Baja Florida

by Bob Morris

  As Miner Cay’s most prominent citizen, Cutie was the de facto mayor/godfather of the island and its three hundred or so residents. Nothing happened on Miner Cay without Cutie knowing about it.

  “Hard to forget that boat,” Cutie was telling us. “Women having at it like that. Never seen such a catfight.”

  “A fight?” I said. “Between who?”

  “Between all three of the women on that boat, mon. Going at each other’s throats. Couldn’t tell who was scratching at who. All three of them with blond hair, long and leggity.”

  “Leggity?”

  “Tall, good-looking women. Couldn’t tell ’em apart, hardly. ’Specially when they was all in a ball fighting like that.”

  We had ordered food. One of Cutie’s daughters brought us plates of fried snapper, peas ’n’ rice, and some mixed vegetables that had come from a can. Fresh provisions can be scarce on Miner Cay.

  I said, “They were fighting on the boat?”

  “Started on the boat. Heard ’em yelling and screaming all the way up here. Then it continued onto the dock, getting louder and louder, them cussing each other. Then they came in here to the restaurant, sat down at this very table, and before they even had a chance to order they were going to it. One of them went after another one and then they were all three into it. Knocked the table right over,” Cutie said. “The men, there was three of them as I remember, they got ’em split up and quieted down. But it was something to watch, I tell you.”

  I said, “You ever figure out why they were fighting?”

  Cutie shook his head.

  “No, and I knew better than to stick my nose in it and ask,” he said. “But I’ve seen it happen before. People on a crossing like that, spend a few days at sea and they find out they just don’t get along. Something’s gonna pop.”

  “How long were they here?”

  “One night was all. They wanted to stay longer but I asked them to move along,” Cutie said. “One of ’em though, she didn’t want any more of it. She got her things off the boat, rented one of my cottages. When that boat sailed off in the morning, she wasn’t on it.”

  “Which one was that?”

  Cutie shook his head.

  “Don’t recall her name. Like I said, they was all the same to me. But I could call over to the office, look it up. I ran her credit card.”

  “Yeah, if you don’t mind…”

  Cutie pulled out his cell phone and made a call. He spoke to someone on the other end and told them what he wanted.

  While we were waiting, Cutie’s daughter brought us banana pudding. Charlie said he didn’t want his, so I took half of it and Boggy took the rest. It was good banana pudding. The pudding might have come from a box but that didn’t really matter. Whoever made it had let the bananas get nice and ripe first and that made all the difference. Make banana pudding before the bananas start going brown and mushy and you might as well not even make it.

  There were a few other people in Cutie’s Place. A table full of guys wearing Tarponwear in various hues, fishermen over from Florida. A table of men and women, all of them wearing identical white polo shirts that bore an image of the big trawler they were traveling on and the words “Seventh Annual Bahamas Spring Fling.” A few locals were taking turns at the pool table that sat at the far end of the room.

  Everyone was drinking Kaliks or gin ’n’ tonics or something cool and soothing. Something cool and soothing sounded nice. But if I started drinking now, then I wouldn’t want to do anything else and there was lots that needed doing.

  Cutie said something into the phone, then clicked it off and put it away.

  “Woman’s name was Karen Breakell,” Cutie said. “Stayed here four nights.”

  “Musta liked it here,” I said.

  “Wasn’t so much like it as she didn’t have a choice. No regular air service out of here and she didn’t want to charter a boat or a plane. She was waiting on the mail boat, comes around every week. Planned to take it to Nassau, then go from there to wherever,” Cutie said. “But she wound up getting herself another ride.”

  “Another ride?”

  “Yeah, another big sailboat coming from up north somewhere to charter out of Marsh Harbour. Crew was transporting it down, a big trimaran,” Cutie said. “But one of them, the cook, pulled up bad sick and they had to medevac him over to Miami. So this Karen woman, she told them she could cook, and she signed on with them.”

  “You remember the name of that boat?”

  Cutie thought about it.

  “Yeah,” he said. “It’s called the Trifecta.”

  “We got a problem.”

  “What, the bank wouldn’t give you the money?”

  “No, they gave me the money. That’s not…”

  “How much did you get?”

  “Two thousand, just like you said.”

  “And the IDs worked?”

  “They worked just fine. The teller even called me Miss Ryser and asked if I was enjoying my stay. It couldn’t have gone smoother.”

  “So what’s the problem?”

  “Here. Take a look at this. I found it posted on a bulletin board outside a grocery store.”

  “That’s the sailboat.”

  “Yeah, no shit it’s the sailboat. Or one just exactly like it. Even says the name right there. Chasin’ Molly. And there’s a number to call if anyone has information…”

  “Fuck.”

  “What are we going to do?”

  “Fuck, fuck, fuck.”

  “I say we get rid of her and haul ass. Right now. While there’s still time. Because if someone’s snooping around already and looking for her then…”

  “Just shut the fuck up and let me think. We kept all their cell phones, right?”

  “Yes, all the cell phones. They’re in that big duffel bag along with some of their clothes and other crap. I thought we should have gotten rid of it, but you said keep it…”

  “Just shut the fuck up and bring me the duffel bag.”

  “You don’t have to talk to me like that.”

  “Just bring it, dammit. I need to make a phone call.”

  “You calling the number on the poster?”

  “Just bring me the goddam duffel bag, alright?”

  16

  I was feeling slightly better about finding Jen Ryser after we left Cutie’s Place. But only slightly.

  I knew for certain she had reached the Bahamas. But more than a week had passed since her arrival. Plenty of time to cruise down to the Exumas and visit her father. I didn’t want to call Mickey until I had more information to report than “Your daughter is in the Bahamas but I don’t know where exactly.” Knowing that wouldn’t do Mickey a bit of good. He needed something solid to grab.

  As for Abel Delgado, it was heartening to know that a thoroughly amateur sleuth like myself was on the same trail as a highly trained professional. Maybe our paths would cross. Maybe we could swap some secrets of the trade. And maybe I could ask him face-to-face why he’d been dodging Mickey Ryser.

  And then there was the whole thing about the fight at Cutie’s Place. I wasn’t all that concerned about the three young women getting into a scrape. Like Cutie said, put people on a boat under stressful conditions and the worst will come out. Especially when booze and who knows what else is added to the equation.

  But most folks would sleep it off and make amends. Or at least try to. Especially if they were aboard a gorgeous new boat and on the first leg of a vacation that had probably been planned for months. They wouldn’t shitcan the whole shebang, abandon their friends, and jump ship on a tiny island knowing they would get stranded there for days.

  Karen Breakell.

  The list of people I needed to find kept getting longer.

  We piled into the seaplane, Charlie pointed us for Marsh Harbour, and thirty minutes later we were touching down at the airport just outside of town.

  The plane needed some minor maintenance, loose bolts on the struts or something, something I’m relieve
d Charlie didn’t tell us about when we were up in the air. He said he’d take care of it and catch up with us later.

  Boggy and I rented a car at the airport, drove into town. Compared to Grand Cay, Marsh Harbour was Manhattan. Strip malls, Kentucky Fried Chicken, and traffic backed up at the town’s two stoplights.

  I got us rooms at the Mariner’s Inn, near the center of things. Then we set out, going from marina to marina, asking if anyone had seen the Chasin’ Molly or the Trifecta.

  The first place we stopped, the dockmaster said, “You working with that other guy?”

  “What other guy?”

  “Guy who stuck that up.”

  The dockmaster pointed to a flyer on a bulletin board. It showed a Beneteau 54, a stock shot, taken off the Internet probably. Written below it—“REWARD: For information leading to the location of Chasin’ Molly. Urgent! Call…”

  The number on the flyer was the same one Gloria Delgado had given me. I called it and this time I got the same recorded voice that I’d heard on the machine at Delgado’s office. I left my name and number and told Delgado he needed to call me right away.

  We visited two more marinas. Both sported flyers on their bulletin boards about Chasin’ Molly. At least Delgado appeared to be doing a little something to earn his pay.

  We got lucky at the fourth place we stopped—Blue Sky Marina. It turned out to be where the Trifecta was based.

  “Out on a charter,” said the man behind the counter at the marina office. “Not due back until tomorrow.”

  “You know the crew?”

  “Just got here the other day, but yeah, I met them.”

  “You know a Karen Breakell? She’d be in her twenties.”

  “Only one woman crew on Trifecta. Guess that would be her.”

  “You know where Trifecta is?” I said. “Sure would like to find it.”

  “You mind me asking why?”

  “Old friend of the family,” I said. “Just thought I’d surprise Karen, maybe buy her a drink or something.”

  “Works for me,” the man said. “Hold on.”

  A VHF radio sat on the counter, tuned to Channel 16. The man picked up the handset.

  “Blue Sky Marina calling the Trifecta,” he said. “Trifecta, come in.”

  He gave it a few seconds and called again. Static and then a man’s voice: “Read you, Blue Sky. This is the Trifecta.”

  “Yeah, Captain. What’s your location?”

  “Just leaving Guana for Green Turtle. Look to be there in two-three hours.”

  “Copy that,” said the man behind the counter. He held out the handset to me. “You want to tell that friend of yours anything?”

  “No,” I said. “I think I’ll surprise her.”

  17

  Green Turtle Cay sits three miles offshore of Great Abaco. The only way to get there if you don’t have a boat, or a seaplane, is to take the ferry, which runs on the hour or thereabouts.

  I covered the twenty-five miles on the S.C. Bootle Highway to the ferry dock in less than forty minutes. A minor miracle since we had to stop twice for goats, once for chickens, and once for a truck that had dropped its exhaust system in the middle of the road after hitting a monster pothole.

  We pulled into the ferry dock parking lot just as the deckhands on the Sarah Mitchell were casting off lines. The captain kept it at idle until we’d hopped aboard.

  Two long bench seats ran down each side of the ferry’s cabin. They were filled with passengers, a mix of vacationers and locals. The space between the benches was taken up by various goods bought in Marsh Harbour—crates of groceries, cases of beer and soda, boxes containing everything from dishwashers to TV sets—along with assorted suitcases and duffel bags.

  The only place left to stand was near the stern. Aside from the occasional whiff of diesel fumes, the wind felt fresh on my skin. The sun was at our backs. The day was progressing nicely enough, although I had not a clue where it was heading. Still, there was motion and it seemed to be forward motion and I was just a big shrimp, going with the tide, crunching my way along, ass-first and mindless of any hungry beasties that might come along and make a meal of me.

  A pod of dolphins broke surface in our wake and drafted the boat for several minutes before jetting away. I took it as a good luck sign. Not that I put much stock in signs. Or luck. The good kind or the bad kind. But when dolphins present themselves—those quirky almost-human smiles, their happy leaping, that sense of a creature so attuned to its place and so utterly pleased to be there—it is hard not to feel just a little bit hopeful.

  The ferry hit a wave and jostled us around. Boggy and I held fast to the transom to keep our footing. Despite the washing he’d given his clothes, Boggy still looked a mess.

  “Mind me asking you something?”

  “You just did,” he said.

  “Mind me asking what you were doing in that ditch at the Walker’s airport?”

  “I found some things there.”

  “What things?”

  “Taino things.”

  “The Taino used to live on Walker’s Cay?”

  “The Taino, they were everywhere, Zachary. On all these islands. Some called themselves Lucaya. Some Arawak. But they were all the same people—Taino.”

  He opened one of the leather pouches that hung from the drawstring of his pants. He pulled out a smooth black object, a stone of some kind it looked like, just a couple of inches long, maybe three inches wide.

  He handed it to me.

  “A zemi,” Boggy said.

  “Zemi. That’s one of your Taino gods or something, right?”

  “Yes, my people, they carve the likenesses of zemis in sacred wood.”

  I weighed the object in the palm of my hand, rubbed it between my fingers. The shape was irregular, but there seemed to be five distinct, rounded corners.

  “Hard wood,” I said. “Hard as rock.”

  “From the ceiba. Some they call it the silk cotton tree. It is the tree where spirits live.”

  “So what particular god am I holding here?”

  “The years they have worn it smooth, but look and you can see the shape—the head, the four legs, the round shell. This, it is Opiyelguobirán, the turtle zemi, guardian of the gates of death.”

  “Mmm, cheery,” I said. “But how do you know it’s not just an old piece of wood that if you squint real hard it might look vaguely like Opi-…some damn turtle.”

  “Because when I found the zemi, it spoke to me, Zachary. I could feel its power.”

  “That maja acu stuff, you been nipping at it again, haven’t you?”

  Boggy ignored me. He took the zemi from me and put it back in the pouch.

  “You got more zemis in there?”

  “Yes, several.”

  “Let’s see.”

  “Not now,” Boggy said. “It is not the time or place.”

  “But you found them in that ditch? Just lucked across them, out in the middle of nowhere, easy as that. Like going to the zemi Super Store?”

  “You have to understand, Zachary, there were once thousands and thousands of Taino in these islands. Every Taino—man, woman, child—always carried a pouch like mine with different zemis in it. For power and for protection. When Tainos died, their zemis were buried with them, to look after them in the afterlife.”

  “So the runway at Walker’s Cay, that was once a Taino burial ground?”

  “I think so, yes. At the center of the island, near a high point of land. That is where Taino live, and that is where they bury their dead,” Boggy said. “I am very happy that I found these zemis.”

  Boggy lives in a small place he built at the nursery. It’s a glorified chickee hut really—a palmetto-thatched roof with a broad overhang above a platform of hard pine, not even screens to keep out the bugs. It sits near the center of the property, on the highest ground.

  “I’ve seen some of those zemis at your place, haven’t I? You’ve got them stuck everywhere.”

  “Yes, but tho
se zemis are ones that I made.” He tapped the leather pouch. “These zemis, they are much more powerful.”

  “Why’s that? Thought you were supposed to be some high-charged shaman, a guy who has a direct line to the gods. The zemis you make, they oughta be jam-up with power.”

  “I am only one, Zachary.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “In the long-ago, when there were many Taino on these islands, the belief it was strong, the belief it was everywhere. The old zemis they were filled with that belief, they were filled with power.”

  “What were they, like faith magnets or something?”

  Boggy’s eyes lit up. He smiled. Such a rare occurrence that I had to blink to make sure.

  “That is a very good way to describe it, Zachary. Yes, that is exactly what they are. Faith magnets. I like that.”

  “Well, glad I could make your day.”

  Boggy looked at me. I always try to hold his gaze, but every time it’s me who is the first one to look away.

  “I know you don’t believe, Zachary.”

  “I’ve got my beliefs.”

  “In what do you believe?”

  “It’s not like I can put a name on it or anything.”

  “If you cannot put a name on it, then why believe in it?”

  “I believe in myself.”

  “A small belief.”

  “I believe in Barbara and I believe in Shula, OK? I believe in the thing that joins all people together and not the thing that pulls them apart. I believe in wisdom defeating ignorance, love conquering hate, good winning out over evil, some beauty being just skin deep and some ugly going all the way to the bone. I believe in skies of blue, clouds of white, bright blessed days, and dark sacred nights.”

  “Mr. Louis Armstrong.”

  “Yeah, I believe in him, too.”

  Boggy put a hand on my shoulder.

  “That’s a start,” he said.

  18

  The Sarah Mitchell pulled up to the ferry dock in New Plymouth, Green Turtle’s only town and as charming a place as you could hope to find in the Bahamas. Yet another Loyalist community, with its roots in the 1780s, it still had the narrow streets and tabby walls and pastel buildings that hearkened to that era, although few of the structures dated back much more than a hundred years. Numerous fires and hurricanes had seen to that.