Free Caribbean Hustle (A Nick Teffinger Thriller / Read in Any Order) by R.J. Jagger, Jack Rain Page A

he twisted the throttle and then he was gone.
     
    Teffinger gave the red shirt one final glance.
    The man’s eyes were open, staring at nothing.
    A fly landed on his nose and twisted in a little dance.
    Across the street, a few gathered faces watched.
    Against his better judgment, or maybe because of it, Teffinger searched the man’s pockets and was glad he did. There he found a wallet that might have identification, but more importantly he found his own plane ticket, the one that had been in the suitcase back in Modeste’s apartment.
    That would have tied him to the scene.
    He also found money and keys.
    He tossed the money on the ground, stuffed everything else in his pocket and ran off in the direction Modeste had gone.

    24
    Day Four
    June 7
    Saturday Afternoon
     
    In his mind, Teffinger did nothing wrong. He’d acted in self-defense and, if it had happened in the states, he would have stayed at the scene and let the justice system run its short and understanding course. Here though he didn’t know the laws, or how much they might be ignored or twisted or distorted in the name of corruption or extortion, nor did he know who the dead man was, or who he might be connected to that might be able to pull ugly strings.
    So he left.
    For better or worse, he left.
    With any luck there’d been no security cameras in the area, the few faces across the street either didn’t get much of a look or knew better than to get involved, and the police investigation, if even there was one, would die a sudden and final death.
    He wandered the streets of Port au Prince, hoping to have enough luck left to stumble onto Modeste. He saw her once but it turned out to not be her, instead being a woman who made eye contact and let a smile briefly cross her face before turning away.
    Police sirens echoed through the streets with increasingly regularity.
    Teffinger didn’t like them.
    He found a bar, wedged himself into a dark corner and sipped lukewarm beer.
     
    The dead man was someone named Widson Danticat, who had an address that Teffinger pulled up on Google Earth, to discover that it wasn’t that far away, half an hour or so on foot, a little longer if the heat got to him.
    He swallowed what was left of his beer, left a good tip and headed that way.
    Outside, he got his bearings, and then headed back in.
    The guy behind the bar was an older man in a stained wife-beater shirt who talked to guys on stools in French.
    Teffinger leaned on the counter and said, “I’m supposed to meet a friend named Janjak this afternoon but I lost her address. You wouldn’t know her by any chance, would you?”
    The man’s face tightened.
    “No.”
    Teffinger nodded.
    “It was a long shot.”
    Then he left.
     
    Danticat’s apartment was a mess, not ransacked, just the by-product of someone who placed no value on order and neatness. Dirty dishes filled the sink, tattered sheets hung as window coverings and stuff was everywhere—not good stuff, not useful stuff or even potentially useful stuff at some point in the future. No, this was stuff that should have been kicked to the curb decades ago.
    The walls were too close.
    The ceiling was too low.
    The windows were too small.
    It was worse than an elevator jammed up with snakes.
    Teffinger’s instinct was to get the hell out of there before some incurable disease jumped on him but instead he dug in, looking for anything that might explain why the guy had been after Modeste.
    Clearly Danticat wasn’t self-motivated.
    He didn’t have the drive to tend to his own existence, let alone be focused and involved enough to kill someone out of his own desires.
    He was working for someone else.
    That’s where his motivation came from, no doubt in the form of money.
    That wasn’t good.
    That meant Modeste was still in as much danger as she was before. There would be a thousand other Danticat’s in the city to replace this one with.
    One thing about the guy, he liked his music. He had an actual CD player and