WELCOME TO THE BIG SHAKEDOWN (Devil Barnett Detective Series Book 5) Read online

  WELCOME TO THE BIG SHAKEDOWN

  A Devil Barnett Detective Novel

  by Teddy Hayes

  ****

  Prologue

  “I made sure that everything was taken care of Sir, don’t worry”, Luis said, as the middle aged man wearing the neatly tailored beige linen suit lit his cigar with an expensive gold coloured lighter.

  The man uncrossed his legs then stood up from the worn armchair nonchalantly and looked Luis in the eye for a few moments without saying anything.

  “I really appreciate everything you’ve done, and just to show you how much, I’m going to take you into business with me.” the man said.

  “Business?” Luis managed to mutter, but couldn’t really believe what he was hearing.

  “Cuba is about to change in a very big way and I could use a smart resourceful young man like you. You no doubt have heard the news.” the man said.

  “You mean the thing about Raul talking to Obama?

  “Exactly” the man smiled.

  *****

  CHAPTER 1

  HAVANA

  It seemed like everyone on the island was still talking about the announcement that Raul Castro had made the day before. It was huge news. United States President Barack Obama had announced that the US would start the process to normalise relations and end the embargo that had lasted for more than 50 years and Raul had made a speech which lasted for hours. What would it all mean and what changes would it bring?

  That was all anyone seemed to be thinking or talking about. Everybody that is except Mario Palacios, who was thinking about sex, as he marked the boxes that he prepared for shipping to Mexico. Three cardboard boxes were the last thing in the world that should have reminded him of sex, but they did. In fact everything did, everything from the cold half-filled coffee cup on the counter to the tiny brown ant that he saw crawling across the floor. Sex, sex, sex had been travelling through his head like a runaway train for the past half hour, ever since he had spoken to Rosaria Gomez . Ever since she had told him that she had always liked him and thought he was sexy and that she couldn’t wait to feel him kissing her. It was better than a dream come true. Rosaria was the sexiest woman he had ever met. He had known her since high school but just to say hello to, nothing more. She had always been kind of quiet. She was his secret Goddess. He had even drawn pictures of her and hung them on his wall. But that was it. He had never even dreamed of having the courage to approach her, she was just too perfect. Why should she even consider going out with someone as uninteresting as himself? But then, just this afternoon as fate would have it, she came into the place where he worked at the DHL store with a package and she recognized him. After more than fifteen years. Of course he recognized her right away and she returned the compliment with a smile that melted his heart and suddenly he was fifteen years younger, and back in love all over again. But this time he had learned that sometimes in order to make dreams come true you had to grab hold of them and shake them a little. So thinking he had nothing to lose, he asked to take her to lunch and she accepted. She even waited around for ten minutes until his lunch break came. They went to a local restaurant and had pork sandwiches and laughed and talked. To his surprise, she told him that she had always wanted him to ask her to be his girlfriend, but that she never saw him again after high school because he went into the army and she had lost track of him because she didn’t know anyone who knew him. She said that she wanted him to come over later and they would go out somewhere. She even told him that this time she was going to make sure he didn’t get away like before. WOW! The chance of Rosaria wanting him was about as likely as him being chosen by Fidel Castro himself to be the first Cuban astronaut sent into space.

  During the conversation, right there in the restaurant, he had gotten a hard on, and it had remained ever since, almost two hours later. At lunch they agreed that they would meet after work and all he could think about now was finishing his shift, rushing home, changing into his best clothes, borrowing his cousin’s car and making his way to see Rosaria.

  Sex Sex Sex. The song that was going through Mario’s head was the Lionel Ritchie song All Night Long, All Night, All Night Long. That how he would make love to Rosaria. All Night Long.

  The way she had sounded, she wanted sex as much as he did, maybe more. No, not more, that wasn’t possible, but at least as much. And it wasn’t a dirty kind of thing either, it was just a woman telling her man what was in her heart. Mario Palacio had fallen in love all over again.

  “Waaaank” the sound of a van horn disturbed Mario from his reverie. He looked up to see a van standing in front of the door.

  Mario’s first thought made him frown, as he was hoping that the driver didn’t have a lot of boxes to process. Not today of all days. Mario looked at his watch. He still had eighteen minutes to go before he could close the store, so there was no way he could not process this order.

  “How many boxes you got?” Mario asked as the driver walked through the door.

  “Seven or eight” the driver answered.

  “Heavy?”

  “No, light. Can I unload? Where do you want them?” the driver asked. This was a guy Mario had seen a couple of times before, but not enough to know him by name.

  “Just bring everything inside and put it on the floor. I got to look inside before I do the paperwork.”

  “No problem” the driver said.

  Mario went to the back of the shop to get the items he needed for processing deliveries, like the box cutter, shipping tape and labels, humming happily to himself and thinking about his good fortune. Thinking about Rosaria Gomez and what color underwear she would probably be wearing, he signed the finished paperwork from the previous order, dropped it into the outgoing basket and prepared to process the next order. It didn’t take a lot of brainwork to do his job which was very routine once you got the hang of it. Look inside the boxes, make sure there was nothing on the list that was contained inside like liquor or firearms, weigh the boxes, establish the sending price, check the paperwork, tag the boxes into the system for tracking, label them and put them on the send out rack.

  “Briiinnnng” his phone rang. Mario first thought was one of dread, he was praying that it wasn’t Rosaria saying she had changed her mind. He looked at the number on his cell phone and breathed a sigh of relief. The number belonged to his sister Nilda.

  “I’m really busy right now,” Mario said as she started to talk.

  “I just want to remind you about Mama’s birthday party next Sunday, and you’re supposed to arrange the cake, so don’t forget.”

  “No I won’t, I’ll talk to the lady who lives next door, she makes delicious cakes. Don’t worry. Look I’m really busy, let’s talk tomorrow OK,” Mario said trying to rush her off the phone as politely as possible.

  “And her present. I thought we were going to get her something together” Nilda stated.

  “I haven’t had time to think, you do it. Whatever you choose will be fine” Mario said.

  “Oh no, I remember what happened last year. I bought it and you complained for a week. Never again, we’ll decide together” she told him.

  “OK, ok, I’ll think about it tonight and call you in the morning. Now bye” Mario said and disconnected his sister as she started to say something else. Normally he wasn’t rude, but now he was under pressure.

  Mario looked at his phone clock, 19:45. Now he only had fifteen minutes to process the last order. Shit!

  “The customer has an account, so can I just leave them?” the driver asked.

  “Yeah sure, what’s
the number?”

  “I’ll go get it, it’s in the van” the driver said as he walked out the door.

  Mario looked at the eight boxes in the storefront lobby. Not really big or heavy boxes. The guy didn’t seem to have a problem bringing them inside. He figured all going well he could finish the job in maybe twelve to thirteen minutes. All Night Long. All Night, All Night.

  The boxes had tape around them, but not wrapped tightly, a lot of people put tape in place to keep things from spilling out.

  He glanced at the paperwork which had been filled out already. Usually clients who made regular deliveries had a bunch of DHL forms that they kept in their offices and filled out when they were shipping rather than let the driver fill out the forms at the store. If the people in the office filled out the paperwork it cut down on mistakes and saved time. The boxes were surprisingly light.

  Just then an elderly man with a dog on a leash opened the door and stepped inside the store. He looked at his watch and then a sigh of relief passed across his figures.

  Mario looked up irritated. Shit not another customer.

  “How many packages do you have Sir?” Mario asked trying to sound calmer than he was actually feeling.

  “Just one that I need to send today” the elderly man said.

  “Ok, just fill out this form” Mario replied, taking a sending form from the slot under the counter and handing it to the customer.

  “As soon as I finish with these boxes I’ll send your package” Mario said. He looked for the box cutter that he thought he had brought out of the back room, but it wasn’t where he thought he had put it. As he returned to the back room for the box cutter, he heard the dog suddenly begin to bark and growl. It was like the dog was attacking someone.

  When he rushed back out into the store, he saw the dog straining towards the boxes that had just been delivered and the dog’s owner holding him back.

  “What’s going on with him?” Mario asked rushing back to the counter.

  “He must smell something in the boxes. What’s inside them?”

  “I don’t know” Mario admitted. His first thought was, what if it was a bomb?

  They had been given strict training in cases like this. If there was even a suspicion of something suspicious, the clerk was supposed to clear the store and call the manager.

  “You’ve got to leave the store now, and I’ve got to lock up and call my supervisor. There maybe a bomb in there. Is he a bomb sniffing dog?” Mario wanted to know.

  “No, he’s just a pet, but I don’t know why he’s suddenly going so crazy,” the dog’s owner confessed.

  When Mario got the customer outside the store, he used his cell phone to call his boss, who was on the next road at the warehouse.

  His boss’s name was Arsenio Enrique Carillo, but everyone called him Carillo.

  Mario explained what had happened and Carillo told him to stay calm and that he would be there within five minutes. Actually it only took Carillio 4 minutes and 20 seconds to arrive.

  He saw Mario and the customer outside the store and looked at the dog suspiciously. By now the dog was perfectly calm and licking the hand of his owner, but funnily enough the moment Carillo opened the door to the store the dog started barking again.

  “You stay here” Carillo told Mario as he went inside the DHL office.

  Carillo had worked his way up from being a clerk and had been in the DHL job since the store opened a few years ago, He had been working in the parcel business for sixteen years, back when the government office handled all packages going in and out of Cuba. He knew the parcel game like the back of his hand. All of these regulations were a pain in the ass. If he had been a clerk, instead of calling for his boss, he would have just opened the damned box and saved everybody a lot of hassle. But regulations were regulations. Nowadays there was always someone willing to snitch up the line to one of the many citizen’s committees to try and unseat you and take your place especially if you had a cushy job like he had. So he had to comply. Better to bite the bullet and get it over with so he could get home and go next door to his brother- in-law’s house to watch a baseball game from New York on his internet connection. This was one of the perks he enjoyed because he and his brother-in-law had a business renting rooms to tourists. Although according to government regulations the internet was supposed to be used exclusively for business, other than for their room reservations, the main functionality of the internet connection was for them watching baseball games and sporting events from all over the world.

  Mario was looking through the glass door as his boss approached the boxes with the confidence of a man who had seen and dealt with all that life had sent his way. Carillo used his pocket knife to cut the loose tape from the first box and started to take out the tissue paper wrapping inside.

  Suddenly Carillo stopped with his hand frozen in mid-air.

  He opened his mouth to speak, but was speechless. He wasn’t sure if what he was looking at was real or from some kind of theatrical company. His guts turned upside down and his legs suddenly felt as if they would collapse beneath him as the smell of rotting flesh filled his nostrils. From inside the cardboard box, surrounded by brown wrapping paper looking directly at him was something out of a horror movie. Instinctively, he quickly closed the flap on the cardboard box and fought as hard as he could to stop from losing his lunch. His mind fought to explain what his eyes had just seen. As much as he didn’t want it to believe his own eyes he couldn’t deny that what he had just seen inside the box wrapped in plastic was undeniably the bloody, dismembered head of a real woman starring him right in the face.

  CHAPTER 2

  LONDON ENGLAND

  I was running for my life.

  “Waaaah Graahhh” the sound and the sulphur smell produced by the band of demonic pursuers forced me to look behind as I felt the fear looming up inside me. The heat from the breath of the pursuers burned inside my brain so hotly that sweat poured from my eyes in torrents so much so that I could hardly see where I was running. It wasn’t the kind of fear that makes a person paralyzed, but the kind of fear that pushes the adrenaline through your arteries and makes your feet shoot forward like your blood was mixed with rocket fuel. I could feel my legs notch up and attain another level of speed like my hips were attached to a well oiled gearbox. As I moved faster and faster, I could feel myself pulling away from my pursuers. I ran and ran and ran, and then looked back again. This time I could hardly see whatever it was with the lava like heat demons that had been chasing me.

  I rounded the corner and slowed down. I looked for a place to hide inside one of the old buildings on the almost deserted street and made my way up the narrow flight of the winding staircase and into a large courtyard that looked like an old ancient Italian piazza, with what must have been hundreds of rooms in the buildings surrounding the courtyard. The torrents of sweat had subsided a little, which meant I had lost my pursuers for the time being. Suddenly I could hear voices, sweet clear voices that I knew instinctively belonged to angels. I ran towards the sound of the voices that seemed to be chanting a strange incantation in harmony, an incantation that included my name. The voices were chanting “Devil, give back the lives you have taken, give back the lives you have taken and all will be forgiven.” I knew that somehow I had to find the voices because whatever it was that had been chasing me would never let me rest until I could find those voices. I ran in and out of the rooms searching for the voices. Sometimes they grew louder and sometimes softer, but still they remained illusive. I knew my pursuers would get me if he didn’t find the voices. And I knew that they were gaining on me from the increased heat in my brain. I also knew that they were on the narrow staircase and coming up the stairs. I desperately kept searching for the voices.

  My cognitive skills were not functioning very well and I felt like an animal, moving mostly on instinct, avoiding catastrophe, hiding, running. Suddenly I entered a room that was pale sea green color, where one angel sat on a floating blue chair with a high
white back that reached up to the height of the ceiling. I instinctively knew that the back of the chair was somehow connected to a holy place, maybe even heaven.

  “Waaah Graahh”, the roaring sound of the demonic pursuers moved closer and I could feel my brain heating up again. I looked towards the angel who was beckoning me with an outstretched hand. “Come and find peace,” she said, as the angelic chanting chorus grew louder behind her. I stretched out my hand as I moved towards the angel who was clearly offering sanctuary.

  “Waaaah Graaah,” the sound of the demonic pursuers bursting into the pale room distracted my attention from the angel for a nanosecond, but that was a second too long, as the demons reached out for me.....

  “Hey Mr. Sleepy” a voice said accompanied by a sudden tickling sensation inside my ear that woke me from my nightmarish dream, just before I was gobbled up by the lava demons.

  “So what’s it going to be, fish and chips, or me, or what?” the fashion model purred into my ear and then kissed me on the mouth.

  “You tell me” I smiled and yawned while wrapping her up into my arms. Rhea was a very beautiful woman by any standard, no doubt about it. Perfect coffee-coloured skin, a firm shapely body, beautiful features with eyes so deep and dark it made you want to dive in and become lost forever in her own unique brand of exoticism. And she looked happy too. Happy that she had taken a break from her work as one of the U.K.’s top fashion marketing consultants to be with me for the past three days.

  “Don’t tell me that you came all the way from New York just for the fish and chips” she teased, biting my earlobe.

  “By the way, I like my fish with a lot of hot sauce” I grinned as I grabbed her and pulled her down and rolled on top of her.

  We started our lovemaking for what was the third time that morning, and it was still before noon. When we were both exhausted she turned to me.

  “So exactly what is it like being a private detective?” she asked. The question caught me off guard.