Wreckers' Key (4 page)

The wind was blowing out of the west at fifteen to eighteen knots, and I was motoring right into a nasty chop. The small waves broke over the pontoons, drenching my pants and forcing me to throttle down to an agonizingly slow pace.

By the time I got to the boat, my black Lab, Abaco, was leaping for joy and trying to crawl down into the dinghy with me. I kept a piece of Astroturf tied to a length of line on deck for emergencies, but she hated to use it. She’d get this guilty look and slink off to the foredeck in shame whenever nature forced her to relieve herself on board. I never wanted to put her through that. She needed to get to shore quickly, but all I could think about was getting aboard and getting out of my now wet clothes.

There were dozens of boats flanking the west side of Christmas Tree Island anchored along the edge of the Northwest Channel, the best route for heading to the Dry Tortugas. Most were cruising sailboats, although there was one big classic motor yacht at the opposite end of the anchorage that I’d heard this morning belonged to some Danish heiress. A giant brown dog, hard to tell what breed from this distance, strolled the decks and barked at boats that came too close. I’d yet to see anyone aboard take that dog ashore, I thought as I hurried below to change.

When I stepped out of the deckhouse about twenty minutes later, I saw a parade of schooners charging past, hard on the wind, making for the outer channel. There must have been nearly a dozen of them, from the smallest—a little 30-some-footer with gaff-rigged tanbark sails—to the grand 130-foot
Western Union
, Key West’s own flagship. They all had full sails flying and were having to tack their way out of the harbor, not an easy feat with all those gaffs and topsails and square sails. They had just crossed the starting line off the beam of my tug, and
Hawkeye
was in the lead. I could see costumed characters on nearly all the boats, eye patches, head scarves, and striped pantaloons marking the pirate-like gear most of the crews sported. Abaco startled when a loud boom and a puff of smoke heralded a cannon shot from the schooner
Wolf
. The wharf ashore was lined with spectators, and, like good Floridians, a few of them hit the dirt at the sound of the gunfire, while the rest laughed and pointed at the picturesque boats pretending to battle for first rights to the wreck. The
Appledore
responded with another cannon shot as she attempted to overtake the
Western Union
, and the tourist charter guests on the big schooner responded with applause.

Over on
Hawkeye
, though, there was no sign of the usual Key West craziness—no costumed blokes hanging from the rigging waving mugs of grog. I reached into the wheelhouse and pulled out my binoculars. Through them, I watched Ben at the wheel, hunched forward, as though urging his boat on. He wore a yellow foul-weather jacket and a dark baseball cap pulled low over his face so I couldn’t really even see his profile. He nodded once, then spun the wheel around to execute a near-perfect tack. He had a young kid crewing for him, cranking on the winches. His charter guests sat huddled around the front of the oval cockpit watching the two men handle the big schooner with almost graceful precision. The Wreckers’ Race wasn’t really much of a race, but it appeared Ben Baker took competition of any kind very seriously.

That afternoon, I took my dog ashore on the little spoil island and threw sticks down the narrow beach so she could run and splash into the water. She sometimes found it torture out on the boat—surrounded by all that water and not allowed to jump in. She was a Lab, after all. Australian pines and palmettos grew so thick in the center of the island that when I threw her stick inland, she disappeared into the bush. I called her name. The third time, when I was starting to feel just a little worried, I saw a flock of doves take wing and Abaco came charging out of the brush, the stick in her mouth and her eyes alight with mischief.

When we got back to the boat, I had a long list of projects waiting. I soon found myself dismantling the accumulator in my freshwater pressure system, which was leaking and causing the pump to tick over several times an hour and keeping me awake through the quiet hours of the night. I kept the radio on, as usual, tuned to channel sixteen, listening to the chatter of the racers and the fishermen and the charter boat captains. Late in the afternoon, I heard the shouts and laughter, the rush of water and creak of rigging, as the schooners returned from their race to Sand Key. I stepped out on deck to see
Hawkeye
sail by very close to
Gorda
, and her captain swept off his baseball hat and bowed to me like a swashbuckling hero as they passed.

“Cute,” I said aloud, even though he was out of earshot. “Very cute.” And I meant it. “Now that the competition is over, he can relax and have fun. Boy, has he changed.”

Abaco looked up at me and cocked her head.

“Never mind, girl. I’m just talking to myself,” I said as I watched Ben work the foredeck, furling sails. I found myself hoping he would glance my way again. There was something about the way he sailed and worked his boat that spoke of his love of the sea, and
that
I found even more attractive than his great new body.

I laughed out loud. Ben Baker? What was I thinking?

I watched the sailboats motoring and sailing back to the marina, all in a hurry now for the best part of racing—the party in the bar. Through the boats, I could see the crowd gathering for the nightly sunset celebration on Mallory Pier. The various street performers were erecting their high wires or setting up perches for their performing cats and dogs. The vendors were open and selling their piña coladas, carved coconuts, and shell necklaces, and though the sun wouldn’t set for another hour or so, the pier was already packed with tourists.

I left the rail and returned to clean up and put away my tools in preparation for the afternoon’s first beer. I was just reaching for an iced Corona when I heard the panic in the voice that seemed to explode from the radio.

“Mayday, mayday, mayday! Attention all vessels in Key West Harbor. There’s an overdue windsurfer from the Casa Marina beach rentals. Anybody who can help search, please assist.”

IV

I immediately thought of Nestor. Had Catalina convinced him to go windsurfing after all? I looked at the clock. It was four forty-five. The sun would set at five thirty. After sundown, there would be maybe another thirty minutes in which a downed windsurfing sail might be visible in the light of the waning dusk. After that, forget it. The missing person would spend the night at sea, in the water, and at this time of year that probably meant death. I was sitting by the radio, listening to the Key West Coast Guard marine operator quizzing the kid from the beach rental about the possible location of the missing windsurfer, when I started hearing boat engines.

Out on deck, the scene before me was remarkable. There were charter fishing skiffs, muscle boats, big sport-fishermen, sailboats, and runabouts of all kinds charging out the channel. They were all headed toward Sand Key, the place the kid at the windsurfer rental shack had said his customer was headed for. One thing I had to say about the boating community: when someone was in a jam, they came together. It was kind of like the old days, really. The scene playing out was more reminiscent of the onetime wreckers than their namesake race had been.

I was considering lifting the anchor and heading out on
Gorda
when I spotted a white-hulled center-console run-about coming at me from the other side—out of the north. The operator was waving at me. I waved back, and when he turned to approach my boat, I saw the name t/t
Power Play
in blue paint on the bow. It was the tender to the big Sunseeker, and I now recognized the man standing at the helm. As he drew close, Ted Berger shouted, “I could use another set of eyes. Want to come?”

“Sure,” I shouted back. In less than a minute, I’d grabbed my rain jacket off the hook inside the wheelhouse, slipped the strap for my binoculars over my head, closed up
Gorda
, and jumped aboard Berger’s boat. Abaco whined, pleading to come along, but I told her to stay. Somehow I didn’t think Berger would appreciate dog hair all over his immaculate tender.

Ted pushed the throttle forward and the big two-hundred-horse four-stroke Honda engine pushed the boat up onto an easy plane. We probably wouldn’t be able to hold that speed once we hit the open ocean outside, but for now he was eating up the water in a way my little tug would never manage.

“I was on my way back from fishing Bluefish Channel when I heard,” he shouted. As we came out from behind Sunset Key, Berger whistled. “Damn. Look at all the boats.”

He was right. There must have been at least thirty boats all steaming out toward Sand Key.

On the center console of Berger’s boat, he pointed to the large-screen color GPS chart plotter, which displayed a chart of the Key West entrance channel out to Sand Key Light.

“I’m not going to head out toward Eastern Dry Rocks. Looks like all the others are already working that area. Let’s start from the midpoint channel markers and work a search pattern east from there,” Ted hollered over the roar of the outboard. “You keep watch on the starboard side, I’ll watch the port.”

“Sounds good to me.”

I alternated searching with the naked eye and peering through the glasses. The breeze was dying down a bit, but the wind waves were still confused and choppy. Patchy gray clouds had blown in from the west and now covered the sun and half the horizon. The sea reflected the colorless sky; it was difficult enough to make out the channel markers, much less spot a small sail floating on the surface of the water.

My watch told me the sun had just set, but the clouds had hidden the event. We had been searching for what seemed like hours and were now due south of Key West, over a mile offshore from Smathers Beach. The radio had been depressingly quiet except for the Coast Guard operator, who was continuing to seek information from the young man on the beach. He worked at the rental shack at the Casa Marina Resort and when his client, who’d rented the windsurfer for two hours, hadn’t returned by three pm, the kid went out in his Boston Whaler to search for the man. He’d had no luck. When he realized darkness was fast approaching, he decided to get on the radio and call for help.

My eyes kept playing tricks on me. I would think I saw something, then when I blinked or tried to steady the binoculars, I’d look back and it would be gone. In fact, it was never there in the first place. That was why I didn’t believe it the first time I saw the flash of yellow in the water. When I squeezed my eyes shut that time, I thought it had disappeared, but then the patch of yellow rose again on a choppy swell.

“Over there,” I shouted, pointing with my right arm while I held the glasses in one hand, keeping my eyes fastened on that spot of color. “I saw something in the water.” I shifted my position, swinging my arm around as Berger turned the boat. I couldn’t take my eyes off that spot.

At first, the wet suit was indistinguishable from the dark water. The sail was blue with a small horizontal stripe of yellow, and it wasn’t until we were nearly on top of him that I realized a man’s shadowy form lay facedown and half submerged across the sail. I knew before we pulled alongside and I touched his cold wrist to feel for a pulse that it was Nestor and he was dead.

V

“Oh, great,” Berger said and rubbed his hand across his mouth.
 

I couldn’t look at him. I kept my eyes on the horizon like a seasick person who feared she was going to vomit. The idling outboard filled the boat with fumes, but it was neither that nor the sight of Nestor that made me feel ill. It had been Berger’s voice. He’d sounded about as emotionless as the computerized voice that reads the NOAA weather on the Coast Guard radio.

We got a line onto the windsurfer’s boom and stood by waiting for the Coast Guard to arrive on the scene. Berger and I didn’t say much as the last streaks of light evaporated from the western sky and a few stars began to blink between the swift-moving clouds overhead. I moved up to the bow of the open runabout and sat on the padded seat that ran in front of the center console. I thought about Catalina and how fresh and alive and in love they had been that morning at breakfast. I didn’t want to break down and bawl in front of this asshole, but I felt like my chest and throat were pulled in so tight and hard that I was going to suffocate if I didn’t let it out. I wanted to hit something and scream curses at the stars. At nature. At fate. At God. Why Nestor? I pulled my knees to my chest and gritted my teeth, but when I pictured Nestor smiling behind Catalina, his arms wrapped around her waist and patting the bulge that would be their child, I couldn’t hold it in any longer. I let go.

When the Coast Guard arrived in their forty-foot utility boat, I dried my eyes on the backs of my hands and handed the young crewman a bow line. Ted had taken out his spotlight and was shining it on the windsurfer and sail so the Coasties would know to come alongside on the other side of his boat. His spot cast a stark light on the bright sail and the neoprene-clad body, which I could now see was tangled in the lines from his mast and harness. A young man in a blue uniform wearing a bulky life jacket leaned over the rail of the Coast Guard boat and took several flash photos of the body. At first, I was offended, thinking he was just taking souvenir shots, but then when they hoisted the body aboard, Nestor’s head turned, and I saw the discolored and swollen contusion at his temple. I realized the photos would likely be needed as forensic evidence.

It was a somber procession that headed back into the harbor. We’d been told the police would be waiting and that they would want to talk to us. We were to follow the Coast Guard to their dock, so Berger cruised back slowly in the big boat’s wake.

“So what do you think happened?” Berger asked.

I didn’t look at him. I kept my eyes on the white stern light of the Coast Guard boat. I was angry and embarrassed that this stranger had seen me sobbing, had witnessed that raw grief. I couldn’t wait to get off his boat and away from him. “I don’t know. Maybe a strong gust, maybe it flung him headfirst into the mast, knocked him unconscious, then he drowned?” I turned to look at Ted’s profile. “What do you think?”