Robert Jones - Blood Tide

“Blue Thunder,” Curt said. “Built by USA Racing on Northeast 188th Street off Dumbfoundling Bay in the North Dade section of metropolitan Miami. Don Aronow’s far-famed Fleet Street. His last design. Not the quickest fast boat ever launched—sixty or seventy miles an hour tops—but very stable in open water. It won’t kick your kidneys to hash in an hour of heavy seas.” He turned and grinned at Torres and the commodore. “No, I’ve never driven one. The only folks who do are the Coast Guard and U.S. Customs.”

“Civilians own them, too,” Torres said. “Prince Rainier has one. King Hussein of Jordan has a couple. Plenty of Arabs whose names escape me.”

Some civilians.

Curt knew the Blue Thunder. The Caddy—no, the Rolls—of offshore powerboat work. He’d known Aronow, too. A big, strong, swaggering man, good-looking despite those bushy eyebrows that crouched above his hard, brown seaman’s eyes like a couple of porcupines touching noses. A shtarker in the Yiddish of Aronow’s coreligionists. But smart. He’d built Fleet Street practically single-handed. The names of the boat-building companies he’d founded, made famous, then sold lined the street—Formula, Donzi, Magnum, Cigarette (his masterwork), Squadron VII, USA Racing. He was the latter-day king of that dangerous world, the Mickey Mantle to Gar Wood’s Babe Ruth, a helluva racer. Sixteen deep-sea victories—a record. Two world and three U.S. championships in the late sixties. ’Fraid a nothin’, as the saying goes—hell or high water. Back in the old days guys used to walk in off the street like Curt did, scruffy hippie boat bums, and slap down a Ziploc plastic bag full of thousand-dollar bills, buy a Cigarette right off the floor. Don would pour them an Amaretto from the big swivel jug on his desk and stuff the dough in his pants pocket, then walk around with it for days, they said. No one was gonna rip him off . . .

He should have been afraid, though. In the end some dude just pulled in off Fleet Street in a big vague car, walked over to where Aronow sat in his Mercedes coupe, and pumped him full of lead. On a work day, too, with loads of potential witnesses. Stole his Rolex right off his wrist as the final indignity. Miami Metro hadn’t arrested anyone for that one yet, and it was a couple of years ago. Claimed they hadn’t the vaguest idea who did it. Neither did Curt. In that crisscross world, it could have been anybody. Curt was lucky to be out of it.

He walked out to the end of the dock and looked down into the crystal-clear water. Bright fish circled the pilings, and deep in the shadows he saw the mottled backs of dozing barracudas. Their baleful yellow eyes looked up at him, unafraid. One of them yawned. There was no wire-mesh net protecting the entries to the slips, nor could he see the pilings for one farther out in the bay.

“No net,” he said.

“We don’t really need one,” the commodore said. “Who’d want to steal or sabotage our boats around here? We’re the island’s economy.”

“What kind of paint is that?” The boats were painted green or dull black.

“Stealth stuff,” Torres said, after looking for the commodore’s nod. “It absorbs radar signals where the angles of the hull don’t deflect them.”

“Pricey boats, pricey paint jobs,” Curt said.

“Our firm is amply capitalized,” the commodore replied, and laughed. “Our stockholders earn good dividends on their investment. We hope you’ll help us add to our profit margin.”

“The best I can, sir,” Curt said.

“Do you shoot, Captain?”

“I’ve been off the hard stuff for years,” Curt answered. “Never really cared for needle drugs.”

“I meant wing shooting. Game birds—pheasant, quail, doves, ducks.”

“Oh, you mean like skeet? But on live birds, those pigeon shoots in Caracas or Bogotá? Up one goes, and bang, bang!”

“No,” the commodore said. “Bang.”

Curt laughed. “Never tried it. I’m fair with a handgun, though. Or an Uzi.”

“Too bad,” the commodore said. “Billy doesn’t care for the sport, and it would be nice to have a shooting companion. There are jungle cock over on Balbal. I like to run over there when things are slow and enjoy a few hours of sport.”

“Jungle cock? I thought they were illegal. I mean, you can’t even bring a few feathers, much less a skin, into the U.S., can you? Endangered species, or something.”

“Not here. They’re abundant on Balbal. The feathers are very valuable, almost priceless, and the best kind for tying salmon flies.” The commodore had many friends back in Washington who appreciated his gifts of carefully dried jungle-cock necks, salmon anglers all in the corridors of power. Venial sins in a diplomatic pouch.

“Well, heck, sir,” Curt said. “I wouldn’t mind learning. I’m not one of your bug-fucking hippie nature boys who wouldn’t swat a housefly. Wing shooting, hey? A real gentleman’s sport.”

“Good,” the commodore said. “We’ll run out there this afternoon in one of the Thunders. Later, when it cools off a bit and the birds are moving. You can show me how well you drive a fast boat, and then carry my game bag. Two birds with one stone.” He chuckled.

Pain in the ass, Curt thought. Now I’m this fucking gun-bearer. But he chuckled right along.

They drove back to the bungalow in Billy’s dinged-up GMC Jimmy. It was painted gray, like a navy carryall, the kind you see around the whorehouses in Old San Juan when a carrier or cruiser’s in port. Curt liked what he’d seen so far of Lázaro—the wide, stone seafront embarcadero with its huge old flamboyant trees in blossom, coco palms tossing in the trades that washed it most of the day, little cantinas and shops lining the shaded paseos, a spindly towered mosque in town, and the big, square-spired cathedral overlooking the sea. It was like the Caribbean before it got nasty down there. Here people actually smiled at a white face, doffed their hats and called you Don.

Lunch was cold roast beef—a bit stringy, Curt thought—and chicken salad with chopped coconut, grapes, and bits of what looked like mango or papaya mixed in. The crisp-crusted rolls were from the panadería on the waterfront. They ate on the lanai, to enjoy the sea breeze, and were served by little brown barefoot Tausuq boys in starched whites. Rosalinda, the commodore’s housekeeper, kept a watchful eye on the boys. She was a handsome woman, in her fifties, Curt guessed, and he wondered if the commodore or Billy was doinking her. There was a hint of the whore about her, the kind that really loves her work. A rare breed, indeed.

“How do you like the roast beef?” the commodore asked.

“Flavorful but a bit chewy,” Curt said. “What is it, carabao?”

“Close, but not quite. Tamarau. A wild buffalo from over on Balbal. There’s a good-sized herd of them there still. Used to be abundant here on Lázaro as well, in the Spanish days, but the dons liked to ride them down on horseback and spear them. Tough customers, the dons. At least in their heyday. A tamarau’s no sissy, not like his poncey water buff cousin, the carabao. Sharp horns and a strong life. Took two rounds from a .375 Magnum to stop this guy, didn’t it, Billy?”

Torres laughed.

“Another one not so long ago killed a well-to-do Filipino client of ours from Davao. He’d knocked it down with one shot, walked up to have a look, then, when he turned away, it stuck him right up the backside. Like a toro bravo might an incautious matador.”

Torres laughed again, with his mouth full, then patted his lips with the linen napkin and kept on chuckling.

“Balbal, hey? Where we’re going to hunt birds this afternoon?”

“That’s right,” the commodore said. “They’re often in the same cover together.”