Key West Connection

by Randy Wayne White

  “I hardly know the guy.”

  “Right. And I love Atlanta in August. Dusky, he’s the one who shoved this whole thing through.”

  IX

  I was glad the dogs guarding Cuda Key were Dobermans. The Doberman is a singularly merciless animal—but with one major flaw. They are so anxious to attack an intruder that they often fail to bark a warning first.

  I could not afford to have any warnings sounded.

  It was a full-moon midnight. I worked my way through the jungle of mangroves off Bahia Honda Key, slapping at the vectoring mosquitoes. An occasional car roared over the high arching bridge behind me, straightening and slowing for the narrow, seven-mile ordeal which would carry them to Marathon. A weekday night at midnight—one of the few fairly safe times to travel that deadly Florida Keys Highway, A1A. Few drunks, fewer tourists.

  Earlier, I had made a partial reconnaissance of the area by car. Reconnaissance by day in preparation for the reconnaissance by night. Cuda Key lay about a mile off Bahia Honda in the clear, calm water of Florida Bay. From the shore, I had made notes: a broad-shouldered tourist writing postcards in the hot sun. A hundred acres of island, with plenty of cover. Gumbo limbo, bamboo, Jamaican dogwoods, bayonet plants and pepper trees. Big house on a shell mound, nearly hidden by trees, and squat like a fortress, made of coquina rock. Deepwater entry on the Big Spanish Channel side. Neat docks with two big cruisers, several smaller boats—and one dark-blue cigarette-style hull. Smaller outbuildings, a steelmesh fence surrounding the island, and the trotting Dobermans. That’s all I could see—from the road. Now my little Boston Whaler was tethered to its anchor in the shallows of a jungled spoil bank, and I moved toward the island which housed members of one of the Keys’ bigger drug rings. And, I hoped, the man who had masterminded the deaths of my wife and sons.

  I pulled the black watch cap down over my forehead and ears, spat in and rinsed my mask, then adjusted it on my face.

  I carried only two real weapons: my Randall knife, and the Webber 4-B dart pistol. But the lignum vitae darts were not armed with the scorpionfish poison. Instead, they held a simple tranquilizer—one that would knock a big dog out for an hour, or a medium-sized man for approximately half that time.

  I was working for the government now. Doing it their way. And Stormin’ Norman had forbidden me to kill—unless I absolutely had to.

  It had not gone over well with me.

  “We need to build a better case, Dusky. More proof.”

  “I’ve got all the proof I need, for God’s sake.”

  “Great! We’ll just subpoena them all into federal court, have you stand up and tell the judge your story, and then he’ll lock them all away for a hundred years. Dusky, it’s not that damn simple. We need a little illegal bugging done. When we find out who is in on it, how long it has been going on, what the connections are and when their next score is, then we’ll get the warrants.”

  “And what if you can’t get the warrants?”

  “If the rot goes that deep, then we’ll turn you loose. My God, don’t grin like that, captain. You look like the grim reaper himself when you grin like that.”

  So instead of the RDX explosives, I carried four candy-colored and candy-sized bugging devices. My mission was to gain access to the island, place the bugs in strategic areas, then escape without anyone knowing that I had been there.

  It sounded easy enough.

  I slid into the water, noiseless as a seal, and began the half-mile swim. I could have walked most of the way. Except for the passes and the channels and a few potholes where the big flats fish and barracuda covey on low spring tides, Florida Bay is shallow. It is a vast littoral zone that is gravid with life: everything from mud worms to tunicates to bonefish to sharks.

  The full moon cast a frosted pale sheen across the water and veiled Cuda Key in a silver mist. I had spent the previous day reading everything I could about the island. Two thousand years of human inhabitation. First, the prehistoric Tequesta or Calusa Indians. They were expert fishermen and seamen. They carved beautiful wooden masks and idols and made sacrifices to their nature gods. By canoe, they traded with the Indians of Cuba and South America, and they were such fierce warriors that they extracted tribute from the other Indians of Florida, and they held the Spaniards—with their steel swords and shields—at bay for more than a hundred years. But finally, not the swords of the Spanish but the diseases of the Spanish caught up with them. And drove them to extinction. Now all that remained of those Indians were the high shell mounds which they had built—like the mound which foundationed that fortress of a stone house. A Spanish mission came later. And then Cuda Key became a hideout for pirates. And after the American men-of-war routed the pirates, the island became the home of fishermen, and then a citrus farmer, then a goat herder, then a group of nudists trying to breed their own superrace, and, finally, pirates again.

  These were the pirates that I hunted.

  I made good time in the calm night water. Mullet streamed and jumped in the shallows beside me, and I heard something big—a barracuda, probably—knifing the baitfish somewhere beyond, in the ocean darkness.

  I chose an area of the island where the mangroves hung out over the water for my point of entry. I slid up the bank, climbed quietly along the arching roots. I took off my mask and fins and hid them. The western edge of the big house lay high before me. There was one light on—a bedroom light, probably. I forced myself to keep a mental map as I moved along, planning alternate routes of escape in my head. It was a good feeling I had; an old familiar feeling. And once you know it, you never forget it. Ever. A chemical nervousness low in the stomach; steady pulse of blood mixed with adrenaline. Controlled breathing, soft and shallow. All senses alerted, ready. Hearing, acute; eyes that sweep and take in everything.

  I was the silent one.

  The night stalker; the midnight hunter.

  And once you have done it well and loved it, you never stop loving it.

  I reached a broad clearing which bordered the steel fence. In the military, we had called such a clearing a “killing area.” I kept low, on my stomach. I felt beggar lice and sandspurs latch into my hands, my black sweater, the soft British commando pants. I knew what I needed to get across that fence. And, finally, I found it.

  A big gumbo limbo tree, looking amber in the moonlight, reached one thick limb over the fence. The fence itself would have been easy enough to climb or to cut, but it might have been electrified, or wired for sound. I wanted to take no chances. From one of the leg pockets of the commando pants, I took out a thirty-foot length of half-inch, five-strand rope. I tossed it over the limb, caught the other end, and tied a quick loop, using a bowline. I pulled the other end through until the knot was snug against the limb. I climbed the rope, hand over hand. The limb sagged beneath my weight, but not enough to touch the fence. When I was safely in the tree, I backed the knot out, coiled the rope, and stuck it back in my pants.

  I waited for the Dobermans to come.

  They were wind trackers. They needed no ground scent.

  And come they did. On a run.

  And barking.

  “Dammit!”

  They gathered beneath the tree like coonhounds. There were three of them. Two big black ones, and another that was cinnamon-colored. They jumped at me, trying to get up the tree: snarling, teeth snapping, looking like animal devils with their pointed ears, broad chests, and stiletto faces.

  A floodlight switched on at the house up on the mound. A figure appeared.

  “What in the hell are those dogs up to, Jimmy?”

  And from a little cottage at the base of the mound came another voice.

  “Jes’ goin’ out to check, Senator!”

  I watched the second figure walk toward me.

  “Snake Eyes! Gator! What ya got, boys?”

  I had an idea. I could dart the caretaker with no problem. But then they would know that I was there. Quietly, I cleared my throat. A cat doesn’t meow. Not at night. And certai
nly not when three Dobermans are after it.

  “E-e-e-auw-O-O-O!”

  A high, soprano wail—like a small panther.

  “Aw, shit!”

  “E-e-e-auw-O-O-O-O!”

  “Rusty! You boys come away from that damn cat! They got a cat, Senator!”

  “A cat! Oh, Jesus. Well, I didn’t pay two thousand dollars for trained cat killers!”

  “Tol’ you we shoulda got shepherds! You can trust a shepherd—but those bastards . . . ”

  “Pull them away, Jimmy. I’m trying to get some work done up here.”

  “Christ, Senator, they turn on me when they’re like that! Don’t trust ’em, no sir!”

  “Okay, okay. Let them eat the cat, for all I care. But if they aren’t quiet in five minutes, it’s your job!”

  The caretaker called to the dogs for a while, then headed back toward his cottage, muttering. “Goddam Dobermans . . . don’t know why they can’t use retrievers . . . good Chesapeake ’ould eat all three o’ their asses, then lick me like a puppy. . . . ”

  I darted them. One by one. Soft whimpers, heavy, drunken thud of collapsing dogs.

  I swung off the limb and dropped to the ground. I had an hour before they woke up. Maybe more, maybe a little less.

  From tree to tree, from shadowed bush to shadowed bush I went. At the little caretaker’s cottage, I paused, my eye to the corner of the window. He sat within in a soft chair, reading an article in a fishing magazine. He held an old pipe in his right hand, the stem repaired with electrical tape. I moved up the shell mound, mindful of my footing, toward the big house.

  The bedroom light was still on. I peered in. At first I thought the room was empty. But then a bathroom door opened, and I saw the woman. Tall ebony Negress. She wore a filmy nightgown. Small, sharp thrust of dark breasts plainly visible beneath the gown. She moved in front of the big floor lamp, and I saw the flat stomach, the perfect curve of rounded Negro hips vee away into black thatch. She was beautiful: short cropped hair, face the color of certain autumn leaves. Fluidly, she walked across the room, switched on the stereo, and made herself a drink at the bar. Bourbon and Bach.

  Keeping in the shadows of the big house, I moved around to the side door. Big door, black mahogany. Little rows of numbered buttons were placed where the doorbell should have been. An electronic lock. I retraced my steps, back along the house, and tried the door from which the Senator had exited and reenetered. More glowing buttons. I tried the door anyway, and to my surprise, it swung open. I stuck my hand in.

  Dark living room. Marble statues like mannequins on the plush carpet. I could hear the soft music coming from the bedroom. And from another room the deep voices and hushed laughter of men talking.

  I slipped in and closed the door behind me. From my pocket I took a Wise high-intensity penlight. Waterproof, it threw a laserlike beam when you screwed the lens down. I checked two tables before I finally found the phone. I switched on the tiny light, removed the transmitter, and unscrewed the red power wire and the green and yellow ground wires. I added the bug, replaced the phone. It would pick up all phone conversations on that line, and any conversations which took place in the living room.

  I crept down the dark hallway toward the bedroom. The music still played, but there was no band of light beneath the door. I waited, I listened. And finally I took a chance. I had to place a bug in the master bedroom. I opened the door ever so slowly and, on my belly, crawled in.

  Soft, steady inhalations and exhalations came from the long dark figure in the bed. Moonlight filtered in the two French windows, and in that soft glow I searched for a place to hide another little transmitter.

  There was a broad hatchcover bedroom table at the foot of the bed. I crawled toward it.

  “Darling? Senator, is that you?”

  I flattened, trying not to breathe, trying to will the loud beating of my own heart to stop.

  I heard the rustle of covers as she sat up.

  “Is someone there?”

  Soft lilt of British West Indies accent.

  I gave it a full five minutes before I allowed myself to move again. I stuck the little bug beneath the bottom surface of the heavy table with an ingenious sound-sensitive plaster the colonel had devised. It had the texture and color of old chewed gum.

  I gave it another ten minutes of dead silence, then crawled from the room. Once in the hallway, with the door closed behind me, I pulled up the sleeve of my watch sweater and checked the luminous green glow of the Rolex. Twelve-fifty-two. I had about twenty minutes before the Dobermans woke up.

  The men were still in the room talking. Soft deep voices, businesslike. The meeting room: probably den or library. I lay with my ear to the door, hearing snatches of conversation.

  “Pay off . . . Cleveland . . . wants too big a cut . . . ”

  “Maybe, plane crash . . . ”

  “Bahamas . . . getting easier . . . heroin . . . ”

  Three voices. One vaguely familiar—but not Ellsworth’s. I knew Ellsworth’s unique intonations all too well.

  I had to get a bug into that room.

  But how? Their meeting might take five more minutes, or five more hours.

  I decided to give them a little more time.

  I moved down the hallway, hoping that there would be a second entrance to the large master bathroom, and there was. It was halfway to the end, off to the right. I switched on the little flashlight. The place was as big as a boat. Sunken tub, gold-plated faucet fixtures, mirrors on the ceiling, redwood sauna bath. I opened the door of the sauna bath. I had planned on putting the bug near the sink. That’s the common ploy when important, deadly things are discussed: go into the bathroom, turn on both spigots, and talk. But the sauna bath might be even better.

  I didn’t know how the little transmitter would react to extreme heat, so I placed it under one of the long benches, away from the rock-covered heater.

  That done, I moved back down the hallway.

  And still they talked. I checked my watch. Five more minutes, tops. I had to think of a way to get the bug into that room. I didn’t want to be trapped by those dogs again. Perhaps I should have killed them. No—then they would have known; been on guard forever afterward.

  And finally it came to me.

  A dangerous idea—but necessary.

  I crept back out to the living room and found the main bar. What do the wealthy ones like to drink? I made three strong bourbons, on the rocks. I found a small vase of silk flowers. I removed the flowers, deposited the bug, then put the flowers back in. I put the drinks and the flowers on a silver tray. Back in the hallway, I listened to make sure they were still talking.

  They were.

  I placed the tray by the door, found the hallway light, and switched it on.

  And then I knocked: a soft feminine knock, three times.

  “What?”

  I knocked again, and then took cover.

  I heard the door open; smelled the odor of the expensive cigars.

  “I told you I didn’t want to be bothered, Bimini—hey, what’s this?”

  I heard the rattle of glasses as he picked up the tray.

  “Hey, three fresh bourbons.”

  “Doesn’t she know I don’t drink?”

  “What the hell. She’s been drinking herself. Didn’t I tell you she takes better care of me than any white woman I ever had? And flowers, too.” He called down the hall toward the bedroom, “Thank you, darling. Be with you as soon as I can!”

  The door closed amid bawdy male laughter.

  The glasses and tray would be taken away in the morning.

  The flowers would stay.

  I hoped.

  I switched off the light. She would have switched it off before her final trip to the bedroom. And then I made my way out of the house.

  So far, everything had gone perfectly. Without a hitch.

  Just like old times. I thought of Billy Mack. He loved night maneuvers. There had been no one better than he in the jungle. At ni
ght. When the killing or the reconnaissance had to be done silently. He had grown up on a farm and had spent half of his life in the woods.

  We used to talk about our boyhoods on those godawful rain-forest nights, waiting in the muck of those coffee-colored rivers, waiting to kill or be killed. I had told him about traveling with the circus. It turned out that our paths had actually crossed earlier. His folks had carted him clear to Toledo so that he might see the show under the big top.

  “Christ, I remember you now! That blond head of yours swinging back and forth with all those good-looking Italian people. Shit, I can’t believe it! I thought you was the luckiest kid on earth. Traveling like that.”

  “I was, Billy. For a long time I was. . . . ”

  Funny, the things you remember about old, lost friends. He told me once about the time he had picked up the trail of a big buck. He had done everything just right. Figured out where the buck was going. Crossed the trail and moved to that spot, keeping well downwind.

  “I came through some bushes, movin’ quiet, and I’ll be damn if that big ol’ buck wasn’t standin’ right there. It was like I knew the way of the woods as well as he did, to intercept him like that. H was a beauty, too. A fine-looking rack of antlers—a twelvepointer. He stood there, nose kind of quiverin’, those big brown eyes lookin’ fierce and proud. I raised my gun ever so slowly and . . . and . . . ”

  “And what, Billy?”

  “I couldn’t shoot, Dusky.” His voice was soft, reflective. “He was just too . . . too fine . . . ”

  Billy Mack had known the woods. And the jungle. He couldn’t be surprised in the woods. But on the sea, on a clear August day, when all boaters are supposed to be comrades . . .

  Quietly, I made my way down the shell mound. The caretaker’s light was still on. I glanced inside. The magazine had been placed facedown on the chair. The pipe still smoldered.

  Where had he gone?

  To the bathroom, probably. I checked my watch. It was after one a.m.

  I retraced my earlier route, staying in the shadows of trees and bushes. The big gumbo limbo was in front of me. I stopped and checked to make sure the dogs were still there.