Backwater Flats

by Steven Becker

  “I need to follow those guys,” I told the man at the wheel.

  “With this old rust bucket?” He pushed down on the throttle and the engine coughed. The other boat was through the bridge and made a turn to the north.

  Water splashed out of the bait wells and the two fifty-five gallon drums they had tied to each side of the transom. Filled with water plus bait, they each weighed close to five hundred pounds. The boat would never get up on plane with that much weight in the stern. “Alright. I’ll find another way. Drop me at the pier.”

  “Shoot, man, we know those guys,” the man who had thrown the net said.

  “Where do they keep the boat? I’m not looking to bust them, but they may have some information critical to a murder case I’m working on,” I said, trying to coerce their cooperation.

  “That officer, Hayward?”

  “Yeah. You know him?”

  “Nah, stayed away from that dude. We’ve got all our paperwork in order, though.”

  “Did he sell to those guys?”

  “Seen him come up in a small bay-boat several times a week during season.”

  It took either a photographic memory—or an app—to keep track of the open and closed seasons for the myriad of Florida fish and shellfish species, but when someone said “season” in South Florida or the Keys, it usually meant lobster season.

  He had dropped the boat to an idle, allowing us to talk over the old two-stroke engine, though he did have to goose the throttle a little to maintain steerage as the tide pulled us through the bridge.

  “What do you know about those guys?” I asked

  “Who’d you say you were with?” Cast-net guy asked.

  “Special Agent Kurt Hunter, with the National Park Service. Hayward’s murder occurred inside the park, making it my case.”

  “They teach you blind ninja stuff in secret-agent school?” Cast-net guy asked.

  He was starting to grate on my nerves. Moving to the cooler, he pulled out another beer, his second in the few minutes I had been on board. Fortunately, the man at the wheel told him to get lost, and he moved back by the stern.

  “Wish I could throw a net like him,” I said.

  “He’s a one-trick pony. Sucks at everything else.”

  I wasn’t going to argue that. Working the current, the driver had us close to the pier.

  “You have fenders?” I asked.

  He called to his partner, who put out two large, red balls and readied a line. “You want to find those guys, head up the river. Past the airport there’s a sketchy marina with a bunch of fishing boats. Not what I call a premium spot, but they’ll be there.”

  Nudging the throttle and using the red balls, he kept enough pressure against the dock that the line wasn’t necessary. I thanked him and disembarked.

  Walking through the Wetlab, I crossed the parking lot to my truck and sat inside, wondering if it was safe to check out the marina at night. I knew exactly where it was, and actually had been there several times working on another case. The three sides of the property bordering land were protected by an eight-foot-high chain-link fence with razor wire looped around the top. The easy access was by water.

  Promising myself I was just taking a boat ride to check things out, I rationalized that using our personal boat was the best choice. Driving back over the Causeway and after merging onto 95, I took the second exit and cruised the surface streets to the small marina where Justine and I kept our center console. It, like everything in Miami, was protected by chain-link fence. Pulling up to the entrance, I entered my code into the keypad and waited as the gate slid open. I parked right by the boat and hopped aboard. A few minutes later, I was motoring upriver.

  The almost six-mile-long Miami River bisects the city, running from the Miami Canal in the Everglades to Biscayne Bay. Its original headwaters are long gone, the small falls removed when the great “River of Grass” was drained to make room for development. As you move east to west you can see the property values drop. At the river’s mouth are luxurious condos with million-dollar yachts docked nearby. The further inland you travel, as I was now, the lower the rent, until just west of the airport the banks of the river turned industrial.

  I passed the police impound and evidence lot on the left and continued to the dicey marina that the bait fisherman told me to try. Security lights illuminated the seawall and pothole-scarred parking lot. Several larger boats were tied up along the seawall, with smaller ones, the size of the one I was looking for, docked in side canals that had been dredged perpendicular to the river. In the second one I found the boat I wanted.

  Its spreader lights were on and the two men were unloading their “catch.” Idling by, I waved, as boaters generally do, and continued upriver trying to figure out how to get, if nothing else, a picture of the boat. In addition to its registration numbers, there was a larger set stenciled on the side—its commercial fishing license.

  The scam started to make sense. With a commercial license, they were allowed to sell as much seafood as the legal limits allowed. Where they got their catch from was anyone’s guess—but I knew where they got their lobsters.

  20

  Once past the Airport Expressway, the waterway lost whatever “river” feel it had. Looking ahead, it was dead straight and dredged, with small canals running off it. I wanted to make a turn and come back without looking suspicious. From a half-mile away, I could still clearly see the lights of the fishing boat at the dock. If they happened to look my way, they would see the red light marking my port disappear, then turn green as I came back toward them. There was a good chance they would ignore me as a lookie-loo if they happened to notice, since there was a fair amount of traffic on the river and canals, but it wasn’t worth it. Continuing for another quarter-mile, I killed the navigation lights and went dark.

  Hoping the shadow of my boat was invisible from this distance, I made a quick one-eighty and, after a couple hundred yards, turned the lights back on. I had my phone ready as I again approached the fishing boat, ready to take a picture. With my pen in my mouth, my notepad sat open on the helm ready to record the license and registration numbers, too. Redundant systems.

  I was sitting about a quarter-mile away when I saw the lights of another boat approaching the dock. I shouldn’t have been worried, but there was something familiar about its lines.

  Turned out my gut was right.

  With only a hundred yards separating us, there was enough ambient light to see the approaching boat was the twin-engine FWC RHIB. To make matters worse, there were two people standing at the helm—and one of them was a woman. Another fifty yards closer and I could see it was Robinson and Susan McLeash. Neither knew my personal boat, and since they were focusing on the fishing boat, I guessed they hadn’t noticed me.

  I had a decision to make. Remaining unseen was my priority, but I badly wanted to see what these two were up to. I’d noticed a side channel on my approach and, looking down at the chartplotter, saw it was ahead, just past the dock. Moving into the shadows on the north side of the river, I put as much space between the FWC boat and mine as possible. Turning my head away as the boats passed one another, I couldn’t see if they were looking at me. Assuming they hadn’t identified me, I cut across the river and entered the canal.

  Turning even a small boat like mine in the tight confines of the canal was like navigating a three-point turn with a car, only about a half-dozen more steps. Now facing towards the river, I crept up to the intersection and dropped to an idle. The original flow of the river had long ago been altered by the South Florida Water Management District. With what was left of the Everglades retained by a half-dozen locks upstream, and no tidal pull this far upriver, there was virtually no current here.

  From my vantage point, I could see both boats. It appeared that Robinson, too, had scoped out the fishing boat on the way upriver, then turned and come back. The difference was, he had no interest in stealth. Bright LED blue and white lights suddenly shot out from the top of his T-tower
as he made his presence known.

  Robinson’s voice echoed across the water as he called out to the fishermen to remain where they were and prepare to be boarded. In the confines of the canal, this was a whole lot of drama, but effective, as the men froze in place.

  Leaving the emergency lights on, he approached the docked fishing boat, idling several feet away while Susan tossed fenders over the gunwales and worked the lines. It probably looked like a routine stop to the fishermen, but the truth was that Robinson and Susan were both outside their jurisdictions—though a haze of alcohol might have stretched those boundaries in their minds. If asked, Susan could justify being here. She was technically doing what I asked. Robinson, I wasn’t so sure about.

  It was a recipe for trouble, especially post-happy-hour. Feeling helpless, I sat there. All I could do was watch and wonder what was being said. The light bar was acting like a strobe, distorting the scene, everyone’s movements jerky and in slow motion. It caused me to miss the gun coming out, and I was caught off-guard when I heard a shot fired.

  I knew her history. That shot came from Susan.

  Any law enforcement within hearing range would automatically respond to the gunshot and issue an alert to others in the area. With the lives of two agents in jeopardy, I had to abandon my cover and speed toward the boats. All four people were still standing—that was the good news.

  The bad news was that the gun, as I had expected, was in Susan’s hand.

  “We’ve got this, Hunter,” Susan slurred from across the two feet of water that now separated our boats.

  With Susan distracted by my arrival, Robinson took the opportunity to disarm her. He didn’t look at me or comment. Instead, he swung the gun barrel toward the two fishermen.

  “We ain’t done nothing wrong! Why’d that crazy bitch shoot?”

  Robinson ignored the comment. I could see Susan’s face, and as she started to respond, Robinson said something I couldn’t hear and she backed down. But I knew our girl, and she wasn’t done. Robinson stepped to the gunwale and, in what looked like a feeble attempt to justify the gunshot, took the fishermen’s driver and fishing licenses, along with the boat papers. With the IDs and documents in hand, he moved back to the helm and, after laying the papers out on the leaning post, punched a number in his phone, and placed it to his ear.

  I was sure my presence had changed Robinson’s plan, though I wasn’t at all sure why he was here. I guessed he was cleaning up Hayward’s mess. Now the best he could hope was that one of these men was already wanted for something. A prior bench warrant would solve all his problems.

  And then things got worse.

  Susan, out of patience, slid in front of the console and, before Robinson realized what she was doing, started screaming at the fishermen. Robinson turned to me like it was my job to control her. I shrugged and continued to watch the show.

  Susan had caught all the men off-guard, and I hoped one would slip and reveal something. Turned out the revelation came from her.

  “Which one of you fuckers killed him? I know it was one of you!”

  They backed away as she leaned forward. As far as I knew, these men had done nothing wrong other than maybe buying some seafood instead of catching it, which they could have done legally. They didn’t deserve to be punished by Susan’s rant before any charges were filed, and maybe not even then.

  Robinson continued to peruse their paperwork, hoping for a break that would absolve him from any wrongdoing and justify his appearance here. On the bench seat were two piles of documents: ones that he had already verified over the phone, the others that he hadn’t. The former was quite a bit higher and, from his expression, I could tell he knew he was running out of opportunity.

  “I loved him! Why—”

  Susan’s exclamation turned my attention to her. She backed away and sat, head in hands, on the cooler in front of the console. Robinson appeared not to notice her, leaving me to clear this train wreck from the tracks.

  Without asking, I tied my boat to the RHIB and crossed the gunwales.

  I caught a sick expression on Robinson’s face. It was his gun that Susan had fired. She’d pulled the same trick on me before, and I sympathized with the inquisition he was about to face. He would eventually be vilified and Susan would be suspended again. The result aside, the process was ugly.

  “You okay?” I asked her. I sat on a small storage locker built into the hard bottom of the inflatable’s deck.

  “Kurt, we were getting along so well. I thought he might be the one.” She sobbed.

  I was not without compassion, but I’d seen this show before. Both acts: the wailing Susan McLeash, and the boyfriend who was “the one.”

  To their credit—and/or innocence—the fishermen had remained aboard their own boat. There had been ample time, with me dealing with Susan, and Robinson running the paperwork, that they could have snuck off. I knew the boatyard was enclosed with a chain-link fence topped with razor wire, but if they paid for a slip here, they likely had a key or code to open the gate.

  Robinson had wasted no time in canceling the automatic calls for backup. The flashing lights on the street from the first responders, which had quickly appeared near the canal, had disappeared almost immediately.

  “I’m going to talk to the fishermen. Wait here and I’ll make sure you get home,” I told Susan. Though she was drunk, I was careful not to mention that I would be her escort. She looked up, revealing the tracks of her tear-streaked mascara, and nodded. Robinson was still busy behind the helm, doing whatever he could to remain separate from the action.

  “You okay if I come aboard?” I asked the fishermen, figuring a little civility after what had happened was in order.

  “You got a warrant or anything?” The one who had been behind the wheel asked.

  “No, just want to talk. I’ve got no interest in fishing or seafood.”

  “Just keep her under control.” His eyes shifted to Susan.

  I nodded and stepped on the gunwale of the park service soft-sided boat. Using the T-top’s structure for support, I stepped onto the sturdy deck of the fishing boat.

  “Kurt Hunter, special agent with the National Park Service.” I extended my hand.

  “We should file a complaint,” the man by the stern whined.

  The other man, likely the captain, turned to him. “Not right now. Why don’t you go get a beer and start cleaning up? I expect this’ll be over soon, right, Hunter?”

  “Just a few questions and you can go.”

  “What about him?” The captain glanced at Robinson.

  “You got no outstanding warrants, I don’t think there’s anything he can do,” I replied.

  “Okay, I’ll answer your questions. Just keep an eye on her.”

  Susan had inadvertently insured a level of cooperation I wouldn’t have gotten if she hadn’t tried to shoot this guy. Good cop, bad cop taken to the extreme.

  “How about we start with why she wanted to shoot you?” I watched his face carefully. After the previous events of the evening, there was little question he was on the wrong side of the law somehow, even if it was for as small an infraction as buying seafood—a product he was permitted to catch. Providing that his sales logs were legit, the acquisition end of his business was undocumented, relying on only hook and line, nets, and traps. Unless there was an eyewitness to his purchases, his under-the-table dealings would never be discovered. There had to be an accounting slight of hand to write off the expense for paying what he was expected to have caught, but that was none of my business

  “Yeah, bought some stuff from Hayward. Mostly tails and all legal.”

  He probably had no idea, nor did he care, how Hayward had obtained the product.

  “So, it was an equitable arrangement between you guys?” I was fishing to see if there was blackmail or extortion involved by Hayward.

  “A little streaky. You couldn’t count on steady production. But we had no issues.”

  “Any idea if he’s involved?”
I made a motion with my head toward Robinson.

  “We all know who he is. First time I’ve seen his fat ass in a boat, though.”

  Reaching into my pocket, I removed a business card and handed it to him with the standard spiel, if you think of anything, give me a call. He took it and thumbed the corner, giving me the feeling he had something more to say.

  “I got no dog in this fight,” I said, trying to put him at ease.

  “That one,” he said, looking directly at Susan. “If I were you, I’d keep an eye on her.”

  For me this was old news but, coming from an outsider, the warning caught my attention. As I thanked him for the chat, I wondered just what Susan was up to.

  21

  Hopping back onto the FWC boat, I waited while Robinson handed the papers back over the gunwales and told the fishermen they were free to go. Knowing Robinson’s passive-aggressive tendencies, he would probably say nothing negative about Susan’s actions or my presence here tonight, but file a complaint about us with Martinez in the morning.

  The two fishermen lifted a heavy cooler between them and set it on the dock. It appeared the fishermen felt they were vindicated. If they had something to hide they would have locked up the boat and bolted when Robinson handed back their paperwork. One of the men stayed with the cooler in case Robinson changed his mind, while the other walked into the darkness. A minute later a pair of headlights flashed and a battered pickup appeared, pulling up next to the dock. The men loaded the cooler in the bed and, without a look at us, headed off into the night.

  The only question that remained was what to do with Susan. Robinson, as I had expected, was just standing behind the wheel as if waiting for me to deal with her. Despite her inebriated condition, in some twisted way our rocky history linked us together.

  “Come on. I’ll take you home.” I reached down for her hand. There was no thank you, tearful or otherwise. She simply took my hand and followed me to my boat. It did occur to me that I would be taking her on my personal boat, but I doubted in her condition she would remember. Proving me correct, she turned, moved toward the bow and crumpled into a heap on the deck. I was fine with her passing out, but would have felt better if she had chosen the stern—downwind, just in case.