Salty Sky

by Seth Coker

  He gathered his stuff for the work trip. Packing was a core competency for a charter pilot, and it took two minutes to complete. Cale then selected an evening outfit before wavering—to shower or not to shower? He decided to get clean and keep the shower door open. Jimmy rested on the bath mat, not minding the occasional splashing water. The Beretta waited on the counter, two short steps away if he didn’t trip over the dog.

  Cale dressed in nicer-than-normal summer wear: A white button-down, beige cords. It was a nice restaurant with a nice girl. He donned lace-up running shoes, letting practicality trump style. If he needed to run, he would need to run fast. He calf-holstered the Beretta. It had been so long since he’d worn the ankle holster that he was surprised it wasn’t dry rotted. He hefted his bag, changed the alarm to AWAY, and left the house.

  Outside, he set the bag down and walked Jimmy up the driveway and down the street to his sitters. He chatted with the parents while their elementary school kids rolled Jimmy on his back. Four small hands scratched the big belly. Cale walked home slightly faster than his natural pace. In his front yard, he grabbed the bag without breaking stride and followed the stepping stones to the Whaler, careful not to splash mud on his pant legs.

  Job one was surviving the trip home and with that accomplished, he motored toward the marina. He’d had no mental progress on finding and eliminating his pursuers. Might inspiration strike over a glass of red and a porterhouse?

  Mid-trip, he radioed the marina and was directed to an interior slip where the entrance geometry proved advanced but ultimately solvable. Cale removed cushions to access a bench seat locker and dropped the bag inside, affixed a padlock, then replaced the cushions to recreate a comfortable seat. He set fenders but wouldn’t need them. It took several minutes to secure the lines properly because the slip was oversized for the vessel. The harbormaster took Cale’s credit card info efficiently, and when Cale departed the harbormaster’s office, the digital clock read 7:25 p.m.

  As he approached Framed, laughter spilled over her flybridge. The calm sound of drips on the dock rippled outward, starting Cale’s transformation from predatory animal into social being. He noticed that the captain had joined Joe and Tony in sporting a Tommy Bahama shirt over khakis and boat shoes. The captain’s shirt sported vertical rows of a Polynesian hula girl bobblehead doll. The nurses wore summer dresses and various forms of angled heels. Ashley’s heels appeared to be four-inch-high bamboo wedges that put her height close enough to Cale’s that he semiconsciously improved his posture.

  He boarded unnoticed and without invitation, climbed the ladder, and received a warm greeting at the top. The captain poured a drink from a pitcher. Sangria, slightly chilled and full of fruit. Appropriate. Delicious. Cale picked the fruit out with his fingers and ate it. Somehow, Ashley’s friends had already severed Cale from the group and had him cornered. Joe and Tony had Ashley to themselves as the captain tidied his bar and appetizers.

  “Did you and Ash have fun today?”

  “It was great. Ended up a beautiful day, didn’t you think?”

  “Sure was. She says y’all went to an island that only had golf carts. That sounds fun.”

  “It was super fun. There are lots of fun islands between South Carolina and the Chesapeake Bay. Just north of here, you have islands with wild horses. To the south, you have the Gullahs. In the Chesapeake, you have two islands where the red-haired, blue-eyed islanders have a British accent. Blackbeard was caught hiding behind islands not too far away. When I was a kid, I knew a German who’d been on a U-boat hiding around these islands. When he told me that, it made the big World War II cannon compounds on Cape Lookout make more sense.”

  “Umm, OK. Will your friends come back this weekend?”

  So historian slash tour guide was not what she was looking for? Misreading a youthful social situation like that had the potential to make you feel out-of-date if you let it. Cale didn’t let it. He thought about amusing himself by continuing his island history lessons. He put an over/under on one minute for the shine to dry up in their eyeballs, and he could talk about Fort Sumter alone for five minutes. But, instead, he chose mercy and answered her. “One of them is. He’s returning my car.”

  The one friendly with Blake wanted to ask questions. He recognized the antsy look in her face. Was he the one coming back? Was he really getting married? Cale felt a bit sorry for her. Not as sorry as he felt for Blake’s fiancée, ex-wife, or others who’d found themselves in his crosshairs. Somehow, he’d assumed that, with age, Blake would get less rather than more misogynistic or selfish or whatever it was. Blake had a bad combination of charisma and a cloudy moral compass, with his intent and messaging frequently misaligned. Cale found it interesting that he labeled Blake as having a cloudy moral compass when he, himself, would be disappointed if he didn’t kill three guys this weekend.

  The conversation with the two girls ran the length of Cale’s drink. They were young, attractive, and smart. They were unseasoned with judgment, not jaded by life’s cycles. Their cynicism levels healthily hovered between no longer excited for the high school pep rally and betting at wedding ceremonies on the marriage’s length.

  Normally, he’d enjoy the conversation. He appreciated a look into his daughters’ peer group, but, in the end, he was also still an animal in its prime. Maybe the backside of prime, but still somewhere within the bounds of prime. Right? He was the alpha lion with two shredded ears sitting on the termite mound in the sunshine, surrounded by lounging lionesses and his progeny tormenting meerkats in the dirt, awaiting the night’s hunt. Life was good. But even sleeping, the big cat scanned the horizon and watched for the next young nomad whose papa sent him on his way and told him to find his own pride. Each time an interloper showed up, it was a little harder for the big lion to get off the mound. The desire to service the lionesses had grown less pressing as time marched on. Now it was the desire to keep the progeny going that brought the roar, the teeth, and the claws out.

  That was a wonderful analogy, but Cale needed to leave the savannah grasses behind. He was slightly impatient, ready to pick back up with Ashley. He decided to be assertive in dinner’s seating arrangements.

  He heard Ashley laugh, and it drew his eye. Her neck tilted back, mouth open, she brought a hand to her mouth and covered the informality of her laughter. She was in the present, a beautiful moment. Cale could bear it no longer, excused himself from her friends, and intruded on the other conversation. Quickly, Tony and Joe had him laughing too.

  The group walked the half mile to dinner, which, without a shepherd, took the herd of cats nearly thirty minutes. The restaurant was in a small outdoor mall that housed high-end clothing stores, three fine-dining establishments, and one small nightclub. The restaurants and the nightclub had large outdoor patios that overlooked the same central courtyard and oversized koi pond. After a rain like yesterday’s, it would not be surprising if a small gator had a new home in the shallows and there were fewer giant koi. The patios bustled with the noise of people and the competing music coming from the various establishments.

  Their party sat inside, at a semiprivate table behind a Chinese paper screen. The otherwise modern restaurant used an old-style salad bar beneath an angled glass sneeze guard. Spinach. Lettuce. Cherry tomatoes. Unpeeled cucumber slices. Baby carrots. Diced peppers. Bacon bits. Croutons. Sunflower seeds. French, thousand island, and creamy Italian in inset buckets. Oil and vinegar in decanters on the bar counter. It was nothing fancy, no modern food trends, but everything was in good form. The word fusion was absent from the menu.

  Seating worked out, with Ashley sitting beside Cale. It was a good time. Everyone enjoyed side conversations between laughs at Brooklyn stories. Tony and Joe could take their show on the road.

  Dinner ended at nine forty-five, when Tony suggested a nightcap at the nightclub next door. Cale’s only drink of the night took place on Framed. He only counted the sangria, because he really hadn’t enjoyed the Scotch from this afternoon. He never drank
more than one the night before a charter. The sangria supplanted the previously envisioned cabernet, but the others shared three bottles, all red. Yes, Cale’s water with lemon was quite delicious and left him an untarnished palette to enjoy the meat.

  At the nightclub, a one-man band played a guitar through a loop pedal. He banged on the side of the guitar to record a drumbeat. He played and recorded rhythm guitar. He was now playing lead guitar. Then he looped in the drum and the rhythm behind it while he took the song where he wanted it to go. His sound was very full. Not for the first time, Cale was amazed at the amount of talent in this country. (This is what people can do when they don’t have to spend half their day walking to the well and back.) Every church had a singer who could make you cry. Every town had a running back who could play in the NFL if things went his way. Painting. Pottery. Photography. Writing. Dancing. So much ability it was hard to see why the famous rose to the top. Again he wondered why they were so well compensated when they were so replaceable. Maybe it was like diamonds, and the issue wasn’t rarity but who controlled the supply. Surely the Internet would bust the bottleneck at some point.

  The three girls took to the small dance area. The guitarist looked pleased, but Cale wondered whether the girls’ flame was too bright for a Monday night. Would they prove too intimidating for suitors? Too formidable for competitors? Cale took the guys’ orders and bought the first round plus his own standard mocktail of tonic and lime in a highball glass. On the dance floor, Ashley moved half as much and looked twice as good as the other two. She isolated different body parts—hips first, shoulders now, then arms up, hands intertwined. She spun somehow without Cale seeing her move her feet. He kept watching, waiting for her to go back to hips.

  Team Tommy Bahama found the Yankees game behind the bar. A public flogging was preferable to watching baseball for Cale. Backing the boast, he headed for the dance floor. The first guy on the floor received a special amount of attention. To the brave was given the world. And to the well-coiffed, intelligent, and successful man leaning on the wall, it should be said that a coward died a thousand deaths.

  Cale didn’t embarrass himself, thankful once more for his three most valuable college credits. After a few songs, the dynamic moved to where Ashley and Cale were dancing. The guitar man slowed it down with Van Morrison’s beach town standard, “Into the Mystic,” and Ashley’s friends receded.

  Cale and Ashley slow danced a modified shag, since neither knew the exact steps. Cale was pretty sure they looked good, for what it mattered, simply because she looked so good (kind of like how he and his daughters looked at their weddings, he thought before he could stop himself). The dance provided plenty of opportunity for violating the principal’s six inches of separation rule, yet the pair maintained fluidity and a PG rating. There were short windows of close talking, mouth to ear. Cale barely defeated his adolescent desire to have every inch of their fabric and skin pushed together.

  The dance changed the evening’s tone. As they left the dance floor holding hands, something unspoken transpired. Between Cale and Ashley. Among the entire group. Tony delivered the clean break.

  “Hey, Joe. Let’s me, youse, and Cap go to the ship and play hearts. Dollar a point.”

  “Nothing better than found money. Tony, I thought youse knew better than to play when youse was in the cups.”

  The captain nodded in agreement.

  “Good evening, ladies,” Joe said. “We cast off at nine. If you miss us, rent a car and find us in Virginia Beach tomorrow night. Cale, I have your card. I’ll give you a call for visiting or transporting some grandkids this fall. Good night.”

  Cale thanked Joe again for dinner. There was a round of handshakes and hugs as the men exited. Ashley and Cale sat outside, and her friends returned to the dance floor. Then her friends were saying good-night. Time slipped by. The entertainer packed up. It was an exciting ride. Infatuation? Check. Lust? Definitely. Love? No. But possible.

  Cale couldn’t remember thinking that was a possibility in this decade. This was sort of his and Ashley’s third date, and he couldn’t remember a third date since Maggie where he didn’t already know it was a temporary assignment. Temporary assignments were fine as long as both parties were on the same page, which was rare in his experience, regardless of how much it was discussed.

  Cale noticed he was spinning his wedding ring. Perhaps he hadn’t given the others a true chance. He conversed silently, Mags, are you OK with this if it goes somewhere? It has been a long trek in the emotional wilderness.

  It was near midnight, and Cale needed to be at the FBO by seven to perform the extra poststorm checks. He didn’t want the night to end, but for him to do his job, it had to. His brain couldn’t navigate the logistical obstacles needed to take this further tonight anyway. Why the hotel room? You already had a packed bag? Did you think I was in the bag? He could navigate those shoals without mentioning the throat slitters who were, he assumed, watching Simpsons reruns at his house. Why is that pistol strapped to your leg? That was a trickier reef. One truism in boating: Sandy shoals forgive more than coral reefs.

  Of course, even if he read the chart correctly and ran the gauntlet, he needed to be fair to his passengers and get five hours of sleep. Nobody chartered a plane to have a grumpy, sleepy pilot. The sales brochure promised a confident, tanned man with a smile and a kind, calming demeanor.

  The next thought escaped Cale’s mouth before he was aware of it. This is what people meant when they said “thinking out loud” but meant “talking out loud.”

  “Would you like to come on my charter with me? I can sign you on as a pilot in training.”

  “What about my stuff?”

  Positive momentum. “Bring it. I’m staying in a hotel nearby tonight. It’s tough to get cabs at my house.”

  See, he knew he’d think of something for that one. Maybe he could have overcome the pistol thing too. But not the sleep. Remember the sleep.

  “I’ll have the cab pick you up off Framed around six forty-five.”

  He could see she was somewhat surprised he’d given up on tonight. Trust me, love, it was not age or desire. Or ability. Don’t give that seed of doubt a chance to germinate.

  “Don’t you pilots call that ‘oh six hundred something something?’”

  “Not when talking to civilians.” A small jest.

  “Will I get back to Charleston for work in time?”

  “If you want.” A borderline cocky jest. “My charter ends Friday, then I’ll fly you home.”

  They figured out the logistics during the walk back to Framed. Cale received a good-night kiss. Very sweet. It put more sorrow in the parting but more excitement in thinking about what was coming.

  With Ashley back aboard Framed, Cale quickly retrieved his bag from the Whaler, found a cab, and checked into the hotel. As he lay down, the bedside clock read one thirty in the morning.

  31

  DESPITE THE COOL shower, Francisco’s forehead beaded with sweat as he dressed. The hard morning workout had cleared his mind.

  Francisco decided to vacate the hotel this morning. If they failed today—he would not fail today—he would pay for Mr. Coleman’s removal. Torturing him would yield twenty-year-old information. Given the opportunity, he would enjoy the process of extracting that information. But there were enough ghosts to chase. And now, today, he didn’t think he’d have the opportunity. His best outcome was reduced to a kill that wouldn’t alert the authorities. Being there personally enhanced his mythology but was not essential. He did yearn for the rush of excitement of vengeance extracted, the intoxication of vindicating a brother’s death, a proxy kill to represent all the norteamericano soldiers who coordinated the hunt and murder of El Capo. This kill would be personally satisfying, given the past, but was mostly a bedside note left for his future pursuers that their success might mean their demise.

  Last night had ended in frustration for Francisco. They returned to Coleman’s house and cut the power before entering, but the al
arm had a backup. Woof-woof-woof. They rapidly searched the small house. With spotlight-mounted guns and night-vision goggles, they moved quickly through the rooms. He was not home, and his boat was gone too. When they left the house, they waited out the responding officers’ sirens deep in the driveway of the lot where no house was ever built.

  Returning to the hotel, he’d had a drink with his men at the bar. They switched to speaking Spanish to convey sharper nuances to their thoughts and ideas. Sleep was fitful as Francisco’s subconscious tried to find solutions to his problems in his dreams. He eventually relented and started his workout early.

  While dressing, Francisco reviewed his plan for Mr. Coleman’s death at the airport. Board the chartered plane first. He was confident Coleman would not recognize him, would be ignorant of the danger. While the four men were alone in the cabin, the Cuban would slip a wire over Coleman’s head, strangle him before the plane powered up. Francisco had heard the Cuban was legendary with such work in close quarters, and he looked forward to seeing it. After ending Coleman’s life, they would stuff him in his own plane’s locker closet, deplane, cross the tarmac, board the Gulfstream, and take off for Savannah. If things went poorly, they’d take off for Bogotá. If they went really badly, Caracas. Even with Chávez dead, America had no influence there. If needed, twenty minutes after takeoff they could be over international waters. This was not the type of crime where the United States would scramble fighter jets to retrieve or destroy the perpetrators.

  He met Alberto and the Cuban in the hotel’s restaurant. A bowl of fruit and a mug of coffee waited in front of his empty seat. Each man’s travel bag was at his feet. They were properly prepared.