Florida Straits (24 page)

—
34 —

"So Gino, it's just you and me."

Joey Goldman had turned seaward again, and
was a mile offshore by the time he spoke, or rather, yelled over
the grind of the engine and the hiss of water shooting past the
hull. The moon had gone from red to yellow to eggshell white, and
spilled an endless beam that glinted over the water and seemed to
single out the little skiff.

"Yup," yelled Gino. He was suddenly rather
giddy, made so by too much freedom and too little control. Being
sprung from his hotel room was about as invigorating and
disconcerting as getting out of jail. Being rid of Vicki felt, for
the moment at least, as good as waking up to find that a throbbing
boil had vanished in the night. But then again, he had no gun, no
car, no crew, no plan, and no idea what Joey had in mind. "So kid,
what the hell we doin' now?"

Joey smiled without parting his lips. His
thick hair had been pressed back by the wind, his eyes were
narrowed against the spray, his forearms were ropy from clutching
the wheel. Gino almost noticed that his bastard half brother had
become a grown man. "We're gonna find your fucking emeralds," Joey
hollered. "What else?'

"You can do that?' Gino screamed.

Joey did not immediately answer but gave
himself a moment to savor the hope, need, and doubt in Gino's tone.
He thought he could do it. He'd studied his chart. It seemed to him
there was only one place Sand Key Marina could be. Straight out
from a radio tower, behind the arc of a narrow peninsula that
curved away like the bone on a lamb chop, there should be a narrow
channel marked by unlit buoys. If there wasn't, well, that was
that.

"I can find 'em," Joey yelled.

Gino suddenly felt tears of greed welling in
his windblown eyes—greed and amazement, as if he'd stopped
believing he would ever see the three million dollars' worth of
Colombian stones. "Great, kid," he screamed. "We'll go partners."
Then he realized that the word implied a fifty-fifty split, and he
quickly recovered from his spasm of generosity. "I mean, I'll cut
you in."

Joey let that slide, and continued with his
own line of thought. "But Gino, ya gotta do everything I tell
you."

"Sure, kid, sure," Gino shouted.

"Before, during, and after," Joey
pressed.

"Whatever."

"Swear on your mother, Gino. Whatever I say,
you do."

Gino looked away. Water was flying off the
side of the boat like it was shot from a fire hose. "Christ, Joey.
We gotta start with this mother shit again?"

"Yeah, Gino, we do. Swear."

He did, and Joey eased back on the throttle.
He scanned the shore for the radio tower. There seemed to be lots
of radio towers, but most of them were probably electrical pylons.
From a mile away, by moonlight, it was hard to tell. Joey steered
closer to land, waiting for the low shapeless ribbon of limestone
and shrubs to show some useful feature. For some minutes no such
feature appeared; the land showed blank as an oil slick, and Joey
choked down the thought that he might yet have to admit to Gino and
himself that once again he'd failed, that just like the jerks from
the neighborhood, he'd talked big and could not deliver.

Then, finally, he spotted what seemed to be
the peninsula shaped like a lamb chop bone. It was nothing more
than a finger of mangrove and showed only as a brief interruption
in the gleam of moonlight. He made toward it. Gino started pawing
around like a dog that hears its food bowl being filled.

" 'Zat it?" he asked. " 'Zat it?"

Joey just shrugged. Then, a couple of
hundred yards off the tip of the peninsula, he thought he saw a
channel marker. It was unlit, stood crooked in the water, but was
dabbed with a reflective paint, and for just an instant it caught
the moonlight and sent back an improbably bright flash. Joey
realized that his heart was pounding. This had nothing to do with
emeralds, but with finding what he was looking for, studying a
picture that stood for the world and discovering that the pieces
fit, that both the picture and his ability to read it could be
trusted. The radio tower was dead ahead. Joey idled forward.

Now, what passes for a harbor in the Florida
Keys would not be called a harbor most other places. There is no
deep water, not much shelter, just skinny passages where the
limestone muck has been dredged away and boats have a reasonable
chance of making it to shore. The channel that Joey hoped he was
following soon narrowed to a swath of flat water barely wider than
the skiff. On either side, little tepees of mangrove popped out,
their greedy roots already capturing nests of land. Mosquitoes
swarmed and buzzed at the nearness of fresh meat. Toads croaked,
night herons screamed out their ugly clicking screech. The
moonlight was swallowed up as the foliage closed in, and something
that sounded like giant crickets made a noise like sandpaper
scratching bone.

Gino fanned invisible bugs from in front of
his face. "Joey, man, this can't be right. It's like we're halfway
inna fucking jungle." Black leaves and low branches drank up the
sound of the engine.

Ahead, on a nubbly, tilted wooden stake, was
what might have been another marker. Joey edged toward it. Behind
it loomed a seemingly endless wall of mangrove that gave off a
smell of sulfur and anchovies kept too long in tin. But at this
second stake, the channel took a sudden dogleg left, and the new
angle revealed an overhung cut between two islets. The cut was so
narrow that waxy mangrove leaves scratched against the skiffs hull
as the little craft slipped through.

Then there was a clearing in which the still
water gleamed black and flat as a lake.

At the edge of this cove was a falling-down
dock.

Its outermost pilings had crumpled like the
forelegs of a crippled horse, and its planks had come unhinged like
the keys of a broken xylophone. On shore, half grown over with
vines and shrubs, was the rotting structure of what once had been
an office or store; next to it was a gas pump with no paint left on
it, then, propped on cinder blocks, a rusty mobile home with
smashed windows and a guano-caked TV antenna.

"Here's your marina," Joey said. "Don't feel
bad you couldn't find it. And there's your boat."

He pointed to a black hulk tied up to the
far side of the dock. Made of ancient planking, with thick sides
and a small, square pilothouse that had lost both its windshield
and its roof, it seemed to be floating only out of habit. Joey
pulled the skiff closer. In small flecks of brittle paint caught
between splinters of wood, he could just make out the vessel's
name:
Osprey
.

If Gino Delgatto had had a tail, it would
have been slapping wildly against his buttocks. As it was, he paced
the skiff with avid steps, making it rock as though in a gale.
"Holy shit, Joey! Tree million bucks. There it is! It's mine! Oh
baby, I can taste it! Come on, willya, move the boat closer, lemme
get on there and grab the fucking stones."

Joey didn't. He idled some twenty feet away
and held steady at that tantalizing distance while a cloud of
mosquitoes formed around them and his brother tried to jerk the
skiff closer with body english. "Hol' on a second, Gino. We're not
just grabbin' the emeralds. We're takin' the whole boat."

On Gino's red and beefy face, the features
all pushed forward, as if his mouth and nose were racing to the
stones. The more his blood rushed to the surface, the better the
mosquitoes liked it. "Joey, what I want with the fucking boat? Just
lemme get the emeralds and let's get the fuck outta here."

Joey crossed his arms. "Gino, did you or did
you not just swear we're doing things my way?"

"Sure, kid, yeah. But I don't see the
fucking point—"

"Gino, use your head. The guys that got
whacked— you got no waya knowing what Ponte got out of 'em before
he clipped 'em. Am I right? Ya gotta figure he squeezed 'em pretty
good. So maybe they gave it up that the stones are on a boat. Maybe
they even told 'im where, and Ponte couldn't find it, just like you
couldn't."

"So?" Gino crushed a mosquito that had
landed in his ear; it squirted some of his blood. He never once
took his eyes off the junked fishing boat.

"So, what if sometime Ponte
does
find
the boat, and the stones ain't on it? Who's he gonna figure got
there first? You, Gino. So you'll be fucked all over again. This
way, we take the whole boat, there's nothin' to find, it's done
with."

Gino scratched, thought, and let out a deep
breath that blew some bugs around. "O.K., kid," he said. "You're
right."

"I know I'm right," Joey pressed. "I been
thinkin' this through for weeks. So Gino, willya do me a favor?
Stop questioning every little goddamn thing and do like I tell
ya."

Gino nodded through a faceful of mosquitoes.
Anything to get his hands on the emeralds. Besides, what did it
cost him to take orders from Joey in a place where no one could see
and no one would ever know?

"Awright," Joey resumed as he clicked the
engine into gear and edged closer. "So here's what we're gonna do.
The skiff, we're gonna leave it here. We're gonna take the little
motor off the back, put it on the junker, and use it to get the
junker outta heah. We're gonna tow the rowboat, then put the little
motor onna rowboat to get back, then pick up the skiff. Got
it?"

Gino hadn't got it. He wasn't listening. He
was thinking about emeralds and swatting mosquitoes, and had no
attention left for other things.

Joey mustered a tone of command. "So Gino,
don't just fucking stand there. Take the little motor off."

Gino unclamped the auxiliary engine and
hoisted it over the
Osprey
's splintery gunwales as Joey
softly clunked the skiff against its side. But once Gino actually
reached the treasure boat, his fragile patience let go all at once
and he went blind with lust for the emeralds. He leaped out of the
skiff, sending it scudding sideways, and clambered onto the
Osprey
's damp and spongy deck. His soft imported loafers
skidded on the slimy planks and he dove obliviously toward the
roofless pilothouse. By the pale but steady light of the moon, he
searched out the board on which an X had supposedly been marked.
For some moments he couldn't find it, and seemed inclined to rip
out his eyes for their failure.

Then he spotted a smudge as of damp powder.
He fell to his knees in front of it and tried to pry up the plank
with his fingernails. A soft unwholesome grit of moldy wood and the
remains of ancient ants and spiders covered his fingers. Then, from
a hole at the base of the steering console, not two feet from where
Gino knelt, there emerged a rat the size of a dachshund. For an
unspeakable moment the rodent's beady red eyes met those of the
mafioso from New York. Gino could see the gleam of mucus on its
pointy black nose, which was twitching in terror. The rat scratched
at the floor, hunkered low as a snake, then, with desperate
courage, it charged along the only escape route it had. It darted
over Gino's hands, its damp, rank fur obscenely tickling his
wrists. Gino, recoiling, flicked his arms and caught the rodent in
the underbelly. It rose in a macabre claws-out somersault, landed
on Gino's Achilles tendon, and scampered away. Gino went back to
pawing at the plank.

Finally it lifted. Nothing was visible in
the dark, narrow gap, but far down in the bilges, fetid water was
dully gleaming. Gino plunged his hand in, and slime stretched out
along the sleeve of his silk jacket. The slime had a skin on it
like burned milk, it clung to his wrist like a condom. His fingers
found a small burlap sack, and squeezed it hard.

Still kneeling, his pulse throbbing in his
mosquito- covered neck and his lips stretched tight across his
teeth, he tugged at the sack's drawstring, then poured into his
palm a sampling of uncut, unpolished Colombian emeralds.

They didn't look like much, just green rocks
that didn't shine, and were coated with a rough white dust that
seemed to have bubbled out from inside them. They varied in size,
the biggest like brazil nuts, but nubbly as potatoes. Gino closed
his hand around them and shook them softly like a favorite set of
dice.

"You happy now?"

Joey was standing on the deck, leaning
against the rickety frame of the pilothouse. He'd secured the skiff
and put the small outboard on the
Osprey's
rotting transom.
"You got your stones. You happy?"

The words seemed to bring Gino out of his
trance of avarice. He glanced up over his shoulder, and for an
instant he seemed abashed, as if it had dawned on him that he must
look like a real horse's ass, kneeling like in church, slime all
over his hands, elbow-deep in crud. Only now did it register that a
rat had run on him, that he had touched its fur and felt the
yielding of its gut, and he choked back a sudden nausea. But what
the hell, he had the emeralds, it was worth it, worth everything.
He grinned. "Fuck yeah, Joey. Hell yeah."

"Good," the younger brother said. "Now put
'em back, and put the plank back on."

Gino swiveled on his knees. "Fuck for?"

Joey showed him the tired look of a teacher
stuck for too many years with the dumb kids. "Coast Guard, Gino.
They patrol. For drugs. But a bagga emeralds on a crummy old
fishing boat—Gino, how's it gonna look?"

—
35 —

"So Joey, wha'?"

The sodden hulk of the
Osprey
had
scratched its way through the narrow cut and lumbered out of the
Sand Key channel, Zack Davidson's little eight-horse motor laboring
mightily to push it through the lapping water and pull the
paintless rowboat behind. It was two
a.m
.
The Big Dipper, dimmed by a bright moon, loomed in the spring sky.
It was the only constellation Joey recognized because it was the
only one piercing enough to have occasionally penetrated the gummy
and overlit summer air of Queens. He and Sandra used to go up on
the roof sometimes to look at it and neck.