Mr. Hooligan Read online

  Julius signaled up, the empty net rose, swinging against the hull. Julius slid the buckets into the V-berth to make room for more. They repeated the process. Before the net went up for a third and final time, eighteen buckets in all, Riley motioned to Julius to take the helm. He tottered over to the buckets, holding the gunwale for balance. He took out his Spyderco and cut away the plastic-wrap seal on one of the buckets, pried the cover off. Got a flashlight and shined it on the contents. Seven tightly taped bricks. He hefted one, about five kilos—he could tell from experience. He sliced open the tape and cellophane, exposed the hard white underneath, and chipped off a tiny piece with the blade. Tasted it. High grade, yes sir.

  He dumped the brick back in, covered the bucket, quickly uncovered another. Results the same, he waved to the figures peering down.

  See you later, nice doing business with you and so long. Eighteen buckets of thirty-five kilos each equal six hundred thirty kilos, and at the Monsanto price of seven thousand per to deliver—yeah, Riley knew the price, he’d checked around—you’re talking four point four million effectively in his boat tonight. And he was asking for a mere forty thousand? The Monsantos were getting away with an insult of a bargain.

  * * *

  They returned the same path they came except this time Riley threw the throttle wide open and cut the running lights. They passed through St. George’s cut back into the calmer Caribbean and sliced south toward Belize City, making good time. Unload this cargo at the Monsantos’ dock in Buttonwood Bay and Riley would be in bed before midnight.

  He eased back the throttle, idling through the channel between mangrove islands, city lights on the horizon. Feeling good, a little tired, but that sea air in his lungs kept him steady. His thoughts slipped into the wake of an earlier reverie, of why he was drawn to Candice, her physical presence. He mused on the image of her sun-weathered shoulders and the lines at the corners of her eyes that said she was experienced at living.

  Then the Coast Guard boat whipped around the corner with hardly a sound and headed toward him.

  Even in the darkness, Riley knew from the shape, the number of heads on board, it was Coast Guard. In the nanosecond that he decided to throttle it, get the hell away, he heard Julius say, “Fuck, behind you,” and Riley whirled around to see another one, coming up fast.

  Searchlights blazed on, front and back, blinding him.

  He thought he could still make it, shoot the gap to the west, so he spun the steering wheel, turning the bow fast, saw the shape of rifles pointing, a man yelling at him cut the engines now, fucking now. Julius standing straight, hands in the air.

  The boats advanced, so much light Riley couldn’t see. He turned off the engines, kept his eyes down, the lights hurting.

  The voice said, “Driver, get your hands up! Get them up.”

  Riley’s hands went up.

  “Two of you, walk to the center of the boat with your hands up, do it now.”

  Riley took two exaggerated steps so there’d be no mistaking that he was complying. He could feel the heat from the lights.

  “Now, two of you, lie down on your belly with your arms out, do it now.”

  Riley lowered himself in stages, no fast moves, first one knee, then both and folded forward, face-first like he was doing yoga, sun salutation to these blinding lights. Julius was already down there. The floor was wet, salt-crusty. Either Julius knew the drill, or he was just as scared as Riley.

  Both of them lay prone, jammed up against the buckets. A Coast Guard boat bumped them from behind, then from the front. Their boat rocked when the policemen boarded it, and instinctively Riley raised his head to see. A black boot landed in front of his face and a rifle muzzle poked him in the ear.

  “Face down,” a man said, “eyes to the ground.”

  But Riley had seen. Their faces were black. They were wearing black ski masks. Blue coveralls, boots, like ordinary police, but black ski masks?

  Movement all around, the boat swaying, buckets being picked up and carried off, low murmurs. Someone planted a knee in the middle of his back, twisted his arms behind him and snapped zip ties around his wrists, tight. He heard them doing the same to Julius. Heard the bucket handles clanking.

  The boat rocked and tilted to one side, the masked men leaving. He heard a deeper rumble of engines and one boat pulling away, and the searchlights went out, and in the darkness he heard the other boat leaving as well, engines fading. After that it was only the night and the smell of gasoline in the breeze and he and Julius lying there on the hard floor, the boat rocking in the wake.

  Riley rolled onto a shoulder and struggled to his feet. Julius staggered up, grunting. They stood, arms tied behind their backs, staring into the dark. Nothing but mangroves and empty waters and far off, too far, the glow of Belize City.

  Black ski masks?

  Riley said, “Who the fuck just jacked us?”

  Julius looked him. “Coast Guard, man. What, you didn’t see that?”

  Eighteen buckets of high-grade cocaine gone. Riley saw that they’d taken the ignition key. No arrests, no fuss, and the two of them left drifting in the dark. He let out a shout over the water and sat down hard on the edge of the gunwale. “Coast Guard my ass.”

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  “Somebody beat us to it, we don’t know who. What we do know, our man didn’t take that water taxi, the Ravish. By the time we realized and deployed, he was probably halfway to his pickup.”

  “No leads on who may be responsible for the ambush?”

  “None yet, but we have some ideas,” Malone said. “Is this bench okay?”

  Candice stopped to consider the surroundings, the sunlight. They were in Battlefield Park, downtown Belize City, traffic noisy on the streets on the other side of the wrought-iron fence, homeless men sleeping on cardboards in the grass and slumping on the benches in the noon heat. “Why don’t we try this one instead,” pointing to another bench in the shade of a Royal Poinciana. That spot was perfect, the old courthouse in the background.

  Malone wanted photos of himself amid the local scenery to send to his folks back home in the Midwest; well, he was about to get authentic ones, bums included.

  He sat stiffly on the bench, pleated khaki shorts and purple polo shirt, canvas shoes, no socks. A few threads too preppy, especially with his shirt buttoned up like that. She told him to loosen the button, hey, loosen up in general, act like you’re enjoying this.

  “But I’m troubled,” he said. “Two months we’ve been expecting this drop. Do they have a contact on the local force, that’s what we need to know. Someone who leaked that we were on to them? Or it could’ve been a handoff. Staged as an ambush.” He undid the buttons and flicked a cold eye on a barefoot bum shambling past, scrutinizing Candice setting up her light stand.

  She said, tightening her Canon strobe onto the hot shoe, “You might want to wait until I start shooting before we continue this conversation.”

  She switched out her zoom for the 50mm prime lens, her good glass, stuffed the zoom into her camera bag that sat close at her feet. The city was abundant in purse snatchers and gold-chain grabbers who could easily lose a tourist in the maze of narrow streets.

  She positioned the strobe stand at a forty-five-degree angle between her and Malone. Raised the camera, found his face in the viewfinder in suitable shade, no shadows. “You could smile,” she said, snapping test shots and examining the LCD screen.

  “Do I have a nice smile?” Malone flirting.

  “You have a lovely smile.” Bullshit, but mildly so, and effective encouragement for getting good pictures. She adjusted the strobe power, thumbing the wheel and saying, “Was there no one following him?” But she knew the answer to this already.

  “They were staking out the boatyard. We figured that once he got there, he’d be on his way, so that was the most logical spot.”

  Candice took a couple more test shots, checked the effect on the screen, adjusted the strobe accordingly. “Okay, smile from the bottom o
f your heart now.” She raised the camera, he smiled and she fired off three shots, came in close and crouched, snapped another. “Nice … nice, I’m getting the courthouse, that old church in the back … great.”

  Strands of hair falling into her eyes were bothering her, and she blew them away, tried to refocus. But that wasn’t the thing bothering her, really. When she spoke again, her palms were perspiring. “What happened to him? Did they hurt him?”

  “Which one? There were two of them.”

  “Our man.”

  “No one was hurt. We heard from this pilot the Monsantos hired that they were handcuffed and left in the boat. The Monsantos had the pilot fly all over before he found them lodged in the mangrove out there, about four miles off the coast. They’d been drifting for some time.”

  Candice wanted to say it must have been several hours, she’d seen Riley entering his gate that morning looking sun-blackened and exhausted.

  Malone said, “You okay?”

  “What?”

  “What are you thinking about?”

  She said, “Let’s try another spot. Over there looks good. Brodie’s in the background. Did you know that for decades that used to be the country’s only department store?” She slung her camera bag over a shoulder, picked up the strobe stand, asking herself, Whose side are you on? You’re going to have to make up your mind whose side you’re on. She said, “Come, look alive.”

  Malone rose and walked through the grass toward the other bench. “You mean chirpy like you?”

  “Chirpy? God, don’t say that, I don’t do chirpy.” Couldn’t even fake it now that her stomach was in knots. She wiped her palms off on her shorts, inhaled deep. This double life was more nerve-racking than she’d expected. Malone said he was troubled. He was troubled? He didn’t know the meaning of the word.

  Because, Candice, she told herself as she positioned Malone on the bench, set the strobe stand at the proper angle, acting normal in this scene in her own drama—because, Candice, in your other world, you’re in love with a criminal. But the DEA didn’t know the man, and she did. The qualities that made Riley a successful drug runner—loyalty, patience, determination—were the qualities she would admire in anyone. Put him in any line of work, she always told herself, and he’d succeed. Before they met, he was only a name and a photo, and she’d wanted the man she was about to deceive to be mean and all-around dislikeable, but the day she moved in, his kindness threw her. Riley lugged her boxes up those stairs all afternoon, showed her a photo of his son, and in the weeks afterward when she saw more of his laid-back sweetness, his goofball humor, saw that smile on his face whenever he talked about his son, she lost her balance. She understood only one thing the night they first shared a bottle of wine on his porch, after they kissed and she tasted Chianti on his tongue—she could never hate this man. And the next morning, when she awoke and saw him propped up in bed, reading, glasses low on his nose, she got the sense that it was too late for her to return to her old self. Her priorities had been rearranged, seemingly without her volition, and Riley James now lived in that space that her fiancé’s death had left.

  “Smile,” she said, talking to Malone there on the bench, talking to herself as well.

  Behind him, a homeless man was sitting against the fence Indian-style in the grass, eating a ripe mango. He was into it, yellow juice running down his hands, forearms, dripping on the grass. The scene looked delicious; she snapped it. She edged closer, aimed the lens at the gnarled black hands clutching the moist peeled-back mango skin just above the grass, against the backdrop of the black iron fence.

  Click, a perfect photo. Except her pleasure was short because when she lifted her eyes from the camera, she noticed a familiar face observing her from the sidewalk across the street. Sister Pat, Riley’s friend, was holding a Brodie’s plastic bag, shading her eyes. She waved, hesitantly.

  Candice waved back, offered a tentative smile.

  Sister Pat’s hand went down, she smiled, stood primly watching her and Malone and the homeless man. Waved again and left, down the sidewalk, into the crowd.

  Candice scrolled through the last shots, walking over to Malone. She said, “Not that anyone here knows your job, but next time, let’s make this business-pleasure meeting somewhere less public, shall we?”

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Carlo Monsanto passed the bowl of grapes to his brother, sitting there with two hands on the hook of the cane between his legs. Israel screwed up his face at the grapes and shook his head like the grapes had insulted him. All he had to do was say no fucking thank you, none of this snootiness, like Carlo’s Chilean seedless weren’t sweet or juicy enough.

  Israel said to Julius, who was sitting next to Riley on a metal chair in the center of the bare storage room, “The main question is in fact the only question we need to answer, is who ratted us out. We find this rat, kill it, we could resume operations. Until then, hell, I wouldn’t even consider to plan to try to ponder to give any thought to want to attempt one single shipment more. Not one.” He banged his cane on the concrete floor three times, saying, “Until we kill that rat!”

  Carlo flipped a grape into the air, tipped his head back and caught it in his mouth. He chomped, Riley and Julius looking at him intently, the sideshow to Israel’s seriousness. Carlo had made a point of kindly offering them some grapes, to hide how pissed off he was. Get them relaxed, let them believe he was kicking back, not agonizing over the bad news. Let them feel comfortable and not realize he was checking out their body language. Make them comfortable and wait for a slip of the tongue.

  “Think, tell me the truth,” Israel was saying, “you didn’t talk to nobody at any time about this? Think hard.”

  Julius was quick to answer no, shrugging and shaking his head vehemently, dreadlocks moving. Riley now, he was relaxed, not happy but not scared. A tougher one to read.

  Israel said, “Riley?”

  Riley cocked his head. “How many years I been doing this? Why would I talk to anybody about my business?”

  “That’s a good question,” Carlo said, “why would you?”

  Riley looked at him, but Carlo wasn’t ready to engage him yet. He was only tapping, poking for weakness. He kicked out his legs, crossed them at the ankles, and tossed up another grape, leaned his head back to catch it, but it bounced off his front teeth and onto the floor. When he bent to pick it up, he saw a trace of a smile on Julius. The fuck was wannabe Rasta smiling at? Carlo simmered. When he was a kid, people always teased him about having horse teeth, so call him sensitive. But, anyway, what happened just now, he wasn’t in the proper position, legs too far out. Okay, he’d let Julius have that smile.

  “Call Barrel in here,” Israel said.

  Carlo unlocked the door and walked across the pavement to the store’s back door. His sister’s two boys scampered past, screeching and shouting, shooting each other with plastic guns. He said, “Whoa whoa, slow down there,” entering the shop.

  Barrel was at the counter, chatting up his sister. Mirta laughed at something he said, playing with her hair. Watch, she was going to flip it in a second. There was a customer in the store, a man she was paying no attention to. Barrel leaned in and said something. Mirta laughed and … there, the flip, look at that. Soaking up the attention.

  Carlo said, “Hey, Barrel. You’re needed.”

  Barrel turned away from the counter and waddled to the back, leading with his belly. Carlo had no inkling what Mirta saw in this fat dude. Carlo said, “Mirta, those boys eat lunch yet?”

  “What?”

  “Your boys,” he said, jerking his thumb over his shoulder, “the reason I ask—”

  “Of course they ate,” she said with a scowl.

  “Don’t look at me like that. Yesterday you shoulda seen them, digging out chocolates and cookies all afternoon, and when Ma stopped them, they said because you didn’t give them any lunch, what’s up with that?”

  Mirta strode down the counter and came at him. “Look, don’t tell me,�
� her voice steely, “about my kids. Like I don’t take care of them properly. You have no idea—”

  “All I’m saying—”

  “I don’t want to hear what you’re saying ’cause you don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  Carlo said, “Barrel, go on back.” Fat man had stopped to listen. He rolled on out the door, and Carlo said to Mirta, “You’re here wasting time talking to him and like usual you’re not aware what your boys doing. Running through the shop causing chaos, that’s what.”

  She slapped the counter. “I know damn well where my boys are. Don’t you even—”

  “Wasting your time with somebody like Barrel. Ink on your divorce papers hardly dried yet and you’re in the market already.”

  She rolled her neck, saying, “Unlike somebody I know, at least somebody finds me attractive.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Look at you.”

  He wagged a finger at her. “Better watch yourself, Mirta, that mouth. Next time you need my money, probably tomorrow, just wait, we’ll see how smart your mouth is when I tell you keep walking.” He said, pointing with his chin, “Look, you got a customer.”

  She shot him one last glare and swiveled around.

  He said, “Hey, by the way.”

  “What.”

  “Pedro’s been calling for you. Left two messages yesterday. I’m just saying.”

  “I don’t want to talk to Pedro.”

  “What’s wrong with Pedro? Give the guy a shot, he’s got a good job, a house. Stays out of trouble. All the things you like to insult me with—right after you take my money. What’s wrong with Pedro?”

  She narrowed her eyes. “What’s wrong? He’s our cousin.”

  “So?”

  “I’m not having this conversation.” Throwing up a palm and turning away, smiling at the man waiting at the counter.