Trap Line (6 page)

Barnett was satisfied: the Machine was going to give him a boat he could wave under the noses of Freed and the city council. Barnett would unleash half the force on Ramrod. God knew what else was coming in on other boats, or where. That was part of the bargain; Barnett’s prize was the decoy. Afterwards, three thousand dollars would discreetly appear in the nest-egg account he kept in the Cayman Islands. It was all so professional that it enhanced Barnett’s considerable admiration for the Machine. A stupid name, but that was what people in Key West called it. The only thing Barnett couldn’t understand was why an outfit so slick would use such an obvious dirtbag like Winnebago Tom.

Shorty Whining was finished at last with his instructions to the squad of fresh-faced police. Huge Barnett returned to the center of the room for the benediction.

“My
information is that this is a very big operation,” he said momentously. “Let’s try real hard not to shoot each other out there, OK?”

JIMMY TALKED FOR
hours, like an excited little boy who didn’t want to go to bed, filibustering his way through Christmas Eve. Albury’s nerves collected in a hard knot in his belly. Jimmy’s nerves jangled in his tongue. Everybody had a different reaction. It was hard, waiting in false colors on a black night at sea.

Radio traffic was light: two party boats comparing notes on the snapper fishing; a Coast Guard patrol boat looking for somebody down around the Dry Tortugas, a day sailor who sounded like a horse’s ass promising all the world he’d be off the sandbank sure thing, once the tide turned. If anybody important knew about a big dope run, they weren’t talking about it on the radio. The cops and the smugglers spent most of the time listening for each other, broadcasting only when necessary, and then only on little-used channels. Crystal listened to them all, and that was why he was invaluable. At quarter to midnight, he checked in with Albury with another “weather report.” Everything was go. The sky was clear and star-spangled, and for the tenth time Jimmy remarked on how gorgeous it was.

Albury envied Jimmy his excitement. He had spent the previous day in methodical preparation, paying off his bills and enriching the checking account with what was left of the ten grand. Tomorrow afternoon he would drive up to Miami and look for a place.

Jimmy sat on the gunwale, hanging his legs over the side so his bare feet tickled the water. His white T-shirt seemed to glow against the indelible outdoor brownness of his arms and neck; the starlight gave his blond hair a silvery cast. To Albury, the twenty-five years that lay between him and the mate stretched out as dull and hot and halting as U.S. 1. He couldn’t find a lesson anywhere that he wanted to share with the kid.

The sound of the big outboard sprang out of the mangroves on Ramrod Key. The whine grew louder, but Albury could see no boat, which meant it was running with no lights. His watch said ten minutes past twelve.

The outboard was only about a hundred yards away when the driver cut the engines. Albury went to the console and flicked his lights four times. Jimmy started to say something, but Albury shook his head sharply and put a finger to his lips. The outboard started once, then stalled out, then started again. The driver idled toward the
Diamond Cutter
, and Albury was able to identify the boat as a twenty-one-foot T-craft. It was basically nothing but a broad hull with a flat open deck, powered by an absurdly oversized Mercury. A boat with only one function.

“Captain?” called a voice from the T-craft.

“Yeah.”

“You and your mate are supposed to come with me.”

Jimmy glanced apprehensively at Albury.

“What about my boat?” Albury demanded.

“I’ll take good care of it, pardner.” It was the voice of the second man in the T-craft.

Albury put it together quickly. He asked anyway, “Why can’t I run my boat?”

The T-craft came alongside. “This ain’t the
Diamond Cutter,”
muttered the second man.

“Yeah, it is. I just hung a new name on the transom.”

“What for?” asked the driver.

“For looks, asshole,” Albury said. “Now, why can’t I run my own boat?”

“Tom said we’re switching captains. Captain Smith here is gonna run your boat and you’re gonna run his,” the driver explained. “If either of you gets taken down, the other guy reports his boat stolen. That way Customs or the Marine Patrol can’t seize the damn thing. They gotta give it back. It’s for your own goddamn good, so quit complaining and hop in.”

“Is that right, Breeze?”

Albury nodded, but he didn’t get in the T-craft right away. “So if something happens to the
Diamond Cutter
…”

“Tell ’em it was stolen. Tell ’em Captain Smith must have stole it from the fish house.”

Albury snorted. “Captain
Smith.
Jesus.”

He and Jimmy stepped into the T-craft. Albury didn’t recognize the slender man who climbed out, but the sight of the other captain in the wheelhouse of the
Diamond Cutter
stabbed him, like watching a stranger trying to fuck your girlfriend.

Before Albury could issue a warning about the mortal importance of treating his boat properly, the T-craft was skimming through the chop toward Big Pine Key, its graceless hull slapping and plowing alternately. Albury and Jimmy framed the driver, each on one side of the console and he in the center, all hanging on with certitude. Albury made out the silhouette of another crawfish boat at anchor. The driver of the T-craft took one hand off the wheel and pointed. “There she is,” he shouted.

As soon as he got the anchor up, Albury knew that he and the borrowed boat would not get along. The name on the stern was
Miss Alice.
It was cranky, old, and too damn slow to be a dope boat. Albury expected radar. Most of the grass boats carried the best; this one had none.

“You ever seen this boat?” Jimmy asked as Albury steered toward the coordinates provided by the T-craft’s driver.

“No, I haven’t,” Albury said. “But it’s a Marathon boat. I don’t know a lot of the guys up there.”

The Machine was smart. On nights of a run, it would deliberately plant false intelligence with the police, usually through a double informant at Customs. Out in the Gulf, to the west, there probably was a shrimper with a couple of lobster boats alongside, whose captains were being paid to have a raucous, suspicious-looking, but entirely innocent drink together. Albury could only hope that every cop in the Keys was watching the party.

To the east, in the Atlantic, he throttled the
Miss Alice
toward a big Texas shrimper. Another crawfish boat was ahead of him, alongside the shrimper, and Albury imagined he could hear the sound of the bales dropping onto the deck, the muted rushing footsteps on the bigger boat.

“Is that the
Diamond Cutter
?” Jimmy asked.

“I don’t think so,” Albury replied. He hoped not. It would be just fine with him if Tom had decided to use the
Diamond Cutter
as one of the barren decoys.

Silence enveloped the
Miss Alice.
Diesel just ticking over, Albury could now distinctly hear from the shrimper the sounds he had imagined before. Street music at sea.

Albury watched the other crawfish boat cast off, and then he guided the
Miss Alice
into place. “One o’clock,” he called to the dark figure on the deck of the shrimper.

“You got it,” the man answered.

The bales came fire-brigade style, with Jimmy and then Albury the final links. Each fifty-five-pound package was wrapped with black plastic over the burlap; the odor was pungent, almost sickeningly sweet. Albury stacked the bales in the hold of the
Miss Alice.
After about a half-hour, he could feel the boat settle with its new weight.

Once he looked aft to trace the sound of another boat. He saw in the shrimper’s wake another crawfish boat, waiting its turn. The
Diamond Cutter.
He tugged on Jimmy’s sleeve and pointed. Both of them saw two figures in the wheelhouse.

Albury figured he had loaded about two tons when the bales abruptly stopped.

“What’s up?” he asked one of the crew on the shrimper, a bearded young fisherman in white rubber boots.

“That’s it. See you around.”

“But that’s not a full load,” Albury protested.

“You’re the one o’clock, ain’t you?”

“Yeah.”

“That’s all she wrote, one o’clock. Move along now, bubba. You’re blocking traffic.”

Puzzled, Albury steered the
Miss Alice
in a deft arc away from the shrimper and gave a backward glance to judge how smoothly the stranger docked the
Diamond Cutter.
Albury ran the crawfish boat blacked out, with only a sliver of green compass light to guide them. Jimmy sat on a stack of bales near the stern.

It didn’t figure. Albury had assumed he would be hauling at least four tons. Christ, even the Cubans could run a boat in with two tons. You had more speed, less water beneath you. Yet Tom had paid the full freight and made such a Hollywood production out of it. It made no sense.

Albury puzzled over it while the
Miss Alice
browsed through the gentle sea. He wondered if the other boats were getting the same loads; maybe the Machine was splitting the cargo among more boats to cut its losses if one got taken.
If one got taken.
He remembered what the driver of the T-craft had told him about switching boats.

Albury bickered with the radio until he was able to raise Crystal. “Smilin’ Jack, this is Lucky Seven.”

“For sure. You fat and sassy yet?”

“Yeah, right on schedule, but not as fat as I expected.”

Crystal was silent for about twenty seconds. “You want me to see what I can find out?”

“I would appreciate it,” Albury said into the hand mike. “Hey, and listen, I’ve got a new lady, too.”

“Oh? Why?” Crystal was confused.

“I don’t know, but she’s old and slow, Jack, and I’m a little worried.”

“Lemme call you back, Seven, OK?” Then Crystal was quiet.

By the time he reached the mouth of Niles Channel, Albury had made up his mind about one thing. He killed the engines and turned to Jimmy.
Miss Alice
drifted and turned slowly in the tide.

“You get your money?” Albury asked in a whisper.

“Yesterday, in the mailbox, where you left it.”

“Good,” said Albury. “Jimmy, I want you to take off. Swim to shore. I’ll take her in.”

“God, Breeze, what are you talking about? Who’s gonna unload?”

“Shit, they got a dozen Cubans waiting there with Tom’s campers. Don’t worry.”

Jimmy could see trouble. Albury wouldn’t look at him; he was smoking furiously.

“I’ll stay with you.”

“You’ll go!”

“Aw, Breeze,” was the last thing Jimmy managed before the big man seized him under the arms and heaved him like a sack of stone crabs over the gunwale. The diesel was hacking and the
Miss Alice
was back in the channel by the time Jimmy exploded from the surface. He paddled for the mangroves and scrabbled ashore.

Within minutes, Albury was navigating the finger cut, a black ribbon of water that snaked up to the off-loading site on Ramrod Key. A short, rotting pier jutted from a clearing in the mangroves; the creek surrendered seven feet at low tide, enough for most crawfish boats. Beyond the sagging dock was a disused wooden warehouse, two junked cars, and a stack of old, broken lobster traps. At dead slow, Albury let the
Miss Alice
glide toward the dock. He had sweated off most of the bug spray, so the ravenous Keys mosquitoes were having a feast.

The accident happened five minutes too late to save Albury. Two out-of-town college kids, liquored up and luded out, lost it on the Stock Island Bridge. Their Camaro jumped the median and crashed head-on into a pickup driven by a black electrician on his way home from an emergency repair job at the Pier House.

The first patrol car reached the scene quickly and without sirens, the officer remembering Chief Huge Barnett’s warnings about a possible red herring. He got out of the car and vomited as he inspected the wreck. Then he called for help.

“We’ve got two or three fatalities. Get an ambulance down here and a couple more patrol units,” he pleaded.

“Everybody else is up at Ramrod with the chief,” blurted the dispatcher. “I think they got their radios off.”

“Shit,” gagged the young patrolman, “then call me a state trooper.”

Crystal reacted quickly. With one hand he turned down the volume on his police scanner and with the other he nimbly adjusted his VHF to the frequency he and Breeze Albury had agreed upon. There was only one sorry reason that Barnett would be up on Ramrod.

“Lucky Seven, Lucky Seven! You got weather comin’. Hit it, man.”

Albury was already running.
Miss Alice
was only a few yards from the old dock when the private alarm bells rang. Everything was wrong. There was nobody waiting, no campers or trucks. There was nothing, just Albury and a slow boat full of grass. It was an ambush.

Albury slammed the
Miss Alice
into reverse and gave her full throttle. The diesel coughed thick gray smoke and the old engine whimpered. Albury thought the boat must be aground; she didn’t seem to be moving at all. He put the wheel hard over.

Huge Barnett, crouching awkwardly behind one of the abandoned cars, knew what the sound meant.

“Now!” he screamed.

Light flooded the tiny inlet. Armed men sprang from behind the lobster traps. Albury had the fleeting image of a rotund man in a Stetson, pistol waving, waddling like a bloated duck toward the water’s edge. From around a bend in the inky creek two motor-boats appeared like angry bees. They hummed on intersecting courses towards the turning
Miss Alice.

Albury nearly made it. He clipped the bow of one police boat and might have successfully intimidated the second, but someone on shore, provoked no doubt by the sound and fury of Huge Barnett, loosed a cool, sharp burst of automatic weapons fire that sent Albury diving for the deck of the wheelhouse and kept him there, hands over his head, until the
Miss Alice
, undirected, backed blindly and harmlessly into the mangroves.