Laurence Shames - Florida straits

Joey leaned back against the gunwale and watched Key West whiz by. Smathers Beach and the open U of the Paradiso condo. The airport with its faceted weather bubble like the eye of a bug. Cow Key Channel, and beyond it, the gross pyramid of Mount Trashmore. Joey gave a bitter silent laugh. Gahbidge, he said to himself. Nice try at a life, kid, but it's all coming down to gahbidge.

He turned around and looked out at the blank green water of the Straits. Here and there it was blotched purple with coral heads or under the ragged shadows of the few small clouds. Joey scanned the horizon, wondering if he'd be able to spot Clem Sanders's salvage boat, wondering if Clem Sanders had even made it out there. He took big gulps of salt air, and each breath carried a different mix of fear and acceptance. He'd had his plan, his plan had been short-circuited, and now what happened would happen. Like Bert said, who could argue with that?

The boat roared on. Sometimes its noise was a featureless rumble; then at moments its engines would sync a certain way and there'd be piston beats like drumrolls. The sun was flame white by now and they slammed straight toward it. Tiny pellets of spray screamed past the boat and pebbled Joey's glasses. Up ahead, maybe half a mile landward, was the promontory that led into the channel for the Sand Key Marina. A low line of mangrove arced around like a rib. The boat driver pointed to it, Joey nodded, and the cigarette banked steeply and headed south.

Joey searched the horizon. But his shades were bouncing on his nose, his eyeballs were rattling in their sockets, and he couldn't see much of anything.

The driver abruptly cut back on the engines.

The deafening noise softened to a rhythmically popping clatter, the spray stopped slicing past. Then the water caved in like a disappointed dream and the blue boat came off of plane and settled down heavy and dead. The driver pointed past the bow. "We got company out there, Mr. Ponte."

Ponte moved his mouth but no sound came out.

The driver reached into a small compartment underneath the steering wheel and produced a pair of binoculars. " 'Bout two miles off," he said. "Could be a shrimper, but I don't think so. Looks to be anchored."

"Gimme the fucking glasses," Charlie Ponte said. He pressed them to his eyes and Joey could see his hands were trembling. Unconsciously, his thugs moved closer around the Boss, as if they could somehow all see through the binoculars at once. With the boat stopped, the morning sun was brutal, and everybody started to sweat. "What you know about this, kid?"

Joey took an instant to look at Sandra. His expression was wry, flat, and fatal, the same expression he'd worn when he asked her to drop everything and move to Florida with him. "It's a salvage boat, Mr. Ponte. I been tryin' to tell ya this all morning."

No one moved, no one breathed. Ponte's face crawled, his upper lip pulled back from his teeth. He wanted to claw at Joey's eyes, wanted him held down so he could kick him around the cockpit. The only thing that stayed his fury was that he couldn't spare the time.

"How the fuck you know about it?"

Joey leaned back against the gunwale and exhaled loudly. He shifted his weight, looked down at his feet. A man with a tortured conscience, with a terrible confession to make. "Gino," he softly said.

Ponte went toward him and hit him with both hands on the chest, as if he were trying to beat open a door. "Gino, what? What, Gino?"

Joey looked off to the side. "Gino put the stones there, ya know, to hide 'em. He's got a piece of the salvage job. That's all I know about it."

Ponte stepped back, rubbed his chin. There were nine of them baking in the boat, they could smell each other through the salt and iodine, but Charlie Ponte was a guy with a knack for making himself a hole in space and disappearing into it all by himself. He thought a few seconds. Then he came up with a way to make himself look at least a little bit smart. "Ya see?" he said to no one in particular. "Ya see? I knew he was protecting his twat of a brother." He paused, tapped his foot. "How many people they got on that boat?" He said it to his two divers.

The divers shrugged so that their wet suits squeaked. "Couple guys to go down probably," said the one who hadn't been driving. "Couple guys to work the winches. Maybe a guy to navigate."

"Armed?"

The divers looked at each other. "Not usually. One gun, maybe, for sharks or whatever."

Ponte went to the edge of the boat and spat thickly in the green water. Then he reached inside his silver jacket and came out with a dainty little pistol. "Fuck it, let's take 'em."

"But Mr. Ponte-"

"Shut your fuckin' mouth. Bruno, smack this fuckin' kid for me, willya? Smack 'im one like it was Gino too. Fucking family. This whole fuckin' family, I'm sick of 'em."

The loud blue boat lifted its nose from the water and hurtled forward. Ponte's troops spread their feet like sumo wrestlers to keep their balance while they readied their guns. Sandra sat alone now on the stem settee, and Joey sidled back to her. No one bothered to stop him. He took Sandra's hand and squeezed it between both of his.

Up ahead, like a small pillar of flame in the ferocious light, was the red buoy that Joey had used as a signpost for the place to scuttle the Osprey. Beyond the marker, the water roiled and bounced, curled like cake frosting and twinkled like smashed crystal. A third of a mile shy, the driver geared down into neutral and again peered through the binoculars. "They're anchored on the far side of the reef," he announced.

"So wha' does that mean?" Ponte growled.

"It means we have to go in real slow, pick our way across."

Ponte pulled back his lip. He had by far the faster boat and it killed him to give up an advantage. Joey looked across at the salvage craft. It was a tub, maybe forty feet long, painted battleship gray. It sat high and graceless in the water, top-heavy with smokestacks, cranes, a pilothouse. "Fuck," said Ponte. "We can't just make a run at it?"

"Not unless you wanna rip the bottom outta this baby."

"They see us yet?"

The driver shrugged. "If they're lookin' this way, sure. If they got divers down-"

"And my stones? They find my stones?"

The driver was sweating rivulets inside his wet suit and gave in to an instant's exasperation. "Fuck should I know, Mr. Ponte? They got their anchor down, they're probably still looking."

Ponte stiffened at his tone, then decided to let it slide. The cigarette was a valuable thing. He needed this guy to keep it that way.

The driver shifted into forward. But now he didn't push the boat onto plane. He went slow, the engines sounded constipated, like a Porsche in second gear. The blue hull pulled even with the red buoy and suddenly the water went crazy all around it. It streamed in tiny rapids, sucked itself into hollowing whirlpools. Ponte's thugs lurched around like drunk men dancing, their guns held gingerly in front of them like cocktails they were trying not to spill. In the heightening sunlight, the reef shimmered as through aquarium glass. Brain coral sprouted like astonishing broccoli. Fan coral waved with the currents, bright yellow fish swam between its magenta fronds. Fascinated, Sandra leaned over the side.

"I'm glad I'm getting to see this," she said, in a tone of deathbed gratitude that made Joey want to bite his own face off with remorse. "The girls at the bank, they said it was beautiful."

The gray salvage boat was not more than a few hundred yards beyond them now, but it inhabited a realm of flat, calm sea that seemed a universe away. The men looked up at the sun-struck pilothouse. Only Sandra watched the water.

She elbowed Joey in the ribs.

He didn't react and she elbowed him again. She pointed with her eyes toward a small bright something that had just poked through the surface, maybe twenty yards beyond Clem Sanders's boat. Joey trained his gaze that way and squinted through his blue-lensed sunglasses. Searing light glinted off the green ocean, and in the center of his view there was a brighter glint, a blinding, intermittent flash. It was the reflection off a diver's mask. There was a person in the water. He had something in his gloved hand, and he was waving it toward his comrades on the slow gray boat.