Wreckers' Key

by Christine Kling

  I paced the dock. “Shit,” I said aloud when I tripped over a cleat and nearly went into the water. I thought about the last time I’d seen him up in Lake Santa Barbara. I had told him to be careful. And then I remembered him giving me the number to his new cell phone. I ran back to Gorda, jumped aboard, and grabbed my bag out of the wheelhouse. I slid the door closed and headed down the dock at a run. One of these days, I was going to have to give in and buy myself a cell phone. I was postponing that moment as long as possible, but on days like this I regretted it.

  Over by the pool, I found a pay phone, and after the damn thing rang almost ten times, a male voice—with no lilting Caribbean accent—answered the phone.

  “Hello? Is Quentin there?” I was breathing hard from the running.

  “He’s not able to come to the phone right now. I can take a message.”

  There was something familiar about that voice. I was going through the voices I knew that were connected to Ocean Towing and I was drawing a blank. “This is Seychelle Sullivan. Quentin Hazell was going to work for me today. I need to speak to him.”

  There was a long silence on the other end of the phone. I was beginning to wonder if the call had been disconnected, when the man spoke. “Miss Sullivan. This is Detective Collazo. I’m afraid I have bad news for you.”

  I closed my eyes and for several seconds all the sound in the world seemed to recede into the distance, then stop.

  “Miss Sullivan, are you there?”

  His voice sounded as though he were at the bottom of a deep well. Then it grew louder.

  “Miss Sullivan?”

  I knew what it meant if Collazo was on the scene, and part of me hadn’t even registered the words when he told me what he was looking at. I didn’t want him to hear the sound of my pain so I had covered the mouthpiece. No, no, not again. Not Quentin.

  “Miss Sullivan?”

  I uncovered the phone. “I’m here,” I said, though the words came out at a barely audible level. I was leaning against the wall alongside the pay phone, the tears beginning to slide down my cheeks. I tried again to speak. “I’m here, Detective. Sorry.” I wiped my face with the back of my hand. “What happened?”

  Collazo and I had a history. This wasn’t the first time he and I had met up because someone who knew me had turned up dead.

  “I’m over here on Sistrunk,” he said. “Behind a chicken restaurant. Employee found the body out by the Dumpster when he came in to work this morning. Single blow to the head.”

  The body. That beautiful man with a smile that could just knock you out was now being referred to as the body. Oh, Quentin. What have I done to you?

  “Sistrunk?” I said. That was a predominantly black, high-crime neighborhood in the northwest section of town. “What was he doing over there?”

  “Same as most. This looks like a drug deal gone bad.”

  “Quentin? Drugs? Not unless he was scoring some ganja, and he could find that on the docks.”

  “And you know this guy.”

  I told him the story of our meeting in Key West and how he had crewed for me on the trip north. “I just saw him yesterday. He had found a job with Ocean Towing.” He had been so eager to help me, I remembered. What had he done? Why did I ever ask him to help? Oh, Quentin. “Collazo, I think I need to talk to you. There’s more to this.”

  “Miss Sullivan. I understand you are upset, but this looks pretty straightforward.”

  “Collazo, I get what you’re seeing. A black man, worn clothes, dreadlocks. But you aren’t seeing Quentin Hazell.”

  “Repeat his name.”

  I spelled it out for him, and I could picture Collazo writing it in his notebook in that neat hand of his. “So his wallet is gone?”

  “Like I said, it’s pretty straightforward.”

  “You’re not looking at it right. Collazo, think about it. When was the last time you ever heard of a drug dealer who left a cell phone behind?”

  I sat on the sidewalk under the pay phone, leaning my back against the wall, trying to understand how this could have happened. I didn’t believe for a minute that Quentin’s death had been a random killing. He didn’t have any reason to be in that part of town, but whoever had done this counted on the cops not asking too many questions about a dead black man on Sistrunk. What happened? And why had I encouraged him to do anything? If I had just kept my mouth shut, Quentin would probably be alive. Thinking about that actually hurt; it caused a physical pain in my chest like I was going to collapse inward. I rested my head on my bent knees and cried again.

  I wasn’t aware of the passing of time. When I raised my head and looked around, I realized it could have been five minutes or an hour since I’d first heard the news about Quentin. The whole world seemed askew. Time wasn’t working properly, and good people who should live long lives were dying.

  I felt something shift inside me. I could breathe easier, the tightness in my chest gone. Two good decent young men were gone. And the son of a bitch who did this was going to pay. I’d told Collazo that I would be in to speak to him in the afternoon. And there was still the matter of the Wild Matilda. It was time to get moving. I stood up, reached into my bag for more change, and dialed a number I knew by heart.

  “Hi, Mike,” I said when he answered. “I could really use a hand if you’re free.”

  XXIII

  Mike Beesting was a retired Fort Lauderdale cop who lived aboard his Irwin 54 Outta the Blue and ran occasional day charters—more out of his need to be social than a desire for income. After losing the lower half of one leg in an incident considered the line of duty, his severance package with the city had been generous. Mike had never been a boater before and he loved gear, so he’d loaded up his Irwin with too many toys that drained his batteries and too many fancy gadgets that frequently malfunctioned. Our friendship had started with me towing him in the first two or three times he couldn’t start his engine. From then on, we rarely went a week without seeing each other.

  Thirty minutes later, he was pulling up in his hard-bottomed inflatable dinghy.

  “Thanks for doing this for me, Mike.” I held the painter to his dinghy while he crawled out onto the dock.

  When he was sailing his own boat, Mike hardly ever wore his prosthetic leg, but today, with his worn blue jeans, he had both boat shoes on. Navigating the metal-runged ladder to climb onto the Bahia Mar dock was a challenge for anyone, but crawling on hands and knees presented different challenges for Mike. After he got to his feet, he wrapped me up in a big bear hug.

  “It’s good to see you, my friend. Now tell me what sort of trouble you’ve got yourself into this time. Start at the beginning, ’cause I couldn’t hardly understand a word on the phone.”

  “Come on aboard the Wild Matilda here, and I’ll tell you while I show you around the controls.” I tied his dinghy off on one of the sailboat’s stern cleats.

  Mike had known Nestor and had heard about his death already. He didn’t ask me many questions, the way some people had. In his life as a cop on the streets of Fort Lauderdale, Mike had seen enough bloodshed. He didn’t need to hear any more grisly details. As I pointed out the engine controls, the fancy chart plotter, the depth sounder, and the VHF radio, I told him about Nestor’s belief that someone had sabotaged his GPS, Catalina’s certainty that someone had killed Nestor, and all my experiences since with Neville Pinder.

  “Even the detective who worked Nestor’s case down in Key West has come around to thinking that there might have been foul play, Mike, but Key West has closed the case. Accidental death by drowning. We don’t have enough evidence to open it up again, yet. And now this morning I find this out about Quentin.”

  “And who is Quentin again?”

  I gave him a brief overview of how I’d met the man and how he had come to be working for Ocean Towing. Several times I had to stop and swallow down the ball of emotion that was trying to crawl back up my throat. “Mike, Quentin wouldn’t have had any reason to be over in northwest Lauderdale. N
o way this guy was into crack or heroin or anything like that. He was staying on the Power Play while it was hauled out, and once he got a paycheck or two, he was going to try to rent a room in a crew house. I’m sure his death had something to do with Ocean Towing.”

  “That’s probably going to be a hard sell to the cops.”

  “I know. You want to get away with murder? Just make sure your victim is poor and black.”

  “That’s not fair, Seychelle. There are lots of good cops in this town.”

  “Dammit, I know it. But you have to admit there’s some truth in what I’m saying. I could use your help when I go talk to Collazo. Maybe he’ll listen to you.”

  “Maybe. It’s not like we were old chums, though.”

  “All right. You’ll go with me then?”

  He nodded.

  “Great. But right now, this tide isn’t waiting for us. Let’s get this boat up the river and we can talk more afterward, okay?”

  I had been a little bit leery of asking Mike for help with the tow, because he wasn’t the most experienced captain. On the other hand, I needed his help with the cops and I figured I could keep him out of trouble on the water. We stayed in touch via the VHF and traffic was light on the river, so he never even had to fire up the Holland’s engine until we were right off the boatyard there at River Bend. I held my breath as he drove her into the slipway. He went in a little too hot but threw the engine into reverse, and, spewing black smoke out her exhaust, she stopped just before hitting the wall. I tied Gorda on the outside dock and headed for the office to take care of the paperwork.

  “You had me a little nervous there, hotshot,” I said to Mike when he came in.

  “I knew what I was doing.”

  In reaction to that, Charlie, the yard foreman, who’d come into the office for a stop at the coffeepot, choked and nearly spewed coffee all over the papers I’d just finished.

  “Careful,” I said, smiling.

  He pointed to his throat. “Just finding it a little hard to swallow.”

  “Charlie, I’ve got a question for you. Would you say you’ve seen an increase lately in boats with damage from accidents?”

  “There’s always enough assholes out there to keep us plenty busy.”

  “So you wouldn’t say you’ve noticed any change?”

  “What are you getting at?”

  “Nothing. Just kind of thinking out loud.”

  “Haven’t really noticed any change here.”

  “ ’Course you don’t handle the really big megayachts here, either, do you?”

  He shook his head and walked around from behind the counter. “Go upriver for that.” He had one hand on the door when I thought of one more question.

  “Charlie, if I was to ask for the top expert in town on GPS, who would you recommend?”

  He didn’t answer right away. “That’s not really my thing, you know. Ask me about wood, fiberglass, bottom paint, I’ll have an answer for you. But there was one boat in here that was having trouble with their GPS, and they brought in this old guy. I think he’s retired. Had a funny name. Give me a minute, I’ll think of it.”

  The answer he finally gave me made my stomach turn sour.

  “Sparky. That’s it. Don’t know his real name, but the owner called him Sparky most of the time. Said he was a real expert in GPS. You know, some kind of rocket scientist—worked on the guidance systems for missiles or some shit like that.”

  I knew I should be asking him more questions, but my brain was having difficulty processing what he’d just said. Sparky. Arlen? It had to be him. He had worked with GPS at Motowave. He’d lied to me.

  The door closed behind Charlie, and I grabbed my bag and followed him outside. “Charlie, when was that? When was this guy here in the yard?”

  The yard foreman rubbed his chin and looked up at the slab side of a dark blue motor yacht on the hard. “Must have been last summer. Yeah. August. Before the hurricane. Or rather hurricanes.”

  “Thanks.” I was standing there staring, but not seeing, when Mike walked up behind me.

  “You want to tell me what’s going on?”

  “Do you know Arlen Sparks?”

  He shook his head.

  “He lives on the street where I grew up. He was a friend of Red’s. Shit, Mike, I’ve known this guy all my life.”

  “Okay, and? He’s some kinda expert with GPS and this is a problem?”

  I looked across the basin and saw an Ocean Towing boat pulling in with a small cabin cruiser in tow. “Go get your dinghy and meet me at Gorda. We need to talk this out.”

  When we were settled in the wheelhouse, in a place I was confident we could not be overheard, I told Mike about my visit with Arlen Sparks.

  “The guy told me point-blank that GPS was not his specialty. That he didn’t know much more than the average layman. Now, according to what Charlie said, he lied. According to Charlie, that was his job at Motowave, it was his specialty.”

  “Maybe he was exaggerating his expertise to his friend. You know, guys do that sometimes.”

  I gave him a look that said duh. “Listen, Arlen told me that he got laid off last summer in July. He was here in the yard after that. After he got laid off. It makes sense. When he was working at Motowave, he was a real company man. I couldn’t see him troubleshooting a GPS installation in a boat in his spare time in those days. He didn’t have any spare time. But after he got laid off, he needed the money. He was trying to figure out what to do. But he didn’t get really desperate until his wife got sick again.”

  “You lost me there.”

  “His wife survived one bout with breast cancer, but the cancer returned this last fall. The doctor wanted to do some kind of treatment that Medicare denied and Arlen desperately wanted to get the money for it.”

  “So?”

  “Mike, I am convinced someone is deliberately causing some boats to go aground and then conveniently showing up to tow them off the shoal or reef and filing a salvage claim. The company that seems to be first to the wreck every time these days is Ocean Towing. It’s almost as though they know the boats are going to wreck. Well, they would if they were causing the wrecks.”

  “And what kind of magic are you thinking they’re using?”

  “Not magic. Some radio waves or something. I’m not sure about the science of it, but I’m thinking they’ve figured out a way to selectively jam the GPS using, I don’t know, some kind of directional antennas. I realize it sounds like something out of a comic book, but think about it. It makes sense. We’ve been fighting wars in the desert for some time. With GPS, you know exactly where you are, and if you can mess with your enemy’s navigation system, you really have an advantage. Our government’s got to be working on something like this, don’t you think?”

  “Yeah, in fact I’ve heard something about this. On the news.”

  “I thought so. I hate the fact that Arlen was able to convince me so easily that I didn’t know what the hell I was talking about. I just figured he was the expert, and I gave up on the idea as soon as he said it wasn’t possible. Besides, it was Arlen Sparks, my neighbor, a man I’ve known as long as I can remember. I think I’m going to have to give in to all these goddamn electronics and learn some more about computers and stuff. I shouldn’t have been so gullible.”

  “It’s about time, Sullivan. You’ve been a goddamn Luddite for too long.”

  “Speaking of which, could I borrow your cell phone? I want to call B.J.”

  Mike chuckled and pulled a tiny flip phone out of his jean pocket. I looked at the odd-shaped device in the palm of his hand. I was embarrassed to admit the thing frightened me. I’d seen kids barely old enough to go to school using the little phones, but I’d only made a couple of calls on them before, and I’d never called on one that you had to open. “Can you show me how it works?” I asked.

  As expected, Mike roared with laughter. “You have got to be kidding me, sweetheart.” Then he saw the look on my face. “Or maybe not. Look here, jus
t open it up and push these numbers.”

  I dialed Molly’s house first. I put it to my ear. Nothing. “It’s not working,” I said.

  “Did you push send?” he asked, then rolled his eyes as he took the phone from me and pushed a button before handing it back.

  “Well, you don’t have to get snotty about it.” When I put the phone to my ear, this time I heard a voice.

  “Get snotty about what?”

  “Oh, hi, Molly. It’s me. Never mind. Is B.J. there?”

  “Sure. Hang on.”

  “Hey,” he said a few minutes later, his voice deep and gentle. “I was just thinking of you.”

  “Really?” I still found it hard to believe that a man like B.J. could be around petite, curvaceous Molly day after day and continue thinking of me. I turned my back to Mike and said in my best attempt at a throaty, seductive voice, “Well, I was just thinking of you, too.”

  Mike groaned. “I have things I need to do, Sullivan. I don’t have time to sit here and listen to you make lovey-dovey noises into my phone.”

  I put my hand over the phone. “Give me a break, will you?” I said to Mike.

  “What?” B.J. asked.

  “Nothing. I was talking to Mike. He’s giving me a hard time. The reason I was thinking of you is because I need someone who can look something up for me on the computer.”

  “I’d be happy to do it for you. What do you need?”

  “I want you to try to find something about this GPS idea of mine. See if you can find out whether or not they—like the government, or some corporation—have developed the ability to mess with somebody’s GPS signal. Not to just jam it, but to actually make it give a false readout. I’d also like to know if Motowave has been doing any of the R and D on systems like that.”