Wreckers' Key (27 page)

“Even the detective who worked Nestor’s case down in Key West has come around to thinking that there might have been foul play, Mike, but Key West has closed the case. Accidental death by drowning. We don’t have enough evidence to open it up again, yet. And now this morning I find this out about Quentin.”

“And who is Quentin again?”

I gave him a brief overview of how I’d met the man and how he had come to be working for Ocean Towing. Several times I had to stop and swallow down the ball of emotion that was trying to crawl back up my throat. “Mike, Quentin wouldn’t have had any reason to be over in northwest Lauderdale. No way this guy was into crack or heroin or anything like that. He was staying on the
Power Play
while it was hauled out, and once he got a paycheck or two, he was going to try to rent a room in a crew house. I’m sure his death had something to do with Ocean Towing.”

“That’s probably going to be a hard sell to the cops.”

“I know. You want to get away with murder? Just make sure your victim is poor and black.”

“That’s not fair, Seychelle. There are lots of good cops in this town.”

“Dammit, I know it. But you have to admit there’s some truth in what I’m saying. I could use your help when I go talk to Collazo. Maybe he’ll listen to you.”
 

“Maybe. It’s not like we were old chums, though.”
 

“All right. You’ll go with me then?”

He nodded.

“Great. But right now, this tide isn’t waiting for us. Let’s get this boat up the river and we can talk more afterward, okay?”

I had been a little bit leery of asking Mike for help with the tow, because he wasn’t the most experienced captain. On the other hand, I needed his help with the cops and I figured I could keep him out of trouble on the water. We stayed in touch via the VHF and traffic was light on the river, so he never even had to fire up the Holland’s engine until we were right off the boatyard there at River Bend. I held my breath as he drove her into the slipway. He went in a little too hot but threw the engine into reverse, and, spewing black smoke out her exhaust, she stopped just before hitting the wall. I tied
Gorda
on the outside dock and headed for the office to take care of the paperwork.

“You had me a little nervous there, hotshot,” I said to Mike when he came in.

“I knew what I was doing.”

In reaction to that, Charlie, the yard foreman, who’d come into the office for a stop at the coffeepot, choked and nearly spewed coffee all over the papers I’d just finished.

“Careful,” I said, smiling.

He pointed to his throat. “Just finding it a little hard to swallow.”

“Charlie, I’ve got a question for you. Would you say you’ve seen an increase lately in boats with damage from accidents?”

“There’s always enough assholes out there to keep us plenty busy.”

“So you wouldn’t say you’ve noticed any change?”
 

“What are you getting at?”

“Nothing. Just kind of thinking out loud.”

“Haven’t really noticed any change here.”

“ ’Course you don’t handle the really big megayachts here, either, do you?”

He shook his head and walked around from behind the counter. “Go upriver for that.” He had one hand on the door when I thought of one more question.

“Charlie, if I was to ask for the top expert in town on GPS, who would you recommend?”

He didn’t answer right away. “That’s not really my thing, you know. Ask me about wood, fiberglass, bottom paint, I’ll have an answer for you. But there was one boat in here that was having trouble with their GPS, and they brought in this old guy. I think he’s retired. Had a funny name. Give me a minute, I’ll think of it.”

The answer he finally gave me made my stomach turn sour.

“Sparky. That’s it. Don’t know his real name, but the owner called him Sparky most of the time. Said he was a real expert in GPS. You know, some kind of rocket scientist—worked on the guidance systems for missiles or some shit like that.”

I knew I should be asking him more questions, but my brain was having difficulty processing what he’d just said. Sparky. Arlen? It had to be him. He
had
worked with GPS at Motowave. He’d lied to me.

The door closed behind Charlie, and I grabbed my bag and followed him outside. “Charlie, when was that? When was this guy here in the yard?”

The yard foreman rubbed his chin and looked up at the slab side of a dark blue motor yacht on the hard. “Must have been last summer. Yeah. August. Before the hurricane. Or rather hurricanes.”

“Thanks.” I was standing there staring, but not seeing, when Mike walked up behind me.

“You want to tell me what’s going on?”

“Do you know Arlen Sparks?”

He shook his head.

“He lives on the street where I grew up. He was a friend of Red’s. Shit, Mike, I’ve known this guy all my life.”

“Okay, and? He’s some kinda expert with GPS and this is a problem?”

I looked across the basin and saw an Ocean Towing boat pulling in with a small cabin cruiser in tow. “Go get your dinghy and meet me at
Gorda
. We need to talk this out.”

When we were settled in the wheelhouse, in a place I was confident we could not be overheard, I told Mike about my visit with Arlen Sparks.

“The guy told me point-blank that GPS was not his specialty. That he didn’t know much more than the average layman. Now, according to what Charlie said, he lied. According to Charlie, that was his job at Motowave, it was his specialty.”

“Maybe he was exaggerating his expertise to his friend. You know, guys do that sometimes.”

I gave him a look that said
duh
. “Listen, Arlen told me that he got laid off last summer in July. He was here in the yard after that. After he got laid off. It makes sense. When he was working at Motowave, he was a real company man. I couldn’t see him troubleshooting a GPS installation in a boat in his spare time in those days. He didn’t have any spare time. But after he got laid off, he needed the money. He was trying to figure out what to do. But he didn’t get really desperate until his wife got sick again.”
 

“You lost me there.”

“His wife survived one bout with breast cancer, but the cancer returned this last fall. The doctor wanted to do some kind of treatment that Medicare denied and Arlen desperately wanted to get the money for it.”
 

“So?”

“Mike, I am convinced someone is deliberately causing some boats to go aground and then conveniently showing up to tow them off the shoal or reef and filing a salvage claim. The company that seems to be first to the wreck every time these days is Ocean Towing. It’s almost as though they know the boats are going to wreck. Well, they would if they were causing the wrecks.”
 

“And what kind of magic are you thinking they’re using?”

“Not magic. Some radio waves or something. I’m not sure about the science of it, but I’m thinking they’ve figured out a way to selectively jam the GPS using, I don’t know, some kind of directional antennas. I realize it sounds like something out of a comic book, but think about it. It makes sense. We’ve been fighting wars in the desert for some time. With GPS, you know exactly where you are, and if you can mess with your enemy’s navigation system, you really have an advantage. Our government’s got to be working on something like this, don’t you think?”

“Yeah, in fact I’ve heard something about this. On the news.”

“I thought so. I hate the fact that Arlen was able to convince me so easily that I didn’t know what the hell I was talking about. I just figured he was the expert, and I gave up on the idea as soon as he said it wasn’t possible. Besides, it was Arlen Sparks, my neighbor, a man I’ve known as long as I can remember. I think I’m going to have to give in to all these goddamn electronics and learn some more about computers and stuff. I shouldn’t have been so gullible.”

“It’s about time, Sullivan. You’ve been a goddamn Luddite for too long.”

“Speaking of which, could I borrow your cell phone? I want to call B.J.”

Mike chuckled and pulled a tiny flip phone out of his jean pocket. I looked at the odd-shaped device in the palm of his hand. I was embarrassed to admit the thing frightened me. I’d seen kids barely old enough to go to school using the little phones, but I’d only made a couple of calls on them before, and I’d never called on one that you had to open. “Can you show me how it works?” I asked.

As expected, Mike roared with laughter. “You have got to be kidding me, sweetheart.” Then he saw the look on my face. “Or maybe not. Look here, just open it up and push these numbers.”

I dialed Molly’s house first. I put it to my ear. Nothing. “It’s not working,” I said.

“Did you push
send
?” he asked, then rolled his eyes as he took the phone from me and pushed a button before handing it back.

“Well, you don’t have to get snotty about it.” When I put the phone to my ear, this time I heard a voice.

“Get snotty about what?”

“Oh, hi, Molly. It’s me. Never mind. Is B.J. there?”
 

“Sure. Hang on.”

“Hey,” he said a few minutes later, his voice deep and gentle. “I was just thinking of you.”

“Really?” I still found it hard to believe that a man like B.J. could be around petite, curvaceous Molly day after day and continue thinking of me. I turned my back to Mike and said in my best attempt at a throaty, seductive voice, “Well, I was just thinking of you, too.”

Mike groaned. “I have things I need to do, Sullivan. I don’t have time to sit here and listen to you make lovey-dovey noises into my phone.”

I put my hand over the phone. “Give me a break, will you?” I said to Mike.

“What?” B.J. asked.

“Nothing. I was talking to Mike. He’s giving me a hard time. The reason I was thinking of you is because I need someone who can look something up for me on the computer.”

“I’d be happy to do it for you. What do you need?”

“I want you to try to find something about this GPS idea of mine. See if you can find out whether or not they—like the government, or some corporation—have developed the ability to mess with somebody’s GPS signal. Not to just jam it, but to actually make it give a false readout. I’d also like to know if Motowave has been doing any of the R and D on systems like that.”

“I can do that. Give me a couple of hours, tops.”

XXIV

We decided to take Mike’s car to the Fort Lauderdale Police Department, so after securing
Gorda
to my dock we took his dinghy back to his boat. As we pulled up to his dock, I noticed a small, domelike new antenna on the arch that held up his boom.

“Another toy, Mike?”

“Yup. A satellite phone. Now, I’ve got communication capability worldwide.”

“But you never go farther than ten miles offshore.”

“Yes, darling, but you never know when I might. And now, if I do, I can call you and leave a message on your goddamn cottage phone ’cause you don’t even own a cell phone.”

“Okay, already. I’ll get one. I will. I promise.” I just didn’t say when.

It turned out that having Mike along speeded up the process of getting into the inner recesses of the Fort Lauderdale police station, but once there, our progress toward Collazo’s desk slowed considerably. Mike knew everybody, and they all had to stop and shake his hand and ask him how he was doing while trying to hide their furtive glances down at his leg. I knew my way and got tired of waiting for Mr. Popularity, so I abandoned him in the corridor and made for the detectives’ bullpen where I found Collazo sitting, squinting at a screen, and doing two-fingered typing on a laptop.

My relationship with Detective Victor Collazo dated back a couple of years to the time my ex-boyfriend, lover, significant other—whatever you wanted to call Neal Garrett—had gotten himself involved with a Fort Lauderdale sleazebag who was trying to smuggle his ill-earned cash out of the States on rust-bucket freighters. When a stripper, Neal’s new girlfriend, ended up dead, Collazo had suspected me, so we hadn’t exactly started off as buddies. But we had achieved a state of grudging tolerance, and now especially, watching him struggle to type on the computer, I felt a kind of kinship. Pinder had called it: people like Collazo and me were Old School.

“Detective, how’s it going?” I reached out and shook his hand.

Collazo had more body hair than any other individual I’d ever met, and because of that he always wore long-sleeved shirts. He never rolled up his sleeves or unbuttoned his collar—which was unfortunate because he also had a tendency to sweat. When he reached out his arm, there were already big wet circles under his pits, and his hand felt damp in my grasp.

“I got a ride here with Mike Beesting, but he’s out there swapping lies with his old buddies.”

“You said you had information to add concerning the Hazell case.”

“Detective, don’t you ever ease up a little, take part in the social niceties of life? You know, like say hello to a person for example?”

“Hello, Miss Sullivan. You don’t think Hazell’s murder had anything to do with drugs.”

“Right. That’s why I came. Collazo, have you ever been to Key West?”

“I can’t see how that would pertain to this investigation.”

“Oh, it does. Did you know that Key West was built by the wrecking industry in the the nineteenth century?”

“This is going to get to Hazell, eventually.”

“Yes, just give me ten minutes to explain it to you.”

“Five minutes.”

“Okay. It’s economics, supply and demand. In my business, the marine salvage business, when a boat goes on the reef, the salvage company that gets her off more or less in one piece can make a claim, which translates to a percentage of the value of the boat. Here in Fort Lauderdale, fifty years ago, most boats or yachts were relatively small, both in size and value. Today, if your yacht is under a hundred feet or worth less than two million, you’re small potatoes. You know that even five percent of a million dollars is a nice piece of change. This has become a huge business, but as the yachts grew in size, more and more people jumped into the business. Then, with electronic navigation like GPS, not as many boats were having accidents. The end result is that today there are too many salvage boats and not enough wrecks, so somebody has decided to
make
wrecks happen, and I believe it’s such a lucrative business that they have now killed two people to keep their scam from being discovered. Quentin was number two. The first was Nestor Frias in Key West last week.”