Florida Straits

by SKLA

  "What boat?" Joey was looking down at the black and white linoleum squares, they swam at his feet and made him dizzy. He spotted his sunglasses on the kitchen table and just managed to grab them as he was being swept along.

  "What boat?" mimicked Charlie Ponte. Joey's bafflement amused him and he spat out a derisive laugh. "Asshole."

  The goons obediently cackled along with their boss as they herded their captives out through the sliding door and into the compound. The morning was dead still, a pillow of mist sat on the flat water of the hot tub. The sky was halfway bright but even through shades it had no color, and Joey, who had little experience with dawns, guessed that the sun had been up for maybe fifteen minutes, half an hour. He wished he could stop being so confused and wished he could walk closer to Sandra, could push aside the two thugs who loomed between them as they crunched along the gravel path.

  Bruno and Tony's dark blue Lincoln was parked between some garbage cans around the corner. There was no other car.

  One of the new goons opened a back door and stuffed Sandra and Joey through it. He climbed in after them, his colleague sandwiching the captives from the other side. Bruno got in the driver's seat, Tony squeezed in the middle, and Charlie Ponte rode shotgun.

  "Where are you taking us?" Sandra asked.

  Bruno pulled away from the curb.

  Ponte didn't bother to turn around. He didn't see the point of talking to hostages. But he was in high spirits and he did like talking to his boys, liked to show them how smart he was. "Broad wants to know where we're takin' 'er. Kid wants to know what boat." He shook his head. "Ya know what's wrong with this fuckin' country? People are stupid, they can't figure nothin' out. Fuck she think we're takin' 'er? To the emeralds, honey! Inna boat we come down from Miami in. Guy tells us the stones are inna water. Fuck's he think—we're gonna fetch 'em with a Lincoln?"

  The goons laughed.

  "But Mr. Ponte—"

  "But Mr. Ponte," mimicked the Miami Boss. "Asshole's a broken record with this Mr. Ponte shit. Smack 'im for me, will ya." One of the backseat thugs obliged, but be couldn't get much leverage in the packed car and the blow did nothing more than make Joey's sunglasses rattle on his nose. "And tell 'im he ain't heah to talk, he's heah to bring us to the stones." Ponte paused as the Lincoln slunk through the narrow empty streets. "And if he don't bring us to the stones, he better not waste his fucking breath yammering, 'cause he's gonna have a long swim home."

  — 46 —

  The cigarette boat was cobalt blue and shaped like a shark. It sat perfectly still in the celery-green water at the end of the Flagler House dock. Two guys had stayed on board. Divers. They had stubble beards, crinkled eyes, and wore wetsuit tops unzipped to the solar plexus. One of them reached up to help Sandra into the open cockpit. The other started the twin engines; they fired into life with a roar that shook the ocean. Joey was pushed into the boat, then he was pushed up against a gunwale as Ponte's goons piled in behind him. He just had time for one quick look at the sleeping hotel, early light throwing triangle shadows across its balconies. Then the cigarette spun seaward. In three seconds the hull was up on plane, shushing over the slashed water of the Florida Straits with a sound like a million skis on icy snow.

  Charlie Ponte crab-walked across the tilted cockpit and screamed in Joey's face: "So, asshole, where we goin'?"

  White-knuckled, Joey squeezed the gunwale and willed his brain to think of something clever. Through the wildly vibrating air he glanced back at Sandra; she was pressed between two goons on a little wraparound settee at the stem, and her eyes did not look good, they looked forlorn as candles whose wicks had gotten buried in wax. Joey was still stalling even as he watched Charlie Ponte's small neat fist coming toward his chin, and the instant before the blow was one of stunning clarity in which Joey realized there was no lie that would save him and the truth probably wouldn't help much either.

  Now, what the hell, he was ready to talk, but his mouth wasn't quite right after getting hit, and all that came out was a mumble.

  "What, asshole?"

  "Like twelve miles up," he shouted. "There's a piece a land shaped like a lamb chop bone. Then it's about five miles out from there. But listen—"

  Charlie Ponte didn't want to listen. He had what he needed, and he turned his back on Joey. He shot a look at the guy at the wheel. The guy nodded. Then Ponte smiled. It was a big smile of genuine contentment. Finally he was winning, and winning was what he liked.

  Joey leaned back against the gunwale and watched Key West whiz by. Smathers Beach and the open U of the Paradiso condo. The airport with its faceted weather bubble like the eye of a bug. Cow Key Channel, and beyond it, the gross pyramid of Mount Trashmore. Joey gave a bitter silent laugh. Gahbidge, he said to himself. Nice try at a life, kid, but it's all coming down to gahbidge.

  He turned around and looked out at the blank green water of the Straits. Here and there it was blotched purple with coral heads or under the ragged shadows of the few small clouds. Joey scanned the horizon, wondering if he'd be able to spot Clem Sanders's salvage boat, wondering if Clem Sanders had even made it out there. He took big gulps of salt air, and each breath carried a different mix of fear and acceptance. He'd had his plan, his plan had been short-circuited, and now what happened would happen. Like Bert said, who could argue with that?

  The boat roared on. Sometimes its noise was a featureless rumble; then at moments its engines would sync a certain way and there'd be piston beats like drumrolls. The sun was flame white by now and they slammed straight toward it. Tiny pellets of spray screamed past the boat and pebbled Joey's glasses. Up ahead, maybe half a mile landward, was the promontory that led into the channel for the Sand Key Marina. A low line of mangrove arced around like a rib. The boat driver pointed to it, Joey nodded, and the cigarette banked steeply and headed south.

  Joey searched the horizon. But his shades were bouncing on his nose, his eyeballs were rattling in their sockets, and he couldn't see much of anything.

  The driver abruptly cut back on the engines.

  The deafening noise softened to a rhythmically popping clatter, the spray stopped slicing past. Then the water caved in like a disappointed dream and the blue boat came off of plane and settled down heavy and dead. The driver pointed past the bow. "We got company out there, Mr. Ponte."

  Ponte moved his mouth but no sound came out.

  The driver reached into a small compartment underneath the steering wheel and produced a pair of binoculars. " 'Bout two miles off," he said. "Could be a shrimper, but I don't think so. Looks to be anchored."

  "Gimme the fucking glasses," Charlie Ponte said. He pressed them to his eyes and Joey could see his hands were trembling. Unconsciously, his thugs moved closer around the Boss, as if they could somehow all see through the binoculars at once. With the boat stopped, the morning sun was brutal, and everybody started to sweat. "What you know about this, kid?"

  Joey took an instant to look at Sandra. His expression was wry, flat, and fatal, the same expression he'd worn when he asked her to drop everything and move to Florida with him. "It's a salvage boat, Mr. Ponte. I been tryin' to tell ya this all morning."

  No one moved, no one breathed. Ponte's face crawled, his upper lip pulled back from his teeth. He wanted to claw at Joey's eyes, wanted him held down so he could kick him around the cockpit. The only thing that stayed his fury was that he couldn't spare the time.

  "How the fuck you know about it?"

  Joey leaned back against the gunwale and exhaled loudly. He shifted his weight, looked down at his feet. A man with a tortured conscience, with a terrible confession to make. "Gino," he softly said.

  Ponte went toward him and hit him with both hands on the chest, as if he were trying to beat open a door. "Gino, what? What, Gino?"

  Joey looked off to the side. "Gino put the stones there, ya know, to hide 'em. He's got a piece of the salvage job. That's all I know about it."

  Ponte stepped back, rubbed his chin. There were nine of them
baking in the boat, they could smell each other through the salt and iodine, but Charlie Ponte was a guy with a knack for making himself a hole in space and disappearing into it all by himself. He thought a few seconds. Then he came up with a way to make himself look at least a little bit smart. "Ya see?" he said to no one in particular. "Ya see? I knew he was protecting his twat of a brother." He paused, tapped his foot. "How many people they got on that boat?" He said it to his two divers.

  The divers shrugged so that their wet suits squeaked. "Couple guys to go down probably," said the one who hadn't been driving. "Couple guys to work the winches. Maybe a guy to navigate."

  "Armed?"

  The divers looked at each other. "Not usually. One gun, maybe, for sharks or whatever."

  Ponte went to the edge of the boat and spat thickly in the green water. Then he reached inside his silver jacket and came out with a dainty little pistol. "Fuck it, let's take 'em."

  "But Mr. Ponte—"

  "Shut your fuckin' mouth. Bruno, smack this fuckin' kid for me, willya? Smack 'im one like it was Gino too. Fucking family. This whole fuckin' family, I'm sick of 'em."

  — 47 —

  The loud blue boat lifted its nose from the water and hurtled forward. Ponte's troops spread their feet like sumo wrestlers to keep their balance while they readied their guns. Sandra sat alone now on the stem settee, and Joey sidled back to her. No one bothered to stop him. He took Sandra's hand and squeezed it between both of his.

  Up ahead, like a small pillar of flame in the ferocious light, was the red buoy that Joey had used as a signpost for the place to scuttle the Osprey. Beyond the marker, the water roiled and bounced, curled like cake frosting and twinkled like smashed crystal. A third of a mile shy, the driver geared down into neutral and again peered through the binoculars. "They're anchored on the far side of the reef," he announced.

  "So wha' does that mean?" Ponte growled.

  "It means we have to go in real slow, pick our way across."

  Ponte pulled back his lip. He had by far the faster boat and it killed him to give up an advantage. Joey looked across at the salvage craft. It was a tub, maybe forty feet long, painted battleship gray. It sat high and graceless in the water, top-heavy with smokestacks, cranes, a pilothouse. "Fuck," said Ponte. "We can't just make a run at it?"

  "Not unless you wanna rip the bottom outta this baby."

  "They see us yet?"

  The driver shrugged. "If they're lookin' this way, sure. If they got divers down—"

  "And my stones? They find my stones?"

  The driver was sweating rivulets inside his wet suit and gave in to an instant's exasperation. "Fuck should I know, Mr. Ponte? They got their anchor down, they're probably still looking."

  Ponte stiffened at his tone, then decided to let it slide. The cigarette was a valuable thing. He needed this guy to keep it that way.

  The driver shifted into forward. But now he didn't push the boat onto plane. He went slow, the engines sounded constipated, like a Porsche in second gear. The blue hull pulled even with the red buoy and suddenly the water went crazy all around it. It streamed in tiny rapids, sucked itself into hollowing whirlpools. Ponte's thugs lurched around like drunk men dancing, their guns held gingerly in front of them like cocktails they were trying not to spill. In the heightening sunlight, the reef shimmered as through aquarium glass. Brain coral sprouted like astonishing broccoli. Fan coral waved with the currents, bright yellow fish swam between its magenta fronds. Fascinated, Sandra leaned over the side.

  "I'm glad I'm getting to see this," she said, in a tone of deathbed gratitude that made Joey want to bite his own face off with remorse. "The girls at the bank, they said it was beautiful."

  The gray salvage boat was not more than a few hundred yards beyond them now, but it inhabited a realm of flat, calm sea that seemed a universe away. The men looked up at the sun-struck pilothouse. Only Sandra watched the water.

  She elbowed Joey in the ribs.

  He didn't react and she elbowed him again. She pointed with her eyes toward a small bright something that had just poked through the surface, maybe twenty yards beyond Clem Sanders's boat. Joey trained his gaze that way and squinted through his blue-lensed sunglasses. Searing light glinted off the green ocean, and in the center of his view there was a brighter glint, a blinding, intermittent flash. It was the reflection off a diver's mask. There was a person in the water. He had something in his gloved hand, and he was waving it toward his comrades on the slow gray boat.

  There was movement on the deck of the salvage craft and in an instant it was clear to everyone what had happened.

  "Shit. Balls. Fuck," said Charlie Ponte. "Get after those bastards."

  The driver accelerated and the blue boat started cutting a lunatic slalom course through the coral. The twin props clattered and complained as they bit through the shallow, viscous water, the cockpit leaned steep as a butte as it banked left, cut right, and zig-zagged back again. Immaculate cobalt fiberglass scratched here and there against the lacerating reef; the sound was like giant cat claws ripping at silk.

  And on the gray salvage boat, Clem Sanders and crew looked up from their triumph and realized they were under siege.

  The diver with the emeralds bolted for home as though a shark was nosing his flippers. The engines were started, they belched wet black smoke through their rusty stacks. The windlass creaked, yanking up the anchor with Clem Sanders already on the fly. Joey tried to peer through the sun-shocked windows of the pilothouse, to see if the treasure hunter had yet managed to get on the radio to his promised allies.

  The cigarette boat pivoted and splashed, its freight of dark suits and gunmetal bouncing like loose boxes in the back of a truck. The salvage boat, as if in mockery, had turned its wide gray ass on them and was heading out to sea. Charlie Ponte's silver jacket was soaking through with sweat. He believed in going in straight lines toward what he wanted, knocking over whatever was in the way. It pushed him toward utter madness to have to zig and zag, shuck and jive, dodge like some melanzane halfback while his quarry receded in plain view. "Come on, come on," he screamed at the driver. The voice was not quite human, and the driver ignored him. He wrenched the wheel and scudded past a coral head that poked up like a murderous cauliflower, he skated through a school of indifferent parrotfish. Joey and Sandra huddled on the settee, their ears assaulted by the screams and rumbles of the tormented motors.

  The salvage boat was escaping, but it was not escaping fast. It furrowed through the deepening water as if it were planting corn, its ancient diesels laboring like a tractor in soft dirt. It was maybe half a mile off by the time the cigarette had danced and capered to the far fringe of the reef. The boatload of gangsters did a final series of dips and curls, endured a last set of scrapes and clings, then finally broke free of the killing shallows. The driver jerked the throttle, the cigarette took off like a goosed horse, and Charlie Ponte's thugs were pressed backward like astronauts on takeoff.

  The white sun shone fiercely on the torn-up water, and every instant the gap between the two boats narrowed. Sandra and Joey had their elbows locked like kids on a roller coaster. Off the wide transom of the salvage craft fanned a peacock's tail of flattened wake, and the cigarette homed in like a missile on that swath. Ponte was grinning now. He held up his dainty gun and yelped. His goons smiled. Victory was on the horizon and the horizon was scudding toward them. They were so close that they could see the rust bubbles in the salvage craft's gray paint, could see the lumps in the old boat's imperfect welds. They were almost ready to start shooting. The engines of the blue boat sounded full of steely joy.

  There was no way, above that potent motor noise and the glad hissing of the water, that the thugs could hear the coast guard helicopter approaching from behind, coming at them low and hard, its rotor blades pitched frantically forward, a machine gun poking out of its bulletproof belly at a jaunty angle like the dick of a dog.

  Nor did they yet see the two marine patrol cutters closing in f
rom seaward in a neat V.

  They saw only the lumbering craft ahead of them.

  There was something pathetic in its attempt to outrun them, pathetic like a hobbled cow trying to escape a lion. Through the glare of the pilothouse windows, they could see the silhouettes of Clem Sanders and his crew. Either they would surrender the emeralds or they would die.

  Then the driver of the cigarette noticed the circle of dented water where it was beaten down by the force of the chopper's blades. He looked over his shoulder, the others followed his eyes. There the helicopter was, not more than fifty feet above the water, not more than a hundred yards behind them and closing fast.

  "Ditch the guns," the driver screamed. "Drop 'em low over the side, right now."

  He said it in such a knowing panic that no one hesitated a second. Five firearms of assorted make and caliber were jettisoned, adding to the untold number of weapons scuttled in the Florida Straits. In another fifteen seconds the aircraft was directly over them, hovering in the hot sky like an apocalyptic bug, and a stern voice bizarrely amplified was ordering them to halt their vessel and stop their engines. The driver throttled back and looked at Charlie Ponte. Ponte stood numbly by, sweat-soaked and bewildered. The salvage craft slowed and began to circle, came back as if to gloat. From over the horizon came the twin wakes of the converging cutters, completing the elegant geometry of a capture at sea.

  Joey squeezed Sandra's knee. Then, as the chopper was descending, bringing its pontoons close to the water, he got up and walked over to Ponte. The Boss was so boggled that Joey had to tap him on the shoulder. "Mr. Ponte," he shouted above the whooshing clatter, "we're fucked heah. Attempted piracy. You know that, right?"

  Ponte didn't answer. He looked straight ahead; his goons milled stupidly around the cockpit.

  "Well, lissena me," Joey continued. "I can take care of it."

  The little mobster glared at the kid, his glance emerging from under one eyebrow. The chopper had set down, its slowing rotors still churning the water like a blender.