Fallen Out: Jesse McDermitt Series, The Beginning

by Wayne Stinnett

  As I headed toward my old International, Jimmy said, “It’s only half a mile, man.”

  So we walked up Sombrero Boulevard to a place near US-1 called Sea Wiz Marine Systems. I’d noticed the shop before but hadn’t needed anything to this point.

  We spent the next hour talking to the owner about a stereo system and he asked a lot of questions about my boat and musical tastes. They had a wide variety of stereo systems, amplifiers, and speakers made specifically for boats. They also carried a good assortment of wind and solar generator systems. With the owner’s and Jimmy’s help we picked out what we wanted, including some backup systems for electrical power. The owner said they weren’t busy and he could have two of his technicians at the dock in an hour and have it all installed and working by the afternoon.

  “What kind of radar and fish finder do you have aboard?” the guy asked. “We don’t sell much in that line, but I have a friend that does.”

  I described the systems aboard and he said, “Sounds like good equipment. If you want, I could have my friend stop by and take a look. Maybe offer some suggestions.” Jimmy agreed that the systems we had aboard were probably adequate, but it wouldn’t hurt to hear what’s new, since electronics were obsolete as soon as they hit the store.

  Just before noon, a Sea Wiz van pulled up in the parking lot and two men got out. Another white van pulled up next to the first about the same time and a third man got out and all three came over to the dock. The three men introduced themselves and I invited them aboard. The two guys from Sea Wiz went straight to work and the other man, Ken, climbed up to the bridge with me.

  After examining the radar and fish finders he turned to me and said, “Your Mate was right. This is all good equipment. Top of the line, in fact. Ever think of adding forward and side scan sonar?”

  “What for?” I asked sounding like a land lubber.

  “Some channels are pretty narrow and could have obstructions, or turns. Finding a cut through a reef is a breeze with forward scanning sonar. Especially at night.”

  “You’d have to pull her out of the water?”

  “No sir,” he said surprising me. “I’ve developed my own system. I put a watertight cover over the area in the bilge I want to mount with a sending unit mounted inside and cut the hole underwater, using a sensor to find the sending unit.”

  “Ever missed?”

  “A couple times when I was developing it. Those were just plywood on sawhorses, though. Done it to forty-four boats in the water and hit dead center every time.”

  “How much?”

  “Installation of the transducer, wiring, installation of the receiver, all other parts and labor, I could do you up right for $9,000.”

  “Can you do it up right for eight-thousand?”

  He thought it over a moment and said, “Since Jimmy works for ya, $8,500.”

  “Do it,” I said. “But, if you sink it, you bought it.”

  By mid-afternoon, all the work was done. The new sonar screen mounted in the console really set us apart from other charter boats. The stereo system consisted of a ten-CD changer, stereo, and amplifier, mounted in the entertainment center in the salon. The speakers in the salon and staterooms were so small I was real surprised at the sound quality. Waterproof speakers were mounted in the aft bulkhead for the cockpit and four more on the bridge. Sea Wiz even threw in an intercom system, with units in both staterooms, the galley, cockpit, and on the bridge, all wireless. The whole day cost almost twelve grand.

  Jimmy surprised me once more, when he switched on the CD and Coltrane filled the bridge with smooth jazz. “I would have guessed you for a head banger,” I said.

  “Dude, please. Not that I don’t like rock, too. I listen to a little of everything, but jazz is music for the soul, man.”

  We drank a couple of beers then Jimmy said he and his girlfriend were going out to supper and he left. Rusty stopped by and we sat on the bridge drinking ‘til well past sunset, while listening to a Cuban radio station. Rusty surprised me by translating what the DJ said.

  “I didn’t know you spoke Spanish,” I said.

  “I understand it more than I can talk it. It’s pretty necessary down here. Wouldn’t hurt you to learn a little.”

  We talked some more and I told him about the fight and meeting the sisters. An hour later, he said he had to get up early and left.

  Chapter Six

  The smell of fresh coffee woke me the next morning. The coffee maker had a timer and I’d taken to setting it up before going to bed. It was better than an alarm clock. Sitting on the bridge, I watched the night sky slowly turn purple, then the first finger rays of the rising sun lit up the clouds hanging over the eastern horizon. I’d always reveled in watching the sun rise and set in different places around the world. No matter where I was, it looked the same and different at the same time.

  I heard a splash and looked toward the sound. Savannah was tying up their dinghy. Just what I needed. She climbed out and walked along the dock toward the Revenge. Stopping at my pier she looked up and said, “I think I owe you an apology.” She lifted a thermos. “Can I buy you a cup of Australian coffee?”

  Never one to turn down someone else’s brew, I said, “Sure, come aboard.”

  She sat on the transom and swung two tanned and shapely legs over, stepping down to the deck in bare feet. I climbed down and met her in the cockpit. “Come on in,” I said as I held the hatch open.

  “Thanks,” she said as she stepped up into the galley. “Wow! This is a really cool yacht. I thought it was a fishing boat.”

  “It is,” I said. “Kind of a reverse mullet. Party up front and all business in the rear.”

  “You’re dating yourself. Nobody wears a mullet anymore.”

  “Have a seat, I’ll get another mug.”

  She slid into the settee booth and twisted the top off the thermos, unconcerned about where I’d sit. I didn’t bother with a saucer, sugar, or cream and my guess was right, as she poured both our mugs with the strong smelling coffee and took a sip.

  “I asked around about what you said. About the sex slave thing. I’m sorry I accused you of lying. Also, thanks for bailing us out the other night. Sharlee is a little gullible sometimes and I was way toasted.”

  I noticed that she didn’t have a hint of southern drawl like her sister and asked her about it.

  “Sharlee went to ‘finishing school’,” she said, rolling her eyes at the words. “I was sort of a tomboy and preferred to go out on my dad’s fishing boats.”

  “Boats? Plural?”

  “Yeah, he owns a fleet of commercial boats. I skippered one until he retired and sold the fleet.”

  “Really?”

  She used both hands holding her mug, as she took another sip. “You like the coffee?”

  I’d finished half the cup and hardly noticed it. “Yeah, it’s great,” I said looking into her blue eyes.

  “Where’d you learn to fight like that? You went through the three biggest guys like a hot knife through butter.”

  “Fight? Oh, the other night. I studied a little martial arts. You and your sister are as different as night and day.”

  “Thanks, I love her, but she can be a handful sometimes.” I nearly spit out my coffee. “What?” she asked.

  As I tried to control my laughter I said, “She said almost exactly the same thing about you.”

  Refilling both our cups she said, “We’ve decided to stay here a while.”

  “What brought you to the Keys, anyway?”

  “Mom and Dad went to Australia. That’s where the coffee came from, they sent it to me. Sharlee doesn’t like coffee.”

  “So, I guess Captain Wood will be leaving?”

  “Tomorrow. He was planning to take a bus, but since we took so much longer getting down here, we bought him an airline ticket. The way he talked, it sounded like you two knew each other. Do you?”

  “Not really,” I said. “We both served in Desert Storm. Just met the other night.”


  “You were a Marine, too?”

  I let the ‘were’ slide. “Yeah, I retired a few months ago.”

  “You’re way too young to retire.”

  “Which is why I’m working as a charter boat Captain.”

  We talked for another twenty minutes and finished the coffee when Jimmy showed up. We met him on the dock and Jimmy and I stood watching as she walked back to her dinghy. As he started to say something I held up a finger, watching her. At the end of the dock, she looked back over her shoulder at the two of us and waved.

  “She looked back,” I said waving.

  “Yeah, so?”

  “She didn’t yesterday.”

  “You’re losing me, dude.”

  I stepped over the transom and said, “If a woman looks back as she’s walking away, she’s interested.”

  “Ah, one of those body language things, huh?”

  We spent an hour checking on the boat. I was still learning a lot about it and he seemed to have an unlimited supply of knowledge. I told him that on days we didn’t have a charter he didn’t even need to come down to the marina and if something came up, I’d call him.

  I powered up my laptop and we checked emails from the website. I still wanted to keep my workdays to a minimum, so we often told prospective clients we were booked. Jimmy suggested we raise our rates. “We’re priced like every other dive operator and we only take six divers out,” he said. “A lot of people would be willing to pay more for that kind of service. And dude, nothing cuts out the serious divers from the amateurs like money.”

  So, we raised our prices. We also offered a slightly lower group rate. There were four emails, requesting slots for seven divers total. All of them wanted Saturday. I suggested to Jimmy that we only work weekdays and he seemed to like that. It would further cut our clientele by weeding out the weekend warriors. Just as I was about to shut the thing off, another email came in. It was from a friend of one of the photographers we took out a few days earlier. He wanted to book the boat for a whole night, any night this week, for just three dive photographers. They wanted to dive in the 20 to 40 foot range starting at dusk.

  “All night?” Jimmy said.

  “What’s the going rate around here for something like that?” I asked.

  “Got me, man. Nobody does it.”

  “Send him a reply. Tell him the rate’s 10% higher than an all-day charter, make it $1300.”

  “We don’t do all day charters, dude.”

  “He doesn’t know that.”

  Jimmy sent the reply, dressing it up to include free tank refills, photo editing, and breakfast at the Dockside. The reply came back almost immediately, asking what nights were available.

  “Damn,” I said. “He bit.”

  “We’ll need a third hand on board, man. Someone to help out refilling tanks and piloting, while I’m working with the photography.”

  “Tell him tomorrow night, I have someone in mind.”

  He sent the message and got a reply back immediately again, booking it. The guy said he’d stop by later in the afternoon and give me a deposit.

  “Wow, dude,” Jimmy said. “That’s almost double what anyone else charges and he didn’t hesitate. Who you got in mind to help out? Rusty?”

  “I’ll ask around,” I said glancing out the starboard porthole. “Why don’t you take off? Get to bed early this evening and meet me here at 0300. We can get everything ready by 1100 and get a few hours of sleep aboard in the afternoon.”

  After he left, I went up to the bridge with a cooler of beer. The Richmond sisters and Wood were rowing toward the dinghy dock. Once they tied off and started toward Dockside, I stood at the rail and lifted my beer. “Got a minute, Captain?”

  Charlotte kept walking, her nose in the air, as I’d hoped she would. Savannah and Wood stopped at the transom and Wood said, “Catching a flight in about an hour, but that’s plenty of time for a beer I guess.”

  “What about you, Savannah?” I asked. “Have a beer with a couple of boat bums?”

  “Boat bums are my favorite people to drink with,” she said then turned to her sister and called out, “I’ll catch up in a minute, Sharlee.”

  The woman never broke stride, just waved over her shoulder and kept going. Wood vaulted over the transom and offered his hand to Savannah, who ignored it and stepped lightly to the deck in her bare feet. I wondered if she ever wore shoes.

  “Come on up,” I said. I switched on the stereo, turned very low and clicked the CD changer’s remote switch a few times. The sound of John McLaughlin’s double neck guitar started to quietly fill the bridge, as if from nowhere.

  Wood noticed the new sonar screen and said, “That’s way cool, Gunny. Sonar?”

  “Just installed, it can scan forward, backward, and to the sides. Should make picking my way through holes in the reef a lot easier. Have a seat.” I offered them both a bottle of Kalik and they both accepted.

  “What’s a gunny?” Savannah asked.

  “It was my rank, before I retired,” I said. “Just wanted to have a farewell drink, Wood. Savannah said you were flying out.”

  “I appreciate the hospitality,” he said. “It’s always good meeting a fellow Jarhead.”

  I extended my bottle and he clinked the neck of his to it.

  “Is that Mahavishnu?” Savannah asked.

  “Now look who’s dating themselves,” I said. “How is it that you know McLaughlin?”

  “He still tours. I caught him in Munich last summer.”

  Turning back to Wood, I said, “I also wanted to ask if you’d like a job, Wood?”

  “What kind of job?”

  “I have an all-night dive charter tomorrow night that came up suddenly, a group of photographers. My First Mate will be busy between dives helping them edit photographs. I could use someone to help pilot the boat, while I hook up the air compressor to refill the tanks for the next dive. Depart before dusk and back by sunrise.”

  “Wish I could help you out, but I’ve already been gone longer than I figured on.”

  I looked over at Savannah and said, “You’re a licensed skipper, right?”

  She thought about it for a second and said, “Sure I can help you out. Hanging around with Sharlee all night can get a bit tedious anyway.”

  Wood had a flight to catch, so they left soon after to collect Charlotte at Dockside. I noticed the three of them leave a few minutes later and get into a red convertible, obviously a rental, with Savannah behind the wheel.

  Thirty minutes later, the red convertible pulled back into the parking lot with only Savannah in it. She got out and went inside, emerging five minutes later. As she walked toward the dinghy dock I called down, “What happened to your sister?”

  “Got any more beer?” she asked.

  I invited her up to the bridge, where she told me that Charlotte had booked a flight at the last minute for San Francisco. So she’d rented a slip and would be staying awhile.

  “She booked a flight to Frisco without any baggage?”

  “She’ll just buy whatever she needs when she gets there. It’s not the first time she’s done this.”

  We talked for a few minutes longer. I asked her to be here at 1800, rested, and ready to go. The clients would arrive at 1900. She left after that, to move her boat to a slip three down from mine. I offered to help, but she declined. “Like I said, Sharlee’s ditched me more than once, leaving me to single hand the boat.”

  I watched from the bridge as she got the dinghy aboard by herself and started the engines on the big Riviera. Letting them warm up, she went forward and checked the line securing the boat to the mooring buoy, checked the current in the bay and looked aft where several boats were moored behind her. It looked like she reached a decision and went back to the boats helm. She put it in gear then scrambled forward to untie the line as the boat slowly idled forward against the current.

  In an instant she had cast off the mooring line and was back at the helm, expertly maneuvering the big luxury yach
t toward the dock and swinging it around to back in. Just a few minutes later, she had her backed in, snubbed to the pier, and shut down the engines. I was impressed.

  Chapter Seven

  The following day, I woke at 0230 and had coffee on the bridge. Jimmy arrived right on time and we spent the next several hours cleaning, polishing, and getting the equipment ready. After that, we spent some time checking tides and dive sites. We chose five shallow reefs that aren’t visited by dive charter boats very often. By staying on shallow reefs the divers could make multiple dives, without worrying much about nitrogen buildup. Before noon, we turned in to get some sleep before the clients arrived.

  The smell of coffee woke me at 1730. I poured a cup and went up to the bridge. A few minutes later, Jimmy joined me. “Did you ever find someone to help us out?” he asked, watching Savannah walk toward us with a bag over her shoulder. She was dressed in jeans and a man’s work shirt, but had the tails tied at her belly, showing off an inch or two of tanned skin.

  “Sure did,” I said.

  “Permission to board, Captain,” Savannah asked from the dock.

  “Stow your gear in the hanging closet just inside the hatch,” I told her. “There’s coffee in the galley. Mugs are right above it.”

  “She’s our crew?” Jimmy asked. His mouth hung open, watching her sit on the transom and swing her legs over. She was barefoot again.

  When she joined us on the bridge, I introduced them and said, “Savannah’s going to be a neighbor for a while.”

  Less than an hour later the clients arrived, two men and a young woman, all carrying dive bags and hard cases that I assumed contained expensive camera equipment. While I started the engines, Jimmy and Savannah helped them stow their gear in the salon and Jimmy showed them around the boat.

  They made a total of six dives and everything went very well. Savannah handled the boat whenever we had to move between dives, using the GPS and waypoints I’d already entered. That allowed me to swap tanks for the divers, while they worked in the salon with Jimmy. They made two dives on one of the reefs we’d chosen and one dive on the other four.