Fallen Honor: A Jesse McDermitt Novel (Caribbean Adventure Series Book 7) (29 page)

I turned, leaned on the rail and watched as a flock of pelicans flew in a tight formation out over the Contents, peeling off and diving one by one on the baitfish in a narrow channel between two islands. Coral leaned on the rail next to me and waited.

“Now, I suppose you two go on with whatever life it is you choose,” I said. “Bradley will be caught either trying to get out of Key West, or when he gets to Pittsburgh.”

She stared off to the far horizon for a moment, then looked down into the water below the pier. “Five men dead. That’s not what we wanted to happen.”

Taking her by the shoulders, I turned her toward me. “None of that’s on you, kid. Those men made a conscious decision to follow the life that
they
chose. If people like that are lucky, they spend half their life in prison. If not, they spend the rest of it just being dead. What you need to ask yourself is this. Is that young man worth it?”

She smiled a little, but there was moisture in her eyes. “Aunt Dawn was right about you. She said you had a reputation for ending problems before they started, then rationalizing what happened in a way that makes perfect sense.”

“I barely even know your aunt.”

“Yeah, she said that too. But down island, you’re pretty well known as a problem solver.” We both turned toward the island and could see Michal and the Trents’ kids throwing a ball to one another in the clearing, Pescador bounding after it when little Patty dropped it. “I think Michal’s worth it. Deep down, he’s a good man. Aunt Dawn told me weeks ago that he would arrive in my life soon and she thinks he’s worthy, too.”

“If he keeps on the right side of the line,” I said.

She turned to me, eyes now blazing defiantly. “Because of the drugs? We threw the coke into the bight. He’s done with that.”

“And the pot?”

“Everyone smokes weed, even Aunt Dawn on occasion. That’s no big deal.”

I looked at her, surprised. I’d known only a handful of people who ever smoked marijuana and they were all young people, like Michal, Coral, and Jimmy. “Your aunt does?”

“That surprises you?”

“Well, yeah.”

“Not often and don’t tell her I told you.”

Travis stepped out of the shade of the gumbo limbo next to the western bunkhouse and motioned to me. “Excuse me,” I said. “Make yourself at home here until we’re sure it’s safe to go back down island. We’re having a sort of party here later. Y’all are welcome to stay.”

I trotted after Travis and followed him around to the far side of the west bunkhouse and into Chyrel’s little field office there. The two bunkhouses had originally been built identical, but Carl remodeled this one. It now has a desk to accommodate Chyrel’s computers and bunks for up to four women, separated from the rest of the bunkhouse, where the men from Deuce’s team stay from time to time, as needed.

Once inside, Travis closed the door. “Chyrel hacked into the local PD and sheriff’s computers. None of the three men who escaped last night have been apprehended. And there was a report of a stolen boat sometime overnight.”

“What kind of boat?”

“An eighteen-foot Mako center-console. The owner said it had less than half a tank of gas on board.”

“They couldn’t make it more than fifteen or twenty miles without stopping for gas somewhere.”

Travis nodded. “Word went out from the marina the boat was stolen from to every other marina in the Keys. If they buy gas anywhere, it’ll be reported.”

“Local cops have more roadblocks up, besides the Stock Island Bridge?”

“Yeah, but not until after the theft was reported.”

“Damn,” I said. “Always reactive, never proactive. They could be all the way to Daytona by now. All they had to do was get past Stock Island in the boat and then steal a car. What about the five dead guys?”

Travis went to Chyrel’s desk and picked up a notepad. “Erik Lowery, age thirty, resides in Pittsburgh. Known bagman and bodyguard for Gerald Tremont Bradley. Did a few years in Attica, up in New York. The other four are from the Okeechobee area. Small-time hoods, but well known to the authorities in Hendry, Glades, Palm Beach, and Dade counties.”

I looked at the list of names, but none were familiar. “Let me call someone I know up there. See if he has any idea who the black cowboy is that these guys were with.”

Travis tore the page off and handed it to me. “Your daughter and her family are coming down today?”

“Yeah, I’m picking them up at the
Anchor
at noon. You staying for the cookout?”

“Is that an invitation?”

“Unless you prefer the Wooden Spoon.”

“Sure,” he replied. “Thanks.”

Aboard the
Revenge
, I used the sat-phone and called a friend in LaBelle, just west of Lake Okeechobee. He answered on the first ring.

“Figured you’d be calling, Kemosabe,” Billy Rainwater said by way of answering the phone. Billy and I went to school together, though he was a couple of years behind me, and later served in the Corps together. His dad was one of the last of the Calusa, the original people that had inhabited South Florida. His mom was Seminole. I occasionally buy guns and a few other toys from him.

“What do you mean you knew I’d be calling? You don’t even know this number.”

“You’re looking for a black cracker name of Austin Brown, originally from Clewiston. He called me less than an hour ago for help. I figured you’d find out who his buddies were and call me.”

“He called
you
for help?”

“Said he and the guy he was working for needed guns and off-road transportation. When he mentioned the name of your boat, I cut him off and told him he was on his own and better get shed of the guy he was with, muy pronto.”

“He say where they were?”

“Nope, and I didn’t ask. He ain’t a bad guy, Jesse. Just has some redneck, trailer-trash friends. Or had some, anyway. The average IQ in Naranja went up a bit after last night. That’s where Brown lives now, owns a gun shop down there. I could tell he was on a payphone, though, and near water. Heard cars going by on the highway and gulls crying.”

“He say how many people he was with?”

“Nope, but the way he talked it sounded like just him and the one guy he was working for. I won’t even ask what happened down there, Kemosabe. His white trash buddies got shot to shit and you’re involved. That’s enough for me to know they probably deserved it.”

“Anything else you can tell me about him?”

“He’s smart. Way smarter than he lets on. He knows me and knows if I’m warning him away, the guy he’s working for is like kryptonite to Superman. As soon as the opportunity presents itself, he’ll ditch the guy he’s running with. Odds are he’s traveling solo already. His wife’s name’s Mary-Beth, a white woman. The two of ’em run his gun store on Old Dixie Highway, near Biscayne Drive. Mean woman.”

“Thanks, Billy. I appreciate it. If he calls you back, see if you can find out where the other guy is. I’m only interested in that guy, so long as your friend keeps his ass up there on the mainland.”

“Never said he was a friend. Just a business associate.”

I ended the call and went back out to where Carl, Germ, and Scott were working in the garden. “Shouldn’t you be headed up to get your daughter?” Carl asked.

“Leaving in a minute,” I replied. “Got a second, Scott?”

I walked toward the steps leading up to my house, and Scott followed, wiping his forehead with the tail of a sleeveless workout shirt. “What’s up?” he asked when I turned around.

“You and Germ mind hanging out here a day or so?”

“The Pittsburgh drug dealer got away from Key West PD?”

“Apparently,” I replied. “The hired gunman he’s with is an amateur out of South Miami, Austin Brown. They probably stole a boat last night and could have made Saddlebunch Keys before running out of gas. They’ll probably get picked up today. If not, I might know where at least one of them is headed.”

“Sure, Gunny. We’ll hang out, unless the director says different.”

“You know a gun shop on Old Dixie up near the base?”

Scott laughed. “About a dozen. Shooting’s a pretty popular pastime up there.”

“Owned by a black guy named Austin Brown and his wife, a white woman, Mary-Beth.”

“Yeah,” Scott said. “I know the place. At least by reputation. It’s said you can buy clean guns there. By clean, I mean they’ve never been registered, have had the serial numbers removed, and never been used in the commission of a felony.”

“The black cowboy last night was Austin Brown, and the trailer trash were his buddies. Bradley probably hired them, no idea how they knew each other.”

Scott rubbed the back of his thick neck. “I thought a couple of those guys looked familiar. I’ve probably seen them around Homestead.”

“I gotta head up to Rusty’s place to pick up my daughter and her family. Let Travis know what I told you?”

“Sure thing, Gunny. See ya in a bit.”

Cutting through a path around the steps, I waded out to the foot of the pier, climbed up and went through the door to the dock space. After a quick rinse under the shower on board, I was dressed in clean clothes and pulling out from under the house in the big Winter center-console,
El Cazador
.

Twenty minutes later, I had to heave to in the shallows by the channel to the
Anchor
to let a boat pass that was coming down the canal. As it got closer, I recognized Mac Travis at the helm. He turned toward me as he approached and, coming alongside, he reversed his engine, bringing the boat to a stop.

Mac nodded. “McDermitt.”

I stepped over to the rail and leaned on it, ready to fend his boat off if need be. “How are ya, Mac?”

“Same old shit,” he said. “You hear about that shootout down in Key West?”

“Heard something about it,” I said. Mac was a decent enough guy, kept pretty much to himself most of the time. “Some bad guys got killed and a few of them got away.”

“Three got away, but one of ’em went back to the scene of the crime. He’s dead now, too.”

“Hadn’t heard that,” I said.

“Some ugly little crackhead about five foot nothin’ that was supposed to be involved.”

The guy that tried to sell crack to Charlie
, I thought.
No great loss there.

“Cops get him?” I asked.

Mac laughed and took off his fisherman shades, revealing the white rings around his eyes, where the skin wasn’t exposed to the rays of the sun.

“Weirdest thing I ever heard. You know that little footbridge near the aquarium?” I nodded. “The guy that pedals the Key West Mobile Library was crossing it on that three-wheeled bookstore thing of his. Apparently the little crack monster was crossing it from the other direction and must’ve tripped over something. The bookmobile bumped him right off the bridge. It was feeding time in the shark pen just thirty feet away.”

“He fell in the shark pen?” I asked.

“No, but when they feed the big sharks in the pen, a bunch of little ones, mostly spinners and bonnet heads, come into the tidal pond area that the pen gets its clean water from. What I heard was, the guy wasn’t any bigger than a ten-year-old girl, easy pickings for the five or six three-footers that usually show up for scraps.”

“Guess he missed the sign,” I said.

“What sign?”

“‘Don’t feed the sharks.’”

Mac laughed, putting his shades back on and reversing his boat back into the channel. “Thought you meant the one on the bookmobile.”

“What’s that?”

“Says, ‘Be nice, or I’ll kill you in my next book.’”

T
ied up to Rusty’s big barge at the end of the turning basin a few minutes later, I walked across the deck and up to the dock, where I stopped to look around. The air was a little cooler, in the high eighties maybe, but the humidity was through the roof. The only cars in the lot were Rusty’s old pickup, my Travelall, and an older Toyota that I knew belonged to Angie, Jimmy’s girlfriend.

I crossed the yard to the front door of the bar, the smells of something good cooking from out on the back deck filling my nostrils. Opening the door, I stepped inside, waiting a moment for my eyes to adjust to the dimmer light inside.