Tropical Swap (Key West Capers Book 10)

by Laurence Shames

  Finally Bert said, not to Sheehan but to the group, “Okay, he passes. If a guy uses petting the dog as an excuse to look away from me, I don’t trust him. This guy, I think he’s okay. But there’s still a problem. A numbers thing. Looking at a worst-case scenario, which is let’s face it the type of scenario one often ends up facing in situations such as these, one guy doing backup would probably not be adequate or sufficient to counterbalance any sort of unfair advantage that people of bad faith, if in fact we are dealing with people of bad faith, might wish to have. In other words I think we need to have backup to the backup.”

  Bert stroked his dog to think. The cat leaped from a standing start into Peter’s lap and ignored the chihuahua altogether. A lazy breeze moved through the yard, briefly lifting and agitating fronds and then letting them drop again so that they hung as still as towels on a rack. Peter scratched the cat behind the ears and said, “I have an idea for that.”

  Everyone was surprised at hearing this from Peter, but no one more so than his wife. She said, “You do?”

  Peter said, “Hey, when you’re involved, you’re involved. Am I right, Bert, or am I right? I’ve been thinking about this and I think it just might work.”

  37.

  While Bert and Sheehan were driving a dozen or so miles up Highway 1 to reconnoiter the shoreline of Big Sandy Key, Peter made his way through the shrubbery and weeds of the side yard to have a chat with Mel.

  He found the old man sitting on his porch, rocking in his creaky chair, picking what was left of his teeth with what seemed to be a corner of a shirt cardboard. As Peter approached the rotting stairs, Mel said, “What? You taking a little breather from the orgy over there?”

  “Sorry to disappoint you. There isn’t any orgy.”

  “I see they’ve invited the Peeper in to join the party. Nice. Pervert shows up, they give him a drink and a babe and everybody’s good to go.”

  Peter said, “Mel, I was hoping to ask a favor.”

  Mel didn’t quite seem to hear that. He said, “Y’ever been to Marseille?”

  “No.”

  “Amazing town, Marseille. I hear they’ve cleaned it up. I hope not. That would be a shame. Used to be nothing but whorehouses all along the port.”

  “Must’ve been very festive,” Peter said. “But what I came to ask you—“

  “Famous for transvestite hookers. I mean, beautiful. Made these Duval Street queens look like old bags. Some guys—not me, okay?—they’d have a few drinks, zero in on some babe, take her upstairs, reach under the skirt, find a big ol’ pair of balls. Then they’re all pissed off, like they was tricked, but come on, some of these guys, it’s what they wanted all along. Tell me I’m wrong.”

  “No, I’m sure you’re right. But the reason I came over—“

  “Me, I never got fooled. I had a policy. No show, no go. I always took a peek right there in the bar. Great town, Marseille.”

  “And a wise policy,” said Peter. “Very wise. But can I please tell you why I stopped by?”

  Mel blinked his pale and watery blue eyes and Peter blurted out his favor. Mel sucked his gums and went back to working with the shirt cardboard for a moment, then said, “Well, that’s a strange request.”

  “Yeah, I guess it is a little strange.”

  The old man broke into a lubricious though mostly toothless smile and lifted his bony chin in the direction of the Bufano house. “Must be getting pretty kinky over there,” he said. “I mean, sounds like it’s turning kind of rough.”

  Peter said nothing to that.

  “Well, good clean dirty fun,” said Mel. “Enjoy it while you can. Doesn’t last forever. Except in your mind, I mean. Anyway, what the hell, long as no one’s getting hurt.”

  “Long as no one’s getting hurt,” said Peter.

  Later that afternoon, back at the shady table by the pool, people were looking over Andy Sheehan’s shoulder as he drew a rough schematic diagram of Big Sandy Key. The edge of the island was defined by a solid line that didn’t satisfy Benny. “Wait a second,” he said. “Where are the mangroves?”

  “All around,” said Sheehan.

  “Let’s make them look like mangroves, then.” He borrowed the pencil and with some deft shading and cross-hatching created a rather convincing impression of the dense, ankle-grabbing plants and the muddled, tangled boundary between oozing land and shallow sea. He was still admiring the effect when Sheehan somewhat testily took back the pencil and resumed his briefing.

  Scrawling a large X near the south end of the island, he said, “Here’s where the road ends.” He drew a couple of smaller X’s. “Here are places where you can hide vehicles in the mangroves. Make sure you pull in far enough so there’s no light off the back reflectors.”

  “But not so far that the front end goes down in quicksand,” Bert put in. “If you hear sloshing under the hood you’ve gone too far.”

  Sheehan drew a circle at the shoreline. “This is the clearing where the boat should come in. There’s the remains of an old dock there, you can barely see some pilings sticking out above the surface. So we bushwhack into the mangroves on both sides of the clearing, find spots where we can stay as long as necessary without making a sound. Got it?”

  Everybody nodded, though with limited enthusiasm.

  “Load up on the bug spray,” Sheehan went on. “Wear heavy shoes that the scorpions can’t sting through. Gloves would be good for the centipedes and earwigs. Maybe some cotton to stuff in our ears and nostrils. Don’t want little things flying in there. Long sleeves for the spiders, high collars for the bats…anything I’m leaving out, Bert?”

  “Hats,” the old man said. “Hats for the birdshit. Lotsa birds sit out there at night.”

  “Right,” said Sheehan. “Hats for the birdshit. Any questions?”

  “Yeah,” said Glenda. “Isn’t there some less disgusting way to do this?”

  “Unfortunately, I don’t think so. Any other questions?”

  People glanced at one another but there were no further questions. Instead, there was a fraught and lingering silence as the improbable little squad tried to muster the kind of esprit that might ripen into courage, that could make bravery contagious and beat back fear by the simple stratagem of not admitting out loud that fear existed.

  Peter broke the quiet with a single word. “Antihistamines.”

  “What about ‘em?” Sheehan said.

  “How many can a person take before he falls asleep or goes into a coma? Anybody know?”

  “Coma I don’t know about,” said Bert the Shirt. “But you won’t fall asleep, trust me on that. With the frogs, mosquitoes, giant moths, birds crapping and lizards slithering over your feet, there’s no way you’ll fall asleep.”

  38.

  As the afternoon stretched on, the members of the odd group on Poorhouse Lane oscillated between jumpiness and lethargy. They talked about contingencies and plans, but there really weren’t any further plans to make. For a while they sat out by the pool, but there wasn’t any horseplay now, no water games, no laughing. The truth was that it was hard for all of them to be together because no one wanted to be the first to admit to nervousness or second thoughts, no one wanted to jinx the group by acknowledging that things could end up going horribly wrong for all of them. Gradually, people drifted away to find some respite. Bert and his chihuahua went home for a nap. Lydia and Sheehan sneaked back to the Last Resort with its misshapen but marvelous bed. Meg and Peter went out for a bike ride.

  It was just about an hour before sunset by then. The daylight had mellowed from searing white to buttery yellow and there were long distorted shadows of gnarled tree trunks and the weirdly hand-like outlines of giant leaves stenciled onto the sidewalks and the roofs of cars. The streets still held the heat of noon and the bicycle tires seemed to melt a little bit each time they turned, making a soft sucking sound as they spun against the asphalt. In Bayview Park the drunks lounged on the patchy grass, their ratty backpacks used as pillows. At Higgs Beach the
hardcore sun-worshippers swiveled onto their backs for one last blast of tanning on their chests and faces. On White Street Pier stubble-bearded locals were casting bait-nets that gracefully opened into perfect circles and then fell slowly, like parachutes.

  Meg and Peter climbed off their bikes at the far end of the pier and blinked out at the twinkling ocean and the green-tinged clouds above the distant reef. Meg said, “This would be a damn nice town for a real vacation. Maybe we should try it sometime.”

  “Let’s get through this one first,” said Peter.

  “You worried?”

  “Of course I am. I’m trying not to let it show. How’m I doing?”

  “About as well as any of us.” They stood silent for a moment. Offshore, terns were diving, gulls hovering to steal their catch. Meg went on, “We don’t have to go through with this, you know.”

  “I know we don’t. Except we sort of do. Don’t you agree?”

  “Yeah, I do. It’s just…it’s just that it’s so strange, the way it happens.”

  “The way what happens?”

  “Getting to feel responsible for other people,” she said. “Other people’s problems, screwed up families, pain. It’s, like, as soon as you see a right and a wrong, people you root for and people you don’t, you’re stuck, your gut’s already picked a side before your brain has even had time to think it over.”

  Peter nodded, but distractedly, and gazed off toward the west. The sun was just above the horizon and its light no longer seemed to be filling the entire sky but rather to be focused in a narrow beam that skimmed across the water and pointed straight at anyone who happened to be watching. Without looking down, simply knowing where his wife’s hand would be, he took it and said softly, “Meg, I was thinking, the way we are, you and me, it still feels right to you?”

  The question startled and baffled her, and she couldn’t find an answer right away.

  “I mean,” he went on, “these other couples…Benny and Glenda, they have screaming fights, crazy break-ups, over-the-top hysterical reunions. Lydia and Sheehan, they’re after each other like teenagers, turning their whole lives upside down to be together…You and me, we just sort of undramatically get along, depend on each other, look out for each other.”

  Meg said, “I think they call that marriage.”

  “So it’s still okay with you?”

  She took a deep breath before she answered then let it out slowly to drift off in the mild breeze. “Yeah, it’s still okay,” she said. “It’s more than okay. I can’t imagine wanting it any other way. You?”

  By way of answer, he took her in his arms and they kissed. The kiss began as a long-married couple’s sort of kiss, a casual reminder, a ritual of affection, but in the reddening light of sunset and with the goad of simmering fear for the night ahead, the kiss would not settle for being only that, but deepened and stretched into a new lover’s sort of kiss, vibrant with discovery, driven by wonder. They were still embracing as the sun slipped through the horizon and bedded itself in the sea.

  39.

  By eleven o’clock the unlikely team had re-gathered and dispersed again, leaving only Lydia and Benny behind. At eleven-thirty the two of them walked down the driveway and got into Benny’s car.

  Seeing the ridiculous plastic hula girl on the dashboard and the handcuffs still dangling from the armrest, Lydia said, “What is it about this car, that whenever I get into it I feel like I’m going God knows where and God knows what will happen?”

  Benny said nothing, just started the engine and eased down the narrow street to where it ended at the cemetery.

  After a few moments, Lydia said, “You nervous? I’m nervous. Have you ever noticed that some people talk more when they’re nervous and some people clam up and hardly talk at all? Anyway, what odds do you give it that we’re being set up, double-crossed?”

  “Fifty-fifty,” Benny said as he turned onto Truman Avenue.

  “Now there’s a bold prediction. Well, I really hope your buddy Carlos didn’t sell us out. Which is kind of weird, because the other day when I thought you were going to kill me, I really didn’t care that much. I mean, I cared, I didn’t want to die, that’s only human, but I didn’t really care. I didn’t like my life that much, I didn’t really see it getting better. Now I do. Strange, huh? You live thirty-seven years and nothing really happens. You tack on three more days and everything looks different. Moving to Havana. Falling for a guy.”

  She paused a moment but there was no response from Benny so she rambled on. “You don’t like Sheehan, do you?”

  Tactfully, Benny said, “I don’t really know him.”

  “He’s difficult to like. That’s why I like him. He almost dares you not to. He half wants you to hate him. In fact, he’s sort of smug about people hating him, he takes pride in it, it’s what gives him his mojo. People are complicated, right? Anyway, it’s been a great three extra days. Have I thanked you lately for letting me have them?”

  “You don’t need to thank me,” Benny said. “But do you mind if I turn on the radio? I could use some nice calm music.”

  The highway turnoff onto Big Sandy Key was marked by a single feeble streetlamp and after that the road was dark. The pavement held out for a mile or so as it wound past a mix of funky cottages and fussily landscaped second homes, then gave way to a rutted single-lane street made of coral chunks and flanked here and there by rusting trailers and shacks propped up on leaning stilts. By imperceptible degrees this roadway slanted downward toward the level of the sea until it spread out like a river delta into a web of side-paths that finally disappeared in mangrove thickets.

  At the end of the main track there was a clearing the size of a modest backyard, and in the clearing stood a single large black car with its lights off and its engine running. The car’s windows were tinted purple and they reflected hazy points of starlight and the wan gleam of a half-moon that was already slipping down the sky.

  Bouncing over coral outcrops, Benny nosed into the clearing and stopped his car. Lydia gave his hand a comradely squeeze before he climbed out. Then he moved around to the passenger side and opened the door that lacked an inside handle.

  No one came out of the other vehicle and for a moment the two of them just stood there in the starlight. The air was warm and heavy, it carried a fetid, sulfur smell of low tide. The clearing was still but not quiet; it buzzed with flying insects and rasped with crickets and moaned with frogs and toads.

  As their eyes adjusted to the midnight dimness, they saw the vague outline of a boat, a small working craft with a big winch at the stern, tucked into a narrow notch among the mangroves. For some seconds they allowed themselves to imagine that everything was going well and simply, that here was the boat that would carry Lydia to a brand new life in Cuba and leave Benny at home with his wife and his drawings and his secret and his safety.

  A rear door opened in the big black car. A wedge of yellow light stretched then shrank away as Carlos climbed out and closed the door behind him. He was, as always, dressed in perfect clothes, pressed and pleated, elegant as an expensive knife. He moved toward Lydia and Benny on small feet in beautiful shoes. When he was just a step away, he looked Lydia up and down and said, “So, this is the lovely refugee.”

  With an odd formality, as though in a workplace, she extended her hand for a shake that Carlos shied away from. She went on with her introduction anyway. “Lydia Greenspan. I just want to—“

  “Just want to what?” he interrupted. “Thank me? A gracious thought, but premature. Don’t thank me yet. Let me show you to your accommodations.” And with a sweeping Old World gesture, he pointed the way toward the notch in the mangroves.

  40.

  They moved at a measured pace across the clearing, Lydia walking first, Benny, feeling misgivings at the backs of his knees, forcing his feet to follow. The waxy mangroves in front of them drank up the faint light and threw back a more viscous darkness. As they drew closer to the soupy boundary between land and water, the riot
of bugs grew louder and the stink of rot got stronger. The hard ground was just giving way to muck when a shadow suddenly moved and assumed the shape of a man. The shadow took on mass and volume as it raised a .44 magnum that glinted dully in the moonlight and was pointed at the level of Lydia’s heart.

  She froze in mid-step, unbalanced, nearly stumbling forward. Benny, ashamed to let her shield him, stepped out to the side, tried to cross in front. She stopped him with an arm.

  From behind them, Carlos said, “You see? It’s just as well you didn’t thank me. I won’t be sending you to Cuba. For a boat ride, yes. Both of you. But only as far as the outside of the reef. Where the big sharks hang out, at the drop-off. Feeding on the little fish that wander out too deep. Like you.”

  Benny stammered out, “But why--?”

  Almost pityingly, Carlos said, “Benny. Benny. You call yourself a businessman, but you know nothing about business. You know nothing about anything. Why would I do a favor for you when I could do one for a man who actually matters?”

  He gestured back toward the dark car. Frank Fortuna was just climbing out of it and he stood now in the wedge of light that escaped through the open door, his leonine hair gleaming, his heavy jaw and thick neck silhouetted. Slowly, with what he imagined would pass for dignity, he walked across the clearing, approached his son-in-law, and spat in his face.

  “You disgust me, Benny,” he said. “For years I protected you, thought of you almost like a son. Then I ask you to do one simple job. I ask you to protect me for once, against some bitch who’s about to turn on me—“

  “I wasn’t about to turn on you, you stupid bastard,” Lydia cut in.

  Fortuna ignored her as if she were already drowned. “—And you’re not man enough to do it. You run. You hide. You’re soft, Benny, a total disappointment.” To the man with the magnum, he said, “Go ahead, sink these two, get ‘em out of my sight.”