Florida Straits (33 page)

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."

—
47 —

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.

There was movement on the deck of the
salvage craft and in an instant it was clear to everyone what had
happened.

"Shit. Balls. Fuck," said Charlie Ponte.
"Get after those bastards."

The driver accelerated and the blue boat
started cutting a lunatic slalom course through the coral. The twin
props clattered and complained as they bit through the shallow,
viscous water, the cockpit leaned steep as a butte as it banked
left, cut right, and zig-zagged back again. Immaculate cobalt
fiberglass scratched here and there against the lacerating reef;
the sound was like giant cat claws ripping at silk.

And on the gray salvage boat, Clem Sanders
and crew looked up from their triumph and realized they were under
siege.

The diver with the emeralds bolted for home
as though a shark was nosing his flippers. The engines were
started, they belched wet black smoke through their rusty stacks.
The windlass creaked, yanking up the anchor with Clem Sanders
already on the fly. Joey tried to peer through the sun-shocked
windows of the pilothouse, to see if the treasure hunter had yet
managed to get on the radio to his promised allies.

The cigarette boat pivoted and splashed, its
freight of dark suits and gunmetal bouncing like loose boxes in the
back of a truck. The salvage boat, as if in mockery, had turned its
wide gray ass on them and was heading out to sea. Charlie Ponte's
silver jacket was soaking through with sweat. He believed in going
in straight lines toward what he wanted, knocking over whatever was
in the way. It pushed him toward utter madness to have to zig and
zag, shuck and jive, dodge like some
melanzane
halfback
while his quarry receded in plain view. "Come on, come on," he
screamed at the driver. The voice was not quite human, and the
driver ignored him. He wrenched the wheel and scudded past a coral
head that poked up like a murderous cauliflower, he skated through
a school of indifferent parrotfish. Joey and Sandra huddled on the
settee, their ears assaulted by the screams and rumbles of the
tormented motors.

The salvage boat was escaping, but it was
not escaping fast. It furrowed through the deepening water as if it
were planting corn, its ancient diesels laboring like a tractor in
soft dirt. It was maybe half a mile off by the time the cigarette
had danced and capered to the far fringe of the reef. The boatload
of gangsters did a final series of dips and curls, endured a last
set of scrapes and clings, then finally broke free of the killing
shallows. The driver jerked the throttle, the cigarette took off
like a goosed horse, and Charlie Ponte's thugs were pressed
backward like astronauts on takeoff.

The white sun shone fiercely on the torn-up
water, and every instant the gap between the two boats narrowed.
Sandra and Joey had their elbows locked like kids on a roller
coaster. Off the wide transom of the salvage craft fanned a
peacock's tail of flattened wake, and the cigarette homed in like a
missile on that swath. Ponte was grinning now. He held up his
dainty gun and yelped. His goons smiled. Victory was on the horizon
and the horizon was scudding toward them. They were so close that
they could see the rust bubbles in the salvage craft's gray paint,
could see the lumps in the old boat's imperfect welds. They were
almost ready to start shooting. The engines of the blue boat
sounded full of steely joy.

There was no way, above that potent motor
noise and the glad hissing of the water, that the thugs could hear
the coast guard helicopter approaching from behind, coming at them
low and hard, its rotor blades pitched frantically forward, a
machine gun poking out of its bulletproof belly at a jaunty angle
like the dick of a dog.

Nor did they yet see the two marine patrol
cutters closing in from seaward in a neat V.

They saw only the lumbering craft ahead of
them.

There was something pathetic in its attempt
to outrun them, pathetic like a hobbled cow trying to escape a
lion. Through the glare of the pilothouse windows, they could see
the silhouettes of Clem Sanders and his crew. Either they would
surrender the emeralds or they would die.

Then the driver of the cigarette noticed the
circle of dented water where it was beaten down by the force of the
chopper's blades. He looked over his shoulder, the others followed
his eyes. There the helicopter was, not more than fifty feet above
the water, not more than a hundred yards behind them and closing
fast.

"Ditch the guns," the driver screamed. "Drop
'em low over the side, right now."

He said it in such a knowing panic that no
one hesitated a second. Five firearms of assorted make and caliber
were jettisoned, adding to the untold number of weapons scuttled in
the Florida Straits. In another fifteen seconds the aircraft was
directly over them, hovering in the hot sky like an apocalyptic
bug, and a stern voice bizarrely amplified was ordering them to
halt their vessel and stop their engines. The driver throttled back
and looked at Charlie Ponte. Ponte stood numbly by, sweat-soaked
and bewildered. The salvage craft slowed and began to circle, came
back as if to gloat. From over the horizon came the twin wakes of
the converging cutters, completing the elegant geometry of a
capture at sea.

Joey squeezed Sandra's knee. Then, as the
chopper was descending, bringing its pontoons close to the water,
he got up and walked over to Ponte. The Boss was so boggled that
Joey had to tap him on the shoulder. "Mr. Ponte," he shouted above
the whooshing clatter, "we're fucked heah. Attempted piracy. You
know that, right?"

Ponte didn't answer. He looked straight
ahead; his goons milled stupidly around the cockpit.

"Well, lissena me," Joey continued. "I can
take care of it."

The little mobster glared at the kid, his
glance emerging from under one eyebrow. The chopper had set down,
its slowing rotors still churning the water like a blender.

"I can't fight you, Mr. Ponte. I can't run
away. I know that. You wanna kill me, kill my brother, sooner or
later you will. But inna meantime I can get us outta this. Now
here's the deal."

Ponte's lip pulled back as if to protest.
Who was this fucking nobody to tell him what the deal was? But he
looked down at his dainty feet and let Joey continue.

"You lemme handle this. I get us off, you
gimme ten minutes to explain things. That's all I'm asking. After
that, you do what you want."

Ponte said nothing. Joey pressed. "Gimme
your hand on it." Grudgingly, the little gangster held out a damp
and slippery mitt. But the eyes were unyielding, they promised
revenge.

Three guardsmen were standing on the
pontoons of the chopper. They had repeating rifles. The cutters had
closed in. Clem Sanders was edging his slow boat nearer. And it was
hot as hell in the merciless sun.

—
48 —

"What the hayle—" said Clem Sanders, leaning
on the railing of his old gray salvage boat. His bleached blue eyes
were narrowed against the glare and he was trying to act like he
hadn't almost wet his jumpsuit while the cigarette was pursuing
him.

The salvage craft was tied up to one of the
patrol cutters. Ponte's blue boat was tied up to the other. The
helicopter sat between them like a dragonfly on a swimming
pool.

"Hi, Clem," Joey said. "Sorry for all the,
like, commotion."

The coast guard guys from the chopper hadn't
lowered their rifles. One of the men from the marine patrol, a
beefy guy with a crew cut and Ray-Bans, said in a surprisingly
squeaky voice, "You wanna tell us what this is all about?"

"Just wanted to see how the search was
going," Joey said. "My brother's one a the investors."

The marine patrolman looked dubiously at the
boatload of thugs, sizing them up while they fried in the sun.
Charlie Ponte with his soaked silver jacket and hair spiked around
his bald spot like a crown. Tony with his evil lip, his toupee
blown cockeyed; Bruno with the blank dumb gaze of the enforcer; the
two from Miami dressed in blue suits and shiny black shoes in the
middle of the Atlantic Ocean. " 'Zat so, Clem?" he asked.

The treasure hunter shot a hard look at Joey
before he answered. " 'Tis," he said.

The cop frowned down at his fingernails. The
boats and the chopper rocked lightly together in the morning's weak
breeze. "Then why the hell'd ya call us?"

For an instant Sanders looked almost
sheepish. "Didn't know they'd be here," the salvor said. "Didn't
recognize the craft."

"It's my fault," Joey offered. "I shoulda
let 'im know. But it was like, ya know, a whim."

"A whim," the cop with the Ray-Bans
repeated. The boatload of thugs did not strike him as a whimsical
group, and he managed to look skeptical behind his opaque glasses.
But no crime had been committed as far as he could tell. "So Clem,
whaddya want us to do?"