Rising Tide

by Wayne Stinnett

  “What do we do now?” he asked, looking around in the dark.

  “Now we wait,” I replied, pointing toward the east-northeast, where it was starting to get light. “The sun is going to come up over there. Just to the right of that island in the distance.”

  “And we’re just going to wait for it?”

  I moved over to the gunwale and leaned against the dock where, just a few hours earlier, Savannah and I had made love. Then I put my feet up on the little center console.

  “That’s what you wanted to see, right?” I asked. “The sky’s already getting light over that way. It shouldn’t be long.”

  Alberto stepped up onto the aft deck and put a hand on the aluminum framework around the engine. “What’s this for?”

  “It’s called a poling platform.” I pointed toward a push pole mounted on the port gunwale. “See that long pole? In real shallow water, you stand up on the platform and use the pole for pushing the boat and looking for fish.”

  “It’s a little boat,” he said, standing on the other side of the console. “Is it fast?”

  I grinned at him. The kid had a one-track mind.

  “Yes, she is,” I replied. “Clients like to get to where the fish are as quickly as possible.”

  “What’s a client?”

  “A lot of people like to fish, but not all of them have a boat or know where the fish are. Some of those people will hire people like me—a fishing guide—to take them out and find the fish. Those people are clients.”

  As the sky to the east continued to brighten, Alberto looked around the boat some more. I turned on the aerator on the live well and grabbed the cast net from below the aft deck.

  “What are you doing?” he asked.

  “We’ll need bait,” I said. “As soon as the sky starts to get light, pinfish come out from under the dock to forage.”

  I made two casts, right alongside the dock, and put several dozen baitfish into the live well.

  “Look,” I said, pointing toward the sun, as the first sliver began to appear.

  I sat back down, and he came over beside me and sat cross-legged on the aft deck.

  “You two look comfortable,” Savannah said, walking toward us with the dogs following behind her. “Is there room for one more?”

  “Sure,” I replied, standing, and taking a small cooler from her.

  I placed it on the aft deck and opened it. The aroma of fried sausage hit my nostrils, reminding me how hungry I was. Savannah sat next to Alberto and I handed them both a biscuit, half wrapped in a paper towel.

  “What is it?” he asked.

  “Mana from Heaven,” I replied, taking a big bite.

  “Mana?” he asked, looking up at me puzzled. “That’s not Spanish or English.”

  I laughed. “No, it’s not. It’s Polynesian.”

  “You speak Polynesian?”

  “No, but I’ve been to the South Pacific. Mana means the life force that permeates all things in the universe.”

  “He means mana with one N,” Savannah said. “But he referenced the Biblical story of manna from Heaven with two Ns.”

  Alberto looked at her with revelation in his eyes. “When Moses fed the people?”

  She smiled at him. “Exactly. But Jesse’s version probably sounds more adventurous.”

  We sat on the gunwale and ate the biscuits as the sun rose slowly.

  “Mmm,” Alberto hummed, as he chewed and swallowed a bite. “Mana is good.”

  We were silent for a few minutes, as the sun gradually revealed itself from beyond the horizon. As we ate, the sky changed from inky purple to a cobalt blue in just a matter of minutes. Twilight was shorter on the water.

  “There are two more in the cooler,” Savannah said. “Plus, a half dozen sandwiches, some tortilla chips, salsa, sliced pineapple, and bottled water. That should hold the three of you over until you get back.”

  “What’s for dinner?” Alberto asked.

  “That depends on what you catch,” she replied, then wiped her mouth on a cloth napkin. “Don’t you boys let me down.”

  She patted Alberto on the back, then rose and gave me a kiss before stepping up to the dock.

  I started the engine and untied the stern line while Savannah got the bow line.

  “Bye,” she said. “Good luck.”

  “Thanks,” I replied, putting the boat into gear. “Love you.”

  “Love you, too,” she called out, as we idled away.

  At the end of my channel, I turned left into Harbor Channel, bumping the speed up a little.

  “What did she mean when she said, ‘don’t let her down’?” Alberto asked.

  “Remember I said that work was fun here?”

  He nodded.

  “You and I are going to work,” I said.

  “Fishing is work?”

  “It is for us, little man,” I said as we neared Mac Travis’s island. “And work is fun out here on our own. We don’t buy much food from stores. We catch or grow just about everything we eat.”

  Mac Travis was our only neighbor. At least the only one within about five miles. He tended to keep pretty much to himself, working his lobster traps throughout the season and looking for treasure during the off-season. His girlfriend, Mel Woodson, actually owned the island, having inherited it from her dad. I never knew his first name; everyone just called him Wood. She was a lawyer and stayed on the island with Mac off and on.

  Seeing Mac wading toward his boat, I turned and angled toward him. I killed the engine ten feet away.

  “Hi, Jesse,” he said, as he caught the gunwale. “Who’s that you have with you?”

  Mac held us in place against the incoming tide. It didn’t take a lot of effort to hold the Maverick into the current.

  “This is my friend, Alberto Marco,” I replied. “Alberto, meet our neighbor, Mac Travis.”

  Mac extended a hand, and the boy shook it.

  “Alberto’s staying with us for a while,” I said. “We’re heading out to catch some fish.”

  Mac looked at the boy curiously. “Are you the kid Jesse found in a drifting boat?”

  Alberto nodded. “Him and Savannah both. They jumped in the water and took me to shore.”

  “How’d you know that?” I asked Mac.

  “You know how it is,” he replied, nodding sagely. “Coconut telegraph.”

  It was hard to keep anything a secret on a small island. Though we’d tried to keep everything under wraps, I knew word would get around. But islanders were tight and I doubted if many knew what had happened.

  “Figured you’d be packing,” Mac said. “Aren’t you leaving tomorrow?”

  “There’s been a delay,” I replied. “We’re not leaving until Monday—all three of us.”

  “Jimmy’ll be staying at your place while you’re gone?”

  “Yeah,” I replied. “He and Naomi will be out later this morning and staying on permanently.”

  “I’d heard she was moving out of her apartment.”

  “Hope they don’t get too wild,” I said with a half grin.

  “Jimmy could never be as much a pain as Tru,” he said with a laugh.

  Trufant was Mac’s first mate. He was a lanky Louisiana Cajun with a mouthful of pearly whites you could see from a mile away. The man had a penchant for finding trouble. And crazy women.

  “Where is Tru?” I asked. “Not like him to miss work.”

  “He called and said he was running late,” Mac replied. “After an hour, I figured it’d be faster for me to go to him.”

  “Ah, one of those situations.”

  “Some girl he and Pamela met at Burdines last night.”

  “Well, be careful out there,” I said, starting the engine.

  “You do the same,” he replied, pushing the bow toward the channel.

  I put the engine in gear and idled toward the flats south of the channel until we were far enough away.

  “Hang on,” I told Alberto. “We need to be moving fast to get across the sa
ndbar.”

  He leaned forward and grabbed the rail on the starboard side of the console as I pushed the throttle forward.

  The little boat leapt up onto the surface of the water and we skimmed across the shallow sandbar with no more than eight inches of the lower unit in the water. I glanced over at Alberto.

  The grin on his face said it all.

  An old Chevy crunched across the gravel and came to a stop beside its modern cousin. It was still dark but would be light soon. The white, 1964 Bel Air sat incredibly low on hydraulic suspension—a lowrider. The system had a leak and during the drive from Fort Myers, the car had settled lower and lower, until finally, it was almost scraping the gravel in the parking lot.

  Manuel “Bones” Bonilla had been to the warehouse only once before, just over a year earlier, but he was certain he was in the right place. By the door, a beefy-looking Hispanic man leaned back in a chair on two legs. That was a good indication. As was the SUV Bones had parked next to.

  As Bones got out of the car, the man in the chair rocked forward onto all four legs and stood. “We heard you was dead, Bones.”

  Lifting his shirt, Bonilla revealed a large bandage on his lower left shoulder, as well as many gang tattoos. “An inch lower and I would have been.” He glanced over at the Cadillac Escalade beside his old Chevy. “Is the jefe here?”

  “Yeah, man, yeah.” The guard opened the door and nodded to another man sitting behind a desk just inside the outer office. “Bones is here, Julio,” he announced. “Wants to see the boss.”

  Bones stepped past the guard and entered the warehouse’s reception area. Julio Mendoza rose from behind the desk and stared, slack-jawed.

  “I need to talk to Carlos,” Bones said.

  “We heard you got shot.”

  “I did,” Bones replied. “But I ain’t dead.”

  “Hang on,” Julio said, picking up the desk phone’s handset and pushing a button. “Bones is here, jefe.” After a moment he said, “Si,” and hung up the phone.

  “Go on back,” Julio said. “He’s questioning a puta negra we had brought here from Fort Myers.”

  Bones walked down the corridor to the last door and knocked.

  “Entra,” he heard Santiago say from inside.

  He turned the knob and stepped into the private office. Santiago was standing over a black woman who was practically naked and bleeding from several wounds to her torso—razor cuts—one of MS-13’s favored methods for extracting information from rival gang members or police informants. Her face was a swollen mess from a beating.

  “They said you were killed in the shootings,” Santiago said, coming toward him.

  Once more, Bones lifted his shirt. “Shot twice, jefe.” He puffed his chest up. “But it wasn’t enough.”

  The two men shook hands and Santiago waved him toward a chair beside the injured woman. Santiago’s personal bodyguard stood on the other side of her.

  Bones sat down, ignoring the woman in the next chair. He’d seen, and done, much worse. The woman was alive, but he knew she wouldn’t be for much longer. She wouldn’t die from the injuries she’d received; Santiago could keep someone alive and experiencing more pain for a long time.

  Santiago went around his desk and sat down. “Tell me what happened.”

  “I was with Razor,” Bones said. “This crazy Indian and a woman, with probably three others with them, busted in. Diego and Esteban are both dead. So is Razor. I barely got out alive.”

  “Yes, we heard.” He nodded toward the woman. “And now we know the name of one of the people who was a part of it.”

  “The woman who rounded up all the putas?” Bones asked, amazed that Santiago had found out so fast.

  “Woman?” His eyes cut to the bloody girl sitting next to Bones. “She said it was a white man named Jesse McDermitt.”

  Bones nodded, putting what he’d learned on his own together with what Santiago had just told him.

  “I learned from two sources that a white man picked them up, but it was a woman named Savannah, talking to them with one of those Bluetooth things.” He twirled a finger around his ear. “She was the one who talked them into checking into rehab. The Lake Boyz shootings happened later that night. I found one of them still alive, just before the cops got there, and he described the same man who’d picked up the girls.”

  Santiago sat back in his chair and thought for a moment.

  “They were a team, this McDermitt and the woman,” he finally said. “And they had others.”

  “Si, jefe,” Bones said. “From what I learned, they hit three Lake Boyz locations at once, not long after they hit Diego.”

  “So, this crazy Indian was a part of their gang? Someone new trying to take over both us and Lake Boyz?”

  “No lo creo,” Bones said. “Whoever they were, they wiped out both gangs’ leaders, took prostitutas and narcotraficantes from both sides, and then just left.”

  “That makes no sense,” Santiago said. “I would have continued the attack and taken over everything. Something I should have done from the start, instead of trying to play nice with Lake Boyz.”

  “I learned that the man who picked up the putas left on a boat,” Bones offered. “With another boat following it. Each boat had a blond woman aboard.”

  “Did you see the name of this boat?”

  “Better than that, jefe.” Bones smiled, revealing a gold-capped tooth. “More than that. I know where the man who owns the boat lives.”

  “The w-woman,” the black girl croaked between split lips. “She was his w-wife.”

  Santiago cocked his head and stared at her for a moment, as if seeing her for the first time. Manuel moved away from her slightly.

  Bones looked over at the side of her battered face.

  Of course, he thought. Husband and wife, do-gooder vigilantes. That would explain why they’d just left when all the girls were rounded up and both gangs all shot to shit.

  Santiago pulled open a desk drawer to his right, drew a silenced handgun and pointed it at the woman’s face. “You should have told me that before. It would have saved me time and you, much pain.”

  The gun bucked in his hand, emitting no more sound than punching a heavy bag. A pink mist from the back of the woman’s head sprayed across the floor.

  Santiago looked up at his bodyguard and spoke calmly. “Manuel, roll that thing out of here, get rid of it, and have the chair cleaned and returned.”

  Reaching deeper water, I turned southeast, searching for the microwave tower on Grassy Key. There was no need of a chart plotter or depth finder; we’d just crossed the shallowest water we were going to encounter.

  I finally spotted the tower and turned toward it, pointing. “See that tower sticking up way out in front of us?”

  Alberto craned his neck and looked over the console. “That one?” he asked, pointing toward it.

  “That’s close to Tank and Chyrel’s place,” I said, then opened the throttle a little more. “We’ll be there in fifteen minutes.”

  The two of us sat slightly hunched to absorb what little bounce there was and enjoyed the ride.

  Finally, I slowed as we neared shore, angling toward the dock behind Tank’s place. He and Chyrel were waiting.

  “Wasting daylight, Gunny,” Tank said, as I came alongside the dock. “I thought fishermen got up early.”

  “I wanted to see the sunrise,” Alberto said in my defense.

  Tank sat on the edge of the dock, holding the boat in place with his feet. “Was it worth the wait?” he asked, tousling Alberto’s hair.

  “It sure was,” he replied. “And we had sausage biscuits.”

  Chyrel handed me a small cooler. “There’s a few sandwiches and water in there, plus his meds.”

  “Thanks,” I said, placing it with Savannah’s cooler.

  How we were going to eat three sandwiches each, I wasn’t sure.

  She leaned over and kissed Tank on the cheek. “You be careful and don’t forget when to take them.”
>
  “We’ll be back in a few hours,” Tank said, scooting down to the gunwale and shoving off.

  Tank took the little seat in front of the console and a minute later, we were up on plane, heading north. After several minutes, we passed Marker 9 and I angled toward the northeast. Channel Bank wasn’t all that far—within sight of Grassy Key and the bridge—but you still had a sense that you were in another world there.

  I slowed as we approached the bank. “Dink was out here yesterday,” I called forward to Tank. “He said he was getting cobia at the north end of the bank.”

  “Cobia?” Alberto asked. “Like we had yesterday?”

  “That’s right,” I replied. “If we can catch one or two, we won’t have to worry about food for the rest of the weekend.”

  “I like cobia,” he said.

  I took the boat out of gear and shut off the engine. We drifted along the shoal in the current as I got the rods out. I hooked a pinfish through the meat just ahead of its tail and passed the rod forward to Tank, who moved up to the forward casting deck. Baiting another, I handed it to Alberto.

  “Let’s see what you can do,” I said, as I prepped the third rod. “Try to get it close to the bank, but not too close.”

  He gripped the upper part of the handle, getting the line between his thumb and forefinger, then flipped the bail arm over on the spinning reel. His cast wasn’t far, and the bait hit the water pretty hard, rather than arcing high. But he obviously knew at least the basics of what he was doing.

  “You have done this before,” I said. “Not too bad. Give him some slack, and when he wakes up from that wallop you gave him, he’ll swim toward the shoal.”

  I cast mine close to what looked like a ledge that ran along the bank for thirty or forty feet, then reeled in the slack so the pinfish couldn’t get to it.

  “Fish on!” Tank yelled. “Looks like a red snapper.”

  He quickly wrestled the fish close to the boat, then knelt down and grabbed the short leader, looping it around his hand and lifting the snapper aboard.

  “Definitely a keeper,” I said. “You don’t even have to measure that one, even if we were over on the Atlantic side.”