Hawk Channel Chase

by Tom Corcoran

  I crossed the southbound lane, veered away from the skiff slips and aimed for a slot too narrow for a car in the “paid trailer” section. I wedged the cycle between a Dodge van and a Toyota pickup, set the Triumph on its stand and pretended to check my rear wheel for a problem. Barely hidden, I scoped the dock.

  Black taillight trim, yellow county tags on the Crown Vic. I remembered seeing the car in front of Louie’s Backyard the day the drunk had interrupted Chicken Neck Liska’s liquid lunch. Now Liska’s Crimes Against Persons Unit boss, Lt. Dick Wonsetler, and Captain Turk were chatting, passing the time of day. The main reason Sam had given me for not going to Turk was that he could “get a little frantic.” He sure as hell didn’t look frantic at the moment.

  Sweat streamed out of my helmet. I needed to remain unseen, get out of the parking area. I wished to hell I had a distant-eavesdrop device, if only to assure myself that Turk wasn’t being recruited to shaft Sam. I remained kneeling, shifted my focus for a moment from the dock conversation to the paved area around me. I must have stared at the Dodge van’s white license plate for ten seconds before its words sank into my skull. “US Government. For Official Use Only.” A white Grand Caravan with tinted windows? What kind of official use requires tint?

  “You got a problem?”

  The midday sun tripled its warmth. I looked up at a Florida Fish and Wildlife officer. His shadow fell across my upper body. I didn’t have to squint, but I had to think fast for an answer.

  “The rear end felt wobbly and mushy,” I said. “I figured I had a slow leak, but I don’t see a screw head or roofing nail in the tread. Must’ve been my imagination.”

  “Wouldn’t happen here anyway.” The officer pretended to have his thumbs hooked in his belt. He was ready for any move I made.

  Certain that his words had a double meaning, I expected to be arrested for a bogus charge of stalking deputies on the job. “Why not here?” I said.

  He pointed to the Shell station across the intersection. “Too close to where they might patch your tire. Flats only happen in the middle of nowhere, or your driveway.” He laughed at his own humor.

  “Got that right,” I said. “I should probably go over there and borrow a gauge.”

  “You local?” he said.

  I nodded, felt sweat splash onto my shirt. “For years.”

  He pointed at the dock. “You know that cop’s name?”

  I pretended to not know whom he meant, then let myself focus on Wonsetler and Turk. “It’s Wonsetler. He’s one of the sheriff’s top boys.”

  “Son of a bitch,” said the officer. “I’ve known that man’s name for ages and I’ll be damned if it’ll stick in my memory. He looks like a barracuda standing next to Captain Turk there. Past hour or so he’s been talking to all the boat captains. Kind of my job, I thought. Thanks for your help.”

  He walked slowly past the dock security office, climbed into his F-150XL pickup, drove toward the lot exit. I felt light-headed from loss of body fluids. No matter how fast I drove downtown, my shirt wouldn’t dry.

  I parked next to a bike rack in the shaded alley next to La Trattoria, carried my helmet in the rear door of Virgilio’s. My sinuses flexed to block the stale smells of dried booze spills and a pine cleaner that hadn’t worked. The bartender who had suffered Cormier the day before was setting up for his afternoon business.

  “Your chum coming back to meet you?” he said. “No pun intended.”

  “I accept no blame. But I will accept a glass of water and a shot of Bacardi 8. What inspired him to get so toasted? Did he say?”

  “His wife hates him for being an egghead dork, or words to that effect.”

  “How long did he stay?” I said.

  “Maybe twenty minutes after you left. We showed him the exit after he experienced an unintended and spontaneous urine flow.”

  “Pissed his pants?”

  “And a charming dude he was.”

  I shot the rum, put a ten on the bar and asked the man to guard my helmet with his life.

  “It’ll be here. You can keep your tip if you send me back that guy’s old lady.”

  “You’re better off this way,” I said.

  “I’ll be the judge.” He laughed. “This job, I see all kinds.”

  I walked down Duval and found myself unable to invent a last-minute strategy for dealing with Cormier. My mind wandered back to Jerry Hammond’s computer rig and the router he’d installed for his “wired” network. Why hadn’t he upgraded to the more common wireless type, if only for his Internet hookup? With only the one laptop plus a printer and a couple peripherals connected by direct wires, he didn’t need a network. If his friends had brought computers into his home to transfer or swap files, he could have done the job just as simply by burning CDs or DVDs. The mishmash of wires called out for an explanation.

  Posing as a mind-numbed tourist, Copeland Cormier walked out of St. Paul’s. He must have been studying the stained-glass windows, watching the sidewalk for my arrival, timing his departure. My clothing smelled of my brief time in Virgilio’s, tainting the fresh, warm air on the church walkway. I wondered for a moment if I had carried around that morning-after stink of beer slop and cigarette smoke when I had bartended years ago.

  Pretending not to notice me, Cormier said, “Pier House Beach.”

  “Bullshit,” I said. “This sneaky crap is getting tiresome.”

  Copeland stopped, scanned the architecture. “This is for him, not me.” He tried to keep his lips from moving as he spoke. “He’s my friend and he’s yours too.”

  “You and my friend have your gig,” I said. “I have mine. I hope both succeed. If there’s an overlap, I don’t want to know. I sure as fuck don’t want to get caught in the middle.”

  “You’re already there, Rutledge.”

  “And you can count on my silence. But you can’t dick around with my time or my mind or my future.”

  He gave up trying to hide our conversation. “Is this because of yesterday afternoon?” he said. “I can’t deny I was way out of line.”

  “No, Dr. Cormier. This is a lifetime of stress reduction and jail avoidance.”

  “You could be hanging your friend out to dry.”

  “Or I could be just like him,” I said, “trusting his wits to keep him where he feels most secure.”

  “So you’ve spoken with Captain Wheeler today?”

  That stopped me short. I heard it as a dead-end question. If he was Sam’s ally no answer mattered. If Cormier, by some convoluted strategy of self-preservation or greed, wanted to pinpoint Sam, wanted him arrested or hurt, either answer could work to his favor. And against my friend.

  It wasn’t dead-end. It was dangerous.

  “Two days ago you were straight out of a Le Carré novel,” I said. “Yesterday at Virgilio’s you were a Graham Greene character. You drew attention to yourself. You ignored your own insistence on secrecy. Weren’t you risking your charity plan, the whole operation? Screwing yourself, your wife and Sam?”

  “I suppose…”

  “That’s what I thought.”

  “I’ll finish my sentence,” he said. “You’re going too cerebral on this, Rutledge. We don’t play brains. We don’t employ spycraft. It took research and knowledge to launch our operation, and it takes a shitload of money to stay in gear. Sam doesn’t pay for his gas, for instance. If he has to cancel a charter to make a delivery, he is paid back to compensate for his missed date. Then we pay him again so he can give the client he stiffed a free day on the water. We maintain all this with street smarts, grunt work and balls. That’s what my team employs and it’s what the other side uses.”

  “So yesterday…”

  “I fucking got ripped, but that doesn’t mean I spewed top secrets all over the saloon. Maybe I’ve got issues on the home front and it’s my problem, nobody else’s.”

  No comment.

  “Meanwhile,” he continued, “I believe our friend has allowed his wits to put the worst possible spin on re
cent events. I’m not saying it’s stupid not to trust me. But I assure you, all choices considered, all spin aside, it’s a gambit of risk.”

  “These church meetings, you and me acting like intelligence agents, why not make our risk go away? Why don’t we chat on the radio?”

  “Radio?” he said, wide-eyed.

  “Sure. We can talk in pre-designated non-sequiturs, we can’t be tapped, and we pick the frequency and time of day.”

  “Who told you about all this?”

  “I was in the Navy. How do you think we communicated ship-to-ship?”

  Cormier locked his eyes on mine for five or six seconds then looked to the sky, shook his head. He walked away, going north on Duval.

  I had guessed right. His squad probably checked in clean and simple on an open circuit. Maybe UHF Channel 16. For all the Keys to hear and not a soul to understand, no one able to trace senders or recipients.

  Back in the lane, I coasted the motorcycle past the porch.

  “Party time,” said a man’s loud voice that I didn’t recognize right away. With bright reflections off the screening, I couldn’t see inside. The porch rear door opened. “You’ve still got time to catch up,” said Marnie.

  I stopped the Triumph, pulled off my helmet. Captain Turk stood behind Marnie. Each had a beer in hand.

  “Did you hear a loud fluttering noise?” said Turk.

  “Fifty air conditioners at the Eden House?” I said.

  “Nope.”

  “What, a helicopter?”

  “Not quite like that,” said Turk. “It had a much tighter rhythm. We can’t decide if it was the fan hitting the shit or vice versa.”

  I put the motorcycle in its condo-shed and locked the shed’s swinging door. Marnie watched me warily as I entered the porch.

  Captain Turk looks like his nickname should be Turk. I had never heard him called by another name, first or last. He goes about two-forty, all muscle and bulk and his neck size matches my hat size. Over the years anyone who had thought that his appearance connoted a lesser intellect was proved wrong in decisive ways. Or ignored like a dead leaf, because he didn’t care about much beyond fishing and friends.

  Turk wore his usual lightweight fishing shirt, blue jeans, and brown deck shoes. Wrap-around sunglasses hung from his neck on a leather cord. White skin, goggle-like around his eyes, offset his dark tan. It had been a while since I had socialized with Turk, not that this surprise get-together qualified. I saw for the first time light-toned hair that could no longer claim to be sun-bleached.

  In her wrinkled polo shirt, khaki pants and ratty sneakers, Marnie Dunwoody looked as if she hadn’t slept for days. I had never noticed the spider webs next to her eyes. Never seen her mouth tremble with sadness, or sensed defeat and bitterness in her body language.

  The porch air was only a degree or two cooler than outside, but the change felt fine. I sat on a threadbare canvas captain’s chair, declined the beer Turk offered me from a paper sack. I already had a shot of pre-noon Bacardi in my system. It had fueled me through my encounter with Copeland Cormier, perhaps with a shade too much confrontation.

  “What’s up?” I said.

  “It’s down,” said Turk. “The Marine Patrol found a Maverick half-sunk south of the Saddlebunch Keys. It was full of water, sitting just under the surface. The only things visible were the poling platform, a Yamaha motor cover and the top of the console. It’s got Sam’s hull registration number.”

  “Sam just bought a 115 to replace his worn-out 90,” I said. “He kept saying, ‘Thirty more pounds and three miles an hour.’”

  “He claimed he would save on gas,” said Marnie, “enough to pay for the motor in ten months. Now that’s shot to hell.”

  “I have a hard time believing it’s really Sam’s,” said Turk. “There’s talk that he destroyed evidence. Evidence of what crime, we don’t know.”

  “You got that from Wonsetler?”

  “I knew that was you in the parking lot,” he said. “I figured you were rolling low-key. I didn’t want to scream out your name and draw attention.”

  “How do they see it?” I said.

  “There are people who wonder if Sam’s into human trafficking. They think he might have dropped a boatload of Cubans in the Marquesas last Sunday. Nine new citizens of the USA.”

  “Oh, horsecrap,” I said. “We know he’s not a coyote. Someone’s trying to twist his arm, and it’s not the sheriff’s office. They don’t give a shit about refugees unless they’re swiping shirts off clotheslines in Marathon or hitchhiking up US 1. Plus, what idiot would sink his boat with a new motor and the hull numbers intact? Even the dopes who abandon cars along the highway take their tags along.”

  “So if Dick Wonsetler is just a messenger,” said Turk, “what’s the message? He sure as hell knew I wouldn’t turn in Sam.”

  “And sure as hell Sam knew you can’t really sink a Maverick,” I said.

  Turk agreed. “Wonsetler asked me about that. I told him it would take 1,000 feet of anchor chain and a V-8 block jammed in the console. But it probably would roll over and dump all the weight.”

  “What the fuck is Sam up to?” said Marnie. She leaned forward, focused a cold gaze on me. “I have this horrible feeling that you know what’s going on, Alex. You and I have been friends for a long time and that’s why it’s horrible. You’ve been told to keep it from me. Please tell me I’m wrong.”

  “I have not been told to…”

  “Okay, Alex, asked to keep it from me. You can count on one hand the crimes someone might commit in a boat. You get technical, two hands, but you don’t run out of fingers. I managed to adjust to the idea that he isn’t seeing another woman. You were right the other day when you said he wouldn’t do it that way. Now the only thing left to think is that he doesn’t trust me. Why is he not coming home at night? Answer: he’s doing something after dark. Is he afraid I’ll smear his privacy on the front page of the Citizen?”

  She stopped talking and stared. Her silence challenged me to respond.

  What had Sam said when I asked about his boat?

  “Hung on a davit in suburbia, where it will stay. Totally out of sight.”

  Years ago, when I had needed help sneaking ashore on Summerland to snoop the beach property of a car thief and killer, Sam had been there for me. We started with Sam stashing his boat on the bay side of Cudjoe during daylight hours. Later we had gone to the canal adjacent to Johnny and Laurel Baker’s home on Blue Gill Lane, picked up the boat and run our deal on beginners’ luck.

  “There’s another way to look at it,” I said. “It doesn’t impeach trust.”

  “What?” said Marnie. “He doesn’t want to stretch his ethics and pitch me a load of bullshit?”

  “That’s close,” I said. “If you held back on a story because Sam’s your partner, how would you feel about yourself for the rest of your career? If you knew your reputation was as bogus as a plastic mango, could you go in the restroom at work and look in the mirror every day?”

  She sat back slowly, allowed some of her steam to waft away. “What’s with his boat being half-sunk? If evidence is destroyed, evidence of what? If it’s really his boat, did he try to sink it or did someone else? If it’s not his boat, whose is it?”

  “Those sound like a reporter’s questions,” said Turk, “rapid-fire style.”

  “No offense,” she said.

  Turk ignored her sarcasm. “If it’s a stolen boat made to look like Sam’s, the real owner doesn’t matter.”

  “If someone other than Sam scuttled the boat, no matter whose it is,” I said, “it’s an attempt to set up Sam for a bust he doesn’t deserve.”

  Marnie crunched her beer can to an hourglass shape. “Great logic, Alex, but your phrasing tells me he deserves to be busted for something.”

  “Who found it, the Marine Patrol?”

  “Good question,” said Turk. “Wonsetler didn’t say. All I know is they found it south of Saddlebunch, and that’s anywhere from Geiger
Key out to Pelican Shoal over to American Shoal and back up to Sugarloaf Creek. That’s thirty square miles of long-term parking, but more important, it’s Hawk Channel. That makes it a hazard to navigation, so they must have towed it to shore.”

  “How did they find it with just the platform and engine cover sticking up?”

  “Better question, unless someone saw it being sunk. Which, after dark, is not a reasonable assumption.”

  “Unless it had a GPS transmitter aboard,” I said. “Maybe Sam found out it was there.”

  Turk shrugged.

  I looked at Marnie. Her questions told me she was keeping a tight grasp on her grief, her bewilderment. The most telling detail of her state of mind was that she hadn’t asked me about the Jerry Hammond case. She had no way to know that I had spent the morning in his home. But there was always the chance that, as a neighbor, I might have heard a rumor, a hint of motive, a tale of comings and goings. I never had known her to put private life, convenience, or personal safety ahead of her profession.

  “What makes you so sure that the boat isn’t Sam’s?”

  “He wouldn’t let it happen,” said Turk. “It’s too easy for a boat handler like Sam to make Fancy Fool invisible.”

  “So if he got jumped mid-stream or, say, on Sugarloaf, he might hide his skiff on…”

  “Oh, maybe Cudjoe,” said Turk.

  We understood each other. I had my suspicions, and he knew or had figured out where Sam had stashed his boat. “Let’s take my truck,” he said. “It’s a nice day for a drive.”

  Marnie came out of her reverie, picked up on our tone. “Am I being taken for another ride?”

  “This time,” said Turk, “it’s only forty-six miles, round-trip.”

  “And if we don’t find what you think we might find?” she said.