09-Twelve Mile Limit (25 page)

I did, then added, “And what about talking to some of those refugees? If they saw three people adrift, they have no reason not to tell me about it.”

“You’re out of luck, there. I happen to know the whole group was transported to the Immigration and Naturalization Service facility in Miami. The State Department has the process so streamlined that it takes less than a couple of weeks—unless the refugees happen to be Cuban, and there’s a question of political asylum. They get fingerprinted, photographed, then a quick physical. Couple days later, once the State Department has gotten the okay from the home country, they’re herded onto a military transport and shipped back to where they came from. In this case, it was Colombia. Probably flew them into Bogotá.”

“That’s what I was afraid of.”

Dorsey told me he’d check the computers and give me a call in an hour or two.

I stayed busy in my lab assembling the digitized video camera system. My old stilt house is constructed of heart pine, solid as a small ship, built by the long-defunct Punta Gorda Fish Company back around 1920—many hurricanes ago. I used a rechargeable drill to fix the bracket to a wooden beam in the corner of the room. As the screws burrowed into the beam, they augured yellow wood to the surface, releasing pine resin nearly a century old. That pleasant pine smell mixed with the ozone odor of the lab.

When the bracket was solid, I threaded the camera onto the male base, then toyed with it until the view through the lens, at its widest angle, included the crab tanks, the door to the lab, and some of the aquaria along the eastern wall.

I had to use an extension cord to plug in the 12-volt converter. Finally, I touched the camera’s on switch, allowing the computerized timer mode to take control.

Nothing or no one could come through the door, approach the crab tanks, and avoid the lens of that camera.

I was standing there, admiring my handiwork when the telephone rang. Commander Dorsey had some interesting—and troubling—information.

“Turns out your intel about the Nan-Shan may be right,” he began, then laughed. “So why am I not surprised?”

He went on to tell me that the vessel had been searched by the Coast Guard twice in the last six years, suspected of carrying drugs, and once by agents from the INS because the owner was suspected of being involved in the people-smuggling trade. No arrests were made.

“Internationally, people smuggling gets bigger and bigger every year. Big financial return with a minimum of risk. That’s not my area of expertise, but I’ve got a State Department briefing paper on it. I can send you a copy if you want.”

I told Dorsey I would be very interested in reading the report, then made notes as he told me that the owner of the Nan-Shan was a man named Dexter Ray Money of Sarasota County. The EPIC had him flagged as a career criminal who’d been arrested and charged with crimes that, over a span of two decades, included grand theft, drug trafficking, extortion, assault and battery, and manslaughter.

“Money got off on everything but the drug-trafficking charge. He spent seven years in Raiford for that, but he’s been out for more than ten years. He’s a suspect in three murders, including the manslaughter charge, so I don’t think running illegals would bother him much at all. He owns three trawler boats, all out of Cortez. The Nellie, the Rebel Witch, and the Nan-Shan. A very bad man.”

I said, “Do they have an address listed for him?”

“Whoa, whoa, wait a minute, pal. Do yourself a favor. Do my conscience a favor. Please don’t go looking for Mr. Dexter Ray Money. I don’t know him, but I know his type. The EPIC has him listed as armed and extremely dangerous, approach with caution—those are the exact words from the data bank. You want to talk to him, do it over the phone.”

I kept my tone light. “Give him a call—yeah. Jesus, murder, extortion, plus he’s smart enough to keep getting off. After what I’ve just heard, that sounds like good advice.”

“Doc, how reliable is your information? You tell me the source, let me look into it. If we find probable cause, we’ll go talk to Mr. Money.”

I answered, “I wish I could. I really do.” And meant it.

I asked Dorsey one last question before signing off. In his opinion, if Janet, Grace, and Michael had been picked up by a vessel smuggling illegal aliens, why hadn’t we heard from them? “Give me some possible scenarios,” I said.

“I can think of two right off the top of my head, neither one very pleasant. A bad actor like Money? He kills the man and keeps the women. He keeps them to use for himself, then probably kills them both when he’s done. Or decides to make a profit on them. The white slave trade is no joke. Drug smuggling gets all the press, but the flesh trade is a multibillion-dollar business. You read the report I’ll send you. There’s big money in selling women in places like Brunei, North Africa. Hell, Amnesty International just issued a paper criticizing Israel because people’re kidnapping women from outside the country, smuggling them in, and selling them over there.”

He added, “Either way, the guy’s dead. If someone picked them up—Michael Sanford?—he’d be the first to go.”

When I hung up the phone, I immediately dialed information and asked for the number of Dexter Money, Cortez, Florida. I wasn’t exactly sure how I was going to work it, but the first thing I had to do was establish the man’s whereabouts. How I would contact him, I’d decide later.

I was relieved when the automated voice responded with the ten-digit number.

Caller ID has mitigated some of our modern problems, and it has created others. I wrote the number on a sheet of paper and walked to shore, then up the shell road to the Hess convenience store next to the old Sanibel Police Station. There’s a pay phone there. I went inside, exchanged dollar bills for coins, then dialed the number.

I listened to it ring several times before a girl’s voice, in a rush, said what sounded like, “Obie, you ain’t got no use to keep callin’ here, pesterin’ me, and if you doan stop I’m gonna set daddy loose on your ass, boy!” A harsh, Dixie-girl accent, very nasal, but with an adolescent, hormonal rasp.

Playing it as I went along, I answered, “’Scuse me, miss, but this ain’t Obie. I’m callin’ for Dexter Money.”

She made a deprecating noise of chagrin. “Aw, I’m sorry, mister. That damn Oberlin Carter, he been calling and calling, just won’t take no for an answer, so that’s who I … well, that don’t mean nothing to you. You want my daddy, right?”

“If your daddy is Dexter Money, yes, miss, I’d like to speak with him.”

“Does it have somethin’ to do with pit bulls?” For some reason I got the impression she was asking me two questions, not one. Respond with the correct password or signal phrase and I’d be recognized as part of the inner sanctum.

I gave it a try. “I’m a big fan of that particular breed, yes I am, miss.”

Wrong answer. In a flat voice, she said, “He’s down working on one of the boats right now, something about one of the flopper-stoppers busted. So I can tell him to give you a call when he gets back to the house.”

“That’s okay, dear. I got a few things to do, I’ll try later.”

“Maybe he’ll be here later, maybe he won’t. You want to talk to my daddy or don’t you?” When I didn’t answer immediately, some of the aggressiveness returned. “I don’t believe you told me what your name is, mister.”

“It’s not important. I can call back. What you think, maybe an hour or two?”

Families that live outside the law are naturally and pointedly suspicious. The girl said, “I think you best give me your name and number, and let Daddy decide who calls who.”

As if I hadn’t heard her clearly, I said, “Okay, about two hours then,” and hung up.

I’d gotten only a few steps away when the pay phone began to ring. Yep, Money had caller ID.

There was no reason to put the father or daughter on guard, so I answered the phone and listened to the girl say, “Mister, you best tell me who the hell you are and what it is you want.”

I said, “Oh, I’m sorry, miss! No need to get upset. My company gives me a list of potential clients, and I’m down here on Sanibel, gettin’ ready to swing north. Your daddy’s name’s on the printout sheet they give me. That’s all.”

“Oh, really? What kind’a business you in?”

I tried to add a solemn note to my voice when I said, “I sell full memorial packages, miss. From the funeral to a final resting place, and on easy monthly payments. None of us are too young to plan ahead and spare our loved ones the pain of dealing with financial details during their time of grief.”

The girl thought that was hilarious. “Mister, you walk onto our property and say that to Daddy, he put you in a hole. Your final resting place be right here!”

I was relieved when she hung up.

I checked my watch: 2:15 on a Friday afternoon. I looked overhead: The sky was a December blue with a few cumulus clouds suspended in isolated plateaus over the mangroves, motionless. No wind. I’d already listened to the VHF weather that morning, the maddening computer voice predicting winds to ten knots, seas calm. It’s difficult to imagine what kind of idiotic agency would employ an indistinguishable computerized voice to communicate information so valuable.

In my six-cylinder Chevy pickup, it would probably take me two and a half hours to drive the eighty miles to Cortez. In my new twenty-one-foot Maverick flats boat, though, I could chop a lot of miles and half an hour off the time, and the trip would be a hell of a lot more enjoyable.

Another consideration was that, if need be, I could more easily escape unnoticed in a boat, and there was less chance of being intercepted by law enforcement. No way of telling how Money would react to my questions or what I’d have to do to get information.

At the marina, I topped off the fifty-gallon fuel tank and the oil reservoir, then loaded on block ice, beer, and liter bottles of water. In the big hatch beneath the swivel seats, I’d already stowed extra clothes, a tent, minimal camping gear, and several MREs—the military acronym for meals ready to eat—in their rubberized, brown bags.

At just after 3 P.M., I turned my skiff toward Pine Island Sound, the massive 225-horsepower Yamaha rumbling like a Harley Davidson roadster, and touched the throttle forward. There was a rocket sled sense of acceleration as the skiff reared, lifted, and then flattened itself on plane, rising slightly in the water, gaining buoyancy and speed as I trimmed the engine upward. At nearly fifty miles an hour, the blue horizon rushed toward me, and I left the safety of Dinkin’s Bay rolling in my slow, expanding wake.

At Redfish Pass, I cut along South Seas Plantation, waved at Johnny, the resort’s enduring tennis teacher—he was wearing a Santa’s hat, of all things—then exited into the open Gulf and turned parallel the beach.

After that, it was beach all the way: the glitter of mica-bright sand, palm trees leaning in windward strands, high-rise condos in schematic rows, and seaside estates in the shadows of hardwoods, secure behind walls, on their own grounds.

It was Gulf Coast Florida: part tropical idyllic, part Shaker-Heights-by-the-Sea, part theme-park deco.

I love the region and love being on a fast boat alone. I cracked a cold beer, sat back in the swivel seat, and watched the barrier islands slide past—Gasparilla, Manasota Key, Venice, and Siesta Key—sunglasses on, ball cap pulled low, feet up on the console, steering that solid skiff with one bare toe.

Cortez is a village of four thousand or so souls, a settlement of piling houses and gray docks clustered on Sarasota Bay, south of St. Pete and just across the bridge from Bradenton Beach.

Just before 5 P.M., I raised the bridge. I banked east through Longboat Pass, its riverine tide fast beneath my hull, the water tannin-stained, a perfect place for snook or bull sharks on a feed. Ahead was Jewfish Key, a few tin roofs silver in the late sunlight beneath a canopy of palms. The bridge was to the north; Cortez a clutter of buildings and docks to the northeast.

Cortez is among the last of Florida’s old-time fish camps. Among the last, because increasingly stringent fishing laws and bans are gradually squeezing independent fisher families out of business, leaving international factory ships to strip the sea bottom and supply the world’s demand for seafood. An irony of government intervention: By disabling the people it can control, bureaucracy empowers the people and nations it cannot control.

Because the village is built out and isolated on a mangrove peninsula, Cortez has a time-warp feel. The firestorm of development that is strip-mall Florida might have blazed past without noticing the little fish markets and piney-woods houses. Back in the 1930s, the men and women of Cortez wove their own nets, grew peppers and pineapples and mangoes; they wholesaled mullet and stone crabs caught from boats that they had built up from wooden stringers and glassed themselves.

Things hadn’t changed much. But they would.

As I dropped down off plane and began to idle toward the docks, I noted mountains of wooden stone crabs traps stacked behind buildings, curtains of shrimp net strung to cure or dry. The air smelled of creosote, diesel, and exposed barnacles.

Ahead was a two-story warehouse made of white cement, a massive blue fuel-storage tank beside it. The sign over the docks read: A. P. Bell Fish Company.

It was a big commercial operation. Inside would be freezers, perhaps even a blast freezer, and container-sized holdings of every variety of salable sea life. From this small place of debarkation, the wealth of waters adjoining Sarasota Bay would be shipped around the world.

Next to the warehouse was Star Fish Company, a two-story building that was spray-creted white. The sign read: Retail Sales & Restaurant. Beer on Tap, so I tied up at the dock and went through the door into the air-conditioned market. Nice little place: snapper, grouper, sea trout, clear-eyed and fresh, lined in the display case on a bed of ice, plus oysters, clams, and shrimp, too. Someone had gone to the trouble to hand paint the tiles that decorated the little room. Behind the counter was a nice-looking woman, her brown hair tied back with a red handkerchief, wearing a white apron that read Don’t Kiss the Cook!