Clint Faraday Mysteries Collection B :This Job is Murder Collector's Edition (16 page)

Clint thanked him again and went back into
the restaurant. A few minutes later he went back through the lobby
toward the door and slipped into the open elevator when no one was
looking.

It was easy enough to get into the room.
Clint has experience in that. He knew how to read the card and to
use the hotel entry code. The computer was on the desk with the
charger on it. Clint took a memory stick from his pocket, went to
the inicio page, to documents and to a folder labeled “Books” to
find “Freud” listed. He copied the book to the memory stick,
cleared the screen, put the comp back on charge and left. In the
morning he met with Gault and asked why people kept saying at that
party that he was a drug supplier to France and England – did he
know that was being said?

He was actually shocked! NO one ever said he
had anything to do with the drug trade. Who was saying it?

“
Cori heard it. She said that must be
why you’re here, but it couldn’t be – because it was just something
she heard. She wasn’t sure who said it, except he was an obnoxious
sort of pig who kept pawing at her. I don’t think much of you, but
I know how that kind of thing can fuck up your reputation among
those political asses. If you didn’t know it you probably aren’t
messed up in that crap. If you knew it there might be a basis. You
might be after her. As it is, she’s done you a favor.”

“
She did that! I can drop a little word
and that shithead – I can guess who it was – won’t say another word
about me again. Ever. I will say to you that my reputation is that
I give one warning, then act. Never two. Never say a thing unless
you are prepared to follow your words with action. One or two times
a long time ago and the problem doesn’t arise again.”

Clint said that was all he wanted to know.
Thanks.

“
You came here only to ask
that?”

“
The answer was in the way you reacted,
not in the words you used. You were actually shocked. It was all
over your face. I can believe that. I couldn’t ever be sure from a
phone call.”

“
I think you scare me. I hope there is
never reason you will be after me.”

Clint grinned and said he had a reputation to
uphold himself.

He left.

Codes

Clint stretched, sighed, turned on his
computer and stuck the memory stick in the USB port to bring up the
book.

It was in German.

So what? He could use the code to write what
came up and have a friend translate.

Assuming that the first number was the page
number, the second the line number and the third was ?

He cut and pasted all he had, putting the
whole line on the page. Most of it was the same on both sets of
sheets. Only the lists noted were very much different.

Clint studied the thing awhile. He didn’t
know enough, but one thing caught his eye in the main paragraphs.
The one through eight seemed to be the number of words included,
starting from a period. Thus seven came out to be “This later was
seen to be the major” and the next line had a one that said
“Directions” followed by the line with a four. “To take this
further” followed by something he couldn’t translate from his
meager knowledge of German. It did tell him, he hoped, how the code
was read. Four and a half hours later he had the whole thing except
the lists. There had to be a different base to that code. It was
the same three number system, but none was ended with a number
higher than three. The first number was no higher than four. The
second number was as high as fifty five.

Clint couldn’t find a key to that.

He called Judi, who came over to look at the
lists. She went from the first of the book to the end. The end had
appendices and reference to footnotes and credits. Four pages.

She took the first one, 2-37-2. She went to
page 2, to credit 37, and to the second name. Marks, Konrad. The
next was 1-19-3. That was strange. The first name on the credits
there was Reighter, Adolf Enrique. There was no third name.

“
Ah!” Clint said. “The third word is
Enrique. Marks and Enrique. Mean anything?”

“
Cori said there was some German
attaché named Marks at that party.”

“
And an Enrique somebody. I think this
is a very important list. We have to get a translator we can
trust.”

“
Ben. He speaks German. I’ve heard
him.”

Ben was a close friend and neighbor. He was
involved in a couple of cases and Clint could trust him. Judi
called and asked him to come over. He said half an hour. He had to
get his latest boyfriend to the water taxi. He was on the way right
now.

Oh, yeah. He was gay.

Clint and Judi translated the rest of the
list of names. Twelve. There were four names that were different on
the two lists.

The list from Gault had him and someone named
Fred Sanders a woman named Gisela Christianson and a man named Yohn
Kopec changed on Maria’s list. Gault was changed to Markos Jardín,
Gisela Bendetti was changed to Oscar, Sanders was changed to
Velasquez and Kopec was changed to Linderman. When Ben showed up
Judi explained what they’d done and told him about the lists.

“
It would seem, unless there’s another
Oscar in this, that Mittermann plans to become a leader in this
stupid scheme,” Clint said.

“
Who’s Oscar?” Ben asked.

“
You don’t want to know,” Judi
said.

“
A CIA asshole,” Clint said. “I think
maybe we can bring this particular pot to a pretty fast
boil.”

Clint’s cell phone buzzed. He looked at the
caller ID and answered to hear Luis say, “It seems the lovely Maria
has decided to stay with Cecilio for a few days. She is in fear of
someone by what we can understand of her very poor Spanish or she
is someone to fear because of a bruja in some other place or
something. We have placed her into a room that can be locked to be
sure no one can get to her. She has spoken to only Cecilio. She
knows I speak Spanish, thus we let her know not that I am even
here.”

“
Thanks, Luis. If Cecilio could get a
message to her with his own poor Spanish that someone named Oscar
and someone named Gault are looking for her and he feels they are
dangerous people she should be protected from...?”

“
I think perhaps I can manage
that.”

They chatted a minute more. It seemed Maria
was trying to get through to them that she was working for a
powerful witch who would turn them all into zombies or something.
They were acting like they thought she was saying a witch was
looking for her to turn her into a zombie. It was great fun. They
kept assuring her that no witch could get to her because the
comarca had a witch of their own to give her an amulet of garlic to
keep zombies and vampires away.

“
What was that about?” Judi asked when
he rang off.

“
Maria is being held in protective
custody on the comarca because, from what Cecilio can understand of
her very poor Spanish, some witch is looking for her to turn her
into a zombie. Maybe him into a zombie. Maybe both. She didn’t make
any sense. He locked her in where no one can get to her and will
have the bruja make a spell against zombies.”

“
Her poor Spanish? Hell, she speaks
perfect Spanish!” Judi grinned. “He must only speak dialect so
can’t understand Spanish beyond buenos dias.”

“
Well, I was trying to understand his
dialect and may have it wrong,” Clint said in excellent dialect. “I
think this is a great break! I’ll call friend Gault and tell him we
found a list in the kitchen at Obilio’s place that’s in German. I
can give him the list of names that are the same in any language.
Oscar is on it. He isn’t.”

“
That could piss him off!” Judi said.
Ben laughed and said maybe Gault would want to turn Oscar into a
zombie. This could be a great horror movie.
Zombies In the Mist
or
Terror In the Timbers.

“
Maybe
Zombies
In the Timbers
or
Terrors In
the Mist
,” Judi suggested.

“
It would make a good Keystone Kop show
with this bunch of clowns,” Clint suggested. “Maybe
Charlie Chaplin Meets the Chumps
or
something.”

He called Gault and said (with his innocent
act) that they had found the list and translated the names. He
said, seeing what had happened, that Oscar might be Mittermann,
which would explain his even knowing about it. Don’t trust him. He
could hear the rage in Gault’s voice, though he was trying to sound
like it was nice to know, and thanks. Clint hung up and said, “I
think the thing that’s boiling is Gault’s temper. This could get
interesting.”

“
It could be deadly,” Judi
warned.

“
Yeah, but not for us,” Clint agreed.
“I think the only way to stop it is to let them kill each other
off. Just so no more innocent bystanders are drawn in that’s fine
with me.”

They waited for a couple of hours, but didn’t
hear anything more. Ben had translated the sheets that were made by
Claire Auber. The original list was the original group. The second
was the way the group would become as soon as they got those four
out of it. The main paragraphs, except for that item on the second
set, was mostly laying out who was in charge (Auber) and who was to
handle which part. Most of that was supplying funds and personnel
when the thing was set in motion. The weak part was having no
control of who outside of the group became involved. It was
important that whoever else could be terrorized into silence if
they learned too much. She could handle that. She was the most
feared witch in Haiti so everyone in the Latin American countries
could be threatened with untold horrors if they crossed her.

It might not be too easy to set it in motion
now. It seemed some of the major players weren’t too happy about
the arrangements. The main thing they learned was from adding up
what had happened there with the Campbells and Maria and Pablo. The
way Clint figured, Mittermann was in Panamá and had discovered the
plot and cut himself in. He wouldn’t be someone Auber could
terrorize with her mighty witch act. It would be up to him to get
Gault involved so he could be knocked over.

Maria latched onto the Campbells as an excuse
to come to Panamá and Gault was conned into coming because he was
told that Maria had a list of the group that was about to fall into
the hands of the CIA. It was the use of terror and threats of
witches and zombies and so forth that would scare the Panamanians
into not acting against them. The list was to be given to
Mittermann when Gault et al were handled. It was his contract.

Well, maybe some Panamanians would be
terrorized by some witch in Haiti, particularly the blacks. Not the
Indios. That was a huge mistake. You can’t terrorize the Indios.
They’re a very practical people. It went wrong because Clint
Faraday got involved. They didn’t know who did that. Someone told a
friend of Faraday’s that the Campbells were not what they seemed as
a way to get suspicions started against them. Then they met Judi
Lum and it went to hell from that point because she told Faraday
what the Campbells were really like. Just normal people. If they
had simply shot Gault and the other three in the head it would have
probably worked. As it turned out the complications drug the scheme
down. Nothing worked out the way the brilliant Claire planned. She
didn’t take into consideration that Faraday and the Indios would
find her to be a joke. Most Panamanians aren’t superstitious. Their
witches are more medicine women than witches in the traditional
sense. They don’t claim extraordinary powers.

Maybe that was way off on a tangent, but it
made a kind of sense. Nothing else did. Claire Auber was an
egomaniac who thought she was smarter than everyone around her
because the witches were feared in Haiti and Jamaica. It was a
fantasy in her own mind. Most of the others either feared witches
or knew she could wield a lot of power – on those islands.

Which came down to Mittermann discovering a
silly plot and using it to his own advantage. These people were
wealthy enough to where he could get a few millions personally
before the scheme collapsed. He figured wrong, too. Claire Auber
thought she was a terror, but she was a joke. It would almost be
funny if innocent people hadn’t been drawn into it. Doom was
definitely involved. The plot was doomed from the get-go.

Clint thought about it awhile, then decided
to wait for a couple of days to see what developed. He called
Cecilio and said to tell Maria it was all a misunderstanding and
let her go late this afternoon. Her own people would handle things
from that point. Gault called him in the wee hours and said that
some gringo by the name of Mittermann had left David and gone
toward the home of some Indio named Obilio in the mountains. He
understood Obilio was in Bocas Town with his wife, so what was he
up to?

“
He doesn’t know I found the lists,
does he?”

“
Not from me.”

“
Then he has some way that Maria told
him where she left it. He’s going after it.”

“
That could be a mistake.”

“
Uh-huh. Talk to you tomorrow when they
find one or the other of their bodies.”

“
Sounds like a plan.”

Rewards

Judi called from her deck for Clint to answer
his phone. Gault was trying to get in touch. He seemed very anxious
about something. He hadn’t struck her as the anxious type.