Four Nines Fine

By JC Simmons

This is the COMPLETE VERSION of "Four Nines Fine (Book 7 of the Jay Leicester Mysteries Series)" by critically acclaimed southern author JC Simmons:

One hundred million dollars' worth of pure gold traded for stolen military arms... the brutal murder of a Mexican Governor... the involvement of La Eme, the Mexican Mafia, Outlaw Motorcycle gangs, and violent street gangs, and a contract ordered on his life... These are the pieces of the puzzle Jay Leicester (pronounced "Lester") must put together to save not only himself, but those of innocent people working with him.

Asked to recover and airplane from Ciudad Victoria, Mexico, Jay is inadvertently drawn into unthinkable horror. In his unaccustomed role as prey, Jay is forced into consideration of his own mortality and those close to him. Jolted into taking stock of his life, into acknowledging that through the years he has become more of a loner than he ever intended to be...

As he goes about the increasingly dangerous business of keeping himself alive, following the trail of gold smugglers from South America to Mexico to urban and rural areas of Mississippi, Jay begins to see the only way to avoid more deaths is to shatter the opposing forces.

Here - in a novel exploding with action, surprises, and suspense is J.C. Simmons writing at the top of his game. FOUR NINES FINE is one of the most entertaining works we have yet from this gifted and prolific writer from Mississippi.

There are 10 ebooks in the Jay Leicester Mysteries Series by JC Simmons:

Blood on the Vine
Some People Die Quick
Blind Overlook
Icy Blue Descent
The Electra File
Popping the Shine
Four Nines Fine
The Underground Lady
Akel Dama
The Candela of Cancri

• Language: English
• Publisher: JC Simmons
• Release date: Jan 29, 2012
• ISBN: 9781936377657

JC Simmons

JC Simmons is the author of an Ernest Hemingway biography, several short stories and ten critically acclaimed serial mystery novels, known as the "Jay Leicester Mysteries Series". Included in the series are: Blood On The Vine, Some People Die Quick, Blind Overlook, Icy Blue Descent, The Electra File, Popping the Shine, Four Nines Fine, The Underground Lady, Akel Dama, and The Candela of Cancri, all of which have been recently re-released as ebooks by Nighttime Press LLC.From the Author's mouth:My flying career and writing in general was inspired by a single book titled, Fate is the Hunter, by Ernest K. Gann. Writing specifically as a style was manifest due to a single book titled, Ernest Hemingway: A Life Story, by Carlos Baker, Hemingway’s official biographer. A friend and Emergency Room doctor, Edgar Grissom, who would later publish the definitive bibliography on Hemingway, Ernest Hemingway: A Descriptive Bibliography, loaned me his copy of Baker’s bio one summer back in the early 70s. The rest, as they say, is history.During the next few years, I read everything by and about Hemingway. Never has a writer influenced me more. My first foray into the world of letters was to be about Hemingway. John Evans, owner of Lemuria Books, and my mentor in all things literati, pointed out that there were literally hundreds of bios on Hemingway. However, a scholarly study on the man and his work had never been done in a Q&A format. So was born the “Workbook.”Evans, Grissom, Evan’s store manager, Tom Gerald and his assistant Valerie Sims, all collaborated on the manuscript. It took two years to finish. I learned much on the journey.It was from this endeavor with the Hemingway bio that emerged the Jay Leicester Murder/Mystery series. Even the name Leicester came from Hemingway’s brother, who also published a bio, My Brother Ernest Hemingway, in 1961.Hemingway once said he “learned to write landscapes by looking at the paintings of Cezanne in the Louvre in Paris,” and “that it’s not how much one puts into a book, but what the writer leaves out that makes the story.” From him I learned how to write true dialogue, and how to add the sights, sounds, and smells so that the reader feels he is there. While I did not try and copy his style, thousands have tried and failed, I did take what he offered and used it well, I hope. You the reader will make that determination.J.C. Simmons was born, raised, educated, and stayed in the great State of Mississippi. He is a retired Airline/Corporate pilot and lives with his wife on the family farm in Union, Mississippi where he is working on a autobiographical work detailing his life and times as a pilot.

Book preview

FOUR NINES FINE (Book 7 of the Jay Leicester Mysteries Series)

by JC Simmons

Copyright 2012 by JC Simmons

Smashwords Edition

This ebook, BLOOD ON THE VINE, is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. BLOOD ON THE VINE may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each reader. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

PUBLISHED BY NIGHTTIME PRESS LLC

Copyright © 2012 Edition by JC Simmons

All rights reserved

Check out all ten books in

The Jay Leicester Mysteries Series:

Blood on the Vine

Some People Die Quick

Blind Overlook

Icy Blue Descent

The Electra File

Popping the Shine

Four Nines Fine

The Underground Lady

Akel Dama

The Candela of Cancri

Now available at the usual outlets

Four Nines Fine

(Book 7 of the Jay Leicester Mysteries Series)

By JC Simmons

CHAPTER ONE

The new forty million-dollar Gulfstream GV corporate aircraft taxied slowly to the end of runway 36 at the Napa County Airport. On board were the two pilots, the owner, Ben Brooks, and three of his company attorneys. They had, the day before, completed purchase of the famed Novellone Winery in Calistoga, California, and were enroute back to Jackson, Mississippi, headquarters of the Brooks Corporation.

Four Nines Fine

(Book 7 of the Jay Leicester Mysteries Series)

By JC Simmons

***

PROLOGUE

The crosshairs in the scope of the high-powered sniper rifle moved back and forth over the man in the overcoat walking next to the stoop-shouldered old woman. Six hundred yards away and higher up the slope in the foothills of the Andes Mountains near Bogota, Colombia, the shooter propped his arm on an ice-covered limb of a tree, resting the rifle in a gloved hand. The temperature was below freezing, and he had tamped out a place in the deep snow to stand. The cold did not bother him, his thoughts only on the target.

He did not want to hit the man in the head; he wanted the victim to be able to think after the bullet ripped through his body, to be aware that he was dying.

The shooter took the glove off his right hand and placed a finger lightly on the trigger. He set the crosshairs exactly where he wanted, and breathed easily. Slowly squeezing the trigger, he sensed an orgasmic feeling that approached or was better than sex. When the rifle fired, it surprised him. If done correctly, it should be a surprise.

He watched as the man flinched at the impact and went down to both knees. As he toppled over into the snow, the shooter observed the old woman put her hand to her mouth in an unheard scream.

The man covered his tracks under the tree, and walked away thinking of how he would dispose of the rifle.

Chapter One

It was one of those August days in the south, hot, humid, and hazy. Temperatures hovered near three digits, and one gave thanks to Mr. Willis Haviland Carrier and his US pat. # 808897. In the field east of the cottage, out at the tree line, crows wheeled in short, erratic circles resembling black fluid paint-smears on an artist's wet canvas, their piercing caws irritating.

The big Siamese cat named B.W., not for his black and white color but after the Black Watch flight program of the military, curled up in my lap and silently cursed me for having his testicles removed when he was a kitten. He placed his wide paw on every page of the novel I was reading, an obvious fan of Mr. Faulkner's Light in August. However, he turned up his nose at the cold glass of Dom Perignon champagne I sipped as we followed Joe Christmas and Lena Grove around Jefferson, Mississippi. Tomorrow we would bushhog grass and hunt mice; today we stayed cool and read.

The phone rang, interrupting the violent death of Joanna Burden, irritating B.W. who cried angrily and jumped down leaving claw marks on my thigh from which tiny drops of blood oozed. Leicester.

Can you still fly a DC-3? Please do not tell me that if someone will start the engines, you can fly anything. I've heard that enough, thank you.

Guy Robbins. How you doing, old son? My boat still afloat?

Picaroon is seaworthy. Continental International Insurance has been trying to get in touch with you. Seems they cannot collect the million dollars they have invested in said airplane and would like for you to return it to their jurisdiction.

Where is the DC-3?

Mexico, I think. I don't have the details. They tried your office in Jackson, but got no answer, so they called me. Seems you stay isolated more and more in that rural area you call a farm.

It's the only place I feel at home outside of where I was born. It's where I'm meant to be. I call it God's country, and here one has to believe in God. Who else teaches the homing pigeon to fly as they do, who gives the coyote his craftiness, or a hunting dog his nose? Give them this number and say hello to Mildred for me.

Will do.

It's true, you know.

What?

If someone will figure out how to start the engines, I can fly it.

Goodbye, Leicester.

***

C.I.I. did call. They insisted on a face to face meeting in their office in Jackson, the state capital, the next morning at nine a.m.

B.W. refused to have anything else to do with me since interrupting his reading. My mind was now on recovering a Douglas DC-3, not on the brilliant masterwork of Mr. Bill, so we left mill worker Byron Bunch in his search for love and went to look up the aircraft flight manual for a quick refresher course. It had been over a year since I'd been at the controls of one of those fine flying machines. I put the copy of Light in August in the bookcase with the glass doors. It held a good collection of first editions, a thirty-year labor of love. A man used to be known by his books, now it's his DVD collection and computers and ram and hard drive speed and capacity and whether you are on dialup or high speed Internet connection. Rather sad, I thought.

Sipping the champagne and watching the tiny bubbles race to the top of the flute while thumbing through the manual, I thought about Guy Robbins. An attorney on the Mississippi Gulf Coast, he and I grew up together, were roommates in college. We both played linebacker on the football team. He was the better all-a-round athlete, though I was the quicker and stronger. After college Guy opted for law school, I for the NFL. Now, when it takes me fifteen minutes to get out of bed in the morning, I wish law school had been my choice.

After two years with the Baltimore Colts, a knee injury sent me to my second love, aviation. Southern Airways, a regional carrier based in Atlanta, Georgia, hired me as a co-pilot flying Martin 404s. I was crew-based in New Orleans, Louisiana, and made Captain in three years. My route of flight was to Atlanta via Gulfport, Pascagoula, Hattiesburg, Laurel, Meridian, Mississippi, and Birmingham, Alabama. With an hour layover in Atlanta, we would return through the same cities. You could type-rate a co-pilot in one trip. It did make true airmen out of fledgling aviators.

After twenty years of flying the line, during which I grew unable to accept the growing inane government bureaucracy, I took an early retirement and opened an aviation-consulting firm. Recovering aircraft for companies is a big part of my business. It has always amazed me how people will buy things with not the slightest intention of paying for them. I sometimes wish my conscience would allow me that fault. Other aspects of my business consist of setting up flight departments for companies, ensuring they purchase the aircraft best suited for their needs, hiring the flight crew, and seeing they get trained to current standards. Established flight departments will have me audit the entire operation and make recommendations for upgrades or changes. Chief Pilots with troublesome crewmembers involved with illegal drugs or alcohol will ask for help. Getting those pilots into successful rehab programs and seeing them return to flying status has always been a source of pride for me.

There was one company with a chief Pilot whose morals were so corrupt, his womanizing so wanton, that he was shot at one winter day at an airport in Iowa by an irate husband. The shooter missed the man, but put a 30.06 caliber bullet hole in a six million dollar corporate jet. After a month of investigating the pilot's habits and reporting my findings to the CEO, he was fired. Another Chief Pilot was taking kickbacks from almost everything the flight department purchased. When they bought a new jet, he demanded a hundred thousand-dollar finders' fee from the salesman. I personally handed him the check, and he was stupid enough to sign a receipt, all caught on video. Then there is some undercover work for the government that I can't or won't discuss; though, it mostly involves the international drug trade or terrorism.

My business has grown over the last ten years, thanks a lot to Guy Robbins, but I am still a one-man operation. A hard individual to get along with, I suffer fools badly, so it's better to work alone.

***

I kept a bi-wing Stearman at the local airport, but I decided to drive rather than fly to the capital, as there were some errands that I needed to run and a car would be necessary. I left B.W. enough food and water and made him promise to be on the alert for coyotes that love to snack on feral cats. Although, I did watch through a riflescope one morning as he slapped a young female coyote so hard on the nose that blood spurted two feet, and she tucked her tail and ran off. B.W. strutted back toward the cottage with a pleased expression. He is a tough old boy, but I still worried about his running these woods.

***

Continental International Insurance operated from a five story building on Pascagoula Street just south of city hall. I took the elevator to the top floor. The cute blond receptionist whose nameplate identified her as Vickey Moralis asked me to please have a seat. Mr. Jones and Mr. Vandiver were expecting me. It would be just a few minutes.

The waiting area was spacious and well appointed, though not extravagant. This was an insurance company that operated on a global scale. Their stock portfolio alone was rumored to be at over a billion dollars, and their reserve at two billion, but they were run by an unassuming board that preferred a small town atmosphere. I had worked for them previously on a rather complicated matter concerning a fleet of Boeing 737s and a startup low cost carrier that went belly up. We were able to secure all nine aircraft and get them flown to a storage facility in Tucson, Arizona, to await disposition. The C.I.I. man I worked with on that operation was B.C. Jones, the man I waited to see this morning. I did not know Vandiver.

At precisely nine a.m., Miss Vickey ushered me into B.C.'s office. It was a huge corner location with a panoramic view of south Jackson and the Pearl River. The furniture matched the waiting area. The chairs were functional and comfortable, though did not appear to be expensive. The only unique thing was B.C.'s desk, a magnificent, hand-carved solid piece of black walnut with four legs delicately shaped like elephant heads complete with ivory tusks and curved intricately detailed trunks. There was not a sheet of paper, file folder, pen set, or anything else, not even a lamp on the desktop. This, to me, showed a man who tended to business.

B.C. rose from behind the elephants, came around, and greeted me warmly. He was a short, stocky man in his fifties with coal black hair combed straight back over his head. He exuded wealth and physical fitness, but not in an overbearing or garish way. His clothes were conservative, though tailor-made. His only fault was two packs of Pall Mall cigarettes a day, a vice that would kill him before he reached the age of sixty. Everyone has his or her own brand of poison. He introduced me to Dave Vandiver.

He was almost the direct opposite of B.C. He was my height and age with a ruddy complexion and light-green penetrating eyes. Slim built, he had big powerful hands with numerous calluses, probably from working out regularly with freestanding weights. He did not appear to be a man who would do manual labor. His suit was hand-tailored and in the four thousand dollar range. If the cuff links he wore were real diamonds, then he was also a bigger egoist than I guessed.

Jay, we appreciate you coming on such short notice.

Not a problem. What's the story on the DC-3?

B.C. looked at Vandiver who crossed his legs revealing tasseled Gucci loafers. The aircraft is on the ramp at Ciudad Victoria, Mexico. We want it brought back to the U.S. as soon as practical.

I don't understand why C.I.I. has an aircraft with a resale value of three hundred thousand dollars insured for one million? My fee of six percent of the insured value, plus expenses means you are going to end up with over one point one million in a plane worth a third of that amount.

Vandiver shot me a look that said much. You are hired to get the plane out of Mexico without creating an international incident, not to question our financial investments.

Getting up, I leaned over Vandiver's Gucci loafers, putting my face inches from his. Then get yourself another whipping boy. I don't do anything unless I know everything about what I'm getting myself and my people into. Standing erect, I headed for the door. Sorry, B.C., I don't work this way.

B.C. came from behind the desk. "Wait, Jay. Dave's simply on edge about this as it involves not only the insurance company, but also the death of a family member.

Please sit. We will lay it all out for you."

Vandiver stood, extended a hand. I meant no disrespect. I apologize. I wasn't thinking.

Shaking his hand, I sat back down. The hand was clammy and cold, like a man afraid of life. B.C. handed me a folder with the name Tamaulipas written across the top. I knew the name well. Ciudad Victoria is the capital city of that Mexican State.

Back in the 70s, I fished the huge reservoir north of Victoria for Bullhead Bass. When the reservoir was created, a whole town was abandoned and sacrificed, which resulted in it being completely under water. One could fish directly over a church or a school. Sometimes when the water level was low, one could read the names of storefronts or restaurants. It always seemed rather eerie to me, troublesome in some sort of macabre way. We would fly down twice a year and spend a week at a fish camp on the eastern shore of the lake. I knew the airport well and, but for the Grace of God, would have been killed on my first approach into there. The skies were overcast, and we were in the clouds all the way from our customs entry airport at Reynosa. We knew the weather at Ciudad Victoria forecast a fifteen hundred-foot ceiling with good visibility, so we let down a few miles north until we descended below the overcast. What we didn't know was that there were ten thousand-foot mountains just south of the airport. We were young, reckless, ill prepared to fly in Mexican airspace, and had no excuses. Having survived, we learned much.

B.C. pointed to the folder. Read the file thoroughly. Vickey will escort you to a conference room where you will not be disturbed. When you are finished, let her know, and we will meet with you again and answer any questions. Take your time.

Vickey took me to a windowless room with a huge inlaid table constructed of twenty-four different kinds of wood, (I counted them,) and polished so that one got the impression it was inches deep.

Would you care for something, Mr. Leicester? Coffee, tea?

Coffee with honey, if you have it?

We have honey, Tupelo honey, as a matter of fact.

Wonderful. Moralis… I played football in college with a Joe Moralis from here in Jackson. Any relation?

My father's name is Joe. He was an All-American at Southeastern as a defensive-back. Jay Leicester, yes, that rings a bell. There was a photograph of you and my father and another man in your football uniforms that sat on my father's desk. What was the other man's name…Guy something?

Robbins, Guy Robbins. It's a small world. How is your dad? Still ornery as always?

He died two years ago, Mr. Leicester. Pancreatic cancer.

I'm so sorry. I didn't know.

"My mom tried