by Carl Hiaasen
A: It’s got a shotgun shell rigged to blow out on the end of a spear. You pop the shark real good and it explodes. Technically, yes, I guess it’s a firearm. But it’s definitely designed for sharks, not people.
Q: What was Captain Albury’s destination when he left Key West on the twenty fourth of August?
A: An island off Andros.
Q: And what was the purpose of the trip?
A: To work off a debt. They spring him from jail, and, in return, he smuggles their Colombians.
Q: They? Who’s they?
A: Them.
Q: Augie, that isn’t good enough.
A: I’ll tell you what happened on the trip. Nothing more.
Q: All right, what happened?
A: It’s simple. One of the crazy Colombians, his name was Oscar, really went crazy. Breeze had to do something; it was his boat.
Q: This Oscar, what was his last name?
A: Which one, lady? They tell me he had three different passports in his pockets. Guys like Oscar pick a new name every morning while they’re brushing the scum off their teeth. From the time he boarded the Diamond Cutter to the end, he had one thing and one thing only on his mind.
Q: Augie, what did Breeze—Captain Albury—what exactly did he do to stop Oscar?
A: You know the answer to these questions.
Q: Please, Augie, this is legal testimony now, for the record. Tell me what happened at the dock in Key Largo.
A: I’m supposed to meet my cousin at the dog track. I didn’t realize it was so late.
Q: Augie!
A: The thing to remember is that Oscar lied about everything. The guns, the money, everything. We didn’t know the rules, me and Jimmy and Breeze. And when we found out, the nature of the thing changed. The fifty grand was the least of our worries. And when the rules changed, and when Breeze knew it, there was nothing left to happen but what did happen. It was dark and the water was low and mosquitoes were so thick you swallowed them every time you took a deep breath. And, lady, I took some mighty fucking deep breaths that night at Dynamite Docks.
Q: Just a few more questions—
A: What I can’t figure out is why you’re so interested in all this. It’s over and done.
Q: It’s very important for the investigation.
A: Cristo, look at the time. I’ve really got to run.
Chapter 9
AUGIE BURST INTO the wheelhouse with an infectious grin and a cold can of beer. Water pooled at his feet.
“Three nice crawfish and a couple of beautiful little yellowtails.”
Albury grunted and eased back from the counter where he had unfolded the chart. He massaged his eyes with twin knuckles and worked his back.
“Cook ’em up, I’m starved.”
Augie surrendered the beer and scanned the chart. “You been at it for hours, Breeze. You trying to memorize the damn thing?”
“Something like that.”
“Lotta shallow water. The tide will be important.”
Albury nodded grimly. He noticed Jimmy dog-paddling abreast of the anchor rope, nudging their supper before him in a white net bag. “We’ll talk after dinner,” he said to Augie and turned to the chart for one last hard look.
Williams Island, a flyspeck cay off the northwest coast of Andros Island, had been a private rendezvous for quiet men of the sea since the days of Blackbeard; then, as now, a rogue’s haven, no place for the uninvited. Because Williams was one of those places that suited smugglers, it meant two things: either the Bahamians would watch it closely, or they would ignore it.
Albury marked a sandbar that would block his exit from the westernmost beach; the only way out was south, and around, and that route was guarded by a nasty curving reef shrouded by a treacherous seven feet of water at high tide. Augie was right. The tide was everything.
IT WAS ONE of those tropical twilights that poets proclaim and rich men squander. The Diamond Cutter lay at peace in a cove of crystal water on the west coast of Andros. Albury coaxed a last white piece of crawfish from its shell and reflected, not for the first time, that if people ever found out how good fresh-caught seafood really was they would never set foot in restaurants.
Sprawled on a hatch cover, he made no effort to stifle an appreciative belch. When Augie brought three steaming mugs of coffee, Albury arranged the crawfish remnants into a makeshift map on the hatch cover.
“All right, we are here, right off the coast. The pickup is Williams Island. There’s a small beach here on the western side. We’re probably an hour, ninety minutes, at the most, away. One of these assholes will have a big flashlight, so we should see a signal when it’s clear to come in.” Albury pointed with a brittle length of lobster antenna.
“There’s no moon. I want to go in an hour after high tide, just as it’s starting to fall. That means we load fast. The bottom is soft marl, so the prop shouldn’t take a beating. I’ll motor in to maybe thirty yards of the beach, turn us around and keep her in neutral, just in case.”
“You want me to go ashore?” Augie asked.
“It depends. These people might have a small boat. Then we wait, let them do the work. If not, Augie, you swim in with a tow rope, tied to our stern. They get wet, so what? And, remember, I don’t want them hauling a lot of shit aboard. Just them and the clothes on their back, that’s the deal. No suitcases, no boxes. And, most of all”—Albury hammered the hatch cover for emphasis—“no guns. You tell them that right off, Augie, before anybody leaves the beach.”
Jimmy asked, “You expecting trouble?”
“I’m trying to avoid it.”
“What about the Bahamian gunboats?” It was Augie this time.
“Crystal is too far away to give us a good ear, unfortunately. But the odds are in our favor—they got half a dozen boats to patrol seven hundred islands.”
“How far back to Florida?” Jimmy wondered.
“Once we pick ’em up, I figure six, maybe eight hours to Key Largo. A straight run.”
“At least the weather’s decent,” Augie observed.
“Breeze, you forgot the most important thing of all. When do we get paid?”
“It’s COD, Jimmy. We get the cash when they get their Colombians.”
Augie shifted uneasily. “At Dynamite Docks?”
Albury nodded. “Hey, it should be nice and easy,” he said. “Maybe we can even get a little fishing in on the way back to Key West.”
The night was magic. The absence of moon had left more phosphorescence in the shallow tropical waters than Albury had ever seen. He watched mesmerized as schools of fish, their tails ablaze, darted away from the Diamond Cutter’s cleaving bow. A sweet breeze carried the aroma of land and, seemingly, the taste of a better tomorrow.
This was Albury’s element, and he knew it. The sea was all a man would ever need. It was the land that tied you in knots and made you squirm. There was no end of the month at sea. All you had to do was love it, and to fear it a little, and the sea paid you back.
The Diamond Cutter drove straight and true, like a yearling ready to run, as though it, too, could sense the majesty of soft night under an eternal canvas. Gentling the wheel, Albury watched tentative strips of cirrus play tag with the stars.
This was his last run. Albury tried not to think of that; of how he would miss the flow of the deck and the sigh of the sea; of how it would hurt to sell the Diamond Cutter.
He thought instead of the cheering crowds and the poised young righthander with common sense and a raffish grin, pouring it in, mixing his pitches, keeping it low, making it look easy.
Ricky wouldn’t mind leaving Key West too much, Albury reasoned. It was simply the setting for his baseball. There were a million places like it around the country, the same diamond, the same subtle touches of excellence. Maybe out West was the best idea. There were some good baseball towns there, and Albury had heard men talk about the mountains the way he felt about the sea.
Would Laurie want to come, too? Probably not. She had drifted
into Key West and improbably stuck to the Rock the way barnacles cling to driftwood. She loved the place now, as much as he wanted to be rid of it. So be it. If he could live without the sea, he could live without Laurie, he supposed.
Albury wanted a cigarette, but lighting it would rob him of his night vision. Instead, he fished a cough drop from a box by the wheel, eyes never leaving the quiet sea. Squinting, he could just make out a blacker piece of darkness fine on the starboard bow. Williams Island, right on schedule.
JIMMY SAW it first.
“There, Breeze.” His voice seemed unnaturally loud in the blackness. Diamond Cutter lay about a half-mile offshore, engine idling, running lights aglow. Until now, they had been safe. Interception would have meant a chewing out, maybe a fine for violating territorial waters. Now was for keeps.
“Where, Jimmy? Tell me, I can’t see where you’re pointing.”
“One o’clock, Breeze,” Augie called. “Flashing white light.”
Albury saw it then, a pinprick in the vastness. He could imagine the scene on the beach; a dozen mangy Colombians, excited, probably frightened, peering out to sea, wondering if the boat that lay there was a passport to America or a ticket to Fox Hill Prison in Nassau.
Albury closed his eyes for an instant and transposed the dark half-moon of beach before him onto the chart he had studied that afternoon. It tasted right.
Behind him, water was beginning to empty out with the tide, flattening the long sinister reef. Albury pointed the Diamond Cutter toward the beach and nudged the throttle.
There was no dock, as Albury had known; and his passengers had no boat of their own, as he had feared. Even so, the transfer went smoothly until one of the Colombians drowned.
Augie had swum in easily, a three-quarter-inch nylon tow rope in his teeth. Albury could see him naked at the center of a knot of figures on the beach. Augie swam back alone, and Albury levered him into the boat. Gasping, the young Cuban needed no coaxing.
“There must be twenty of them, Breeze, including a few women. They all stink; Jesus, they stink. And they are in a big hurry.”
“Shit,” Albury sighed. A dozen, that was the agreement. Twenty was absurd; they would slow down the boat. Christ, where would he put them all? Albury furiously assessed the possibilities: he would have to take none, or take them all and try to settle with the Machine later. To leave any of them on this beach would surely spell trouble later, at Key Largo, when the welcoming committee started counting heads.
“The leader is a big guy with a mouth full of gold. Name of Oscar,” Augie reported. “I told him no luggage and no guns, and he said OK.”
Albury saw his plan for a swift, easy transfer slipping out with the tide. “How’s the water?” he asked Augie.
“Eight feet off the stern, no more, but the current is tricky.”
“Go back to the beach, Augie. Feed them out on the line, one at a time. Tell them to hang on tight and pull themselves hand over hand, OK? Warn them about the current. Tell ’em they’re going to have to move fast. You come last.”
“They’ve got some shopping bags and other shit.”
“Leave it on the beach. This ain’t the S.S. Norway.” Albury turned to Jimmy. “As they come in, you help ’em up the dive ladder and then shove ’em down below as fast as you can. No rough stuff unless you have to.”
“You want me to get the shotgun?”
“Jesus, no! Leave it where they can’t see it.”
Dark shapes, featureless from where Albury watched at the wheel, the Colombians came up off the line like fresh-caught grouper, heaving, grunting, cascading water onto the deck, then shuttling below at Jimmy’s urging. For the most part they came mutely, although twice Albury heard a whispered gracias, and once he smiled when Jimmy whistled appreciatively through his teeth. Even from where Albury stood, the wet silhouette, dimly seen, was spectacular. “Hola, lindo,” the girl called to Jimmy and was gone, like a fish to the ice.
The sea was black, calm, and empty. The Colombians were young, and they worked themselves along the rope with little trouble at first. Gradually, though, the rope began to bow as the current stiffened with the falling tide.
After the first dozen, the interval between arrivals began to lengthen. Number fourteen stopped twice for breath, and when he finally reached the Diamond Cutter, he could hardly climb the ladder. Jimmy had to bodily haul number fifteen, another girl, from the water.
Hurry, Albury wanted to shout. Hurry. Soon it will be impossible to come at all; soon the current will be too strong. Augie would see the water moving. He would tell them. Albury said nothing, not even when a faint draft of wind delivered the sound, distant but unmistakeable. He scoured the northern horizon, cursing under his breath.
The seventeenth Colombian didn’t make it.
Albury heard a muffled shout. He saw bubbles, then a half-submerged balloon of white—it must have been the man’s shirt—separate from the tow line and float away to port.
“Jimmy!” Albury yelled. “Watch the boat and keep them coming.”
He slipped out of his boots, took a quick bearing on the receding speck of white, and dove into the dark water. It felt like a warm bath. Albury swam underwater in virtual blindness toward the drowning man. When he surfaced, there was nothing.
“Jimmy,” he called, treading water, “where is he?”
“Ten yards to your right. He just went under,” came the call from the Diamond Cutter. Albury could see the Colombians clustered on deck; the transfer was going to hell in a hurry.
Albury swam ten measured strokes to his right and dove. A cave. He let the current carry him, arms extended. The water was not deep, but it might as well have been a hundred fathoms. He could see nothing.
He broke the surface.
“Nothing, Breeze,” Jimmy yelled. “He sank like a rock. Come back now.”
“I hear something,” Augie shouted from the beach.
Albury dove again and struck out for the Diamond Cutter. He nearly lost his air in the involuntary grunt of surprise when a coral claw raked his left arm.
That will bleed, he thought anxiously. Shallow water or not, sharks made their own rules. Albury swam faster. He winced when the salty night air fingered the wounded arm. He knew he was dripping like a stuck pig.
Then he touched it with his foot. Not coral, or turtle grass. It was fabric.
“Here!” he shouted and dove again.
This time his fingers traced the figure of a small man. Albury found a cold arm and tugged with all his might. The figure swayed but did not yield. He pulled again.
The man was moving gently with the current, suspended like a sponge from the ocean floor. Dots of phosphorescence spangled the curly hair. Albury sensed instantly what had happened. Somehow, in his panic, the Colombian had become entangled in the stiff branches of coral. And there he would stay until the sharks came for him.
Albury kicked toward his boat. Winded, his arm aching and sticky, he swam doggedly against the roiling tide. He felt weak and tired.
Suddenly he realized that he was no longer alone in the water. If it was a shark, Breeze Albury knew, he was as dead as the luckless Colombian. He spun in the water to face it, thrashing with both fists, aiming for the blunt snout of a killer he could not see.
It took a long, shivery moment for Albury to recognize Augie, bringing him the rope so that he, too, could hoist himself aboard and complete the Diamond Cutter’s alien complement.
“NOT TOO TIGHT.”
“It’s got to be tight enough to stop the blood. It needs stitches, man.”
Jimmy stretched the tape across the gauze. Augie held out four Tylenols and a bottle of Wild Turkey.
The deck was warm and wet, and Albury sat there puffing, like an old man. He gradually became aware of the circle of dusky feet around him, and a muttering. He looked up into gaunt, frightened faces: Colombians.
His ears rang, but it was not in his head. It was out there, much louder than before. “That’s a big boat coming,�
�� Albury croaked. “Let’s get the hell out of here.”
Jimmy helped him to his feet. Albury breathed deeply and waited for the world to right itself.
“What are they doing up here?” he demanded.
“They came up when their guy lost the rope. I couldn’t stop ’em, Breeze.”
Augie said, “We’ve got to move.”
“Jimmy, get the anchor.” Stiffly, Albury walked to the wheelhouse and punched the ignition buttons. “Augie, get those people down below.”
“I tried, but they won’t go. They say they won’t leave without the guy in the water.”
“Tell them he’s dead, Augie. And tell ’em we’re all going to a very nasty jail if they don’t get below. Now!”
The patter of half-understood Spanish washed over Albury; the Colombians were insistent.
“It’s not the guy they care about,” Augie explained. “It’s what he was carrying. They say it is their luck.”
“Oh, shit.”
“Before they left Colombia, they got a local priest to bless a small religious statue to take along. A Virgin or something. For luck. The guy who was carrying it—they called him El Cura—he’s the one who drowned.”
“Some luck.”
“It must have been made of stone, way he went down,” Jimmy said.
“These people are fucking crazy,” said Albury. Now he could see it, a speck where the sky met the ocean. Then twin pinpricks of light, one red, one green. Bow and stern.
“Tell them that anybody who wants to stay can be my guest. Tell them there’s a boat coming and that I’m not waiting,” Albury said. “Tell them to go below and say their crazy prayers.”
He slipped the diesel into gear. Jimmy was at the bow, coiling another rope. Augie spoke Spanish, urgently, persuasively. Glowering, the Colombians shambled into the hold.
Twice Albury reached for a cigarette, and to hell with night vision. Twice he stopped short of the inviting pack. He felt the three ounces of Wild Turkey rampage into his gut and begin to resew the frayed nerves. A night of imaginary sharks, a stone virgin, and a dead man’s hair waving in the water like seaweed. Jesus.
From the beach, Diamond Cutter fled into the night at twenty-five knots. Ahead, the reef waited. In a few minutes it would be bared by the tide, but now the water curled over it and broke in mocking whispers. Behind, the boat had closed to within a mile of the Diamond Cutter’s starboard flank. Its speed and single-mindedness left Albury no illusion: it was a gunboat.