Miami Noir

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Miami Noir Page 12

by Les Standiford


  The patrol boat slowed. Two men in uniform at the machine gun, a third man holding a bullhorn.

  “I’m not fucking with you, Cruz,” Steve said. “You’ve got thirty seconds. Where’s Teresa’s money?”

  Chingate!” Cruz snarled.

  Señores del barco de pesca!” The tinny sound of the bullhorn carried across the water.

  “Last chance,” Steve said.

  Se han adentrado en las aguas territoriales de la República de Cuba

  “Steve, we’re in Cuban waters,” Victoria said.

  “I know. I passed Spanish 101.”

  Den la vuelta y salgan inmediatamente de aquí, o los vamos a abordar

  “They’re going to board us if we don’t turn around,” she said.

  “I kind of figured that out too.” Steve turned to Cruz. “Absolutely, positively last chance, pal. I’m handing you over.”

  “I’m betting you don’t,” Cruz said.

  The patrol boat was fifty yards away. One of the men in uniform pointed an AK-47 their way.

  “Steve…?” Victoria’s voice was a plea.

  This wasn’t the way he’d planned it. By this time, Cruz should have been spouting numbers and accounts from banks in the Caymans or Switzerland or the Isle of Man. But the bastard was toughing it out. Calling Steve’s bluff.

  Is that what it was? An empty threat?

  Steve wanted to hand Cruz over, wanted him to rot in a Cuban prison.

  But damnit, I’m a lawyer, not a vigilante.

  He wished he could turn his conscience on and off with the flick of a switch. He wished he could end a man’s life with cold calculations and no remorse. But the rats gnawing on Cruz at Isla de Pinos would also visit the house on Kumquat Avenue in Steve’s nightmares.

  “Take the wheel, Vic.” Filled with self-loathing, wishing he could be someone he was not. “Twenty-two degrees. Key West.”

  “Say ‘please,’” Cruz laughed, mocking him.

  Just before midnight, the lights of Key West off the port, the Wet Dream cruised north through Hawk Channel, headed toward Miami. The sky was clear and sparkled with stars. The wind whipped across the bridge, bringing a night chill. Victoria slipped into her glen-plaid jacket. Hair messed, clothes rumpled, emotionally drained, she was trying to figure out how to salvage the situation.

  I came aboard to save Steve from himself and I’m doing a lousy job.

  Steve stood at the wheel, draining a La Tropical beer, maybe listening, maybe not, as Cruz berated him.

  “You fucking loser,” Cruz said. “Every minute I’m tied up is gonna cost you.” Cruz rubbed his arm where the cuff was biting into his wrist. “I got nerve damage. Gonna add that to my lawsuit. When this is over, you’ll wish the Cubans had taken you prisoner.”

  “Steve, I need a moment with you,” Victoria said.

  Steve put the boat on auto—Cruz complaining that it was a damn reckless way to cruise at night—then headed down the ladder, joining Victoria in the salon.

  “You can’t keep him locked up,” she said.

  “I need more time.”

  “For what?”

  “To think.” He walked to the galley sink and turned the faucet, intending to splash cold water on his face. Same rattle, same thump. “Damn, I forgot. Cruz put all that money into his boat and still can’t get the water to work.”

  “What?”

  “A fancy boat like this and you can’t wash your hands.”

  “No. What you said before. ‘Cruz put all that money into his boat.’”

  “It’s just a figure of speech.”

  “Think about it, Steve. He doesn’t own a house. He leases a car. No brokerage accounts, no bank accounts. Everything he has, he puts into his boat. If he ever has to leave town quickly…”

  “Like he left Cuba,” Steve said, picking up the beat. “With nothing but the clothes on his back.”

  “This time it would be different because…”

  “The money’s here! On the boat.”

  In sync now, she thought. A man and a woman running stride for stride.

  “Vic, why don’t you go back up to the bridge and make sure we don’t crash into any cruise ships?”

  “And what are you doing?”

  “I’m gonna fix the plumbing.”

  Steve opened the hatch in the salon floor and climbed down a ladder to the engine compartment, wincing at the noise from the twin diesels. He found the black water tank first, tucked up under the bow. Sewage and waste water. Nothing unusual about it, and Cruz wouldn’t want to dirty his hands with that, anyway. Then Steve found the freshwater tank, a custom job built into one of the bulkheads. Made of fiberglass, it looked capable of holding five hundred gallons or more. The boat had desalinization equipment, so why did Cruz need such a big tank?

  A big tank that wasn’t working.

  Steve grabbed a flashlight mounted on a pole and took a closer look. He peered into an inspection port and could see the tank was three-quarters full. On top of the tank was a metal plate with a built-in handle. He turned the plate counter-clockwise and removed it. Then he aimed the flashlight into the opening.

  Water. Well, what did you expect?

  He grabbed a mop that was attached by velcro to a stringer and poked the handle into the tank. The end of the handle clanked off the walls.

  Clank. Clank. Clank. Thud.

  Thud? What the hell?

  Steve pushed the mop handle around the bottom of the tank as if he were stirring a giant vat of paella. It snagged on something soft. He worked the handle under the object and lifted.

  Something as long as a man’s body but much thinner.

  Thin enough to fit into the opening of the custom-built tank. The object was a transparent plasticized pouch, and when the end peeked out of the opening, Steve saw Ben Franklin’s tight-lipped face. A hundred-dollar bill. Stacked on others. Dozens of stacks. As he pulled the pouch out of the tank, he saw even more. Hundreds of stacks, thousands of bills.

  Damn heavy, Steve thought, lugging the pouch up the ladder from the engine compartment. Then he dragged the load out the salon door and into the cockpit.

  “Now you’ve done it.” Cruz sounded almost mournful. He stood on the bridge, aiming a double-barrel shotgun at Steve. The rail where he had been cuffed hung loose. “I didn’t want this. But it’s your own damn fault.”

  “I’m sorry, Steve,” Victoria said. “When I came up here, he’d gotten out.”

  “It’s okay,” Steve said. He dragged the pouch to the starboard gunwale.

  “Stop right there!” Cruz ordered. “Step away from the money.”

  “Nope. Don’t think so.”

  Cruz pumped the shotgun, an unmistakable click-clack that Steve felt in the pit of his stomach. “I’ll blow your head off.”

  “And leave blood and bone and tissue embedded in the planking? Nah. You may kill us, but you won’t do it on your boat.” Steve hoisted the pouch onto the rail. “If I can’t take this to Teresa, I’m sure as hell not gonna let you have it. Your treasure, pal, is strictly Sierra Madre.”

  The shotgun blast roared over Steve’s head, and he flinched. The pouch balanced on the rail, halfway between the deck and the deep blue sea.

  “Put the money down, asshole.”

  “Okay, okay.” Steve shoved the pouch over the rail and it splashed into the water. “It’s down.”

  “Asshole!” Cruz grabbed both throttles, slowed the boat, and swung her around. He turned a spotlight on the water.

  Nothing but a black sea and foamy whitecaps.

  He swung the spotlight left and right. Still nothing, until…the beam picked up the pouch floating with the current. Cruz eased the boat close to the pouch at idle speed, slipped the engine out of gear, then dashed down the ladder. Grabbing a tarpon gaff, he moved quickly to the gunwale. Shotgun in one hand, gaff in the other, he motioned toward Steve. “Back up. All the way to the chair.”

  “Do what he says, Steve!” Victoria called from the bridge.


  “Only because you say so.” Steve moved toward one of the fighting chairs.

  Cruz leaned over the side and snagged the pouch with the gaff. He struggled to lift it with one arm, still aiming the shotgun at Steve.

  Suddenly, the boat shot forward, and Cruz tumbled into the water, the shotgun blasting into space as it fell onto the deck. On the bridge, Victoria had one hand on the throttles, the other on the wheel.

  Coño “ Cruz shouted from the darkness.

  “Do sharks feed at night?” Steve leaned over the side. “Or should I just drop some wiggles on your head and find out?”

  “Get me out of here!” His voice more fearful than demanding.

  “Nah.”

  ">“No me jodas!”

  “I’m not fucking with you. Just don’t feel like giving you a lift.”

  Victoria raced down the ladder and joined Steve in the cockpit. “Testing, testing,” she said, punching a button on her pocket Dictaphone.

  “What are you doing?” Steve said.

  “Mr. Cruz!” Victoria called out. “We’ll bring you on board once you answer a few questions.”

  Cruz was splashing just off the starboard side. “What fucking questions!”

  “Do you admit stealing three million dollars from Teresa Toraño?” Victoria said.

  Pink slivers of sky lit up the horizon and seabirds squawked overhead as Steve steered the boat into the channel at Matheson Hammock. He had one hand on the wheel and one draped on Victoria’s shoulder. A shivering Cruz, his arms and legs bound with quarter-inch line, was laced into a fighting chair in the cockpit. His taped confession would be in the hands of the state attorney by noon. The pouch of money lay at his feet, taunting him.

  “What are you thinking about?” Victoria asked.

  “I was just imagining the look on Teresa’s face when we give her the money.”

  “She’ll be delighted. But it was never about the money, Steve.”

  “Whadaya mean?”

  “When you were a baby lawyer, Teresa believed in you and nobody else did. You needed to prove to her that she was right. And maybe you needed to prove it to yourself too.”

  Steve shrugged. “If you say so.”

  She wrapped both arms around his neck. “But remember this, Steve. You never have to prove anything to me.” They kissed, at first softly, and then deeper and slower. The kiss lasted a long time, and when they opened their eyes, the sun was peeking above the horizon in the eastern sky.

  Victoria folded the contours of her body against him. “What’s that?”

  “What?” he asked.

  “Pressing against me. You have another pair of handcuffs in your pocket?”

  “Nope.”

  “Then what…?” She jammed a hand into one of his pockets. “Oh. That.”

  Steve smiled. “Like I said, no cuffs.”

  “It’s okay, sailor.” She brushed her lips against his cheek. “You won’t need them.”

  THE LAST OF LORD JITTERS

  BY DAVID BEATY

  South Miami

  The hurricane brought Woody and Isolde Trimble home on the last flight from San Francisco before the authorities closed the Miami airport.

  A Miami neighbor had phoned them at Woody’s mother’s house in Bolinas, north of San Francisco. They’d just pulled into her driveway after ten days of camping in the Trinities. Woody’s mother had recently died, and the camping trip was a vacation after all the sad cleaning and sorting they’d done at her house, preparing it for sale.

  From the driveway, they heard telephones ringing in the empty rooms. Isolde ran into the house and answered in the kitchen. It was just after 9 p.m. A woman’s voice, hoarse and dramatic, said, “It’s coming.” Isolde, suspecting a joke, said, “Tell me about it.” Hurricane Ernestine, the woman said. One huge—pardon her French—fucking monster, coño, and what are you going to do about your hurricane shutters? It was their neighbor in Miami. She and her husband, the woman said, were leaving tonight, driving up to Disney World. Oh—and that fucking alligator had come back again.

  The next morning at the San Francisco airport, the ticket agent warned the Trimbles that the Miami airport would be closing down soon. Their flight might be diverted. Woody told her they’d chance it. The agent asked if they’d ever experienced a hurricane.

  Woody glanced at Isolde, who said that she hadn’t. Woody said that he had.

  Isolde had a bad feeling about Hurricane Ernestine. Her marriage to Woody was new, but their house in Miami was old. They’d lived in it for five months. They had metal hurricane shutters for only the front and back porch windows. In June, Woody had stored water, hurricane supplies, and plywood sheets in the garage. Now they had to get back in time to cut the plywood sheets to size and bolt them over all the other windows.

  Woody remembered his last hurricane, when he was a kid living in Coconut Grove. He remembered their shuttered house, the humidity, the god-awful noise outside; and, next day, the high water mark on the walls downstairs, the thin layer of stinking mud on the floor, and his twelve-year-old younger brother Chip hosing out the television set, singing “I’m All Shook Up.” Aha, umm, ooohhh yeah. Chip said he loved hurricanes.

  Woody and Isolde first met at an exhibition of Brazilian art at the Bass Museum on Miami Beach. He was peering at a drawing by Mira Schendel when he noticed a tall, tanned, athletic-looking blond woman with gray eyes leaning toward the same drawing.

  Woody knew as soon as he saw her that she was his woman, he was her man. Call it coupe de foudre, flash of lightning, pure insanity, Woody didn’t care. He wanted Isolde with a fierceness he’d never felt with any other woman. He looked around for rivals, thinking, Why not throw her over my shoulder and scamper into the night?

  Isolde looked at him and saw a man with thinning blond hair, not tall, wearing gold-rimmed spectacles. He radiated confidence, a sense of fun. She heard something in his voice that disarmed her, and she trusted him. He’s an honest man, she thought.

  By the time she began to focus on the meaning of Woody’s words, they were drinking Chardonnay in the museum courtyard, and she was wondering, Why is he talking about Byron and Don Juan? Is he an English professor?

  But before she had a chance to verify this, she’d agreed to join him for sushi at a nearby restaurant. They were walking away from the museum, and he was describing a Thai restaurant in Coconut Grove, where—he mimed pulling something like string out of his mouth—he found the elastic waistband from a pair of women’s underpants in his Pad Thai. “Fruit of the Loom,” he told her. “Size ten.”

  Over sushi and warm saki, she learned that Woody had been a graduate student of English, but now was regional manager for Cardiotron, a company that made cardiac CT scanners—very, very expensive machines. He sold them to hospitals and doctors’ groups in Brazil, Argentina, and other countries in South America. He spoke fluent Spanish and Portuguese. He said, “Our scanner gives you a real-time, beating, 3-D rendering of the human heart. Amazing! I love it.” Woody laughed and clinked his glass against Isolde’s. “Can you see it? My business is the human heart.”

  Isolde told Woody that she was studying Early Childhood Education at Florida International University. She’d just moved to Miami. Before that, she’d spent seven years, the years since high school, working as crew on big, ocean-going sailing yachts, spending her summers in the Mediterranean, her winters in the Caribbean.

  She’d grown up in Colorado, an only child. Both parents were dead. She’d always wanted to be a sailor. She asked Woody, You know that Mediterranean blue? Her favorite color since she was five. She’d wanted to live in that color.

  Her favorite song was an oldie version of “Somewhere Beyond the Sea,” sung in French by Charles Trenet, who made love sound dreamy and poetic, but also sexy, in a genial way. When she heard it, she imagined love on a clear day, with no memories.

  “So now,” Isolde said, touching the rim of her wine glass to Woody’s, “I’ve told you everything important there is
to know about me.”

  There was something important Woody didn’t tell Isolde until they were living together in a rented apartment in Coral Gables and were talking about marriage. He’d been married and divorced when he was a graduate student in English at the University of Georgia. Isolde, after a stunned silence, asked if they’d had children. Woody said no.

  Isolde packed a suitcase and drove away in her white Volkswagen Jetta. Woody thought he’d lost her for good. She left a message on his office voice mail the next day. She said she felt confused and needed to be alone, so she’d driven to Key West.

  She returned in two days. She’d cut her lovely blond hair and wore a Jenny Holzer T-shirt that said: When someone beats you with a flashlight you make the light shine in all directions. Woody kissed her, told her how worried he’d been, how he’d missed her.

  He said, “Don’t you have anything you regret, too?”

  Her face took on a complex, haunted look that frightened Woody. He thought, She wasn’t angry at For the first time, he tried to imagine Isolde’s seven years as a sailor.

  * * *

  The house was on a half-acre of unincorporated Dade County, west of Red Road, between Coral Gables and South Miami. It was a one-story, two-bedroom, two-bathroom bungalow with a tiled roof. The pool lay just beyond the back porch. A botanist who worked at Fairchild Gardens built the house in the 1930s. He planted gardenia bushes near the house, and lychee, orange, grapefruit, key lime, avocado, and mango trees in the yard. He also planted a calamondin tree from the Philippines, and, from Brazil, a jacaranda tree and a jaboticaba bush, which bore purplish-red, thick-skinned fruit the size of a cherry directly on its trunk and branches.

  “I love this,” Isolde said to Woody. They were strolling around the yard. They’d been together a year and were getting married. It was April, the sun was shining, the jacaranda tree was a purple cloud of blossoms, and the real estate agent, who sensed that the house was selling itself, drifted away.

  Isolde placed a hand on Woody’s shoulder in a beseeching gesture that startled and moved them both. She looked as if she were going to cry. “Oh, Woody. This is paradise. Can’t I have this? Please?”

 

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