The Best American Mystery Stories Part 23

Bill wipes the section he's just sanded with a damp cloth. "Mexico," he says. "One good case of the trots and you're history."

A fishing skiff with a pair of locals aboard chugs around the reef of auto tires that serves as a breakwater and heads for the fuel dock. The marina was nothing much when Emmett first tied up here twenty years ago, rickety, unpainted wood crusted with gull droppings. As the cruisers and their money grew in importance, the mosquito fleet had been driven to shallower harbor farther west and a French corporation built the new jetty and facilities. Now ramshackle boats like this might wander in illegally to sightsee among the yachts or hustle up charters, but when Roderick is on duty they don't dare tie up. The man working the outboard waves lazily to Emmett and calls out.

"Golden Years," he smiles. "Bringin' the chat round."

A lot of the locals call him by the name of the boat, and Muriel endures being hailed as Mrs. Golden Years. "Could be worse," he likes to tell her. "If we had that catamaran on C Pier you'd be Betty Bazooka. "

Rut Adams is up on the flydeck of the Squire, nursing a b.l.o.o.d.y mary and training binoculars on the new arrival at the far end of the marina.

"Anything to report?"

Rut brings his binoculars down, his eyes taking a moment to adjust.

"Emmett. Caught me spying."

"I don't suppose they spend their time looking at us."

It was just there one morning, looking more like a s.p.a.ce-age hotel than a boat, dwarfing the Cheoy Lee and Broward hundred-footers in the Land of the Giants. A forty-plus sportfisherman was perched like a toy on the aft deck, and the heliport had been used once so quickly n.o.body saw who jumped in or out of the chopper.

"They got manned submersibles on that thing- those Jacques Cousteau things? Decompression chamber in the lazarette, satellite dish, large-format screen like a movie theater. Got two Jacuzzis, personal trainer, cook with a full staff -"

"You saw all this?"

Rut shakes his head. "Archibald, the local fella who comes around with the crabs? He's been onboard a bunch of times. Got a thing going with one of the maids. Filipino gal."

"I've still never seen the man," says Emmett. "Just people running around in uniforms setting things up."

"He's been here once or twice."

"Imagine being the center of all that. You get a whim to go out and dozens of people jump into action." Emmett had walked on the pontoon beside it once, pacing off at least eighty yards, staring up at his reflection in the tinted Plexiglas cabin panels. Nothing stirred aboard. Muriel calls it the Mother Ship and says it's crewed by bulb-headed aliens. "So what's he look like?"

Rut clears his throat, recalling. "Swarthy fella - remember the one Nixon used to hang out with? Relleno - Refugio -"

"Rebozo."

"Looks like him."

"Drug money?"

"Not enough security hanging around. I don't think he's Spanish of any kind. Not an Arab either - Arabs don't dive."

"They don't?"

"h.e.l.l no. My guess is he's some Greek, owns one of these international dot-com outfits. Making money out of thin air."

"What you think it runs him to keep it floating?"

Rut always knows what things cost or has an educated guess. He stands on top of his big Hatteras, calculating, face glowing red with his first drink of the day. "d.a.m.n if I can even imagine. Meggy was here the other day" - Rut's wife, Meggy, lives in their cliff house and only visits on weekends - "her Daddy owned half the state of Delaware and even her jaw dropped when she got a look at it. I'd say crew and staff alone is a good fifty, sixty grand a week."

Emmett whistles, looks back toward the ma.s.sive yacht. "A thing that size, hardly know you're on the ocean."

"You sail people," Rut grins, "wrestling a hunk of canvas and puking your guts out."

"Dacron," says Emmett. "Things have progressed a little."

"If there's no wind you're still f.u.c.ked. Hey, what's the deal with Whitey and what's-her-name?"

"Edna."

"Edna."

"No details yet. I'm hoping to track Roderick down."

They both look toward D Pier, to the yellow tape cordoning off the Silver King in its berth.

"I think of him sitting out there every evening in his fighting chair, knocking one back."

"G and T," says Emmett.

"That what it was? I'm a Scotch man myself. I could see him from up here - he'd raise his gla.s.s, we'd toast the sunset."

"A real gentleman, Whitey."

"Health problems?"

"Not that I know of."

"That age, it can go fast."

"They brought in a black marlin last month. Whitey was in the chair - fought him four, five hours before he made his last run. Boated him, cut him loose, but he just floated sidewise on the surface so they circled around and gaffed him in before the sharks could gather. Good seven, seven-and-a-half feet. You can't swing that with health problems."

"Fish like that will take up a lot of wall s.p.a.ce."

"They'd caught it. before."

"What?"

"Edna said that when they got it onboard they recognized the marlin. Scars, the shape of its dorsal. They were sure of it, couple years ago in the Dry Tortugas."

"That's one for Ripley."

"She said Whitey was pretty upset about it."

"Killing the fish?"

Emmett nods. "Either that or that it was the same one. He was always saying, 'I like to beat 'em, not beat 'em to death.'"

"Stick a hook in your lip, drag a quarter mile of line through the ocean for a couple hours, what's he think is gonna happen?" Rut shakes his head. "Moody b.a.s.t.a.r.ds, fishermen. That Hemingway -"

"Whitey never cared for Hemingway. He liked the dog fella -"

"Dog fella."

"Call of the Wild, White Fang -"

"Jack London."

"Loved him."

"He wrote about boats?"

"I guess so."

"London. Think he drowned himself. Or drank himself to death." Rut kills the last of his b.l.o.o.d.y mary. '"Death, where is thy sting?'"

"He died of TB." Chase Pomeroy steps out on the Rockin' Robin in the next slip, rubbing his eyes. "Or some s.h.i.t like that. Sailed to the South Seas and brought back all these really gnarly diseases."

Chase is a currency trader still in his thirties who has recently traded up from a little Sea Ray to a Sunchaser Predator.

"That thing get airborne?" asks Emmett, eyeing the boat.

"It'll move." Chase climbs on top of the cabin and lies on his back, covering his eyes against the sun. "Make the Caymans in under three hours."

"What's your hurry?" Rut complains about Chase speeding in the channel but always comes on deck when he brings a new girlfriend around.

Chase shrugs. "If I wanted to float with the current I'd find some Haitians and build a raft. What can you do in that thing - twelve knots, max?"

"It depends." Rut's face gets redder. "You hear the brouhaha last night?"

"Saw it. I was at Zooma till two - dead night, lot of dental hygienists off a cruise ship - then I hit the Daquiri Shak with Ricky G. till it closed. We got back from the Dak and there's the whole sorry excuse for a police department and the even sorrier excuse for a rescue squad -"

"They couldn't rescue a t.u.r.d from a toilet bowl," says Rut. "I ever get in the s.h.i.t out there I'm calling Key West and taking my chances on the wait."

"They asked us for ID. You imagine that? Ricky goes up to the captain, whatever he is, the one in charge, and says, "You know me. I used to bang your sister when she worked in my restaurant.'"

"That must have cleared things up."

"Ricky's slipping payoffs to every one of these guys, what're they gonna do?"

"You see anything?"

"Lotta lights, lotta local constabulary. I think the old folks were already out of here by that point."

Emmett nods. "You heard anything more about the storm?"

"Just that it's supposed to be coming." Chase shifts his arm away from his eyes to squint up at Rut. "I'm taking this out today, pollute the environment. You see Stephanie -"

"That's the new one? Redheaded gal?"

Chase nods. "Yeah, with the wide b.u.t.t. Tell her I'll be at Zooma by ten."

A trio of frigate birds sail over the marina, gradually losing alt.i.tude and seeming to pick up speed as they swoop down into the channel. It is already hot. A film of diesel oil swirls in rainbow colors around the pilings and a single turtle paddles between the moored boats, head just breaking the surface. Emmett likes to think of the marina as a community, maybe a few more transients than usual, but with reliably suburban rhythms. A bit of bustle at sunrise, morning errands, buckling down to serious work by midday, and then the relaxing slide to c.o.c.ktail hour. He likes to hear the hardware rattling as the boats rock in their slips, the squeak of rope and cleat, the sharp luffing of plastic boat covers. He likes to hear the motors coughing into life, thrumming as they pa.s.s on the way out, likes the smell of polyurethane and deet. Emmett likes the long tines of the jetty with their evenly s.p.a.ced slips, hundreds of boats with distinct outlines and personalities moored side by side, the blazing, primary blues and reds and yellows of gear, the stunning white of fibergla.s.s and Dacron. He liked the gulls and pelicans in the old days, too, but the feeding and dumping regulations have had their effect and they only pa.s.s over now, heading for the smelly chaos of the locals' wharf.

Roderick is talking with Ricky G., who sits looking disoriented at the fore of a shiny new Beneteau. Ricky is wearing a shirt with a Day-Glo parroffish design and has marks from fibergla.s.s deck beading on one side of his face.

"Looks like somebody pa.s.sed out on the deck," says Emmett.

"I needed to rest." Ricky never seems to shave yet never has a full beard, sporting a perpetual morning-after stubble. "These people are up in Vermont or something."

"What if I trespa.s.s you," says Roderick, "sleep on Ricky bar some night?"

Ricky tends bar at the Y-Ki-Ki, which he co-owns, the only bar locals of all colors go to. He squints at Roderick. "I've pulled you out from under the table more than once."

"Never 'appen beyond closing time. Surprise me them authority don't 'carcerate you while they here last night."

Emmett steps closer. "Listen, Roderick, what -"

Before he can say more Roderick puts his big hand up for silence.

"Mr. Alphonse already vex me wit instruction. I got nothing to tell till official version has been spoken."

"Were you here?"

"Drag me a.s.s out of bed, got to open every gate in creation." Roderick shakes his head. "Why they don't weat till sunup, spear a mon his sleep?"

"It was an emergency."

"Nothing in that boat that wouldn't keep till sunup."

"Remember the dude two Christmases ago," says Ricky, "washed up by the old turtle works?"

"Accidental causes."

"That's what they always say when they don't know s.h.i.t. Didn't know where he came from, what boat he was off of, nada. And n.o.body ever claimed him."

"Plenty of that on this island."

"But the watch he had on, the guy was obviously a tourist -"

"Black mon drown," says Roderick, "authority don't inquire. White mon drown they declear mystery."

There is a pause as they all watch the blond divorcee from Sarasota and her teenage daughter in matching bikinis pa.s.s on the parallel pier. Ricky moans quietly.

"I could go either way with that."