Under Cover of Daylight (6 page)

Kate came around in front of the podium again, brought her legal pad and glasses with her. Faced these people.

“And it’s not wood rats. And it’s not condominiums, libraries, or jobs.” Kate looked at Grayson, over at the county commissioners, out across the room of faces. “This is about ice cream cones. Baseball gloves.”

Thorn and redbeard marched out to the dewy grass, Thorn’s blood shining, fired by Kate’s voice, not afraid or angry, just a pleasant warmth spreading through him. As they were squaring off, redbeard’s friends gathering, Thorn noticed the size of redbeard’s thick, vein-laced wrists, and he chuckled to himself. Her speech hadn’t been
that
good.

Redbeard dropped his tool belt in the grass nearby, growled, and took a karate stance. Thorn swallowed, stood his ground, and brought his hands up. He fended off redbeard’s first two punches and connected with one good right hand. Redbeard managed in the next few seconds to hit him with two jabs. And brought from somewhere out of the dark a roundhouse left that scattered new flecks of light into the sky. It was then that Billy Mason, an off-duty highway patrolman, broke it up and lifted Thorn up off the ground. Helped him dust off and guarded him till the carpenters sauntered away.

By the time Kate and Sarah made it through the departing crowd and reached the Volkswagen, Thorn’s lips had begun to swell and he was sucking on a deep slice on the inside of his cheek.

He was sitting in the backseat, replaying the short fight, trying to fashion it into something noble. Kate and Sarah stopped beside the car, regarded Thorn.

Kate said, “Will you look at this?” She shook her head and laid her hand on Thorn’s shoulder. Gave him a light squeeze. “I inspired somebody anyway.”

“Our hero, out winning votes,” said Sarah. “Doing what he can for the cause.”

Thorn tried to smile. Through his puffy lips he said, “The social skills are a little rusty. Give me time.”

Kate said, “Might want to work on keeping the left up, too.”

As they were getting in, Sarah made a retching noise and hauled up from the floor of the passenger seat a clear plastic bag. Dead rats.

Kate took it from her hand and held it up so the lights from the parking lot shone on it.

“Three brown rats,” she said. “One wood rat.”

She and Sarah looked at each other for a moment. Kate shook her head sadly and got out of the car, walked back across the parking lot, and dropped the bag into the school Dumpster. Sarah and Thorn were quiet. Thorn watched Kate come back across the dewy grass.

She started the car, and Thorn shifted sideways, resting his legs across the backseat. Sarah glanced back at him as they got under way. She smiled at him, but Thorn saw something in her face, a slight lift in her eyebrows, a flush that made him uneasy, as though his boxing workout had somehow aroused her.

A mile down the road Kate pulled the pins out of her hair, shaking her head to let the wind work it loose.

K
ATE
T
RUMAN CUT THE THIRTY-TWO-FOOT
Chris-Craft to an idle, still coasting forward, following the pathway of moonlight toward the east, out toward the shipping lanes. It’d been over a week since she’d had the boat out with Sarah, longer than she liked to leave the boat out of action, but everything was smooth, engine running without a murmur.

She took the big Chevy out of gear, watched the depth finder print out the bottom. The graph paper showed 60 feet, a gradual dropping away, then, as the vessel finished its coast, a plunge to 105, 110. The wall. Just east of Conch Reef, seven miles off Key Largo. Stacks of yellowtail, shadows of computer ink on the paper, marshaled just across the precipice, the larger ones halfway down the ledge.

“They’re here,” to no one.

She shut the engine off, went forward, and released the anchor. The current was running hard to the northeast. The stern would swing around, and they could lay their chum line right out across the edge of the wall.

Wary for a while, but after some glass minnows, a little macaroni, some menhaden oil, those fish would devour anything she dropped overboard. She’d seen nights the water had turned yellow with fish.

She made the anchor line fast. Alone, she might have stayed up on the bow, admiring. Moon still big, flat calm, a splash from flying fish or ballyhoo. Always something going on below the surface. She could use some of those Atlantic negative ions or whatever it was that granted you the peacefulness, the full, deep breath. There seemed to be a name for everything these days. Everything just biology and chemistry or a little trigonometry. Even the tranquilizing ocean, even tracking down the fish, all named, numbered, binaried.

But tonight she wasn’t alone. Her anglers for the evening, Laurel and Hardy, or what, Gomez and Fernandez? The skinny, sweaty one handled the conversation; the fat one probably a Marielito, six months ashore, whispered. All he did, whisper, whisper. Maybe he’d had to sell his voice box for passage over.

Both of them in their black, shiny shirts. The Laurel one wearing mirror sunglasses, in case the moon flared up. Rings the size of brass knuckles. Street shoes. A diamond earring, for godsakes. Ten o’clock at night and dressed for the disco. She should have just turned them away at the dock. “You can’t come aboard a fishing boat looking like Al Capone’s nightmares.”

Those people. Who bought all the black, shiny shirts before the new wave of Cubans arrived? It wasn’t like she had anything going on against Cubans. There’d been Cubans fishing down here, living here all her life. But these new ones. They behaved by some other book.

The one with English had wanted to go yellowtailing. He’d called her up at home and said he wanted her to guide. Wouldn’t be persuaded that yellowtailing was off. Very slow. Everything on the reef had been slow for most of June. Some Guatemalan freighter had run aground on Alligator Reef, and in the weeks that the tugs had been pulling at her, the water had gotten so milky all up and down the reef line, the fishing had died.

She told him no. She wouldn’t take his money for just a boat ride. She was a billfish guide anyway. No meat fishing unless it was for Thorn and her, groceries. But with charters, it was strictly catch and release, except for the occasional trophy fish.

The Cuban wouldn’t let go of it. Said he was down from New Jersey, came all this way to catch his favorite fish.

“No,” she’d said. And she gave him the names of a couple of others she knew could use the work.

He’d said, “I want the best.” And she asked him right back who had referred him to her.

“I forget her name,” the Cuban had said. “But I have yellowtail once a long ago, and I never forget it. It’s a savory fish, the best. I like the best.”

“Try one of those others. One of them’ll find you fish.”

“It was Roxy. Or like that. Said she was related. In Key West, where we eat breakfast.”

“I have a daughter, Ricki.”

“This is the one, then,” he said, sounding in a hurry now to get past this name business.

“Ricki recommended me?” she said. Not like her, not at all.

“Say you always get fish. Yellowtail, anything.”

“Well.” Weakening.

“We’ll not be trouble. Pay in front. Don’t worry about us.”

“All right,” she’d said, only because of Ricki. ’Cause she wanted to see who these guys were Ricki would recommend her to, after all this time. Even a little touched that Ricki would give her name. Yes, touched. Otherwise, she’d already begun building a case against this guy.

She put the chum bag in, sprinkled some elbow macaroni overboard. Poured a half gallon of menhaden oil over. Watching the slick spread across the calm surface. More whispering, the big one hunched over his companion, a real speech this time. Neither of them particularly interested in the chumming.

When she was finished, she turned and motioned at the big guy, who was looking over the side, holding on to the rail. She asked if he was OK.

“He is unused to being on the water,” said the little, skinny one. His mirror glasses full of moonlight. His hook nose the shape of a shark fin.

“Where does he usually fish?”

“I understand what you mean”—this with a trace of José Jiménez. “He is catching fish most times before from bridges.”

“Tell him if it gets any calmer than this, you could putt on it.”

The short, curly-haired one spoke out loud to the big man. It wasn’t Spanish, not Cuban, not Puerto Rican, nothing remotely Spanish. She’d heard the real thing all her life. This was something else.

She spilled some more macaroni onto the flat sea. Hands sweaty now. Not concentrating on the path the chum was taking. Eyes scanning, searching out lights. The two of them were watching her when she turned. She couldn’t read their looks. The little one was wiping his hands on the seat of his dark pants. Then he clasped his hands and stretched them inside out.

He said to her, “All that shit in the water, doesn’t it bring in sharks?” He’d taken off his mirror glasses, was holding them in his hand.

“It brings in yellowtail first,” she said, shifting the bucket of glass minnow slush to her right hand. She felt a queasy shake begin in her stomach, sending a wobble into her legs.

“But the sharks,” he said, smiling now with his eyes. The moon shining up his earring. “They come around, too. I want to see that. I like sharks. I like the idea of sharks.”

The big one was staring at him.

“Let’s catch us a goddamn shark. Forget this yellowtail shit.” His accent gone. Just American, plain, flat, maybe Ohio, maybe Indiana. It was a hobby of hers, placing accents. With all the tourists, you got so you could hear it.

“I’ll get the rods,” she said, fighting with the wobble.

“This is them here.” The little one motioned at the rocket launcher. It held two rigged yellowtail rods. Just that brass hook knotted onto twelve-pound test, no leader. Bahama rigging.

She said, “Those are bonefish rods. The yellowtail tackle’s in here.” She moved toward the cabin, not waiting for his permission. Pretending it was all going according to plan.

“Stay out here with us,” the little one said, something new in his voice now. A little strain, something frayed, a whine but with anger in it.

“I’m getting the other rods.”

“You’re fucking staying out here in the fucking moonlight where I can fucking see you.”

Where did they come from? Holsters under those tight nylon shirts? Two blue-black pistols, darker than the night around them. The big fellow was starting to bob around now, impatient, as if the boat were rocking or something. His pistol bobbing with him.

“I don’t know about you, Irv,” he said. “I don’t fucking know about you sometime.”

“You got that right, boy. Call me unpredictable. Mr. unfucking-predictable.”

“I don’t like it, man. I don’t like changing the plan in the middle of things.”

“Hey.” The little one stepped over to him, watching Kate. “Hey.” He slapped the big man on the cheek, half-playfully. “You got to learn to improvise, buddy. You gonna ever learn how to be creative, you got to start letting go. Got to go with the flow.”

“Which way’s the flow fucking going, is what I want to know. I’m here, man, going with the fucking flow, and then the flow starts going somewhere else, you know. And it makes me a little nauseous.”

“Everything makes you puke. You got puke for blood.” Never taking an eye off Kate.

She’d run through her alternatives already. Dive into the cockpit, find her .38. Dive overboard. Rush them. Overboard seemed the best. But all that moonlight. Talk them out of whatever it was. She thought she knew what it was. Not much chance of talking somebody’s hired help out of their job.

The panic had gone, the shiver in her legs, like stage fright. Now that the curtain had swept back, and here it was, her nightmare come alive, she was composed. The same practical calm that overtook her when the big reel was spinning, a marlin running. Slow-motion calm. Do this, then this.

“You’re a pretty woman, you know that? For an old hag. How old are you anyway? Sixty-five, seventy? Gone dry, I bet, and me without nothing but reel grease in my tackle box. Hey, wouldn’t that be just right? Screwed the charter boat captain with reel grease.”

This man, Irv, took a couple of steps toward her, a little flounce, a cocky tilt of head.

“You like me? Even a little bit? It’s all it takes with me, just to like me a little bit, and I supply all the rest. You know? I make a big impression on most of the women.”

He’d closed to just a yard from her, his big partner edging up behind him. Kate thought something was wrong with those eyes, some failure of focus, a glaze. Maybe drugs, maybe worse.

“You ever thought you’re maybe upsetting the balance of things, doing a man’s job like this? You know, yin and yang, when it gets out of whack, man, things start spinning. You start getting the white in the black and the black in the white, you’re headed for big fucking trouble. Yin and yang, man, that’s the thing where the white fish is chasing the black fish, or the black one’s chasing the white one. Depends on how you look at it. But lady, if you were born yin, you fucking well stay yin. You don’t get a shot at yang till the next go-round.” The big guy had moved up to Irv’s shoulder and was craning forward, staring at him.

“I hope you know what I’m talking about ’cause it’d be a shame for the last words you ever heard to be confusing. You should always understand the last thing you hear before you die, ’cause otherwise it starts the whole karma thing off on the wrong foot. Know what I mean? Do you?”

He’d lowered his gun. Kate straining to hear any nearby boat passing, or voices out there in the ocean, men fishing who might hear a scream.

“I had a mother, an old fart a lot like you, and she strutted around just like you. She wanted to have what a man has. You know what that is? What a man has. I’ll show you. You forgotten ’cause you’re so old.”

Only because it was in her hand already. She had no idea that five pounds of decomposing glassy minnows would hurt anybody; it was more a matter of making a statement, not being shot down with a bucket of ground-up fish in hand. Most of the goop went on the big one, but a lucky handful rode in on the little one’s inhalation. He was looking down, trying to get his tight black pants unzipped. A mouthful of decomposing fish parts instead.