Bahamarama, page 6
part #1 of Zack Chasteen Series
I waded chest-deep through the mangroves, moving to the back side of the tiny island. Fiddler crabs skittered along the shore and ducked into their holes. I shuffled my feet along the sandy bottom, hoping to scare off any stingrays that might be in my path. Last thing I needed was to get barbed by one of them. That would have me hobbling for sure.
I made it to a pocket-sized break in the tangle of roots and limbs and stared west, charting my course. I picked out the radio tower behind DeQuesnes Fish Camp on the far side of the lagoon. The sun was still a palm width or two above the tree line on the opposite shore, but it was sinking fast. The mosquitoes were already fierce. I ducked underwater to keep them off me, and when I came up they were buzzing there, waiting, ready to suck me dry. With luck I’d make it to Oak Hill by dark, before the little bastards got any worse.
For the next two hours, it was swim a little, trudge a little, swim a little more, as I moved across the lagoon. I had plenty of time to think about things, which meant thinking mostly about Victor Ortiz. I thought about the day I first laid eyes on him. It was at the Minorca Beach Marina, where I had taken Miz Blitz to get her hull scraped and a new coat of bottom paint put on. I was standing around talking with Robby Greig, the marina owner, when a shiny Mercedes pulled up and Ortiz got out and introduced himself. He was elegant in a way that only Latin men can be, with slick-backed hair and an absurdly skinny mustache. Anglo guys can’t pull off that kind of look. They wind up being mistaken for aluminum siding salesmen or pederasts.
Ortiz had a couple of guys with him—big, thick guys, who hung back and let him do the talking. He told me he wanted to take some buddies to the Bahamas and go diving. I told him I could arrange that. I also told him that it would cost him more to run out of Minorca Beach than it would farther south—a twenty-hour haul to get to Grand Bahama. He could charter someone based in Fort Lauderdale or Miami and get to Bimini in less than four hours. And the diving would be just as good, if not better. He said he didn’t mind the extra time or the extra money. He said he wanted to go to Grand Bahama and that he preferred leaving from Minorca Beach. I told him the price. He didn’t argue. And we set the date. There was nothing to sign, just a shake-hand deal. He paid me the fee up front in cash. All the more reason to trust him. I handed part of the money straight over to Robby Greig to pay for the work on the boat. It was all very convenient.
Ortiz showed up at the appointed time and place with four buddies. They brought a lot of gear—several duffels and two of those gray aluminum suitcases made for carrying photo equipment. It didn’t strike me as unusual. Most divers are gearheads, and a good number of them also fancy themselves underwater photographers. Miz Blitz had plenty of room. Boggy helped me stash everything below and we set off.
It was a long, slow, sloppy haul—high seas and rain, and a lot of chumming the fishes on the part of Ortiz and his friends. It was still storming like hell when we hit West End, so ugly that when I radioed Bahamas customs to let them know we were heading in, they told me they were locking up and going home and not to worry about the paperwork until the next morning. Ortiz and his buddies rallied a bit after we tied off at our mooring, and when the weather settled I let them take Miz Blitz’s skiff ashore for an evening of bar-hopping. They brought along a couple of their duffels and one of the aluminum suitcases. Again, it didn’t strike me as unusual.
A couple of hours later, Ortiz and his pals returned in the skiff. They were just short of drunk. They said they had stopped by a dive shop, worked a good deal on some used scuba tanks, and wanted to get them back on the boat before continuing their night on the town. So Boggy and I unloaded the tanks. There were maybe ten of them and they were pieces of crap—old and dinged, with black paint recently brushed on to cover the defects. Then Ortiz and his friends headed back to shore. That was the last I saw of them.
When they weren’t back by 10 A.M. the next day, I was forced to clear customs without them. I had forgotten to gather their passports the night before, so I filed an incomplete manifest, showing Boggy and myself as Miz Blitz’s only passengers. In retrospect, hell, yes, I should have mentioned something to the customs officials. But I knew it would create all kinds of bureaucratic snags and I just didn’t think it was worth the trouble. Stupid, stupid, stupid.
Boggy went ashore at noon to look for Ortiz. He found the skiff tied up at the marina with nothing in it. He made the rounds of bars and casinos. He visited the police station and was told to take a seat until someone could speak with him. While he was sitting there a reporter from the Freeport Crier came in and began interviewing the watch commander about a shooting incident from the night before. The details were sketchy but several people had wound up dead. The reporter asked if it was a drug deal. The watch commander said he was not at liberty to discuss the details, but if the reporter wanted to grab his camera, then he could probably get some good shots next door at the morgue. They were getting ready to unload the bodies. Boggy followed the reporter next door. There were seven bodies, some of them uncovered, and Boggy recognized two of them as Ortiz’s friends.
We sat on the boat all that night. No one came to ask us any questions. We sat there all the next day and through the next night. Still, no one came to ask us anything. We read the story in the Freeport Crier. It didn’t contain much more in the way of information than what Boggy had picked up. It said there had been a gunfight during a suspected drug deal. Four of the dead were Cuban-Americans, and the story listed Victor Ortiz as one of them. The other three were from Panama and had been living in Freeport for six weeks prior to the shootings. The story said authorities were asking for anyone who might have information about the incident to please come forward.
We sat on the boat another day and night trying to decide what to do. If I hadn’t botched the whole deal with customs, then I probably would have gone to the police and told them what I knew, which was pretty close to nothing. But it would have looked suspicious.
“So why did you not, at least, tell authorities these men were on your boat?” the police would ask.
“Damn good question,” I would say. “Why don’t you just go ahead and lock me up?”
And they would have. And I could have taken my chances with the Bahamian justice system.
So we pulled anchor and headed back to Minorca Beach. I went through all the belongings that Ortiz and his friends had left behind. The last thing I wanted was to get caught with dope on the boat. But mostly there was just clothes. They had left one of the aluminum suitcases, and when I opened it, all I saw was a bunch of photography stuff—fancy lenses and what looked like darkroom equipment. All I knew was that it looked expensive and I couldn’t see just chunking it overboard.
After the crossing, we cut in at Coronado Inlet and Boggy took off in the skiff. His crab traps had gone untended for several days and he wanted to check them. It would give us something good for dinner. I cruised down to LaDonna, taking my time, cleaning up Miz Blitz as I went, thinking about how I would make crab enchilau, cracking the crabs and cooking them with tomatoes and garlic, and a little white wine, and soaking up everything with crusty Cuban bread. I pulled Miz Blitz into her stall and tied her off, and then all hell broke loose.
I think just about every branch of law enforcement was represented there that day. First came a squadron of black-clad S.W.A.T. team commandos who swarmed the boathouse and flattened me and read me my rights. Then came the F.B.I. and the D.E.A. and the B.A.T.F.—enough acronyms to provide all the makings for a world-class Scrabble game. The Secret Service was there, too, along with enough local cops to put a serious dent in the day’s receipts at Dunkin’ Donuts. All of them just for me. I think even they were a little embarrassed by the overkill.
The headline in the next morning’s Orlando Sentinel read: “Former Dolphins Star Arrested for Counterfeiting.” Which was totally misleading since I had never been a bona-fide star, just a journeyman strong safety, who only once made All-Pro, and who blew out his knee after four seasons and then hung up his jockstrap. There were two counts of counterfeiting—one for the $1,750 in bogus bills that I had paid Minorca Beach Marina for the paint job, the other for possession of what the newspaper called “sophisticated, state-of-the-art counterfeiting devices.” That’s what had been inside the aluminum suitcase.
The feds arrested Boggy, too. But when it came to the real nut-cutting, they dropped the case against him to concentrate on me. They took my boats. They took everything I had, except my homestead.
Barbara and I were already tight by that time, and she insisted on paying for the attorneys. She paid too much, because the trial lasted only two days, and even I was impressed by the government’s case. The defense rested on my claim that the counterfeiting equipment and the bogus money had belonged to Victor Ortiz. Only, Victor Ortiz was dead. And I had no way to prove that he had ever been on my boat.
My attorneys told me I should be grateful that I wound up with only a three-year sentence. Yeah, I was grateful. About as grateful as I was for the head-whopping I’d just received, thanks to a dead man.
10
It was just past dark when I waded out of the lagoon in Oak Hill and walked into the bait shop at DeQuesnes Fish Camp. Freddy DeQuesnes was sitting behind the counter. He was shirtless and nursing a Budweiser and watching the Cubs play the Braves on a tiny TV beside the cash register. There was no one else in the place.
Freddy raised his beer in salute when he saw me, then drained it off and crumpled the can and flattened it on the counter. He owned about ten acres along the lagoon, part of it the fish camp, and part of it a storage lot where people from up north paid Freddy to keep their boats and trucks and travel trailers until they came down to use them each winter. If today was like most of Freddy DeQuesnes’s days, he had collected five dollars a boat from fishermen using his boat ramp, sold a few dozen live shrimp, pumped a little gas, and probably already polished off the better part of a twelve-pack.
Freddy stood from his stool, hitched up his khaki shorts, and opened a rusty refrigerator. He pulled out another Bud and offered me one. I turned it down. Then Freddy said: “What the hell happened to you?”
“Long story. Need to use your bathroom.”
“Looks like you need a helluva lot more than that, Zack,” said Freddy. “Emergency room comes to mind.”
“I’ll be alright.”
Freddy nodded me toward the bathroom.
He said, “Got a first-aid kit under the sink.”
I stepped in the bathroom and studied my face in the mirror. Looked even worse than I’d imagined. Over the years, I had suffered plenty of head bangings, but no one had ever hit me with a shovel before. The right side of my face bore a five-inch-wide welt that ran down to my chin. My jawline was discolored and throbbing. There was a knot on the side of my cheekbone the size of a crab apple and, below it, a gash that could probably have used some stitches. I stuck out my tongue. I’d bit off a flap on one side and it was already turning black. The broken teeth were way in back and I couldn’t get a good look at them, but I’d be in the market for a couple of crowns.
I pulled paper towels out of the dispenser, soaked them with water, and washed up. I opened the first-aid kit and found a bottle of hydrogen peroxide and poured it over the gash on my face. It fizzed and stung. I wiped it clean and poured on some more hydrogen peroxide and wiped it clean again. I used a pair of scissors to fashion a couple of butterfly bandages out of some Band-Aids and applied them to the gash on my cheekbone. They drew the wound together nicely. There would be a scar, but it wouldn’t be lonesome.
I thought about what to do next. The right thing would have been to call the cops. But my outlook on what was right and what was wrong had been skewed by the circumstances that sent me to Baypoint. Ever since then, I had pitched my tent in Camp To-Thine-Own-Self-Be-True. I would abide the law and honor those who tried to uphold it, but damned if I would trust them to sort out the whole truth and nothing but. Particularly as it applied to me.
If I had called the cops, then things would have gotten messy. For one thing, there was the body in the boathouse. That meant I would have to get lawyered up before I called the cops, and I didn’t want to go through all of that. Besides, even if I was reporting nothing more serious than a cat stuck in a cherry tree, my record would make for murky waters. Things would get even murkier considering I wasn’t even a full day out of prison. I could forget all about flying to Harbour Island. The cops wouldn’t let me leave Minorca Beach. Days might pass before I got to see Barbara. I couldn’t accept that.
When I stepped out of the bathroom, the Cubs had taken the lead, 2-0, and Freddy DeQuesnes was pulling a pizza out of the microwave and cutting it into slices. He opened another beer.
“You got a car I can borrow, Freddy?”
He cocked his head and looked me up and down.
“Should I ask what happened to you first?”
“No,” I said. “Better that you didn’t.”
Freddy nodded.
“How long you need the car?” he said.
“A week, maybe. Need to drive down to Fort Lauderdale, catch a plane. I’ll return it when I get back.”
Freddy took a bite out of the pizza. He took a swig of beer.
“I can pay you for it,” I said. “Call it a rental.”
Freddy liked the sound of that.
“Hundred bucks?”
I took a hundred from the wad in my pocket and handed it to him.
“Sorry about it being wet.”
“It’ll spend,” said Freddy.
He got up from his stool and walked to a square of pegboard stuck on the wall by the refrigerator. There were dozens of keys hanging from it. Freddy searched through them until he found the one he was looking for, and handed it to me.
“1989 Ford F-150. White, with an over-the-cab camper. Belongs to a fellow out of Michigan won’t be coming down this winter on account he had a stroke,” said Freddy. “Don’t fuck it up. But there ain’t no real hurry getting it back.”
It was a three-hour drive to Fort Lauderdale and I stopped twice—once in Titusville and once in West Palm Beach—to buy small bags of ice. I wrapped them inside a towel, tied it around my head, and let the ice work on my jaw. The throbbing had just about gone away, but my tongue was swollen the size of a sneaker. The crab apple knot had grown into a small cantaloupe and turned an ugly blue. I already had one black eye and the other one was approaching shiner status.
Just outside of Fort Lauderdale, I found a phone booth and called Ruby Booby’s again. This time around someone answered, a man.
“Ruby’s,” he said, shouting over the music in the background.
“Is Chip Willis there?” I asked.
“Hold on,” said the guy on the other end.
A couple of minutes went by. The song in the background ended and a new one began. It was that “We Will Rock You” song they play at too many sporting events. I started picturing the Ruby Booby babes performing lap dances to it. I also started picturing the guys they were performing on. So I tried to picture something else. Finally a voice said: “Yeah.”
“Chip?” I said.
“Uh-huh.”
“Surprise. It’s me.”
No reply from the other end.
“Look, Chip, I don’t care about you hauling ass and leaving me, I just need to get my things out of the car, alright?”
“What the fuck you talking about?”
“You can keep the money Barbara paid you. I don’t care. I just want my things.”
“What fucking money? Who the fuck is Barbara?”
It was slowly sinking in on me that this voice didn’t belong to the Chip Willis I knew. It was more nasal, with a definite up-north accent.
“This Chip Willis?”
“Yeah, I already told you.”
“Look, the club has a limo, right?”
“Yeah. We got a limo. Who is this?”
“And you’re the driver, right?”
“I drive it sometimes. What’s this about?”
“Someone driving the club’s limo picked me up today. And then he went off and left me.”
“Sure as shit wasn’t me.”
“I think we’ve established that,” I said. “Do you know who was driving it? Or where the limo is?”
“Hold on, lemme get Ricky.”
Several minutes went by. The song changed from “We Will Rock You” to “Sweet Home Alabama.” I tried not to picture anything. I was just trying to figure out what was going on. I was doing a thoroughly crappy job of it. Finally, another voice came on the phone.
“This is Ricky. You know something about the limo?”
“Less by the minute,” I said.
“What’s that?” Ricky shouted. “I can’t hear you real good, the fucking music.”
“I said I don’t know where the limo is, but I’m trying to find it.”
“Well, so are we. It’s missing.”
“Someone stole it?” I asked.
“You know something about it?”
“All I know is that whoever was driving the limo picked me up but didn’t take me where I needed to go,” I said. “He went off and left me.”
“Where did he pick you up at?”
“Oh, just up the road.”
“Who’d you talk to when you booked it?”
“I didn’t,” I said. “Someone else made the arrangements.”
“Who’d they talk to?”
“I don’t have a clue,” I said. “You think someone stole the limo?”
“What the fuck do I know? The key was off the board this afternoon when I opened up and the chauffeur uniform was gone from the closet. Thought maybe Chip or somebody might have booked something last minute, just didn’t have a chance to tell me about it. But none of them know nothing about it. The guy picked you up, what’s he look like?”
I described the fake Chip Willis.
