Naked Came the Manatee (1996)

by Elmore Leonard

  "What the hell's that supposed to mean?"

  "Watch."

  Lassiter stood and headed to the guy's table, carrying a fresh Grolsch, a sixteen-ouncer with the porcelain stopper. "Hey, buddy, I wonder if you would move."

  The guy glared at him and looked around. There were no empty tables. "Move? Where?"

  "Hialeah, Sopchoppy, I don't care. You're crowding my friend."

  The guy stood up, barely reaching Lassiter's shoulders. He had the thick neck and sloping shoulders of a bodybuilder. A tattoo of a scorpion was visible on his right forearm. "My name is Hector," he said, without smiling, "and your friend has something I want very much."

  "What, a personality?"

  At the next table, one of the Yuppie lawyers was boasting about tossing out a paraplegic's lawsuit because the statute of limitations had expired.

  "Your thieving friend stole something from me," Hector said angrily.

  "Yeah, well, under the law of the sea, the Treaty of Versailles, and the doctrine of finders keepers, what he found belongs to him."

  Hector grinned, but there was no humor in it. "No, cabron, it belongs to me."

  "Look, Hector, I'm going to count to ten, and when I get there, you're gone. One... two... three... C'mon, make yourself scarce. Cuatro... cinco... seis... Hey, Hector, vete! Seven... eight... nine... "

  Suddenly, Hector slammed a size 10-EEE cowboy boot on Lassiter's instep. The pain shot through his ankle and radiated up his leg. Before Lassiter could recover, Hector threw a short right back, sinking it deep into his gut. The lawyer doubled over, retched, and an explosion of grilled dolphin, coleslaw, and beer showered the Yuppie lawyers.

  Deal got painfully to his feet and hobbled over, but Hector was already halfway to the dock, where a Boston Whaler sat idling, a young man at the wheel. Hector leapt into the boat, which took off, engine roaring in the no-wake zone.

  Deal knelt down next to Lassiter, who was on one knee. "You look worse than I do, counselor."

  "On the other hand," Lassiter said, wheezing, "there is something to be said for the play-action fake."

  The moonlight streaked across the dark water, a highway reaching toward the horizon. A light breeze blew from the southeast, and the dive boat rocked gently at anchor. The twinkling lights of Key Biscayne condos were visible to the west. Jake Lassiter sat in the captain's chair, his bandaged foot resting inside an open cooler filled with beer and ice. John Deal removed his cervical collar and kneaded the muscles of his aching neck, then popped three Advil. It had been a long day.

  "I can't believe you didn't even open it," Lassiter said.

  "The old woman told me not to, said I'd be better off just to get rid of it."

  "It could be jewels, drugs."

  "Ebola virus," Deal added.

  Lassiter shook his head. "No. It's gotta be something valuable. Why else would Hector want it so much?"

  Deal shrugged and looked over the rail into the water. Seventy feet below, a Boeing 727 sat on the sandy bottom, an artificial reef for the fishermen and divers. "If the storms last month haven't stirred up everything, we'll know soon enough." In the dark water below, a light was growing brighter. "Can you trust her?" Deal asked.

  "I've known Fay Leonard since she was a kid catching lobsters bare-handed off Islamorada. She's a good diver and a good friend."

  "So the two of you aren't... "

  He let it hang there.

  "Ancient history, John. Ancient history."

  There was a splash, and suddenly Fay was behind the boat. She spit out the regulator and slid her face mask on top of her head, and once again Deal had the powerful sense that he knew her from somewhere. It had been itching at him since they'd first met, but... well, it'd come to him. With her free hand, she slung a net onto the dive platform. Inside the net was a round metal canister wrapped in plastic. Lassiter hobbled toward the stern, his foot throbbing, and Deal walked stiffly to meet him. Fay came halfway up the dive ladder. "It was just where you said it would be, John, in three feet of sand just under the cockpit."

  Fay pulled herself onto the dive platform, removed her tank, mask and flippers, then, without a word, peeled off her one-piece suit. She was a lithe, tanned, athletic woman in her early thirties, with sun-bleached hair tied back in a ponytail. "Jake, I'm going to take a swim," Fay said. "The water's beautiful."

  "Don't you want to see what's--"

  "No, you boys play treasure salvors. There's a big old manatee out there who wants some company. Just yell when you want to head back in."

  She slipped gracefully into the water, the moonlight reflecting off her long limbs as she swam into the darkness. "I must be getting old," Lassiter said, " 'cause I'd rather see what's in that box than go skinny-dipping with Fay Leonard."

  "As I recall, she didn't exactly invite you."

  "Sure she did, John, in a woman's roundabout way."

  "The way I heard it, she'd rather swim naked with a manatee."

  Lassiter thought about it a moment and said, "Fay was always partial to linemen."

  "C'mon," Deal said. "Let's do it."

  They huddled over their prize,, Deal unwrapping the plastic, Lassiter holding a flashlight. It took less than a minute. Underneath the plastic, a shiny steel canister the size of a hatbox. A wheel lock secured a door built into the top. Deal strained to turn the wheel counterclockwise. "It's stuck," he said, his face reddening.

  Together they pulled, and after a moment, the wheel turned and the small door opened with a whoosh. Inside, a circle of tiny green lights immediately flashed red, and a blast of frigid air escaped. In the center of the lights, a second door with a simple slide latch led to another compartment.

  "Well, counselor, here goes," Deal said.

  They both held their breath. They were unaware of Fay Leonard swimming fifty yards away in the darkness, the giant manatee Booger alongside. They were unaware of the Boston Whaler with two men aboard, anchored directly in Fay's path. They were unaware of anything and everything in the whole wide world and the deep blue sea, except what treasure might rest in front of them.

  Deal slid the latch and opened the interior door as Lassiter shone the flashlight inside.

  "Uh-oh," Lassiter said.

  "Oh Lord," Deal said.

  Lassiter exhaled a tense breath. "Turn it over."

  "No, you."

  "C'mon. It's not alive."

  "You're the ambulance chaser, Jake. You've seen stuff like this before."

  "No I haven't."

  Wincing, Lassiter reached into the compartment and grabbed the human head by its thick, graying hair. "It's cold," Lassiter said. "Like it's being preserved."

  He turned the head over, faceup, then dropped it back into the canister.

  And there it was.

  Bushy beard and all.

  Staring at them with wide-open eyes, a startled look on that familiar face.

  The face of Fidel Castro.

  4. THE L. A. CONNECTION--Edna Buchanan Moments earlier, Britt Montero had been hungry and feverish, battling deadlines and the blues, yearning to go home, desperate and exhausted, her brain an overloaded computer about to crash. But she never could resist a ringing telephone. And Jake Lassiter knew exactly what to say.

  "Have I got a story for you!"

  She felt the adrenaline pump and her brain cells kick back into life. Her blood began to tingle. She loved to hear those words, but still, she reacted with caution.

  "Have you been drinking, Jake?"

  "Hell, yeah," he said. "You would be too. I've got John Deal here... "

  She pinched the bridge of her upturned nose and tried to ignore the distant drumbeat of an impending headache. "Isn't he the one that wrecked that entire showroom full of exotic cars... ?"

  "Yep, that's him, he's a client of mine."

  It did not surprise Britt that John Deal needed a lawyer.

  "Did your jury just come in?"

  "No... "

  "Then call me tomorrow."

  "This
isn't about him, not directly anyway." Jake lowered his deep voice for dramatic effect. "This story is so big that when word gets out, there will be riots in the streets, power grabs, and the whole damn revolution will come down."

  "What are you talking about?"

  "You've got to see this to believe it."

  "Where are you?"

  "Crandon Park Marina. Can you meet us here right away? And, uh, could you grab a couple of recent pictures, close-ups, of Fidel Castro from the newspaper morgue and bring them with you?"

  "Castro? What is this? If you're putting me on, Jake... "

  "Scout's honor, this is dead serious, in fact it could be a matter of life or death. Uh, check the wires too, before you leave. See if anything unusual is coming out of Havana."

  Britt hung up and punched the send button on her computer terminal, booting into the editing system her story about the lovesick bag boy who had taken an entire Kendall supermarket and its shoppers hostage with his father's 12-gauge shotgun.

  Beyond the big bayfront windows of the Miami News building, the panoramic Miami Beach skyline and its twinkling lights beckoned alluringly, but she knew there was no going home soon. Her apartment on the Beach might as well have been a thousand miles away. The west drawbridge of the Venetian Causeway had been stuck in the open position since noon. On the MacArthur span, the remains of a house and several cars were scattered across the eastbound lanes. In order to save one of the last historic pioneer homes from demolition, the city had decided to move it to a new location, but the house had toppled off the wide-load flatbed and smashed into a million pieces. Several South Beach-bound motorists, startled by a house dead ahead as they ascended a fast-lane rise at fifty-five miles an hour, lost control, compounding the problem. The Julia Tuttle Causeway, two miles north, was also closed to traffic. A Hollywood movie crew had rented it for the night to shoot a high-speed chase scene for a new action epic.

  Maybe Jake really had a great story, Britt thought hopefully. She loved this job. Every day was like Christmas morning. Full of surprises, stories unfolding, always the possibility that the big one would break today. So far, today had brought only two threatening letters and three obscene calls from faithful readers, while another had left chicken entrails on the hood of her new T-Bird in the News parking lot. She fervently hoped they were chicken entrails. Then came the assignment, followed by a major skirmish with the assistant city editor from hell.

  Still steamed about the assignment, she drove south through the soft night to meet Jake, half listening to the crackle of her portable police scanner. Enthralled city, tourism, and newspaper executives were eager to cooperate with the moviemakers on location.

  Final Deadline, a major action flick, would star movie hero Dash Brandon as a government agent under cover as a newsman for a major Miami newspaper. Britt's assignment, and she had been given no choice but to accept, was to help the star research his role by having him accompany her on the police beat for a week.

  Unimpressed by Hollywood types, Britt resented the intrusion. But so far, the assignment hadn't been too bad, she thought, turning east across the Rickenbacker Causeway, windows open, the salt breeze bracing. The jet-lagged star wearied quickly. Summoning his limo, he had departed between the mini-riot that had broken out during a police raid on a Hialeah cockfight and the high-speed pursuit of three carloads of teenage smash-and-grabbers across the Broad Causeway from Bal Harbour.

  Fay had fought hard, but Hector and Phil, despite the obvious difficulties in holding on to a slippery, wet, naked body, had succeeded in wrestling her aboard. Before Lassiter and Deal, stunned by the contents of the shiny steel canister, realized what was happening, Fay was shrieking and struggling on the deck of the Boston Whaler. Hector managed to cuff the surprisingly strong and agile woman to the handrail, but as he grinned victoriously, she landed a vicious kick to his crotch. He dropped to his knees, moaning. Phil gunned the engines, cut the running lights, and throttled into the darkness, as Lassiter and Deal collided painfully, cursing and fumbling in their haste to start the engine of their dive boat.

  "Did you see that big feesh?" groaned Hector, still sitting dazed and wet on the deck.

  "That shows how much you know about fishing," Phil jeered. "That was a barrel."

  "It was a manatee, you jerks," Fay gasped. "Touch me and I'll rip your faces off. Who the hell are you?"

  "Your friends have something that belongs to us," Hector said. "Here, cover yourself with this." He blushed and looked away as he draped something around her shoulders.

  "This is a fishing net, you idiot! Where are we going?" she demanded.

  Booger, buffeted about by the wake, experienced a vague sense of something amiss. It had begun as Fay flailed and grappled on the deck of the dive boat, thrashing about like a slick mermaid in the moonlight. Then he was alone, with neither a playmate nor a swimming partner. Miffed and lonely, he followed at a distance, hoping she would come back.

  Britt spotted Jake on the dock. The tall, sandy-haired ex-football jock was limping, and lugging a metal canister the size of a hatbox and what appeared to be a woman's one-piece bathing suit slung over his arm. The man in a neck brace who was trailing behind him had to be Deal, she thought. Both looked grim.

  "What happened to you two?"

  "That's not important," Jake said, wincing as he led the way. "Did you bring the pictures?"

  "Kidnapping?" Britt said, as they trooped into Jake's kitchen. He lived in the Grove, in a small coral rock house with no air-conditioning. They had gone there in her T-Bird after a brief but vicious argument about who would drive. Jake's foot was bandaged, and although Britt could not clearly recall the specifics of Deal's destructive swath through the exotic-car showroom, she suspected that it would be safer to skydive without a chute than travel anywhere as his passenger.

  They sat at the table and filled her in on Fay's abduction.

  "We have to call the FBI," she said, concerned.

  "No cops," Jake said. "Bring in any kind of badge and that'll get Fay dead. I know those guys. That's why we called you."

  "Jake, I'm no Rambo. What can I do?"

  "Look, Britt, nobody in Miami has better contacts. We need you to check something out for us. Quietly. You'll have to sit on it for a few days, but then you'll have the story of a lifetime, and hopefully we'll have Fay back, and maybe a little something extra for our trouble."

  Deal nodded and popped a handful of Advil. "Those lowlifes on the boat know who we are," he muttered. "We'll be hearing from them soon, without a doubt. We need to know who they're working for, what the hell we're dealing with here."

  "They'll probably contact us, to arrange a swap," Jake said.

  "Swap?"

  "That's what we have to show you." Jake swept an accumulation of beer cans and pizza crusts off the cluttered tabletop and placed the metal canister in the center.

  Opening the box, he lifted the lid, curling his wrists as he did so, as though unveiling a rare work of art.

  The room was so hot that they could feel the whoosh of cool air, as though somebody had opened a freezer. But it was something else that prickled the hair on the back of Britt's neck. Could be it be the faint, stale aroma of cigar smoke?

  Britt stared into the expressionless eyes. Fidel Castro was the man who had killed her father, stood him in front of a bullet-pocked wall on San Juan Hill and ordered his execution by firing squad when she was only three years old. "Think it's really him?" she whispered.

  They could not be sure from the photos she had brought.

  "Was there anything unusual on the wires out of Havana?"

  Britt shook her head. "Rumors are always sweeping Miami that Castro is dead, dying, or in Switzerland having sheep-glands injections to maintain his virility." Jake raised his eyebrows.

  "Don't laugh," Britt said. "He has quite a reputation."

  She stared into the canister. "I've never actually seen the man in person."

  "Nor I," Jake said.

  "What a
bout Magda Montiel Davis?" she said. "She'd know him." Davis, a local lawyer, had kissed Castro, gushing like an infatuated schoolgirl at a reception in Havana. She had had no inkling at the time that Cuban cameras were rolling, that Fidel would gleefully sell the footage to Miami television stations, and that enraged exiles would greet her return with threats of death, bombs, and mob violence.

  All three studied the frozen face.

  "What's Mickey Schwartz doing these days?" Jake said thoughtfully.

  Schwartz had built a successful three-decade acting and modeling career based on the fact that he was a dead ringer for Castro. His most recent gig was a Florida lottery commercial in which he wore fatigues and blew contented smoke rings after using dollar bills, presumably lottery winnings, to light his cigar.

  "This could be him," Jake said, and closed the container. "Wre don't want it to thaw out."

  "Good thinking," Deal said.

  "Maybe Castro was dying," Britt suggested, "he knew it and wanted to be frozen until they could cure what killed him. There's a doctor into cryogenics here in Miami."

  "Why wouldn't they send his entire body?" Deal said. "It would be easier to revive than finding him a whole new body."

  "Maybe somebody screwed up," she said. "Remember that pop singer from Caracas? He intended to have his body frozen but there was an accident with a circular saw during the packaging. All they could salvage was his head. It's still frozen here somewhere."

  "This isn't getting Fay back," Jake muttered, painfully pacing the length of the small kitchen. He paused at the refrigerator to take out a beer, and tossed one to Deal. Britt passed, no longer hungry, or thirsty. Her mind was racing. Maybe this was the big one.

  "Well, I tell you," she said, after peering again into the metal container. "It's either him or Mickey Schwartz."

  "Why would those guys so desperately want the head of Mickey Schwartz?" Jake asked.

  They stared at one another.

  "Unless they want to pass it off as Castro," she said. "Every time there are rumors of Castro's demise, Little Havana erupts. Juan Carlos Reyes has offered a million-dollar reward for proof that Castro is dead."