“Hey! Now hey!” Pilate sputtered, pointing at Buster. “That man is a Key West policeman. You don’t want to kill a cop and bring that kind of heat on yourself.”
“Settle down now, mon,” Dreadlocks said. “Let me ask you sumting. Do I look like a man who cares if I kills a cop?”
“He has a point there, John,” Taters said.
“So, what’s it gonna be? Gimme what I want or this old cop gets a bullet, and then you two get ones to match.”
“I don’t have it,” Pilate said, “but what if…what if I tell you where it is?” Pilate said.
“Dat wud help,” he said, uncocking the gun and pointing it down at the floor a second. “Might not save your lives, but it might make your passing less…painful.”
“Well, that’s fucking great,” Taters said. “Look, man, I’m just a boat charter guy. I don’t know anything about this—“
“You know enough, my friend,” Dreadlocks said, “so shut up unless you gonna tell me where I can find da chip.”
“All right,” Pilate said, holding a hand up as if to slow the man down. “The chip’s at the White House.”
“That’s it,” Dreadlocks said, cocking the pistol and pointing it at Buster again.
“The Truman Little White House,” Pilate said, his voice shrill. “The museum. I put the chip on the poker table under Truman’s cards.”
Dreadlocks looked at Pilate as if he had grown a third eye.
“You kidding?” he said. “Look mothafucka, you shud understand that I will kill you right here, right now if you fuckin’ with me.”
“Would I make something like that up?” Pilate said.
“Yeah. That’s some kind of spy novel James Bond-type shit,” Taters said.
Dreadlocks looked at his companion, who shrugged back at him.
“So, what do I do? Take da tour tomorrow?” Dreadlocks said. “Shit.” He pulled a cell phone from his pocket, called someone—presumably his boss—and relayed into the phone what Pilate had told him. “Okay, okay. We wait.” Dreadlocks stepped over Buster and sat in a chair opposite the sofa. He smiled.
“So?” Pilate said.
“So da boss said we wait,” he said. “He’s checking out your story.”
“He’s gonna break into Truman’s place?” Taters said. “That’s a national park.”
“Ooh, you’re right. Park ranger may get him, eh?” Dreadlocks said, his white smile brightly contrasting his red eyes. “Look out, Yogi Bear.”
Pilate looked at Taters, then did a nonchalant scan of the room. It was nearly eight o’clock, the sun was almost bedding down for the night, and they were being held at gunpoint by two thugs who may have fatally injured Buster.
“You won’t get out of here alive, John,” Simon echoed in his brain. “If they find the chip, you die. If they don’t, they torture you until you give them the coordinates, and then you die.”
Pilate swallowed hard. “That moment before we walked in the door was the last, best moment of our lives, wasn’t it?” Pilate asked.
Taters nodded slowly, never taking his eyes off the gun leveled at his chest.
Pilate’s cell phone rang again. They had sat there for over an hour, and the phone kept ringing. “Look, can I answer it? It’s my girlfriend,” Pilate said.
“No,” Dreadlocks said, “but you can hand it here.”
Pilate sighed, holding the ringing phone in his hand.
“Easy der, Mr.,” Dreadlocks said, reaching for the phone. He accepted it from Pilate and looked at the screen. “Now, let’s see who wants to talk to you so bad—“
Buster, who had risen from the floor, with blood droplets flinging from his head, interrupted Dreadlocks with an agonized cry. He looked like the sacrificed bull in Apocalypse Now. His fists were clasped together like a prizefighter or a victorious politician, and he brought the meaty club down on Dreadlocks’s neck with all his might.
The cell phone flew from Dreadlocks’s hand, and the pistol fired into the wooden floor; splinters flew up from the hole into the dark man’s cheek. Dreadlocks yelled in outrage and fell forward, dropping the gun.
Taters dived for the floor, reaching for the gun. Pilate leapt over the sofa toward Hector, who froze in place. He dropped the machete and made a move for the gun in his waistband.
Pilate smacked at the gun, knocking it from his hand. Hector’s eyes widened, ferociously pissed. He smacked Pilate hard under the chin.
White spots fell like snow before his vision as Pilate fell backward against the back of the sofa, where he crumpled in a heap.
Taters scooped up Dreadlocks’s gun and pointed it at Hector. “Don’t do it, Pancho,” he said. His hand shook with fright and adrenaline. “Or the next burrito you eat will be intravenous.”
Hector raised his hands. “Fucking asshole! I’m not Mexican! I’m Puerto Rican.”
“Well,” Taters said, “I don’t know what the fuck passes for burritos in San Juan, but you better get on your knees right now. John, you okay?”
Pilate nodded, holding his jaw and picking up the machete and pistol.
“Buster?” Pilate asked.
Buster nodded, breathing heavily. His head wound was still a mass of red, and a small, grotesquely displaced flap of skin hung from above his left ear. “I’ll be better in just a sec’.” He offered Dreadlocks a savage kick to the head, knocking him out cold. “Oh yeah,” Buster said, falling into the chair, “much better.”
“What do we do now?” Pilate said.
“First thing we do is truss these boys up like Christmas turkeys,” Buster said. “Then we have a little talk about what this is all about. After I make a phone call, you can start.”
Buster pulled out his cell and dialed. “Hello? It’s me. Any chatter tonight? Really?” He listened a moment. “They get anything?” He listened a moment more, wandering into the kitchen, out of earshot.
Moments later, Dreadlocks came to his senses. Taters and Pilate had them in the corner of the living room, sitting on their knees, Dreadlocks’s hands tied with electrical cord from a lamp and Hector’s with his own belt.
“You guys are so over,” Taters said to the thugs.
They held up their hands and flipped him the bird.
Taters flipped the bird back, using both hands.
“Okay, thanks,” Buster said, walking back in the room. “Well, boys,” he said, looking condescendingly at Hector and Dreadlocks, “your boss managed to break in to the Little White House. No idea if he found anything.”
The men nodded at one another in a small moment of victory.
“I wouldn’t be too happy about all this, fellas,” Buster said. “I’m not a cop anymore, and it would be pretty damn easy for me to make sure you’re fish food by dawn.”
Holding a towel packed with ice to his ear and drinking straight vodka, Buster listened intently to Pilate’s story.
“Trev figured you were all mixed up with something to do with a fella from Cross,” Buster said, slamming down the vodka. “Boy, is he gonna be shocked to know you fell into another shit situation altogether.”
“So you didn’t call him before? After we first talked?”
“I did, but he didn’t answer,” Buster said.
“That may be for the best,” Pilate said.
“And you, Skipper? You just happened to be the guy Gilligan here hired for—“
“A three-hour tour,” Taters said, eyeing the two thugs, who were bound and gagged in the corner of the room.
“I guess that makes me Ginger,” Buster said.
“Not exactly,” Pilate said.
“Oh right. Officer Kay is Ginger.”
“I’m more of a Mary Ann kinda guy,” Pilate said. “And she knows nothing about this—zero.”
Buster gently removed the iced towel from his ear. “How bad is this?”
Pilate looked at it. “You need stitches,” he said. “You may also want to get checked for a concussion.”
“Well, before we go any further, we need t
o talk to these guys.” Buster gestured at the thugs on the floor in the corner, their heads hung low. “Before we drown them.”
The men’s heads snapped up to Buster’s face. If they were seeking signs of humor or sarcasm, he offered none.
“Fair enough,” Taters said.
Buster leaned over the two men who were tied together on the floor. “That’s a nasty cut on your face from those splinters,” he said to Dreadlocks, pulling the gag from his mouth.
“Fuck you,” Dreadlocks said.
Buster smiled, then smacked Dreadlocks on the side of the head.
“Okay. Enough of this. So what’s so valuable down there?” Pilate said. “I’d like to know what the hell I was almost killed for.”
“Da night is young, mon,” Dreadlocks said. “The Bahamian will not take this lightly.”
“The Bahamian, eh?” Buster said.
“Bahamian? Pfft. What is this, a bad episode of Miami Vice?” Taters said. “It was drugs,” Taters said.
“How pedestrian,” Simon said.
Dreadlocks shook his head slowly. “Nope. Try again.”
“Well, it’s damn sure not a wreck,” Pilate said.
Dreadlocks smiled. “Not exactly, no. It’s a narco sub for sure, mon, but it isn’t filled wid da narco, you know?”
“Okay. So what is it then?”
“Marchand. You know dat name?”
Pilate shook his head.
“I do,” Taters said. “He’s that rich fella who was killed on his yacht out near Duggan’s Key a while back. Rumor has it he was onto a wreck almost as valuable as the Atocha.”
Dreadlocks smiled, his white teeth glistening in the pale light of the moon through the sunroof. He touched his nose and pointed back at Taters.
“So whatever’s in that sub is part of the haul, right?”
“Right,” Taters said. “It’s whatever Marchand found that he didn’t want to declare to the authorities. He was probably towing the narco sub behind his motor yacht, heading for Alabama or Mississippi so he could unload it there and fence it on the international market.”
“Greedy bastard. Even if he’d declared it, he’d still be rich, right?”
“Hell yeah,” Taters said. “Guess he had his reasons though. I guess the folks he thought were trustworthy turned out not to be.”
“Maybe you should think about that, Mr. Dreadlock,” Pilate said.
“Tink about what?” he said, chuckling.
“You should ‘tink’ about whether your boss will let you live,” Pilate said.
“Let me explain something, my stupid tourist friend,” he said. “Juan was killed because he got greedy. Simple. He was supposed to kill Marchand and tow the sub in to the cove. Instead, he cut it loose and had a pal pick him up. He was stupid enough to think Hector, here, was his friend.”
“You murdered him!” Pilate screamed at Hector. “You vicious bastard! You cut his throat.”
Hector looked at the floor. “And Juan killed Marchand. So what? You Coño got no idea what you’re dealing with.”
“Quiet, John. So, now your boss has the chip, and it’s only a matter of time before he’s figured out the coordinates and goes out there to dive on that sub, hitch it to his boat, and tow it away,” Buster said.
Dreadlocks and his companion said nothing.
“Okay,” Buster said. “What kind of boat does your boss have?”
“Oh, we’ve seen it,” Taters said. “New speeder—faster than shit and more than enough to tow that narco sub away.”
Buster looked at Pilate and Taters. “Gentlemen, mind joinin’ me over in the kitchen for a minute?”
Double-checking that the bonds and gags were in place on the thugs, the trio went to the kitchen.
“Aspirin?” Buster asked.
“Buster, maybe you shouldn’t be taking any blood thinners at the moment,” Pilate said.
“Yeah, yeah, Doc,” he said, waving Pilate off. “Okay, here’s the deal. We call the Coasties and tell ‘em everything. Maybe we’ll get cut in on the reward money if there is any.”
“Sounds like a plan,” Pilate said.
Taters nodded. “I’m in.”
Okay. Then we gotta…” Pilate stopped when he heard his phone ringing. He picked it up off the floor and checked the caller ID. “Unknown caller. Might be Kate or Trevathan. Hang on.” He accepted the call and put the phone to his ear. “Hello?”
“Is this Mr. Pilate?” a heavily accented voice asked.
“Who’s this?”
“Oh, you can call me…” There was an uncomfortable pause, during which Pilate noted that the voice had a Caribbean flavor, not exactly Jamaican like Mr. Dreadlocks. “Call me Mistah Bahamas.”
“Oh really? So you’re the mysterious Bahamian, huh?” Pilate looked at Buster and Taters, and both expressed surprise and curiosity.
“Indeed,” the voice said.
“Well, if you’re calling because you want your men back, that’s probably not going to happen, so—“
“Oh I don’t care what yinna do with them,” he said.
“What do you want then?” Pilate demanded. “We’re going to the police and the Coast Guard, so I’m afraid you’re screwed, buddy.”
“No need to make such hasty decisions, Mr. Pilate,” he said. “Let me explain.” A brief pause and a ruffling sound were audible.
“John? I’m so sorry,” Kay said.
“Kay? What are you doing with…oh my God! Kay!”
The Bahamian took the phone back. “See, Mr. Pilate, I have something very valuable dat you want, and you have something very valuable dat I want. A simple enough equation, don’t you tink?”
“You hurt her—you lay one fucking finger on her, you slime—and you’re a dead man,” Pilate said, his teeth clamping around every syllable.
“Easy, John,” Simon said from the reaches of his mind.
Buster unwittingly agreed, holding up his hands as if to beg him to calm down.
“I would never harm one of Key West’s finest,” he said, “especially one so gorgeous. She ain’t no ordinary cutter, this one.” Pilate heard a sound like someone spitting. “Oh now. Spittin’? Das a nomanners gal.”
“What do you want? It’s not like we can forget where the sub is,” Pilate said, his voice growing ever higher and tighter.
“Simple. You get on the potato man’s boat—da tree of you. No, wait. Make that all five. Bring Felix and Hector with you and meet us out at the sub. We exchange the girl for my guys, then you let us take da sub and go. Of course, we’ll hafta disable your boat.”
“What, so you can kill us?” Pilate said. “Fuck that.”
“Your only choice is to hope I’m feeling charitable. You come with police or Coasties, I kill this little cutter. I’ll slit her troat right on deck. You try to stop me, maybe I take her wid me and she enters the exciting world of white slavery. Your choice.”
“You hurt her, and the law will hunt you down,” Buster said, pulling Pilate’s hand and the cell phone closer to his mouth.
“Of course!” He laughed. “So why not make it easy? You come out, bring my boys, and we do the exchange, then we sail away and everybody happy.”
Pilate looked at Taters and Buster; their faces were grim at best. He looked over at Felix and Hector, who were smiling broadly beneath the gags in their mouths.
“Fuck.” Simon said.
“Fuck.” Pilate echoed.
“Copycat.”
“Put Felix on the phone,” the Bahamian ordered. “I’m going to tell him to watch you guys. If Felix and Hector don’t show up along with you, and in good health, I will dice your girlfriend up so fine the sharks will need toothpicks. If you make a phone call between now and the time you get here, he will tell me when you arrive, and I will kill your nomanners girlfriend. If you do anything that even looks like you’re trying to fuck me, your girlfriend will be suffering the same fate.”
Pilate complied and handed the phone to Felix.
Felix laug
hed for a second and listened. “Yes, boss,” he said, handing the phone back to Pilate, clutched in both of his hands. “Perfectly clear. “
“All right. We’ll be there as soon as we can—should take about an hour,” Pilate said. “No cops. No Coasties. We exchange the men for Kay, and we’ll stay put until you get away.”
“Aww, flip. I knew you could be sensible. We can make this wybe work out. Just don’t be late.”
Pilate ended the call and went back in the kitchen with Taters and Buster.
“Don’t be naughty, my friends,” Felix teased. “I be on you like Sting. I be watching you.”
Pilate looked at Taters and Buster. “He’ll kill her,” he whispered, sweat on his upper lip.
“He’ll kill us,” Taters said, almost as quietly.
“She may be dead before we even get there,” Buster said, flaking off some of the dried blood caked on his ear and throat like chipping paint. “He just wants us to get out there into the kill zone so he can finish us off.”
“So what do we do? We have to leave now if we’re going to get there in time,” Pilate said.
Buster shook his head. “Goddamn my head hurts,” he said. “We have no choice. We go and take our chances. We’ve got our guns and our brains, such as they are.”
“Shit,” Taters said. “Jordan’s gonna kick my ass.”
Gunning the engines on a direct course, Taters plowed the bow of the TenFortyEZ into the choppy evening waters. Buster held a gun on Felix and Hector on the deck astern. Pilate stood beside Taters.
“No funny stuff!” Felix called over the engines.
“No funny stuff, asshole!” Pilate called back. “Buster, you okay?”
“Yeah,” he said. “Little tired and got a damn headache worse than the one I picked up outside Da Nang with Trev, but I’ll live.”
“So you two were in the shit in ‘Nam?” Taters said.
Buster nodded. “Yep. Till late ’66, when Trev’s M-16 blew up in his face and took out that eye of his.”
Pilate looked at Buster. “Oh. I always figured it was a hunting accident.”
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