by Janie DeVos
“What are they doing?” I asked softly.
“Since a sponge is actually an animal, they’re beating anything still living in it out of it,” Scott replied.
From the boardwalk, we turned left and headed down the main street of Bimini, which was nothing more than a limestone road filled with tiny shanties, but bustling with many people. It was obvious that business was conducted in a variety of ways. The indigenous people, with their beautifully rich, dark chocolate-colored skin, seemed friendly enough, but in a guarded sort of way. I felt as though I was being measured as I walked along. Scott, however, was enthusiastically welcomed by several of the Bahamians, who shouted friendly greetings to him. There was no mistaking the fact that he was known in this place and accepted. And there was also no mistaking the fact that these were people hard at work, shrewdly making a living as fast as they could while taking advantage of the good fortune that the selling and running of liquor out of their port had brought to them. It was almost as though they understood that a thing this good couldn’t last, so they hawked their wares, and offered their services up and down the streets and docks, filling their pockets as best they could while the sun was shining down upon them.
We nearly walked past a couple of men cleaning king fish at a table by one of the docks, but Scott happened to glance over at them at the last second and stopped. “Hey, Oscar,” he warmly greeted a large man who was wearing a bright green knitted cap even though it felt like it was a hundred degrees out. Immediately, the man looked up from the fish he was gutting.
“Heyyyyy, Scottie!” the man enthusiastically shouted. “I thought dat mighta been you come flyin’ in over m’ head a few minutes ago. What brings ya here dis time o’ day?” The man spoke in a melodic, staccato rhythm, and replaced the letters th, in words such as “this” or “that”, with the letter d.
“I’m lookin’ for Sparky or Cleo. Are either of ‘em around?”
“Cleo was here ’bout an hour ago, I guess. But she gone back to Nassau. She come in ’cause dat McCoy was bringin’ in a dozen cases of brandy for her. She could have sent one o’ her boys to come get it for her, but I tink she jus’ wanted to see ol’ Bill,” he said with a wink. “She flew in ’n out. Bet she didn’t stay no more den an hour. But Sparky’s here somewhere,” he said, looking around. “I just saw him snitchin’ a fritter off o’ Loretta. She chased him outta her place with a fly swatter! Dey might actually get married if dey would quit fightin’ long enough to say ‘I do.’” Oscar smiled a semi-toothless grin.
Scott laughed, and then asked which way Sparky was heading with his fritter.
“Saw him headin’ towards his trawler. You might find him there,” he suggested.
“Thanks, Oscar,” Scott said and we started to walk away.
“Scottie boy,” Oscar called after him, stopping us. “Dat’s a mighty fine lookin’ filly you got dere,” he said, nodding toward me. “She blind or what? Gotta be somedin’ wrong with de gal to be hangin’ around with the likes o’ you!” He grinned.
Scott smiled and nodded in agreement. Then, “We’ll be seein’ ya, Oscar.”
We moved down the street, and Scott picked up the pace as we did. About fifty yards down was a tiny shanty. Over the door, on a piece of driftwood, “Loretta’s” was handwritten in faded red paint. “C’mon,” Scott said, holding the door open for me. “You hungry?”
I told him I could eat.
Inside, the tiny room was only lit by natural lighting. It was stuffy, and smelled of fried seafood and the salt air, even though all the windows were open. There were four small tables, and beyond that was a counter with a cash register. Behind it was a brightly lit kitchen that was separated from the rest of the restaurant by an open arched doorway that had strings of bright beads hanging down, acting as a curtain of sorts. Though I couldn’t see anyone in the kitchen, I could hear some woman chewing someone else out. She spoke so heatedly and rapidly, it was hard to make out exactly what it was she was saying.
“Loretta’s in.” Scott grinned.
“Is that who’s doing all the fussin’?” I said in a low voice.
“It is.” Scott nodded, laughing. “And you know she loves you and everything’s right as rain between you two when she does. If she’s polite to you, you better run.”
“No kiddin’?”
“No, I’m deadly serious,” he replied. “I’ve seen her give a man the sweetest smile and then send someone after him to pulverize him. Loretta’s well known and well respected in these parts. She makes the best fried anything in the Caribbean—her and Minerva.”
“Who’s Minerva?” I asked, but before he could answer me, an enormously tall and equally wide woman with skin the color of caramel came out from behind the kitchen curtain.
“Well, looky here! Looky what Santy Claus done brought early!” she said, coming around the end of the counter and enveloping Scott in a bear hug. She sounded far more like a southerner than an islander. “I been askin’ fer a purty man, and finally got me one!” she beamed. “Uh-oh,” she said, releasing him and narrowing her eyes at me. “Looks like someone else got him first.” I couldn’t help but laugh.
“Loretta, this is Lily,” he said, smiling over at me. He looked back at her and held her away at arm’s distance. “You’re lookin’ good,” he said. “What’s keepin’ you so young?”
“Bullshit!” she exuberantly declared. “It’s gotta be that ’cuz everyone around here is full of it, including me!” She laughed and her huge belly shook like she was “Santy Claus.”
“Loretta, we’re looking for two things; rum and fritters. Do you know if Sparky’s got any rum? We need sixty cases. And if you don’t have any fritters, I’m tying weights to my feet, bidding this pitiful life farewell and dropping into the deep.”
“Well, you’ll live to see another day,” she said with her hands on her hips. “I just fried a whole batch of fritters, and the conch’s as fresh as a sailor’s mouth. Sparky just brought it in about mid-mornin’. And he brought rye in, but I don’t know about rum. He’s over at his boat. Go see what he’s got, and quick-like, ’cuz I know he’s gettin’ ready to make a run over to West Palm Beach.”
“Alright,” Scott said, pulling his wallet out of his back trouser pocket. “Let us have a dozen fritters to go, and then we’ll go on over to Sparky’s. Oscar said Cleo headed back to Nassau about an hour ago—is that right?”
“Yeah, she got her fifteen minutes with Big Bill, and then she flew out of here. Lord, God, but that woman had a smile on her face that’ll last until—”
“Let me guess,” Scott interrupted her. “Until Santy Claus visits Miss Cleopatra again next week.”
Loretta roared with laughter. “You got that right!”
We walked down the street toward the last dock, where Sparky’s trawler was tied up. “Loretta doesn’t sound like she’s from the islands,” I said around a delicious mouthful of a deep golden fritter that looked like a hushpuppy and was prepared much in the same way. Only the conch, which was actually the animal living inside the large conical-shaped shell, was doctored up with a lot of spices, giving the fritters a lot of flavor and heat. “She sounds like a southerner.”
“She is,” Scott said, crumpling up the newspaper the fritters had come wrapped in and tossing it into a trash can by one of the fish cleaning stations. “She’s from Macon, Georgia.”
“What brought her here?” I asked.
“A murder charge. She ran before they could hang her.”
“Who’d she kill?” I asked, aghast.
“Her husband.” He smirked. “She beat him to death with a meat mallet.”
“Why?” I cried.
“He insulted her cooking.”
Chapter 27
The Setting Sun
We sped across the water paralleling Bimini, building up enough speed to become airborne, and then we banked off to the we
st. We’d been able to catch Sparky before he left for West Palm Beach with his cargo but were only able to get forty cases of rum from him. But he sent one of his men over to the Sapona in a runabout, and we were able to procure twenty more from their stock. Scott was able to get the cases at a better price by dealing with the locals than by dealing with the distributers out of London, or the northeast, who had storefronts set up on Bimini’s main street. Another reason he preferred dealing with the locals, Scott said, was because he knew he was getting premium liquor from them, whereas he couldn’t always say the same about the outsiders. Once we had all the rum we needed, Scott gave four teenaged boys a dollar each to haul the cases down the beach and onto the plane, and then he and I took off for Miami. Because we were going to have to make two runs, we decided to take the first load back to the mainland, unload it and then fly back to Nassau. First though, we needed to decide where to stash the liquor while we flew the second leg. It was too dangerous to take such a large quantity of liquor directly to Chick. We needed to unload it somewhere safe, without the authorities seeing us, especially the border patrol. Then we’d have to figure out how to get the liquor to Chick.
“We could drop this rum off at Elliot Key,” Scott suggested, “but that island’s pretty far south of Miami. On the other hand, that makes it really isolated, which is good. A lemon grove is about the only thing there right now.”
“The house on Key Biscayne is much closer,” I replied, “but let’s leave that as a last resort. That place has been used way too much lately, and for all the wrong reasons. Besides, someone in my family, or even one of our friends, could stop by. And if all that liquor was there…” There was no need to finish the sentence. We both knew what a bind that would put us in.
“When I used to run the stuff,” Scott explained, “I’d take it directly to a secluded place the buyer and I agreed upon. I used to land in fields, and even on a deserted street a time or two, but it was picked up within five minutes of my setting the wheels down. This stuff’s gonna sit there for a while, so we’ve got to hide it somewhere safe.”
“The lighthouse!” It had just occurred to me. “The Cape Florida Lighthouse, on Key Biscayne. There’s no one there. Every blue moon a caretaker comes out to check it, but there’s really not much to check on. It’s decommissioned, so I bet they don’t come out more than twice a year. The old keeper’s house is there, too, and that’s probably the main reason the caretaker goes out—you know, checking for squatters, rumrunners—that kind of thing,” I said wryly. “But I think the lighthouse would be a safe bet. I have access to it, too.”
“Why’s that?” Scott asked, glancing over at me. Suddenly, the thought occurred to me that he might wonder if I’d taken anyone there before, like maybe Neil Aldrich. After all, Scott had flown over us just when we’d arrived on Key Biscayne in the runabout. I figured he understood now that we were there for no other reason than to take care of my injured sister, but there was no way for me to broach the subject without it being very awkward. Really, there was no reason to bring it up at all. Scott was willing to help me in order to bail my sister out of a very dangerous situation and I would be forever grateful to him. Other than gratitude, though, I didn’t owe Scott anything, including an explanation about my relationship with Neil, no matter what he might be thinking. Besides, what he thought, right or wrong, shouldn’t have mattered to me. But it did.
“My father used to be a lighthouse keeper at Fowey Light, six miles offshore from Key Biscayne,” I explained. “He knew where the key was for every lighthouse along the South Florida coastline, or at least how to get into most of them. They moved the offshore keepers around a lot. I went into the Cape Florida light with him on a couple of occasions; you know, just checking the place out, Daddy showing me the big Fresnel lens, that kind of thing. I know where the key is hidden. Also, we can unload the plane in the lagoon behind the lighthouse, on the western side of the island. They call that lagoon ‘hurricane harbor’ because folks anchor their boats there during storms. It offers fairly good shelter, and, more importantly for us, it’s more private than the eastern side of the Key.”
“Then hurricane harbor, it is,” Scott said.
Several miles out of Bimini, we banked off to the southwest. The lighthouse was in that direction, and we didn’t want to fly over the Full House, which we would have done had we headed due west. If Daddy saw us, he’d wonder what was going on. We’d only been gone several hours; about the same amount of time it would take us to get to Nassau, but not there and back.
Forty-five minutes later, we had the lighthouse in sight. “Okay,” Scott said, taking a deep breath. “I only want to make one pass by the lighthouse. The longer we’re in the air, circling around, the more attention we’re going to draw to ourselves. It’s not like the sky is thick with traffic, and we’re going to be noticed, so we’ve got to do this right the first time. Now, Miss Strickland, this is where I really need you. You watch along the shoreline and look for anything that doesn’t look right. If you see something, you let me know loud ’n clear and we’ll keep flying and figure out a Plan B. You got that?”
I told him I did, and I strained my eyes, watching for the least little thing that seemed out of place. When I confirmed that everything looked as it should, we flew past the red brick, ninety-five foot lighthouse, and after seeing that it, too, looked deserted, we banked off to the west, then came in low, heading in a northeast direction, and landed just outside the mouth of the lagoon. We slowly pulled into the bladder-shaped body of water, whose shoreline was encrusted with thick mangroves, while cabbage palms and coconut palms lay beyond. The thick foliage would provide the privacy we needed, and I knew a small pathway through it that would enable us to carry the cases to the lighthouse.
Leading up to the lighthouse was a stone pathway, and I located the key hidden beneath the third stone from the front door. Scott slowly unlocked it and peered around the door. Nothing was inside other than the iron staircase that wound its way up to the lantern room at the top.
“We’ll store the cases here at the base of the staircase and get going. It’s going to take us about two hours to get to Nassau, and it’s mid-afternoon already. I want to get there before dark, if we can.”
By 3:45 p.m., we were rising above Key Biscayne, and I caught a glimpse of my family’s cottage below. To the north side of the house was a picnic table, where just the month before, my family grilled the freshly caught lobster we’d caught off the reef earlier that day. While the lobsters cooked, Mama and Daddy walked along the beach hunting for sea glass that washed ashore. The smooth, opalescent glass came from broken bottles and the like, worn smooth by the constant movement of the abrasive salt water currents. Mama loved collecting it and even had some jewelry made from sea glass that a young Seminole girl named Rose had given to her when she was a young woman. Mama taught Rose how to read and write in English, and the two had kept in touch through letters over the years. While my parents beach combed, my grandparents, Olivia and I played penny-ante poker, and Grandma won. She always did – as long as Granddaddy let her. It was a gentle afternoon, a day when nothing mattered but the family, the sun and water, buttered lobster and easy laughter. Though we were sorry the day had to end, we knew there’d be others. There always were. But as Scott and I flew out of sight of the house, and I turned away from the window, I knew that the security, warmth, and joy the place had always given me were gone. The sun had set on its innocence, just as it had on that gentle afternoon.
Chapter 28
Meeting Cleopatra
We walked along Nassau’s Bay Street at dusk after our two-hour flight, part of which I slept through. Now, feeling wide awake and alert, I turned my head in amazement as I took in the many foreign sights, sounds and smells of the Caribbean’s miniature version of New York City. Sitting out in the open for all to see, with no attempt at covering or camouflaging them, were countless barrels of whiskey and rum that had either just
arrived at the docks or were waiting to be loaded on to ships and transported to places like Florida and New York. And much like New York, Nassau was made up of tightly packed buildings. Many were no more than unpainted shanties, though the newer, handsomely trimmed and painted buildings scattered among them were a testament to the large amounts of money being made.
The sidewalks were bustling with people of every culture, class and creed, and they moved along briskly, dodging the few couples who were dressed elegantly for dinner and strolling at a much more leisurely pace. The ones who stood out to me were the tough-looking businessmen who moved about with definite intention, their eyes darting this way and that as though they were en route to a make-or-break deal. Steely-eyed and hardened, these men were the liquor brokers or agents; they had come from as far away as New York and New Jersey, Chicago and Detroit, and even across the Atlantic from London. Many of them became wealthy from the British-owned-island’s legal liquor trade, and as we walked by the lighted storefronts, we were witness to fortunes increasing as agents sat at their desks and continued to conduct business even as twilight edged its way in.
We walked several blocks down and turned left on Market Street. Once we were away from the hustle and noise of the docks, the pace seemed to slow a bit, even though the businesses here were just as embroiled in the liquor business as those on Bay Street. And it was to one of these particular offices that we headed.
We came upon a nondescript, three-story, red, brick building with a black and white shingle hanging from it that read: “Gertrude Lythgoe, Wholesaler, Premium Whiskies and Rum.”
Scott stopped in front of the office’s large picture window and peered in. Sitting half on and half off a large desk was a man with his back to us. He blocked from view the person he was obviously engaged in conversation with, though I could just make out a very fair bare arm, with the shoulder covered in a capped sleeve of some red garment, and a little of that person’s dark hair. Apparently, though, Scott could see enough to know exactly who he or she was.
