Backwater Tide

by Steven Becker

  I did my best to ignore her and approached the clerk. “How much are the cell phones?” I asked.

  He studied me carefully before answering, probably trying to evaluate which one to recommend.

  “A smart phone would be good,” I said, making his decision easier. If I was going off the reservation, I wanted to be all the way off and have my pictures and browser history private as well.

  He turned and pointed to one. “This one is $79.95. I have a better one for twenty more—but you’ll need a plan with it. Otherwise I have these that are pre-paid and don’t need a credit card.”

  I ignored the burner phones. I was fine paying a hundred bucks and getting a real plan. “That’s good,” I said, taking the package and looking at the phone, noticing it was at least two generations behind the one in my pocket. I paid for it and the coffee and went back to the truck.

  After fumbling with the packaging, I finally gave up and sliced through it with my knife. I found all the parts and plugged the charger into the truck’s cigarette lighter outlet. There was a laminated paper with instructions to activate it. The phone had enough juice to start up, and leaving it plugged in I picked it up and entered my credit card information. A wave of guilt passed through me; I felt like I was doing something wrong—but that feeling didn’t last long when the display lit up and showed my new phone number and five full bars of private unobservable service. Finally, the umbilical cord with Martinez was broken.

  I entered Justine and Allie’s numbers into the contacts and scrolled through my park service phone, looking for a number I hoped I still had. It had been more than a year since Mac Travis and I had worked together to stop a human smuggling ring. The well-orchestrated scheme, used old American car engines from the fifties, that were still common in Cuba, to power a fleet of salvaged fishing boats or pangas, as the locals called them. Once clear of Cuban waters, the refugees activated a stolen EPIRB that broadcast their position to the group. The smugglers would then use go-fast boats to pick them up. The pangas had then been recycled by a crooked cop that Justine and I had brought down.

  After the smuggling ring’s members had picked up each group of refugees, the men were killed and the women taken to sell. It was an absolutely evil, yet ingenious, plan that had worked until Mac and his sidekick Trufante found one of the boats in the Marquesas and I’d found another, floating with a dead body inside of the park. It had taken a team effort to bring them down.

  I knew Mac to be reclusive. He lived on an island off Big Pine Key, and it was a long shot to expect him to answer his phone. From what I remembered, if his phone was even with him it was rarely turned on. But he knew the salvage game and I needed help.

  The phone rang twice before a woman answered. I was about to disconnect, thinking he had changed his number, when I remembered his girlfriend Mel. “Hey, this is Kurt Hunter. I’m looking for Mac.”

  “Me too. Let me know when you find him,” she answered.

  It appeared that Mac was still Mac. She wasn’t being snarky and I continued. “I don’t think we’ve met, but I’m with the National Park Service in Biscayne Bay. Mac and I worked together last year.”

  “Right, I remember. That deal with the EPIRBs.”

  It had been quite a bit more than that: Mel and Trufante’s girlfriend Pamela had been taken by the men. “Any chance I can speak to him?”

  “He’s out with Trufante setting stone crab traps. They left at dawn. Unless Trufante finds some trouble, they’re likely to be back any time.”

  I gave her my new super secret number and thanked her. Martinez didn’t need to know about Mac. Setting the phones side by side on the seat next to me, I headed to the medical examiner’s office.

  It was an awkward necessity to carry both phones, but the freedom I now had to operate independently was worth it. With my park service phone in the front pocket of my cargo pants and my personal one in my back pocket, I left the truck and headed into the building.

  Vance was working at his stand-up desk, drinking from a stainless steel tumbler that undoubtedly held some kind of concoction I had never heard of. He set the mug down when he saw me.

  “I was just going to call you,” he said, turning up the ends of his mustache. “Been fishing again?”

  I knew what he meant. “Nope, got this one paddling.”

  “What’s the bite like?”

  I gave him a rundown of the current state of fish affairs, noting that between training for the race and now this case, I hadn’t been out in a few weeks.

  Vance and Sid were as opposite as you could get. Probably a half dozen years younger than I am, Vance was all hipster. His haircut was straight out of the 1920s: long on top, shaved on the sides, and held back with a whole lot of product. His mustache was carefully groomed as well. Thankfully he had shaved his soul patch.

  Coming from a guy wearing a too-tight untucked plaid shirt and skinny jeans that barely covered cartoon-patterned socks, it sounded like a different person was spouting the technical data that had come back with the tests.

  I quickly got past the incongruence and focused on what he was saying. The tox screen had come back negative—no surprise there. The news was that the brain scans showed that he had suffocated.

  “There was no air left in his tanks,” I said when Vance finished.

  He thought for a second. “I’m not a diver, but we do get three or four diving fatalities here a year. Running out of air usually causes the victim to drown, not suffocate.”

  “What about the embolism?”

  “It was still there, meaning he did ascend too quickly.” He paused. “That and the fact that there was no water in the lungs led me to conclude that he was alive when he boarded the boat.”

  “So if he didn’t run out of air, someone drained the tank to make it look like he had?”

  “Possibly. And then killed him. You’ve got a murder on your hands.”

  I wanted to be sure of the sequence of events leading up to Gross’s death, and combining our information, we came up with something plausible.

  Gross had been diving, alone or not, I didn’t know. He must have heard another boat above and expected foul play, which caused him to forget his ingrained safety procedures and bolt for the surface. When he reached the boat, someone was waiting for him and, already crippled by the embolism, he had been easy prey. The murderer had then cut the anchor line to allow the boat to drift off the site.

  I thanked Vance and promised to take him out fishing soon, then headed out to the parking lot. Just as I pushed open the door, the phone in my back pocket vibrated. I jumped, not expecting it, and pulled the phone out. On the display was a number with a 305 area code. I recognized it right away.

  Eleven

  “Hey, Kurt. Mac Travis here.”

  “Hey, Mac. Got a case up here that I could use some advice on.”

  “Sure, go on.”

  I remembered him as being short on words and shorter on patience so I got right to the point. “You ever hear of a guy by the name of Gill Gross?”

  “Sure, good and bad. From the folks I trust, mostly good, but I hear he may have hit a few bumps in the road lately.”

  Another reference to the treasure hunter having fallen on hard times, and coming from Mac I wasn’t going to ignore it. I made a note to check his finances. “He died of what I would call, at this point, suspicious causes.”

  “Heard something about that through the coconut telegraph.”

  The Keys had their own under-the-radar network that was somehow faster than the internet. “I found the boat drifting in the park and his dead body was aboard.”

  “That’s more your line of work than mine.”

  “There was evidence of some concretions on deck and my wife, Justine, found a whole object that we believe to be a silver artifact.”

  “Getting interesting.”

  I heard it in his voice—the treasure bug. “It appears that he was into some secret project. How would I figure out what he was working on?”<
br />
  “His backers are likely to be tight-lipped. The state would know, but they’re not very cooperative. You could pull your federal agent status on them.”

  “Left a message for the underwater archeologist.” The line went silent. I was already surprised the conversation had lasted this long.

  “Careful with how you deal with those guys. They have their own agendas, and it’s not what I would call archaeology.”

  I wanted to know what he meant but could feel his patience waning. “Any other ideas? I checked his GPS and got nothing from it.”

  “Might have an SD card.”

  “The slot was empty. Just the numbers programmed into the unit itself.”

  “Doubt that’ll help. Probably has some decoy spots on it. Anyone looking to move in on his find would know the GPS data on the boat would be worthless. Gotta be somewhere safe, maybe a handheld unit or on his computer at home where he can password protect that.”

  “I’ll check into both those.”

  “Hey. Let me know how it goes.” He paused. “I could run up there if you need a diver.”

  I thanked him and disconnected. His interest in the case surprised me, but I knew it was more from what Gross was working on than about finding his killer. He’d been helpful, though.

  I hadn’t thought to search Gross’s house. I would need a warrant and that meant going through either Miami-Dade or Martinez. Grace hadn’t returned my second call yet and I wondered if she was avoiding me. Anyway, things were moving along nicely without the locals’ help, and I decided that as long as Martinez was being amicable I would use him. Somehow I often ended up needing warrants after hours or on the weekend. This was a Monday afternoon so it wouldn’t require him to ask for any favors or use any capital. After a brief call and with the warrant being a sure thing, he agreed to help.

  My next call was to Justine. It was before two and I caught her just getting out of the shower. Wishing I was there with her, I asked if she had found a handheld GPS or an SD card.

  “Nope. Went through everything onboard. I didn’t check his person, though; he was wearing a wetsuit.”

  That appeared to be a dead end. “I’m trying to get a search warrant for his house. Interested?”

  “You bet. But, gotta have a case number or it’s a no-go. You know, the Kurt Hunter Rule.”

  I remembered the new policy that we had jokingly named after me. In the past, I had used Miami-Dade’s resources freely. They had put an end to that.

  “I won’t go over there until I talk to you first.”

  “Deal. I would like to follow through on the case. I’ll let my boss know it’s coming.”

  We signed off and I put the phone down. Looking at my new personal phone, I texted her from it.

  A second later it binged. “Woohoo! Freedom!!” and a string of laughing emojis was her response.

  When my work phone rang a second later and Martinez’s name appeared on the screen, my first thought was that he had already cracked my new phone and was on to me.

  “What the hell, Hunter?”

  His greeting seemed to confirm that. “Got a call from Jackson Memorial. You know anything about a guy named Lucius Graves?”

  “Slipstream?”

  “What are you up to? They want to bill the Park Service for an examination, x-rays, and a walking boot. Who knows where it’ll go from there?”

  “He calls himself Gross’s partner, but I’m guessing he’s more of a helper.”

  “And that affects me or this department how?”

  “He ran when I was trying to interview him. Tripped over something.” There was no point telling him about the Russian woman. “I had to take him somewhere. I just left my name for the contact info.”

  “Yeah, about that. Don’t be so freakin’ naïve. This isn’t small town California here. You’re in Miami now, so start thinking like the low-life scum that you’re dealing with.”

  The high he’d gotten from the TV appearance this morning had faded already. “I did get some useful information from him,” I said.

  “Good, because he’s your new best friend and asked that you pick him up.”

  “Crap.” I wasn’t sure if I’d said that out loud. Martinez disconnected with another warning about being naïve. Still in the parking lot of the medical examiner’s building, I looked over at Jackson Memorial and started the truck.

  A few minutes of parking lot hopping later, I found Slipstream sitting on a bench by the entrance to the emergency room. He pushed himself off the bench to stand awkwardly on his new boot. Moving the heavy leg in front of him, he limped to the passenger side of the truck and opened the door. From the smile on his face, I guessed he had gotten what he’d asked for. The rattle of the pill bottle in his loose pants when he sat down confirmed it.

  “Said it’s just a sprain. Y’all lucked out, I guess.”

  There was no point arguing who was at fault here and Martinez had made it clear that I needed to pacify him enough to keep him from filing a complaint. Two could play at the not-being-naïve game.

  “Where’re we headed, boss?”

  “Wherever you live.” I had no need for a sidekick.

  “Shoot, I got a stake in this, too. Ol’ Gross done me out of some money. If we find anything I get my share, right? And screw that state dude.”

  He did know more about the treasure game than I did. If I could stand him, he might be helpful. “You better not hold anything out on me.”

  “Scout’s honor,” he said, holding up his right hand while his left hand fished the bottle of pain pills from his pocket.

  I reached over and grabbed them before he could pop the lid. “No way. You work with me, you stay sober.”

  “Hey. Doctor’s orders.”

  I doubted that and figured he had put on quite the performance to get the drugs. Looking at the label, I saw they were a blend of oxycontin and acetaminophen. Not the strongest pill in the medicine cabinet, but they could get him where he wanted to go—especially as I was sure he would increase the dosage by several times. I pocketed the drugs and looked at him.

  “How do we find his backers?” Until the state underwater archeologist called back, they were next on my list.

  “One I know is a big-time downtown lawyer. Comes out with us on weekends sometimes. Gross said there were a few more silent guys, but knowing him, he’d cap it at three.”

  “Why’s that?” I asked, pulling out of the lot and heading toward downtown.

  “How many bosses do you want?”

  I could understand that. Back in the Plumas Forest in California, I’d had one boss who was hours away. He left me on my own, asking only for incident reports and a vague schedule once a week. Now I had the king of the micromanagers sitting in his office watching me in real-time on his monitors. I placed a wager with myself about how long it would take him to find out I had a personal phone—not very long was my guess.

  “Where’s this guy at?”

  “Top floor of a big ass building. Never been up there.”

  “What’s his name?”

  “Morehead something or other.” He fished a fresh cigar out of his pocket, bit off the end, and stuck it in his mouth like he had done something to deserve it. My guess was that the hospital had surgically removed the last one and tossed it.

  In one sense I got lucky, in another maybe not so much: I remembered the name of the firm I had written a five-figure check to during my custody dispute: Viscount and Morehead. It was hard to forget those luxurious offices and I wondered if I should call ahead, but figured we were close anyway, and if Morehead was in his office it would be harder for the receptionist to say no with me standing in front of her, rather than on the phone. Slipstream, of course, would stay in the truck.

  We headed downtown. I found the building and parked in a loading zone right by the door. “If anyone comes by, just say I’ll be a minute.” I didn’t expect trouble, but I was in Miami-Dade country.

  “You let me look the dude straight in the
face. I’ll tell you if he’s lying or not.”

  Slipstream was not going to be an asset in any way. He was staying in the truck. I tossed him a pill, which he grabbed like a pet monkey, in return for his compliance. Pocketing the container, I locked the truck and headed into the building.

  Frantic is not the impression a high-priced law firm wants to give. That’s usually a feeling reserved for the backrooms. But today even the plush carpet of the waiting room couldn’t dampen the conversations going on behind the receptionist’s desk.

  “Mr. Hunter, are you here about Mr. Morehead?”

  Her memory must have been the second attribute they had hired her for. The first was plain as day. I decided to play along and not show my ignorance. Asking what had happened to Mr. Morehead was probably a bad idea. “Yes.”

  “Come with me, please.”

  I came around the desk, walked through a heavy-looking door she opened for me, and followed her back to an office every bit as nice as Daniel J. Viscount’s. I noticed this one had an opposite view; instead of South Beach, it looked out on downtown. Viscount came toward me.

  “Glad you could help out,” he said, shaking my hand.

  “Sure.” I still had no idea what was going on, but I was starting to expect the worst.

  “Did Miami-Dade call you in?”

  I let the question go, figuring he was going to keep talking—that’s what lawyers do.

  “No one has heard from Jake since Saturday afternoon. He was supposed to go out diving but never came back. His car has a locator on it. It’s down in the Gables.“ He pulled out his phone and showed me a dot on a map. I knew the area, but the specific location meant nothing to me.

  “Do you know anything about their relationship?”

  “He was obsessed with Gross and this wreck. It was okay when he just went on the weekends, but he’d started taking time off during the week.” He looked down. “Bad for billable hours.”