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The Place of Refuge
(*) Coming soon
Back to TOC
Here is a preview of The Place of Refuge by Albert Tucher, published by Shotgun Honey…
FEBRUARY
CHAPTER ONE
“Now that,” Coutinho said, “is not what the Chamber of Commerce wants to see.”
As soon as said the words, he wanted them back. It wasn’t his style to get flippant over a body.
He had seen death before. Even in paradise people had fatal accidents. Bar fights could end as badly in Hilo as anywhere else, and Hawaii had its share of unfortunates with no one but the police to find them in the end.
But this kind of butchery was something new. Even in Honolulu the cops didn’t see much of it, and the Big Island wasn’t the big city.
His partner circled the body at a distance to get a look at the woman’s face.
“Gladys Robles,” said Kim. “Can’t say she deserved to go like this.”
“Who does?”
Coutinho found the odors of death, of blood and bowels, more oppressive than usual. A glance told him that Kim felt the same.
Here was the vulnerability of prostitutes, spelled out in smears of blood on the wall and puddles of it on the floor. The body’s position suggested that Gladys had slid down the wall as she lost consciousness. There were some distinct handprints among the streaks of blood, but they were probably hers.
If they were lucky, some of the blood would be
the moke’s. He might have cut himself in his killing frenzy.
Coutinho didn’t feel lucky.
The crime scene techs obviously wanted the detectives out of the way. Coutinho turned and left the hotel room with Kim behind him. In the hallway the Filipino housekeeper who had found the body leaned against the wall as if grateful for its support. She was new enough on the island to be wondering whether this kind of thing came with her job.
“Did you see the young lady arrive?”
“Yes, I see her. She give me forty dollars.”
To clean up after the day’s work and keep an eye on things as much as she could.
“How about her gentlemen callers?”
“I see a couple of them. I have my work to do.”
“So you didn’t see the last one?”
“No, Sir.”
If she had, Coutinho might be working a double murder.
“Thanks. You can go back to work.”
Or back home to Manila, if her nerve failed her. He wouldn’t blame her if it did.
He would have to talk to the desk clerk and the maintenance workers, but he expected similar answers from them.
Right now he decided to get a breath of air. Outside it was misting a little, but real rain had been scarce for months. From the sidewalk in front of the hotel he could see a piece of Hilo Bay, with the usual dark clouds on the horizon. They seemed to warn coastal dwellers to head for higher ground.
Coutinho lifted the hem of his aloha shirt and took his cell phone from his belt. Lieutenant Tanaka answered the second ring.
“How bad?” said Tanaka.
“I hope they don’t come much worse.”
“Anything to work with?”
“Doesn’t look like he cooperated by dropping his driver’s license or anything.”
“So if the techs get no fingerprints or DNA, we’ll have to wait for the moke to do it again.”
CHAPTER TWO
Jessie looked at Teddy Dias and thought about having his children.
What got her thinking that way was the look of fatherly indulgence on his face, which was a little weird, considering. Teddy was watching two of his underlings administer a beat-down to a surfer-dealer named Vince, who had come up short on his money.
Vince wasn’t enjoying himself, but he seemed to realize that it could be worse. The two men using their fists on him worked without noticeable enthusiasm. The crowd in Lori’s Bar stayed true to the North Shore surfer’s code of conduct and went about their drinking and palavering as if they saw nothing. And Jessie found herself ignoring the spectacle in favor of June Cleaver fantasies of life with Teddy.
It was more than a little weird.
“Okay,” said Teddy. “Gabe, Frank, that’s enough.”
“Frank,” said Teddy, “that was unnecessary.”
The false benevolence was supposed to make Vince feel grateful to the same man who had ordered his pain. Teddy knew it, Vince knew it, and Jessie understood it too. She could tell that Frank didn’t take the rebuke seriously.
Gabe let Vince fall to the floor, which was probably the worst part of his punishment. Six different kinds of tetanus lurked down there.
Teddy reached his arm around Jessie’s shoulders. She recalled the first time he had done that. She had wanted to cringe, but at some point that urge had faded. She could feel the thrum of blood under his skin. He would be hot for her tonight, and she wouldn’t have a problem with that.
Across the table, Teddy’s new friend Chuey put a sycophantic grin on his face.
“Hey, Teddy, you run a tight operation. My uncle’s gonna like that.”
Jessie didn’t like the young man, but she didn’t expect her opinion to count.
Teddy stroked her hair.
“So,” he said, “how’d you like to go to Mexico.”
“As long as it’s with you, Teddy.”
He turned back toward Chuey and grinned.
“The boss here says we’re good to go. Let’s talk details.”
From the beginning Jessie had pretended that details bored her. She still had trouble believing that Teddy bought her airhead act, but here was this up-and-coming pakalolo dealer talking shop right in front of her.
She listened for a while, but not long enough to make him wonder. Then she turned to Delilah.
“Am I going to like Nogales?”
Chuey’s girlfriend smiled back.
“Home is where the heart is. I like it because Chuey’s there.”
“You ever feel homesick?”
“A little, but not for here. For Vegas. That’s where I met Chuey.”
“How long you been in Vegas?”
“Couple of years.”
Jessie knew that story. Economic refugees from Hawaii made a major contribution toward keeping the Vegas casinos and hotels going. At some point, someone from Hawaii must have caught on in Nevada and told his cousins and his cousins’ friends, and now there was a revolving door.
“What brings you back here?” said Jessie.
“Ohana.”
Family. The word explained a lot in Hawaii.
“Chuey wants to meet them. Seriously, though, you’ll like Mexico. There’s even a few of us there.”
“No kidding.”
“One guy I’m thinking of in particular. King Kamehameha come back to life.”
“What’s his name?”
“Hosea,” said Delilah.
Jessie didn’t realize at first that she was staring, but then she noticed the strange look that Delilah was giving her.
“Hosea what?”
“Huh,” said Delilah after a moment. “I don’t think I ever heard his last name. He’s just Hosea. That’s kind of the way it goes there. Lots of people are vague about who they are, or how they got there. Especially how they got there.”
Jessie got up from her seat.
“Going to the ladies’.”
Delilah didn’t get up to go with her, which surprised Jessie a little. Delilah was usually big on the girl stuff. But if she didn’t want to come along, that would make things simpler.
Teddy nodded, only half hearing. Jessie made her way toward the rest rooms. Coming into Lori’s earlier, she had suppressed her disgust as her flip flops stuck and pulled loose from the floor with each step. Now she barely noticed.
Inside the women’s room she glanced around. Just to make sure, she stooped and checked under the door of each stall. Unless someone was standing on a toilet, she had the place to herself.
She needed to make this fast. Delilah could change her mind, and Teddy was capable of the odd attack of paranoia. He might bull his way right in here. She speed-dialed a phone number filed under “Janice” in her contacts.
“Hey, Jess,” said a woman’s voice. It was always a woman. Teddy might be listening, and she couldn’t have a man answering her friend Janice’s number.
“Green,” said Jessie.
It was the color of the day. If she didn’t work it into whatever she said, they would come running to get her out of trouble.
“What’s up?” said Detective Ronald Tedeschi.
“Teddy’s going to Mexico. I can go if you want me to.”
“Damn, that’s huge.”
She could almost hear him thinking over the airwaves.
“I told you something like this could happen, but I didn’t really think it would. This is going to go interagency.”
Which meant more opportunities for bureaucratic fuckups.
“When?”
“Soon.” She said.” Any day.”
“I’ll set something up. Can you get away?”
“I can always go shopping.”
“Damn,” said Tedeschi again. “This is where we find out what you’re made of. You’ll be pretty much on your own.”
I’m counting on it, Jessie thought.
That was the one thing she coul
dn’t tell anyone.
CHAPTER THREE
Curled up on his left side, Teddy snored. He had dropped the tough-guy front he showed the world, and she saw the little boy he had once been. That wasn’t something she could afford to consider, not if she wanted to keep her focus on putting him in prison.
But sometimes she couldn’t avoid thinking about it. Everyone she met in this new life, every dealer, user, enforcer, or hooker, had been a child. The difference was, she never saw them sleeping.
She slid out of bed and stood naked on the small patch of floor. She usually slept naked anyway, and Teddy wouldn’t have had it any other way last night.
Outside was still darkness, but the usual rapid island transition to daylight would come any minute. Jessie picked Teddy’s T-shirt up from the floor and pulled it over her head. She stooped again and found her cell phone in the tangle of her clothes. She headed down the narrow hallway to the door of the trailer.
Jessie climbed down to the ground and took a seat in one of the plastic chairs under the awning that Teddy had attached to his trailer. She speed dialed another number from her contacts. Tedeschi had warned her about storing numbers from her real life, but she could trust her mother to give nothing away. Not that Mom was especially protective of her daughter. Mom never told anybody anything.
She would be up at this early hour. It came with owning a restaurant.
“Mom, it’s Jessie.”
Silence.
“Tell me about Mexico.”
“Why?”
“Because I’m going.”
“Why?”
“You know why.”
“It’s a big country.”
“I have a name and a location. Nogales. That’s the last information you have, right?”