Fallen Honor: A Jesse McDermitt Novel (Caribbean Adventure Series Book 7) (4 page)

We idled south toward the other pier I’d built on the spoils of the deeper channel that provides access to my house from Harbor Channel about fifty yards away. Going as far as the end of the south pier, Carl reversed and backed up to the other side where we could tie off. Leaving the engines rumbling at idle to warm up, we checked the bilges. Opening the access in the rear cockpit deck, I noted a little water. In the bottom of the engine compartment we found about the same. Both Carl and I checked thoroughly for any water leaks.

Satisfied that the only water we found was from where we’d splashed aboard, we untied the lines and idled out to Harbor Channel. Carl made the tight left turn into it using only the transmissions, first spinning the boat to the right almost completely around before shifting both transmissions and spinning the opposite way until we faced the long channel. Everything worked perfectly and he shifted both engines to forward.

We slowly idled in Harbor Channel, which runs almost straight for four miles to Turtlecrawl Bank. There, it turns north into the deep water of the Gulf.

Carl grinned. “Ready?”

I nodded. “Mash it!”

Carl floored the pedal and the two big motorcycle engines roared simultaneously, launching us forward and accelerating faster than any boat I’d ever been on. She lifted up on plane in a second, seeming to just leap up out of the water. On plane, we continued to gather speed. I started the stopwatch function on my dive watch to measure the time to the lobster traps we had set up exactly two miles from the entrance to my channel.

Responding like a rocket sled on rails, we negotiated the two sweeping curves in the channel. It only took a few seconds to again reach top speed. Looking back, there wasn’t much of a wake off the stern at all, but the twin propellers created two distinct bulges in the water, culminating fifty feet astern with a pair of small rooster tails. Very little of the hull was in contact with the water, just enough to create drag and let the thrust of the props keep the rest of boat up out of the water.

As we roared past the trap’s floats, I stopped the watch and looked at it as Carl slowly brought the speed down. “A hundred and eight seconds!”

“That’s almost seventy miles an hour!” Carl shouted. “From an idle, no less!”

“We need to mount a GPS. We must’ve been going close to eighty-five there at the end.”

“Let’s keep that to ourselves, if Charlie asks.”

He looked at me and I grinned, arching an eyebrow. “A lie of omission?”

We both laughed, knowing that he never kept anything from his wife. “Maybe she won’t ask,” he said, as we idled in the wide part of the channel, just before the curve north to the open Gulf.

Switching seats, I piloted the boat back the way we came at a more sedate speed, planing and weaving back and forth across the channel. Even at half throttle it seemed like we were going as fast as my charter boat, Gaspar’s Revenge.

Charlie, the kids, and Pescador met us at the south pier. “We heard you all the way to the end of Harbor Channel,” Charlie said as she took the line Carl tossed her. “How fast is it?”

“Not sure exactly,” he replied, being somewhat truthful. “We’ll have to put a speedometer in the dash. It’s pretty fast, though.”

“Well, keep it at a slower speed when the kids and I go out with you.”

Once tied off, Carl and I checked the bilge and engines again. Putting on a scuba mask, I got in the water and checked the underside of the hull for any visible stress fractures in the clear-coat finish. We’d added two short stabilizing fins extending two feet back to the prop shafts, with small rudders aft the props. The stabilizers were an afterthought, once we’d calculated that the high speed the powerful engines might produce would be too much for the nearly flat-bottomed hull to allow it to turn at high speed. Declaring the boat to be sound, we decided to go to Marathon for lunch.

Twenty minutes later, after we’d all rinsed off again and put on clean clothes, we idled away from the pier. I let Charlie sit up front with Carl Junior and Carl at the helm and I sat in back with Patty and Pescador.

As Carl started down the channel, I said, “Know what we forgot? To measure the draft.”

Carl turned east into Harbor Channel. “We’ll take the deeper route until we’re sure it can navigate the cuts at idle.” When Carl gassed the engines to get up on plane, little Carl and Patty both covered their ears.

We hadn’t had any kind of wind in days and the water lay as calm and still as the heavy air. Carl followed the cut south of Turtlecrawl Bank, then turned due south into Big Spanish Channel. Cruising along at what I guessed to be forty knots, the boat performed really well as Carl slalomed a few crab traps, the boat barely heeling at all. With the Seven Mile Bridge in sight to the southeast, Carl put his son on his lap and let him pilot the boat for a while. Carl Junior was no stranger to running a boat, even at eight years old. Carl had earned a living from the sea all his life, as had his father and his grandfather before him.

Leaning back and looking over the engine compartment and sloped transom, I could nearly see the waterline, the swim platform now about three inches above the water streaming out from under the hull. I sat back and stretched my legs out. The feeling was incredible. We’d dreamed this up nearly a year ago, sketching and drawing for months. Some parts had had to be built off island, but every single rib, spar, plank, and dowel we’d installed ourselves.

Reaching Bahia Honda Channel, Carl continued south and turned left just before the bridge crossing from Scout Key to Bahia Honda. We followed deep water around the north side of the island, Carl keeping the boat about fifty yards off the Seven Mile Bridge.

Charlie pointed up to the cars on the bridge and shouted, “They have a speed limit. We don’t.”

Carl looked back and I nodded. Bringing the speed up until we were passing the cars in the northbound lane, I could tell by the tone of the engines that we weren’t quite up to top speed, but I guessed we were going at least sixty.

“
W
hat do you mean you lost it?” the voice on the phone shouted.

Lenny Walcza had put off the call as long as he could. The man on the other end of the phone he was now holding away from his ear was former Steelers linebacker GT Bradley, known for his quick temper and vicious punishment of anyone he considered to have crossed him, both on and off the field.

“I only turned my back for a second, GT,” Lenny confessed. The fact was, when he went to the john, he was so high he’d tripped over the dirty laundry strewn about the floor and hit his head on the toilet bowl, passed out and pissed himself.

It wasn’t until after he came to and cleaned himself up that he noticed Grabowski and the key of coke were gone. Thinking Grabowski was just pranking him, Lenny tried calling, but the call went straight to voicemail. Lenny had left Grabowski a message, telling him the joke wasn’t funny.

Lenny had considered taking off after Grabowski himself. However, Lenny lacked the funds and didn’t know where to start. He’d already gone to the guy’s place and the landlord had told him that Grabowski had turned in his keys the night before, leaving with nothing more than a backpack as far as the old man could tell.

“What’s his name? Where’s he live?” GT growled over the phone.

“I already checked there, GT. Landlord said he skipped out last night with nothing but a backpack and driving his beat-up old Corolla. He’s not answering his phone, either. Name’s Michal Grabowski.”

“Grabowski?” GT muttered, with obvious distaste. “He’s a damned worm. You stay put, shithead. I’ll be there in ten minutes.”

Lenny stared at the phone, the call now disconnected. It was nearly nine o’clock and Grabowski had at least a six-hour head start. Knowing the old Corolla was near the end of its life and had four bald tires, Lenny doubted he could have made it very far. Especially if he was driving fast.

GT had a network that covered the whole Three Rivers area and contacts throughout southwestern Pennsylvania. If anyone could find Grabowski, it’d be GT.

Minutes later, Lenny heard the sound of tires squealing as a car suddenly stopped in front of his house. Looking out through the front window, he immediately recognized GT’s white Escalade, with the dark-tinted windows. A large black man with a shaved head climbed out of the driver’s seat, as GT himself came around the hood in a hurry. Lenny knew the other man from his deliveries. Erik something or other. Looking like bookends, the two men hurried toward the front door, each wearing a gray sports coat.

Lenny met them at the door, motioning them inside and then put on a show of looking up and down the street before closing and locking the door. GT stopped in the foyer, as the other man went on into the house. Lenny could hear him going room to room opening and closing doors.

“We went by the bus station,” GT said, turning and walking into Lenny’s living room. “Grabowski’s piece-a-shit car was there, keys still in the ignition. Even in this neighborhood, nobody stole it. You’re telling me he was here when Erik dropped the stuff off last night?”

“Yeah, he dropped by with a case of beer and we watched the Pirates game, then he just kinda hung around.”

“What’d I tell you about having anyone over when a delivery was made?” GT shouted. “You owe me thirty-five large, asshole. Where is it?”

In the back of the house, Lenny heard something break and something large being turned over. “I don’t have it, GT. Ya gotta believe me. Why would I try to rip you off, man?”

“Because you’re an idiot!” GT barked, getting worked up as the sound of more crashing and things breaking could be heard from the back of the house. “Tell me everything you know about Grabowski.”

With his house being ransacked, Lenny told him all he knew, which wasn’t much. Grabowski’s mom had died years ago and he’d been raised by his dad, a steelworker who’d died last year. Grabowski had a girlfriend that he brought around from time to time, but Lenny hadn’t seen her in several months. When he finished, the other man came out of the back of the house and started jerking open drawers in the kitchen, dumping the contents on the floor, tearing open every box and container of food and drink, dumping that on the floor as well.

Finally, Erik came back into the living room and handed GT a wad of cash and shrugged. “Only thing I found, GT. Just shy of five grand.”

Looking at the wad of cash, GT slowly brought his face up and glared at Lenny. “This all you got?”

“A few hundred in the bank,” Lenny stammered, growing more afraid. GT had a habit of killing people who let him down. “I can probably sell some stuff and get you a couple grand more by the weekend.”

GT’s right hand snaked under his jacket in a flash, causing Lenny to cringe. Pulling out a pack of Pall Mall cigarettes, GT shook one loose and put it in his mouth. Erik produced a lighter, flicking it under his boss’s smoke. GT grinned and puffed to get it lit. Lenny relaxed a little.

Putting the pack of smokes back in his shirt pocket, GT grabbed the grip of his stainless steel Colt 1911 and pulled it out, placing the barrel just inches from Lenny’s forehead in a blur.

The report of the big handgun was deafening in the small living room. Blood and brain tissue plastered the wall and window, then began to ooze down the glass, as Lenny fell backward, crashing through the glass insert of a coffee table.

“By the weekend, huh?” GT asked the corpse, with its arms and legs spread-eagle, slumped in the heavy wooden frame of the table. “Yeah, you get back to me on that, dickweed.”

Turning to Erik, GT said, “C’mon, let’s go talk to the ticket agent.”