Cross Current (27 page)

When I stepped into the hall, I saw Collazo standing in the dark at the doorway to the kids’ room. He was watching Solange sleep, and he looked up, surprised when I joined him.

“Isn’t she sweet?” I asked. “She’s got nobody, you know. Do you really want to send her back to the streets of Port-au- Prince?”

“You get them settled into Elliot’s condo. Tomorrow”—he turned and looked straight at me—“I want to talk to the child about this captain.”

We piled toys and clothes and sleepy kids into the back of Jeannie’s van. It took me several minutes to convince Solange that she couldn’t go with me in the Jeep, that she needed to stay in the van with the other kids. Looking like a regular caravan, we pulled out of Jeannie’s driveway—the van, then me in the Jeep, and Rusty taking up the rear in the Border Patrol Suburban. When Agent D’Ugard had left earlier, Rusty walked her down to her car, and although I couldn’t hear what they were saying, I did hear their raised voices.

When we exited Sailboat Bend onto Broward Boulevard, Rusty had us divide up and drive around in some convoluted routes while he backtracked behind each of us, checking for any possible tails. It was nearly two in the morning when we met up in the parking lot at the Howard Johnson’s on the beach. Jeannie and Rusty were there ahead of me, and a Hollywood cop pulled into the lot at the same time I did. Rusty went over and leaned into the car to talk to the officer.

I jumped out of the Jeep and went over to the window of Jeannie’s van.

“How’re the kids?” I asked.

“They zonked out in the first five minutes. I’d like to do the same. What’s Mr. Green Jeans doing, anyway?”

I was trying to come up with a clever remark, but my brain was too exhausted to even approach the realm of slightly amusing.

Just then Rusty stepped away from the cop car, and he motioned for us to follow him. We drove another three blocks north and parked in the lot of a condo building on the Intracoastal side of US-1. The complex wasn’t huge, just a single building four stories high with a rustic wood sign out front that said “Heron Heights Condominiums.” There was no ground floor; the building was built over a covered parking area. Rusty waved as the Hollywood cop cruised slowly past the building, and we each took a sleeping kid and carried them up to the fourth floor.

The door to Rusty’s condo was at the end of the hall, facing north. When I stepped inside his unit, I realized it stretched to both sides of the building, overlooking the Intracoastal to the west, and when I crossed the living room to the sliding glass balcony doors, the ocean loomed as a distant dark mass,beyond the rooftops of the low apartment bungalows between US-1 and North Surf Road.

Rusty flicked a switch and the soft light of a ceramic lamp lit the room. The lamp rested on a dark wood table next to a big leather reading chair.

“Wow,” I said. The place was like something out of an old Key West magazine photo—hardwood floors, ceiling fans, built-in bookcases, and a few perfectly placed antiques.

“In here,” Rusty said, carrying Jeannie’s son Adair into one of the bedrooms. He laid the boy down on the queen-size bed and unfolded the armchair, which was then transformed into a single futon. I knelt down and placed the girl’s thin body on the futon mattress, though it took me several minutes to get her to let go of my neck. Even in her sleep, she was clinging to me in a way I found both unsettling and reassuring, as though whether or not I believed in myself, this child believed in me. Jeannie and I covered all three kids with the sheets and blankets Rusty provided, while he fiddled with the air conditioner to clear out the stale air. He pointed Jeannie to the second room, promising to bring up the rest of the luggage. Jeannie just waved a limp hand in the air and closed the door behind her.

“You can have the bedroom. I’ll take the couch,” Rusty said.

“Nah, I’m not staying.”

“But you must be exhausted.” He rested his hand on my shoulder, and I felt the muscles beneath his touch tighten. “You shouldn’t drive anywhere.”

I shrugged. “Yeah, but I’ve got the dog at home and—” I couldn’t finish the sentence. I looked at him, saw the way his shaggy hair fell across the tops of his ears, the way the light made his blue eyes appear iridescent. I had enjoyed that kiss earlier, and the prospect of another wasn’t exactly unappealing. B.J. and I had agreed to a break. There really wouldn’t be anything wrong with it, would there? My brain felt foggy.

I turned and stepped out of his reach, trying to get the weight of that hand off my shoulder before I did something really stupid. “You got a Coke or something with caffeine? I think I just need a little fresh air.” With barely a touch of my hand, the balcony doors slid open with a soft whoosh, and the moist sea air blew into the opening. I stepped outside and sucked in what a yoga instructor years ago had called a “cleansing breath.” I exhaled loudly through my mouth. Rather than revived, I felt even more dizzy. I was hyperventilating.

Rusty joined me at the balcony rail and handed me an icy soda can. I drank so much, so fast, my chest hurt. Out on the horizon a small pinpoint of light appeared and then disappeared, then came back and grew steady—a small vessel crossing the current, heading for Port Everglades. There was no other traffic in sight, which was unusual for this stretch of the coast. I wondered then, how many boats were out there running dark—running drugs or human cargo?

“This is really a nice place you’ve got here, Rusty. View’s sure spectacular.”

“Yeah, I like it, but I don’t get to use it enough. I keep my boat at the dock out back on the Waterway, and most times I just go out fishing, come back, and never even make it upstairs.”

“I hope you’re going to be ready for three rowdy kids in the morning.”

“Bringing them here solved the problem for tonight, but this is not a long-term solution, you know.”

“Why’d you do it? Invite us over like this?”

He tried to laugh, but it came out a single “Ha,” without humor. “Good question.” He leaned his arms on the balcony railing and stared out to sea. He seemed to be struggling to find the words to say something. I was afraid of what that might be.

I drained off the last of the soda. “Well,” I said, and turned to head for the door.

He reached for my shoulder and slid his big hand around the back of my neck and under my ponytail. He pulled me to him, saying, “It took inviting the entire crew over just to get you here.”

“Now that’s funny, because they’re going to stay and I’m not.” I must not have sounded very convincing at that point because he kissed me. Again. And again, I didn’t protest. In fact, my body became a regular cheerleader for the idea. All kinds of little nerve endings were shaking their pom-poms.

But then I pulled away. “Rusty, it’s late and we both need to get some sleep.”

He tried little kisses then, down the side of my neck, around my ears, and that came very close to making me forget everything.

When I got to the door and had my hand on the doorknob and was almost out of there, he called my name softly. “Seychelle.”

“Yeah,” I said, but I didn’t even turn around.

“Are you sure you won’t stay?”

I couldn’t answer him. My voice would have given too much away.

When I got back to the Larsens’ place and saw Abaco crawl out all sleepy from under her bougainvillea bush, I sat down on the bench outside the cottage door and gave her a good body rub. She groaned in contentment. I patted the bench next to me, and she hopped up and sat there panting. I looped an arm around her and buried my face in the soft fur around her neck. I pulled back quickly.

“You need a bath.” I looked down at my clothes, the dark smudges from the chicken blood still apparent on my shirt. “Me too, I guess.” I scratched her silky ears. “Girl, do you think we’ll ever understand men?” She just smiled her doggy smile.

I started to tiptoe past Pit snoring on the couch, but then I stopped and stood there for a while in the dark, watching his chest rise and fall with each breath. In the face of the man I could still see the features of the boy I had grown up with. The hair at his temples reflected what little light there was in the room. He was going prematurely gray. We were all growing older—Maddy was already quite gray. We had tried to gather as a family at least once a year as long as Red had still been alive, but now we were forging our own lives and seeing less and less of one another. I tried to memorize every small detail of Pit’s features because I knew he was already itching to leave.

I crawled into my bed after a quick rinse in the shower. I was too tired to sleep and still tossing and turning as the sky began to go gray. Rusty’s words, the sound of his voice, the feel of his touch. I kept going over and over every minute of the night, from the restaurant to Jeannie’s to his gorgeous condo. And I kept trying to avoid the question that my mind couldn’t let go. How does a Border Patrol officer afford a half-million-dollar condo on the Intracoastal Waterway?

XX

I’d slept about an hour when I woke to the noise of an exceptionally loud outboard motor headed downriver, and I knew I wasn’t going to get back to sleep. It was not yet six o’clock, but I threw back the sheet and swung my legs to the floor.

My head felt like it was stuffed with dirty gym socks. I knew because I could taste them. After a bathroom trip, and pulling on shorts and a T-shirt, I grabbed a bottle of water out of the fridge and locked up the cottage, my brother still snoring contentedly. I noticed the dining table and floor were covered with charts, and my plotter and dividers were on the bar next to several empty beer bottles. Pit had been hard at work.

The Larsens have a shed full of water toys, and they don’t mind if I use them from time to time. And alternating running, paddling, and swimming did help keep the exercise regimen from getting too boring. I pulled the red, sit-on kayak down to the dock, gritting my teeth as the plastic slid across the gravel. Holding on to the bowline, I tossed it into the river. Getting onto the thing from the dock ladder without capsizing was a feat, but once settled, I paddled upriver, pulling against a river current made weak by the rising tide.

The hour of morning after the sky first starts to turn gray but before the sun’s top curve peeks above the trees and homes of my neighborhood is the part of the day I cherish most. I hadn’t seen much of it recently. Along the banks of the New River, the early morning is when the animals relinquish the world to the humans. The raccoons scurry across backyards and hightail it up trees to their daytime sleeping roosts. The herons stand regal and still on the seawalls, their bills pointed down at the slow-moving water, their dark, sharp eyes their only moving parts.

After I’d passed through the heart of downtown, where the cars were already moving over the drawbridges and aproned men were out sweeping between the waterfront tables, I heard a sharp exhale as I approached the fork where the river split in two directions. I slowed my paddling and watched the surface ahead. Circles again on the surface. Finally, I saw the nostrils blow off my port bow. Our late-season manatee was making her way downriver, and now that the sun was nearly up, the water around her reflected the pink clouds, making it look like she was swimming in a bubble-gum-colored river.

The morning air was still and heavy with humidity. No more than ten minutes after I’d slowed to watch the manatee, the sunlight’s reflection on the river ripples seared laserlike into my eyes. Soon, the sweat was dripping off the tip of my nose, and I was starting to wake up.

I paddled up the north fork of the New River where it meandered undeveloped through some of the poorest neighborhoods of Fort Lauderdale. The riverbanks were thick with trees and grasses, but I knew that less than one hundred feet beyond those wooded banks ran some mean, tough streets. At least it was quiet up there, and there was only the occasional friendly fisherman waving to me from the riverbanks.

The railroad bridge was down, and I was paddling in slow circles, waiting for the freight train to pass, when I sensed a boat approaching me closer than I would like from astern. I turned around and saw Perry Greene’s white blond hair as he leaned over the side of his Little Bitt with his arm outstretched, reaching for my ponytail.

“Don’t even think about it, Perry,” I said, keeping an eye on him.

“Hey, babe, what you doing in that little bathtub toy?”

“It’s called exercise, Perry. Not that you’d understand the meaning of that word.”

He put his boat into reverse and I stopped paddling. We both eased to a stop, side by side and still in the water, but traveling slowly with the tide. The last car of the freight train rumbled over the trestle, and it grew much quieter as we waited for the automated bridge to reopen.

I grabbed the gunwale of
Little Bitt
. While he was here, I might as well ask him a couple of questions. “Perry, I saw you in Flossie’s yesterday. I’m guessing you were there talking to Gil Lynch.”

He pressed his lips together like he was getting ready to spit, and I cringed. He turned his head aside and blew a mouthful of spittle into the water off the stern.

“God, gross, Perry.”

“So what if I was talking to Gil. It’s a free country.”

“No big deal. I’m just curious what you guys were talking about, and why he ran when Mike and I tried to talk to him. Do you have any idea why he took off like that?”

“He’s crazy. You do know that, don’t you? But the thing is, he’s still got connections. We was just shooting the shit. I told him about towing in your friend Mike and then I was asking him about the owner of that Eye-talian boat we worked. He was just starting to tell me about that dude when he split. So I went back to Flossie’s last night.”

“Perry, you’re at Flossie’s every night.”

He nodded. “Nearly. Anyways, when Gil showed up, he was acting real skittish. Said he didn’t want to have nothing to do with that one-legged cop. Meaning Beesting, of course.”

“That’s kind of weird. What’s he got against Mike?”