Baja Florida (7 page)

“What took you so long? I thought you'd be back a couple of hours ago.”

“Took me a while to find an ATM that had any money.”

“The ATMs are out of money?”

“Yeah, I talked to this guy at a convenience store and he said it happens all the time. Especially in the evenings. And especially when there are lots of Americans on the island like now. He said the ATMs get refilled in the morning and if you want to get money then you better do it before noon.”

“But the bank card worked?”

“Yeah, it worked just fine. She gave us the right pin number.”

“How much did you get?”

“A hundred.”

“That's all?”

“Yeah, I just wanted to see if it worked. It gave me the balance. Take a look at this.”

“Holy shit. Even more than we thought.”

“Lots more.”

“Holy fucking shit.”

“Yeah, I figure tomorrow, first thing in the morning, you can go into town and get a couple thousand.”

“But what if the ATMs are still out of money?”

“You aren't going to use the ATM. They max out at five hundred. So you're going to walk inside the bank, hand the teller the card, and tell her you want to make a withdrawal.”

“But what if the teller asks for ID?”

“Well, she's goddam sure gonna ask for ID, you can count on that. So you show it to her. You've got the passport. You've got the driver's license. You've got all the ID they could possibly want.”

“You think it will work?”

“Yeah, it will work. It's not like you're dealing with Homeland Security. It's a fucking Bahamian bank teller. She's going to look at the photo and see a white girl with lots of blond hair. And then she's going to look at you.”

“I'll wear my hair down, like in the photo.”

“Yeah, and smile like she's smiling. The smile helps.”

“Maybe I should wear sunglasses or something.”

“No sunglasses. That could make them suspicious. Just go in there with your hair down and smiling and, trust me, everything's going to work just fine.”

“And there's no way they can trace this?”

“Who's they?”

“I don't know, the bank, the cops, whoever. They see we're taking money here and somewhere else down the line and they can find us.”

“Yeah, they can trace it. But who's looking? No one. Not yet anyway. I figure we've got a week at least.”

“What then?”

“Then everything's going to fall in place. Just like we planned it.”

By ten o'clock the next morning we were taking off from Fort Lauderdale Executive Airport in Charlie Callahan's brand-new seaplane.

“Not just any seaplane either, Zack-o. A Maule-MT-7-420. Only a dozen like it in the world,” Charlie said. “Rolls-Royce engine. Seriously overpowered. Off the water in four seconds if it's just my skinny ass on board. I can land it in less than a foot of water. Or put it down on the runway. Just about anywhere you want to go, this puppy can take us.”

I said, “How long to Walker's Cay?”

“No more than an hour. Just hold on to your dipstick and leave the flying to us.”

The plane was a four-seater. I sat up front with Charlie. Boggy sat in the back.

Charlie wore his pilot's “uniform”—flip-flops, a pair of faded Madras shorts, and a T-shirt that said, “Hell yes, I'm the pilot. Got a problem with that?” For extra flourish, his T-shirt boasted Army surplus gold-braid epaulets. His hair had gone to gray but he still had plenty of it—a gnarly mane of dreadlocks that descended halfway down his back.

When I first started playing for the Dolphins, Charlie was the team pilot. But an incident involving two Dolphins cheerleaders, a boa constrictor, and Dolphins owner Joe Robbie's private cabin on the plane—I was never quite clear about the details—got him booted from that gig.

After that, the legend of Charlie Callahan only grew. According to some stories he was running guns to Nicaragua. Others had it that he was doing everything from flying dope out of Colombia to delivering mercenaries to sub-Saharan Africa. I don't know if any of it was true, but what ever he was up to it probably wasn't missionary work.

When he finally resurfaced, he had enough money to buy a small fleet of planes and start Sorry Charlie's Island Charters. Reputation and appearance worked in Charlie's behalf, an effective if inadvertent marketing plan. His well-heeled clients liked the idea that they were flying with a Genuine Colorful Character. It gave them stories to tell. And Charlie had all the work he wanted.

All I knew was that Charlie was a steady hand, a good man in a tight spot, and if someone had to fly me around the Bahamas looking for Jen Ryser or Abel Delgado or whoever I could find first, then I wanted it to be him.

Fifteen minutes out of Fort Lauderdale and Florida's armored coastline was just a glimmer on the horizon. Below us, the Big Blue River—aka the Gulf Stream—churned northward on its way to make the British Isles a slightly more habitable place.

Every now and then, I'd spot a patch of white on the water and make out the lines of a sailboat. Sometimes I'd spot a patch of white and think it was a sailboat, only it would turn out to be a trawler or a fishing boat or the froth from a big breaker.

It is devilishly hard to spot boats on the water when you're flying at safe altitude. Harder still to determine exactly what kind of boats they might be. And damn near impossible to pick out a name like
Chasin' Molly
on the transom.

With its big jib flying, a Beneteau 54 would offer a highly visible profile. But on any given day there are hundreds of pleasure boats cruising the Gulf Stream. By the time you reach the protected waters of the Bahamas, the hundreds become thousands. Combine them with thousands more that are moored at marinas, tied up at docks, or tucked away in coves and, well, no way we could just bop around on Charlie's seaplane and count on finding the boat we were looking for.

So I had devised a plan. Not much of a plan but the best plan I could come up with considering what little we had to go on.

There are more than thirty official ports of entry in the Bahamas. Upon reaching Bahamian waters, foreign vessels must make it their first order of business to clear customs and immigration at one of these ports.

Since the bureaucrats in Nassau were showing me no love, I had opted for a grassroots approach. Pick the most likely port where Jen Ryser might have entered the Bahamas, win over the local authorities with my great charm, and hope they would bend regulations, give me the information I was looking for, and let me know if I was on the right track.

In the Seventh Edition of Chasteen's Complete and Unabridged Dictionary, the synonym for “my great charm” is “bribe money.” And I had a pocketful of that.

Jen Ryser and crew had set out from Charleston. I was betting they had chosen the quickest route—a straight shot to the Abacos, the chain of islands at the upper tip of the Bahamas.

The Abacos offer several ports of entry. Most cruisers head straight for Marsh Harbour, the sailing hub of the Bahamas, with plenty of marinas and places for provisioning.

But Walker's Cay is the northernmost port in the Abacos, and although its luster has diminished in recent years, some boats choose it for clearing customs. Besides, I am nothing if not methodical. I liked the idea of starting at the top of the Bahamas and working our way down. So Walker's Cay would be our first stop.

This is not to say my brilliant plan didn't have plenty of holes in it.

According to Helen Miller's snooping around, Jen Ryser had bought
Chasin' Molly
only a few months earlier. Chances were this was her first significant outing in the boat. No matter how seasoned a sailor she might be, maybe she wasn't comfortable with the notion of immediately setting out on a four-hundred-mile open-water crossing. Maybe she had taken a  more prudent route, stuck close to shore, run all the way down to Miami, made the fifty-mile crossing to Bimini and cleared customs there. That would put her closer to Exuma and Mickey Ryser's place on Lady Cut Cay.

The previous few weeks had brought some rough weather. Late-season blows out of the northeast. Maybe Jen and her crew had stuck to the safe confines of the Intracoastal Waterway, or The Ditch as it's popularly known. A boring haul, but it comes with one redeeming factor—numerous rowdy watering holes along the way, from Savannah down to Lauderdale. These were kids not long out of college. Maybe the idea of leisurely barhopping their way south appealed to them more than dealing with heavy seas.

Or maybe, after so many years of not knowing her father, Jen Ryser had decided against paying him a visit. Maybe she still bore him a grudge. Maybe she had just said to hell with it. Maybe she had bypassed the Bahamas altogether and was now cruising the Virgin Islands, heading for more distant ports.

So many maybes.

So little time to find Jen Ryser before her father's ship set sail.

They both came in and fed her breakfast. After that, they left and closed the hatch behind them, and she could hear them talking from up above, on the deck.

“Where should I go to?”

“I saw a Scotia Bank near the dock. Try it.”

Moments later she heard him call out: “Straight there and back, you got that?”

Jen waited a few minutes. No more talking. It was just him and her on the boat now. How to make that work to her advantage?

She yelled up to him: “Hey, down here. I need some help.”

“What is it?”

“I have to use the head.”

He took his sweet time getting there. Finally, the hatch slid open.

He said, “You just went a little while ago.”

“Yeah, but I started my period.”

A groan of disgust.

“So what do you want me to do about it?”

“My backpack,” she said. “There's a little purse in a side pocket. Cloth with a paisley print. It's got some tampons. Just open it and get me one.”

Another groan.

Guys. They could be so squeamish about this kind of thing. Exactly what Jen was counting on.

“Here,” he said, putting the backpack on her lap. “You get it.”

“You need to untie my hands.”

He paused, thinking about it.

“OK, but no funny stuff. You understand?”

“Uh-huh,” she said. “How about the blindfold, too?”

“No, that's staying on.”

After her hands were free, Jen rummaged around in the backpack and felt the cloth purse. She felt the other thing she was looking for, too. But she knew he was standing right there, watching her.

“Can you get me some water?”

She heard him step away, and she quickly stuck her Leatherman into the little cloth purse. The only time she had ever really used it was for the corkscrew. But it was like one of those Transformer robots. It could turn into almost any kind of tool—chisel, file, needle-nose pliers. Eighty-seven different uses. Or some such thing.

He came back with the water. She drank from the cup.

He said, “You get what you need?”

Jen held up the paisley purse so he could see it.

“Right here,” she said.

He pulled her up from the bed, loosened the rope around her feet just enough so she could walk. He guided her to the head and backed her inside.

“Close the door,” she said.

And this time he did as she asked.

Her hands immediately went for the blindfold. She didn't pull it all the way off. Just enough to peek over the top.

She saw: A narrow stall, white fiberglass walls. Not much in there except for the toilet. One shelf with cans of Comet and Lysol and some rolls of toilet paper. Not even a sink.

In the ceiling above the toilet—a Plexiglas vent, about eighteen inches square, the kind that can pop up to let in air or seal tight in a storm. It was up.

She stood atop the toilet and did her best to peek out the vent. The opening was only about five inches high. It gave her a glimpse of the boat: Bigger than she thought, thirty-four feet at least, its deck pale blue. A sleek sportfisherman with a pair of fighting chairs near the transom and a ladder that led to the flying bridge.

She turned atop the toilet, looking beyond the boat in all directions and saw: Open water. More open water. A scattering of boats at their mooring buoys, the closest maybe two hundred yards away. And a mangrove shoreline, at least a half mile in the distance, with a long dock, a few houses tucked here and there, a couple of spindly radio towers, and the flickering image of cars passing on a road behind the mangroves.

Her spirits lifted. All this time she had thought they were at some remote location, an uninhabited cay, a hidden cove. Yet, here were cars and boats and houses—other people, the chance for escape.

She pushed against the vent. It wouldn't open any farther. Its top was fastened to the base on aluminum hinges. The hinges were attached to the base by rivets. Easy enough to work loose.

A knock on the door.

“You done in there?”

She stepped down from the toilet.

“Just a second,” she said.

She pulled the Leatherman from the purse. It had several types of blades—a hacksaw, a file, a basic knife. None of them more than a couple inches long. Capable of doing some damage, but only if her first strike was directly on target—the middle of his forehead, an eye. If she missed or if the blade was deflected or any number of other misfires, then that was it. He'd be all over her. She didn't have a chance of fighting him off.

Better to use the Leatherman to undo the hinges on the vent. The vent was narrow but she felt sure she could squeeze through. But where to hide the Leatherman? She looked around. The only place was behind the toilet. She tucked it away.

She sat down on the toilet. She put the blindfold back in place.

Another knock on the door.

“All done,” she said.