“You open up right this second!” the old woman squawked. “I gotta go now!”
She wore a shiny copper-colored wig that fit like a helmet. Her face was caked with powdery makeup, and her sparkly fake eyelashes were longer than a camel’s. A cigarette dangled from parrotfish lips that were puffy and painted the color of sliced mangoes.
“Can’t you read the sign?” I asked through the crack.
“What sign, Einstein?”
That’s when I spotted the piece of cardboard between her feet on the scuffed floor. Shelly’s tack must have come loose.
“Hey, you’re not even a Mermaid!” the old woman snapped, spitting her cigarette. “Get outta that bathroom ‘fore I call Security.”
It took all my strength to pull the door shut.
“You little sicko!” She let out a string of cuss words that would have put my Grandma Janet into cardiac arrest.
“Go away,” I pleaded. “This is an emergency.”
“Emergency? I’ll show you a damn emergency.” The parrotfish lady pounded at the flimsy door with her bony fists. “My bladder’s about to blow like Mount Saint Helen, you hear me, young man?”
Now she was shouting like a maniac. I knew it wouldn’t be long before a crew member came running to see what was wrong.
“Listen up, you brat,” the woman said. “I’m gonna count to five and then I’m bustin’ in—and you better not be sittin’ on that john when I do. You read me, junior? It ain’t gonna be pretty.”
“Please don’t,” I said, but it was hopeless.
“One! Two! …”
There was no other choice. I stood up from the toilet, put on the backpack, and lowered one shoulder. When the nasty old buzzard barked “Five!” I crashed out the door, ducked under her flailing, twig-sized arms, and took off running.
Nobody would’ve paid much attention if she hadn’t started shrieking: “Catch him! Catch that rotten little pervert!”
Luckily, I’m pretty fast and not real tall, so I was able to dodge and weave through the legs of the gamblers. A few of them glanced up, and one or two actually made a lame grab for my shirt. Fortunately, most of them had been celebrating hard and were in no condition to chase after me.
Shelly’s eyes got as wide as saucers when I flew past the bar. A bleary, leathery-faced man who I assumed was Billy Babcock spun on his stool and exclaimed, “Is that a kid on the boat?”
I headed topside. An angry yell rose from behind me, and I turned to see two humongous guys in hot pursuit. They looked seriously ticked off. Each wore a tight red T-shirt with the words EVENT STAFF silk-screened across the front.
Shelly had warned me about them—the bouncers.
They bellowed at me to stop, but that wasn’t going to happen. I scampered to the upper deck and ran straight for the bow. Reflected below, in the glassy basin, were the twinkling, Christmassy lights of the Coral Queen.
It was a long way down to the water; longer than I’d imagined.
“Game’s over,” a voice said.
I turned to face the bouncers, 400-odd pounds of meat and muscle. Panting from the chase, they wore cocky grins. They thought they had me cornered, but they were wrong.
One of them beckoned with a beefy finger. “Let’s go, boy.”
I kicked off my shoes and stuffed them into Abbey’s backpack.
The other one spoke up: “Chill out, shrimp. Don’t try anything stupid.”
After that “shrimp” remark, I couldn’t resist messing with them. “If I fall overboard and drown,” I said, “you guys are in deep trouble.”
“Yeah, right.”
“My mom and dad’ll sue Mr. Muleman for every cent he’s got, so you’d better watch it.”
The bouncers looked at each other and their smiles faded.
While they huddled to discuss their next move, I ducked under the railing and edged into position. I purposely didn’t look down again.
One of the goons took a step toward me. “Whaddya think you’re doin’? You nuts?” he asked.
They were getting ready to rush me, I could tell.
“Move away from there!” ordered the other bouncer, also moving forward. “You’re gonna break your fool neck.”
“I wasn’t planning on it,” I said.
Something like panic showed in their pudgy, squinting faces. They figured they’d lose their jobs, or worse, if they let something bad happen to me.
One of the men whipped out a walkie-talkie and held it close to his mouth. “Luno! Better come check this out!”
“Yeah, tell him to hurry,” the other man said. “This kid’s a real space case.”
It was definitely time to go.
The bouncers reached out and lunged, but I was already in the air, falling sweetly to freedom.
Or so I told myself as I hollered, “Geronimo!”
SIXTEEN
I don’t remember hitting the water, but I do remember sinking.
Not very deep, but deep enough to remind me that I was wearing Abbey’s backpack.
I could have ditched it, but that would have been the same as littering. Besides, MS. ABBEY UNDERWOOD was written with a bright red marker in two different places on the backpack. If somebody found it and saw all those empty food-coloring bottles, we were busted for sure.
Hurriedly I loosened one strap of the backpack to free my right shoulder, which made it easier to swim. I wasn’t breaking any Olympic records, but I was definitely putting some distance between myself and the Coral Queen. At any moment I expected the blue dinghy to come chugging into view, Abbey riding to the rescue.
Behind me, where the casino boat was moored, a shouting match had erupted. I turned my head and spotted Luno stomping back and forth under the dock lights, hollering furiously at the two bouncers on the top deck. The bouncers were yelling back, pointing across the basin.
Pointing at me, of course.
I kicked harder, thinking: Hurry up, Abbey. Hurry.
“Stop, boy!” Luno commanded. “You stop now!”
He was running along the docks, trying to keep even with me, so I dove beneath the surface. The dirty water stung my eyes and I squeezed them shut. It didn’t matter, because even with my eyes wide open I couldn’t have seen a whale three inches in front of my nose—not in that murky basin in the dead of night. I was swimming blind, but at least I was swimming.
When I came up for air, a white blast of light caught me squarely in the face.
“There he is!” Luno cried out. He was standing on a fish-cleaning table, sweeping a portable spotlight across the basin.
I ducked like a turtle and swam farther. When I popped up again, the same thing happened—the bright light, Luno yelling at me to stop. This time, though, he sounded closer.
Where was my sister?
The channel was at least a hundred yards away. Luno would run out of dock before I’d run out of water, but I was getting exhausted. My clothes were slowing me down, and the waterlogged backpack felt heavier by the minute.
Still no sign of the dinghy.
Even if my “Geronimo!” wasn’t loud enough, Abbey surely must have heard Dusty Muleman’s goons bellowing like bull elephants. I took a gulp of air and dove under again. Two kicks later I struck what seemed to be a wall of blubber.
A wall that moved.
Next thing I remember was me spinning like a top—then shooting upward, launched by some invisible brute force. Flying out of the water, I opened my eyes just in time to see an enormous brown shape, mossy and slick, pushing away at an incredible speed. A broad rounded tail slapped the surface so hard, it sounded like a rifle.
Right away I knew what had happened: I’d crashed into a sleeping manatee.
I splashed down in a tumble. For a solid minute I treaded water, not going anywhere, until my heart quit racing and I was able to catch my breath. The marina was momentarily quiet except for the merry chime of steel drums from the Coral Queen’s calypso band.
Where in the world was Abbey? And where was that
caveman Luno?
I began swimming again, although not as bravely as before. The collision with the sea cow had rattled me—I couldn’t help wondering what other creatures might be cruising around the dark cloudy basin. As huge as manatees are, they feed strictly on vegetation and have no appetite for humans. That’s not true for everything that swims at night, especially certain large and fearless sharks.
The water was as warm as soup, but an icy shiver ran down my neck as I kicked onward. I only know a few prayers by heart, but I said all of them to myself. Twice. That’s how scared I was.
I can’t say for certain whether God was listening, but it wasn’t long afterward that I heard the wheezy chug-a-chug-chug of a small outboard motor. I stopped moving and fixed my eyes in the direction of the noise. A familiar shape took form along the edge of the shadows, near the mouth of the basin.
As the shape drew closer, into the pale wash of the dock lights, I recognized the blue dinghy and the spindly silhouette of my sister at the helm.
Excitedly I called Abbey’s name, and she responded with our pre-arranged signal: three rapid blinks of her flashlight. I set out for the little boat as fast as I could, not caring how much noise I made. All I wanted was to get out of the water in one piece.
Abbey whistled, but I was too exhausted to whistle back. The dinghy was no longer heading my way; in fact, it seemed to be sliding away in the current. By the time I caught up, my arms and legs were starting to cramp. I grabbed on to the bow and, with my sister’s help, hauled myself aboard.
At first I couldn’t even talk—I just sat there, dripping and panting like a tired old dog. Finally, I shook off the backpack and dried my face with the tail of Abbey’s shirt.
“You okay?” she asked.
I nodded and rubbed my aching muscles. “How come you turned off the engine?”
“I didn’t,” Abbey said. “It stalled out.”
“Nice.”
“That’s how come I was late getting here. It took like forever to get the stupid thing started!”
I stepped to the stern to confront the creaky old Evinrude. The starter cord was a three-foot length of rope that wrapped tightly around the engine’s flywheel. A small block of plastic served as a handle on the exposed end of the rope, so you could pull it without shredding your fingers.
Hand-cranking an outboard is harder than starting a lawn mower. Marine engines have more horsepower, so it takes more strength to turn the flywheel. After bracing my heels against the transom of the dinghy, I locked both hands around the grip of the starter cord.
“Do it,” said my sister.
“Keep your fingers crossed.”
I reared back and yanked. The engine shuddered, coughed once, then went silent.
“Crap,” mumbled Abbey.
“Don’t worry,” I said, which was ridiculous. Only an idiot wouldn’t have been worried.
I shifted my weight slightly and took hold of the rope again.
“Let it happen, cap’n,” said Abbey.
At that instant the dinghy lit up like a movie stage—Luno had found us with his spotlight. Abbey and I shielded our eyes and tried to see where he was. His voice gave us the answer: He was close.
Too close.
“You again!” we heard him snarl. “You two punks! This time you no get away!”
He was standing at the end of the last dock in the marina. Off our port side was the mouth of the basin and, beyond that, open sea. If I could only get Rado’s darn engine started, Abbey and I could escape.
Again I tried the starter cord, and again nothing happened but a sad sputter.
“We’re drifting toward the dock,” my sister said gloomily.
“I can see that.”
“Should we jump?”
“No, not yet.”
Four, five, six times I pulled the rope with the same depressing result. Meanwhile a breeze was pushing the dinghy steadily toward the dock, where Luno was pacing like a hungry cat. For amusement he would occasionally zap us with the hot beam of his spotlight.
Abbey crouched low in the bow, but I had to keep standing. It was the only way to put enough force into pulling the starter cord.
As we floated closer to the lights, we could make out Luno’s gloating expression. His smile was thin and ugly.
Frantically I jerked on the starter cord, and this time the old engine gave an encouraging kick before sputtering out.
Luno crowed, “I get you punks now!”
My sister poked me in the back. “Noah, look! Quick!”
Another figure had joined the bald goon at the end of the dock. I recognized him immediately in that flowered Hawaiian shirt, but just the stink from his cigar would have given him away. It was Dusty Muleman himself.
“I’m outta here,” said Abbey, poised to jump.
“No, wait.” I feverishly resumed hauling on the starter cord, one hard pull after another. Nothing makes you forget how tired you are like pure cold fear. I was working like a robot in high gear.
Then my sister cried, “Noah, duck!”
And ducking would have been a smart move, no doubt about it. Because I turned to see Luno with his meaty right arm extended, aiming a stubby-looking gun at the dinghy. Dusty stood off to the side, blowing lazy rings of blue smoke.
The scene was so unreal, I just froze. It was like watching someone else’s nightmare. I felt blank and numb and far away.
“What’s the matter with you? Get down!” Abbey yelled.
By now we’d drifted to within fifty feet of the dock, which made us an easy target. Finally an alarm bell went off in my brain and I threw up both arms, shouting, “Don’t shoot! We give up!”
Dusty chuckled quietly. Luno was leering like a psycho. He did not lower the gun barrel even one millimeter.
“You kids make bad mistake,” he said. “Now must pay.”
If ever I was going to wet my pants in public, it would have been right then and there.
Yet all I could think about was protecting my sister, so I threw myself on top of her. The landing wasn’t so graceful— I banged my chin on the gunwale and nearly capsized us. Wrapping my arms around Abbey, I waited for the explosion of a gunshot.
It never came. A fierce and breathless struggle had broken out on the dock. Peeking over the side of the dinghy, Abbey and I witnessed an amazing sight.
As if dropped from the stars, a third man had materialized under the dock lights—and he was pounding Luno into a sweaty lump of Jell-O. The only sign of Dusty Muleman was the slapping of his designer flip-flops against the ground as he scurried off in terror toward the Coral Queen.
The cheerful tinkle of steel drums now mixed with Luno’s odd piggish grunts, the wiry stranger swinging a deck mop with painful accuracy.
In fact, he wasn’t a total stranger to me and my sister. We were near enough to see the M-shaped scar on his weathered tan face, and the bright gold coin swinging from the chain around his neck.
“The pirate guy!” Abbey whispered gleefully. “Outrageous!”
“Don’t you move,” I told her, and clambered to the stern. I seized the handle of the starter rope and, from a squatting position, yanked with every ounce of muscle I had left.
By some small miracle, the rickety old engine purred to life.
I whipped the dinghy around, aimed it toward the channel, and twisted the throttle wide open. I glanced back just as the mysterious pirate was hurling Luno’s stubby gun into the basin. For an old geezer, he had a pretty good arm.
After reaching the open water, I slowed to half speed. Running a boat at night is tricky because you can’t see very far or very clearly, and a cheapo flashlight doesn’t help much. All kinds of hazardous clutter could be floating in your path—boards, driftwood, coconuts, ropes—and it wouldn’t have taken much to wreck the propeller blades on the old Evinrude.
Abbey perched on the bow, watching out for obstacles, while I tried to navigate by the lights of the shoreline: motels, mansions, RV parks, tiki bars. The darkest st
retch was Thunder Beach, peaceful and deserted under a yellow moon. An ideal night for a momma turtle to crawl up and lay her eggs, I thought.
The salt air felt good on our faces as we ran against a light chop. Above us hung a glittering spray of stars that stretched all the way to Cuba. I was happier than I’d ever been, and so was Abbey.
“We did it!” she cheered. “We are so hot!”
“Adiós, Captain Muleman!” I shouted with a phony salute.
The hardest part of Operation Royal Flush was over. We’d laid the trap and escaped, though barely. Being chased by Luno wasn’t part of the plan, but it didn’t spoil anything. For now, Dusty Muleman and his gorillas wouldn’t be able to figure out what I’d been doing aboard the Coral Queen, since the only clue had gone down the toilets.
Way, way down the toilets, into the holding tank—the last place they’d ever stick their heads.
Only later would Dusty realize what I’d done, and by then he’d have worse problems—namely the U.S. Coast Guard, which I intended to call first thing in the morning.
But as jazzed as I was, I couldn’t forget how close Abbey and I had come to being shot. Shot. It was unbelievable.
Why, I wondered, would Dusty stand there and let Luno take aim at a couple of pint-sized trespassers? We must have really annoyed him, I thought, with all our snooping around.
And what were the odds of being rescued for a second time by the same stranger? Either the old pirate was following us around like some sort of weird guardian angel, or Abbey and I were the luckiest two kids in Florida.
“Hard right!” she called from the bow.
I pushed the tiller, and we skittered past a glistening spear of two-by-four, only inches away. It would have punched a hole in the hull for sure.
“Good eyes,” I called to my sister.
“Thanks. What’s that noise?”
“Don’t know.”
“Noah, why are you slowing us down?” she shouted.
“I’m not,” I said. “Not on purpose, anyway.”