Cross Current (6 page)

I got
Gorda
under way and, once offshore, I poured on the speed to get back to Hillsboro. It took me an hour and a half to cover the ten or so miles up the coast. The Gulf Stream usually gave me a little more push than that, but it seemed the current was not running as strong as usual. While en route, I put
Gorda
on autopilot and pulled out the large-scale chart for the Bahamas, Cuba, and Hispaniola. The chart showed the Gulf Stream running at a speed of 2.6 to 3.3 knots at its axis. I thought about Solange and wondered what it was like being alone and adrift, in a boat with a dead woman. How long had she been out there? At the Gulf Stream’s usual rate of drift, they would have traveled seventy-five miles in twenty-four hours, and she looked like she’d been out there even longer than that. But there was just no way I would believe they had come from Haiti in that boat. There were times, like right now, when in certain places, the Stream didn’t always run at full strength. And close inshore there was frequently a countercurrent. My guess was that Solange had been on a larger boat before being set adrift somewhere to the south. Of course the
Miss Agnes
came to mind, but the timing was off—if she’d been set adrift from that boat, she should have been somewhere up off northern Palm Beach County. If I could find the exact time she got into the small boat, I could calculate the rate of drift and figure out where she started from.

B.J. looked happy to see me as he took my lines to tie
Gorda
back alongside the crane barge. He had been sitting cross-legged on the deck in the shade, his head bowed over a paperback book, when I pulled alongside. I wanted to freeze- frame the image of him sitting there smiling at me and put it away in a special keepsake box before I ruined it. I’d been doing a lot of that lately.

The
Miss Agnes
was afloat and nearly sitting on her lines, while the crane’s two huge pumps were spewing water out of her innards.

“So Seychelle Sullivan does it again,” B.J. shouted after I turned off
Gorda
's engine. The noise from the gasoline pumps still made conversation only marginally possible.

“What do you mean?”

“Out saving the world, rescuing small children, finding dead bodies. Everybody’s talking about it on the radio. Perry and Mike set off a regular gabfest on channel seventy-two.” He pointed to the workers sitting inside the deckhouse. “The guys and I were listening for over an hour while the pumps were working.”

The Bahamian cruiser looked even worse out of the water than it had sitting on the bottom. Peeling paint, soaked cardboard boxes, clothing, and garbage littered the decks and what I could see of the interior of the cabin through the fogged-up windows. 

“I’ll tell you about it once we get under way. I’d like to get this boat into the yard before quitting time. Think we can get started and finish pumping her out on the way?”

“I think so. She’s still pretty tight, considering.”

“Okay, let’s do it.”

B.J. and I worked well as a team. We always had and, fortunately, the emotional awkwardness of our current romantic separation didn’t extend onto the deck. We rigged my pumps on the cruiser’s deck, got a good towing bridle secured at her bow, said our good-byes to the Gilman crew, and took off back toward Port Everglades.

Even as late in the day as it was, the heat in the deckhouse was stifling. We set her on autopilot and went up on the bow to catch the breeze we made by traveling at six knots. If it wasn’t for our forward speed, there wouldn’t have been any breeze at all.

I kept seeing Solange’s face, those high cheekbones and big dark eyes—eyes that looked far too old for a child who had lived barely a decade. Though I’d had my share of pain in my childhood, compared to this kid I felt lucky. I could not imagine what her short life had been like.

“You’re different,” B.J. said, not looking at me but scanning the horizon for boat traffic.

“What do you mean, different?”

“Something about finding that kid, it changed you.”

I knew it was true, but somehow his saying it seemed to imply that I had instantly become the maternal type. “Oh, B.J., cut the crap with your pseudo-psychological paranormal bullshit. Geez.” I ran my fingers through my hair. “She’s just a kid.” As I turned and made my way aft to check on our tow, I heard his soft laughter.

It was after six by the time we made our way up the Dania Cut-off Canal toward Playboy Marine, the yard that had contracted to haul and store the
Miss Agnes
. The yard workers had quit for the day, but they had left the boatyard travel lift parked over the slip, the slings lowered to the perfect depth for the cruiser. B.J. and I tied the boat up and shut down the pumps. If she sank during the night, she would go down no more than eighteen inches and settle right into those slings. They could pump her out again in the morning before they hauled her out.

I climbed aboard the
Miss Agnes
to take one last look around. B.J. had loaded the pumps back on
Gorda
, and I’d replaced my towlines with some raggedy old dock lines we’d scrounged off the travel lift. Standing on the cruiser’s deck, I imagined again the scene of fifty people and the belongings they had brought for a new life crammed into these few square feet of space.

Beads of moisture fogged the window in the aft cabin door. As I reached for the door handle, I wondered again if there was a connection between the two jobs I’d worked that day: a boat bringing in some illegal Haitian immigrants sinks, and a day and a half later I find two Haitians offshore in a half-sunk boat. Had Solange started out aboard the
Miss Agnes
? The problem was that the numbers just didn’t add up. The current should have carried her much farther north. Was there a third boat we didn’t know about? When I swung the door open and peered into the cabin area, the smell of wet, rotting clothes, ammonia, and dead sea critters hit my face, and the rank sun-heated air flowed out of the enclosed space. Coughing and gasping for air, I stepped back and turned my face away from the cabin door.

Abaco growled a low throaty growl from her post aboard
Gorda
. I could hear the sound of her claws clicking on the aluminum decks as she paced, wanting desperately to come protect me.

B.J. looked down at me from atop the cement dock. “Isn’t it amazing how ripe people’s belongings can get after just a couple of days underwater? After we brought her up, we closed all those windows for a reason, Sey.”

“Oh, man.” I closed the door to the cabin. “I don’t envy the cops who are going to have to go through the stuff in there.” The side decks were clear, so I made my way forward and tested the latch on the door to the wheelhouse. It turned, and this time I took a deep breath and held it before opening the door.

“Sey,” B.J. said, “you do remember that we had clear instructions from the authorities not to touch anything?”

I ignored him and peered inside.

“You told me that this morning,” he said, “and
I
was careful not to disturb any evidence. Anyway, aside from that, there’s a bad vibe in there.”

Smiling at his comments, I stepped into the wheelhouse, risking the boat’s “bad karma.” Abaco growled again, and B.J. said, “See? Even she knows.”

“Think I’m risking some kind of Voodoo curse, eh, B.J.?” I did not consider myself either a religious or a superstitious person, and, admittedly, I did at times make light of B.J.’s mishmash spirituality, which was made up of bits of Transcendentalism, Eastern religions, aikido, and who knows what all. But deep inside, I knew that he saw and felt things that were totally beyond my ken.

I took a breath, testing the air. It wasn’t as bad in here as it had been aft. The inside steering station on most American boats this size would boast a control panel of electronics rivaling that of an airplane cockpit. The
Miss Agnes
, however, had an ancient, pre-digital depth sounder with a circular flasher, and that was it. Not even a VHF radio. The compass had clearly been salvaged from a sunken sailboat. It was mounted on the cabinetry above the helm with wood blocks and nails, and I wondered what those nails did to the instrument’s accuracy. That compass had once cost somebody a bundle, but now all the plastic and metal surfaces were covered with bits of calcified shell where barnacles had once grown. It was the helm of the cruiser, though, that really showed the ingenuity of the island people. In place of a steering wheel, the boat was piloted with bicycle handlebars attached to the steering gear that protruded from the cabinetry.

A couple of waterlogged charts were plastered to the woodwork, and other bits of paper and plastic trash littered the cabin floor. Everywhere I looked in the little cruiser’s wheelhouse, I saw another jury-rigged contraption that would have thrown most American yachtsmen into a conniption. I don’t know if it was real or just the power of suggestion from B.J., but I began to feel there was something creepy about the boat. It was depressing to think about the poverty and desperation of the people who struck out in boats like this to try to get to America, but there was something more. Despite the hot muggy air, I felt a distinct chill.

I turned around, overcome by the desire to get off that boat as soon as possible, and I was about to step back through the doorway when I saw something stuck to the glass windshield. It was a small white rectangle of paper, and when I started to reach for it, something skittered through the trash at my feet. I jumped, letting out a high-pitched squeak.

“Are you okay?” B.J. was squatting on the dock next to the cabin door, ready to jump to the boat’s deck.

I pushed aside the wet cardboard on the floor and a small, pale crab scurried for another hiding place. “This place is spooking me out. I just got scared by a crab, for Pete’s sake.” 

B.J. stood up. “Come on, Sey. Let’s get out of here.” 

Leaning over the makeshift helm, I peeled the paper off the windshield. It was a business card. “Racine Toussaint” was written in plain type above a Pompano Beach address. It didn’t say what business Racine was in, but I slid it into my pocket anyway, careful not to rip the soggy paper.

It was when I was almost out the door that I noticed the sunglasses hooked under a bungee cord that ran across the top of the steering station.
Miss Agnes
’s crew probably used the bungee to keep charts and equipment from blowing or rolling away out at sea. The shades stood out in that dilapidated cabin because they were obviously very expensive Polarized glasses. That brand started at over a hundred dollars a pair. A beaded string was tied between the two earpieces of the shades to keep them on the mariner’s head, and on the wide sides of the frame someone had drawn crude designs in white enamel paint: little skulls with crossbones.

So somebody fancied himself a pirate? I slid the glasses under my T-shirt and tucked in my shirttail to hold them snug. I didn’t want any arguments from B.J. about my having taken a souvenir.

The last fingers of pink were disappearing from the western sky by the time I dropped B.J. off at the docks close to the Dania Bridge and reached the mouth of the New River. I had piloted the tug upriver after dark many times before, but every time I appreciated the beauty of the homes as though I were seeing them for the first time. The river took on a different character when the big old oak and sea grape trees were lit by floodlights and the red and green navigational lights on the occasional pilings that marked the river’s shallows. Sound carried farther in the darkness, and soft music drifted across the water from the poolside cabana at one of the enormous homes. Many like this one were of recent construction, pseudo-Spanish, and built out to the lot’s limits after the nice little Florida bungalows built in the forties and fifties had been torn down. White twinkling lights wound round the trunks of the oaks and illuminated the three party workers slumped on high stools at the outdoor tiki bar looking bored. The party probably wouldn’t heat up for another couple of hours. That was one of the few riverfront homes with anyone in residence in June; most of the houses on either side of
Gorda
were shuttered and dark, their owners long since gone in preparation for the coming months of heat, humidity, and hurricanes.

Abaco began to pace the decks and whine. She knew we were nearing home. I lived in a Lauderdale neighborhood called Rio Vista in what had once been a small boathouse, renovated by the previous owners into a tiny, one-bedroom cottage. It was on the property of a riverfront mansion that belonged to a Mr. Lars Larsen, owner of a national chain of muffler shops headquartered up in Milwaukee. Larsen had bought the place as his Florida winter home, and in years past, he’d often had Red tow his various yachts. When Red died, and my brothers and I sold Red’s house where
Gorda
used to dock, Mr. Larsen called and offered me the boathouse. He said he’d like to have an on-site caretaker for the months when he and his family were not there. The main house was a huge multitowered, Moorish edifice that dated to the 1930s, when the New River meandered through a Fort Lauderdale that was more of a frontier town, back when fish houses and vegetable docks still stood on the New River’s banks. Over the years, a succession of owners had added on rooms and towers, and today, the Larsen house looked like something created by Disney on drugs. The main house was set back from the river, but my cottage was right on the dock, and I could park
Gorda
just a few feet outside my front door.

When I stepped out of the elevator on the fourth floor at Broward General Hospital, it was ten till eight, and the nurse who gave me directions to room 425 reminded me that visiting hours would be over in ten minutes. The forced congeniality and the low hum of machinery were what I most remembered about the weeks I’d spent here with Red before he died. Indoors is
more
indoors in a hospital; even the air tastes artificial. I knew it was the cancer that killed him, but I always felt that being shut away from the sunshine and fresh air had hurried that process along.