Baja Florida

by Bob Morris

  “Hasn’t been much business, lately.”

  “My point exactly,” Barbara said. “Inertia does not become you, Zack Chasteen. You are a creature of motion. Deep down inside you’ve been craving for something to come along that would require you to haul yourself out of house-husbandry and hit the road. That opportunity has now presented itself and you need not feel the least bit guilty about it.”

  As always, she’d pegged me.

  Barbara said, “Thing about us, Zack, we get along together. And we get along apart. Not everyone can say that.”

  “I like the together better.”

  “Me, too. But sometimes we need the apart to fully appreciate the together.”

  “You saying you’ll be glad to get rid of me?”

  “No, I’m not saying that at all. But…”

  “But what?”

  She curled up against me.

  “I won’t mind having the bed all to myself when you’re gone.”

  “Is the bed really that crowded with me in it?”

  She looked up. Something about her eyes. They swallowed me.

  “Perhaps I’m mistaken,” she said. “Perhaps further research is required.”

  “Perhaps we should go hop in that bed and conduct research of a collaborative nature.”

  She gave my leg a squeeze.

  “Perhaps, my ass,” she said.

  Breathe in, breathe out. Stay calm. Try to figure out what’s going on…

  She lay on her side. Thin mattress on a narrow bed. Her legs hanging over the edge of it. Coarse blanket against her cheek.

  She was on a boat. She knew that much.

  She could feel it rocking gently, side to side. Like it was anchored somewhere. No slap-slap-slap of forward motion.

  Not her boat. Because there was the odor of old bilge and diesel and mildew, and her boat, it didn’t smell like that.

  She was a fanatic about keeping her boat tidy. When they were provisioning, getting ready to leave Charleston, Karen had made fun of all the cleaning supplies she’d bought at Harris Teeter.

  “Ya know, Jen, they do sell Clorox in the islands. And an entire case of teak oil? You think there’s going to be a worldwide shortage while we’re gone or something?”

  Her boat didn’t sound like this boat either. Her boat, she knew its creaks and groans. She’d lived on it for two months before they left, fell asleep each night listening to the clang of the halyards, the whine of the stays.

  Her boat, it spoke to her. This boat did not.

  She heard: Footsteps, from somewhere above, getting closer. A door sliding open.

  A voice: “Well, well. If it’s not Sleeping Beauty.”

  Another voice: “Damn, it stinks down here. Look what she did to the blanket. What a mess.”

  “The back of her T-shirt, it’s all bloody.”

  “Too bad Dr. Boy isn’t here to take care of her.”

  She recognized the voices.

  “We need to get her out of those clothes, wash her down.”

  “You’ll like that, won’t you?”

  “Just shut up and help me.”

  “We’ll have to untie her first.”

  “You untie her. I’ll hold her. She’s not going to put up a fight. Are you, Jen? Just be a good girl.”

  She said, “Where are my friends?”

  “Don’t you worry about them, Jen. You just do what we tell you.”

  She felt his hands upon her shoulders.

  She tensed.

  The other one untied her legs, her arms.

  She waited.

  Hands, his hands, pulling her T-shirt over her head and off.

  Other hands unbuttoning her shorts…

  She waited.

  Yanking her shorts down…

  And then she rolled, pulling both of them with her onto the floor. Landing a knee, hard, into the one beneath her. Her elbows jabbing ribs, soft flesh, anything.

  Her blows had little strength behind them. Still, weak as she was, she managed to break free, scramble blindly across the floor.

  They were on her in an instant, pinning her down.

  “Bitch!”

  A hard fist into the side of her head. Again and again.

  Darkness…

  5

  Boggy and I were on the road by 6:00 a.m. I had a thermos of Café Bustelo. Boggy had a thermos of God-only-knows-what. He poured some in his cup. It made the car smell like something that might get stuck on the bottom of your shoe and you wouldn’t bother scraping it off, you’d just throw the shoe away.

  “What is that stuff?”

  “Maja acu,” Boggy said. “Is Taino for ‘Big Eye Tea.’”

  “Big Eye as in wakes you up?”

  “No, more like Big Eye as in helps you see.”

  “See what?”

  “See what you would not see if you did not drink it.”

  “It legal?”

  “By whose law?”

  “By the law of any highway patrolman who might pull me over, ask what’s in there, and then haul the both of us to jail.”

  Boggy drained the cup. Then he drained the rest of the thermos.

  “We’re good,” he said.

  He closed his eyes and for the rest of the drive to Miami he just sat there seeing what ever the hell he saw—a short dark man with long black hair and the visage of some ancient stone-faced tiki god.

  I saw U.S. 1 going south in the early morning. Tiny pockets of it were still distinctly Florida—tidal creeks and salt marshes, mom ’n’ pop motels and bait shacks, houses built to fit a place, not to make a statement about net worth.

  But more and more it was just a slice of anywhere. The same restaurant that would serve me the same hamburger in Omaha. The same motel that would offer me the same thin mattress in Dubuque. The same gated developments with the same insipid names—Oak Run, Pine Glen, Quail Hollow—that substituted nomenclature for what they had stripped from nature.

  I recalled a sign I had seen at Minorca Beach, just north of our place. Most of Minorca County allows people to drive cars on the beach, a long-standing tradition in this part of Florida, dating back to the days when the first stock car races were held on the hard-packed sands at Daytona. A big part of me knows that driving cars on the beach doesn’t make a lick of sense. Not good for loggerhead hatchlings that get squashed under steel-belted radials. Not good for sunbathers on beach blankets who get mistaken for speed bumps. But this is Florida and good sense is not an abundant natural resource. All fourteen million of us want a place where we can plant an umbrella and a chaise lounge and enjoy our little place in the sun. Yes, the beach belongs to everyone. And the notion that access to it is the exclusive domain of those who can afford to own pricey oceanfront homes doesn’t sit right with me either.

  Recently, driving had been outlawed along a five-mile stretch of south Minorca Beach. In addition to putting up Day-Glo barricades to divert traffic, the county had erected a pair of giant signs that read “Natural Area Ahead.” It was like planting wildflowers in the median of the interstate and calling it a “Wildlife Refuge.” No matter that beyond the pair of giant signs the five-mile stretch was zero-lot lined with ticky-tacky condos built where soaring dunes once stood. No matter that the beach itself was actually fill that had been pumped in from offshore by huge dredges after the last hurricane and would likely disappear with the next big blow. No matter that the endemic coastal vegetation—sea oats, scrub oaks, and spartina grass—had been replaced by sod lawns, hibiscus hedges, and other exotic flora that needed constant irrigation from an increasingly tapped-out aquifer. No matter that the most abundant fauna was flocks of squawking seagulls that subsisted on a diet of Cheetos and discarded fried chicken. It was, by official proclamation and garish sign-age, a “Natural Area.” And it irked me. It irked me because it bespoke an insidious mentality, one that had crept in to diminish our understanding of nature in its most precious and bona-fide form. It made us increasingly numb to venal encroachment and blind to greed m
asquerading as progress.

  But simmer down, Chasteen. You’re getting older. You’re a husband and a father. By all rights, your mellow years are well upon you. The rage? Let it go, man, let it go.

  Besides, generations of Floridians have been raging and to what good? The thirty percent of us who vote still elect county commissioners who buddy-up to developers and lack the foresight of a flea. And the legislature, populated largely by realtors who fancy themselves statesmen, provides ongoing evidence that everything all the other states think about us yahoos down here might well be true: It’s not the heat, it’s the stupidity.

  Perhaps it really is better just to marvel over the ongoing spectacle of Florida, do what you can to save your little part of it, and hope for the best.

  If we’ve succeeded at nothing else, then at least we have succeeded in out-weirding California. Really, there ought to be a cable news channel that is all Florida, all the time. Chronically botched elections, astronaut/hitwomen wearing adult diapers, and Burmese pythons taking over the Everglades. Condo commandos, world-record shark attacks, and a critical mass of trailer trash.

  Our peculiar peninsula is the original Dysfunction Junction. Give the U.S.A. a good shake and all the loose parts roll down our way.

  Yes, the road to hell passes straight through Florida. Grab a chaise lounge, kick back, and enjoy the parade.

  6

  Around Titusville I pulled onto I-95 and slid into the southward flow. Traffic started jamming when we hit Delray Beach a couple of hours later, became a total snakepit in Fort Lauderdale, and by the time the interstate folded into Dixie Highway south of downtown Miami, I was ready to get where we were going.

  The detective’s name was Delgado. Abel Delgado. Mickey Ryser told me he’d been referred to him by a friend of a friend, someone who worked for the Metro Dade Police Department. Delgado had left the force and set up shop for himself. I’d called his office twice on the drive down. Each time I’d gotten a voice on the answering machine—Delgado’s, I supposed; monotone, like he was reading from a script—followed by a beep. Then the call disconnected like it does when the answering machine is full.

  I’d been expecting a shabby storefront in a run-down strip mall somewhere. But the address was Coral Gables, a shiny, five-story office building on Ponce de Leon. Nice neighborhood with soaring palms—Cuban Royals, Roystonia regia—lining the street.

  I found shade under a banyan tree at a corner of the parking lot. Boggy was in the exact position as when we’d left home hours earlier. Sitting up straight in the passenger seat, hands clasped in his lap, eyes closed.

  I gave him a shake. One eye eased open and considered me.

  “We’re here,” I said.

  The eye closed. Boggy didn’t budge.

  Fine, then. I’d go it alone.

  I got out of the car and went inside the building. A receptionist’s desk sat in the middle of the lobby, sans the receptionist. Near the elevator, a directory listed who was where, and I picked out Delgado Investigations, Suite 121.

  I walked down a hall and found Suite 121 at the end of it, past the law office of Andrew Strecker, Esq., and a real estate appraisal firm. I tried the door. Locked. I knocked. No answer. I knocked again. Same thing.

  I looked at my watch. Ten o’clock. No reason a private detective should keep regular office hours.

  I walked back to the car. I gave Boggy another shake. This time I kept shaking until both his eyes opened.

  “Nap time’s over.”

  “Wasn’t napping,” he said.

  “You hungry?”

  “No.”

  “Good. You can watch me eat.”

  A few minutes later we were sitting at Lario’s, just south of Sunset. There are more authentic Cuban joints than Lario’s in Miami, places where you order at a walk-up window and eat at the counter next to old men smoking fat cigars and old women studying scratch-off lottery tickets, sometimes vice versa.

  But Lario’s had a patio and I liked sitting there. The view was nothing special—a Winn-Dixie across the street—but the human scenery was always worth taking in. Not the fashionista South Beach scene, but the ebb and flow of a neighborhood. Good-looking moms with their good-looking kids. Guys with slicked-back hair who might be mobsters. Or who might just as easily be deposed Central American dictators. U.M. coeds who might moonlight at Club Platinum. Young men in dark suits doing deals. Old men in guayaberas dreaming of deals they once did.

  When the waiter appeared, I ordered a cortadito, Cuban toast, and a chorizo omelet with pica de gallo. Boggy said he’d have the same thing.

  “Thought you weren’t hungry.”

  “I’m not,” Boggy said.

  “Just being sociable?”

  He looked at me. Like I should know better.

  The waiter brought the cortaditos and the toast, and we broke off hunks of toast and dipped them in the coffee and didn’t talk.

  A man sitting at the table next to us was going on about the Heat and how with a stud like Dwyane Wade why couldn’t they do any better than they did. The guys sitting at the table on the other side were talking about all the grouper they’d caught in the Dry Tortugas over the weekend. Then again, they could have been talking about the Heat, too. My Spanish pretty much sucks.

  The waiter brought our omelets and we ate them. I ordered another cortadito, sucked it down, and paid the bill.

  We drove back to the office on Ponce de Leon. This time Boggy deigned to accompany me inside.

  It was still short of noon. Still no receptionist at the receptionist’s desk. Still no answer to my knocking on the door of Suite 101.

  Maybe the neighbors knew something. No one home at the real estate appraisal firm. But the door to the law firm of Andrew Strecker, Esq., opened and we stepped inside.

  A woman sat behind a desk in the anteroom. Mid-thirties, pretty enough. More than pretty enough, actually. One of those women it took you a second glance to see all the pretty.

  She looked me up and down without passing judgment. She looked at Boggy and her eyes lingered longer and she smiled. That’s the way it always is. Women see Boggy and they want to hug him. Sometimes they wind up doing more than that. Beats hell out of me.

  “Help you?” she said.

  “Actually, we’re looking for the guy at the end of the hall. Abel Delgado.”

  It didn’t register. Then she brightened.

  “Oh, the detective you mean?”

  “Yes, him. Any idea when he usually comes in?”

  She shook her head.

  “Afraid I can’t help you. I’ve never even laid eyes on him.” She shrugged an apology. “But then, I’ve only been working here a couple weeks. Just a sec…”

  She punched the intercom button on her phone.

  “Mr. Strecker?”

  A voice said, “Yeah, Maria, what is it?”

  “Men here are asking about the office down the hall.”

  “They want to rent it, tell them to call the leasing agent.”

  “I don’t think they want to rent it.” She looked at me. “Do you?”

  “No, just looking for Abel Delgado,” I said.

  “They’re just looking for Abel Delgado,” she repeated into the intercom.

  A pause, then: “Oh, looking for Abel Delgado. Hold on…”

  “He’ll be right with you,” Maria said.

  She nodded to a pair of chairs. We didn’t take her up on sitting down. She didn’t seem offended. She studied Boggy and smiled some more.

  A few seconds later, Strecker stepped into the anteroom. Younger than his secretary. Not long out of law school. Tall with shaggy blondish hair.

  “Sorry,” he said. “I thought you were interested in the office next door. Closed up shop. Appraisal business isn’t what it used to be.”

  “We’re looking for Abel Delgado,” I said.

  I figured if I said it enough it might finally sink in with someone.

  Strecker thought about it.

  “May I
ask what for?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  He waited. Then he got it. He looked away, coughed.

  “Reason I ask,” Strecker said, “is because I represent Mr. Delgado in…in his personal matters. And if this pertains to that, then…”

  “This pertains to ten thousand dollars he took from a friend of mine as a retainer to locate his daughter. Thing is, my friend has had exactly no luck contacting Mr. Delgado to find out what he has done to earn the money and find the daughter. And now it has become a personal matter. For me.”

  “Oh, I see,” said Strecker. He seemed to be eyeing us for the ball-peen hammers we might have brought along to use on Delgado’s kneecaps. Guess I couldn’t blame him for thinking that, this being Miami and two guys walking into his office looking like Boggy and me. “I’m afraid I can’t help you with that.”

  “You got any idea what time Delgado might show up at his office?”

  Strecker shook his head.

  “No,” he said.

  “What time does he usually show up when he shows up?”

  “No special time really,” Strecker said. “Early. Late. All hours. It depends.”

  “When was the last time you saw him?”

  “I don’t know. A week ago. Maybe longer.”

  “Know where he lives?”

  “Yes,” Strecker said.

  I waited. Then I got it. Touché.

  “Gentlemen,” Strecker said.

  He turned and went back to wherever he came from.

  I tipped my head to Maria.

  “Thanks for your time.”

  She looked over her shoulder to make sure Strecker was long gone.

  “Hang on,” she said.

  She turned to her computer, tapped on the keyboard, squinted at the screen. She wrote something on a piece of paper, folded it over, and handed it to me.

  “Try this,” she said.

  “Appreciate that.”

  She smiled. This time it wasn’t all for Boggy.

  “Hope you find the guy’s daughter,” she said.

  The next time it was just him and he didn’t untie her.