For some reason, I didn’t want to share with her that I’d brought my cop girlfriend back to Key West from my island.
“I was supposed to meet a charter,” I lied, “but they didn’t show. So I walked over to Starbucks for—”
“Coffee, of course,” she said, smiling. “Strong and hot, just like you like your women.”
“Where are you staying?” I asked, noting the lack of even a tan line on her ring finger.
“We live on our boat, Sea Biscuit. I’m only in town to arrange for Charlotte’s transport home.”
To me, that sounded like a dismissal.
“I looked for your boat in Boot Key Harbor,” she said. I caught her eyes flash briefly to my own left hand. “We stopped in yesterday. You’re no longer docked there?”
Again, I’d read it wrong. I told myself that where women were concerned, maybe I should just start figuring whatever the opposite of what my gut told me.
“No,” I said. “Different boat and different dock. Well, same boat, just a newer model. I developed my island up in the Contents and live there now.”
“You built a house?”
“Several,” I replied. “My house, my caretaker’s place, and two bunkhouses for visiting fishermen.”
Part of me wanted to make sure she knew I’d moved on, that she hadn’t been all that big a deal. Another part was hoping she’d like the change, and still a third part was yelling and screaming at me that I had a girlfriend.
“It must be lovely,” she said, “so why would you come all the way to Key West to pick up your clients?”
“Easier for them,” I compounded the lie. “And they paid extra.”
“We really must be going,” she said. “After I take care of this, I want to catch the evening tide.”
Now, I was being dismissed. Perhaps forever.
“It was nice to see you again,” I said, thinking how stupid that sounded, given our history. Even as the words came out of my mouth, I grimaced.
She started to walk away, but stopped. “Maybe if you’re around Dockside tomorrow, we’ll bump into one another again.”
I smiled. “That’d be nice.” That third part of my brain went off the deep end, calling me all kinds of vile names. “But Dockside’s closed. Most of the Boot Key crowd hangs out at Burdine’s.”
“Burdine’s then,” she said, and turned away.
Taking Florence by the hand, they started up the sidewalk toward the hospital. I stood and watched them walk away. Ten yards, then twenty. Suddenly, Savannah tossed her hair, looked back over her shoulder, and smiled at me.
For someone who didn’t like boats, Cedric felt he was spending way too much time on them, as the bouncing of the dive boat he was on jarred him awake.
He’d come to the Keys in the dead of winter nearly three years ago. Not because he was a boater or liked the water, but because Key West was as far as the road out of Detroit would take him; he didn’t want to ever be cold again. It didn’t take long to see that the Keys weren’t a good fit for him. Too many unusual people and gaudy lifestyles. So he escaped slightly to the north, to the mainland and the lights of Miami. There, he could melt into the pavement, just another anonymous face on the streets. A lot like Chicago.
But in Miami, Cedric did whatever he needed to survive. He burglarized cars, picked unsuspecting tourists’ pockets and purses, and made enough contacts on the streets to buy and sell a little weed and blow. He held no ambition to be famous, not even in his own apartment building. He stayed low, didn’t have a bank account, no plastic, no car, and no driver’s license. His Illinois license had expired long before he headed south. He was anonymous, a John Doe.
Mister Ballinger had wanted him on the dive boat, so that’s where he was. Though they’d only known one another a few months, the man had accepted Cedric for who he was and appreciated his talent. In Detroit, Cedric was just another urban cretin living off the street. But unlike many around him, he just never developed the addiction for meth, using it only sparingly. He’d had a friend that made the stuff in small amounts and always tested it for chemical purity. The guy also bought and sold it, always testing purity. Subsequently, Cedric had developed a nose for purity, just by hanging around the guy. Just a pinch up one nostril and Cedric could tell within a couple of percentage points what the purity was. It was a talent Mister Ballinger had said would take him far in his new export company. At the time, Cedric thought he’d meant just buying drugs for him and his wealthy guests, and at first it was.
Then Ballinger got the notion that he could make better meth in his own lab. Cedric had told him about the problems with odor from cooking meth, but the idea never left Ballinger’s mind. He asked Cedric more questions and he told Mister Ballinger everything he’d learned from his friend in Chicago.
It was about then that Mister Ballinger heard about Raymond Black. He’d contacted the ousted pharmacist and the three of them had discussed how much Black could make and what he’d need to do it. He’d been hesitant at first, but facing the idea of finding a job outside of the pharmaceutical business, and competing with twenty-something college grads for a Walmart greeter job didn’t appeal to him.
After boarding the dive boat in the middle of the night, Cedric had slept most of the way to their present location. The boat was a regular charter boat, but everyone on board was part of Ballinger’s crew, except the boat’s captain. He was being paid enough to not ask questions, and knew how to not listen and look the other way.
The trip down from Fort Myers had taken over five hours; they’d arrived just after sunrise. The divers split up into two teams, planning at least two dives each, and maybe a third. The first two-man team in the water was only going to do a search, then tell the next two what needed to be recovered from where. After that, they’d worked out a regular interval of forty-minute dives, each team picking up where the other team left off.
Cedric had explained to the divers where everything should be, but cautioned them that because of the explosion, they’d have to search every square inch of the stricken boat. High on the list was locating and recovering the plastic box containing the product. More important though, was removing anything from the hold that pointed toward it being anything other than a shrimper. The boat had been on its way to its third anchorage, so it should have two packages in the box, a pound of meth in each package.
Just in case a situation like this were to come up, the hiding place wasn’t just known, but had been assigned by Mister Ballinger himself. On this boat, the divers were to look under the captain’s watch bunk in the wheelhouse. It had been fitted with a false bottom and covered with spare parts, ropes, and other boat junk.
Cedric looked at his watch. It was just past noon. The first two divers, now on their third dive of the day, should be coming up soon.
After their first dive, they’d reported that the aft deck and rear part of the pilothouse were severely damaged and there was little left in the hold. They’d spent most of the dive cutting and dragging away the nets that had tangled the whole boat. The second team had then worked on removing the reaction vessel, which had been bolted to the floor inside the boat’s hold. Once they got it up, the first team went back down and spent forty minutes sifting through the sand that had been scraped up when the boat was dragged. They’d surfaced with the burner, which had been mounted under the reaction vessel. They’d also found one of the cooling trays, which had been mounted on gimbals to the sides of the hold. The gimbaled cooling trays allowed the product to slowly cool and crystalize, without being sloshed around.
After that, it was the second team’s job to search the seafloor around the boat, especially the area in the direction that it had been dragged from. Anything that had been broken loose during the drag had been marked with a small surface float to pick up after the last dive. There were four floats stretched out behind the dive boat.
Sitting on the fly bridge, Cedric had a commanding view all around. As soon as they’d anchored, the boat’s captain ha
d been sent below to get some sleep for the return trip, so Cedric had the bridge to himself.
The other two divers were resting in the cockpit, waiting for the forty-minute timer to go off, alerting them to get ready. It would be their job to make one last sweep of the boat, retrieving the product from under the watch bunk and anything else they could find.
A low rumbling sound caught Cedric’s attention. He scanned the horizon, but didn’t see anything. The sound faded away. A moment later, he heard it again, but still couldn’t tell which direction the sound was coming from.
The timer went off and Cedric watched as the two men in the cockpit begin to get their gear together for their final dive. If the divers in the water now didn’t find the box with the product, then these two men would make one more attempt. The product in the box was worth over seventy thousand dollars, so they had to at least try to retrieve it. But if they were unable to find it or couldn’t get to it, they’d have a large demolition charge with them. Before surfacing, they’d place the explosives in the engine room for maximum destruction.
So far, Cedric thought they’d been pretty lucky. The Coast Guard either hadn’t returned to dive on the original site, or they just weren’t interested in looking for where it had been dragged to. Only one other boat had passed within sight, and it was a slow-moving private yacht headed south.
Over the sound of the men talking below, Cedric heard the rumbling noise again, louder this time. The sound was coming from the southwest. Looking around the bridge, Cedric opened several storage compartments and finally found a pair of binoculars. He scanned the horizon until he finally saw the source of the sound.
Though it was a couple of miles away, Cedric made out a fishing boat moving north at a slow speed. The big poles that kept the fishing lines from tangling each other were sticking out both sides of the boat.
“What is it?” one of the divers asked from below.
Cedric looked down at him. “Just a fishing boat.”
That seemed to satisfy the man and he went back to work on his gear. Cedric looked through the binoculars at the boat again. It was now barely moving. He knew that this kind of fishing was called trolling, but had no idea what kind of fish the guy hoped to catch. He could barely make out the man on the boat, but it seemed as if he was alone. Occasionally, he’d turn and look forward, but mostly he just looked behind him, letting the boat drive itself.
There was a commotion at the back of the dive boat, and Cedric looked down to see the other two divers at the swim platform. The two men in the cockpit stepped down to help them with their dive gear. One of the men in the water handed up a large gray plastic box. Cedric put the binoculars back in the storage bin and went down the ladder.
“I’ll take that,” he said, as the box was handed up. “Go ahead and make one more sweep, then plant the charge.”
Cedric had already found a good hiding spot on the dive boat while on their way out last night. He carried the box inside, raised the panel in the floor for the engine room, and took the box down into the cramped space below the floor. Toward the back was a metal tool chest that had to have been installed when the boat was built; he saw no way to move it into the tight area. He opened one of the larger drawers, and removed two large hand pumps. He had no idea what they were used for. He then opened the plastic container and removed the two packages, placing them deep inside the drawer and replacing the pumps.
Once he closed the floor panel, Cedric went forward to wake the captain, then went back to the bridge. As soon as the two divers returned, he wanted to get out of here and back to dry land.
The second crew stepped off the dive platform, and the other two divers handed down the explosive charge. It was set to go off thirty minutes after arming. That would give them more than enough time to get several miles away before the powerful explosives destroyed the wrecked boat.
Cedric looked through the binoculars at the fishing boat, now running parallel to the dive boat about a mile away. He could see the guy more clearly now. He looked like most of the other fishermen Cedric had seen down here, wearing long sleeves, a cap, and dark sunglasses. Every now and then, the man glanced over at the dive boat. He didn’t seem to be interested, other than just making sure where it was.
Two splashes caused Cedric to look away. The divers that had just gotten out of the water had now dove back in with only masks and fins. They were swimming away from the boat toward the markers. After a moment, they reached the first two and started swimming back, looping the lines around their shoulders.
When they got back aboard, they pulled the parts up that the lines were attached to, and stacked the things with the other junk. Somewhere on the return trip, they’d dump everything in deep water.
The swimmers went back into the water and started out for the two farthest floats. Cedric watched until they reached the markers then looked west through the binoculars to see what the fishing boat was doing.
The guy on the boat didn’t seem to be paying them any attention. He’d passed beyond the dive boat and seemed to be intently watching his fishing lines.
Just as Cedric started to lower the binoculars, he caught sight of the boat’s name on the transom.
The captain was now sitting in the helm seat, his feet up on the dash, waiting to be told when to start the engines.
“Can you catch that boat?” Cedric asked the man.
“What boat?”
He handed the binoculars to the captain. “Over there,” he said, pointing just a little north of due west. “That fishing boat.”
The captain studied the other boat for a moment, then put the glasses down. “Nope,” he said. “Probly not. I know I can outdistance him, but a boat like that’ll run a good five or ten knots faster than my top speed.”
As if to prove the point, Cedric heard the other boat’s engine rev. When he looked again, the guy had pulled in his lines and was heading straight away from them. In seconds, it was up on plane, plowing through the light chop effortlessly.
The swimmers and the two divers arrived at the transom at about the same time. While the divers got out of their gear, the other two men hauled the last of the recovered items aboard.
“Let’s get out of here,” Cedric ordered.
“Hey!” the captain yelled down to the men in the cockpit. “One of you guys wanna get the anchor?”
Minutes later, the dive boat started moving toward the north, gathering speed and rising out of the water. Cedric looked at the instruments. They were going twenty-five miles per hour, or knots; he wasn’t sure what the difference was. They’d be at least five miles away when the explosives went off.
They’d covered a good two or three miles, when one of the divers climbed up to the fly bridge. “That other boat’s heading back,” he said.
Cedric retrieved the binoculars and looked back, trying to steady himself. The guy was right. Though only the top of the fishing boat was visible, it was moving directly toward where the wreck was.
“He’ll soon wish he hadn’t,” Cedric said with a malicious grin. With any luck, he might be able to tell Ballinger that he’d killed two birds with one stone.
“Slow down,” Cedric told the captain, trying to steady himself. “Is this the most powerful binoculars you got?”
My feet felt light as I walked out onto the boardwalk. I kept telling myself that it was stupid and wrong, but Savannah’s smile lit something inside me. A long-dead dream of slipping away to some island paradise, a beautiful woman at my side. One who appreciated a quiet anchorage and deserted beaches.
I was comfortable with Devon and she was fun to be with. Her only flaw, at least in my mind, was that she just wasn’t all that crazy about boating. Living on an island, a boat is kind of necessary.
Savannah’s boat was pretty easy to recognize. Rusty had told me it was a big Grand Banks trawler. Sea Biscuit was a regal-looking yacht, a good forty feet in length, with a large salon amidships and lower houses extending fore and aft, which I assumed were the st
aterooms. The large fly bridge was completely covered from the sun by a blue Bimini top, with roll down plastic windows to protect the occupants from wind or spray. They were all rolled up. The aft house had a small dinghy on the roof, with a mast and hoist next to the steps to the fly bridge, for lowering and retrieving it. The dinghy was covered with the same blue canvas as the Bimini. The decks were teak and looked immaculate.
The rails were polished wood, with a netting below it. That didn’t make sense, as Savannah’s daughter was easily tall enough to climb over the rails. Maybe she’d put them on when the girl was a toddler, and just neglected to remove them.
A low rumble told me I wasn’t alone. Looking toward the bow, I saw a large black and brown dog with a bobbed tail walking along the side deck. A Rottweiler. The dog stopped at the steps to the roof of the aft cabin, its lips curled back just enough to display large canine teeth.
I continued down the dock, walking backward.
Aboard Cazador, I started the engine and looked back at Savannah’s boat. A large dog for protection wasn’t unusual for a woman with a child, living alone in a house in the suburbs, but a woman and child living alone on a boat was a little unusual. I don’t know why it struck me as odd that they’d have a guard dog aboard.
I tossed off the lines and used the bow thruster to turn the boat away from the dock. Minutes later, I pushed the throttle forward as I left the confines of the marina. Once on plane, I followed the channel west about halfway to Dredgers Key, then turned northwest, crossing the three-foot deep flats toward Bluefish Channel and the open waters of the Gulf, just beyond.
Once I was through the channel, I turned northeast, headed for home. The sun was high overhead, and Kim would need to get back to the Anchor soon, so she could make the long drive back to Gainesville.
For the next hour, I kept the northern most islands of the backcountry a mile off the starboard side, running in twenty feet of water. It was a beautiful day, with a cloudless sky overhead, and the temperature was barely in the seventies. Not cold, but I’d worn a long-sleeved work shirt against the wind. The low rumble of the diesel engine under the console numbed my brain.
Rising Fury: A Jesse McDermitt Novel (Caribbean Adventure Series Book 12) Page 12