Heart Strings (Black Magic Outlaw Book 3) (6 page)

 

 

 

 

My pickup is registered in the name of the old man who sold it to me. It was a cash transaction without transfer of ownership. That makes it untraceable to me. As long as no one links me to the vehicle, I can drive around without fear of a BOLO. I doubted the security guard at the commissioner's house knew who I was or caught the make of the truck, much less the plate. That was good enough for me as I made my way down South Dixie Highway, planning a Caribbean vacation.

US 1 is the longest north-south highway in the country, running all the way from the Canadian border in Maine to the southernmost tip of the United States in Key West. The Florida Keys are practically Caribbean islands themselves. Some large, some small; some built from trash; all connected by the land bridge that is US 1. The northernmost and largest of the islands is Key Largo. Less than an hour out of Miami, that's where I was, pulling into the driveway of a charter company.

The building had seen better days. Broken windows shoddily repaired with plywood, a warped wooden sign with an unreadable company logo, a mailbox rusted by the salty coastal air—I was beginning to think I should've called before making the trip down.

I hopped out of the truck and made my way to the porch. Old floorboards creaked beneath me, but I wasn't sure there was anyone home to note my presence. I was proven wrong by the sound of a shotgun pumping its action.

"Cisco Suarez," came a shrill voice from behind the screen door.

I put my hands up slowly and peered inside. I couldn't see anyone in the darkness. I let the black leak into my eyes again, and the interior began to illuminate.

"Don't you be trying that shadow squat with me, brujo."

I pulled my head back, surprised the woman had noticed. Even with my enhanced sight, I could barely make her out through the dusty screen door. "Just trying to get a good look at you, is all."

"Hmph. Why didn't you say that? Take a step back."

I did.

The door swung open and Carla emerged. I was right about the shotgun. Ten or twelve gauge, double barrel, pointed at my chest.

I sighed loudly. "You know that's next to useless against me, right?"

"I like the weight of it all the same," she replied.

Despite being in her mid fifties, Carla was a woman of action. Underneath her sun-leathered skin were tight, ropey muscles. She had tan hair that barely reached her eyes or covered her ears, and a hard face that meant business.

"What in Jesus' asshole do you want?" she snapped.

Oh, and she had a mouth only a deaf mother could love.

But what in Jesus' asshole
did
I want? Well, Carla was a smuggler, or had been when I'd known her years ago. She had a boat and she was an illusionist, which were a couple things I really needed right now.

Sure, I could turtle up in my hideout and hope the silvan magic would keep me out of sight, but I wouldn't make forward progress sitting on my ass. Two weeks of failed stake outs attested to that. Better to look for a needle in a Caribbean island.

"You still taking on clients?" I asked.

Her eyes hardened. "I went to jail 'cause of you."

"You went to jail because you tried to smuggle out a poser Jamaican witch doctor who robbed charms from my partner."

Her head shot back, as if she'd never thought of the situation with as much clarity before. "You blew up my boat and crashed it into a Navy vessel!"

"Whoa, whoa.
You
crashed your boat after
my powder
blew it up. I wasn't the one who took it onboard. Besides, the fire burned away the drug stash I know your client was carrying. You could say I saved you from trafficking charges."

"Hmph. That's a fist up my ass if I ever had one."

Breathtaking imagery. "Carla, what are we talking about here anyway? You paid a fine and were put on probation. It could've been much worse. From the looks of it, you're still in business."

"The business of taking a dump," she answered, and I hoped that was colorful language. "I look like I'm making a respectable income here?"

I smiled and pulled a fold of cash from my jeans.

Carla dropped the shotgun to her side. "Shit. Why the hell you wait so long to take those bills out?"

As the old smuggler counted the money, I told her what I needed. She shrugged like it was nothing and counted the cash again. I kept quiet until she finished this time. Better not to make someone holding a shotgun lose count.

Within the hour, Carla walked me to the dock to help load the boat. It was a forty-two-foot yacht. Not a whole lot of upper cabin space but it looked fast. Maybe not luxury, per se, but it was worth a king's ransom compared to the building she lived in.

I was a little uneasy stepping aboard. The last time I walked on a boat, I didn't walk off in one piece. Good thing I had no memory of that incident or I might be afraid of sailing.

"Seas are calm today," Carla said. "Four-foot waves at most. That keeps up, I'll get us there in a day and a half."

I raised my eyebrows. "A day and a half? This thing has an engine, right?"

"Don't be an oaf," she snapped. "This is the fastest I've got. Had to sell my go-fast. Damn shame, too, but radar technology's caught up with 'em anyway."

I chuckled. If there was a living pirate in Key Largo, it was her.

Not only that, but her yacht, the
Now You See Me
, was a veritable ghost ship. It was trim and clean and didn't have spirits of creepy British children, but Carla's magic ensured it had a few tricks. Namely, her illusory spellcraft could make it practically disappear, given the right conditions.

We loaded up and hit the high seas. I wasn't much of a sailor, but after years of death and weeks of being a fugitive, being on the open ocean was a relief. Birds hovered on the breeze overhead. Dolphins swam in the aqua below. I watched the sun set over the open water and deepen the landscape to a brilliant cerulean, beautiful yet mysterious.

But even though the water was relatively calm, it was choppier than the ride in my pickup. My insides tightened and I began focusing less on the beauty of the earth and more on keeping my lunch down. And that's a slow way to pass the time.

We stopped to refuel in Havana, then again in Cape Antonio, before making a beeline to Grand Cayman. The stops were a welcome break from the monotony of the sea, but I never disembarked. I hid in the shadows and got what sleep I could.

By the next morning, my excitement had built again. I made a point to watch the sunrise, and the water was a deeper green than anything I'd seen in my life. We were almost at our destination and I was already getting nostalgic about the journey. A little sea sickness is a welcome price to pay for shoving the stresses of reality aside.

Carla sat on her captain's chair picking at the calluses on her bare feet. Despite that, I tried to capture the serenity by staring into the sea. But it was gone already. My elusive white whale, sunken in the depths of my burgeoning investigation.

The Covey. The remaining living members were in a holding pattern. Hiding from me. Except for Emily. She was in plain sight but, in many ways, the most difficult to deal with.

Em. The love of my other life. After going off and dying, I couldn't really blame her for marrying my best friend, but to find out she was part of the Covey? To discover the only reason she ever introduced herself was to manipulate a naive shadow witch into finding the Horn of Subjugation and then steal it for herself? That hit me hard.

Like I sap, I reached for the picture in my back pocket. I was happy to find I'd left it in the pickup. But that didn't stop my thoughts.

In some ways, Emily was a complete stranger now. For all I knew, she was an animist herself. But there were still some acts I couldn't reconcile, some facts that made me believe Emily wasn't all bad. She'd apologized about my parents, claiming not to have a hand in that. She'd named our daughter after me and given her the doll I gifted. These were strange actions for a heartless conspirator.

Maybe I was just another sucker who wanted to believe, allowing remnants of my love for her to cloud my judgment. But it was what it was. Emily still had a hold on me, still tugged my heartstrings. She sat at home everyday, out in the open, but how could I harm the mother of my child?

Women, am I right?

Her half sister was a different matter. Kita Mariko, the offspring of an Australian real estate tycoon and a Japanese mistress. Em never told me about her half sister, but I connected the dots. Really, the dots were connected for me. Shoved into my face by the poltergeist of their dead father. The cover story presented his death as an accident, but Kita and Emily had conspired in his death to take over his land holdings in the Caribbean. How Kita had forced her sister into that situation was beyond me.

The man was another victim of my undead hand. Another drop of guilt in my bucket. Thinking over the connection of their well-traveled father convinced me that coming out here was all the more necessary. But I had to be careful.

Kita Mariko is Commissioner Alvarez's chief of staff, but she's much more than a bureaucrat. She's an animist. A paper mage. Interesting magic and the reason I now always carry flammable shells on hand. After our confrontation at the commissioner's house, I suspected Kita was the brains of the operation. Maybe she'd brainwashed Emily somehow.

There I went again. Looking for excuses.

But the Horn, killing me, killing their father—they were all just plays at something larger. Something that entailed buying a politician and the soon-to-be mayor of Miami. As the man's chief of staff, Kita was invaluable. Without her around, the Covey's influence was neutralized.

That only left Tyson Roderick, the ousted head of security for the commissioner. The real mystery behind the man was why a volcanic elemental was engaged in Earthly politics.

Elementals are strange creatures. I'd butted heads with Tyson. Killed him even. But that just banished him to his plane temporarily. Nothing stopped him from coming back again. Only so far, he hadn't come back. And if he didn't come to me I could hardly go to him. Not where he lives.

Opposed to the Nether, elementals are from the Aether. It's a steppe above ours. A place of primal beings. Jinns, dragons, and elementals. The Aether is made of fire and air, and it's a place humans cannot tread.

I sulked as I watched the water and the deep. The Nether is the polar opposite of the Aether. The Nether is made of earth and water, a land of silvans, giants, and fiends. Much more familiar to our kind. Much more tangible and material.

I considered my empty palm, scarred with blackened lines making up arcane shapes. The wound had scabbed over with a black crust. I hoped that meant my enhanced healing was going to work on it, but I wasn't optimistic. This was no ordinary burn.

Not ten feet from me, a serpent-like creature wriggled under the turquoise waves. Its timing, as I pondered the Nether, was impeccably creepy. Just as mythical creatures can venture through rabbit holes on land, Nether beings live beneath the sea as well. They're all around us. Under us. But they know how to stay out of sight. After my silvan curse, I knew to stay out of the Nether as well.

Carla stomped over to me. "If you're gonna puke, just do it already. I don't want you embarrassing me in sight of land."

I snapped out of my thoughts and noticed the island in view, flat and difficult to see, but taking up more and more of the horizon as we closed in. I quickly ducked below the rail. Time to get down to business.

"I'm fine," I told her. "What's the plan?"

Carla's weathered eyes considered me. "What plan?"

"I mean, how are you gonna get me in? I figure you can make me invisible while I follow you through customs."

"Angel farts," she snapped. "If I could work illusions on people, you think I'd keep this mug?"

I arched an eyebrow. "So, what then? Some kind of Trojan horse play? Or maybe a distraction. I could blow something up."

"Hell, no. What is it with you and explosions? What we're doing is much easier than that." The Key Largo pirate reached into her boat shorts and handed me a passport. "Here you go."

I checked the ID. It was a near-perfect recreation of what I assumed to be a modern passport, complete with a picture of me that I had never posed for. I could sense the ambient Intrinsics emanating from the paper, and wondered what was really printed on it.

"I've never had a passport before," I whispered.

And just like that, Cisco Suarez was official.

 

 

 

 

Grand Cayman's not a huge island, but upon leaving the clutches of the expansive sea and sky, it felt like it was all the land in the world. The white sand clashed against the rainbow of blues above and below, but it was far from an idyllic scene of pure, natural beauty. Tourists with sunburns scurried around madly like panicked ants. Locals hawked wares with impolite sales tactics. These were the vacation highlights edited out of movie reels.

Still, the spirit of the original island remained. A scoundrel's sense of adventure, maybe. Or a potential bounty. I couldn't put my finger on it.

Carla's enchanted passport held up. We made it through customs without a second look, and I wondered if the enchantment had a slight charm to it as well. I didn't have a chance to ask the boat captain because she told me to be back at the dock the next afternoon (but not too early 'cause she likes her beauty sleep) and disappeared without another word.

Guess she wanted no part of my trouble. Guess I didn't blame her.

I was now alone in George Town, the capital of the territory. Despite being nowhere near as sprawling as Miami, I was suddenly daunted and wished I had Carla as a tour guide. I could literally start anywhere.

The Cayman Islands, a sunny place for shady people. When a group of three tiny islands in the middle of the Caribbean makes it into the top five banking centers in the world, you know something's fishy. That's not the same thing as illegal, mind you, but it gets pretty close. Huge corporations to private asset holders all enjoy the light and indirect taxation the Caymans provide, but it really comes down to hiding money.

Why is any of this important to me? Well, the paper trail, Sherlock.

Fact the first: As part of my zombie service, I had helped incite a gang war in the voodoo communities of Little Haiti. The public crime wave spiked media attention. Predictably, property values plummeted. My recent break-in to City Hall had caused all sorts of grief (including an up-close-and-personal police raid), but the visit uncovered proof that Rudi Alvarez and his staff, including Evan, had holdings in a Cayman Islands financial services company named Blue Sky.

Fact the second: Along with my gang warfare, I'd assassinated Australian real-estate tycoon Henry Hoover. His wealth went to his daughter Emily Cross. Most of his estate by then had been long squandered, but various properties in the Caribbean, notably the Cayman Islands, were part of the inheritance.

Finally, and perhaps most important, fact the third: Ten years ago I'd boarded a boat for a date with destiny that led to my capture and death. The boat was registered to a defunct charter company on Grand Cayman (think Carla's small-time operation except on this side of Cuba). The business was long gone, but any possible links were worth checking out while I was in the neighborhood.

I scratched my head and considered my options. Bank accounts, real estate, or the boat I'd been murdered on. Try boring, boring, and about damn time I got answers.

Destination in mind, I hit a local rental shop. The Caymans are a British territory so everybody speaks English. Even better, they accept US cash. That made it easy for me to flash my passport and rent a scooter. One pair of plastic sunglasses later and Cisco Suarez was out for a coastal ride, albeit on the left side of the road.

Within twenty minutes, I got my bearings and made it to the address of Stingray Tours, where the boat had been registered. Except the waterside building wasn't a charter company anymore. It was a scuba shop.

I parked my scooter and entered the storefront. Diving gear lined the shelves and a single old man sat behind the counter.

"Hi there," I said, just another unassuming tourist. "You guys rent boats?"

The geezer arched an eyebrow. "We don't do tours."

It was that obvious I didn't belong. I took the news like a champ. Frowning for a second and then pulling back before I overplayed the act, I said, "My father told me Stingray Tours was the place to get a charter."

The man widened his eyes. "He must've told you that a while ago, son. Stingray used to do business here but that was years ago. I bought the shop when they went out of business."

"Out of business?" Crestfallen. "Any idea what happened?"

"The owner killed himself on a binger." The man said it like he was talking about a piece of food stuck in his teeth. "His wife was his partner and she died in the crash too. No more backers, no more business."

I shook my head mournfully. "That's too bad. My dad said he had a great time with him."

"Charles? I doubt it. He was a grumpy bastard." Pot, meet kettle. "Your old man must've been talking about Captain Wallace. He was the talkative one. Did most of the tours."

I snapped my fingers. "Wallace. That's it. He still around?"

"Sure is," said the man, losing some edge to his voice. "He's doing his own thing under his own name now. Flipped to the opposite side of the island, but that's not a long drive in these parts."

I pumped the owner for the details, thanked him, and left the shop. I wasn't looking for the boat anymore. Since it had been stolen and impounded by Miami police, it wasn't worth nosing around for physical evidence here. I hopped on the scooter and blazed a trail to Rum Point Beach.

It was a winding route that took me around much of the island, but the old man was right. I made it in less than an hour. I had to ask around to find Wallace Sightseeing. I was glad I did because I wouldn't have found it on my own.

Carla's dilapidated business place was a modern miracle of design compared to Wallace's, which I'd describe as more of a hut or shanty. It didn't have its own dock and no one answered the door. Some stragglers in the mostly residential neighborhood—locals, not tourists—were watching me. So much for breaking in. I smiled and knocked again.

"He's not there," came a voice from the street. It was an older woman pushing a baby stroller. I didn't see a baby.

"You a friend of Captain Wallace?" I asked.

"Not really."

I frowned, wondering where her baby was. "If you're not his friend, how do you know—"

She pointed at the door behind me. "Read the sign."

That's right, I missed the sign posted on the door window, flipped around to read, "On the water," followed by a phone number. World's greatest detective, I am. At least the sightseeing business was still humming. I turned around to thank the woman but she was already halfway down the block. Maybe it was better to avoid women with empty baby strollers. I saved the number on my phone even though I wasn't planning on using it. The kind of questions I had were best done in person and without announcement.

So much for starting with the exciting clues. Captain Wallace could be on the water for most of the day, and I had too much steam under my sails to wait around for him now. I compromised by picking up lunch at a beachside bar called The Wreck. A few conch fritters and a jerk burger later and I gave up on the captain and scooted back to George Town.

It wasn't check-in time yet and I couldn't look into Hoover's properties without a hotel computer, so that left the Blue Sky paper trail. I headed to the financial center downtown and was surprised by the slew of colorful buildings. Even mega-banks were susceptible to the eccentricities of islander life, I supposed.

It wasn't all glitz and glamour, though. After the financial crackdown of the nineties, the Caymans fell on hard times. Gone were the days of lugging around briefcases of cash to disappear. This wasn't the same Grand Cayman because of it. Gangs were on the rise. Crime and murder more commonplace. It was the type of environment that bred desperation.

That said, a financial center's a financial center. It would be naive to believe everything was on the straight and narrow. Especially the building I approached with large, inviting windows and friendly-looking professionals at their desks. Blue Sky Investments.

That's when I realized my conundrum.

Here I was, with no real paper in my possession, dressed in a plain white tank top, jeans, and red cowboy boots, needing access to sensitive financial data that wasn't mine. I supposed it was worth the old college effort, and maybe my style of dress could be attributed to the same islander eccentricities I was surrounded by.

I entered the silent office. It wasn't a traditional bank, really. Large enough for several desks and kiosks, with a back office for heavy hitters. If I had to guess, there were various managers that interacted personally with clients. To me, that meant big money and specially tailored business.

A pretty young woman caught my eye and waved me to sit down. "What can I do for you?" she asked in a British accent.

No time like the present.

"Hi," I started, trying (and failing) to sound as haughty as she did. "I represent a firm interested in moving assets to Blue Sky."

She nodded with a plastic smile. "Which firm is that?"

I cleared my throat. "Actually, I'd prefer to look into your services before I reveal that."

"I'm sure you would," she replied without missing a beat. "But I wouldn't know what kind of package to set you up with unless you divulge your firm's assets."

I nodded. A perfectly acceptable setback. "Let's start north of a million," I said casually.

The woman didn't even blink. "Are the funds currently with another bank?"

I licked my lips to buy time. "Several banks."

"Let's start with those account numbers and we can verify your approval."

I grimaced as politely as I could manage. "Again, I'd prefer not to divulge that yet."

The woman's smile wavered, but she did an admirable job maintaining it. "Mister...?"

"Livingston," I blurted out.

She nodded. "Yes, Mr. Livingston. I'm sorry to disappoint you, but we are unable to work with clients without a pre-approval phase. I suggest you check with your"—sarcastic tone now—"
firm
, and re-engage us if you decide the opportunity is right."

I smiled politely, but the woman came back with an even stronger one. She had me beat at everything. Pleasantries, subtext, even insincerity. I stuttered for a moment until I saw something that took my voice away completely.

Entering the Blue Sky office from the street was a prim Japanese woman, an all-business bureaucrat in a pants suit by the name of Kita Mariko: chief of staff to one Commissioner Rudi Alvarez.