Fallen King: A Jesse McDermitt Novel (Caribbean Adventure Series Book 6)

by Wayne Stinnett

  Ten minutes after talking to Doc, I brought my skiff down off plane and idled up the channel to my friend’s place, the Rusty Anchor Bar and Grill. I first met Rusty on a Greyhound Bus bound for Parris Island. We were in the same platoon in Boot Camp and were stationed together a few times over the next four years. He left the Corps when his wife went into labor early and died giving birth to his daughter, Julie. Raising a daughter alone hadn’t been easy for him, but the two had managed. Julie married Deuce last summer and the two were living on their Whitby sailboat at Rusty’s dock.

  Tying up at the skiff dock I noticed that Deuce and Julie’s ketch was gone. The Rusty Anchor is an out-of-the-way place, known pretty much only to locals, though it’s nearly in the heart of Marathon, on Vaca Key. It’s been here in one form or another for generations. Rusty’s grandfather made illegal rum during prohibition. The rum shack is now Rufus’s living quarters.

  Rufus is Rusty’s part-time Jamaican cook. Nobody seems to know exactly how old he is, but if I were to guess, he’s probably in his seventies. If you made your guess based on his complexion, build or flexibility, you’d guess half that. Only when you look into his dark eyes do you see the wisdom of age. He eats mostly fruits and nuts, grazing pretty much all day long, his lean and muscular frame a testament to his simple diet. Early in the mornings, you sometimes see him standing in the shallows just beyond his shack, practicing some sort of meditation and stretching exercise, contorting his body in ways that would make a Thai hooker jealous.

  I crossed the lawn and walked through the door into the dimly lit bar, letting my eyes adjust for a moment. There were already a number of locals sitting at the bar and scattered at the tables. Jimmy Saunders was behind the bar. He used to be my First Mate aboard the Revenge, before Doc. His girlfriend, Angie, was waiting tables. Angie is Carl’s daughter from his first marriage. It’s that kind of community, where everyone knows everyone and many are related.

  “Hi, Jesse,” Jimmy said. “Get you a beer? Linda’s not here yet.” Before I could answer, he set a dripping Red Stripe on a coaster at the far end of the bar.

  Linda had been coming to visit almost every weekend since we met on Elbow Cay last September. She stays in the guest bunkhouse with Kim and the three of us spend time on the water, fishing, diving, and swimming. Every Sunday, before she has to go back up north, the two of us do a four-mile run down Sombrero Beach Road to the beach and back. We’d become close friends over the last few months, but until Kim left in the summer, I was reluctant to try to carry the relationship any further. Linda, not being the pushy type and in no hurry for a relationship herself, seemed to enjoy the easy way we fell into a friendship, but she still tossed out the occasional sexually-charged innuendo from time to time. The physical attraction was obvious and mutual, we were just in no hurry at all.

  “Thanks, Jimmy,” I said, taking my usual seat at the far end of the bar. Against the wall. Facing the door. “Yeah, she said she’d be here about eighteen hundred. Figured I’d drop in early and see if I could get caught up on what’s going on around the islands.”

  “Not a whole lot going on, dude,” he said as he turned away to wipe down the other end of the bar. Usually Jimmy was one of the best sources for local intel, so his comment surprised me. As I took my first long pull on the beer bottle, Rusty came through the door at the back of the bar.

  “Hey, Jesse. Where’s Kim?” he asked, looking around and lifting his considerable girth onto a stool behind the bar just across from me. At just five and a half feet tall and over three hundred pounds, he’s had more than a few troublemakers make the mistake of assuming he was an easy target. His bald head and thick red beard, just now starting to show some gray, did offset his soft appearance a little, but not much.

  “Her and Charlie took the Trent kids fishing for the afternoon, over by Raccoon Key,” I replied. Leaning forward I asked, “What’s the latest you’re hearing about the grenade fishing?”

  “Grenade fishing?”

  I glanced over at Jimmy, who was watching us and quickly turned and started polishing the glasses under the bar even though they were spotless. Looking back at Rusty, he averted his eyes and glanced out the open windows toward the docks.

  “Yeah,” I said, leaning into his line of vision. “Grenade fishing up in the backcountry.”

  He looked at me and sighed. “Just leave it to the cops, okay.”

  “He’s not gonna, man,” Jimmy said, shaking his head slowly, still looking down at the glass he was polishing.

  “Look,” Rusty began, “you got your kid to think of now, bro. Lord knows I been hoping the day’d come when you could get to know them. Stay out of it, okay?”

  I looked him in the eye, seeing real concern there. Over the years, we’d become the best friends you could imagine. While we were young Marines, I used to hitch a ride in his old pickup to my home in Fort Myers, whenever the two of us would get leave or a four-day pass, what we called a ninety-six. Often, he’d stay over at my grandparents place, before the last leg home. When he left the Corps, I started splitting my liberty and leave time between home and the Keys, staying with him and Julie in the guest room of his little house behind the bar.

  “Who said I was getting involved? I just want to be aware of what’s going on around my house. Bullard Bank isn’t too far from me.”

  “Okay,” he said, leaning in conspiratorially. “Word is that some lowlifes with a Miami gang are down here. Just in the last few weeks, they’ve blown the hell out of more than twenty patch reefs to collect the dead fish. There’s been two incidents of people being strong-armed by these punks and two divers injured who were on a reef nearby.”

  “A Miami gang?”

  “Yeah, a bunch of bloodthirsty Haitians who call themselves Zoe Pound. Been around for a few years, now. They do a lot of importing up there, if you know what I mean. Why they’re using grenades to fish, nobody seems to know. Maybe just blowing off steam between drug runs.”

  “Grenades aren’t cheap,” I said. “Nor plentiful.”

  “That’s why I’m thinking they’re just bored. Cost-benefit thing. Why waste grenades for a few bucks’ worth of fish, when you’re raking in millions dealing coke and meth?”

  “The two injured divers? Locals?”

  “No,” Rusty replied, with a shake of his head. “A couple out of Indiana, down here to get away from the snow.”

  “Indiana?”

  “Don’t appear to be any connection, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

  “Just a bunch of teenagers blowing up reefs for fun, huh?”

  “You didn’t hear that from me,” he said, looking over my shoulder as light spilled in from outside the front door.

  I turned and saw Linda standing at the doorway, silhouetted by the bright sunlight behind her. The sun seemed to pick out the auburn streaks it had placed in her dark hair over the previous few months, making her look like a phoenix. When she saw us at the bar, she glided our way.

  When we met, she was working undercover for a high-end escort service, belying her forty-something age. At five seven and a hundred and twenty-five pounds, you’d have to look very close to find a single flaw in her skin or build that would indicate she was almost my age. I’d looked a few times. Rusty placed a bottle of Dos Equis on a coaster next to my nearly empty Red Stripe as she sat down and leaned over to kiss me on the cheek.

  “Thanks, Rusty,” she said. “You two look like you both swallowed a canary.”

  “Just talking about flying up to Cape Sable,” I said.

  “Yeah,” Rusty chimed in. He’d always been able to pick up what I was thinking and carry it. “Supposed to be some great sea trout fishing in Micmac Lagoon and big reds being taken right off the beach.”

  “I’ve never been up there,” Linda said, smiling. “But I hear it’s really beautiful in a prehistoric kind of way.”

  “Oh yeah,” Rusty said, leaning on the bar with his elbows. “It’s like going back in time, when you walk along the beach t
here.” Turning to me, he said, “Maybe we can fly out over the Glades and check out Whitewater Bay.”

  I hadn’t even invited the man yet. That’s another thing he’s good at doing.

  “I’m really looking forward to it,” Linda said. “When do we leave?”

  “First light,” I replied, giving Rusty a crooked grin and nodding toward my now empty beer bottle.

  “Who else is going?” he asked as he placed another dripping bottle on my coaster.

  “The three of us and Kim,” I said. “It’s just a twenty-minute flight. We can spend the day fishing and exploring, stay the night and fly back here on Sunday.”

  “Want me to strap the canoes to the floats?” Rusty asked.

  “Yeah, that’d make getting around into the lagoon a lot easier.”

  We chatted a while longer, before the shadows on the wall told me we’d better head up to the island. Even though I knew the channels and reefs like the back of my hand, it’s never a good idea running them at night if you don’t have to.

  We left the Anchor and circled the west end of the island. Between there and my island, there’s only the house on Sister Rock, a couple of waterfront homes and businesses, and the Seven Mile Bridge to indicate that Marathon is a bustling town of almost ten thousand people. Nearly the whole of Vaca Key has been developed now. I remember coming down here as a kid when there were only a few hundred people on the island. Progress, as ugly as it is at times, can’t be stopped. It can be slowed by making a place difficult to get to, like on my island, but anywhere a road goes down here, a bar or tee shirt shop is bound to open.

  When Linda and I got to the island and docked the skiff under the house, the sun was already nearing the western horizon. Pescador met us at the dock, so I knew that Charlie and Kim were back from fishing with the kids and would have a seafood feast in the making.

  “It’s really cold,” Linda said as we crossed the deck to the rear steps, the wind blowing from the north around us with nothing to impede it up on the deck, fifteen feet above the water.

  “Did you bring warm clothes?” I asked as we descended the steps and started across the clearing. “Tomorrow is supposed to be the same as today.”

  “I don’t suppose there’s a hotel with heated rooms up there?”

  With a chuckle, I replied, “No phones, no lights, no motor cars.”

  “Not a single luxury?”

  “Like Robinson Crusoe, as primitive as can be.”

  She laughed, deep and hearty, then leaned into me, holding my arm. “I always loved that show as a kid.”

  “Yeah, me too. Don’t worry, there’s plenty of driftwood on the beach up there for a fire and we can pitch our tents around it.”

  “Tents?” she pouted, tossing out another of her sexually-charged innuendoes.

  “Yeah, one for each of us.” But, one of these days, I thought.

  “Hey,” Kim called out as we approached the two tables Carl had built in front of the bunkhouses. “You’re just in time. We’re grilling hogfish and flounder.”

  “Hogfish?” I asked.

  “Cortesía del señor Pescador. He jumped in and caught two big ones.”

  Blackened hogfish is about my favorite seafood. They’re extremely elusive for anglers, but plentiful enough around reefs and rock piles that they can be speared fairly easily.

  “Charlie is marinating everything now,” Kim said.

  “Then let’s go watch the sun set while we wait,” I said.

  Sitting on the dock to watch the sun go down is something that Pescador and I have been doing for over a year. I found him stranded on little more than a sandbar just after Hurricane Wilma over a year ago. Not really stranded, because he’s a strong enough swimmer that he could easily make it to any nearby island and he was more than capable of fending for himself. Since Kim had come to live with me and with Linda now staying on the weekends, the dock was getting crowded around sunset.

  “Give me just a sec,” Linda said. “I want to drop my bag and grab a blanket.”

  “I’ll go with you,” Kim said. “I want one too.”

  A minute later, we were sitting on the floating dock off the north part of the island, watching the daily art show provided by Sol and Mother Ocean. It was the kind of evening perfect for a green flash and as I explained the phenomenon, we watched the sun sink lower and lower toward the horizon. I could see Carl and his family watching it from out on the sandbar on the west side of the island. All over the Keys, locals were setting aside their various chores and diversions to watch the sun go down. It’s an island thing.

  “Watch,” I whispered reverently. “As clear as the sky is, it’ll look like the sea just reaches up and grabs the sun.”

  Slowly, the big red orb dropped lower and lower, until the water seemed to just reach right up and snatch it, pulling and elongating it into an oval, pointed at the bottom where the water had it in its grasp. There wasn’t a cloud anywhere in sight, just the water and the sun, dancing together as they have since time began.

  Kim was sitting to my right, with Pescador just beyond her and Linda on my left. Without asking, Linda reached around my shoulder with her blanket. I pulled it down around me as she leaned against my shoulder. Slowly, the sun flattened out into a horizontal oval shape.

  “What’s that bright star up above the sun?”

  “The light purple one?” I said, pointing about thirty degrees above and to the north of the sun. She nodded. “It’s not a star, that’s the planet Neptune. King of the Seven Seas.”

  Linda whispered. “Hey, where’d you learn all this?”

  “Rusty taught me. He says the stars and planets are ‘timeless and predictable.’ He showed me how to figure out where I am using only a sextant and chart, by triangulating the position of the moon, stars, planets and the sun at a certain hour. Ask him to show you tomorrow night. He loves talking about the heavens.”

  The top of the sun was just about to drop below the horizon, creating a mirage where it looked like a portion of the sun appeared to elongate up away from the main body, like a drop of water in a pond slowly splashing back upwards.

  “Watch closely,” I whispered to Linda. “As the last of the sun disappears, that little dew-drop-looking part above it might flash green for just a second.”

  It didn’t happen. The green flash is so rare a phenomenon, I’ve only seen it a few times, and I watch the sun set just about every night. As darkness surrounded us, we left the pier and went back to the others.

  Carl was cooking over the large stone grill I’d built. Charlie had the table set, and the Tiki torches that surrounded the table flickered, casting an orange light over everything and giving the appearance of warmth, though it was already down in the sixties.

  After eating, Carl and Charlie took the kids to their house, while the three of us cleaned the dishes and started a small fire in the fire pit on the northeast side of the island. We sat around the fire as it grew colder, talking about our trip to Cape Sable in the morning.

  Chapter Three

  I woke before dawn. It was colder and I immediately stoked the fire in the old potbellied stove, even before pouring my first cup of coffee. Looking out the window to the southeast, the first faint light had yet to purple the sky. Always an early riser, I’d wondered about the need for it anymore. Particularly in winter. It’d be an hour before any work could be done and two hours before it was light enough to head back down to Marathon, where I kept my plane at the Anchor.

  My plane is a deHavilland Beaver built in 1953 and fitted with a pair of Wipaire floats with wheels that retracted into them. I bought it last September from a friend who was moving back to his home state of Kentucky. With its big Pratt and Whitney radial engine and wide wingspan, it was perfect for the islands, able to land and take off in a very short distance, whether on land or sea.

  Filling a thermos, I went down below the house to the dock area, which fills the whole area under both the house and the wraparound deck. Although it’s a tight sq
ueeze, we keep six boats down here, including the Revenge. There’s a narrow walkway all the way around three sides, and two sets of doors facing south. Down the middle is another narrow dock, connecting the rear dock to the piling between the two sets of huge double doors. Stepping down into the cockpit of the Revenge, I unlocked the hatch and turned off the alarm.

  Sitting down on the settee in the salon, I powered up my laptop computer. Jimmy had set up a satellite-based Internet account for me and installed a wireless modem in the cabinet next to the flat panel TV in my old boat.

  Deuce had upgraded my system on the new boat so it could be used whenever I was transporting his team to or from a mission and had switched the satellite feed over to a government satellite. It was much faster and more reliable than the company Jimmy had used and provided access to a few other things the old service couldn’t.

  I ran a couple of Google searches to see if there was any public news about the people blowing up reefs, but didn’t find anything I didn’t already know. In fact, I already knew more than I was able to find on the Internet.

  Knowing that whatever Deuce’s team was doing, Chyrel would be in her comm shack up in Homestead, I clicked the Soft Jazz icon on the computer’s desktop, which opened a direct video feed to wherever she was. After a couple of seconds the window expanded and her face appeared, a completely blank white wall behind her. I recognized by the starkness of the background that she was in her little office. The other walls are decorated, but not the one facing the camera.

  “Hey, Jesse,” she said. Then giggling, she asked, “How’s it hanging?” The joke was getting old. When we were on Elbow Cay last September a woman had drugged me with some kind of homemade aphrodisiac that left me with an eighteen-hour erection.

  “Hardy-har,” I said. “Hey, we’re flying up to Cape Sable in a little while. Just wanted to check in and see if you guys needed anything.” Deuce and his entire team were in training with a newly-formed second team that would operate out of Key Largo in pretty much the same fashion as the original team did here.