Blown Page 8

  Neal did a quick scan of LeBlanc’s browser history for the last twelve months. It was pretty boring reading. LeBlanc spent some time looking up political events around the world, but Neal decided that was because he was tracking currencies, and LeBlanc appeared to take an unusually high interest in the weather and agriculture reports. But a couple of deleted Google searches stood out—LeBlanc had looked for a book on maritime law. That seemed strange. Maybe it wasn’t. Neal didn’t have a clue and he really needed a clue. Anything.

  He pulled up the phone records for LeBlanc’s corporate account. There were several phone calls to and from the resort in the Dominican Republic, and calls to clients, restaurants, even a few colleagues. That was it. But this was LeBlanc’s company phone. Most people used a personal line. Neal did. There are some things you don’t want your employer to know about you. For example, if you want to send a picture of your erect penis to your boyfriend, you should probably do that on your personal device.

  Neal also had asked the IT guys to pull up all the text messages from LeBlanc’s company phone, including deleted ones. He looked at their report, and there was one slightly cryptic incoming message that had been deleted. It said simply, “Confirmed.” It was from a number with a 345 country code. A quick cross-check on the internet and Neal learned it was from the Cayman Islands. He called the number and heard a recorded message. It was a bank called the CIBC Trust Company Limited. It could be nothing. Confirmation of a transaction he’d done for a client. LeBlanc had been meticulous, leaving no trace, but maybe someone on the other end had gotten sloppy. It was worth looking into.

  If LeBlanc was hiding somewhere in the Caribbean, and everything seemed to point in that direction, then Neal was going to need someone who knew the region, someone who had contacts with the local authorities. He sent an email to an old friend who worked in the State Department. She’d know whom to call.

  He closed the lid on his laptop and took a sip of his beer. He was tired, but not sleepy. He turned on his television and looked at his meager DVD collection. He couldn’t decide between L.A. Tool & Die or Kansas City Trucking Co. They were classics and he’d watched them over and over since Bart left. Neal didn’t like the new kind of porn, the Titans and twinks, but there was something about Joe Gage’s workingman erotica that turned him on—probably because he didn’t encounter that many workingmen. He chose the truck drivers. He drained his beer and let his pants drop to his ankles. It was time this fancy couch got some stains.

  Bryan dropped the money off at the cottage he’d rented and then returned to the condo. He didn’t park and enter the building; instead he sat in his rental car and watched the man in the yellow Jeep. He was still there, watching the condo. It was night and the rain had intensified. That made it easy for Bryan to go unnoticed, but also made it hard to see what was going on. The lights were still on in the apartment and the doors to the balcony were gaping open, swinging in the wind. It looked as though someone was home, someone who didn’t care if the floor got wet. Bryan wasn’t sure why he’d returned. He had made a substantial deposit into Cuffy Ebanks’s bank account just in case something happened and he needed to cut and run. He could’ve stayed hidden, walked away from the condo as he’d planned. But the fact that someone was watching the apartment meant that someone knew about the money, and if so, someone would scour the island to find him. This was not good. Bryan needed time, a few days, maybe longer, to pull off his final move.

  At around ten o’clock, Bryan saw a car pull up and park next to the Jeep. Leighton hopped out holding a newspaper over his head against the rain and climbed into the passenger side of the Jeep. Bryan sighed. You couldn’t trust anybody these days.

  Bryan remembered meeting Leighton at a forex conference in Miami. He was ambitious, and his bank in the Caymans was actively pitching US brokers for clients who might want an offshore tax shelter. This was something that Brian didn’t want to do for his clients. He thought they should pay taxes. Maybe it was because his dad had been a high school teacher, but there were too many rich people paying too little. Dodges and loopholes and deductions: it was a shell game. The rich stayed rich while the infrastructure and the public school system collapsed. Who wanted to live in a society filled with crumbling bridges and uneducated nitwits? But after a few drinks, Leighton began to tell Bryan that he could fix certain things—residency status, visas, maybe even a passport—and Brian began to take an interest. Leighton had delivered, no doubt. He’d done everything he said he would and more. Brian would’ve written him a glowing letter of recommendation. That’s why it was so disappointing to see that he was capable of betrayal. After a few minutes Leighton and the guy in the yellow Jeep got out and walked across the street to the condo. Bryan cracked his window open to get a clearer view and watched as Leighton reached into his pocket and pulled out a key. Both men were wearing latex gloves. Bryan assumed it wasn’t to keep their hands dry.

  It took less than five minutes for them to figure out he was gone. He watched the men exit the condo. The guy from the Jeep wasn’t happy. He was yelling and jabbing his finger into Leighton’s sternum. Bryan almost felt sorry for Leighton, but hadn’t he paid him enough? If he wanted a bigger cut he should’ve said something. Bryan would have given him a bonus. Of course he didn’t feel that sorry for him; if Bryan had been home, he would be dead right now and they’d be carting the duffel bags out to their cars.

  The guy gave Leighton a shove and then got back in his Jeep and drove off. Leighton stood in the rain. Bryan couldn’t tell if he looked frustrated or forlorn, but he was obviously giving the situation some thought. Eventually Leighton peeled off his latex gloves, dropped them on the street, and got in his car.

  Bryan let Leighton drive off, then started his car and followed.

  He had never followed anyone before. He’d seen people do it in movies. He knew you weren’t supposed to get close, just close enough to keep an eye on the vehicle without being seen. As it turned out, it wasn’t difficult, even in the downpour, to keep Leighton’s car in view.

  A few minutes later Bryan saw Leighton pull into the drive of a modest bungalow. As he drove past he saw Leighton run from his car to the front door. Bryan kept driving until the bungalow was out of sight. He found a spot and pulled over to the side. What was his plan? Should he confront him? Offer to renegotiate? That seemed like the smartest move. He’d offer Leighton another million or two. It only seemed fair. He wouldn’t have gotten this far without Leighton’s help.

  He turned off the engine. The car rental company had kindly left an umbrella in the backseat, and Bryan held it up over his head as he walked back along the road toward Leighton’s bungalow. The only light was from his front porch and the dim glow from a few houses nearby. Leighton’s house looked freshly painted, white with aquamarine shutters. Bryan could tell that he took pride in it. The garden was manicured and there was a path lined with conch shells leading to the veranda. Bryan stooped and picked one up, turning it upside down, draining the rainwater. They were substantial shells: bigger than his fist and twice as heavy. He didn’t know what he was going to do with it exactly, but he figured he might have to defend himself. You couldn’t be too careful. What if there was trouble? What if Leighton knew kung fu?

  Bryan knocked on the front door and waited. He was nervous; he didn’t know what to expect really, but he assumed that Leighton would be happy to have one or two million dollars dropped in his lap. Although the reverse could be just as true: Maybe Leighton wanted all the money. Maybe he was greedy.

  As the rain pounded the umbrella, Bryan got a better idea. It wasn’t an elaborate plan, but it might be effective. He’d still offer to give Leighton more money, but he’d start by smashing him in the head with the conch, then tying him up and having a chat. Play hardball first, then give in with cash. With the element of surprise and a good hard swing, it could work. Leighton seemed like a reasonable guy. Bryan was confident they could come to some kind of accommodation.

  As Leighton
opened the door, Bryan sprang forward and swung the conch as hard as he could, attempting to deliver an overhead smash to Leighton’s skull. But the umbrella snagged in the doorway, impeding Bryan’s lunge and causing him to stumble so that he missed the top of Leighton’s head and instead plunged the spire of the conch straight into his left eye, knocking off his glasses, driving through the soft tissue and into his brain.

  Leighton dropped dead on the floor, his limbs gently spasming, the shell protruding from his eye socket.

  It was the gnarliest thing Bryan had ever seen.

  Bryan dropped the umbrella at the door and stepped inside. He felt his bowels clench and lurch.

  Had he just shit himself? Was he about to?

  He leaned close to Leighton. “Hey. Hey, man. Can you hear me?”

  Leighton was unresponsive.

  Bryan gasped. The pressure from his bowels increased, a churning commanding him to shit. This was not what he’d had in mind, not at all, and yet it didn’t take a genius to see that killing Leighton solved his problem.

  Bryan had seen enough television to know that he had to wipe his fingerprints off the shell and hide the body somewhere. Ideally, he would take Leighton out to sea and sink him in deep water. Ideally, he would go into Leighton’s bathroom and relieve himself. This was not an ideal moment for either option. What if Leighton had a wife? A partner? He had to get the body out of there as quickly as he could. Bryan clenched his sphincter and broke out in a cold sweat.

  Careful not to touch anything else, he searched Leighton’s pockets and found his car keys, then went outside and opened the trunk. The combination of dense foliage and a tropical downpour meant that he could probably pull this off without anyone seeing. He came back and picked Leighton up by the armpits and dragged his body out of the house. It was strange that Leighton’s underarms were as clammy as his handshake. Maybe clammy people were not to be trusted.

  Bryan gently dumped Leighton’s body into the trunk, the trunk light glinting off the conch, a little spark of pink opalescence jutting grotesquely out of Leighton’s face. He carefully wiped the conch with the end of Leighton’s shirt and shut the trunk.

  Bryan’s bowels lurched again and he almost lost it, almost shit himself right then and there. But he clenched his teeth, tightened the muscles in his rectum, and scurried back to turn off the lights and shut the front door. That done, he picked up his umbrella, turned, and ran.

  The rain continued to pound as Bryan slowed his jog to a quick shuffle. He didn’t want any witnesses to say they saw someone running from the house. But he wasn’t trying to flee a crime scene; his guts were on fire, his bowels screaming. Bryan realized he wasn’t going to make it to his house; he wasn’t even going to make it to his rental car. He couldn’t hold it any longer. His bowels began moving whether he wanted them to or not. He ducked into the brush—ignoring the rain and the distant barking of a dog—and frantically dropped his pants. He squatted there, under the umbrella, and unleashed a violent torrent of shit.

  Piet sipped his daiquiri and waited for the merengue to end. The merengue was not a sexy dance. He preferred the bachata. He could tell a lot about how a woman was in bed by the way she danced the bachata—the soft, rolling ass motion punctuated by the pop of the hips on the four—but the merengue told him nothing.

  A few drops of condensation fell from his glass onto his lemon-yellow guayabera. Piet reached up to the bar for a paper napkin to blot them. He knew he looked crisp against the humidity, his chocolate-colored slacks freshly pressed, his leather shoes polished to perfection, and his hair sculpted by sweet-smelling gel.

  The band segued to a salsa, again not as good as a bachata, but a decent enough indicator of sexual potential. As the dancers began to move, Piet scanned the crowd. He’d been trained by the police to read crowds for suspicious individuals and terrorists, and now he used the same skill to look for women.

  The moon was full and gave a soft glow to the dancers as they moved to the beat. Piet had been on the floor a couple of times with young women—tourists who thought dancing with him was some kind of bucket list experience, a selfie to post on their social media—but like all serious playboys, he was happy to wait for something worth his time.

  This wasn’t the slickest club in Willemstad; in fact it wasn’t a club, it was a bar on the beach that happened to have a good Latin band on Friday nights. The bartenders made a great daiquiri, though, and the joint was filled with bored tourists looking for something to do on their holiday in Curaçao.

  Piet caught her out of the corner of his eye and turned to get a better look. She was pretty, but not beautiful, with long blond hair and a slash of red lipstick against skin that looked freshly sunburnt. He was a good judge of age and guessed she was in her late thirties. He liked women to be a certain age. Too young and they wouldn’t know what they were doing, and honestly, what’s the fun in that?

  He watched her move to the salsa, her body undulating under a flowing beach dress, a belt made from looping silver circles draped across her hips. The dress was open at the neck, revealing a small gold crucifix nestled between her breasts. He could tell that she didn’t really know how to dance the salsa: she wasn’t following the prescribed moves, she was freely improvising, spinning and stepping to her own beat.

  Piet smiled. Even though he was a former policeman, he didn’t like people who followed the rules; it showed they lacked self-confidence. They might know all the steps and be able to perform without a mistake, but what they gained with precision they lost in passion. It was all about the ability to be yourself, to feel the music, to not care what anyone thought. That’s what made someone a good lover—you had to be confident enough to let yourself get carried away.

  A bachata started. Piet put his drink up on the bar and moved toward her.

  They’d been dancing for almost an hour when he suggested they get a drink. He followed her back to her table, signaling a waitress for two daiquiris.

  “You’re a fantastic dancer.”

  She smiled and tucked a loose strand of hair behind her right ear. “You too.”

  Piet grinned. “I live for the bachata.”

  The cocktails arrived and they clinked their glasses together. Piet relaxed, sitting back in his chair and letting the breeze off the ocean cool his head. He tried to make small talk. “Are you here on vacation?”

  She shook her head. “A friend’s destination wedding.” She took another sip of her drink. “Actually, not even a close friend. A coworker. I just thought it’d be fun to get away for a while.”

  “And are you having fun?”

  She smiled. “Absolutely.”

  And then her face changed. She leaned close to him and said, “But the humidity is killing me and I desperately need a shower. Would you like to join me?”

  “In a shower?”

  She nodded.

  Piet raised his glass to her. “I can scrub your back.”

  He followed her as she led the way, cocking his head slightly to the side for a better angle, studying the curve of her buttocks as she strode out of the bar and climbed into a taxi.

  Piet had a unique relationship to women’s bottoms. Not only was he a connoisseur of culo, an aficionado of ass, but he felt that women’s asses communicated to him, through signs and semaphores. They sent him messages, gave him instructions, told him how they wanted to be caressed or if they preferred to be roughed up a bit. They teased, they invited, they told him stories of heartache and pain, triumph and ecstasy. His ability to read an ass wasn’t a superpower; it was a skill he’d developed by paying close attention.

  Her ass told him a story. It was a round but not spherical ass, slightly oversize but not wide; it was, he could tell, spectacular, the perfect combination of dance-floor firm and bedroom soft. But while her ass blushed at his unspoken appraisal, it told him to go gently, that it had been neglected and mistreated in the past, and it was lonely. The tourist’s ass needed a friend more than anything else.

  One o
f the few positives of having a genetic condition that gave him disproportionately short arms and legs was that the achondroplasia didn’t affect his face, which was of normal size and handsome, or his genitals, which were quite large. Piet assumed that if he were six feet tall, like his father, he probably would’ve had a generous but normal-size penis. But he was only four-foot-seven, so when they finally got to her hotel room and he slipped out of his slacks, she looked at his erection and said, “Oh my.”

  What did a murderer eat for breakfast? Should he have what the menu called the “Pirate’s Breakfast” or go with coconut French toast? “Dead men tell no tales,” as the pirates say, but Bryan doubted that pirates really wanted to tuck into a pile of hash browns, pancakes, bacon, and eggs—although maybe that was the difference between a pirate and himself. He didn’t swash-buckle a cutlass or fire a musket; he’d murdered a man with a decorative shell. A real pirate might have a robust appetite after a night spent pillaging, and it might make sense to carbo-load before enslaving the women and children and carting away the town’s booty. That’s hard work in the hot sun. But Bryan knew he wasn’t really a pirate. He didn’t want to be reminded of what he’d done, so he went with the coconut French toast and a second coffee.

  The walls of the restaurant were painted in garish tropical greens and yellows, and there was a large mural of happy monkeys drinking Miller Lite. Arranged on the bar were a couple of large conch shells that gave him pause. He hadn’t meant to kill Leighton. That was not the plan. He consoled himself with the knowledge that it was justifiable homicide; there were mitigating circumstances. He wasn’t some kind of thrill-killer or psychopath. It was entirely accidental, and if he wasn’t already in hiding for embezzling millions of dollars, Bryan might have even come clean to the police, told them it was all a joke gone wrong. No one in his right mind would drive a conch shell through someone’s eye socket. Bryan LeBlanc wasn’t a killer. But then, as he poured maple syrup on his coconut French toast, he realized that maybe Cuffy Ebanks was. Maybe you didn’t fuck with Cuffy Ebanks, because you never knew what that dude would do.