Backwater Pass

by Steven Becker

  “Was he a good builder?” There’s a distinct difference between a builder and a contractor. A builder builds and a contractor contracts. Contractors wear many hats, including builder, but builders are less multi-faceted and have to deal only with the actual construction of the project. A contractor has to deal with workmen’s comp, OSHA, contracts, bids, bonds, payroll, subcontractors, and a variety of other tasks.

  “He knows his stuff or we wouldn’t have used him, but a contractor’s only as good as his last job,” Roslyn said.

  I knew that to be true as well. A multitude of circumstances can change a contractor’s performance: drinking, drugs, losing key employees, legal issues, and, often, domestic problems. Contractors are licensed by the individual states, and each state’s process creates an individual set of circumstances with the potential for failure. In California, for example, contractors’ licenses are fairly easy to obtain, and many carpenters that would likely never reach a position higher than foreman are licensed. This has its own set of pitfalls: bad accounting and financial planning being the most serious. In Florida, the more stringent licensing laws create larger construction companies where the principal, or qualifier, as they are legally known, often never sees a job site.

  I already had a sense of how Burkett ran his business, but I still wanted to know if he could build. The answer I got from Roslyn was in the affirmative, making her other statements, clearly throwing him under the bus, seem illogical. His money problems could well have been caused by bad financial planning or bidding, even though in his own view, Burkett thought the university had screwed him out of money on change orders.

  That wouldn’t affect a good builder in the way he performed his job, though. My dad often said that he would break even or lose money on one in five jobs. There were many reasons for this—usually the customer—but that didn’t allow him to cut corners. Whether he made money or not, to him reputation was everything; and Burkett seemed to care about his.

  The way we had seated ourselves allowed me a view of the entrance and hallway. Fortunately I was able to see Justine coming toward us before Roslyn did. By the way she was carrying her backpack over her shoulder, I figured she was done working and had come looking for me. I got up as if I had just remembered something important, said a quick good-bye, and walked down the hall where I grabbed Justine’s arm and steered her toward the exit. Just as we pushed through the doors, I glanced back and saw Roslyn following.

  “What are you doing?” Justine asked, wiggling from my grasp.

  “Keeping you out of trouble.” For a second I thought she was going to head back inside.

  “Got that about right. That woman bothers me.”

  “I hear you there. She’s as two-faced as Susan McLeash and damned near as scary.” After listening to her go on about Burkett, I did not want either one of us to fall into Roslyn’s crosshairs. “Ready to head out?”

  “Lead on, Kimo sabe. I’ve had enough for one day. Politics takes all the fun out of this job.”

  We reached her car, where I risked a quick glance at the entrance. There was no sign of Roslyn and I wasted no time getting out of the parking lot. Miami traffic was a no-win situation. The late hour meant there were fewer cars on the road, but night construction on the Turnpike slowed us. Finally, forty minutes later, we reached headquarters. I parked and waved to the camera mounted under the eaves of the building. For what it was worth, I had figured out most of the locations of Martinez’s surveillance cameras, but unless I wanted to take some target practice, the best I could do was to let him know that I knew where they were.

  We walked together down to the dock. The boat rocked in its slip and I looked around for the source of the waves. Unlike the Pacific, the Atlantic rarely had a noticeable swell unless there was a big storm spinning out at sea. The long-period, two-foot waves were a reminder that we were about to enter the busiest month of hurricane season.

  “Better check the weather when we get to your place,” Justine said.

  She had noticed the waves, too. I had originally thought that with the wind laid down, taking a look at the barge would be easily accomplished in the dark. The way the waves were pushing the boats around in the protected marina I had second thoughts. “Think we might have better luck if we get up early and have a look?”

  “Probably better. We can paddle out if you’re up to it.”

  Justine rarely missed a chance to get on a board. She would use mine, leaving me the kayak, which was probably for the better if the seas continued to roll like they were now. I had started paddleboarding and had bought what she called a starter board: wider and shorter than the toothpick profile of her race board. But even with the forgiving design, I was still getting used to balancing in anything except flat water. “You’re on.”

  “That leaves us tonight without an activity, then,” she said with a smile.

  I leaned in and kissed her, fully aware that we were within view of the camera mounted on a pole at the dock. Releasing her, I grabbed the two lines tied to the cleats on the seawall and hopped aboard. Justine followed and went to the stern, where she grabbed the lines looped over the pilings while I backed out. A minute later we were heading out of the channel.

  Once the boat was up on plane, I tilted the engine up slightly until the rpms rose and the bow cut easily through the swell. With Justine leaning against me, I forgot about the bridge investigation. I put my arm around her and pulled her close. For at least a few minutes the world was at peace.

  It lasted more than a few minutes; we woke the next morning without Martinez’s help. It didn’t matter, though: we were up with the sun and had a quick breakfast before carrying the paddleboard and kayak to the dock. Ray is an early riser, and I heard the screen door to his house open only seconds before Zero honed in on Justine. Our departure was delayed slightly while she paid him the requisite attention. While she petted him, I lowered the board and kayak into the water.

  With a line looped through the bow and stern handles of the kayak, I used the cleats as resistance to control the descent of the boat into the water several feet below. It was close to high tide now and the operation was easily accomplished. At low tide the drop was close to five feet, making it much harder. I tied one of the lines off and pulled the other free. Using the same procedure I quickly had the board floating next to it. Justine said good-bye to Zero and with our paddles in hand, we climbed down the ladder to the boats.

  The weather forecast had shown a low spinning off the Bahamas. That was the cause of the swell, but as long as the wind remained calm it would be an easy paddle out Caesar Creek and into the Atlantic. If I’d been on my own, I probably would have stayed to the inside of the barrier islands, but that was not Justine’s way. Between the advantage of the board and her ability, she was ahead of me by a hundred feet and clearly the leader of our expedition in no time.

  We paddled northeast, slowly working to deeper water. I had estimated it would be a six-mile paddle, and every twenty minutes I took out my phone, which was protected by a plastic case, and checked our position on the GPS. The water was crystal clear despite the swell, and we were coasting over the shallow patch reefs watching the coral heads in the clear water below when I heard the Darth Vader ring tone. I didn’t have to look, and left it in its pouch. Martinez had found us.

  I stopped checking the GPS after a few miles, when the outline of the barge became visible. We also stopped taking breaks as the wind had started to put a ripple on the otherwise smooth waves. An hour and fifteen minutes after starting out, we had reached the barge. I was tired, but Justine assured me the wind and swell would make it an easier trip back.

  Now that we had reached the barge, I realized for the first time how massive it was. I’d thought the surface would be low to the water and proportionately it was, but it was still above my head. Justine paddled to the anchor line and clipped her leash to the cable. Without saying anything she hopped off the board and into the water with her paddle in hand. She covered the few
feet to the barge easily and swam to the stern, where she climbed a welded ladder. I followed her example, taking both my paddle and phone.

  We stood staring at the twisted mass of concrete and steel.

  “What now, Kimo sabe?”

  “You’re the tech guru. What do you think?”

  “I think we had a good paddle.”

  It was intimidating standing on a hunk of metal with tons of debris stacked above my head. With every swell, the hull rose and fell, resulting in an eerie creaking sound as the load shifted. I felt like abandoning ship before something shifted and injured one of us, but I also knew this might be our only chance at examining the debris and I wanted to take advantage of it. With no real idea what I was looking for, I started walking around the barge, taking pictures from different angles. Too late, I realized that Martinez was probably watching them come up on his monitor as they streamed from my phone to the Cloud in real time.

  It was too late to stop, but my hunch was confirmed when the phone rang again. There was no point in denying I was here and I answered.

  “What the hell, Hunter?”

  This was the new hello. “Just checking out our new reef.” The words were out of my mouth before I realized that I wasn’t supposed to know about it. “Just out patrolling and I saw the barge inside the park boundary. Thought I’d check it out,” I said, trying to cover my tracks.

  “You are not authorized to be on that barge.”

  Justine came by my side and gave me a questioning look. I mouthed Martinez.

  But then he seemed to relent. “As long as you’re out there why don’t you check the mooring? I’m a little worried about this low that’s forming in the Bahamas.

  It sounded like I had dodged a bullet for now, and I disconnected. “Any ideas?”

  “You’re the concrete ninja.” Justine shrugged.

  “Yeah, not so much.” I was intimidated by the sheer mass of the debris. If we were going to find anything it would take a close examination, but with so much material I wasn’t sure where to start.

  I decided on top was as good a place as any and started climbing the pile. By the time I reached the summit, my legs were wavering under me. It wasn’t fatigue. Standing twenty odd feet above the seas multiplied the effect of each wave and I had to hold on to the debris as the barge moved up and down with each swell.

  A larger wave lifted the barge. I lost my balance and dropped to my knees. A piece of exposed steel scraped my knee and I rose to avoid impaling myself on it. On the horizon I saw a boat coming directly toward us. “Justine!” I called.

  She climbed to my side and together we stayed low and watched the sportfisher approach. The boat was older, a low-end model for the class of boat, but I knew these cruisers still ran into the mid six-figures. I could make out a single person on the bridge—a man by the look of him—and as the boat approached I realized it was Burkett.

  8

  The sportfisher came alongside the barge and I watched as Burkett skillfully maneuvered the craft and tied off to two of the oversized cleats protruding from the barge’s deck. He climbed over the gunwale, which, already several feet above the water, allowed him easy access to the barge’s deck.

  He started to prowl through the wreckage, but stopped before he reached our hiding place on the other side of the barge. Grunting as he climbed over the rubble he cursed every thirty seconds or so for the next half hour, then inexplicably gave up his search and returned to his boat. A minute later he was heading back to Miami.

  “What do you think he was up to?” Justine asked.

  “I don’t know, but it’s a good thing we brought the board and kayak; otherwise he would have seen us.” The five-foot drop to the water from the deck created an angle that, unless you were standing right next to them, hid the boats.

  “Didn’t seem like he found what he was looking for,” Justine said. She rose and started working through the wreckage again.

  “He either wanted to find something and couldn’t or wanted to make sure no one else would find whatever he was looking for. Fifty-fifty odds.”

  While Justine climbed through the wreckage I stared at the web of shattered concrete and twisted steel. Whatever Burkett had come looking for could easily have been underneath tons of concrete. We worked our way around to an area where the failed sections of the bridge that were lifted in place lay, and started climbing over it. What had once been a neatly constructed section of the bridge was now rubble.

  “Find something?” she asked.

  “I should have brought some tools and evidence bags.”

  Justine reached behind her back and pulled the waist pack she wore that contained a hydration bladder and inflatable PFD around to the front. She separated the velcro seal of a pocket and pulled out a small multi-tool. From the pocket on the other side she removed a Ziploc baggie containing two gel packs. Offering me one, she tore the top from the other and squeezed the contents into her mouth. I followed suit. The carbohydrate-rich mix hit my system in seconds. With the tool in hand, I opened the knife blade and started to scrape chips of concrete from one of the larger pieces.

  “That’s way too easy,” Justine said.

  Using the blade of the knife, I dumped several chips into the baggie and moved to one of the exposed sections. It was much harder to chip the finished surface.

  “Well?” Justine asked.

  Afraid of breaking the knife, I left the exposed area alone and freed several more pieces from the interior section. I would have liked to take a sample of the steel as well, but with only the small tool all I could do was to scrape the rust from the bars.

  “Surprised it’s not epoxy coated,” I told her. The ribbed steel bars known as rebar rusted quickly when exposed to the elements, and the humid South Florida climate was especially destructive to them. Once the steel was encapsulated in plastic, however, it was generally okay; but concrete was porous and if water made its way to the steel the oxidation could expand the bar and break the concrete. Though there was a surprising amount of rust, the barge had only been on the water overnight. I had seen what a night in open water could do to metal and what I was looking at could be a result of the recent exposure to the harsh environment.

  “After seeing the inside of this I don’t want to be paddling under any bridges.”

  “As fast as you are you have nothing to worry about. I’m so slow the bridge could decay and collapse before I passed underneath.” I closed the knife, sealed the baggie and handed both to Justine. She put them back in the pockets of her pack. “I don’t think there’s anything else we can do until the samples can be analyzed.”

  “I thought your girlfriend, the engineer, said they had tests.”

  “She did, but I’d prefer my own.”

  “What are we going to do about the material being dumped tomorrow? It won’t be until late tonight that I can get any results, if our equipment can even analyze this stuff.”

  A larger wave passed underneath the barge and I looked out to the east. “Seems like the seas are building.” The sky was still clear and there was no sign of storm clouds. “Maybe that’ll help. I’ve never seen Martinez on a boat—he wobbles on a dock.”

  “Okay, let’s head back,” Justine said, and started to climb down. Several other large waves passed under the barge as we descended and I looked back again at the building seas, starting to worry about the six-mile paddle back.

  One look at the kayak and barge moving separately convinced me to follow Justine’s lead and I dove off the barge with my paddle in hand and stroked hard to the kayak. After squirming aboard, I released the line from the mooring buoy and used the paddle to turn the bow toward land. I struggled and wondered what kind of nightmare I had gotten myself into. Justine was already ahead and I watched as she effortlessly used the swell to her advantage.

  I mimicked her movements; she would paddle hard until the momentum of the wave took the board, allowing her a small respite. Though I had nowhere near her experience, I had two blades
on my paddle and was able to sit down. She looked back and I could see the smile on her face as another wave lifted the board. After half a dozen hard strokes she had matched its speed and now relaxed, using the energy of the sea to her advantage.

  It took me more than a few tries, but I finally got the hang of it. Using my paddle to brace against the waves I started to ride the swells. Soon I found myself in the elusive groove or flow that paddlers and surfers seek, and was shocked when Caesar Creek came up on my right. I followed Justine as she steered her board through the channel. A minute later, I heard Zero greeting us from the dock.

  “You did great!” she said.

  “That was fun.” I reached for the line hanging from the dock and tied off the kayak, then used it to pull myself to the ladder. Once on the dock, I helped Justine. She stepped up the ladder and found herself face to face with Zero when her head reached dock level. With his tongue extended to the max, he stood there pushing forward as far as he dared. I tried to distract him, but he was undeterred, enjoying his moment with Justine.

  Finally she pushed up and rose above him. With some attitude, he walked to the grass and collapsed in his shady spot. I guess that was his way of giving us the cold shoulder.

  Together we pulled the boats out of the water and carried them to the house. Zero tired of playing hard to get and followed us upstairs.

  “You going to try and talk to someone at the university today?” Justine asked.

  After showering and making breakfast, we were sitting at the bar that separated the kitchen from the living room. Zero had worked himself between us and lay on the floor, glancing up occasionally for a scrap. I ignored him, but I saw Justine knock a piece of her eggs over the edge. “That’s still the plan, but I’m thinking I want someone impartial to have a look at the concrete samples first.”