Solomon & Lord Drop Anchor (3 page)

“They’re going to board us if we don’t turn
around,” she said.

“I kind of figured that out, too.” Steve
turned to Cruz. “Absolutely, positively last chance, pal. I’m
handing you over.”

“I’m betting you don’t,” Cruz
said.

The patrol boat was fifty yards away. One of
the men in uniform pointed an AK-47 their way.

“Steve…?” Victoria’s voice was a plea.

This wasn’t the way he’d planned it. By this
time, Cruz should have been spouting numbers and accounts from
banks in the Caymans or Switzerland or the Isle of Man. But the
bastard was toughing it out. Calling Steve’s bluff.

Is that what it is? An
empty threat.

Steve wanted to hand Cruz over, wanted him to
rot in a Cuban prison.

But dammit, I’m a
lawyer, not a vigilante.

He wished he could turn his conscience on and
off with the flick of a switch. He wished he could end a man’s life
with cold calculations and no remorse. But the rats that would gnaw
at Cruz at
 
Isla
de Pinos
 
would visit the
house on Kumquat Avenue in Steve’s nightmares.

“Take the wheel, Vic.” Filled with
self-loathing, wishing he could be someone he was not. “Twenty-two
degrees. Key West.”

“Say ‘please,’” Cruz laughed, mocking
him.

* * *

Just before midnight, the lights of Key West
off the port, the
 
Wet Dream
 
cruised
north through Hawk Channel, headed toward Miami. The sky was clear
and sparkled with stars. The wind whipped across the bridge,
bringing a night chill. Victoria slipped into her glen-plaid
jacket. Hair messed, clothes rumpled, emotionally drained, she was
trying to figure out how to salvage the situation.

I came aboard to save
Steve from himself and I’m doing a lousy job.

Steve stood at the wheel, draining
a
 
La Tropical
beer,
 
maybe listening,
maybe not, as Cruz berated him.

“You fucking loser,” Cruz said. “Every minute
I’m tied up is gonna cost you.” Cruz rubbed his arm where the cuff
was biting into his wrist. “I got nerve damage. Gonna add that to
my lawsuit. When this is over, you’ll wish the Cubans had
taken
 
you
 
prisoner.”

“Steve, I need a moment with you,” Victoria
said.

Steve put the boat on auto — Cruz complaining
that it was a damn reckless way to cruise at night — then headed
down the ladder, joining Victoria in the salon.

“You can’t keep him locked up,” she said.

“I need more time.”

“For what?”

“To think.” He walked to the galley sink and
turned the faucet, intending to toss cold water on his face. Same
rattle, same thump. “Damn, I forgot. Cruz put all that money into
his boat and still can’t get the water to work.”

“What?”

“A fancy boat like this and you can’t wash
your hands.”

“No. What you said before. ‘Cruz put all that
money into his boat.’”

“It’s just a figure of speech.”

“Think about it, Steve. He doesn’t own a
house. He leases a car. No brokerage accounts, no bank accounts.
Everything he has, he puts into his boat. If he ever has to leave
town quickly…”

“Like he left Cuba,” Steve said, picking up
the beat. “With nothing but the clothes on his back.”

“This time it would be different
because…”

“The money’s here! On the boat.”

In sync now, she thought.

A man and a woman
running stride for stride.

“Vic, why don’t you go back up to the bridge
and make sure we don’t crash into any cruise ships?”

“And what are you doing?”

“I’m gonna fix the plumbing.”

* * *

Steve opened the hatch in the salon floor and
climbed down a ladder to the engine compartment, wincing at the
noise from the twin diesels. He found the black water tank first,
tucked up under the bow. Sewage and waste water. Nothing unusual
about it, and Cruz wouldn’t want to dirty his hands with that,
anyway. Then Steve found the freshwater tank, a custom job built
into one of the bulkheads. Made of fiberglass, it looked capable of
holding 500 gallons or more. The boat had desalinization equipment,
so why did Cruz need such a big tank?

A big tank that wasn’t
working.

Steve grabbed a flashlight mounted on a pole
and took a closer look. He peered into an inspection port and could
see the tank was three quarters full. On top of the tank was a
metal plate with a built-in handle. He turned the plate
counter-clockwise and removed it. Then he aimed the flashlight into
the opening.

Water. Well, what did
you expect?

He grabbed a mop that was attached by velcro
to a stringer and poked the handle into the tank. The end of the
handle
 
clanked
 
off the
walls.

Clank. Clank. Clank.
Thud.

Thud?
 
What the
hell?

Steve pushed the mop handle around the bottom
of the tank as if he were stirring a giant vat of
 
paella.
 
It snagged
on something soft. He worked the handle under the object and
lifted.

Something as long as a
man’s body but much thinner.

Thin enough to fit into the opening of the
custom-built tank. The object was a transparent, plasticized pouch,
and when the end peeked out of the opening, Steve saw Ben
Franklin’s tight-lipped face. A hundred dollar bill. Stacked on
others. Dozens of stacks. As he pulled the pouch out of the tank,
he saw even more. Hundreds of stacks, thousands of bills.

* * *

Damn heavy, Steve thought, lugging the pouch
up the ladder from the engine compartment. Then he dragged the load
out the salon door and into the cockpit. “Now you’ve done it,” Cruz
sounded almost mournful. He stood on the bridge, aiming a
double-barrel shotgun at Steve. The rail where he had been cuffed
hung loose. “I didn’t want this. But it’s your own damn fault.”

“I’m sorry, Steve,” Victoria said. “When I
came up here, he’d gotten out.”

“Not your fault,” Steve said. He dragged the
pouch to the starboard gunwale.

“Stop right there!” Cruz ordered. “Step away
from the money.”

“Nope. Don’t think so.”

Cruz pumped the shotgun, an
unmistakable
 
click-clack
 
that
Steve felt in the pit of his stomach. “I’ll blow your head
off.”

“And leave blood and bone and tissue embedded
in the planking? Nah. You may kill us, but you won’t do it on your
boat.” Steve hoisted the pouch onto the rail.

“If I can’t take this to Teresa, I’m sure as
hell not gonna let you have it. Your treasure, pal, is strictly
Sierra Madre.’”

The shotgun blast roared over Steve’s head,
and he flinched. The pouch balanced on the rail, halfway between
the deck and the deep blue sea.

“Put the money down, asshole.”

“Okay, okay.” Steve shoved the pouch over the
rail and it splashed into the water.  “It’s down.”

“Asshole!” Cruz grabbed both throttles,
slowed the boat, and swung her around. He turned a spotlight on the
water.

Nothing but a black sea and foamy
whitecaps.

He swung the spotlight left and right. Still
nothing, until…the beam picked up the pouch floating with the
current. Cruz eased the boat close to the pouch at idle speed,
slipped the engine out of gear, then dashed down the ladder.
Grabbing a tarpon gaff, he moved quickly to the gunwale. Shotgun in
one hand, gaff in the other, he motioned toward Steve. “Back up.
All the way to the chair.”

“Do what he says, Steve,” Victoria called
from the bridge.

“Only because you said so.” Steve moved
toward one of the fighting chairs.

Cruz leaned over the side and snagged the
pouch with the gaff. He struggled to lift it with one arm, still
aiming the shotgun at Steve.

Suddenly, the boat shot forward, and Cruz
tumbled into the water, the shotgun blasting into space as it fell
onto the deck. On the bridge, Victoria had one hand on the
throttles, the other on the wheel.

“
Cono!”
 
Cruz shouted
from the darkness.

“Do sharks feed at night?” Steve leaned over
the side. “Or should I just drop some wiggles on your head and find
out?”

“Get me out of here!” His voice more fearful
than demanding.

“Nah.”

“No me
jodas!”

“I’m not fucking with you. Just don’t feel
like giving you a lift.”

Victoria raced down the ladder and joined
Steve in the cockpit. “Testing, testing,” she said, punching a
button on her pocket Dictaphone.

“What are you doing?” Steve said.

“Mr. Cruz,” Victoria called out. “We’ll bring
you on board once you answer a few questions.”

Cruz was splashing just off the starboard
side. “What fucking questions!”

“Do you admit stealing three million dollars
from Teresa Toraño?” Victoria said.

* * *

Pink slivers of sky lit up the horizon and
seabirds squawked overhead as Steve steered the boat into the
channel at Matheson Hammock. He had one hand on the wheel and one
draped on Victoria’s shoulder. A shivering Cruz, his arms and legs
bound with quarter-inch line, was laced into a fighting chair in
the cockpit. His taped confession would be in the hands of the
State Attorney by noon. The pouch of money lay at his feet,
taunting him.

“What are you thinking about?” Victoria
asked.

“I was just imagining the look on Teresa’s
face when we give her the money.”

“She’ll be delighted. But it was never about
the money, Steve.”

“Whadaya mean?”

“When you were a baby lawyer, Teresa believed
in you and nobody else did.  You needed to prove to her
that she was right. And maybe you needed to prove it to yourself,
too.”

Steve shrugged. “If you say so.”

She wrapped both arms around his neck. “But
remember this, Steve. You never have to prove anything to me.” They
kissed, at first softly, and then deeper and slower. The kiss
lasted a long time, and when they each opened their eyes, the sun
was peeking above the horizon in the eastern sky.

Their bodies pressed together, Victoria felt
something digging into her hip. “Are you carrying another pair of
handcuffs?”

“Nope.”

“Then what…?” She jammed a hand into one of
his pockets. “Oh. That.”

Steve smiled. “Like I said, no cuffs.”

“That’s okay, sailor.” She brushed her lips
against his cheek. “You won’t need them.”

#

TO SPEAK FOR THE DEAD

He would remember the sounds—the wailing
sirens, the moans of the injured—and the smells, a smoky ashen
stench that clung to hair and clothing. Late the first night, he
slipped into the parking lot for some air, and he tasted the sky as
the smoke rose above Miami’s inner core. He heard the city scream,
the popping of wood and plastic aflame, short bursts of gunfire
followed by silence, then the crackle of police radios. Later he
would remember slipping in a puddle of blood on the tile floor of
the Emergency Room.

He would not leave the hospital for
seventy-two hours, and by then, he had treated more gunshot wounds
than most doctors see in a lifetime. Blacks against police, whites
against blacks, savage violence in a ghetto hopelessly misnamed
Liberty City. By the time the shooting stopped and the fires were
out, an eerie silence hung over the area, an inner-city battle zone
where neither side surrendered, but each put away its weapons and
withdrew.

* * *

“That’s a real poster ass, huh?”

Roger Salisbury shot a sideways glance at the
man next to him. A working guy, heavy boots and a plaid shirt open
at the neck. Thick hands, one on a pack of cigarettes, the other on
his drink, elbows resting on the scarred bar. “Like to frame that
ass, hang it in the den next to Bob Griese.”

“Uh-huh,” Salisbury mumbled. He didn’t come
here to talk, didn’t know why he came. Maybe to lose himself in a
place crammed with people and noise, to be alone amid clinking
glasses, laughter, and the creaminess of women’s bodies. He
strained his neck to see her above him on the stage.

“Not that one,” the man said, tapping the bar
with a solid index finger. “Over there at the stairs, the on-deck
circle. A real poster ass. Never saw a skinny girl with an ass like
that. Eat my lunch offa that.”

She wore a black G-string, a red bikini top,
and red high-heeled shoes. If not for the outfit and the setting,
she could have been a cheerleader with a mom, dad, and grandmom in
Kansas. Good bone structure, fair complexion with freckles across a
button nose, short wavy reddish-brown hair, wholesome as a wheat
field. The face belonged in a high school yearbook; the body
launched a thousand fantasies. Her thin waist accentuated a round
bottom that arched skyward out of both sides of the tiny G-string.
Her breasts were round and full. She was warming up, fastening a
prefab smile into place, taking a few practice swings, tapping a
sequined shoe in time to Billy Joel, who was turned up way too
high:

What’s the mat-ter with the clothes I’m
wear-ing?

Can’t you tell that your tie’s too wide?

May-be I should buy some old tab
col-lars.

Wel-come back to the age of jive.

The working guy was looking at Salisbury now,
sizing him up. Looking at a blow-dry haircut that was a little too
precise for a place like this. Clean shaven, skin still glistening
like he’d just spanked his face with Aqua Velva at two A.M., as if
the girls in a beat-your-meat joint really care. The hair was
starting to show some early gray, the features pleasant, if not
matinee idol stuff. A professor at Miami-Dade maybe, the working
guy figured.