Ray looked puzzled, “So what happens to the house in a storm?”
She grinned, “Thanks to a combination of genius, money and a geeky college student who wanted to get laid, the house is safe.”
“Explain that.”
They had returned to the dock. She sat down and propped her feet on the railing and said, “Well, when Aurelio went looking to buy an island all of the ones that filled the bill were under water part of the year. Initially that was fine. He decided he would just buy a big yacht and park it in the lagoon during the times in the year when it was safe to do so. During hurricane season, he moved it to Costa Rica or Venezuela. But, he soon realized he loved the island and wanted a permanent structure here so he could pop over in the summertime whenever the weather was okay. He made some inquiries among the architecture students at the University of Miami school of architecture. He sort of offered to fund a design contest involving how to deal with the problem.
“Only one student was interested so, instead of having a contest, the school simply put the student in contact with Aurelio. Turns out the kid mainly wanted to get married and wanted a cheap place to take his wife on a honeymoon. Significantly, she was an architecture student as well, but her interest was residential architecture, whereas his was commercial. Aurelio agreed to let them use the island if they'd spend some time considering his problem and present him with a proposal. He even gave them the use of a boat. (Not the one we came over here on. He chartered a smaller one for them.) They spent their honeymoon here alternately swimming, making love and making drawings. When they returned to Miami, they were bummed out because they said the only solution they came up with would be very expensive, although they thought it might work. It turned out not to be as expensive as they feared, especially since the house Aurelio ultimately built was to be a lot smaller and less elaborate than they envisioned.
“The solution was a sort of two-parter. First, when the water rises, the dock raises with it. The pilings can extend 25 feet. In a big storm, if the water goes higher than that, the dock will break loose of the pilings and be held by anchor chains that are 65 feet long. When the water goes back down, the dock lowers too. So far it has never raised up high enough to come off the pilings; that would entail major repairs to the understructure, but as long as the water doesn't raise more than 25 feet, the dock goes up and comes down like an elevator. The house is very low and has safety features that will withstand 145 mile-an-hour winds. It has taken direct hits from hurricanes on more than one occasion and has never suffered any significant damage.”
“Wow!”
She nodded. “It's amazing. Aurelio spent a lot of money on this place, but not as much as he probably would have if the island had been high and dry. He'd have put a palace on a dry island! His tastes run a bit on the opulent side.”
“Why do I think you had something to do with the design of the house?”
“Because I did. Once Aurelio was reconciled to building a very small house that had to be able to float, he decided it actually should be something like a houseboat, making maximum use of all space. He asked for my input since I had spent more time on boats than anyone he knew. I laid out the interior according to my own tastes.”
He laughed and asked, “I'm guessing the glass floor was your idea?”
She nodded, “Every place I have ever traveled where they have tours with glass bottomed boats, I have taken them. I love watching the life under water but I do not enjoy diving. This is the perfect alternative. The floor was a significant additional expense, but after Aurelio – and especially his kids – saw it, they all agreed it was worth it.”
Ray and Marcella spent the rest of the week exactly as they had spent Christmas day. They fished. They swam. They whiled away hours every day watching the reef through the glass floor. They talked for hours. They each checked email and voice messages only once a day, and returned no calls or messages. The day before New Year's Eve when she checked her email, she grinned and said, “We have a special New Year's treat courtesy of Aurelio. He's sending the yacht over a day early so we can have a special dinner and move in closer to Nassau. They have awesome fireworks at midnight to ring in the new year. We can spend the night on the boat and then leave on the 1st whenever we are ready.”
“That sounds great. I thought you said you and Aurelio don't get along.”
She chuckled, “That's true. We can't stand each when we're together. I guess in many ways we are too much alike. We are both control freaks and when we're together we clash. As I told you, I don't work for him regularly any more, but I do occasional special jobs. It is in his best interests to stay on my good side. It is in my best interest to let him.”
He shook his head, “I am not sure that follows. It would seem to be in your best interest to sever ties with him. With your high profile and the feds always watching, it seems smuggling jewels places you at enormous risk.”
She made a face, “That may be. If the feds catch me, they'll put me in jail. If I tried to bail on Aurelio completely, he'd put me in Davy Jones' Locker, and I am neither kidding nor exaggerating.”
Ray was astonished, and it must have showed.
She shrugged and said, “You must know what gangsters do to people who, to their way of thinking, double cross them.”
“But you are more like a member of the family than an employee.”
“All the more reason for me to stay in the business. What's the matter with you, haven't you ever seen The Godfather?”
“That's a movie.”
“It may be a movie, but there are some very true things about it. First and foremost is the theme that members of the family are supposed to work in the family business whether its a laundry or a world-wide smuggling ring. Tonio was from Sicily. He did things according to the old ways. In his world there was honor among thieves in a sense. They operated according to their own rules, but there were rules and limits. Tonio was a smuggler and a money launderer. That was what he did. He did both of those things the way he learned in the Old Country
“Aurelio was born in the U. S. and has lived in South Florida for way, way too long. He is a big fan of the American Mafia. The Chicago families have never let him into the fold but they have occasionally undertaken joint ventures, particularly when it allowed the Chicago families to operate in the territory of the thugs that run the drug trade in Florida. On occasion, when needed, Aurelio could hire some of Mafia muscle when he needed to get rid of someone.”
“Is it true he killed one of his employees for smuggling drugs?”
A black look passed over her face, then she smiled. “Actually, whether or not he killed the person or someone else did is something I do not know, nor do I want to know. This much I do know. One day when I was maybe 23 or 24, he brought all of us together in Miami. It was the only time I saw any of his other employees. He made certain that none of us spoke to each other. We were each flown in with an escort, marched into the enormous living room of his house where we were lined up, with our escorts behind us. Aurelio lectured us for about ten minutes on the rules of our organization. He spelled out what we were allowed to do (which basically amounted to doing exactly what we were told) and what we were not allowed to do (which basically amounted to be anything else). He warned us about compromising his operations by free-lancing.
“I wanted to laugh, thinking that no one in their right mind would even think of free-lancing. We made so much money as it was, why would anybody try to do side-jobs? For a minute, I thought the whole thing was a joke.
“Then, he took out a photo of a girl, who had been shot in the head, and passed it around. He told us that was what happened to people who double-crossed him. He never said he did it. He never accused anybody else of doing it. He said, 'Consider yourselves warned.' After that, our escorts took us back to the airport and we were sent home. It was intended to intimidate and scare us. It sure as hell worked on me.
“Tonio had recently died and Aurelio was the closest thing I had to family. I was scared to death,
but I felt I did not have any choice other than to continue to work for him. I have no illusions that he takes me for anything other than a long-time employee even now. The same rules apply.”
“How many people were there?”
She thought about it for a minute. “I think six. One of them was Brenda, Tonio's widow who married Aurelio after Tonio died. I didn't know any of the others.”
“You listened to that lecture and saw those photos and didn't do anything about it?”
“You mean like call the cops?” She laughed, “What was I supposed to say, 'Hello, Mr. Policeman, I am a diamond and art smuggler. I think my boss may have offed an employee who double-crossed him, and I think you should arrest him.'
“I'm not that crazy.”
Ray shook his head, “They would have probably given you immunity or at least a very lenient sentence.”
“First of all, I have no intention of going to jail at all, ever. Secondly, that happened a long time ago. The kid was just some stupid brat who didn't know what a good opportunity she had working for Aurelio. What is more, she was smuggling drugs. There is a hierarchy among smugglers; drug dealers are the bottom feeders of the profession. The legal process takes too long and it isn't effective when it comes to drug dealers. Aurelio deals with drug traffickers in his own way.”
“You mean he has killed others.”
She laughed. “I think Aurelio sees himself as a sort of modern day Robin Hood, although he's such an ignorant bastard, I doubt he's ever heard of Robin Hood. He sees himself as a sort of anti-drug vigilante. If he catches a drug runner, which happens occasionally because this island is a perfect place for smugglers to hide, the crew ends up missing and the Coast Guard tends to 'find' the boat adrift off Key Biscayne. He has also been known to have his people shoot down planes he knows to be carrying drugs in from South America. He has lots of connections. He often knows when the planes are coming. The ATF agents are so overwhelmed, they are totally ineffective. Aurelio sort of helps them out from time to time.”
“Are you suggesting he has a deal with the ATF?”
She waved her hand and shook her head, “Oh, there is no 'deal'. Neither Aurelio nor any of his employees has never spoken to an ATF agent or any other law enforcement officer. Aurelio sees law enforcement in America as being too far beneath him to bother with actually discussing deals. It is interesting, however, to note that after he started 'helping' in the drug war, the intensity of the scrutiny the FBI and the IRS had been leveling at his employment agency seemed to lessen somewhat. It isn't a 'deal', but I think it is something of an unspoken understanding. The ATF or the FBI always takes credit for 'capturing' the contraband; the stories never say that they just 'found' it.
“The other thing that helps Aurelio is that we never bring smuggled jewels or art into the U.S. We bring in only money. We take the goods from one foreign country to another. We bring back money, which we put into the American economy. Money laundering is a crime, of course, but in the big scheme of things, it's the sort of crime the government can choose to ignore, especially since the government knows it isn't drug money. They care a lot about drug money.”
Ray sat down and shook his head, “You are talking about some kind of alternate reality.”
She made a face and a rude noise, “What the hell do you think is going on out there in the big bad world? You mosey around in South Florida writing heart-warming stories about nice people or funny stories about Florida's collection of odd-balls. You obsess over saving the Everglades, not that that isn't important. But, out in The Big World there's a lot of other shit going on! You play by one set of rules, the rules of the laws of the United States of America and of Southern society. There are a lot of other rulebooks, Ray. There are a lot of other ways to see the world.”
“So you think that smuggling is okay?”
“It depends on who's asking the questions and which rules you apply. According to the laws of most countries, smuggling is a crime mostly because it cheats the government out of taxes. To those people who are already paying zillions in taxes and or bribes and payoffs to said governments, what's the harm in delivering some jewels or art without adding a tax bill.”
“Do you ask where the stuff comes from?”
“Of course not. Although most of the artworks I have ever moved come with provenance.”
“How do they do that? What do they put down for your transaction?”
“There are written receipts, usually including forged tax documents. For provenance the important thing is the information on the seller and the buyer, not the taxes. Aurelio's clients are sophisticated buyers and sellers. We never got into the forgery part of it; that was always handled by European specialists. We just made the deliveries. I have to confess, I almost always checked the documentation to assure myself the forgeries were good enough to pass a quick inspection if I got caught. Most of them were excellent.”
Ray put his hands on his head and said, “This is giving me a headache. Can we stop?”
“Sure. Remember, you're the one who wanted more information. So, do you want to take Aurelio up on his offer or not?”
“Since you have waxed so eloquent on the dangers of getting on his bad side, I feel as though I have little choice.”
“Especially since that yacht is the only way for us to get back to Nassau to go home, unless you're prepared to swim. The runabout can't go that far with out extra gas.”
He sighed. “I need to go for a run. I hate a treadmill. How long is that beach?”
“It's a mile and a half from one point to the other.”
“Will I look silly running back and forth?”
She laughed, “I do it all the time. Do you want some company?”
He answered, just a little to quickly and a tad too loud, “No!”
She shrugged and said, “Suit yourself.” She turned around and walked out to the end of the dock where the kayaks were tied up. She took off in a kayak, fast and smooth, headed straight for the pass to the ocean. She didn't look back.
Ray ran hard for a couple of hours and then went back to the house where he showered and drank a beer. He was troubled by their conversation, but after a couple of hours of thinking about it, he concluded she was probably right about the fact that in her world different rules applied and he would be wrong to apply his standards to her behavior. As soon as that thought occurred to him, he stopped himself, realizing that line of thinking put him on a terribly slippery slope. He wasn't sure what to do about that.
Soon his thoughts turned to worry about Marcella. She had been gone for more than three hours. The weather was clear and the seas were glassy, but he began to worry nevertheless. He sat there with his eyes fixed on the pass. He didn't realize he was holding his breath until he saw her. He noticed that after three hours of paddling, she her stroke was as smooth and as fast as when she left. She tied up her kyak and walked toward him. She was sweaty and her skin glistened in the sun. She knelt down in front of him and said softly, “I am sorry to upset you. I know you don't understand. Sometimes I don't either. It's a fine line I feel I need to walk with you. If I tell you the whole truth, I'm afraid it will drive you away. If I keep secrets, I'm afraid that will drive you off because you won't trust me.”
He took her hands and did not respond for a long time, “I guess I sort of feel the same way. When I am with you, especially on the water, it feels so wonderful I can't even begin to describe it. But when we are together on land, sometimes you make me feel like a dweeb. My head tells me you are wrong. My heart wants to believe you. So, I am just confused.”
She said softly, “What do you think we should do?”
He answered, “Right now, I think we should go fishing. We can deal with the serious issues that keep us apart when we're back home in Sarasota next week. While we're here, let's just fish and have fun.”
She reached up and put her arms around him, “You don't have to ask me twice. Now, where did I put my new hat?”
They fished for a
while and then drifted until late in the afternoon. Marcella insisted on being back at the dock before dark because she said the pass was tricky in the daylight; she wouldn't risk it at night in a boat without sonar. They watched the sun go down and then ducked inside before the insects swarmed. They watched the reef for a while and then they went to bed early, but neither was in the mood to make love. There was a large question mark between them. It had always been there. Now, it had grown to the point they needed to address it. There would be time for that after they returned to Sarasota.
They rang in the New Year with French champagne under Bahamian fireworks. It could have been magical, but Ray felt a cold, hard knot of uncertainty in the pit of his stomach.
They flew back to Sarasota mid-day on January 1. He started the year fearing what the coming months would bring.
Chapter 21
Ray was surprised to learn when he arrived at work the next day that it was very well known around the newsroom where he had been and with whom. He didn't understand how that happened. He had not told anyone where he was going. He found it hard to believe Marcella might have spread the word. He couldn't figure it out, but he was annoyed and irritated with the comments from his colleagues and flat out pissed off when the feature editor suggested he do a “what I did on my vacation” story. He told her to go to hell and said he had calls to make.
He called Victoria from his cell phone and suggested an early lunch. He offered to bring sandwiches from Dick's. She told him to skip the sandwiches and come straight over. She said she would make them something whenever they got hungry.
He waited until after she poured his coffee, and took a small package out of his pocket. He said, “I bought these from the guy who sells carved stuff out of that boat shack on Siesta Key. He actually gave me a really good deal because he said the publicity he got from a feature I wrote about him dramatically increased his local business. He told me that what he liked even better was that the cops had stopped hassling him once they learned he was a crazy artist and not merely a bum. Anyway, you're the only person I know who might actually use something like this. I thought they were beautiful.”
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