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Most of Bailey’s clients were rich Americans sneaking into the Bahamas to engage in some extramarital recreation, or to drop some cash at the local casinos. The smarter ones came to stash money in offshore accounts. Bailey didn’t smuggle things, just people. There was too much risk when you started moving unknown cargo across international borders. You might get boarded and find yourself holding fifty keys of coke. Or guns. Or anything. It wasn’t worth it if you got caught, and even if you didn’t, there were moral considerations. Where were the guns going? Would they be used to liberate people, or enslave them? Were the drugs going to middle-class suburbanites, or would they contribute to the rot of the i
Free people moving about freely. The idea held great philosophical appeal. At least, it used to. Things changed after 9/11, but Bailey was a good judge of people and he knew he’d never smuggled a terrorist. Not yet. Lately, he had started to consider the merits of retirement. Of going legit.
He could continue to run the Zombie Jamboree as a fishing charter, simply knock off the undeclared, cash-only side business. But if he were going legit, it wouldn’t be as a fishing charter. Too much stink, and all his time spent on the surface, and too many asshole customers who blame the captain when the fish don’t bite.
No, the plan for going legit went like this: move to an island where he wasn’t known-an island with a good economy and stable political climate. Barbados was perfect. Buy a small dive shop there, and hire a couple of young guys to help run the place. Maybe even move ashore and charter the cat for pleasure cruising. Or hire a local captain to babysit the fishing tourists.
That was the plan. But it was a plan with a significant price tag, especially on an island like Barbados. If he stayed with the people-smuggling sideline, he might make the nut in a couple years. But if he went legit as a fishing charter, what with the cost of fuel these days, it could take another decade.
So a couple more years of people-smuggling, and out. He’d still be a few years on the right side of forty when he reinvented himself yet again, this time as a law-abiding dive-shop operator. He might even meet a nice woman, fall in love…have a kid.
Or maybe he was kidding himself. But what the hell. He’d come a long way on this ongoing journey of personal transformation; might as well buy in to the whole dream. Stranger things have happened.
The man who called himself Diego was no terrorist, but neither was he simply a playboy looking for a good time or a tax dodge. Whatever he was, he was a hard guy. Dangerous. Not weight-lifter hard-those body-proud posers were only dangerous to themselves. Like Bailey, this guy had a lean and flexible musculature. His hardness was a mental hardness. Hence, dangerous.
Whatever this guy was, he was a bad dude. He knew it, and he knew that you knew it, and he never made any effort to convince you of it. That’s the way it is with truly dangerous men. They never try to convince anybody. They just are. If you’re an even halfway bad dude, you’ll recognize it. If you don’t, you’re not worth worrying about.
Bailey recognized it. He’d been a bad dude himself, in a former life. But that was before the first reinvention. These days he was known, to those who thought they knew him, as a friendly expat American who liked rum and reefer, diving and women, in approximately that order.
Among the Caribbean ’s expat, live-aboard set, there were two distinct groups. There were those, like Bailey, who never talked about their former lives, and there were those who never shut the hell up about their former lives. All you had to do is pull up a stool next to them at the beach bar and you’d hear all about it, in excruciating detail.
Dot-com millionaires who struck gold with an IPO and then dumped out just ahead of the bust; stock-market day-traders who’d had the discipline to quit while they were ahead; software developers; venture capitalists; real estate speculators; doctors and dentists who’d diligently saved their money and retired while still young enough to live the rest of their lives chasing after Jimmy Buffett’s bliss. The stories were all different, and all the same.
And of course there were the trust-fund babies. Their former lives consisted mostly of homogenous boarding schools and ski trips in the Alps and absent parents and kindly na
Bailey’s group-those who didn’t talk about their former lives-consisted of retired arms dealers, drug ru
The man who called himself Diego didn’t seem to fit any of these categories. He used the name Diego and spoke with a slight accent, but Bailey guessed that the accent was no more authentic than the name. He lacked the olive complexion, and while he had a good tan, it looked like it had been recently acquired in a salon. Bailey guessed the man for an American, but he couldn’t be positive.
Bailey’s initial dislike of the man only intensified while they talked. Although the man made no effort to act tough, ego asserted itself in a pronounced attitude of superiority. An attitude that says, I’m smarter than you and everyone else on this island, and I resent having to deal with men of lesser competence.
Still, there was no concrete reason to turn the man down. The gig was easy enough-pick the guy up at the Flying Fish Marina in Clarence Town, get him to Haiti, drop him off before sunrise, pick him up the same night, deliver him back to the marina the next day. The first pickup and final drop-off would happen in full view, and Bailey would have the boat set up like a regular fishing charter. Fighting chair in place, rods prominently displayed.
And the money was good. Ten thousand American dollars, plus fuel expenses. Cash. Always in cash.
Bailey returned to Labadee Beach at exactly eleven-thirty that night. He cut the throttle down to idle and sca
Nothing. He grabbed the big flashlight with the red lens, pointed it toward land, flicked the switch on and off three times. Glanced at his watch.
Three minutes later, he did it again. Still nothing.
Another three minutes, and then the flashlight dance again.
Where the hell was this guy?
After the fourth flashlight signal went unanswered, Bailey moved to the aft deck’s portside throttle controls and eased the cat closer to shore. He checked his watch again. Fifteen minutes. Something was very wrong.
I plan everything, down to the minute, and then I execute with precision. I leave nothing to chance.
And now the guy was late.
Bailey reached for the flashlight again, but before he hit the switch, there was a rustling of bushes at the top of the beach. The man who called himself Diego burst into view, ran down the beach and splashed into the water, the Pelican case in his left hand.
Bailey swung the boat around as the man waded out in a jog. He cut the throttle and moved to the swim step, keeping his eye on shore.
The beach was empty. Nobody giving chase.
The man clambered aboard. There was blood on the front of his shirt. A lot of blood.