“Claims he’s got juice in the probation system. He can make it either better or worse for me. I don’t need to fucking go backward.”
“That’s a good one. Be better if you could hold him to it. Telling lies, he’s had years of training.”
“What if his deal takes a shit?”
Duane looked down the canal as if the resident cormorant was an essential factor in his dockside existence. “If it goes good, you get a snack from Rigoberto.”
I waited for the rest.
“Something goes sideways...” He turned to look me in the eye. “You’ll be glad your mother died first.”
Change the subject. “How did The Club happen to migrate to Alabama Jack’s?”
“My doing. I’ve always come here. I grew up a half mile up the road.”
I asked tactfully, “In a stilt home?”
Duane shook his head. “A lopsided shack that started as a house trailer which became a houseboat which survived I can’t count how many storms and got attached to the canal’s edge. We were scroungy-ass poor but never hungry except one summer when I didn’t have a boat motor. I had to troll out of a fucking canoe. That was the summer me and my sisters almost starved.”
“Mister James Task over there bragged to me two hours ago about coming down Biscayne Bay from Miami Beach in the 1970s and boosting a fifteen-horse Johnson off what he called a piece-of-crap rowboat.”
“Boys will be boys,” said Duane. “You come in your pickup?”
“I drove his Town Car.”
“What color is it?” He turned, gave a slight wave, caught the attention of our server.
“Dark maroon,” I said.
Duane’s cell phone rang. He unclipped it from his belt, raised his bifocals to read the caller ID, scowled, stood, and walked fifteen feet from the table. His conversation lasted no more than ten seconds.
I wondered what had happened to our server. I watched her take a walk-around phone from the fishing guide at the bar and hang it back on the wall.
Across the table, Rigo and Task looked up when Duane took his seat.
“Kids,” said Duane.
Rigo nodded and asked us to rejoin him and Task.
“I’ve been explaining the new realities of yacht restoration,” said Rigo. “How someone finds a stripped and abandoned boat, reports it to the Marine Patrol, then tries to claim salvage rights. When that fails, which is no surprise, the finder buys it from the insurance company and hires an outfitter to make the yacht presentable again.”
“It’s a great concept,” said Task. “You got the original claim, the stripped stuff in a storage locker, the cost of the lawyers, and the hull. Then the resale including finder’s fees and brokerage fees, you got cash flow at every stage.”
Duane looked up at a twirling fan. “The rebuilder has to reapply for a boat title, so every time it gets stolen, rebuilt, and resold, it’s officially a different boat. The state of Florida will catch on someday, but they haven’t done it yet.”
Task picked his ear and did a wax check. “I love it,” he said, “and so will my people.”
The fishing guide from the bar appeared at our table. “Who wants to go sightseeing?” he said. “A pickup truck just sailed into Elliott Key.”
“A refugee raft?” I said.
“Eighteen Cubans running a bus diesel with a prop on the driveshaft. God knows how they made it across. You want to ride up with me to look?”
“Shit yes, Bear,” said Rigo. “This is current-day history in action. We’ll all go along if there’s room.”
Captain Bear shook his head. “Room for three but not four.”
Duane said, “I’ll stay behind.”
“I want you along,” said Rigo. “We got something in motion. We need to talk with Mr. Task.”
“I’ll sit at the bar,” I said. “I can watch golf and daydream about painting walls.”
They left and I took Captain Bear’s vacated stool, a mere ten feet from the TV, and nursed my third Bloody Mary. Ten minutes into my wait, the server I knew handed me a bar napkin. The note read: NO PASSENGER SIDE AIR BAG. 75 BIGS AND TASER IN CAVITY. PIG STICKER IN DRIVER’S SIDE VISOR
Forty minutes later, I heard Bear’s skiff maneuver to the dock. Rigo and Captain Bear returned to our table by the railing, and Duane motioned for me to follow him outside. We walked down the dock toward the Hewes that Bear chartered. Over the railing the dredged canal bottom reflected early-afternoon sun. It looked like a painter’s dreamscape of aquatic pastels, except it was real and just the ditch.
“Strange sky this afternoon,” I said.
“You’re in South Florida, Clancy Whidden. After enough time ain’t nothing strange here.”
“Where’s our man Task?”
“He got side-tracted,” said Duane. “Stupid asshole was running solo. He had the cojones to ask for security cash.”
“Not too damned smart,” I said.
“True, and you should be offended. He didn’t think much of your smarts, either. He volunteered to... What’d he say? Remove you from the equation.”
“Not a surprise,” I said.
“Rigo thinks you should be compensated for Task’s rudeness.” Duane reached into the Hewes skiff, grabbed two cans of Budweiser, and handed me one. “Don’t pop it open just yet,” he said. “There’s ten grand in there. Where are you going to leave that Town Car, and don’t tell me the airport?”
“I’ll park it behind a bar in South Miami. They’ll think for a week that some drunk forgot where he left it.”
“That’s plenty of time. You didn’t drive the Turnpike, right?”
“Don’t worry,” I said. “No toll booth photos.”
“That’s a healthy chunk of change, Clancy. How will you spend yours?”
“A Yamaha piano. I can’t decide between baby grand or upright. I’ll stash the rest and trickle-spend. You?”
“That’s a coincidence — Yamaha. I’m going to order a 225 four-stroke for my workboat. Replace that Johnson someone stole a lifetime ago.”
“You think he did it?”
“I figure a five-year gap between our ages, maybe six.” Duane popped open his beer. “I’d sure like to know who it was, but it wasn’t him.”
Solomon & Lord drop anchor
by Paul Levine
Florida Straits
What aren’t you telling me?” Victoria Lord demanded.
Jeez. Her grand jury tone.
“Nothing to tell,” Steve Solomon said. “I’m going deep-sea fishing.”
“You? The guy who got seasick in a paddle boat at Disney World?”
“That boat was defective. I’m gonna sue.” Steve hauled an Igloo cooler onto the kitchen counter. “You may not know it, but I come from a long line of anglers.”
“A long line of liars, you mean.”
The partners of Solomon & Lord, Attorneys-at-Law, stood in the kitchen of Steve’s bungalow on Kumquat Avenue in Coconut Grove. The place was a square stucco pillbox the color of a rotting avocado, but it had withstood hurricanes, termites, and countless keg parties.
Unshaven and hair mussed, wearing cargo shorts and a T-shirt, Steve looked like a beach bum. Lips glossed and cheekbones highlighted, wearing a glen-plaid suit with an ivory silk blouse, Victoria looked sexy, smart, and successful.
“C’mon, Steve. What are you really up to?” Her voice drizzled with suspicion like mango glaze over sautéed snapper.
Steve wanted to tell his lover and law partner the truth. Or at least, the partial truth. But he knew how Ms. Propriety would react: “You can’t do that. It’s unethical.”