Red Tide (Billy Knight Thrillers 2)

“It’s one of those two, Maria something or Petit Fleur. It has to be.”

“I’m with you on that, buddy. But which one?”

I shook my head. “Can’t say. It could have worked out that he worked the Fleur, got fed up, and went through a couple of jobs fast. Or it could have been the Maria. But one of them is the Black Freighter. It has to be.”

“Don’t want to jump on the Petit Fleur, just ’cause it’s a Haitian name,” he said.

“Why not?” Nicky blurted. “Man’s a voodoo priest, stands to reason.”

Deacon shook his head. “These old freighters go back and forth all over the Caribbean. Might change hands a dozen times.”

“But the name,” Nicky insisted.

“It’s bad luck to change a boat’s name, Nicky,” I said.

“Oh.”

“Check ’em both,” I told Deacon.

“Uh-huh,” he said, and began pecking at the keyboard again. “Let’s us just see what we can find…”

Deacon hammered at the computer for about five minutes, muttering softly to himself and a couple of times to me, saying things like, “Hang on, buddy.”

Finally he slapped the keyboard and the printer started to whirr again. Deacon leaned back, looking satisfied. “Well,” he said.

“You found something?”

“Yes I did, Billy. I surely did find something.” He grabbed the paper from the printer. “Gervasio Lopez is the master of the Maria Chinea. He has stayed at our fine hotel in Raiford on two occasions. Once for drug smuggling, once for manslaughter.” He looked up. “That one was a plea bargain down from Murder One. Apparently he’s in with the Cali syndicate. They can buy some pretty good legal help.”

“He sounds like a drug smuggler. We’re looking for a witch doctor,” I said.

Deacon held up a finger. “Now don’t go jumping to any conclusions, Billy. A lot of the Colombian syndicate guys do a kind of black magic version of santeria. Human sacrifice and everything. Remember that thing in Mexico a few years back?”

“Matamoros,” I said. I remembered.

“That’s it. They thought eating human body parts would make ’em rich and keep them from being arrested. This Lopez could be another one.”

“What about the other ship?”

Deacon glanced at the printout. “Patrice du Sinueux. Known as Cappy.” Deacon frowned. “Funny. We got some detail on this guy but no arrest record. And so no picture.” He ran a finger down the page. “Okay. That explains it. He was a mid-level guy in the ton-ton macoute. Guess that would be with Baby Doc Duvalier. Got in some trouble, tried to claim political asylum here in the U.S.”

“What kind of trouble?”

Deacon frowned. “Doesn’t say here, but it’s a good rule of thumb that if you’re running from that crowd you’re a good guy.”

What Deacon said made sense. All we had heard from Honore about the Black Freighter had said its captain was a voodoo houngan. But Honore was Haitian. He would put things in those terms. And palo mayombe, the dark side of Santeria, was similar enough to voodoo that somebody who knew about one of them would recognize the other.

So although a small voice in the dark of my head was telling me the Haitian captain ran the Black Freighter, my head said it made more sense to go for the convicted felon, rather than a man who had apparently tried to escape from the ton-ton macoute.

“All right,” I said to Deacon. “I vote for Lopez.”

Deacon nodded. “Me too. I just hope we’re right, Billy,” he said, reaching for the telephone. “Let me call my buddy in Customs.”

Chapter Twenty-Two

The Maria Chinea had probably been a nice ship once—maybe fifty years ago. Now it was a bucket of rust held together by the greasy cables around its deck cargo. There was a thick smell of old fish dipped in diesel clinging to the deck.

The mate was on deck when we got there, smoking a cigar that looked like it had been launched about the same time as the ship. He was a tanned, creased guy in his fifties, dirty and unshaved, with a face like a disappointed gorilla. As our car pulled up he stood, knocked the coal off the end of his cigar, and stuck the battered old thing in his shirt pocket.