by Chris Niles
Kate slowly made her way down the pier toward the ship, shifting her day pack and trying her hardest to look like a woman who can’t find her sister. She waved off the cruise photographers who kept framing her with the ship in the background and kept her eye on the stream of passengers heading toward her.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Morning sunlight streamed through the open curtains of the small stateroom. Vince rubbed the crust from his eyes and slipped out from under the thick arm of the playmate he’d picked up at the casino. After wrapping a towel around his waist, he grabbed a pack of cigarettes then stepped out onto the balcony.
The ship was due into port at noon. He had three hours to get rid of his guest, order coffee and breakfast, fill a bag with a few of Lombardo’s finer things, wipe the room clean, then get off the ship with the first crowd of eager tourists.
He flicked his cigarette butt out into the wind then opened the sliding door, returning to the stateroom just in time to see the hall door snap shut. The bed was empty. He smiled and picked up the TV remote. With just a few clicks, a pot of coffee, eggs Benedict, and extra crispy hash browns were all on their way to his door.
Vince grabbed a quick shower then sorted through Lombardo’s clothes, selecting two days’ worth and stuffing them on top of his own dirty duds in a small daypack he found in the closet. He wiped every surface of the room, tucked Thomas Miller’s copy of Treasure Island into the pack, then perched a straw hat atop his slicked-back hair. On his way out the door, he winked at his reflection.
The crowded elevator stunk of shampoo and sunscreen. Vince backed into a corner to avoid bodily contact with fellow passengers who chatted with each other about swimming with turtles and the island Jeep tour that ended at a tequila tasting room. He envied their enthusiasm but just wanted get off the boat and blend into the crowded little town.
He slid Lombardo’s keycard into the reader at the security podium. Tipped his hat at the tiny woman sitting behind the screen. Sauntered down the pier. Home free … until he spotted her.
How could that meddling blonde possibly be here in Cozumel?
No way at all. Except there she was, right in the middle of the pier. And worse yet, she was waving a big white sun hat at someone near the shops. What Vince had thought would be the easy part just got complicated. He dodged two overly aggressive ship photographers and ducked into a group of rambunctious cruisers who’d started the day’s partying a little early.
Vince stuck to the group through the maze of stalls and shops, his gaze darting back and forth as he searched for an exit. Beside him, a drunken woman carrying a huge beach bag staggered along the edge of the crowd, pointing at various items in each shop they passed. Vince had just mapped his route to freedom when the woman stumbled into a wide terra cotta platter. It crashed to the floor, drawing way too much unwanted attention. He scurried out onto the street, leaving the ruckus behind him.
As tourists flowed across the avenue to Señor Frog’s, Vince peeled off into the small shopping plaza, wiped the card key clean, then dropped it in a nearby trash can. From there, he blended into the loose crowd of shoppers walking toward the town square.
Halfway down the first block, he slipped behind a tall display of tie-dyed sundresses and surveyed the street. No sign of the blonde or her big white hat. He stepped back out to the sidewalk and waved at a taxi careening up the avenue. It sped by, so he flailed at the next one. And the next.
This is worse than trying to hail a cab in Manhattan.
Vince ducked into the next shop. It was shallow, with every bit of its white walls crammed with displays of brightly-colored ponchos, sarongs, and dresses. The shopkeeper had positioned racks of straw hats and sunglasses between them, and tables stacked with souvenir t-shirts filled the center of the shop. Vince pulled a batik dress from the wall and held it wide in front of him to block the view from the street. He hoped the shopkeeper would think he was inspecting the merchandise while he actually checked for the blonde who was bound to catch up with him.
As he worked his way up Avenue Rafael E. Medgar, the four-lane boulevard running the length of the city, he repeated this process in shop after shop — duck into a shop, block with a piece of merchandise, check for a tail.
Three blocks north of the cruise pier, Vince spotted a second-story rooftop cantina. He surveyed the crowd of tourists. Surrounded by a cacophony of color and sound from the shops and the stream of people making their way up and down the avenue, few of them ever looked up. It was the perfect hiding place to stop and come up with a plan.
After ducking up the narrow terra cotta staircase, he settled himself at a tall table with a view of the avenue and opened a menu. Only then did he breathe a little easier. He pulled his hat low then sent a text to Baumann.
Moments later, his phone rang. Baumann. Vince tapped the screen to send the call to voicemail. Then he scanned the crowd on the street, looking intently for the blonde.
“Buenas tardes, señor. Can I bring you a beer?”
Vince admired the young Mexican waitress packed into a tiny bright halter top and even tinier jeans shorts. Typical tourist joint. If the food was good and the drinks were strong, the servers wouldn’t need to show more than they hid to make tips.
“Corona, por favor.” He set a ten-dollar bill on the table then weighted it down with a heavy clay ashtray. After the woman turned back toward the bar, Vince pulled the battered copy of Treasure Island from his pack while scanning the crowd on the street below.
He opened the book, pored over the faded ink in the margins, then turned to the back page. The tight scrawl was barely legible. It seemed like a ledger of some sort, but the entries didn’t make any sense.
When the waitress returned with a sweaty bottle of beer, he snapped the book shut then stuffed it back in his pack. He nodded his thanks, turned, scanned the crowd on the sidewalk below. Amid the pudgy, sunburned horde, he spotted her.
White hat. Blonde hair. Sunglasses.
Pointing straight at him.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Finally, she found him. Even under a woven straw fedora and baggy green shirt, his beady eyes and bruised nose were unmistakable. Kate turned and waved back up the pier at no one, hoping he wouldn’t spot her. She let him pass by before falling in behind him. Staying a few yards back, she scanned the crowd and spotted the top of William’s head at a shop several stalls behind her.
The crash of breaking pottery pulled Kate’s attention to a group of tourists ahead. She spun just in time to see the straw hat — and therefore the creep wearing it — round a corner. Fixated on the space where his straw hat disappeared, she slammed face-first into the crowd building around the broken terra cotta.
“¡Va a pagarla, señora!”
“Get your hands off—”
“I ain’t payin’ for no—”
Kate pushed her way through the screaming crowd, but when she emerged around the corner, the man was gone. She flopped against the wall and swore.
“Hey, now.”
“I thought we had him, Susan. We almost had him.”
“It’s a small island. We’ll find him.”
She waved at the crowd streaming through the little market. “How?”
“I don’t know. But we will. We have to.” William wrapped his arm around Kate’s shoulder. She started to shrug it off, but to her surprise, if felt oddly comforting.
“How about this?” William mused. “We can cover more ground if we split up. I’ll take the south end — I know a couple guys with shops down that way, and I can move quicker by myself. You three stroll up the street toward the north and see what you can see. Sound like a plan?”
“Better than standing here feeling sorry for ourselves.”
They found their way out of the maze of shops to the wide boulevard. William turned right, and they watched him disappear into the crowd. Kate followed Steve and Susan across the street where they joined the cruise passengers ambling up the sidewalk lined with tiny open shops.
Most storefronts were small, single rooms with one cashier, little more than a market stall. With crowds like this, the tiny shops kept every patron visible and easy to monitor. But a few of the larger shops catering to tourists took longer. They were deep, meandering stores, stocked with high shelves of Mexican crafts. Steve walked to the back of one, leaving Susan and Kate pretending to shop near the front.
“It’s not that much different than Key West, really.”
Kate spun around. “Looks pretty different to me.”
“Sure, the history and language and culture are different, but in some way or another, nearly every job on this island is made possible by tourism. Dive operators, shopkeepers, the guys who run the Jeep tours that circle the island. Those are the obvious ones. But the schools teach the kids of those people and the utilities serve their homes. The grocery stores and gas stations are kept afloat by the tourists, too, just like ours are. And everyone speaks enough English to haggle with the visitors.”
“Hadn’t thought about that. And I do see the similarity in the crowds. Can’t stand ’em here, either.” She shrugged and turned into the next dimly lit ceramics stall, watching the street.
“These are cute.” A husband wore a floppy, khaki-colored hat with a thick cord around his chin. He was dressed for an African safari more than a Caribbean island.
His wife, pale and sunburned, shifted a plastic sack to her left hand and examined a bundle of ceramic fish. Each one hung from a thick length of twine, and they jangled against each other as she lifted the bunch. “Nice catch.”
Out of the corner of her eye, Kate noticed the shopkeeper rolling her eyes at the tired joke.
“But where would we put them?” The wife continued to hold the fish above her head, spinning them back and forth.
“Maybe the guest bathroom? Or the porch. There’s that bare spot beside the door.”
Kate slipped back out onto the street and joined Susan. They continued down the crowded avenue, checking stalls and milling through shops, with Steve following a few paces behind. Each time they stopped, one kept watch while the others swept through the store.
Several blocks north of the cruise terminal, Kate caught a glimpse of a man with dark, slicked-back hair in a deep green collared shirt.
“There!”
She pushed through the crowd, with Steve overtaking Susan behind her. The target ducked around a corner. Moments later, Kate and Steve rounded the bend into a crowded plaza lined with small stalls. No sign of the green shirt.
“Hey Amigo, come look. I make good deal.”
Kate ignored the aggressive market vendors and pushed her way through the crowd. She checked between stalls and under tables, but the man had disappeared again.
“Dammit.” She plopped down on a concrete bench in the shade of a low palm tree. The soothing sound of a huge fountain in the center of the plaza only served to annoy her further. “It was him, and I freaking lost him. Again.”
Steve bought three bottles of water from an elderly woman sitting beside a cooler filled with ice, a wide piece of cardboard proclaiming “Ice Cold Agua. $2.00”
He started to check the caps on both bottles. The woman stopped him. “Wait, señor. No. No. Here…” She reached into a second cooler behind her and handed him fresh bottles, seals intact, and returned the refilled bottles to the ice.
Steve handed one of the bottles to Kate and snapped the seal on Susan’s as she caught up to them. “We’ll find him. This city just isn’t that big. He knows we’re following him, but he doesn’t know William’s got the pier covered. All we need to do is get upwind and start herding him back that way. Piece of cake.”
Kate wiped a bead of sweat from her neck. “Piece of cake? None of this would even be happening if I’d been paying attention last night.”
“Don’t be so hard on yourself.”
“He just came out of nowhere, Steve. He burst from the bushes behind the building, beat the crap out of Chuck, then ran. It was like he knew exactly where we’d be and what we’d have. How could he know?”
Steve leaned back and scanned the crowd. “If he’s Baumann’s muscle, then he’s keeping tabs on Chuck.”
“But the ship?”
“Key West is small, and there’s only one road out. If I was a scumbag, and I was near the port, and I needed to get clear, fast, then sure. I’d roll a tourist who looked like me and take his sea pass. If you think about it, it’s almost genius. No one without a pass can get on the ship, so it gives him a perfect getaway. Get off at the next port then blend into the crowd. Exactly what he’s done.”
“But he’ll have to get back to Key West eventually, right?”
“Sure, eventually. But remember, he doesn’t know the significance of the book, so he doesn’t need it like we do. His only job is to keep it away from us. By now, the guy from last night will have reported it so all the ships will tighten their security. If I was him, I’d be looking to—” Steve hopped to his feet. “I know where to find him.”
He pulled his phone out and dialed. “William? Meet us in the plaza as fast as you can get here!”
Ten minutes later, William climbed out of a cab. As he walked toward them, Steve shouted, “He’ll be looking for a boat.”
Kate scanned the seawall across from them and the clear water beyond. The beach was dotted with dive shacks, jet ski rentals, and parasail operators. “No shortage of boats here. He could be halfway back by now.”
“He could be, but he’s not.” Steve sounded confident. “It’s not as easy as snagging one of those little dive boats and chugging east. First, he’d need something with enough range to make the crossing. If he’s smart, he’s not headed straight back to Key West anyway. He’d never make it back through immigration.”
“You’re assuming he’ll check in when he gets back to the Keys,” William countered. “Sure, the Coast Guard is on their toes, but you come in at the right time, it’s not too hard to blend in with the traffic and claim you were just out fishing.”
“But what he won’t do is bee-line straight back,” Steve said. “And without the right stamps in his passport, he’ll need to be careful where he goes.”
“Maybe this is a dumb question, but I’m new to this international escape business.” Susan shrugged. “What’s to stop him from just catching a flight back?”
“Passport stamps,” William replied. “Even if he has his passport on him, which is unlikely unless he’s smarter than he looks, he won’t show as having entered Mexico legally. Without record of entry, he won’t get past immigration to exit. And if somehow he did, he’d have a hard time making it through U.S. immigration when he got back. That’s all computerized now … he’d have a lot of questions to answer.”
“Okay, so he’s got all the time in the world, he’s got Baumann’s money, and he won’t be able to fly.”
“Right. A boat will take longer, but it’ll be a lot easier.”
“So, we need a bigger boat.”
“Already on it.” William tapped at the screen of his phone. “I know the harbormaster at a big marina north of town. There are only a couple places we could charter a boat with enough range to make the crossing, but there might be a few options that aren’t official.” He tapped a couple more buttons. “I just sent you the details for every operator in town who might have boats that meet his—”
Kate pointed up at a rooftop bar just beyond the next intersection. “Wait, is that him? It’s him.”
William followed her finger and nodded. “Maybe.”
The man suddenly ducked low and scrambled out of view.
“He’s bolting!” Steve sprinted down the block, then darted into the street as a white taxi entered the intersection. It screeched to a halt, but not in time. Kate winced at the loud thunk as his legs slammed into the front quarterpanel, then he flipped across the hood from the momentum.
Susan rushed into the street, and a crowd of tourists surrounded them.
Kate pushed through the onlookers until she reached h
er friends, then crouched beside them on the pavement.
“I’m fine. Go after him!” Steve was already rolling to his knees. Kate shoved through the crowd, broke free, then ran.
Chapter Thirty
Vince tried to stay cool.
The blonde pointed from the street below. A tall black man followed her finger, his gaze landing at Vince’s table in the rooftop cantina. Another heavier man and a woman he’d seen around the Shark Key marina looked up, as well.
Vince grabbed his pack then ducked into the enclosed stairwell, catching his waitress as she hurried past.
“Is there a back door? Another way out?”
“No, señor. I’m sorry. This is the only way down onto the street.”
Vince shoved her aside, flew down the steps. He ran halfway up the block, his head swiveling to see if the blonde was following. There was a commotion near the corner that had to be them.
Ahead, he spotted a teenager climbing onto a small motorcycle. As the engine fired, he tackled the kid, shoving him off the seat. Then Vince swung his leg over and kicked the stand backward. He tore out onto the avenue, cutting off a speeding taxi.
A cloud of exhaust from an ancient blue four-door choked him as he passed it on the right. He barely squeezed between the car and a parked white taxi van, then he leaned back into the center of his lane. Vince passed the next car on the left, scraping the high curb of the median. From there, he wove in and out of traffic until he came upon a side street. Leaning hard to the right, he fishtailed as he made the bend. Tourists scattered in the crosswalk as he careened down the road.
He zig-zagged through the narrow streets, doubling back several times to be sure he’d lost them. When he was certain they weren’t following, he pulled the bike into an alley near the north end of town and left the keys in it. After carefully checking the avenue, he stepped onto the street then flagged down a cab.