Trap Line - Carl Hiaasen [2]
Albury smiled. He leaned back from the waist and let his belly steady the wheel, gentling the lobster boat through the quiet morning sea. He would buy the new spikes, pay on the boat and whatever else he could, then let the unpaids chase him. Wouldn’t be the first time. Let them take back the color television if they wanted it bad enough.
Albury lit a cigarette and nudged the Diamond Cutter on a course that would intersect up-current with the first trail of orange-and-white buoys that marked his trap line.
“Hey, Jimmy,” he called down to the deck where the young mate was coiling rope. “The captain needs a cold beer.”
A few minutes later, Albury jockeyed the boat with unthinking precision as Jimmy hauled the traps. He would snare the pumpkin-sized buoy with a swoop of long practice, fix it to the winch, and watch expectantly as the cypress trap spun to the surface. Albury only half-heard Jimmy’s running count as he stripped the traps, rebaited them with a strip of cowhide, and sorted the catch.
“Breeze,” Jimmy said, “what say we keep a few of these shorts today?”
“No shorts: Toss ’em back.”
Shorts were the undersized crawfish that measured less than five and one-half inches from bony carapace to tail. Get caught with them and it could cost a couple hundred dollars, except that no self-respecting crawfisherman would get caught. If the Marine
Patrol happened by, all you had to do was cut the weighted sack from a line on the stern and let the delicious evidence sink. There weren’t many Key West captains who could resist the shorts now and then; easy to sell and good to eat. Albury could have gotten away with it, but Laurie would have lectured him for sins against the ecology. Risk was another factor. A fine was the last thing he needed, especially with the end of the month coming. You could never tell about the Marine Patrol. One morning they wave hello, next morning they get nasty and board you.
“Hey, Breeze, you been to Miami a lot.” Jimmy had climbed into the wheelhouse with two fresh cans of Bud. Albury drank deeply as the Diamond Cutter plodded dutifully, like a milkman’s horse, toward the second line of traps.
“Sure, I spent some time in Miami. Why?”
“I just wanna know if it’s safe up there.”
“Safe for what? Christ, don’t tell me you never been.” Albury was incredulous.
“Sure, with my dad, a few times. But it’s been a couple years. I want to know is it safe for Kathy, if I take her up there with me. You read about all these murders and crazy shit …”
“How old is Kathy?”
“Almost seventeen.”
“And you’ve been married …”
“About three months. She wants to go up there and do some shopping.”
Albury laughed. “Sure. It’ll be fun.”
“Well, I asked her what’s wrong with shopping on the island, but she says everything’s too ugly or too expensive down here.”
“Sounds like she wants to see Miami.”
Jimmy ran a calloused hand through his bleached-out hair. “Maybe so,” he said.
Albury drained the beer, squashed the can, and tossed it neatly into a broken lobster trap on deck. He gestured toward the windshield. “Trap line comin’ up.”
Jimmy turned for the deck, but Albury stopped him with a question. “You got enough money for a shopping trip to the city?”
“No, I ain’t, Breeze. Not yet. But I figure you and me gonna pull us some fat fucking crawfish out of the Cobia Hole this morning, and I’ll be fixed just fine.”
“OK,” Albury said. “You got it.”
The second line of traps bore decent fruit. With Jimmy happily babbling a soon-to-be-rich aria for the very young, Albury aimed the Diamond Cutter out to sea, toward the final trap line, the new and private one he and Jimmy called the Cobia Hole.
Albury had discovered the improbable underwater ridge two years earlier. It was four hours southeast of Key West, further than lobstermen normally ventured on a one-day trip. If you believed the charts, the water in this area was too deep, but a good hard look at the color told Albury there was a ledge below. Intrigued, he had investigated, patiently tracking a long and narrow ridge where none should have been. Jimmy, who was new