O’Hara went below and checked the cabin. It was empty. So was the galley, which was spotless. A coffee pot steamed on an electric stove. Nearby were a Braun electric grinder and three bags of coffee beans. O’Hara checked the label on one of them. Tanzanian Kilimanjaro.
He poured himself a cup, went back n deck and sat on the gunwale, watching Walker’s Cay grow smaller as the sun made a spectacular entrance. Gulls swept down over the wake and bitched at him. The engines got serious and the Miami Belle picked up speed.
By the time the sun cleared the horizon, Walker’s was a mere speck. Small, sandy islands abounded, protected by jagged peaks of coral jutting from the placid sea. Here and there, fishing boats plied the troughs, trolling for big game. Several big sharks, ten-footers or larger, glided close to the boat, looking for a handout. Clumps of coral drifted below them, thirty feet down, yet seeming close enough to touch through the crystal water.
They had been out fifteen or twenty minutes when Cap’n K. altered his course, circling a flat, sandy island. On the west side, away from the fishing traffic, near the mouth of a tiny inlet, a man was hunched under a broad-brimmed straw hat, fishing from the back of a small rowboat -
‘Ahoy down there,’ Cap’n K. barked. ‘How’s th’ fishin’?’
Tony Falmouth looked up and smiled. ‘The bloody bugs’ve damn near done me in. Thirty minutes, and they’ve sucked me dry. Here, get this lifeboat hooked up and get me aboard while I’ve still got some blood left in me.’
‘Gotcher, toot-sweet,’ the red-haired master of the Miami Belle yelled down. He throttled back and threw a line to Falmouth.
Falmouth looked good, but tense. He seemed taller than O’Hara had remembered and was definitely thinner. A little grayer, too, maybe. But his handsome features were etched by a deep tan and he still had the smile of a rascal. The year and a half had treated him kindly, particularly in a game where a week could sometimes do terrible things to a human being.
The tall man climbed on deck and lit a cigarette. He threw the match underhanded, watching it arc out and vanish, with hardly a sizzle, into the mirror-like sea.
‘Cheers, Sailor,’ he said, as if they had met yesterday. And O’Hara grinned and stuck out his hand.
‘Glad to see you’re in one piece, lad,’ Falmouth said. ‘For a while there I was a little worried maybe they’d get you.’ The years had refined everything about him, including his accent, although it was still softly tempered with an Irish lilt.
‘I knew you were around somewhere,’ O’Hara said.
Falmouth raised an eyebrow. ‘Oh? And how’s that?’
‘A discussion we had one night over dinner in San Francisco. About coffee.’
‘Jesus, that must have been four years ago.’
‘About that.’
‘And you remember the kind of coffee I like?’
‘No, I remember you like to grind your own. Now, the captain there, he looks like it would be fine by him if the coffee were made out of buffalo chips. There’s three bags of gourmet coffee and a grinder down in the galley.’
‘Neat,’ Falmouth said. “A” for the course. Want to put some legs under your java?’
‘Brandy?’
‘I think we can accommodate you.’
Falmouth went below and emerged with a bottle of Courvoisier. He doused both cups liberally.
‘Before I forget, thanks for getting me off the hook in Washington,’ O’Hara said.
‘My pleasure, Sailor. Listen here, I was on the cuff to you. Let’s not lose our perspective, eh?’
‘So, we’re starting dead even.’
Falmouth hesitated for just an instant. ‘So to speak,’ he said.
Cap’n K. secured the lifeboat in its rig on the stern. He wiped his hands on an oily rag. Then he asked, ‘Anybody want a bagel with their coffee?’
‘A bagel?’ O’Hara said. ‘Two days ago I was on Howe’s yacht having scrod for breakfast.’
‘Well, fuck it, then,’ Cap’n K. said and disappeared down the hatch toward the galley.
‘Where did you dig him up?’ O’Hara asked.
‘Expatriate American,’ Falmouth said.. ‘Knows these waters better than the fish. Was a lawyer once big pistol. About ten years ago he got fed up, said the hell with it, took his two boys outta school, bought himself a boat and he’s been here ever since. The boys run the business now. They also have an air charter service that works the islands. And a very handy radiophone.’
‘You thinking of becoming a beach bum, now that you’re retired?’
Falmouth looked at him with mild curiosity for a moment and then said, ‘It’s a thought. The bloody rascal not only knows more about these islands than anyone alive, he sees nothing, hears nothing and says nothing.’
‘What in hell are we doing out here in the middle of nowhere?’
‘Nobody can sneak up on you out here.’
‘Getting a little paranoid, aren’t you?’
‘There’s good reason,’ he said, without explaining the remark.
O’Hara had never seen him this edgy. But Falmouth changed his mood quickly. ‘Pour yourself some more mud and try one of Cap’s bagels. We’ll get under way. take a little sun, catch a fish or two. I’ll tell you a story will turn your toes up.’
‘Can we set the lines while we’re lyin’ idle?’ Cap’n K. asked, interrupting them as he emerged from below. For the next few minutes there was a flurry of activity. The captain turned the Miami Belle out toward the open sea and tied down the wheel. He came back to the stern, dragged a four-foot barracuda out of the bait box and buried a hook the size of a grappling iron deep in its gills. He threw the hook overboard and fed the line out about fifteen feet, then set the rod in a bracket in the gunwales. He pulled up some slack from the line, hooked it over a small pulley and reeled the line out to the point of the outrigger and set it in place with a clothespin.
He repeated the procedure with the other rod, using a tattered fish head for bait. Then he leaned on the side of the boat. ‘Just remember,’ he said, ‘the big ones, the billfish, they hit twice.’ He held up two fingers to make his point.
‘First time, they use that schnozz on the end of their nose, they use that to stun their meal, they lay back a second or two, whap, they hit again. That time the hook goes in, okay? You’ll know it. When they make that first hit , the line’ll snap outa the outrigger, the line picks up the slack so the bait don’t run away from the fish, then bang, he’ll hit it again. Then you haul ass, toot-sweet, set that hook in good, or the fucker’ll spit it Out. Then it’s you and him, one on one.’ He waved disdainfully at the other rod. ‘The other line’s fixed for smaller stuff. They’ll hit it and dive deep. Maybe we’ll pick up something tasty for dinner.’
He went back to the bridge and eased up the throttles. The bait skittered along the surface of the water, fifty or sixty feet behind the boat.
Falmouth settled down in one of the two fighting chairs in the stern. ‘I figgered we’d mix a little pleasure with business,’ he said. ‘Grab a chair and let’s chat.’
‘For the record, Tony, why me? Why pick a guy on the dodge?’
‘Well, Sailor, we know each other and you know the territory and you know I’m not a bullshitter.. . Who else would I pick, Walter-bleedin’-Cronkite? Stickin’ it to that bloody Winter Man and bringin’ you in, I felt I owed you that. Once done, you’re the best man I know for the job.’
‘Job?’ O’Hara said.
‘It’s what you do now, isn’t it? Reporting for a living.’ Falmouth lit a cigarette and threw the match to the wind.
‘How come you turned down the Winter Man’s offer?’ O’Hara asked.
‘Hell, we’re friends. Also I don’t like him. It’s bastards like that give the Company a bad name. Besides, Sailor, I wasn’t all that sure I could turn you up. I’m not a tracker. My specialties are planning and execution. And even if 1 had turned you up, I wasn’t that sure I could take you.’