Under Cover of Daylight (19 page)

She watched as the boat slid up nearby. Some mother ship. To Sarah the term had always implied something formidable. This was just ten feet longer than the
Heart Pounder,
but with lots more beam and deep in the water. Usually with a crew of three. One would stay at the wheel while the other two swung down a cargo net with the bales. Two netfuls was her load. Fifty bales. And then one of them would come aboard sliding the bales around, settling most of them inside the cabin and the rest in ice chests out in the cockpit.

If Jorge were aboard, there would be some fast conversation; otherwise, it was just hurried work and move along, a quick handing over of gym bag as the second netful was being lowered. Sarah stood, holding on to the starboard rail, watching the shadowy men appear on the shrimper.

She was alert to any slight variation of pattern. No way she was going to cooperate with that, nothing outside the routine, say, a voice she didn’t recognize, a guy trying to board her before the first net load was lowered. The
Heart Pounder
was idling, ready to fly, but she’d still have to let go of the ropes they would throw over to tie her alongside. That would be the critical moment, the moment of exposure if she had to cast off to escape. She wished she knew some slipknot she could use to tie their lines to her cleats.

The captain of the shrimper reversed his engines, sidling up to her starboard. A dark figure appeared on the mother ship’s port side. He cast her a line. She caught it, but an end lashed her in the eye.

Blinking back the tears, she tied the line to her stern cleat. She watched the shadowy man on the shrimper as she made her way to the bow. He tossed her the other line, and she made it fast as well. She looped it around the cleat and drew it tight, not cheating on the knot, connected now to this other ship, no matter what. No way to make a run for it. It had been silly ever to consider there was a way out of this, short of not coming. Silly to think the pistol meant anything to people determined to murder her.

She stood and turned back down the gunwale to the cockpit, hanging on to the chrome railing. Not even looking now. Absolutely aware of the boat, her peripheral vision and hearing tuned way, way up, but still not looking over there. All very normal, all very dignified. She tried to imagine Kate in her last moment, what stance she must have taken, what anxiety she had permitted herself when she saw what was coming.

As Sarah stepped back down into the cockpit, the screech of metal broke her balance. She stumbled back against the cabin door. Fumbled for the pistol in her waistband. Had a moment of freeze-frame terror as she accidentally cocked the hammer. She pulled the pistol free and stepped back into the cabin.

The crane groaned, cable screaming, as the net lowered over the open cockpit. A man was riding down with the cargo. That was new. She let her finger curl inside the trigger guard.

Sarah drew deeper into the cockpit, raising the Colt, half aiming it, half holding back in case this was just a small variation on standard procedure, something she hadn’t seen, but still normal.

“Captain?” Man’s voice, Latin undercurrent.

“I’m here.”

“Who is it there?” Now
he
was on guard. It took so little to pull this thing way off course, into gunfire. The trust, even on a good night, was papery.

“Sarah. It’s Sarah.”

“Good evening, counselor.” It was Jorge. Jorge riding down on the screeching cable.

But she was still nervous. Things change, Sarah was thinking. Jorge can change. From the warm, grateful man, courteous, sometimes even courtly, to something else. Sarah had been tricked so often by other Jorges, guys who at the jailhouse were docile, fawning, but who could turn sinister and bitter, lashing out at her without warning. After all, Jorge was succeeding in a business filled with paranoids carrying automatic weapons. It was foolish to be lulled by a warm voice.

“You are alone tonight?”

“Yes,” Sarah said, still from the doorway. The revolver now out of his line of sight.

“Your friend? She is ill?” Jorge advanced slowly toward her, the netful of shiny black bales swaying behind him.

“No,” said Sarah. “She was murdered.” Clobber him with it, see if he flinches.

He stopped. He glanced quickly back at the shrimper. She could see him clearly now, from the shaded lights of the shrimper. Wary, a tightening of his stance.

“Murdered,” he said. Weighing it, what it meant for him.

One of the others called harshly in Spanish from the shrimper, and Jorge turned and called back.

“There are boats in the area,” Jorge told her. “We have been watching them all night.”

“Following you?”

“Perhaps,” he said.

“I need to know,” said Sarah. “Have things fallen apart? Am I in trouble?”

“I hear of nothing,” he said.

“Would you know, for certain, if someone did not want you doing business with me?”

“When was the woman killed?”

“Monday. Monday night.”

“By this time I would know. No,” he said, “I can tell you, no one cares about such a small quantity of marijuana. It could be of no importance to anyone.”

Sarah felt her grip on the pistol relax, muscles hurting now from the pressure.

“Your friend was murdered for some other purpose,” he said. “This amount. It is nothing to anyone.” He turned and patted the net. “Now, we must work. There are boats tonight.”

Sarah said, “One more load, Jorge. That’s all I need. Wednesday night, this time. Right? The thirtieth?”

“
Sí,
and as much as you want, counselor. We are having a very good harvest. You want more, there is more for you.”

Sarah actually caught a fish. She didn’t know what to do with it, how even to get it off her hook. It was a pretty one, blue stripes running down its yellow body. In the early Saturday morning sunlight. It had fought hard as she reeled it in, turning on its side and thrashing. She had grimaced during the whole ordeal, and now that it was on board, she felt ashamed.

She knew she was only doing this for some invisible audience, which probably was not out there at all. Someone beyond the horizon who had her in his binoculars, someone who knew from her grimace that she was no fisherman.

She had put on Kate’s khaki jacket and her long-billed cap, and as the sun rose, she had located Kate’s sunglasses. Now she sat with this fish on her lap, looking out at the calm sea through Kate’s eyes, inside her clothes. Eighty degrees already, but she was chilled. A shiver from the audacity of it, sitting out there in the rising light, loaded with enough marijuana to stone Miami for a month.

Her catch was in the fish box now, bleeding, panting. It fluttered, and Sarah squirmed in her seat. She rebaited the hook, choosing a shrimp that was already dead, and cast it out toward the dark reef. The line sailed out in a nice arc, and she closed the bail, picturing the bait sinking slowly into that bright world of fish and coral, doing it all as Kate had trained her. All for show, hoping her hoax would not require another fish to be sacrificed.

A boat had been nosing around for fifteen minutes, just far enough away so she could not make out more than its color. Red. Coast Guard was gray and blue, so it didn’t arouse more than mild concern. But she watched it. Turning east, coming toward her, then back out, a turn south and then back north. She thought it might be trolling or some other type of fishing. All that was beyond her.

The boat stayed put for a while, due east, the sun rising just behind it, making it impossible for her to study it. She reeled in one of the lines. For a fast getaway. Her shrimp was gone. She set the rod in the rocket launcher behind the fighting chair and then reeled the other line in almost to the edge of the boat. She permitted herself a glance to the east. The crimson boat wasn’t there.

She could smell the dope. The sweet herb was in the air. Like an Italian kitchen at suppertime. Surely the Drug Enforcement K-9 Corps back on shore were howling in their pens, raising their heads, trying to dig under their fences. Fifty bales wrapped in all that plastic, inside the Styrofoam ice chests, and still its strong, dizzy scent was everywhere.

She sat back in the chair and checked the time. Seven-thirty. The Sabrosa Seafood truck would arrive at Kate’s at eleven. Kate had always liked to arrive just before eleven so there was no gap between docking and unloading. Just part of her neatness. Boat captains had to be neat. Neat was survival. When the madness of marlin broke aboard, everything had to be orderly, in place.

The boat was beside the
Heart Pounder
only seconds after she’d heard it approaching. Its huge wake rocked her, and she saw one of the big ice chests full of dope shifting, readying for a long slide somewhere.

It was one of those ocean racers, possibly a Cigarette, one of those flashy, frivolous boats the guys in her office were always ogling as they roared past a bayside lunch restaurant. It was the boat of choice for cocaine smugglers and the Bimini-for-brunch crowd. That group of adolescents whose afternoon fun was running down porpoises out in the Stream, Bahamas and back to Miami for supper.

This one was red, and there were two of them on board. A short one in a tan uniform and a big one with a flesh-colored eye patch wearing the same uniform. They just stood there, staring at her as their bow banged her stern. She felt her pulse soar. Her chest tightened. They were taking too long, she thought. They seemed uncertain.

“Prepare to be boarded,” the short one called.

“No way,” she called back without thinking.

He opened his wallet and flashed a silvery card. “DEA, vice president’s task force.”

“I’m fishing,” she said. She knew it was lame, but here she was, caught between roles. Which Sarah was she? “You have any kind of warrant?” There, that was better.

“We don’t use warrants.” He withdrew a large automatic from beneath his control console.

“You’re not coming aboard my vessel without some probable cause.” She was up now, inching back toward the cabin, the consolation of the Colt.

“We are coming aboard.” But he didn’t move. The big one with the eye patch was whispering to him. Maybe they were new at this, unsure, hadn’t met such resistance before. She might be still within some rights she didn’t know about. She wasn’t even sure of the rules of boarding at sea anyway. But bluffing was the first skill of jurisprudence.

“I’m calling the Coast Guard to see if there are DEA in the area.” Sarah moved into the cabin, keeping a watch on them. Raising the VHS microphone up so they could see her. Not turning it on. Waiting. Talking, mumbling. Waiting. Watching these two all the while. Mouthing some more into the microphone. Saying finally, “Over and out.” It rang false as she spoke the words.

“There are no agents in the area,” she called to these two. “I am within my legal rights to prevent you from boarding.”

The short one, dark, curly hair, mirrored glasses, edged the racing boat closer to the
Heart Pounder,
craning forward, peering at Sarah. He said something over his shoulder to the fat one. The fat one braced himself against the rear seat. The wake it left splashed onto Sarah’s rear deck, awoke her fish, one last thrash against the walls of the fish box, drowning in air.

Sarah sat down in the fighting chair, watching them go. Their boat’s name, in gold script,
Perfect Execution.

“You dumb shit.” Irv pinched Milburn’s tit and twisted hard, steering the Scarab with his left hand for a moment.

Milburn said, “I thought it was a goddamn ghost.”

“I told you,” said Irv. “You think when I shoot somebody, she gets up and goes fishing a week later.”

“It was the boat, man. The same fucking boat. And it was a lady, looked just like the other.”

“Man, you need an IQ transplant.”

They were cruising at forty knots. Skimming the flat seas, cutting close to boats fishing the reef. Getting some mean looks, some up-yours fingers. Past the marker light where they had abandoned those nurses from Michigan.

“Well, it looked like her. Same clothes, same height.”

“But about seventy-five years younger.”

“Man, I’m still freaked.”

“That old lady’s history. We got us a date with an heiress. Let’s get there.” Irv mashed the throttle lever, trying to squeeze an extra knot out of those big Mercs.

T
HORN ATE BREAKFAST
at the same diner, had the same waitress, a woman Kate’s age with a tall black confection of hair. He ordered three soft-boiled eggs and grits and a large coffee. The woman smiled at him but didn’t seem to remember him.

He watched the diner fill up with Saturday locals. A couple of hippies still hanging in there in buckskin vests and granny glasses. Two tables of scruffy, red-eyed construction workers on their way to pick up some overtime. And a body builder in bright cologne.

After eating, he used the bathroom in the diner and headed back to the bash-mobile. It was a cloudy day, something ugly forming out over Cuba. Thorn took off his Last Resort T-shirt and slipped into the wrinkled Bash-a-Bug shirt. It was the same blinding pink as the car. On the back of it was a print of a cockroach, a booted foot coming down onto it.

He looked at his face in the rearview mirror, rubbed a few grains from the corners of his eyes. The face he saw there wasn’t his own. The guy in the mirror seemed to know what the hell he was up to.

There were two uniformed two-hundred-pounders at the front gate of Sandpiper Bay Club. They were trying to perfect their smiles as Thorn pulled up to the gate.

One with a clipboard came over to the car. Thorn reached up and thumped the box on the ceiling, and the ears began to wag.

“Help you?” the guard said at the window, but not leaning down, taking a peek at the ears.

“Grayson wanted me to do a walk-through inspection.”

The man stepped back, checked his clipboard. Turned and spoke to his partner. His partner checked another clipboard inside the guardhouse and shook his head at the first guard.

A silver Mercedes passed through the adjacent gate. The old man driving it took a second look at the VW, giving Thorn the evil eye.