Red Tide (13 page)

“Very early,” I said. “How about fifteen minutes?”

He blinked. “What. Fifteen minutes from 
now
?”

“That’s right.”

“Ohhh,” he said, and for the first time since this whole thing had started he looked a little uneasy.

“What’s the matter? A little worried about going out there into the Miami night?”

“No, no,” he said. “It’s not that.”

“Maybe you think we should wait for daylight to track down a voodoo 
bocor
.”

“Since you bring it up, Billy—”

“Good,” I said, standing up and brushing off a few crumbs of food. “You can stay here with Anna.”

“Anna does not stay here,” she said.

“Yes, she does.”

“We have an agree that I am to come.”

“Where I want to go tonight is not dangerous—
if
I go alone. But if I take a beautiful woman—and an astrologer with a loud sense of impulse—it can get dangerous.”

She frowned. “What kind of place this is, I am making danger?”

“It’s just a joint. A bar for sailors.”

“A 
bar
!?” Nicky bellowed. “Mate, think what you’re saying. You’re going to a bar—and you’re leaving 
me
?”

“That’s right,” I said. “It’s a sort of specialized bar. You wouldn’t fit in.”

“I’ve never seen the bar where I wouldn’t fit in,” Nicky said.

“Why should this place be a danger for me?” Anna added.

“A bar’s a bar, Billy. Home away from home.”

“Do you think I do a sex dance with the juke box, hah?”

I had a full-scale revolt on my hands.

My plan had been to slip quietly into a few of the dives along the river and ask questions. Just one or two innocent questions in each of three places I knew about, so nobody would get suspicious about a whole bunch of significant talk. They were the kind of places that don’t appreciate outsiders. I thought I could pass muster; I had the deep-water tan, I knew the dialect, and if it came to swapping knuckles in good clean fun I could hold my own.

It looked like that plan wasn’t going to get past The Committee.

“Listen,” I said, trying one last time. “We agreed that the reason I’m doing this is because I know how. And one of the things I know is that there is no way in hell I can go into one of these places with you two and not attract attention.”

“What’s wrong with a little attention, eh?” Nicky demanded. “Best way to find somebody is to let them find you.” And he looked really happy with himself for coming up with something that smart.

“Do you really want to be found,” I asked carefully, “by someone who’s making a lot of money killing people and might not want you to stop him from doing it a while longer?”

Nicky opened his mouth, and then closed it again.

“Although I must say,” Anna said solemnly, “one person alone is in more danger. And is very good dus… dusko… How you are calling it when you make to look like something which you are not?”

“Disguise,” I said.

“Just so. A disguise. Three people, one of them woman. Who would think of harm from such?”

“She’s right, Billy. Can’t go in without someone to watch your back, mate.”

“My back will be fine. Especially if I’m not worried about watching your backs, too.”

But he shook his head. “Sorry. I reckon it’s settled.”

“No.”

“Yes,” Anna said.

I held the door for her anyway. Probably it was the cute way she said it, with the accent and everything.

The Miami River isn’t really a river anymore. It’s been turned into a canal that cuts the city in half and then dumps into Biscayne Bay. It has tides and brackish water and it is a kind of second-class port for the smaller freighters.

But of the many things it is, the most important is that it’s a strange, self-contained sub-culture. It’s a little world of its own along the banks of the large canal. When people in Miami say “Miami River,” they usually mean this minor sprawl of marinas and dry docks and bars. It sits a few miles inland from the Atlantic Ocean and several layers of evolution away from the horrors of South Beach.

The residents of this world, known as River Rats, are the real boat people of Miami. These are not guys who take the speedboat out on Sunday after church to see if they can make it to Elliot Key in under ten minutes. They don’t spend a lot of time looking at the BOAT US catalogue.

But they are likely to know where you can buy a World War II surplus landing craft, who might have a reconditioned engine for a tanker, or who’s been making some extra cash on the run from Colombia.

They range in age from very young to very old, but most of them have that no-age look of men who have always been old but are still spry enough to bend a Buick’s bumper with their teeth.

There aren’t that many of them, not anymore, and they are at sea whenever they can arrange it. But it’s a dying lifestyle, like most of the other interesting ones, and there are fewer berths available every year as the computers take over the ships. So there are always a few dozen River Rats on shore.

Those few only have a couple of places where they hang out. What those places have in common is cheap drinks and a view of the River. My plan had been to slip into some of those places, have a few quiet beers, ask a couple of questions. My modified plan was to lead the parade of Nicky and Anna into a couple of places and try to keep us all from being pounded into the ground.

The first place we went was called The 0. From the outside it looked like it had fallen down a few years ago. Once you saw the inside you were willing to pay for the bulldozers to make sure.

As we pushed through the crooked doorway I felt like we were in a bad Western. A sudden quiet fell over the room when they saw Anna. Even the jukebox stopped and I felt twenty-three hungry eyes on us.

“Christ on a bun,” Nicky muttered, looking into the dimness where a dozen battered and scarred faces were looking back.

Then somebody dropped a glass, the music started up, and they all turned away again. They weren’t being polite; it was just that anything that wasn’t a boat could only hold their interest for so long.

I could see that Nicky and Anna were both re-thinking their attitude of fearless confrontation. But I managed to steer us to a table in the corner without either of them trying to surrender.

Anna’s eyes had gotten very big when I opened the door, and walking across the room to the table didn’t shrink them at all. Now she sat with her hands clasped on the table in front of her, trying not to see too much.

“Are you sure this is still America?” she whispered to me. “Never have I seen such a place.”

“I have,” Nicky muttered. “Ever see 
Star Wars
?”

“Just don’t order a wine spritzer,” I said. “Or milk.”

“Is beer all right,” Nicky asked, “or do I need to eat a broken glass?”

We sat quietly for a while, nursing our drinks. I tried to size up the River Rats in the room without being too obvious, and finally narrowed it down to one.

The guy I picked had been sitting over at the far end of the bar. He looked to be older than most of the others, and everybody who came in nodded to him. Every now and then somebody would go over to him and lean their head in close, talk for a minute, and then walk away.

He was thin and looked to be over six feet tall, though it was hard to be sure with the way he had folded himself onto his stool. He had a worn, deeply tanned face, colorless hair, and wore clothes that looked like they were nice once, but he’d worn them to overhaul the engines one time too many.

In a community like the River, where people come and go, there are usually a couple of people who are the bulletin boards. They stay put and keep track of things. My guy looked like the man who knew everything that was going on and everybody who was doing it.

I waited until he was alone, with only about a half inch left in his glass, and pushed my chair back. “Just stay here and keep quiet,” I told Nicky and Anna. They nodded.

I walked over to him at the end of the bar. “Buy you a drink?”

He looked up at me. He didn’t look friendly, but he didn’t look hostile, either. He was just waiting. If there was a password, I hadn’t said it yet.

“Name’s Billy,” I said. I jerked my head back at my table. “Some friends are looking for a boat.”

He nodded.

“Thought you might know where they can find one,” I said.

“I’ll take a whiskey and water,” he told me.

I called the bartender over and got him his drink. He didn’t say another word until I had paid and the new glass was in front of him. Then, he picked up the last of the old drink and tossed it down.

“My name is Bud,” he said. “Thanks for the drink.”

He didn’t put his hand out, so I didn’t either. “Bud, I got two people over there looking for a small freighter to hire.”

“Uh-huh,” he said.

He watched me without making any sign that he knew what I wanted or why I was asking him.

“It would be pretty good money,” I said.

“That a fact?” he said.

“I wondered if you knew anybody might be interested.”

He still didn’t show any emotion beyond barely polite interest. Now he raised one eyebrow, looking at me out of distant blue eyes that weren’t saying anything. “Everybody’s interested in pretty good money,” he said.

“Well, that guy over there,” I nodded at Nicky and tried out the story we’d agreed on, “he’s a South African. He’s looking for a way to get his money out of the country. And, uh—anyway there’s a lot of it.”

“And he figured that the best way to do that was by investing in an independent maritime cargo hauler,” Bud said, eyebrow still up in the air.

“Well, actually I think he’s got a pretty specific cargo in mind.”

“Oh, uh-huh,” he said. “Thinking of making the Colombia run, is he?”

“Something like that,” I said.

He blinked at me for a minute. Then he gave his head a half-shake, and he gave me a half smile. It reminded me of an alligator looking at something tender a few minutes after he’s already eaten his fill.

“Sonny boy, you’re so full of crap it’s spilling out your mouth,” he said, turning away from me and back to the bar. He lifted his glass over his shoulder in a small toast. “Thanks for the drink.”

Strike One. “Listen, Bud—”

“I am listening,” he said without turning around. “I appreciate creativity, Billy, and I know you’re not going to let me down.”

“We’re not cops,” I said.

He turned and gave me another half smile. “Oh, I’m sure of that. You by yourself might be, but no cop in the world would walk into a joint like this dragging along beauty and the beast over there.” He nodded towards Anna and Nicky. “So like I say, I’m really looking forward to hearing your story. As long as we both admit it’s a story and don’t get hung up trying to pretend that either one of us believes you even for a Detroit minute.”

There comes a time in the life of any lie when the paint peels off and you either tell the truth or make up a brand new lie and start all over. Bud was telling me that this lie was there.

“All right, Bud,” I said. “But sometimes the truth sounds pretty stupid.”

He smiled again, real amusement this time. “That’s how we know it’s the truth,” he said.

I had to decide how much to tell him, and decide right now. Part of being a cop is reading people. I’d always been good at it when I wore the badge.

So while I knew Bud might have a stake in either saying nothing or, worse, letting somebody know we were asking questions, I didn’t think he would. He looked hard as nails, sure, but he also looked straight.

I decided to go with my gut.

“What do you know about the Black Freighter?” I said.

A couple of things ran across Bud’s face. He clamped down on them pretty fast, but before he did I saw the first expression on his face that he hadn’t put there on purpose. It was so fast it was hard to read, but I caught it and it told me I was right. He knew, and he didn’t like it.

“What do you want with 
that
?” he said in a suddenly flat voice.

“We want to stop it,” I said.

He cocked his head a quarter of an inch to one side. “You said you weren’t cops.”

“That’s right.”

He moved his lips in and out and squinted. “Reporters?”

“Nope.”

He looked at me for a long moment, flicked his eyes over to Anna and Nicky, then looked at me again. He shook his head and picked up his glass. “I don’t get it,” he said finally, taking a long pull on his drink.

“I’m not sure I do, either,” I said. “We’re just trying to find out enough to give somebody a starting place on digging in and stopping it.”

He looked at me with complete disbelief. “Concerned citizens?”

“Yeah, that’s right. Sorry it sounds like that.”

He drained his glass and put it down on the bar. Somebody had gouged a chunk out of the bar there and the tumbler stuck in the pothole, tilted at a crazy angle. “I’ll take another drink,” Bud said.

I got him his drink. But he didn’t take a sip from it, just stared at the ice cubes. “I came here in 1959,” he finally said. “You probably weren’t even born.”

“Probably not.”

He jerked his head at the huge dinosaur of a jukebox over in the corner. “There was Pat Boone and The Crewcuts on that thing first time I came in here. Most of the guys in here were veterans, got used to the sea during the war. Just looking to stay on the water, do a job, make a few bucks.”

Now he took a drink, draining off about half of his whiskey and water. “Started to change around 1965. New kind of cash cargo coming in.”

“Dope.”

“Dope,” he agreed. “Changed everything.” He sighed heavily and finished the drink, letting the glass hang from his hand, tilted so that one ice cube hung just inside the rim. “Changed… Everything,” he repeated, drawing out the vowels. “Used to be a pretty damn good life. Not curing cancer, maybe, but you could feel good about what you did. And then drugs started creeping in, until you never knew when you might have some stuck in your hold, hidden in something else. You accept it, you go along because either you can’t be sure or hell, everybody else is doing it, making that amazing money, why not. And once you’ve gone one step down that road, there’s no going back.”