A canal dead-ended by the roadside, and warm water from the electrical plant flowed into the canal at that point. A makeshift picnic area had once been set up around the perimeter of the water where a few scraggly pine trees survived in the shadow of a tank farm and the stacks of the power plant, but the authorities had removed the tables and attempted to cover the fence with blinds. What attracted people to this spot wasn’t the trees but what was in the water: manatees. The big sea cows had started coming to the power plant’s outflow during cold fronts. The warm water found there was a welcome relief from the cold winter temperatures. Eventually, people started feeding them lettuce and bits of fruit, and now the manatees came as much in hopes of a free handout as for the warm water. They tried to keep the crowds away, but die-hard manatee lovers had cut holes in the blinds.
I parked the Jeep as far off the road as I could get. There was a Latino family already there, with two little kids, about five and seven years old, all dressed up in their church finery. The littler was a girl, clutching lettuce leaves in her dainty hands, all pink ruffles and ribbons. Her daddy was holding her up so she could toss the leaves over the top of the chain-link fence down into the water.
“Mira, mira, Papa,” she squealed, excitedly pointing into the water.
I walked to the fence and wrapped my fingers through the wire. At the bottom of the pit, a mother manatee lolled on the surface, slowly drifting toward any debris on the water, checking out its edible qualities. Her gray back was crisscrossed with white scars where boat propellers had slashed her. In her wake was a tiny calf: an adorable, chubby, unblemished miniature of his mom.
Mother and child. My mother’s scars weren’t visible, and I had been a kid. How could I have been expected to understand? I watched as the crisscrossed manatee mother nudged the calf over to the lettuce. She wore her motherhood so effortlessly.
After watching the manatees for fifteen minutes or so, I climbed back into Lightnin’ and sat before turning the key in the ignition. I envied the little girl on her father’s shoulders. I couldn’t remember Red ever lifting me up like that. I was never Daddy’s little girl. He was proud of me in a different way, because I was smart and knew boats and could pull Gorda in to kiss the dock from the time I was about eight years old. From a very early age Red talked to me like I was an adult, treating me sometimes as the woman of the house. When he’d leave to go on a job down in Miami, before he’d go out that door, he’d crouch down in front of me and say quietly, “You’ll take care of your mother and your brothers, now, won’t you?" Red knew that Mother sometimes was there to mother us and sometimes vanished behind her door and didn’t come out for days. I would take over feeding the boys hot dogs and pork and beans for dinner and shushing them, telling them not to bother her. Then Red would come home, and I could be a kid again. God, I missed my dad. I didn’t know who I could trust anymore.
XV
When I heard the beeping, I was aware of where I was, and I really had to pee. I’d slept a few hours at the Paradise Hotel just to get away from everyone. The room was spartan and what little was there was tasteless. I’d wolfed down a Whopper with cheese and large order of fries while balancing the food on my lap. Nothing in the room looked clean enough to eat off. In fact, I’d decided to turn the air down and nap on top of the covers. I didn’t want to see what surprises might be on the sheets. The carbohydrate fix had made me even sleepier. I’d set the alarm on my watch for 1:00 A.M., and I was out the moment I was prone.
Now it took all the willpower I could muster to force my body up off that bed and into the bathroom. I sat on the john and wondered if I was a complete lunatic to try to break into a million-dollar yacht tied up to the docks of a United States Coast Guard base. My conclusion: probably. But I didn’t know what else to do at that point. I was certain that everything that had happened during these last four days was connected. Ely and Patty both had been killed because of some secret, and Neal was hiding out because he knew something about it. Men like Hamilton Burns and his clients really valued only money. At the moment, I could use some of it myself, and that was just one reason I was determined to find out if the Top Ten held any of the answers I was looking for.
The motel was quiet and the streets were nearly empty when I pulled out onto the highway. I’d found an old navy blue zip-front hooded sweatshirt balled up in the back of my Jeep, and I pulled it on to cover my bright T-shirt. The dark jean shorts would be okay. I also had a collection of baseball caps under the seat for days when the wind in the Jeep got to be too much. With my hair pulled into a tight ponytail, I chose a dark cap with Sullivan Towing stitched in faded gold across the front. It had once belonged to Red.
It had been a long time since I had last been to John Lloyd Beach State Park. The park was on a long peninsula that formed the southern side of the mouth to the harbor at Port Everglades. This narrow strip of land was really a barrier island that stretched all the way down to South Beach and the Miami Harbor entrance. The ocean flowed on the outside, the Intracoastal on the inside. At the tip of the peninsula, the Coast Guard had their facilities, but you had to pass through the park to get down to their station. The State Parks people manned a security gate there round the clock.
I turned off into the parking lot at Dania Beach and parked in one of the metered spots. The best way to get past the gate would be on foot, going into the brush on either side of the guard station. But then it would be a good two-mile hike down to where the Top Ten was docked. I didn’t think anybody would be on the road through the park at that hour. I grabbed the backpack containing my in-line skates. There was a flashlight under the driver’s seat for emergencies, and I dropped it in the backpack as well.
I pulled my cap down low over my face as I crossed the Whiskey Creek bridge. I was in full view of the ranger station about fifteen hundred yards ahead, but I was guessing that the person on duty either had something to read or some music and he wouldn’t pay much attention to my end of the road. At the bottom of the bridge, I turned off into the forest of tall Australian pines. The thick carpet of pine needles on the forest floor made it easy walking, although the trees didn’t provide much cover. I passed the ranger post about a hundred feet away. I could see the headphones on the young man’s head.
The road took a turn another couple of hundred yards past the guard post, and I sat on a chunk of dead coral on the side of the road and pulled on my skates.
The road through the park was dark and desolate. Pines lined the right side of the road, and on the left, short mangrove seedlings covered the bank before the dark water of the Intracoastal. I skated near the side of the road, ready to jump into the trees if a car approached. The asphalt was rough, and I tried to get into my steady rhythm of side-to-side sweeping strides.
Just across the Intracoastal, the mangroves began to thin out and the bright lights of the busy commercial port lit my way. On one side was the loamy smell of the dark pine woods, while across the water came the noises and machine smells of ships’ engines and generators. Toward the end of the peninsula, the road curved, and through the trees, I could see the lights of the dormitories and buildings at the station.
There were several compounds out on the end of the peninsula that marked the southern half of the entrance to Port Everglades. After I replaced my skates with my sneakers, I checked the whole area over to make sure I was jumping the right fence. The entrance to the Coast Guard station had a closed chain-link gate that operated electronically, but no guard. Not even any barbed wire on top. Up until now, everything I’d been doing had been minor but breaking into a U.S. military installation was a major offense. My pulse was throbbing in my neck as I hooked my fingers through the chain link. It took me several minutes to force myself to make the first step. Once over, I made my way around the perimeter of the compound to where I could see the Top Ten berthed behind a forty-foot cutter.