Cross Current

by Christine Kling

  We slid out of Jack’s truck and waved our thanks as he headed back to Pattie’s. “I’m sure glad I locked up the dink and outboard. I don’t think any of them back there would be above helping themselves.”

  “I’m sure you’re right about that,” I said as I pushed open the door and nearly gagged on the cigarette smoke. My ears were assaulted by the sound of Garth Brooks singing about how much papa loved mama. The bar was so much darker than the bright sunlight outside that I stood in the doorway a few seconds, waiting for my eyes to adjust. Mike came in behind me, hooked his arm in mine, and led me past the couple of pool tables to a pair of empty stools on the far side of the bar.

  I’d driven by Flossie’s probably a hundred times in my life, but I’d never been inside. I knew about the place because it had been a landmark for thirty-some years, and both my brothers had boasted to me when we were in high school that the bar’s owner, Flossie, never checked IDs. They often came over here to drink and practice being men. The dominant decorating themes went from Nascar to Budweiser, from neon signs to inflatable oil cans to a full-size picture of Dale Earnhardt on the storeroom door. The place was very crowded, although I counted only two women other than the bartender.

  I didn’t spot Gil as I surveyed the crowd, but I wasn’t surprised to see Perry Greene sitting at one of the bar-height tables by the door. He was wearing a white mesh baseball cap stuck backward on his head, the straggly ends of his long hair curling around from the back of his neck. Smoking a filterless cigarette no more than an inch long, he squinted across the bar and sucked on the butt, and I was surprised the red glow didn’t bum his fingers.

  After Mike secured us a couple of beers, I pointed Perry out to him.

  “Check out my competition over there.” I squeezed the lime down the neck of the bottle and took a couple of swallows.

  “Interesting,” he said. “Think we ought to mosey over and see who’s smoking that other cigarette burning in his ashtray?”

  I hadn’t noticed the smoke rising from the ashtray. “Think he’d tell us if we did?”

  “Probably not.”

  I told Mike about the tow of the Italian yacht O Solo Mio. “Perry seemed to be very proud of his connections to those big boys. I’ve always thought of Perry as just a sleaze ball— a user, yeah, but not a dealer. A guy not above some smalltime crime if the chance presented itself, but not a big criminal. Do you know anything I don’t know?”

  “Not really. I know he’s been busted for drunk and disorderly a few times, and he does sell a little weed to his friends. That’s it, far as I know. I think he’s probably just bullshitting, but then again, I wouldn’t put it past him, trying to hook up with some kind of big-time score.”

  “That’s just it. I don’t think anything's beneath Perry.”

  Mike laughed. “Yeah, he’s definitely a bottom-feeder.”

  The beer tasted fresh and clean. My throat already felt scratchy from the cigarette smoke and from trying to shout over the noise coming from both the jukebox and the inebriated crowd. I turned around on my stool and watched the game of pool at the table behind us for a few minutes.

  “Doesn’t look like Gil’s here,” Mike said, and I could tell he understood how disappointed I was.

  A heavyset, ponytailed white man at the pool table was accusing a younger black man of having cheated by moving the cue ball. Ponytail was a biker type with a huge gut and various chains hanging off his belt. On the table, the striped balls grossly outnumbered the solids, and I suspected the accusation was a way of trying to make up lost ground.

  I turned around and reached for the last of my beer. “Let’s get out of here.”

  At that moment the door to the men’s room opened and a large man walked out, his hands still fumbling with his fly. His belly, stretching the fabric of the faded black T-shirt, was third-trimester size, and his head bobbed as he struggled to get things situated in his trousers. When he stepped into the red glow of the neon Bud Light sign, I saw the wide handlebar mustache and the scarred, off-kilter face. Although the skin was etched with deep crevasses, there was now more to the unbalanced look than just the eyebrow. In person, Gil Lynch looked positively insane.

  Gil saw us just as he came abreast of our bar stools, and when I opened my mouth to speak to him, he bolted for the door. The move caught me off guard, his quickness remarkable for such a heavy man.

  Mike was off his stool and heading for the door before my brain was able to process what was happening. He turned to me and shouted, “Come on,” his cop instinct just like a dog’s—the sight of a man’s back only whetted his appetite. As my feet hit the floor, I identified the source of my confusion: I couldn’t comprehend why or how Gil would know that we were looking for him. To my knowledge, I’d never met the man before.

  I was no more than a few seconds behind Mike, but he had stopped and was holding the door, staring out toward the street. Just before I went through the door, I saw Perry cover his face with his hand. Seemed nobody wanted to have anything to do with me today. Outside, I looked to my right and saw the bike and its rider in a faded black T-shirt turn south in the direction of Pattie’s.

  “We’ll never catch him by running, leastwise I never will,” Mike said.

  “Think he’s headed back to the marina?”

  “Probably.” He stretched out his hand in front of me. “After you.”

  The dinghy was still where we’d left it, a fact that caused us both to sigh with relief when we walked down the gravel road in front of Pattie’s office and saw it still floating along the fuel dock. The chickee hut was abandoned, the only sign of its recent occupants an overflowing ashtray and one still-smoldering butt. Gil’s bike lay on its side in the weeds next to the office trailer.

  “Come on, let’s have a little talk with the folks here.” Mike stepped up and opened the door.

  Pattie sat back in an aging office chair on the far side of a low counter. From where we stood, the counter hid nothing, and I had to stifle a grin when it struck me how much her body looked like one of Abaco’s chew toys—a round piece of red rubber that bulged with multiple rings of ever-widening widths. She sat with her legs spread, her capri pants showing her thick, vein-riddled ankles.

  “Howdy,” Mike said, once again removing his hat for the lady. “Seems we just missed Gil over at Flossie’s. I seen his bike out there. Any idea where he got to?”

  I was amazed at how well Mike spoke the lingo of those he questioned. The man was a veritable chameleon, but Pattie wasn’t smiling at him this time.

  “Shoulda told me you was a cop.”

  “Me?” Mike looked absolutely injured. “I’m not a cop.” Then he ducked his head and looked apologetic. “Well, it’s true, I used to be a cop, but not no more. Hell, you ever see a one-legged cop?”

  That stopped her. Her face seemed to fold in on itself, eyebrows lowered, chin up, as she mulled that one over. “Yeah, okay. Well, Gil said you was a cop.”

  “He musta recognized me from the old days.”

  “He’s not so right in the head sometimes,” she said. “He took the marina launch. It’s got a twenty-five-horse engine. I don’t know where he’d be headed. Think he’s got someplace he sleeps up the canal somewhere. You know, he’s good on the water. He don’t want you to find him, you ain’t gonna find him.”

  XV

  On the fuel dock, we saw that, though the dinghy floated where we’d left her, she was no longer tied to the dock. Gil had thrown off our line to untie the marina boat, and the dinghy painter now trailed into the depths of the brown, oily water. It was Mike’s cable around the piling that had prevented the boat from drifting off.

  Once he got the outboard started and we were idling out toward the canal, Mike said, “Pattie’s probably right. We’ll find him another day. I sure as hell would like to know why he’s running, though.”

  From Pattie’s marina, we could get back to Mike’s dock by turning either left or right since we were on a big circle made by the New Ri
ver and the Dania Cut-off Canal. We headed left, west, up the canal, inland. Joe D’Angelo’s house, our next stop on our way back to Mike’s, was far up the New River, and eventually the canal we were on would connect with the river. Mike explained to me that Joe had bought his house in the Riverland neighborhood back in the eighties when a DEA guy could afford those places. His point lot home not far from the Jungle Queen’s tourist compound was the smartest investment the guy had ever made.

  As we entered the stretch of the canal that passed through Pond Apple Slough, the canal banks changed from neat lawns to twisted mangroves. The evidence of civilization slipped away. Except for the occasional channel marker, we could have been deep in the Everglades. The Slough was one of the last remaining freshwater swamps on the southeast coast of Florida, and environmentalists had managed thus far to prevent its total destruction. It remained an isolated island of wilderness in the middle of Fort Lauderdale’s urban sprawl.

  Mike pushed the throttle forward and the inflatable jumped into a plane. While I would have preferred to dawdle along at five knots, watching for birds and fish and raccoon, I had more important things to do—like find Solange’s father. A snapshot of her face kept popping up in my mind, even as I watched the flocks of cattle egrets take off from the mangroves as our outboard sped by. Occasionally, narrow passages branched off from the main waterway, and I glanced down them, yearning to explore. I’d forgotten how pretty it was up here. I told myself I’d have to come back here someday in one of the Larsens’ kayaks. Maybe bring Solange once this whole mess was worked out.

  “Slow down, Mike.” I’d seen a flash of bright yellow and green.

  “What’s up?” he asked as the boat settled back down into the water and our wake splashed into the mangrove roots ahead of us.

  “Turn around.” We had just passed a little creek or something off the west side of the canal. “I saw something.”

  He swung the boat around and motored back the hundred yards or so, then slowed and turned into an opening in the trees. There was a small barge aground about five hundred yards into the swamp where the narrow passage dead-ended. The rust brown sides of the barge blended into the brown and green of the mangroves. I never would have spotted it if Pattie’s paint-splattered boatyard punt had not been tied alongside.

  “What do you know,” Mike said. “I think we found Gil’s little hidey-hole, after all.”

  “Think he’s there?”

  “Naw. He’d have to be deaf not to hear this outboard out here. Like Pattie said, he doesn’t want to be found.” Mike shrugged. “He’s probably slithered off into the swamp. Want to go aboard and check it out anyway?” He bobbed his head in the direction of the barge.

  “We could take a quick look, I guess,” I said.

  The old iron barge appeared to be no more than sixty feet long. They’d used such barges to haul out the muck back when many of South Florida’s canals were dredged. This one was now holed by rust and waterlogged, resting on the mud bottom in what I guessed was about two feet of water. Even in water five inches deep, the bottom wouldn’t have been visible. The swamp water resembled strong tea, stained as it was from the tannin in the mangroves. A small plywood-and-epoxy deckhouse, no more than ten by twelve, had been erected on the flat surface of the barge in what appeared to be the aft end of the derelict. Small plants, grasses, and mangrove shoots grew out of holes in the iron sides where rust had caused the metal to cave in and enough organic material had collected to allow seeds to root. What had once been a huge metal structure was rapidly being reclaimed by the swamp.

  Mike tied the dinghy to an area that looked relatively free of sharp protuberances, and we climbed aboard. Polyethylene plastic sheeting was duct taped over what had once been the wheelhouse windows. It was difficult to see through the plastic film, but Mike was right—it wasn’t likely that Gil was still around. Still, I was happy to let Mike enter the deckhouse first.

  “It’s okay, Sey. No bogeymen in here,” he shouted, his voice sounding muffled through the plastic sheeting.

  “Hey, I’m not scared.”

  He poked his head out the doorway. “No, that’s why you’re standing out there, twenty feet away, looking like you’re ready to bolt at the slightest sound.”

  “You’ve got to admit, this place is creepy.”

  “You want to be grossed out, come in here.”

  The smell in the deckhouse touched off some faint memory I could not place. Human sweat mixed with fishy iodine and the sickly smell of dead things. Rotting leaves and food and papers were strewn around the inside of the structure. A single twin mattress, wet by the smell of it, rested on the floor, and the inside walls were covered with newspapers taped up with wide strips of duct tape. An ornate end table that had probably once sat in a Fort Lauderdale family room now rested between the mattress and the wall, the brass drawer handles rusted to greenish lumps and the wooden top now warped from the damp of the swamp. On the table was an ashtray that held a couple of roaches—evidence that Gil still smoked some weed when he could find it.

  While Mike was pulling out the drawers and looking for anything of Gil’s that might tell us something, I noticed the newspaper on the bulkhead closest to the door was newer than the others. The front page of the Miami Herald had a small headline in the lower left corner, “Haitian Boat Sinks in Hillsboro Inlet,” and in the first paragraph I saw the name Miss Agnes.

  “Well, would you look at this?” Mike held up a flashy new handheld VHF radio and a Nextel cellular phone. “I wonder where our friend picked up these little items?”

  “Pretty expensive gear for a guy who’s homeless,” I said. “Yeah, I think it’s more likely our buddy Gil has sticky fingers than a major credit card.” He pulled out the drawer where he had found the electronics and felt around inside for anything that might be taped to the underside of the cabinet, when he didn’t find anything, he slid the drawer back in place, adjusted his leg, and pushed himself to his feet.

  “Take a look at this,” I said, pointing to the newspaper. “What do you make of this?”

  “What? That Gil uses newspaper for wallpaper?” Mike leaned in closer to the newsprint and tapped his finger against the headline. “Interesting, but probably just a coincidence.” He held up the phone and radio. “This, however, this intrigues me. I know Gil Lynch is not as loony as he pretends to be.” He handed me the phone and took a scrap of paper and a mechanical pencil out of his pocket. “Read me the number off that phone. I’ll have somebody run it and see who it belongs to.”

  After I’d read him the number, he placed the items back in the drawer. “Let’s get out of this stink hole.”

  We both managed to climb back down into Mike’s inflatable without falling into the canal or tearing any clothing on the rusty metal edges of the barge. I continued to be surprised by Mike’s agility with his artificial leg.

  He cranked up the outboard while I untied our line and pushed the inflatable away from the rusty old derelict. “Tell me what you’re thinking,” I said as we idled slowly out of the little side creek.

  “Okay, let’s look at what we know. Gil Lynch is a burnt-out dealer turned snitch. He might get Social Security, but he’s dirt poor, living on the streets, and sleeping in shitty holes like that.” He jerked his thumb back at the barge. “As far as I know, the guy usually doesn’t mind seeing the cops come along. He normally tries to sell some tidbit of information.”

  He turned the corner back into the Dania Cut-off Canal and pushed the throttle forward. The outboard noise climbed, and Mike continued by shouting.

  “Two things are weird. First, if Gil knows something, why didn’t he try to sell it to me? And second, if he stole that stuff, why’s he hanging on to it? Guys like him usually head straight for the nearest pawnshop when they lift something like that.”

  I wasn’t up to trying to shout over the outboard, so I just watched the riverbank flash by, and I let my thoughts blur in the same way. There had once been cypress trees in the freshwater
swamp we were passing through, but when developers tapped into the aquifer to water all the green lawns they were planting, the water table dropped and Pond Apple Slough suffered as the saltwater seeped in. The twisted branches of the dead cypress trees still provided nesting space for hawks and osprey, though. I pointed a nest out to Mike. “Osprey,” I shouted.

  “Cool.” He nodded.

  Red had known Gil for about twenty-five years, and in all the time I had worked for my father on board Gorda, I didn’t remember Red ever mentioning him. Had they stayed in touch after the delivery, when Gil became a big-time drug dealer?

  We rounded a bend in the waterway, and I saw we were exiting the swamp. More boat traffic and the bridges of the interstate were just ahead. Mike slowed the dinghy. Finally, he was able to talk in a more natural voice.

  “We’re not far from Joe’s house now.”

  “What do you think Gil’s connection to Joe is?”

  “That’s just what we’re going to ask him,” Mike said.

  Joe D’Angelo’s house stood out from its neighbors. The canal that stretched back from the river along the side of his property was lined with simple suburban homes whose backyard embellishments consisted of barbecues and swimming pools. Joe’s house was anything but simple. The large corner lot fronted about seventy feet on the river and another hundred feet along the canal, so you could not miss the elaborate patio and swimming pool with a huge artificial rock waterfall, the built-in waterslide, and the raised Jacuzzi that spilled into the pool. A covered redwood bar adjoined the Jacuzzi so that the bartender could easily deliver drinks to those basking in the bubbles. The pool cabana house had a small satellite dish on the roof, and the ranch-style house had been modified beyond recognition with a raised roof to accommodate the cathedral ceilings and glass walls that fronted the pool area. Davits at the far end of the dock held a black Jet Ski suspended over the water. The only boat tied to his dock was a sleek white Donzi ocean racer, maybe forty-five feet long, with a large cabin forward and room for half a dozen bikinied babes on the large upholstered transom. Judging from the dirt and leaves on the white fiberglass, Joe didn’t take her out much.