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Authors: Sarah Andrews

Killer Dust (27 page)

BOOK: Killer Dust
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“Sea Dingo,”
I said.
“Trawler
Sea Dingo
. Eastbound. Yeah. You sure? Okay. Good man. I thank you.” He hung up the phone. To me, he said, “That was my friend Gus at Wilson Pigott.” He grinned. “That’s why I know the name of the bridge. He said
Sea Dingo
hasn’t gotten there yet, but he knows where he is. Heard him cussing someone out on the marine radio about half an hour ago, they all been having a good chuckle.”
“What’s going on?”
“Something about a Sea Ray kicking up a wake. They’re these go-fast boats; people who drive them got no manners, all a bunch of new money. Some woman’s on
Sea Dingo
’s radio down by Cape Coral telling them to go home and stuff their BMW’s up their butts.”
“Sounds like Waltrine.” For the first time in two days I found myself truly smiling. “Maybe Guffey’s letting her drive while he catches some Z’s.”
“Yeah, he’d be tired. That means he ran most of the night, came all the way down in open water, then turned in maybe south of Sanibel Island here, where there’s a lighthouse and all like that. But anyway, he’s a couple hours downriver of the Franklin Lock, which is the first place you’d be able to catch him.”
“He’s got to go through locks?”
Gator grinned at my naïveteé. “Yeah. The lake is higher than the ocean, so the boat traffic has to go up through three locks to get there. Slows him way down, especially if there’s traffic.” He opened the atlas again and tapped each lock and each place a highway crossed the river. “Lift bridge. Swing. At LaBelle here, another lift bridge, then here’s the Ortona Locks. From there, you can see the river runs real straight; it’s been channelized. Leads you right
through to Moore Haven. One last swing bridge—the railroad, those are really low, maybe five feet—and then one more lock to get you into the lake.”
“And all of them close again this evening at nine?”
“That’s the story. He’s down there by Cape Coral now, ain’t no way he’s going to make Okeechobee in time to get all the way through by nine, and he won’t want to be out there in the dark, either.” Now he grinned at me, very satisfied with his analysis.
I smiled and nodded to him. “So he’ll have to tie up somewhere for the night.”
“Yeah. That’s your best bet. The lock tenders are Army Corps of Engineers. They don’t let anyone get on or off while they’re going through there.”
“I’d like to get to him as soon as possible.”
Gator looked at his watch. “I’ll be off at seven. See you then. Until then, I think your friend needs you.” He gave me a tender smile.
 
 
Faye was in the chickee, lying facedown on the cot, which is hard to do when you’re that pregnant. She had swiped my pillow and placed it to one side of her belly to support it.
“Any way I can talk you into touring the canals of the Caloosahatchee?” I asked.
“No.”
“You’d think you were aiding and abetting.”
“Mind reader.” Her voice was thick. She’d been crying again.
“The way I see it, he’s already committed, so he needs help, not …” I trailed off, uncertain which was correct, action or inaction.
Faye said nothing. She kept her back to me.
I said, “Listen, maybe this is a bunch of boys playing white knight, but
somebody’s
got to do it.”
“Why Tom?”
“So his child can grow up safe?”
“Being born is not safe. Living is not safe.”
I sat down on the edge of her cot and began to massage her back. “I’m so sorry, Faye.”
The tears began to flow again. “I had so hoped he and I could make it work.”
“It’s not over.”
She put her hand on the great roundness of her belly.
I asked, “Is he kicking?”
“She.”
“You know it’s a girl?”
“It had better be. No fucking war games.”
I sighed. “Girls can join the army now, and the FBI … .”
Faye cried a long time, softly keening, rocking herself and her unborn child. I smoothed her clothes, stroked her sweaty back through the cloth. At length, she said hoarsely, “When you see Tom, send him home.”
I put a hand on her shoulder and squeezed. “I will,” I whispered.
“The surface of Lake Okeechobee isn’t much higher than the ocean,” Gator informed me, as we bounded along in his little Toyota sedan over a rough two-lane blacktop. The road ran straight as a die between cane fields that stretched as far as I could see in either direction. We were traveling north of the Big Cypress Reservation, heading for the Caloosahatchee River. It was early evening, and the thunderheads had built up high and wide and fuzzy, ready to pelt us as soon as we were foolish enough to drive under one of them. And yet I felt an urgency to get after them, as if they could draw me closer to Miles Guffey’s boat, and his boat could bring me to Jack.
Eduardo “Gator” Batista continued his educational travelogue. “Right now Okeechobee’s surface is maybe twelve feet above sea level. There’s a levee built around it, because one time it flooded and killed about 3,000 people. You know, the Everglades are all water, really, just a little land in there to confuse the folks up north with more money than sense, make them think this is farmland, or a good place to build a retirement house. When you add a whole lot more water all at once—in a hurricane say—well, there’s nowhere to go to get away from it.”
“So that’s why they built the canals? To drain the swamp? Aren’t there bad jokes about that?”
“Yeah. They came and built all these canals and drainage
ditches. It drained, alright, and the first thing that happened was all that peat began to catch fire with the lightning.” He shook his head. “Some people think nature’s something they’ve got to tame, like a wild animal. Me, I like my animals wild.”
I ran my gaze over the scars on his arms. “Especially your alligators.”
Gator opened his mouth to show me his teeth and made a claw with one hand.
“Yeah.”
“How … exactly did you get those bites?” I asked.
He grinned. “Oh those? I used to work at an alligator farm. Took me a while to learn how to handle them.”
“Farm? They really do farm alligators?”
“Yeah. All you eat is the tail, that’s where the meat is. They make key chains out of the claws.” He shook his head. Laughed. “Tourists.”
I shook my head, too. Florida seemed one big clash of man and nature, or man’s nature versus nature’s compulsion to exist, with all the certainty of water running downhill and taxes being due on April 15. “So do you think I can catch him at the Ortona Lock?”
“He’s past there by now. I’ve had my friends tracking him all afternoon.” He gave me his grin. “Not much to do here in the Everglades, so they’re only too glad to assist.
Sea Dingo
called for the lift bridge at La Belle
como cinco y medio
. Five-thirty. He’s averaging less than seven knots. Don’t worry, he won’t get to Moore Haven before the bridge-and-lock there closes for the night.”
Gator slowed to avoid skidding off the road during a series of sharp right angles. We caught up with a rainstorm. Everything went wet as the little windshield wipers struggled with a sheet of liquid. I held on for dear life.
The streets were shining with water when we reached Moore Haven. Gator drove straight to the town docks. An osprey settled onto a phone pole a hundred yards away and glared at me. No sign of
Sea Dingo
. “Not here yet,” he announced. “What I tell you?”
“You’re sure he hasn’t gone on through to the lake?”
Gator shrugged. Put the car in reverse, executed a smuggler’s turn, and headed over toward the swing bridge that carried the railroad across the canal. Clearance was only about five feet. No way
Sea Dingo
was going to crawl under that. The bridge manager was in his pilot box, so Gator got out and talked to him. The man shook his head and climbed out, headed down the road on foot. Gator returned to the car. “He says she’s not come through yet. He’s got a couple trains coming, so he’s done for the night, not going to open it again until the morning.” He looked at his watch. “
Ocho y media
. You got it made. Let’s go get some dinner.” His smile positively twinkled.
“Okay.”
“¡Splendido!”
Gator took me to a little café with searing blue paint. Inside, my nostrils were greeted by the savory aroma of Caribbean cookery. “Let me guess,” I said. “Black beans and yellow rice.”
Gator gave me an appreciative nod. “Wait ’til you taste her
plaítanos.
”
Dinner was just the sort of wonderful meal you can find only in a wayside cafeé where the cook looks like somebody’s mama. She fussed over Gator—called him ’Uardo—and was reasonably solicitous over me, even though she was clearly trying to promote Gator’s obvious interest in a shy young lass with doe eyes and skin as rosy as a ripe plum who watched him expectantly from behind the counter.
When we were done, and barely able to move for the largess of Mama’s cooking, we paid our bill—or should I say Gator paid; he would not hear of my even contributing to the tip, so gallant was he as he shamelessly ogled the daughter—and headed back to the dock. Sure enough, there was
Sea Dingo,
all tied up and shipshape, the only boat in sight. It was past ten o’clock. The osprey had gone to bed, and had been replaced by a nighthawk. The scene was illuminated by streetlights. Things looked very, very quiet.
I walked along the dock until I was next to the place where the rail was folded back to make it easy to get aboard. I called out, “Permission to come aboard, skipper?”
I got no answer. No light came on in the cabin. No one stirred. The only sound was the steady hum of an air-conditioning unit somewhere deep in the boat.
A small pickup truck drove by in the street, spraying something from a fogger mounted in its bed. That explained the lack of mosquitoes.
I turned and looked at Gator. He shrugged eloquently.
I stepped aboard. Walked around to the back door of the main cabin and knocked. “Miles?” I called out. “Waltrine?”
No answer.
Gator still waited on the dock. “Gone to dinner, you think?”
“Must be.”
“We could come back later.”
“No. Knowing Miles, they probably found a bar. But they could come back any time, and I don’t want to chance losing them. I need to wait.” I looked at him with apology in my eyes. “Are you in a hurry to get back?”
Gator stepped aboard. The boat shifted ever so slightly with his weight. “You can’t just sit out here.” He checked every door and window large enough to let me through. All locked up tight. “How many people you say were on this boat?”
“Two.”
“Oye,
this thing’ll sleep six easy. Plenty of room for you.”
“Sleep?” It hadn’t occurred to me that I might be staying the night.
“Let’s try this,” he said, and headed up the ladder to the flying bridge.
I peered up after him. Heard rustling, a satisfied,
“Bueno.”
He reappeared at the top of the ladder and waved me up.
I clambered up the ladder moving gingerly past an array of fishhooks and rods that were mounted behind it. On the
upper deck, I saw what he had gone looking for: a rubber skiff lashed to the roof. It had its own outboard motor, all neatly tucked up, the whole works covered with a tarp.
“Little Zodiac,” he said. “You can get in under the cover here like a good stowaway. Us Cubans know how to do this, eh? I tuck you right in. I’m going back to Mama’s and get some dessert, know what I mean? You go ahead and stay here, and I’ll come get you in the morning, okay?”
“But what if I fall asleep?”
“Then you can talk to him in the morning. The engines will wake you up. He’ll run them for a while before he gets going, you’ll have time.”
There was merit in Gator’s plan. Miles might arrive back half plastered. That in turn might be good or bad; it could loosen him up, or it might make him craftier, if his performance at dinner with Tom was any indication. Waltrine I did not want to see drunk under any circumstances.
I had not reckoned on finding the boat but not its crew. My plan had been to have a brief talk with Miles, extort the needed information from him, phone it to Tom, and go back to Faye.
Faye. When you see Tom, send him home, she had told me. She had seen it before I had: I would see Tom, because I was staying with the boat. “You get a message to Faye tonight?” I asked. “I don’t want her worrying about me, too.”
“Of course. You got a passport?”
“No. Why?”
“Boats going through to Stuart are usually going to the Bahamas. If you go there you’d better stay out of sight of customs.”
“Oh.”
In for a penny, in for a pound,
I decided, and climbed underneath the tarp.
 
 
The engines rumbled me awake while it was still half dark out. I clambered out of the Zodiac, discovering to my dismay
that my legs were staying asleep longer than the rest of my body. I had slept folded up in such a cramped position to fit in between the seat and the front roll that I was amazed to find that I had slept heavily enough to miss the return of the skipper and his first mate. Now I could hear them talking. I looked to where the voices were coming from, and spotted open portholes between the flying bridge and the pilothouse below.
“Yeah, he just called,” Miles was saying.
“Where is he now?” Waltrine asked in response.
“He made it to Freeport. We’ll be in Stuart by five, with any luck. Get fuel, that’s six, be across to Memory Rock before daybreak tomorrow. Be at West End early afternoon. He’ll be at the Old Bahama Bay. Pick him up after we clear customs, and we’ll be at our destination by tomorrow midnight or, at worst, the next morning.”
“He have any trouble?”
“Well, course he did. You ever try traveling with nothing but a tail tux that’s spent a night in salt water? No passport? No money? People aren’t so quick to help ya.”
“What are you talking no money? I wired him a couple thousand,” Waltrine said.
So Calvin Wheat’s alive.
I leaned closer to the porthole.
Miles said, “Cast off, will you? I want to be first in line for that swing bridge when she opens.”
I heard a door open. I shrank back toward the Zodiac to stay out of sight. Crouched. My mind raced.
He’s in Freeport, that’s in the Bahamas. Why, why are Miles and Waltrine going to meet him without telling anyone? And why didn’t they tell anyone that Calvin’s alive? Are they still going for publicity?
Against whom?
The guy who threw Calvin overboard, or …
No, it would be bigger than that. He was on a cruise ship, collecting dust samples. He was just short of proving not only Miles Guffey’s theory, but also an accessory theory of his own: that someone is messing with anthrax out there. Someone who might sell it to the wrong people.
Then what’s the connection between being thrown off the ship and the guy with the anthrax? Or was he in fact thrown off the ship? There’s something that still does not make sense here
… . My mind tumbled down the road of alternative interpretations, through various combinations and explanations of available data. What was the connection between Guffey’s departure and the sand found inside the wrapping of the SAM-7? Was there a connection? Calvin Wheat was alive, which made sense, because Miles and Waltrine had gotten over seeming convincingly upset about his disappearance almost as soon as it occurred. Did that mean that he had not in fact gone overboard? Because if he had been thrown overboard, how had he survived? And how had Miles and Waltrine known of his survival so soon? In fact, how had they known of his disappearance? Had they invented the whole story to draw attention to the project? Were they now heading out to the Bahamas to quietly retrieve their missing man, or to stir up some other kind of trouble?
He came to Freeport with no money, and nothing to his name but a tail tux that had spent some time in sea water.
That sounded like he had in fact become separated from a cruise ship the hard way.
Brad said that such falls were survivable, given extraordinary luck or special training
… .
It struck me all at once.
They aren’t going for publicity; they’re going for revenge.
The boat swung away from the dock, snapping my thoughts back to my present situation. I hunkered down, my head on a swivel, looking for Gator. I wasn’t sure how he could help me, or even if I needed help. Everything was happening faster than it was supposed to, too fast for me to follow. I was on a boat with two people who were either doing something very wrong, or who were doing something very naïve, and I wasn’t sure which was worse. I couldn’t decide whether to jump off, climb back under the tarp and continue eavesdropping, or climb down the ladder and say, “Howdy do, where’s the toilet?”
I glanced over the side and suddenly realized a certain
fact: I was on a boat, and boats meant water. My stomach lurched at the thought of jumping into it, of being immersed in it. Besides, it looked oddly dark, black as coffee, almost. Was it tannic acid or pollution?
BOOK: Killer Dust
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