Bluewater Vengeance: Mystery and Adventure in the Caribbean (Bluewater Thrillers Book 2) Page 4

  As she worked, she thought about Best of Times and imagined what it would be like to own her. Dani had in mind a charter business, catering to couples or small families. She thought that she could run the boat with one other person, preferably someone who could fill the role of chef as well as deck hand. The vessel would accommodate the crew of two and two to four guests in luxury. The challenge would be finding that one other person, but she put that worry aside and concentrated on the economics.

  With a boat like Best of Times, she could position her offering at the upper end of the crewed charter market for small sailing yachts. She wouldn't have to compete with the folks who ran crewed charters on the 50- to 60- foot cookie-cutter boats, working themselves to exhaustion running the boat and catering to the whims of four couples at a time. Their clients were looking for a week filled with beach bars and umbrella drinks.

  She figured she could easily command a price of $10,000 per week per couple, with candle-lit dinners served on white linen in the soft glow of that varnished teak interior. The Wedgwood china would be just the ticket, although she'd never let that swishy broker know it. A smile flickered over her face at the thought. Estimating the running expenses and the occupancy rate as she finished the cushions, she decided that she could make a business of it.

  As she cleaned up after herself and stowed her tools, she heard Liz call, "Hello, Kayak Spirit. Are you aboard, Dani?"

  She climbed up a couple of steps on the companionway ladder and stuck her head out. "Come on aboard, Liz. I just finished the upholstery job."

  "So, why does Phillip call his yacht Kayak Spirit, Dani? Something about the Eskimos?"

  Dani chuckled as Liz climbed into the cockpit. "No, that's the original name. She was built down in Carriacou in the '50s, to haul freight in the islands. In the local patois down there, the people from Carriacou are called Kayaks."

  "I see. She does have the look of a boat that could work for her living, now that you mention it. Sturdy and strong."

  "Yes." Dani agreed. "She worked for her living for about 50 years. Phillip bought her from the original owner, who also did most of the original construction. He used her for smuggling 180-proof rum into Martinique and Guadeloupe until he retired, and then Phillip bought her."

  "Fascinating," Liz said, running her hands over the simple, hand-made fittings of bronze and painted iron. She examined the joinery work with the appreciative eye of an artist. "Beautiful, too. A real piece of local history, isn't she?"

  "Yes, Liz, she is. Would you be interested in taking her out with me tomorrow? Just for a few hours, maybe, so that you can see how she handles?"

  "Could we?"

  "Sure. We'll just put her on a beam reach toward Guadeloupe, and ride until lunchtime. We can heave to for lunch and have a beam reach back. I'll even take care of lunch."

  "That would be fun. So today, lunch must be my treat, okay?"

  "Sure, Liz. If you're buying, you pick the place," Dani said, as they climbed down onto the dock and started walking toward the shops and restaurants.

  ****

  "I know I can afford it, Papa. I just like the idea of spreading the risk a little. If I were buying her as a plaything, then, okay, I know there's plenty from what grandmother left me, but this is a solid business. I'm thinking myself and three other investors. I'll set up a corporation in Delaware to own the boat and borrow the money from us. We'll hold a preferred ship's mortgage to secure a loan at the market rate, and I'll eventually register the boat offshore in the corporate name. That solves all sorts of liability and tax issues. I need some other investors with significant participation, just in case of trouble. If I'm the only one with money in it, it would be too easy for some aggressive lawyer to pierce the corporate veil, if anything went wrong, like one of the guests getting an infected hangnail and deciding to sue."

  "I see, Dani. That all makes sense to me," J.-P. said, leaning back in his swivel chair and looking out of his office window at the beginnings of a dreary, damp evening in Paris. "Would you be willing to have me as one of the investors, or does that make it too cozy from a liability point of view?"

  "No, Papa, I think that would be all right if you want, as long as the others aren't relatives. We would still only have half of the business, in effect."

  "Do you think we should fund this by buying shares, instead of with debt, Dani?"

  "No, Papa. I don't want a board of directors. I'll make the decisions and I don't want to discuss them. The investors will get their periodic payments and see a good return, but they won't have a say in how I run the business."

  J.-P. smiled. She was his daughter. No doubt about that. "Okay, Dani. So what do you need from me?"

  "Nothing more, right now, Papa. I needed to talk through this, to hear the words out loud, and see if they still rang true."

  "I don't think you've missed anything important. There will always be surprises. What about crew? You have someone in mind, do you?" J.-P. asked, thinking that there might be a young man in the background somewhere.

  "Possibly. I'll know more after tomorrow, but I think she'll do. I'm taking her out on Kayak Spirit tomorrow to see if she sails as well as she talks about it. I don't know if she can cook, though. I'm not going to run the boat and cook. That's for sure."

  J.-P. smothered a chuckle, remembering Dani's debacles in the kitchen. "You think two little girls can run charters on a 60-foot ketch?" He quickly held the phone out at arm's distance, expecting an outburst.

  "Go to hell, Papa. Thanks for listening. I love you." Dani disconnected the call before he could hear her giggling.

  She made a quick inventory of the galley stores that Phillip had left aboard and walked up to the little grocery store in the marina complex to pick up a few essentials. Once she had stowed her purchases, she headed for the bar, with a beer and a burger in mind. It was too late to catch the broker and begin negotiating, but she figured time was in her favor.

  ****

  Some three hundred miles to the south, Big Jim was trying to enjoy his customary after-dinner cigar. The three replacement guards had arrived from Miami around lunchtime, and he had spent the afternoon getting them settled over on Baliceaux. They were first generation Cuban-Americans, just as he had suspected they would be. Juan Camacho, "the Boss," was from Havana, originally, but he had come to the states as a child with his parents, refugees from the 1959 revolution. Big Jim figured there was probably some blood relationship between the Boss and at least one of these hard-eyed men.

  As the smoke from his Cohiba drifted in the still air of the little bar where he ate supper most nights, he wondered why he, a Venezuelan in a Venezuelan business, was taking orders from a Cuban in Miami. No matter what Chavez did with Venezuela, nothing could change the fact that Miami was the unofficial capital city of Latin America and the Caribbean. And the Cubans ran Miami. To do business in the Caribbean basin, especially shady business, without access to Miami's infrastructure would be difficult. He had to accept it, but he didn't like it.

  He had only a vague notion of the organization to which Camacho belonged, but he knew it was run by some of Chavez's cronies. El Grupo was careful about who knew what, and Big Jim only knew what the Boss told him. He had been doing all right, trading on his own account, while he ran El Grupo's drugs and women through his transshipment point on Baliceaux.

  His percentage from El Grupo was generous, but no man got independently wealthy working for others. He had a good thing going on the side with Julio, and Julio had been none the wiser. He just did what Big Jim told him. Julio didn't know that almost half of the shipments he handled were on Big Jim's personal account, not that he would have cared. As long as he was paid generously, Julio didn't ask questions.

  Now Julio was dead. Big Jim didn’t believe for a minute that he had killed himself, either. There was no way he could tell the Boss without putting himself in jeopardy, but it was plain to Big Jim that somebody found the girl through Julio. Whoever it was, they had no further use for the d
runken pig once he told them where she was being held. If Big Jim could figure out who killed Julio, he would know who freed the girl.

  The problem was that he had no way of knowing who the girl was. Julio had found her floating in an inflatable life vest, unconscious. He had been between Bequia and Mustique, delivering those microwaves with the coke in the packaging when one of his crew spotted her. She had still been aboard Erzulie Freda, unconscious from an obvious blow to the head, when Big Jim first saw her.

  He had recognized her value almost immediately, and he cut a deal with Julio to let Rosa nurse her back to health. Rosa had been there on Baliceaux with her two nurses to take care of the livestock, as they all referred to their human merchandise. Mostly, they dealt in women, although an occasional maricón came their way. Their captives were often worse for wear when they arrived in Baliceaux, and Rosa and the nurses would clean them up and rehabilitate them before they were sold on, usually through a broker in Caracas, ultimately destined for somewhere in the Middle East.

  The girl had been comatose, and she had no identification on her, so they didn't know how she came to be adrift in the Caribbean. The last Big Jim had heard from Rosa, the girl was showing some signs of regaining consciousness. He had intended to confront the girl with the question of who might be interested in buying her freedom. He had been expecting to make a big score on her, once he paid Julio some pittance, because she was not on El Grupo's books. Now she was gone. In the process, Big Jim had ended up in trouble. He had a personal score to settle with the people who had stolen her from him.

  Chapter 7

  "That's absurd. I'm not taking that offer to my client. I'd be embarrassed," the yacht broker said, looking at Dani over the top of his reading glasses. He was sitting behind his cluttered desk, holding Dani's written offer in his manicured hands.

  She continued to stare out the window, ignoring him. The silence was heavy in the small office.

  "That's 20 percent less than her asking price," the broker said, unnerved by Dani's lack of response.

  She sat, relaxed and immobile, her gaze fixed on some point in the distance.

  "Aren't you going to answer me?"

  "You haven't asked me a question, until now," Dani said, without looking at him.

  "Will you raise your offer to $950,000? I could work with that?"

  "No. You don't have to work with it. You have to take it to your client. You're free to tell her what you think of it, but it would be unethical for you to withhold it, wouldn't it, now?"

  The man looked down at his desk, fidgeting with some of the rumpled papers there. Dani stood up, heading for the door.

  "I'm trying to negotiate, Ms. Berger, don't leave. I need you to fill out the loan application, first, anyway," he said, trying to defuse the situation.

  Dani turned, her hand on the door. "I won't negotiate with you. I'll entertain a written counteroffer with the owner's signature in a fax from a number that I can verify independently, or in an unopened Fed Ex from her. I won't be needing a loan. I'm going sailing. If you don't bring me a counteroffer or an acceptance by tomorrow morning, I'll go to Mrs. Simonson directly and recommend that she have her lawyers fire you. Got it, or did I use too many big words?"

  "No. I mean, yes. How do you know Mrs. Simonson, if I might ask?"

  "I don't know her, but I will, if you don't do what you're obligated to do. Her name and address are in the U.S. Coast Guard's documentation database. Maybe I should just have my attorney in the States take this up with her."

  "No, you needn't do that. I'll fax the offer to her now. I'm sorry we've started off at odds, Ms. Berger."

  "Okay. Apology accepted. See you in the morning." Dani left, headed back to Kayak Spirit.

  ****

  Big Jim took the early morning ferry to Kingstown, the capital city of St. Vincent and the Grenadines. He had an appointment with a local entrepreneur, a dealer in one of St. Vincent's 'premier agricultural commodities,' as his business card advertised. Big Jim's command of English, while adequate for his needs, didn't allow him to appreciate the humor of the phrase on Oscar David Johnston's business card. He just knew that Ozzie, as the man preferred to be called, could hook him up with sizable quantities of locally grown marijuana on short notice, delivered to Baliceaux in the dead of night by small, fast boats that ran without lights.

  He needed to let Ozzie know that there would be a brief interruption in their regular commerce. Also, he wanted to secure the support of some muscle whose first loyalty was not to Juan Camacho. Big Jim couldn't do anything about the three Cubans now occupying Baliceaux, but he could begin mobilizing troops of his own. His first goal for them would be to learn what they could about Julio's fate. He couldn't think of a better way to begin backtracking the people who had freed the girl and caused him all these problems.

  Big Jim still didn't have a clear idea of how to turn his situation with Camacho around. He wasn't sure that he would even be able to square himself with Camacho. El Grupo was known for ruthless efficiency, which didn't often foster forgiveness. It could well be that Big Jim's survival would require him to disappear.

  He didn't trust the three Cubans any more than he trusted Camacho. He was sure that once Camacho figured out what was going on, they would try to make fish food of Big Jim Rodriguez, but he didn't plan to let that happen. He had to find that girl and use her to squeeze walking-away money from whoever had rescued her, so that he could make a new life for himself. He was thinking of the South Pacific, maybe. It would be somewhere without the damned Cubans and the Miami connections; of that he was sure.

  Whatever turn his path might be about to take, he needed revenge for the slight to his manhood, and he always needed more money. No matter how much he had in his various numbered accounts, he needed more, especially if he had to start over in a new place. His instinct told him that whoever was behind stealing that girl from him would have plenty of money. They had to, to be able to do what they had done.

  So his plan was simple. He would do what was necessary to keep Camacho sweet for as long as he could, buying himself time to figure out who his target was. He would kidnap the girl, and this time, his goal would be ransom. He knew that somebody rich and powerful cared for her, so his estimate of her value had increased accordingly.

  As he walked down the gangway into the unruly crowd at the head of the ferry dock, he saw Ozzie's Mercedes 600 SL. The car was idling in the middle of a 50-yard circle of empty pavement, its occupants hidden by the smoked glass windows. He impatiently shoved a small, unkempt man out of his way, wrinkling his nose at the sour odor emanating from his ragged clothes.

  "Lo siento mucho," the ragman mumbled, as he scurried aside, averting his face so that Big Jim wouldn't see his crossed eyes, his one distinguishing feature.

  There were two neatly dressed but rough-looking men, one standing on each side of the car. Their mere appearance was sufficient to keep the rowdy crowd from encroaching on the space around the car.

  As Big Jim approached, one of the guards tapped lightly on the driver's window. The door opened, and the driver, another daunting specimen, greeted Big Jim respectfully. He opened the back door on the driver's side, ushering Big Jim into the cool, dark interior of Ozzie's mobile office. As he took Ozzie's proffered hand, Big Jim saw the guards getting into a large black S.U.V. driven by a third man.

  "Welcome to St. Vincent, Big Jim," Ozzie said, smiling. He held Big Jim's hand in his own large, meaty paw, the grip curiously soft, in the way of island handshakes.

  "Thanks, Ozzie. Thanks for seeing me."

  "I am always happy to see you, my friend, but what brings you here on such short notice? Has there been some problem with my goods? My deliveries?"

  "No, of course not. You run a first-class operation, always, Ozzie. The problem is on my side. I come hoping that you may be able to help me. Of course, helping me would be a profitable thing for us both, as usual." Big Jim struggled vainly to match Ozzie's precise diction and flawless grammar, but he
always felt tongue-tied when he listened to the man's upper-class English. Odd that the wealthy, upper-class islanders sounded more English than their former colonial overlords, he thought. He watched the traffic thin out as they left the downtown area.

  Ozzie, seeing his guest's curious glances out the window, said, "Since you said you were in no hurry to get back to Mustique, I thought we could have lunch at the plantation. You once said that you would like to see it, and it's a beautiful day to enjoy the countryside, is it not?"

  "Yes, Ozzie, beautiful," Big Jim said, wishing that he could get right to the meat of the matter, but resigning himself to play the game of manners that his host enjoyed so much.

  ****

  Once Kayak Spirit was clear of the other boats that were moored stern-to at the dock, Dani put the diesel in neutral and shut it down.

  "You get the main, and I'll get the jib," she said to Liz as they went forward to the mast.

  They had uncovered the sails before leaving the dock, and Dani had already laid out the jib on deck, ready to hoist. She raised it quickly, turning to watch Liz. She wanted to see how readily the diminutive Liz could hoist the heavy main. Given the callused palm Dani had felt when they shook hands the other day, she didn't expect Liz to have any difficulty, but she wanted to be sure. As she had hoped, Liz raised the main smoothly, not bothering with the winch except for the last few feet, using it only to tension the luff of the sail. Standing on opposite sides of the mast, they looked at each other and nodded, as they simultaneously belayed their respective halyards.

  "You want to take her out of the harbor, Liz?" Dani asked. "If you'll trim the main, I'll manage the jib sheets while we're short-tacking out of here."

  Back in the cockpit, Liz caught the tiller between her knees. Facing forward, she briskly hauled in the mainsheet hand over hand, watching the sail begin to fill. Dani trimmed the jib. Liz sat down on the starboard cockpit seat, taking the tiller in her left hand, holding it with her fingertips as she sought to feel the response of the heavy boat. Dani noticed with an approving smile that Liz held the mainsheet in her right hand instead of making it fast to a cleat. Watching the mainsail, she was playing the sheet and tiller against one another constantly as Kayak Spirit gathered way in the light breeze.