If I’d ever been committed to one woman in my life, it’d been Maria and every time she said “Unca Charlie,” I melted.
At least once a week, I drove her to school, but not before stopping off at Krispy Kreme where the HOT NOW sign was flashing glow plug red. “Uncle Charlie” became the de facto babysitter and I loved it. Maria followed in her mother’s footsteps, and Zaul fell in love with two things: surfing and the life—and look—of a rapper.
While Maria owned the spotlight, Zaul shared his mother’s gift of music and, at one time, could make a piano sing. He had his father’s quick mind—a whiz with math, could solve complex problems with relative ease, and had always disliked school. I was with him when Colin took him to his first Dolphins game, and I got to sit courtside with him at his first Heat game. We caught umpteen lobsters together both in Bimini and around the Keys, snorkeled around dozens of wrecks, and speared some really big fish in forty to sixty feet of water. Unlike Maria, Zaul wasn’t friends with the masses, but he was good friends with a few.
Despite mine and Colin’s best attempts at influence, Zaul was attracted to two things: others’ attention and things that glitter. Especially people.
To insert himself, to get noticed, he’d jump off the dock house—three stories up. Then he’d jump off and do a front flip. Then a back. Then two backs. As he grew older, he constantly ramped up his appeals to impress people. Soon he was trying to impress the attendees at his dad’s parties. And while that was cute at first, I saw Colin begin to wrestle with how to control a son who was growing out of control. And the effect showed on Marguerite’s face. The wrinkles above her eyes. If my life with Colin was a controlled burn, Zaul’s life was a smoking heap and had the possibility to become a wildfire out of control.
Shortly after I met him, Zaul began hanging with the wrong crowd. Sneaking out. He changed his clothes. His mannerisms. He spent his days and most of his nights, 24-7, calculating how to be or become cool in other people’s eyes. Everything he did, every action he took, had been precalculated to draw, and hopefully keep, attention. He was driven by bitter envy and selfish ambition. Where Maria had gravitated toward beauty, Zaul was attracted to power—and wielding it. He saw his father, the circles he walked in, the money he spent, and somewhere in that mind of his, he decided he wanted it. He spent less time at home, snuck out more, had three tattoos before his folks knew about the first. He was buying, selling, and smoking dope before he was twelve; cussed out his mom when he was thirteen; had a diamond stud earring by fourteen; and, following his sixteenth birthday, had wrecked two new cars before the permanent tags had arrived in the mail.
Colin and Marguerite were not unaware. They knew they were losing or had lost control of Zaul, but the seeds of that were sewn long ago. They’d given him a generous allowance since he was ten. Pampered. Enabled. Made apologies for. Rolled out the silver platter. Let him do as he pleased. If he wanted something, he demanded and they gave. They erected no boundaries in his life, and hence, he operated by few, if any. A few months ago, he bought himself a $20,000 gold Rolex with a diamond bezel. A month later, when he turned up one morning with a black eye, a busted lip, and no watch, he hopped in his car and bought another.
The last real glimmer of light I’d seen with Zaul came just after he’d turned fourteen. I’d been sitting on the dock with Maria, feeding the fish, when Zaul appeared with a stack of playing cards. “Uncle Charlie…you teach me how to play poker?”
Zaul had so retreated into his own world and I saw him so seldom that interactions between us were scarce. And conversations with his folks were almost nonexistent. His sudden interest in me surprised me. I could tell Colin and Marguerite were worried, so I was looking for a way, any way, to engage Zaul. When he invited me in, I jumped on it.
Zaul and I met in his dad’s boathouse and played every week for the better part of six months. And I think in his own way, he began looking forward to our “weekly game” as he called it. He listened, learned, and got proficient, but he wasn’t any good. The only part of the game he was good at was losing money. Which he could do as well as the best of them. And he couldn’t bluff to save his life. His greatest strength was also his greatest weakness. Despite his tough exterior, Zaul had his mother’s heart. Tender and honest. That may make for a good human being, but it makes for a very bad poker player. To compensate for this “inadequacy,” he kept wanting me to teach him how to cheat. In order to keep him in my life, I taught him two or three tricks—real novice stuff—but I never thought he’d actually try to use them in a real game.
Then about a year ago, he quit showing up at the boathouse. I hadn’t seen him much since.
* * *
One interesting development occurred during this time. American distilled spirit consumption changed and grew at the same time, and people’s desire for rum doubled and tripled overnight. Colin was pretty well connected in the legitimate Central American rum trade. So while I was a drug runner, I became a legitimate rumrunner. Sugarcane production in Central America was at an all-time high, as was rum production. People couldn’t get enough of it, and while our margins on rum weren’t what they were on cocaine, good rum business allowed Colin to launder more money through SIN. While we imported some through legitimate channels in and around Miami customs, we also hired barges and floated some north to the islands, where we unloaded and stored it until I could carry batch loads over. I soon found myself making the forty-four-mile crossing every other day. Sometimes every day. A few times I made it twice a day. Colin and I knew this had to be attracting attention, and his two well-paid contacts in the DEA confirmed this. So I never drove the same boat twice and never dropped at the same place twice. On three occasions, we got a tip that law enforcement was waiting on us in a canal en route to the Keys. I anchored just offshore, thumbed a ride back to Miami, “borrowed” one of Colin’s museum boats, and made my way home by tacking north some ninety miles and then coming in on the eastern “back” side of Bimini. The “abandoned” vessel was reported on the news along with the suspicion of drugs, but they found none because—with Colin’s full agreement—I’d fed the fish.
The Bahamian police soon clued in to the fact that we were running rum through the island, and they wanted a cut. Gladly. By the caseload. We gave them all they and their families could drink. We wanted to keep them as happy with us as possible, and they were. They never bothered us. Didn’t check our boats. Didn’t wake me up in the middle of the night. In fact, they ran interference for us when the larger U.S. agencies came knocking.
Given my special set of skills, Colin leaned on me more and more. On the surface, Colin and I ran a successful business. Beneath the surface, we sold and delivered a lot of cocaine to very wealthy people, who paid us a lot of money to keep their identities and habits hidden. Which we did. Business grew. When I hadn’t seen Hack in a week, he came knocking and found me asleep. I’d been out all night and returned only about an hour before he shook me.
He held a cup of coffee next to my nose and said, “Come on. Your porch is calling you.”
I sat and he jumped right in. “I was once crazy like you.” An exhale and a smile. “I ran rum before it was legal. I told you once I’d never been off this island.” He shook his head. “That’s a lie. I been over a good part of this hemisphere and bought and sold more rum than most companies.” He lit a second cigarette with the dying embers of the first. “I don’t fault you for what you’re doing. If people want to blow that white stuff into their lungs, so be it, but let me offer you one bit of advice.” He turned to me. “I have love one woman in this world.” Hack often dropped the “d” on his past-tense verbs. “Love her with all of me. One night pirates wanted our boat. A lot of rum. I tell them they no can have it.” He sucked through his teeth. “So because they could not take my boat, they took her. Shot her.” He pointed at his stomach. “Painful. I buried her at sea.” A long pause. “It’s been over forty years and the hurt hasn’t gotten any better.” A nod. “So, you do what you want. You’ve a right to that, but just know that the business you’re in does not have a happy ending. No one…” He waved a finger in the air. “And I mean no one, no matter how smart, ever stays in and escapes what they got coming.”