Fallen King: A Jesse McDermitt Novel (Caribbean Adventure Series Book 6) (3 page)

“You’re saying Bullard is off limits?”

“No,” she replied. “I don’t know how you heard, but I’m assuming you’ve learned about the illegal fishing practices.”

“That’s Fish and Wildlife. How’s FDLE involved?”

“I said I can’t talk about it,” she replied.

I thought for a moment, then said, “It’s no longer just about taking fish, is it?”

“You didn’t hear that from me,” she said. “In fact, I think I better hang up now.”

“Wait,” I said. “I didn’t mean to piss you off. I really would like to see you this weekend.”

“No talk about the investigation?”

“If that’s what you want,” I said. “Maybe we can get a few people together and fly up to Cape Sable for a campout and backcountry fly fishing.”

“Yeah,” she said, her voice taking on its usual cheery tone. “That sounds like it’d be a lot of fun. I really do have to go, though. See you tomorrow night?”

“Pick you up at the
Anchor
?”

“I’ll be there by six,” she said. “Bye now.”

I said goodbye and ended the call.

Headed south in my skiff the next afternoon, I called Doc. He picked up almost instantly as I threaded my way through the narrow channel east of Big Pine Key. “You hear anything else about that thing we were talking about yesterday?” I asked.

“I knew you wouldn’t let it rest,” he replied, then sighed and added, “Yeah, a girl Nikki works with overheard a couple of local cops talking about it at Hog’s Breath last night. Seems a tourist couple were out in the backcountry two days ago in a rental and came across another boat near Monkey Bank after hearing an explosion. When they came alongside the boat, thinking they might be in trouble, three guys on board pulled guns and robbed them. Cut their fuel line and left them adrift among hundreds of dead fish.”

“So, that’s why Linda’s involved,” I said, thinking out loud.

“She’s investigating it?”

“She didn’t come right out and say so,” I replied. “I’m picking her up in an hour.”

“Let me know if you hear anything,” he said.

I told him I would and ended the call. Passing Porpoise Key, I turned east and skimmed the skinny water into Big Spanish Channel and the deeper water east of there and north of the Seven Mile Bridge.

The front had passed on through and left behind a cloudless cobalt-blue sky and cold temperatures. Being built over the water, my house rarely gets uncomfortable in summer or winter. Even if the temperature drops into the fifties like this morning, the water temperature rarely gets below seventy-two.

However, with no insulation, last night was still a cold night by Keys standards. So I’d tossed a few pieces of driftwood in the wood stove and lit it just before going to bed. The coals had still been hot this morning, allowing me to toss on another couple of pieces to take the early morning chill off.

Ten minutes after talking to Doc, I brought my skiff down off plane and idled up the channel to my friend’s place, the
Rusty Anchor Bar and Grill
. I first met Rusty on a Greyhound Bus bound for Parris Island. We were in the same platoon in Boot Camp and were stationed together a few times over the next four years. He left the Corps when his wife went into labor early and died giving birth to his daughter, Julie. Raising a daughter alone hadn’t been easy for him, but the two had managed. Julie married Deuce last summer and the two were living on their Whitby sailboat at Rusty’s dock.

Tying up at the skiff dock I noticed that Deuce and Julie’s ketch was gone. The
Rusty Anchor
is an out-of-the-way place, known pretty much only to locals, though it’s nearly in the heart of Marathon, on Vaca Key. It’s been here in one form or another for generations. Rusty’s grandfather made illegal rum during prohibition. The rum shack is now Rufus’s living quarters.

Rufus is Rusty’s part-time Jamaican cook. Nobody seems to know exactly how old he is, but if I were to guess, he’s probably in his seventies. If you made your guess based on his complexion, build or flexibility, you’d guess half that. Only when you look into his dark eyes do you see the wisdom of age. He eats mostly fruits and nuts, grazing pretty much all day long, his lean and muscular frame a testament to his simple diet. Early in the mornings, you sometimes see him standing in the shallows just beyond his shack, practicing some sort of meditation and stretching exercise, contorting his body in ways that would make a Thai hooker jealous.

I crossed the lawn and walked through the door into the dimly lit bar, letting my eyes adjust for a moment. There were already a number of locals sitting at the bar and scattered at the tables. Jimmy Saunders was behind the bar. He used to be my First Mate aboard the
Revenge
, before Doc. His girlfriend, Angie, was waiting tables. Angie is Carl’s daughter from his first marriage. It’s that kind of community, where everyone knows everyone and many are related.

“Hi, Jesse,” Jimmy said. “Get you a beer? Linda’s not here yet.” Before I could answer, he set a dripping Red Stripe on a coaster at the far end of the bar.

Linda had been coming to visit almost every weekend since we met on Elbow Cay last September. She stays in the guest bunkhouse with Kim and the three of us spend time on the water, fishing, diving, and swimming. Every Sunday, before she has to go back up north, the two of us do a four-mile run down Sombrero Beach Road to the beach and back. We’d become close friends over the last few months, but until Kim left in the summer, I was reluctant to try to carry the relationship any further. Linda, not being the pushy type and in no hurry for a relationship herself, seemed to enjoy the easy way we fell into a friendship, but she still tossed out the occasional sexually-charged innuendo from time to time. The physical attraction was obvious and mutual, we were just in no hurry at all.

“Thanks, Jimmy,” I said, taking my usual seat at the far end of the bar. Against the wall. Facing the door. “Yeah, she said she’d be here about eighteen hundred. Figured I’d drop in early and see if I could get caught up on what’s going on around the islands.”

“Not a whole lot going on, dude,” he said as he turned away to wipe down the other end of the bar. Usually Jimmy was one of the best sources for local intel, so his comment surprised me. As I took my first long pull on the beer bottle, Rusty came through the door at the back of the bar.

“Hey, Jesse. Where’s Kim?” he asked, looking around and lifting his considerable girth onto a stool behind the bar just across from me. At just five and a half feet tall and over three hundred pounds, he’s had more than a few troublemakers make the mistake of assuming he was an easy target. His bald head and thick red beard, just now starting to show some gray, did offset his soft appearance a little, but not much.

“Her and Charlie took the Trent kids fishing for the afternoon, over by Raccoon Key,” I replied. Leaning forward I asked, “What’s the latest you’re hearing about the grenade fishing?”

“Grenade fishing?”

I glanced over at Jimmy, who was watching us and quickly turned and started polishing the glasses under the bar even though they were spotless. Looking back at Rusty, he averted his eyes and glanced out the open windows toward the docks.

“Yeah,” I said, leaning into his line of vision. “Grenade fishing up in the backcountry.”

He looked at me and sighed. “Just leave it to the cops, okay.”

“He’s not gonna, man,” Jimmy said, shaking his head slowly, still looking down at the glass he was polishing.

“Look,” Rusty began, “you got your kid to think of now, bro. Lord knows I been hoping the day’d come when you could get to know them. Stay out of it, okay?”

I looked him in the eye, seeing real concern there. Over the years, we’d become the best friends you could imagine. While we were young Marines, I used to hitch a ride in his old pickup to my home in Fort Myers, whenever the two of us would get leave or a four-day pass, what we called a ninety-six. Often, he’d stay over at my grandparents place, before the last leg home. When he left the Corps, I started splitting my liberty and leave time between home and the Keys, staying with him and Julie in the guest room of his little house behind the bar.

“Who said I was getting involved? I just want to be aware of what’s going on around my house. Bullard Bank isn’t too far from me.”

“Okay,” he said, leaning in conspiratorially. “Word is that some lowlifes with a Miami gang are down here. Just in the last few weeks, they’ve blown the hell out of more than twenty patch reefs to collect the dead fish. There’s been two incidents of people being strong-armed by these punks and two divers injured who were on a reef nearby.”

“A Miami gang?”

“Yeah, a bunch of bloodthirsty Haitians who call themselves Zoe Pound. Been around for a few years, now. They do a lot of importing up there, if you know what I mean. Why they’re using grenades to fish, nobody seems to know. Maybe just blowing off steam between drug runs.”

“Grenades aren’t cheap,” I said. “Nor plentiful.”

“That’s why I’m thinking they’re just bored. Cost-benefit thing. Why waste grenades for a few bucks’ worth of fish, when you’re raking in millions dealing coke and meth?”

“The two injured divers? Locals?”

“No,” Rusty replied, with a shake of his head. “A couple out of Indiana, down here to get away from the snow.”

“Indiana?”

“Don’t appear to be any connection, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

“Just a bunch of teenagers blowing up reefs for fun, huh?”

“You didn’t hear that from me,” he said, looking over my shoulder as light spilled in from outside the front door.

I turned and saw Linda standing at the doorway, silhouetted by the bright sunlight behind her. The sun seemed to pick out the auburn streaks it had placed in her dark hair over the previous few months, making her look like a phoenix. When she saw us at the bar, she glided our way.

When we met, she was working undercover for a high-end escort service, belying her forty-something age. At five seven and a hundred and twenty-five pounds, you’d have to look very close to find a single flaw in her skin or build that would indicate she was almost my age. I’d looked a few times. Rusty placed a bottle of Dos Equis on a coaster next to my nearly empty Red Stripe as she sat down and leaned over to kiss me on the cheek.

“Thanks, Rusty,” she said. “You two look like you both swallowed a canary.”

“Just talking about flying up to Cape Sable,” I said.

“Yeah,” Rusty chimed in. He’d always been able to pick up what I was thinking and carry it. “Supposed to be some great sea trout fishing in Micmac Lagoon and big reds being taken right off the beach.”

“I’ve never been up there,” Linda said, smiling. “But I hear it’s really beautiful in a prehistoric kind of way.”

“Oh yeah,” Rusty said, leaning on the bar with his elbows. “It’s like going back in time, when you walk along the beach there.” Turning to me, he said, “Maybe we can fly out over the Glades and check out Whitewater Bay.”

I hadn’t even invited the man yet. That’s another thing he’s good at doing.

“I’m really looking forward to it,” Linda said. “When do we leave?”

“First light,” I replied, giving Rusty a crooked grin and nodding toward my now empty beer bottle.

“Who else is going?” he asked as he placed another dripping bottle on my coaster.

“The three of us and Kim,” I said. “It’s just a twenty-minute flight. We can spend the day fishing and exploring, stay the night and fly back here on Sunday.”

“Want me to strap the canoes to the floats?” Rusty asked.

“Yeah, that’d make getting around into the lagoon a lot easier.”

We chatted a while longer, before the shadows on the wall told me we’d better head up to the island. Even though I knew the channels and reefs like the back of my hand, it’s never a good idea running them at night if you don’t have to.

We left the
Anchor
and circled the west end of the island. Between there and my island, there’s only the house on Sister Rock, a couple of waterfront homes and businesses, and the Seven Mile Bridge to indicate that Marathon is a bustling town of almost ten thousand people. Nearly the whole of Vaca Key has been developed now. I remember coming down here as a kid when there were only a few hundred people on the island. Progress, as ugly as it is at times, can’t be stopped. It can be slowed by making a place difficult to get to, like on my island, but anywhere a road goes down here, a bar or tee shirt shop is bound to open.

When Linda and I got to the island and docked the skiff under the house, the sun was already nearing the western horizon. Pescador met us at the dock, so I knew that Charlie and Kim were back from fishing with the kids and would have a seafood feast in the making.

“It’s really cold,” Linda said as we crossed the deck to the rear steps, the wind blowing from the north around us with nothing to impede it up on the deck, fifteen feet above the water.

“Did you bring warm clothes?” I asked as we descended the steps and started across the clearing. “Tomorrow is supposed to be the same as today.”

“I don’t suppose there’s a hotel with heated rooms up there?”

With a chuckle, I replied, “No phones, no lights, no motor cars.”

“Not a single luxury?”

“Like Robinson Crusoe, as primitive as can be.”

She laughed, deep and hearty, then leaned into me, holding my arm. “I always loved that show as a kid.”

“Yeah, me too. Don’t worry, there’s plenty of driftwood on the beach up there for a fire and we can pitch our tents around it.”

“Tents?” she pouted, tossing out another of her sexually-charged innuendoes.

“Yeah, one for each of us.”
But, one of these days
, I thought.

“Hey,” Kim called out as we approached the two tables Carl had built in front of the bunkhouses. “You’re just in time. We’re grilling hogfish and flounder.”

“Hogfish?” I asked.

“
Cortesía del señor Pescador
. He jumped in and caught two big ones.”

Blackened hogfish is about my favorite seafood. They’re extremely elusive for anglers, but plentiful enough around reefs and rock piles that they can be speared fairly easily.

“Charlie is marinating everything now,” Kim said.