Blackwater Sound (8 page)

“What's the range on this baby?”

“Now that's the question, isn't it? That's the million-dollar question.”

Lawton glanced up at the rumbling sky, then back at his friend.

“All right,” Arnold said. “Come on, old buddy. I need to get you home.”

“You said we were going fishing.”

“Plans've changed,” Arnold said. “You and I, we're going to have to keep our heads down for a while, Lawton. Not have any contact.”

Lawton followed Arnold over to the Bertram. Printed in gold letters across the stern was the boat's name:
You Bet Your Ass
.

Arnold climbed aboard and Lawton loosened the lines from the dock cleats and tossed them over the rail to Arnold. Arnold grabbed them and let them fall at his feet. He didn't coil them like he usually did. He just let them lie there, in a mad tangle on the deck.

Arnold slipped the box into the cockpit storage locker. He dug out the ignition keys and handed them to Lawton, then turned and lifted his eyes and watched the laughing gulls spinning over Neon Leon's, a few of them diving down at the roof shrieking as though whatever had turned off the television had also driven them insane.

“I got to use the head, get rid of this beer. I'll be up top in a minute.”

“It's true, isn't it, Arnold? I used to arrest you?”

“Yes, it's true.”

“Why was that? You a dope peddler?”

“No, it wasn't dope, Lawton. I never dabbled in dope.”

He turned and gave Arnold a long look. “Don't tell me you were a professional killer.”

Arnold patted him on the shoulder. “You get us a little downstream, I'll be right up.”

“We going fishing, catch some dolphin?”

“Not today, Lawton. I need to get you back, safe and sound. I'll stick around till Alexandra gets home, then I got a couple of things I gotta attend to. We'll go fishing soon as this thing gets cleared up. I promise.”

“Don't worry about your boat. Go on, take a piss. You can trust me.”

“I know I can.”

“Hey, Arnold, is this guy Braswell trying to kill us?”

“No, Lawton. Braswell went over to the Bahamas. He's hanging out in Marsh Harbor, trying to locate a blue marlin. No, we're fine. We're just dandy.”

“He's after that fish you told me about? One with the transmitter on it? Looks like a cigar?”

“That's right, Lawton. He's chasing that fish. He doesn't have time for a couple of old farts like us.”

Arnold gave his shoulder another pat, then headed for the cabin.

Lawton climbed the ladder to the flybridge and started the big engines. Nudging the right throttle, then the left, twisting the wheel, he eased the Bertram away from the dock and out into the dark, oily center of the Miami River.

A hundred yards away, a squat, thick-necked tugboat was chugging toward them like some kind of irritable bulldog, so Lawton edged Arnold's sleek white yacht over to the right half of the river.

He kept the Bertram idling forward, two knots, three, inhaling the river scents, industrial smells of kerosene and turpentine and a burnt coffee odor, all of it riding the sugary breeze.

Lawton Collins always had an easy hand with boats. As close to a natural gift as he could claim. He wasn't a certified captain, hadn't taken the Coast Guard courses, and he didn't know all the niceties of radar and GPS and Loran, and he knew next to nothing about the big turbo-charged diesels belowdecks, but Lawton could still handle
a boat with charmed certainty. Didn't matter how big or small the craft was. Give him a target on a nautical chart, set him behind the controls, and he'd roll through fifteen-foot seas or search out the twisting channels through treacherous shallows and get to his destination every time. It was one of the few skills he still possessed. Almost the only talent that hadn't deserted him these last years as his limbs were crabbed by arthritis and his brain hollowed out.

Soon as his hands were on the controls of a boat, he was rejuvenated. Muscles springy, heart alert. Mind of a twenty-year-old.

As the big boat grumbled ahead, Lawton's mind whisked back to the days when he used to steer his small wood skiff with the forty-horse Evinrude through the chaotic chop outside of Key West Harbor, into the rush of open water and the sloppy convergence of tides and currents across the reefs, on and on, south by southwest, finally into the blue-green sand flats of the Marquesa Islands, volcanic and remote and crackling with fish, the Marquesas where he and his buddies built a little fishing shack tucked among the mangroves, a place to camp under the unsullied heavens, far from the dogs barking, the guns cocking and brakes squealing on dark, bloody streets, just him and his buddies lying on the wood planks he'd nailed into place, lying on a blanket or a nylon sleeping bag, shutting off the kerosene lantern, and gazing up at the dense speckle of stars and the dark birds circling against the moon, all that splendor to feast on, simply because he could handle a boat, wasn't afraid of the markerless waters, could guide his way through the shoals and the narrow limestone channels, following a simple compass heading, reading the stars, or else doing it by a blind man's intuition, and even to this day he had all those same skills, even though his brain was as leaky as the spongy earth beneath the Florida topsoil, and he damn well could still recall every patch of water he'd ever crossed, had a freeze-frame of each acre of blue water in crystal-sharp focus, just like the day he'd crossed them the first time, as if every boat he'd ever steered, every wake he'd ever thrown was still there, white foamy trails across
the transparent surface of the world, all the pathways he'd taken to get to this day, to this narrow, greasy river, to this boat,
You Bet Your Ass
.

Lawton eased back on the throttle. The tug still hogged the middle of the river, a freighter looming behind it, big rusty-red hull, deckhands scurrying about on the foredeck, chattering, full of bustle. And other boats were strung out farther back, a fishing trawler, a small open fisherman, a Hatteras yacht. A regular parade coming up the river for repairs or gas or to deliver their loads.

As Lawton steered the boat, a scene from long ago flashed before him. A night in the Marquesas when the mosquitoes were so bad Alex and her mother and Lawton had to climb down the wooden ladder and submerge themselves in the water for a little relief. He saw that moment. Black water, glossy with moonlight. Alexandra's mother in her bathing suit with the flowered skirt. What was her name? The woman he'd married. The woman he'd lived with for nearly forty years. He remembered the swimsuit she'd worn that night. It had flowers. Pink flowers. He remembered that. Hibiscus.

 

Arnold Peretti took one step into the Bertram's main salon and stopped. Sitting in a leather chair was Johnny Braswell. He had his elbows on the dining table, a sheet of paper lying in front of him. Johnny looked up from the paper and smiled at Arnold. The kid wore the same straw hat he always wore when he was out fishing, wide-brimmed sombrero with the top cut out like he was letting his skull breathe. Dark blue shorts and a white polo shirt with
ByteMe
embroidered over the left breast. The name of the Braswells' yacht.

Arnold stayed in the doorway, one foot in the cabin, the other still on the rear deck.

“Hey, Johnny.”

“Hey, Arnold, What it
is
, man?”

Johnny Braswell had a chirpy voice, smiled too much. Lying on
the table beside the sheet of paper was one of Johnny's knives, blade open. The kid loved knives, always had.

“Come on in, Arnold, shut the door, relax, man. I need to talk to you. Pick your brains a little.”

Arnold held his ground, trying to keep cool but running a quick movie in his head: slam the door, take two quick steps, throw himself over the gunwale into the river. Workable, except for one minor detail. He didn't swim a stroke.

Still, as he took another look at that knife, today might be the day to learn.

“You like this blade, Arnold? It's an AK 430. Customized version of one the Special Forces used in Desert Storm. Slices through solid bone like it was mayonnaise. Lot better than packing iron. Don't you think? I mean, sure, there's a higher spatter factor, but then what's a little gore, right? Just the cost of doing business.”

Arnold looked at the knife with its glittery blade, some kind of pygmy machete, a sugarcane cutter or something.

Johnny was thick-waisted, with a bulky chest and a baby face. Always flushed from the sun, and squinting, even when he was indoors. Arnold had seen the kid work the wire on a few giant marlin and knew the blubber under Johnny's shirt wasn't blubber at all.

“I believe I invited you inside, Grandpa. Didn't I?”

Arnold took a step backwards onto the deck. The door still open. If he was going to get cut, he wanted witnesses.

Johnny grinned at the old man's cockiness.

“Okay, sure, Arnold, outside's cool. Wherever you want.”

Johnny got up from the table. He came across the cabin and stepped onto the aft deck, holding his knife down by his leg. He took a perch on the starboard gunwale and watched Arnold grip the back of the fighting chair.

“We got a stowaway,” Arnold called up to Lawton.

Lawton turned and looked down.

“Hey, Arnold? You remember my wife's name? I was trying to recall.”

“Her name was Grace, Lawton.”

“Yeah, yeah, that's right. Grace. Grace Collins.”

“Lawton, you just keep us going downriver, me and my friend are going to socialize a bit. Okay?”

“Grace is a pretty name,” Lawton said. “I like that. Grace. It's got kind of a religious connotation to it.”

Arnold nodded.

“That's some captain you got,” said Johnny. He smiled at Arnold in that bleary hey-this-is-great-shit way he had. “What's wrong with the dude?”

“He lived too long,” Arnold said. “That's all.”

“Yeah, that seems to be going around.”

“Johnny, listen. You got some problem with me, fine, we'll handle that however we can. But that old man up there, he's got no part in my business. Get that straight. He's an innocent bystander, that's all.”

“Whatever you say, Arnold. You're the head goomba. At least for the time being anyway.”

Arnold shook his head, got the fighting chair between him and the boy.

“You know, Arnold, I'm disappointed in you. Old fuck like you, you shoulda known you couldn't break the omerta. Finger your own people and we'd sit still for it. And here all this time I thought you were a stand-up guy.”

“Johnny, Johnny, Johnny. I told you once, I told you a million fucking times, I'm not in the Mob. I'm not a fucking Godfather. All I am is a bookie, for Christsakes. I take bets. Football, basketball, the ponies. Nothing more than that.”

“Sure, Arnold. However you want to play it.”

Up on the flybridge, Lawton kept the boat idling along. He glanced back, showed Arnold a worried look, then turned back to the river.

“ ‘In Italy, for thirty years under the Borgias,' ” Johnny said, “ ‘they had warfare, terror, murder, and bloodshed, but they produced Mi
chelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland, they had brotherly love; they had five hundred years of democracy and peace—and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock.' ”

“Yeah, yeah, I know,” Arnold said. “Orson Welles,
The Third Man
.”

“Good, Arnold. You remembered.”

“Listen to me, Johnny. Let's put the knife away, we'll have a cocktail, talk this thing through, take a little boat ride, enjoy the sun. When we're done, we swing by the Jockey Club, pick up a couple of girls I know. You'd like that, wouldn't you? A couple of girls.”

They were passing beneath the Brickell Avenue drawbridge, cars backed up in both directions. Moving along slowly, almost to the mouth of the river.

“What girls, Arnold? What kind of girls could an old brontosaurus like you show me?”

Johnny smiled but there was nothing behind it. He pushed himself up from the gunwale and took a step toward Arnold and stopped.

“I like you, Arnold. I like your boat, I like how you live. I always thought you were a classy guy. For a goomba, you got refinement. You have that John Gotti thing going. Dapper don, old Moustache Pete.”

“That's movie bullshit, Johnny. You lie there and you watch Edward G. Robinson and Robert Mitchum all the fucking day and night and your brains are turned to mush, boy. That's not how the world is. It just isn't, son.”

The boat passed beyond the no-wake zones, and Lawton Collins pushed the throttle forward and got them up on plane. The big mirrored windows of the office buildings slipping away to the north. Behind them a jet ski bounced across their wake, crisscrossing back and forth, searching out the best bumps.

Arnold looked out at the watery blue dazzle. He wasn't sure why he'd never learned to swim. Probably too busy running errands for guys on Miami Beach, getting his start in the business.

Arnold took off his glasses and wiped the salt spray off the lenses
with his shirt tail. When he put them back on, Johnny had moved a step closer to him, watching the jet ski cutting back and forth over their wake.

Peretti looked ahead at the big Rickenbacker Causeway coming up, all the joggers and skaters and bicyclers pedaling across it. Everybody out enjoying the weather, the sun. Staying young and healthy, gonna live forever, this generation.

“Now look, Johnny, if your dad or Morgan has a beef with me, then I'm going to talk directly to them. A family meeting, fine. But I'm not doing this with you. You could wave the biggest fucking knife in the world, I'm not saying another word. A. J. wants to hear my side of things, we do it face to face.”

Eyes drowsy, Johnny said, “We're out on this boat, Arnold, nice sunny day, know what I'd like? I'd like to catch a fish, put some meat on the deck.”

“What?”

Johnny tucked the knife in his belt, grabbed one of the rods out of the rod holder, opened the bailer on the reel, reached up to the tip of the rod and pinched the big stainless steel hook and pulled out some line.

“You got any bait around here, Arnold?”

“What're you doing, Johnny? What is this?”

“You should always carry bait. You got all these rods, you need fresh bait.”

“I got some frozen squid down below. Take a minute to thaw it out.”

“What I want, Arnold, I want some fresh bait. Something still alive, full of blood, you know what I mean. Maybe about the size and shape of a finger. You see anything like that around here?”

“Johnny, listen. Don't push this thing where it doesn't have to go.”

“Live bait, Arnold. You got any idea where we could rustle some up?”