Trap Line - Carl Hiaasen [31]
Jimmy asked, “You expecting trouble?”
“I’m trying to avoid it.”
“What about the Bahamian gunboats?” It was Augie this time.
“Crystal is too far away to give us a good ear, unfortunately. But the odds are in our favor—they got half a dozen boats to patrol seven hundred islands.”
“How far back to Florida?” Jimmy wondered.
“Once we pick ’em up, I figure six, maybe eight hours to Key Largo. A straight run.”
“At least the weather’s decent,” Augie observed.
“Breeze, you forgot the most important thing of all. When do we get paid?”
“It’s COD, Jimmy. We get the cash when they get their Colombians.”
Augie shifted uneasily. “At Dynamite Docks?”
Albury nodded. “Hey, it should be nice and easy,” he said. “Maybe we can even get a little fishing in on the way back to Key West.”
The night was magic. The absence of moon had left more phosphorescence in the shallow tropical waters than Albury had ever seen. He watched mesmerized as schools of fish, their tails ablaze, darted away from the Diamond Cutter’s cleaving bow. A sweet breeze carried the aroma of land and, seemingly, the taste of a better tomorrow.
This was Albury’s element, and he knew it. The sea was all a man would ever need. It was the land that tied you in knots and made you squirm. There was no end of the month at sea. All you had to do was love it, and to fear it a little, and the sea paid you back.
The Diamond Cutter drove straight and true, like a yearling ready to run, as though it, too, could sense the majesty of soft night under an eternal canvas. Gentling the wheel, Albury watched tentative strips of cirrus play tag with the stars.
This was his last run. Albury tried not to think of that; of how he would miss the flow of the deck and the sigh of the sea; of how it would hurt to sell the Diamond Cutter.
He thought instead of the cheering crowds and the poised young righthander with common sense and a raffish grin, pouring it in, mixing his pitches, keeping it low, making it look easy.
Ricky wouldn’t mind leaving Key West too much, Albury reasoned. It was simply the setting for his baseball. There were a million places like it around the country, the same diamond, the same subtle touches of excellence. Maybe out West was the best idea. There were some good baseball towns there, and Albury had heard men talk about the mountains the way he felt about the sea.
Would Laurie want to come, too? Probably not. She had drifted into Key West and improbably stuck to the Rock the way barnacles cling to driftwood. She loved the place now, as much as he wanted to be rid of it. So be it. If he could live without the sea, he could live without Laurie, he supposed.
Albury wanted a cigarette, but lighting it would rob him of his night vision. Instead, he fished a cough drop from a box by the wheel, eyes never leaving the quiet sea. Squinting, he could just make out a blacker piece of darkness fine on the starboard bow. Williams Island, right on schedule.
JIMMY SAW it first.
“There, Breeze.” His voice seemed unnaturally loud in the blackness. Diamond Cutter lay about a half-mile offshore, engine idling, running lights aglow. Until now, they had been safe. Interception would have meant a chewing out, maybe a fine for violating territorial waters. Now was for keeps.
“Where, Jimmy? Tell me, I can’t see where you’re pointing.”
“One o’clock, Breeze,” Augie called. “Flashing white light.”
Albury saw it then, a pinprick in the vastness. He could imagine the scene on the beach; a dozen mangy Colombians, excited, probably frightened, peering out to sea, wondering if the boat that lay there was a passport to America or a ticket to Fox Hill Prison in Nassau.
Albury closed his eyes for an instant and transposed the dark half-moon of beach before him onto the chart he had studied that afternoon. It