Clint Faraday Mysteries Collection B :This Job is Murder Collector's Edition (23 page)

“
What was here for someone to steal?”
Clint asked. “Is it something they just have to know about or
something they would take?”

Goins got up and went into the bedroom. He
stayed a couple of minutes and came back.

“
Things have been moved. I left some
traps. They wanted a look at the account freeze information, I
guess.”

“
Who’s doing this to me!
Why?”

“
Licenciada Elena Vargas, because
you’re no longer necessary to the plan. You know what happens to
anyone who becomes, shall we say, redundant. Exactly the way you
set it up. You were being used the same way you used the Nesmiths
and Littletons. You damned well know how that was handled long
before you even got involved. If it weren’t for the fact the
Nesmiths were just two people who got suckered into it and died as
a result I’d let her take care of you, then take her down. I still
might.”

“
Clint! I swear! I never thought they
would do anything to the Nesmiths other than deplete their bank
account by half a million. They wouldn’t have been hurt by that.
They knew the target was being sought in an illegal manner so they
weren’t all that innocent. I did NOT have any idea they would be
hurt. I knew damned well the Littletons and Guila and Fred would
end up, one set of them, dead. Big boo-hoo!”

“
I agree none of them were a loss.
Anyone like them, someone who goes into a scheme where they kill
someone else for money, knows the rules of that game. It’s a risk
YOU took along with them. Why do every one of you think you’re
somehow outside the rules? Are you all so damned stupid ... you’re
just like politicians. The rules apply to others, not
you.

“
Got news for you, chump! You went into
this with your eyes wide open. You put the blinders on yourself.
Now you’re playing last hand. You or Elena win – or the house takes
the pot. I’m going to see that the house takes the pot. That puts
me at the same risk as you and the lovely Elena. I think I’m good
enough at the game to beat someone who lets little details slip by
them.”

Goins was about to cry. “Little details?”

“
Lock the place and leave that balcony
door unsecured? That’s the little detail that could have ended your
seat at the game.”

Goins thought hard for a few minutes and
Clint sipped the beer. He wasn’t worried about the beer because
everyone knew Goins didn’t drink beer. He wanted to know more about
Elena Sanchez Vargas Menendez.

“
Oh. One other little detail you would
tend to miss. Don’t eat or drink anything in this apartment. Valdez
and Guila did that. I wonder mightily where the Littletons got the
stuff. The Cuna sure as all hell didn’t give any of it to a gringo
for any price!”

“
Cuna? What...?”

“
The poison used to knock off Valdez
and Zacharia was made by the Cuna. They don’t let it get out of
their hands. It was supposed to look like the Ngobe did it, but
even they can’t get the poison and wouldn’t use it if ... I’ll be
damned! The witch!”

“
Witch? What’s going on! What
witch?”

“
This is getting weirder and weirder. I
think there’s someone else involved, but don’t have a clue as to
how.”

“
Clint, what do I do? What would you do
in my position?”

“
Your position at the moment is bent
over with your bare ass sticking up to get a stiff one. I’d get the
hell out of Panama, personally.”

“
I can go to Medellin ... or
Managua!”

“
Why bother? That’s the same as
here.”

“
I have relatives in Ontario. I can go
there. Or Sydney.”

“
Sidney might be safe enough. It’s
become your problem.”

“
I have to make some kind of
arrangement to move the, er, funds.”

“
In an account that woman and probably
a few friends are watching? Really? That would be
smart!”

“
Let it sit there a month or so,
huh?”

“
Maybe two years. There’s no way I can
get them all.”

“
I think I should make it plain that
the money will be totally out of, er, anyone else’s reach if
anything happens to me, don’t you?”

“
I suppose.”

Goins looked entirely defeated. Clint studied
him a little as he got another cold beer from the ‘fridge. He
smirked to himself walked out on the balcony to drink the beer,
then went in to say he had to make a few calls, then he’d probably
go back to Cusapín. He used the bathroom, looked at the things
there and decided, seeing there were witches and such involved, he
would take something for them. He knew there was some, maybe not
much, but some, truth to psychic powers.

“
You’re pretty good! – but not as good
as you think you are!” he mumbled as he walked toward the
bus.

There was still something missing. He changed
directions and looked for Vargas’s office. He went in and said he
had to speak with her briefly. He waited ten minutes until an Indio
woman left. A woman in the traditional colors of the Cuna Yala. The
secretary said for Clint to go in.

Elena Vargas was a mostly-Indio woman. That
explained the poison when added to that Cuna Yala leaving.

“
I just stopped to ask if the witch
woman near the comarca is in this – or just you?

“
Which comarca? Where?” She didn’t turn
a hair that Clint knew a lot about the deal. He was probably noted
from the start. Maybe she thought she was using him,
too.

“
Cusapín,” Clint replied.

“
Olafia? We talk now and
then.”

Clint nodded and left without further
comment. He went to the bus. Obilio, a friend who helped him in the
past was there so Clint asked that he keep an eye on Goins. Notice
particularly when he went to the bank or when he pretended to
leave. See if he could find where he went.

“
Should I stop it when anyone wants to
kill him?”

Clint thought a moment. “Only if you don’t
get hurt doing it.”

He caught a bus to David. He wondered if
Vargas or Goins would be alive in two days.

Strike Two!

Clint called Judi when he was in David at the
Pension Costa Rica. She had a few little things that helped – such
as that there was some black witch-woman involved somehow. Her name
came up twice. Olafia Smith. Judi knew exactly how to not let a
person know she even heard something they said. Rolando, a local
semi-thug, had said something about her. Luela had said her boss, a
local black woman who was a sort of witch herself, had let it slip
that something was supposed to be done to protect someone else who
she didn’t like, but was getting scared of. Olafia Something. She
had made Wiliam and Jorge go back to Colon.

Clint had it all, he thought. It was a matter
of four sets of schemes backfiring against themselves. The first
set was what had happened in Cusapín and in that area. Now this
mess Goins was trying to use to manipulate Clint into getting rid
of Elena for him. That was ... damn it! It could be just one or two
working together!

But Clint had enough with this to finish it,
he was sure. “Strike two!” he said aloud.

Obilio called. Goins was going to Panamá
City. He went to the bank and got a long readout and signature on
an account ledger. He managed to be waiting for the consultant on
the seat by the office door and heard it all. Goins and the bank
manager both spoke English – but, as they did NOT know, so did
Obilio.

“
They will transfer almost a million
dollars to an account in the Banco Global. It will cost Goins more
than nine hundred dollars.”

“
Thanks, Obilio. That tells me a
lot.”

Clint went to a good meal at Las Brasas and
then went to Bohmfalk’s. They had the bar and restaurant in Bocas
Town when Clint first went there. They sold that place and had just
opened the bar and restaurant in David. He then went to Peter’s at
the Hotel Iris and chatted with friends. He turned in about ten
thirty.

He caught a very early bus in the morning to
Chiriqui Gande. He managed to leave the Costa Rica by the back
entrance where no one who was watching the place would know. It
probably wasn’t necessary, but he wouldn’t take any chances. It was
about 6:45 when he got to Chiriqui Grande.

Clint went to the police station to talk
seriously with Oliveros. He knew he would have the morning shift
because it was early when Moises called them about Valdez and
company and he came. He knew who the witch woman was and warned
Clint that she had a reputation for using poisons that they
couldn’t trace or prove. He suspected strongly that she was behind
the deaths of Valdez and Zacharia.

“
I think maybe she’s behind a lot of
things. All I have to know is who else is involved with her. It’s
one of two people,” Clint explained. “I have to talk to her. I may
have enough information that I can get her to slip up. I only need
to know a few things.

“
I don’t think she was directly
involved in the poisoning of the Littletons. I have to know
definitely. She might have made the suggestion that led to that
part.”

Oliveros nodded and wished Clint luck.

Clint went out to the dock. None of his
regular friends were around this morning. He went back into town to
a restaurant and asked how he could get to the village where Olafia
Smith was staying. He was told there was a road, not very good, but
not too bad, from Rambala. He was directed to it. He could probably
walk there in less than an hour. Michael, a friend from Changuinola
was there and said he’d take him in his truck part of the way, but
the road was too bad after the river.

Clint took him up on that and was taken to
where it only took about twenty minutes to walk the rest of the
way. He came into the village to find a pretty young black girl
waiting for him. She said the witch-woman said she had a vision
that he would come.

Yeah. And I didn’t see that waitress at the
restaurant run in to call her when I asked how to find her!

“
She is very powerful. She knows what
will happen. It happens many times here. She said to bring Mr.
Clint to her house early because she has much work with the spirits
of some people who were murdered in the comarca and they want
everyone to know she was not the one who sent the death potion to
them.

So she’s covering her ass with the locals.
She maybe didn’t send it, but she damned well knows who did.

Clint walked with the girl to a house that
was full of the things mediums and witches always had around. The
girl introduced her to a large black woman with dark sunglasses
that Clint was surprised she could see through in that darkened
house.

“
I know you. I know your soul. You are
a man partly good and partly bad. You seek revenge on those who
killed the friends of your friend who lives somewhere to the west
and near the sea. The people were given a poison that is not from
here. It is a poison that none can ever prove. I tell you it was
that poison you have suspected by the word of a not ... very wise
and loyal ... possibly Indio. Name begins with an `N’ ... or ...
no! `M’. Very surely an `M’!

“
I am correct, no?”

“
No. They weren’t friends. Quite the
opposite. It’s not revenge I seek, it’s truth. Two of those people
were innocent and were brought into this by trickery. I don’t like
schemes that bring innocent people into them – and I very damned
certainly want justice for them. I want to have the people
responsible for that caught and prosecuted. I came here to find
just how deeply involved you are. Elena Vargas hinted that you’re
very deeply involved.”

“
Elena Vargas is who?”

“
Elena Sanchez Vargas Menendez. In
Puerto Armuelles.”

“
The lawyer woman? I spoke with her one
time about some maps that were phony. She wanted me to tell some
people they were real. That I spoke with the spirits who made them
and they are real. She offered me five hundred dollars.

“
I would not do that. I do many things
that are spoken of as evil. I do not like the Indios, but I am
black and few black people like Indios.

“
I understand that the culture is the
reason. Our cultures do not blend in many places. I do them no
harm, though I am accused of anything that goes wrong on the
comarca.”

“
No. You aren’t blamed for anything on
the comarcas. They have their own witch women who counter any
spells or such. They say you do not send spells there. They know
it’s cultural conflict. They do say you are much too free with
poisons, which is why they suspected you. Moises told them the
poison was one that is not available to you. There’s a damned good
reason or two no one would believe they used the poison,
anyway.

“
I wanted to know if you’re involved.
I’ll tell you definitely that you’re in danger. They’re dangerous
people. There’s a lot of money involved. That’s a bad situation
when people are killed for the money, then someone steals the money
from the killer.”

She studied Clint for a minute, took off the
sunglasses and said it was a relief to be able to see for a
change.

“
I’m from Jamaica, Mon. This is an act
that keeps me free and I can eat regular-like. I make some poisons,
but they are only used by my own race. I know there are very evil
black people here – more than most other places except Jamaica and
Haiti. I do not feel regret that they use those poisons on each
other so much, Mon. They aren’t so messy as a machete or
Uzzi.