Key West Luck

by Laurence Shames

  Insofar as the drinking bout had been designed to prop up his courage, the tactic had come perilously close to working. The alcohol hadn’t made him brave, exactly, just forgetful of the quite good reasons he had to be afraid. He’d backslid into imagining that what lay ahead of him was an easy job, a garden-variety inside heist, and he was eager now to get it over with. He wondered what was going on with the boatload of cigars. He wondered if the toy soldiers from the Coast Guard and the Marine Patrol and the Customs Department had yet headed out with their guns and floodlights and bullhorns. He decided to see for himself if the charade had begun.

  On unsteady legs he lumbered along the many coves and notches that made up harborside Key West—the catwalks where people tied up dinghies, the turtle pens, the tacky seashell shops whose garish lights drew squads of ghostly fish that darted around beneath the piers. He walked and weaved until he came to the locked metal gate of the Customs mole. He had the credentials to get inside but he didn’t want to get inside. He just wanted to see if anything was going on. Nothing was.

  He realized he was way too early, that there were many hours to fill or kill before he’d have to do his part. The prospect of this empty, solitary time made him notice that he was very tired. Nervousness began to slither back into his slowly sobering mind and he decided he’d better get some sleep.

  He was just turning away from the gate when an unlikely sight barely registered at the edge of his vision. In the main harbor channel, beyond the Customs docks, a two-story house was floating by.

  The house was listing to starboard and trailing a plume of lavender smoke. Its motion was a complicated blend of going forward while also slipping sideways on the current while at the same time seeming to spin with an exquisite, waltz-like slowness in the grip of some unseen gyre. Meara blinked at the apparition then shook his head. Key West. People were crazy here. Crazy people doing crazy things for crazy reasons. He was glad that he’d be leaving in the morning.

  “Doesn’t maneuver very well, does it?” Phoebe was saying, her knuckles turning white as she squeezed down to brace herself against a kitchen counter.

  “I tried telling you that a while ago,” said Ozzie, wrestling with the unresponsive wheel. “You didn’t seem to want to hear it.”

  She shrugged, flexed her knees for balance, and watched downtown Key West spin by. Her perspective was like that from one of those teacup rides at a carnival and it made the web of byways that branched out from Duval Street appear even more antic and frenetic than in fact they were. Neon flashed, its afterglow smearing with the motion of the houseboat; the tourist trolley seemed to proceed by discrete quick jerks, as though lit up by a stroboscope. Twisting her neck to follow the spectacle, trying to make chit-chat in the midst of the dizzying ride, she said, “You think you’ll always live here, Oz?”

  Straining against the weight of the rudder, watching gobs of spray fly up from the Sea Queen’s bow, he said, “Always is a funny thing to be talking about right now.”

  “Okay. So say always for as long as always turns out to be.”

  “I dunno. I guess. Can’t really imagine living anywhere else.” He broke off for a moment as the houseboat wallowed and twirled. Snatches of music came pouring out of bars; giddy laughter crackled in the streets. “Thing is,” he went on, “it’s not like Key West is perfect or anything. Not even close. More like it just has this weird way of making other places look like shit. Know what I mean?”

  She didn’t get to answer, because just then the houseboat made a violent lurch that tossed her sideways against a table and left Ozzie clinging to the wheel with both feet off the floor. The clumsy craft had made it to the harbor entrance where the Atlantic and the Gulf slammed into one another with a riot of chop and spray. Spiky waves spouted up like geysers, their spume soaking the tatty Astroturf. The bow dipped into the foam as if kow-towing; the stern lifted then came crashing down with the graceless splat of a fat kid doing a cannonball. Inside the cabin, dishes clattered, pots and pans flew around like boomerangs, plywood bulkheads strained against their screws and bolts.

  Amid the general chaos Nicky’s guitar came sliding down from the upper bunk. It landed flat on its back and rang out dully with a baleful chord like a lingering groan. Seeming suddenly to forget all else—the slamming cabinets, the soaking spray—Phoebe hunkered low, almost to her hands and knees, and crept forward to rescue the suffering instrument.

  Ozzie watched her strain toward it across the rolling funhouse floor, saw the tenderness with which she lifted it, examined it, and moved it clear of harm. For some reason his

  throat closed when he saw that; he was happy for his best friend Nicky but he felt a pang of something close to envy and he couldn’t help wondering if he himself would ever be the object of such undeclared but clear devotion.

  He leaned his shoulder against the wheel and steered as best he could toward the reef and the distant beacon of the Sand Key Lighthouse.

  27.

  At around 11 pm, a call came in to the Citizen’s Hot Line at the U.S. Customs Service in Washington, D.C., informing the authorities that a boatload of Cuban cigars was currently en route to Key West by way of Sand Key Channel. The caller declined to give a name, though the call was easily traced to a restaurant phone in North Miami Beach. Asked if he would claim a reward if the tip resulted in a capture, the caller responded with a certain ill-disguised sour wryness that no, he didn’t want a reward, he was only doing his duty.

  Having finished the call, Luis Benavides handed the phone back to the maitre d’, thanked him for its use, and went back to his brandy.

  In Key West the dispatcher had been dozing when the call came in from Washington. His torpor changed instantly to a kind of discombobulated frenzy at the possibility of some real action at the all but mothballed base. Flustered, he elbowed papers off his desk and spilled some coffee on his blotter as he tried to recall the precise but seldom used chain of procedures for launching an interception and seizure mission.

  Within ten minutes, officers and seamen had been rousted out of bed or pulled away from their poker games. Ten minutes after that, two Coast Guard cutters and a Marine Patrol pursuit boat were rumbling to life at the docks and being boarded by crews equipped with searchlights, grappling hooks, and submachine guns. By 11:30 the flotilla was speeding out of Key West harbor, the swollen chevrons of its triple wake spreading out for many miles.

  After the fearsome swells and baffling eddies of the Gulf Stream where it was running close in to the Cuban coast, the relatively quiescent waters of the Florida Straits were a pleasure to be navigating. With half-attention Nicky easily held his fated course beneath a sky full of lightly misted stars. The Mariposa, as if remembering with pride that it once had been a hale and handsome boat, seemed to firm up its posture like a dignified old man straightening his tie and to gain confidence in its gait as it glided through the sea. Except for the stink of cigars, this part of the journey was almost a joy ride. Nothing had gone wrong so far and, human nature being what it is, this provisional lack of calamity had been gradually eroding Nicky’s realism and giving rise to a dangerous and foolish hope that perhaps, in spite of all his well-reasoned misgivings, things would go smoothly right to the end.

  Not much more than a mile ahead, he could see broken water where the tide and the waves were shredded by the reef. Sand Key Light, a sort of stubby Eiffel Tower, flashed out its warning and marked the way through. Heading toward it, strangely calm, Nicky was several bars into his favorite song before he noticed he was singing it out loud. I’ve had a long streak of that bad luck, but I pray it’s gone at last…

  On the opposite side of the reef, hidden by night and spray, the Sea Queen was already in the grip of the erratic waters that reflected off the sunken coral and sluiced at a hundred angles through every gap in the rocks. The battered old houseboat yawed and leaned; when its nose dove and its stern lifted, its rusted twin propellers came almost clear of the surface and rasped out a grinding and unlubricated s
ound.

  But there was also another sound that worried Phoebe even more. She wasn’t quite sure that she heard it; and in the immense sameness of the sea the direction of the sound was difficult to judge. But what she thought she heard was the growl and roar of engines far mightier than their own coming from behind them. She said to Ozzie, “Can’t this thing go any faster?”

  He glanced down at the ancient tachometer whose needle was irregularly twitching like the heartbeat of a dying patient. “Maybe,” he said. “Or then again it might explode.”

  “We better try, Oz. I don’t think we’re alone out here.”

  Ozzie cursed, gritted his teeth, and pushed the throttle down as far as it would go. For a moment the old diesel made no response at all, as if it was affronted or simply stunned by this new demand. Then it seemed to gather itself for one final and heroic push. The exhaust turned from lavender to hellish black. The engine noise mounted from a steady rumble to an extended anguished grunt as from a giant beast straining to break a blockage in its gut. The Sea Queen lurched and bucked; the wash from the props boiled and foamed. Then, miraculously, like an aged dancer somehow finding inspiration for one more star performance, the houseboat seemed to summon a vision of grace and poise; it settled into a serene and sudden equilibrium and fairly skated into the coursing channel. The beacon on Sand Key tracked it like a spotlight as it scudded past.

  On board the Mariposa, Nicky blinked. He gave himself a sobering slap across the cheek and blinked again. He wondered about the fumes from the cigars and if perhaps the cigars were made from something other than tobacco. He was obviously hallucinating; he was imagining that his house was floating toward him in the middle of the ocean.

  He closed his eyes a moment. When he opened them the houseboat was still there and coming closer. Then, impossibly, he saw Phoebe climb out onto the deck, carrying her slender body very low, groping at the rusted and untrustworthy lifelines for balance. Still doubting his sanity, he maneuvered alongside as closely as he dared, the two craft rocking like twin cradles. Then he screamed out Phoebe’s name.

  All she said was, “We’re ditching the cigars.”

  “But—“

  “We’ll talk later. Throw me a line.”

  He tossed her a greasy rope. The two old hulls snuggled up together and after some clattering and clunking they were rafted. Phoebe and Ozzie vaulted onto the Mariposa.

  Nicky said, “But how—?”

  “Where are they?” Phoebe said. “We’re ditching them. Now.”

  Too baffled to resist, Nicky pointed to the staterooms that were packed with contraband. Ozzie took the rear cabin; Phoebe took the forepeak. Working at warp speed, they grabbed box after box after box of cigars, flinging them overboard like Frisbees then diving back into the belly of the boat for more. Catching the contagion of their urgency, Nicky joined in the jettisoning of the forbidden cargo; in moments he was soaked with sweat but also close to bursting with a kind of reckless joy. There was something cathartic, ecstatic in this heedless casting off, like he was freeing himself from a nagging evil thought.

  The last of the cigars had caught the current and floated just barely out of sight when the Customs flotilla steamed through the channel and pulled up alongside.

  “Sure smells like cigars in here,” said the skipper of the lead Customs boat as he boarded the Mariposa and clomped into the cabin.

  Nicky squinted back at the man, though it was hard to see him in detail because of the rank of floodlights arrayed on the cutter behind him. Through the hot white glare the crisp silhouettes of men with guns could be seen on the bobbing deck. Trying to sound casual, Nicky said, “Yeah, I smoke one now and then. Nasty habit but I’m pretty sure it’s legal.”

  The skipper maintained a skeptical silence for a moment. “And you say you’re en route from the Bahamas?”

  “As per the papers,” Nicky said. He showed him the folio of documents he’d received from the elder Benavides. They were pretty good fakes.

  At a bit of a loss, fearing that this rare chance for a showy seizure might be slipping away, the captain abruptly turned to Ozzie and Phoebe. “And what the hell are you two doing out here in that death-trap?”

  “Call it a homecoming,” Ozzie said. “Except instead of him coming home, his home was coming out to him. Get it?”

  “Not funny,” said the skipper. Then, to the men standing behind him, “Search the boats. Both of them. Everywhere.”

  For the next fifteen minutes, Phoebe, Nicky, and Ozzie stood silently in the obscene and groping glow of the floodlights while embarrassed sailors rifled drawers, poked around in cabinets, patted cushions and peered beneath them. On the Mariposa they found nothing. On the Sea Queen they found a shambles—broken dishes that had bounced out of their racks, sagging hinges on splintered plywood doors, tipped-over chairs that had no business being on a boat to begin with. As for contraband, the only discovery was half of one of Ozzie’s joints, which a young Coast Guard guy slipped into his pocket to have for later.

  Thwarted, the skipper stood with his arms crossed on his chest, trying to look threatening and righteous, bitterly frustrated in the conviction that someone was getting away with something but he couldn’t figure what it was. At length he called off his troops and the thwarted flotilla steamed away.

  With the searchlights finally switched off, the night seemed amazingly dark and very beautiful, a perfection of empty blackness highlighted only by the occasional sweep of the lighthouse beacon. The water was invisible, the power it had to lift and rock the boats

  a glorious mystery. It took a while before the stars shined through again, and a while longer to see even a faint seam at the horizon. Neither Phoebe nor Nicky nor Ozzie said a word or even seemed to breathe until the Customs boats had retreated almost out of hearing.

  Then, of course, it was Ozzie who punctured the calm. “Okay,” he said, “so now what the fuck do we do?”

  Part Four

  28.

  Ozzie himself was the first to offer a suggestion. Referring to the Mariposa, he said, “Why don’t we just let it drift away or sink, go home in the Sea Queen, and the hell with it?”

  “Can’t do that,” Nicky said.

  “Sure we can.”

  Nicky shook his head. “You don’t understand, Oz. I can’t just go home. I agreed to do a job. I took ten grand of Charlie Ponte’s money. The job didn’t get done. He’ll come after me. That’s the way it works.”

  “So give him back his stupid money.”

  “And his cigars?” said Nicky, gesturing in the general direction the cigars had headed as they bobbed away.

  Very softly, Phoebe said, “It was never about the cigars.”

  Ozzie, misunderstanding, jumped back in again. “So if it wasn’t about the cigars, just give him back his money.”

  “I can’t.”

  “Whaddya mean, you can’t?”

  Nicky looked down at the deck. “I just can’t. Come on, Oz, let it go.”

  Ozzie didn’t let it go, of course. “Why the hell can’t you give him back his money?”

  Nicky scratched the back of his neck. “I don’t have it, okay?”

  “Don’t have it? When the hell’d you have the chance to spend it?”

  “I didn’t spend it. It’s…it’s in the mail.”

  “In the mail?” expostulated Ozzie. “The U.S. mail? You put ten grand in the U.S. mail? Like, in a mailbox? Like, in an envelope? Are you fucking crazy?”

  In an attempt at the vaguest of explanations, Nicky said, “Ya know, in case anything went wrong.”

  There was a silence then and the three of them just stood there in the starlight. Nicky badly wanted to look at Phoebe, but he didn’t let himself because he knew that if he met her eyes just then she’d see in his face that the money was addressed to her, and because of his odd sort of shyness, that’s not the way he pictured her finding out and not the way he wanted it to happen. He wanted her just to show up at the post office one day and find the mone
y without him there. He didn’t want to be thanked for it and he didn’t want her to have the chance to turn it down or give it back. All he wanted was for her to pay off her truck. So he just stared out at the green-black water and hoped that nothing showed in his expression.

  Did Phoebe suspect? If she did, she wouldn’t let herself admit it, because if she let herself admit it then she’d have to sort through all the lousy feelings and past mistakes that made it unthinkable to her to accept the gift. Trying to shift the conversation at least a little bit, she said, “Well, things did go wrong. Just not exactly in the way they were supposed to.”

  “Hm?”

  “You were supposed to get caught with the cigars, Nicky. Ponte set you up.”

  Nicky nodded slightly without any obvious emotion or surprise. “Yeah,” he said, “I kind of figured that.”

  Ozzie said, “You figured that? And you took the job anyway? You are fucking crazy.”

  Nicky just shrugged.

  Phoebe pressed her knuckles to her lips and after a moment said, “There’s gotta be something else on this boat.”

  “Something else?” said Ozzie.

  “Something worth way more than cigars. The cigars were just a front.”

  This leap of logic seemed to befuddle Ozzie, who said, “Uh-oh, girl detective. This is getting way beyond me now.”

  “No,” said Phoebe, “it’s just what old Bert told me.”

  “Bert?” said Nicky. “What’s Bert got to with it?”

  “He was frosted at Ponte for getting you involved. So they talked, and Ponte said more than he should have, and that’s how we knew to come out here and warn you.”

  Nicky took a moment to sort that out.