3 Crystal Blue Read online

  “So God thinks a mother or father should be executed—”

  “Don’t put words in my mouth, boy.” The squint returned, which again reminded me of a wolverine. “And don’t be trying to change God’s will to meet your needs. You ain’t shit, we all ain’t shit, and God don’t take no shit.” His voice had a slight Germanic accent with an island finish.

  Crystal said today’s caller told her she’d ‘eat shit’ if she didn’t cancel the show.

  “Quite the message. And what happens to people who don’t abide by that philosophy?”

  “They go to hell, son. See, people today, most of ‘em are selfish, self-centered, lazy. I don’t care what religion they practice, if any, ‘cause they all hypocrites. That whole idea of forgiveness is a license to steal, far as I can tell. Ain’t nobody want to face the truth, ‘cause truth’s a bitch. You ignore God, you get what’s coming, plain and simple.”

  Hellfire stood with one fist on his hip, the gun to his side, stared me straight in the eye, and spoke with absolute confidence. He never once raised his voice, but it held an authority that commanded you to listen, regardless of your opinion.

  “Hellfire believes in no grace or forgiveness, that’s what you’re saying?”

  “You catch on quick.”

  “So is that what happened to John Thedford?”

  He took a step toward me.

  “Get your ass outta here, boy. You’re going to hell too, I can already tell. You got that look about you. And whether you’re mixed up with that bunch or the damned mobsters, you’re not welcome here.”

  He bumped his chest into me and pushed me back. He was coming again, so I took a backward step down the aisle. I didn’t want to fight the man. He bumped me again.

  “Did you call Crystal Thedford today?” I said.

  “Get the hell outta here ‘fore I call my boys.” He lifted the gun.

  I back-stepped my way down the aisle and pushed the door open with my rear end.

  “Does God tell you to take his word into your hands, Reverend?”

  “He’s telling me to shoot your ass right now if you don’t get off my property!” His lips were peeled back, showing stubby teeth. He pointed the massive revolver at my head. “Get out!

  The door slammed in my face and I heard the metallic sound of the ancient lock click. So much for asking him to call me a taxi.

  I started down the road, breathing deep to slow my heart rate and process his statements. Boom-Boom obviously told Hellfire about me. Could Boom-Boom be the kidnapper? Could the kidnappings be his way of gaining leverage in whatever this crime war was that’s brewing? Hellfire mentioned his boys, too, and I wondered whether one drove a red Cigarette boat.

  The shore wasn’t visible from the road, but I made a mental note to cruise the coast from the sky to see what lay around the Church of Hellfire. He might not call it that, but the shoe damn sure fit.

  AFTER A TWENTY-MINUTE HIKE, I saw a black SUV coming up the road. It flew past, braked, did a quick U-turn, pulled up alongside me and slowed to my pace—all within a few seconds.

  The tinted passenger window lowered and a massive black bald head peered out.

  “You looking for me?” Boom-Boom. “Ready to broker the deal?”

  “Just having some spiritual time.”

  He grinned. “Hellfire’s place?”

  The SUV came to a stop and Boom-Boom popped the door open. Of course there was a shotgun between his legs. I got in the empty back seat, and the same driver as last night stepped on the gas.

  “How do you know Hellfire?” I asked.

  The deep laugh I recalled through the stupor from last night made my toes curl.

  “You ask a lotta questions, Reilly. But to demonstrate the extent of my network to you and your people, I got some information for you.”

  “What—”

  “Not so fast, brudda, we still need to arrange that sit-down. The quid for the pro quo.” He laughed. “You won’t be sorry, man. We can do this together a lot easier and cleanly than if things gets hostile.”

  The driver turned onto the road toward Frenchman’s Reef.

  “I’m headed to the airport, if you guys wouldn’t mind—”

  “Let’s go meet your people, Reilly. Right now.”

  “I told you, I’m working with Adoption AID.” Deep breath. “Did someone grab Thedford and Mahoney as leverage for future negotiations?”

  “That why you went to see Hellfire?”

  The cell phone rang in my pocket.

  I pulled it out: YOUR MASTER. Shit.

  “Go ahead and answer it,” Boom-Boom said. “Tell him I’m ready to meet, here and now.” He thumped the butt of the shotgun on the floor.

  My mouth was dry. The phone started to ring again and I hit the green button.

  “I can’t talk right now—”

  “Impersonating an officer—”

  I clamped my hand over the earpiece so Boom-Boom wouldn’t hear Booth.

  “I said I can’t talk.”

  “White’s threatening to have you arrested.” He laughed. “I’m calling, Reilly, to tell you that your lady friend’s now my top suspect in the disappearance of her husband.”

  “Are you crazy? Just because of Stud—”

  “Five million dollar life insurance policy says I’m not, hotshot. Keep your eyes open and think with your big head, not the little one.” He paused to make sure I appreciated his devastating wit. “I’m still assessing how this ties to Mahoney.” He hung up.

  Boom-Boom turned back to look at me.

  “Heard something about five million dollars, Reilly. I can get you more.”

  I swallowed, hard. “I hear you. Why don’t you tell me what you’ve learned? I already told you we’d work something out.”

  “I want a guarantee,” he said. “Insurance.”

  My mind shot back to Booth’s call. A five million dollar insurance policy? On John Thedford?

  “I’ll be at that concert,” Boom-Boom said. “That’ll put all those celebrities right in the middle, you know, in case our talks don’t go so good.”

  “You help me find Thedford and Mahoney,” I said, “and good things will happen.”

  Big yellow teeth appeared, but his eyes were slits.

  “Okay, here’s the skinny. Brudda from Tortola picked up the dude you looking for on St. John, few nights back.”

  “John Thedford? How’d he pick him up?”

  “Boy got a bad ass red speed boat. Cigarette with trip 300’s.”

  “Where’d they—”

  “He’s a boat for hire, used him plenty times myself. Said he dropped the dude, who was all fucked up, at another boat out in the middle of the sound. Got paid on the spot in cash, but he don’t know shit. People approached him at the bar on Soper’s to make the run. Just business. Said he didn’t know the dudes.”

  We were down in Charlotte Amalie now, driving up through the hordes making their way toward the cruise ships, when I smelled something not unlike burning rope. Boom-Boom had lit a monster blunt. He passed it to the driver, who pulled on it with Olympic strength, then tried to hand it back to me.

  “Not today, fellas,” I said.

  “Suit yourself, but you owe me now,” Boom-Boom said. “I want that meeting.”

  “Fine, but I need to know where Thedford is, Mahoney too. Otherwise it’s just gossip. Did the same guy pick up Mahoney on Peter Island?”

  “’Brudda with the boat didn’t know shit about no actor getting kidnapped.”

  “So what’s his name, the guy with the red boat?”

  Boom-Boom turned back to look over his shoulder, smoke streaming from his nostrils.

  “That’s it for now. You set the meeting or I’ll be at the show this weekend, don’t forget it.” He stared into my eyes. “And if things don’t go good, there’ll be a whole bunch of other famous people in trouble.”

  Boom-Boom gave me a long, hard stare. I held his eyes but had my hand on the door handle. I’d jump if that sho
tgun budged off his crotch. By the time he turned back around we were at the General Aviation building.

  I got out. Fast.

  “This weekend, Reilly. I’m counting on that meeting. And if things get ugly around here with your boss, I’ll find you first.”

  WITH THE PRE-FLIGHT CHECK complete, I reread the letter from the FAA for the umpteenth time. Had they transmitted this to all the local authorities? Would Commissioner Duncan Mather of the Royal Virgin Islands Police Force really allow me to make a water landing in the BVI?

  Only one way to find out. I fired up the Beast’s twin Pratt & Whitney Wasp Jr. engines. The plane shook with the 900 horsepower from the twin radial engines. The sound and vibration stirred me to the core. Flying antique planes came with a lot of headaches, not the least of which was obtaining parts, but a thrill pulsed through me every time I cranked the Beast up. Seaplanes today were much more efficient and often faster, but they were all modified to use floats. Old Grumman amphibians like the Goose were called flying boats because their fuselages were actual hulls that sliced through the water at up to a hundred miles an hour before the physics of flight launched them aloft. It was a much more intimate relationship with the water, which I loved.

  I glanced at my phone and found the same texts from Ray and Crystal: Call me.

  It took one-third of the 7,000-foot runaway before the Beast was airborne and we lit out over Brewer’s Bay. With my cell phone connected to my headset, I called Ray first.

  He went off about the celebrities he’d met. I banked to the northeast and flew at an angle so I could view St. Thomas’s mountainous region to try and find Boom-Boom’s place and Hellfire’s church. Ray had nothing else for me, so we signed off.

  I cracked my knuckles and dialed Crystal’s number.

  “There you are,” she said. “Have people started arriving—NO, put that over there!” Her voice boomed, but away from the phone.

  It sounded like pandemonium in the background. When I told her Avery Rose declined a ride, she asked me to retrieve her from Peter Island and bring her to Jost for rehearsal. She also repeated Ray’s news about demands made by Stud’s kidnappers. I had trouble concentrating—the five million dollar insurance policy and her silence about her relationship with Stud were bugging the hell out of me.

  There weren’t many dwellings in the mountainous area, but I flew with purpose until I found the old stone house where I’d been delivered to Boom-Boom. It was bigger than I thought, with two wings—a fortress surrounded by sheer rock cliffs and dense jungle. Several people emerged from the woods to peer up at me. The black SUV was parked next to the house.

  I banked to follow the road down and spotted Hellfire’s church. Behind the woods at its back, I was surprised to see three other buildings.

  Could John or Stud be in one of them?

  Below all that was a path that led down to a dock. No boat, but direct water access. Boom-Boom said the red Cigarette rendezvoused with another boat in Pillsbury Sound to transfer Thedford. Could that boat have come to this dock?

  I vectored west and dialed Harry.

  “I thought you’d forgotten about me,” he said.

  “Sorry, Harry. I guess it seems like I only call you when I need information these days. But with those, ah, sixty three companies—”

  “Back to sixty four. In fact, your being in the Virgin Islands inspired me to acquire a telecommunications firm based in Roadtown, Tortola. And I much prefer your calling for knowledge than money, dear boy. But we are overdue for a social evening.”

  Got to love Harry.

  “So when I called you a few days ago, I know it was a really broad question, but did you have any luck?”

  He chuckled. “Yes, well, I did query Percy’s accuracy in noting your inquiry. What he relayed to me was that you wanted to know if there were any radical groups so opposed to the adoption of children that they’d go to any length to prevent its becoming more commonplace.”

  “I’d say Percy nailed it.”

  “I was able to research through G&M, our security consultancy in Manhattan, and they did produce a list of rather disjointed possibilities, several pages in fact—”

  “Tell you what, Harry, I’m in a major hurry here, so why don’t I mention a few things and see if any match what your group discovered?”

  “Spot on,” he said. “Whenever you’re ready.”

  “The obvious ones would be radical pro-life or pro-choice elements,” I said. “But rogue abortion clinic bombers and in-your-face reproductive rights groups? Abduction, blackmail, and torture don’t seem to fit their platitudes.”

  The sound of paper rustling came through the phone.

  “Hmmm…it says here…yes, G&M concurs with that line of thought.”

  “So another one I’ve come across is a religious zealot who calls himself Reverend Hellfire. Anything on him?”

  A brief rustling this time. “I’m afraid not, but if he’s a lone wolf, it’s unlikely we would have found him.”

  “How about international opposition. Anything on that?”

  More crackling of pages. “You can find opposition to nearly anything, but groups targeting adoption don’t come up specifically. However, when you factor in religion—”

  “Stud Mahoney’s kidnappers have demanded that prisoners be released from Guantanamo,” I said.

  “So there you are. An obvious connection. Muslims oppose adoption.”

  “Could it really be Muslim extremists? They get blamed for everything these days.” I sighed. “Anything else on the international front?”

  “You also have the overseas export of children, a.k.a. adoption, recently virtually outlawed by the Russians. But unfortunately the picture becomes quite muddled when you examine the broader perspective.”

  With Tortola now close, I asked Harry to keep digging and promised to call again later.

  Muddled indeed.

  THE FLIGHT FROM ST. THOMAS to Beef Island, the spit of land connected to Tortola where the international airport is situated, would be over in moments, but I had a few things I wanted to check first. At an altitude of 3,000 feet I could see every island in the BVI, big and small. The sky was partially clear, but the large cumulous clouds that had been building all day rocked the Beast with serious turbulence.

  Somewhere down there were John Thedford and Stud Mahoney. I hoped they were still alive—and that I’d find them before it was too late. Or before Boom-Boom’s threats to bring trouble to Adoption AID came true, which amounted to the same thing.

  As Tortola grew larger ahead of me I added flaps and pointed the nose of the Beast toward its west end. The harbor there was where the ferries docked and boaters passed through Customs, but across the harbor was an island officially named Frenchman’s Cay but known as Soper’s Hole.

  I buzzed over Soper’s and focused on the boatyard and marina where Pusser’s and the Blue Parrot bars were located. I saw several large catamarans but no red-hulled Cigarette. I circled south, over Pillsbury Sound, and scanned the harbor again—nothing aside from some damn nice cruising ships.

  With Tortola ATC barking in my headset, I continued north over Cane Garden Bay. I glanced over at Jost Van Dyke to the west, noting the concentration of white dots—boats in Great Harbor where Foxy’s was located—and vectored east around Guana Island, Great Camanoe, and Scrub Islands, adding flaps as we circled.

  I straightened out toward Terrance B. Lettsome Airport and touched a third of the way down the 4,500-foot runway. I taxied along toward the FBO, where I was directed to park the Beast on the tarmac, just before the private aviation building.

  The trip had been too short to process all the beauty I’d observed along the way: the brilliant turquoise water, rugged rock outcroppings, white strips of sand, and red terracotta roofs dotting green hills. Nothing replaced the feeling I always got when soaring above the islands, all of which I knew by name. It imbued my soul with a sense of peace that calmed the fears I had in coming here.

  With my fligh
t bag over my shoulder and the letters from the FAA and FBI in my breast pocket, I was as ready as I’d ever be to go through Customs. Not just because it was a mind-numbing process, island time being especially prevalent where bureaucrats reign, but because it was Tortola.

  The line was short and it only took a few minutes before I handed over my passport to the blue-uniformed agent who looked as if he’d fall asleep if left alone for more than a minute. He glanced at the passport, then my face, then back to the passport photo. Okay, so I hadn’t updated it post-e-Antiquity, but it’s still me.

  His fingers dragged over the keyboard. He stopped typing, glanced up at me again, looked over his left shoulder toward a closed door.

  “Hang on a minute,” he said.

  I watched him walk to the door, knock, glance back at me, then enter the room. My gut twisted tighter with each moment that passed. The customs agent came back out followed by a woman with two gold stripes on her epaulets and a scowl on her face. A moment later, the door that led outside to the street opened up and two armed police officers entered the room—headed straight for me, of course.

  I swallowed.

  “Charles Reilly, III?” the woman said.

  I nodded.

  “Gentlemen, please escort Mr. Reilly to holding room one.”

  The policemen, who now stood on both sides of me, each took one of my elbows and turned me toward another door.

  “What’s this about?” I said.

  No response.

  “Commissioner Mather’s expecting me,” I said.

  Still nothing.

  The door opened to a short hallway. A painted number 1 adorned a gray metal door with a massive lock and steel bolt fixed on the outside.

  Crap.

  Was it because of the seedy appearance of the Beast? All of the drug and weapons smuggling in the area? Or because law enforcement tends to be paranoid about amphibious aircraft?

  “Please take a seat,” one of the policemen said as the other officer closed the door. The sound of the locks being secured didn’t help my stomach. “Empty your pockets, please.”

  “What’s the problem, officer?”