Shark River (37 page)

The stone pilings weren’t hard to find. There were more than a dozen of them, much too heavy to move, spread out in a symmetrical, Stonehenge pattern.

Not stone, actually. In Florida, at the turn of the previous century, they’d made a dense cement out of local sand and crushed shell. Built all the houses up on knee-high stilts so air could circulate above and beneath. The cement was as hard and heavy as rock.

I don’t know why I was so surprised to find that one of the pilings had an X cut in the top. Probably because Tucker had told me so many lies during his lifetime that honesty and accuracy even after death seemed out of character.

The cutting saw that Joseph had probably used was there, too, orange with rust, the wooden handle rotted off. It was strange to think that Joseph was the last person to have touched that handle.

I used my entrenchment tool and began to dig around the base of the piling. I watched a tiny scorpion crab away, its tail curled like a backhoe. I got down deep enough so that the silver sand turned gray with moisture when I finally hit something.

A second surprise: There really was a bottle.

I picked it up and studied the bottle in the sunlight. It was an old glass Hatuey beer bottle, the word “Havana” embossed on the bottom. Tuck had used a cork, and some kind of wax to seal it. Even so, I expected the paper inside to be a soppy mess.

It wasn’t because he hadn’t written this note on paper. He’d written it on a piece of buckskin brown cowhide that had been tanned soft as glove leather. He’d probably used a fountain pen judging from all the smearing.

I sat on the piling and read the note, then read it again. Read it a third time and began to laugh. The postscript from Joseph Egret was the funniest part. It read, “He’s telling the truth, for once, Marion. If there was any way we could of gotten that box out, he would have lost it somehow by now or pissed it away, which he always had a way of doing.”

I stood, still laughing, and said aloud, “You sly old son-of-a-bitch. Finally. You
finally
pulled one off.”

Back at my mangrove camp, I tossed a rope over the limb of a nearby tree and tied the cell phone to it. Tied it close enough to the lean-to so that anyone approaching would see the little camp and make the obvious assumption, but far enough away so that I’d remain unseen, unexpected.

I studied the area carefully, considering my field of fire, then studied it some more. I finally decided that it was a good ambush point. A nice little predatory drop-off.

 

 

By late morning, the sea breeze had begun to warm. By noon, I could feel the sun radiating through the canopy of mangrove leaves, but still I remained hidden away in my hammock or on the platform.

My Navy watch sweater became too hot, so I stripped it off and changed to an OD green T-shirt.

OD: olive drab.

I’d brought along
The Windward Road
to pass the time. A couple of journals, too. I’d alternately read for a few minutes, then check the horizon with my binoculars.

I saw several more boats far offshore, probably bound for Key West or the Dry Tortugas.

I had a Mako, then a Hewes flats boat sweep in close to the beach, trying to find some lee, on their way around the Cape to Flamingo.

Each time I saw a boat, my heart began to thud.

Then I did see them. Saw them pounding through waves a couple miles off, throwing big water, running way too hard for conditions.

It caught my attention.

I watched the boat dolphin right past my little place on the beach. Then watched it slow . . . stop . . . turn and began to vector shoreward.

They’d either seen the red Moss tent and the fire, or they were following some kind of direction finder.

As they drew closer, I identified the boat as one of the mass production tri-hulls that only non-watermen buy, and saw the name on the side—CHOKOLOSKEE BOAT RENTALS—and knew it had to be Cordero or his hirelings. I could also see that the OMC was burning way too much oil, blowing a cloud of blue exhaust as the boat banged its way through the waves. Then I could see the faces of the two men who stood behind the cabin windshield.

Both faces were familiar to me.

At the wheel of the boat was a man with a huge pumpkin-sized head and dyed, punkish hair—his hair was, appropriately, bright orange now instead of blue. I recognized him because he’d driven the smaller of the two Scarabs when Cordero’s men had attempted to kidnap Lindsey.

Beside him was the man with the dark, Indio eyes set in a Castillian face; the man with the mustache and pointed goatee who’d tried his best to shoot me only a week ago.

They’d both come a-hunting, wanting a second chance.

They would have it.

I remembered the Lauderdale investigator who’d been tailing me—Romano?—remembered him telling me that he’d spotted three men on active surveillance, two white and one a very light-skinned black.

Where was the third?

I watched the two men closely through the binoculars, breathing evenly, but heart pounding. I saw that Goatee was holding something in his hand, staring at it intently. It looked to be like a little palm computer . . . yes, and he was wearing earphones, too. A computerized GPS link that was now undoubtedly locked onto the cell phone that Harrington had sent me—a device similar to something I’d used several times in the past; a high-tech surveillance system known by the code name of Glockenspiel and then, later, Triggerfish.

Beneath me and forty meters to my right, my cell phone began to ring—the first time I’d ever heard it ring. It rang so loud that I jumped, startled. It was a computerized melody that was familiar, yet my brain couldn’t identify immediately. Then it did: The phone was playing the
William Tell
overture, the theme from the old television show
The Lone Ranger.

Hal Harrington’s strange little joke.

The phone continued to ring. Maddening. If Goatee and Orange were having trouble zeroing in on my cell phone’s signature, they’d have no trouble now.

Through the binoculars, I watched Goatee began to gesture wildly toward my hiding place in the big mangroves. The boat was still half a mile off, but he seemed to be looking directly at me.

Had they seen the red tent? Yes . . . no doubt about it. I watched the tri-hull gain speed, porpoising through the surf toward the beach.

I touched my hand to the Sig Sauer on the platform beside me, a gesture seeking reassurance. No need for the sound arrestor here. As an emergency out, I’d placed Tuck’s old .44, freshly loaded, on a plastic bag inside the little foxhole I’d dug. But my plan was to remain where I was, let them track the cell phone, then take them when they got into range.

I’d selected my ambush point. Now I’d wait for the electronic current to sweep them in.

But then I saw something that brought an ascending nervous spasm of nausea to my throat... something that also brought Tomlinson’s old maxim freshly to mind: Want to make God laugh? Tell him your plans.

What I saw was the third man, the light-skinned black. An older man with curly, graying hair—maybe Cordero himself. He’d been in the cabin below and now stepped up onto deck. He was pulling something by the hair, then punching at something with his fists. I watched as he dragged Tomlinson out onto the deck and club him to his knees.

Then he dragged a second person onto the deck.

It was Ransom. I had to force myself to remain where I was, to keep watching, as he slapped her, making her move along.

 

 

 

I
t was Cordero. Had to be Edgar Cordero. Pure fury has an energy that’s infectious, radiates, and the light-skinned man was in a rage.

I recalled a phone message from Harrington saying that Cordero had gone berserk, literally, prior to using a bat to beat a mother and child to death.

Now here he was, crazy with anger again.

I recognized it in the way he was brutalizing Tomlinson and Ransom. I could see it in the way his guy steered them hard toward shore, slowing only slightly, surfing down waves until the boat grounded itself on the beach, the hull lifting and heeling to starboard, spray pluming over the transom as first Goatee, then Pumpkin-head swung over the side into knee-deep water trying to steady the thing.

They either knew nothing about boats or didn’t plan to stay long.

Then I watched Cordero shove Ransom backward over the side into the water and Tomlinson leap immediately to help her, lifting her to her feet in the slow surf, her tie-dye T-shirt, red and blue, clinging to her body, her expression dazed as she touched her own face experimentally, then looked at her fingertips. A familiar interrogative: Was her nose bleeding?

I was already climbing down the tree, not even thinking about it, the Sig in the back of my pants, checkered grip secure against my spine, my brain scanning to make sense of what I was seeing. I remembered saying to Tomlinson that I might rent a boat in Chokoloskee; remembered him pressing for us to make the trip together, then Ransom’s dark assertion that they should not let me go alone.

“I’ve got a feeling someone’s going to die,” she’d told me, fingering her beads and her little bag of magic.

I’d done it. I’d put the idea of a rental boat into their heads and, somehow, the two groups had met on that tiny island and at that tiny marina. Ransom was a talker; so was Tomlinson. Both of them were easy sources of information; both easily followed. Both also easily overpowered.

I guessed that somewhere between here and Chokoloskee, probably hidden away in some small backwater, was a second tri-hull.

It was the boat Tomlinson and Ransom had rented before Cordero and his men had followed them, stopped them, then kidnapped them.

Halfway down the tree, I could still see the beach. I watched as Goatee, still holding the little palm computer, pointed toward the red tent. Saw Cordero make an impatient waving gesture with his right hand until the man with the pumpkin-sized head tossed him what looked to be an Uzi.

Under any other circumstances, it would have been an absurdly amusing sight: A distinguished-looking gentleman in gray slacks, black glossy shoes, and an expensive dress shirt holding a submachine gun at waist level. I watched him as he ripped the top-mounted cocking handle back and fired into the tent, holding the trigger on full automatic, the muzzle climbing high enough to spray stray rounds into the trees near me as the nylon of the red tent shuddered.

Reflexively, I pressed myself against the mangrove’s trunk, waiting. Then my ears strained in the abrupt silence of an empty magazine. I watched Cordero change magazines as Goatee walked cautiously to the tent, drew a nine-millimeter semiautomatic and fired several more rounds into it before he ripped the screen door open and peered inside. Then he kicked the tent and kept kicking it until the stakes finally pulled free, and the little red dome tumbled down the beach in the wind like tumbleweed.

I couldn’t hear, then, what Goatee said to Cordero. But I heard Cordero’s voice clearly as he grabbed Ransom and yanked her to his chest like a shield, then touched the barrel of the Uzi to her temple. I saw her jerk her face away from that hot flash arrestor as he called out in English, “You come out now or I kill your sister! You hear me? I blow her fucking head right off you don’t come out!” Then he screamed my name:
“FORD!”

Feeling numb, helpless, I dropped down onto the sand and walked toward the beach, hands high over my head.

I still had the Sig Sauer in the back of my pants. Why not? What was the worst they could do if they found it?

They were going to kill us all anyway.

I watched the expression on Edgar Cordero’s face change when he saw me. Watched it change from rage to a slow demonic delight. He shoved Ransom roughly to the ground, absolutely focused on me, lifting the muzzle of the Uzi to chest level as he called, “So! The cockroach finally comes crawling into the sunlight! You are so seldom alone”—he turned and kicked Ransom viciously in the thigh—“that we brought you company! Does that please you,
cabrón
? How does it feel to see a member of your own family in pain?”

I’d never seen Tomlinson attempt violence. Now he did. He went charging at Cordero as if to tackle him, all arms and jeans and Hawiian shirt, but Goatee intercepted. Hit him behind the shoulders with the butt of his pistol once . . . twice . . . then kneed him to the ground.

I continued to walk toward the little group, my mind working frantically, seeing the white beach and broad ocean beyond them, their rental boat rolling beam to the waves now, my skiff bucking at anchor nearby.

I had to come up with something. I had to at least try.

The pit I’d dug was about twenty meters to Cordero’s right. Still covered with palmettos, too. If Tomlinson or Ransom created some kind of diversion, maybe I could dive into the pit and come up firing. Take my chances because, the way things looked, it was the only chance we had. It might be even better to let Cordero’s men disarm me first, give them a false sense of safety. Dive and grab Tucker’s old revolver that I’d hidden in there. I could use the big .44 to take out at least one of them. Then, hopefully, in the confusion, get off a couple more shots.

“Come closer! I want to look into the eyes of the filthy scum who attacked my son Amador when he wasn’t looking. Attacked him when he was not ready, like a woman fights!”

I kept walking. Watched as Cordero handed the Uzi to Pumpkin-head and, in Spanish, asked him for a knife.

I remembered Harrington saying that Edgar collected ears from his adversaries.

Kept them like trophies behind the bar to show his friends.

Now Cordero was walking toward me, opening the knife as he approached, his eyes glittering. I stopped, waited. I began to lower my hands, wanting to get into position to grab my pistol, but raised them again when Pumpkin-head poked the Uzi at me and yelled, “Hands up! I shoot!”