Rising Tide

by Wayne Stinnett

  The Revenge came up fast and close, then Tony pulled back on the throttles and settled in beside us at twenty-five knots.

  “How fast does it go?” Alberto asked.

  “She,” I corrected him. “You call a boat she, not it. She goes a little over fifty knots, almost sixty miles per hour.”

  “Is Ambrosia fast?”

  I smiled at him. Apparently, the kid was a speed demon, like me.

  “Ambrosia is even faster,” I replied. “But she doesn’t go real fast very often.”

  His eyes grew wide. I figured he was trying to imagine that coastal cruise ship we’d seen earlier going faster than the Revenge.

  It took nearly three more hours before we picked up Harbor Key Light off to starboard. I texted Detective Andersen, giving him Alberto’s full name and those of his parents, and asked him to meet us at the Rusty Anchor.

  By the time we arrived, it was mid-afternoon. Savannah had let Alberto drive a good bit of the way but took the helm as we approached the shallower waters nearer the Keys. She slowed and Tony let us go ahead of him.

  Savannah kept us right in the middle of East Bahia Honda Channel at twenty knots, until we neared Moser Channel and the Seven Mile Bridge. There, she slowed to trawler speed.

  Alberto studied the chart plotter and then looked up at me. “Isn’t your island over there?” he asked, pointing off to starboard and aft.

  “Yes, it is,” I replied. “But we keep Sea Biscuit at the Rusty Anchor. It’s too big to fit under the house.”

  “Why do you call her Sea Biscuit?”

  “Seabiscuit,” Savannah said. “Just one word—was a champion racehorse from long ago. When I bought her, my dad had her completely rebuilt with brand new, more powerful engines. She was fast then, but even faster now.”

  Twenty minutes later, before entering Rusty’s canal, Savannah turned the boat around, then backed her into the end slip, across from Salty Dog.

  “Whose big sailboat is that?” Alberto asked. “And whose airplane?”

  “Both are ours,” I replied. “Would you like to go flying in it?”

  “Can we?”

  “Definitely,” I replied. “That’s how we’re going to get to Ambrosia.”

  Jimmy met us at the dock, and I tossed him a line, then jumped over with the stern line in hand and we quickly made her fast.

  “There’s room for the Revenge next to the barge,” Jimmy said.

  “Let’s go help Tony,” I called up to Alberto.

  He came quickly down to the gunwale and jumped over to the dock, just as the Revenge idled past. Alberto ran ahead of me and Jimmy.

  “How’d it go up in Fort Misery, man?” Jimmy asked.

  “We learned who Alberto is and he’s regained much of his memory. That’s all that’s important.”

  “So, you know who his parents are?”

  “Were,” I replied. “Alberto’s an orphan.”

  “Aw, man. That sucks.”

  “Savannah and I talked about it last night,” I said. “If it comes to pass, we’re going to petition for adoption.”

  “What?” he exclaimed, as we reached the barge where Alberto was waiting.

  “I’ll tell you all about it later,” I promised. Then to Alberto, I said, “Go ahead on over onto Rusty’s barge. Paul will throw you a line.”

  We joined him, and Alberto caught his first line, not really sure what to do with it.

  “Let Tony maneuver closer,” I told him, catching another line from Tank. “She’s too big to pull in. When the boat bumps the fender, loop the line twice around that cleat.”

  He looked around and, seeing the deck cleat, positioned himself near it. I tied off the spring line, while Jimmy took care of the bow, and then I went over to Alberto and showed him how to make a proper cleat hitch.

  “No need to get fancy and wrap it a million times,” I said. “One full loop around both ends, then over the top, and under the end.” I showed him as I explained. “Then make a loop so the bitter end is on the bottom and put it over the other end of the cleat and pull it tight. Extra loops and knots won’t make it any more secure.”

  I then untied it and let him do it. He struggled with the loop at the end, but finally twisted it the right way and pulled on the bitter end, making it fast.

  “Now, what would you do with the rest of the dock line?” I asked him.

  He looked at the ten feet of bitter end and shrugged. “I dunno.”

  I straightened the line out and brought the end back to the cleat, where I knelt beside him.

  “Do like this,” I said, pinching the end of the line and turning it half a turn. I released it and did it again. Then again, until the line started to coil around itself.

  “When the coil gets big, use your palm, like this, and keep turning it till it’s snug and coiled tightly beside the cleat.”

  We left the others and went back to Sea Biscuit. Savannah had added more spring lines.

  “Can I make the coils?” Alberto asked.

  She looked down at him and said, “Sure, honey. You just knock yourself out.”

  He followed my instructions and soon had all the lines coiled and shipshape.

  “He learns fast,” Chyrel said, as she and Tank approached.

  “Yeah,” I replied. “I think he’ll make a good waterman.”

  Alberto beamed.

  Tank knelt in front of him. “Chyrel and I are going to head back up island now. I’m a little old for all this. You’ll come and visit us, won’t you?”

  “I’d like to,” Alberto said, looking up at me.

  I shook Tank’s hand and looked down at Alberto. “Sure, we can. We don’t have to leave for a few days. We’ll pick Tank up and go fishing.”

  They left then, collecting Paul and Tony on the way, who both shouted goodbye.

  “You hungry?” I asked Alberto.

  “Uh-huh. Are we going to eat here?”

  “Sure,” Savannah said. “I could use some time off from cooking for you hungry men.”

  We went inside and Rusty greeted us from behind the bar. “Y’all stayin’ for supper?”

  “What’s fresh?” I asked.

  “Dink just dropped off some cobia a little while ago. They were swimming this morning.”

  “Three plates,” I said, and we went over to a table in the corner.

  Dink was a local fishing guide who always brought fresh fish to Rufus’s kitchen. By his own admission, Dink wasn’t much of a cook, often saying he could burn Kool-Aid. So, since he brought Rufus two or three nice fish every day, Rusty let him eat for free. Rusty had the same arrangement with a few other guides and often let them eat free, even on days when they got skunked on the water. Having local guides meet their clients at the Anchor increased Rusty’s revenue. And it probably cut the kitchen’s fish budget in half.

  A moment later, Rusty brought us a water pitcher and glasses. “Want a beer with your food?”

  “No, thanks,” I replied. “We’re gonna head back up to the island before it gets dark.”

  While we waited, I sent another text to Andersen, to see how long he’d be. He came through the door reading it.

  “Got time for dinner?” I asked, as he approached our table.

  “Ha, I just ate lunch. Dinner for a cop is usually around midnight. How are you doing, Alberto?”

  “Good,” the boy replied. “I remember some things.”

  “Like what?” Andersen asked, settling into a chair.

  “My name’s Alberto Marco,” he replied. “I’ll be nine in June. My dad was LaBron Green. He was a mechanic and could fix anything. He taught me how to play chess, but he died in a car wreck when I was five. That’s when Mom started using drugs.” He paused for a moment and his eyes shifted to mine.

  I nodded.

  He looked somberly at the detective. “Mom died from the drugs.”

  Andersen glanced over at me. “I did the check, as you asked. It’s confirmed.”

  “We want to adopt Alberto,” Savannah
said. “We’ll give him a good home.”

  Andersen smiled at the kid. “If it was up to me, I’d say yes.” Then he turned his gaze to me and Savannah. “But it’s not up to me. Lee County is investigating. If there are no relatives who can take him, he’ll be able to be adopted.” Then he grinned. “But I have good news. Your application to foster was fast-tracked and approved. Alberto can stay with you until a relative comes forward, or he’s adopted. If you want to do that, you need to file paperwork with the Department of Children and Families, then hire an adoption attorney. Foster parents are almost always approved to adopt their foster kids if no relatives can.”

  “How long will that take?” I asked.

  “Who knows? I would guess it’d be several weeks at least, maybe months. And that’s only after Lee County finishes their investigation.”

  “I don’t think I have any other family,” Alberto said. “Mom didn’t have any brothers or sisters, and I’ve only seen pictures of my grandma. She’s in one of those homes.”

  “A nursing home,” Andersen said to me. “That much, they’ve already reported. Her name’s Regina Marco, forty-nine, suffered a stroke five years ago and is an invalid. Probably not a candidate to be an adoptive parent.”

  “My dad used to talk about his brother who lived in Detroit,” Alberto said. “But he told me he got shot. I don’t think he had anyone else.”

  “Can I talk to you outside?” Andersen asked me.

  “I’ll be right back,” I said to Savannah, then followed Andersen out to the back deck. It was early and there wasn’t anyone there yet.

  “I didn’t want to say anything in front of the kid,” he said. “But there’s been a lot of gang activity up in Fort Myers. A sudden escalation this week ended up with a lot of dead gangbangers and hookers, so they’re a little back-logged up there.”

  “Alberto’s mother was one of them,” I said. “Raped and shot in the head by one of the Lake Boyz gang. I only told him it was the drugs that killed her because he asked if that was what it was. She was murdered.”

  He eyed me suspiciously. “I don’t even have the coroner’s report on manner or even cause of death yet. How do you know this?”

  “I have ways,” I said. “Remember the driver’s seat in Cobie Murphy’s car?”

  He nodded. That seemed to satisfy him.

  “I do have one question,” I said. “We’re planning to leave on Monday to go to Bimini and don’t know when we’ll be back. Is that okay with DCF?”

  “Probably, but how did you get him a passport so quickly?”

  “Still working on that,” I said. “But we should get it by the end of the week.”

  “Can you delay your trip if it doesn’t?”

  “I can’t,” I said. “I’ll be taking command of a research vessel. But we’d originally planned on Savannah joining me after a two-week shakedown cruise.”

  “You’re a commercial captain?” he asked.

  “Unlimited tonnage,” I replied. “Ambrosia is a 199-foot former superyacht, converted for oil exploration. If Alberto’s passport doesn’t arrive in time, they can join us at sea, as we’d originally planned.”

  “It sounds like you’ve got things all planned out.” He paused a moment. “Are you sure you want to adopt this kid?”

  “We’re sure,” I replied. “We didn’t have to discuss it at length—it’s something we both wanted. The truth is, I always wanted a son and have three daughters. And Savannah isn’t ready to stop being a mom just because our kid is grown and gone.”

  “I have two,” he said. “Girls that is. Even our dog’s female.”

  “Keep me posted on anything you find out from Lee County?”

  “I will,” he replied, pulling a pair of wrap-around Costas from his pocket, and putting them on. “Best of luck to you and the wife.”

  I stood there a moment as he walked toward the parking lot and climbed in his car. Then I turned and headed back inside. The food had arrived, and Alberto wasn’t waiting.

  “What’s cobia?” he asked, as I sat back down. “It’s good.”

  “It’s a pelagic fish,” I replied. “That means it swims freely in the ocean, but they do come close to reefs and even into the mangroves to feed on crab and smaller fish sometimes. They look a little like sharks.”

  “I’ve never seen a shark in real life.”

  I reached over and ruffled his hair. “Well, we’ll have to remedy that real soon.”

  That evening, after we’d returned to the island, we sat by the firepit and snacked on fresh pineapple, while I pretended to play guitar. I wasn’t particularly good—my fingers were too fat for the strings. But I’d been trying for a few years. Lately, I’d been learning some songs by female artists. Simple ballads, like most I knew. Savannah had a beautiful singing voice, whereas I sounded more like a cat and a bufo toad fighting.

  I set the guitar down and looked at Alberto, licking his fingers. We grew several dozen pineapple plants on the little island nearly connected to our main one.

  We also had two large solar units on that part of our property. In the morning, the panels opened up like flowers, tracked the sun across the sky all day, charging the battery shack, then folded themselves up at night.

  The dogs lay with their backs to the fire and their heads away from it. I often thought they did it to maintain night vision, but it was probably just to keep their sensitive noses away from the heat and smoke.

  “This is good,” Alberto said. “What is it?”

  Savannah gave him a shocked look. “You’ve never had pineapple before?”

  “I like apples. But this doesn’t taste anything like an apple.”

  “Europeans weren’t the best at naming things,” I offered. “Apples were common in Europe, and the pineapple has a tough, gnarly hide.” I showed him the top, which I’d saved to replant. “Kinda like the bark of a pine tree. So maybe that’s how they got the idea to name it. Columbus, or more likely, one of his crewmen, was the first European to see a pineapple. By the time he arrived, they’d been farmed by Indians across South and Central America and the Caribbean.”

  Alberto yawned.

  “Are you ready for bed?” Savannah asked. “Or are Jesse’s drawn-out stories that boring?”

  “They’re not boring,” he said. “I guess I’m sleepy. But I don’t know what time it is.”

  I laughed and he gave me a curious look.

  “Out here, there’s no need for a clock,” I told him. “We sleep when we’re tired and eat when we’re hungry.”

  “What do you do the rest of the time?”

  “We work, little man,” I replied. “But work here is fun. Tomorrow, me and you will go pick up Tank and catch some fish. The freezer is running low.”

  “That’s fishing, not work.”

  “Didn’t I say that work here is fun?”

  He yawned again.

  “Come on,” Savannah said, rising from her chair. “Let’s get you to bed.”

  “What time will we wake up?”

  “When the sun comes up,” I told him. “That’s our clock. Maybe a little before if you want to catch the sunrise.”

  “Yeah,” he said. “Will it be like the sunset?”

  “Different,” I replied. “But just as magical. Sunset is a time to look back on your day, what you accomplished, and what steps you might have taken to do better. Sunrise is a new beginning. You wipe the slate clean and have the opportunity to fix anything from the previous day.”

  I started to get up too, but Savannah patted my shoulder and smiled down at me. “Stay put, Socrates. Contemplate the stars. I’ll be back in a few minutes. I’m going to get a glass of wine. Would you like a beer?”

  “Thanks, but make it two fingers of rum, please.”

  They left, with Woden trotting ahead.

  Finn rose and came over to me, sniffing around on the ground, looking for a place to sit. He finally plopped down on my left foot and leaned against my leg, watching them go.

  “Y
ou like Alberto?” I asked him, while gently stroking his head.

  He whined and licked his chops.

  “It’s gonna be a lot different having a little boy around full-time. I hope you and Woden can keep up with him.”

  Savannah returned, carrying a wine glass and a pewter mug with the Gaspar’s Revenge Fishing Charter logo on it. She handed my grog ration to me, then pulled her chair closer and sat down.

  I sniffed the rum. The mixture of Caribbean spices and a slight scent of orange peel told me what it was.

  “I thought we were saving the Appleton Estate for a special occasion.”

  “Nothing wrong with your nose,” she said, clinking her glass to my pewter. “This is a big step in our lives. We’re going to be parents again. Together.”

  “Maybe,” I cautioned her, taking a sip. “Just because he didn’t know of any other family doesn’t mean there aren’t any.”

  “Have faith, Jesse. God put us on that bridge for a reason.”

  I wasn’t about to argue theism with her. I believed in God, but they took things to a whole different level in South Carolina, where she was from. The fact that we were entered in the Seven Mile Bridge Run was because of her desire to be more social in the community. Had we run up in the front with the leaders, we might never have even seen the boat.

  “We’ll do the best we can,” I assured her.

  “I know. You never do anything halfway.”

  “Where’s Woden?”

  “Sleeping beside Alberto’s bed,” she replied. “They were both very tired.”

  “Yeah, this one’s making my foot go to sleep,” I said, looking down at Finn, now snoozing with his rump still on my foot.

  She was silent for a moment. Then she looked me squarely in the eye. “Are you going to tell me what happened last night?”

  I knew that she already knew.

  “Chyrel’s laptop was still open when I came to bed this morning,” I said by way of a reply.

  “Is that all there is to it?”

  “You know everything that happened. What more is there for me to tell you?”

  She looked down at her glass, swirled the wine a moment, then took a sip before replying. “I knew what you did when I married you, Jesse. I knew the kind of man you were when I first met you and you rescued me and Char from those men at Dockside. Those men last night got what they deserved if you ask me.” She paused and looked up at me. “I want to know what you felt when you pulled the trigger.”