Wood's Revenge

by Steven Becker

  “You want it out of your share, we can ditch it. That’s almost a grand in net, floats, and lead. I ain’t leaving it,” Jeff spat back.

  Trufante was always one for the big picture. They had close to five grand in fish aboard, even at the discounted rate they would have to sell them at. Nets were expenses, and he was ready to move on.

  “Why don’t you take your sorry ass for a swim?” Jeff said.

  Trufante looked at the water, watching the rip disappear as whatever had a hold of the net pulled it to the bottom. “Not today.” He didn’t think he would see anything without a mask, and with the current smoking past the boat, he didn’t trust Jeff either. “Why don’t we sell this load and come back in the morning when the tide’s slack. Visibility should be better, and I’ll grab some gear from Mac.”

  “Works for me, but I’m holding out some from your share,” Jeff said. He pointed the bow south toward the empty horizon and pushed the throttle forward.

  “Get the numbers.” Trufante grabbed a fresh beer from the cooler and took a long drag. When he finished, he tossed the can and removed the raw water sprayer to hose the deck and the baskets of fish, hoping it would take some of the smell with it. Once the deck was clear, he opened a large hatch and started digging into the hold packed with ice. He shoveled out large scoops, which he placed liberally on the baskets. Even after washing and icing down everything, the fish still smelled. He grabbed two fresh beers, handed one to Jeff, and went to the small space forward of the wheelhouse to get some fresh air.

  The sixty-five-foot arc in the Seven Mile Bridge was the first thing to break the glassy surface of the water. The span was the tallest object for miles. Jeff was headed on a course that would intersect with Moser Channel, which ran underneath it. Better than coming through Boot Key Harbor, Trufante thought. If there was going to be any law around, they would be sitting in the crowded harbor, not worrying about traffic running near the center of the bridge, miles from land. They fell in behind several other boats, blending in with the Keys’ rush hour.

  Half an hour later, they passed underneath the bridge and turned east, staying well clear of the harbor entrance. Running parallel with the shore, but giving enough clearance to avoid the shallow flats, Jeff followed the coastline for a few miles before turning to port and entering Sisters Creek. The small inlet seldom had law enforcement and offered a backdoor route into the commercial harbor. Jeff pulled back on the throttle just after passing the second marker and steered to the west of the line of red marked pilings.

  “Might wanna watch your wake,” Trufante called over the engine noise.

  “Ain’t nobody around,” Jeff said.

  Trufante looked around at the houses on the right. The million dollar homes each had a dock extending into the channel, most with a large boat tied to it. “Only take one of those well-dressed cats to take a picture with their phone and report you.” He knew from experience that reports were followed through, especially with commercial boats. “That pelican over there could read the registration numbers,” he said, pointing to a lone bird in the mangroves on the left. Even he was not interested in their catch.

  “I got that shit covered. Check it out when we stop. The four’s a nine and the one’s a four. They’ll never track me down,” Jeff said proudly.

  “Except for that carrot top you got. Ain’t no other around here that got a head of hair like that,” Trufante said, moving behind the wheelhouse to use it for cover in case someone did snap a picture. At a half dozen inches over six foot, with his ponytail and grin, he was not exactly invisible.

  Jeff slowed and followed the mangrove-lined canal to the left. After steering around a few bends, they entered Boot Key Harbor. They cut across the mooring field to the opposite side and entered one of the canals. Lobster and crab traps lined the concrete seawalls of the commercial fisheries they passed. Toward the end, the channel became tighter with mangroves encroaching from both sides. A large clearing with a few run-down buildings came into view, and they pulled up to a rickety wooden dock on the left.

  As soon as he saw where they were headed, the stump of his finger started itching. “You’re selling to Monster?” Trufante asked. The shack off to the left was where he had lost part of his finger to the chum machine.

  “They’ll pay,” Jeff said, easing the bow of the boat to the dock.

  Trufante knew what to do without being asked and was already forward with a line tied to the cleat. It was difficult, especially after the beers they had drunk, with the wind blowing them forward and pushing the boat past the dock. While Jeff manipulated the throttles, he jumped across the void and put a bight around the rusted cleat on the dock, then used the leverage to pull the boat in before tying it off. Jeff reversed the engine and swung the stern toward the dock, where Trufante was ready with another line.

  “Hand ’em up and let’s get this over with,” Trufante said, extending his arms to take the first basket from Jeff. With the dozen baskets on the dock, Trufante went to look for a dolly, staying clear of the chum shack, while Jeff looked for the owner.

  Fifteen painful minutes later, they were back on board. Trufante released the bow line, kicked the hull away from the old dock, and scratched his stump again. Jeff let the wind spin the boat around before Trufante released the stern line and jumped aboard. They headed back into the harbor. It wasn’t until they were tied around the back side of Burdines gas dock that he relaxed. “We gonna split it here or what?” he asked as he sprayed down the deck.

  “Too many eyes around. We should go back to your place,” Jeff said.

  Trufante suspected that he just wanted to get a look at Pamela, hopefully with not a lot of clothes on. “Truck works for me.”

  Jeff gave him the stink eye. “Pass me another beer then.”

  Trufante finished cleaning the deck and climbed onto the dock. Together the men walked across the crushed coral parking lot to Jeff’s rundown truck. “Gotta drive you home anyway. That girl of yours is gonna be awful proud when she sees this payday.”

  “Whatever, man,” Trufante said, giving in. He just wanted the cash and to be rid of Jeff. Tomorrow he would go get the net himself. Climbing in the truck, he kicked aside some empty beer cans on the floorboard. “You shouldn’t be drivin’ with this shit inside.”

  “And you’re one to be giving advice?” Jeff asked. He started the truck, drained his beer, crushed the can, and tossed it at Trufante.”

  Five minutes later they pulled into Pamela’s driveway. “Let’s just do this here,” Trufante said.

  Jeff pulled a wad of cash from the cargo pocket of his shorts. “How’s this look?” He counted out twenty hundreds and handed them to Trufante.

  “That ain’t half,” Trufante said, eyeing the stack of bills.

  “Got expenses, and it was my idea. That’s mate’s pay,” Jeff said.

  “Yeah, if you want a mate that’ll be telling everyone what we did. You took me ’cause I can keep a secret.”

  “Well, point taken,” he said, peeling off another ten bills. “Get the net back, and there’s another handful.”

  Trufante took the money and climbed out of the truck, his trademark smile not anywhere near breaking through his clenched jaw. “We’ll see.”

  3

  Mac looked at the piles of debris stacked on the beach. It had taken all day to clean up the mess from the king tide and storms. The only useful material they had collected was a large pile of driftwood. Next to it was a stack of roots and organic material that would burn. Closer to the waterline, a colorful assortment of plastic, ranging from flip-flops to water bottles, sat waiting to be hauled to shore. There was no garbage collection out here.

  Mac and Mel looked at each other through the cloud of flies swarming around them.

  “Shouldn’t be seatrout and snook this time of year,” he said, looking at the pile of dead fish.

  “They look bad,” Mel said.

  He poked the pile with a stick, releasing the bloated gasses from the diste
nded stomach of a large snook. “The local fish look pretty healthy,” he said, moving the stick to a bonefish, a species plentiful on the neighboring flats.

  “It seems reasonable that the tide brought the fish down, but they shouldn’t be rotten. These look like they have some kind of disease.”

  Mac had an idea what it was, but wasn’t sure this was the time to voice his opinion. Over the last few years, he had increasingly found floaters like these when he was pulling traps or fishing the deeper Gulf waters. He’d asked around and done some research, finding out that red tides and fish kills up the coast were moving slowly south, the result of pollution released from the floodgates controlling the Everglades. Big Sugar was the culprit, and there were all kinds of activist groups protesting. Just the thing that would suck Mel in.

  Her past as an ACLU lawyer had brought her to the pinnacle of activism. It was a huge relief when she had left that world after becoming an unwilling pawn in the corruption and financial agendas involved. But a cause like this might light the fire he knew still burned in her.

  “Strong tide, who knows—” He was interrupted by the whine of an outboard engine heading toward the island.

  They didn’t get many visitors here. His only neighbor was a retired marine, Jesse McDermitt, and he was several miles away in the Content Keys. They stood side-by-side at the waterline watching the small boat cruise toward them. Both grew anxious in their own way, as they could see the thousand-dollar grin on the driver from a quarter mile away. Trufante guided the boat into the unmarked channel, dropped his speed when he made the turn, and coasted to a stop. When the bow of the aluminum skiff hit the beach, he killed the engine and quickly tilted it out of the water before the propeller fouled.

  “Look here, if it ain’t the happy couple,” he called, ignoring the scowl on Mel’s face.

  Mac was not as concerned. The Cajun sometimes brought trouble, but was generally entertaining and a good mate. “What’s up, Tru,” he called back.

  His long legs had him out of the boat and on dry land in two steps. At the bow, he easily pulled the lightweight boat onto the beach.

  “Planning on staying?” Mel asked, her tone clearly uninviting.

  “Shoot, girl, good to see you too,” he said with a smile, her mood clearly not affecting him.

  Trufante had been around since Katrina had barreled through the bayou a little over ten years ago. Like many of the Keys’ residents, he was on the run from something, and Mac had gotten enough tidbits out of him over the years to piece together his story. The Cajun had been a concrete contractor outside of New Orleans and had somehow been awarded some government contracts to reinforce the levies holding back the Mississippi River. When the storm surge from the hurricane caused the work to fail, he hightailed it out of town on a small sailboat. Hopping from port to port along the Gulf Coast, he had finally found a home in Marathon. It was said the crazies were in Key West, or Key Weird, as the locals called it, but that was only by degrees. The further down the chain of islands you traveled, the crazier the people got. Mac figured Trufante had landed in about the right spot—halfway down.

  “Y’all got anything goin’ on?” Trufante asked.

  Mac knew there was a reason he was here and looked over at the pile of trash. “Gonna dump this lot,” he said.

  “Man, forget that. Me and you ought to take a ride. I need a little help,” Trufante said.

  “Figures,” Mel said and walked off.

  “Help me out and I’ll haul the load back for you,” Trufante said quickly, before Mel was out of earshot. He needed to garner any favor he could from her.

  “What do you need?” Mac asked. Given the choice between hauling a load of trash to Marathon or hanging out with Trufante for a couple of hours, he would generally choose the later. If there was any sign of trouble, Mac could back out. “I’m guessing you need a boat.”

  “And some dive gear,” Trufante said. “Not too far out. Maybe ten miles from here we lost a net yesterday. That bastard Jeff’s holding a bunch out of my pay to get it.”

  Mac was curious now. Maybe he could get some information on the fish kill. “Right. Let me go talk to Mel and grab some gear,” he said and started walking toward the trail. Trufante started to follow and Mac turned around. “Better you stay here. You know how she gets.” He walked away without looking back.

  Mac started pulling gear out of the shed, thankful that it had remained above the flood line. He thought again that he should raise it a few feet. He piled the scuba gear into a wheelbarrow and looked up at the house. Reluctantly, he left the equipment and climbed the stairs.

  Mel was at the table, writing furiously on a legal pad. “I’m going to take a ride with the boy wonder. He says he’ll dump the trash if I go with him.”

  She didn’t look up for a long minute. “Guess there’s no use trying to warn you to stay away from him.”

  “We’re taking the center-console. If he’s up to anything stupid, I’ll turn around. Sounds pretty harmless,” Mac said.

  “Usually does with that one, until the other foot drops,” Mel said. “I want to go to shore when you get back and get some Internet time.”

  If that was all it was going to take to avoid a fight, he would gladly comply. “Sure thing,” he said. “Be back in a couple of hours.”

  Mac breathed deeply as he walked down the steps, double-checked the contents of the wheelbarrow, and started pushing it down the path. Trufante was already aboard when he stopped at the waterline and started off-loading the gear. Wading to the boat, he handed the tank first, then came back for the buoyancy compensator, regulator, fins, and mask.

  Trufante was at the helm, squinting at his phone when he came aboard. “Can you see this?”

  Mac grabbed the phone and looked at the GPS numbers. He quickly entered them into the boat’s unit and started the engine. Trufante released the line from the lone pile and they headed toward open water. Mac couldn’t help but smile as the boat came up on plane and skipped over the small waves. It was a feeling of freedom that never got old, and he was brought back to reality faster than he would have liked by the GPS alarm. Trufante, who had drifted deep in the bucket seat, woke with a start.

  “Get the buoy ready,” Mac said, spinning the wheel and circling the waypoint. He switched the display to a split screen, showing their location on the left and a sonar shot of the bottom on the right. The line ran flat, not unusual for this area. Only a few small irregularities broke the solid line. From the orange color, Mac guessed they were over soft bottom, mostly turtle grass that usually had no structure and wondered why Trufante had been out here.

  Suddenly, something broke the screen. “Drop!” Mac yelled as soon as he saw the line jump. Still focused on the screen, he idled over the image, seeing what looked to be the shape of a small boat below them. “That a wreck?”

  Trufante returned a vacant look. “We was just netting. Don’t know about no wreck. Must be what snagged the net.”

  Mac circled the buoy and studied the screen, then looked up to determine the best trajectory to anchor. Slowly he motored into the waves until he was about a hundred feet from the buoy. “Drop!” he called to Trufante, who was on the bow with the anchor in his hand. He released the rode and let the line slide through his hands as Mac backed the boat to set the hook. A few minutes later they were sitting next to the buoy and Trufante was gearing up to dive.

  “What’re you doing?” Mac asked.

  “Goin’ to get my five hundred back,” Trufante said, pulling the BC straps tight.

  “You know the deal. Not on my boat,” Mac said. They’d been through this before. It didn’t matter how experienced a diver the Cajun was. Until he got certified, he was not diving off Mac’s boats. “I’ll lose my license. You want to free dive it, go ahead.”

  Trufante dropped the gear. “Shoot, I can’t hold my breath for that long.”

  Mac was tempted to free dive just to show him, but decided it would be safer and quicker to don the scuba gear.
If there was any work to be done to retrieve the net, he would need the bottled air. Mac took the gear from Trufante, lifted the tank onto his back, and swung the mask around to the front of his face. Sitting on the gunwale, he eased the straps of the BC out to fit him and buckled them. He swept his right arm around his back to retrieve the regulator and stuck it in his mouth. After confirming the air was on, he nodded to Trufante and rolled over the side.

  The water was colder than he expected, probably from the extreme current coming from the north. Shivering, he released the air from the BC and drifted to the bottom. The water was green and still murky, reducing visibility to about ten feet, but he instantly saw the top of the wreck. Finning alongside it, he was surprised the canvas was still attached to the T-top and there was no growth at all. Not even the slime coat that seemed to form instantly.

  He swam around the hull, estimating it to be about twenty-four feet. The twin outboards half buried in the sand would probably be useless, but there was some salvage value here. Finishing his survey, he started pulling the net off the structure and ascended with the leading edge. On the surface, he handed the buoy to Trufante and went back down to feed him the next. It was tedious work trying to recover the gear without destroying it, and it took almost half an hour before he handed the last buoy to the Cajun.

  There was still a five-hundred PSI showing on his air gauge, enough to at least get another quick look at the wreck. He held his left arm over his head to discharge the air from the BC and was just about to drop below the surface when he heard an engine coming toward them. Trufante yelled for him to get aboard.

  “Come on. It’s the law,” Trufante called.

  “Get the anchor. I’ll take care of myself,” Mac yelled back. The approaching boat was still a ways off, but the chances it was going anywhere else were slim. He kicked back to the swim platform and pulled himself aboard, shedding the tank and BC as soon as he was on deck. The boat was still coming at them, the lights on its tower clearly indicating its authority.