Salty Sky

by Seth Coker

  He ruminated on the old RAF pilot’s comment about the rule of law allowing England to rule the world. There seemed validity in this idea. In the failed states of South America, it was true: There was no rule of law. Even in Mexico, law only took hold within pockets of the citizenry. Certainly, there were laws, but the justice and value of these laws were not embedded in the culture. The creation of value that came from honoring deals or respecting property rights was little understood. There was no understanding of the fact that if there were no dishonor in stealing, then everyone’s property would soon be stolen, except the smallest amount they could physically protect.

  Better to partner directly with the Americans and Europeans rather than the Mexicans or Moroccans. The westernized criminals with whom he would deal were culturally bound to honor deals. Their deceptions would only occur when it was in their best interest. A calculated gamble. These partners would realize they made a choice to steal and would understand the ramifications. The men who grew up without the rule of law stole because they could at that moment; they didn’t consider the consequences.

  The Americans and Europeans were also sheltered. Even their poorest grew up with doctors to treat the sick. They rarely saw youthful deaths from poor health or violence. The untimely passing of a single friend traumatized them; a mass grave was a fairy tale. The idea that law enforcement officials could be left hanging from street lights was unfathomable.

  Using the Western men would save lives. The reminders of his violent capabilities would be needed less frequently. Another benefit of dealing with the Westerners was their fifty years of equal rights movements. He could align with women as well as men. Certainly, his socially repressed competitors under their turbans or machismo wouldn’t. The old RAF pilot would probably say that the Western world ruled today, because it allowed women to contribute. Francisco could hear his cockney accent, “Lad, how do you not use half your population and move forward? Do you think if I cut the engines off on the left side of the plane we’ll get there as fast as if they were all trailing blue flames?”

  ESTELLA INTERRUPTED HIS thoughts. “Mr. Escobar, would you like a drink?”

  He looked up and replied, “Please. A Heineken.”

  He had missed the pleasure of watching her approach. He did not repeat the mistake as she walked away, taking the time to absorb her fluid motion. As she walked, she traversed a tight rope, each foot landing almost exactly in front of the other. Her shanks cocked up and down with each stride. The tucked-in shirt highlighted her narrow waist and straight back. The slit in the skirt’s back stopped just below his imagination. She bent at the waist and opened the undercounter refrigerator in the middle of the cabin. This was for his benefit; it would have been more comfortable for her to bend at the knees. He started to relax. It had been a good day. As she returned, he watched a drop of water from the cold bottle land in the open fold of her button-down shirt and slide first sideways and then accelerate vertically down between her breasts.

  Handing the bottle over, she asked, “Is there anything else I can get for you, Mr. Escobar?”

  He motioned for her to sit. Estella drew the curtain separating the plane’s lounge from its passenger rows before sitting. Silently, he enjoyed her fragrance. He felt the skin above her knee as it turned to soft inner thigh. He turned toward her, and their eyes met and held. A knowing look of pleasures to come passed between them. Francisco felt it was a shame he had not already upgraded the back of the cabin with a wall and door.

  Francisco did not find the limited privacy inhibiting. Estella soon wore only her heels. Two of Francisco’s buttons were lost on the floor. From the sounds Francisco heard and the quivers he felt, the missing wall did not detract from Estella’s experience either.

  15

  “HE SPEAK TO the cops?” Joe asked the two nervous trainers who’d awoken him with the story of the attack on Gino.

  “Yeah, he was telling them the story when we were at the hospital. Oh, and the docs won’t release him before eight.”

  “OK. Thanks. I’ll get him in the morning.” Dark thoughts of retribution seeped into Joe’s brain. A moment of silence passed as they stood on either side of Joe’s cabin doorway.

  One of the trainers finally said, “Mr. Pascarella, one more thing.”

  Where did all this “Mr. Pascarella” come from? Joe nodded for him to proceed.

  “Do you mind calling Gino’s mom? He asked us to, but, you know, you’re her brother or whatever, and maybe she would take it better from you.”

  When they waxed their pubic hair, it must have pulled their balls off too.

  “Yeah, I can do that. Oh, I was going to tell you in the morning, but since we’re all here: The captain got you a Hertz car to drive to Raleigh and fly home tomorrow. Assuming Gino’s OK to fly, he has a seat on the plane with you.”

  There was no reaction from the two man-boys. Joe remembered he’d told them earlier in the night. He turned and shut his door. He cut his light and fell onto his bed. He heard the trainers leave. He lay on top of his sheets until he heard the rain start. Somehow, he fell back to sleep.

  TONY HAD COFFEE ready when he got up. The conversation between the trainers and Joe woke Tony last night, so he was up to speed. Fortunately, the captain had already picked up the rental car the trainers were to take to the airport. He and Tony could use it to check on Gino. Leaving Framed, Joe put on a yellow raincoat, flipped the hood up, and filled a to-go cup. They hurried through gusts of rain to the small rental SUV. None of the console buttons were where Joe thought they should be.

  “Anthony, you think Gino was attacked?”

  “Hard to imagine somebody looking at him from the front and then choosing to beat him up. Hard to imagine him admitting it if they did.”

  Clear as mud. Joe hated to see his family get hurt. Hated that he thought such uncharitable thoughts about Gino every time he saw him.

  Forty years ago, Joe had hammered scabs taking jobs from his guys. Those guys’ mistake was wanting to feed their families. He didn’t feel so good about that now. He and Tony never relived those memories. Some of those guys were just back from Vietnam, too, already emotionally torn up and maybe trying to kick some bad habits. And when they tried to make a living … Joe didn’t want to follow that thought.

  He just wasn’t sure about Gino. He’d talk to Gino and see whether he could figure it out. He wouldn’t rush to bust open a scab today, but if somebody cowardly attacked someone under his care … Really, if somebody cowardly attacked anybody and Joe could do something about it, he would. Processing the situation, he felt a spark catch in his gut.

  Ignoring the technology in both the dashboard LCD and their phones, they wrote the directions on a sheet of notepaper.

  The hospital parking lot was under construction with a new oncology wing coming soon. Hospitals always grow. Demographics pushed the hospitals’ expansion destiny, which was to grow or die. Funny thought for a business dealing with death. There were good margins in hospital jobs, lots of change orders, and late-stage customization. You could turn five percent profit into fifteen percent quickly.

  Gino was having breakfast—what else—a smoothie. His right arm had a hard cast bent eighty degrees from straight. Not plaster, but hard. It was wrapped in fiberglass mesh tape like sheetrockers use. How much would a plaster cast around Gino’s ham hock arm weigh?

  Gino’s face was a mess. It was hard to tell with the swelling and discoloration, but Joe thought he looked depressed. A good butt whipping could do that to you. Although Joe noticed that somehow, he’d ripped the neck of his blue paper gown enough to show his hairless chest.

  “Eh, Gino, how you feeling? I hope better than you look.”

  He mumbled, “Uncle Joe, cut me some slack. I can’t believe it. Doctor says I’ll need this cast for four weeks. Then a smaller one another four weeks. Then they’ll look at it again to see how much longer. I probably won’t work out for three or four months by the time it’s healed. I’ll lose a lot of ma
ss in four months.”

  Diminished appearances. The source of depression was identified. Joe thought to mention that, as appearances go, he, not Gino, was the “after” picture.

  No reason to pile it on. Gino spent his life creating those muscles. He didn’t need them in a conventional sense. He didn’t pull a plow, hammer railroad ties, grapple giant crab pots onto boats in freezing waves. He needed them to substitute for a personality—personality from physical presentation. Saved effort on thoughts, words, or actions. Joe felt a little bad for him.

  “So, Gino, what happened?”

  “Uncle Joe, I went to look at the boats. I stopped to take a whiz off the dock. I had my johnson in my hand when that sucker with those flowery shorts cracked a tire iron across my arm, popped me in the head a couple times when I was bent over, and left me. He stole my phone and the cash out of my wallet, too.”

  “What did the police say?”

  “They asked if I knew his name or any way to find him. I didn’t. Here’s the police report.”

  Joe could track him down. The nurses knew his name or his friends’ names well enough. He could almost remember the names of the guys on the boat. He figured the captain would remember the name of the boat itself. Gino could have figured this out. Joe didn’t think he’d mention it.

  He wasn’t sure about Gino’s story. Joe read the report. Why was his shirt off to whiz? Christ Almighty, what was he thinking? Gino would take his shirt off anytime he got the chance.

  The doctor made her rounds. The CAT scan and MRI were clear. She scribbled on the chart at the foot of the bed. Gino could fly home. She prescribed pain pills, advised an orthopedist, and moved down the hall. Two minutes tops. Gino said he’d never seen her before.

  Tony and Joe helped Gino into his pants. Neither one’s knees felt good bending down, so they laid Gino back on the bed to put on his shoes. The blue gown stayed on for a shirt; Gino’s T-shirt hadn’t made the ambulance. Joe helped Gino through the checkout process while Tony got the car.

  Gino sat in the back. Joe called the captain to have the trainers and their bags ready to ride to Raleigh. No extended good-byes.

  It was nine. Joe crossed himself and dialed his sister. He put her on speaker so Tony and Gino could feel the assault. After taking his licks from his sibling, Joe took Gino back to the boat with Tony.

  ASHLEY AND HER friends were in Cale’s Land Cruiser with Barry behind the wheel. Ashley used her phone for directions to find the marina. The Jersey guys pulled out as they pulled in. Solemn looks alone were exchanged in the passing. Joe and Tony stood on the covered aft deck, drinking coffee, and the captain adjusted the dock fenders in the rain.

  When they made eye contact, Tony whistled, Joe smiled, and Ashley felt better. She wondered whether they were evacuating. Were Joe and Tony staying on the boat or heading inland? Chief said that when a hurricane came ashore, they took the boats to deep water. Did boats like this do that, or just big navy ships?

  Deckhands in rain slickers tidied the marina, putting hoses in lockers, disconnecting shore power feeds, and clamping lockers shut. Cushions went below decks, Bimini tops were removed, rain dodgers were zipped, and yardarms and fighting chairs were stored. Everybody was in a really good mood. Ashley expected the ominous foreboding of a coming storm but instead found the air had a very communal feeling. The gunslinger brings the ranchers together.

  “Joe, do we stay on the boat?”

  “Captain says it’s OK. The wind is gusty, but not too bad. Just rain all day. Some cruise you signed up for, huh?”

  “Sunny and Gino versus rainy and no Gino. That’s a tough call.”

  She’d expected Joe to laugh. He forced a smile.

  “Here’s your money back. I’m sorry I even took it. I was just so … What’s the right word? … confused … with all the action. I can’t believe I’m admitting this, but I was happy you took charge and told me what to do. Until you got there, all I had my mind on was hitting Gino as hard as I could. Oh, and we didn’t need it. The money, that is. The bachelor party guys let us crash with them.”

  SHE HAD HIS attention. He was jealous. Green, mean jealous. Crash? What did that mean?

  Simmer down. She wasn’t his girlfriend. She wasn’t his daughter. And daughter was more realistic; if his kids had kids the same age he had ’em, granddaughter wasn’t too far off. OK. Feel jealous, just don’t let her see you’re jealous. Joe felt the darkness in him take firmer hold.

  JOE’S AWKWARD PAUSE made Ashley keep talking. “Cale. The guy who was right in Gino’s face. He owns this really neat little house out on the water. Not on the beach but on the … what do you call it?”

  “The Intracoastal Waterway?”

  “Yeah. The Intracoastal. It’s really old. Huge front and back yards. Perfect view down to the water.”

  “Could you find the house again? Do you have his phone number?”

  “Sure. I have his address in my phone. I didn’t get his phone number. Why?”

  “I think I need to talk with him about Gino.”

  Joe wrote down the address, and the conversation concluded awkwardly.

  Ashley went to her cabin to shower, scurrying through the rain. The cabin door opened upward. To get in, she descended a ladder. By the time the door shut, the floor was soaked. She stripped out of her damp dress, then used it to mop the floor. She hung her dress on a hook and hopped in the shower.

  JOE ASKED THE captain to borrow a car for him. He unlocked his safe and put his pistol in the pocket of his rain slicker. He couldn’t find Tony and thought it best to go without him anyway to keep him out of whatever trouble Joe ended up causing.

  The captain returned with an entry-level pickup—rear two-wheel drive only, vinyl bench seats, roll-up windows. Joe was surprised you could still find roll-up windows. It was one less electronic component to break down. The truck had a four-speed manual transmission. It had been a long time since he’d driven a manual. Or a four-speed. The cell phone had killed the manual transmission. Who wanted to shift gears when you had to hold a phone to your ear? Maybe new hands-free phone technology would bring it back.

  He sat behind the steering wheel and wrote the directions from his phone onto paper. More miles than turns. More miles by land than by water. He started the Mitsubishi, checked the windshield wipers, and set off.

  The flat roads puddled at any asphalt dip, poor grading, raised side yard, or clogged drainage ditch. More than once, water sloshed through the bottom of the door onto the rubber floors. There was very little traffic; the tourists were gone and the residents were holed up in their homes. He went slow. He turned off the collector road onto a neighborhood road with houses on each side. There was no consistency in the houses—old, new, big, small, lots of land, almost no land. He found the street and turned onto a ribbon-paved road no wider than sixteen feet.

  Trees lined both sides of the road, broken by mailboxes and gravel driveways leading to houses he couldn’t see in the rain. He pulled over to let an SUV pass. As it pulled past him, and the headlights no longer shone in his eyes, he saw it was the same old Toyota that had dropped the nurses off, now filled with guys. He figured that was the party leaving town, and he was too late, but he was close enough that he’d find out for sure.

  He found the driveway. The mailbox said “Coleman” on top. The street number was on the box itself. Below the box were some decorative crabs in a net, and at the base of the six-by-six post was a cactus in a bed of oyster shells.

  He pulled off the street and sat in the truck with the engine running, the lights and windshield wipers on. Joe’s thoughts shifted between fury over his nephew and jealousy over Ashley. What happened with Ashley here last night? He should have kicked the trainers off the boat, not the girls. The darkness grew. He felt himself hoping Gino told the truth. He put his right hand on his rain slicker’s pocket and felt the danger of the pistol.

  16

  HALLELUJAH! THE FRIENDS were gone, the house empty. Cale loved seeing his friends
, but you know what Ben Franklin said about fish and visitors.

  He checked his phone. A missed call from a 703 area code that he didn’t recognize but—surprise—no messages from his daughters. He told himself not to be a grumpy old man. He would go to Facebook to see if they had any updates. There was something about the end of a guys’ weekend that made you want to hug your family. The girls had both uploaded new pictures of the little ones—on swings, being held in the pool, asleep in the car seat in a bathing suit.

  Cale scanned his other “friends’” posts. Oh no. A former coworker, Jim Radcliffe, died in a fire in an office building. The funeral was scheduled for Thursday.

  Toggling out of Facebook, Cale Googled articles on the fire. Cause unknown. Started in an area with construction material. The deceased’s remains were too damaged to perform an autopsy. Worry crept into Cale’s chest.

  His mind wandered. Despite the Facebook connection, he and Jim weren’t truly friends, but they were bonded. Every time they worked together, except one, Jim jumped out of the helicopter, and Cale stayed in it. But there was that time in Colombia. (Wow, two times in twenty-four hours thinking about Colombia.) They’d survived. A pair of better men hadn’t.

  Was it coincidence that this happened to Jim right after the new treaty? After Colombia, whenever the two men crossed paths, they joked that if one died in a strange car wreck, it was time the other stopped driving. Even since both men left the DEA, they’d occasionally sent each other emails with titles like “Still driving?” Such were the type of looking-over-your-shoulder worries the drug runners in Colombia inspired.

  Feeling a touch of paranoia, he dialed Sheila, a former boss of both Cale and Jim. Sheila started with the DEA in 1984, fresh out of Vanderbilt Law School. The DEA was pretty fresh at the time too. Cale started half a decade later, right in the middle of the South American campaign of the War on Drugs. Four years before Pablo Escobar met his demise.