Baja Florida

by Bob Morris

  Baja Florida, I call it.

  Once you’re over the border, no one asks too many questions. A little money, you can hole up, be anyone you want to be.

  Drift here, drift there. A lot of territory.

  And plenty of places to hide.

  “She musta really got you worked up, huh?”

  “You complaining?”

  “Not at all. I’ve been itching for you, baby. It’s been too long.”

  “Just a couple of weeks.”

  “But all that time I had to watch the two of you, going on like you did. You know what that was like?”

  “I had to do some watching, too.”

  “Yeah, but you could tell I wasn’t enjoying it.”

  “You faked it pretty good then.”

  “We both did.”

  “That’s what we do.”

  “Still…”

  “Still what?”

  “I don’t know. I just keep thinking maybe we should have kept it simple. Like before. Take the boat, get some money, disappear. Now we’ve got her to worry about.”

  “Opportunity comes along, you grab it.”

  “Maybe we tried to grab too much. Maybe we should just get rid of her.”

  “Trust me, it’ll work.”

  “What makes you so sure?”

  “Because I’ve got confidence in you.”

  “Yeah?”

  “You and me, we’re a team. We’re gonna pull this off.”

  “And then what?”

  “You know. We talked about it.”

  “Tell me again. I like to hear you say it.”

  “And then we’re set. We can live the life. Do anything we want to do, go anywhere we want to go.”

  “Argentina?”

  “If you want. Yeah, sure. Argentina.”

  “Money can go a long way there.”

  “What I’ve heard, too.”

  “South Africa. I always wanted to go on a safari. Wouldn’t that be cool?”

  “Yeah, wherever.”

  “You don’t like South Africa?”

  “Let’s get this over with first, OK? Then we can talk about the rest. Lots of things still have to fall in place.”

  “We need some food, some other stuff.”

  “I’ll go into town this evening.”

  “Can I come, too?”

  “No, you’re staying here.”

  “But I’m going crazy, just sitting around.”

  “We can’t leave her here alone, you know that.”

  “How long will you be gone?”

  “I don’t know. Not long. I need to find an ATM, see if the bank card works.”

  “What if it doesn’t?”

  “Then she’s got a problem. A big problem…”

  9

  Boggy emerged from his room about 5:00 p.m. and announced that he was hungry. We walked down Bayshore to Scotty’s Landing. We snagged a table near the seawall. A waiter finally made it our way. I ordered a cheeseburger.

  “Same for me,” Boggy told the waiter. “But I’ll start off with two dozen oysters. And a big glass of chocolate milk.”

  The waiter wrote it all down and stepped away.

  “Chocolate milk and oysters?”

  “Such cravings are typical at the end of a long journey,” Boggy said.

  “Wasn’t such a long journey. We left home this morning, drove three hundred miles, and here we are in Miami.”

  “That was a temporal journey,” Boggy said. “I am talking about a journey of a different sort.”

  “Did you go somewhere I don’t know about?”

  He just looked at me.

  “Oh yeah, right,” I said. “One of your spiritual journeys. Off in la-la land. You sucked down that mojo yucko stuff…”

  “Maja acu,” Boggy corrected me. “It transports those who drink it to a different plane.”

  “Cuckoo Kool-Aid.”

  “The journey, it was long and difficult.”

  “But now you’re back?”

  “Yes, now I am back.”

  “Well, glad to hear it because, frankly, my strange brown friend, you’ve been a pain in my ass all day. Like some kind of zombie, like you weren’t really here.”

  “Yes, and for that I am sorry, Zachary. Under ideal conditions, I would drink the maja acu while I am alone and not inflict others with the burden of the journey. But time is critical. We have only a week.”

  “Only a week for what?”

  “Until the full moon.”

  “And that matters why?”

  “The naming ceremony, Zachary. That is when your daughter will meet her spirit guide and be shown the path of her life.”

  Ever since Shula’s birth, Boggy had been going on and on about how, when the appropriate time came along, he would conduct the ancient ritual that would bestow upon Shula her official Taino name.

  Boggy’s full name is Cachique Baugtanaxata, which in Taino-speak means “Chief of the Cenote.” Cenotes are freshwater sinkholes that descend through layers of limestone and connect to the underground aquifer. The ancient Tainos, who once lived throughout the Ca rib be an, believed cenotes were portals to the spirit world and their shamans often conducted ceremonies and made offerings at such sites.

  According to experts in such matters, the Taino were extinct by the early 1600s. Yet, despite overwhelming historical evidence to the contrary, Boggy contends he is full-blooded Taino, the last of a long line of shamans, someone who can trace his lineage back thousands of years.

  I’ve long since learned not to argue the topic with him. Besides, his juju, wherever it comes from, has gotten me out of numerous jams.

  And there was little doubt of his devotion to Shula. Boggy doted over her, was always strapping Shula into her sling and taking her for walks, telling her the Taino words for different plants and animals. It had gotten to the point that Barbara and I often joked that we had to vie with Boggy for time with our daughter.

  “So,” I said, “on this little trip you took, you discovered Shula’s true Taino name?”

  “Yes, Guamikeni,” Boggy said.

  That’s his name for me. It means “lord of land and sea.” It’s what the Taino called Christopher Columbus after they were there to greet him when he landed on San Salvador. At first I was flattered that Boggy would give me such an illustrious title. I thought it demonstrated the great respect he had for me. Then it sunk in: Columbus and those who followed him brought the disease and violent colonization that wiped out the Tainos. Boggy was just being a smart-ass, displaying what I could only assume was the Taino penchant for mordant humor.

  “And what would Shula’s Taino name be?” I asked him.

  “Not now,” he said. “It will be revealed at the naming ceremony. Eight days from now.”

  “What if we aren’t back from the Bahamas by then?”

  “We must be back by then, Zachary. We have no choice.”

  “Look, there’s a full moon every month. It doesn’t have to be this particular full moon, does it?”

  Our waiter arrived with Boggy’s appetizer and set it down in front of him. Boggy opened a bottle of hot sauce and splashed it on the oysters.

  “It must be this full moon and no other,” Boggy said. “It is a moment in time that will never come again. If your daughter is not united at that precise moment with her spirit guide, she will be forever lost.”

  He slurped an oyster from its shell, washed it down with chocolate milk.

  “Ya know, sometimes,” I said, “you really creep me out.”

  10

  By the time we finished eating it was barely seven o’clock. Boggy went back to our room at the Mutiny. Said he needed some real sleep.

  It was way too early for me to turn in. I called the number for Abel Delgado that his wife had given me. No answer, no voice mail, no nothing. I asked the valet to bring the car. Time to pay one more visit to Delgado’s office.

  It had been several days since Gloria Delgado had heard from her husband. Maybe he ha
d returned home. Maybe I’d find him toiling away at his desk, doing what ever it is private investigators do when they aren’t out investigating.

  It was worth a shot anyway. I didn’t want to head for the Bahamas the next morning looking for Delgado only to discover he was back in Miami.

  The main entrance to the office building was locked. I hung back and waited, trying not to make it look like I was hanging back and waiting. Tougher than it sounds. After a few minutes, a couple of guys in suits left the building and I slipped in behind them.

  I headed down the hall. A trash can propped open the door to Suite 121. The light was on inside.

  A woman in a blue house keeper’s uniform was vacuuming around the chairs in the small waiting area, oblivious to me standing in the doorway. Beyond her, the door to Delgado’s office was open and I could see his cluttered desk.

  “Excuse me…”

  The woman jumped and spun around, a hand to her chest. She was short, Hispanic, in her fifties.

  I smiled. She didn’t. She switched off the vacuum cleaner.

  “Sorry,” I said, moving past her to the office. “Didn’t mean to scare you.”

  I went behind Delgado’s desk and sat down in his chair. I began flipping through stacks of paper and looking at note pads.

  The woman studied me, uncertain.

  “I’ll just be a second,” I said. “Happened to be in the neighborhood and thought I’d pick up a couple of things. Don’t let me interrupt you.”

  “Que, senor?” she said.

  “Un momento,” I said. “No problemo.”

  The only other thing I remembered from high school Spanish was “Yo tiene catarro,” but I didn’t think she cared whether or not I had a cold.

  The woman backed out of the office and disappeared down the hall.

  The papers on Delgado’s desk were mostly bills. Nothing I found made any reference to Jen Ryser.

  A red light flashed on Delgado’s answering machine. I pressed play. The digital voice first announced that the mailbox was full and then told me it had twenty-two new messages.

  I sat back and listened. Calls from credit card companies. Calls from Gloria Delgado. A call from Mickey Ryser. A call from Abel Delgado’s bank.

  As the messages played, I went through the desk drawers. Found some framed photographs. One showed Abel and Gloria Delgado on their wedding day. She looked about thirty pounds lighter and a whole lot happier than when I’d seen her earlier. He looked considerably older than I had imagined him, in his forties, with a thick neck, black hair spiked with gel, and a much grimmer expression than the situation called for. Tough cop with a pretty young bride. Another picture showed the Delgado family a few years later. Gloria held the little boy, who looked no more than a month or two old. The little girl sat on her daddy’s lap. Abel Delgado didn’t look any happier in that photo than he did on his wedding day.

  Then a woman’s voice came on the answering machine:

  “Yes, Mr. Delgado. This is Helen Miller with H.M. Associates in Charleston, calling about that young woman you are looking for, the one with the sailboat. Got something if you want to give me a call.”

  I grabbed a pen and scribbled down the number she read off. There were only two more messages after that and none of them meant anything to me.

  I used Delgado’s phone to call the number in Charleston. Helen Miller answered on the third ring.

  “Abel Delgado’s office returning your call,” I said, which was kinda not a lie. “Got a message saying you had some information for us regarding Jennifer Ryser.”

  “Oh yeah, right. I’m in my car right now, don’t have the case file in front of me,” Helen Miller said. She had a nice voice. Smoky, with a pleasant low-country lilt to it. “But I can give you the gist of it.”

  “I need all the gist I can get,” I said.

  Helen Miller laughed. She had a nice laugh to go with the nice voice. It made me wonder what she looked like. A little innocent wondering never hurt anyone.

  “Took me a while to search the state’s boat registration data base, but I finally found a vessel registered to a Jennifer Ryser of Mt. Pleasant. Bought brand-new about five months ago. Paid cash. A Beneteau 54.”

  “Nice boat,” I said.

  “Yeah, about nine hundred thousand dollars’ worth of nice, according to the state sales tax receipt. You want the boat’s name?”

  “You bet.”

  “Chasin’ Molly,” she said.

  Molly, after Jen’s mother. A fitting moniker for the boat. Spirits in the wind.

  “You find out anything else?”

  “Nope, that’s all you asked me to find out.”

  “Oh yeah. Right…”

  “Is this Abel Delgado? You don’t sound like the same guy I spoke to.”

  “I’m an associate. My name’s Clete,” I said. “Clete Boyer.”

  “Like the baseball player?”

  “Yeah, like him.”

  “My father was a Yankees fan.”

  Just my luck.

  “Ol’ Uncle Clete,” I said. “Quite a guy. My mother’s favorite brother. That’s why she named me after him.”

  A pause on the other end of the line. Then:

  “So how come if your mother was Clete Boyer’s sister, then your name is Boyer? Didn’t she have a married name?”

  “My mother was a very progressive woman. Way ahead of her time.”

  “Oh, really?” Helen Miller didn’t sound very convinced. “Look, I’ve got about three hours in this. I’ll send an invoice.”

  “That’ll be fine. And, please, go ahead and add an extra hundred dollars to it. I appreciate how quickly you got back to us about this matter.”

  “Very generous of you, Mr. Boyer.”

  “That’s the way we do things here at Delgado Investigations,” I said. “And if you’ve got the time, then I’d really appreciate it if you could look into a few other matters as well.”

  “Be glad to,” she said.

  I was giving her the details when the maid returned to the office. She hadn’t returned alone. She’d brought along a guy in a blue uniform who looked like he might be her supervisor.

  The supervisor started to say something. I held up a finger and cut him off.

  “Hold on,” I told him. “I’m busy here.”

  I finished telling Helen Miller what I needed to know and how she could reach me. I hung up the phone, stood up from the desk, and started walking out of the office.

  The supervisor moved to block my way.

  “Look,” I said. “I really don’t appreciate you barging in here while I’m on the phone with a client. Mr. Delgado will hear about this.”

  The supervisor look startled but he recovered quickly.

  “Who are you? What are you doing here?”

  He got in my face. I got in his.

  “Well, I’m damn sure not Clete Boyer, I’ll tell you that. And don’t let anyone tell you differently,” I said. “I have never played third base for the New York Yankees. Neither has my mother. As far as I know I don’t have an uncle. And even if I did my mother wouldn’t have named me after him. Do you understand?”

  He shook his head, thoroughly confused.

  “No, I don’t understand at all.”

  “Good,” I said. “Keep it that way.”

  I brushed past him and out the door.

  11

  Knowing the name of the boat wasn’t much of a start, but it was a toe-hold. On the drive back to the Mutiny, I called Lynfield Pederson.

  “You better tell me what you need to tell me and tell me quick,” Pederson said. “Because I am due at my mother-in-law’s house for dinner in exactly five minutes.”

  “Nice talking to you, too, Lynfield.”

  “Chicken ’n’ dumplings.”

  “What about them?”

  “That’s what she’s making,” Pederson said. “And believe me when I tell you that she is putting dinner on the table right this very minute. That woman will not hold a m
eal for me or anyone else. Doreen is already over there.”

  “How is Doreen?”

  “She’s just fine. I’ll tell her you asked. But let me warn you about something, Chasteen.”

  “What’s that?”

  “I do not look kindly upon anyone who causes me to eat my chicken ’n’ dumplings cold.”

  I’d first met Lynfield Pederson years ago when we both played ball at Florida. He was a walk-on freshman when I was a senior and he never let me forget the fact that he had once knocked me on my can during a scrimmage before the Auburn game. The block had helped win him a spot on the traveling squad and ultimately a full scholarship.

  After a few years of police work in Florida, he returned to the Bahamas and eventually landed the position as superintendent of the Royal Bahamian Police for the Eleuthera district. It included Harbour Island, where he was born. Aside from the fact that he once briefly considered me the prime suspect in a murder that took place there a few years earlier, he was as astute a lawman as I’d ever encountered. And that was not damning by faint praise.

  Harbour Island sits about halfway between the Abacos and Lady Cut Cay, a popular hopping-off point for cruisers heading south. I told Pederson I was looking for a boat called Chasin’ Molly, hoping he could spread the word down his way and maybe turn up something.

  “You thinking bad thoughts?” he asked.

  “Don’t want to, but no one knows for sure where the boat is. Girl’s father is getting anxious.”

  “And he’s a friend.”

  “A good one.”

  “Well, boats like that, they have been known to get stolen,” Pederson said.

  “Even with lawmen like you riding the range?”

  “Shit, I’m so shorthanded I can’t keep up with niggah cutting niggah, much less look after stupid, rich white folk passing through on fancy-ass boats.”

  “Least you got priorities.”