Fallen Honor: A Jesse McDermitt Novel (Caribbean Adventure Series Book 7)

by Wayne Stinnett

  Twenty minutes later, after we’d all rinsed off again and put on clean clothes, we idled away from the pier. I let Charlie sit up front with Carl Junior and Carl at the helm and I sat in back with Patty and Pescador.

  As Carl started down the channel, I said, “Know what we forgot? To measure the draft.”

  Carl turned east into Harbor Channel. “We’ll take the deeper route until we’re sure it can navigate the cuts at idle.” When Carl gassed the engines to get up on plane, little Carl and Patty both covered their ears.

  We hadn’t had any kind of wind in days and the water lay as calm and still as the heavy air. Carl followed the cut south of Turtlecrawl Bank, then turned due south into Big Spanish Channel. Cruising along at what I guessed to be forty knots, the boat performed really well as Carl slalomed a few crab traps, the boat barely heeling at all. With the Seven Mile Bridge in sight to the southeast, Carl put his son on his lap and let him pilot the boat for a while. Carl Junior was no stranger to running a boat, even at eight years old. Carl had earned a living from the sea all his life, as had his father and his grandfather before him.

  Leaning back and looking over the engine compartment and sloped transom, I could nearly see the waterline, the swim platform now about three inches above the water streaming out from under the hull. I sat back and stretched my legs out. The feeling was incredible. We’d dreamed this up nearly a year ago, sketching and drawing for months. Some parts had had to be built off island, but every single rib, spar, plank, and dowel we’d installed ourselves.

  Reaching Bahia Honda Channel, Carl continued south and turned left just before the bridge crossing from Scout Key to Bahia Honda. We followed deep water around the north side of the island, Carl keeping the boat about fifty yards off the Seven Mile Bridge.

  Charlie pointed up to the cars on the bridge and shouted, “They have a speed limit. We don’t.”

  Carl looked back and I nodded. Bringing the speed up until we were passing the cars in the northbound lane, I could tell by the tone of the engines that we weren’t quite up to top speed, but I guessed we were going at least sixty.

  “What do you mean you lost it?” the voice on the phone shouted.

  Lenny Walcza had put off the call as long as he could. The man on the other end of the phone he was now holding away from his ear was former Steelers linebacker GT Bradley, known for his quick temper and vicious punishment of anyone he considered to have crossed him, both on and off the field.

  “I only turned my back for a second, GT,” Lenny confessed. The fact was, when he went to the john, he was so high he’d tripped over the dirty laundry strewn about the floor and hit his head on the toilet bowl, passed out and pissed himself.

  It wasn’t until after he came to and cleaned himself up that he noticed Grabowski and the key of coke were gone. Thinking Grabowski was just pranking him, Lenny tried calling, but the call went straight to voicemail. Lenny had left Grabowski a message, telling him the joke wasn’t funny.

  Lenny had considered taking off after Grabowski himself. However, Lenny lacked the funds and didn’t know where to start. He’d already gone to the guy’s place and the landlord had told him that Grabowski had turned in his keys the night before, leaving with nothing more than a backpack as far as the old man could tell.

  “What’s his name? Where’s he live?” GT growled over the phone.

  “I already checked there, GT. Landlord said he skipped out last night with nothing but a backpack and driving his beat-up old Corolla. He’s not answering his phone, either. Name’s Michal Grabowski.”

  “Grabowski?” GT muttered, with obvious distaste. “He’s a damned worm. You stay put, shithead. I’ll be there in ten minutes.”

  Lenny stared at the phone, the call now disconnected. It was nearly nine o’clock and Grabowski had at least a six-hour head start. Knowing the old Corolla was near the end of its life and had four bald tires, Lenny doubted he could have made it very far. Especially if he was driving fast.

  GT had a network that covered the whole Three Rivers area and contacts throughout southwestern Pennsylvania. If anyone could find Grabowski, it’d be GT.

  Minutes later, Lenny heard the sound of tires squealing as a car suddenly stopped in front of his house. Looking out through the front window, he immediately recognized GT’s white Escalade, with the dark-tinted windows. A large black man with a shaved head climbed out of the driver’s seat, as GT himself came around the hood in a hurry. Lenny knew the other man from his deliveries. Erik something or other. Looking like bookends, the two men hurried toward the front door, each wearing a gray sports coat.

  Lenny met them at the door, motioning them inside and then put on a show of looking up and down the street before closing and locking the door. GT stopped in the foyer, as the other man went on into the house. Lenny could hear him going room to room opening and closing doors.

  “We went by the bus station,” GT said, turning and walking into Lenny’s living room. “Grabowski’s piece-a-shit car was there, keys still in the ignition. Even in this neighborhood, nobody stole it. You’re telling me he was here when Erik dropped the stuff off last night?”

  “Yeah, he dropped by with a case of beer and we watched the Pirates game, then he just kinda hung around.”

  “What’d I tell you about having anyone over when a delivery was made?” GT shouted. “You owe me thirty-five large, asshole. Where is it?”

  In the back of the house, Lenny heard something break and something large being turned over. “I don’t have it, GT. Ya gotta believe me. Why would I try to rip you off, man?”

  “Because you’re an idiot!” GT barked, getting worked up as the sound of more crashing and things breaking could be heard from the back of the house. “Tell me everything you know about Grabowski.”

  With his house being ransacked, Lenny told him all he knew, which wasn’t much. Grabowski’s mom had died years ago and he’d been raised by his dad, a steelworker who’d died last year. Grabowski had a girlfriend that he brought around from time to time, but Lenny hadn’t seen her in several months. When he finished, the other man came out of the back of the house and started jerking open drawers in the kitchen, dumping the contents on the floor, tearing open every box and container of food and drink, dumping that on the floor as well.

  Finally, Erik came back into the living room and handed GT a wad of cash and shrugged. “Only thing I found, GT. Just shy of five grand.”

  Looking at the wad of cash, GT slowly brought his face up and glared at Lenny. “This all you got?”

  “A few hundred in the bank,” Lenny stammered, growing more afraid. GT had a habit of killing people who let him down. “I can probably sell some stuff and get you a couple grand more by the weekend.”

  GT’s right hand snaked under his jacket in a flash, causing Lenny to cringe. Pulling out a pack of Pall Mall cigarettes, GT shook one loose and put it in his mouth. Erik produced a lighter, flicking it under his boss’s smoke. GT grinned and puffed to get it lit. Lenny relaxed a little.

  Putting the pack of smokes back in his shirt pocket, GT grabbed the grip of his stainless steel Colt 1911 and pulled it out, placing the barrel just inches from Lenny’s forehead in a blur.

  The report of the big handgun was deafening in the small living room. Blood and brain tissue plastered the wall and window, then began to ooze down the glass, as Lenny fell backward, crashing through the glass insert of a coffee table.

  “By the weekend, huh?” GT asked the corpse, with its arms and legs spread-eagle, slumped in the heavy wooden frame of the table. “Yeah, you get back to me on that, dickweed.”

  Turning to Erik, GT said, “C’mon, let’s go talk to the ticket agent.”

  We idled slowly up the canal to my favorite watering hole, the Rusty Anchor Bar and Grill, owned by my longtime friend, Rusty Thurman. Rusty and I met in boot camp in ’79 and stayed close ever since.

  The burbling of the twin motorcycle engines caused more than a few heads to pop up out of the hatches of t
he liveaboards, and a few locals streamed out of the bar to see if a biker had ridden into the canal.

  Rusty met us at the end of the canal, where his big barge is tied at the end of the large turning basin. Approaching the barge at the end of the docks, Carl threw the starboard engine into reverse and gunned it for a second, nearly stopping the boat and sending it into a slow spin to the right. We barely bumped the fenders on the barge.

  Charlie quickly stepped up to the deck of the barge and tied us off, as Carl shut down the engines. He opened the bilge compartments for another look and I raised the cover on the engine compartment. Both were dry and the float-switch-activated bilge pump was off.

  “Now that’s a mighty fine-looking boat,” Rusty commented as he approached. At just under three hundred pounds and barely five feet six inches tall, Rusty had a personality that matched his girth.

  Jimmy Saunders, a friend and my former first mate, strode over to the side of the boat and looked down into the engine bay. “What the hell kinda engines you got in that, man?”

  “Big air-cooled V-twins,” Charlie said, grinning and taking Patty as I handed her up. She herded the kids across the barge and, satisfied that we had no leaks, Carl and I followed, with everyone asking questions. I let Carl field most of them and stopped on the dock for a moment to look around.

  Looking around was a habit, something I’d once done constantly when I was in the Corps, especially when exiting a vehicle. I had a platoon sergeant on Okinawa that double-timed up and down our lines as we moved along a trail, constantly reminding us, “Head on a swivel!” At times, he’d jump up in someone’s face and ask what color the rock was that another of the Marines ahead had slipped on, or which way the mongoose was going in the underbrush. Staff Sergeant Russ Livingston saw everything and missed nothing.

  At the same time I realized my body wasn’t in the shape it used to be, I came to the conclusion that neither were my habits. Looking around can clue you in to possible hidden danger and I’d lost that edge.

  This look around, while almost immediately dismissing any prospect of danger, took in the familiar surroundings. In the eight years that I’d lived here, I’d been lulled by the small town atmosphere on this little island chain.

  Locals call it island time and sooner or later it catches up with everyone. The trouble with being on island time, you tend to lose focus. I’m fortunate, I can turn it on and off. I’ve found that compartmentalizing things in my mind has allowed me to perform better at the things I’ve done, by keeping outside influences away from the task at hand. Another of Russ Livingston’s sayings was, “Not my circus, not my monkeys,” meaning that anything that didn’t have a direct bearing on the mission at hand was to be ignored.

  Right now, island time was on. By the standards of most people, it was a miserably hot day. Several of the liveaboards were connected to shore power and I heard a number of small air conditioners humming. Down the dock and around behind the bar, there were a few people lounging on the deck, all of them at tables shaded by palm thatch umbrellas.

  Far beyond the dock, a set of ruts followed the canal. Out at the end sat my airplane, Island Hopper. She’s a deHavilland Beaver, built more than fifty years ago and equipped with pontoons for landing on water and wheels, which retracted into the pontoons, for landing on a runway. The son of the friend who I bought the plane from died in a fiery explosion just beyond there at the boat ramp.

  Dressed in lightweight khaki pants and a long-sleeved shirt, I enjoyed the heat. However, getting burned by the sun’s rays wasn’t a good idea when you’re outside as much as I am. Sweating has a purpose. Cooling by evaporation. I kept hydrated and sweated heavily. So I stayed cool, even in this tropical heat.

  Inside, Charlie took the kids out the back door to see if Rufus needed any help in the kitchen. Rusty had just added the closed-in cooking area to the backyard, replacing a series of tarps. His old Jamaican chef loved cooking outdoors, so the whole kitchen area had big roll-up doors. Watching Rufus cook had become sort of an attraction for some of the locals.

  The Anchor was pretty much a local’s hangout. Rusty didn’t advertise and the place was hidden deep on the property, invisible from US-1. Dense overhanging foliage nearly hid the crushed-shell drive and there wasn’t any sign out there for “Cold Beer.” Open whenever Rusty was awake, it was a gathering spot for local watermen, and the liveaboards that now lined his docks. It had been this way for three generations of Thurmans.

  Every morning, before the sun rose, Rufus would fire up his grills and burners and then roll up the shutters over the long countertop surrounding the kitchen. Big exhaust fans soon spread the scent of grilling onions, lobster, fish, Jamaican sausage and eggs for probably five square miles on a still day like this. Within minutes, people would climb out of their boats and start pulling up in skiffs. The parking lot might only have a car or two, but every stool around the kitchen would be full, people anticipating a great breakfast. For the liveaboards, this was included in their slip lease.

  Rufus had once been a gourmet chef at a very popular five-star restaurant in Jamaica. He’d retired here after the death of his wife and lived in a tiny shack that had once been Rusty’s grandfather’s rum distillery. Nobody really knew for sure how old the wiry little Jamaican man was. My guess was mid-sixties or early seventies, but it didn’t show and most strangers would guess much younger.

  Carl and I sat at the bar, where Rusty produced two bottles of water. Not long ago, it would have been water for Carl, who rarely drank, and a beer for me. Or coffee, if it was early. Even late coffee on many days. And before noon with the beer on many days, as well. Island time isn’t measured by clocks.

  “You’re looking damned near a hundred percent, Jesse,” my old friend said. “Still swimming?”

  “Every other day. How’s Julie? Heard from her this week?”

  Julie is Rusty’s daughter. He’d raised her himself, after her mother died giving Julie life. She’d recently moved to Washington DC with her husband, Deuce Livingston. He’d been promoted to commander in the Navy and reassigned to take over the Caribbean Counterterrorism Command of Homeland Security, or CCC. He was also the son of my former platoon sergeant and the two of us had become quick friends a couple years ago.

  “Talked to her for an hour last night,” Rusty replied. “They’re still getting adjusted. Said she’ll be down in September for some training with the new team in Largo.”

  The CCC consisted of two teams of highly skilled operators that came from all branches of the military and several law enforcement agencies. Julie is a petty officer in the Coast Guard Reserves and trained for their elite Maritime Enforcement. She was attached as a reserve element to Deuce’s teams, helping to teach small-boat boarding tactics to the others.

  “Be good to see her again,” I said as I turned on my stool and looked out the windows, shaded from the sun by awnings. Rusty could afford to air condition the place, but chose not to. I knew this, because I was a silent partner in his business. To most of the clientele he served, air conditioning was achieved at twenty-five knots over open water. The Anchor was built to take advantage of the prevailing wind and had long overhangs on the roof and awnings over the windows. There were a number of ceiling fans that constantly moved the air around inside and there was almost always a cooling breeze off the water.

  No breeze today, though. Not much anyway. Every now and then a slight movement of air could be felt through the large open windows that surrounded the bar area. Out beyond the side yard, I could see the little boat sitting there and marveled again at the gleaming lines.

  “How fast is she?” Jimmy asked, sitting on the stool next to me and following my gaze.

  “Not sure,” I replied. “No GPS or speedometer, but she covered a two-mile stretch, from idling speed, in just over a hundred seconds this morning.”

  Jimmy whistled softly. “Most of them antique replica boats are all show, man. But that’s seriously fast.”

  A familiar voice from th
e other end of the bar said, “Boat like that can get up and grow legs.”

  I glanced over and recognized Bill Woodson, Wood to his friends. He was a gruff and cantankerous man and a longtime resident of the Keys. A bridge builder and engineer, he’d probably had a hand in either building or repairing half the bridges in the Keys. Semiretired now, he lived on an island not far from mine.

  I nodded to the older man. “Long time, no see, Wood.”

  “Way I like it,” he replied gruffly. “See you coming and going from time to time. Ya oughta keep a close eye on that boat.”

  “I will,” I replied.

  Without another word, Wood got up and walked out the back door with his beer, heading toward the dock. Looking out the window again, I watched as a small center-console came idling up the canal and I recognized the two men on board. One was a guy about my age, Mac Travis, who lived on one of the canals off Boot Key Harbor. Mac had been Wood’s diver for the better part of twenty years and was now a commercial lobsterman. His sidekick and crewman was easily recognizable even from a distance. Taller than me, with a set of polished teeth that probably glowed in the dark, Alan Trufante was known to be close by whenever there was trouble, usually right in the middle of it. Wood met Mac’s boat at the dock and stepped down into it. Mac turned in the canal and they headed back out the way they came.

  “He’s right, ya know,” Rusty said, polishing a beer mug. “A sharp-looking boat like that could disappear in a heartbeat.”

  “What’s on the menu for lunch?” I asked, turning back to my old friend.

  “Leftover janga soup from last night and fish,” Rusty replied. “Or a burger,” he added with a grin.

  What Rufus called janga were the crawfish that Carl and I raised in our aquaculture garden. The waste from the crawfish and catfish tanks nourished the plants, which in turn kept the water clean and filtered. Janga are a distant Caribbean cousin to the crawfish, and according to Rufus, the hill people in Jamaica consider them to have an aphrodisiac quality.