The boat trailed them for twenty miles before Pilate shouted in Taters’s ear over the roar of the engines, “We taking the long way home?”
“Yeah…got to. We’re going to have to go west. They’ve got us cut off pretty good from the east. We’ll move out toward the Dry Tortugas. We might get lucky and run into enough boats between here and there so they’ll stop chasing us. Then we’ll go back around the Marquesas—well, as close as we can—away from the shallows. Then we’ll go south a ways and come back up north to Key West.”
“That’s going to take all day,” Pilate said. “Are you sure we shouldn’t just make a beeline back?”
“That boat’s bigger and faster,” Taters said, “and if they can drive us east and north further out, then we’re probably dead men. We need to get around other boats.”
“How we doing on gas?”
“We probably have enough if we don’t get too many more surprises,” he said. “She’s got range, but what worries me is those Chryslers getting tired. We blow a gasket, and that’s it.”
“Have you blown a gasket before?” Pilate said, looking at Taters with a mixture of hope and forbidding.
Taters glanced at him a moment, then pushed his straw hat lower on his brow.
“Great,” Pilate said.
Two hours later, the other boat continued to follow them.
“What about the radio? Can we call the Coast Guard?”
“Well, yeah, but as soon as we do, the other boat will hear it and peel off,” he said. “Then we’ll have to explain to the Coasties why we called.”
“We could blow a gasket,” Pilate offered.
“Too risky,” he said. “We make the call, and the other boat could stick to our asses until we killed the engines. They’d make short work of us. And I assure you, we don’t want to deal with these guys. They want the coordinates for the sub, and then they’ll want us dead because we know where it is.”
“So we have to outrun them?” Pilate said.
“Yup.”
“But even then they’re still after us,” Pilate said.
“Yeah. Thanks, pal.”
“I’m sorry, Taters,” he said. “I really am.”
“I know,” he said, “but I knew this was going to be risky on the way in.”
“What about Jordan?”
“Fortunately, she’s on a plane to Oklahoma to see her folks,” he said. “She left last night.”
“Thank God,” Pilate said.
“Yeah, God and the fact that her mom’s a hypochondriac. She’s always happily ill—thinks she’s dying of athlete’s foot or prickly heat or whatever every other week.”
“Small favors,” Pilate said, looking astern at the boat that had no problem keeping pace with the TenFortyEZ.
“So when we get back, we need to go to a very public place and stay there until we can figure out what to do,” Taters said.
“Yeah, but if these guys are going to kill us anyway, shouldn’t we just go to the Coast Guard?”
“Let’s think it through,” he said. “We can get back, get an anonymous tip to the Coasties, and then you and me can get the hell out of town before the pirates or smugglers or whatever the hell they are get to us.”
“I know a great place in the middle of nowhere,” Pilate said.
“That’s okay,” he said. “Oklahoma is close enough to nowhere for me.”
They made it around the Marquesas and darted around the Dry Tortugas, but they didn’t see enough other boats to risk stopping. Taters turned the TenFortyEZ back toward Key West.
“It’s make or break,” Pilate said. “They’re still on our ass.”
“Who are those guys?” Taters said.
Mid-afternoon and less than twenty miles from Key West, the TenFortyEZ engines started to hiccup.
“Shit!” Taters said.
“Are they messed up bad?”
“Ever hear of anything being messed up good?”
“How long?”
“Well, they’re running hot, but the good news is they aren’t broken—just out of gas. At least one of them’s going to give it up any minute though. I can tell.”
As if his prediction was a wish, one of the engines coughed and stopped.
“That’s it. We’re done. Take the wheel. We’ll have to limp along the best we can on fumes for a bit.”
Taters went below, returning with a small yellow box.
“Yep. I poured what little I had left in reserve, but it won’t get us but another couple or three miles. All that zigzagging and taking the long way at top speed ate up our juice.”
“Damn,” Pilate said. “What’s that?”
“Flare gun,” he said, opening the box and loading the flare cartridge into the red plastic gun.
“What the hell are you doin’? Trying some James Bond action?” Pilate said.
“What?”
“Shoot the flare at the boat? Set some gas on fire?”
“We’re out of gas, genius, and even if I did have…oh, never mind. I’m going to signal for help,” he said, firing the flare. He made a distress call. “Mayday! Mayday! This is TenFortyEZ. I repeat, mayday!” He gave their nautical position and added that the boat was disabled. “I require immediate assistance. Two people onboard. Mayday, mayday, mayday! TenFortyEZ. Over.”
“What now?” Pilate said.
“All we can do is hope that boat over there saw the flare and heard the message,” he said.
Pilate scooped up the binoculars and spotted a large catamaran.
“TenFortyEZ, this is RickRoll. TenFortyEZ. this is RickRoll. Do you copy? We have heard your call and are making way to your position. Please respond.”
Pilate watched the pursuing boat veer off as soon as the cat responded to Taters’s distress call.
“Rick Rogers? It had to be that ass.” Taters laughed. “His cat just saved our lives—probably a booze cruise with fifty drunks on it. Way too many people for our pursuers to want to mess with this close to Key West.”
“Thank God,” Pilate said.
The catamaran cruised to their position within fifteen minutes. True to form, it was full of revelers drinking and dancing on the cat decks.
A man in a goofy captain’s hat called over to the TenFortyEZ. “Taters? You okay? What’s up, buddy?”
“Howdy, Rick. We ran outta gas. Fuel line must be leaking. Can you spare any juice?” Taters said.
“No-can-do on the gas, but we’ll wait here until a tug comes out. Sound good?”
“Fair enough,” Taters said. “Thanks, Rick.” Once Rick was out of earshot, Taters turned to Pilate. “Never thought that showboat driver would end up saving my life.”
A leggy brunette wearing a red bikini and holding a large martini shaker appeared behind Rick. “Hey, guys, you want a drink while you…wait a minute. Is that you, Nebraska?”
“Yup. Hi, Marlene,” Pilate said, smiling.
“Fancy meeting you here,” she said with a delighted giggle. “Let me fix you guys a drink.”
Taters turned to Pilate. “What is it with you anyway? A hot little cop and now this?”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
The tug back into the harbor was quiet. Pilate and Taters barely spoke, consumed as they were with a new set of worries and fears. They saw no sign of the boat that had driven the TenFortyEZ to near-ruin. They tied up the boat after refueling.
Pilate jumped when his cell phone ring broke the silence. He noted a 305 area code on the screen, indicating that the call was coming from somewhere in the Keys. “Hello?”
Static smacked his ear, and then a garbled voice spoke as if it were deep in a well. “Are you sleeping? Are you sleeping? Brother John?”
“Who is this?”
“Morning bells are ringing. Morning bells are ringing. Ding, ding, dong. Ding, ding, dong…”
“Who the fuck is this?” Pilate snarled.
Click.
“So?” Taters asked. “Who the fuck was that?”
“Little Jack Ho
rner,” he said, dialing the number, “or maybe Indrid Cold.”
After several dozen more rings, the call went unanswered and did not go to voicemail.
“Shit.”
“Cold?” Taters cocked his head and looked at Pilate. “Okay. Well, what did he say?”
“Nothing intelligible,” Pilate said, “but I think I know what he meant.”
“Where to now?” Taters asked as they walked away from the TenFortyEZ.
“I think we better go somewhere heavily populated,” Pilate said, “someplace they won’t dare to come looking or start trouble—a place with witnesses.”
Careful to avoid the webcam’s passive gaze, Pilate and Taters slipped in to plastic chairs at the Hog’s Snout Saloon.
“Haven’t been here in a while,” Taters said.
“Me neither,” Pilate said, “not since a guy got a fatally close shave in the bathroom.”
“Ugh,” Taters said. “Modelo,” he told the waitress, “and throw a shot of tequila in there, won’t you?”
“Dos,” Pilate said, lighting a Marlboro 25.
“So, this is where you got unintentionally involved, eh?” Taters said.
Pilate nodded, exhaling smoke from his nostrils. “I’m going to miss these,” Pilate said, drawing on the cigarette.
“Not as much as you think,” Taters said. “I smoked a few years, and now the thought of that shit makes me want to gag.”
“Like right now?”
“A little, but we all need our little vices in times like these,” he said.
The waitress brought their drinks, and the pair ordered burgers and a basket of conch fritters.
“What’s our next move?” Taters said.
“Hmm.”
“Well, for starters, I think it’s like the man said. We’re gonna need lawyers, guns, and money.”
“No shit,” Pilate said. “But we need to get word of all this to the Coast Guard, right?”
“Yep, but how do we do that without getting pulled into this mess? A phone call?”
“Probably the simplest way,” Pilate said. “We use a pay phone and keep everything anonymous.”
“Okay, but I don’t want my voice on any recording,” Taters said.
“How do you know they’ll record it?”
“I don’t, but it seems like a probability, and we can’t be too careful,” he said, drinking a shot and sipping his Modelo.
“The chip!” Pilate said. “We could send them the chip.”
“Won’t that take more time than we got?”
“Yeah, but we could tell them they could find it in a public place,” Pilate said. “I mean, it’s in a public place—as far as I know anyway.”
“What?”
“It’s in the White House,” Pilate said. “The Little White House.”
Tired and nervous as they were, they devoured the food in mere moments after the waitress delivered it.
Taters laughed and sat back in his chair, stretching. “I cannot…” he said, leaning forward with his muscled, tan forearms on the table, “believe you did that. What the hell were you thinking?”
“I thought I was being followed, so I ditched it and plugged the coordinates into the cell,” Pilate said.
“Clever boy,” Taters said, “but let’s just hope it was clever enough.”
“So we do what? Call the Coast Guard front desk?”
“Got any better ideas?” Taters said.
“Well, what if I ask Kay—“
“The cop? Um, no.”
Pilate nodded. “Yeah, you’re right. That would put her in a bad spot.”
“Not to mention getting our asses thrown in jail. Maybe we can just write a note or something—or maybe we need to go back and get the chip and drop it in the mail to them.”
Pilate thought for a moment. “I may know another way,” he said.
“Oh? Do tell,” Taters said, waving the waitress over for another drink.
“Buster.”
“Cherry?”
“Ha. No. I’m talking about that P.I., the retired cop. I can tell him where the chip is, and he’s in tight enough with the Key West PD to make sure nothing dirty rubs off on us.”
“You think he’d do it?”
“Maybe not for me personally, but he would for Trevathan,” he said, leaning back and scanning the bar. “Let’s put it that way.”
“Well, I don’t have any better ideas,” Taters said. “Call him.”
“Okay, it’s all set. He’s going to meet us at my place,” Pilate said. “We show up, fill him in on the chip, and leave town. In the meantime, he retrieves it and makes sure it falls into the right hands.”
“Sounds good,” Taters said, standing, “not optimal, mind you, but the best we can hope for.”
“Let’s go,” Pilate said.
On Duval, Taters signaled for a cab.
Pilate waved one off. “It’s not far. Might want to take it easy and give Buster time to get there.” Pilate looked around. As busy as Key West always is, there was only a small crowd of people two blocks down, following in rapt attention a man in a cloak and top hat.
“You’re doomed!” the man in the top hat shouted as a passing car honked.
“Ghost tour,” Taters said. “How appropriate.”
A block over, they ran into a gaggle of pretty, tan young women, all stumbling drunk.
“Is youth wasted on the young?” Pilate asked, smiling.
“Nah. The young are just wasted a lot,” he said, whistling.
“Times like these make me really appreciate life,” Pilate said. “Not to be too corny, but this is the second life-threatening situation I’ve found myself in—actually the third if you count a cancer scare I had this year. I don’t know if I’m dealing with three strikes you’re out or third time’s a charm.”
“After I lost Lizzie, I figured that out,” Taters said. “Have you ever thought about your life when it’s going good?”
The pair ambled down Duval, dodging tourists and keeping an eye out for a tail.
“What do you mean?”
“Well, ever thought about how things are going the night before you wake up to a shitty day?” Taters said, hands in his pockets. “Like if you had an ordinary, decent day, went to sleep, and the next day a doctor looks at you and your wife and tells you she’s got six months to live?”
Pilate looked at Taters.
“You want so bad to go back—to just go back twelve hours or so when you went to bed the night before and everything was more or less right with the world. You want to get that moment or two back and just hold it. You don’t want it to slip away ‘cause the next day, everything goes to shit and that ordinary, decent, boring day is the thing you want most in the world, but you can’t have it. It’s gone…for good.”
“I never thought about it like that,” Pilate said above the noise of a phalanx of rented scooters.
“Most people never do,” he said, “but think about this. Today, as shitty as it was, could be the last, best day of your life.”
“Damn, Taters. That’s deep,” Pilate said.
“Of course, calling a grown man ‘Taters’ kind of ruins the emotional import of it,” Simon chimed in.
“Man swims in dark waters, John,” he said, casting his eyes to the street. “We just very rarely touch bottom enough to know their true depth.”
“Light’s on,” Taters said.
“That’s okay,” Pilate said. “Buster is a pal of Trevathan’s. He has a key, and he’s in there waiting for us. Good guy, far as I can tell.”
“Okay,” Taters said. “And you weren’t kidding. This place is kind of a shack.”
Pilate tried the door; it was locked. He took the key from his pocket and unlocked it, stepping inside.
“Buster, it’s John Pilate—“
“Come in, Mr. Pilate. We’ve been waiting for you,” said the dark man with dreadlocks. Standing over Buster’s prone body, he pointed a pistol at Pilate and Taters. Buster lay on the floor at a
n odd angle in a puddle of bright red blood.
“Ohhhh shit!” Taters said.
“Shut the door,” Dreadlocks said. Behind the men appeared the Hispanic henchman with the mustache who had helped Dreadlocks break in before. He closed the door and locked it, holding a machete like a baseball bat, crazy at the bat.
Pilate and Taters raised their hands.
“It’s cool, it’s cool,” Pilate said, a look of recognition crossing his face. The Hispanic dude had killed Juan in that fateful bathroom. He was the guy Pilate had bumped into in the Hog’s Snout restroom just after Juan gave Pilate his smokes and the poker chip.
Taters flinched a little as the Hispanic man yanked the .45 out of the waistband of his shorts, showed it to Dreadlocks, and tucked it into his own waistband.
“Sit down!” Dreadlocks pointed his pistol at the bullet-ridden sofa, and the pair acquiesced.
“Is he dead?” Pilate asked, looking at Buster.
“Not yet, but soon, mon,” Dreadlocks said, kicking Buster’s shoulder. “He got feisty wid us.”
“We’re not into feisty,” Taters said, clearing his throat.
“Good. Dat’s very good,” Dreadlocks said. He nodded his head at the Hispanic man, who turned and kept an eye on the front porch through the curtains of the bay window. “Hector, you tink they figger it out yet?”
Hector shrugged.
“He don’t talk much,” Dreadlocks said, “but he da master of da double-cross.”
“What can we do for you?” Pilate asked.
“We want da chip, mon,” he said. “Dat simple.”
“Wavy or ruffled?” Taters said.
“What?”
“Nothing,” Pilate said. “We don’t have the chip anymore.”
“Oh, tsk, tsk, tsk,” Dreadlocks said, as if scolding a naughty child. “That beddy bad for you, den. If you don’t have chip, you’re worthless.” He cocked the pistol and pointed it at Buster’s head. “Old man gets it first.”
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