dog island

by Mike Stewart

  I glanced at my watch. It was seven-fifteen. We had gotten more sleep than I thought.

  Down in the kitchen, Joey’s massive frame was perched on one of the fragile-looking chrome and leather chairs that seemed to have been designed more for looking at than sitting on. He said, “Go brush your teeth and get dressed for some outside work. Purcell’s not going. Not now anyhow. He’s got that little doctor’s wife in his bed, and he ain’t going anywhere anytime soon. He told this Rupert guy who called to just hold on to Carli, quote, ‘on the island,’ and he’d meet them there around noon.”

  Susan said, “Do you think they’re talking about St. George, or did they actually bring Carli to Dog Island on the one night you weren’t there?”

  Joey and I together said, “Dog Island.”

  Susan looked confused. “How do you know?”

  Joey said, “Makes sense.”

  “Why?”

  Joey looked pleadingly at me. I said, “I guess they could mean any island within driving distance, Susan. But Dog Island is hard to get to; they’ve got an isolated cottage there; they’re used to doing business there; and there aren’t any cops on the island.”

  Susan said, “Okay.”

  “None of that means we’re right. But I think we are.” I looked around. “Where’s Kelly?”

  Loutie said, “Still asleep. She hasn’t got any business in this. She works for you, Tom. But that’s what I thought.”

  “You thought right. Kelly needs to get back to Mobile. And I guess Joey and I need to head for Dog Island. Try to beat Purcell there.”

  Joey said, “Yeah. And Loutie, you get on over to Purcell’s place. Hang around outside. Don’t let him out of your sight.”

  Joey turned to me. “Tom, did you get that tracker box stuck under Purcell’s Caddy?”

  “Yeah, the first day here.”

  Joey caught Loutie’s eye to make sure she’d heard me and then looked at Susan. “Can you handle the listening equipment?” Susan said yes. “Okay, then you stay here and listen and work the phones. Tom and I will keep you up on what we’re doing. Loutie, you do the same. I mean, you keep in contact with Susan to let her know what you’re doing.” He stopped and looked around the room and smiled. “I never been around such a bunch of gloomy people. We know where she is. This is the good part.”

  chapter twenty-five

  After two days without a decent bath, one of which was spent hurling digestive juices on a rolling shrimp boat, a hot shower was not a luxury. I made a quick job of it, left Susan upstairs getting dressed, and met Joey downstairs. He had loaded his Expedition with guns, blankets, and food—what he described as his “rescue kit.” Loutie would stay by the listening equipment until Susan came down; then she would head over to watch Purcell.

  By eight, Joey and I left the strained charm of Seaside behind.

  Neither of us spoke much. Joey pulled out a paper sack of Dolly Madison cinnamon rolls and canned drinks, and we made a breakfast of that as we listened to the news on NPR. On the eastern side of Port St. Joe, as we neared Apalachicola, Joey said, “I called about a boat while you were in the shower. Susan knew somebody. We don’t need to be trying to ride a ferry with all these guns in the car, and we sure as hell don’t need to be standing around waiting for the ferry after discharging firearms into the locals.”

  I asked, “You really think that’s going to be necessary?”

  “Never know. I sure as hell hope not. We have to kill a couple of those Bodine boys, and you’re gonna have to take up the life of the hunted again.”

  I said, “The life of the hunted?” And Joey smiled.

  He drove straight through Apalachicola and Eastpoint to a marina called “The Moorings” in tiny Carrabelle, Florida. It was where we had caught the ferry when we went out to watch Thomas Bobby Haycock.

  As Joey put his vehicle in park and pulled the key, he said, “Why don’t you wait in the car? After your adventure with the Teeters, you’re probably a minor celebrity around here.” And he closed the door.

  So I hunkered down in the seat feeling a little embarrassed to be left behind but lucky not to be going—like a child waiting for his father to come out of the liquor store. Four interminable minutes passed, and the door locks snapped as Joey shot them with his remote. He opened the door and stepped in. He said, “Got it,” and backed the Expedition out and pulled around the side of the marina.

  Dozens of luxury sailboats and motor yachts were huddled so tightly around a maze of concrete docks that it looked as though the first guy in would never leave again. But then, no one seemed to be leaving. Retired couples in baggy shorts and slouch hats polished brass or coiled ropes between trips to other boats to talk sailing or diesel motors or maybe a little fishing with someone from Wilmington or Bar Harbor or some other place where money intersected with seacoast.

  Our little Boston Whaler was tied up among the working boats, which were kept well away from the yacht trade, and we had clear access to the waterway leading out into the bay. Joey popped the hatch on his Expedition. The food was in a cooler; the blankets were loose; and the firearms were discreetly zipped inside a fatigue-green duffel bag. As we loaded the blue-and-white Boston Whaler, Joey and I looked like nothing more than a couple of friends out for a day of fishing, except maybe for the complete absence of fishing equipment.

  Joey said, “You know how to drive one of these things?”

  “Well, yeah. On a lake. I thought you were in the Navy.”

  “We didn’t spend a lot of time tooling around in pissant fishing boats in Naval Intelligence.” I looked at him. He said, “How hard can it be? Crank it up. The guy in the marina told me how to get to the island. Hell, it’s just over there. Soon as you pull around that place there where the land boops out you can see the damn thing.”

  “Boops out, huh?”

  Joey ignored me.

  I asked, “Did he tell you where all the oyster beds are too?”

  “I asked about that.”

  “That was nice of you.”

  “He said they’re not too bad between here and Dog Island. Just don’t drive too fast.”

  “Like Rus Poultrez did?”

  “Just like that.”

  While Joey rummaged in the cooler for additional sustenance, I puttered the boat away from the dock. Then, ever so gently, I steered a course in the general direction of Dog Island. The sour-sweet, almost carnal scents of the coast swirled in the spring air as a persistent chop paddled the hull and sprayed us with salt mist. Thirty minutes out of Carrabelle, I judged that we were not quite halfway there. I asked, “How far is it supposed to be out to the island?”

  “The guy in the marina said seven miles.”

  “It didn’t look that far when we came out into the bay.”

  “You can’t tell lookin’ over water. Everything looks closer. The way to tell is you gotta turn around and bend over and look across the water through your legs.”

  I said, “Uh-huh.”

  “No shit. It works. An old forester taught me that. One summer in high school, I worked on a survey crew cutting land lines through the woods. We’d hit a stretch of swamp every now and then. The only way to tell how much wading you were gonna have to do was to bend over and look through your legs.”

  I said, “Uh-huh.”

  Forty minutes later, we were maybe a hundred yards off the narrow strip of island, and Joey said, “Hook around the left end of the island there.”

  It took another half hour to putt around the tip of the island and land the boat on the same desolate stretch of beach where I had parked my Jeep a week earlier as we hunkered in the dunes watching Haycock’s place.

  I had been working at keeping things light—trying to behave as though none of this bothered me. But, as Joey unzipped the green duffel and pulled out some kind of machine pistol, I could feel the morning grow cooler as light perspiration covered my face and neck and hands. Acid churned my stomach and adrenaline fogged my mind, and I had to concentrat
e to follow what Joey was saying.

  “This is a Tech 9. It holds twenty rounds in the clip, plus one in the chamber. This is the safety. Up is on. Down is off. Push it down to fire.”

  “I’ve got my nine millimeter.”

  Joey said, “That’s fine. You’re used to shootin’ it, so you should stick to it if you can. But we don’t know what or who’s waitin’ for us. If six guys come around a corner with guns, you’re gonna get your ass shot off if you count on that Browning. The Tech 9 is automatic, or at least the way I’ve got it set up it is. Pull back like this to chamber the first round and then just hold down the trigger. It’ll squeeze out four rounds a second. So don’t waste ‘em all on one guy. Spread it around if you have to use it.” Joey pulled out two black shoulder bags and tossed one to me. “Put it in there till you need it. We could run into somebody.” Then he pulled out an identical weapon for himself, which he put in his black nylon bag. He also dropped in a Glock 9mm before zipping it up. Finally, he produced a tiny Walther PPK .380 and put it in his hip pocket.

  As Joey worked at readying assault weapons in the morning sun, knot-kneed sandpipers scurried in and out with the surf, poking spindly beaks into quartz-white sand in search of sand fleas and baby shrimp. Above our heads, black-headed laughing gulls spiraled in the air, begging frantically for food. The gulls’ shrill calls sounded in sporadic bunches, and with each shriek the abdominal muscles south of my navel clenched my gut like a nervous fist.

  I said, “Somebody’s been feeding them bread or something.”

  Joey glanced up at the birds and then back at me. “You ready?”

  “Not really.”

  Joey looked at me for a second or two and said, “Look, why don’t I just go in by myself? It’s probably just Haycock and the Rupert guy watchin’ Carli and waitin’ on Purcell. Tell you what. Let me go look around. If it’s bad, I’ll come back for you.”

  “Nope.”

  Joey shrugged.

  I took in a deep breath and said, “Let’s go.”

  “Okay, hot dog. But as soon as we take the first step, I’m in charge. You do what I say. You got it?”

  I nodded.

  We moved crouched over, running awkwardly across dry sand, filling our shoes with grit and our pant legs with cockleburs, and finding inadequate cover first behind one sand dune and then another. When we were about two hundred feet from Haycock’s cottage, Joey waved me toward the trees we had used for shelter on stakeout. I turned and trotted to the scraggly clump of wind-tortured pines. Joey waited. When I got there, he made a hand motion that usually means “Hold it down.” I dropped to one knee. He nodded and moved behind a dune. Minutes dragged by, and I saw him near the house on his stomach. Joey was crawling commando-style toward the back window, and he looked like he knew what he was doing. I watched him crawl, and I watched too long.

  Tim the painter was only thirty feet from the front door when I saw him. Adrenaline flushed through my brain and muscles with such violence that I almost yelled out to Joey. Think. Joey was out of sight in back, and, so far, Tim seemed oblivious to our presence. Then he seemed to hear something. The man stopped, and I fell onto my stomach as he turned to survey the dunes and trees and scrub. I could just see his head. He was very still and seemed to be listening, more so than watching, for trouble. Then he swiveled his head toward the cottage. Now, he knew Joey was there.

  I moved. Keeping low and quiet, I circled behind the painting Bodine and watched as he unclipped a small walkie-talkie from his belt and spoke quietly to someone. Shit. Joey was coming around the back corner, shaking his head and looking for me among the pines. Tim was too close to the cottage to see Joey—the angle was wrong—but he heard him. In one efficient movement, Tim gently dropped the radio to the ground and pulled a machine pistol from a shoulder holster. He dropped to one knee and waited. The Tech 9 was still zipped inside my shoulder bag. The zipper would make noise, and I didn’t really know how to use the damn thing anyhow; so I eased it onto the sand and reached back inside my windbreaker and pulled out the Browning and clicked off the safety.

  Joey was going to walk around the corner and get shot in maybe two seconds. I tried to sound official. “Hold it right there, asshole.”

  Tim froze. Slowly, he began to raise his hands, and I began to breathe again. Joey was still out of sight. I said, “Drop the gun.”

  The gun moved and, for one fleeting instant, I thought he was putting it on the ground. Then he spun on his knees and landed on his back. The man took aim with both arms stretched out toward me in a rigid wedge and both hands steadying the pistol. I fired. Tim’s pant leg popped out at the knee as if some unseen hand had snatched the cloth, and a second shot from the other direction followed so quickly that it sounded like an echo of the first. Tim the painter’s face exploded with his eyes fixed on mine.

  Joey was standing next to the house, holding the Glock on the man whose face he had just blown off. I called out, “He’s dead,” and Joey and I began to approach the body from opposite sides. Joey’s hollow-point had entered through Tim’s crown and blasted out through some part of his face. Standing over the body in a kind of fascinated and repulsed shock, I couldn’t tell much more than that. There wasn’t enough face left to tell exactly where Joey’s mushroomed bullet had exited.

  I managed to say, “He had a walkie-talkie,” and to point at the tiny communicator where Tim the painter had dropped it.

  Joey leaned over and picked it up. He said, “Let’s get the hell out of here.”

  “What about Carli?”

  “Get your bag.” I looked at him. He snapped, “Get the goddamn weapons bag you dropped back there.”

  I ran back and retrieved the shoulder bag with the Tech 9 inside. As I returned, Joey grabbed my jacket and pulled me roughly along as he retreated behind the house. As I stumbled behind him, Joey said, “Carli’s not here. Nobody’s here. We’re in the wrong place. Or somethin’ worse.” I looked at him. He said, “Let’s get to the boat. Keep your eyes open. That guy wasn’t talkin’ to himself.” Joey took off toward the beach, running in his tucked-over stance, and I followed.

  Voices floated across the sand. Joey kept moving. I sprinted to catch up and slapped him on the back. As I did, I said, “Down,” and Joey dropped even before I did. “You hear that?”

  Joey moved his chin from side to side and sat still. The only sounds were the surf and the wind and the sporadic, shrill cackles of laughing gulls as they fished the waves and fought for trash along the shoreline. Then the human voices came again. Joey turned and pointed at my chest and then at the ground. I nodded, and he left me there sitting on one knee in the sand between a grassy dune on one side and a gnarled clump of brown and green brush on the other.

  Male voices ebbed and flowed among the sounds of surf and wind, and Joey reappeared and motioned for me to follow. We moved away from the beach. A hundred feet in, Joey stopped and spoke quietly. He was breathing heavily, more, I thought, from fear or excitement than effort. He said, “One man at the cottage. Two on the beach. Spread out. They’re watching the boat. Waiting.”

  I asked a stupid question. “For us?”

  Joey nodded. And he looked scared, which was one of many emotions I had never seen on his face. I tried to think, to concentrate, and then wished I hadn’t. I said, “They knew.” My oversized friend didn’t answer. He was scanning the beach.

  Then he whispered, “Call Susan,” and my breathing turned fast and shallow.

  I found my cell phone and punched in the number of the beach house. No one answered. I asked Joey how to get Loutie and punched in her number. She answered on the second ring. I said, “Where are you? Are you at the beach house?”

  Loutie sounded surprised. “No. I’m in Mobile. Purcell’s taking the doc’s wife to some kind of party here. Brunch or something.”

  I interrupted. “Susan’s not answering.”

  “Maybe she’s…”

  Again I cut her off. “Carli’s not at the house on Dog
Island. They may have been waiting for us.”

  Loutie said, “How would they…?” And her voice trailed off.

  I said what she was thinking. “Purcell may have found the bugs. We’re on the island, and you’re following him around Mobile. And Susan’s not answering.”

  Joey reached for the phone, and I let him take it. He said, “Loutie? Haul ass back to Seaside. Keep trying Susan. The Bodines have got our boat staked out, and Tom and I are gonna have to find another way off the island.” He stopped to listen and said, “Call the goddamn second you know something.”

  chapter twenty-six

  Bright sunshine radiated across blue sky, glinting off sugar-white sand and suddenly consuming the world in blazing light that blocked out everything except the tiny black cell phone in Joey’s hand and the tortured thoughts racing through my mind. I grabbed the phone from Joey and once again dialed the beach house in Seaside. Still no one answered. I hit the end button and punched redial, and Joey said my name. I listened to the phone ringing in our whimsically sterile Seaside cottage, and Joey said my name again. Finally, I said, “What!”

  “That’s not doing any good, Tom. You’re just gonna use up the battery.”

  “I don’t really give a shit if I use up the battery.”

  “Loutie’s calling. She’s in her car. So she can call all day without running out of juice. If we run out, Loutie’s not even gonna be able to call and tell us if there is news.”

  I could feel my heart thumping against my sternum, and coursing blood sounded inside my ears like boots running in mud. I tried to control the erratic rhythm of my breathing. Slowly, shapes began to emerge from the blinding glare, and other sounds floated back to me. Wind sighed across the island, and gulls filled the air with shrill chatter.

  Joey looked out across glowing sand dappled green and brown with undulating sea grass and streaks of coarse underbrush. He said, “You see what I mean, don’t you? We gotta stay calm and wait on Loutie. She’s as good as they get, Tom. You couldn’t ask for somebody better if—and I’m just saying if—Susan’s gotten in trouble.”