A pause.
She was small. A child. She knelt, lifted her shirt to cover her nose against the stench, and with one finger lifted my eyelid. A larger shadow fell across me, and then I felt a finger, stronger and more purposeful, on my carotid. Another pause. The voice belonging to the large shadow said, “How long have you been like this?” Her English was as good as mine, but her accent was thick.
“Last night.”
“When did you arrive?”
“Yesterday.”
“Did you eat?”
“Yes. A café.”
“You remember the name?”
“No.”
“What’d you eat?”
“Beans, rice, and meat.”
“Was it steaming?”
“Yes.”
“What’d you drink?”
“Bottled water.”
She paused another second. “You eat any chips?”
“Two or three bowls.”
I could hear her smile when she spoke. “You eat any salsa with that?”
That’s about when the truth hit me. Salsa is made with fresh and often uncooked vegetables. “Two or three bowls.”
She covered her nose with her hand. “Wow. You really stink.”
She pulled out a cell phone, called someone who responded; she spoke in Spanish, and within a few minutes a truck pulled up next to the sidewalk upon which I’d soiled and sprawled. The truck backed up, a man exited and lowered the tailgate, and the woman said to me, “You want my help, get in the truck.”
I crawled along the street, pulled myself up on the tailgate, and was physically unable to get myself inside, prompting the driver to lift me in.
I lay down in the back of the truck; the engine whined, clutch slipped, and I fell asleep beneath the smell of spent fuel and the heat of a rising sun.
During my sleep, I remember cold sweats and fever. More vomiting and diarrhea. Then I vaguely remember a sting in my arm, and later someone telling me to roll over and relax and then shoving something up my rectum to which I was powerless to object.
* * *
I woke to the soft light of evening. Above me, in the gap between the concrete block walls and the tin roof, I could hear dogs barking, a pig grunting, several birds singing farther off, kids playing what sounded like soccer, someone chopping wood, a fire crackling, and the sound of a passing car. I could hear food simmering close by and could smell the wood fire and coffee, which helped leverage open my eyes.
My room was hot, ninety degrees or better, and my skin was painted in my own sweat. I lay naked beneath a sheet, but I was clean. I could smell soap. The oscillating fan to my left clicked, paused, and began its return in my direction, pushing the wave of heat across my skin. An IV bag dripped over my left shoulder, running down a clear tube that ended in a needle that had been inserted and taped into my arm. I reached to touch it, but a hand rested gently on mine. “Antibiotics.”
It was the same voice I remembered hearing on the sidewalk beneath the bells.
She spoke again. “Think you could hold down some water?”
“I don’t want to put anything near my mouth. Ever again.”
Her laughter was easy and quiet. She held a cup to my lips. “Come on. Sooner you start drinking, the sooner you get that needle out of your arm.”
My stomach felt better and I was very thirsty. I lifted my head and sipped.
She had black hair tied up in a bun. Dark skin, toned muscles, and sweat on her top lip. She wore a long skirt to her ankles, sandals, and a loose short-sleeve shirt. She said, “It’s water, lemon juice, honey, and a touch of salt.”
I swallowed and sat back, coming to grips with the realization that such a small effort required so much of me. I was exhausted. My tongue felt thick as I licked my lips. “Tastes like bleach.”
She held the cup again to my lips. “Least we know your taste buds still work.” A pause. “It kills bacteria. In the water and in you.”
I sat back and closed my eyes. “What happened to me? And where am I?”
“Amebic dysentery. You’re in Valle Cruces.” She held out her hand. “Paulina Rodriguez Flores.” The way she said Paulina sounded like “Pow-leena.” “You’re in my uncle’s house.”
“Are you a doctor?”
“Nurse. But around here, those two occupations are a bit blurred.” She crossed her legs. “Want to tell me what you were doing out there? I’m assuming you were mugged because your pockets were empty.”
For the first time, I noticed my left wrist. There was no watch on it. Again. “You didn’t happen to notice a watch on my left arm, did you?”
She shook her head.
“I remember someone tugging on me, but it’s all a little hazy. I’d had a bite and went out for a walk after.”
“What are you doing in León?”
“Your English is good.”
“College in Virginia. Studied medicine at the University of Miami. And you didn’t answer my question.”
“It’s a long story, but I’m looking for a kid.”
“Is he in trouble?”
“If he’s not, he will be.” I continued, “And not to be indelicate, but did you shove something up my butt?”
She laughed. Easily. “Suppository. I was tired of cleaning up your mess.”
I tried to counter with humor. “You do that with all your guests?”
“Nope. You’re the first.” She stood and walked to the curtain that acted as the door. “Get some rest. You’ve been asleep for over two days.”
I pointed out the single window. Several miles in the distance sat a volcano. It stood three to five thousand feet above us. Its shoulders were green, lush, and a second smaller volcano sat off to its right. “What’s that?”
Her Spanish accent was thick when she spoke the name, proving that she moved fluidly between English and Spanish. “San Cristóbal.”
“It’s smoking.”
“He does that.”
“Why?”
“He likes to remind us.”
“Of what?”
“The fact that he’s in control and we’re not. Life around here is like that.”
“Why do you call it a ‘he’?”
She laughed easily. “’Cause a ‘she’ would never do that to these beautiful people that she loves.”
“Are you one of those women who doesn’t like ‘hes’?”
“No, I like ‘hes’ just fine. Used to be married to one, but if you look closely enough around here, you’ll find that the source of ninety nine percent of our problems are ‘hes’ and that’s not just the ‘she’ in me talking.” I decided to shut my mouth before I got myself in trouble with a woman who had no problem shoving something up my butt.
“Yes, ma’am.”
She continued. “You should sleep. You were pretty close to being in a real bad way.”
Sleep fell heavy on me, but my mind was spinning. I couldn’t help but think of the time I’d lost. Any trail I’d had that might have been hot regarding Zaul had long since grown cold.
Before I dozed off, I heard the sound of a young girl speaking Spanish with Paulina. I also heard the sound of water being poured over someone, which suggested she was bathing just beyond the wall. Later, maybe early morning, I heard the deep tone of a man’s voice whispering with Paulina. And while I didn’t understand a word he said, his tone toward her was tender. Almost fatherly.
CHAPTER TWELVE
In the beginning, most of my drops were South Florida. Eventually, Colin stretched me to the other islands and points south. Given my stellar six-month record, Colin called. “You mind making a few pickups? You can say no, but…the money’s pretty good.”
Like it or not, and despite my denials, money had become the carrot. As had getting away with something few were willing to risk—and every time I hopped in that boat, I was risking my freedom. As much as I denied and tried to act like it was not, money gave me the one thing nothing else did. Control. It allowed me to trust and depend o
n no one.
“A pickup is just a delivery in reverse. I’m in.”
He laughed.
I had also become an adrenaline junkie. I knew more about boats than the people who made them, and given my rather advanced woodcrafting skills after working with Hack, I got pretty good at retrofitting boats with compartments that were almost impossible to detect. Soon I was driving drug-laden boats real fast between Miami and Cuba, the Cayman Islands, Jamaica, El Salvador, Honduras, Puerto Rico, and Nicaragua. Sometimes as far north as Savannah and Charleston. Colin kept a fleet of about ten boats. Give or take. And he was always trading. Always buying and selling. Seldom, if ever, did I drive the same boat a second time to any location. His entire fleet was seaworthy, and most were worth a half million or more, averaged forty-fifty feet, carried a lot of fuel, and were deceptively fast. As in, when fully fueled, which they were, they could maintain 100 miles per hour for several hours. The trick—and it was why I stayed in the game so long at such a high level—was never using all that speed. Look like you’re out for a Sunday stroll, and people believe you are. It was just one more bluff.
High risk, high reward. Running drugs was an adrenaline rush and I loved it. I also kept it entirely to myself. I talked to no one about it. Not even Hack. I had a sense that he suspected something, but he never said anything. We continued building skiffs, and I helped him guide when he needed help. But at night, when he’d go to sleep, I’d leave Bimini churning in an angry wake. And I got really good at traveling by chart, radar, and GPS. Sometimes, if the drop was close and the weather agreed, I’d return at midnight. Sometimes I was gone a day. Sometimes two. Given all my Central American travel, it would have helped had I learned Spanish, but I managed. I could find a bathroom or order bottled water, but that was about it. My best talent was learning how to be visible yet invisible, not draw attention, how to “fly under the radar,” how to not look guilty, and how to avoid detection.
I had one problem. So did Colin. And if we were riding a wave, our problem was a tsunami and it was gaining quickly. And that was the idea of control—which was an illusion—and there was nothing we could do about it.
Colin and Marguerite had adopted me as family. As did the kids. I taught Maria how to tie her shoes, jump rope, whistle, drive a boat, and bait her hook. I knew which rib was the most ticklish, that she liked ketchup and mayonnaise but hated mustard, and I’d attended all twenty-one of her dance recitals. I’d helped her with her math homework, picked her up from school, run with her the first time she ever ran three miles without stopping, and of all the stuffed animals on her bed, the fluffy monkey with the long tail that I’d given her was the one tucked under her arm every morning.
If I’d ever been committed to one woman in my life, it’d been Maria and every time she said “Unca Charlie,” I melted.
At least once a week, I drove her to school, but not before stopping off at Krispy Kreme where the HOT NOW sign was flashing glow plug red. “Uncle Charlie” became the de facto babysitter and I loved it. Maria followed in her mother’s footsteps, and Zaul fell in love with two things: surfing and the life—and look—of a rapper.
While Maria owned the spotlight, Zaul shared his mother’s gift of music and, at one time, could make a piano sing. He had his father’s quick mind—a whiz with math, could solve complex problems with relative ease, and had always disliked school. I was with him when Colin took him to his first Dolphins game, and I got to sit courtside with him at his first Heat game. We caught umpteen lobsters together both in Bimini and around the Keys, snorkeled around dozens of wrecks, and speared some really big fish in forty to sixty feet of water. Unlike Maria, Zaul wasn’t friends with the masses, but he was good friends with a few.
Despite mine and Colin’s best attempts at influence, Zaul was attracted to two things: others’ attention and things that glitter. Especially people.
To insert himself, to get noticed, he’d jump off the dock house—three stories up. Then he’d jump off and do a front flip. Then a back. Then two backs. As he grew older, he constantly ramped up his appeals to impress people. Soon he was trying to impress the attendees at his dad’s parties. And while that was cute at first, I saw Colin begin to wrestle with how to control a son who was growing out of control. And the effect showed on Marguerite’s face. The wrinkles above her eyes. If my life with Colin was a controlled burn, Zaul’s life was a smoking heap and had the possibility to become a wildfire out of control.
Shortly after I met him, Zaul began hanging with the wrong crowd. Sneaking out. He changed his clothes. His mannerisms. He spent his days and most of his nights, 24-7, calculating how to be or become cool in other people’s eyes. Everything he did, every action he took, had been precalculated to draw, and hopefully keep, attention. He was driven by bitter envy and selfish ambition. Where Maria had gravitated toward beauty, Zaul was attracted to power—and wielding it. He saw his father, the circles he walked in, the money he spent, and somewhere in that mind of his, he decided he wanted it. He spent less time at home, snuck out more, had three tattoos before his folks knew about the first. He was buying, selling, and smoking dope before he was twelve; cussed out his mom when he was thirteen; had a diamond stud earring by fourteen; and, following his sixteenth birthday, had wrecked two new cars before the permanent tags had arrived in the mail.
Colin and Marguerite were not unaware. They knew they were losing or had lost control of Zaul, but the seeds of that were sewn long ago. They’d given him a generous allowance since he was ten. Pampered. Enabled. Made apologies for. Rolled out the silver platter. Let him do as he pleased. If he wanted something, he demanded and they gave. They erected no boundaries in his life, and hence, he operated by few, if any. A few months ago, he bought himself a $20,000 gold Rolex with a diamond bezel. A month later, when he turned up one morning with a black eye, a busted lip, and no watch, he hopped in his car and bought another.
The last real glimmer of light I’d seen with Zaul came just after he’d turned fourteen. I’d been sitting on the dock with Maria, feeding the fish, when Zaul appeared with a stack of playing cards. “Uncle Charlie…you teach me how to play poker?”
Zaul had so retreated into his own world and I saw him so seldom that interactions between us were scarce. And conversations with his folks were almost nonexistent. His sudden interest in me surprised me. I could tell Colin and Marguerite were worried, so I was looking for a way, any way, to engage Zaul. When he invited me in, I jumped on it.
Zaul and I met in his dad’s boathouse and played every week for the better part of six months. And I think in his own way, he began looking forward to our “weekly game” as he called it. He listened, learned, and got proficient, but he wasn’t any good. The only part of the game he was good at was losing money. Which he could do as well as the best of them. And he couldn’t bluff to save his life. His greatest strength was also his greatest weakness. Despite his tough exterior, Zaul had his mother’s heart. Tender and honest. That may make for a good human being, but it makes for a very bad poker player. To compensate for this “inadequacy,” he kept wanting me to teach him how to cheat. In order to keep him in my life, I taught him two or three tricks—real novice stuff—but I never thought he’d actually try to use them in a real game.
Then about a year ago, he quit showing up at the boathouse. I hadn’t seen him much since.
* * *
One interesting development occurred during this time. American distilled spirit consumption changed and grew at the same time, and people’s desire for rum doubled and tripled overnight. Colin was pretty well connected in the legitimate Central American rum trade. So while I was a drug runner, I became a legitimate rumrunner. Sugarcane production in Central America was at an all-time high, as was rum production. People couldn’t get enough of it, and while our margins on rum weren’t what they were on cocaine, good rum business allowed Colin to launder more money through SIN. While we imported some through legitimate channels in and around Miami customs, we also hired bar
ges and floated some north to the islands, where we unloaded and stored it until I could carry batch loads over. I soon found myself making the forty-four-mile crossing every other day. Sometimes every day. A few times I made it twice a day. Colin and I knew this had to be attracting attention, and his two well-paid contacts in the DEA confirmed this. So I never drove the same boat twice and never dropped at the same place twice. On three occasions, we got a tip that law enforcement was waiting on us in a canal en route to the Keys. I anchored just offshore, thumbed a ride back to Miami, “borrowed” one of Colin’s museum boats, and made my way home by tacking north some ninety miles and then coming in on the eastern “back” side of Bimini. The “abandoned” vessel was reported on the news along with the suspicion of drugs, but they found none because—with Colin’s full agreement—I’d fed the fish.
The Bahamian police soon clued in to the fact that we were running rum through the island, and they wanted a cut. Gladly. By the caseload. We gave them all they and their families could drink. We wanted to keep them as happy with us as possible, and they were. They never bothered us. Didn’t check our boats. Didn’t wake me up in the middle of the night. In fact, they ran interference for us when the larger U.S. agencies came knocking.
Given my special set of skills, Colin leaned on me more and more. On the surface, Colin and I ran a successful business. Beneath the surface, we sold and delivered a lot of cocaine to very wealthy people, who paid us a lot of money to keep their identities and habits hidden. Which we did. Business grew. When I hadn’t seen Hack in a week, he came knocking and found me asleep. I’d been out all night and returned only about an hour before he shook me.
He held a cup of coffee next to my nose and said, “Come on. Your porch is calling you.”
I sat and he jumped right in. “I was once crazy like you.” An exhale and a smile. “I ran rum before it was legal. I told you once I’d never been off this island.” He shook his head. “That’s a lie. I been over a good part of this hemisphere and bought and sold more rum than most companies.” He lit a second cigarette with the dying embers of the first. “I don’t fault you for what you’re doing. If people want to blow that white stuff into their lungs, so be it, but let me offer you one bit of advice.” He turned to me. “I have love one woman in this world.” Hack often dropped the “d” on his past-tense verbs. “Love her with all of me. One night pirates wanted our boat. A lot of rum. I tell them they no can have it.” He sucked through his teeth. “So because they could not take my boat, they took her. Shot her.” He pointed at his stomach. “Painful. I buried her at sea.” A long pause. “It’s been over forty years and the hurt hasn’t gotten any better.” A nod. “So, you do what you want. You’ve a right to that, but just know that the business you’re in does not have a happy ending. No one…” He waved a finger in the air. “And I mean no one, no matter how smart, ever stays in and escapes what they got coming.”