by C I Dennis
It was fully overcast and threatening to rain when I got to Key West, so I pulled over to put the top up. I took North Roosevelt Boulevard around the northern perimeter of the island, toward my destination. There are only two places to keep a boat that big: the Garrison Bight, where I’d already been and had subsequently been mugged, and the Key West Bight next to the ferry terminal. I decided to try the former, and if ol’ Plumber Butt was in the fishing shack cutting up a grouper, I would grab the back of his undershorts and give him a wedgie to remember for ratting me out to the Iturbe brothers on my last trip.
I parked off of the feeder road to the Palm Avenue Causeway and got out my pocket Swarovski binoculars. The marinas were populated with houseboats and sportfisherman rigs of the forty- to fifty-foot variety—no luxury seventy-foot types in sight. I got out of the car and stretched, which felt good after the three-plus-hour drive from the hospital, not to mention the drive before that from Vero to Miami. If this was an actual case and I was getting paid, I might have just racked up a sizable mileage bill. But it wasn’t, and I was exhausted, and hungry, and I needed to pee.
I found a floating Thai restaurant on the other side of the causeway, and used their bathroom while I waited for an order of bibimbap to go, which is Korean, not Thai, but they didn’t care and neither did I. I found a shady bench beside the water, where I ate the delicious rice and vegetable dish from the paper container, drank water from a plastic bottle, and kept an eye on the harbor’s comings and goings. There was nothing I could see that looked remotely as elegant as a Mikelson—I had done an image search on my phone so that I would know what it looked like, and it was a boat that you wouldn’t miss. I decided to pass the time by catching up on my correspondence—Barbara had texted me several times during the day, but I hadn’t felt like answering. The last message that she had written said: Where are U? They said U left the hospital hours ago.
Key West again, I wrote.
She texted right back. So we’re stuck with your friend here?
Sonny? Yes.
What am I supposed to feed him?
Supposed to feed him? What did she think he was, a zoo animal? I believe he eats normal food. You could ask him.
He’s not what I’d call normal.
At least he’s loyal, I wrote back.
A minute passed until her reply came. Come home soon, Vince.
Got to get this done, I wrote, and I snapped off the phone and put it in my pocket.
*
At four thirty in the afternoon I was all set for my nap, having digested the bibimbap, read the paper, done the crossword on my phone, checked my email, and finally gotten out my knitting, out of sheer, desperate boredom. Waiting around has never been my strong suit. I wanted to knock on a few doors, or maybe knock a few heads, but I didn’t want to end up in the hospital alongside Gustavo Arguelles. Time is on your side, Vince, I told myself. You know that the boat lives here, somewhere. This is where Lilian’s phone had last given a signal from land. Then, Roberto had tracked it offshore: south, until it either went out of range or the battery died.
Or, it went over the side of a boat. I was hopeful that it hadn’t been in Lilian’s pocket at the time, if that was what had happened.
My cellphone rang. “Tanzi.”
“Tal Heffernan. I think we just figured this out. The Pimentel brother who died was cooking the books.”
“Segundo? He did the accounting?”
“I just got off the phone with the other brother,” Heffernan said. “He confirmed what we knew. Segundo did all the financing for the family’s real estate projects, and he must have got in with the wrong people.”
“Where did you find this?”
“We went through his office today,” he said. “The Superior Court sent a chaperone, but we still scored. There were accounting records. The family coffers were millions of dollars in the red. Their lenders were in the Caymans, and we’re guessing that they got fed up and took out Segundo and the old man.”
“What about Javier?”
“Javier? He’s more like, sales and marketing,” Heffernan said. “He stays out of the finance side. He’s all about the show. You’ve seen his office.”
“My whole house would fit in his office. So you talked with Javier?”
“Yeah, and I laid it all out for him, but I figure he knew most of it already. I almost feel bad for the guy, losing half of his family over some shitty mall deals. Apparently the old man went on a buying spree in ‘07, at the top of the market, and Segundo had been trying to dig them out ever since, but he couldn’t pull it off. He was making it look like they were solvent, but they were bleeding cash.”
“So his bankers had him killed? That’s crazy. There’s bankruptcy, for god’s sake.”
“You don’t know these Latinos,” the detective said. “I deal with this crap every day. You look at them cross-eyed and they start a blood feud. No, this one’s all done.”
“What about Lilian Arguelles? My client?”
“Vince—I wouldn’t get your hopes up, OK? I pressed Javier pretty hard, and he doesn’t know anything about her. My guess is that she was collateral damage.”
His words hit me like a sucker punch, and for a second I didn’t think that I’d be able to keep the Thai food down. Lilian, dead? In a fight over who owed who? No. Not possible.
But it was possible, very much so, and I wondered what the hell I was going to say to her son.
“So, how are you going to go after them?”
“We’re not,” Heffernan said. “We’re turning it over to the FBI. But they won’t find anything. Basically, if some bad-guy lenders in the Caymans want to punch a few tickets here on the mainland, they call in a pro, and unless we happen to catch the shooter in the act, there’s no way that anybody’s going to find them. Don’t expect the Feds to put a lot of resources on it.”
“I have a teenage kid whose mother is missing. And you’re telling me that nobody gives a shit?”
“I’m telling it like it is,” he said. “You know. You were a cop.”
Yeah, I knew. I knew that whenever a case led overseas, the locals bailed. That was somebody else’s turf. Pass the buck. Call the FBI, the Border Patrol, the CIA, or Spider-Man. Whatever it had been before, it was now a lost cause, and there were a hundred other cases in the hopper that needed attention. Move along, nothing to see here, have a nice day.
Detective Talbot Heffernan had found out what was going on with the Pimentel family. Obviously he was better at his job than I’d given him credit for. Some unknown entity had made a phone call and had had Raimundo and Segundo Pimentel murdered, and Lilian might have been killed as well. Heffernan was telling it like it was.
But that didn’t mean I had to accept it.
After twenty-five years of being a deputy, and then five more as a P.I., I know when I’m being told to go away. Sometimes it’s obvious, like when two mugs shoot me up with a tranquilizer and then toss me out of a van. That’s one way to tell me to mind my own business.
Another way is when a colleague, whom I have no reason to not believe, calmly and professionally explains that everything has been taken care of, and it’s out of everybody’s hands now, and, oh yes, keep your expectations low. That’s the more subtle way, and it would usually be very convincing.
Except that it sounded like bullshit, and I didn’t know why.
As if to prove my point, a big, expensive-looking sportfisher reflected the afternoon light on the side of its polished white hull as it slowly entered the Garrison Bight from the channel at Trumbo Point. Whoever was at the helm knew how to handle it, and they carefully maneuvered the boat alongside the far end of the row of slips, a hundred yards from where my bench was. I picked up my binoculars and adjusted the focus, just as the captain swung the big craft around so that I could make out the dark-blue letters that were painted across the transom:
MAMARTA.
Ten minutes later I watched from my bench as Javier Pimentel walked up the steps from the
dock to the parking area, got into a taxi, and drove away.
I could get in my car and follow him. Or, I could wait for him to return. And while I waited, I could check out his boat. Javier had no doubt locked the Mikelson up tight, but I had my lock-picking kit in the trunk.
Popping a lock of the quality that I would find on a million-dollar yacht requires a high degree of small-motor control, and my inadvertent meeting with a bullet had taken much of that away. For the first couple of months after coming home from the hospital I had barely been able to open a beer. My hand functions had come back painfully slowly, and I’d had to completely relearn how to fasten a button, or pick up a coin off the floor, or zip up my fly without accidentally circumcising myself. Everyone agreed that I had made a lot of progress, and now all I needed to do was open a lock, on a boat.
Piece of cake. I’d be inside in five minutes, max.
*
Tanzi’s Tip #6: When you meet someone from a foreign country, always ask them to teach you the best swear words, because you might need them when you run out of good ones in English.
The piece-of-cake door lock on the Mikelson had refused to yield after half an hour of coaxing with a short hook and my best tension wrench. I had skinned my knuckles twice and had broken two of the hooks, leaving me with a third one that had seen better days and might get me into an accidentally-locked bathroom but wasn’t about to let me inside the sliding glass door of the boat’s main saloon. My angry epithets in Norwegian and Portuguese weren’t helping, and I was about to take a nearby fire extinguisher from the wall, dispense with subtlety, and heave it at the glass, when I saw someone approaching down the dock. I quickly ducked out of sight.
Javier Pimentel was leading the way toward the boat, and behind him were the Iturbe brothers, each carrying one end of a white plastic box that appeared to be a gigantic ice cooler. Uh-oh. Somebody was going to go fishing, and I was wondering if I would be the bait. I could jump off the side into the water, but I wasn’t about to leave my tool bag, and it would make me sink to the bottom like a stone. Going back onto the dock wouldn’t work either—there was only one way out, and it was blocked by the two massive guys who were quickly approaching behind their leader. It was apparent that what Javier had told me a few days ago about the Iturbes no longer working for the Pimentels was false. He looked like the boss here—the rock star, and the other two were the roadies. I set that thought aside to process later.
I gathered up my tools and scrambled around the deck of the boat for a hiding place. Lashed to the foredeck was a Zodiac inflatable tender, protected by a rubberized canvas boat cover. I peeled back one side of the cover and climbed in with my gear, hoping that I wouldn’t have to spend the night there. The space inside was large enough for me to lie down comfortably, but if the warm evening cooled off, I would be in trouble. I was wearing a short-sleeved polo shirt and lightweight pants, and it could get surprisingly chilly on the water, even this close to the equator. I held my breath as I heard the voices getting nearer, and I opened up a corner of the boat cover to peek out.
Javier Pimentel was directing the other two men as they shrouded the big cooler in what appeared to be plastic wrap, and then attached pieces of foam to the sides with a tape gun. They bundled the whole thing in a heavy fishing net and left it at the stern of the boat. The two brothers cast off the mooring lines as Javier fired up the Mikelson’s engines and then carefully piloted the craft away from the dock’s perimeter. In less than a minute we were motoring back out of the channel past Trumbo Point toward the Fleming Key Cut. Not long afterward, the Mikelson rounded the western shore of the key past the Truman estate, and I took note of our heading, which was made obvious to me by the passing landmarks and the position of the descending late afternoon sun:
South.
Javier Pimentel was steering his million-dollar fishing boat out into the Florida Straits, the hundred-mile-wide body of warm, shark-infested water that separated the Pimentel family’s adopted state of Florida from their native country of Cuba. And it was a little late in the day for fishing.
*
By the time I had decided who I should call, we were out of sight of land and the cell signal was almost gone. I had eliminated Tal Heffernan, and even Bobby Bove by association. I didn’t think that I was getting the straight story from the authorities for some reason and had decided that I would be better off on my own. I couldn’t call Barbara, or Roberto—that would worry the hell out of them, and chances were that we’d be back in port after some evening fishing, and I could then slip away unnoticed. The person to call was Sonny, but it was too loud on the deck, even under the cover of the Zodiac, so I sent a text instead:
I’m a stowaway on Javier Pimentel’s boat. Heading south from Key West. He’s with the two big guys.
What? He sent right back. You crazy? They catch you and you’ll walk the plank.
That’s what I’m afraid of.
You want me to fly down?
I need you at home, I sent. The cops say it’s all over, but I don’t agree. Still no Lilian.
Maybe she’s in Cuba?
Sonny had made the same connection that I had. Maybe you’re right.
You speak any Spanish?
I can order a beer, I wrote.
Will fly to Keys tomorrow unless I hear from you, he sent. Don’t worry about your family.
Thanks, I sent, and I turned the phone off. It had about an hour of battery life left, and I figured I might need it.
*
A couple of hours later, I used up some precious phone voltage to rummage around in the Zodiac with the benefit of the flashlight app. I was shivering from the chill, and if there was a blanket in here, I wanted it, plus I was thirsty, and I didn’t want to get dehydrated. Wadded up near the motor mount was a pink sweatshirt with ELLE emblazoned on the front in block letters, and I wrapped it as far as I could around my shoulders, as it was about sixteen sizes too small to pull over my head. It helped. A small cooler in the bow of the Zodiac held about an inch of water, probably from melted ice, and I drank a few sips, knowing that I should ration it if I was going to be stashed in here for longer than I’d hoped. I lay on the bottom of the inflatable as comfortably as I could, and I began to add everything up.
Javier Pimentel had a boat in the keys, moored at exactly the same location where his sister’s cellphone had last given out a signal. But according to Tal Heffernan, Javier was clueless about Lilian’s disappearance, or his family’s financial ruin. Javier had told me when we’d met in his office that all of this was so—unbelievable. Right. That one had pushed the needle on the bullshit-o-meter into the red zone.
And he had also said that the Iturbes no longer worked for the family, but here they were, and they seemed to be working pretty hard.
What had also gotten my curiosity was the “square grouper” on the rear deck, wrapped up and ready to go overboard. A square grouper was a term that was used to describe a rectangular bale of marijuana that had been dropped off the Florida coast by boat, or by plane, and then retrieved by the locals and smuggled into port. You could make a lot more money angling for weed than for amberjack. In recent years the same technique had been used to bring in cocaine, usually wrapped in a water-tight container and carrying a GPS device so that the retrieving boat was certain to find it, because a sealed-up cooler full of coke was worth many times more than a bale of brine-soaked pot and was something that you definitely didn’t want to drift off into the sunset. The Coast Guard and the DEA kept watch on some of this activity from overhead, but there was just too much coastline and not enough resources.
My question was—why was Javier sending his package in the wrong direction? The stuff was supposed to come into the United States, not go out. The cooler was maybe five feet long and a couple of feet wide. That would hold enough cocaine to keep the entire country up until five AM watching Steven Segal movies. The box was also long enough to hold a small body. I shivered, even with the sweatshirt wrapped around me. Lilian?
If she were inside there, she would be dead. The Iturbes had sealed the thing up tight.
We had been underway for nearly four hours, according to my phone. I estimated that the boat was making around twenty knots, which meant that we would be in Cuban waters very soon, if we weren’t already. My calculations were confirmed when the engines were suddenly cut, and there was some activity aft of my hideaway, though I couldn’t see what because my view was blocked by the pilothouse.
But I did hear the splash, just before the engines were restarted, and someone steered the boat in a slow arc north, back into our wake. We had dropped off our package and were heading home.
The sun had gone below the horizon an hour before, and the water and the skies were now nearly the same deep-blue tint, with a couple of stars out as early sentinels of the night. I had a good vantage point from underneath the boat cover, and I made out a boat approaching—fast—from the south. It was much larger than the Mikelson, and was festooned with gear. Not fishing gear—it looked like military rigging, and I took the binoculars from my bag.
The approaching boat was definitely rigged for patrolling, not fishing. The giveaway was a naval gun protruding from a turret on the front deck, and the large array of radar and communication devices that were strung along the tower. I could just make out a number in the nearly-gone light, painted in white on the side of the hull: 202. When I got back to civilization, assuming that I did, I would look it up, but my guess was that it was one of the ships that had been provided to the Cuban Navy by the Soviets, back in the day. Most of those were rusting hulks now, but this one was moving right along at full speed, directly toward the zone where Javier had dropped off his parcel.
A military vessel? Picking up a drug drop from a rich guy’s sportfisher? That didn’t make sense. We were cruising at twenty knots again, and I was able to watch the other boat slow down, and then turn back toward the south. It stopped, a bank of floodlights came on, and grappling hooks were dropped from the stern. I watched as they winched up the cooler, shrouded in the fishing net.