Operation Caribe

7

BADTOWN WAS WELL named.

Dominating the southern end of Nassau, just over the hill from some of the most glamorous resorts in the western hemisphere, it was a collection of hovels, tin shacks, drug dens, and cafés that attracted more flies than people. Much of Nassau was a slum; Badtown was its most treacherous part. When cruise ships docking here warned their passengers to exercise caution while walking in the outlying neighborhoods at night, Badtown was the place they were talking about.

A canal connected this place to the sea. It was the conduit through which much of Badtown’s criminal activity flowed. Pot. Crack. Meth. Jewels. Guns. Just about anything and everything was for sale to adventurous tourists and addicted locals, if the price was right.

The busy season for Badtown’s drug trade was approaching. American college students on Spring Break would soon besiege the islands, and this meant dozens of pounds of coke and hundreds of pounds of pot could be sold in just one week.

These days, the people moving all these drugs around were, more often than not, the most feared, if most secretive pirate gang in the islands: the Muy Capaz.

* * *

OF THE TWO dozen bars in Badtown, most were little more than shacks with mud roofs. But one stood out, because it was made not of metal, but of stone.

It was as old as anything could be in this part of the Bahamas. Built more than two hundred years before by the British Army to house prostitutes close to one of its many forts, it was known then, as now, as the Tainted Lady.

The bar inside was as rundown as the building itself. Made of rotting wood from a nineteenth-century schooner, it was bordered by three shelves of bootleg liquor. There were a few tables, a few chairs and that was it. Cigarette smoke, pot smoke, spilled beer and blood combined to give the place a unique aroma. It was always dark inside, no matter what the time of day.

Just off the bar was a small room whose door was hidden behind a false wood panel. Few people knew the room existed. Inside it tonight were four members of the Muy Capaz. There were dressed badly even by Badtown standards, in stained, ragged shorts, dirty beach shirts and tattered straw hats. Each man had a gun in his belt and a machete by his side. Several bottles of rum sat on the table.

The pirates had been playing Cuban Poker since midnight. At about 2 A.M., the secret door opened and four heavily armed men came in. Everyone in the room froze. The four men weren’t rival gang members—they were bodyguards. Their sudden appearance could mean only one thing.

Another man walked in a few moments later. He was six-foot-two, with the build of an ex-boxer and the scars of an ex-con. He was dressed all in white, and his hands, cracked and rough, were an odd shade of red, as if they were permanently stained with blood.

He was Charles Black, the boss of the Muy Capaz.

This was not good—and the four pirates knew it. For Black to show himself in public was a rare event. He almost never left the gang’s secret hideout. His presence here meant something was wrong inside the world of the Muy Capaz.

And that could be bad for everybody.

* * *

BLACK’S MAIN SOURCE of income was buying and selling large quantities of pot and coke. His suppliers were from Jamaica; the business was strictly cash up front. Whenever Black and his men needed an injection of funds to get resupplied, they did what pirates do: They robbed vessels at sea. Turning that booty into money, they bought the drugs wholesale, and then resold them to mid-level dealers, most right here in Badtown, for a good profit.

The problem was, Black and his men were pirates from skin to bones. Like their predecessors of centuries past, they had something in their genes that caused them to be quickly separated from any extra money they came across. Despite their reputation for moving like ghosts when it came to committing crimes at sea, they were terrible businessmen. When they made a score, they would take the profits and hit Badtown hard. And whether their visit lasted several days or even a week or more, after a bender of booze, drugs, gambling and paying for the boom-boom, most if not all of their ill-gotten gains were gone.

This was why the gang was almost always broke, forcing them to knock off more yachts, to get some more seed money, to buy more stuff from the Jamaicans, to sell again, to blow the profits again. It was a vicious cycle. And had it had nothing to do with voodoo or the full moon.

The problem flowed from the top. Black himself was prone to recklessness when he was in the chips, and to foul moods when the well went dry. In the past year alone he’d murdered six people, three inside this very bar, all over money matters.

There was no way the local police were going to arrest him, though. The only reason they came to Badtown was to pick up their bribe money.

* * *

BLACK WAS IN an especially bad mood tonight.

The gang was again low on funds. A raiding party he’d sent out the night before had spent nearly all of its profits over in Bimini. Doubling their sin, the same four men had not returned from a raid they’d gone out on earlier this night. Again, the big selling week was coming up, and gang’s coffers were seriously depleted. But even worse, the thought that his men might be holding out on him was enough to make Black’s blood boil.

He walked over to the table where his gang members were playing cards and viciously slapped the first man he saw. The man fell to the floor, his nose broken, his mouth bloody.

“When I slap you, you goin’ to stay slap,” Black roared at his astonished victim. “You understand? Or do you need more cut lip?”

The man didn’t reply; he just scrambled away.

Black took his seat, which was all he really wanted.

The pirate captain also commandeered the man’s meager pile of money and began playing poker, but clearly, he was distracted. He was constantly checking his watch, waiting for his raiding party to show up with some much-needed capital. But as each minute ticked by, that possibility seemed more and more remote.

Into this swirl of dangerous vibes stumbled a man named Petey Chops. He was small and rodentlike, and he’d spent more than half his life in jail for murdering a child. These days he was a low-level drug mule for Black’s crew; his forte was pushing powdered coke on American college students here on school break or for a long weekend.

Chops was supposed to be carrying a $10,000 payment for a load of coke Black’s men had given him the week before. Tonight was the night to pay up, which was the reason Black had left his hideout in the first place. He wanted that money in his own pocket, no one else’s. But when Chops walked in and saw Black himself in the flesh, he immediately tried to turn and run. Black’s bodyguards stopped him at the door, though, and the pirate captain motioned them to bring him over.

By the time Chops reached the table and sat down, he’d turned ghost white. He also looked beat up. His eyes were puffy, his lips swollen.

“I’m sorry,” he blurted out, not daring to look at Black across the table. “But I don’t have your scratch.”

Black glared back at him. “What do you mean?”

Chops was trembling. “I had the money. But I was rolled thirty minutes ago. Two guys in military uniforms. They took everything I had.”

Black drank an entire glass of rum without taking his eyes off Chops. “I got rolled” was the oldest excuse in the book, and everyone at the table knew it.

“But it’s true,” Chops insisted. “I was leaving my crib and these two army dudes came out of nowhere. Masked faces, billy clubs. They hit me from behind, then dragged me into the alley and took my roll. Ten grand in tens and twenties. It was like they were waiting for me. It was like they knew I was coming here with your money.”

Black never broke his gaze. The tension in the room was nearly unbearable.

He asked Chops, “So, when can you get us the money? Tomorrow? The next day?”

Chops’s relief was so apparent, he nearly fell out of his seat.

“For sure, Captain,” he said. “Tomorrow, for sure.”

Black reached across the table and tapped Chops lightly on his face.

“Tomorrow,” the pirate captain told him. “Or else.”

More blood trickled from Chops’s busted-up nose. But he didn’t care. He’d somehow escaped with his life.

“Yes, Captain,” he said, wiping the blood away. “I won’t gin it up.”

Black reached into his shirt pocket and came out with a joint the size of a cigar.

“Let’s smoke this outside,” he told the others at the table. “It’s new stuff—from Panama. We don’t want everyone out there to be smelling us.”

Everyone at the table got up and filed through the secret doorway and outside via a short stairway that faced the dirty canal. Black’s heavily armed motorboat was tied up close by.

The pirate king handed the Panama blunt to one of his men, who lit it with a huge cigarette lighter. He got the joint going and blew out a huge cloud of bluish smoke.

The man passed the huge joint to Chops. The dealer took a long drag—but before he was able to exhale, another of Black’s men had moved up behind him and suddenly had a leather belt around Chops’s neck.

The pirate started pulling the belt tight, slowly twisting and turning it. Chops began fighting madly, but his fate was sealed.

“Examples must be made,” Black told Chops nonchalantly. “You understand, mon?”

Chops collapsed to his knees, but his executioner yanked him back to his feet. The pirate kept twisting the belt tighter and tighter while Black and the others calmly passed the joint back and forth, looking on, unmoved.

Finally, the pressure was so intense, Chops’s eyes popped out. Only then did the pirate let his lifeless body fall to the ground. Black took another long drag on the joint and then gave Chops a final kick in the stomach.

“He’s lucky we didn’t tear him to shreds first,” Black said.

They took rope from Black’s motorboat and tied Chops’s body to a docking post. When the sun came up, his corpse would be visible for all of Badtown to see.

It was a clear warning: Don’t cross the Muy Capaz.

* * *

THE PIRATES RETURNED to the hidden room and opened another bottle of rum.

Dispatching Chops had eased Black’s frustration level a bit. But it left the gang with the same old problem: They still had no money. In fact, now they were another ten grand in the hole.

That’s when Black’s cell phone rang. It was one of his contacts in the nearby casino district. Could Black still get a large quantity of coke on just a few days’ notice? The contact had three customers looking for a substantial deal. They would pay up front, and were interested in regular large buys in the future.

It was just what Black needed.

He turned to the two senior pirates at the table, Doggie and Jacks.

“Clean up and head over the hill,” he told them. “Sniff out a deal with these guys—and don’t bitch it up. If spirits agree, tell them we can move up to a ton of stuff if they want us to.”

* * *

DOGGIE AND JACKS walked into the lounge of the Regency Casino just before 3 A.M.

They’d changed their clothes to appear a little more presentable, but at best, they still looked like part of the casino’s kitchen crew.

They spotted the contact sitting in a dark corner with three coal-black men. They were well-dressed, very refined looking, and spoke with strange accents. The pirates sat down and made small talk while an army of high-priced hookers paraded around the casino’s main floor.

Finally, they got down to business.

The contact told the pirates the three men were looking for coke, meth, pot—and weapons. These were things the pirates could get with ease. The three men were also looking for someone to attack the vessels of their business rivals at sea. Again, the Muy Capaz were the people for the job. Best of all, the three would pay in cash, up front, for everything the pirates could give them.

It was the deal that the Muy Capaz had been awaiting for a long time.

Drunk and stoned and now dreaming of riches in their heads, Doggie and Jacks shook hands with the three men, sealing the deal.

Then Jacks asked, “Where are you blokes from? Antigua? Belize?”

The three men laughed.

“No, mon,” one of them replied: “We are from Senegal.”