Baja Florida

by Bob Morris

  Picnic tables sat on a concrete slab illuminated by yellow bug lights that dangled from bamboo poles. A dozen or so men played dominoes at the tables. Each and every one of them casting an eye our way.

  Williamson walked out to meet us the moment Charlie swung his rental car into the parking lot. A tall, slender, loose-limbed man with a close-cropped white beard that matched his hair. Might have been forty, might have been seventy. Hard to tell. He had more than half his teeth, but the ones he had were gnarly and stained and there were sizable gaps between them. He wore a long-sleeved white shirt tucked into long brown pants. Black sandals on calloused feet.

  We had gotten straight to business.

  “I’ll pay you two hundred now,” I said. “And the rest if it pans out.”

  “Three hundred now,” Williamson said.

  “Tell me once more what you saw,” I said.

  He told the story again, the same way he told it the first time. He was a lobster fisherman and a few days earlier he had been out on his boat along the west side of Great Abaco. Lobster season was over and Williamson had been pulling his traps, taking them ashore a boatload at a time to clean and repair and get ready for when the season reopened in August.

  “I seen da boat, big and bare-masted, come puttering along in the still of morning,” he said. “Took notice of it, too, because dat kind of boat, it don’t come near da Marls too often.”

  At mention of The Marls, I looked at Charlie and he looked at me.

  The Marls is a vast estuarial reserve that gets its name from the gray muck—a combination of clay and dolomite and shell—that is the region’s most notable topographical feature. Where there’s enough muck to form an islet, mangroves take root, flourish, and create dense broad canopies of green. A spiderweb network of tidal channels, miles and miles of it, cuts among the islets, flooding the estuary with baitfish and the larvae of shrimp, lobster, and conch.

  Imagine a ten-thousand-piece jigsaw puzzle where every piece looks like every other piece and that pretty much describes The Marls. And it’s home to some of the best bonefishing on the planet.

  Charlie said, “Brings back fond memories, doesn’t it, Zack-o?”

  “Don’t know if fond is the exact word I’d use to describe those memories.”

  A few years back, Charlie and I had chartered a guide for a day of fishing in The Marls. We must have caught and released two dozen bonefish. A splendid excursion.

  The next day, feeling cocky about our navigational skills and looking to save a few hundred dollars, we rented a little skiff and set out into The Marls on our own. We caught some fish. We did ourselves proud. But it wasn’t until the sun was a few fingers above the horizon that either one of us would admit we were lost. And not just lost but complete head-up-our-butts-without-a-clue in the wilderness.

  We would follow a channel that looked like it might lead to open water only to run aground. We would follow another promising channel only to hit the dead end of a mangrove cul-de-sac. We would let the boat drift, hoping it would take us somewhere, but we wound up floating in circles.

  The boat didn’t have a radio. It got dark. The mosquitoes came out.

  These weren’t the kind of mosquitoes that could be warded off by mere slapping. These were vicious little saltwater mosquitoes unaccustomed to having large mammals in their presence, and sensing the feast of their brief lives, they were by-God relentless.

  After we parted with all the blood we could afford to part with, Charlie and I hit upon the only available solution to our predicament. We dug up muck from the flats and covered ourselves in it from head to toe. It didn’t totally thwart the mosquitoes, but at least the little bastards had to work for their meals.

  Come morning, some local fishermen found us. And after assuring themselves we weren’t lunatic exiles from the Lost Tribe of Mudmen, they led us back toward relative civilization.

  Charlie caught me scratching my arms and legs.

  “Yeah,” he said, “just thinking about The Marls does me that way, too.”

  Williamson told us he had kept an eye on the sailboat as it moved past. At one point, when the boat appeared to have run aground, Williamson cranked up his skiff and headed for it, thinking he might make a few bucks by throwing the captain a line and pulling the sailboat to deeper water. But the sailboat worked free on its own.

  “Dat’s when I saw it, her name written right across da transom,” he said.

  “Chasin’ Molly?”

  “Yah, dat what it say, for true.”

  Late that afternoon, heading home, Williamson came across the boat again.

  “Only dis time she was out of da water on skids,” he said. “Had the gantry out and they was hauling her in.”

  “Who’s they?”

  Williamson looked around, as if someone might have sneaked up behind him.

  “Dem Dailey brothers,” he said. “They stay out the other side of Crossing Place off the road to Hole in the Wall. They got a boatyard. Do that and other things.”

  He told me how to get there. I got out the money and handed it to him through the car window. He looked over each bill carefully, then smoothed them out, folded them over, and stuffed them away.

  He said, “I’ll be sitting right here, waiting ’til you come back.”

  25

  It was a twenty-minute drive to the Dailey brothers’ boatyard, the last ten minutes of it down a crater-chocked, semisubmerged stretch of limestone that only under the most generous terms could be called a road. The Hyundai that Charlie had picked up at the airport offered exactly nothing in the way of shock absorption. Each jarring bounce threatened to splay it open.

  “Perfect car for these conditions,” Charlie said.

  “It’s a piece of crap,” I said.

  “Yes, my friend, but it’s a rental piece of crap. That’s what makes it perfect.”

  The going wasn’t made any easier without headlights. We decided to douse them just in case the Daileys weren’t in the mood for visitors. Mangrove branches clawed the windshield and scraped the side panels. Fallen limbs pounded against the undercarriage.

  It was almost midnight. We could have waited until morning, but I was anxious to get a peek at where Chasin’ Molly might or might not be. If I could just put my eyes on the boat and confirm that it was here, then that would give me all I needed to contact the police and let them step in to help with the search for Jen Ryser.

  The road that wasn’t really a road stopped at a makeshift gate that was little more than knobby pine poles and chicken wire. A hand-painted sign said “Private.” The fence that stretched out on either side was not built for high-security purposes, but the brambles and brush that had overgrown it were almost as effective as concertina wire.

  Charlie managed to turn the car around and park it pointing it out, the way we’d come in.

  “Not that we could haul ass out of here on that road,” he said. “Still, it’s a comforting thought.”

  We got out and walked up to the gate. No lock and chain holding it shut, just a loop of rope over a post. I unlooped it and we walked in.

  It was like entering a boat cemetery. Vessels of every kind on either side of us, big ones and small ones, from trawlers to skiffs. Some were toppled on their sides, wheel houses ripped asunder, flying bridges torn apart. Others were flipped over completely, hulls to the heavens. None would ever touch water again. They had been cannibalized for their parts, picked to the bone like carrion in the desert.

  As we moved deeper into the place, we got a feel for its layout. It wasn’t particularly well lit, just one flickering light outside a squat block building that appeared to be an office of sorts. Behind it, lined up with barely an arm’s length between them—three wooden cottages, each with a sagging porch and in various stages of disrepair. I was expecting dogs to come lunging out from under the porches, but none appeared. A nice piece of luck there. Nothing can put a damper on an evening stroll like dogs coming for you in the dark.

  Another hun
dred feet ahead of us a small cove opened onto the lee of Great Abaco—dull gray water under a dark sky. A long concrete dock stuck out from a concrete seawall, a couple of small boats tied up at it. Alongside the dock sat a broad concrete boat ramp. And towering above the ramp, its wheels in tracks on either side, stood the steel gantry that Williamson had told us about.

  The gantry was sturdy and substantial, capable of lifting some very big boats. Its tracks wound away from the ramp and led to a massive Quonset hut hangar. In contrast to the surrounding dereliction, the hangar stood out in the night, a gleaming white, prefabricated building easily fifty yards long and three stories tall. It looked fairly new.

  The boatyard was bigger than two Kmart parking lots and we had already decided that the only way to cover it all and get out of there in a hurry would be to split up. I pointed Boggy toward the rows of boats sitting atop cradles at the far end of the property. Charlie would head to the other side and work his way along the waterfront. I would check out the hangar.

  “Ten minutes,” I said. “Back here.”

  They split off and I continued straight ahead. The hangar loomed larger and larger the closer I got to it. A forklift was parked outside the hangar. A broad garage-style door made of corrugated aluminum was the only entrance I could see. I pulled up on the handle, but it was locked tight.

  I walked down one side of the hangar and found no windows that would offer a glimpse inside. There were probably skylights up top. And the hangar’s thin vinyl skin, stretched tight on a skeleton of metal ribs, would let in enough ambient light during daytime to illuminate the building without much need for artificial light. Boxy compressors stationed every thirty feet or so fed huge, snakelike ducts that blew cool air into the hangar. All in all, a high-tech and no doubt costly piece of work.

  I walked all the way around the hangar and returned to the entrance. I was giving the handle another pull when I heard the last sound anyone wants to hear when you’re snooping around someplace where you really shouldn’t be: The kachuck-kachuck of a shell being chambered in a shotgun.

  Whoever was holding the shotgun didn’t have to tell me to freeze. The instinct was automatic. Same with lifting my hands over my head.

  A high-beam lantern flipped on and lit up the scene. My silhouette against the hangar made me look gigantic, but I felt damn puny with a gun at my back.

  “Turn around real slow.”

  I turned and squinted against the light. I saw three faces but couldn’t tell much about the men who belonged to them. The bright beam made it impossible to pick up any details.

  The one holding the lantern said, “Who the hell are you?”

  I told them my name.

  “What do you think you’re doing out here?”

  I told them I was looking for a boat.

  “So you just come sneaking around in the middle of the night? You planning on stealing this boat or something? That what you planning to do?”

  “No. I just wanted to see if it was here.”

  “We got lots of boats. Exactly what kind of boat are you looking for?”

  “A Beneteau 54. New one. It’s called Chasin’ Molly.”

  I heard them mumbling among themselves. Then the one with the lantern nodded toward the block building.

  “Start walking,” he said.

  26

  They sat me in a cheap white plastic chair, tied my wrists behind me, and wrapped duct tape around me and the chair.

  The chair was in the middle of a big, cluttered room. The door was at my back, open windows on either side. On the ceiling directly above me, two long fluorescent bulbs cast a bluish aura on the surroundings.

  It was more ware house than office—power tools, cans of marine paint, saw horses, the pervasive odor of resin and fiberglass. On the floor—greasy rags, oil-soaked dirt, and random heaps of trash. Cobwebs consumed the corners of the ceiling. A breeze passed through the door and windows, provoking small torrents of dust.

  One of the men—he looked to be the oldest, in his thirties—sat behind a wooden desk. He wore a tight white T-shirt with a tattoo displayed on one forearm. An anchor with roses entwined around it. An old-school tattoo, like sailors used to wear. Something done in a drunken whim in some foreign port. Or prison. Not the artful filigrees sported nowadays by everyone from hipsters and house wives to schoolgirls.

  Another brother, in his twenties, sat on the edge of the desk. He was shirtless with a pistol stuck in the waist of his jeans.

  The third one couldn’t have been more than eighteen or nineteen. He kept the shotgun pointed at me from the far side of the room.

  Looking at the Dailey brothers was like looking at those computer-generated images the cops use to show what missing persons looked like ten years ago and what they might look like now. Variations on a hereditary theme and a predictable arc of aging.

  Same eyes, same basic build, same set to their jaws, all of it reflecting an undistilled strain of meanness. Reddish brown hair. On the youngest, it fell nearly to his shoulders. Middle brother kept it trimmed above his ears. And the oldest one wore it cut tight in deference to an eroding hairline.

  Their genetic stock and pigmentation was not predisposed toward long hours under an unyielding tropical sun. The youngest of them, the one with the shotgun, owned a thin face still relatively unblemished and the beginnings of a mustache, not so much because his face needed it but just to show he could grow one. The middle one, plumper in the cheeks, displayed the onset of carcinomas-in-waiting—discoloring on the forehead, a festering blotch on his nose. And the older brother, the one with first-stage jowls and a double chin, had an ugly canker on his lower lip and crusty outbreaks along his brow. Case studies for the annals of dermatology. Having had plenty of pieces of my own self lopped off over the years, I’m more than casually observant about such things. The Dailey brothers should have spent some of their disposable income on sunscreen.

  The one behind the desk, the oldest one, said, “You some kind of cop?”

  I shook my head.

  “Insurance man?”

  I shook my head again.

  “Then why you interested in that particular boat?”

  “Belongs to the daughter of a friend of mine. She’s gone missing. I figure if I find the boat it might lead me to her.”

  The one behind the desk worked his mouth around. His smirk became a snarl.

  “That what you figure, huh?”

  I didn’t say anything.

  “Who told you to look here?”

  “Just a hunch,” I said.

  “Bullshit. Who told you?”

  I shook my head.

  “Donnie,” he said. “You might have to loosen his tongue.”

  The middle brother, the one with the pistol, hopped off the desk and planted himself in front of me. He pointed the pistol at my right knee. Then at my left knee. Then at a spot in my forehead that I didn’t want to think about.

  “Who?” the oldest brother asked.

  “Screw you,” I said.

  Donnie took a step and whacked the pistol against the side of my head. I saw stars and diamonds and prisms of light, and I went somewhere else for an instant, and then all the pieces came together and I was back in the chair. Coach Lowe used to say: “Only hurts if you rub it.” And I couldn’t. For what comfort that was worth.

  “Who?”

  “Must be an echo in here,” I said.

  Donnie smacked me again. This time the stars and diamonds took longer going away. I shook my head to get rid of them. And still it was like the whole room was underwater.

  Something sour came up at the back of my throat. I coughed and gagged trying to hold it back.

  “Last time,” big brother said. “Or else Donnie puts a slug in your knee.”

  The sour stuff was not to be denied its destiny. It gushed up, I hurled and it drenched Donnie.

  “Son of a bitch,” Donnie said.

  He stepped back, pointed the pistol at my knee…

  A flash of
silver, something flew past me. And I actually thought: It’s a goddam bird, a crazy goddam bird flying straight through the room.

  The blade of Boggy’s knife sank into Donnie’s arm, at the hinge of his elbow. He screamed, fell to his knees, dropped the gun.

  After that, everything happened all at once: Charlie raced in from behind me, took down Donnie…Boggy dove across the desk, floored big brother…A shotgun blast, the desk splintered…I pushed up with my feet and toppled over in the chair…Another blast from the shotgun, the floor exploded beside me…I rolled with the chair…Another blast into the desk…

  Big brother yelled, “Hold off, Sonny, goddammit! Stop!”

  I lay on my side, couldn’t move. It gave me a skewered view of things: Charlie with the pistol held to Donnie’s head…Sonny, backed up in a corner, shotgun leveled at his waist…Boggy rising from behind the desk, an arm locked around the neck of the oldest Dailey brother, whose shoulder was splattered with red.

  Donnie stared at the knife in his arm.

  “I’m stuck! I’m bleeding!”

  Sonny, the kid with the shotgun, took aim at Charlie. Charlie pressed the pistol harder against Donnie’s head and pinned him on the floor.

  “Don’t do it,” Charlie said.

  “I’ll shoot your sorry ass, believe me, I will!”

  Charlie eyed the kid, eyed the shotgun. He said, “You already got off three shots and you didn’t hit anyone.”

  “He hit me, goddammit,” big brother said.

  “OK, strike that,” Charlie said. “He didn’t hit anyone he aimed at. I’m liking my odds.”

  “Fuck you,” Sonny said. He moved along the far wall, trying to get a better angle.

  Charlie yanked Donnie up from the floor. He put Donnie between himself and the shotgun.

  Donnie kicked and screamed.

  “I’m bleeding, I’m bleeding!”

  Big brother shouted, “Shut the fuck up, Donnie!”