Tuna Tango (9 page)

Dick got out as soon as the wheels stopped rolling and ran to the seawall to make sure the fish was there. He breathed in relief as he saw that the line was still attached to the pier the way they had left it. Figuring it was locked, but worth a try anyway, he checked the lock on the door. It was shut tight.

He needed the Sawzall to butcher the fish, but it looked like he’d have to get it the hard way. He got on the platform and pushed himself toward one of the holes in the floor, where he jumped for the opening. His hands grabbed the rough edges of the concrete, and he pulled with all he had. Once his chest cleared the floor, he relaxed and took a breath before finishing the maneuver. He pulled himself the rest of the way into the dark fish house and started to look for the Sawzall. The rough teeth on the blade caught his eye and he worried how badly it would mar the flesh, but there was no option. Back on the platform with the saw and an extension cord trailing behind him, he pushed the platform back to the seawall. Kyle was in the water with the line in his hand when they heard a truck pull up. 

They froze in place as the door slammed, and heard someone walking toward them. The steps stopped short of the cooler, where a flashlight reflected off the metal and into the water. 

“Goddamn mother-f’ing son of a goddamn bitch,” the man swore.

Dick scooted closer, staying in the shadows to have a look. The guy was fumbling with a keychain, trying several keys. He knew they wouldn’t work, and started to snicker under his breath. The man smacked the door, went back to his truck, and pulled out of the lot. 

“That was close,” Kyle said as he came up beside him. 

“I told you to hurry at the bar, now we’ve got no time.” Dick hopped off the platform and went for the fish. “We’ve got to get this cut up and get out of here before he comes back.” He hauled the fish toward the seawall. “You got any more McGyver moves to get this up there?” 

Kyle looked at the fish and shook his head. He looked around, and saw a rock pile underneath the building where the seawall ended. “We can drag it over there and cut it up on the rocks. I think I can move the car so we can use the headlights to see.”

Dick started to pull the fish by the tail rope. It moved easily through the water, but when he got to the rocks, he faced the same problem as they had before.

“Hold on,” Kyle said. “Snake the rope up to the parking lot.”

He went back to the seawall as Dick climbed on the rocks and pushed the end of the rope through a small opening between the building and the rocks. A moment later, the car started, and he watched the headlights as Kyle drove toward him. He could feel the heat of the engine as the car stopped, and Kyle got out. With the headlights illuminating the scene, he watched as Kyle took the rope and tied it around the bumper. 

“Yell when it’s good,” Kyle called out, and went back to the car. He put it in reverse, and Dick watched as the line came taught. It was going to damage the valuable flesh, but they were out of both time and options.

With a quick squeal of the tires, Kyle accelerated, pulling the fish onto the rocks. Several large pieces of flesh came off as it came out of the water, but there was enough fish not to worry about scraps. 

The car door slammed and Kyle was soon back at his side with the sawzall. “You better keep watch. I’ll cut it up.”

“That dude comes back, we’re both dead. Better let me help. I can use the platform and shuttle the meat to the car.”

Dick nodded and pulled the trigger on the saw. The teeth of the blade cut easily through the thick skin and flesh of the tuna as Dick hacked away at it. He knew the cuts were ragged and he was probably losing money by butchering it this way, but he also knew it had to be done, and now. With one side carved off the spine, he started to cut it into manageable pieces as Kyle loaded them onto the platform. 

“I’ll take this and be right back,” he said as he pushed the platform into the night air. Reaching the seawall, he hopped off and started unloading the huge fillets onto the concrete. He was about to jump onto the wall when headlights flashed into the parking lot and the truck pulled in. 

“Shit, Dick! He’s back.”

***

Will was in the cabin of the boat, cooking a fillet from a snook he had caught earlier in the afternoon. He had noticed an abundance of fish attracted to the structure of the building when he had done his inspection the other day and knew from his years as a guide how any kind of structure was a fish magnet; the piers of the building a perfect spot for the smaller bait fish to hide and the larger predators to ambush their prey. 

Unfortunately, his rods and reels were still at his old house, and he had no desire for another run in with Sheryl, so he’d decided on a more primitive method. 

From the convenience store down the street, he had bought some 12-pound test line, medium-sized hooks, and bait. Using the holes they had cut in the floor like an ice fisherman, he rigged a line to each hole, using a two-by-four spread across the opening to hold it in place. An unattended line would not hook nearly as many fish, but there was a way around that. To set the hook, he pulled back two feet of line and looped it with a rubber band attaching it to the two-by-four with a nail. Once the fish hit, it would take the bait and pull on the excess line. The rubber band would allow enough time and recoil for the fish to hook itself. 

He had set up the rigs and gone to get some supplies, hoping dinner would be at the end of one of the lines when he got back. Less than an hour later, when he returned, two of the rigs were pulled tight, the rubber bands broken. The lines came up easily, a fat snook on the end of both. 

That was two hours ago. He had filleted the fish and walked across the street to the beach to watch the sunset. Now back aboard, he had two fillets cooking in butter on the small gas stove. Dinner cooked, he went back to the cockpit to escape the heat of the cabin. Just as he sat down to eat, he saw the lights of the truck pull into the parking lot next door. He set the plate down, stepped onto the dock, and made his way to the seawall, trying to stay out of site. As he got closer, he saw what looked like Kyle’s car with it’s headlights on. 

Fearful that the boys had broken into the cooler again and were now in danger, he did a quick inventory of what was at hand, trying to find anything that might be serviceable as a weapon. He felt some responsibility for their indiscretion—unable to pay them earlier, they were probably desperate for cash. He couldn’t get to his tools in the fish house without being discovered, though, so he ran back to the boat and looked through the storage. With a flare gun in one hand and a boat hook in the other, he crept back toward the building. 

George was standing by the door of the cooler with two men, cursing under his breath as he tried several keys in the lock. He relaxed slightly as he realized that if the lock wasn’t cut, the boys must have been up to something else. But what? At the end of the dock, he reached an exposed area that was clearly visible from where George stood, though the big man was still head down, working the lock. He yelled something at one of the men, who went to the truck and came back with a pair of bolt cutters. George stood back as the man cut the lock and opened the door. 

“It’s gone!” one of the men yelled.

George looked around the lot. “What’s with that clown car over there? It’s running. Go find out who’s here!” he screamed.

Will crouched low to avoid being seen as he watched the three men spread out and search. They tried the door to the building, but it was still locked. The beam of the flashlight moved to the seawall, and Will could clearly see Kyle standing chest deep in the water with a pile of tuna fillets. 

There was nothing he could do as George yelled for the men to come over and they pulled Kyle out of the water. One threw him against the building while the other loaded the fillets into one of several coolers in the back of the truck. 

George went over to Kyle and punched him in the stomach. He started yelling questions at him, but Kyle just stood there, looking like he was going to throw up, and said nothing. One of the men came over to them and said something to George that Will couldn’t make out. George punched Kyle in the face and went to the truck. 

A moment later, he came back toward the shaken boy, his hands balled into fists. Will could clearly hear him screaming that it was only half the fish. He hit him again and Kyle went down in a lump. Then he kicked him and the two men dragged him to the truck.

Chapter 10

Will ran to the seawall, unsure of what he had just witnessed. Both the platform and concrete were covered in blood and fish slime. He turned to look at Kyle’s car, noticed it was still running, and went to turn it off. As he reached in through the open window to turn off the ignition, he saw a pair of eyes reflected in the headlights. His first thought was a gator, but they didn’t live in salt water. Wondering what else it could be, he went to the gap between the building and seawall and leaned over. 

“Will. What the fuck,” came the broken voice.

“Dick? They’re gone. Come out of there,” Will said.

“I gotta get the rest of this fish out. Where’s Kyle?”

“You didn’t see?”

“No. I saw that dude pull up in the black truck, but that’s it. Can you send the platform over here?” 

Will went back to the corner of the building where the platform bobbed in the small waves, kicked some of the fish remnants into the water, and climbed on. He was starting to get an idea of what the boys were up to. As he started to pull the joists, he slipped on the greasy plywood, barely keeping his balance. He maneuvered his feet to a clean spot and moved the platform toward Dick. The fish carcass lay on the rocks, there, a pile of fillets beside it. 

“Holy crap. Where did that come from?”

“Never mind that, I’ll tell you later. Can you just get me out of here and tell me what happened to Kyle?”

Will could hear the panic in his voice, and decided to get him to the parking lot before telling him that Kyle was gone. He pulled the platform toward him and helped load the fillets. Dick jumped on next to the three huge piles of meat with the Sawzall in hand and a large grin on his face. Seawater flooded onto the overloaded deck as Will pulled the craft toward the seawall, with Dick huddled over the cargo, protecting it from sliding off. When he reached the end of the building, he glanced at the parking lot to see if there were any onlookers and, with a final push, escaped the confines of the understructure. 

“You better start talking,” Will said as he pulled his body from the platform to the seawall. 

Dick sat next to the fillets. “Would you just tell me what happened to Kyle?” He got up, jumped onto the seawall and started pacing nervously,

“That guy, George, took him. Smacked him around and then threw him in the truck. OK. Now spill it.”

Dick started to balk. “We were just trying to get some cash to pay this guy back. If you would have given us the advance—”

Will blew. “Don’t you even
think
about blaming this on me. You guys have known me for three days and worked all of eight hours. You make your own decisions.”

“OK, OK.” Dick looked around. “Hey, you don’t have any weed do you? My stuff is wet.”

“Damn it, Dick. Kyle is gone, you have a pile of what looks like illegal bluefin tuna, and you want weed?”

“It calms me down. You have no idea.” He put his head down. 

“Would you please tell me what you two are into, and maybe we can figure out what to do about Kyle.” 

He was getting impatient. George could have killed him by now and dumped his body … or he could be coming back here to look for the rest of the fish. The more he thought about it, the more he realized the story could wait. If George
did
come back, and found them like this, he would be implicated as well. 

“Hurry up. Let’s get the fish in the building and clean this mess up before he comes back. Then we can figure out what to do about Kyle. It’s not going to help him if we get caught, too.”

They carried the piles of fish into the building, fighting the flies that were eagerly swarming around the warming fillets. Dick dragged a hose to the platform and cleaned the surface and seawall. When all the evidence was gone, Will took the platform underneath again. He swatted the flies as he jammed a large screwdriver into the eyes of the fish to keep it from floating to the surface, and then unceremoniously slid it into the water. Now it would stay below the water and be quickly consumed by crabs. 

Dick was just finishing the cleanup when Will emerged and tied off the platform. “Let’s go to my boat over there, and you can tell me what in the hell you two are into.” 

He walked away without waiting for an answer. Halfway down the dock, he saw Dick close the car door and come running after him. Back on board, he sat in the cockpit and waited while Dick told him about the cooler and the fish, stopping frequently to pull hard on a roach he must have recovered from the car.