Offside Trap

by A. J. Stewart

  Chapter Eighteen

  FISHING IS TO sitting on your butt what golf is to walking in a park. I know a few guys who like to head offshore and catch sea beasts the size of Korean cars, but that just seems to me something best left to the burly lads on Deadliest Catch. Personally, I don’t get up to go fishing before the dawn, I don’t raise a sweat using a rod that I wouldn’t have raised drinking a beer, and I don’t leave sight of good, solid land. Which is why I found myself sitting in a Boston Whaler, sipping a cold one under the midday sun. A gentle breeze kept things cool and pleasant. The boat was anchored on the island side of the Intracoastal, just out of the channel south of Peanut Island. We had two Ugly Sticks in the water, but a bite would have been more a bother than a bonus. I sat in a swivel chair next to Sally. He was smoking a cigar the size of a rocket launcher, and it was putting off the same amount of smoke. The smell didn’t bother me. I don’t smoke and I never have, but Sally’s cigar smoke was being picked up on the breeze and sent to Grand Bahama.

  I had known Sal Mondavi a long time. Sally had watched me pitch for St. Lucie, and had passed me notes in the dugout about my form. He had become a mentor and a friend. The breeze kept blowing strands of hair across his face. I could count the hairs on his head using my fingers. But Sally grew what was there and spent his afternoon pushing them back into place. He didn’t seem bothered by it.

  “How’s your son?” I said.

  Sally took a puff. “Doing good. Still in the Windy City. Girls are in school. They got a nice house near the lake. He emailed me photos.”

  “You do email now?”

  “He wanted to buy a computer for me.” Sally cackled a laugh that sounded like a gurgling drain. “Me. I own a pawn shop, for chrissakes.”

  “You should’ve called. I could have helped set it up.”

  “I got a kid from the community college.” He butted ash overboard. “How ‘bout you? How’s that lady deputy of yours?”

  “Well. It’s all good. She’s busy, upholding the law and all that.”

  “Glad to hear it. You should make an honest woman of her.”

  “Plenty of time, Sally.”

  He grunted like a bull. “Don’t take time for granted, boy.”

  “Spoken like an old man.”

  “Spoken by an old man.” He took a long drag on the cigar. “So I know what I’m talking about.”

  “You always do. You wanna beer?” I dove into the cooler of ice.

  “No. You get old, the high ain’t as high, but the low is lower.”

  I opened another and took a long pull. There were tiny shards of ice in it.

  “Speaking of my lovely lady, you had any trouble with her ex-husband lately? Or can’t we say?”

  “Turn on the engine.”

  “I think they call it a motor on a boat,” I said, grinning as I leaned over and pushed the red start button. The motor roared to life.

  “Okay, smart guy. In the duffel there. Grab that radio thing.”

  I opened Sally’s duffel, a cheap sports bag, and found a device that looked like a high-tech walkie-talkie. I handed it to him and he switched it on. Sally played with a couple of knobs and then took the strap on the device and looped it through the frame of the Bimini top on the boat. The device hung in the air as if Sally was going to listen to the ponies from Gulfstream Park. But the device made no sound.

  “Care to share?” I said, frowning.

  Sally smiled his nicotine grin. “Sound jammer. Interferes with any listening device our friends from the FBI or Florida Department of Law Enforcement might care to try.”

  “That’s very James Bond of you, Sally.”

  “My kid from the community college. Boy’s got promise.”

  I smiled. “So anything from the state attorney for the Fifteenth Judicial Circuit?”

  “Nothing I can’t handle. I get my visits, bit of good cop, bad cop. Every now and then they’ll put a car on the store, but nothing happens so they get skittish about their budgets.”

  “They don’t get rough or anything?”

  “You think I can’t handle myself?”

  “I think you can handle anything, Sally.”

  “Believe it. I like to mess with them. I got that from you—you’re a bad influence. I like to see if I can make the good cop laugh and the bad cop lose his rag.”

  I laughed. “How do you go?”

  “Like feeding a baby to get ’em grumpy. Makin’ ’em laugh ain’t easy though. Buggers don’t got much sense of humor. I’m probably batting about .200.”

  “Good for you. Just let me know if they get a bit warm.”

  “They’re okay. Thirty years ago they might have got something on me. But I’m an old man now, Miami. I don’t get up to much these days. And the people I move stuff for got the connections to not get caught.”

  We both turned to the side of the boat where one of the fishing rods was bobbling. The tip bounced up and down like a tease, and then the rod bent right over. I stuck my foot out just in time to wedge the rod and stop it flipping over the side.

  “What the hell is that?” said Sally.

  “That’s called fishing, Sal. When we put little morsels of food on hooks and drop them into the water, we are supposed to wait for the fish to bite.”

  “Just pull it in, smart guy.”

  I grabbed the rod and started reeling in the line. I knew there was some kind of technique, letting the fish run and then winding in a bit. I couldn’t be bothered. I just wound the little handle as fast as I could. The rod bent more as I did. The fish was heavier than I thought it would be. I wished Ron were with us. He was the nautical one. I wound fast, and before I could stop, the end of the line came flying out of the water and into the bright blue sky. My catch launched up over our heads, like a slow-motion replay, spinning like a football, and then landing with a hollow thud on the deck of our boat.

  “What in the name of Babe Ruth is that,” said Sally, jumping back into his seat. It took me longer to figure it out than it should have.

  “It’s a stone crab.” The brown-red beast flashed its massive claw at us and tickled the fiberglass floor with its tiny feet. The feet kept clacking like it was on speed. It thrust a nipper at Sally, and he recoiled further up his seat.

  “Look at the claws on that thing,” he yelled. “Well, claw. It’s only got one.”

  “No, it’s got two, but one is much bigger.”

  “Did it eat the hook?”

  “I think it was just hanging on.” I bounced the rod in the air a few times and pulled the crab upwards like a puppet. After several yanks the hook came away from the crab’s claw and it fell to the deck. It didn’t look happy, but I’m not sure what a happy crab would look like.

  “What do we do with it.”

  “There used to be a guy who drank at Longboard’s, Pat McGinnis. He used to catch them.” The crab must have understood English because it turned at me and thrust its claw like a drunk in a knife fight.

  “Pat always said their claws come off and grow back. It’s a defense thing. He used to bring the claws into the bar, and throw the crabs back.” We both stared at the alien-looking crustacean.

  “You want to try ripping that thing off, is that what you’re telling me?” Sally looked at me like I had suggested we pool our credit card limits and buy the Yankees.

  “No, I am not saying that.”

  “Good, because I’m sorry, Miami, but you take that thing on, you are on your own.” I looked at Sally. He’d seen enough scary stuff in his lifetime to keep Stephen King in material for the rest of his.

  “I think we need to get it back in the water,” I said.

  “We?”

  I shook my head at him, and then I picked up the rod again and dangled the hook about the crab’s claw. It didn’t seem remotely interested. I gently angled the barb down between the pincers. The crab closed its claw and I lifted up. Then it opened its claw and dropped back to the deck.

  “He fell for that already,” said Sally. �
��Ain’t buying it again.”

  “Sounds like the Jets’ pass defense.”

  “Hey. You’ll leave the Jets out of this, if you know what’s good for you.”

  “Any thoughts here?”

  “I’m from Jersey. I don’t do seafood.”

  “You ever hear of the Jersey shore?”

  “You go to the Jersey shore for hot dogs.”

  “Well, thanks for your stellar advice.”

  “You want some advice? Man up.”

  I thought that was pretty rich coming from a guy who was marooned on a vinyl swivel chair, like an elephant escaping a mouse in a children’s book. I’d seen guys holding lobsters when I was a kid in New England, and the key seemed to be to get at them in a way that didn’t involve the nippers. The crab had gone quiet. I wasn’t sure if he was suffocating or sleeping, but I took my shot. I waved one hand in front of its eyes while I came at it from behind with the other hand. The waving had no effect. Picking it up did. I grabbed it from the backside and it was like putting voltage through a cartoon character. The crab flapped every limb it had. Its little legs, its mini-claw, its eyes. The big claw waved and snapped maniacally, and with an audible crunch. I didn’t wait to find out if it could reach around to scratch its back. I swiveled and launched the crab out into the water. The crustacean skipped across the surface like a bouncing stone, then dropped into the water, gone. I nodded to myself and brushed my hands together. Sally slid back into a normal seated position.

  “That’s how we do things where I’m from,” I said.

  “You’re from Connecticut. The scariest thing they got in Connecticut is oysters. More people die in Connecticut of boredom than heart disease.”

  “Can I interest you in that beer now?”

  “Most certainly.”

  I didn’t put the line back into the water. We drank our beers, and when we were done, removed the other line, pulled up anchor and motored our way to the boat shed. On the cruise in I remembered I had a question for Sally that didn’t involve seafood.

  “Sally, you heard of a drug called Maxx?”

  He shook his head and tapped his mouth with his forefinger.

  “I don’t like drugs, Miami. So many better ways to make a living.”

  “I’m not asking if you’re moving them.”

  “Max, you say?”

  “M-A-X-X.”

  He nodded. “What is it? Meth? Heroin?”

  “I’m not sure. We think an amphetamine. What I know is it’s a tablet and it’s already killed a kid.”

  “Bad news. I don’t like drugs, and I don’t have much time for those who deal in that business.” He tapped his lips again. Then he started nodding like he remembered something.

  “You see Buzz Weeks about those lessons yet?”

  “Not yet. Been kind of busy.”

  “Never too busy for cultural enrichment.”

  Sally had given me a saxophone from his pawn shop and directed me to a local jazz player for some tips on playing it. I hadn’t gone because my solitary attempt at blowing the thing sounded like a wounded rhino.

  “You go down to the Funky Biscuit, see Buzz Weeks. I’ll call him, tell him you’re coming. He’ll sort you out with the horn, and he’ll know something about your Maxx stuff.”

  “He uses that sort of thing?” I said, pulling the boat into the dock.

  “Buzz? No. Nothing more than secondhand smoke and rye whiskey for Buzz. But he plays a lot of smoky rooms, you know. Such things pass through rooms like that.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  THE FUNKY BISCUIT was in a small Mediterranean-style mall on Mizner. From the outside it looked like a dentist’s office. Inside was dark and clean. Stylish chrome chairs faced a polished stone bar, backlit by muted spotlights of pinks and oranges. The stage was lit in red. Canned jazz was playing over the speakers. Given the location I expected it to be Kenny G, but it had a whole lot more cred than that. The bar was full, the tables about half. A guy in a black T-shirt and black jeans was setting up some equipment on the stage. I asked at the host desk for Buzz Weeks. A very cute little thing with perfect teeth called someone on her desk phone.

  “You are?” she asked me.

  “Sal Mondavi sent me.” She repeated that, nodded, and then directed me to the stage. I sat on the stage and waited. Before long a rake-thin black man appeared from backstage. He was dressed in a black T-shirt, black trousers and a herringbone sports jacket. He wore a thin string noose around his neck, with a small hook at the bottom of it. He looked timeless, with a high forehead but no hair loss. His skin said he was thirty, but he had the eyes of a sixty-year-old.

  “Buzz Weeks?” I said.

  He nodded and shook my hand.

  “Miami Jones,” I said.

  “You know Sally?” he said, sitting next to me on the edge of the stage.

  “I do. He suggested I come see you.”

  “How do you know him?”

  “You could say he saved my life. You?”

  “Same. What can I do for you, sir?”

  “Couple things. Sally gave me a saxophone, said you’d be the guy to talk to about it.”

  He nodded. “What sort of saxophone?”

  I raised my eyebrows.

  Buzz shook his head. He pushed himself up and stepped onto the stage. The lights made him glow purple. He picked up a shiny saxophone from the stand. He brought it to me.

  “Does it have a curved neck like this one, or a straight neck?”

  “Straight.”

  “So an alto. This here’s a tenor sax.”

  “Okay.”

  “The reeds I have for alto will be too stiff for you. Go to Leonard’s Music. You know Leonard’s?”

  “I do.”

  “Tell ’em I sent you. Tell ’em to set you up with a starter pack for alto sax.”

  “Okay.”

  Buzz slipped the saxophone back into its stand. He sat back down on the stage with an audible harrumph.

  “What’s the other thing?”

  “Sally thought you might be able to point me in the right direction on something.” I looked around the room. People were drinking and eating, keeping to themselves. But I felt exposed on the stage.

  “Perhaps somewhere more private?” I said. “Your dressing room?”

  “Dressing room? This is a jazz club, not Carnegie Hall.”

  I shrugged.

  “Come on,” he said, leading me out the door near the stage. We walked through a corridor, past the kitchen and outside into a small, dark space between the buildings. Two black dudes were pressed against the wall, smoking. Buzz nodded at them, and they returned the favor. Buzz turned to me.

  “So what’s your problem?”

  “You tell me anything about this?” I pulled out the freezer baggie with the Maxx tablet inside. Buzz took it and held it up to his eyes, and then he threw the bag at me.

  “What the hell you think I am?”

  “A jazz player, and a very good one, from what I understand.”

  “You don’t understand nothing. You think it’s cool to come here and accuse me of pushing this, this . . .” He finished the thought with a throw of his hands.

  “No, Buzz, you’ve got it wrong. I’m not saying you’re into this garbage. But Sally thought you work in these clubs, maybe you see things.”

  “I see plenty.”

  “I’m sure you do. And a kid died because of this stuff. I don’t want a second one dead.”

  Buzz shuffled his feet. I noticed he was wearing wingtips. They were good quality. Leather soles, not rubber, and they tapped against the pavement.

  “You ain’t gonna find nothing here,” he said.

  “Come on, Buzz. Help me out.”

  “I’m serious. I don’t see that stuff here. This is Boca, man. You get it? This is white man’s jazz. This crowd be killing themselves with cigars and bourbon. This ain’t your crowd.”

  “So where’s my crowd.”

  He put his hands in his pockets like the
sixty-five degree air was turning his hands blue, and he shuffled some more.

  “Nothing gets back to you, Buzz. I swear.”

  “It always gets back, brother. Look, you get your sax stuff, and you come to a club called Ted’s. It’s in Lauderhill. You got a pen?”

  “No,” I said, pulling out my phone. “Just tell me.” He gave me the address, and the directions.

  “You come by Sunday night. Bring your sax, I show you some moves. And maybe there be a guy there who can help you with your questions.”

  Chapter Twenty

  I WOKE LATE on Friday. I had decided to stay on at the Funky Biscuit and see Buzz Weeks play. And play he did. He renewed my desire to learn to play the saxophone. It never ceased to amaze how the professionals could make the near impossible look like shelling peas. As I sat in the dark club, sipping a single malt, I remembered when I got picked up by the Oakland A’s for twenty-nine days. They had a roster of guys who could do things with the ball that defied physics. I saw Barry Zito hit a soup can off the top of a barstool with a baseball, from forty feet. Throwing fast balls. Down the aisle of a moving bus. He hit the can twenty-seven times in a row. We got to Camden Yards to play the Orioles before he ever missed. We might have been there all night waiting. At his best Zito had that kind of ungodly control. I’ve set that same game up at Longboard Kelly’s. Most people struggle to hit the stool, let alone the can. Let alone twenty-seven times. Now I’m not saying it’s brain surgery or anything, but what it was was the perfect confluence of gift and work ethic. And so it was with Buzz Weeks. He and his band could take a piece of bent brass tube and make your soul cry, like it was the instrument rather than the man that had its heart broken.