Baja Florida

by Bob Morris

  “Did you contact their parents?”

  “I started to,” Helen Miller said. “Then I decided it might freak them out for no good reason, so I held off. What do you think?”

  I told her I had just spoken with Karen Breakell and shared what I had learned from her.

  “As for Will Moody and Pete Crumrine, I think it’s worth the risk of freaking out their parents just to know if their sons have been in touch. Maybe they’ve called and can shed some more light on all this.”

  “OK, will do,” Helen said. “As for the other two people on the boat…”

  “Justin Hatchitt and Torrey Kealing.”

  “That’s the first I’ve heard of their names. No one I spoke to knew anything about either one of them. But I’ll check them out, too.”

  “Hold on. I’ve got their passport numbers.”

  I read them off to her.

  “That’ll help,” she said. “I did go back out to the marina and talk with the dockmaster after I spoke to Tony Telan. He remembered a couple of things that he didn’t remember the first time I spoke with him.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like this guy who visited the marina a couple of times, said he was looking for work, either transporting someone’s boat for them or hiring on as a captain. Dockmaster told him the only boat he knew of that was planning to go anywhere was Jen Ryser’s boat but it already had a captain and a full crew.”

  “This was before Tony Telan dropped out, right?”

  “Yeah, must have been,” Helen said. “Anyway, the guy said he might as well check it out anyway, just in case anything came up. So the dockmaster gave him Telan’s name and Jen’s name and how to find them. I’m thinking maybe the guy might be Justin Hatchitt.”

  “Sounds like a fit. Except…”

  “Except what?”

  “Except Karen Breakell told me they met Justin Hatchitt at a bar one night by coincidence. It was after the fire at Telan’s house. They needed a captain. And…”

  “And lo and behold, some guy just shows up and fills the bill.”

  “Sound funny to you?”

  “It does when I put it with something else.”

  “What’s that?”

  “That fire at Telan’s house? It wasn’t an accident. State fire marshal’s report was just filed last week. Definitely arson. The investigators found accelerants placed in three different locations.”

  “And they don’t suspect Telan?”

  “No, they cleared him. He and his girlfriend were renting the place. They were both asleep when it happened and they barely got out of there. Lost just about everything including their dog. An old two-story wooden house on Montague Street. A firetrap to begin with, only someone nudged it along.”

  “Landlord maybe?”

  “Landlord’s a ninety-year-old woman, lives next door,” Helen Miller said. “They pretty much ruled her out right off the bat.”

  “You think this guy Hatchitt…?”

  “Might have burned down the house just to get Telan out of the way? A whole lot of trouble just to be captain on a sailboat trip.”

  “Not when the sailboat is worth nearly a million dollars and the woman who owns it even more than that.”

  Helen Miller thought about it.

  “I didn’t have a name before. Now I do,” she said. “I’ll start checking out Hatchitt. Torrey Kealing, too.”

  I suggested a few other things she might want to check out. And when I was done, she said, “I’m not billing this to Abel Delgado, am I?”

  “No,” I said. “You can bill it to me.”

  “Along with that hundred-dollar bonus you told me to tack on Delgado’s bill?”

  “Yeah, that, too,” I said. “How deep am I in with you so far?”

  “Oh, you’re in pretty deep,” she said. “And for what you want, it’ll get deeper.”

  She gave me a dollar amount.

  I let out a whistle.

  “Like I told you,” she said. “I’m good.”

  22

  Charlie and Boggy weren’t back from dinner by the time eight o’clock rolled around. So I paid my visit to the Mariner’s Inn bar without them.

  It wasn’t hard to pick out Abel Delgado. He was the biggest guy at the bar and he occupied one corner of it, his stool turned so he could see everyone who came in the place.

  At least that might have been his original intent. But as it stood now, Delgado was in no condition to see much beyond the salted rim of his margarita glass. He wore some kind of Tommy Bahama knockoff, aqua-marine with orange palm trees, that was supposed to make him look like a real island guy. His hair was tousled, his jaw slack, and it was better than even money that he’d been slamming down drinks ever since we’d spoken on the phone three hours earlier.

  He sat hunched over, both elbows on the bar, talking to a young man next to him. I took the stool on his other side. He didn’t pay me any attention.

  The bartender, a busty Bahamian woman wearing a red silk blouse and a toothy smile, asked what I wanted. I ordered a Kalik. She delivered it. And I sat there, sipping my beer and eavesdropping on Delgado’s conversation.

  It was really more of a monologue, with Delgado doing the talking, his voice thick, the words slurred. The young man offered an occasional nod just to hold up his end of the proposition.

  “…and I told the old man, I said, I got expenses you know. Plus, my day rate, a case like this, it’s twenty-five hundred. And I already been on it six days, which is…which is…”

  “Fifteen thousand,” the young man.

  “Yeah, fifteen thousand. So I said to him, I said I need that, plus my expenses before you find out what I found out. And, believe me, I’m finding out some things. Give me a couple more days and…”

  I tapped Delgado on the shoulder. He turned and squinted at me, trying hard to focus. His head rolled, as if it were on a swivel atop his neck.

  “Howya doing, Abel?”

  “I know you?”

  “Zack Chasteen. Here as promised.”

  It took a moment to sink in with him.

  “You’re a fucking asshole,” he said.

  “That’s no way to make friends, Delgado.”

  “Fuck you, you fucking asshole.”

  He said it loudly and it quieted the bar.

  “Easy,” I said.

  Delgado turned on me, knocking over his glass, splattering the two of us.

  “You’re trying to fuck me over, you piece of shit…”

  He lunged at me and I grabbed his shoulders, trying to hold him off. But his sheer bulk and momentum sent me backward off the stool and both of us fell to the floor. Drunk as he was, Delgado managed to land a couple of blows to the top of my head that probably hurt his knuckles more than they hurt me. I wrenched out from under him and onto my feet. I held off the urge to kick him.

  I heard women screaming, saw men backing away. I caught a glimpse of Boggy and Charlie entering the bar. Under most conditions, the sight of the two of them would rivet a crowd’s attention, but right now Delgado and I had center stage.

  I crouched, ready, as Delgado pulled himself up. He stood there, swaying for a moment as he got his bearings.

  The young man he’d been talking to was standing now. He was taller than Delgado and in a lot better shape. He grabbed Delgado’s arm, trying to hold him back. The bartender reached across the bar and tried to grab him, too. But Delgado pulled away and charged me, head down, roaring with rage.

  I sidestepped him and planted a foot into his backside as he went past. It sent him crashing into a nearby table, scattering its occupants, and sending plates and glasses and bottles of beer in all directions.

  Delgado lay there a moment, his face in the remains of someone’s fish dinner. He shook his head, then he shook himself all over, like a dog coming in from the rain.

  He got up. Winded and heaving, he came at me again. I grabbed his shirt at the shoulders and slung him into the side of the bar. He hit it hard and slid to the floor. This
time he lay there a little longer.

  And then he got up again. Give the guy points for perseverance. He steadied himself on a bar stool. The bartender got a hand on his shirt, but he ripped away and charged me.

  He aimed high this time and I went low, ramming a shoulder into his gut, lifting him up and driving him back against the bar. I felt all the wind go out of him, heard his head snap back and hit something. When I stood up, he stayed down. His head lolled against the bar rail, eyes closed. His tongue hung from the side of his mouth. He was out for the count.

  I stood there getting my wind. It hadn’t lasted long, but it had sucked the air out of me. I needed to work out more often, get in better shape. Story of my life.

  The bartender looked at me and said, “You know him?”

  “Casual acquaintance.”

  “Well, either you get him out of here or I call the police and they do it.”

  “I’ll take care of it,” I said.

  “I’ll give you a hand,” said the young man who’d been sitting beside Delgado. He was a good-looking guy—tanned, built like an athlete. I put him in his late twenties. He wore a two-week beard and his curly black hair framed a face with sharp features. He got his hands under Delgado’s shoulders and pulled him away from the bar.

  Boggy and Charlie joined us.

  “Sorry we didn’t get here earlier,” Charlie said. “I swung by the airport to check a couple of things on the plane.”

  “Wouldn’t have made any difference. He was gunning for me no matter what.”

  I went through Delgado’s pockets and found the card key for his room. The bartender was still watching me.

  “You got his tab?” I asked her.

  “Sure do. He was charging it to his room.”

  “I’ll take it.”

  I looked it over. The room number was written in a box at the top—221. I put a hundred-dollar bill on it, handed it back to her, and told her to keep the change.

  23

  Getting Delgado back to his room was a four-man job. Boggy and I each grabbed a leg. Charlie took one arm and the young man took the other.

  We stopped once just outside the bar when Delgado started throwing up. We rolled him on his side and let him do what he had to do and then he was out again.

  When we reached Room 221, I swiped Delgado’s card key through the scanner/lock on the door. I’m no good with those things. I kept getting the red light.

  “Here, let me,” the young man said.

  First try—bingo.

  We carried Delgado inside and lowered him onto the bed. The room was ice-cold, the thermostat probably turned as low as it would go. Rivulets of condensation streamed down the sliding-glass door that opened to a small patio overlooking the marina. I flipped on some lights to get a better look around.

  Not much to see besides what came with the room. Empty Kalik bottles in the garbage can. Clothes on the floor. Wadded-up receipts and a yellow legal pad atop the dresser.

  I gave the legal pad a look. The pages were empty. I started going through the dresser drawers.

  Boggy nosed around in the bathroom. Charlie checked out the patio.

  The young man leaned against a wall by the TV console, hands in the pockets of his cargo shorts, watching my every move.

  He said, “You sure took care of Mr. Delgado.”

  “I had lots of help. Me and eight margaritas versus him.”

  He laughed.

  “Yeah, he was out of it by the time I got to the bar,” he said. “What did you do to piss him off anyway?”

  “Came here to finish the job he was hired to do.”

  The young man cocked his head, studied me closer.

  “You a detective like him?”

  “Nope.”

  I felt around under Delgado’s T-shirts and socks. Found nothing.

  “But you’re looking for Jen, too?”

  I stopped riffling through the drawer. I looked at the young man.

  “You say that as if you know her.”

  “Yeah, I do. I was with her on the boat. That’s why I was in the bar with Mr. Delgado. I saw a flyer he put up and gave him a call and he said to meet him here.”

  I stepped away from the dresser.

  “What’s your name?”

  “Will,” he said. “Will Moody.”

  He gave me a smile and stuck out his hand. I shook it. His handshake was firm and he looked me straight in the eyes.

  As I’d listened to Karen Breakell tell me about those on board the Chasin’ Molly, I’d formed a mental image of Will Moody and his friend, Pete Crumrine. College boys. Fraternity buds probably. Crumrine headed for law school. Moody for med school. I’d imagined them as clean-cut, preppy types. Izod shirts and Duck Head pants and Topsiders on their feet. If there was anything scruffy about them it was the kind of scruffy that could be washed away in a hurry should they need to make a good impression on a dean or the parents of a girlfriend or Mom and Dad at the country club for dinner.

  The young man standing before me didn’t fit that picture. He looked a little older than I had imagined. He wasn’t exactly unkempt. His hair was clean enough. His T-shirt and shorts, though faded, appeared recently washed. He looked like lots of young guys who spend time on boats. With them, there is the tendency to let things go, to keep grooming time at a minimum. Not to the point of slovenliness, but just short of it.

  Then again, you can take an investment banker in a Barney’s suit, put him on a sailboat in the islands, and witness the transformation. Within a day or two he’s throwing away the Gillette disposables, wearing a bandanna, and wondering how he’d look in dreadlocks.

  “So where’s Jen? Does she know people are looking for her up and down the Bahamas?”

  Moody grinned and shook his head.

  “You guys are so blowing this out of proportion. Like I was telling him…” He nodded at Delgado again. “There’s nothing to worry about. Jen’s fine. She should be arriving at her dad’s place any day now.”

  “Where is she right now?”

  “I couldn’t tell you exactly. Last I saw her…”

  “When was that?”

  “Day before yesterday,” he said. “They were heading for Nassau. Then they were maybe stopping at Eleuthera or somewhere before going wherever it is her dad’s place is at.”

  “They?”

  “Jen, Torrey, Pete, and Justin.”

  “Why aren’t you with them?”

  He shrugged.

  “I don’t know. I’d had enough, I guess. I just wanted to get off the boat and do my own thing.”

  “Like Karen Breakell.”

  “Yeah, like that. Wonder if she ever made it off that little island we stopped at.”

  “She did,” I said. “I saw her just a couple of hours ago.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Over on Green Turtle Cay. She landed a crew job on a charter boat. It’ll be docking here in Marsh Harbour this evening.”

  “You know where?”

  “Blue Sky Marina,” I said. “Name of the boat is Trifecta.”

  “Cool,” he said. “Maybe I’ll look her up. I like Karen. She’s got her shit straight.”

  There were plenty of other things I wanted to ask him, but a cell phone started ringing. It was coming from one of Delgado’s pockets. I got it just before the fourth ring.

  “Is this Mr. Delgado?”

  A man’s voice. Bahamian accent.

  “I’m an associate,” I said.

  There was hesitation on the other end. And then the man said, “I am calling back as we agreed.”

  “Is this about the boat?”

  “Yah, mon. He said he would have the money for me and…”

  The call started breaking up.

  “Hold on, hold on,” I said.

  I hurried from the room and onto the patio. I closed the sliding door behind me. Didn’t want to let the cold out. Will Moody had started after me, but stopped on the other side of the glass.

  “You there?” />
  “Yah, mon. Right here.”

  “Tell me about the boat.”

  “First I need to see that money.”

  We went back and forth for a while. After we agreed on how to handle it, I stepped back inside.

  Boggy and Charlie occupied the room’s two chairs. Will Moody had turned on the TV and was flipping through channels. Delgado was still snoring on the bed.

  I told them about my conversation with the man on the phone.

  Will Moody said, “You going there now?”

  “Might as well. Night’s still young,” I said. “But I’d like to sit down with you in the morning. Maybe we can catch an early breakfast.”

  “Sure, that would be great,” Moody said.

  “Where you staying?”

  “Oh, this little place just up the road. I forget the name of it.”

  There aren’t that many choices in Marsh Harbour. I knew most of them.

  “Abaco Beach Resort? The Lofty Fig? Dunning’s Cottages?”

  “That last one,” Moody said. “But why don’t I just meet you here at the restaurant, if that’s alright.”

  “Fine by me. Say seven o’clock?”

  “That is early,” Moody said. “How about nine?”

  “Eight.”

  He grinned.

  “OK,” he said. “I’ll try.”

  I gave the room another quick once-over while Boggy pulled a blanket over Delgado. He wasn’t going anywhere. I’d check in with him first thing in the morning, maybe drag him along with me to breakfast. We could kiss and make up over coffee.

  Charlie turned off the lights. The four of us stepped outside, and I pulled the door shut behind us.

  24

  “He tol’ me five hunritt dollars. And dat’s what I want to see.”

  The man said his name was Williamson and we’d met him, as instructed, at a place called Lita’s Take-A-Way.

  It was on the road going south out of Marsh Harbour. Typical Bahamian fish-fry joint. Weathered shack glorified with turquoise paint and white trim. Wooden shutters propped open above a walk-up window. Old woman in a hairnet taking the orders. A couple of not-quite-so-old women working behind her in the kitchen. Fried fish. Cracked conch. Fried chicken. Conch fritters. You could elevate your cholesterol count just by breathing the air.