Flush - Carl Hiaasen [17]
It didn’t take long to reach the marina. The Coral Queen had just closed and the passengers were filing off, laughing and talking loudly. Abbey and I hid nearby, on one of the deep-sea charter boats. We crouched low in the stern so that nobody could see us.
A yellow crescent moon peeked out from behind the clouds, and the mosquitoes weren’t too bad. We just sat there not saying a word, looking up at the sky and waiting for the docks to quiet down. By the time all the gamblers were gone, we could hear the jacks and tarpon crashing schools of minnows in the basin.
When I peered over the gunwale, I spotted Dusty Muleman’s big black Escalade parked under one of the lampposts near the Coral Queen. The sound of men’s voices carried across the still water, and I could see figures moving around on the casino boat. My sister got on her knees beside me.
“How long you want to wait here?” she asked anxiously. “Mom’s gonna freak if she wakes up and we’re gone.”
I checked my watch: ten minutes after one. “We’ll give it to one-thirty,” I said, “then we’ll go home.”
The way Dad had explained it, big boats like the Coral Queen are supposed to pump their toilet waste from onboard holding tanks into a sealed vat onshore. Later a sewage truck collects the stuff and hauls it to a treatment plant.
Dad believed that Dusty Muleman’s boat was flushing hundreds of gallons of poop directly into the basin, which is not only gross (as Abbey would say) but also a big-time crime. All we had to do was catch him in the act and call the Coast Guard to come arrest him.
Then everybody in town would know that my father wasn’t some kind of loony troublemaker, that he was just a guy who cared about the kids and the beaches and the things that lived in the sea. And when the truth about Dusty came out and everyone saw that Dad was right, Mom would feel better about staying married to him.
Maybe we were kidding ourselves, but that’s how Abbey and I had it figured.
So we both got excited when we noticed the workers dragging a long thick hose toward the stern of the Coral Queen. We were sure—I mean, one thousand percent certain—that they’d open the valve and drop the end of that hose into the water.
But they didn’t. They snaked it over to the dock and connected it to something that resembled a giant rust-freckled egg.
“Hey,” whispered Abbey, “that looks like a sewer tank.”
“Yeah, it does.” There was a knot in my stomach. I couldn’t believe what we were seeing.
“What if Dad made a mistake?” she asked gloomily. “What if Dusty’s totally legal? What if the pollution is coming from somewhere else?”
I had no answer. It had never occurred to me that my father might have blamed the wrong person.
“What do we do now?” Abbey said.
“I really don’t know.”
“Noah?”
“Abbey, I said I don’t know.”
“Noah!”
From the hitch in her voice, I sensed something was wrong. I turned and saw, in the pale glow of the marina lights, a thick greasy arm around my little sister’s neck.
SIX
When Abbey was a baby, she had a nasty habit that nearly drove us nuts. Even in the hottest part of summer we’d have to put on long clothes to protect our arms and legs—and forget about having company over. It was too dangerous.
My sister was a biter.
Not that she was a mean little kid; she just liked to chew. My dad called her a pit bull in diapers. In those days she’d gnaw on just about anything, and I don’t mean “nibble.” When Abbey chomped, she chomped hard. One time she crunched on a marble like it was a gumball.
So I had a hunch what was about to happen on the deep-sea boat when the bald crooked-nosed guy grabbed my sister around her neck. I could see her eyeing the meaty part of his forearm, and I thought: Whoever this goon is, some major pain is headed his way.
The instant Abbey clamped down, the stranger howled and