Late that night, after Rosalind had fallen asleep, Doom walked up the hill, back across the road, and down to the damp sand at the edge of the ocean. There he sat for an hour in a tight ball, watching the sea’s gentle motion, undulating obsidian, and everything seemed to be drifting away on the ebb tide. But then, control of anything, even one’s own feelings, was illusory. Thick longing for something vague, something balancing out there on the taut wire of the horizon, clogged his throat.
BLACK CAESAR’S YACHT CLUB
About dawn on the morning of their departure, Doom gathered up his snorkeling gear for a last visit to Smiley, but he had barely pulled on one fin when he saw a teenage boy on the dock. The kid was hoisting Smiley up by a stick stuck through the barracuda’s gills and out its mouth. The grinning boy was posing for a picture, which his sallow, fat father was framing with a plastic camera. There wasn’t even a caudal-fin flicker of life left in Smiley. That made the anglers feel successful and happy, but it made Doom dangerous.
The anglers had left their rods, heavy, thick things with fancy gold reels and wire line, on the edge of the dock. In a cold rage Doom removed his flippers, climbed onto the dock, and kicked the rods into the water.
“Hey, Dad, that guy just—!”
Doom picked up their big aluminum tackle box, with trembling hands tore it open, and shook the contents—feathers, jigs, spoons, plugs, pliers, hooks, line, and sinkers—into the water. Then he chucked the box in the water.
“Hey, you!” the father yelled. “You—”
“Shut up!” Doom snarled at the father. “Put down that fish,” Doom demanded of the son in a level voice.
The father took one look into Doom’s eyes, saw in them violent death, and called retreat. “Come on, son—”
“But Dad—”
“Put it down, son.”
“Gently,” Doom dictated.
Doom heard the father, leaving, explain to his son that some of these crackers would just as soon knife your spleen out as look at you. “It’s different down here than home in Detroit.”
Doom removed the stick from Smiley’s mouth. A finger of blood ran from its gills. The silver had faded from its flesh, turned to opaque gray. Doom picked up the big dead fish by the tail and slid it back into the water. Smiley sank in a fluttering corkscrew motion, a cruel parody of its swimming, and came to rest on its side in the white sand among the objects of its destruction.
Shortly after that Staggerlee got under way. A throng had gathered on the dock to wave bon voyage. Archie and Dawn, Billy, Bobby, Arnie, and Arnie Junior were there, and so were Holly, Duncan and the professor, Marvis and Lisa Up-the-Grove. And Rosalind was there. Bert was hiding aboard in the forepeak to lend some covert sailing assistance; so was Longnecker, to lend firepower. Rosalind took the bow line from its cleat, tossed it on the foredeck, and tensely Doom backed his boat away from the dock, into the channel. He felt sad, even if the leaving was phony. Omnium Key had begun to feel like home. Perhaps that’s what life held in store for him—intinerancy, a life of departures. He thought of Smiley bobbing back and forth in the tide, picked at by crabs, like his old man.
That same gentle east wind was blowing, and their plan was to take a long starboard tack to the northeast. When they had put a horizon between Staggerlee and the King Don, whose crew would be watching through the glasses and the radar, they would crack sheets and bear off onto a reach northward. Carysfort Light in sight, they would run back to the coast to enter Card Sound through Angelfish Creek. From there it would be only a three-mile sail into the mangrove backwaters Bert had picked as their hideout. He said it used to be the lair of pirates…
The channel narrowed, tightened down to a stream nearly overgrown by haggard red mangroves. Here and there, they brushed Staggerlee’s shrouds and spreaders. Beer cans and plastic soda bottles bobbed among their prop roots. Scum undulated in the wake. Longnecker stood by to fend off. The air was damp and overbearing, the water a milky, typhoid green, devoid of all life but bacteria. Why were the mangrove leaves covered with white dust? What was wrong with this place? Was it the proximity of Route One? Doom could hear traffic but not see it behind the trees. Or had some ecological disaster occurred? Glad to have Bert at the wheel in tight quarters, Doom stood lookout on the bow for flotsam, jetsam, corpses.
Then they rounded a dogleg, and the creek brushed Route One. Actually, this was Old Route One. New Route One, a four-lane highway, crossed Barnes and Card Sounds onto Key Largo ten miles south, leaving Old Route One a lonely loop through the marshes. On a crumbling wedge of limestone, between the creek and the road, perched Black Caesar’s Yacht Club. Seeing his new home, Doom felt his resolve fading. He longed to return to Omnium Key and listen to stories at the Flamingo Tongue. The sun slunk behind a stack of stratocumulus, turning the water to black, like festering mucus. A flock of brown pelicans from the healthy world flew overhead in a line astern and disappeared.
Black Caesar’s, a two-story paintless frame hotel with a bar and restaurant on the ground floor, had a serious list to starboard, as if its backbone had snapped or the land had sunk beneath it. There were six slips along Caesar’s dock. A houseboat had sunk in the first. Its plywood roof remained above water, delaminating in the sun. Slimy dock lines were still attached to the submerged deck. Adjacent to it, a cheap fiberglass sailboat baked, mast and rigging lying along the deck—someone’s dead dream of a nautical getaway. A once-handsome wooden motor launch had capsized years before against the dock pilings, one of which had penetrated her topsides. The remaining three slips were empty except for floating garbage.
Bert cleanly entered the slip, and Doom stepped gingerly onto the dock for fear of falling right through it. He made the bow line fast to a splintery piling. Bert rigged fore and aft spring lines…They were home. No little fish played among the pilings. This water was opaque, bereft of life.
“Bucket of blood,” pronounced Longnecker, squinting at the lopsided building. He decided to slide another pistol into his belt beneath his Hawaiian shirt, this one painted with volcanoes and frigate birds. Doom wondered if Black Caesar was really black. This didn’t look like a good place for harmonious racial interaction.
Bert, Doom, and Longnecker entered the bar from the creek side, but they piled up just inside because it was too dark to walk safely. They stood by vulnerably while their eyes adjusted to sudden night.
Several hard-bitten fuckers at the bar turned to glare at the strangers. The fuckers wore chewing-tobacco caps and were no doubt as heavily armed as Longnecker, who was considering opening fire for the sake of prudence. Pupils dilating, Doom saw no warmth of welcome in Black Caesar’s Yacht Club. It stank of stale beer, fish, and urine, not the musty sweet wooden nostalgia of the Flamingo Tongue. A wiry man with a mean face tilted the pinball machine with a kung-fu kick, then glared at it. Six guys in greasy baseball caps sat crammed into a booth watching with unmasked distaste the trio of lost tourists letting in the daylight.
Black Caesar was indeed black. He sat shirtless behind the cash register at the corner of the bar. Black Caesar’s upper body looked as if it were assembled from suspension bridge cables and hot rivets.
“Good morning,” said Doom congenially. “I’d like dockage space.”
“Looks like you already took dockage space.”
Bert was tense and jumpy, but Longnecker felt right at home in this menacing environment.
“Did we take someone else’s place?”
“Yeah. But he’s dead. In a dispute over dock space. Cost you a hunnert.”
“A hunnert a month?”
“A night. ’Course, if that don’t suit you, there’s all kinds of marinas in the region. Take your pick. Some’ll rent you Jet Skis or a surfboard, any manner of waterfront tourist shit. They even got shoreside crappers where the little lady can freshen up. ’Course, they’ll want to know your name and address, certain personal particulars.” Black Caesar spotted a mosquito orbiting his head. His eyes drew a raptorlike bead on it, then in a black blur he clappe
d it between two leather hands. He flicked away its flat corpse. “Me, I don’t ask no questions. I don’t give a fuck whether you live or die.”
“That kind of indifference never comes cheap,” said Doom, handing over three hundred dollars to start his exile.
“Would you gentlemen care for an aperitif?” Black Caesar offered, counting. He had a live one here.
MEETING AT THE SUMMIT
The meeting held that night by lamplight in Staggerlee’s saloon—Bert and Marvis, Duncan and the professor, Longnecker and Holly were there—had about it a military, a naval, air, Doom reluctantly in command. He hadn’t come to Florida to run a conspiracy. An hour before this general gathering, about dark, Rosalind had arrived with Snack Broadnax. During the ride from Omnium Key to Black Caesar’s she had presented to Snack the serpentine evidence implicating Big Al in the alligator killings.
Snack was sad, but he tried to cover it with anger, a less vulnerable emotion. Snack used to love sitting on the bank with Rosalind and Lisa Up-the-Grove watching the gators bask in the winter sun. He had helped name them, helped Rosalind take notes on their behavior in an effort to, as Rosalind put it, “more deeply understand their lives”; he had been there when the two babies emerged from their eggs peeping for their mothers. Now they were slaughtered on orders from his old man.
“So okay,” growled Snack, “he’s an asshole. What do you want me to do about it?”
“We’d like you to spy on him for us,” said Doom.
“Fuck you.”
“That’s all right. I understand.”
“He’s my own father. He brought me into this world!”
“Your mother helped,” Rosalind pointed out.
What was he angry at? Simply that Big Al had killed the alligators or that Doom Loomis had taken Rosalind? Or that now he had to do something? Or was it something else entirely, something like fear of infanticide? “I ain’t no Abel Cain.”
“Thanks anyway, Snack. I know we’re asking the impossible, spying on your own father. I’d feel the same way. Could I ask you a question before you go? What were you doing at the Snowy Egret Shopping Plaza on the day Tamarind Financial blew up?”
Snack glared at Doom. “My father sent me,” Snack said defiantly.
“Oh.”
“What do you mean oh?”
“Just oh.”
“What are you trying to say? You trying to say my old man meant to kill me?”
“Kill you? That never crossed my mind. Why? Do you think he meant to kill you?”
“Hell, no! My own father? Trying to kill me? Besides, I thought we were talking about alligators. I want a drink.”
“Sure,” said Doom. “What kind would you like?”
“I want a private drink.” He climbed up the companionway and headed for Black Caesar’s.
“I’ve missed you,” said Doom to Rosalind.
“Me too. This place is horrible.”
“I know it. Would you like to make love?”
“Doom, we don’t have time. Snack could come back any minute, the others’ll be here in a little while—”
“You won’t stop liking me, will you?”
“When?”
“When I start doing mean things.”
“We’ll do them together.”
The others straggled in late. They seemed uniformly depressed at the slimy backwater qualities of Black Caesar’s Yacht Club. Doom was glad they hadn’t seen the place by daylight, when the true extent of its malarial gloom was vivid.
Doom poured tots of his father’s Barbadan rum all around, but the Annes demurred, busy setting up their gear in the cramped quarters forward of the settee near the mast step. Then Doom passed all present two thousand dollars in stacks of crisp twenties. “I’ve come into some money, and I want to share it with you. I’m going to need your help. It could get ugly, and everyone should decide whether or not they want to help. I hope you’ll keep the money whether you decide to stay or not.”
Topside somewhere window glass shattered. Talk ceased abruptly aboard Staggerlee.
A man screamed for help—
“Snack!” said Rosalind.
Doom and the others bolted up the companionway, over the dock into Black Caesar’s bar— Three wiry guys in greasy baseball caps were pummeling Snack Broadnax, who had curled into a tight springboard-diver’s tuck on the floor to protect his vitals. Four others cheered on the savagery from bar stools.
“Stop!” Doom shouted, but they didn’t. Doom leveled his father’s twelve-gauge flare gun at the twinkling Bud Lite sign on the far wall, squeezed his eyes to slits—and fired. He was not disappointed in the effect. With an air-sucking whoosh the meteor left its launcher and instantaneously exploded against the wall. Night became noon. All but Doom recoiled from the smash of phosphorus flying around the bar in vicious smoking tendrils of potential blindness and third-degree burns. The Bud Lite sign was atomized. Men and women from his own party, as well as the opposition, screamed and hit the deck hugging their heads while Doom reloaded. If the opposition turned restive, Doom decided he would fire one into the bottles behind the bar. But if that didn’t work, he’d have to start firing at people. Snack crawled away from his huddled assailants to the safe ground around Doom’s shoes.
“May I have your attention, please?”
May I have your—? Now this was a stand-up guy in action, mused Longnecker.
“I represent certain powerful interests in Tallahassee. For security reasons, I can’t be more specific.” Small fires crackled near the blackened point of impact, but no one dared move to extinguish them. “I’ll be here only a short time, during which I need peace and quiet to conduct my consultations. If you gentlemen leave me and my friends entirely alone, I’ll pay you each three hundred dollars upon my departure. Mr. Caesar, I’m holding you personally responsible. If these men bother us, I’ll accordion your spine under the raw weight of authority.”
Rosalind felt a shiver replace the surging adrenaline. Was Doom really as dangerous as he looked?
“Conversely, if they leave us alone, I’ll pay you a bonus of five hundred dollars.”
Black Caesar blinked twice…“Belly up, crackers,” he called to the crouching regulars. “Drinks on Black Caesar. What we gonna drink to? How ’bout peace on earth and goodwill to Tallahassee?”
Doom pulled Snack to his feet. His face was purple and bloody. Back at the boat, Rosalind tended his wounds while the others, abuzz, looked on. The Annes had to muscle the camera through the crowd.
“What was the fight about?” Doom wanted to know.
“Snook.”
“The fish?”
“When’s the best time to catch ’em.” Snack winced as Rosalind dabbed disinfectant under his eye. Then Snack began to cry. “It was my fault, I started it…I want a home! That’s all! Is that too much to ask for?” Rosalind hugged him, an orphan. After a time he collected himself and said, “I’ll spy on him under one condition.”
“What?” Doom asked.
“That you don’t hurt him.”
“I don’t want to hurt him.”
“If you do, I’ll get you good.”
“Fair enough,” said Doom.
AGENTS OF CHANGE
They waited until after dark, after Sheriff Plotner had finished sucking the marrow out of his Flamingo Tongue blue-plate special. They intercepted him at the green dumpster.
“Sheriff Lincoln Plotner?” Duncan Feeney wore an unseasonable blue wool pin-striped suit.
“Yeah?”
“I’m Agent Armbrister of the FBI.” Pointing to Longnecker, in an identical suit, Duncan said, “And this is Agent Peebles. You’re under arrest as an accessory after the fact to the murder of Dennis Loomis. You have the right to remain silent so on and so forth.”
Sheriff Plotner choked back fried chicken bile. His knees went soggy, and sweat burst forth from his forehead. He forgot to wonder what the FBI was doing in a local murder case or even to ask for ID from the arresting officers. They h
ad to be real—only the FBI would wear wool suits in Florida. Besides, he was guilty as sin, and they had him dead to rights. The best he could hope for would be to escape the indignity of barfing creamed corn on his own spit-shine.
“We have other felonies waiting in line, like misuse of office and filing false documents in a murder case. Whether we lay them on you or not depends entirely on your level of cooperation.”
His brain limp, he noticed only in passing that Agent Peebles was cuffing his hands behind his back and relieving him of his Magnum and his Mace. Good-bye, Ted Koppel. Sheriff Plotner squeezed his atrophied abdominals to prevent himself from peeing in his uniform. In the dark, Longnecker couldn’t tell if the sheriff was actually weeping as Duncan Feeney folded him into the backseat of his own black-and-white. Longnecker had expected trouble, but this poor guy was a lamb, and Longnecker felt a little sorry for him…What the hell was that stink? Christ, it must be the stink of cold fear.
Siren and flasher screaming their approach, Duncan did sixty up Route One, the traffic diving and careening out of the squad car’s path. Duncan had always wanted to drive like that, without having to become a cop. He could have become an ambulance driver, but that didn’t pay shit, and fire engines just didn’t corner worth a damn.
Sheriff Plotner’s head bobbed, and his eyes had gone blank.
“Hey, buck up, pal,” said Longnecker. “We might be able to fix this.” Longnecker opened the side windows. At this speed, the stink didn’t remain long. The sheriff’s body, like a half-filled fuel bladder, sagged right, then left as Duncan swerved wildly in and out of his lane. Longnecker thought for a moment that the sheriff had died. Doom wouldn’t have liked that.
BABY BEAR
Bert and Marvis had found and rented the Goldilocks and Baby Bear bungalows from the Three Bears Motel—Mama Bear and Papa Bear bungalows had burned to the ground after a domestic disturbance—several miles north of Homestead. Doom grinned lasciviously out the side of his mouth and told the manager that they were making a dirty movie. Doom slipped him an extra hundred bucks to take a break.
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