It was 3:50 and we were already over the Pourtales Terrace, a narrow undersea ridge that follows the curve of the Keys for 213 kilometers. The reef stretches southwest from Key Largo to the Marquesas Keys that lie between Key West and the Dry Tortugas. In a half hour we would be over the Pourtales Escarpment where the Terrace drops sharply into the depths of the Straits. I care about that drop because after a gentle slide from180 meters to 450, the reef plunges into an abyss. I didn’t like the thought of sinking there. Once we crossed the Pourtales, we would be about thirty miles from the rig.
“The wind’s picking up,” said Louise. It was blowing in from the starboard side.
Clouds, dark ones, had gathered quickly over the Straits. Where had all those white clouds gone? By the time we spotted the outline of the rig it was 4:45 p.m. and the sun was nodding off in the west, sinking into the clouds like they were pillows. I was at the helm and Louise had her glasses on the rig.
“Big,” I said.
“Fifty-three thousand tons,” said Cynthia. “It’s a ship—on stilts.”
It sat on the water like a giant spider, its large body raised high in the sky on four massive legs. A city of iron, with a maze of metal beams, scaffolding, derricks, and exhaust pipes sticking out of the deck. Tubes that were at least twenty feet in diameter ran along the vessel’s topside. A massive grid-work rose from the center of the deck that I assumed housed the drill that dove into the sea. Across the side of the rig, in letters as large as those on the Empire State Building, were the words:
ZHI ZHU NU
They were also spread broadside across a large structure on one corner of the ship. It’s hard to describe any part of the monstrous machine as being aft, port, or starboard because it was, after all, a square. I assumed there was an engine somewhere that drove it.
“Strange name,” said Cynthia.
“It is that,” I said. Maybe Chinese.
We were several hundred yards away when its lights went on. Dusk was already settling over the Straits, throwing red from a dying sun across the waters. I pictured Jackson Pollack striding over the Straits, dipping his brush and snapping it over the surface. The colors were changing from red to orange to yellow, as the rays of the sun hit the surface and disappeared into the waves. Nearer the rig they washed over its legs and up over its massive sides, coloring it like a massive kaleidoscope.
It wasn’t until I could distinguish the colors of the setting sun from the lights of the rig itself that I realized that the red flashes emerging from within those colors were coming from a boat headed our way. A shell smashed into the Canyon’s windshield, throwing glass everywhere. Cynthia screamed. I turned around and saw her staring at her shoulder. It was turning scarlet. She pushed her hand against the blood trying to stem the flow that was seeping through her fingers. She looked up at me.
“Louise!” I yelled. She had gone below just moments before. “Get the first aid kit, now! And grab a towel!”
“I’ve been shot,” Cynthia said staring at her shoulder, but like she couldn’t be sure.
Louise was topside with a large first aid kit, yanking it open as she came. A towel was draped over her shoulder.
“I’ll take care of Cynthia. You get us out of here,” she yelled as more shells hit the hull of the boat.
I pulled myself back up into the captain’s chair, swung hard around and pushed the throttle forward. The Canyon lifted up like a bronco bucking against its rider and tore into the waves that were blocking us from the mainland. The boat that was chasing us fell behind and the Yamahas screamed as we reached fifty-five miles per hour.
“You’re going to kill us!” yelled Louise.
“Better than them killing us,” I said, then eased back on the throttle. We fell into a steady thirty miles per hour and were over the Pourtales in a half hour. Louise had called in an SOS and the EMTs said they would meet us at the marina. The shell had passed through the fleshy part of Cynthia’s shoulder, just beneath her armpit. Louise had applied pressure to the wound with a tight bandage and had finally gotten the bleeding to stop. Cynthia was now resting across a leather pull-down bench aft.
“You doing okay?” I yelled over the motors. She just nodded and stared at her bloodied shoulder.
“It hurts,” she said as loudly as she could, and didn’t look up.
Lights from the mainland blinked through the darkness like friends. I breathed a sigh of relief as I cut the motors back and entered the No Wake zone. The Yamahas boiled the water like eggbeaters as I steered the Canyon into the channel that cuts through to Lake Largo and the Pilot House Marina.
Chapter Eighteen
The ER
Thursday Night, December 1
“You callin’ cause you wanna know what I want for Christmas,” said Richie. Louise had called him while I was helping the medics offload Cynthia at the hospital. She had the phone on speaker. A medic looked over at her. She turned down the volume.
“Planning early,” I said, leaning into the phone and following Cynthia into Emergency. Then Louise told him we would call him later.
The ER team hooked Cynthia up to an IV and rushed her through the double doors leading into the recesses of the hospital.
“Don’t leave me, Cooper,” Cynthia called anxiously from the stretcher. I took her hand and then lost her as they wheeled the gurney away.
Louise sat. I paced. About ten minutes later, a doctor, who looked like Doogie Howser, swung through the doors where Cynthia had disappeared. He must have skipped grades on his way to medical school. Brown hair, soft face, glasses, and a smile that made you like him.
“Family?” he asked as he approached.
“No,” I said. “Friends.” Then, “Actually a client.”
He nodded and motioned for us to follow him back through the swinging doors. Cynthia was wired with tubes. They ran up both arms. An oxygen mask blocked her face.
“Uh-huh,” said Doogie, examining the shoulder. Then, without looking up, “How did this happen?” I knew what he was asking. The bullet wound.
It was a long story, but I told it in about two minutes. The doc then called for the nurse to wheel Cynthia into surgery and asked us to go back to the waiting room.
We were the only people there so I pulled out my cell to call the Key Largo police. Before anyone answered, a cop car pulled up, lighting the entryway outside the ER. Two plainclothesmen came through the door and looked our way. Good detective work. We were the only other people there.
“Cooper?” said the lead cop. He was tall—maybe six-three or -four, his skin dark from the sun and smelling like a cigar.
“That would be me,” I said. Louise got up and was standing next to me now.
The cop looked over at Louise.
“Delgado,” she said—clipped, like a cop.
He hesitated. Thought. “Delgado. Miami PD?”
“Yeah.” She paused. “Do I know you?”
“Kelly,” he said. Then added, “Joe. You came down for a gang-related a couple years ago.” Louise was nodding. “I was the cop reported the case,” he added quickly, looking at Louise like maybe she remembered him now. She didn’t seem to, but acted like she did. “I got promoted to detective two months ago.”
“Congratulations,” said Louise, nodding again. Silence.
Kelly coughed. Then, “This is Detective Monday,” he continued, turning to the man standing next to him. “He doesn’t work on his name-day. Lucky this is Thursday, I guess, huh?” Smiling like he enjoyed his humor. I stared at him. Monday didn’t laugh.
“So, tell me how this happened.”
“How’d you hear about the shooting?” I said.
“Doc told me. They gotta report shootings.”
I nodded. “That was fast.”
“If nothin’ else, we’re fast,” he said. “So, fill me in.”
Louise and I took turns recounting the events of the evening. Briefly.
“Why were you out there?” Monday said, asking like I was a suspect. He was ch
ewing on a fingernail.
“The victim—” I began.
“Miss Hayward,” Kelly added. “Family’s good people down here.”
I nodded. “Our client. She hired us to investigate the death of her father—”
“Jack Hayward.” Kelly broke in.
I felt like asking him if he just wanted to tell the whole damn story. But instead, I just nodded.
Kelly was staring at me. Then, “You used to work homicide, right?” Studying me as he asked. “Miami PD?”
I nodded.
“No longer, huh?”
“Um-huh. Left a year ago.”
“Worked a case about a priest running a prostitution ring in his school?”
“Seminary,” I said.
“Fuckin’ crazy story,” he said.
“That it was,” I said. He shook his head.
He turned to Louise. “Well, since the vic’s here in our hospital, this case is technically ours. In reality I should kick it over to the Coast Guard. Only they don’t have fuckin’ police authority. So…it looks like we’re stuck with it.” He turned to his partner, who was now smoothing a fingernail with his teeth.
“Aaron, what the hell you doin’? It’s not healthy. Germs!” He shook his head and turned to me. “Good meeting you guys,” he said, hurrying, as if he was embarrassed for either himself or Monday. “Okay, we gotta get to work,” he said, looking over at Monday, nodding to the double doors that were quiet now. I watched him set those doors swinging as he banged into the Inner Sanctum of the ER.
Monday was just behind him but stopped short of the swinging doors and turned. “By the way, we’re going to need you to come down to HQ and file a report,” he said. “You know how it works.”
“On Monday?” I said.
He actually laughed this time.
Louise and I followed him into Emergency.
A woman at the nursing station just inside the door was talking with Kelly mostly, Monday leaning in. I heard her say Cynthia was in surgery and the doctor would talk to them when he came out.
Louise and I hung out near Cynthia’s room, watching Kelly. He pushed his body off the nurses’ counter, looked our way, and must have decided we had something else to tell him. The look on his face.
“Pretty crazy,” said Kelly, finding a place close to Louise. She edged away. He noticed. “I mean, given two members of the same family are involved in a shooting.” He thought for a moment, then, “Who caught the homicide?”
“Park Police,” I said. “They’re Sharing it with MPD.”
Kelly nodded. “ Needed the forensics lab, right?”
“Right you are.”
A doc had come to the Nurses’ Station. Louise murmured, “Be right back.”
Monday cocked his head toward Louise who was walking away. “She working it?”
“No. Tony DeFelice. She’s off duty.”
“Nice,” Kelly said, looking over at Louise. “Lucky you.”
Lucky me, I thought, watching her talking at the nurses’ station, pulling back her hair, even blacker in the dim light of the hall, her features, angular and perfectly formed.
Lucky me.
Chapter Nineteen
The Fly Trap
I thought about the oil rig as we waited for word on Cynthia. Louise settled into the chair next to me. “Zhi Zhu Nu. What does that mean?” she said.
“Damned if I know.” I Googled it on my phone.
“It’s Chinese. Zhi zhu means spider,” I said, reading from Wikipedia. “A special kind of spider. From the Araneidae family,” I added, scrolling down. “They’re orb weavers.” Louise was staring at my screen.
“An orb weaver?”
“Yeah, they make webs shaped like wheels. You know, like the ones you see in your backyard.”
She nodded.
“They trap their victims and then eat them. The spider and the fly.” I paused. “Like that,” I said, working my fingers like a mouth chewing.
“Ugh!” said Louise. “Stop that.” I had irritated her. “You know they were trying to kill us,” she said, locking onto my eyes. Then she stared off into empty space and mused softly, “Maybe the ones who killed Jack.”
Maybe, I thought. Maybe.
“Chinese,” she said, and shook her head. “They’re everywhere.”
“Easy,” I said. “Your bias is showing. They’re also buying up our debt.”
“Why would they shoot at us?” she muttered, now more to herself than me.
“We were in Cuban waters. Maybe they thought they had a right.”
“But that rig’s run by a private company.”
“Good point.”
“So why does a private enterprise launch a boat to fire at an unarmed vessel? No warning. Like pirates, only they don’t chase us.”
“Another good point. But there aren’t many pirates in that part of the Straits.”
“Maybe this boat is the first wave of the Chinese invasion we’ve been waiting for,” she said, getting up and heading for the candy machine. “What does Nu mean?” Her back was turned to me now.
This time I went to Google Translate.
“There was a movie. It was made in 1996, called Zhi Zhu Nu.” I paused, still reading. “Nu means woman. So, Zhi Zhu Nu—The Spider Woman.” Louise looked back at me as she fought the machine for her purchase.
“I never saw it,” she said, impatient with the machine’s knob. “This damn thing owes me a dollar.” She hit it hard with the palm of her hand.
“No one else did either,” I said, pulling out a dollar, walking over to the machine and sticking it in the slot. The candy dropped into the tray.
She glared at me. “Don’t be a wise ass.”
“Jade Leung played the part of Spider Woman.”
Louise looked at me curiously.
“She’s a beautiful woman. Made most of her films in Hong Kong. She has a kind of cult following,” I added.
“And you’re one of her fan boys,” she said, sitting back down next to me. She broke off a chunk of her Milky Way and handed it to me. My favorite candy bar. Hers too. “So why are you telling me this?”
“I find it interesting that a Chinese drilling company would call their rig The Spider Woman. Do you know what the female spider does to her mate when they are done…uh…mating?”
“She gives him a cigarette?” Shrugging.
I smiled. “That’s really good.” I paused. “She kills him.”
“That’s one for women,” she said, almost cheering.
“Uh-huh. But on another note,” and the wait seemed eternal as I watched the clock move on the waiting room wall, “it’s interesting that the rig has Zhi Zhu on its hull.” I kept reading. “Zhi Zhu was an assassin—for the Black Lotus Tong. Interesting huh?” I thought about it as Louise watched me.
“And…?” she said.
“And it’s interesting that an oil rig would have a Tong allusion on its hull. The only thing that was missing is the Black Lotus below the name. But, hey, maybe it’s no different than the name Enola Gay on the plane that dropped the bomb on Nagasaki.”
Louise stared at me as if to ask, What the hell are you talking about?
“Enola Gay Tibbets was the mother of the pilot who captained the plane.”
“You’re saying a Chinese gang is running that rig? That doesn’t make sense.”
I shook my head. “Just saying. Probably not. But interesting anyway.”
Louise nodded.
The Kiss of the Spider Woman. We felt the sting of that spider tonight. Zhi Zhu, the assassin, was killed trying to strangle Sherlock Holmes. But Zhi Zhu Nu is still alive. Maybe on that rig. Maybe Jade Leung kissed Cynthia tonight. A chilling thought.
Chapter Twenty
The News
The doctor came back into the waiting room about two hours later. “She’s out of surgery,” he said, leaning over to talk with us like we were family. “She’s lost a lot of blood. But she’ll be fine,” he added quickly seeing the concern on my
face.
“How long?” said Louise.
“The bullet passed through her shoulder. I cleaned out the wound and patched her up. She should have full use of her arm when she heals. In the meantime, Dr. Kopf—he’s the orthopedist on staff—will see her in the morning.” Then he read my mind. “Not to worry. He’s good. But if she has her own doctor, she should follow up with him when she’s released. Okay?” He straightened up.
I nodded.
“Can we see her now?” said Louise.
“She’s in recovery. We’ll be assigning a room shortly. When she gets settled, you can visit her.” Then he smiled, shook our hands, and headed back through the double doors. Doogie Howser. Up late.
Chapter Twenty-One
Back home
Friday Morning, December 2
It was after six in the a.m. when Louise and I left Cynthia. The cops had left hours ago. Before they did, Kelly had reminded me that PIs are not cops—We got a shooting here and… I said thanks for the reminder and darn I had forgotten that and turned to Louise—and she said wow she had forgotten that too and thanks. Kelly didn’t appreciate the humor.
I headed back to the marina to pick up Louise’s car. She was driving an unmarked.
I jumped out when we got there and opened her door. She flipped down the mirror on the visor and studied her face.
“You’re beautiful even when you’re tired,” I said, leaning in and kissing her.
She shrugged. “You’re biased,” she said.
“Nope. Just honest,” I said. She smiled.
We held each other in the darkened parking lot of the marina for a few minutes.
Only a couple of cars there. It was 6:50 a.m. and the early rays of the sun were just appearing over the Florida Straits. No clouds at all.
“What are you going to do?” she said, as we held hands and stared at each other.
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