Surface Tension (3 page)

I tossed the
Top Ten
’s bowline onto
Gorda
’s foredeck and pulled myself up onto the tug. Abaco licked my face once as I came aboard, and then she stood back, out of the way. After untying the line that secured us to the big yacht’s stern, I tossed that line into the water. I wasn’t going to have to worry about
Top Ten
’s props getting tangled on the line; her engines were out of commission.

I walked the line that was tied to
Top Ten
’s bow back to the stern of
Gorda
and tied it to the tow bit. From the wheelhouse, I brought the tug around in a half circle to the seaward side of the
Top Ten
’s bow, careful not to foul the towline on my own prop. If the
Top Ten
didn’t touch bottom before I swung the bow around, she must have been missing by just inches. As we pounded our way offshore, away from the breakers, I noticed Perry circling in
Little Bitt
, probably praying my towline would bust. Then I heard the siren and saw the blue flashing lights of the Fort Lauderdale Marine Police Unit and, behind them, the Coast Guard cutter.

I smiled to myself. A little late, boys.

III

“You’re the one who found her.”

I wasn’t sure whether he was asking me or telling me, or even if he meant the girl or the boat. “Yes.” I stuck out my hand. “Seychelle Sullivan.”

He looked at my hand for a moment as though he were being offered a dead fish. Then he reached out and shook it in one brisk stroke.

“Detective Victor Collazo, Fort Lauderdale Police.” Long black hairs curled out from the cuffs of his white shirt, and though it was only midday, his face was already darkened by coarse black stubble. “Tell me about it,” he said.

“When I got there, the boat was unmanned and adrift. No captain, no helmsman, nobody. Nobody alive, at least. The vessel just missed going on the beach by minutes, but then I got a line on her and towed her in.”

“You just happened by.”

“No. I heard the mayday call on the radio. Towing is what I do.” I handed him a business card from my shoulder bag. “Sullivan Towing and Salvage. I’ve always got the radio on.”

We were sitting on the bright tropical-print sofa in the
Top Ten
’s main salon. With no generators and no air, the atmosphere in the boat was like an overheated engine room. He glanced at my card and dropped it in his coat pocket.

“And the victim,” he said.

“I didn’t touch a thing.” I nodded toward the upper deck. “That’s how she was when I found her.”

The Coasties had swarmed aboard as soon as
Gorda
nudged the
Top Ten
alongside the Port Everglades Coast Guard dock. Once I’d tied up the tug, I went back to tell them my side of the story, and they ushered me aboard, telling me to wait. Not too much later, the cops showed up, some in uniforms, others in plain clothes. There was a regular parade heading up and down from the bridge deck carrying suitcases, flash cameras, even video cameras. They all seemed to ignore me. Finally, I got up and asked a uniformed policewoman what they wanted me to do. She, too, told me to sit and wait. At that point, the last thing I wanted was to sit there with nothing to do, allowing my mind to replay the dead-girl slide show in my brain. Over and over, I watched myself approach the bridge, spot the hand, and then slowly, as I come around the corner, see the knife and the blood.

Only this time, I was suddenly on a beach, and there was no blood. The sun was so bright, it leached the color out of everything, and there was the overpowering coconut-sweet smell of suntan lotion. I heard hushed voices as I pushed my way through the crowd, but I couldn’t make out what they were saying. The only word I could hear was the last word I’d said to my mother. I was eleven years old again when I reached down and turned her head, brushing the sea grass from pale sandy skin; I knew that face.

Shaking my head as though to pry loose the memories, I refocused my eyes and my brain on the scene at hand. What was taking so long? What were they doing to find Neal? Were they thoroughly searching the boat? The sea? They surely wouldn’t know where to look. They didn’t know him like I did.

I remembered the book then, Bowditch’s
Practical Navigator
, and those days when we were down in the Keys aboard his little wooden sailboat, and he was teaching me celestial navigation. He was a lousy teacher. He carried it all around inside his head, and he didn’t know how to share it. He recommended I bring the Bowditch along and read it. I tried, but I was always getting lost, because the teacher was more interested in getting his student off the subject (and on to studying human anatomy) than in teaching navigation. Now, maybe that man I once loved was hurt and lost, and I was stuck in that hot salon, waiting.

I’d been sitting there trying hard to turn off the memories for over an hour when Collazo finally showed up. I was feeling irritable, hot, and sweaty. But the few drops on my upper lip were nothing compared to the sweat on that cop. Within minutes he was pressing a linen handkerchief to his face and neck, trying to mop up the rivulets of sweat, but no sooner had he wiped his face and neck dry than more droplets popped out of his skin. The man was an honest-to-God sweat machine. Immaculately dressed, he had taken off his jacket when he first sat down, revealing his perfectly pressed, custom-fitted shirt, but he never loosened his tie. Even so, above his collar I could see the tufts of hair peeking out. I figured he had to be a regular gorilla underneath all his clothes. Maybe, since some women don’t react too well to hairy guys, he tried to keep himself covered, no matter how miserable he might be.

“Did you recognize the victim?”

“No.”

“The captain wasn’t aboard when you arrived.”

His voice was a monotone, unaccented and almost without inflection, and he had this weird way of asking questions by making statements and then waiting for me to agree or disagree.

“No, I didn’t see him, and I never heard him on the radio on my way out there. Does anybody know if Neal was even aboard?”

Collazo gazed up at one of the uniformed officers searching the boat. He watched the man as he rifled through the drawer of CDs under the stereo system. Then he turned back to me, sizing me up. Given my height, I was used to it. I could tell he was trying to guess how tall I was. I’d been five foot ten ever since junior high school, and generally I could classify men into two categories: those who found it intimidating and those who didn’t. I figured Collazo fell in the latter category.

“You knew Neal Garrett.”

The way he said it, it sounded almost like an accusation.

“In my business, I know most of the professional captains.”

“You heard the mayday call.”

We’d been over this part already. It seemed like a detective should be better at asking questions and getting the story straight. I knew I didn’t want to stay in that heat any longer than necessary, so I told him the story exactly as it had happened. He nodded as I spoke, and sometimes wrote in a little notebook he had. His handwriting was small, neat, and precise. When I got to the part about the girl, he stopped writing and our eyes met. I explained about the knife, and I saw her all over again reflected in the detective’s dark eyes. Then when I’d finished, he had me go over several parts and repeat them.

“You started out there on your tugboat after the girl started calling for help.”

“That’s right.”

“And someone saw you leave your dock.”

“No, nobody was around. I tried to find my mechanic, BJ. Moana, to help me out, but I couldn’t locate him. Time was running out. The Seventeenth Street Bridge tender might remember me going through, though.”

He wrote in his book.

“You knew the captain”—he glanced down at his book—“Neal Garrett.”

I sighed. There probably wasn’t any way to avoid talking about it. He’d find out soon enough if he asked around.

When Neal and I had finally agreed that it was time for him to move his wet suits, weight belts, dive tanks, and precious few clothes out of my cottage, we had both grown tired of the yelling. It seemed we were arguing more often than not, and he accused me of ruining our relationship by “asking too many questions.” I’d watched him undergo a transformation in two years from a shaggy-haired boat bum (a refugee from a long stint as a Navy Seal) who wanted nothing more than to sail naked, dive for conch and lobster and make love under the forepeak hatch of his lovely H-28,
Wind Dancer
, to a driven, gold-epaulettes-type captain of a boat right out of
Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous
. He began to forget that the boat he was driving wasn’t really his. He wanted me to give up my boat and the business I’d inherited from my dad so I could become his first mate and stewardess. We’d had some great times together, especially in bed, and I admit I was tempted briefly—long nights in that queen-size bed in the
Top Ten
’s master stateroom and no more struggling to pay bills. But Neal brought that same passion to our arguments, and there was no way I was ready to take orders from him. I knew we were finished the night his rage took over; he was totally out of control, screaming at me and cursing, and he lifted his arm, threatening to hit me. I stood up to him, staring silently into the eyes I no longer recognized, fighting hard inside not to let him see just how much those eyes frightened me. By the time he moved out, I didn’t think his leaving would matter much to me anymore. But two days later I was balled up in a soggy robe, clutching a bottle of Mount Gay, burying myself in the sofa behind closed drapes.

“Neal and I lived together for a bit over a year. He moved out several months ago. We hadn’t seen much of each other lately.”

He wrote in his book. Then he watched me expectantly.

I tried hard not to volunteer anything more, but the silence was just so empty. “I heard he had a new girlfriend.” I pointed overhead with my index finger. “That may be her.”

“And you know who owns the vessel, then,” he said.

“Not really. I used to know who the old owner was, but the boat was sold last summer. Neal said it was some corporation that bought it. It used to belong to the guy that owns those topless clubs, you know, the ones with the Top Ten Girls. That’s how the boat got its name.”

He looked up at me. “Benjamin Crystal.”

“Yeah, that guy.”

“You know him.”

“Not really. I know of him. You’d just about have to be living in a hut out in the Everglades to not hear about him. He’s always on TV or in the newspapers in some expos
é
about this poor guy from the Dominican Republic who struck it rich building his strip joints. Anyway, he sold the boat. It was right after that that he got arrested.”

Whenever I get the feeling that someone doesn’t believe me, I start feeling guilty even though I know I’m telling the truth. I kept seeing that flash of red fingernail and those porcelain-smooth buttocks. I glanced at Collazo, certain I must have looked guilty as hell.

“You seem to know a great deal about Crystal.”

“Neal talked about him. It was like he was fascinated with his boss.”

Then he asked me again if I knew where Neal might be.

“I can guarantee you Neal would never have let that girl take the boat out by herself. I doubt she even could. He had to have been on board. Now, maybe somebody held a gun to his head and made him do something he didn’t want to do, maybe there was another boat involved, maybe he went overboard, I don’t know. None of it makes any sense at this point.”

I wasn’t sure anymore what to call the feelings I had for Neal. But the thought of his ending up like the girl on the bridge made my throat start closing involuntarily.

“I don’t know where he is now,” I said, “but you could check that he was aboard the boat this morning. Just call over to Pier 66 and ask some of the guys around there.”

Collazo nodded at a plainclothes policewoman who had been standing nearby throughout most of the questioning. She disappeared through the side door of the main salon.

Collazo stood. “Come with me.”

We climbed up the interior stairs leading to the bridge. I’d been up those stairs dozens of times, but they seemed shorter this time—we got there too fast. There were two men working the crime scene, one examining bullet holes, the other doing something to the bloodstains on the teak doorframe. The body was still there, but covered.

“Look around, Miss Sullivan. You know boats. Everything here looks normal to you, as it should on this ship.”
 

The last time I’d been up here, a few hours earlier it had been as though I had tunnel vision, noticing little other than a dead woman and a gun. I forced myself to ignore both those now, and, starting from the port side, I scanned the bridge, looking for something out of place. From the high-tech electronics instrument panel that looked more like it belonged in a jet than a boat to the small charting and plotting area and over to the helm, everything looked as it should to me.

“Other than a dead body and a bullet hole, it looks pretty normal to me.” I tried smiling at Collazo, but he didn’t smile back.

I pointed to the copy of Bowditch’s
Practical Navigator
. “That book, it belongs to me. I loaned it to Neal. Don’t suppose I could take it back, could I?”

“It’s evidence now, miss. But as soon as we’re finished, I’ll see to it you get it back.”

Then he thanked me for my time and took down my address and phone number.

“Go to the station downtown, and they will take your formal statement,” he said, standing and heading toward the door. I followed after him. I couldn’t wait to get out into the fresh air.

Collazo accompanied me to the top of the gangway. We met the policewoman coming up. She looked questioningly at me, and he nodded.

“The dockmaster at Pier 66”—she looked down at her notebook—“Bill Heller, helped them get the boat out when they left the slip at approximately seven-thirty A.M. He says Garrett was definitely aboard when they left the dock, but it was just the two of them, Garrett and the girl.”