3 Crystal Blue Read online

  He gave me an impatient nod and I began to empty my pockets. Wallet, Chapstick, wad of paper with the schedule for Ray and Lenny’s pick-ups. I felt the phone in my breast pocket. Just then, the policeman’s cell phone rang. He stepped back to answer it and turned away for a moment.

  I pulled out my phone, scrolled down the saved numbers, found the one I wanted, and hit SEND. I placed the phone on the table and covered the screen with the wad of paper.

  The officer turned back around.

  “Welcome back to Tortola, Mr. Reilly.” His British accent was anything but welcoming. “There’s a warrant out for your arrest.”

  “For what?”

  “The murder of Stanley Ober.”

  Shit. Crap.

  “I was released—the judge threw the case out—”

  “You were ordered to remain on-island, but you disappeared.”

  “That’s crazy! My attorney—he said I was free to go.”

  Officer Robertson, according to the gold nametag, held up his right palm.

  “Save it for the magistrate, Mr. Reilly.”

  I slumped into the metal chair, which was bolted to the floor.

  Dammit!

  Officer Robertson scooped up my possessions and knocked twice on the door, which opened slowly. He exited without a glance back.

  I slumped forward and took my face in both hands. When your only hope is T. Edward Booth, you know you’re in deep shit.

  AFTER BEING HANDCUFFED AND taken by van over the bridge to Tortola and through the hills into Road Town, I was back in the same cell where I’d spent a month nearly four years ago. Time hadn’t been kind to either of us: the 8’ x 10’ cut stone chamber smelled even worse of piss, vomit, and feces than I remembered. The cell walls were scarred with more graffiti, the toilet in the corner was plugged up with more of the previous occupants’ detritus, and the flicker of the lone fluorescent bulb was already driving me crazy. As for me, last time I was here I was still wealthy, still married, still at the helm of e-Antiquity, and had a flock of attorneys fighting to gain my release.

  I lay back on the hard bunk and looked up at the window, a foot-square slash in the two-foot-deep wall. At least I could tell it was still daytime. Avery Rose would expect me at Peter Island, and Crystal Thedford would await us at Jost. Good luck to them, since I was at the mercy of the local court system. Customs processing at the airport might be on island time, but due process here was glacial.

  Footsteps sounded outside my door, followed by the clank of the locks. In stepped none other than Officer Bramble, fists on his hips. His belly was bigger but he seemed shorter than I remembered.

  “King Charles, back where you belong.”

  “The judge threw this out—”

  “Shut up. When I saw you on TV in St. Thomas, I reissued the warrant and reserved your room here.”

  “That murder charge was bullshit. I’m here to help the Adoption AID people with their show on Jost Van Dyke.”

  “Ha!” Bramble cried. “Assuaging years of guilt with charity work? That’s funny, Reilly, almost Dickensian. Now you’re just another broken-down has-been cluttering up my islands with get-rich-again schemes. I‘m so sick of you people. Americans and Down-islanders make a fortune hauling drugs while arms merchants peddle stolen guns to thugs and gangs that litter our shores with innocent victims. Pathetic.” He paused, the sneer on his face as vitriolic as I remembered it, if not worse. “And now you’re a charter pilot and salvage hunter! Here to help a charity try to change the world—”

  “What are you doing to find John Thedford? Why are you wasting your time with me when you should have every available man out looking for him?”

  “We’re looking for the actor—”

  “And never mind about Thedford?”

  Bramble held his stare, but there was something different in his eyes. A flicker.

  “I want to call my attorney!”

  He laughed. “You got the money for an attorney?”

  “What am I being charged with!”

  “Now who be da King, huh?”

  “I did nothing but help Stanley Ober—”

  “I don’t give a rat’s ass about him.”

  “The Adoption AID people need me—”

  “They’re the reason you’re here.” He reached for the door.

  I sprang up from the bed as he slammed the door shut.

  “What am I being charged with, you miserable piece of shit!”

  I paced the cell so fast I was practically running in circles, jumped over the toilet, screamed at the top of my lungs. I knew none of it was any use, but I was boiling mad and seething with frustration—jailed, kept from doing my job, no resources to fight back.

  Finally I slumped against the back wall, where I slid down to the concrete floor. I sat with my head low and listened to the sounds that came through the window. I heard laughter and imagined Bramble leaving the building for home, thoroughly pleased with himself. I sat there for what seemed an hour.

  “Charles Reilly, you in there?”

  I jumped up. “Who is that out there?”

  “Zachary,” the voice said. “Zachary Ober.”

  Zachary Ober? What the—

  “My father was Stanley Ober, the man who sold you the fake information about the Indian treasure.”

  Oh sweet Jesus, now what?

  “I NEED YOU TO help me find the treasure,” Zachary said.

  “There was no treasure. Your father sold me a bogus map then got himself killed, which is—” I started to say it was why I was back here in jail, but Bramble said I had Adoption AID to thank. Why?

  “My father was an immoral man,” Zachary said. “He said if you sell something once, you’ll eat a fine meal, but if you sell things again and again, you’ll eat abundantly.” He sighed. “I’m sorry for what you’ve been through, King Charles—”

  “Forget King Charles, call me Buck if you don’t mind. I’m broke, stuck in a piss-coated jail cell, and nobody even knows where I am. I’m more like a jester than a king.”

  I laid my head against the cold stone below the window.

  “We can help each other—”

  “How can you help me? Are you a magistrate?”

  “I drive an ambulance, but I—”

  For some reason his answer set me to laughing. I slid back down the wall again and sat on the floor.

  “I’d pretend to be sick so you could rescue me, but Bramble wouldn’t give a shit.”

  “When I heard on the scanner you were arrested, I came right over. It’s a sign, I’m certain. You can help me find the treasure.”

  “Not if I can’t get out of here. And I told you, there is no treasure.”

  He was quiet for a moment. I wondered if he believed me.

  “Why’d you get arrested, anyway?”

  “That’s a damned good question, Zach.”

  Silence followed. Street noises, cackling birds, bleating goats, distant voices filled the void. I jumped up.

  “You still out there, Zachary?”

  “I’m here, um, Buck.”

  “Listen, if you make a call for me, we can talk. Will you do that?”

  He was quiet so long I thought he’d left.

  “Buck, I believe you could help—”

  “You get me out of here and I’ll listen to whatever you want to say. I can’t promise I’ll be able to help you, but I promise I’ll try. Okay?”

  He agreed and I repeated the number I now had memorized. He didn’t have a pen, but after three tries he could repeat it back to me. He promised to call when he got home.

  “I’ll be waiting for you when you’re released,” he said.

  “Last time I was here for a month, so don’t hold your breath.”

  A crack of thunder was followed by what sounded like a torrent of rain. Zach must have fled, as he no longer responded to my calls. Along with the rain came the fetid smell of manure. The goats I’d heard earlier grazed in a field behind the jail, and I remembered from my las
t stay that every time it rained the stench of goat feces lasted until the heat of the sun evaporated the moisture.

  Night brought vivid dreams that woke me in a sweat, grateful I couldn’t remember them. The sound of the rain had ceased, the smell of dung worse than I remembered. In fact, it smelled as if the goats had been throwing up booze.

  I rolled over and realized why.

  A drunk was passed out on the floor near my bunk. I couldn’t believe I hadn’t waked up when they threw him in here. A pool of vomit circled his head, and had I not heard him breathing heavily I might have thought he’d drowned in his puke. He faced away from me, so all I could see were rows of untended dreadlocks spread out like snakes from Medusa’s scalp.

  I curled back into a ball, closed my eyes, and next thing I knew it was dawn.

  When I glanced at the floor, the drunk was gone—

  “Good morning,” a voice said.

  I leapt to my feet to find the man who’d been passed out on the floor standing by the window.

  “Sorry if I woke you,” he said. “I been trying to wash this stench off me.”

  Nothing like a toilet bath to start your day.

  “You was sawing same major lumber, man,” he said.

  I looked at my new roommate’s face and did a double take.

  “Hey, aren’t you—”

  “Diego sends his love.”

  It was Brass Knuckles, the Rasta who’d cold-cocked me at the Beach Bar on St. John.

  “I’m here to deliver some information. Diego heard you was here because Bramble be up to some tricks.”

  I crossed my arms.

  “We’re at war.” His voice dropped. “That big international syndicate moved in and killed some of our men….” His chest heaved once and he caught his breath. “Blew up Diego’s boat, fired shots at his house from a helicopter, stole his car.”

  “When did this happen? I was just in St. Thomas—”

  “Yesterday afternoon.” He slumped over. “They grabbed Spice… my friend.”

  Dreadlocks?

  “The guy with you at the Beach Bar when we, ah, met?” He nodded. “He okay?”

  “No idea, but hope so,” he said.

  “You say it’s an international syndicate?” I thought back to my conversations with Lieutenant White and then Harry. “From where?”

  “We don’t know, but they big—went after everyt’ing all at once. Arms trade, bitches, gambling, drugs—”

  “Boom-Boom?”

  His brow furrowed. “Yeah, him too, same shit—shot up his compound, took some of his men. Pretty fucked up.”

  Silence followed as his eyes grew distant.

  “So why’d you come to see me?”

  “Diego needs you to get him out. He’s stuck in Fish Bay. The syndicate has people at the ferry and the marinas that’ll shoot him dead. He needs you to fly into the bay by his house and pick him up.”

  I stared at him. “I can’t exactly walk out of here.”

  “You’ll get out.”

  I bit the side of my lip.

  “Have you heard anything about John Thedford?”

  His expression compressed into a thoughtful scowl, then he shrugged.

  “Could be, or maybe that actor. We heard someone be holed up in a private villa on Guana Island.”

  “There’s a hundred-grand reward for Mahoney,” I said. “If you have news on him go get him yourself.”

  “Call the cops? Nah, man, not me—and Diego ain’t calling no police neither. But we’ll take half the reward money if you collect. After you fly us outta here.”

  I ran my fingers through my hair and rubbed my eyes.

  “I don’t care so much about the actor, I’m looking for—”

  “That red Cigarette boat, right?” he said.

  I sat up straight. “How’d you know?”

  “You texted Diego.”

  “What about it?” I said.

  “You gonna pick Diego up at Fish Bay?”

  “If you get me what I need.”

  What I didn’t need was to be smack in the middle of an organized-crime war.

  He shrugged. “Baldwin outta Marina Cay. Keeps that sweet red boat over on Scrub Island. Too pussy to work for us, but he do this and that for others.”

  Damn! I’d flown right over Marina Cay and Scrub Island on my approach to the airport.

  “Baldwin, huh. You know his first name?”

  “Nah, mon, but everyone call him Baldy. He run the marina there. Got that boat from a DEA auction on St. Thomas couple of years ago.” He laughed. “Won’t be long ‘fore they take it back, soon as Baldy get busted running shit around the islands. But we heard he be working for this new syndicate, so he might be dead ’fore you get to him.”

  I let this sink in for a minute.

  “Any chance Baldy might have taken Thedford to Guana Island?”

  “Could be.” Brass Knuckles nodded vigorously, which made his dreadlocks jump. “So when you get out, Diego be waiting. So make it soon.”

  My under the radar network was under attack and falling apart, but at least it had delivered some information.

  “Now I got to get outta here.”

  “Thanks for the visit.”

  He walked straight to the door and beat on it, hard, with the palm of his hand. He yelled something unintelligible and beat on it again. The door opened a minute later, and the guard looked in and smiled. They exchanged garbled conversation, then Brass Knuckles walked out without looking back.

  I jumped up and tried the same thing, beat on the door hard and yelled, but nobody came.

  MY ASS GREW NUMB sitting on the cot, so I did an isometric-aerobic workout that soaked my already soggy shirt with more sweat—no climate-controlled comforts here in the jail. As the hours passed I felt myself descending into the mental numbness that comes with incarceration. Not that I had much experience with anything beyond the month I spent in this cell four years ago, maybe a few days here and there, but it was the same every time. After the initial anger and outrage fade, you become sluggish and enter a semi-hibernated state to survive the anguish of confinement.

  I didn’t know how my former partner had handled nearly two years in jail, so far. I’d be a basket case. Last I heard Jack had another year to go before he’d be eligible for parole. My brother and I had helped support the Dodson family while he was locked up. Jack could have dragged me down with him—and my brother, too, since he inherited the wealth my parents gained when I warned them to sell our stock. Jack wasn’t the only one who hid assets as e-Antiquity free-fell into insolvency, but the cash he stashed was a lot more obvious than the maps and background information I had spirited away.

  I heard a noise—the slide of the bolt and keys jingling in the lock. The heavy door slid open. Three men stood outside: a guard, Officer Bramble, and another man who was vaguely familiar—the court magistrate who released me last time.

  “Charles Reilly, III,” the magistrate said. “Do you remember me?”

  “Of course. You released me last time because you knew I was innocent—”

  “Hardly innocent,” Bramble said.

  “Why have I been arrested?”

  “There’s a crime war going on in your islands, Reilly,” Bramble said. “I assumed you were part of it.”

  “I’m here to help an Adoption AID charity concert on Jost Van Dyke. The head of the nonprofit, John Thedford, disappeared several days ago—”

  “Also in the USVI,” Bramble said.

  “My sources say he was taken by a man named Baldwin from Marina Cay aboard a red Cigarette boat. Have you heard that, Bramble? Or do you give a shit?”

  Bramble took a step toward me. The magistrate stepped between us.

  “That’s enough of that!” This to Bramble, who looked ready to cold-cock me.

  “Marina Cay’s in the BVI, in case you forgot,” I said. “And Stud Mahoney was last seen on Peter Island, also in the BVI—”

  “Our investigation,” Bramble said, “sh
ows him leaving on a private boat with his lady friend after they checked in—”

  “A red Cigarette, by any chance?”

  Bramble’s eyes narrowed as he rubbed his chin between his index finger and thumb.

  “And what do you mean, your sources? You got a license to be investigating here in the British Virgin Islands? Or are you connected to one of the gangs in the USVI?”

  “Or the FBI?” the magistrate said.

  Had Booth interceded on my behalf? The call I made from the airport when the officer confiscated my possessions may have connected after all. Or had Zach Ober reached him?

  The magistrate stared at me, waiting for an answer.

  “What am I being charged with? Or is this just another case of police brutality—”

  “You’re a common criminal, Reilly!” Bramble said.

  The magistrate literally shoved him aside.

  “There’s no charge, Mr. Reilly. You were detained due to an outstanding bench warrant dating back to when you departed Tortola without appearing in my court for official release.”

  “That’s it? You kept me in here overnight, interrupted my… investigation—”

  “You’re no law enforcement officer!” Bramble’s face was so red I thought his head might explode. “You’re a phony and a punk!”

  “Enough!” the magistrate said.

  “I’m walking out of here right now,” I said. “You’ve held me without cause—”

  “Not until you pay the fine!” Bramble said. “That bench warrant’s been outstanding for three years!”

  Damn. I didn’t have much cash, but…

  “My FBI credit card is in my wallet,” I said. “Feel free to charge the fine.”

  Bramble’s face turned chalky mocha. The magistrate held both hands up, palms out.

  “The court waives the fine, Mr. Reilly, and please accept our apologies for the treatment you’ve received here.”

  I held my breath. The moment was so good I almost didn’t want it to end, but I needed to get out of here before I went too far.

  Then I remembered why I was here.

  “I came to Tortola to meet with Commissioner Duncan Mather—”

  “What for?” Bramble said.

  “That’s enough, Kenneth!” The magistrate turned to me “Was he expecting you?”