The Money Vault

The Money Vault
by
Austin Mitchell

During the hurricane, 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 Dexter’s 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 stomped 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 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.
“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.”
“Far as I know none of those guys work. How come all of a sudden they are so busy?”
“Why you so interested in a me friends? What about us?”
“I won’t be able to go back to evening school. 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 thief the bank 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 in the water. 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 in the sofa that night Dex began to think. His mother was due in the island in two month’s time. He had to get rid of the vault. If he got it down to the river the current wasn’t strong to carry it downstream.
That morning, Carline, Reta’s sister came by looking for her.
“Dex, you see Reta? She tell 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,” Dex told her.
“But where she could be? Is only your house I can think about. You sure you don’t have her in there hiding?”
“Why I would do that, Carline?”
“Okay, if you see her tell her that mummy want her to go somewhere for her.”
Dex told her that he would give Reta her message if he saw her.
Two days later there was consternation in their village when Reta’s lifeless body was found several miles down the river.
Dex was down by Reta’s home and he was crying too at the news.
“They strangled her. The police said it no look as if they raped her,” Carline wailed.
Dex looked at Bertie Brown. 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 Bertie he knew he had to kill him before he broke and talk. He knew that Bertie 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.
It took a week for him to gather the whole crew together. It took a certain amount of cajoling 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 country. 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 Bertie 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 one o‘clock. Tuesday night he overslept and didn’t know what happened Wednesday night.
On Saturday night at last he got his chance. At about one o’clock that morning Bertie came out. Dex gave one mighty swing of the steel club and heard when the bones in the man neck crack and he pitched forward without a sound. Dex three down the club and crept silently away.
He was in his bed an hour later when he heard the shouts.
“Murder, them kill Mass Luddy!”
People were running up and down and shouting.
Mass Luddy was Bertie’s father. Jesus Christ! It wasn’t Bertie he had killed!
Dex put on some clothes and went down there.
“What we do them, why them want kill off we family. First a Jabez, then Reta and now Luddy. How the people them a Nelson so wicked,” Miss Pearline, Mass Luddy’s wife, wailed.
Police had yellow taped the area. He went over to Berie and asked him about what had happened.
“A so we find him, the whole a him head bashed in,” Bertie said.
“I must find out a who kill me father though,” the youth wailed.
Dex stayed until the police had finished their investigations. They had found the steel club. He had used newspaper to hold the club and as he had found the club in Bertie’s yard.
He was with the family the whole time, playing dominoes and other games. He was keeping 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.
At last Luddy’s body was released for burial. Dex was at the grave digging, helping to make the vault. He had been at both Reta’s and Jabez’s grave diggings and had helped 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 meant that Bertie hadn’t gone to them as yet. He thought he still had time to get Bertie before he went to the police.
The best thing Dex thought was to engage Bertie in conversation to find out just where the man’s 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. Dex and two men had held up the Chinese man one night. 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 Bally and Juby his two accomplicies.
He had told her about all the deaths. Was she suspicious about his role in those deaths. 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 a what going on. How they kill off so much people?” Bertie asked.
“I hear that the police question lots of people, but nobody know who killed Luddy,” Dex relied.
“It’s the same man who kill Reta, kill me father. I feel that a serial murderer is about the place.”
A chill ran through Dex, but he showed no emotions.
After that conversation, Dex was convinced that Bertie knew that he was the killer.
That night he thought of new ways to kill Bertie. If Bally 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 that man. Where I can find him most of the time? Right now is pure big money me charge, but through a you I will take half price. I have to get half the money before I start work.”
Dex had the money on him and gave it to Naddy. 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 Bertie 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. Then he heard 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, gunman just shoot him, “ a man said.
“Him no dead?” Dex asked.
“I don’t know, them gone with him a hospital.”
Bertie’s sisters and younger brother were all wailing. Miss Pearline must have gone with him to the hospital. Then Dex heard the police siren again.
The police car came down the avenue.
“The guy get way and it look like a bogus license plate him have on the bike.”
“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 day Inspector Davis Lewis was fit to be tied.
“Who do I have working with me, fools, brainless morons?”
He was addressing the two Sergeants and a Corporal seated in his office.
“What’s so difficult about this case?”
“On the night of the hurricane, a vault was stolen. The watchman was hit unconscious. He died a view days later. Three days later his daughter is found on a river bank, dead. She was found stark naked but had not been molested. She and her father were not properly in their grave when somebody ambushes her uncle and bashes in his head.”
The Inspector drank some water before continuing.
“The girl’s uncle has just been buried when an attempt is made on her
cousin’s life.”
“I believe that it has something to do with than bank vault. I believe that
girl was killed because she knew too much. I believe that the attempt was made
on her cousin’s life becausen he knew too much.”
“But why was Luddy murdered?” one of the Sergeants asked.
“His murder is tied into the whole thing. Let’s start with the girl. Who was the last person who saw her alive?”
“Her sister said that her boyfriend, Dex Potinger. He denies that, said that they weren’t friends,” the other Sergeant said.
The Inspector thought for a while.
“Now imagine that, he’s denying that he and the dead girl were friends. I think he has something to hide. Remember that he was implicated Watson Chin’s murder. He only got off because his other accomplices were killed.”
The Inspector drank some more water. He stood up.
“I want you to bring him in for questioning no later than today,” he said as he dismissed them.
That afternoon Dex was in a mango tree down his gully. He could see the road from where he was. He saw when a police car came up the road and stopped at his gate. He saw when the four policemen came out of the car and went up to his gate.
He couldn’t hear what they were saying but he knew that they were looking for. Dex quetly 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 knaw at his stomach before he moved.
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 likely stop all the taxis from Keswick going to Spanish Town.
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 slep 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 slepping in some very uncomfortable places.
Then he met Liston. Liston was from Keswick.
“What I hear that you go on with, Dex?”
Dex explained to Liston what had happed. The huge man kept nodding.
“I know couple men who might find buse for you,” he told Dex.
That was how Dex got to join the Scrappers, who operated out of the Maxfield. When he showed them the newspaper clipping about it there was general agreement that he was a murderer.
Now after six months, several murderers, robberies and arson he was on his way to kidnapping Denzil Chang.
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.
Capone had told them to forget about those hotel, banking and wahatever 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 was’t afraid of cooperation with other Chinese or the new Chinese migrants. 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. Whenn they reached their destination, Dex got 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 a gun 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 Stennett.
“They got Ken and Sten,” Dex shouted. “I don’t think they’ll last long.”
“How many of them are there?” Liston asked.
“Only one gun was firing at us.”
“We’ve got to get in the house and grab Denzil. Where the hell are the back-up guys?” Liston asked. He took out his cell phone.
“Norris, where the hell are you, Bing and Pablo? We need back up to get out.”
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 bid to escape. The ran out of the house but just eached 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.