“I guess this isn’t much of a vacation for you,” I said to Hooker.
“It’s not that bad,” Hooker said. “I’m in Key West with a pretty girl. So far you haven’t put out, but I still have hopes. Someone’s threatening to kill me. I’m on sort of a treasure hunt. And the breakfast burrito was first-class.”
“My fantasy is that we’ll walk along these docks and stumble across your boat, complete with Bill and Maria.”
“That’s a decent fantasy. Want to hear mine?”
“No.”
“It involves wild gorilla sex.”
“Gee, that’s a surprise.”
Hooker grinned. “I didn’t want to disappoint you.”
We walked the entire marina, but we didn’t see Hooker’s boat. We showed Bill’s picture to a couple people, but no one recognized him. We stopped in at the dockmaster’s office and got a hit. The boat came in on Tuesday and stayed one night. Bill paid for the space with a credit card Hooker had left on board.
Hooker called his credit card company to see if there’d been any further charges or cash withdrawals. There hadn’t.
“Now what?” I asked.
“Now we hope Rosa’s map is worth something.”
We were at the edge of the marina parking lot, debating a latte and a bag of doughnuts when my phone rang.
“We’re here,” Rosa said. “We just crossed the bridge onto the island.”
“Tell her we’ll meet her in the marina parking lot,” Hooker said. “Uh-oh.”
“What uh-oh?”
“You see that family, by the trolley stop? I don’t like the way they’re looking at me.”
“They’re probably thinking you need a fashion makeover. Or maybe they’re looking at me. Maybe they think I’m adorable in my pink hat.”
“You don’t know what it’s like. It can get damn scary. Before you know it there are people running at you from all over the place. I don’t have any security here.”
“Don’t worry. I’ll protect you.”
Hooker was still in the motor oil T-shirt and wrinkled shorts. He was wearing sunglasses, ratty sneakers without socks, and the hat advertising tires. He turned his back to the family and kept his head down. “Tell me when they’re gone. I like my fans. I swear, I really do, but sometimes they scare the crap out of me.”
“They aren’t going away,” I told him. “They’re slowly creeping toward us. They look like a nice family. A couple little boys. And the mother and father are nicely dressed.”
“They’re all nice. It’s just when you put them together and they turn into a mob.”
“Well maybe if you weren’t wearing a hat advertising tires and a T-shirt advertising motor oil…”
“My sponsors give this shit to me. I’m supposed to wear it. And anyway, I’ve got a billion of these T-shirts and hats. What am I supposed to do with them if I don’t wear them?”
“It’s him,” the mother screamed. “It’s Sam Hooker!”
The two kids ran up to Hooker. Hooker turned and smiled at them. Mr. Nice NASCAR Guy.
“Hey, how’s it going?” Hooker said to the kids. “Do you guys like cars?”
The mother had a pen and the father had his hat in his hand. “Would you sign my hat?” he asked Hooker.
A couple more people trotted over. Hooker was smiling at them all, signing whatever was handed to him.
“See,” I said to Hooker, “isn’t this fun? Look how happy you’re making these people.”
“You’re not doing your bodyguard thing,” he said. “You have to keep them back a little so they don’t crush into me. I can’t sign if I’ve got my arms pinned against my chest.”
I looked around. He was right. They were crushing into him, pushed by the people at the back. He was right about the numbers, too. There were suddenly a lot of people trying to get close to Hooker. They were waving hats and napkins and T-shirts and they were yelling at him. “Hooker. Hey Hooker, sign this. Sign this!”
I’d been standing next to him, but somehow I got elbowed aside and shoved to the rear. In a moment’s time I was pushed so far back I couldn’t see Hooker at all. I was looking for an opening to get back in when Rosa and Felicia showed up.
“What’s all the excitement about?” Rosa wanted to know.
“Hooker’s up there, autographing stuff,” I said. “I was supposed to be doing crowd control, but I got pitched out. I’m worried about Hooker. I just saw a woman run by with a piece of his shirt in her hand.”
“We gotta get Hooker away from this mob or there’ll be nothing left of him but a grease spot on the sidewalk,” Rosa said. “There’s people coming from all over.”
“I don’t know what to do,” I said. “I tried yelling at them and they laughed at me.”
Rosa hiked her purse up on her shoulder. “Get out of my way. I’ll take care of this.” She leaned forward and shouted at the crowd. “Omigod! It’s Britney Spears! Britney Spears.”
The people at the outermost edge turned to look. A murmur rippled through the mob.
“Now they’re vulnerable,” Rosa said. “Now we gotta ram our way through.”
Rosa went first with her head down. She knocked people out of her way, and she kept going. “Britney Spears is back there,” she kept saying. “Did you see Britney?”
Felicia followed Rosa. And I followed Felicia.
By the time we reached Hooker he’d climbed onto the roof of a Subaru. He only had one sneaker, and his hat and his shirt were gone.
The Subaru was surrounded by fans trying to grab Hooker. They were still shoving things at him to get signed. The fans were all yelling things like: “This is for my son. He’s dying. Brain cancer…It’s his birthday…It’s for my mother. She tried to kill herself when you lost at Taledega…It’s for my daughter. She sold her trailer so she could come to Daytona to see you race, and now she’s homeless. It would mean a lot to her if you’d sign my sock…I haven’t got any paper. Could you sign my forehead?…Could you sign my right breast? Look I’ve got it out for you. Here’s a pen.”
Rosa and Felicia and I climbed onto the Subaru with Hooker.
“Lady, you suck as a bodyguard,” Hooker said to me. “Where were you when they ripped my shirt off?”
“These people are crazy!”
“They’re just a little excited. I don’t understand it, but this happens to me a lot.”
Two cop cars pulled into the lot, lights flashing. A couple cops got out and waded through the crowd.
“Hey look,” one of the cops said. “It really is Sam Hooker. Man, I love to watch you drive,” the cop said to Hooker. “You’re the best. I almost lost it when you took out the Bud car last year at Miami.”
“Yeah,” Hooker said. “That was a good one. I’m in sort of a bind here, guys. I’m turning into fan food.”
One of the cops got knocked to the ground. “Call for backup,” he yelled to his partner. “We need riot control.”
A half hour later, the crowd was dispersed. The cops all had autographs. A property damage report had been filed for the Subaru. One of the cops had gotten Hooker’s shoe back. The hat and the shirt were never to be seen again.
“Thanks guys,” Hooker said to the cops. “Appreciate the help.”
We all piled into Rosa’s gray Nissan Sentra, and the cops escorted us out of the lot and waved us away.
SIX
Rosa, Felicia, and I sat on the crimson-and-yellow couch in Rich Vana’s living room and waited while Hooker went off to get another motor oil T-shirt.
“So,” Felicia said to me. “Are you sleeping with him?”
“No!”
“That’s a good thing. He’s hot-looking, but he’s probably diseased. I read the magazines, and I watch the celebrity shows on television. These race car drivers have sex on the brain. They’re like barnyard animals.”
“It’s not just race car drivers,” Rosa said. “It’s men. All men have sex on the brain. That’s why they can’t multitask. Their whole brain is taken up
with sex.”
“Not all men are diseased, though,” Felicia said.
“Puleeze,” Rosa said, eyes rolling, hands in the air. “All men are diseased. What about herpes and genital warts? Do you honestly think there’s a man in Miami without one of those?”
“Well, no. But I wasn’t counting those. Do you think they count for disease?”
Hooker strolled into the living room. He was wearing a new hat and a new T-shirt that were exact replicas of the ones he’d lost. “What counts for disease?”
“Herpes,” I said.
“Not if it’s on your lip,” Hooker said. “If it’s on your lip you can call it a cold sore. And everyone knows a cold isn’t a disease.”
“I rest my case,” Rosa said. “All men are sex-crazy and diseased.”
“Yeah,” Hooker said. “But we’re fun, right?” He turned to me. “Just for the record, I’m not diseased.”
Felicia put two maps on the coffee table. One was a fold-up road map of Cuba, and the other was crazy Armond’s map, drawn on a piece of lined paper. The road map was dog-eared and worn at the folds. It had a coffee cup stain over Havana and an arrow drawn in red Magic Marker pointing to Club Med Varadero.
“Here, you see, is Maria’s little town, Nuevo Cabo,” Felicia said. “It is a very good place to be a fisherman because the fish are not far offshore, and because there is a safe harbor. It is also a good place to smuggle things you would like kept secret because it is a little remote, but it is still close to Mariel. There were many Russian ships going into Mariel when Maria’s grandfather was looking to make money. The first of the missiles came into the port of Mariel to be taken to the site at Guanajay.
“Remember, there was the blockade by the U.S. Navy, and still Maria’s grandfather went out that night. It was craziness. And it started the curse.”
“There’s no curse,” Rosa said. “Just greed.”
Felicia made the sign of the cross. “Greed is a curse,” she said. “If you look on crazy Armond’s map, you will see where he puts Nuevo Cabo and Mariel. It was always thought the fishing boat went down in the harbor of Mariel. Or maybe that it started to sail to Havana. Armond says Juan found his father far west of there. Juan told Armond he found his father’s bones still with the wedding band on his finger and with a bullet hole in his skull. There are islands and underwater caves to the far side of the Bahia de Cabana, and this is where Armond says Juan found his father. Armond has drawn three islands. One he calls the boot. And another he calls the bird in flight. And he says it is here that Juan did his final diving.”
Hooker took the piece of paper and studied it. “How reliable is crazy Armond?”
“He’s crazy,” Felicia said. “How reliable is crazy?”
“Great.”
“Tell me again why you are doing all this looking,” Felicia said.
“I want to find my boat,” Hooker said.
“And I want to find my brother,” I said.
“But won’t they come home by themselves when they are ready?”
“We’re not the only ones looking for them,” I said. “I want to find them before the bad guys find them.”
“Is that possible?”
“Anything’s possible,” Hooker said. He had his cell phone in his hand, and he was scrolling through his phone book. He found what he was looking for and pushed send.
“Hey,” Hooker said when the connection was made. “It’s Sam Hooker. What’s up? Un hunh. Un hunh. Un hunh.” There was some NASCAR talk. Then there was some talk about cigars. And then Hooker asked the guy on the other end if he wanted to buzz some islands off the coast of Cuba. There was some laughing after that. Hooker disconnected and stood. “I’m going to the airport,” Hooker said. “Anyone going with me?”
Key West International Airport is on the easternmost part of the island. The terminal is single story white stucco with an orange tile roof, and it seems too pretty, too relaxed, and too small to belong to something calling itself an international airport. We parked in the lot, under a couple palms, and we all followed Hooker into the building.
“You seem to know what you’re doing,” I said to Hooker.
“I’ve flown out of here before on fishing and sightseeing trips. Other than that, it’s an illusion. I have no idea what I’m doing.”
We stood to one side of the entrance and looked around. A slim guy with a great tan trotted over to us. He was wearing sandals and shorts and a short-sleeve, open-necked shirt with a lot of red and green parrots printed on it. His hair was long, pulled back into a ponytail, his sport sunglasses were on a cord around his neck, his eyes were blue and crinkled at the corners, his smile was wide.
“Where the hell have you been?” he said to Hooker. “I haven’t seen you in months.”
“End of the season always gets nutty. And then I had to go back to Texas for the holidays.”
“So what are you doing, shopping for Cuban real estate?”
“My boat’s wandered off. I thought I’d go out looking for it. This is Barney, Rosa, and Felicia. Barney’s going with us.”
The ponytail guy nodded to us. “Chuck DeWolfe. A pleasure, ladies.”
“Isn’t it illegal to fly over Cuba?” I asked Chuck.
“Not for me,” he said. “I’m a Canadian citizen.”
“So, what have you got?” Rosa wanted to know. “Seaplane?”
“Helicopter,” Chuck said.
Helicopter! I’d never been in a helicopter. Never wanted to try one out. I’d take an elevator to Mars before I’d go a hundred feet in a helicopter.
“Barney gets a little nervous over heights,” Hooker said.
“No problemo,” Chuck said to me. “We’ll fly nice and low.”
Felicia was crossing herself and saying the rosary in Spanish. “You’ll crash and die,” she said. “No one will ever find you. The sharks will eat you, and there’ll be nothing left. I can see it all.”
“Yeah, you have to be nuts to go in a helicopter,” Rosa said. “Only men go in helicopters. Women know better.” She shook her finger at me. “Don’t you let him talk you into going up in that helicopter. Just because he’s a hottie doesn’t mean he has any brains.”
“Cripes,” Hooker said. “Cut me some slack here.”
“Yeah, that’s harsh,” Chuck said. “On the other hand, dog, they think you’re a hottie.”
Hooker and Chuck did a complicated variation on the high five.
“Probably there’s no need for all of us to go,” I said. “Why don’t I wait here?”
Hooker locked eyes with me for a couple beats. “You’re going to be here when I get back, right?”
“Right.”
“Promise.”
“Don’t push it,” I said.
Rosa and Felicia and I watched the two men walk away, out to the helicopter.
“He might be worth a disease,” Felicia said. “Nothing major. A little one.”
“I’m gonna tell your husband,” Rosa said. “You’re thinking dirty thoughts about another man.”
“Thinking doesn’t count,” Felicia said. “A woman’s allowed to think. Even a good Catholic woman can think.”
“Here’s the plan,” Rosa said. “First we eat, and then we shop.”
We went back to Old Town, parked by the harbor, and walked up Duval Street. We sat outside at a tourist-trap café, and we ate fried fish sandwiches and key lime pie.
“I make better pie,” Felicia said. “The trick is you use condensed milk.”
A flash of black caught my attention. Not a lot of people wearing black in Key West. I looked up from my pie and locked eyes with the shooter with the slicked-back hair. He seemed as surprised to see me as I was to see him.
We stared at each other for maybe ten seconds, and then he turned and crossed the street and walked toward the corner. He stopped outside a store, and I realized the store was Scuba Dooba. A guy who looked like he was in the Rent-A-Thug training program came out of Scuba Dooba and stood talking to the s
hooter. The two men swiveled their heads to look at me. We all stared at one another for what seemed like two years. The shooter made a gun with his hand, index finger extended, aimed it at me, and pulled the trigger.
Rosa and Felicia had been watching.
“Hey!” Rosa said. “Shoot this.” And she gave him an entirely different hand gesture, middle finger extended.
Felicia did the same. And I didn’t want to be left out, so I gave him the finger, too.
The shooter smiled at us. He was half a block away, but I could see the smile went to his eyes. The shooter thought we were funny.
“What’s with him?” Rosa asked.
“I think he wants to kill me,” I said.
“He’s smiling.”
“Yeah,” I said. “Men. Go figure.”
Rosa leaned forward, across the table at me. “Any special reason why he wants to kill you? Because aside from that, he’s not too bad to look at.”
I told them about the conversation at Monty’s.
“You got a lot of nerve to stay here like this,” Rosa said to me. “I’d be on a plane going home.”
“I can’t do that. It’s my brother.”
“What about the police?”
“I went to the police, but I couldn’t tell them everything. I’m afraid Bill might be doing something illegal.”
“You’re a good sister,” Felicia said.
The shooter and his partner turned away from us and disappeared down a side street.
“This is like a movie,” Rosa said. “One of those scary ones where everyone gets murdered. And John Travolta is the hit man.”
Felicia was crossing herself again.
“I wish you’d go light on that crossing,” Rosa said to Felicia. “It’s freaking me out.”
“What crossing?” Felicia asked. “Was I crossing? I didn’t notice.”
We paid our bill, and we wandered down the street, past Scuba Dooba, to the next block. We looked at T-shirts, jewelry, sandals, and cotton shirts with island prints. Not high fashion here. This was tourist town. Fine by me, because I couldn’t afford high fashion. Felicia bought T-shirts for her grandchildren, and Rosa bought a Jimmy Buffet shot glass. I didn’t buy anything. It was Saturday, and I was very possibly two days away from being unemployed.
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