Key West Connection

by Randy Wayne White

  I don’t know how I made it back to the surface. But I did. Billy Mack was still there. The rest of the guys were a couple hundred yards away, trying to make it to land. I didn’t blame them. Later, each and every one of them would risk their lives—and some would, in the end, lose their lives—for me.

  “Jesus Christ,” Billy Mack had said, amazed that I was still among the breathing. “You were down there forever. For goddam forever. I thought . . . I thought . . . ”

  There was an odd, burning sensation around my left pelvic area. “Billy Mack,” I told him, gasping, beginning to cramp with pain, “as long as I’m around, you ain’t ever gonna die. And as long as you’re around, I ain’t gonna die. Remember that, buddy. I’m hurt, Billy. Maybe bad. You gotta get me back. Promise me that. You won’t let me die, I won’t let you die.”

  It took 148 stitches. It was a huge dusky shark—they knew from a ragged tooth imbedded in my pelvis. Forever afterward, I was known as “Dusky.”

  “Very rare,” the Navy marine biologist told me later. “A dusky almost never attacks man and certainly not in the Pacific. It’s an Atlantic shark. Until you came along, that is. It’s almost a kind of strange privilege. You ought to feel proud, MacMorgan.”

  And for all these years, I had felt a strange pride in it. I had beaten nature’s own perfect rogue warrior and gone back for more. When Billy and I got sick and tired of Nam—the politics, the pointless battles governed by pointless little men who never wanted you to win, not really—we retired, went to Key West, started chartering. I met Janet, who was then an actress on location in the Keys. The most beautiful woman I had ever seen, before or since. She told me she was tired of the glamour grind, the parties and premieres, the newspaper clowns always sniffing around. She said all she really wanted out of life was a home, kids, and something else; something that she had discovered was very rare indeed—a real man.

  Billy Mack handled the wedding details singlehandedly. I hated that sort of crap, and Janet was on location in Ireland: her final film. And when Ernest and Honor came along he was official godfather and legal guardian if anything happened. They never tired of listening to his stories. Especially the story about the big dusky.

  “Tell us again how Daddy got his name, Uncle Billy,” they would beg him.

  Billy Mack and I wanted to get old and slack and slow together. He had his stories and I had that wide indentation of scar on my pelvis: the symbol of a promise we had made each other a long, long time ago one night in the black Pacific.

  But now, four strangers had made a liar out of me. Two black guys, two white, in a ritzy racing boat. I had been around, and I had let Billy Mack die. And now someone was going to pay.

  II

  “Dusky! Dusky! Are you listenin’?”

  The reality of Nels Chester screaming at me over the Konel VHF jolted me out of my nostalgic reverie.

  “Yeah, I’m here, Nels.”

  “Christ, I thought for a second they’d gotten you too.”

  “Not hardly. Tell me again: which way were they headed?”

  “Well, east-nor’east, tryin’ to pick up the main shippin’ markers into Key West, I suppose. But if you’re figurin’ on interceptin’ that cigarette hull, Dusky, there’s just no way, ’cause it’s clear outta sight already.”

  “Shut up, Nels. What about Billy Mack’s boat? How many guys are in it?”

  “Two. The big colored guy that cut Billy, and one of the white guys.”

  “That course, Nels—that course will bring them right by the shoals at Sand Key and Eastern Dry Rocks, won’t it?”

  “Yeah, but hell, they won’t even know those shoals are there. They ain’t gonna slow up. I been around boats all my life, and these guys don’t know what in the hell they’re doin’.”

  “One more thing, Nels. Give me half an hour before you notify the Coast Guard.”

  “What?”

  “Just do it, goddammit! Now, cover up Billy Mack good. Use that white fly-bridge canvas—I’ll buy you a new one. And when you get back to the docks, don’t let any of those gore seekers or newspapermen stare at him. I won’t let them do that to Billy Mack. If I hear that it happened, I’ll come looking for you, Nels. You know me; you know I mean it.”

  I switched the VHF off in the middle of Nels’ indignant protestations, then hurried deckside.

  “Fish on!”

  The guy who had chartered my boat sat tensed in the chrome-and-white fighting chair while, astern of us, a big Atlantic sailfish, iridescent blue in the blackblue water of the Gulf Stream, knifed its way through the weak trolling chop, mullet bait already in its mouth.

  “Thousand one. Thousand two . . . ”

  Before he had a chance to finish his count and strike the fish, I had whipped my Gerber fishing knife out and cut the line. His face registered surprise, then outrage.

  “What in the hell . . . ? What are you, some kinda madman?” He jumped out of the fighting chair, letting the big Penn Senator reel fall with a thud onto the deck. He shoved me back against the ladder to the fly bridge of my old custom-built, thirty-four-foot sportsfisherman, hands gripping the collars of my shirt.

  I didn’t like the guy to begin with. He had chartered me three days in a row, each day coming aboard with the loud and braggartly flourish of the gaudy rich, browbeating his pretty blond wife, lecturing her when she missed her first fish. I couldn’t understand it. She was a good woman. A beautiful face and figure; soft weight of breasts lifting full and firm under the denim shirts that she wore. And she was obviously intelligent. Once I caught her looking at me in the soft way that women do when they are interested in a man. And when I caught her, her gaze hardened, softened, then hardened again. She seemed to be saying: “Okay, I made a mistake. I married a bratty man-child who isn’t big enough or confident enough to allow his wife to live as an individual. He gropes for integrity by stealing mine, and his ego feeds on making me look small and silly and foolish. I made a mistake, but I’ll live with it. I don’t need an affair with a big blond hulk of a charterboat captain to salvage what humanity I have left. That would only make me feel even more pathetic. No matter how good-looking you are, no matter how tender you might be. And as much as I would like to. . . . ”

  His hands tightened, pulling his big hams of fists up under my chin when he realized how easily he had shoved me back against the ladder.

  “I want my money back, Captain MacMorgan. Every goddam cent of it. That was my one shot at a trophy fish, and you blew it. It could have been a world’s record on thirty-pound, and I want a refund. Now!”

  He was a big guy. A whole head taller than I am—and I’m just a tad over six feet two. The college fullback type; maybe tight end. If so, that had been some years and twenty pounds ago. Oh, in a fight, he might even now have been able to summon all that strength and speed of college days—but not for more than forty seconds. And, frankly, I didn’t give a shit if he could. Slowly, ever so slowly, I reached up and took his wrist in my right hand, and then began to squeeze. Softly at first. Then harder. I watched his face. First, he was amused. Then surprised. And then his face blanched white with pain. I felt the small carpal bone pop and crush beneath my grip.

  “Oh, Jesus!” His hands fell limply to his sides. “Jesus, you broke my . . .”

  Gently, I grabbed his shirt collar and swung him into the cabin, noticing, as I did, the slightest of wry smiles on the face of his wife.

  “Listen to me, fat boy,” I said in a hoarse whisper. “And listen good. In about ten minutes I’ve got a very important date with a couple of murderers. It won’t take long. And I want you and that nice woman—I’m not going to call her your wife because that implies ownership, and she’s too good to be owned by anybody, especially you—to do what I say. You lock yourselves in the head and don’t come out no matter what you hear.”

  “You’re crazy,” the big man said, eyes wide with horror. “I refuse to be a part of any of it. I demand you take us back to Key West immediately. I demand . . . h
ey, what are you doing?”

  I had lowered him down into a booth seat beside the galley. I was rummaging around in the food locker and finally found what I was looking for. A little tin of Copenhagen snuff. I held it up.

  “See this stuff? Got hooked on it when I was a kid in the circus. I was a catch man—the best, some used to say. But there was a lot of pressure, lot of responsibility. Got so before each show I had to have a dip of this Copenhagen. Then, in Vietnam, I had it shipped over. Couldn’t fight without it; that’s how it got to be. I killed seventeen men in hand-to-hand combat above water, and the last thing thirteen of them saw was me about to spit this shit into their eyes. Now, do you have some idea of what I’m doing?”

  There was a wild look of terror in his eyes. He made a lunge for the VHF. I caught him in midstride, swung him around, and slapped him; four good stingers.

  “Okay,” he said, a little whimper escaping. “Okay, I’ll do anything you say.”

  “Good. Just lock yourselves in the head and don’t come out. No matter what.”

  I started up deckside, then stopped and turned around. His chubby face was pallid and he was holding his wrist. I said, “Your wife didn’t see any of this. So it never happened as far as I’m concerned. If she had seen you humiliated, I know what you would have done. Taken it all out on her. Made her life an even bigger hell than it is right now. So forget it. Right?”

  He nodded quickly.

  I jumped the steps to topside and came immediately face to face with the woman. I slammed the cabin door behind me.

  “You heard?”

  She nodded somberly. She seemed to be on the verge of tears, her lovely face flushed, and I realized that I had seen only one prettier woman in my life—Janet, my wife.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I had to do it. My best friend was just . . . just murdered. The guys who did it . . . well. See that light tower toward shore a ways? That’s the marker at Sand Key. If my guess is right, they’ll skirt Sand Key, turn directly for Western Head and the channel into Key West. And if they do, I’ve got ’em. They’ll go around at Eastern Dry Rocks, or I’ll intercept them. Either way, they’re dead.”

  She gasped. In her eyes was sadness and deep concern. “You can’t do that, Captain MacMorgan. You have a wife to think about. And you love her; love her very much. I can tell. You’re the first man who never . . . never . . . ”

  “Made a pass at you, Mrs. Johnson?”

  She smiled at me then; reached up with a soft dry hand and touched my face. “Did you really kill seventeen men in hand-to-hand combat?”

  “Maybe.”

  I watched her study my eyes.

  “Yes, I think you did, Captain MacMorgan.” She stood on tiptoe and brushed my cheek lightly with her soft lips. For an instant I felt the fullness of nipple and breast against my chest; felt the brief heat of thighs against my leg. “I wish you well, captain. I had forgotten: there are still some men who do the things they have to do. No matter what.”

  III

  Nels Chester was wrong. There weren’t two of them. There were three. And when that fatal unknown jammed the phallic muzzle of a .45-caliber service automatic in my back I knew that, in unintentionally breaking my long-ago promise to Billy Mack, I had vanquished all our vows.

  On that afternoon, I too would die.

  It had started out as such a fine day: old morning sun lifting up over the turquoise expanse of coral sea; rolling its fresh August heat over Crawfish Key, and Mule Key, sweet with the cloying odor of jasmine, right into Key West. As always, I awoke with the first sound of waking birds. My wife, Janet, slept beside me, cool on cotton sheets, long auburn hair and soft nakedness in revolving shadow beneath the ceiling fan.

  She stretched, yawned, heavy breasts lifting with each slow inhalation. “Dusky? Do you have to leave already?”

  I had nuzzled her face, felt her mouth open to accept the proffered good-morning kiss, felt her legs part as I stripped the cotton sheet away, felt her buttocks lift and rise as my tongue traced the curve of back, reaching deep into the abyss of white thighs, finding the auburn and silken source of my own two sons. I had entered her from behind, then, sliding gently into those well-loved depths. Her nipples flushed, swelled, lengthened; that soft body coming alive as she lay half asleep, eyes closed, wry smile on her face as if we enjoyed the common bond of all secrets of all time. She whimpered, shuddered, gasped, and grew feverish.

  “My God, Dusky . . . ah . . . you seemed huge when I met you, and you seem to get bigger . . . ah . . . every year. . . . ”

  Soft morning giggle of the teenager she would always be; of the vampish lover that the film critics—who had praised her beauty and her acting lavishly—would never know.

  Down at the docks, with the smell of freshening sea wind moving over the long white brigade of charter boats, I saw bottlenosed dolphins hunting the flats off Trumbo Point. A good sign. I am a man who looks for good omens and worries about the bad. Superstitious. Like every circus performer on earth. Carlos de Marti, who had trained with me for the Bay of Pigs fiasco, was already on the docks, a long night of dark sea behind him.

  “Hola, mi amigo!”

  “Buenos dǐas, capitán!”

  “Tu tienes mi cerveza?”

  “Sí!”

  He helped me load the two cases of excellent Cuban beer aboard the Sniper. Once a month, Carlos made the dangerous crossing to Cuba alone, meeting the love of his life on a rural shore of the northern coast, then heading back the next night. Someday he’ll be caught. And shot or imprisoned. But for more than two years, once a month, he has brought me back forty-eight rations of that good Hatuey beer. I had learned to love it when I was barely a teenager. It was my first time in Key West, and after our third show, nearly midnight, I had walked down to Mallory Docks alone. And there was Papa, a writer I had loved but never met. Grizzly white beard, whiskeycask chest, he stood with hands in pockets on the deserted docks, looking out into the midnight sea toward his beloved Cuba. Even then, I was almost as big as he: six feet tall, 185 pounds. The fact that I worked the trapeze interested him. And he came to watch me the next night. And afterward, we went out walking again, through the empty old pirate streets of Key West, down to the docks. With him he carried a huge thermos of beer.

  “Old-timer,” he had said, “drinking and writing have many similarities yet one great difference. They both make you feel fine, they both should be approached with discipline and respect. But drinking should be taught. And writing—good writing—can never ever be taught.”

  That night he taught me how to drink beer. Good Hatuey beer. The rest of the world already looked upon him as a living legend. As I did. But that night, standing side by side, looking out into the strangely promising expanse of black sea, I came to look upon him as a friend, too.

  So it had been a good morning. A promising morning. Dolphins feeding and a fresh larder of beer.

  Until the call. Until Nels Chester told me Billy Mack, my best friend, had been murdered.

  Once I had the Johnson couple, alienated man and wife, secured in the head below, I headed for the shoals inside Eastern Dry Rocks. But not before I had taken the Randall knife from its storage place in the starboard locker. That knife was made for two things and two things only. Life. And death. I hadn’t worn it in seven years. I took off my belt, took off my shirt, strapped the knife firmly just between armpit and left breast, then put my shirt back on. It wouldn’t show. I had a rifle aboard. A Russian assault automatic, an AK-47, fully loaded with 7.62mm cartridges. I had smuggled it back from Nam. I kept it secured horizontally above the forward controls in spring clips. I used it for sharks, the open-ocean sharks that vector in on a hooked billfish. But I didn’t want to use it on these guys. You shoot someone down at sea—no matter what they’ve done—and you end up in court. I wanted to make it look like selfdefense. And besides that, I wanted to look into their eyes. I wanted them to know why they were going to die. I wanted their last thoughts to be about Billy Mack.
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br />   I had two plans of action. If they went aground on the shoals, I would putter up like a friendly weekend fisherman and offer assistance. If they didn’t go aground, I would try to flag them down, pretending I was disabled. And just hope and pray they tried on me what they did to Billy.

  I would have no trouble intercepting them. In my thirty-four-foot Sniper I had twin 453 GM diesels, and all Billy’s old Chris Craft had was a standard-power Caterpillar 3208, single-screw. We used to laugh about the differences between our two boats. His was so slow and sure, mine was so fast and erratic: reflections of our separate personalities. He was by far the better fisherman.

  “Hell, Dusky,” he had once said, “you ought to fish like me—just hunt around till you find ’em. But no, you can’t be that way. You gotta work the long shots; pick a spot an’ wait for the big ones to come by. Christ, you fish like a sniper. That’s it—a goddamn sniper!”

  And so my boat was named.

  Key West was a heat mirage on the turquoise slick of open water. A power skiff threw silver wake as it cut across Whitehead Spit, angling inland by old Fort Taylor. I picked up the bell buoy which was Marker 2, skirted the spoil area, then dropped her down and shut her off, drifting on the inside of Eastern Dry Rocks.

  I checked my Rolex Submariner watch. If they had followed Nels’ predicted course, they should have already been in sight. But they weren’t. I was flooded with second thoughts, other possibilities. Why couldn’t they just run Southwest Channel toward Key West? No, Nels had said they didn’t know boats. They didn’t know the water, so they’d head for markers. But why in hell would they be taking a hijacked boat inland anyway? Because that was the only place they could hide it. And as far as they were concerned, no one knew they had slit a good man’s throat to get it. Why would anybody be watching for them?