Flush - Carl Hiaasen [24]
I crouched behind the sewage tank and watched him for several minutes. He never moved even slightly, and when I edged closer, I could hear him snoring. He sounded just like Rado’s dog, Godzilla, when he sleeps.
Finally I got up my nerve and crept past him. That turned out to be the easy part. Getting off the Coral Queen was a different story.
I’d been rummaging through the wheelhouse, hunting for any scrap of evidence that might help Dad—a note in the crew’s log, an order in Dusty’s handwriting to dump the tanks, whatever—when a mullet boat rumbled into the basin. A man in rubber boots rose in the bow and started tossing a cast net. The noise woke up the bald guy, who got out of the car and stretched his arms and lit up a cigarette.
Now I was stuck. There was no way to leave the Coral Queen without being spotted under the dock lights. I could see Dusty’s goon guy sitting on the hood of his station wagon, the tip of the cigarette glowing orange whenever he took a drag.
On tiptoes I made my way down a stairwell to the second casino deck, which, like the others, was enclosed to keep out the rain. I snooped around until I found a rack of poker chips that the crew had forgotten to lock away. I carried the rack up toward the front of the boat and opened one of the side windows. I waited there until the mullet netter motored out of the basin and the marina was quiet.
Then I reached out the window and dropped the poker chips. They made a very impressive racket, clattering on the hard deck and rolling in a hundred directions.
The bald watchman tossed his cigarette, slid off the hood of the station wagon, and headed for the Coral Queen. He was bounding up the aft stairs as I was sneaking down the forward stairs. When I heard his heavy footsteps on the deck above me, I hustled to the stern, stepped lightly onto the gangplank, and then bolted for cover.
I made it as far as the sewage tank, where I huddled in the shadow and tried to catch my breath. My heart was beating so hard that I thought my chest might split open. Behind me I could hear Dusty’s goon cussing and kicking at the spilled poker chips. When I looked back, I saw him moving through the gambling boat and shining a flashlight.
It seemed like a fine time to run away.
But as I rose to my feet, a car came bouncing down the dirt road toward Dusty’s dock—a police car, with its headlights off. Immediately I dove back to my hiding spot, which would have been a nifty move except that I banged my head on the sewage tank.
The pain was ridiculous. At first everything went bright, like a starburst, and then suddenly it was as black as a tunnel. My skull was ringing like a gong.
As I lay there, trying not to cry out and give myself away, I heard my own voice say, “It’s empty.”
Empty!
It wasn’t my skull that was ringing; it was the sewer tank.
Which should have been full, if the Coral Queen had emptied her hose into it that night.
I watched the police car roll to a stop near the boat. The bald goon hurried down the gangplank and waved at the deputy, who hopped out of the car and followed Dusty’s man onto the boat. Both of them were shining flashlights back and forth.
I rolled to my knees and sat up too fast. As I waited for the dizziness to go away, I noticed a dark, powdery tracing on the concrete slab under the sewage tank—something so small that the pollution inspectors might never have noticed. I touched it and, in the faint light from the docks, saw red on my fingers.
Rust. The old tank was rusting away.
I reached underneath and found a patch of pitted metal that crumbled like stale crackers. Peeling it away, I made a hole so large that I could stick my fist inside.
The sewer tank wasn’t just empty, it was wrecked and useless—a phony prop in Dusty Muleman’s scam.
Suddenly the knot on my head didn’t hurt so much. I stuffed a handful of rust into my pocket, and took off.
EIGHT
The next afternoon Mom insisted on driving all the way to Homestead for groceries because nobody there knew who she was. Dad’s TV