by Carl Hiaasen
Christina was on her second cup of coffee when she said, “I’ve been a pretty good sport about all this, don’t you agree?”
“Sure.” He had his eyes on the faraway lights of a tramp freighter plowing south in the Gulf Stream.
Christina said, “I know I’ve asked before, but I’m going to try again: What the hell are we doing out here?”
“I thought you liked this place.”
“I love it, Mick, but I still don’t understand.”
“We can’t go back to the stilt house. Not yet, anyway.”
“But why come here?” She was nearly out of patience with the mystery.
“Because I needed a place where something could happen, and no one would see it. Or hear it.”
“Mick—”
“There’s no other way.” He stood up and poured out the cold dregs of his coffee, which splattered against the bare serrated coral. He noticed that the tide was slipping out. “There’s no other way to deal with people like this,” he said.
Christina turned to him. “You don’t understand. I can’t do this, I can’t be a part of this.”
“You wanted to come along.”
“To observe. To report. To get the story.”
Stranahan’s laugh carried all the way to Hawk Channel. “Story?”
She knew how silly it sounded, and was. Willie had the television cameras, and Reynaldo Flemm had Willie. Reynaldo . . . another macho head case. He had sounded so odd when she had phoned from the mainland; his voice terse and icy, his laugh thin and ironic. He was cooking up something, although he denied it to Christina. Even when she told him about the wild incident at the Plaza, about how she had almost been shot again, Reynaldo’s reaction was strangely muted and unreadable. When she had called again two hours later from a pay booth at the marina, the secretary in New York told Christina that Reynaldo had already left for the airport. The secretary went on to report, in a snitchy tone, that Reynaldo had withdrawn fifteen thousand dollars from the emergency weekend travel account—the account normally reserved for commercial airline disasters, killer earthquakes, political assassinations, and other breaking news events. Christina Marks could not imagine what Reynaldo intended to do with fifteen grand, but she assumed it would be a memorable folly.
And there she was in Florida: no camera, no crew, no star. So she had boarded the marine patrol boat with Mick Stranahan and Luis Córdova.
Standing in the moonglow, watching the tide lick the coral under her feet, Christina said again: “I can’t be a part of this.”
Stranahan put an arm around her. It reminded Christina of the hugs her father sometimes gave her when she was a child and something sad had made her cry. A gesture that said he was sorry, but nothing could be done; sometimes the world was not such a good place.
“Mick, let’s just go to the police.”
“These are the police. Remember?”
She looked at his face, searching the shadows for his expression. “So that’s who you’re waiting for.”
“Sure. Who’d you think?”
Christina pretended to slap herself on the forehead. “Oh, silly me—I thought it might be that huge skinny freak who keeps trying to shoot us.”
Stranahan shook his head. “Him, we don’t wait for.”
“Mick, this still isn’t right.”
But the hug was finished, and so was the discussion. “There’s a lantern back at the house,” he told her. “I want you to take a walk around the island. A long walk, okay?”
CHAPTER 23
JOE Salazar said, “You got to steer yesterday.”
“For Christ’s sake,” mumbled Murdock.
“Come on, Johnny, it’s my turn.”
They were gassing up the boat at Crandon Marina on Key Biscayne. It was the sheriff’s department’s boat, a nineteen-foot Aquasport with a forest-green police stripe down the front. It was the same boat that the two detectives had borrowed the day before. The sergeant in charge of the marine division had not wanted to loan the boat to Murdock or Salazar because it was obvious that neither knew how to navigate. The sergeant wondered if they even knew how to swim. Both men were wearing new khaki deck shorts that revealed pale legs, chubby legs that had seldom been touched by salt or sunlight: landlubber’s legs. The sergeant had surrendered the Aquasport only when John Murdock flashed the murder warrant and said the suspect had been spotted on a house way out in Stiltsville. The sergeant had asked why they weren’t taking any backups along, since there was room on the boat, but Murdock hadn’t seemed to hear the question.
When the two detectives had returned to the dock a few hours later, the sergeant had been pleasantly surprised to find no major structural damage to the Aquasport or its drive shaft. But when Murdock and Salazar in their stupid khakis showed up again the following afternoon, the sergeant wondered how long their luck would hold out on the water.
“Go ahead and drive,” Murdock grumped at the gas dock. “I don’t give a shit.”
Joe Salazar took a stance behind the steering console. He tried not to gloat. Then it occurred to him: “Where do we look now?”
The day before, Stranahan’s stilt house had been empty. They had torn the rooms apart for clues to his whereabouts, found none, and departed in frustration. The whole way back, Murdock had complained about how the shoulder holster was chafing through his mesh tank top. Twice they had run the boat aground on bonefish flats, and both times Murdock had forced Salazar to hop out in the mud and push. For this, if for nothing else, Salazar figured that he deserved to be the captain today.
Murdock said: “I tell you where we look. We look in every goddamn stilt house on the bay.”
“Yeah, like a regular canvass.”
“Door to door, except by boat. You know the fuckwad’s out there somewhere.”
Joe Salazar felt better now that they had a plan. He paid the dock attendant for the gasoline, cranked up the big Evinrude on the back of the Aquasport, and aimed the bow toward Bear Cut. Or tried. The boat didn’t want to move.
The dock attendant snickered. “Helps to untie it,” he said, pointing with one of his bright white sneakers.
Sheepishly Joe Salazar unhitched the lines off the bow and stern and shoved off. John Murdock said, “What a wiseass that guy was. Didn’t he see we had guns?”
“Sure he did,” Salazar replied, steering tentatively toward the channel.
“This town is gone to shit,” Murdock said, spitting over the gunwale, “when a guy with a gun has to put up with that kind of bull.”
“Everybody’s a wiseass,” Joe Salazar agreed. Nervously he was watching a gray outboard coming in the other direction along the opposite side of the channel. The boat had a blue police light mounted in the center. A young Latin man in a gray uniform stood behind the windshield. He waved to them: the world-weary wave of one cop to another.
“What do I do?” Salazar asked.
“Try waving back,” said Murdock.
Salazar did. The man in the gray boat changed his course and idled toward them.
“Grouper trooper,” John Murdock whispered. Salazar nodded as if he knew what his partner was talking about. He didn’t. He also didn’t know how to stop the Aquasport. Every time he pulled down on the throttle, the engine jolted into reverse. When he pushed the lever the other way, the boat would shudder and shoot forward. Backward, forward, backward again. The big Evinrude sounded like it was about to blow up. Joe Salazar could tell that Murdock was seething.
“Try neutral,” the young marine patrolman called. “Move the throttle sideways till it clicks.”
Salazar did as he was told, and it worked.
“Thanks!” he called back.
Under his breath, Murdock said: “Yeah, thanks for making us look like a couple of jerkoffs.”
The marine patrol boat coasted up on the port side of the Aquasport. The young officer introduced himself as Luis Córdova. He asked where the two detectives were headed, and if he could help. Joe Salazar told him they were goi
ng to Stiltsville to serve a murder warrant.
“Only one guy lives out there that I know of,” Luis Córdova said.
Murdock said: “That’s the guy we want.”
“Mick Stranahan?”
“You know him?”
“I know where he lives,” said Luis Córdova, “but he’s not there now. I saw him only yesterday.”
“Where?” blurted Joe Salazar. “Was he alone?”
“Yeah, he was alone. Sitting on the conch dock down at Old Rhodes Key.”
Murdock said, “Where the hell’s that?”
“South of Elliott.”
“Where the hell’s Elliott?”
The marine patrolman said, “Why don’t you guys just wait a few hours and follow me down? The tide won’t be right until dusk. Besides, you might need some extra muscle with this guy.”
“No. Thanks anyway.” John Murdock’s tone left no chance for discussion. “But we could use a map, if you got one.”
Luis Córdova disappeared briefly behind the steering console. When he stood up again, he was smiling. “Just happened to have an extra,” he said.
A half hour out of the marina, Joe Salazar said to his partner: “Maybe we should’ve asked what he meant about the tides.”
The Aquasport was stuck hard on another mud flat, this one a mile south of Soldier Key. John Murdock cracked open his third can of beer and said: “You’re the one wanted to drive.”
Salazar leaned over the side of the boat and studied the situation. He decided there was no point in getting out to push. “It’s only six inches deep,” he said, a childlike marvel in his voice. “On the map it sure looked like plenty of water, didn’t it?”
Murdock said, “If you’re a starfish, it’s plenty of water. If you’re a boat, it’s a goddamn beach. Another thing: I told you to get three bags of ice. Look how fast this shit is melting.” He kicked angrily at the cooler.
Joe Salazar continued to stare at the shallow gin-clear water. “I think the tide’s coming in,” he said hopefully.
“Swell,” said Murdock. “That means it’s only what?—another four, five hours in the mud. Fanfuckingtastic. By then it’ll be good and dark, too.”
Salazar pointed out that the police boat was equipped with excellent lights. “Once we get off the flat, it’s a clean shot down to the island. Deep water the whole trip.”
He had never seen his partner so jumpy and short-tempered. Normally John Murdock was the picture of a cool tough cop, but Salazar had watched a change come over him beginning the night they took the down payment from Commissioner Roberto Pepsical. Five thousand cash, each. Five more when it was done. To persuade the detectives that he was not the booze-swilling lech that he had appeared to be at the nudie joint, the commissioner had arranged the payoff meeting to take place in one of the empty confessionals at St. Mary’s Catholic Church in Little Havana. The confessional was dimly lit and no bigger than a broom closet; the three conspirators had to stand sidewise to fit. It had been a dozen years since Joe Salazar had stepped inside a confessional and not much had changed. The place reeked of damp linen and guilt, just as he remembered. He and Murdock stuffed the cash in their jackets and bolted out the door together, nearly trampling a quartet of slow-footed nuns. Commissioner Roberto Pepsical stayed alone in the confessional and recited three Hail Marys. He figured it couldn’t hurt.
Back in the car, John Murdock had not displayed the crude and cocky ebullience that usually followed the taking of a hefty bribe; rather, his mood had been taciturn and apprehensive. It had stayed that way for two days.
Now, with the boat stuck fast on the bonefish flat, Murdock sulked alone in the stern, glaring at the slow crawl of the incoming tide. Joe Salazar lit a Camel and settled in for a long, tense afternoon. He didn’t feel so well himself, but at least he knew why. This was the biggest job they’d ever done, and the dirtiest. By a mile.
IN fact, the tides would not have mattered if either of the two detectives had known how to read a marine chart. Even at dead low, there was plenty of water from Cape Florida all the way to Old Rhodes Key. All you had to do was follow the channels, which were plainly marked on Luis Córdova’s map.
Mick Stranahan knew that Murdock and Salazar would run the boat aground. He also knew that it would be nighttime before they could float free, and that they would make the rest of the trip at a snail’s pace, fearful of repeating the mishap.
He and Luis Córdova had talked this part out. Together they had calculated that the two detectives would reach the island between nine and midnight, provided they didn’t hit the shoal off Boca Chita and shear the prop off the Evinrude. Luis had offered to tail the Aquasport at a discreet distance, but Stranahan told him no. He didn’t want the marine patrolman anywhere near Old Rhodes Key when it happened. If Luis was there, he’d want to do it by the book. Wait for the assholes to make their move, then try to arrest them. Stranahan knew it would never work that way—they’d try to kill Luis, too. And even if Luis was as sharp as Stranahan thought, it would be a mess for him afterward. An automatic suspension, a grand jury, his name all over the newspapers. No way, Stranahan told him, no hero stuff. Just give them the map and get lost.
Besides, Stranahan already had his hands full with Christina Marks on the island.
“I don’t want to go for a walk,” she said. “Grandmothers and widows go for walks. I’m staying here with you.”
“So you can take notes, or what?” He handed her a Coleman lantern. The jumpy white light made their shadows clash on the cinder-block walls. Stranahan said, “You’re not a reporter anymore, you’re a goddamn witness.”
She said, “Is this your idea of pillow talk? Half an hour ago we were making love, and now I’m a ‘goddamn witness.’ You ever thought of writing poetry, Mick?”
He was down on one knee, pulling items from one of the duffel bags. Without looking up, he said, “You said you couldn’t be a part of this, I’m trying to accommodate you. As for the afterglow, you want to waltz in the moonlight, we’ll do that later. Right now there’s a pair of bad cops on their way out here to shoot me.”
“You don’t know that.”
“Yeah, you’re right,” Stranahan said. “They’re probably just collecting Toys for Tots. Now go.”
He stood up. In the lantern light, Christina saw that his arms were full: binoculars, a poplin Windbreaker, a pair of corduroys, an Orioles cap, a fishing knife, and a round spool of some kind.
She said, “It’s not for the damn TV show that I want to stay. I’m scared for you. I don’t know why—since you’re being such a prick—but I’m worried about you, I admit it.”
When Stranahan spoke again, the acid was gone from his voice. “Look, if you stay . . . if you were to see something, they’d make you testify. Forget reporter’s privilege and First Amendment—doesn’t count for a damn thing in a situation like this. If you witness a crime, Chris, they put you under oath. You don’t want that.”
“Neither do you.”
He smiled drily. She had him on that one. It was true: He didn’t want any witnesses. “You’ve had enough excitement,” he told her. “Twice I’ve nearly gotten you killed. If I were you, I’d take that as a hint.”
Christina said, “What if you’re wrong about them, Mick? What if they only want to ask more questions? Even if they’re coming to arrest you, you can’t just—”
“Go,” he said. Later he would explain that these cops were buddies of the late Judge Raleigh Goomer, and that what they wanted from Mick Stranahan was payback. Asking questions was not at all what they had in mind. “Take the path I showed you. Follow the shoreline about halfway down the island and you’ll come to a clearing. You’ll see some plastic milk crates, an empty oil drum, an old campfire hole. Wait there for me.”
Christina gave him a frozen look, but he didn’t feel it. His mind was in overdrive, long gone.
“There’s some fruit and candy bars in the Tupperware,” he said. “But don’t feed the raccoons, they bite like he
ll.”
She was twenty yards down the path when she heard him call, “Hey, Chris, you forgot the bug spray.”
She shook her head and kept walking.
Fifteen minutes later, when Stranahan was sure she was gone, he carried his things down to Cartwright’s dock. There he lit another lantern and hung it on a nail in one of the pilings. Then he pulled off his sneakers, kicked out of his jeans, and slid naked into the cool flowing tides.
FOR Joe Salazar, it was a moment of quiet triumph at the helm. “By God, we did it.”
John Murdock made a snide chuckle. “Yeah, we found it,” he said. “The Atlantic fucking Ocean. A regular needle in a haystack, Joe. And all it took was three hours of dry humping these islands.”
Salazar didn’t let the sarcasm dampen his newfound confidence. The passage through Sand Cut had been hairy; even at a slow speed, navigating the swift serpentine channel at night was an accomplishment worth savoring. Murdock knew it, too; not once had he tried to take the wheel.
“So this is the famous Elliott Key.” Murdock scratched his sunburned cheeks. The Aquasport idled half a mile offshore, rocking in a brisk chop. The beer was long gone, the ice melted. In the cool breeze Murdock had slipped into a tan leather jacket, the one he always wore to work; it looked ridiculous over his khaki shorts. Dismally he slapped at his pink shins, where a horsefly was eating supper.
Joe Salazar held the chart on his lap, a flashlight in his right hand. With the other hand he pointed: “Like I said, Johnny, from here it’s a straight nine-mile run to Rhodes. Twelve feet of water the whole way.”
Murdock said, “So let’s go, Señor Columbus. Maybe we can make it before Christmas.” He readjusted his shoulder holster for the umpteenth time.