Death in the Polka Dot Shoes

by Marlin Fitzwater

  Chapter Fourteen

  Dave “Chumbucket” Roberts walked down the pier of the Palm Tree townhouse complex, stopping at slip number eleven where his 36-foot fishing boat had been berthed for over two months. Chum had followed his instructions to the letter, removing the windshield and radar attached to the fly bridge, dropping canvas over the stern so it hid the varnished transom that might be identifiable to a passing yacht or police boat, and removing the outriggers that carried the fishing lines for deep sea fishing. He did all that while moving the boat from North Carolina to Florida, and when he pulled into the slip, the boat looked for all the world like its Captain: unused, unemployed, and disheveled.

  Chum’s new neighbors at the Palm Tree may have wondered where he came from, but they never doubted Chum’s story. He was bringing the boat down from New Jersey to be refurbished by the new owner of unit eleven, probably in the spring. Only one person had even asked who he was: the lady in unit ten who parked her Cadillac in the adjoining driveway. She introduced herself one morning as Chum was walking down to his favorite restaurant on the Intracoastal Waterway, just a few hundred yards from his townhouse.

  “Hi,” she called to him, as she opened the door of the car. “I’m your neighbor, Betty Ramos, can I give you a ride?”

  “I’m Chum,” he said, walking around the hood of the car, and offering his hand. “Chum Roberts.”

  “That your real name?”

  “Actually, it’s Dave,” he said. “Chum is a nickname. It’s what they call the dead fish and other bait that fishermen throw out to attract the big fish.”

  “Are you a dead fish?” she asked.

  “No,” he said, “but I used to be a first mate. My job was to throw the chum overboard behind the boat as we trolled across the Bay. Somebody called me Chum and it stuck.”

  “Welcome to New Smyrna, Florida,” she said. “You don’t bother us, we don’t bother you. That’s our motto.”

  “That’s not on a bumper sticker, is it?” he asked.

  “No,” Betty said, a bit sheepishly, “but even the chamber of commerce calls us a laid back community. I work in the school system, and we’re glad to have you.”

  Chum told her thanks and moved on down the sidewalk. He wanted the community to know he was friendly, but he didn’t want them to know too much. The thing that scared him the most was the internet. Before computers, a person could find some small town and hide forever with a raft of made up facts and history. No more. One tiny piece of the wrong information, and people would look you up on dot.com web sites of every kind, from phone directories to satellite phones. It was damn hard to hide anymore.

  Chum had been picked for this job anonymously, and he didn’t know yet quite what had happened. He had just returned home from a daily fishing trip with three Washington business men. He ran his fishing boat out of Pilgrim’s Harbor and was making pretty good money when the call came from a voice that began the conversation this way:

  “Chum, this is an old acquaintance from your days growing up in Calvert County, Maryland. You won’t remember me, but I knew you remotely when you first dropped out of high school and worked as first mate on the Scatback. I want to hire you for a fishing trip.”

  Chum was stunned. He let the phone dangle from his hand as he considered the options: an old friend from South County; maybe a Captain he had recently met in Newport News, but who would have a job to offer?

  “Who is this?” he asked.

  “I can’t tell you Chum,” he said, “but listen to my offer.”

  “Is this legal?” Chum asked. That wasn’t necessarily the first question he usually asked. Indeed, Chum had spent enough time in reform school, and in the backseat of police cars, to be too sensitive about the law. Legality always had a rather broad definition for him, ever since the days when he would steal lumber from new home builders and sell it to customers coming out of the hardware store. Chum got caught a lot, but few people pressed charges, usually because it was just one piece of lumber, like a 4x8 piece of plywood or maybe a couple of two by fours. But talking back to teachers, or picking fights in class, had gotten him kicked out of school on several occasions and made him well known to the county police.

  The reform school stay resulted from a breaking and entering charge against Chum for living in a neighbor’s house while they were on vacation. He didn’t do any damage, but it scared the whole neighborhood to have someone just move into a vacant house. It also happened that the incident occurred shortly after the Columbine school shootings in Colorado. And when the newspaper published a list of ten factors to look for in children who might be harboring malicious feelings, it became common knowledge that Chum had exhibited most of them. The most frightening was number eight, “Tries to harm animals.” Chum was known for poking the eyes out of frogs, dropping cats from the roof of the garage, killing snakes, and throwing rocks at the family dog.

  The community was glad to see Chum finally get a job on one of the local fishing boats, with many people hoping he might fall overboard in a storm. But they were pleasantly surprised to find that Chum loved the water, took to business, and within a couple of years had bought his boss’ boat and moved to Newport News. Reports had filtered home that he was still a loner, but dedicated to his boat and not coming home.

  Chum continued to hold the phone and ran through his mind all the friends and neighbors he could remember, and considered all the strange voices he could remember, but no bells were ringing.

  “Well, I tell you, Mister,” Chum said, “I’m pretty busy right now.”

  “I’ll give you $10,000.”

  Chum was silent again. So was the caller.

  Finally, Chum was starting to register the buying power of ten thousand dollars. He didn’t worry much about taxes, because fishing is a cash and carry business. Chum’s policy was to declare any amounts paid to him with a check, and forget the cash. This would surely be a cash deal, because of the secrecy, and ten thousand would clean and paint the bottom of his boat. He made a note to himself to deposit the cash in five thousand dollar amounts so as not to alert the banks who alert the tax man of anything over ten thousand in cash. He was rather proud of himself for knowing such a business fact.

  “What do you want me to do?” he asked the secret caller.

  “This isn’t much really,” the voice said, “but I need a little of your time. I need you to take your boat down to Cape Hatteras and take a friend of mine out tuna fishing.”

  “How much time?”

  “Well Chum,” the caller said, “I’d like you to go down about the first of September. I have a slip for your boat. You stay on the boat, and I’ll call you when my friend is coming to fish. It should be within two weeks.”

  “Who’s the friend,” Chum asked.

  “No names, Chum.”

  “How many people?”

  “Just one. Maybe two. Just a day of fishing.”

  “Let me think about it,” Chum said. “Call me tomorrow.”

  “OK,” the caller said, and hung up.

  Now that it’s all over, Chum plays that conversation around in his head a hundred times, wondering why ten thousand was so important and how he got caught up in this disaster. Now he’s a hunted man, and hiding out in a town he never knew existed. His boat is out of work and sits at the dock like a ghostly remnant of the last hurricane.

  Chum pushed the ball cap back on his forehead and moved across the street. He liked the morning in Florida, when it was cool and smelled fresh, and he could taste the hot coffee and scrambled eggs at the IC Diner. The IC, for Intra Coastal, opened at six so commuters and fishermen alike could get an early start. It was cheap, and food seemed to be the main extravagance eating into his ten thousand of new money.

  Chum’s only new friend in Smyrna was a house painter named Horace Yoakum, who arrived every morning at the IC Diner to get a scrambled egg sandwich and a thermos of coffee. He ate the sandwich in his car on the way to whatever house he was painting that day, and sometime
s the drive could be lengthy. The coffee was for the rest of the day. Horace never told Chum much about himself, but they became friends through a few sentences of greeting each day. At first, Horace stood by the cash register while his “take out” order was being made. Then he took to sitting on one of the stools. But he always spoke to Chum in his nearby booth. Finally, he just walked over to Chum’s booth and sat down. It was as natural as you please. And the conversations were easy, perhaps because neither of them wanted to engage weighty subjects, or neither wanted to divulge their personal demons. They talked mostly about the boats cruising down the waterway, although lately Chum had steered away from that subject.

  “You know Chum,” Horace said, “I once got in a little trouble on a boat over at Myrtle Beach. I lived on somebody’s boat one winter while they were gone. I knew them. They just didn’t know I was living there.”

  Horace said he didn’t really think much about it at the time. He had helped paint the boat, and he knew the owner. He even stayed on the boat during the painting. And when the job was finished, he just stayed on. It was a 40-foot sailboat, with teak throughout, a full galley, and all the comforts. It just seemed natural to stay a few days longer. But when the winter was over, Horace was still there. And when the owner came for his boat, only to find Horace fixing dinner, he ordered the painter out immediately and threatened to call the police. So Horace moved on down the IC to New Smyrna.

  When Chum heard this story, he recognized a kindred spirit, someone who moved with the tide, and flowed through life on the gentlest of breezes. They became friends, and began to satisfy the unquenchable thirst that most people have to confide in others.

  Horace kept his egg sandwich wrapped in paper inside the brown bag, but sipped his coffee as he slid into the booth with Chum. Horace had a sharp mustache, rather unkempt, but nevertheless precise along the edges. Even in his twenties, it had a few flecks of gray that gave it maturity, and looked as if a few drops of paint might have splattered his face. But his eyes had a mischievous twinkle, as if he might be enjoying an innocent joke with his friend.

  “Chum,” he said, “I noticed your boat yesterday. Why don’t you take it out and clean it up. I’ll be glad to help.”

  “No,” Chum said, “I’m waiting for instructions. I could be leaving in a month or two.”

  “Who’s giving the instructions?”

  “I can’t tell you much about him,” Chum said. “He hired me to take his friends out fishing. I did and it didn’t work out. So now I’m waiting.”

  Horace saw intrigue in this answer, and a chance to show his friendship. He was cautious, but he wondered what had happened. “Was it a good fishing trip?” he asked.

  “Not really,” Chum said. “We had a man overboard.”

  “No shit!” Horace exclaimed. “What happened?”

  Chum let the question sink in, wondering where it was leading and why. He looked at Horace again, from another perspective. What if Horace was a cop, or even just a nosey guy who liked to gossip? What if he told others about this new friend who won’t clean up his boat?

  “Nothing much,” Chum said.

  There was a silence when Chum realized he hadn’t given much of an answer, and probably raised more questions from Horace; and Horace realized that Chum was either covering something up, or lying, or both. This unanswered question was bound to change the relationship, and they both had but a second or two to consider how.

  “I realize this may be something you don’t want to talk about,” Horace said. “But did you get the guy back? Was he OK?”

  “No,” Chum said, “he didn’t make it. We looked for him for hours, but he never came up.”

  “Did you call the Coast Guard?” Horace asked.

  “Wait a minute!” Chum exclaimed. “Why the questions? Shit happens.”

  “I know,” Horace said. “Sorry.”

  “Let’s talk about something else.”

  “How did you get into this business?” Horace volunteered. “You own your own boat. Must be doing pretty well.”

  Chum stared at his new friend, wondering about his motives, and the intensity of his questions. But Chum had spent most of his life in isolation, at least in those corners of life where people are not generally interested, where people don’t inquire about your interests.

  “People don’t normally care,” Chum said. “Why do you ask?”

  “I’m just interested. Maybe I can learn something. I’m just a painter, but I’d like to own my own business,” Horace said. “You know, last week I read that if I buy a van, and paint my name on the side, I can deduct the whole thing from taxes.”

  “That’s true,” Chum said. “In fact, you can deduct everything. I deduct the cost of bait, hooks, string, gas, scraping the bottom, paint, oil, maintenance, everything. Then I get paid in cash if I can, and never report that at all. When I was crab’n, everything was cash. Usually, I had a buyer waiting at the dock when I came in. He just dug out a roll of cash, put the crabs in his truck, and was gone. If he wasn’t there, I took the crabs to the closest restaurant and they did the same thing. Hell, some years I had to make up income I didn’t have, just to keep the IRS from coming after me.”

  “Of course,” Horace said, “you guys didn’t make much, did you?”

  “Hell yes,” Chum replied. “If you worked hard, you could make thousands of dollars a year. Deduct the mortgage on the boat, slip fees and a few other things and still have a hundred thousand left over.”

  “Wow. That’s five times more than I make,” Horace said.

  “Well, you have to work hard though,” Chum said. “Watermen all work hard and a lot of them don’t make much at all. They don’t trust banks either. Of course, now they’re all getting wives who are smart enough to use the banks. The best crabbers have wives who keep the books and manage the money. But I’ll tell you this; none of them will ever tell you how much money they really make. Poor as church mice, they tell you. And many of them are, of course. One year I only made about twenty thousand, but it was a bad year for crabs.”

  “How you do’n in the charter business?” Horace asked.

  “Even better than crabb’n,” Chum said. “Until this last trip. I got greedy and now look at me, sitting in this lazy little place doing nothing and scared to death.”

  “What are you scared of?” the waitress asked as she walked within hearing range. Marge carried a pot of coffee, filling empty cups as customers began filing out. Marge bought the IC in 2000 and looked at it as her golden goose, which she expected to lay its last eggs on her 65th birthday, still four years away. The way she figured, she worked every day and made about fifty thousand a year, after taxes, which paid for her car and a townhouse down on the waterway, a few new tee shirts and jeans every year, and a car trip to Maine every August.

  “Nothin,” Chum responded to her question, chagrined that he was overheard, but blaming only himself. “No more coffee Marge.”

  “Are you in danger?” Horace asked. “What the hell happened on that charter?”

  “I gotta go,” Chum said, shuffling in his seat. He saw that Horace was disappointed. Apparently he didn’t have a job this morning. As he slid across the leather booth, and raised himself from the table, he said nonchalantly, “Want to go see the boat?”

  “Sure,” Horace responded. “We walking? I’ve got my truck.”

  “I walked down. I’ll ride with you.”

  Chum and Horace walked down the boardwalk behind his townhouse to a white fishing boat that looked like a patient in a military hospital. It was wounded. White canvas pieces were taped over the windows like bandages. A large blue tarpaulin of the kind purchased in K-Mart was draped over the fly bridge, and weighted down with plastic water bottles hanging on strings from the grommets. Rain had created small pools of water in the low spots on the canvas. There was no identity except that this was an injured boat.

  “How do we get in?” Horace asked, not seeing any obvious bridge. Both boys stood on the dock and s
urveyed the boat, Chum wondering how his life could have deteriorated to this. It had been over two months since he pulled the Scatback into this slip. At that time, it seemed like a new adventure. He was in a new state, a new city, and a new home, however temporary. He had applied all the boat bandages in anticipation of moving into a new townhouse, and discovering his surroundings.

  Now all those aspirations seemed ephemeral, vanishing in just a few days, with nothing left but empty days and no future. Chum walked to the side of the boat, grabbed the handrail, and stepped onto the deck where the tarp suggested a solid footing.

  “C’mon Horace,” Chum said, “I can’t take it any more. Let’s yank this canvas off and I’ll show you the boat.”

  Horace stepped onto the boat, reached over the side and lifted one of the water bottles to empty it into the canal. Spiders ran in every direction. There had been enough rain to seep under the canvas cover and leave the dusty fingerprints of previous storms around the cleats and deck chairs.

  “This is all day work,” Chum said. “You want to help me clean up?”

  “Sure,” Horace replied. “Can we get her running?”

  “If we have battery power,” Chum said. “She hasn’t moved in a long time. But oil and engine should be all right. Got gas. I’m tired of sittin around here.”