Windward Passage

by Jim Nisbet

  The supervisor gestured toward the door, beyond which rumbled a cavern of passengers layered like pastry, with belts, shoes and tickets in hand, their individuality demarcated by a maze of nylon straps and chrome stanchions. Two bumper stickers were affixed to the inside of the windowless door.

  I ♥ GITMO

  I ♥ WIRETAPS

  “Don’t you want to catch your plane?” the supervisor asked.

  “It wouldn’t do me any good without my knife,” Cedric stated simply. “I’m going west to work.”

  “And what is your trade, Mr. …” The supervisor glanced at Cedric’s 100-ton Coast Guard license.

  “Osawa,” Cedric said. “I do anything on a boat that needs doing.”

  “So you’re going to San Francisco for a boat job?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “What sort of boat job?”

  “Why, sailing, sir,” replied Cedric patiently, though he was beginning to wonder what order of stupidity he was dealing with, “by way of delivering a boat from San Francisco to Zihuatanejo.”

  “Is that why you have those tattoos?”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “To help you deliver boats?”

  One of the two subordinates snickered.

  “Aids to navigation?” the supervisor continued, glancing behind him at the snickering subordinate in order to conceal a smile of his own.

  “Actually, skipper,” Cedric said evenly, “I got this one here,” he touched his right forearm, “when I was in the service.”

  The supervisor raised an eyebrow, then turned his head to read what was inked on Cedric Osawa’s right forearm. He did this cautiously, as if he were afraid that the subject was laying for a chance to kick him in the privates. The supervisor had learned this precaution the hard way.

  “Semper—?” he read aloud. The supervisor’s eyes snapped up. “Semper fidelis?” he recited rather than read. “You’re a United States Marine?”

  “Marine?” Cedric cocked his head as if puzzled. “Why would I join a pussified outfit like the Marines?”

  Now both subordinates snickered. With startling alacrity the supervisor whirled and barked. “Stand down!” The subordinates wiped their smiles, assumed parade rest, and stared straight ahead. The supervisor turned back to Cedric. “Well?”

  “Merchant seaman. Four years.” The supervisor took the forearm by its wrist and read aloud, with difficulty, “Semper Voco Imp …” He flung the arm away in disgust, annoyed at obviously faking, if even momentarily, a pretension to fluency in non-leatherneck Latin. “What’s that mean?” he gruffly demanded. “What outfit’s that?”

  “Semper Voco Imperium Dubium.” Cedric generously supplied a translation, “Always Question Authority.” Then he added, not flinching from the supervisor’s glare, “Outfit’s kinda loose.”

  The supervisor was incredulous. “What the hell’s that got to do with the goddamn service?”

  “Everything. Do I have to spell it out for you? Some people don’t like to be told what to do.”

  The supervisor was visibly fuming. “That’s not how it works, sailor. Semper Fidelis is how it works.”

  “With Semper, I agree.”

  “That’s enough.” The supervisor stood aside. “Escort this man to his gate and see that he doesn’t miss his flight.”

  “The knife …” Cedric began.

  “… Will be melted down,” the supervisor finished the sentence for him, “prior to being cast along with many others into one-liter beer steins embossed with patriotic tableaux vivants of battles fought and won throughout US history, given away free in PXs all over the world with the purchase of two cases of 3.2 American-brewed beer or the rental of any ten made-in-America DVDs or a down payment on a combat life-insurance policy. It’s not much but it shows support for our troops and every little bit helps. You do support our troops?” the supervisor thought to query.

  Cedric looked from the supervisor to his knife to each of the two subordinates and back to the supervisor again. “I can see,” he said with quiet assurance, “that you add up to little more than a middling bureaucrat with a substandard dick.” He sighted through a thumb and middle finger, held a half-inch apart, and Cedric’s eye did not quail before the bulging orbs of the supervisor’s.

  Later, in the break room, one of the two subordinates would recall for some colleagues how the back of the supe’s neck turned redder than Stalin’s nuts.

  For Cedric’s more or less generic insult turned out to be all too deliciously near the meta-mark. The very same two subordinates had also been on the scene when the supe had yanked a French socialite out of line because her jewelry kept setting off the metal detector, plus she was a MILF. When this lady, already late for her international flight, objected in a reasonable if slightly haughty tone, the supe had demurred in a vulgarly smug one, and things rapidly deteriorated until she called him, as it happened, un vrai fonctionnaire avec de bonheur de posséder un pipe diminutif in front of the two or three hundred other native speakers waiting to board a jet to Paris. When the shrieks of amazed laughter had died down, amid cluckings and exclamations of Oh la la la, and on the outside chance this foreigner was talking code, the supe insisted on calling for an official translator, refusing to accept the proffered offices of any number of bilingual travelers. That took a while. But the moment he’d been informed as to what the woman had actually said, the supe radioed for the dykes and ordered a strip search, and the woman missed her plane.

  About a year after that, the supe discovered that the socialite’s husband owned a big piece of the bank that held the mortgage on the supe’s house, and he found out the hard way.

  Ever since, the supe had applied the strictures of Homeland Security with a fine discernment for those without recourse. Cedric Osawa, it had seemed to him, fit the bill perfectly.

  In the meantime, behind the supe’s back of course, his subordinates and all their brethren at the airport had taken to calling him Needledick the Gnatfucker.

  Now the supe’s eyes assumed a steely glint, and, at least to his subordinates, the very paint on the walls of the interrogation room seemed to sweat. When the supe’s mouth opened it looked much like the wound a chef might twist into a bratwurst with the corner of a spatula in order to ascertain the degree to which it has cooked.

  “I care about Homeland Security,” the supervisor said in a barely audible voice, “like everybody else cares about football. It’s my top priority. It’s my career. It’s my life. Nothing could be more important. I lose sleep over it.”

  “You care for Homeland Security,” Cedric Osawa countersuggested, “like pigeons care for Grant’s tomb.”

  “But tonight,” the supe persevered with leavened certainty, “I’m going to sleep very soundly. Merkin.”

  “Yessir.”

  “Mr. …”

  Merkin looked at his clipboard, which he’d been holding behind him while at parade rest, and hastily turned it right side up. “Osawa. Sir.”

  “Enter Mr. Osawa’s name on the No-Fly watch list. Under Remarks make the entry, Hates America. Under Last known address enter,” and here the Supervisor could not refrain from a condescending sneer, “The Everglades.”

  To give him credit, the subordinate glanced at his coworker and blinked. His coworker continued to stare straight ahead.

  “Well, Merkin?”

  Merkin stammered in the affirmative and reached for a ballpoint pen clipped into his breast pocket. Its activating click was loud. Everybody waited for him to finish copying the number of Cedric Osawa’s passport onto the form on the clipboard. It seemed to take a long time.

  “Finished?” the supervisor finally asked.

  Though he was still writing, Merkin nodded nervously.

  “I can’t hear you,” said the supervisor.

  The supervisor had Merkin sufficiently buffaloed that he stammered. “All f-finished, s-sir.”

  “That’s fine. Now be so kind as to escort Mr. Nigawa, here—”

&nbs
p; “Osawa,” Merkin corrected. “Sir.”

  The supervisor stopped speaking long enough to favor Merkin with a slow look, then continued, “—to the taxi stand outside the baggage terminal. Bosworth.”

  “Sir.”

  “Find Mr. Osawa’s baggage. You do have baggage?”

  “More than when I came in here,” Cedric stated mildly.

  The two subordinates exchanged a glance, then looked to their supervisor. A puzzled expression passed over the supervisor’s face. It looked, as Merkin later remarked, as if interviewer and interviewee were going to follow the logic of this contretemps to a violent conclusion.

  Almost imperceptibly, the supervisor smiled. “Find Mr. Osawa’s baggage, return it to him at the taxi stand on the Arrivals deck, watch him get into a taxi, and watch the taxi until it has disappeared over the horizon.”

  Pulling a radio from his belt with one hand and retrieving a magnetic key from his breast pocket with the other, Bosworth activated the door lock and exited. The supervisor said to Cedric, “If you’re otherwise clean, Osawa, you can apply to be removed from the No-Fly list within six months to a year. Visit our website for the appropriate forms and procedures. And if you’re not clean? Don’t apply. Because if you’re not clean, we’ll know. And applying when you’re not clean, by the way, is a felony. Get me? Until then,” he turned one hand palm up, as if the situation were soon to be beyond the scope of his power, which no doubt it would be, “you’re going to have to take the train. Or the bus. The train and the bus are a little looser about security than we are. For the time being, anyway.”

  At the curb Bosworth handed Cedric his sea bag. Merkin walked up the sidewalk against traffic with one arm raised, signaling for a cab. “Your boss is a piece of work,” Cedric observed matter-of-factly.

  “You should see him at the end of the shift,” Bosworth said morosely.

  “This is the beginning?”

  Bosworth nodded.

  “Let me think. A forklift loads him and his heartburn into a half-track drawn by Clydesdales?”

  Bosworth gave him a look. “Funny you should put it that way. I was going to mention the supe’s heartburn. Also, he’s got the acid reflux.”

  “I could give a shit about that guy’s metabolism.”

  “What’s funny is, you’re almost completely right. At the end of every shift the supe squeezes himself into a perfectly restored 1957 Alfa Romeo Giulietta Spider Veloce convertible. It’s the apple of his eye and the pride of his existence and, on account of his blood pressure, his complexion perfectly rhymes with the poppy-red paint job. He even wears a special black shirt with red stripes when he drives the machine to gymkhanas, along with a black cap with a little red pompon on top, all of it rhyming with the red piping on the black leather upholstery.”

  “Your boss lives alone. Weekends, he details the car. He refuses to drive it in the rain. At night he sits beside it in his garage on a shooting stick and sips single-malt whiskey while listening to Madame Butterfly.”

  “What!” marveled Bosworth. “You know this guy all your life?”

  Cedric modestly shrugged.

  “It’s just like you said. Supe restored the car entirely by himself. Took him years. Did the body work, the paint, blueprinted the engine, tracked down and paid double for original parts, waited eighteen months for the custom upholstery, rewired the entire electrical harness by himself. The job got him through his divorce and the loss of his house so he didn’t kill himself or his ex-wife or any lawyers or nobody from the bank or me or Merkin either. But anyway, no, that’s not what I’m talking about. What I meant was, this is just the beginning of the shift. By the end of the shift, he’s much worse.”

  “What time’s the shift end?”

  Bosworth shrugged. “Twelve-thirty in the a.m.”

  “He could easily blow a gasket by then,” Cedric hypothesized optimistically. He considered Bosworth. “Miles to go before you sleep.”

  Bosworth sighed wearily. “Tell me about it.”

  A cab pulled to the curb. Merkin exited the front passenger seat and opened the back door for Cedric.

  Cedric said, “You guys graduate from college for this?”

  “For this,” Merkin shook his head, “I should go to college?”

  “I graduated,” Bosworth affirmed. He blinked. “That was fourteen years ago.”

  “Quod erat demonstrandum,” Merkin pointed out.

  Cedric nodded. “Maybe see you guys in a year or so.”

  “Maybe,” said Bosworth.

  “I buy two Lotto tickets every Friday night,” said Merkin.

  “Sucker,” said Bosworth.

  Merkin eyed him coolly. “That what you learned in college?”

  Cedric threw his sea bag through the open door and followed it into the back seat. Merkin closed the door and saluted. The taxi pulled away from the curb. As instructed, the two functionaries watched it go.

  Cedric asked the driver for the time.

  The cabbie glanced at the back of the cellphone clenched between the palm of his hand and the rim of the steering wheel. “Four thirty-five.”

  The cab merged onto a freeway. Cedric asked the driver if he knew of a chandlery.

  The cabbie frowned into the rear view mirror. “A what?”

  Cedric told him.

  “I got a buddy just bought a boat,” the cabbie said to the mirror. “Says he’s going to cruise the Bahamas.” The cabbie touched a preset on his phone and instigated a consultation in Sranantongo. Presently he hung up the phone and spoke English to the mirror. “He leases something called a side-tie about a half hour from here. There’s a boatyard, a marine supply store, and a bar. He needs all three.” He shook his head. “It’s going to take a whole lot of work to get that boat cruising anywhere.”

  “You know what boat stands for?” Cedric asked him.

  The cabbie shook his head.

  “Break Out Another Thousand.”

  The cabbie grinned at the mirror. “I’m gonna call him right back.”

  He wasn’t on the phone a minute.

  “Well?”

  “He heard that one already.”

  Back at the airport by eleven, wearing baggy brown thrift-store shorts and a matching short-sleeved button-down shirt with KEN embossed on its breast pocket in white letters, Cedric boarded the employee shuttle-bus. With a pair of sunglasses worn backwards on his head and a beaded chain around his neck looped through the corner of a credit-card-sized piece of laminated plastic cut out of a bar menu and tucked into his breast pocket, Cedric looked every inch the baggage handler. The few employees on the shuttle were beat and said not a word, except for two stewardesses and a steward who carried on an animated conversation about a movie star who had gotten drunk in first class and exposed himself in coach coming back from London.

  Miami International is a large airport, and the employee parking lot contains many vehicles. But the lot is well lit and, soon enough, among row upon row of conveyances, a gleaming red two-seat convertible made itself perfectly obvious. Eight or ten rows later, Cedric stepped down from the back door of the shuttle.

  He was a little drunker than he should have been while undertaking a serious piece of work, but his contempt for the job made up for it.

  The new knife had been among the cheaper models offered by Tropicana Boat and Marine, and it was a no-nonsense example of its type. Its curved marlinspike easily penetrated the sidewall of each of the Alfa’s steel-belted radial tyres. Its bluff-bowed blade made short work of the black canvas top, and easily plowed a deep fissure through any number of hand-rubbed coats of red lacquer, well into the sheet metal, from headlight to taillight on the passenger side of the roadster.

  As he mirrored the first incision on the driver’s side of the car, taillight to headlight, it occurred to Cedric that the odd size of the tires might make them a special-order item.

  He hoped so.

  NINE

  I WORKED THE BOAT INTO PORT NELSON ON RUM CAY JUST BEFORE NOON
, having hove to outside to wait for the sun to get out of my eyes. The entrance is tricky, although others might call it a challenge.

  Well, start them bastards with a properly crowned rope. There’s ledges and coral heads and wrecks and old pilings and all the rest. Fishermen love it here and that just adds to the obstacles. There was a dinghy with five or six sets out, right in the middle of the channel. And having said that, I feel better. It’s their island, after all.

  I set stern and bow anchors in 2 meters of water so that whatever the tide is up to around here it might proceed more or less parallel to Vellela Vellela’s keel and leave us more or less out of it, and maybe I could get a night’s sleep into the bargain. I noticed we were well out of sight of the little ice and bait shack at the top of Government Pier. That’s for appearance’s sake, I’m sure. No way that guy’s not a friend of Red’s. In fact, Red emphasized this as the ideal place to park.

  I made a call on Channel 21 as prearranged, going to 42, the doubled frequency, after the acknowledgment. Sat in the cockpit with a bottle of rum until the noseeums got to be too much. The mosquito fly was stowed forward of the Danforth and the ditch kit too, like I’d maybe never spent a twilight in the Caribbean. But it’s more like I have no idea of the plan. I mean, I’m just a mule. Why should I have any idea of the plan?

  “Hey, Tipsy.”

  Tipsy looked up from the letter.

  Faulkner pointed. “That’s one I don’t have.”

  Tipsy lifted her glass off the envelope. Faulkner took it up and narrowed his eyes at the prize. “Crooked Island. That’s new. Almost four months ago.”

  “I noticed that,” Tipsy said.

  “What’s he up to?”

  “Same old epistolary novel,” she said evasively. She took a sip of beer. “The book he’s always been meaning to write but never has written. While this opus, here,” she lifted the pages, “has been writing itself.”

  “Does he get laid in it?”

  “Why do you ask, Faulkner?”

  “Epistolary novels are always about getting laid. Think of Les Liasons Dangereuse.”