Tampa Burn df-11

by Randy Wayne White

  I said, “If I write her a letter, can you see that she gets it?”

  “Yes. I can do that.”

  “I really screwed up, Jan. No one’s ever called me talkative, so why is it my mouth that always gets me in trouble with the women I care about? I think she may be gone for good.”

  Janet stirred beside me, and I felt her hand pat my arm then come to rest atop my hand. “Do you know why women like quiet men? Because it’s easier for us to believe they’re really listening. Relationships are a pain in the ass, Dr. Ford.”

  I said, “Yes, they are, Dr. Mueller,” laughing softly with her, and realizing that she’d already helped dissipate some of the emotional trauma, which is exactly what she was trying to do.

  “After the last time I got dumped, I swore I’d never get any closer to a permanent relationship, or marriage, than going to a sex store and telling the sales clerk ‘I do’ when she asked if I wanted to buy a vibrator.”

  I was laughing harder as she added, “But nothing shocks me anymore when it comes to relationships. Nothing. ”

  She gave it so much emphasis, I knew she was referencing something recent and personal. Which meant she had things in her own love life she wanted to talk about, too.

  As much as anyone I know, Janet reminds me why I like women as people. She is also my secret reminder that, for women who are not born with great looks, or who are past a certain age, the world is an unfair place.

  Men can compensate for their genetic bad luck by being successful in business or politics. The same is not true for women. Inequity becomes a fact of life. Some of the very best of them end up settling for guys who are not their intellectual or emotional equals, and lead lives that never offer them much challenge or reward. These are the private ones, the undiscovered treasures whose gifts are forever concealed by an oversized body, or a facial conformation that’s a few centimeters off the current Hollywood ideal.

  As we sat and talked, and had another beer, I thought about this good person and all that she’d endured. Maybe she hoped that’s what I’d do. It certainly reduced my feeling of being overwhelmed.

  Most people stop maturing long before they stop aging, but not this lady. Whatever her own rocky life had demanded, she’d evolved and grown in whatever way it took to compensate. I admired that. Same with everyone at Dinkin’s Bay.

  Janet had arrived at the marina a few years back with lots of emotional baggage, after losing her husband in a car wreck, then their unborn child to a miscarriage. Many people move to Florida hoping to save themselves or to reinvent themselves. Janet’s one of the few resilient enough to have succeeded at both.

  While she healed, she worked regularly in my lab and lived aboard her little blue houseboat. After a split-up with Jeth, her on-again-off-again love, she’d moved her vessel to Twin Palms, but continued to work for me and remained a part of the Dinkin’s Bay community.

  Janet was always the quiet girl with glasses, the sisterly type who was there when you needed her, but was never glib or showy. She was the one with the frazzled hair and heavy hips, but a cute face; the one who liked to laugh and socialize. If you were a man, you wanted to protect her, just as women, on first meeting, knew immediately they could trust Janet and confide in her.

  She was nice, but lacked confidence. She could be outgoing, but never assertive.

  That changed.

  Not so long ago, Janet, along with friends, had been set adrift in the open sea after a boating accident, only to be picked up by the worst sort of people.

  Once again, she’d endured. Then she’d prevailed.

  I remembered what Merlin Starkey had said about his life being scarred by his failures. Janet has too much character and courage to allow herself to use such a transparent excuse.

  The woman who sat next to me now was a very different Janet Mueller from the soft-spoken lady who’d come shy-eyed into the marina years back. There was no shortage of self-confidence, she had no problem being assertive-but my friend had also lost something during the process.

  There’s always a price.

  As I finished my second beer and the last of the food, she said, “If you don’t feel better, at least you look better. You were so pale, I thought you were going to pass out on me.”

  I said, “Years from now, when I’m older and even more decrepit and you’re nursing me through my dotage, maybe I’ll tell you the whole story about my day. Finding out about Dewey wasn’t the worst of it, but it’s close.”

  “I’m tempted to ask.”

  “Like I said, down the road, when you’re feeding me with a spoon.”

  “Another one of Doc’s secrets,” she said, musing. “The marina folks wonder about you sometimes, you know. You disappear for a week or a month at a time, then come back and never say a word. Like last November, you show up with your hand bandaged and your tan almost gone. They whisper behind your back.”

  When I didn’t reply, she stood-my signal to leave. “It’s going on one o’clock in the morning, sweetie. The guys’ll be back soon. They’re gonna make another trip, then call it a night.”

  I wasn’t ready to leave yet, though. There was one last thing I wanted to do.

  I dropped my bottle in the recycle bin, said, “Gotta use the head first,” then walked down the hall, past the guest bath and bedroom, to Dewey’s master suite. I turned on the bathroom light and locked the door behind me.

  The wastebasket hadn’t yet been emptied. It’s what I’d hoped. I flushed the toilet to cover the noise, then knelt and pawed through the bathroom detritus. I didn’t expect to find what I was searching for, so I was enormously pleased when I did: A small blue box that read CLEARBLUE HOME PREGNANCY TEST.

  I touched index finger to glasses, adjusting them, before I looked inside.

  Empty.

  The printing on the box said that it had contained two test strips. Where were they?

  I knelt over the trash again and sifted more carefully. I found a plastic wrapper that had held one of the strips, but nothing else.

  What did that tell me? I stood, thinking about it.

  Dewey had used the kit. Once, at least. Maybe twice. That meant that she knew. She knew if she was pregnant or not.

  Would she have decided to leave Captiva if she was not pregnant?

  Possibly. The woman had a temper, and she also had as much willpower and pride as anyone I’ve ever met. So what could I infer additionally, if anything?

  Not much, I decided. Positive or negative, she could have done the test twice just to be certain.

  From the front of the house, I heard Janet call, “Doc? Hey in there. What’d you do, fall in?”

  I shoved the box deep into the trash, then flushed again.

  Janet stood on the front stoop outside, lights off, looking at the sky. A commercial airliner was transecting airspace between Pine Island and Sanibel, on the standard landing pattern into Regional Southwest Airport. With its landing lights fired, the plane looked like a bright planet descending

  I stopped beside her and said, “What’s Dewey going to do with the house? Am I allowed to ask that? She’s leaving it empty, I hope. She is coming back.”

  Still looking at the plane, Janet replied softly, “Jeth and I are moving in. For a while, anyway. A few months. Just to see how it goes.”

  I said, “What?”

  The roller-coaster affair between Janet and the good-looking fishing guide had ended forever, we all thought, when Jeth had fallen in love with Janet’s younger sister, Claudia. Claudia was a funnier, rowdier edition of Janet. She was athletic, more of a guy’s girl, and a better match, it seemed. But that hadn’t made it any easier for Jeth when he tried to break the news to Janet. He stuttered so badly that Claudia had to take over.

  I said, “How long have you two been back together? Usually, I at least hear rumors.”

  “A couple of months. We kept it quiet. We knew how damn foolish we’d both look if it didn’t work out. There was something the big goof had to find out for hims
elf about Claudia. All our lives, whatever big sister had, little sister wanted. But once she got it, Claudia got tired of it real quick. Jeth caught her in the bedroom with not one, but two other guys. Tourist guys down from Boston. That’s something else he didn’t know about Claudia. She’s always been on the kinky side.”

  Now it made sense, the way Janet said that nothing surprised her about relationships.

  Because I was her friend, I had to say it. “So Jeth came back to you on the rebound. How’s your pride dealing with that?”

  “Pride? I really don’t give two hoots about pride anymore. What’s the worst that can happen? I get hurt?” She made a fluttering sound with her lips: As if I haven’t been hurt before! “Doc, after all the crap I’ve been through, here’s about the only thing I’ve learned for sure: It’s one hell of a short and lonely life. If I can make it a little happier, and a little less lonely, by forgiving someone I care about, then I’m going to risk it.”

  I put my arm over her shoulder, the two of us standing, looking into the late sky and at the airliner. “Do me a favor. Pass that little gem along to Dewey, would you? I could use some forgiveness.” After a moment, I added, “What time did her flight leave this morning?”

  Janet started to answer, “She didn’t leave this morning because-” but caught herself and stopped. Using two fingers to lift my arm away as if it were soiled laundry, she then turned and said, “Don’t do that to me, pal. I’ve worked with you, I know how that little calculator you call a brain functions. If I give you the flight time, you’ll figure out all the possible destinations, then start narrowing it down from there. Don’t you dare get tricky with me. So show a little respect. Or maybe we’re not as close friends as I thought.”

  The last was added with a real edge-a verbal slap that told me how serious she was.

  I said, “You’re right. I’m sorry. That will never happen again.” I held out my hand. “Forgiven?”

  The woman shook her head at me severely, smiled, ignoring my hand, and gave me a quick hug-“Of course I forgive you. Because I love you.”-then paused, listening. “Hey-do you hear something ringing? Kind of a weird warble?”

  I listened and heard it, too. Muted, rhythmic. It seemed to be coming from the rental car.

  Then I realized: The satellite phone was ringing.

  I sprinted toward the Ford.

  SIXTEEN

  By noon Thursday, Prax Lourdes and Laken Fuentes were on a DC 10 cargo plane to Pinar del Rio, western Cuba, just them, the pilot, plus several tons of Masaguan rice in burlap sacks. By ten P.M., they were boarding a beat-up old fertilizer freighter that was registered in Monrovia, Liberia, a ship named Repatriate.

  For the last six or seven years, when the cops or the Nicaraguan military were really on his ass, Lourdes hopped a freighter. Didn’t matter where it went. Pay cash, no questions. Nothing touched the privacy of a ship that was transporting fertilizers.

  He preferred the tramp freighter Repatriate. The ship’s captain was a 250-pound Bahamian white woman named Micki who would do anything for money. Anything. She’d been born in Detroit, grown up in the slums of Nassau, chain-smoked Pall Malls, drank cane liquor, despised women even more than she did children, and probably hated men, too.

  Men, at least, though, she could tolerate.

  Not that she gave much of a shit about any human being on earth.

  Once, in Bluefields, Nicaragua, she’d asked Prax, “Is it true? Do you really do what they say you do? I’d fuckin’ like to see it. Elsewise, I’m thinkin’ you’re jus’ one more freak fulla shit. With my own eyes, I’d like to see it happen.”

  That was a first.

  Prax had said to her, “You got anyone in mind?”

  Micki told him, “Not really. But how about our Greek cook? He ain’t worth a shit, and he’s got so much grease pourin’ out of him, you won’t even need no fire starter.”

  Captain Micki was close to right. The woman enjoyed it, watching the drunken Greek sprint toward the dock, ablaze. He was a burner.

  Not at all like his driver, Reynaldo. The man had been a disappointment. Too stoic, some of those mountain Indios. Reynaldo, he’d run a couple steps, then just sort of balled up and smoldered.

  His heroin junkie plastic surgeon, Fernando Delgado, hadn’t gone up much better. He was too strung out to run. Just slapped at himself and screamed, as if he might have been imagining it.

  That took the fun out of it.

  Killing the doctor had been a snap decision. It happened that way sometimes. It was after getting the good news about the kid’s blood type, and while looking in the mirror, seeing what a mess the quack had made of his face. That’s when he felt the sudden headache begin to move up his spine, and then the rage came flooding in behind his eyes like a scarlet starburst.

  So he’d done the doctor, too.

  Talk about burning bridges.

  After the way the fat sea captain, Micki, had set up the Greek, Lourdes almost always used the Repatriate. Used it exclusively for trips to Florida. He went there whenever the feds in Central America got too close.

  Micki was a psycho bitch, but she was also a hell of a captain. She had the routine down. She could get him off the boat and back aboard without the local cops ever having a clue. Micki, he could trust.

  One thing Prax had learned working carnivals was that people who didn’t bother to pretend that they had morals or ethics were the only people who could ever be trusted. You always knew where they stood, and what they were after.

  That was Micki. Cash, that’s all she cared about. Prax could do any damn thing he wanted aboard her vessel as long as he didn’t get in her way or piss her off.

  Another reason the Repatriate was his vessel of choice was because there were seldom more than a handful of seamen aboard. The ship always carried a skeleton crew because everyone on the docks despised Micki. Seamen desperate enough to stick it out were exactly like her: They’d do anything for cash.

  That made doing business aboard Repatriate easy.

  All he had to have was money.

  Prax had some cash now. He’d stolen Balserio’s $75,000-he loved that; only, the shit-heel had short-counted him. Plus, he had another $25,000 or so he’d copped during the last year traveling around the Masaguan countryside doing his thing.

  So he’d flown out of Central America with close to $100K. But the cargo pilot had taken a chunk of that. Then Micki had taken a much bigger chunk.

  At the freighter docks in Mariel Harbor, Cuba, she’d called him up to her cabin-the place was too filthy for pigs-and said, “I got all three of those things you said you ordered. Plus the instruments. But they’uz double what you said they’d cost. Even the Russian stuff, and it was used. It all cost more.”

  Prax had expected this.

  When he asked, she told him what the price was. The numbers had about doubled. He’d expected that, too, and had privately figured it into his expenses. Which was a relief.

  Micki reminded him that the cost of the ship, her, and the crew, plus doing all the bullshit he wanted, was a hundred percent markup of the stuff for the infirmary, plus the usual nut, but times two. Cash.

  A lot of cash.

  She said, “You got that fucking kid locked in one of the cabins. I swear to Christ, if he starts to cry, or whine, or ask for shit, I’ll throw the little motherfucker’s ass overboard without slowing a knot. And I’m still gonna charge you the fuckin’ nut for his passage.”

  Micki. You had to love her. She was one of the few people in the world whom Prax actually enjoyed hanging around with. The woman could make him laugh!

  Still standing in her stinking cabin, he had listened to her return to the subject of the equipment they’d loaded aboard in Mariel, saying, “Jesus Christ, when you said you wanted a surgical microscope, I pictured something that would fit on a desk. We had to use the fucking ship’s derrick to get the thing aboard. Crew about busted its ass getting the damn thing into the infirmary.”

  Prax had said,
suddenly very serious, “You found the microscope I wrote to you about in the e-mail? It’s a Carl Zeiss, the floor model. Weighs about three hundred pounds. They had a couple in Havana, ’cause I checked on the Internet. It’s important you got the right model. Same with the surgical instruments. Doctors-the great ones-they’re very damn fussy about what they use in their work.”

  Micki had just lit a cigarette. Now she intentionally blew smoke in his face. Prax wasn’t wearing one of his masks. Aboard Repatriate, it wasn’t necessary-another reason he liked the ship.

  He leaned into the smoke, tried to suck it in and blow it back at her-which made her smile. The two of them got along pretty good.

  She said, “If that face of yours didn’t look like a map of the world, man, you might have a shot at ol’ Micki-but don’t ever be givin’ me orders aboard my own ship again.”

  Prax had replied, “If you lost a hundred pounds and took a bath, I might take a shot. I’m not giving orders. I’m just telling you it’s important I get the right stuff. I know what I want.”

  Actually, he knew what surgical equipment Dr. Valerie Santos used.

  She’d told him in her e-mails.

  THE Repatriate left Cuban waters before midnight on Thursday, May 1, crossed the Florida Straits into the Gulf of Mexico, and twenty-three hours later, was being piloted by U.S. authorities into the shipping channels of Tampa Bay.

  By three A.M., Saturday morning, the ship was moored at a wing of isolated phosphate loading docks on a river near a highway bridge, and Micki was finishing the last of the paperwork so the two Port Authority inspectors could go on their merry way.

  They knew Micki, they knew the ship, and their inspection had been no more thorough than others.

  When they left the Repatriate, the U.S. authorities stationed a single male security guard at the bottom of the gangplank, on the starboard side of the vessel, so the crew could not disembark.

  There was no security of any kind, not a soul watching the port-or river side-of the ship. And, at this hour, there was almost no car traffic on the usually busy highway bridge.