The Money Vault by Austin Mitchell - HTML preview

The Money Vault

by

Austin Mitchell

During the hurricane while some of their associates had been busy digging down supermarkets and grocery stores, Dexter and five of his friends had stolen the vault from the local parish council bank. They had used the cover of darkness to do it and it took the six of them to load it onto a hand cart and take it to his house. They had used an electric torch to cut a hole into it and got the grand sum of thirty thousand dollars.

“You said nearly a million would be there, Dex,” Roland said.

      “What the hell am I going to do with this little money?” Bertie Brown shouted and threw it on the floor and was gone.

“Dex, you know what, it’s you alone in this. Don’t call my name. If Jabez dead I don’t know anything about it,” David Johnson said and stormed out of the room.

The others had followed suit. Dex was left with a vault weighing in excess of five hundred pounds. The next week Tuesday, Jabez died. There was consternation in their village. Jabez had been the watchman at the bank. On the night of the hurricane somebody had knocked him out. He never regained consciousness.

Somebody was knocking on Dex’s gate and he went out. It was Reta, his girlfriend and Jabez’s daughter. He let her into the house. She was dressed in a pair of blue shorts and a body hugging white blouse. She was wearing a pair of leather slippers. At twenty she was a year younger than him. She was about five feet five inches tall and had a slim body with small breasts.

“You heard that my father was dead and you didn’t even come down to my house to see me.”

“I was planning on doing that this evening.”

They were in the living room now.

“What happened to your friends? I hardly see them around anymore.”

“They are around. Maybe they’re just busy, that’s all.”

“As far as I know none of those guys work, how come all of a sudden they are so busy?”

“Why are you so interested in my friends? What about us?”

“I won’t be able to go back to evening classes. With you not working, how am I going to manage?”

“I’ll get you something to drink.”

He got up and went into the kitchen.

When he returned, he didn’t see Reta. He saw her coming towards him and she jumped on him and began to hit him.

“You stole the bank’s vault and killed my father.”

Dex threw her off him and grabbed her by the throat and began to squeeze. She fought him, but he kept on squeezing until he felt her body go slack. He felt for her pulse, but there was none. He drank some of the lemonade he had made and tried to relax as he thought about his next move.

***

Dex pushed Reta’s naked body into the river. The current would take it downstream. He tied her clothes together, he would bury them later. He was glad that nobody had come asking for her. He would say that he hadn’t seen her. He felt foolish for having left the door open with the vault for her to see it. It served her right for sneaking about in people’s house.      

As he sat on the sofa that night Dex began to think. His mother was due on the island in six weeks time. He had to get rid of the vault. If he got it down to the river the current wasn’t strong enough to carry it downstream.

***

That morning, Carline, Reta’s sister came by looking for her.

“Dex, have you seen Reta? She told me that she was coming to look for you, yesterday.”

Dex shook his head. Reta sometimes stayed with him, especially when her father was on night duty and like how his mother was away.

“I was coming down there to look for her,” he told her.

“But where could she be? It’s only your house I can think about. Are you sure you don’t have her in there hiding?”

“Why would I do something like that, Carline?”

“Okay, if you see her tell her that mummy wants her to go somewhere for her.”

Dex told her that he would give Reta her message if he saw her.

She asked him if he had heard about her father and he told her that he had heard the shouts and was planning to come down there from yesterday. However, he had to be fixing up the house for the impending arrival of his mother. He told her he would be down there later today.

Two days later there was consternation in their village when Reta’s lifeless body was found several miles down the river.

Dex was down at Reta’s home and he, too, was crying at the news.

“They strangled her. The police said it doesn’t look as if they raped her,” Carline cried.

Dex looked at Bertie Brown. He saw the look of fear and hatred on the young man’s face.

Bertie had helped him kill his uncle and now his cousin was dead. As Dex looked at him, he knew he had to kill him before he broke and talk. He knew that the youth was suspicious that he was the one who had killed Reta.

      Dex went back home. He thought of ways of killing Bertie. There was a bigger problem, he thought and that was getting rid of the vault. He would threaten all of them, to go to the police and turn state witness against them. Although he was the one who had hit Jabez in the back of his head with the big piece of stick they were all there and saw him do it. Actually, he had just meant to knock out Jabez so that he wouldn’t interfere with what they were doing. That the man had died was something that Dex never expected, although some of the guys had warned him that he had hit him too hard.

It took a week for him to gather the whole crew together. It took a certain amount of persuasion and threats. Finally that Saturday at midnight they were able to dig a hole and bury it in his gully.

Dex then went about planning how to kill Bertie. After Jabez’s and Reta’s funerals, he kept a close eye on the youth. All the other guys had returned to various parts of the island. He and Bertie were the only ones still around.

He knew that Bertie’s family only had a pit latrine. All he had to do was to hide out in his yard and when he came out to use the latrine, he would use a big stone to hit him in his head. He had to make sure that he was dead. He would probably use a piece of iron.

On Monday night he hid behind a tree, but nobody came out. He was there between ten o’clock and two o‘clock. Tuesday night he overslept and didn’t know what happened Wednesday night.

On Friday night at last he got his chance. At about one o’clock that morning, Bertie came out. Dex made one swing of the steel club and heard when the bones in the man’s neck crack and he pitched forward without a sound. He threw down the club and crept away.

He was in his bed an hour later when he heard the shouts.

“Murder, they’ve killed Mister Luddy!”

People were running up and down the road and shouting.

Mister Luddy was Bertie’s father. Jesus Christ! It wasn’t Bertie he had killed!

Dex put on some clothes and went down there.

“What have we done to them, why they want to kill off our family? First, it was Jabez, then Reta and now Luddy. How are the people in Keswick so wicked?” Miss Pearline, Mister Luddy’s wife, cried.

Police had yellow taped the area. He went over to Bertie and asked him about what had happened.

“It’s so we found him, the whole of his head bashed in,” the youth stated.

“I must find out who killed my father, though,” he vowed.

Dex stayed until the police had finished their on the scene investigations. They had found the steel club. He had used newspaper to hold the club as he had found it in Bertie’s yard. He had thrown away the newspapers in some bushes.

He was with the family the whole time, playing dominoes and other board games. He kept a keen eye on Bertie. As far as he knew the police hadn’t questioned him. He knew that it would be foolish to try after Bertie again so soon. He had to think that maybe his chances had gone.

The police had questioned him about Reta. He had denied that she was his girlfriend. He had told them that he had seen her five days before her death.

At last Luddy’s body was released for burial. Dex was at the grave, helping to make the vault. He had been at both Reta’s and Jabez’s grave diggings and had helped to make their vaults. He was at the set-up and funeral after all through his association with Reta, he had been a member of the family.

Dex was thinking of what to do. None of the other guys had resurfaced, not even to attend Luddy’s funeral. That the police hadn’t spoken to him again meant that Bertie hadn’t gone to them as yet. He thought he still had time to get him before he went to the police.

The best thing he thought was to engage him in conversation to find out just where his thoughts were. There was another complication and that was his mother’s impending arrival in the island. She would get suspicious of his actions if she saw him leaving the house so late at nights.

She was still suspicious that he had something to do with Watson Chang’s murder. He and two men had held up the Chinese man one night a year ago. It was the other two guys who had shot Watson though. His mother had questioned him about his whereabouts that night. Things, however, eased up after the police killed Wally and Juby, his two accomplices.

However, he didn’t like how his mother used to curse him and accuse him of taking after his father. His father, Castley, had been a well known Spanish Town bad man who had been cut down in a hail of bullets from gangsters ten years ago.

He had told her about all the deaths. Was she suspicious about his role in them? What about those guys? Suppose one of them cracked and went to the police about Jabez’s death? Maybe the only reason why Bertie hadn’t cracked was because of his role in Jabez’s murder.

***

“I just can’t understand what’s going on. How they kill off so many people?”Bertie asked.

This was a week after Luddy’s funeral and they were talking down at the dead man’s house.

“I heard that the police have questioned lots of people, but nobody knows who killed Luddy,” Dex replied.

“It’s the same man who killed Reta, killed my father. I feel that a serial murderer is on the loose.”

A chill ran through Dex, but he showed no emotions.

After that conversation, he was convinced that Bertie knew that he was the killer.

That night he thought of new ways to kill Bertie. If Wally and Juby were still alive, he would just have to tell them about it and they would do it for free. Why not go to Naddy? He was one of the gang members, although he hadn’t taken part in Watson’s murder.

***

Two days later Dex went to Naddy. He explained to him the predicament he was in.

“You have to tell me about this man. Where can I find him most of the times? Right now it’s pure big money I charge, but through is you, I will take half price. I have to get half the money before I start working.”

Dex had the money on him and gave it to him. It was his mother’s money. He wondered what he was going to tell her when she returned and found the money missing.

Dex went home feeling okay. He would soon get rid of Bertie Brown. He had told Naddy that he was doing work at a construction site in Spanish Town.

He was busy over the next few days as he scrubbed down the house before his mother came. He had found a new girlfriend. He was at home that Saturday evening when he heard gunshots. He knew that the shots came from the direction of Bertie’s house. Then he heard police sirens and then shouts.

Dex ran to have a look.

Several policemen were already yellow taping up the area so Dex had to keep his distance.

“It’s Bertie, gunmen just shoot him,” a man said.

“Is he dead?” Dex asked.

“I don’t know, they’ve gone with him to the hospital.”

Bertie’s three sisters and younger brother were all crying. Miss Pearline must have gone with him to the hospital, Dex thought. Then he heard the police siren again.

A police car came down the road.

“The guy got away. It looks like it’s a bogus license plate, he has on the bike. They can’t trace it.”

“I think it was a hit. We’ll have to find out if this guy was a member of any gang or if he had any enemies,” a police Sergeant said.

***

The next afternoon Dex was in a mango tree down

in his gully. He could see the road from where he was, he

saw a police car come up the road and stop at his gate.

He saw when four policemen came out of the car and

went up to his gate.

He couldn’t hear what they were saying, but he

knew what they were looking for. Dex quietly

descended the tree and crept further down the gully to

wait until the policemen left. One of the things he had

always done was to lock up the house, even when he

wasn’t going far. He knew that the policemen would be

back. Hunger was beginning to gnaw at his stomach

before he moved again. It was about seven o’clock in the

evening.

He moved swiftly in the dark in his room,

packing a bag with clothes and some other necessities.

He thought of taking a taxi down to Spanish Town but if

the police were looking for him, they would most likely

stop all the taxis from Keswick going to Spanish Town.

He was sorry that he didn’t have a gun on him.

Maybe he should have bought one from Naddy. His own

gun had been seized in the raid in which the police had

killed Wally and Juby in their hideout.

He decided to take a route that would make

him bypass Spanish Town. He stayed with some friends

in Portmore before the guys informed him that he was in

the news. He moved out the same night. He slept on the

roof of a shop on a beach. He stayed one other day

before he realized that he wasn’t wanted around. He

loafed around town doing all sorts of odd jobs and

sleeping in some very uncomfortable places.

Then he met Liston. Liston was from Keswick.

“What is this I heard about you, Dex?”

Dex explained to the man what had happened. The

huge man kept nodding.

“I know a couple men who might find use for

you,” he told Dex.

That was how he got to join the Scrappers who

operated out of the Maxfield. When he showed them

the newspaper clippings about him there was general

agreement that he was a murderer.

Now, after six months, several murders, robberies

and arsons he was on his way to kidnapping Denzil

Chin.

During this time his mother had returned home.

He knew that she was worried about him. He was using a different cell phone. He knew that she was okay. Philbert, her boyfriend would take care of her, he was sure of that. He had heard that Bertie was now walking again, it appeared that he had not confessed about his role in Jabez’s murder.
      Capone, the leader of the Scrappers, had told them to forget about those hotel, banking and whatever else magnates, this man was the real deal. His family had been one of the few Chinese families to flee Jamaica for Cayman in the 1970’s.

Denzil had returned as an adult in the 1990’s

and restarted the family business. He wasn’t afraid of

cooperating with other Chinese or the new Chinese

immigrants. Nor was he afraid of striking deals with the

new Indian immigrants.

“He’s the richest man in Jamaica right now.

If we hold him we could easily get hundreds of millions

to release him,” Capone told them.

***

Liston was leading the operation. There were four of

them in the lead car.

The back-up car contained three other men. All of them were armed. When they reached their destination, Dex got out of the car and went to knock on the gate. The gateman slightly opened the gate and found himself staring at a gun.

            Dex pushed him before him. Liston and the two other men followed.

      The gateman suddenly flung himself down on the ground and before Dex or any of the others could react two guns from somewhere on the compound opened up on them.

Both Dex and Liston sprinted for an outhouse and dropped down behind a wall.

Kenneth, was rolling on the ground as was Dennis, their two associates.

“They got Ken and Dennis,” Dex shouted. “I don’t think they’ll last long.”

“How many of them are there?” Liston asked.

“Two guns were firing at us.”

A quick look at the yard revealed two high priced cars and three SUVs. Dex thought Denzil must be very rich to own all these vehicles.

“We’ve got to get into the house and grab Denzil. Where the hell are the back-up guys?” Liston asked. He whipped out his cell phone.

“Norris, where the hell are you, Bulby and Pablo? We need back up to get out of here.”

Dex looked quizzically at Liston.

“You mean, you aren’t trying for Mr. Chin again?”

“We can’t get into the house.”

Then they heard firing from outside.

“They’ve opened up on them. I don’t know what took them so long. Let’s make a run for it,” Liston shouted and he and Dex sprinted for the gate.

Caught up with returning fire from the men on the outside, the two guards were taken by surprise by Liston and Dex’s bid to escape. They sprinted out of the house after them, but just reached the gates as the two cars sped off in opposite directions. They let off a volley of shots at both cars, but missed their targets.

***

Capone told them that a mistake had been made.

They didn’t know that Denzil had been so heavily guarded. Dex realized that Denzil went to work in a convoy of four similar cars. Capone said that Denzil would now beef up his security so they had to forget him for the time being and try after somebody else. He said they would still keep an eye on him and if he made any mistakes they would pounce.

***

They hit Nolan Brown that Saturday afternoon as he left his club and got into his car and drove off. Nolan’s wife agreed to pay fifteen million for her husband’s safe return. Nolan owned several pharmacies and hardware stores. Dex was disappointed at his cut of the ransom money.

“It’s not only us who are involved. We have a lot of people working with,” Liston told him.

Dex bought a second hand used car with his money. He had learnt to drive and planned to drive to his district, one night to scout out the area. So far the police hadn’t picked up anybody for Bertie’s shooting.

He drove past his mother’s house. Nobody would recognize him in his dark glasses. As it was night he couldn’t tell if there were any changes in the district.

That night a thought struck him and that was that Bertie hadn’t talked to the police, if he had they would have arrested him. Why had they been looking for him? Why had they accused him of the murders? That was how the police out here behaved, they didn’t need proof to accuse anybody of a crime.

If he killed Bertie, he would be in the clear. There would be nobody to accuse him of anything. Those other guys wouldn’t dare, less they incriminated themselves. He knew that Bertie had a girlfriend, Celia. He knew where she lived. He had heard that the man was now practically living with her.

***

      Capone called a big meeting of all of them.

“We are calling off all attempts at Denzil Chin.”

“There are quite a few women and men around getting rich quietly, some not so quietly. Some of them are new money, some of them with old money. We can hold at least one of them every month and squeeze some money out of them.”

Dex knew that they were making tons of cash from the protection and lotto scamming business. He wondered why he was bothering to go after Bertie? Why not just live the life he was living? But at the back of his mind was the fact that his mother could die and he could not go back to his house to claim it.

***

Bertie and Celia were at his house that evening. They were planning to go to a party later that night.

“I just saw your friend, the one who ran away after he was accused of killing all those people. The one who you said tried to kill you.”

“You mean Dex, where did you see him and when?”

“Earlier on this evening, down in the village square.”

Bertie considered for a few seconds or so.

“I think it’s me he’s looking for.”

“Why is he after you?”

Bertie took some more sips of his drink.

“I believe that he thinks I know that he’s behind all those killings.”

Bertie drank some more of his drink.

“I’m going to alert the police at the station,” he told her.

He stood up and Celia came and hugged him.

“You have to be careful, Bertie.”

“I’ll take a shortcut down to the station,” he told her and left.      

***

Bertie and Celia had taken a taxi home from the party in Spanish Town. He had made sure that she got into her house safely before making his way home, which was half a mile away.

As he made his way home Bertie was conscious of the headlights of an approaching car and he drew into some bushes.

Dex drove a few chains down the road before he realized that he had lost sight of Bertie. He stopped the car and came out. This section of the road was lighted. He decided to look around, Bertie could be hiding somewhere in the bushes.

He had to kill him this night, he decided. He would not go into the bushes as they were quite thick and Bertie might ambush him. He walked on both sides of the road listening for any sounds out of the bushes. He returned and leaned up against the car and lit a cigarette. He had just finished smoking the cigarette when he saw the headlights of a car approaching. Deciding that it was probably people returning home from a party Dex took out another cigarette.

The car stopped up the road several meters from where he was and two men alighted.

A voice floated over to him.

“Hey, guy, don’t move. Come from behind the car with your hands in the air.”

Jesus, it was the police!

Dex pulled his gun and jumped off the car. He dropped down behind it.