Swifty and the Wife Killer

By Roger F. Greaves

You . . . beeelong to us now, bitch! The giants voice boomed across the windswept beach. Get out here . . . now! The retched gargoyle bounded onto the porch, snorting through the wood-and-thatch walls of the cabin.

We are gonna cutcha and gutcha after we play with ya! he roared. Get out here, bitch! The giant belched his commands, staggering from the porch and bellowing from the windblown sand. Dan searched frantically for a weapon. His rifle had been in the skiff, and they had it. His .45 was on the porch . . . someplace. He couldnt make a fight of it . . . there were too many. They might shoot him and get to Claire.

Dan rifled the kitchen drawers and chucked all the cutlery onto the floor. Sorting through it, he found a big carving knife. At least he could take one of them down as he died.

Give it up, slug. We told ya, the money or the bitch. No money . . . well, she gets us! Haaaaaaaaaa! Yeaaaaaaah! Give it up! The redheaded ogre was wild with rage! As the wind whistled through the eaves of the cabin, Dan felt fear beyond anything he ever felt, even when Saigon was overrun in 75.

The pounding grew louder, and the splintering of the walls made it clear they had only minutes, maybe seconds. Then the firebomb hit the door. They had closed and locked the storm windows, the heavy boards that protected glass in case a typhoon struck. Though a major storm would blow the walls away, it would leave windows, roof, and footing alone. It seldom happened, but Dan was attempting to be prepared. But there was no way to prepare for this.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Oct 11, 2013
• ISBN: 9781493104031

Roger F. Greaves

ROGER F. GREAVES grew up in Southern California. During his six decades in the business community and the military, he has come in contact with many interesting characters. He characterizes many of them in the Swifty Series of novels. Roger graduated from California State University, Long Beach and has done a good deal of graduate work. He is an Air Force Veteran, a private pilot and a story teller. Roger and his wife, Erika live with their lone Westie, Spatz, at Desert Mountain in Scottsdale. They stay active in local and national politics as well as community affairs.

Book preview

SWIFTY AND THE

WIFE KILLER

A Novel: Roger F. Greaves

. . . . THAT THE WISE MAN GAVE HIS TESTIMONY TO THIS AS THE JUST STANDARD OF TRUE FELICITY, WHEN HE PRAYED TO HAVE NEITHER POVERTY OR RICHES.

-ROBINSON CRUSOE… DANIEL DEFOE

Copyright © 2013 by Roger F. Greaves.

Library of Congress Control Number:     2013917109

ISBN:     Hardcover     978-1-4931-0402-4

Softcover     978-1-4931-0401-7

Ebook     978-1-4931-0403-1

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted

in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system,

without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the

product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance

to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Rev. date: 10/03/2013

To order additional copies of this book, contact:

Xlibris LLC

1-888-795-4274

www.Xlibris.com

[e-mail]

140720

CONTENTS

Prologue: The Cave of Fear and Wine

Chapter 1: It Never Ends

Chapter 2: Ryan Chanute

Chapter 3: Swifty and KK, Back in the Saddle Again

Chapter 4: Cambodia, Giving the Bride Away

Chapter 5: The Isle of Misdirection

Chapter 6: Unlocking Walid

Chapter 7: Passwords

Chapter 8: Horsing Around

Chapter 9: The Quest for Dan

Chapter 10: Carrato in Wonderland

Chapter 11: Serengeti Swifty

Chapter 12: Return to the Portrait

Chapter 13: You’re Only Dead Twice?

Chapter 14: Wine and Gold

Chapter 15: Red Lion

Chapter 16: Globe Hopping

Chapter 17: Searchers

Chapter 18: Sandy, the Nurse with Oak Leaves: and an M-16

Chapter 19: Lies, Lies, Lies

Chapter 20: Friends of Bill and Burgess

Chapter 21: The Pirates of La Jolla

Chapter 22: Claire, Janice, Paula, Sara Jane, and All the Others

Chapter 23: The Show Must Go On

Chapter 24: All’s Pretty Good that Ends Okay for Most?

Epilogue

OTHER WRITINGS BY ROGER F. GREAVES

Poetry

Pearl (1995)

Swifty Stories

Swifty (2009)

Swifty and the Magic Man (2010)

Swifty King, Advice (2012)

Swifty and the Wife Killer (2013)

See the website links Swiftybook.com and Swiftybooks.com.

To Erika, who is the best of me and us…

PROLOGUE

The Cave of Fear and Wine

You… beeelong to us now, bitch! The giant’s voice boomed across the windswept beach. Get out here… now! The retched gargoyle bounded onto the porch, snorting through the wood-and-thatch walls of the cabin.

We are gonna cutcha and gutcha after we play with ya! he roared. Get out here, bitch! The giant belched his commands, staggering from the porch and bellowing from the windblown sand. Dan searched frantically for a weapon. His rifle had been in the skiff, and they had it. His .45 was on the porch… someplace. He couldn’t make a fight of it… there were too many. They might shoot him and get to Claire.

Dan rifled the kitchen drawers and chucked all the cutlery onto the floor. Sorting through it, he found a big carving knife. At least he could take one of them down as he died.

Give it up, slug. We told ya, the money or the bitch. No money… well, she gets us! Haaaaaaaaaa! Yeaaaaaaah! Give it up! The redheaded ogre was wild with rage! As the wind whistled through the eaves of the cabin, Dan felt fear beyond anything he ever felt, even when Saigon was overrun in ‘75.

The pounding grew louder, and the splintering of the walls made it clear they had only minutes, maybe seconds. Then the firebomb hit the door. They had closed and locked the storm windows, the heavy boards that protected glass in case a typhoon struck. Though a major storm would blow the walls away, it would leave windows, roof, and footing alone. It seldom happened, but Dan was attempting to be prepared. But there was no way to prepare for this.

The fire sizzled and steamed under the door. They had doused it and moved back around the bonfire a few yards from the structure. They had the sick girl. They were stripping her… the deckhands swung her naked over the fire!

They’re cooking her. Claire stifled a cry as they peered through the cracks in the storm windows. She’s being barbecued… oh god!

Dan ran to the back bathroom, hurled open the cabinet door, and threw the carpet aside. He pulled the lid off the trap—too small to crawl through, but it was a start. He ripped at the floorboards until the cabinet sagged. He pulled it from the wall and yanked up two loose boards, showing strength he didn’t know he had.

Come on… we’ll crawl out under here and run for the cave, he forced a whisper.

Danny, they are cutting that poor girl up… oh geez! she cried.

Dan bounded to the entry and peered out one of the cracks. He saw one of the deckhands cutting away part of the shrieking girl’s breast. They were all wildly drunk or high on something stronger.

He saw the two hands alternating as they raped the naked girl next to the fire while the giant laughed and the slight white guy looked on passively. He turned and hustled Claire to the opening, where she struggled through. He followed with some difficulty, tearing his shirt and the skin on his back.

They crawled to the light and squeezed through the latticework at the back of the cabin’s stilted foundation. Dan had to half carry Claire, who was clearly drunk and wobbled in the soft sand. Once they could gain enough purchase in the harder sand to run, Dan pulled Claire upright and muscled her forward. Within a minute, they reached the dark mouth of the cave and plunged in. The noise was somewhat muted, but they could still hear the screams of the girl and the shouts of the men.

Dan fumbled for the key to his carefully constructed wine cellar that lay just forty feet inside the cave entry. They had to push aside the cool leather-and-burlap risers that hung from the aluminum frame anchored to the roof of the cave. Dan was told that it would add a cooling effect. Mostly it annoyed him as he had to brush through it and climb the double step to his so-called cellar.

He sorted through the keys, selected the correct one, and inserted it. With a push, he opened the teak-and-metal door and shoved Claire in front of him through the opening. By feel he found the wooden safety bar and dropped it in place, then grasped the penlight that hung on a hook just above the doorframe. The fans run by the windmill eighty feet above them on the hill were operating in full swing. Fresh water, also powered by the windmill, circulated in front of the fans and provided a breeze that added to the cooling effect within the cave and wine cellar.

Claire reached for a familiar bottle on one of the lower stacks as she passed. Open one for us… I need a drink after that.

She was ready to pass out as much due to fear as the two bottles of wine she had drunk throughout the day. I have to pee.

Claire bounced off the leather-lined wall as she moved the forty feet to the rear of the unit and slid into the small opening where Dan had placed a chemically treated Porta Potty.

Dan sighed and opened the wine, using the professional device he had affixed to the small desk beyond the last wine rack. There were eight racks separated in the middle by a narrow aisle and from one another by a slightly wider aisle. The racks were six feet high. They contained approximately twenty-five hundred bottles of wine at any given time. Most were good table wines from around the world, and a few were near-priceless collectors’ items. He maintained a careful record both in a manual ledger in the room itself and in his computer files.

Claire stumbled back in and flopped onto a legless leather chaise that had her half lying near Dan’s feet as he sat in a small desk chair.

Now what… ? She raised an eyebrow in the dim light of a candle Dan had found in the desk drawer.

Now we wait and hope, he said, fingering a small .22-caliber pistol that he found in the desk, something his son had been fooling with.

You gon’ shoot ‘em? Claire had one eye closed, and her head bobbed as she sipped and spilled.

Some time had gone by—perhaps hours—since they had drifted off. Claire was at his feet, snoring loudly. He heard the pop of the door. They had broken in. He could see the shadows of men through the stacks. Their lights bounced off the wine bottles. He raised the rusty little revolver and pulled the trigger.

The noise was deafening in the tight quarters. Ouch, goddamit! You son of a bitch! The redheaded giant’s voice changed to a different pitch—a more normal voice.

He saw another shadow and pulled the trigger again. Snap! Nothing. He pulled it again. Snap! Another dud.

You got a popgun there, asshole—that ain’t gonna save ya! The giant, back in the vernacular. We want that bitch! Money or the bitch!

Dan fired again out of frustration and heard the loud bang and nothing else but glass breaking.

We’ll wait your ass out! Can’t have many more a those little BBs… give me the bitch!

Dan saw Claire at his feet, hands over her ears, tears flowing from her half-closed eyes. They were coming in, slowly circling the stacks, and then there he was, the giant, weaving around the stacks of shelved bottles… but there was no mistaking the leer and the wild red hair.

Decision time. Dan looked to the ceiling, then to the .22. He decided. He could not let Claire go through this.

He put the gun to the back of her head, and as he pulled the trigger, he heard the giant roar, Noooooo!

This time no misfire. He saw blood begin to spurt from Claire’s hair, and she slumped on his foot. He looked at the man before him and said, Shit… as he put the gun to his head and fired again.

His last fleeting thought was that the giant was reaching for the gun… then… nothingness…

Earlier

The four men and one woman had arrived in late afternoon. The lagoon was still. Dan was just about to put on a T-shirt when he saw the boat rounding the point and heading toward the dock. It was a Roberts 39, he judged. Nice boat.

Better put on your suit, baby, we got company, Dan yelled to Claire, who was clad in nothing but a see-through sports bra, no bottoms.

She had been drinking a lot of wine that day. It was unusual for her to take more than two glasses at night, and she had never touched it in the daytime before. Maybe she was nervous about going home in a couple of days to a new life.

As the boat approached the dock, Dan saw a couple of crew on the deck and two heads in the windscreen.

Ahoy on land. Captain Boggs here. Got a sick girl aboard. Need some medicine for her, the tall gargoyle of a man yelled.

Dan Chanute! Chanute Bay Isle! Bring her ashore, sir! Dan shouted to the redheaded giant on the afterdeck of the sleek sailer.

Two native crewmen made fast the lines to Dan’s solid concrete and hardwood dock that moored only his power boat, a twenty-five foot Bertram with a pair of 105 hp Honda pushers and a small skiff.

Dan liked speed and wanted to reach the harbor of Port Vila as soon as possible if a serious health challenge occurred involving Claire or himself.

As the day wore on, the new guests became more and more hostile, culminating in Captain Boggs making a demand.

Sir, I figure you for a rich bastard. I will take half a million for her.

Beg pardon… I don’t want the native girl. What are we now, slave traders? Dan said in jest.

Not talking about the girl. Talking about your bitch here. I’m taking her… or maybe letting my boys go at her like they do that other one. That, lest you pay up. He stood tall, weaving and fingering a large knife at his side.

You’re talking crazy. I don’t like that. Claire, go get my gun. One of the native kids skipped across the sand and retrieved Dan’s rifle from the boat, flipping it to Boggs as he returned.

Don’t have a gun now. Gimme the money or I’m takin’ her. You can get another one with the kinda money you got. Boggs looked down as Dan stood and stepped across the fire pit. Boggs signaled the lad who had brought the gun. The two boys started to circle.

Dan scooped up a fistful of sand and threw it into Boggs’s face. The distraction gave him just enough space to pull the rifle free of the giant’s hand.

Claire, get in the house, now! She stood, rocking at first, then wove her way to the steps. Dan backed up, holding the rifle on the crew of four. As he reached the step, one of the young men made his move, knocking Dan off-balance. He dropped the rifle, and the kid reached for it.

Dan ran up the steps and pushed Claire through the door.

He slammed it and dropped the inside security bar. Claire stood facing him with a dumbfounded look. The four outside were frozen in place.

CHAPTER 1

It Never Ends

Life takes strange turns. Take me. My life has been convoluted. I got a rich girl pregnant when I was a teenager. Her folks made us marry and sent us to Phoenix so their friends wouldn’t know. We had twins, then another child two years later. My mother, who was a waitress, went along. She babysat when she wasn’t working. Mom had an attraction to certain kinds of men. She took up with the chauffeur, who was a pal of a rich underworld character. The boyfriend unexpectedly died, and his boss, the underworld guy, gave me a job. My wife got tired of the grind and took the kids back to her folks in Philadelphia. Soon after, while I was working and going to school, I met Swifty. His name was Colin Koenig then. I was assigned by the big boss to keep an eye on him.

Swifty had run an errand for my boss and got tangled in a criminal venture by mistake. He had to take the fall for my boss’s son, Jake, a real jerk at the time. While Swifty was serving federal time, I met his wife and helped her with things. We became friends. I guess I was sort of in love with her for thirty years. Oh, Swifty landed on his feet. He started a business when he got out, helping people reach their potential. I was one of those people. My boss, the tough guy, felt bad about what happened to Swifty and had him watched over in jail. Swifty was placed in the hands of some well-educated con men who forced him to gain the courage and know-how to start his help business. Swifty and my boss had a love-hate relationship for years but got pretty close before the old man died.

My boss’s son, the aforementioned Jake, fired me for asking for a raise. He was still a jerk then. The old man saw to it that a real estate mogul whom he helped with financing hired me. I became a successful real estate guy and later an insurance executive. I had the confidence because of what Swifty taught me. His wife, Kim, was my right hand in the real estate business. Kim was Swifty’s life love and probably mine too.

Swifty and Kim were also very successful after thirty years of hard work. Kim ran our real estate business as I merged with a huge insurance company who financed us, and I eventually became its CEO. My chairman was another Swifty product—Pete Phenet.

Kim became ill with a rare kidney disease and had to have a transplant in the early ‘90s. My old underworld boss arranged for a special treatment that involved using a dog to carry a kidney and grow it for her. The process was similar to chimerics. Kim lived nearly twenty years with that kidney. Her dog, Spirit, died along the way but was replaced with Spirit II. That pup just recently died at age seventeen. Six years since her death and Swifty is just now back into dating. Wow!

Well, our old boss, Artie Leonardo, died years ago, probably a little early due to the residual effects of gunshot wounds that both he and Swifty suffered in the ‘80s. Swifty has had no ill effects except that he has become bolder at risk taking.

Swifty has taken on some very interesting assignments, branching out beyond motivating people to solving problems. He once traveled to Somalia for the State Department and made a deal to get food to two starving tribes over on the Ethiopian border, then worked out a deal to prevent a war in the region. That’s how he met Perc, the tough combat colonel who pulled him out alive when it looked like no hope existed. Evidently, Perc was impressed with Swifty, because he has been with him most of the time since.

A few years ago, we (yeah, me too—I make my contribution) got tangled up with a weird crime cult called the Odums. Around since the 1830s, these characters show no mercy. While they are loyal Americans, they do it their way by running prostitution rings, harvesting and selling body parts, killing high-profile people for hire, and any other high-risk, high-reward opportunity that arises. Swifty’s school chum