Читать книгу Suitcase City - Sterling Watson - Страница 9

TWO

By the time they reached the off-loading site, Teach had calmed himself and treated his headache with whiskey. His first job, he knew, was to keep quiet about what he had seen. There would be plenty of time later to explain to Naylor. No telling how Naylor would react if Teach told it now.

Teach eased the Santa Maria as close to the canal bank as she could go. Naylor always hid in the scrub beyond the bank until Teach gave the signal to bring the truck up the last half mile. Teach idled the engine, picked up his flashlight, and shot the beam at the scrub. Naylor flashed back twice. Teach waited in the wheelhouse while Naylor threw aboard the two lines he kept secured to the trunks of cypress trees. When the boat was moored fore and aft, Naylor lowered a gangplank fixed by hinges to the base of a cypress. A block and tackle in the treetop let the gangplank down across the twenty feet of water to the shrimper’s rail. It was a good and speedy arrangement. The plank was the only permanent apparatus, and when it was upright you had to be in the water directly opposite the tree to see it.

Naylor waved his flashlight to Teach and took off jogging for the truck. Teach went down to the deck. He hadn’t spoken to the Guatemalans since the shooting. He found them in the stern, smoking, their heads together. They stopped talking when he approached. He stood only a few feet from them, but he and they were separated now by more than land and language. It had been crazy stupid to kill Frank Deeks. If they had given Teach the chance, he could have explained Deeks to them, told them the guy was poaching traps. Told them Deeks would have cut off his hands before admitting he’d seen the Santa Maria.

Teach said, “Mi amigo va por el camión. Regresa en unos minutos.” He could already hear in the distance the slow whine of Naylor’s engine.

Esteban stepped away from the other two, looked at Teach. “It is just as it always is. Hurry with the unloading.”

Teach nodded. Ordinary nights, Teach had ten bales ashore before the truck arrived. He looked at Esteban. The man was different. Teach was not sure how. Was this the way you were after you shot someone? Esteban was always tense, wired. Now he seemed relaxed, serene, satisfied. The change frightened Teach more than the pistol under Esteban’s arm.

He looked at Carlos and Julio and saw it there too. Their faces settled, their eyes uncurious, decided. Maybe he saw a little sorrow in the eyes of Carlos, the fisherman. The man who knew boats.

Teach humped bales until the truck arrived. When Naylor’s face loomed out of the darkness, sweating from the half-mile jog, Teach only smiled and said, “Get aboard, buddy, and put some weight on your back. Those clouds are blowing south. Pretty soon it’s gonna be moon over Miami.”

Naylor looked at him. He sensed it. Something was wrong, different. Teach turned back to the gangplank, hurrying for the next bale.

When the unloading was finished, Teach went to the truck cab. As he passed Esteban, who stood at the back of the truck looking at the bales with those uncurious eyes, the man said, “Adónde vas?”

Teach stopped. “To the truck. For a cigarette.” Esteban nodded.

In the truck cab, Teach found the .38 Smith & Wesson Chief’s Special that Naylor kept in the glove box. He remembered Naylor showing it to him the day they had done their dry run before the first trip. Teach laughing. “What’re you gonna do, shoot it out with the DEA?”

Naylor getting sulky, his masculinity damaged. “White man, you never know when that piece might come in handy. Better safe than sorry, I always say.”

“Right,” Teach had said. “Don’t shoot yourself in the foot.”

Teach put the pistol in the back of his waistband, under his shirt. He had been thinking white hot since Frank Deeks had gone up in flames, his mind trying for some clear, certain place where he would know what he had to do. He kept seeing things: How the three Guatemalans had stopped talking when he approached them on the stern of the Santa Maria, some evil fog around them of what they knew and he didn’t. Their eyes holding that serenity. It meant, Teach knew, that they had decided. They had made up their minds.

Teach pushed out of the cab and walked back past Esteban. “Out of cigarettes,” he said.

“Take one of mine.” Esteban reached into his coat pocket for the cheesy gold cigarette case all three carried.

Teach waved no and pinched his nose. “Too strong for me, man.”

Esteban gave an elaborate shrug, shook his head at the weakness of gringo lungs.

When the truck was closed up and ready, Teach stood in front of Naylor. He looked over at the three Guatemalans standing together by the gangplank. “Last trip, Blood,” he whispered. “Wish me luck.”

Bloodworth Naylor laughed, then looked at him. “What’s going on, man? Everything cool? You seem a little—”

Teach slapped him hard on the shoulder to stop his mouth. In a hearty voice he said, “See you tomorrow, man. The bar, just like always. Drinks on me.”

Teach always pushed the shrimper out along the same route he had taken coming in. Only it couldn’t be the same. Not this time. He knew it now: the Guatemalans wouldn’t do anything until he had taken them back to the Gulf, deep water under the keel. Then, something would happen. If Teach read those satisfied eyes right, there would be another body burning in a boat. The boat would be a Boston Whaler, cut loose from the stern of the Santa Maria. The body would be Jimmy Teach.

So the route tonight would be different, and Teach had to hope that the three Guatemalans didn’t notice. He had to hope that they trusted him, believed in his seamanship, hadn’t counted the turns he always took in this maze of mangrove canals.

Teach was approaching the place where he would take the new turn when the wheelhouse door slid open. Carlos. Teach said, “Hey man. Qué paso? Quiet night now, huh?”

“Sí, mi amigo. Muy quiet.” He looked at Teach. “It is too bad about the man in the boat.” He shrugged. “But it had to be. You understand, don’t you?”

Teach gave back the same sad smile. Soldiers lamenting the necessities of war. “Sure,” he said, “I understand. It’s tough, but it had to be.”

Carlos looked ahead into the night and then over at Teach again. “Amigo?” he said, a look of supplication on his face. The Indian licked his lips, smiling.

“Oh,” Teach said, “sure.” He pulled the Wild Turkey from his hip pocket and passed it to Carlos. The man drank and handed it back. Teach reached to put the bottle away.

Carlos said, “Have some, drink with me.”

The turn was just ahead. Teach said, “Sure, buddy.” He drank and returned the bottle to his pocket, drawing his fingers across the pistol butt under his shirt. At the bend, he swung the shrimper right instead of left. It was a tight turn, but so were many of them. He could feel Carlos tensing beside him. Teach didn’t look at the man, just waited. Carlos’s hand was on his shoulder. On the foredeck below, Esteban turned and looked not at Teach but at Carlos.

Carlos said, “Vamos bien? We going the right way? You sure about this?”

Teach turned to the man, smiled. “Hey, Carlos, who’s the pilot here? I know what I’m doing.” Teach let go of the wheel, stepped back. Let a little anger come into his voice. “You think you can do better, man, you take over.”

Carlos looked out at the walls of mangroves. In seconds the Santa Maria would plow into the bank. Fear in his voice, Carlos said, “I am sorry, Señor Piloto. Take the wheel. Take it.”

As he took the wheel, Teach heard Esteban call out from below. The man shouting in Spanish, pointing at the looming trees. Teach turned the shrimper back into the channel. If it was going to happen, it had to be soon. The place Teach wanted was only a few minutes away, and so was the man he would become.

Teach felt Carlos relax beside him. Keeping one hand on the wheel, Teach raised the other and stretched, yawned. “Long night,” he said.

Carlos looked at him, took out a cigarette, and lit it. He offered Teach the gold case.

“I told you, man, I don’t smoke. No fumo. I drink. We did that together.” Teach lowered his right hand and scratched his back.

“Then why you tell Esteban you go to the truck for a cigarette?” Carlos dropped the cigarette and reached inside his coat.

Teach snatched the Smith from his belt, fitted it to Carlos’s skull just below his ear, and pulled the trigger. This time he was ready for the noise and flash in the little wheelhouse. Carlos grunted, “Nuh!” and stiffened, exhaled, went down limp. Teach cut the engine, pocketed the key, and stepped over Carlos’s twitching chest. He pulled aside the sliding door, its little glass pane painted red with blood and brains, slipped out of the wheelhouse, and slid down the ladder to the narrow passage between the deck and the rail. He crouched there, listening. Footsteps came from the stern. Julio called, “Esteban, did you do it? You did it already?”

Julio thinking it was Teach dead up there. Well, now there would be no more calm, uncurious eyes. There was going to be some serious curiosity. Moving fast, Julio appeared in front of Teach, looking up at the wheelhouse, his pistol low by his thigh. Teach fired from a crouch, his pistol barrel almost touching Julio’s chest.

Julio dropped the heavy nine-millimeter at Teach’s feet, then sank to his knees, blood pouring black from his mouth. “Madre,” he gasped, his face close, his breath garlic and cigarettes and blood. He clawed at his chest, tore at his tie, fell backward, and pulled his knees up to his chin.

“She’ll be waiting for you,” Teach muttered.

In the dark, the quiet, with the engine stopped, the Santa Maria drifted toward the canal bank. Teach could hear only the breeze that rustled the tops of the mangroves, the sluicing of water against the sides of the boat, the buzz of insects, the single cry of a heron, “Scrawwk.”

Teach had been lucky with the first two, and now it would be grim. He would have to hunt Esteban, find him, and kill him. Still in his crouch, Julio relaxing into his death three feet in front of him, Teach picked up the big nine-millimeter, lowered the hammer, and stuck it in his belt. He reconsidered the matter. He would not hunt Esteban. He knew the boat better, knew the mangroves. What could the man do? What option did he have but to hunt Teach? If Teach left the boat, Esteban would be stuck here until he was discovered in the morning, or he would be lost out there in those miles of swamp.

Teach slipped through the door of the lazarette beneath the wheelhouse and into the head. He lowered himself to the toilet and waited in the foul stench of thirty years of seagoing piss. His back was protected by a bulkhead, he had walls on either side, and anything that passed by the door was dead. That was how Teach figured it.

He waited, hearing what he could over the thumping of his heart and the ringing in his ears. Twice he thought there was movement, a foot scraping, the boat subtly shifting under a moving body. The Santa Maria would hit something soon, and Teach decided to wait until she did, to see if the collision would give him Esteban’s position. He braced himself against the walls of the toilet, waited, felt first the deep scraping of the forefoot on the canal bank, then the shrimper rising as she plowed up the bank. Hearing the pop and snap and groan of the mangroves as the bow tore into them, Teach thought: Don’t drive yourself too far aground. I’ve got to get out of here. After.

When the boat had shuddered to a stop, Teach waited again for what seemed a long time. Then he heard the twin Yamahas roaring to life. Damnit, Teach thought, I forgot about the little boat. Damn me for leaving the keys in the ignition. He’ll take the Whaler and, with any luck, find his way out of here before morning. He tried to keep the panic down, tried to sort through the possibilities. Maybe it was better if Esteban left him here. He could do what he’d planned to do with the shrimper and then run. Get away. What could the Guatemalans do tonight? Esteban couldn’t meet the mother ship for another hour. Could he even find her out there in all that water? Had he bothered to learn the loran coordinates? By morning, Teach could be long gone. Lost in a new life.

He peered out of the head into the darkness of the lazarette. The Yamahas were still running, idling now. Why hadn’t Esteban gone yet? A trick. Esteban was waiting out there for him. Teach heard the Yamahas grumble as the transmission shifted into gear. Then the Whaler seemed to be moving away.

Teach remembered something: there was a hatch in the roof of the lazarette. Through it you could climb into the wheelhouse, a way to get up there in heavy weather. He went to the hatch and pulled down the ladder bolted to the ceiling. He pushed at the hatch, but Carlos was up there. Dead weight. Standing on the ladder, Teach forced his shoulder against the hatch. Warm blood dripped down onto his head.

He managed to shove the hatch open enough to get past Carlos. He slipped out of the wheelhouse and crawled back to look down at the stern. As he reached the spot where he would have to risk his face to look down, the moon came out from behind the clouds. He could see the empty Whaler fifty yards away, churning its bow into the mangroves. He lifted his face an inch more, then another, and saw Esteban below, crouched behind a big winch housing, his pistol aimed at the lazarette door.

It would be a difficult shot. From above, the available target was the top of Esteban’s head and his shoulders. Teach sighted the Chief’s Special, then changed his mind. He slipped the Special into his belt and pulled the nine-millimeter. He eased back the hammer, released the safety, and got to his knees. He could aim and fire better from this position. He was trading risk for effect. The advantage of position was his; the advantage of killing for a living was with Esteban. A moment of fear came, sliding cold into Teach’s bowels and rising thick into his throat. He could turn and run, leap from the bow of the shrimper, and disappear into the mangroves. But no, he thought, his mind clearing, his hands ceasing to shake. They would only come for him later. Find him and kill him. This was better. The only way now.

Teach edged forward, and as he did, the Chief’s Special loosed from his belt and clattered to the lazarette roof. Esteban raised his arm, aimed at Teach. The moon caught Esteban’s face, and before it disappeared in noise and flash and smoke, Teach saw that smile. The smile Esteban always gave Teach when he opened his coat to show the big pistol.