Cross Current

by Christine Kling

  The girl still stood at her side with her eyes downcast. When Martine turned to speak to the girl, she had to look up at the child. “C’est tout, Juliette.”

  Though Martine Gohin stood less than five feet tall, there was a sense of power about her. Her body was thick, and she wore dark glasses with heavy frames. I settled in the chair she indicated and accepted the tall glass of iced tea.

  “So what can I do for you, Miss Sullivan?”

  “I assume you know that I am the one who found the little girl they’re calling the Earth Angel.”

  “Yes, the little Solange. I read about it in the paper.”

  “Let me explain what I’m trying to do, and then maybe the rest will make sense to you. See, when I found that girl two days ago, I told her—promised her, really—that I would do whatever I could to help her stay in this country.”

  “I wish more people felt as welcoming to Haitian immigrants.”

  “I know what you mean. But now the Immigration people tell me that the only way she can stay is if I find a relative. And since the girl told me her father is American, I’m determined to find him.”

  “She spoke to you? In English?”

  “Yes.”

  “That is very strange. I saw her at the hospital. Twice, actually. I guess you know I work for the police sometimes as a translator, but when I saw her, she refused to speak. No Creole, no English, nothing. The police need to interview her if she is speaking now.”

  “Well, there’s a problem.” I told her there had been an incident at the hospital. “I’m afraid she’s not talking to anybody right now. She’s clammed up again. But that doesn’t change anything about her status with Immigration. I need to find her father as soon as possible.”

  “How do you think I can help?”

  “I want to talk to someone who came over on the Miss Agnes, the boat that sank off Deerfield. We know that quite a few people made it ashore, and we think Solange may have started out on that boat. Maybe one of the people who was aboard knows something about her or her family. I was hoping you could get my message out to the Haitian community on your radio show. If someone is willing to give some information, they can stay anonymous, I don’t care, I just want to find her father—if he is, in fact, here.”

  She took a long drink from her iced tea, then called out, “Juliette.” The child came scurrying out of the house with a platter of fish in one hand and a bowl of rice and beans in the other. Martine pointed to the food and said to me, “Please, help yourself.”

  For the next few minutes, she explained to me how Juliette had cooked the fish according to Haitian custom, and while this meal had been cooked on her electric stove, back in Haiti they had grown up eating the same food cooked over an open charcoal fire. As she spoke, the girl moved silently in and out, serving the food, clearing dishes, bringing more bread, filling our iced tea glasses. Through the French doors, I could see framed photos on the wall unit in the dining room. All were of two parents and a young girl about three years old.

  “Is Juliette a relative of yours?” I noticed the girl shot a quick glance at Martine.

  Martine wiped at her mouth and swallowed. “Yes, she is my niece. Her mother is still in Haiti, but I brought her here a few years ago so she could learn English and get an American education. I have a young daughter, Camille, who is away at her playgroup right now. Juliette is a great help with her, as well.”

  “Is that Camille in those photos?” I nodded toward the dining room.

  “Yes,” she said, and smiled broadly, showing very white straight teeth. “She just turned four last week.”

  “You are very lucky to have such a family. Two beautiful girls. Why doesn’t Juliette pull up a chair and join us?” The girl slipped through the French doors into the house.

  “That is not our custom in Haiti,” Martine said, and then took an enormous mouthful of rice and beans that made further explanation impossible.

  The fish was excellent, flavored with lime and some fiery spices. I waited to see Juliette again, to compliment her on her cooking, but she never reappeared.

  By the time I left her house, Martine Gohin had agreed to broadcast a request for more information from anyone who was aboard or who knew anything about the Miss Agnes and her fate. She would ask her listeners to call the radio station, and she promised to pass on to me any tips that came her way.

  XIV

  When I walked out the finger pier next to Outta the Blue, I saw Mike down in his inflatable dinghy off the stem of his boat, staring up at his outboard where it rested on a flatbed dolly on the dock.

  “Hey, buddy,” I said, smiling. “Looks like you could use a hand getting that beast on your dink.” The outboard was a twenty-five-horsepower four-stroke Honda, and it probably weighed over a hundred pounds.

  “Whew, Seychelle, am I ever glad to see you. I could sure use an extra hand right now. An extra leg, too.” He chuckled at his own joke.

  “Don’t tell me you’ve been considering trying to get that thing into your dinghy all by yourself?”

  He grinned and shrugged. “Well, I guess I was. Joe helped me get it off the dink the other day and into his truck. We took it back to the dealer because it was running kind of rough. Anyway, I hated to have to call somebody and beg for help.”

  “Listen,” I told him, “you’ve got to stop trying to think strong, tough guy on a boat. It doesn’t work. I’m nowhere near as strong as most men in this business, but I can do it because I think smarter, not stronger.”

  In a few minutes, I had shown him how to use his sailboat’s main boom as a crane and his mainsail sheet as a come-along. We used sail ties made of nylon webbing to fashion a harness around the outboard and winched it into the air. I swung the boom across the cockpit, then lowered the outboard over the side of the big sailboat and into the waiting dinghy. Mike slid it onto the transom of the inflatable as I fed out the line. Twenty minutes later, the job was done and we were tidying up the cockpit.

  “Thanks, Seychelle. Come on below. I owe you a cold one for that. Then you can tell me why you really came over here today.”

  Dry, cool air tumbled out the passageway doors and chilled my ankles as I followed Mike down the companionway ladder. I slid the teak hatch closed and latched the clear Plexiglas doors. Down below, Outta the Blue resembled an air-conditioned condo more than a seagoing vessel. Back when he bought the used Irwin-54 with his generous retirement settlement, she had been neglected and needed a complete refit. Mike had refurbished her to suit his tastes. Since he had never owned any boat bigger than a trailerable flats skiff, he had no idea what he was doing and the result was a vessel interior that looked something like a man’s basement hideout. The TV sported video game controllers, and large speakers hung from the overhead in the four corners of the main salon. The chart table was weighted down with a full-size desktop computer with a seventeen-inch monitor. Where most boats use small portable electronic gear, Mike had installed household versions of everything from microwave to VCR. Then he’d allowed the old generator to seize up from lack of use, since he rarely if ever left the dock in those days.

  He reached down into the top-loading refrigerator and offered me a frosty Corona. I waved it away.

  “It’s still a bit early for me, Mike.” For a second beer, I thought, smiling at the memory of seeing Pit.

  He poured himself some dark rum over ice. “So what’s on your mind?” he asked when he finally settled into the other side of the dining booth in the main salon.

  “I don’t know where to start.”

  “I assume this is about the kid. The Haitian girl.”

  “Actually, no.” I watched him finish that rum and pour himself a second. “How well do you know Joe D’Angelo?”

  “Joe? What do you want to know about him for?”

  I lifted my shoulder bag off the floor and unzipped the side pocket. I slid the photo across the table. Mike reached over to a small cubby by the chart table and retrieved some reading glasses. After ad
justing them on his face, he examined the photo.

  “Hmmm,” he said as he held the photo far from his face and tried to focus. “Well, I’ll be damned.” He looked up over the top of the reading glasses. “What year was this taken?”

  “Nineteen seventy-three. Do you know where it is?”

  “I don’t recognize it as any marina around here.” He looked up, slid his glasses to the top of his head, and squinted his blue eyes at me. “Why is that important?”

  “Look on the back.”

  He flipped the photo over and slid the glasses back down onto his nose. He let out a low whistle. “Cartagena.” He rolled the r when he said the name of the city. He ran his fingers through his stubble, and I could hear the scratchy, sand- papery sound over the low hum of the air conditioner.

  “So what do you make of that, Mike?”

  “I don’t know what to tell you, Sey. This is the first I’ve heard about this. Joe and Red? Hell, I didn’t meet Joe until about eighty-five. Don’t know for sure when he started with DEA. What do you know about this?”

  “I found this picture and some others in Red’s old trunk. I have very vague memories of that time, as I was only about three years old. I don’t know if I remember Red’s being gone, or if I just heard my folks argue about it so many times afterward that I think I remember it. Here’s what I do know: My dad had just about finished building Gorda when he just plum ran out of money. Somebody offered him the opportunity to make a delivery on this big fancy yacht. The pay was going to be enough to buy the engine for the tug, and he’d only have to be gone a couple of months. Even as adults, Red and I never talked about it. When they used to argue, my mother would say that he made a better crew than captain.

  He would have made lots more money working on rich people’s yachts than he ever did owning his own boat. Which was true, of course, but Red was never about making money. He just loved that tug.” I had been listening to my own telling of the story. “I know it doesn’t sound good, but I don’t think either Red or Joe would have been involved with anything illegal.”

  The look on Mike’s face worried me. He wasn’t looking me in the eyes, and his lips were stretched thin. “Sey, I’ve seen too much of what people are capable of. Are you sure you want to go digging into this?”

  I didn’t say anything for a moment. Was I sure? How would I handle it if I found out my father had been involved with something illegal? No, the doubts were worse. I had to settle it.

  “Mike, I need to know what really happened down there. Not knowing is the worst.”

  “Okay then, if that’s really what you want, I’ll be glad to help.”

  Mike sounded less convinced than resigned.

  “First,” he said, “I suggest we stop speculating and go talk to these fellas. See, the thing is, I know who this other guy in the picture is, too.”

  “The guy with the big mustache?”

  “Yeah. And, Sey. The news is not good.”

  Mike had been planning on taking his dinghy out for a run to test the outboard that afternoon anyway, so we decided to run down the Intracoastal to the Dania Cut-off Canal and then up the canal inland to Pattie’s Ravenswood Marina. I figured we’d be gone a couple of hours, and there wasn’t much I could do for Solange at this point. Either that or I was rationalizing this trip because I wanted to know what had happened down in Colombia all those years ago.

  Mike had tried to call Joe on his cell phone, but he got no answer. He left a message saying he’d just called to say hello, then he told me we’d try Joe again later. That gave us time to check out Gil first.

  Mike’s was a rigid-bottom inflatable with a center console. He was standing at the controls, his artificial leg strapped on below his knee and worn-out Topsiders laced onto both feet. I was holding on to the stainless-steel bars around the center console as he told me what he knew about Gil’s background. The inflatable leapt onto a plane when we reached the Intracoastal Waterway, and I flexed my legs to take the pounding as we flew over boat wakes and the small chop from the southeasterly breeze.

  According to Mike, the man’s real name was Gilbert Lynch, and he had been a high flier in the drug trade in the 1980s. He had come to Florida from Georgia in the seventies, right after his return from Vietnam, and he had always retained his accent, beguiling his enemies with his slow country boy act and then brutally stomping them out. In his heyday, he used to fill his riverfront estate with his army buddies, and he liked fast motorcycles and faster women. Back in those days, Gil knew everybody in the importing business. He was a real player.

  Like many dealers, however, Gil had sampled his own product a little too freely. He started a downhill slide after he fried a few too many brain cells. Mike explained that Gil kept getting busted and eventually lost everything, but he avoided any serious jail time by pleading that he was a psych case. The really big guys in New York never bothered to get rid of him, because, even with all the time he spent in jail, he never talked about their business. Mike said that just proves he’s not as crazy as everybody thinks.

  “Today, though, a lot of that has changed,” Mike said as we passed the cruise liners and freighters in Port Everglades. “Several of the detectives have been using him as a snitch. Most of the people Gil hangs around think he’s just another waterfront derelict. They say stuff around him, thinking he won’t understand much. But as long as he keeps taking his meds, he can hold it together, and he’s pretty smart. Well, crafty anyway. I don’t even know if Gil’s gonna remember anything from when those pictures were taken, but if he does, he’ll probably tell you everything he knows for about twenty bucks.”

  Mike had heard that Gil hung out at one of the marinas along Ravenswood Road, so we headed south past the entrance to the harbor.

  After traveling about a mile up the Dania Cut-off Canal, we pulled into Pattie’s Marina and tied up to the fuel dock. The only other boat tied to the dock was a twelve-foot wooden punt covered with multihued paint splatters. It was obvious that this year’s most popular boat colors were yellow and green. Pattie’s had a small travel lift and boatyard, and the big outboard on the ugly punt meant they used it as a mini boatyard tug as well as the waterline paint boat. Painting a boat while in the water was heavily frowned on by OSHA, but one got the idea that Pattie’s Marina broke more than a few regs.

  Several locals were sitting around a table under a thatched Seminole Indian chickee hut, drinking from beer cans and watching us. Mike looped our line over the cleat on top of the marina dinghy’s line, then he ran a cable and padlock around the piling. The group under the hut included two men wearing baseball caps, T-shirts, and jeans. The only distinguishing characteristic between them was that one had long straight hair hanging both in front and back of his big jug ears. Of the three women, two wore halter tops and the third, an older woman, wore a faded Pattie’s Marina T-shirt that stretched tight around her ample bosom and hips. It was hard to tell if the couples lived in Pattie’s Trailer Court or if they lived aboard some of the barely floating homes in the marina. Laundry hung from lifelines, bikes rusted away on decks, barnacles grew along the waterlines, and rotten lines, fenders, toolboxes, and garbage bags littered the decks of Pattie’s live-aboard community. I guessed that the older woman sitting with the group was probably Pattie herself. Though Pattie’s was only five miles or so from the glittering marinas of Bahia Mar and Pier Sixty-six, in other forms of measurement the distance was incalculable.

  Mike lifted his hat when he ducked into the shade under the chickee. “Afternoon, folks.”

  One of the men murmured something that sounded like “good afternoon,” but the others just stared at Mike’s artificial leg, the stainless-steel knee and ankle joints, and the smooth pink “flesh-colored” plastic calf that protruded below his cut-off jeans. He ignored the stares and pushed on.

  “We’re looking for a fellow by the name of Gil Lynch. I understand he lives round here.”

  The older woman had been lifting her beer can to her lips, but she
stopped, left the beer hanging in midair. “Who’s asking?”

  I dropped my business card on the table in front of her. “I’m Seychelle Sullivan. I own the tug Gorda. My business is Sullivan Towing and Salvage.” I didn’t think Mike’s credentials as a former FLPD officer would go over big with this crowd.

  The gray-haired woman drank from her beer and then slid my card into the front pocket of her T-shirt. “I seen your boat around.” She reached for a pack of cigarettes on the table and shook one out. With the cigarette dangling from her lips, she asked, “Red’s your pa?”

  “Yeah. He died a couple of years ago. I’m running the boat now.”

  “Sorry to hear that,” she said, struck a match, and inhaled long and deep.

  I nodded. “I understand Gil used to know Red, and I just wanted to ask him some questions about my dad.”

  She took the cigarette from her mouth with two cracked, callused fingers, then she thrust her other hand out to me. “I’m Pattie Dolan.” I tried to shake her hand with the same strength and assertiveness that Wonder Woman had used on me, but Pattie’s grip turned mine to putty. She turned from me and spoke to the man with the jug ears. “Go git the truck.” He slid back his chair and started for the once white Ford Ranger parked in the dirt lot opposite the trailer that served as an office.

  I rested my hand on Mike’s shoulder. “Pattie, this is my friend, Mike Beesting.” They, too, shook hands. Pattie made no attempt to introduce the others at the table.

  “Odds are Gil’s down at Flossie’s this time of day. Jack’ll run you down there. It’s only ’bout a quarter-mile down the road.”

  “I know where it is. Thanks.”

  The truck pulled up, and out the open window Jack jerked his thumb toward the back. Mike pulled down the tailgate, and we slid into the truck bed. After a short drive down Ravenswood Road, the truck pulled into a parking lot that stretched along the side of a drab-looking two-story cinder-block building. Downstairs was the dirty glass entrance to Flossie’s Bar and Grill. Upstairs, an outdoor corridor ran the length of the building where the late Flossie had sometimes rented rooms out to her patrons. The parking lot was halffilled with older pickups and a handful of bikes, mostly Harleys. Leaning against the wall of the building was a rusty old beach cruiser bicycle with high, wide handlebars and a plastic milk crate tied behind the seat with a sun-faded polypropylene line.