Two Jakes (2 page)

“Danke.”

He
started side-stroking toward shore at a slight angle. As he disappeared from
sight, Keitel could hear him singing happily.

Fifteen
men on a dead man’s chest, Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum...

***

The
turbulent surf was a smorgasbord of organic matter and small crustaceans. That
attracted baitfish, pilchards and silversides, whose sole purpose was to occupy
low rungs in the food chain, where they provided a moveable feast for larger
predators: small sharks, bluefish, barracuda, jacks and pompano.

There
was too much seaweed to use lures so the fisherman baited his hook with a chunk
of herring, to which he attached a strip of squid. Both had been purchased,
rather guiltily, at a nearby Publix; he hadn’t had time to go to the marina.
Well, he mused, one man’s sushi was another man’s bait. He felt a sharp jab on
his ankle. Reaching down he brought up a large, faded conch shell. He was
tempted to put it to his ear, but recalled a recent run-in with a hermit crab
that had taken up residence in another conch. The cheeky little devil nipped
his lobe in annoyance. It wasn’t even the crab’s own shell! He’d tell Emma the
story when she visited. She’d get a kick out of it. He smiled as the thought of
her brought back a memory from their shared childhood, another beach, another
shell – the first time he’d crossed swords with his uncle. But certainly not
the last. Just wait until the old reprobate gets a load of what …

The
rod tip jerked and the reel’s drag started clicking wildly. The fisherman
flipped the nondescript conch away (there were many more colorful specimens in
his collection) and set the hook, using a wave to surf the seaweed-covered fish
the final few feet. A bluefish flopped helplessly in the sand. It was small,
maybe three pounds, with a streamlined body built for speed and a piranha-like
head. The analogy was apt. Feeding blues easily topped the ferocity of the much
smaller Amazon denizens and had even been known to bite bathers in their blood
lust. The unfortunate bluefish suffocating on the beach was certainly not
alone. Blues travel in schools of like-sized fish. If it was one of the smaller
blues in its pod, he might get a five or six pounder! He dumped the flopping
fish in the ice-filled bag inside his bucket, in his excitement receiving
several nasty finger cuts from its razor sharp teeth. He rebaited quickly. The
type of bait at this point was academic. Blues chomp anything. He could have
saved money and bought a package of hot dogs.

The
next cast into a trough only 20 feet from shore where a platoon of blues from a
larger school swirled under the seaweed. Eventually they would head to deep
water to rejoin the main pod, guided by senses that could detect a single drop
of blood in a cubic acre of water. A savage hit! This blue ripped off line. He
tightened the drag and worked the frantic fish back. Eventually it tired. A
beauty, at least five pounds. He shoved the blue into his bag, where it
thrashed violently against its deceased cousin. He would keep both. Blues this
size tasted like real fish, not the sauced-up slabs of Chilean sea bass or
tilapia passed off as haute cuisine in the tourist traps on Lincoln Road. And
what the hell was monkfish? He bent down to cut more bait.

“Catch
anything?”

Startled,
he nearly baited his finger. He whirled around, dropping his knife in the sand.
A man stood beside him holding a large plastic bag.

“Jesus,
you almost gave me a cardiac!”

“To
be quite accurate, it’s Jesús,” the man said, smiling. “I’m sorry.” He didn’t
seem sorry. “I was swimming and saw you. I fish.”

Slight
accent, probably Cuban. Good-looking, with a small black mustache that matched
his slick, jet-black hair. He looked like one of the rumba dancers on a cruise
ship. Beaded with water, the stranger wore a tight black bathing suit that
boldly outlined his genitals. At his hip was a small waterproof pouch. Rubber
gloves were tucked into the other side of the suit. The plastic bag looked half
full, with a watery luminescence. The man carefully placed it on the sand.
Liquid spilled from the neck, and a strand of … something … slithered out. He
opened his pouch and took out a cigarette. He did not offer one to the
fisherman and took quite some time with a lighter, flicking it on and off
several times before lighting the cigarette.

“These
things will kill you,” he said, laughing at some private joke as smoke hissed
from his nostrils.

The
fisherman heard a motor start up, and then a muted throbbing. He looked toward
his apartment house, barely visible 200 feet away. There were lights in the
high rise and on a calmer day he would have been able to hear the hum of
traffic on Collins Avenue. But not tonight. The stranger’s appearance unnerved
him. This section of Miami Beach was in transition and just north Collins still
had its fair share of cheap convenience stores, coffee shops, payday loan
operations, burger and burrito joints with vinyl chairs, seedy beach bars and
vagrants. This man was no vagrant, but that was small comfort. It’s not easy to
look sinister in a bathing suit, but the stranger managed it.

There
was a thump as a fish tail flapped out of the bucket.

“Ah,
bluefish,” the stranger said, peering in. “They’ll be delicious. How would you
have prepared them?”

The
fisherman relaxed, not noting the phrasing.

“I
like to marinate them in key lime juice and dark rum. Then dust them with a
little flour and bake then at 400 degrees. Maybe 10 minutes.”

He
was about to suggest an appropriate wine when the “Cuban” looked past his
shoulder out to sea and said loudly, “He’s alone. No one in either direction.”
He flicked away his cigarette and put on the gloves.

A
clipped voice behind the fisherman said, “Make it quick.”

He
turned to see another man walking from the ocean. Sensing danger, he reached
down to grab the knife, sticking hilt up in the sand. Too late. Garza lifted
the plastic bag and in one practiced motion flipped it over the fisherman’s
head, pulling the drawstring taut. Seawater and slime filled the man’s nostrils
and ears. The seal wasn’t perfect and most of the water gushed out the bottom
of the bag, leaving only the congealed “things” that had been floating inside.
Something in the fisherman’s midbrain, just barely below the level of
consciousness, a genetic remnant of primate fear, recognized the creatures.
Although slimy, they seemed to be attaching themselves to his face.

Jellyfish!
Something twirled up his nose. He dropped his knife as his hands flew up. He
barely hooked his thumbs under the throat of the bag when dozens of tentacles
almost simultaneously discharged their poison. It felt like scalding water. His
eyeballs exploded. He inhaled reflexively to scream and the fire filled his
esophagus, which closed in an agonizing spasm. The fisherman pitched backwards
into the sand near the waterline, limbs twitching uncontrollably. Then he went
limp, hooded head rolling freely in the waves.

Keitel
reached into the dead man’s bucket and pulled out a Ziploc bag. “Keys, wallet
and cell phone,” he said. “Convenient.”

Then
the killers each grabbed the corpse by an arm and started to drag it into the
ocean.

“Wait,”
said Garza, dropping one arm, which started flopping grotesquely in the surf.
He went to the bucket and retrieved the bag with the night’s catch.

“Are
you completely insane?”

“I
like bluefish,” Garza said. “He gave me a great recipe.”

Once
in the water, they flipped their victim over and then paddled him out to the
boat, face down. No harm in being sure. After climbing into the Dusky, they
carefully removed the fatal hood from the fisherman, whose bulging,
spider-veined eyes stared at them in seeming reproach. The jellyfish slid into
the water, but some blue, beaded strands remained attached to the dead man’s
face. Tendrils twirled out from his nose and covered his upper lip.

“He
looks like Salvador Dali,” Keitel observed.

“That’s
not a good look for him,” Garza said. He gave the body a gentle, almost loving,
push towards shore. “Now he belongs to the algae,” he intoned solemnly. They
had recently watched a History Channel special about the Lincoln assassination.
“Get it?”

“It’s
not funny when you have to explain it,” Keitel said.

Garza
reached into his pouch and lit a cigarette, which he needed a lot more than the
one he used on the beach as a signal. The corpse slowly sank from sight. The
man had to be found. A mysterious disappearance might spur an open-ended
inquiry. The body would wash ashore, but only after the sea and its creatures
muddied the forensic waters. There would be no signs of man-made trauma. It was
a murder using only natural ingredients.

“You
know, Christian, Greenpeace would be proud of us.”

“What
are you talking about?”

“Never
mind. Take the wheel. I’ll put lures on the rods. We should look the part when
we get back to the dock. Hell, we even have some fish.”

He
lifted the top of a seat and pulled out a tackle box. He knew what he was
doing. As a boy in Cuba he fished the Guantanamo River with his father and
uncles, near where the big waterway ran to the sea, splitting the now infamous
American naval base in two. They often came so close to the base perimeter that
Marine sentries fishing from the bulkhead waved. The perimeter searchlights,
designed to spot intruders – mostly Cubans swimming to freedom – were an
irresistible magnet to huge shrimp, which the Marines put on hooks.

“You
wouldn’t believe it, Chico,” his father told him, “they get big jacks, tarpon,
barracuda, because of those lights. I saw a 100-pound tarpon, a five-footer,
leap like a sardine. Even the Marines jumped back. Then we saw the big shadow
in the water. Tiburón, a hammerhead. Chasing the tarpon. At least 15 feet and
2,000 kilos! Eyes this far apart.” His father held his arms as wide as he
could. He was a fisherman, after all. “Only a fool would swim there.”

Another
time, he tried to step on a log jutting from shore. The “log” turned out to be
a giant barracuda. Huge eyes rolled up to look at his foot, which he held in
midair as his shaken father snatched him back and hugged him tight. And he
recalled how his uncles passed him the rum bottle after a manta ray big as a
Piper Cub jumped over their boat. What fun they had! Garza felt a twinge of
remorse. His father would not have liked him killing a fisherman.

Christian
was saying something.

“You
should call them. Are you listening? You’re a thousand miles away.”

“Only
90,” Garza said, picking up his cell phone from a bag at his feet.

***

In a
luxurious penthouse in Coral Gables, a man teetered at his climax. The woman
astride him was motionless but for the slight rise and fall of a small blue
tattoo at the base of her spine as she clenched her internal sexual muscles.
She had brought the moaning man close several times. Now she would end the
sublime torture. She had a reservation at Joe’s Stone Crabs. Not with him. A
cell phone buzzed on the side table.

“Fuck!
Leave it alone,” the man gasped. “I’m almost there.”

The
woman climbed off. The man cursed and squirmed, all he could do with hands tied
to the bedposts. She placed the phone to the man’s ear.

“Yes,”
he gasped. “Wha… What is it?” He listened. “OK. OK. Fine.”

The
woman threw the phone on the table. Her face was expressionless.

“Well?”

“It’s
done,” he replied, groaning as she remounted.

“One
less thing for us to worry about. Any problems?”

“For
the love of God, can we talk about it later?”

“We
both agreed on this. Perhaps I should get these things in writing.”

“I’ll
sign the goddamn Magna Carta if you want! Let’s talk about it later!”

She
laughed. The tattoo, of the Cross of Lorraine, resumed its rhythmic pulsation.
She increased the frequency. A moment later her pinioned partner bucked upward
violently, roaring in release. She gazed down at him dispassionately as his
breathing slowly returned to normal and his eyes began to refocus. He could
never be bored with her. That was the problem with all the men she slept with.
True, he had been the most interesting. An affair that started with attempted
rape had evolved into a lustful business relationship (in her mind, the best
kind of sex). But she was ready to move on. They would still need each other,
of course. There was a company to run. She wondered how he’d take it. Probably
not well.

He was
trying to say something.

“Shhhh,
darling” she said, putting a finger to his lips. “Be right with you.”

Her
hips began to move slowly. The pace quickened. Her mouth opened and her head
tilted back, throat taut. A flush spread across her breasts. Their nipples,
always prominent, became rock hard. A series of guttural cries. A final
shudder. Her face softened into a smile. The man was mesmerized, as always. It
was like watching a swaying cobra.

***

“What
did he say?”

“He
couldn’t talk.” Garza laughed. “He was tied up.”