Blackwater Sound (6 page)

“My thumb aches,” Johnny said. “I think I nicked the bone. It really hurts.”

“Not now, Johnny. Not now.”

Their Hatteras was moored in the last slip on A dock. The yellow security lights gleamed against the sleek hull.

Morgan halted ten feet from the slip and raised her hand. Johnny stopped behind her and started to speak but Morgan shushed him.

On the side dock that bordered their Hatteras, Jonas Mills, their night security guard, was asleep in a canvas-backed chair. His head propped against a piling. He was Jamaican, father of five. He'd
been with the Braswells for over a year. No complaints. At least not till now.

Morgan stepped over to him. She raised her right foot and planted the bottom of her tennis shoe against the arm of the chair and threw her weight against it. Jonas's eyes came open and he yelped once and kicked his legs out straight, then tumbled backwards. His skull whacked against the rub rail of the yacht and he dropped ten feet into the glistening water of the harbor.

She and Johnny peered over the dock and watched him bob to the surface, gasp several times, then begin to thrash.

“He can't swim,” Johnny said.

“It's time he learned.”

Jonas reached out for a ladder mounted against the piling, and yowled as his hands shredded against the barnacles.

“Jesus,” Johnny said. “You just going to leave him down there?”

“Unless you want to shoot him. Fill him full of daylight.”

Gasping, Jonas grabbed hold of the ladder and hauled himself up to the bottom rung.

She stepped aboard their boat and Johnny followed silently.

She opened the cabin with her key and switched on the lights in the salon. She went down the narrow gangway to her stateroom. Flung open the door and stalked to her wardrobe and shoved aside the panel.

“That's where you hid it, in your closet?”

“Right there.”

There were a pair of sandals on the floor. That was all.

“You're sure?” Johnny said. “Right there on the floor? Blueprints, too?”

“That cocksucker.”

Johnny stared into the closet.

“Which cocksucker?”

“Who do you think, Johnny?”

“I don't know.”

“Who else could it be? Who else had access? No one would question him. No one would think to tell us he'd even come aboard. Everybody's big buddy.”

“Arnold?”

Morgan slammed the closet door shut.

“That cocksucker,” she said. “That goddamn son of a bitch.”

“I thought we were going fishing,” said Lawton Collins.

“Soon as we're done here, Lawton. Another minute or two.” Arnold gave him a pat on his bare knee.

They sat side by side in the high-backed leather booth, Lawton Collins and Arnold Peretti. Both of them seventy-two years old. Longtime buddies.

Lawton had on his yellow Bermudas with a blue sleeveless T-shirt, nicely weathered by paint specks from projects over the years. His daughter, Alex, said that outfit made him look like a trailer park derelict and tried to dress him better. But the clothes were comfortable and they reminded him of things from the past. Things he couldn't name, but he could still sense them when he put on those clothes. So he wore them as often as Alexandra would allow.

Lawton Collins held the box on his lap like Arnold had told him.
Everybody at the table was aware of it, like the thing was glowing. Lawton didn't know what was inside it, but it was as heavy as a goddamn box of rocks.

Across the booth from them were a couple in their late twenties, early thirties, Charlie and Brandy. Good-looking young folks. Especially the girl. Charlie had a two-day beard, the shadow of dark bristles covering his cheeks.

The four of them had been sitting there quietly since the food arrived. Waiting for somebody to break the ice.

So Lawton said, “You know what Harry Houdini's real name was?”

The two young people stared at him.

“It was Erik Weisz,” Lawton told them. “Houdini's family came from Hungary. He did his first trick at six years of age. Made a dried pea appear in any one of three overturned cups.”

The young man gave Lawton a careful look.

“What's wrong with this guy?” Charlie said.

“Nothing's wrong with him. He's getting old. Same as me.”

“What's this shit about Houdini?”

“I like Houdini,” Lawton said.

“He likes Houdini,” Arnold said. “So there.”

Lawton smiled at the young woman. Brandy was her name. She had a large smile and even larger breasts.

“Me and Arnold go way back,” Lawton said. “In the old days I used to bust him about twice a year. Didn't I, Arnold?”

“Like clockwork,” Arnold said.

“You're kidding me. This guy's a cop?”

“Used to be,” said Arnold. “A good one, too.”

“Yes, sir, I was a cop and now I've got a daughter in law enforcement. She's a photographer for the City of Miami Police Department. Crime scenes, corpses, bullet wounds, blood spatters, gore. You name it, she snaps it.”

Charlie frowned.

“I don't like this, Peretti. Some fruitcake listening in.”

“Hey,” Lawton said. “I may be retired, but I still got full arrest powers.”

“Yeah, right,” Charlie said. “Cardiac arrest.”

Brandy giggled, then caught herself and tried to look serious.

“Look, Charlie, not that it's any of your business,” Arnold said, “but after we're done here, me and Lawton are going fishing. I'm looking after him today.”

Charlie closed his mouth and shook his head. The shit he had to endure.

“I think he's cute,” the girl said. “You hear, Lawton? I think you're cute.”

Lawton let go of the box and extended his left hand across the narrow table and cupped the girl's right breast, lightly feeling its contour. Lawton knew how to touch a woman. He'd never been rough, even when he was young and full of fever. Her breast was round as a honeydew and just as solid.

“Hey!” Charlie said. “Watch it, asshole!”

Brandy drew back carefully, easing out of Lawton's grasp. She flattened herself against the leather seat, trying to keep her smile together.

Charlie Harrison leaned halfway across the table.

“Touch her again, old man, you're dead meat. You hear me?”

“Relax,” Arnold said. “He's confused, that's all. He makes mistakes.”

“I'm cracked,” Lawton said. “That's what they say. Loopy doopy. There's a name for it, but I forget.”

“Jesus,” Charlie said. “You okay, Brandy?”

“I'm fine, I'm fine. Leave him alone, Charlie. He's okay.”

“Cracked,” Lawton said. “But still full of beans.”

Everyone was quiet for a minute, eyes wandering the room, trying to put the moment behind them.

Truth was, even in his heyday, Lawton Collins's brain had never been what you'd call razor sharp. For one thing, he'd always been
lousy with time stuff. Most of his life, you could ask him the day of the week, he'd have to puzzle on it a while. Season of the year was the same thing. But that was partly Miami's fault. Anywhere else in the world, somebody asked you what month it was, you looked out the window, you could tell. Leaves turning gold, snow on the ground, jonquils blooming. But in Miami, windows were useless. January looked exactly like June and August was the same as November.

Back in his police days, faces were Lawton's strength. Faces and the names attached to them. But that other stuff, time and dates, chronologies, what happened when, he was never good with that. Like he'd gotten a head start on old age. So when all the rest of the stuff started evaporating in his head, like the fizz going out of a soft drink, it took Lawton and everybody else, even his daughter Alexandra, a good while to notice anything strange was happening.

Right then it was lunchtime, Wednesday. Easter coming up. Beyond the curtained windows the sky was full of juicy spring light, while the interior of Neon Leon's Riverside Café was as murky as an underwater cave, most of the light coming from one big-screen TV that was tuned in to a pro wrestling match.

Charlie had another tug on his beer, wiped his mouth, and fixed his glare on the box in Lawton's lap like he was cranking up his X-ray vision.

“So that's it?” Charlie said. “You got it.”

“Like I promised,” Arnold said. “My word's my bond.”

“So what do you want from me, Arnold? Credit report? Take a polygraph, what?”

Arnold said nothing. Just eyed the young man in that leisurely way he had.

The boy was wearing khaki slacks and a blue button-down. A long way from the scruffy crowd around the rest of the bar. Tattoos and pierced eyelids everywhere you looked. Ratty T-shirts and torn jeans.

Brandy was silent, smiling nervously at Lawton. Brandy had on a shapeless shirt of pale green and baggy jeans. But the clothes didn't conceal her. Already several of the guys at the bar had quit watching
the wrestling match, swiveling their stools around to give Brandy their total attention.

“Always in a hurry, this generation. Can't wait to get to the end of the story, find out what happened. Lost the ability to savor. Isn't that right, Lawton? Not like us old guys, sitting back, swishing the wine around in our mouths before we swallow it, enjoying every tick of the clock.”

“True,” Lawton said. “But I gotta say, this young lady certainly has nice bosoms. Firm and round. They'll come in very handy for suckling her young.”

“All right, that's it,” Harrison said. “Come on, Brandy, we're out of here.”

Arnold reached out and thumped his knuckles on the manila envelope.

“Keep your ass planted right there, Charlie. You'll get what you want, but first I got to get what I want.
Quid pro quo
. You know your Latin, right?”

Charlie stared down at the baskets of fried food that sat in front of him and resettled himself in his seat.

For thirty years Arnold and Lawton had been friends and in all that time Arnold hadn't changed a bit. Still master of ceremonies wherever he went. For five decades he'd run a sports book out of his condo up in Hallandale. Anybody that was anybody in South Florida knew Peretti.

Seventy-two and still commanded respect. Didn't matter he was silver-haired with a short, stocky build. Didn't matter he dressed like a dork. Like today in his lemon-yellow shirt, black shorts, and sandals with white knee-high socks. Big square glasses with gold frames. Behind the thick lenses his eyes were watery and dark. Everywhere he and Lawton went, people knew Arnold. The right people. They were always happy to see him, slapping him on the back, buying him drinks, lighting his cigars.

“I think it's me,” Brandy said. “I think I'm the problem, Charlie. Your friend doesn't want to do business with a woman present.”

Arnold glanced her way, then looked at Lawton, gave him a small, disappointed shake of the head.

“What're you going to do with this generation? Never had a decent war or a good Depression to give them any depth of character. Minute they were born, they thought they were entitled to the first-class seat without doing a damn thing to earn it.”

Brandy scooted to the edge of the booth.

“Would you gentlemen excuse me? This lady needs a potty break.”

She stood up and ambled across the room, with Arnold and the gang at the bar following her movements reverently. As she passed by the last stool and turned into the murky back room, a rack of pool balls exploded.

“Nice girl,” Peretti said. “At least we know that much about you, Charlie. You got good taste in broads.”

Someone cheered at the bar, and Lawton turned in time to see a big guy on the TV with long hair and a beard toss a guy who looked just like him over the ropes into the first row of the crowd. A murmur passed along the bar. A couple of guys talking on cell phones pulled them away from their ears to watch.

“I can't tell which ones are the bad guys,” Lawton said. “Used to be, you could tell.”

“They're all bad these days,” Arnold said. “That's what sells.”

“Bad against bad? Where's the fun in that?”

Out on the river a Haitian freighter piled high with mattresses and bicycles moved slowly downstream. Along the dock Arnold Peretti's big Bertram bumped lightly against the pilings in the swell of the freighter's wake.

Arnold selected a fried shrimp, dunked it in the cocktail sauce, sucked it down. He patted his lips with the napkin and smiled at Charlie.

“Look, kid, I like to have a feel for the people I'm doing business with. Especially a thing like this, the likely repercussions.”

“I'm an average guy. Let's just leave it at that.”

Arnold settled a sharp look on Charlie. He tapped the manila envelope.

“When you write this exposé, you're going to piss some people off. You ready for that, Mr. Average Guy? You ready to go into hiding for a while?”

Charlie pushed his Heineken aside. His eyes settled on the envelope.

“Don't worry, kid. It's all there. Everything I promised. Blueprints, schematics, the whole deal.”

Charlie swallowed.

“How'd you get hold of it, Arnold? Tell me that.”

“Not to worry, kid. It came into my possession, now it's about to pass into yours. And this thing, it's a prototype. You know, a scale model. I don't know if the goddamn thing even works, but there it is.”

“It seems damn small for what it's supposed to do,” Charlie said.

“Like I told you, all I know is what I overheard. Sounds to me like it's a contraband weapon. Somebody's doing a little arms dealing on the side. I thought somebody with some investigative training should look into it, expose the bastards.”

Arnold helped himself to another onion ring.

“I need to know if you stole this stuff, Arnold.”

“What? You think they said, Hey, Arnold, why don't you take this thing out for a test drive? Damn right I stole it.”

“So my article would be based on information acquired illegally.”

Arnold waved the thought away with his big paw.

“Tell me something, Charlie. All this time I been talking to you, not once have you asked me why I'm exposing this guy.”

Charlie closed his eyes and opened them again, like Peretti was trying his patience.

“All right, Arnold. So tell me. Why're you exposing him?”

Arnold smiled. Showed his big teeth.

“Long and short of it, I want to save his ass, set him back on the right course.”

“Save him?”

“Yeah,” Arnold said. “I've known him a long time. There's a loyalty factor at work. But I still got to expose him. For his own damn good.”

Arnold swiveled his head and stared at his smoky reflection in the mirror.

“Why not go to the cops, the FBI?”

“Like I got such a good working relationship with the law enforcement community. They're going to jump up and salute when I walk in the door.”

Charlie picked up a limp onion ring, inspected it for a second, then let it drop back in the basket.

Arnold said, “Next thing you should've asked me but didn't is, how come I chose you. Why the hell didn't I call up the
New York Times, Washington Post
? Shit, anybody would kill to get this story.” Arnold took off his glasses, wiped his eyes, put them back on.

“You like how I write.”

“Fuck, no. What do I know about writing?”

“So why?”

“ 'Cause of that Sugar Bowl, ten years ago. Way you played that night.”

“Aw, Christ.”

With a corner of his paper napkin Arnold blotted the catsup from his lips.

“Yeah, I know,” Arnold said. “People bring it up all the time, you're sick of hearing it. But that's the truth. I remember that game fondly. Then like I say, one of my people showed me your byline in that piece-of-shit paper you write for, what's it called?”

“The
Miami Weekly
.”

“Yeah, yeah. But it was basically the Sugar Bowl. Jesus, that was a classic. Smallest guy on the field, but every fucking play, there you were batting down a pass, squirting through the line with all those corn-fed linemen trying to crush your ass. Man, it hurts my ribs just thinking about it.”

“So you called me up. And here we are.”

Arnold selected another onion ring, held it in front of his lips and said, “So let's hear what you know about him, kid. Tell me.”