Miami Noir (9 page)

“Not even that, until the accident. I was what they called a good little boy.”

I knew where I wanted to take Task to hook up his deal. It was such a good idea, I got antsy, couldn’t even finish my first wall. I wrapped the brush in a plastic grocery bag, did the same with the roller, and capped the paint gallon.

“Your car but I’m driving,” I said.

“Now it’s time for me to pat
you
down.”

I tried to keep pity out of my voice. “Have at it, rookie.”

When I was playing Mister Bad Guy, a few old Miami racketeers—the retired elders of Dade action with no desire to die in prison—hung out at a low-rent country club for a while, then a hotel lounge on LeJeune. Their presence drew the wannabes, and each place gradually filled with snoopers, thug groupies, and dipsticks staging self-important sit-downs. To escape the idiots, the elders pooled loose cash and bought a two-bedroom in Kendall, decorated it with whatever anyone in the inner circle cared to donate. They called it “The Boys Club” and that’s about when I got to know them. Their days quickly fell into a sloth routine: Honduran cigars,
Law & Order
reruns, Kahlua in snifters, and getting tired of looking at each other. So they sold out and shifted their scene to Alabama Jack’s, a floating restaurant ten miles south of Florida City. I ran errands for them, got a few free meals, and endured their endless bullshit sessions.

While I was doing my gray-bar penance, two thoughts buoyed my mind. The first was skin-specific. Depending on a given day’s toss between nostalgia and resentment, any one of four women could’ve provided elevation. The second was culinary. I promised myself a fat fish sandwich and a bowl of lima bean soup at Alabama Jack’s. Sure as hell, my first time back I reconnected with the crusty crew. Once they knew I was ninety-percent clean and totally clammed up, they let me sit in, even fixed me up to buy a motorboat which I keep in Key Largo. I knew I could take James Task to the master dock jockeys and they would decide how to handle him. I could play spectator and try to guess the ending.

A three-vehicle convoy passed us, blew dust into our grille. A Cadillac SUV, whatever they’re called, an S-series Benz sedan, and a Lincoln Navigator. High-cotton members of the Ocean Reef Club in a hurry for their midday toddies.

“First pedal on the right,” said Task. “Step on the fuck, why don’t you?”

What did he expect? I was doing sixty-five in a fifty-five. The washboard road made it feel like ninety. “These are the Everglades, the real-life boonies, Task. This is your chance to commune with the quiet pace of undisturbed nature. You come down here to speed up your life, you’re wasting resources.”

“Middle of fuckin’ nowhere,” he said. “This two-lane got a name?”

“Card Sound Road.”

“You’re lugging it. You’ll clog my plugs.”

“Not until after your heart attack for worrying about your ignition. I hope you brought a package of cash.”

“If I didn’t, it’s less than an hour away—by the way most people drive.”

“Where we’re going, Task, I can’t float a balloon so you can say maybe. Do we need to go back a few miles?”

“Keep going. On second thought, pull over along here, let me drain the barracuda.”

“You don’t want to do that. Swamp skeeters are drawn to pecker temperature. We got all of six minutes to a flush toilet.”

“I wish to hell you’d goose the throttle.”

“Maybe not.” I lifted the gas pedal as we passed a ramshackle camp with
BUY BLUE CRABS
and
JESUS SAVES
signs tacked to spindly roadside posts. I tapped the brake pedal, slowed for a left bend in the road. Before our eyes was a scene you could sell to all-night TV. Two black and gold Florida Highway Patrol Camaros with their roof racks flashing had all three speeders pulled to the shoulder. I didn’t say a fucking word.

A half mile later Task said, “That’s either a bad sign or I’m glad I’m with you.”

“Both because I know the turf?”

“You’re not as dumb as you look, Whidden.”

A server near the door recognized me. She feigned exhaustion, teased her sweat-damp hair, and pointed to a round table near the waterside railing. Rigoberto and Duane. A third-generation Cuban-American and a fifth-generation peckerwood. Rigo was the old-timer; he was wearing a NASCAR T-shirt. Duane, in a fatigued guayabera sports shirt, was closer to my age. He’d started as an errand boy just like me.

We did the introduction, got invited to sit. Task said, “Pleased to meet you,” and Rigo and Duane sized him for a cop, trusted that I’d brought him for a reason. We were invited to share their brunch of conch fritters and the sliced pineapple that Rigo brought from his home garden in Coral Gables. I ordered a Bloody Mary and Task got a Captain Morgan on the rocks and Rigo joked to lighten things up. The gang had razzed me about getting rid of my stepmother’s doilies and trivets. Rigo asked if I’d had my yard sale yet, marked down the afghans and tea sets, held out for high dollar on her five-foot silk palm tree. Duane changed the subject, which I appreciated, and mentioned that a bonefish guide friend of his—he pointed to a large man at the bar—had released four tarpon that morning. The angler had tipped him a day’s pay.

Task gazed down to the southwest. “This is Card Sound?”

“Barnes Sound,” said Duane.

“We came down a road called…”

Rigo jacked his thumb to the northeast. “Card’s up there.”

Task looked in that direction. “Okay, then where’s the Gulf of Mexico?”

Rigo pointed back the other way. “Down past Blackwater Sound and Florida Bay.”

“A boy could get lost around here,” said Task.

“Plenty have,” drawled Duane.

Uh-oh, I thought.

Rigo focused the conversation. He pointed at a lumpy scar on Task’s forearm. “The chief make you lose that tattoo?”

“Family thing,” said Task. He tried to mask his disappointment in having been spotted as a cop.

“Your mother told you she’d die on purpose if you didn’t take it off?”

“Almost her exact words.”

“Just like mine,” said Rigo, “bless her soul.”

“But it’s good that it’s gone.” Task rubbed his scar. “It was a fuckin’ skull, dumb to start with.”

“Where you stay now? Whatcha into?” said Rigo.

“West Palm. Fab, Tide, and borax.”

“Ah, yes, the laundry. Into that long?”

“For a while it was a storefront, payday loans and check advances. We’d loan against car titles, that kind of crap.”

“You quit that? Sounds like cash flow to me.”

“We got asked nicely to close up shop. One of the polite requests you don’t ignore.”

“Let me guess,” said Rigo. “Not the mob.”

“Right you are,” said Task. “A legit company, branches all over the southeast. But they had muscle on their team, that’s for sure.”

“So now you’re into what, cleaning counterfeits, washing profits for importers?”

“No counterfeits, but everything else,” said Task. “As long as they print C-notes, somebody’ll build a stash of dirty ones.”

Rigo cut a slice of pineapple into one-inch sections, then used the knife to stick a piece into his mouth. “Discounting’s a growing industry.”

“Numbskulls coming in, their rookie mistakes, makes it tight at the top.”

“I hear they got a joint-ops group all over that shit.”

Task faked a chuckle. “That group is turning up five-year-old rocks. They ’bout as tuned-in as polka dot pants.”

“You know that for a fact?”

“We keep an eye out,” said Task. “That’s how it is.”

“So we need to get down to the gritty,” said Rigo. He looked at Duane and me. “You two wanted to sit at the next table, correct?”

The two of us left behind our near-empties, took new seats. Duane ordered fresh drinks for both tables and two more baskets of fritters.

“You’re a lot calmer since you went away.”

“I know. I’m four years older,” I said. “I didn’t think I’d changed so you’d notice.”

“You were so wired up, we called you the electric fence. How’s that Wellcraft you bought?”

“I don’t know. It sits lopsided, heavy to starboard. The gas gauge tells lies, so when you see it’s half-full you know it’s full empty. And with that seventy-five Mercury, if you go for optimum cruising tilt, the turbulence kills your water pressure.”

“Cavitation,” said Duane.

“So I change the tilt, ride ass high, the bow thumps. If I ride ass low, the water pressure lifts, but I get less RPM for more throttle.”

“Using ninety-three octane for your mix?”

“Always.”

“Mount that motor an inch lower on the transom.”

“I will do that.”

“He’s got you in a twist.”

“Do tell,” I said.

“Ex-cops don’t know how to cut pie. He’d rather shoot his knee than give you a percentage, so you didn’t get pushed here by money. Where’s he coming from?”

“Claims he’s got juice in the probation system. He can make it either better or worse for me. I don’t need to fucking go backward.”

“That’s a good one. Be better if you could hold him to it. Telling lies, he’s had years of training.”

“What if his deal takes a shit?”

Duane looked down the canal as if the resident cormorant was an essential factor in his dockside existence. “If it goes good, you get a snack from Rigoberto.”

I waited for the rest.

“Something goes sideways…” He turned to look me in the eye. “You’ll be glad your mother died first.”

Change the subject. “How did The Club happen to migrate to Alabama Jack’s?”

“My doing. I’ve always come here. I grew up a half mile up the road.”

I asked tactfully, “In a stilt home?”

Duane shook his head. “A lopsided shack that started as a house trailer which became a houseboat which survived I can’t count how many storms and got attached to the canal’s edge. We were scroungy-ass poor but never hungry except one summer when I didn’t have a boat motor. I had to troll out of a fucking canoe. That was the summer me and my sisters almost starved.”

“Mister James Task over there bragged to me two hours ago about coming down Biscayne Bay from Miami Beach in the 1970s and boosting a fifteen-horse Johnson off what he called a piece-of-crap rowboat.”

“Boys will be boys,” said Duane. “You come in your pickup?”

“I drove his Town Car.”

“What color is it?” He turned, gave a slight wave, caught the attention of our server.

“Dark maroon,” I said.

Duane’s cell phone rang. He unclipped it from his belt, raised his bifocals to read the caller ID, scowled, stood, and walked fifteen feet from the table. His conversation lasted no more than ten seconds.

I wondered what had happened to our server. I watched her take a walk-around phone from the fishing guide at the bar and hang it back on the wall.

Across the table, Rigo and Task looked up when Duane took his seat.

“Kids,” said Duane.

Rigo nodded and asked us to rejoin him and Task.

“I’ve been explaining the new realities of yacht restoration,” said Rigo. “How someone finds a stripped and abandoned boat, reports it to the Marine Patrol, then tries to claim salvage rights. When that fails, which is no surprise, the finder buys it from the insurance company and hires an outfitter to make the yacht presentable again.”

“It’s a great concept,” said Task. “You got the original claim, the stripped stuff in a storage locker, the cost of the lawyers, and the hull. Then the resale including finder’s fees and brokerage fees, you got cash flow at every stage.”

Duane looked up at a twirling fan. “The rebuilder has to reapply for a boat title, so every time it gets stolen, rebuilt, and resold, it’s officially a different boat. The state of Florida will catch on someday, but they haven’t done it yet.”

Task picked his ear and did a wax check. “I love it,” he said, “and so will my people.”

The fishing guide from the bar appeared at our table. “Who wants to go sightseeing?” he said. “A pickup truck just sailed into Elliott Key.”

“A refugee raft?” I said.

“Eighteen Cubans running a bus diesel with a prop on the driveshaft. God knows how they made it across. You want to ride up with me to look?”

“Shit yes, Bear,” said Rigo. “This is current-day history in action. We’ll all go along if there’s room.”

Captain Bear shook his head. “Room for three but not four.”

Duane said, “I’ll stay behind.”

“I want you along,” said Rigo. “We got something in motion. We need to talk with Mr. Task.”

“I’ll sit at the bar,” I said. “I can watch golf and daydream about painting walls.”

They left and I took Captain Bear’s vacated stool, a mere ten feet from the TV, and nursed my third Bloody Mary. Ten minutes into my wait, the server I knew handed me a bar napkin. The note read:
NO PASSENGER SIDE AIR BAG. 75 BIGS AND TASER IN CAVITY. PIG STICKER IN DRIVER’S SIDE VISOR

Forty minutes later, I heard Bear’s skiff maneuver to the dock. Rigo and Captain Bear returned to our table by the railing, and Duane motioned for me to follow him outside. We walked down the dock toward the Hewes that Bear chartered. Over the railing the dredged canal bottom reflected early-afternoon sun. It looked like a painter’s dreamscape of aquatic pastels, except it was real and just the ditch.

“Strange sky this afternoon,” I said.

“You’re in South Florida, Clancy Whidden. After enough time ain’t nothing strange here.”

“Where’s our man Task?”

“He got side-tracted,” said Duane. “Stupid asshole was running solo. He had the
cojones
to ask for security cash.”

“Not too damned smart,” I said.

“True, and you should be offended. He didn’t think much of your smarts, either. He volunteered to…What’d he say? Remove you from the equation.”

“Not a surprise,” I said.

“Rigo thinks you should be compensated for Task’s rudeness.” Duane reached into the Hewes skiff, grabbed two cans of Budweiser, and handed me one. “Don’t pop it open just yet,” he said. “There’s ten grand in there. Where are you going to leave that Town Car, and don’t tell me the airport?”

“I’ll park it behind a bar in South Miami. They’ll think for a week that some drunk forgot where he left it.”

“That’s plenty of time. You didn’t drive the Turnpike, right?”