Wood's Reach (3 page)

“Y’all lookin’ like you could use a little help, or maybe a tour guide?” he started, lighting up his thousand-dollar smile that was said to resemble the grille of a Cadillac.

She ignored him, still listening to whatever song was playing in her head. He followed her to Caroline Street, where she turned left. Closing the gap, he walked next to her. “If you’re lost, I can help.”

“Huh?” She looked at him. “Just wastin’ away in Margaritaville,” she sang softly, whispering the words.

He froze when he saw her deep green eyes. All he could do was stare.

“Cat got your tongue?” she asked.

He shook his head, trying to regain his composure. It wasn’t often that a woman had this effect on him. “Shoot. I was only asking if you needed some help. You’ve been walking in a circle.”

“Can’t find my way home,” she sang—the old Blind Faith tune.

“But are you wasted?” he asked, referencing the beginning of the line. She smiled and his knees almost gave out. “Where ya headed?”

“Damn boyfriend and I split up, and I think the jerk-off took the car. I’ve been walkin’ these streets all afternoon.” She stopped at the corner of Whitehead and looked both ways, as if the car would magically appear.

Trufante shook his head in sympathy. “Yeah, sometimes it’s better to just have a beer and chill. Things seem to solve themselves.”

She sat on the suitcase and put her head in her hands. “Name’s Pamela,” she said, looking up.

“Pajama Bama,” he said and she laughed. “Come on. Old Tru will make it all better. Promise. I’ll even buy,” he offered, fingering the cash in his pocket.

“Money’s not the problem. I’m just kind of bummed is all,” she said.

Now this was his kind of woman. “Let’s go, then. No strings. We can just hang out.” He held his hand out for her.

It felt like a jolt of current had just gone through his body. She rose and looked him in the eye. There weren’t many women who could eyeball him, and he found himself staring at her—he was hooked.

“Well?” She shook her head, trying to break the spell.

“Yeah, I got that too.” He took the handle of the bag and started toward Duval. “Turtle’s right up here. Local’s kind of place.” He led the way across Duval, dodging the tourists and vendors. Scooters, bikes, rickshaws, car and foot traffic all blended together into a mass of partiers heading toward the bars now that the sun had set and the Mallory Square show was over for another night. Taking her hand, he led her past the main drag and onto a quiet side street.

His eyes opened, alerted by the sun streaming through the flimsy curtains. Like every morning for the previous week, he turned his head and saw her there next to him. Somewhere he knew this was too good to be true, like every other windfall in his life had been starting back in Louisiana. In the decade before Katrina had hit, he had lucked into the Army Corps of Engineers concrete contracts to reinforce the jetties. It was all good until it wasn’t, and it had all gone to hell after the storm, and his work failed. With only an old fishing boat to his name, he had port-hopped along the Gulf coast, picking up whatever work he could before finally landing in Marathon.

She stirred, rolled over, and smiled at him. “Just another day in paradise,” he said and kissed her.

“Right on. How ’bout a cheeseburger, then?” she said, using her unique dialect of song lyrics.

He grabbed her butt and leaned in to kiss her again, but she rebuffed him. Not the first time, but he hoped paradise wasn’t wearing thin. “Shoot. I’m all about breakfast. Let’s go get some grub.”

They dressed and walked down the exterior stairs of his second-floor apartment. His bike fired up and they both hopped on. Loving the freedom of Florida’s no-helmet law, Trufante turned onto US-1 and headed south. He pulled into a breakfast-and-lunch place a few miles down the road. If there was any tension or doubts on his part, it was always about this time of the day, when it was time to decide what to do until you could justify the first beer and things got easier. They had already done a lot of the tourist stuff: kayaking, fishing from the bridges, and hanging out on Sombrero Beach. He’d even let her talk him into renting Jet Skis for an afternoon. He’d had a blast, but was constantly looking out of the corner of his eye to make sure that Mac or one of his other buddies didn’t see him on what they regarded as the curse of the Keys.

While she sipped her coffee, he looked around and grabbed a
Keynoter
newspaper off an adjacent table. Always curious about the local gossip, he opened the paper and started reading.

“Hey. We ought to check that out,” she said.

He put down the paper. “What?”

She grabbed the paper from him and pointed at the headline.
Confiscated Goods Auction Today
. “Maybe we can score a better living arrangement.”

“You’re not liking the Hotel Trufante?”

She reached for his hand. “No offense, babe, but I’m used to something a bit more upscale.”

He looked into her eyes, wondering again where she came from. She had spoken little of her past or her circumstances, but the word “job” had never been mentioned, nor had her credit card been refused.
Whatever
, he thought
. If this is a ride, it’s a good one. Might as well see how it ends.
“So, you’d buy something?”

“I’ve heard they sell really cool stuff for pennies on the dollar at those things,” she said.

The stump of his finger started itching at the mention of confiscated goods which, down here, usually meant drug dealers; he’d lost the rest of the digit in a grinder at the expense of one. “You don’t want to get messed up in that,” he cautioned.

“No harm in looking.” She read the article. “Starts at eleven. Just enough time to finish breakfast and head over.”

With an awkward silence between them, the first of their budding relationship, they finished breakfast, she paid, and they left the restaurant. They rode south to the Marriott, where he turned in and parked the bike under the canopy. Looking at her, he thought she appeared different entering the hotel. This must be Pamela for real, he thought, not her alter ego, Pajama Bama, that he had spent the last week with.

They entered the ballroom, or the large room that sufficed for one in the small town of Marathon. Chairs were set up in rows with a center aisle leading to a podium. The setting reminded him of a church—another omen. At the entrance was a long rectangular table manned by a half dozen law enforcement officers.

“Why don’t you look around? I’ll register,” she said and approached the table.

He didn’t mind moving away from the uniforms and took himself on a tour of the room. Around the perimeter were cases of jewelry and watches, most too gaudy for anyone besides a rapper or dealer. Between the cases were easels with poster board displays of the larger objects: boats, cars, and houses. She joined him, and he felt like a married couple as they walked around the room together; he more interested in the boats, she in the houses.

“That’s the one.” She stood in front of a display.

“Shoot. Betcha that sucker is over a million,” he said, peering sideways at the waterfront house.

“I’ve heard you can get them way below market at these auctions. That’s the one I want,” she said and fanned herself with the placard used for bidding. An announcement was made and the crowd went for their seats. “Come on, they’re getting started.”

He followed her to a pair of empty chairs near the front, far from the back row, where he would have felt comfortable. The bidding started, and he nodded off until an elbow jabbed him awake. Opening his eyes, he groaned inwardly as he saw her hand raised high above her head, waving the placard back and forth. He sat up and started paying attention as the bidding went back and forth. He was shocked at how low the numbers were, but they were slowly climbing. Eventually most of the bidders backed out, leaving only Pamela and a man in a suit. He was sweating, the suit too thick for the climate, and Trufante was surprised when he turned to the man next to him, obviously hired muscle. Trufante got a bad feeling when he turned to stare at them and pulled her hand down.

“This is some bad shit,” he said in a whisper.

“Oh, come on. Have some fun.” She smiled like a little girl and shot to her feet, raising the bid.

Defeated, the man sat down, but Trufante would remember his face and his look toward them as he conceded.

“Going once … going twice … sold,” the auctioneer yelled and smashed the gavel down.

“Woo-hoo,” she sighed. “My island in the sun.”

She got up to leave, but Trufante pulled her down. “At least wait this out and blend in with the crowd on the way out. Those guys are creeping me out.”

Chapter Four

Dawn was not quite ready to make an appearance when Mac woke. He’d spent plenty of nights sleeping outside, but mainly on boats. The clearing Wood’s house was built in may have concealed the house, but it also provided a barrier to the sea breeze. With no air moving through it, mosquitoes invaded at dusk and the clearing was thick with dew in the mornings. He’d tried sleeping under a net but found that more annoying than the pests it was to supposed to protect him from. In contrast, Wood’s house had been well thought out, positioned to catch the predominantly southeasterly breeze; the living quarters, rising ten feet above the ground, were comfortable and bug-free. Once he paid off the repairs for his boat, he intended to bring it out to Wood’s island and live aboard, but for now, he was stuck on the ground.

He walked down the path to the beach and pulled an old kayak out of the brush. It was too dark to work, but the fishing was generally good at dawn. Gathering the paddle and two rods lying beside it, he pulled the boat into the water and maneuvered it between his legs, grimacing when his butt met the dewy seat. He settled into the small boat and paddled along the flats flanking Harbor Channel, watching the eastern sky for the first hint of daylight. Turning to the left at the end of the invisible bank, he coasted by a lone egret standing on one leg and watching the water intently, undisturbed by the small craft. With an easy cadence, he stayed in the center of an unmarked narrow slot that held seven feet of water running between foot-deep flats on each side. There were no markers here, the channel known only to locals, and not many of those. It was one of a thousand well-guarded spots in the maze of the backcountry, known only to a few locals and not appearing on any hot spot maps or charts. He coasted to a stop ten minutes later when he reached the end of the channel.

With deep water surrounding him, he used one blade of the paddle as a rudder, turning the kayak and allowing the incoming tide to grab the plastic hull. After a few adjustments, he was satisfied with the drift and deployed the two rods, one on each side of the kayak. With the butts set in their holders, he sat back, letting the current take the boat and dipping the paddle in the water whenever he needed a course correction. The first pass yielded nothing, and he reversed course and paddled back to his starting point. Starting to doubt himself, he checked the lines and started his second drift. The sun was just above the horizon now and he knew his window was shrinking. Years ago, when Wood had dredged the small channel to his island, he had dumped the rubble here, making the bottom a prime spot for snapper and grouper, but so far it had yielded nothing.

As the sky brightened, he finished the second drift and set up for the third and last pass, more concerned about his plans for the day than about catching anything now. The work on the house was rather mundane at this point—just demolition—and his mind kept drifting back to the repair bill for his boat. He really wanted to get it back, but piecing together the money to pay the bill would be a challenge. He thought of every option open to him, drawing blanks on most. The last was a man he would use only as a last resort. Hawk, often said to be a descendant of the original wreckers of Vaca Key, was notorious throughout the area for his larger-than-life personality as well as the treasure he pulled from the sea.

Mac had done enough salvage to know that the divers and captains got most of the glory, but it was the moneymen, often in the background, that enriched themselves. Before steamships, the predominant trade route of the treasure-laden wooden ships ran just offshore of here—between the Keys and the Bahama Bank. The square-rigged ships relied on the Gulf Stream’s powerful current to propel themselves back to Europe, but they were hard to maneuver and often collided with the shallow reefs just offshore. This area still held more than its share of the gold, silver, and jewels that had been lost over the centuries as the treasures of the Americas was shipped to finance the wars of Europe. Hawk had a reputation for skirting the law and reaping the bounties from long-lost wrecks most didn’t know existed, as well as having his competitors mysteriously disappear.

The thumb drive supposedly held the answer to a riddle that had plagued Mac for years, and he knew Hawk would pay for it. Mac and Wood had discovered a section of an old Mayan wreck while rebuilding the No Name Key Bridge twenty-odd years ago. Circumstances and a sibling feud between the remaining twin chiefs of an indigenous tribe had put the project on the back burner. The brother was dead, but the sister remained at large and still claimed the rights to the site. Salvage around any historic site was a bureaucratic nightmare, but without ties to the original inhabitants of the islands, it had been impossible to get a permit for the search. Hawk had offered many times to buy the information they had, but first Wood, and now Mac, refused to sell. Maybe it was time to consider it.

Without even a bite, he finished the drift, reeled in the lines and paddled back to the island, still wondering what to do. He reached the beach and pulled the kayak back to its resting place, but instead of leaving the two rods there, he carried them back to the clearing and set them against the shed to be rerigged. When you don’t catch fish, you have to change things up. Before his next attempt, he would tie on fluorocarbon leaders and new lures.

Still unsure what to do about his boat and the thumb drive, he climbed the ladder and started taking his frustration out on the charred wood studs remaining at the back of the house. The heat came with the sun, and sweat poured off him as he worked. After tearing out the last wall, he stacked the studs and stared out at the open expanse of water. Flats boats were moving toward the bonefish and permit grounds. Several larger vessels were heading into the deeper waters of the Gulf, after the grouper and snapper that were more abundant there. He was about to turn away when one of the boats turned out of the channel and approached the island.