Crash Tack

by A. J. Stewart

  It was tucked behind the radio unit, against the wall, not so much a hiding spot as a filing spot. I pulled it out. It was a black composition notebook, the kind of thing kids used in elementary school. I opened it and found it divided into four columns by hand. Date, vessel, name and location. I flicked to the last entries, which were about eight pages in. The very last entries were dated that day. There were two. The final one gave the vessel as 2 , written in floral script, name as Green with no title, and location as O/S . I wasn’t sure what O/S meant. Maybe offshore. I moved up to the second last line. Date, then vessel written as 4 , name of Miss Black , location BPK Mar . I glanced up the list on the rest of the page, and then flicked back a page. All the renters’ names were colors. White, Black, Purple, Red, Green. The only notation to have a title was Miss Black. Clearly Smitty didn’t get a lot of women customers. At least not alone. About two-thirds of the notations gave the location as O/S. I figured I’d check that with Lucas.

  I flipped the book shut and was slipping it back behind the radio when I had a thought. I had no idea where it had come from, and it didn’t attach itself to any kind of logic. It was just there, a seemingly random thought, a spark across my mind, the sort of thing we do a thousand times a day. Random but not. Like when you lose your keys, and then a day later you’re thirsty, you go to the fridge and see the milk, but you don’t want milk, and you don’t know why. You think milk is white, and white is a color and orange is a color and you took an orange from the fruit bowl yesterday and didn’t have your keys after, so you go to the fruit bowl and find your keys lying underneath a bunch of bananas. It was that kind of thought. I just didn’t know if or how it linked to anything. I took the book out again, and flicked open the last page, and then worked back through the dates, to the night Lenny was shot. There was a notation. Vessel 4 , Name, Miss Black , Location, O/S . Then my mind flipped another switch and I got the idea to go back further. To the night Will disappeared, and there was another notation. Vessel 4 . Name, Miss Black . Location, O/S .

  Chapter Forty-Three

  I RETURNED TO Lenny’s truck and drove away. I didn’t want to be near Smitty’s, in case he woke up, or one of his O/S notations turned up in the dark, or the cops dropped by. I figured they were all possibilities. I tried to put the air conditioner back in the window, but it was like putting a hundred-pound square peg in a round hole. I left it facedown under the window, to give the impression that it had fallen out all by itself. No one was going to buy that, especially not a suspicious guy like Smitty, who used codenames in his logbook, but I figured it would mess with his head anyway. I drove into Tavernier and parked in the lot of a small neon-lit bar. I found a gun rag in the lockbox and wiped down my legs. The stuff that had come from the air conditioner was nasty, the closest I would ever come to primordial ooze. When I was done I went inside, ordered a beer and used the bathroom to clean my shorts as best I could. I came out with a wet patch across my groin, and as I approached the bar, a pink guy in a floppy hat smiled at me.

  “Have some trouble there?” He laughed to himself.

  “No,” I said.

  “You’ve peed yourself,” he said, looking around for anyone else to enjoy his frat boy humor .

  “I don’t like to waste time,” I said, grabbing my beer and dropping a note on the bar. I walked away and found a table in the corner, away from the speaker that was playing something by some eighties hair band. It wasn’t too loud; it wasn’t that kind of a place. But I wanted to make a call. I sat and called Lucas. I could hear a distant party in the background.

  “Sorry, are you out?” I asked.

  “I’m in the parking lot, just enjoying the moonlight. That hubbub’s coming from Monty’s. Autumn’s like spring break for retirees. What’s up?”

  I told him about the notations I had found at Smitty’s.

  “So what do you think?” I asked. “O-slash-S.”

  “Yeah, could mean offshore. That would make sense.”

  “But that could be anywhere, then.”

  “I think that’s the point. Smitty doesn’t want to know where his boats go or what they do. I told you, it’s that kind of an operation.”

  “So if this Miss Black is the third person, and she took the second person to Stiltsville, that means she was out on the night Will died.”

  “Maybe. Smitty might use Miss Black for every woman he hires to.”

  “That’s a hell of a coincidence. Do you buy that?”

  “Nope, I’m just sayin’.”

  “Well, what about BPK Mar? That mean anything to you?”

  I got the sound of relaxed, rhythmic breathing as he thought about it. “Nothing comes to mind. Mar means March in French, or sea in Spanish.”

  “I’m not sure it’s a whole word. There’s period at the end of it, like it’s abbreviated.”

  “You didn’t mention that, mate.” More breathing. “Okay, here’s something. BPK down that way, could be short for Big Pine Key. And if that’s the case, Mar. might be short for marina.”

  “Big Pine Key Marina?”

  “There’s a fishing resort on Big Pine Key, lots of slips and an RV park.”

  “So Miss Black might be there. Or she could have lied.”

  “True. Folks often lie about where they are mooring, for all kinds of reasons. Especially the types of folks who rent from the likes of Smitty. But there’s a thing about that. People will give a fake spot, but the spot is rarely random. It’s usually a place they’ve been, and as often as not, somewhere they will return to. Either that or it is polar opposite. It’s fifty-fifty.”

  “We’ll, I’ve got nothing better to do. I’m going down there.”

  “Good. Take a look, suss it out, but don’t do anything stupid. Not ’til I get there.”

  The traffic that plagued the daytime was gone late at night, but the speed didn’t improve a whole lot. There were signs along the road to keep the speed down at night or risk hitting wildlife or getting a ticket. I had no desire for either, so I took my time and got down to Big Pine Key inside an hour and a half. Big Pine Key Fishing Lodge was a large plot by the highway, a two-story reception and communal building fronting an RV park. The main building was locked tight for the evening, and a chain had been placed across the driveway into the park, so I stopped on the dark road, down a little, and walked in.

  Some teens were watching something on television in a room behind the reception, and two boys played ping-pong. I expected campfires and fishing tales, but as I wandered down the path all I passed were darkened RVs, save the glow of television from within. Air conditioners clanked away to ensure no one’s viewing was disturbed by the annoying sounds of wildlife. I got to the end of the path, where an area was dedicated to tent spots, which were all dark and done. No electrical connection, meaning no television, so darkness meant sleep. I cut around the shore to a dock with a series of slips. There were some nice boats, which ruled out Smitty’s vessels. A couple looked like the owners were staying aboard. I got to the end, saw nothing and turned around. I followed the shore back the other way, and on the opposite side of the park were more slips. They looked smaller, but still mostly full of boats. There was a row of motel rooms by the slips, and I wondered if these constituted the fishing lodges. I walked the length of the motel and saw lots of fishing boats, some rentals, but none belonging to Smitty. I got to the end of the motel and found myself near the front of the park again, so I cut across and out over the chained driveway, and headed back to Lenny’s truck to get some sleep.

  I awoke to the sound of my cell phone buzzing. It was Lucas, on approach to Big Pine Key. The sun was hinting at breaking, and the chain was gone from the driveway. Fishermen like an early start. I wandered down to the first dock I had walked past, and saw Lucas motor in. He was in a sharp-looking speedboat with a big engine, and the whole thing looked like a restrained bronco puttering along in the no-wake zone.

  Lucas tied up and we shook hands and walked back to the front office. There must be some s
ort of guild of marina managers because the guy behind the desk gave Lucas a big smile as we walked in. Perhaps they had an annual convention in Hilton Head every summer. Or not. Lucas introduced me and the guy gave me nod .

  “We’re looking for a woman. Blond, in a boat from Smitty’s,” said Lucas.

  The guy frowned. “Smitty’s?”

  “Yeah, I know.”

  The guy tapped on a computer keyboard. “We got a few women booked in, but no solos.”

  My mind immediately hooked onto Alec, and whether he was here. Lucas must have seen the look on my face, as he placed his hand on my shoulder.

  “Go easy,” he said, and then he looked back at the reception guy. “What about the boat?”

  The guy called to a woman who was selling sunscreen to a customer who looked like she’d walked across the Sahara in a bikini. Sunscreen wasn’t going to help her. She was a candidate for skin grafts. The woman behind the desk passed her two bottles to compare and came over to us.

  “You seen any boats from Smitty’s?” he asked. She looked at the computer, and then at us.

  “Not last night.”

  Lucas nodded. “Thanks.”

  “But not everyone was accounted for.”

  “How so?”

  “Well, you know. Lots of boats don’t get in until late. Some guys like to fish in the dark, for all the good it does. And we close the office at eight, so not everyone’s necessarily in.”

  “You log all the boats?” I asked.

  “Of course. The customer gives us the serial number or name. Whichever. And we check them off, morning and night. But we don’t keep a record of who isn’t there, just any that shouldn’t be. And I didn’t look specifically for one of Smitty’s. I just didn’t see one all the same.”

  “But it’s possible it’s out, and coming back. ”

  “Could be,” she said. We thanked her and she wandered back to sell sunscreen, and I tried another tack.

  “The woman we’re looking for might have been here a while. A few days, maybe a week. Blond, quite a looker apparently. Wears a big sunhat.”

  “Yeah, okay. Maybe,” said the guy. “A blond came in maybe day before yesterday and filled up with gas. I sent one of my kids down to help her out. But he won’t be in ’til later, and honestly, I doubt he’d remember what the boat looked like. She was quite a catch, if you know what I mean.”

  We nodded and thanked him for his time. Lucas asked if he could borrow a couple camping chairs, and we bought some breakfast sandwiches and carried it all down to the end of the park. The sun had broken and the park was alive. People were lined up at the ablutions block, and trailers were being hitched and the smell of eggs and bacon wafted from more than one RV. Campers were sitting out under awnings, drinking coffee and planning their days. We cut between a couple of tents to a beach I must have skirted the night before. The beach sat on a point, such that we could see every boat that came and went from either dock. We looked directly at the bridge that took the Overseas Highway across Spanish Harbor Channel. The sun was getting higher and the water looking inviting. In other circumstances a day’s fishing might not be the worst thing in the world. I didn’t really do fishing, in the same way I didn’t hunt cows. I liked them both as a food source, but I didn’t see either thing as sport. Lucas loved fishing, but again he caught only what he could eat. I guess when you spend part of your life hunting people, as I suspected he and Lenny had in the military, the sport element of fishing was somewhat overdone.

  We waited and watched for several hours. We were the only people on the small beach, and our solitude was broken only by a visit from a key deer. The small deer wandered onto the beach and watched us, and then stepped just out of hand reach, I assumed looking for a feed. We had finished our sandwiches and had nothing to offer, so the deer stayed long enough to figure that out, and continued on its way. After the deer left I took a bathroom break and got some sodas and a couple more sandwiches. I stopped by Lenny’s truck and grabbed the two guns from the lockbox. I put the Glock in a holster under my shirt, and tucked my Ruger into the back of my shorts. Lucas took a nature break after me, and went and checked his boat, or whoever’s boat it was that he had arrived in.

  He came back with a set of field glasses. We took turns scanning the water, more for diversion than anything. If Miss Black came back to the lodge, we’d be able to read the make of her sunglasses from where we sat. I was looking underneath the highway bridge, and the section of the old bridge that stood on the northern side of it, when I saw a white boat head toward me. It wasn’t a new boat, but it wasn’t ancient either, but what I noticed most was the driver. Most guys drive boats by standing or sitting on the back of the seat and looking over the top of the windshield, wind hitting their face. I don’t know if it was a manly thing, or some long forgotten evolutionary link to Labradors in cars. But this driver sat low, right behind the wheel. It occurred to me that a person would do that if they didn’t want their hair blown around, or their large sun hat blown off. Which was exactly what this driver was wearing. A wide-brimmed sun hat, like something from an Audrey Hepburn movie. I passed the glasses to Lucas and he suggested we get off the beach, where we could just as easily be seen by the driver.

  We stood back in the shade of palms and watched the boat head for the cutout where the fishing lodges were. The sun hat turned out to be straw with a pink band, and the boat, another Boston Whaler, with the name Smith’s Boat Ren in adhesive letters on it, the tals of Rentals having peeled away and been given back to the gods of the sea. Lucas and I strode back through the park to the end of the dock where the boat had passed and was pulling into a slip. We watched the woman tie up and walk directly into the motel room opposite. She was in there an hour before a van arrived and she came out and pointed to her boat, and two guys from the van used a trolley to haul supplies to the vessel, and load them up. There was a box of food, cereals and bread and tubs of margarine, and toilet paper and a box of fruits, a pineapple crown sticking out the top. When the guys had finished loading, the first guy returned to the room and knocked on the door, and the woman stood with her back to us, and signed for the goods, and the guy gave her a copy of the invoice and got back in his van and drove away.

  The door to the room closed again, for about five minutes, and then the woman stepped out. She was at forty-five degrees to us, looking away toward the front of the park, with her sun hat in her hand. Her hair was blond and wet, as if she had showered, and she wore fresh clothing. Her old stuff must have been in the tote she carried on her shoulder. She fluffed at her hair, perhaps to dry it a little, then turned with her back to us and pulled the door to the room closed. She pulled sunglasses from her tote, and then she pivoted and looked toward the water. She looked in our direction, but not at us. She was looking out toward Spanish Harbor Channel. She pushed the sunglasses onto her nose, and then used two hands to pull the sun hat into place. She waltzed like a runway model to the boat, where she untied the mooring line.

  Lucas slapped my shoulder and said let’s go , but I didn’t move. I just stood, half-obscured by palm trees, staring at the woman. A thousand images flashed through my head. Synapses fired and dots connected and my mind painted a picture that made sense but didn’t make sense at all. Lucas slapped my shoulder again.

  “Who is she?” he asked.

  “What?”

  “I can see you know her. Who is she?”

  I turned to Lucas and shook my head.

  “Her name is Amanda. Mandy to her friends. Mandy Bennett. Ron’s ex-wife.”

  Chapter Forty-Four

  LUCAS AND I jogged across the RV park to the slips on the other side, and jumped into his boat. I tossed off the lines and he fired her up and pulled away with considerable restraint. I would have accelerated like a bat out of hell, damn the no-wake zone, but either Lucas was more considerate, or he just knew that he wasn’t going to lose Mandy on the open sea with the engines that were strapped to the back of his boat.

  What I d
iscovered is that it can be quite difficult to tail someone by boat. There is very little traffic to hide behind, so it doesn’t take a genius to see when another boat is continuing in your general direction. But Lucas knew how to do it. He hung back, knowing that there weren’t a lot of alleys for Mandy to pull down and get away, so he let her choose her channel before committing us to a direction.

  She navigated north, under the Overseas Highway, and kept well between the markers and away from any sandbanks or reefs. She was clearly in no hurry. She sat low in the boat and didn’t look around. There were no rearview mirrors to look at. She wasn’t worried about being followed. We settled in for the journey, wherever it might lead, and followed Mandy through Bogie Channel under the bridge that headed over to No Name Key. After that Mandy navigated on a more northwesterly heading, following the general coastline of Big Pine Key, and then Howe Key adjoining it. Lucas pulled back the throttle and gave her some distance .

  “Problem?” I asked.

  “From here there aren’t many places to go, except the Gulf of Mexico.”

  I watched through the field glasses and noticed the wake on Mandy’s boat die as she reached the northwest end of Howe Key. I told Lucas I thought she was stopping, and he took a look, and then without a word changed direction and headed north across the channel. He slowed right down as the water got shallow and we drifted in between Cutoe Key and Barnes Key. Lucas put the throttle into neutral and the motor spluttered like it was unhappy with that decision, and we floated. He looked across the deeper water to where Mandy lay dormant.