Craxer Must Steal

By Dave Whellams

John Craxer is good at investigating insurance fraud and even better at pulling off criminal capers. He can't stay away from crime. In this opener to the Craxer Chronicles, Crax, recently fired from his insurance job, is persuaded to steal a great painting from a Canadian art gallery in order to embarrass a sleazy tycoon. Along the way he enlists the help of - and falls in love with - Janie, a former stripper (whose stage name is Amber Alert) and the painter himself, while trying to avoid the vengeful enforcer, Mr. Glimmer.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Dave Whellams
• Release date: Feb 3, 2012
• ISBN: 9780987944405

Dave Whellams

Dave Whellams is also the author of two books in print: Stories from the Criminal Code (a book of short stories) and Walking into the Ocean (a mystery published by ECW Press in April 2012). Both are available in print and in electronic format. Dave lives in Ottawa, Canada.

Book preview

Craxer Must Steal

A Novel

by

Dave Whellams

Book 1 of The Craxer Chronicles

Craxer Must Steal

By Dave Whellams

Published by Dave Whellams at

Smashwords

rev February, 2012

Copyright 2012 Dave Whellams

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Cover design by Cal Sharp at Caligraphics

Provided free: At the end of Craxer Must Steal you will find the first chapter

of Craxer Just Kills, Book 2 of The Craxer Chronicles. Just click on excerpt:

Craxer Just Kills read excerpt

Craxer Must Steal

This story takes place in 2009 . . .

Chapter 1

I want you to steal.

Say wha?

I want you to steal ‘em blind. Until it’s empty. Leave a desert in our wake.

Say whoa! We just met. And there are people around.

Nevertheless.

Craxer had been drinking Costa Rican beer for two hours. It was impossible to get drunk at a Costa Rican regional airport on just the local beer, it burned off too fast, but earlier he’d been into the coloured rum drinks. They had mostly burned away too, leaving trace elements of red dye No. 2 and green dye No. 36. He in fact appreciated the toxic residue still lurking down there in his system; it took his mind off what was going to happen next. He was still trying to get drunk when Cathcart showed up.

Craxer hated to fly and so, stuck on the patio with its oily runway and exhaust-coated palm trees, he was particularly disconcerted by the prospect of a delayed flight out of this hellhole, all the more so because he would be flying out alone, whereas he had arrived with a delicious girl who had abandoned him the day before, and with whom he might have been in love. It seemed the cigar-tube fuselages became narrower each time he flew and this airline had been the worst, a cheap outfit that his ancien girlfriend had described oxymoronically at the time of booking as a regularly scheduled special charter. The carrier had a reputation for running short of fuel, arriving late and failing to compensate passengers for delayed luggage. Once, three flights in one month were scandalized by food poisoning incidents, a problem the outfit neatly finessed by declaring it would no longer serve free meals, except for pretzel packs. The fuel miscalculation was an understandable mistaking of metric numbers for imperial measures regarding the gas tank on an Airbus 360, understandable unless you were one of the paying, now praying, passengers on board the glider as it attempted an approach to the Tenerife landing strip.

There was no sign of the plane but Craxer knew that he would not share the elation of the rest of the tired and browned tourists who currently crowded the airport lounge, when it finally landed. It would be all he could manage to refrain from freaking on the return trip and doing something that would necessitate plastic handcuffs, something like opening all the overhead bins in a search for carry-on sedatives. But, for the moment, he sat out on the terrace, a carelessly laid out platform with broken terracotta tiles and cinder block walls, and drank beer. He was making the best of it. The crowd of Canadians, and a few Americans, mostly stayed inside the terminal. It was hotter inside, but out on the patio periodic swirls of tawny dust got in the eyes and ruined the day-glo drinks. Beer in the bottle was okay; Craxer now understood why wedges of lime were jammed into Latin American brew – to keep out the grit.

He watched a line of green and brown geckos trail diagonally up the partition wall in stop-and-start movements. Earlier, some of the kids tried to catch them in their complimentary Beach Joy Resort ball caps, but they never caught a one.

Only four fellow passengers shared his terrace. The only married couple, off at a table nearest the runway, were in their seventies and remarkably reminiscent of the old pair in the nightclub scene in Casablanca who have just obtained their letters of transit, and are celebrating by practicing their fractured English on the head waiter, played by S.Z. Sakall. They were kind of fictional, Craxer blearily thought, as if cast for the occasion. That got Craxer playing a game with himself to pass the creeping time. If this was a Graham Greene novella, something involving deracinated, gin-soaked Catholic expats expatiating their guilt in barely reachable colonial outposts, what would each of the passengers’ story be?

Just then, a Graham Greene denizen said in his face: May I join you? I am Cathcart.

Craxer turned. The man proffered his hand and Craxer shook it with welcoming warmth. He would have welcomed a talking gecko. The man, who wore a rumpled white suit, pulled up a plastic chair and set it next to him, so that they would both be facing one end of the runway. He deposited his beer on the table but remained standing. Craxer looked around and noted the four identical empties on the fellow’s old table.

Craxer had trouble speaking through his sand-scoured lips, but he took a sip of beer and said: ‘Cathcart.’ One name, like Mantovani, or Madonna?

Or Prince, or Cher? Or the Mantovani previously known as Prince?

Craxer beckoned him to sit down, which he did. Craxer. They shook hands.

Great. A pleasure. Let’s leave it at last names only, shall we?

Don’t mind. My first name is John, but everyone calls me Craxer, or Crax. Clink.

What genius has planes landing directly into the setting sun? Cathcart looked over his shoulder at the molten orange horizon, although it would soon be black.

Craxer toasted the runway. I believe this was once a facility used by Contras in the Reagan era wars. The Nicaraguan border isn’t far.

People talk to each other at airports, in the lounges and on the planes. Airports inspire verbal affidavits, even if the evidence is destined to fade like invisible ink when the plane lands. But airports are a pleasurable place for conversation. And so, Craxer was quite willing to chat with Cathcart about anything and everything with an open demeanour. He had learned from many new voyageur acquaintances about their intimate and interior lives, their sins, their hates and dreams, their indiscretions, their politics and suppressed memories. It turned out that Cathcart had lots of every kind.

I can’t help noticing that you’re alone, said Cathcart. So was the uni-named Cathcart, Craxer observed. On the evidence, he did not belong with the others in the Rainforest Ecology Fun Tour and the complimentary tote bag would have clashed with his linen suit, seriously wrinkled, and the rattan hat that he carried in his hand now, with the hatband of red satin accented with a feather. With his background in insurance fraud, Craxer wondered if his new friend was hiding out – Costa Rica resisted extradition, he knew – much more the Graham Greene Central Casting figure than he would admit.

I came with my girlfriend. She left me in mid tour, Craxer said.

I’m sorry.

I notice you’re a solo act too. What brings you to Quesada?

Cathcart smiled and hailed the teenage waiter for two more beers. Without being rude, may I ask you why you think I’m here?

Craxer assessed his new friend. Okay, you’ve gotta be here on business. Your suit is top line, so you’re not just a stodgy tourist who comes here every season, and you aren’t trying to impress a wife or longstanding girlfriend. So that leaves business. I’d guess you were meeting with government officials but in that case, they wouldn’t have allowed you to take a cheap charter back home, assuming you were representing a big corporation or one government or another. Costa Rica has no armed forces, so you aren’t selling guns and tanks. You’re traveling under the radar. You certainly weren’t on my flight down here, therefore you have some particular reason for latching on to this departure. I’m guessing real estate. Selling condos, maybe developing a resort for Canadians and Yanks looking to retire in the Central American sun. He took a swallow of beer.

Cathcart stared at Craxer neutrally, not at all irritated at his suppositions. Then, he clinked Craxer’s beer bottle to acknowledge that he was on the money.

So, why did your girlfriend leave you? Tit for tat, reasoned Craxer.

Cathcart somehow inspired trust, or at least disclosure, and Craxer was in less and less of a mood to be cautious, feeling mounting panic at the impending flight, and realizing that he had sort of been cuckolded by a leatherback turtle.

"This was our first big vacation together. If it worked out, we’d likely move in. But it was a bad idea from the get-go. I hate flying, she hates driving around to Civil War battlefields. Mind you, I’m not a fanatic about that, I don’t go in for re-enactments or anything. But at least you can drive there.

Her name is Gloriana. Some call her Gloria, but I prefer the full Latin thing. She wanted to go to the Caribbean. Costa Rica, she said. I pointed out that this respected member of the U.N. was not in the Islands, was not even an island. She got out the map and fell in love with the place, get this, because it was bicoastal, bordering both the Atlantic and the Pacific. If we didn’t like one ocean we could go to the other one. How do you deal with logic like that?"

That was enough to kill the trip?

No. it was the turtle. She was determined to do everything eco, since it was an eco-tour. That included wading over to an island at midnight to watch a leatherback tortoise give birth to a bunch of billiard balls. I fell asleep during the birthing. But, hell, the turtle fell asleep too. She moved out that night – that dawn, to be precise. Haven’t seen her since.

Sad story, Cathcart said.

Your turn.

You were right, but don’t tell anybody. I am here to sell real estate. That’s my secret deal in Costa Rica. There’s a new development up in the Tiliran mountains, on the shallow slope where they grow pineapples, at least until Cimarron Estates is built. Twenty-nine spanking new houses, villas really. A beautiful spot and the virtue of it is the farmers will be able to shift their pineapple growing a couple of hills over. In one direction, you can see the Arenal Volcano, and further up the hill the Cloud Forest begins.

Craxer sensed that the sales pitch was just habit, not edited for him, but was threaded with a bit of regret for exploiting this beautiful country.