Tricky Business

by Dave Barry

  “You’re still thinking about that?”

  “I just want to explain my point, which is, some of them might be there already.”

  “Be where?”

  “In Hawaii.”

  “Of course they’re in Hawaii. Nobody said they weren’t in Hawaii. The whole point is, if you sell real estate, you can go to Hawaii and party with the infomercial guy.”

  “But my point is, they might be there already.

  “Who?”

  “The Hawaiians.”

  “What about them?”

  “They’re already there. In Hawaii.”

  “So your point is, there’s Hawaiians in Hawaii? That’s your point?”

  Johnny sighed, fished in his jacket pocket, pulled out another joint, lit it, took a deep hit, passed it to Ted, exhaled.

  “OK, listen,” he said. “Try to follow me here, and don’t interrupt all the time, OK? What I’m saying, there could be—I’m not saying I know, I’m just saying could be—some Hawaiians who were already in Hawaii when the infomercial guy got there, and so the infomercial guy has them come on the infomercial, and he saves on his hotel bill.”

  “Why would he save on his hotel bill?”

  “Not the infomercial guy’s hotel bill. The Hawaiians’ hotel bill.”

  “Why would the Hawaiians have a hotel bill?”

  “They wouldn’t have a hotel bill. That’s my point.

  “Why not?”

  “Because they live there.”

  “They live in the hotel?”

  “No, they live in Hawaii. That’s why they’re Hawaiians, for Chrissakes.”

  “I know that. We established that. Hawaiians live in Hawaii. You keep saying that like it’s E equals M-I-T fucking squared. We agree on that, OK? Hawaiians live in Hawaii. No duh. What’s your point?”

  Johnny took the joint back, took a hit, looked at Ted for a few moments.

  “OK,” he said, finally. “What I’m saying is, when the infomercial guy decides to go to Hawaii, it’s possible, I’m not saying I know for sure, but it’s possible there were some Hawaiians who were already in Hawaii, and the . . .”

  “Hold it,” said Ted, holding up a hand. “Let’s finish this in the back of the boat, OK? I’m getting wet here.”

  “You’re not supposed to go back there,” said Johnny. “That’s crew only. Manny saw me and Wally coming outta there one night and he got really pissed.”

  “Yeah, well, Manny’s not gonna be out here tonight,” said Ted. “You coming?”

  “OK,” said Johnny. “But you need to listen to the point I’m making, and not interrupt all the time, OK?”

  “We might need another joint,” said Ted.

  BREATHE THROUGH YOUR NOSE, FRANK TOLD himself. Breathe through your nose. He felt panic again seeping into his brain, as he felt blood again seeping into his mouth. Swallow, he told himself. Swallow it. Now breathe through your nose....

  Frank had expected Tark to cut him. He had felt Tark crouching over him, had waited for the feel of the blade, wondering where it would come, eyes closed, body clenched, waiting . . .

  “You think I’m gonna cut you, Chief?” Tark had said. “Like I cut your friend?” Frank had felt the tip of the knife touch his left eyelid, just touching it. Not my eyes Jesus not my eyes nononono . . .

  A bit more pressure now, the blade point digging into the thin eyelid skin just a little . . .

  Nonononono . . .

  And then a raspy laugh, and the knife point had pulled away, and Tark had said, “Don’t worry, Chief, I ain’t gonna cut you. In fact, I’m gonna stop that bleeding.”

  Frank had heard the sound then, a familiar, mundane sound: duct tape being ripped off a roll. Then he’d felt the tape across his mouth, Tark wrapping it around his head, then around again, then again, making a tight seal. Immediately, Frank had felt the blood backing up in his mouth. He’d begun to choke, to thrash, but he couldn’t spit out the blood, couldn’t reach the tape, couldn’t do anything.

  He’d heard Tark’s voice again, rasping in his ear: “Best thing for you to do, Chief? Swallow that blood. That’ll work for a while, anyways. How long you think a man can swallow his own blood, Chief? How about we find out?”

  And that’s what Frank was doing, forcing himself to swallow his blood, to breathe, to swallow again, keeping alive another minute, then another.

  He felt the fishing boat slowing now. He rolled onto his back, looked up and saw, through the rainy gloom, the gaudy neon lights of the upper deck of the Extravaganza. He felt a momentary surge of hope. Then he felt himself choking again.

  Swallow.

  ON THE STARBOARD SIDE OF THE EXTRAVAGANZA, on the second deck, outside, Fay was on the cell phone, talking to her mother.

  “She won’t go to sleep, and I don’t know what she wants,” her mother was saying. Estelle was crying in the background. “She’s saying something over and over, but I don’t know what it is.”

  “Can I talk to her?” said Fay.

  “Do you want to talk to your mommy, Estelle?” Fay’s mom said.

  “No!” shouted Estelle. “Namenowhy! Namenowhy!”

  “She just keeps shouting that and crying,” said Fay’s mother. “She’s giving me a headache.”

  “She’s saying her name is Snow White,” said Fay. “She wants you to call her Snow White.”

  “Why?”

  “She’s pretending. Sometimes she pretends she’s Snow White, and you have to call her that, or she gets upset.”

  “Well, it’s driving me crazy. And she wouldn’t eat anything tonight.”

  “Did you give her that kiddy alphabet soup, in the microwave ?”

  “I looked at that, and it’s all chemicals in there. I don’t think she should be eating that. I tried to give her some nice fish, but she won’t eat it. You want some nice fish, Estelle?”

  “Namenowhy! Namenowhy!”

  “Mom, just call her Snow White, OK?”

  “OK, Snow White, you want some nice fish?”

  “No!”

  “She doesn’t want any.”

  “Mom, she hates fish.”

  “Fish is good for her.”

  “Yes, but she won’t eat it.”

  “You don’t want a nice piece of fish, Estelle?”

  “Namenowhy!”

  “She’s giving me a headache.”

  “Mom, just please for Godsakes call her Snow White, OK?”

  “You don’t have to take that tone with me.”

  “I’m sorry, Mom. You’re right. It’s just that . . .”

  “By this hour, your sister’s children are asleep.”

  “Mom, I really don’t see what good it does for . . .”

  “Just a minute. Don’t put that in your mouth, Estelle.”

  “NAMENOWHY!”

  “Fay, you’re going to have to call back, because now she’s . . .

  “NAMENOWHY!NAMENOWHY!NAMENOWHY!”

  “Mom, please, just . . .”

  But her mom had hung up. Fay started to press REDIAL, then decided to first walk around to the stern of the ship, out of the wind. She found her path by a low, locked gate, with a sign on it reading CREW ONLY NO ADMITTANCE AT ANY TIME. She looked around, and seeing nobody—Who would be outside in this weather?—she stepped over the gate.

  THIS WAS HOW IT WAS SUPPOSED TO HAPPEN:

  The fishing boat would raft up to the Extravaganza, stern to stern. The men on the fishing boat would form a chain and haul heavy black polyester bags containing product out of the specially made storage compartment in the hull. They would heave these over the transom, onto the platform on the back of the Extravaganza, where they were grabbed by the ship’s crew. The ship’s crew would then heave the bags of cash over the transom onto the fishing boat. Arquero would oversee the operation, holding his AK-47 with the safety off. His policy, understood by everyone involved, was that if he saw any person do anything that he considered suspicious, that person was hamburger. When the transfer was complete, the fi
shing boat would cast off and get the hell out of there, and Hank Wilde would call Lou Tarant to tell him the Chinese food had been delivered. In good weather, the whole process took about twenty minutes, during which, depending on market conditions, somewhere between $50 million and $100 million worth of money and narcotics changed hands.

  That was how it was supposed to happen.

  Of course, tonight the weather was bad. That was one difference. Another one was that usually Frank and Juan were standing at the back of the fishing boat with the three Bahamian guys. Tonight, as the boat backed toward the Extravaganza, Arquero and Wilde both noted that there was only one man standing in the back of the boat, and it was Tark, the guy who usually drove the boat. He was at the stern on the starboard side, holding a big coil of rope in his right hand.

  When the boat was about ten yards off, Arquero shouted, “WHERE’S FRANK?”

  “INSIDE, PUKIN’,” Tark shouted back. His voice was strained, raspy. “HE’S NOT DOIN’ TOO GOOD.”

  That sounded plausible to Wilde, who didn’t feel so great himself. It almost sounded plausible to Arquero, for a second or two. But then it struck him: If he were puking sick, he wouldn’t be inside the pitching boat. He’d be outside, hanging over the rail. So why wasn’t Frank? And where were the Bahamians?

  The fishing boat was now just a few yards away. Tark drew back the coil of rope, getting ready to toss it. One of the Extravaganza crew guys moved forward, getting ready to catch it.

  Arquero raised the barrel of the AK-47 and shouted, “Hold it!”

  “Hey, man,” said Tark, holding up his left hand, “what’s your problem?”

  “Stop the boat NOW,” said Arquero.

  Tark turned and shouted “Hold up!” toward the bridge of the fishing boat, but to Arquero’s eye there was something wrong with the way Tark was standing, the way he’d raised only his left hand, the way he was holding the coil of rope in his right. To Manny Arquero, these things, combined with the fact that he had never liked this scrawny redneck prick anyway, were enough to justify conviction and execution. He put the AK-47 to his shoulder and in that instant knew he’d made the right decision, because now Tark had dropped the rope coil, and Arquero saw that it had been concealing a gun. Arquero also knew that he was going to win this one, because Tark had to bring the barrel up, which meant Arquero had time to aim and squeeze the trigger nice and easy, the way they teach you, which is what he was just about to do, when the first bullet made a small hole in his back and exited, much less neatly, through the front of his chest. The second and third bullets weren’t really necessary, as Arquero was already going down, and there was no way for him to get any deader than he was about to be anyway.

  The four members of the ship crew had absolutely no chance. Before Arquero landed facedown on the platform, Tark opened fire with his gun, a TEC-9 semiautomatic with a 50-shot magazine, an effective weapon used in countless drug-related slayings. Tark started with the two crewmen to his left, the ones farthest away, taking them with two shots apiece, pop-pop, pop-pop, easy targets, as neither had time to move. As Tark shot the second crewman, he heard, to his right, a pop-pop-pop-pop-pop-pop, which told him that Kaz, who’d been crouched behind the transom on the port side, was up and firing at the other two crewmen, both turning to escape the platform, neither getting more than a step.

  This left only Hank Wilde, whose alcohol-fogged mind had reacted less quickly to the eruption of carnage, still only a few seconds old. As the two bullets, one from Tark’s gun, one from Kaz’s, struck Wilde virtually simultaneously, he was still staring in bafflement at the back of the platform, at the shooter who’d appeared from the ship and gunned down Manny Arquero from behind, and who was still standing there, still clasping a pistol in both of his hands.

  His very big, very pink, hands.

  Eleven

  “THIS IS BAD, MAN,” WHISPERED JOHNNY. “THIS is bad.”

  “Oh man,” whispered Ted. “Oh man.”

  They were crouched on a dark catwalk at the stern of the Extravaganza, starboard side, second-deck level, overlooking the stern platform. They had just lit a joint when they saw the fishing boat backing toward the ship. They had seen Manny Arquero holding a gun and heard him shouting something to the man in the back of the boat. They had heard the man shouting something back. They had seen Manny aiming his gun, and then they’d seen the shell—the shell—appear and pop-pop-pop shoot Arquero in the back. Then suddenly there’d been two guys in the boat shooting, and in a few seconds there were six bodies down.

  Now the fishing boat was tying up, and the shooters were climbing onto the Extravaganza platform. For the first time in his entire life, Johnny dropped a perfectly good joint.

  “Jesus,” he said, “they’re coming on the ship. What are we gonna do?”

  “Oh man,” whispered Ted. “Oh man.”

  “Ted,” whispered Johnny, “we have to do something.”

  “OK,” whispered Ted, fighting to clear the pot fumes from his brain. “OK, listen. We have to tell somebody.”

  “Who? We can’t tell Manny. Manny is dead, man.”

  “I see that. You think I don’t see that? Lemme think.”

  “We should tell the captain.”

  “Shut up and let me think, OK?”

  “OK,” whispered Johnny.

  Ted thought for a moment.

  “OK,” he whispered. “Here’s what we need to do.”

  “What?” whispered Johnny.

  “We need to tell the captain,” whispered Ted.

  “I just said that,” whispered Johnny.

  “When?”

  “Just now. I said, ‘We should tell the captain.’ ”

  “All right, Jesus, whatever, let’s just go,” whispered Ted.

  “All right,” whispered Johnny. “But you got to learn how to listen.”

  FAY SAW IT, TOO. SHE WAS ON THE SAME CATWALK as Johnny and Ted, but on the port side. She had just come around the corner, out of the wind, and was about to call her mother again when she’d seen the fishing boat, seen Manny Arquero, seen Conrad Conch, seen the shootings. Before the guns had stopped firing, she was pressing buttons on her cell phone, holding it to her ear.

  Beepbeepbeepbeepbeep.

  “Shit,” Fay whispered.

  She backed around the corner, out of sight of the platform, held the phone up to catch the light from a porthole. The phone screen said NO SERVICE.

  “Shit.”

  Fay peeked around the corner. The fishing boat was tying up to the Extravaganza, the gunmen getting ready to board. Fay turned and ran, heading for the bow, for the stairway to the bridge.

  ARNIE AND PHIL SAW IT, TOO, OR MOST OF IT. They’d gone down a stairway at the stern, past a sign that said CREW ONLY KEEP OUT. At the bottom, they’d followed a corridor to the left, which took them to another stairway. They followed that down, went out a doorway, and found themselves on a small recessed deck, mostly filled with a large inflatable dinghy, suspended from davits, with an outboard motor. Just below this recessed deck was the starboard end of the stern platform. Arnie and Phil could hear men talking out there, so they stayed back, behind the dinghy. There was a stack of life vests there; Arnie had seated himself on it.

  “Perfect,” he’d said. “You got comfortable seating, fresh air, a view of the ocean; what else could a man want?”

  “He could want to be on land,” said Phil. “With the sane people.”

  “Stop your bellyaching,” said Arnie. “Tomorrow you’ll say to me, ‘Arnie, that was another great idea you had, going out.’ ”

  “If we see tomorrow,” said Phil. “I’m looking at those waves out there, and . . . What the hell is that?”

  “What the hell is what?”

  “We got another boat coming up here. Backward.”

  “What the hell are you talking about?” said Arnie, getting up off the life vests and joining Phil, peering out from behind the lifeboat. “Christ, look, there’s that shell that we . . . Christ, what is he
. . .”

  That was when they saw Conrad Conch open fire. As soon as they heard more gunshots, they were on their way out of there, moving stiffly but at a higher velocity than either man had achieved since the Reagan administration.

  THE INSTANT THE FISHING BOAT TOUCHED THE bumpers hanging from the Extravaganza stern, Tark, TEC-9 in hand, was over the transom and catching a line tossed by Kaz. Tark cleated the line down, then quickly caught and cleated another.

  Conrad Conch was waddling toward him, gesturing with the pistol in his big pink right hand and shouting something unintelligible through his mouth hole. Tark gave him a hold-it gesture, then pointed to Kaz, who was pointing his TEC-9 right at Conrad.

  “Put down the gun gently,” said Tark.

  Conrad Conch set the gun down on the platform, stood up, started to shout and gesture again.

  Tark pointed his gun at Conrad and said, “Shut up.”

  Conrad shut up. Tark quickly went to each of the six bodies on the platform, checking for signs of life. Satisfied that there were none, he turned back toward the fishing boat and shouted, “OK.”

  Holman emerged from the cabin. In one hand, he carried a gym bag. In the other, he carried a gray metal case, rectangular, about the size of a desktop computer, with a carrying handle and an antenna on the top. He handed these to Tark, then climbed over the transom, onto the Extravaganza. Kaz followed him, also holding a gym bag, into which he was stuffing his TEC-9.

  Tark pointed to the metal case. “Is it on?” he asked Holman.

  “It’s been on,” said Holman, pointing to a small green light.

  “Is it working?”

  “Yup. I just checked it.”

  “And you made the call to Miami?”

  “Yup.”

  “You got through?”

  “Yup.”

  “OK, get going,” said Tark. “Then get back here soon’s you can and help move the shit.”

  Holman picked up the metal case and the gym bag. He and Kaz crossed the platform, climbed the port-side ladderway, and disappeared through the doorway into the ship.