Clint Faraday Mysteries collection A Muddled Murders Collector's Edition (73 page)

“
You’d
think any politically-motivated asshole would know better than to
leave a paper trail anywhere it could come back to smack you in the
puss.”

He got one good solid roundhouse into Bert’s
face as he lunged at him. Sergio smacked him with his nightstick at
the same time. He said he was waiting for an excuse!

Bert went to a cell. Leona, his wife,
couldn’t stop talking about the things she had to put up with when
he was being a pig like this.

But then, they had him. They didn’t need to
hear her story. She knew and did things about and for him that she
didn’t want anyone else to know. It was more than obvious.

Well, now she would never be the wife of the
DA, governor, or president. That was enough for her to think
about.

Maybe.

Dead
Wrong

day one

“
Judi!
You got any extra coffee? I didn’t buy it yesterday and only have
enough for one cup,” Clint called to his next door neighbor, Judi
Lum. His day didn’t start until he’d had his third cup.

She waved and went inside. He walked over to
her place to get it. She had half a sack of the fresh ground from
the shop by the dam at Enel Fortuna. A friend grew it there and
only a few could get it. It was the best Clint had found – and
several coffees from Panamá are known worldwide as being
exceptional.

He chatted with Judi awhile, then went back
to his place for a light breakfast. He flipped on the computer to
check his e-mail. 40 ads and two messages. Normal. He deleted all
the ads and opened the first e-mail to find it was from his cousin
in Tennessee. He was getting desperate for cash again. He couldn’t
sell anything and the real estate market was as much as
nonexistent. He tried to get a loan on his farm but the market was
so bad the banks had tightened up and he didn’t have perfect credit
for three years. Could Clint see a way to spot him maybe five
grand? It would be a loan and he would repay it with interest as
soon as the market picked up again.

Clint replied that he couldn’t raise five
hundred at the moment because the real estate market had also
collapsed in Florida and he wasn’t getting anything in. The people
buying the place had defaulted and now it was sitting there running
up a big tax bill. He sent it. His cousin was a habitual gambler
and five grand would be gone in two weeks, then he’d need more.
“Been there, done that,” Clint muttered under his breath. He had
the money, but wasn’t about to enable a gambling addict. That was a
rough rocky slide to nowhere!

The other was from a man named Edwin Brock.
He heard about Clint from friends and was about to get involved in
a very expensive development deal with a Panamanian company called
CIGR C.A. Inversions, S.A. He wanted to hire Clint to investigate
the company because he didn’t much care for the snotty attitude of
Emilio Cano, their representative. He seemed a bit shady. A
retainer would be sent the moment Clint agreed to take the
case.

CIGR C. A. was a semi-mob group of thugs from
Colombia. It was either a scam or an investment that would end up
financing a big drug deal. Clint wasn’t about to get involved in
that! He sent back that the company didn’t need any investigation.
It was a mob front and he’d be smart to stay as far away from those
people as he could get. No charge.

He immediately got a reply: I am already
involved and must get out. I need your help. I will pay whatever
you ask. I don’t know what is happening anymore. Do you know who or
what is E.V.G.?

Clint sent back that he would try to get him
in touch with a man who might be able to do something to make them
back off. He’d e-mail a reply in an hour or so. E.V.G. didn’t mean
anything to him.

He called Manolo, a friend who was undercover
for Interpol, but who knew all the big drug lords. He said for
Clint not to get involved. He’d try to scare the mob into backing
off from Brock by telling them he was being used by the CIA and
didn’t have a tiny clue. Maybe they’d decide he wasn’t worth the
trouble it could cause. They wouldn’t go after him so long as they
thought he was an idiot the CIA was using.

“
Stay out
of it, Clint.”

“
I intend
to. If he thinks he can get me into that kind of situation he’s
dead wrong!”

He didn’t know how prophetic that was.

day two

“
Clint?
Sergio here.” Clint had picked up his cell phone to hear Cpt.
Sergio Valdez and some noise in the background that sounded like a
radio.

“
Yo,
Serg. Wa-aping, cool?”

“
I’m in
contact with Panamá City. There’s a man there who was killed last
night in some kind of phony mugging or something such. There’s an
e-mail on his computer that you sent advising him to stay away from
CIGR?

“
The PC
police want to know what it’s about. Anything to do with them is of
interest. If they killed him it could bring a connection that could
cramp their business, if you get what they’re saying.”

“
I think
the other e-mails will explain what was going on. I doubt they hit
him.

“
Why do
you think it was a phony mugging?”

“
Because
a mugger would have taken his watch, ring and wallet.”

“
Oh.”

“
He had
apparently erased all his former e-mails with you for some reason.
This was the only one to you on the machine. I think maybe he
should have erased this one, too!”

“
It
didn’t say much. I had Manolo get in touch with them and tell them
it would be smart to back off and not get involved with him. They
surely wouldn’t be stupid enough to hit him if they thought it
would just bring on the trouble they wanted to avoid. I don’t get
why they would erase the earlier e-mails and not the
last.”

Sergio said something into the radio Clint
couldn’t quite hear, then said that he apparently erased a lot of
his e-mails. The cache only had a couple in it, both from late
yesterday. One from him and one from someone named Veras about a
golf course.

They chatted for a minute, then Clint went
back to finish his breakfast. He didn’t see that Brock should
concern him. He had warned him and tried to see he didn’t get into
trouble with that bunch.

Maybe that wasn’t the only crooked bunch he
was involved with. If he was really wealthy and gullible they would
descend on him like ... don’t get into silly metaphors. They’d come
to him with fifty deals he simply couldn’t pass up if he wanted to
get in on the ground floor of whatever scam they were running.

He, Manny (a close friend living on Isla San
Cristóbal), Judi, and his weird author friend, Dave, went fishing.
When he returned at four thirty his place had been searched by
someone who wanted him to know it was searched. They left a mess.
There was a note on his computer screen: “Be most careful what you
say and who you say it to. You could end up laying next to Mr.
Edwin Brock in some cemetery.”

He went to his special program to see who had
been there. They found the camera in the comp room, but not the
ones in the kitchen and bedroom. It was a dark bullish man and a
small dark intense Latino woman. They made a rather professional
search, obviously didn’t find what they were looking for and went
back to the comp room. They looked pissed because what they wanted
wasn’t there.

What was it?

Whatever it was, Clint Faraday could get at
least as pissed as those two, if for different reasons. He cleaned
up the place, changed clothes and headed for town. If those two
were still around he’d find them and explain a thing or two to
them.

“
I think
I know who you mean,” Jim said. He was at his regular table in
front of the Golden Grill with some friends. They met there almost
every day. “He was pretty mean-looking. The woman was a fiery type.
They were going out toward Saigon Bay, but that would be to your
house. I haven’t seen them since, oh, maybe two thirty.”

“
She was
hot!” Charlie, another of the regular group said. “Sort of a
dangerous look.”

“
Oh,
those two who were at the Suites? They were headed back toward The
Reef about twenty minutes ago. I was at The Gourmet and saw them go
in,” Bob added.

Clint thanked them and headed for The Reef, a
popular restaurant. Arturo, a waiter, said they went through and
got on a boat on the outer deck. She was cursing at the guy. Called
him Hondo.

“
What
kind of boat? Cayuca?”

“
One of
those fast cigarette boats. They headed toward Dolfin
Point.”

They were probably heading for the canal and
Panamá City – or Colón.

Manolo! Clint called him and asked about a
Hondo and the cigarette boat,

“
Direct
to Medellin, very probably. Hondo Cano and Lana Bardoti. She’s
Italian. They work for a hood called Gordo Cordoba.

“
Why
would they be interested in you?”

“
I wish
to hell I knew! They mentioned Brock. They said I could soon join
him in the cemetery if I said the wrong thing to the wrong
person.”

“
Brock?
He’s dead?”

“
Yeah.
Phony mugging.”

“
It
wasn’t CIGR. They thanked me and said I might have saved their
asses bigtime. I told them he didn’t know he was being used. It
would be stupid to do anything to him because that would probably
bring the CIA onto them like a swarm of killer bees. They said they
knew it. They’d maybe tell him the deal fell through because the
owner of the property decided to try to develop it himself and
they’d be in touch if anything new came along blah, blah,
blah.

“
Oh,
shit! Gordo is a rival group. Maybe he had Brock hit to bring grief
on CIGR!

“
No.
There was something else behind it. There had to be. None of them
are nearly that stupid, just amateurish. I don’t know what it’s
about, Clint. I’ll try to find out.”

They talked for a few minutes, then Clint cut
to call to Judi, who was passing by. He told her about his place.
She said her place had been searched, he showed her how to leave
the little traps, but nothing was trashed or damaged. It was
professional.

Clint looked thoughtful. He might have to
accept this challenge to ever find out what it was about. Brock was
into something. Did he know what it was? Was someone using him?

Who? Gordo? Was he hit because Gordo was
afraid he was leading the wrong people in the wrong direction?

Then why search HIS place? All he had was a
couple of e-mails.

Why did Brock erase his earlier e-mails? What
was in them?

Clint remembered that last one. E.V.G.? Was
that behind this? Who or what WAS E.V.G.?

One thing was certain! He was going to do his
damnedest to find out!

Clint went back to his place to re-read the
e-mails, though he was certain he’d gotten every word. He’d copied
the threatening note and saved it to a special file. The e-mails
were erased except for the last one. No more leaving the automatic
log-on in place. If he’d logged off it would still be there.

Well, there were the backup copies
automatically stored at the server. He knew that much about
computers and e-mail!

The cache was emptied. He sighed and went to
the secondary he’d had Doug install. All e-mail both ways was
recorded on another part of his hard drive. Doug had replaced to
old one when it fried. He used a 120G drive and had sectioned it to
three parts of 40G apiece. If they didn’t know about that they
would think that the old 40G was already totally up.

It was there. He re-read everything from
Brock before the last one carefully, looking for a word or phrase,
but it was the same he remembered. Nothing. He brought up the last
one. It was the same except that the last sentence wasn’t
there.

He thought a minute. They very damned well
had found the sections! He brought up his replies. There was no
mention of “E.V.G.” on them.

So. E.V.G. was the important part. It was
something anyone might forget.

So? What was it they didn’t find?

Anything to do with E.V.G. stupid! That was
the key. They made a huge mistake by not just leaving it there. He
wouldn’t have attached much importance to it and would have
possibly made a couple of minor enquiries, then forgotten it. Now
he was going to find who or what E.V.G. was. It was important. In
fact it was the most important part of his very short bit of
communication with Edwin Brock.

He put the computer back on standby mode and
called Manny Mathews (Who was actually Marko Boccini. Only Clint,
Dave, Judi and Manolo knew he was a retired mafia don from
California who had moved here to get away from the business and to
raise a family who wouldn’t be ashamed of what Papa was.) to ask if
he had a clue as to who or what E.V.G. was. He didn’t, but would
try to check it out. Clint told him the whole story. He said this
was another one of those things where someone had heard a word and
misinterpreted it. They were assuming he knew something he did NOT
know. He damned well was going to find out!

And he was going to be VERY careful with this
one. He might actually end up in a cemetery – and never know
why.

day three

Clint hadn’t learned anything more. No one
knew anything about any E.V.G. He didn’t have one clue as to what
it meant.

He sipped his too-hot coffee slowly and
nibbled the delicious pineapple upside-down cake Judi made for
Christmas.

Hell! It was New Year’s eve! One of the two
nights Clint Faraday stayed home. The whole damned town would
probably be drunk, noisy and generally obnoxious. He would be, too,
if he joined them. Crap!