Bad Juju & Other Tales of Madness and Mayhem Read Online Free PDF Page A

Caught by the wind, the money inside the suitcase, all US$4 million of it, spiraled upward and green-parrot-like swooped into the jungle.
    I pulled up short and watched the final gust of greenbacks flap over the line of palmettos and coco palms twenty yards south of the runway. Then I blanked out for an instant.
    Of course, this was all planned. I had twelve guys in the fallow rice paddy on the other side of the palm and palmetto windbreak scooping the greenbacks out of the air with butterfly nets. Estimated loss: maybe a hundred thou.
    The only unplanned event happened when I walked into the airport terminal.
    Inside, a crowd of on-lookers chaffed at the bit, held back by five or six barely eighteen-year-old camouflage-fatigued troopers hefting machineguns. Lieutenant Ariel Limon, fat, tanned and ghastly, stood in the forefront. Five years before half his face had been blown off by an IED allegedly planted by some shadowy Marxist cell. More likely by a disgruntled client who felt he’d not received good value for his payoffs. Now that side of his face was a white snarl of eyeless scar tissue.
    As Ariel stepped toward me, he jerked a blue-steel military issue .45 from his flapped leather holster. The room suddenly became breathless. The ratcheting sound of the pistol being armed echoed like twin ball bearings dropped on a terrazzo floor.
    “Anne Muldoon?” he demanded, knowing full well who I was. We’d met occasionally at government functions in years past.
    I looked up from massaging a bruised ankle and flashed Ariel a fake smile. Bent over and wearing a low-cut camisole as I was, he had a great view of my tits. Big deal.
    “Hi, Lieutenant. Hell of a close call. Guess I’m lucky to be alive.”
    He ignored my attempt at social repartee, his sole eye as scrunched and rugged as a hardscrabble field carved out of the jungle by some dirtbag campesino .
    “Anne Muldoon. I’m arresting you for the murder of Tony Sanchez.”
    “You must be kidding,” I said.
    He wasn’t. At a nod of Ariel’s buzz-cut skull, two of his foot soldiers jumped forward and grasped my arms. They were so inept, I might have grabbed one of the machine guns and mowed the lot of them down.
    I didn’t.
    My mind was already sorting back through the index cards of memory to the previous evening in Malibu Caye, when I’d last seen Tony “the Microbe” Sanchez. Then, he’d been very much alive.
    Point of clarification: Tony’s nickname wasn’t a reference to the size of his dick, which was pretty average. It referred instead to his unwavering penchant to micromanage every frigging detail of his mostly shady businesses.
    It started out as just another simple insurance scam. Tony would put in a claim for the lost money. The money that got blown out to sea. Meanwhile the missing money would go quietly into some privately owned businesses. Double your pleasure, double your fun. Tony agreed to pay me 25 percent of the missing money to set it up. I got 5 percent up front to cover expenses.
    Now it had morphed into a murder rap.
    As I hissed at Ariel, I realized the US$4 million was long gone. Slipped into someone else’s pocket.
    I needed to get Ariel to tell me whose.
    “Let’s get a drink. You can tell me all about Tony Sanchez’s murder.”
    “You know the details better than I do.”
    “That remains to be seen.”
    Ariel’s jaundiced eye coasted over the clusters of gawkers. His own toy soldiers watching his every move.
    “This is no place to talk,” he said.
    He ordered his sergeant to clear out the upstairs lounge and secure the stairway.
    In the upstairs bar, we took seats by the bank of windows looking out onto the tarmac. On the far side, smoke still wafted from the wreck of the Cessna.
    A Mayan beauty, with skin the color of weathered cedar, brought a bottle of rum and two glasses. Then she went away; and we were on our own.
    The first perfect sip of 1 Barrel took me by surprise. It always tasted smoother and more consoling than I