Bahamarama, page 22
part #1 of Zack Chasteen Series
I heard a thump on the foredeck and opened the cabin door, thinking it might be Boggy. But it was just a plastic bucket, blown onto Miz Blitz from the dock. I went out and got it, and stashed it away. The rain had gotten harder and was starting to come down sideways. There weren’t that many boats left in the marina—another trawler and a couple of sailboats, their lanyards clanging up a racket.
When I got back inside, Pederson said, “Boggy might be good, but he’s going to have to be better than good if he crosses paths over there with Dwayne Crowe.”
“I’m not worried.”
“The hell you aren’t,” said Pederson. “Be stupid not to be worried. Be twice as stupid if Dwayne Crowe is mixed up with Victor Ortiz.”
I went to the galley and poured us some more rum. We drank quietly awhile, listening to the rain, the boat rocking more and more.
I said, “You ever used to get butterflies before a game?”
“Hell, yes. Every game I ever played. Even the ones we knew we were going to win. The tough ones I used to throw up.”
“Me, too.”
“Meant you wanted it. Meant you wanted it so bad you’d lose everything to get it.”
I finished my rum and went for another one. Pederson said he was fine.
I said, “I’m beginning to get that fluttering feeling inside.”
Pederson said, “Uh-huh. Not full-on butterflies yet, but just the beginnings. Yeah, I’m getting that, too.”
“Hadn’t had that feeling in a while.”
“Long while,” said Pederson.
“Doesn’t feel bad, doesn’t feel good.”
“Kinda tickles.”
I looked at him.
“Tickles?”
He said, “You get your butterflies, I get mine, OK?”
Pederson stood up from the table. He said, “Clarissa wants you to come eat dinner with us this evening, you and Boggy.”
“I’ve never turned down a meal. Thanks.”
“Her momma likes to eat real early, around five, but they won’t mind holding it awhile.”
“We’re not there by six, start without us.”
Pederson said, “You can damn sure count on that.”
He stepped outside and was gone. I sipped rum and listened to rain and kept hearing things smack against the boat, and none of them were Boggy coming back.
When he did come back, the sun was low and I didn’t even hear him. The cabin door flew open and he stepped inside.
“I found them,” he said. “I saw Barbara.”
51
Boggy retold his story after we arrived at Clarissa’s mother’s house. We sat around the dining room table—me, Pederson, and Boggy—while Clarissa and her mother brought out the plates: stuffed crab backs, peas ’n’ dumplings, green bananas stewed in lime juice and sprinkled with cinnamon sugar. For dessert there was pineapple tart and banana bread.
Boggy looked a mess. He had slipped into dry clothes, but there were nicks and cuts on his face and arms, all kinds of debris in his long black hair. He had found the Steeples easily enough, seen the Cat Sass right where Nixon had said it would be, and then he had anchored the skiff in a cove about a half mile away. Still, he needed some reason for being there, just in case he ran into Dwayne Crowe. Lucky for Boggy he’s part chameleon. Dress him up in Armani and he can pass for an avant-garde artist or a film director or a two-bit gangster. Put him in rags and he’s a refugee who just washed ashore from some third-world hell.
“There were many birds in the cliffs there. Terns and gulls and skimmers,” said Boggy. “Many, many nests.”
So Boggy had taken a bucket from the boat and slowly worked his way along the cliffs, plucking an occasional egg from the nests, making it look like that’s why he was there. A large cave yawned open above where Cat Sass was anchored, and he had gotten to within a hundred yards of it when they spotted him.
“A man walked from the cave and came near to me. He was not the man we saw before on the boat, but another man, just as big as the other one,” said Boggy.
“Sounds like it could be Donnie Crowe, Dwayne’s brother,” Pederson said.
Boggy said, “This man, he called out and asked what I was I doing there, and I put up my hands and smiled, and said, ‘No habla inglés, señor! Then I reached in the bucket and took out one of the bird eggs and showed it to him and smiled some more. The man, he thought I was just an egg poacher. He said, ‘Go do that somewhere else.’ So I moved away and he went back to the cave.”
Boggy said, “These sea caves, they are just like the caves where I come from in Hispaniola. They are all connected down below and there is more than one way in and out.”
Boggy meandered his way to the top of the cliffs, where the limestone terrain leveled out into a desolate and pockmarked landscape.
“Is like the face of the moon there,” said Boggy. “Everywhere you step there is a hole in the rock.”
After following a number of false passages, he finally found a promising point of entry—a long narrow chute that dropped straight down from the surface, then made a sharp turn before transecting the face of the cliff. Again, he encountered several dead ends before eventually finding a tunnel that led to the same cave from which the man had come.
“It is very narrow, this tunnel. I must lay on my back as I go, feeling the way with my feet. The rocks are sharp, very sharp. There is a little water sometimes coming in with the tides. It is damp and it is dark. But then, I make a turn, and the tunnel widens, and I can stand, and then I see a speck of light. I move closer, and I can hear a voice, a woman’s voice. And it is Barbara. I cannot hear exactly what it is she says, but it is her.
“I crawl closer, behind a big rock, and I can make out a figure now. It is dark, very dark, and it is hard to see. But yes, it is Barbara and she is sitting up, leaning against the wall of the cave, and the man, Lord Downey, he is lying down beside her. They are talking. Beyond them, it is still some distance to where the cave opens in the cliff, and I can just barely make out the figures of the men—there are three of them, sitting there against the light from outside. I wanted to go nearer, to whisper to Barbara, to tell her that all will be OK, but alone I could not risk it.”
Boggy had stuck a spool of fifty-pound-test fishing line in the bucket, and he used it to mark his trail on the way out. When he emerged from the long narrow tunnel, it was still daylight. So he waited until it was dark and then made his way back down the cliffs to the skiff.
“The way it is,” Boggy said. “They keep Barbara and Lord Downey far, far in the back of the cave. And they stay just inside the mouth of it, watching. They may not even know there is another way into the cave. I think maybe we can get in there and get out with Barbara and Lord Downey. And the men, if we are lucky, they will not even know.”
When we were done eating, Clarissa’s mother—Momma Percival, they called her—worried over Boggy’s nicks and cuts. Except for her eyes, which were big and clear, and could stare a hole right through you, Momma Percival looked nothing like her daughter. Short and heavyset, she wore her long white hair tied up on the top of her head in a bun. She spoke little, and when she did, it was in the rapid-fire local Bahamian dialect of which I could understand almost nothing at all. She wore a man’s flannel shirt, a long calico skirt, and high-top tennis shoes with white socks pulled up high above her knees. She scrubbed Boggy’s wounds with a washcloth and then led him to a back room just off the kitchen.
“Momma’s mixing up that hoodoo medicine,” Pederson laughed. “No telling what she’s anointing him with back there.”
“Laugh all you want,” Clarissa said. “All I know is that when you get a bellyache you’re always coming by here asking Momma to make you some bush tea.”
I said, “Your mother knows bush medicine?”
“She’s a root woman, what they call it here,” Clarissa said. “Knows everything that grows and what’s good for curing what.”
“And if you’re burning hot for some sweet young woman,” Pederson said, “she can cook up something that’ll make sure you get her.”
Clarissa said, “She can cook up something that’ll make sure you don’t, too.”
The two of them cut looks at each other, playing it back and forth.
“She and Boggy will hit it off just fine then,” I said. “The two of them can compare notes.”
Pederson was eyeing the last of the stuffed crab backs left on the platter. He finally gave in. While he was eating, I said, “Clarissa, you happen to know a friend of Burma Downey’s by the name of Cheri? Cheri Swanson?”
Clarissa rolled her eyes. She said, “Oh yes, I know her plenty. That one, she’s something else.”
“She’s visited Burma here on-island?”
“Uh-huh, she was here just before Burma left and had her accident,” said Clarissa. “Her and Zoe Applequist and Burma and Tiffani—sleeping the days, partying the nights. Must have been two weeks of it. Don’t know how they kept the pace.”
“Chrissie Hineman told me Tiffani had a boyfriend.”
“Yes, but he only came around once or twice. I hardly got a glance of him. Big man. Had a tattoo around his neck.”
I looked at Pederson.
“Sounds like our boy Dwayne.”
Pederson nodded.
“They were all here right before Burma’s accident?”
“Right up to it,” Clarissa said. “One night they all went out to eat dinner at the Albury, and when they came back, they were going at it until late, until long after I’d gone to bed, raising a ruckus, drinking and yelling. Next morning, they were gone. Just like that, they run off. Burma didn’t even say good-bye to her father. Just gone. Accident must have been two-three days after that.”
“How’d Burma meet Tiffani and Cheri Swanson anyway?”
“Tiffani told me it was at some club where she and Cheri Swanson used to work. Had a funny name.”
“Ruby Booby’s?”
“That sounds like it.”
“You get along with Tiffani?”
“Better than with Zoe. At least Tiffani, she’s friendly. She used to come over and help me out in the kitchen, do this and that. She wasn’t much at cooking, but I taught her how to make lemonade. Lord Downey, he loves his lemonade, drinks it morning, noon, and night. Sometimes with a little gin in the afternoons. So Tiffani, she’d take Lord Downey his lemonade and sit and talk with him awhile.” Clarissa smiled, thinking about it. “Lord Downey didn’t mind that at all. Pretty young girl waiting on him, and walking around half-dressed the way she did. At first, she put the life back in him, but then he started fading.”
“She ever ask him for money?”
“Not that I know of. Besides, he didn’t have it to give. Poor man was selling off pictures on the wall just trying to keep up with all the money Burma was spending. He has the house and the things that are in it, and that’s about it. I mean, the house and the property are worth a great deal of money and he owns that free and clear. He has a little bit coming in, but only enough to cover the basics and maintain a certain degree of respect.”
We cleared off the table. Clarissa stepped into the backroom to check on Momma Percival and Boggy. We heard her say, “Come here, you two, and look at this.”
Clarissa stood by the screen door that opened onto the backyard. Outside in the rain, Boggy held an umbrella over Momma Percival while she shined a flashlight on a tangle of plants and vines and bushes that consumed most of the yard.
“Momma’s showing him her doctorin’ garden,” Clarissa said. “The rain just pouring down on them and they don’t care.”
Pederson said, “Maybe the two of them can cook up something that will scare off this hurricane.”
Clarissa wouldn’t let Pederson and me help her wash the dishes, said she had her own way of doing them and for us just to go and relax. We sat down in the living room. Outside, there was a flash of lightning and then came the thunder, and the wood-frame house creaked and moaned in the wind.
We sat there listening to the storm awhile. And then I said, “It’s going to take at least four of us to get them out of that cave. We’ll use Miz Blitz to haul us over there. We’ll have to do it tomorrow night.”
Pederson nodded.
“Great minds,” he said, “think alike.”
52
By the next morning, the rain had let up some, but the winds were howling, with gusts to fifty miles per hour. The 2 P.M. report out of Miami showed the center of Curt just southwest of Great Exuma. It was crossing the shallow waters of the Great Bahama Bank and nearing the Tongue of the Ocean, where the sea floor suddenly plunges more than a mile below the surface. All that deep, open water meant the storm was likely to strengthen, reaching one hundred and forty miles per hour, or more. A category-four, doozy of a blow.
The forecast called for Curt to follow a path that would take it between Andros and New Providence Island, just missing Nassau. After that, it was anyone’s guess. I was hoping that once it reached the Gulf Stream it might drift north and avoid a direct hit on Minorca Beach. No matter what, Florida’s east coast, along with Georgia and the Carolinas, would soon have hell to pay.
I bought another phone card and called Steffie Plank at home. She unloaded on me for not getting in touch with her earlier.
“All I could think was that something had gone wrong. I’m about to lose it, Zack.”
“Well, just take it easy. Things are going as well as they possibly can.”
“Did you find out the name of the bank where I can wire the money?”
“I want to hold off on the money.”
“Zack—”
“Wait, just hear me out,” I said. I told her about Dwayne Crowe and how Boggy had spotted Barbara and Lord Downey in the caves on North Eleuthera.
“I’m not going to siphon off everything Barbara has worked for and turn it over to these bastards until I know I absolutely have to.”
“And when might that be?”
“I don’t know. I’m working on it.”
“You’ll call me the moment you know something?”
“Yes.”
“You swear, Zack?”
“All the goddam time.”
When I returned to Miz Blitz Pederson and Boggy stood in the galley. An open footlocker sat by the big teak table and I watched Pederson pull two rifles from it and put them on the table.
“Enfield L-85s,” he said. “Fully automatic pieces of shit. Bahamas police bought them off the British in the late 1980s after the Brits figured out they didn’t work worth a damn in that Falklands War of theirs. Got this, too.”
He pulled a shotgun out of the trunk and put it on the table.
‘Twelve-gauge, semi-auto pump. About as simple as they come. But get close enough, it’ll bring down a Crowe,” said Pederson. “You two got any preferences?”
Boggy said he had weapons of his own that he planned to take. Pederson looked skeptical, but didn’t press him on it.
“Guess I’ll take the shotgun,” I said. Pederson handed it to me, along with a box of shells.
“I guess Brindley can use one of the Enfields.”
“What are you going to use?” I asked.
“Oh, I got something special. It’s at my house. I asked Brindley to run by and get it and bring it with him.”
I didn’t say anything. Pederson studied me.
“Look,” he said. “I know you aren’t real excited about including Brindley in this. But the boy can run a boat. He ought to be doing that instead of dressing up in a uniform and pretending he’s a policeman. You can trust him with Miz Blitz while we’re up there on those cliffs.”
I handed him the 12-gauge.
“You want to show me how this thing works?”
“You never fired a shotgun?” Pederson asked.
“Maybe once or twice when I was a kid, one that belonged to a friend. My family wasn’t real big on guns,” I said. “Don’t know much about them.”
So Pederson got a box of shells from the locker and showed me where to pop them into the breech. I loaded three shells—ker-chak, ker-chak, ker-chak—then Pederson showed me how to click the safety off and on.
“Now step out there on the dock with it,” he said.
“Do what?”
“Get out there and fire the damn thing. Just shoot into the water, you aren’t going to hurt anything. Shoot once close and then once far off, and then once in between. You need to see how the shot spreads so you got an idea of what the hell you can hit. I’m not having you go into that cave never having even fired the gun you’re carrying.”
So I went out onto the end of the dock. I aimed the gun at the water and pulled the trigger. Nothing happened.
“Turn off the damn safety,” Pederson said. I did. Then I shot three times into the water, watching the splatter of the shot, pumping the stock, and ejecting the empty shells. It was louder than I thought it would be, even with the wind blowing. I didn’t know that I could hit anything with it, but at least I knew a little bit about what to expect after I pulled the trigger.
I was walking back to the boat when I saw a golf cart stop at the end of the dock. Zoe Applequist stepped out and walked toward me. She looked at the shotgun. Then she looked at the boat where Pederson and Boggy stood watching us.
“What’s this all about?” she said.
“Pederson wants to sell me one of his shotguns. Good for duck hunting. I was just seeing how it works.”
She didn’t buy it, but she didn’t argue.
“They called again,” she said. “Burma wrote you this note.”
Zoe handed me a piece of paper. It said:
Zoe told the men you might have trouble getting all the money. They said they would take $750,000. When can you have it? We need to finalize this as soon as possible.
I folded the note and stuck it in my pocket.
“I’ll bring it to them tomorrow,” I said. “After the storm passes.”
