27. April 14, 2023
Demon
They sat in the restaurant at a table next to the rail, looking over the bay. The conversation had been mostly about Flame’s last book and Kubrick’s current movie shoot.
“Excuse me, ma’am. You lost your napkin.”
Demon, his arm loosely around the back of Cherry’s chair, looked up to see a waitress standing next to her, placing the crumpled cloth napkin on the table beside her place setting.
“Yes, thank you.”
The girl nodded and refilled all of their water glasses. Under her breath, she told them, “Table by the door.” Louder, she wished them a good meal and carried on back to the kitchen, filling water glasses on her way.
TB swore to himself. “Gem couldn’t reach us. We’re being watched.”
Cherry picked up the napkin and laid it in her lap. Demon snuck his hand onto her thigh and felt for whatever the girl slipped to Cherry. It was a room key to a local boutique hotel. Apparently, that’s where they needed to meet.
“Yes,” Demon agreed, glancing into his lap. “Meetup has moved. Five thirteen at the Casa del Mare .” He slipped the key card into his side pocket.
“Slick. Room number on the card,” Midas praised.
He placed his hand back onto her thigh, his hands unobtrusively bunching up the filmy layers of her skirt and sliding his hand along her mid thigh, curving his hand along the inside.
He felt her shift slightly to spread her legs a little more.
To put her leg closer to him or to give him more access?
Feck. Fun as that might be, he’d leave the surreptitious orgasms during a meal to their exhibitionist former teammate.
Instead, he gave her a little squeeze and tapped her skin with his forefinger as if to remind her they were being watched and not just by possible bad guys.
“Midas, you find out anything from your searches?”
“Yeah. None of it good. Felix Giudici. Italian banker. Based out of Rome. Interesting fact—he’s the leading donor to Bananato del Sole toward the upkeep, as well as being heavily invested in the ongoing sustainability measures.
There are also some ruins on the property that he funded the excavation for.
His investment is so large he could buy the joint.
Red flag central. Not currently married, but he has a son, twenty years old, attending Oxford, and following in dad’s footsteps, it appears.
Upon diving deeper into his history, the mother is the mystery woman I told you about yesterday.
He met and married her while working in Switzerland.
Married quick, had the baby, a boy of course, then under a month later, she died after hitting her head against a tree in a skiing accident.
No records of her being treated at any hospital.
No one in Italy, or elsewhere, had ever seen her.
” The table shared a look. “Son has a reputation for the ladies, but… no one sticks.”
Demon felt Cherry shiver next to him. He removed his hand from her bare leg, smoothed her skirt back down, and he curled his arm around the back of her chair, one hand loosely hanging over her shoulder and a finger tracing back and forth over her clavicle, lending her the warmth of his body.
“Let me guess. Almost all of the investors are widowers or single and only have sons for children. Motherfeckers.”
“Yeah, that’s the bulk of them,” Midas confirmed. “There are a few married couples, some with girls, but they’re few and far between.”
“Cover,” TB said behind his coffee cup. “Gotta have some honest investors to hide the real nature of their shit.”
“What about General Howard?” Cherry asked. Demon heard the trepidation forming in her question.
“Bit murkier there, but nothing evades me. Widower, no formal children. I’m thinking after the death of their daughter, he removed the wife to pave the way for a future Mrs. Howard, but there’s no record of another child or woman.
However… he fostered a fellow soldier’s son for two years after the father was killed in action.
At eighteen, the boy up and left. Moved halfway across the country.
No contact with Howard since. Sixteen years now. ”
“You think he tried to recruit the boy, and the kid resisted? Shades of that kid Andres’ father driving his car off the cliff.”
“Sounds like it to me,” TB agreed. “Must have shown signs he wasn’t going to be amenable because he wouldn’t be alive if he knew the operation. Think we should reach out to him anyway?”
“Already did. Waters and God approved it this morning when you were first dragging your sorry asses out of bed. No word yet, but it’s early hours there. No guarantee he’ll return the call. God is fielding it, so he’ll let us know if he finds anything.”
“What about the plantation manager?” Cherry asked.
Midas looked out into the bay. “Probably the most disturbing of the three. The plantation is registered and semi-protected by the government. Something connected to that excavation I mentioned earlier. They’re claiming residency that predates the Arawaks, but there are minimal records, only verified by verbal witnesses in the early years and passed down orally until written records came into play.
The land is as close to a national landmark as they can get.
“Banana farming in St. Lucia has taken a nosedive in recent years, except for Bananato del Sole , which made a huge recovery. Like most Caribbean countries, their primary economy has been driven toward tourism. In the early two thousands, in walks Zion Norton with a small cadre of investors—Bosworth, Giudici, and Howard among them—with a huge cash investment to take the farm from barely scraping by to profitable. Following the tech advancements, suddenly there’s cash to push the product, renovations begin, and by 2006, the groves are the most successful in the country. ”
Steel grunted. “Can you say ‘money laundering’?”
Midas continued, “Most interesting thing I found was in a personal diary.” He moved to lean on his forearms on the table.
His voice lowered. “A local doctor recorded his suspicions that one of Deschamps’ ancestors, back three or four generations, might have murdered his wife shortly after the birth of their son.
He suspected she was deliberately exposed to infection and died from it. ”
“It would not have been a pleasant end,” Demon added.
“Back then, it was easier to get away with murder. Things like infection, poisoning by bad food, and unwitnessed accidents happened daily.”
“How the hell did you get access to someone’s personal diary?” TB asked.
Midas looked at him innocently. “I got a library card, faked some credentials showing I was working on my genealogy, looking to get access to personal records in my family. How do you think I got it?”
Rolling his eyes as if to say, “You are such a nerd,” TB shook his head.
Demon asked, “What about the kid? The grandson. Andres.”
“That’s the creepy part.” He confirmed the story Cherry had overheard, then added a new detail.
“Turns out Andres disappeared from home for about nine months. When he left, he was a gregarious twelve-year-old. When he came back? His whole demeanor, supposedly, changed. He became quiet. Introverted. Almost to the point of being mute.”
“Sounds like him,” Demon agreed. “He said very little unless directly prompted. Respectful, but soft-spoken.” He flashed the table a look. “He appears to have developed a crush on Cherry.”
Steel chuckled. “Some competition for you.”
“Please. Like an eighteen-year-old boy could replace the ocean god here.”
Demon leaned over and kissed her ear, then whispered, “Ocean god, am I? Remind me to lay you on the sand and rise up naked out of the water for you.”
“Stop it!” she hissed.
“Then don’t put that image in my head.” He kissed her ear again and affected nonchalance as he sat next to her.
The three men on the other side of the table weren’t fooled.
“Okay then,” TB said. “We’ve got some time to kill before we meet up with Gem, so what’s the plan?”
“I’m going to take Cherry around the town. We mentioned visiting the shops yesterday, so we should follow through. Then, if we enter the hotel, it probably won’t be looked at weirdly. Newlywed couple looking for privacy for an afternoon tryst.”
“We’ll have to scatter,” Steel said.
“I’ll be back at home base, digging into this stuff,” Midas said.
“I’ll go back to the beach,” TB offered. “Play stupid tourist who ignores signage and wanders ‘accidentally’ onto Les Vergers’ private beach and see what happens.”
Midas warned, “Be careful not to piss anyone off and get on security’s radar.”
“No worries,” the giant placated their project leader. “I’ve got a plan.”
“That's what worries me,” Midas grumbled. “Steel?”
“I’m going to take a ride out of the city. If I head, initially, out toward the plantation, I might pick up a tail. Lead ’em on a little chase this afternoon.”
Demon put his sunglasses on and glanced out his peripheral at the table where their observers were sitting. “There are only two of them at the table. They could split up. Send a text if you draw one of them into following you.”
With that, the group rose from the table, shook hands as if saying goodbye to their new surfing friends, and left the café.
As expected, the two men trying to look like tourists left shortly after them.
Demon and Cherry stopped in front of a shop window so that he could watch them.
Steel was obviously aware that the men were intending to follow the couple, so he faked a phone call, purposefully looking like he was doing something shady in relation to them, then hustled into the truck, taking off toward the main highway north.
There was a short discussion between the two men, and they decided to split up.
One got into a car and followed Steel. The other followed Demon and Cherry down the city streets.
“We’re one of the lucky ones being followed. Guess that gives me a lot of excuses to kiss and touch you,” he warned.
“You don’t exactly need an excuse.”
He smiled. “That is correct.”