Naked Came the Manatee (1996)

by Elmore Leonard

  Reyes, a politically connected Miami millionaire, was determined to become the next president of Cuba.

  "W7hat exactly happened when they took Fay?" Britt was taking notes.

  "She went skinny-dipping with a manatee."

  Deal interrupted. "Do you think it could be the same manatee... ?"

  "What?"

  They told Britt the story of Deal's near-death experience and his amazing rescue from a watery grave. "Not too many manatees left these days," she said, "especially ones that would rescue a human."

  "Doesn't the Navy use them?" Deal said.

  "No, that's dolphins. They're smarter," Britt answered, noticing that his pupils appeared dilated.

  "The old lady that pulled me out said she chats with him."

  "That manatee is our only witness," Jake said. "Maybe we ought to go get the dive boat and find him."

  Britt rolled her eyes. "What do you plan to do, let him sniff her bathing suit?"

  Jake shrugged. "It works with police dogs."

  Marion McAlister Williams was rocking in the dark on her front porch when they arrived, almost as though she had been expecting them. "He's out there," she said, nodding, "and something's wrong."

  They went to the grotto. Booger was there, circling, in a state of agitation.

  Booger experienced an unreasoning feeling of dread. He sensed trouble, cries for help, mortal danger. He swam as fast as he could, powerful flips of his tail propelling him southward. Dawn streaked the sky as the trio in the dive boat trailed him around a mangrove outcropping to a wooden boat dock with a million-dollar yacht appended to it.

  Britt felt an odd sense of deja vu. Like a Lassie movie, she thought, with Timmy trapped down the well.

  "I know who lives here," she said, squinting at the house. "I think it's some city official."

  Jake idled down the Evinrude. As they let the boat coast, they heard a splash as something hit the water.

  "Hurry!" Britt cried out.

  Booger dove nose-down to where a burlap bag was sinking to the silty bottom.

  Burrowing beneath the sack, the gentle giant rose, bursting through the surface of the shining water, showering those aboard with spray.

  "Oh, shit," Lassiter said.

  If Booger had found Fay, or what was left of her, it wasn't much.

  Deal reached out, caught it, then gingerly dropped the sopping sack onto the floor of the dive boat.

  They gasped collectively when it moved.

  Something inside was alive.

  "Could be a snake," Jake warned.

  Cautiously, he loosened the thick twist tie that sealed the sack. Small, high-pitched sounds emerged.

  Then he upended the bag and dumped the contents onto the deck.

  Six drenched calico kittens crawled in all directions, mewing loudly for their mother.

  "That's who lives here!" Britt said. "The Miami Beach city manager! I should have known." The man had been seething ever since his scheme to pay bounty hunters thirty-five dollars a head to exterminate the city's stray cat population had gone awry. "Damn," said Lassiter.

  Booger dove and surfaced, dove and surfaced again, then struck out for open water, as though somehow aware that he had saved the furry little creatures now using the back seat of Britt Montero's new T-Bird for a litter box.

  After a pit stop for Kitten Chow at an all-night convenience store, it was nearly eight a.m. Britt would only have time for a shower and a cup of coffee. She was not tired, she had never been more awake. This could be the big one, the event Miami had awaited for more than three decades. The phone rang just as she was leaving.

  Hoping it was Jake with word on Fay, she felt her heart sink when she heard the deep-throated growl that had launched a thousand fan clubs. Damn, she had forgotten screen star Dash Brandon.

  "You're up early," she said, trying grimly to shake off a kitten fastened by its needle-sharp claws to the right leg of her linen slacks.

  "Tell you the truth, dollface, I haven't slept yet. Been partying in South Beach since I left you. You been to one a these foam parties? A trip. I met up with some of the crew, and we need your help."

  "You must be too exhausted to join me today," she said, trying without success to sound regretful.

  "Yeah, but we need to see you. It's important." He sounded serious. "Meet us for lunch tomorrow."

  "I usually don't eat lunch," Britt said. "It's tough to eat anything on deadline." She pushed back her hair impatiently, watching a kitten dig industriously in her potted begonia. "And I'm pretty busy right now."

  The movie star refused to take no for an answer. "Didn't they say you were assigned to help me?" he pouted.

  5. THE OLD WOMAN AND THE SEA--James W. Hall Marion McAlister Williams was naked in the moonlight. Her body wasn't what it used to be. But name something that was. Especially something 102 years old. She was ankle-deep in Biscayne Bay standing in the soft marl of her own small beach, gazing out at a prairie of moonlight that glazed the still water. It was two in the morning on Tuesday. The Grove was quiet, the sky was densely salted with stars, there was no breeze, no mosquitoes, no boats moving across the water, no birds coasting low, not even the plaintive warble of the owl who lived in her stand of gumbo-limbos and strangler figs.

  Marion waded deeper into the bay. The water was the same heat as her flesh. She might have been melting into a sea of warm blood, dissolving, as she went deeper, the water to her deflated breasts, to her neck, lifting her. She lay back, let it hold her up to the moon, an offering, this woman who had seen enough of this world, what it had become, its garish pleasures, its quick and easy gratifications, its incessant noise pulsing like fevered blood. She let the tide carry her body, buoyant as a funeral pyre, let it take her out into that luminous water, so bright tonight it was as if a tablecloth of iridescent silk were floating on the surface of the bay, a cloth that was miles across.

  Marion McAlister Williams was nearly the oldest thing in Miami. Older than any tree, older tha any building or car or house or boat or stick of wood. She was older than the streets, older than the bridges or boardwalks or seawalls. She was older than anything but the water or the rocks or the land. Though she had to admit, one or two sea turtles still lurking in the bay might be nearly as old.

  Marion drifted farther out, nearly a mile from the shore, effortless and serene, her arms spread wide, taking the last of the outgoing tide. She would float out there during the slack hour, then ride back in with the welling tide. She might have to swim a stroke or two to reach her shoreline again, but usually not. She knew the currents, the small silent streams and eddies that snaked through the bay. She knew the cycling seasons of their movements. As regular as airplane schedules, step aboard, ride out, hover for a while, and ride back in. She had been doing it for most of a century. One of the virtues of age. What you knew, you knew well. What you didn't, no longer mattered.

  Ears underwater, she could hear the ripples of noise, the subtle pings and gurgles of passing creatures. She knew some of their names, some family lineages. There was also a deeper sound, a nearly mystical hum in the bay that vibrated far below the surface, a quiet throb of power that somehow fed her, renewed her strength on these nightly swims. She'd dared to reveal this to her granddaughter some months back, calling it a "soft drumroll of energy," and the girl, a modern woman, skeptical and tough-minded, had fired back that Marion was probably only hearing the chug of sewage as it pumped from the city's vast network of toilets and drainpipes beneath the bay across to Virginia Key.

  The slack hour passed without event, and Marion sculled the water, readjusted her body into a fast-moving channel so she could begin her return voyage. As she glided back toward the shore she was joined, as she so often was, by Booger.

  Tonight Booger pressed close to her, scraped her arm with one of his barnacles, drew blood. Her skin was papery these days, easily torn. They glided along together, soundless, and the fleshy sea cow continued to bump her, continued to urge her forward with something l
ike impatience. Marion did not resist. Long ago she'd abandoned the need for overmanaging her destiny.

  There was nothing she absolutely needed to do anymore. She had won her prizes, taken her bows, had shaken the hands of a half-dozen presidents. Now her most reliable pleasures came from these nightly rides, from giving herself over to the vagaries of the natural world. So she let Booger speed her along to the shallows just off her beach. It was there that she had made a habit of grooming Booger, clearing him of the flotsam and jetsam that he regularly snagged in his journeys around the bay.

  She let her legs dangle down, caught the bottom, then trudged up to the shore, shedding water like sparkling confetti. Booger bobbed nearby, his skin silvered by the moon. Tonight he was even more of a mess than usual. He looked like a honeymoon car with strings of tin cans dragging behind him. Fishing line was wrapped around his fins, twigs and broken driftwood trapped in the line. There were two plastic six-pack holders caught on a notch near his back flipper, and knotted to them was a mooring line that trailed off behind him for twenty feet.

  Marion dragged the line hand over hand, hauling the heavy mass across the soft bay bottom. It was a wonder that Booger had been able to swim at all so entangled in trash. She hauled it out of the water and held it up to the soft moonlight. Splintered wood and elastic cords and another nest of snarled fishing line that ensnared a silver canister.

  Marion patted Booger, told him to wait, then walked up the shore to her chikee hut, where she kept a razor-edged fillet knife for just such tasks as this. She came back to Booger, cut him free of his clutter of trash, gave him a stroke along his broad slick forehead, and watched him turn and wrallow away into the night.

  Hector and Phil took Fay to their hideout. Actually, it was an efficiency apartment off Tigertail Avenue in the Grove. But Hector liked calling it their hideout even though they hadn't had to hide out in it yet, 'cause they hadn't succeeded in doing anything bad enough to be pursued.

  Hector had found the apartment, liked the view of the pool, and given the manager first and last month's rent on the spot. Then he'd found he couldn't afford it, and asked Phil if he wanted to share the rent. Phil, recently split from his wife, had said sure. So they'd laid out two pool floats on the middle of the living room floor, the red one for Hector, the blue one for Phil, and called it home. Fine by Hector. Pool floats were better beds than he'd had at the Dade County Jail or Raiford. Better than when he was growing up in Havana, sleeping on the mud floor of the little barn. A goat for a roommate, chickens for companions.

  This apartment was a perfect spot for spying on the babes who used the pool. Lots of them, secretaries mainly, a couple he'd gotten to know lately. Or at least he'd said a couple of words to them and given them a tongue flick. That tongue flick almost always worked on the average woman. But no luck so far with the fussy secretaries.

  "Hey, man," Hector said. "I got an idea what we can do with this pretty lady she doesn't tell us what she knows."

  Phil was sitting up on the kitchen counter, legs dangling. They didn't have furniture yet, so counter-sitting was about it for taking a load off your feet, except for the floats, and you couldn't use them too much or they'd spring more leaks.

  Phil was staring at Fay, a weird look in his eyes. Fay was dressed in the yellow plastic foul-weather gear they'd found on the Whaler. Looking cute. Pouty lips, with some bite in her green eyes.

  Hector liked women with sharp teeth, women who liked to bite. He liked teeth marks on his shoulders. He liked giving them back, a nice oval bruise on their inner thighs. Yeah. Hector had a way with women.

  Phil told Hector to stop looking at Fay that way. And Hector said a very bad thing to Phil. Phil said a very bad thing back to Hector. Hector said two very bad things. And Phil replied with three very bad things.

  "Knock it off," Fay said. She stalked around, staring at each of them. Hector smiling at her, trying to decide where he wanted to plant his first teeth marks.

  "Now," Fay said. "Which of you idiots is going to tell me what this is all about?"

  "You tell us, pussy boots," Hector said. "That's what you here for. You here to tell us whatever we ask you." Phil said a very bad thing. And Hector replied in kind.

  "OK, dammit, what's going on, Phil?" Fay said. "What the hell are you doing hanging out with this creep?"

  Hector spun around. "Hey, man. How come she know your name, Phil? She said your name, man. How she know that? You tell her your name, you stupid moron breath?"

  Phil said a very bad thing.

  Fay said, "I asked you a question, Phil."

  "So did I, Phil. How she know your name, man? You know this broad?"

  "She's my wife," Phil said.

  Under his breath Hector said a very bad thing. Then he said three very bad things out loud.

  "Ex-wife," Fay said. "Ex, Phil, ex. And this is why. This, right here, what's going on this very minute, this is exactly why you don't live at home anymore. This is why it's finished."

  Marion lugged the silver canister up to her house. She laid it on the glider on her front porch and went inside to shower and dress. Her windows were all open and the first cool breezes of the new season were sighing through them tonight. She dressed in long khaki pants and a plaid flannel shirt. She put on her brogans and rubbed some lavender-scented face cream into the grooves that lined her cheeks. She put a Band-Aid on the cut that Booger had given her.

  She went back down to the porch and sat down in a wicker rocker across from the glider. Something had shifted inside her. She had felt it happen earlier. Some tectonic realignment that was sending tremors up to her flesh. She quivered with excitement for the first time in decades.

  Quivering was dangerous at her age. But quiver she did. She had something in her possession that was worth something to the world at large. She sensed it. She knew that the placid young man she had pulled from the bay and nursed with Sawgrass Juice had found a similar canister and was queerly excited by its existence.

  She was not sure what it meant. Canisters washing ashore? Perhaps hundreds or even thousands of silver containers drifting along the bottom of the bay. She knew she was onto something. Something of major proportions. A shipwreck out in the Gulf Stream, the canisters just now working their way to shore? Some high-tech note in a bottle thrown out from a passing spaceship? This was something new. Rejuvenating. Something that might just rescue her from the doldrums of old age.

  She watched the bay brightening, saw the raspberry clouds out beyond Stiltsville, like streaks of jam across a doughy sky. She stiffened when she heard a car door slam nearby. But then relaxed, for she had recognized it. She looked out at the dawn and sighed to herself. She had made it another day. Another miracle. And now this, a second miracle. A new adventure.

  She stood up, stepped to the edge of the porch. Her granddaughter was coming down the long sandy path. A beautiful young woman. Hard to believe she was carrying Marion's blood and marrow, so full of tough energy as she came striding up to the porch and halted. Her young face was seamed with worry.

  "I need help, Granny."

  "Not even a hello?"

  "I'm sorry, I'm sorry. It's just that I'm so... oh, I don't know what I am at the moment. Hello, Granny."

  "Hello, Fay. Now what's the matter, dear?"

  But Fay was no longer holding Marion's gaze. Her eyes had shifted to the glittering canister and her mouth was working soundlessly, words without breath.

  6. HEADING TO HAVANA--Carolina Hospital Another cigar-smoking Don Johnson look-alike is all I need tonight, thought Mike Weston, as he exited the 1956 Buick nicknamed El Frankenstein by the driver. He wondered how a car could run with so many dead parts and why Cuban government officials were the only ones who didn't know Miami Vice had been canceled ten years ago. It had taken Mike two hours to get from the Jose Marti International Airport to the house in El Vedado. This time, they had insisted the meeting be on the island. He was told it would take place in one of Robert Vesco's mansions, abandoned since he'd
fled the country for the safer haven of Libya.

  Mike had lived in Miami for a while, so he was prepared for his Cuba visit. Same difference, he said to himself, as he approached the front gate. This house and others in the neighborhood reminded him of those in Coral Gables, with their red tile roofs, quaint iron works, and privileged Cubans.

  Robertico Robles walked in a few minutes later. Mike smiled and returned his enthusiastic handshake. Something about Robertico's slick attitude made Mike think this one would not be as easy to convince as the others. He was glad Robertico was amenable to using English. Even though Mike spoke Spanish rather fluently--one of the reasons he had been chosen for the job--he always preferred to negotiate in English. He thought it gave him the edge. They sat down in what must have been a library in the back of the house. Because of the empty shelves, their voices echoed throughout the room.

  "So, Mike," began Robertico, without wasting time--something Mike found unusual in a Cuban--"what has happened to the canisters? The surgeon hasn't received them."

  "I know," said Mike.

  "We used your people," continued Robertico, still maintaining an almost offhand tone, "and now the goods are gone."

  "I know, I know, let me explain," said Mike.

  "Fidel is getting anxious. I'm not sure how much longer he'll wait before calling off the deal," Robertico said, his voice rising for the first time.

  "We had an unexpected accident along the way, with a manatee--"

  "A what?" interrupted Robertico.

  "A manatee, you know, a sea cow," said Mike. "Anyway, we have it under control. We know where the canisters are. We just need a little more time to recover them without anyone else finding out."

  "I don't know anything about sea cows, or land cows," said Robertico. "All I know is a deal is a deal and this is the second time you guys have messed up."

  "Yes," agreed Mike.

  Robertico was getting agitated, fidgeting with a button on his white double-breasted jacket. Mike couldn't help but notice the canary-yellow T-shirt underneath.