I shut the engines and turned on the coffeepot. I knew they’d work up quite an appetite tearing up my boat, so I pulled a box of doughnuts from my bag and left it in a false floor in one of the forward hatches beneath a pile of greasy life jackets. Wouldn’t take them long to find it. I sketched a smiley face on a yellow sticky note and wrote, “Help yourself.” On the rear deck near the engine, located in another false floor beneath one of the live wells, I left a bowl of food for Molly. Her favorite—venison and lamb.
I pulled up the float indicating the crab trap and unrolled my wet suit. The water wasn’t too cold, but the flat black color didn’t show up as well under water as my pale skin. I slid into it, pulled the regulator over my mouth, slipped into the water, pulled on my fins, and began the half-mile swim. I took my time. My tanks had been retrofitted with dual Pegasus Thrusters. These were underwater propulsion devices that pushed me along at 170 feet per minute. Up top that equates to about two knots. I also held on to an H-160 thruster, which was similar to holding on to a torpedo. The combination of these sped me along underwater silently and unseen and kept my legs fresh in the event that I needed them.
I snaked my way through the canals, spotted the flashing beacon above me, dropped my gear, and squirreled out of my wet suit—letting it fall forty feet to the ocean floor beneath me—and surfaced next to the Pathfinder, which I’d packed and docked three days prior. I untied the bowline, shoved off. Thirty minutes later, I was staring at the dock where the basketball team, the rapper with his entourage, the pop artist with her management team, the hedge fund owner with all the girls he could buy, and one-quarter of Miami’s elite were partying. If they wanted to suck their money up their noses, that was their right, their privilege, and their problem. I simply provided an overnight delivery service. If I didn’t, someone else would. Supply and demand.
I slid up next to the dock beneath the rocking boom-boom of a party in the house. In the dark, I unloaded and stacked several packages inside a hidden floor cavity beneath a rolling locker on the dock. I’d been here before. A good customer. Having returned all the furniture to neat and tidy and just as I’d found it, I texted delivery confirmation, jumped back in my boat, and disappeared.
An hour later, I swam beneath the mangroves en route to the Storied Career. Four other DEA boats had surrounded her. She was lit up like a runway. As if the second search would turn up what the first did not. Staring from a distance, Agents Beckwith and Spangler marched about in a spitting frenzy, flinging four-letter words and whatever wasn’t tied down in my boat. Molly stood on the stern, muzzle deep in a box of doughnuts. She must have gotten to the powdered first because her normally black nose and mouth were pastry white. A half mile down the street beyond the boat, the marquee of an all-night pizza joint flashed. I routed around the boats, bought a large pizza, and returned to the boat, holding the box on my shoulder. “Hi, guys. Pizza?” They didn’t like that much, either. But since they had neither drugs nor cash nor evidence that I had or had had any of the above, there wasn’t much they could do other than cuss a little more and tell me to get lost.
Which I did.
I snaked my way through the canals, docked at a marina, and then made my way on foot to my Beach Cruiser. A few miles later, I let myself in Colin’s back door. When they built their house, Marguerite had custom cabinets installed in the back hall. Lockers of sorts for the kids, where they threw all their school and sports stuff, including smelly shoes or jackets, when they walked in the back door. Once I became family, Colin had one added for me. And like most everything Colin Specter did, there was more than one reason for this.
I slipped my hand inside the top shelf of my cubicle, in the back corner, where—invisible from the front—a small sleeve, or pocket, had been built. Just large enough for a cell phone—or a SIM card. It was one of many such places. My fingertips found the new postage-stamp-sized card; I quickly replaced it in my phone, dropped the old card in the trash can leading into the back of the house, and slid the phone back in my pocket.
Something I’d done a hundred times before.
Maria sat on the couch. Pigtails. Ribbons. Evidence of her mother’s makeup. Pink leotard fresh from ballet. Knees tucked into her chest, popcorn resting on her knees, watching our favorite movie. I sat next to her as the nuns on the screen began to sing about their problem—Maria in the convent. The real Maria—the one on the couch next to me—sat, foot tapping, and did not need an invitation to join the singing now filling the airwaves of the living room and kitchen. Knowing full well she had our attention and that the curtain on the stage of her life had now parted, she stood on the couch and belted out the beginnings of a beautiful singing voice. Eyebrow lifted, a sly smile spreading across her face, her mischievous voice asked the nearly half-century-old question of the self-titled song regarding how one might solve a problem like Maria.
Maria and I first watched The Sound of Music when she was four. In a pinch, Colin and Marguerite had asked me to babysit, and knowing next to nothing about children, especially young ones, I plugged in what I thought would help pass the time. It worked and we’ve watched it a hundred times since. Now, at twelve, Maria knew her lines as well as the original cast members.
Jumping from the couch to the pool table, Maria spun, pirouetted, and pliéd herself across the tabletop, leaving petite, powdered footprints on the felt, quite oblivious to the effect her animated hands might have on the hanging light fixture. Her problem in gaining much reaction from “the crowd” rested in the fact that we adults had joined in so many times prior that we’d grown bored of the same and, in a desire for levity amid the monotony, begun to devolve into a confederacy of rhythm-challenged idiots. Doing so, we morphed into our own version of the now-hallowed song. From the kitchen, Colin and Marguerite sang out some sort of cheesy, offbeat rap duet while I feigned total beat ignorance, tapping and snapping badly out of time while singing with as much melodic acumen as a howling coyote.
Monkeys with pots and pans had more rhythm.
After little more than a single verse, Maria, hands on her hips and sensing that the room had descended into total musical chaos, raised an eyebrow, pursed her lips into a frown, and returned to her popcorn and the couch with a deflated exhale and a practiced look of measured disdain. Throwing a handful of popcorn into her mouth, she blew a strand of hair out of her face while texting a friend on her iPhone. Her fingers spoke one message, her mouth another. “You people are so old.”
I laughed. “Yes, we are.”
Cradling the popcorn bowl, she sat cross-legged on the couch, stuffed her mouth, and then rubbed her greasy hands on my shirtsleeve.
I scooted closer to offer some of my signature comedic attempts, which once elicited bladder-busting belly laughter and tears, but now at the knowing age of almost-a-teenager, she would have none of it. She raised her maturing, stop sign hand and spoke without ever taking her eyes off her phone. “Talk to the hand.”
I laughed, kissed her forehead, and turned toward the kitchen, but not before dumping the remains of the half-eaten bucket of popcorn on her head.
“Uncle Charlie!” She jumped up, stamping a foot. A vision in pink. “I cannot believe you just did that!” Eyes wide, she protested with a rather exasperated level of drama. “I just had my hair colored…”
I love that girl.
“Then I guess that proves what we already know…,” I said, laughing and walking backward toward the kitchen.
She looked at me confused. “What?”