Fallen Out: Jesse McDermitt Series, The Beginning (6 page)

The smell of fresh coffee woke me the next morning. The coffee maker had a timer and I’d taken to setting it up before going to bed. It was better than an alarm clock. Sitting on the bridge, I watched the night sky slowly turn purple, then the first finger rays of the rising sun lit up the clouds hanging over the eastern horizon. I’d always reveled in watching the sun rise and set in different places around the world. No matter where I was, it looked the same and different at the same time.

I heard a splash and looked toward the sound. Savannah was tying up their dinghy. Just what I needed. She climbed out and walked along the dock toward the
Revenge
. Stopping at my pier she looked up and said, “I think I owe you an apology.” She lifted a thermos. “Can I buy you a cup of Australian coffee?”

Never one to
turn down someone else’s brew, I said, “Sure, come aboard.”

She sat on the transom and swung two tanned and shapely legs over, stepping down to the deck in bare feet. I climbed down and met her in the cockpit. “Come on in,” I said as I held the hatch open.

“Thanks,” she said as she stepped up into the galley. “Wow! This is a really cool yacht. I thought it was a fishing boat.”

“It is,” I said. “Kind of a reverse mullet. Party up front and all business in the rear.”

“You’re dating yourself. Nobody wears a mullet anymore.”

“Have a seat, I’ll get another mug.”

She slid into the settee booth and twisted the top off the thermos, unconcerned about where I’d sit. I didn’t bother with a saucer, sugar, or cream and my guess was right, as she poured both our mugs with the strong smelling coffee and took a sip.

“I asked around about what you said. About the sex slave thing. I’m sorry I accused you of lying. Also, thanks for bailing us out the other night. Shar
lee is a little gullible sometimes and I was way toasted.”

I noticed that she didn’t have a hint of southern drawl like her sister and asked her about it.

“Sharlee went to ‘finishing school’,” she said, rolling her eyes at the words. “I was sort of a tomboy and preferred to go out on my dad’s fishing boats.”

“Boats? Plural?”

“Yeah, he owns a fleet of commercial boats. I skippered one until he retired and sold the fleet.”

“Really?”

She used both hands holding her mug, as she took another sip. “You like the coffee?”

I’d finished half the cup and hardly noticed it. “Yeah, it’s great,” I said looking into her blue eyes.

“Where’d you learn to fight like that? You went through the three biggest guys like a hot knife through butter.”

“Fight? Oh, the other night. I studied a little martial arts. You and your sister are as different as night and day.”

“Thanks, I love her, but she can be a handful sometimes.” I nearly spit out my coffee. “What?” she asked.

As I tried to control my laughter I said, “She said almost exactly the same thing about you.”

Refilling both our cups she said, “We’ve decided to stay here a while.”

“What brought you to the Keys, anyway?”

“Mom and Dad went to Australia. That’s where the coffee came from, they sent it to me. Sharlee doesn’t like coffee.”

“So, I guess Captain Wood will be leaving?”

“Tomorrow. He was planning to take a bus, but since we took so much longer getting down here, we bought him an airline ticket. The way he talked, it sounded like you two knew each other. Do you?”

“Not really,” I said. “We both served in Desert Storm. Just met the other night.”

“You were a Marine, too?”

I let the ‘were’ slide. “Yeah, I retired a few months ago.”

“You’re way too young to retire.”

“Which is why I’m working as a charter boat Captain.”

We talked for another twenty minutes and finished the coffee when Jimmy showed up. We met him on the dock and Jimmy and I stood watching as she walked back to her dinghy. As he started to say something I held up a finger, watching her. At the end of the dock, she looked back over her shoulder at the two of us and waved.

“She looked back,”
I said waving.

“Yeah, so?”

“She didn’t yesterday.”

“You’re losing me, dude.”

I stepped over the transom and said, “If a woman looks back as she’s walking away, she’s interested.”

“Ah, one of those body language things, huh?”

We spent an hour checking on the boat. I was still learning a lot about it and he seemed to have an unlimited supply of knowledge. I told him that on days we didn’t have a charter he didn’t even need to come down to the marina and if something came up, I’d call him.

I powered up my laptop and we checked emails from the website. I still wanted to keep my workdays to a minimum, so we often told prospective clients we were booked. Jimmy suggested we raise our rates. “We’re priced like every other dive operator and we only take six divers out,” he said. “A lot of people would be willing to pay more for that kind of service.
And dude, nothing cuts out the serious divers from the amateurs like money.”

So, we raised our prices. We also offered a
slightly lower group rate. There were four emails, requesting slots for seven divers total. All of them wanted Saturday. I suggested to Jimmy that we only work weekdays and he seemed to like that. It would further cut our clientele by weeding out the weekend warriors. Just as I was about to shut the thing off, another email came in. It was from a friend of one of the photographers we took out a few days earlier. He wanted to book the boat for a whole night, any night this week, for just three dive photographers. They wanted to dive in the 20 to 40 foot range starting at dusk.

“All night?” Jimmy said.

“What’s the going rate around here for something like that?” I asked.

“Got me, man. Nobody does it.”

“Send him a reply. Tell him the rate’s 10% higher than an all-day charter, make it $1300.”

“We don’t do all day charters, dude.”

“He doesn’t know that.”

Jimmy sent the reply, dressing it up to include free tank refills, photo editing, and breakfast at the
Dockside
. The reply came back almost immediately, asking what nights were available.

“Damn,” I said. “He bit.”

“We’ll need a third hand on board, man. Someone to help out refilling tanks and piloting, while I’m working with the photography.”

“Tell him tomorrow night, I have someone in mind.”

He sent the message and got a reply back immediately again, booking it. The guy said he’d stop by later in the afternoon and give me a deposit.

“Wow, dude,” Jimmy said. “That’s almost double what anyone else charges and he didn’t hesitate. Who you got in mind to help out? Rusty?”

“I’ll ask around,” I said glancing out the starboard porthole. “Why don’t you take off? Get to bed early this evening and meet me here at 0300. We can get everything ready by 1100 and get a few hours of sleep aboard in the afternoon.”

After he left, I went up to the bridge with a cooler of beer. The Richmond sisters and Wood were rowing toward the dinghy dock.
Once they tied off and started toward
Dockside,
I stood at the rail and lifted my beer. “Got a minute, Captain?”

Charlotte kept walking, her nose in the air, as I’d hoped
she would. Savannah and Wood stopped at the transom and Wood said, “Catching a flight in about an hour, but that’s plenty of time for a beer I guess.”

“What about you, Savannah?” I asked. “Have a beer with a couple of boat bums?”

“Boat bums are my favorite people to drink with,” she said then turned to her sister and called out, “I’ll catch up in a minute, Sharlee.”

The woman never broke stride, just waved over her shoulder and kept
going. Wood vaulted over the transom and offered his hand to Savannah, who ignored it and stepped lightly to the deck in her bare feet. I wondered if she ever wore shoes.

“Come on up,” I said. I switched on the stereo, turned very low
and clicked the CD changer’s remote switch a few times. The sound of John McLaughlin’s double neck guitar started to quietly fill the bridge, as if from nowhere.

Wood noticed the new sonar screen and said, “That’s way cool, Gunny. Sonar?”

“Just installed, it can scan forward, backward, and to the sides. Should make picking my way through holes in the reef a lot easier. Have a seat.” I offered them both a bottle of Kalik and they both accepted.

“What’s a gunny?” Savannah asked.

“It was my rank, before I retired,” I said. “Just wanted to have a farewell drink, Wood. Savannah said you were flying out.”

“I appreciate the hospitality
,” he said. “It’s always good meeting a fellow Jarhead.”

I extended my bottle and he clinked the neck of his
to it.

“Is that
Mahavishnu?” Savannah asked.

“Now look who’s dating themselves,” I said. “How is it that you know McLaughlin?”

“He still tours. I caught him in Munich last summer.”

Turning back to Wood, I said,
“I also wanted to ask if you’d like a job, Wood?”

“What kind of job?”

“I have an all-night dive charter tomorrow night that came up suddenly, a group of photographers. My First Mate will be busy between dives helping them edit photographs. I could use someone to help pilot the boat, while I hook up the air compressor to refill the tanks for the next dive. Depart before dusk and back by sunrise.”

“Wish I could help you out, but I’ve already been gone longer than I figured on.”

I looked over at Savannah and said, “You’re a licensed skipper, right?”

She thought
about it for a second and said, “Sure I can help you out. Hanging around with Sharlee all night can get a bit tedious anyway.”

Wood had a flight to catch, so they left soon after
to collect Charlotte at
Dockside
. I noticed the three of them leave a few minutes later and get into a red convertible, obviously a rental, with Savannah behind the wheel.

Thirty minutes later, the red convertible pulled back into the parking lot with only Savannah in it.
She got out and went inside, emerging five minutes later. As she walked toward the dinghy dock I called down, “What happened to your sister?”

“Got any more beer?” she asked.

I invited her up to the bridge, where she told me that Charlotte had booked a flight at the last minute for San Francisco. So she’d rented a slip and would be staying awhile.

“She booked a flight to Frisco without any baggage?”

“She’ll just buy whatever she needs when she gets there. It’s not the first time she’s done this.”

We
talked for a few minutes longer. I asked her to be here at 1800, rested, and ready to go. The clients would arrive at 1900. She left after that, to move her boat to a slip three down from mine. I offered to help, but she declined. “Like I said, Sharlee’s ditched me more than once, leaving me to single hand the boat.”

I watched from the bridge as she got the dinghy aboard by herself and started the engines on the big Riviera. Letting them warm up
, she went forward and checked the line securing the boat to the mooring buoy, checked the current in the bay and looked aft where several boats were moored behind her. It looked like she reached a decision and went back to the boats helm. She put it in gear then scrambled forward to untie the line as the boat slowly idled forward against the current.

In an instant she had cast off the mooring line and was back at the helm, expertly maneuvering the big luxury yacht toward the dock and swinging it around to back in. Just a few minutes later, she had
her backed in, snubbed to the pier, and shut down the engines. I was impressed.

The following day, I woke at 0230 and had coffee on the bridge. Jimmy arrived right on time and we spent the next several hours cleaning, polishing, and getting the equipment ready. After that, we spent some time checking tides and dive sites. We chose five shallow reefs that aren’t visited by dive charter boats very often. By staying on shallow reefs the divers could make multiple dives, without worrying much about nitrogen buildup. Before noon, we turned in to get some sleep before the clients arrived.

The smell of coffee woke me at 1730. I poured a cup and went up to the bridge. A few minutes later, Jimmy joined me. “Did you ever find someone to help us out?” he asked, watching Savannah walk toward us with a bag over her shoulder. She was dressed in jeans and a man’s work shirt, but had the tails tied at her belly, showing off an inch or two of tanned skin.

“Sure did,” I said.

“Permission to board, Captain,” Savannah asked from the dock.

“Stow your gear in the hanging closet just inside the hatch,” I told her. “There’s coffee in the galley. Mugs are right above it.”

“She’s our crew?” Jimmy asked. His mouth hung open, watching her sit on the transom and swing her legs over. She was barefoot again.

When she joined us on the bridge, I introduced them and said, “Savannah’s going to be a neighbor for a while.”

Less than an hour later the clients arrived, two men and a young woman, all carrying dive bags and hard cases that I assumed contained expensive camera equipment. While I started the engines, Jimmy and Savannah helped them stow their gear in the salon and Jimmy showed them around the boat.

They made a total of six dives and everything went very well. Savannah handled the boat whenever we had to move between dives, using the GPS and waypoints I’d already entered. That allowed me to swap tanks for the divers, while they worked in the salon with Jimmy. They made two dives on one of the reefs we’d chosen and one dive on the other four.

W
e were back at the dock just as the sun was beginning to turn the eastern sky purple and I treated the clients to breakfast at
Dockside.
Jimmy’s ability with both the still and video editing software was a huge hit. He wired the laptop to the high definition flat screen TV in the salon, so the divers could see much larger images and video clips. After breakfast, all three divers tipped Jimmy and Savannah a hundred dollars each and promised to feature our operation on their website.

With an extra
three bills in his pocket, Jimmy took off shortly after the clients left. “He has a lot of talent,” Savannah said over coffee. “And you seem to have carved quite a niche among the underwater photography community.”

“Actually, that was a first,” I said. “They were referred by another group we took out a few days ago. Not sure if I want to do a lot of
overnight charters, though.”

“Well, it was fun,” she said. “But, I’ve got to get some sleep.” She got up from the table and started toward the door, where she stopped and looked back over her shoulder.

“See ya later,” I said as she waved.

Jimmy and I had two more very successful charters that week, one of which was a direct result of the photographers mention on their website.
Savannah helped out once again with that charter. She said she just enjoyed being out on the water and would be glad to help out whenever she could.

When I broached the subject of going out on a date
Saturday, she shot me down in flames. “Nothing personal,” she said. “You’re a sweet guy and good looking as all get out. But, I just got through a pretty nasty divorce a few weeks ago. This trip with Sharlee was supposed to be my celebration.” I didn’t push it anymore but did enjoy having her around and although it wasn’t a date, we sat on the bridge Saturday evening, drank a few beers and watched the sun go down.

We had another hurricane scare at the
beginning the following week, Tropical Storm Harvey. When I heard about it on the NOAA weather radio, it had just formed in the Gulf, about three hundred miles west of the Keys and was headed north-northeast, away from us. That night it turned easterly and early the next day, it was headed straight toward Marathon.

A few boat owners began making ready to bug out
by afternoon. I went over to the
Anchor
and everything seemed normal. Rusty and Julie weren’t making any preparations at all. I found Rusty out by the shallow canal, his back to me. As I walked up behind him, without turning he said, “Feels the same as the other day with Floyd, don’t it, Jesse.”

I stepped up beside him and closed my eyes. He was right, the air ‘felt’ heavier and I could hear the small waves on the shoreline more than a hundred yards away. “Yeah,” I said. “It’ll turn east, won’t it?”

When I opened my eyes he was looking at me. “But ya had to come by to make sure?”

“I still have much to learn, Master,” I said with an overly dramatic bow.

“One day,” he said looking out over the canal, “I think I might dredge this canal and make the basin wider. Only boats that can get up here are flats skiffs.”

We went back inside. Julie was out shopping and Rufus was behind the bar. I hadn’t had the chance yet to meet him, being busy with the charter business.

“You must be Rufus,” I said sitting down on a stool at the end.

“Ya sahr,” he said with less of an accent than I would have thought, with his Jamaican heritage. “Yuh muss be
Cap’n McDermitt.”

“I am. How’d you know?”

“It a beanie island, sahr. Wud get aroun.” Turning to Rusty he said, “Anders jest leff. He drop off some fresh hogfish. Yuh two want a sandwich?”

“Hogfish?” Rufus nodded. “Absolutely, mon!
” Turning to me Rusty said, “You’re in for a real treat.”

“I’ve had hogfish before, Rusty.”

“Not like this, you ain’t,” he said as Rufus headed out the back door. “Rufus just had some seasonings sent over from his cousin in Jamaica. Wait till you taste this.”

We had
coffee while we waited. The smell coming from the grill out back was making me very hungry. Rusty was right, the things Rufus could do with some simple seasonings were out of this world.