Straits of Fortune - Anthony Gagliano [33]
I turned on the engine and hit the switch that raised the anchor. It made a soft grinding sound coming up. When the red light on the dashboard stopped flashing, I opened the throttle, and the big yacht surged forward as the water boiled around the stern. I went swiftly and without lights, but I would need them farther out. My concentration was as keen as it had ever been, and I used it to open a channel through the darkness that would exclude everything except me and The Carrousel. In that world not even the fish were welcome. I was in a closed system, flying no colors. The coast guard cutters were out there somewhere, but there was nothing I could do about them. I was playing a lone hand against common sense, not to mention the law, and it was already too late to pass.
I needed to get out about six miles from shore, out into the deeper waters of the Gulf Stream where a sunken boat would never be found, where ancient ships and lost continents were said to rest beyond the power of memory to exhume them. At a fair speed, it would take about an hour. I found a pair of binoculars under the dash and scanned the horizon. When I turned around and looked toward land, the lights of the mansion were receding into the darkness behind me until the entire spread, seen from the distance, was no wider than a doorway and shrinking fast. Ahead of me there was nothing. I put the boat on autopilot and went below to get another drink.
I poured myself a scotch and looked out at the sea, the only sound the muted rumble of the engines, and tried not to think about Matson dead behind the bar. I checked my watch. There wasn’t much time, and I was glad for that. If it’s true that the spirits of the newly murdered linger in shock around the crime scene, then what I felt in that cabin was Randy’s anguish and astonishment, his final betrayal. Randy—death had put us on a first-name basis again—had not expected to die.
He’d assumed he had the upper hand, the same mistake Goliath had made. Then the gun had come out. Even then he might not have believed he was a dead man. Death takes a while to sink in, especially when you think you have the world by the balls and assume immortality is your birthright because you’re young and rich and handsome and have never been shot in the head before. That is an experience from which it is very hard to extract a useful lesson. I raised my glass to Randy’s ghost and wished him peace in the afterlife. I finished my drink and checked my watch again. It was time to sink the Bismarck.
I left the cabin and went up to the helm. It was so dark by then that I had no choice but to switch on the yacht’s lights. I kept an eye out for other boats, but it seemed I had the whole ocean to myself. After about an hour, when I was sure I was out deep enough, I cut the engine and pushed the button that lowered the anchor. Then I headed for the engine room.
I have had many a teacher in my time, and some of them taught me things that I never expected to use. One of those teachers was Captain Tony, whose dangerous and dubious business, as I mentioned, was the repossession of boats, which can be even more dangerous than the repossession of cars, depending on the clientele. Occasionally, however, he also had to sink boats, sometimes for the insurance money and once for a drug dealer attempting to fake his own death on account of the fact that half the cops in North and South America were looking for him. I hadn’t been with Tony on those particular occasions, but he had told me how it was done.
The method used is quite simple. Every