B0092XNA2Q EBOK (6 page)

Covered in coils of rope, my blood and sweat and maybe her urine, it struck me that this was not a publicity stunt. She’d not done this to attract attention. At least not while it was happening. I won’t speak to her motivation but this was intended as a private death, permanent and absolute, no do-over, and the world would deal with it long after she was gone.

For several minutes, the three of us lay exhausted on the balcony. I studied my stinging hands. In a sense, she was lucky the rope slid through them. Had I been able to grip the rope like a vise, the rope plus her weight would have snapped her neck. As it happened, it tightened gradually—allowing us time to pull her up.

Soon, the sobs came. Steady sat up, cradled her head, and
wrapped her body in his robes. I uncoiled myself and lay staring at the stars above us. I tried to stand, but my legs were shaking so badly I decided against it.

I wanted to get out of there before someone found us. Accused us. Steady sat unfazed. Unmoving. She curled into a fetal position in his lap while he whispered in the air above her.

The circular burn around her neck was not going away any time soon. A tattoo sans ink. As were the burns on my hands. I made my way to the kitchen sink, ran cold water over the raw meat in my palms, and then handed a wet towel to Steady. He dabbed her neck. Soothing the skin.

She lay there, sobbing. Shaking uncontrollably. What I saw was not the woman who lit the silver screen, walked the red carpet, graced the cover of
Vogue, People
, or name your tabloid, but a broken human being at the bottom. I slid down the wall, and sat quietly, deciding something I’d long since suspected but never known for sure. Man, or woman, is not made to be worshipped. We are not physically cut out for it. Life in the spotlight, on the pedestal, at the top of the world was a lonely, singular, desolate, soul-killing place.

I whispered, “Shouldn’t we call somebody?”

He looked down at the scar on her wrist and the oozing burn on her neck. He shook his head. He stared out the window, and down at the lights of the dock. “We need to get her out of here without being seen by the sharks below. Get her someplace where she can have a few days anonymity. Peace.” He nodded. Like he’d made up his mind before we ever came up here. “Your place.”

“My place? Why my place? Take her to your place. Take her to a hotel. I’m getting out of here before somebody blames me—”

“ ’Cause nobody’ll find her with you and she needs that right now. And ’cause—”

Steady rarely, if ever, asked anything of me. “ ’Cause what?”

“ ’Cause you don’t care who she is and don’t care to profit off this.”

I wasn’t getting out of this. I leaned my head against the wall. “Maybe we should ask her.”

He brushed the hair out of her face, whispered over her, and she pulled his hand across her heart and nodded.

He pointed at the kitchen. “The keys are hanging on a panel in the pantry. Only one with a floating key chain. The service elevator will spit you out the back of the building. Lower level parking deck. There’s an exit in the far corner. You can wind your way through the dark and avoid the crowd. We’ll be along in a few minutes. And”—a wrinkle appeared between his eyes—“don’t let anyone see you.”

I wanted to ask him how he knew all this but figured now wasn’t the time. As it turned out I was right because with little notice, she turned, lifted her head, and vomited all over the balcony. He waved me off, so as to protect her from any more embarrassment.

I studied the sleek paneled elevator as I stood inside, descending. No security emerged. People here valued their privacy. Downstairs, I crept out of the loading garage and around to the docks, which sat at the end of a long cul-de-sac and out of earshot. The crowd of news media and cameramen had started on eggnog and grown animated. Pointing at the top floor and talking loudly about the injustices of the rich, they were oblivious to what had been attempted and almost happened in the shadow of the western side. I had no desire to tell them so I wound my way to the back. A forty-something-foot, go-fast boat, probably worth well over a quarter of a million dollars, sat dry on a lift a few feet above the surface of the water. Even out of the water she looked fast. The name on the back read
The Ice Queen
.

This meant we were taking the long way home and it also meant no one would ever know. Hopping in that boat at this time of night and killing the running lights was like dropping off the face of the earth. Which, given what I’d just witnessed, wasn’t a bad idea. But none of that was my problem—or so I thought.

I dropped the lift, turned on the batteries, and ran the blowers
while I made sense of the instrument panel—which looked more like a fighter jet than an expensive pleasure boat.

I punched the start button and all three engines roared to life then returned to a low hum and rumble characteristic of over fifteen hundred horsepower. Minutes later, Steady emerged on the dock leading a slow-walking, unstable, cloaked person clinging to his arm. She wore jeans and a dark, long-sleeved T-shirt. He and she stepped into the boat. She descended into the cabin, closing the door behind her. He whispered, “Cut the lights and you two ease out of here.”

My head jerked. “What do you mean, ‘you two’?”

“Security saw me enter. They need to see me leave. Otherwise, I may have to answer questions I can’t answer.”

“But—?”

He waved me off. “Pick me up at the Spear.”

“The what?”

He frowned. Like I should know. He raised both eyebrows. “Piet Hein’s Spear.”

Yeah, I did know the spot.

I eased us out of the slip, through the marina, and into the open water and total darkness of Biscayne Bay—my navigational screen and GPS serving as my guide. I had no idea what I would say if she emerged from her cabin but luckily I didn’t have to figure that out. At least not yet.

We crossed Biscayne Bay, west of the Seaquarium, then turned south where the dark shadow of Biscayne National Park appeared on our port side followed by the lights of the Old Dixie Highway and the Card Sound Bridge. Her cabin door never opened and she made no sound—least not that I could hear over the hum of the engines. The Card Sound Bridge is a toll bridge that hovers sixty-five feet above the water, connecting Florida City to North Key Largo. I have some experience with the bridge and the view from this perspective—from the water up—was strange. It looked taller than I remembered.

The granite obelisk of the memorial, or Piet Hein’s Spear, rose up above the trees on my left. Just past it sat the dock that allowed boat access to the memorial. I nosed the bow of the boat up to the platform, where a white-clothed figure stood smoking a pipe. With surprising agility, Steady stepped in and then hung his arm inside mine.

Wasting no time, I reversed and began easing out into open water. I realized running without lights was in violation of most every law that governs nighttime watercraft use but I doubted if anyone could catch us and if they did I had no intention of still being aboard. I throttled up and planed out. No wind, and glassy water, meant that sixty miles an hour had never felt so smooth. Comfortable inside the pocket of air created by the windshield in front of me, I probed Steady. “How’d you know so much about this boat?”

“She donated a ride in a fund-raiser for the new parish hall. Part of the silent auction.” He made quotation marks with his fingers. “ ‘Buy a hundred-and-twenty-mile-an-hour boat ride with a celebrity.’ It brought a lot of money. Helped us finish the building. She let me tag along.”

I glanced back in the direction of the parking lot. “What about the van?”

“I’ll send someone to pick it up.”

To the north, Sky Seven still sat lit up like the Taj Mahal. “And the letter?”

“Left it alone.”

I looked at him. My surprise showing.

He said, “Throwing away that letter doesn’t change what it says or the person that wrote it. She’s going to have to deal with it sooner or later.”

“What if somebody else finds it first? Like the vultures parked out front.”

“You really think that matters?”

I rarely questioned Steady. “You sure you’re not playing God?”

He paused. Shrugged. Shook his head once. “I hope not.” He looked down at the cabin door. “But sometimes, God wears skin.”

We cut across the channel south of the lighthouse at Bill Baggs Cape Florida State Park and, given a rising tide, right through the seven remaining renegade structures of Stiltsville—a community of houses that, as its name suggests, are built on stilts and sit some ten feet off the ocean’s surface. At one time there were more than twenty-five weekend homes in a cluster on the flat just south of Key Biscayne but every hurricane to pass through has skimmed a few off the surface. I’ve always admired Stiltsville and the people who built it. Maybe that says a lot about me.

I took us to open water where a southwest wind had flattened the Atlantic. Two- to three-foot swells welcomed us with a rhythmic roll. I turned south-southwest and soon knew when Key Largo was on my starboard side.

We passed Islamorada and Lignumvitae Basin, which led into the Florida Bay. I turned northwest at Long Key, crossed under U.S. 1 at the viaduct and across the southern tip of Florida Bay toward the deeper water and grass flats of the gulf. Without the navigational system, I’d have never made it. Maybe Totch Brown, but not me. The waters of Florida Bay are shallow—averaging zero to three feet—and rife with Buick-size chunks of limestone sitting inches below the surface. Depth charts are essential. I swung wide, taking us around most of it, keeping to deeper water. We serpentined through the deeper channels of Little Rabbit and Carl Ross Key, and into the open water just outside Northwest Cape. At the Shark River, the water deepened, and I pressed the throttle forward and started skimming across the surface at over seventy miles an hour. I looked behind me. A frothy wake spread in the shape of a long Y. I smiled. I’d just done something I’d never done—cut across the southern tip of Florida in about thirty minutes. North of us flowed
Marjory Stoneman Douglas’s “river of grass” and the first of the Ten Thousand Islands. If conditions stayed calm, we were ninety miles and less than two hours from home. The drive would not be a straight one as shallow water would force us through more channels only wide enough for one boat. Navigating the flats of the Keys is dicey. On the surface it all looks the same, wide open and inviting. Underneath, it’s anything but. Much like those who live here.

I’d fished this area a lot, and Steady knew it as well if not better than I, but more than one newcomer had sunk his boat because he got overconfident. Local charts are all printed with fine print that says “Local knowledge is essential to successful navigation.” I kept my eyes on the screen and depth gauge.

Given the wind, the water was a sheet of black. Deeper water opened up beneath us and I pushed the throttle forward and trimmed the tabs. Our speed climbed from seventy-two to seventy-seven to eighty-six and finally eighty-nine. We were flying. Yet in a boat that big and heavy it felt like thirty. I wouldn’t want to fish out of it but it danced across the surface of the gulf.

I turned my baseball cap backward and drove in silence—tucked in the vacuum. Steady sat to my left, staring well out beyond the bow. His robes waving in the wind. His lips tight. A wrinkle between his eyes. I don’t know if what Steady was doing—what we were doing—was right or wrong, and I don’t pretend to know what’s best for that poor creature of a woman, but, I will offer this—if God wore skin, I think it’d look a lot like Steady’s.

O
nce in the gulf beyond Shark River, we passed several river mouths, including Lostmans and Chatham. The mouth of the Chatham meant home wasn’t far. Tide was up so we motored across the grass flats at Chatham Bend, beyond Duck Rock, and around to the leeward side of Pavilion Key. Years back, somebody had built a house on stilts that backed up to the mangroves and looked out over the gulf. A great view and great proximity to the fishing, but given that its location sat in the direct path of most every hurricane to pass through, it proved unlivable. Later, it served as a fish camp or trading post for guys like me. As only the twelve barnacled posts remain, the camp did not fare well against the hurricanes, but it did allow safe anchorage for my home on the water, the
Gone Fiction
.

At three a.m., I came in out of the wind, cut the engine, and tied off the go-fast boat to the stern of mine. The woman was hard asleep so I lifted her off her bed in the cabin and carried her onto my boat and into my cabin where I set her quietly on the bed and
pulled the door behind me. She never stirred. Whether she was acting, or truly asleep, I knew not.

Steady waited for me in the galley, only shrugging when I walked out. Having experienced more personal contact than I had in years, I climbed up on deck, and hung my hammock. Nighttime here is magical. I’ve stood on my roof and watched the shuttle spiral into space, followed satellites in their arc across the sky, and watched Mars creep across the black marble floor of heaven.