Death Benefits (A Martin Billings Story Book 2) Read online

  Her indifferent shrug told me she wasn't going to go much out of her way to help unless she was specifically asked. I've never had a job where I had real employees, but it has always struck me that the office managers I've encountered are an interesting breed. They either totally own an office or simply hang out in it. I've been in offices where the nominal boss needed the office manager's permission to change things.

  Consuela appeared to be the other type, the kind that didn't worry much about the business side of the business. I took her for the kind of girl whose main concern was making sure that her paycheck cleared; the prospect of being asked to earn it did not thrill her. At least, not where I was concerned.

  If Walker had hired her because of her looks then his judgment was impeccable. Her ornamental value to the office was unquestionable. She might even provide a distraction that could give him a negotiating edge. Other than that, I guessed she was mostly putting in her time.

  She led me to Walker's cheap metal desk. I saw the papers sitting there on a blotter where Consuela had arranged them neatly. She saw me looking at them.

  "He didn't even read them," she said. "He must have known what they were." Then she pointed to a telephone. "Press the eight and then when you hear a dial tone, press one. It will call Señor Wong's number."

  I did as instructed and was rewarded by the sound of James's voice.

  "He went sailing?" James asked when I told him.

  "On his boat," I said. "He didn't say where, just that he will be back Monday."

  "Monday? As in next week? Damn."

  "Maybe I should go find him," I said. "How big a search area can it be, after all?"

  "Huge," James said sadly. "I can't think of anything else you can do though."

  "Me either. The good news is that a gringo on a sailboat should narrow the area."

  "It should?"

  "If you know how to ask, who to ask, and ask the right questions. I might have to put a few cases of rum on your bill though. Tongue lubricant."

  "Buy a whole cantina if you have to. Just find him," James said.

  When we hung up, I went through the desk drawers and found nothing. Almost nothing. One drawer held a couple of paperclips and a pencil, but I couldn't see any sign of actual business activity.

  Perhaps Walker saw his role as vice president in charge of going sailing. I know I'd be pissed if I knew I was about to lose a gig like that too. I didn't even find his boat's logbook. That had been a vain hope; if he'd gone sailing, he would have taken it with him.

  I took a good look around the sad little office. The walls were stucco and mostly bare, except for a framed print of a painting that included an advertisement for an art exhibit that had taken place long ago. I didn't think it was Walker's. Maybe it came with the office. I walked over and peeked behind it and saw a wall safe.

  That was worth a long and tired sigh. The only thing Walker had done that even looked like he intended to do business was hire Consuela.

  Speaking of the lady, when I went back to the front office, I found her industriously turning her nails into a festival of sparkles embedded in purple nail polish.

  "Something came for you," she said. "A fax." She nodded toward the edge of her desk.

  I went to the desk and found that the fax was from Ugly Bill in Guyana. The message, typical of his messages, read:

  All is well in paradise

  Although some sweet young girls would be nice

  To ease the tension of long days

  We must slave while you are away.

  Yr. Humble Servant,

  Ugly 'Bill' William, Emperor of all he surveys

  PS: Mea culpa for the horrid scansion, but I am writing this standing in the mud and rain at the communication office.

  Bill waxes poetic when he is happy. You can read anything into this little message that you like, but knowing him as I did, I took it to mean he was having the time of his life. The money had arrived, none of the crew he'd hired had gotten arrested for anything important recently, and they didn’t really need my sorry ass hanging around Guyana and giving him trouble. Coming from Bill, this was a basic good-news-o’gram.

  I turned my attention back to matters of the moment. "I noticed that Walker's desk is empty. Does this office have any files at all?" I asked. "Is there any paperwork to suggest the slightest business activity?"

  "What are you looking for?" she asked.

  "I thought maybe there would be some open jobs, any business that Walker might possibly have decided to check on while he was out sailing."

  Consuela's smirk was practiced; she pointed to a file cabinet next to her desk. "There are not many jobs, neither open nor closed," she said. "You would think there would be more, but there aren't, and I know because I took care of them all. You would think that we would be very busy here. If you thought that, you would be horribly disappointed."

  She pulled open a drawer. I could see a hanging file with about ten folders.

  "That's it?"

  "And these are almost all forms that I filled out and filed with government agencies. There are no estimates or proposals or bids that might be what you need." She pulled open another drawer, showing me another dozen or so files. "These are the completed jobs. This is the first time the drawer has been opened this month."

  She seemed to understand things better than I had guessed. I pointed to the computer on her desk. "Are there any business documents on that?"

  She smiled and shook her head. "There is nothing on the computer but an unused spreadsheet and a few letters, mostly to Grenada. I was told that most of the business was not conducted in the office. Although he hired me as an office manager, it would seem that the business of this business is none of mine. Señor Walker said that this was a people business. The office was more for appearances."

  The idea was, on the face of it, true. But I knew James dealt with a ton of paperwork. Apparently one of Walker's major business skills involved avoiding doing any. I imagined that the papers in the drawer were things Walker had Consuela doing to keep her busy when he first hired her. I had misjudged her.

  Apparently, she was more efficient than Walker had counted on too, and the plan of giving her busy work had fizzled out quickly—Walker had stopped pretending and left her to her own devices and her own idea of what the business was all about.

  Of course, Walker had done some business that required a paper trail. He had done some work that James knew about, but all that seemed to be here was pretty thin. He had done a minimal amount that he recorded to make it appear, to James as well as anyone else who cared to check, that the office wasn't just a front. Naturally, that made it look like a front.

  I pulled a few of the folders from the drawer of unfinished work and glanced through them. As Consuela said, there was nothing useful there. Not for my mission, at least. She'd filled out requests for the latest regulations on exporting oil, and some other cargoes, but it was all general information, nothing to do with current or pending business.

  "What about Walker's wife?" I asked Consuela.

  She shot me a sharp look. "She is a bitch," she said.

  I hadn't wanted a character reference. "I mean, did she go sailing too?"

  She laughed as if it were really funny. "He goes sailing to get away from his wife. I don't know if she ever goes on his boat. I would be surprised if she did. There are no fancy stores in the small bays he talks about sailing too."

  "But maybe she knows where he went." Under the circumstances, that sounded lame, even as I said it.

  "She knows nothing." Again, I heard a snap in her voice.

  "Nothing?"

  "Nothing about where her husband is. She ran off to Margarita a few days ago," she said with a dismissive flick of her head.

  "Ran off?"

  Consuela nodded. "Ran off."

  "She didn't run very far," I said. "You can almost see Isla Margarita from Fuenta Mar; it isn't exactly the end of the earth," I
pointed out.

  "It was as far as she needed to go."

  "To do what?"

  "To show everyone that she was angry with Señor Walker."

  "About what?"

  She gave me one of those boy-are-you-stupid looks that never need a translation in or out of any language. "He is a man. When he goes sailing, he takes other women with him. That made her angry. He has new women all the time and so she is always angry with him. And when they tire of arguing about that, they argue about money."

  "That would do it. How do you know she went to Margarita?"

  She gave me a haughty sneer. "Because she called me and told me to make the reservations for her. Even though I don't work for her, she thinks that because I work for her husband, I am her servant."

  "But you did it anyway?"

  Consuela sneered. "The woman has never bothered to learn even a few words of Spanish. She is a helpless fool. Yes, I helped her. Of course, I did that. Anything I can do to keep her away from here is worth doing. I was even somewhat polite."

  I could tell that satisfying the request had required a great sacrifice on her part. Biting her tongue, being polite to the boss's wife didn't come easy to Consuela. I was beginning to like her.

  "And Walker did? Speak Spanish, I mean?"

  "Si. Not well, but he often has to do business in Spanish. He told me that the company that first assigned him to Venezuela sent him to a school that taught gringo businessmen enough Spanish to get by. He can be understood and is better at understanding what others say. He can certainly buy a plane ticket."

  "Do you know where Mrs. Walker is staying?"

  She shrugged. "No. Probably one of the most expensive hotels."

  "I want you to make some calls for me."

  She glared at me. Clearly, I'd ruined her plans for the day. She probably thought I'd tell her to go home early. Well, I didn't think I should have to do all the work.

  "I'm sorry if that annoys you, but James Wong sent me here to meet with Walker," I told her. "This is urgent business. Since you can't help me find him directly, then I need you to help me this way. James said you would be glad to help me any way you could, but if you think I am overstepping my authority, you can call James and ask."

  "No," she said, caving in.

  "Fine. I am going to the marina and see if anyone there knows anything at all. So I want you to call the hotels in Margarita and find out which one Evelyn Walker is staying at. I want to talk to her." I smiled at her frown. "You don't even need to speak to her yourself. Just find the hotel she is at and see if they will tell you how long she has booked the room for. Then you can go home for the day. While I walk down to the marina and see if there is anything to learn about where he might have gone, your job is to make those calls."

  She gave me a look that told a long and sad story of how unappreciated she was in this world. "Of course," she said, sounding as insincerely sweet as she could manage.

  "I know it is almost time to close the office," I told her. "So you can make two calls—two hotels—and then go home. If you don't find her, start calling again first thing tomorrow morning."

  She nodded, acknowledging that the unbearable weight on her shoulders had been lifted ever so slightly. "I come in at nine," she said.

  "The calls shouldn't take long. I will meet you here around ten," I said. "I'd like to know where to find her by then."

  She looked a little happier at that. She looked even happier when I left without asking her to do something else, give her some onerous task that would really ruin her evening.

  # # #

  The Venezuelan tourist bureau promises potential visitors that their country has 365 sunny days a year. Despite the apparent requirement that everything tourist bureaus say or do be excessively hyperbolic, in most years this statement is only a small exaggeration.

  A normal year in this part of the world is actually filled, for the most part, with bright, sunny days. Almost any day is a beach day.

  As I walked, a few puffy white cotton balls off to the East, probably visiting from Trinidad, were the only blight in an otherwise clear sky. The crowd thronging the hot streets dressed in lightweight clothing.

  The young female shop clerks in clinging summer dresses with short hemlines decorated an otherwise dull street and made the relatively short walk more pleasant than it would have been without them.

  The city of Puerto La Cruz has quite a number of marinas. Like restaurants, marinas come and go, or change hands with the ups and downs of the economy and politics. When gringos are welcome in the country, they open like tulip blossoms in spring; when they have to depend on the locals for their business, things are not as good and the colors fade.

  The one where Walker kept his boat is called Marina Bahia Redonda Internacional. I'm not sure if the name was chosen to suggest that this was an international marina on a round bay or that the round bay was in some way international.

  Regardless, it was one of the nicer places in town to keep your boat and hang out with other gringos. It played home to a mix of local boats as well as those of the sailors who sail south to Venezuela for the sunshine, beautiful women, cheap rum and diesel fuel, and almost as important, to escape the hurricanes that make the more northern latitudes less than safe for a chunk of the year.

  Insurance companies have painted lines on the map, designating the part of the Caribbean north of Grenada as a place you cannot be during hurricane season. The maps do change, as hurricanes do not prove to be very good at reading maps, but Venezuela is one of the few places in the world that they tend to avoid and therefore considers hurricanes a blessing.

  Because of the time I've spent in and out of the waters there over a number of years, I knew a few of the truly important people involved in the marine businesses and services. When you need to do business in a foreign (to you) place, it pays to pick your associates carefully. Exercising this care requires an understanding of how things really work.

  You see, while Port Captains seem important to an outsider, as they have nice offices and wonderful uniforms, they are ephemeral political appointees whose jobs depend on friendships and family ties. Besides, they are seldom the ones who actually do anything.

  If you need a favor, you ask a clerk. As a result, in that hierarchy there are some whose jobs are more secure, their influence greater, and who are more likely to survive changes in economics and administrations.

  Bosses might come and go, but mechanics, gardeners, and bartenders remain.

  Naturally, my best source of information at this marina was Pierre, who managed the bar—the social hub. Not only did the open-air bar provide a great vantage point, a congenial spot to watch the comings and goings of people who have their boats there, but it also was a great place to get information. People talk a lot in bars. They seem to forget that bartenders can hear and understand things beyond "hey, how about another round?"

  Pierre was glad enough to see me.

  "Do you know a gringo named Clyde Walker?" I asked after we had gotten through the obligatory small talk about families and mutual friends that Venezuelans often find more important than whatever it was you wanted to chat about.

  He poured me a drink, remembering my preference for Cacique rum. At least I think he remembered, but as Cacique is the best-selling rum in the country he could have taken a wild guess.

  "Sure," he told me. "At least I know who he is. He has been around for a long time now. He came here with some big company. He was with them for quite some time... until they fired him."

  "Fired him?"

  Pierre winked. "That's what I heard. But people like to say things, you know? Anyway, I know that Walker owns a plastic sloop, I think it's a forty-footer, and it is usually tied up right there," he said, pointing down the dock to an empty slip. "It's been gone a few days now."

  "Do you know about him as a person?"

  Pierre smiled. "What do I know? As it is you asking, I can say he seems to have no
head for business; he gave his boat a stupid name; he has an attractive wife that I've only caught a quick glimpse of a couple of times and he has too many girlfriends for his life to become anything but nasty."

  That sounded reasonably comprehensive to me.

  "The boat has a stupid name?"

  He smiled. "It's called George. You decide."

  I groaned. "Do you remember when you saw him last?"

  Pierre rubbed the counter with one of those practiced flourishes bartenders seem to perfect. "I can't say when I saw him last...that could have been a couple of weeks or even more, but I know his boat was tied up right there until the other night. Monday afternoon it was still there. I assume that he left with it."

  "Any idea where he might have gone? Have you ever heard him talk about favorite anchorages?"

  He shook his head. "He never talks much about sailing, except to bitch about the cost of something that needs fixing. And when he has a new girl, he almost never comes up to the bar. In fact, the only time I can remember him coming up here with a woman, he was with his wife. That's how I know what she looks like. He introduced her as if she just got into town or something. It struck me as weird."

  "But you see him with other women?"

  "Just when he is headed for the boat. He takes them straight to the boat, then they are off for a few days. I've never seen him take his wife to the boat. Maybe she isn't big on sailing."

  "Is there anyone who might know anything about where he went or even when he left? Think the port captain might know where he was headed?"

  "Unfortunately, the boat flies a Venezuelan flag."

  "Why is that unfortunate?"

  "Foreign-flagged boats can't leave the marina without filling out much unnecessary paperwork and clearing out with the dockmaster. The dockmaster, in turn, files all those pages with the port captain so that he can have a full in-basket and feel like the important jefe—the boss man, he is supposed to be."

  "So, no joy."

  "If Walker had a gringo boat, and if he didn't lie on his papers, finding out where he had gone would be a simple matter of paying a small bribe to our congenial and very corruptible dockmaster who would then happily share his knowledge and probably fix you up with his sister in the bargain. Because Walker has his boat registered here and he can come and go as he pleases, to the extent anyone can, that is."