Key West Connection (25 page)

“Yes . . . I'm sorry . . . save me, MacMorgan . . . ”

He stared up at me with horrible eyes. But I felt no pity. I kicked him away from me. “There's only one thing I can do for you now, Ellsworth. I can put you out of your misery.”

“No!”

I turned away, as if to start the boat. “Then suffer, lieutenant.”

“No! Yes, I mean
yes
!” He was crying now, bawling like a child.

“Beg me.”

“My God!”

I stooped and lifted him by his foul-weather jacket to his feet. And I looked into his appalling eyes, holding him tight. “There's no other way, lieutenant. Two hours of dying or a split second of death.”

He sagged, still crying. “Okay . . . I'm begging you.”

The moment the words were out of his mouth, I shoved him back and then pulled him forward into the full force of the palm of my hand. It shoved his nose up into his brain, and he died as I had promised. Quickly.

He was a foul and evil person, but still I felt sickened by it. Sickened by the sights and the sounds of death, and his last pathetic minutes. I dropped him down onto the deck and then, deliberately, I took the Webber pistol from my pocket.

And then I fired it into the night, aiming at the blur of chaotic universe. It was the death dart, the killer. It was the dart with the real poison of the scorpionfish. . . .

On a Saturday in late September, I cruised the
Sniper
along the desolate point and white sweep of empty beach off Cape Sable. It was a flawless day: a world of soft blues and yellows; a world of sun and calm sea. And solitude.

The southernmost west coast of Florida is unlike anything else the Vacation State has left to offer. It is vast mangrove forests, trees eighty feet high, and dark tidal rivers and uncharted oyster bars where the tides have ebbed and flowed for a thousand years, known only to the snook and tarpon and redfish which hunt there. It is an immense sea and backcountry wilderness unblemished by the scars of the Florida epic: billboards and trailer parks, condominiums and fast-food stands and roadside attractions—the hallmark of progress and the idiocy of the Florida businessman.

It is a good place to rest.

A good place to disappear.

I nosed the
Sniper
toward shore, into the lee of Lake Ingraham Creek, far enough away to keep the bugs in the mangroves, but close enough so that it would be an easy swim to the desolate beach.

The woman had her back to me, naked and well oiled against the September sun. And when I gave her the word, she dropped the Danforth while I reversed the engines, churning the blue water, setting the hook. And then she turned to face me on the fly bridge; heavy thrust of now tan breasts, sweet glimmer of oil on body hair and perfect thighs.

“You want me to get you something cold to drink?”

She nodded and lay back down on the foredeck to bake in the sun.

Some woman. We had left Key West two weeks before; left to escape and rest and promise each other nothing. A boat trip to the wilderness is better than any hospital. Besides, I had had my fill of hospitals. And she had agreed.

So we had cruised across Florida Bay, stopping when we wanted to stop, swimming when we wanted to swim. She liked sitting on the deck with a book. I liked working on the
Sniper
: polishing and painting, trying to bully the horror back into hiding through manual labor. For the first week, we had been as shy and awkward together as children. If I saw her coming aft along the port walkway, I would back up and take the starboard walkway forward. When our eyes met unexpectedly, she would turn and look away as if there was something to see on the distant glaze of horizon. But slowly, through soft talk and laughter, the shyness dissipated, replaced by a growing, almost tangible sexuality. Janet, my Janet, was gone . . . and I would have to find a way of going on.

It happened on the eighth day. A twilight dinner of snapper, rice, and fresh lime, anchored in the clear shallows of Florida Bay. Sitting across from me, both of us flushed with the nearness of the other, I had found it impossible to eat.

“You're not hungry?”

“Guess not.”

And when we both stood to clear the table, we bumped into each other. We turned and collided again. The cabin felt no bigger than a closet. She took me by the shoulders then and looked up into my eyes. I felt like I was on fire.

“Dusky, I . . . ”

Before she had a chance to finish, I had kissed her. It was like the breaking of a dam. She couldn't get my weathered jeans off fast enough, nor I hers. It was the convalescence we both needed; an affirmation of love.

And God knows I had needed it. After the return from Cuda Key there had been the awful trip to the hospital. And then the meetings with Fizer; meetings and more meetings.

“You've done us a great service, Dusky.”

“Sure, Norm. Sure.”

“We've got plenty on the Senator—now it's just a matter of getting him back to the States. The rest of his flunkies are already looking for lawyers. Except for the old caretaker. He was released and given protection. The prosecution will be using him.”

“Fine, Norm. Fine.”

Norm Fizer had looked at me, the concern obvious. “Look, Dusky, it's over. I know how it is—like back in Nam. But you can't let it eat away at you. So drop it.”

And I had smiled; a bitter smile. “And you also know how hard it is to ‘just drop it.' ” And then: “Norm, I stole about twenty thousand bucks from Ellsworth's stash.”

He nodded. “I know that. I wasn't going to say anything.”

“And I got a money order and sent all but a thousand of it to Bimini's folks.”

“I know that, too.” He had stood and clapped me on the shoulder. “As far as I'm concerned, captain, the case is closed. Take a month or so off. Drink some beer; drink a lot of beer. Get roaring drunk and hunt down some big fish with that boat of yours. And I'll be in touch later—if you're still interested?”

“Yeah, Norm. I'm still interested.”

So one night the girl had come down to the docks. She wanted a private audience. A two-week private audience. And I had agreed, not even daring to hope it would turn into a healing, loving cruise of hot sun and cold beer and idle, idle days.

I climbed down the ladder from the fly bridge and fetched the lady something tall and cold. And when I took it to her, smiling at the fine nakedness of her, she rolled over, sleepy-eyed, her breasts flattening the tiniest bit beneath their own weight, and she held out her arms to me.

“This girl needs something more than Pepsi, captain. In the mood?”

I was.

I stripped off my shorts without haste, savoring my anticipation, and I lay down beside her, feeling the oiled buttocks lift at my touch, feeling her warm lips, soft, coiling her long silken hair in my hands. And when she slid herself up and onto me, joining us with a low moan of ecstasy, I whispered her name, feeling it sweet on my lips:

“Lisa . . . Lisa . . . Lisa-lee. . . . ”

Underwater, in the angling tawny light of late afternoon, everything was gold. Flaxen sea fans undulated in the current that swept around the reef, and aureated and jewel-crested reef fish watched the naked woman as she reached beneath a pod of brain coral and pulled out a spiny lobster. It was a big one—enough for her half of the supper we would eat back on my thirty-four-foot cruiser, the
Sniper
. Drifting above, mask in the water, breathing easily through my snorkel, I watched the naked woman with delight. Even she appeared gold in that strange afternoon light; a tenuous light that seems unique to the open sea, and to the reef islands far, far off Key West. It is a light that does more than illuminate—it seems to melt and liquefy, gilding everything it touches: the Australian pines and coconut palms that leaned in windward strands on nearby Fullmoon Cay; the long sweep of white beach on Marquesas Keys; the blue and then orange expanse of open sea as the sun whirled toward dusk, setting behind the Dry Tortugas. And the woman, too. Drifting above the reef, I watched her slow ascent. Her blond hair streamed behind her in a long veil. After a month on my boat, her body was bronzed and trim, and the bikini strips on chest and hips appeared as pale geometrics upon her golden nakedness. She winked at me as she stroked toward the surface, holding the lobster like a prize.

Gold, gold, gold.

Later, it would return in my memory as a prophecy. An augury of the future. That's the way our minds work. Something happens, and our brains scan the past for omens. It's a human compulsion: search for order in a universe that, at times, seems to be anything but orderly. A friend dies and, in our minds, his last words take on portentous significance. We are involved in an accident, and we remember that “something” told us not to take the trip. Now it was golden light on a golden sea and in less than two hours it would take on a whole new meaning.

I watched the girl. She wore only mask, fins and snorkel. Oxygen bubbles, clinging to her blond triangle of body hair, looked like little pearls, and her breasts moved with heavy, liquid weight. Her beauty, the reef, and the afternoon light filled me with a strange yearning.

“Hey! Look what I've got!” She pulled the mask off her perfect face, laughing with delight.

“I know what you've got—it's hard to miss.”

She slapped at me with mock outrage. “Oh, you! I'm talking about the lobster. Isn't he a beauty?”

He was indeed. A beautiful crustacean, the Florida lobster. No claws, but with sharp spines between their eyes that can needle through heavy cotton gloves. And because of that, this woman, Lisa-lee Johnson—Lee, I called her—hadn't caught one the whole trip. But she wasn't one to give up. Some afternoons she would come back from diving with her hands perforated, then sneak off to the first-aid kit to doctor herself in private. She never complained and I never let on that I knew. And the next day she would go back down for more. Until now. Finally, she had caught one. And it was a beauty. A two pounder, easy. Her blue eyes gleamed victoriously as she dropped it, squeaking and kicking, into my dive bag, and we swam together over to the little Boston Whaler I had hauled along behind my
Sniper
.

“And what about your supper?” She sat naked on the low gunnel of the thirteen-foot boat, her blond hair hanging down in a thick wet rope, dripping water on her upturned breasts.

“Ah . . . supper . . . oh, yeah. . . . ”

“Your mind seems to be someplace else, Dusky.” She grinned bawdily.

“Dressed the way you are, woman, I find that my thoughts are on anything but food.”

The smile left her face, and a new look came into her blue eyes; a heavy, sleepy look with which I had become very familiar over the past month. It had been a good month. A month of sun and fish and clear water; a month of aimless cruising, and then, love. In our own ways, we were both healing. Lee had separated from her domineering husband. And for me, only two eternal months before, the pirates, the ruthless ones, the money-hungry drug runners, had blown my life apart. A little ignition bomb in the trunk of our old blue Chevy. How were they to know that I wouldn't be the one to start it that awful August night? And why should they care that my beautiful wife, Janet, and my twin boys, Ernest and Honor, had been killed instead?

Well, I had made them care. And the few I had allowed to live would regret it until their own dying day.

So, when I was done with them, I had returned to my dock in Key West to find this woman, Lisa-lee Johnson. I had come to know and admire her when she and her husband chartered me and my
Sniper
for a day of fishing, and I had welcomed her tearful request to cruise alone for a few weeks. She wanted to cruise to think. And I wanted to get away so I wouldn't have to think. When we left Key West and headed across Florida Bay, we were two strangers filled with our own private horrors. The first week had been one of nervous laughter and averted glances. Neither of us was interested in love—just companionship. I had seen too much recent death and had done too much killing to want to be alone. And she—well, she seemed to be looking for a man strong enough not to try to hurry her into the sack; a man she could talk to and depend upon while she made up her mind about the husband she had left behind.

But it seemed inevitable that we would become lovers. I had known from our first meeting that there was a strong sexual awareness between us. You know it instinctively, and it has nothing to do with coy exchanges and suggestive remarks. And when we had finally kissed, it was like a dam breaking. We couldn't get each other's clothes off fast enough. We couldn't touch each other enough. We couldn't satisfy each other enough.