Trap Line - Carl Hiaasen [35]
Jimmy burst into the wheelhouse, his voice strained, almost falsetto. His features seemed unnaturally pale in the binnacle light.
“Breeze, these people are animals!”
“What happened?”
“I was bein’ a nice guy, right? I figured they were hungry, so I go down below to make some sandwiches and stuff. Shit, as soon as those assholes smell food they mob me, like I was giving out money or something. I bet there’s not a cracker or a can of beer left on the boat. They grabbed everything they saw and ran off like fuckin’ rats, lookin’ for a hole. And that’s not the worst of it.”
“What else?”
“It took ’em all of five minutes to break the head, but what do they care? Probably no fuckin’ toilets where they come from, anyway. So what difference is a boat? They just squat down and go wherever they happen to be. Breeze, I swear to Christ I never seen nuthin’ like it.”
Albury grunted. He had expected smugglers; smugglers he understood. What he had gotten instead was a boatload of scum—coarse, ignorant gutter criminals of the most vicious sort. Albury knew the type. He had once lived in a cellblock full of them.
“Can you keep ’em below?”
“Shit, Breeze, they’re everywhere. And the stink down there would choke a buzzard.”
“Where’s Augie?”
“He’s been working on the wounded ones. Their pals don’t seem to give a shit. They’re too busy trying to dick it to the women.”
“Jesus,” Albury hissed. “How bad off are the ones who were shot?” The Bahamian machine gun had holed the Diamond Cutter in five or six places, all above the waterline. Two Colombians standing in the stern had gone down without a cry.
“One of them is just grazed on the head. The other is bleeding bad. Augie says he can’t stop it.”
“Neither can we.”
By dawn, Albury knew, many vessels would be out hunting for a renegade lobsterboat. Not only the impulsive Bahamians, but also the more methodical Americans, with their spotter planes, their cutters, and their computers. But by dawn, with any luck, the Colombians would be ashore and the Diamond Cutter would be anonymously licking its wounds in some clump of mangroves. Maybe six more hours at twenty-four knots, Albury reckoned hopefully. They should make it, even allowing for the buffeting they would take from the heavy squall line that the radio predicted off the coast of the Upper Keys.
“Tell Augie to come up here,” Albury said to Jimmy. “Have him bring the jefe. What’s his name? Oscar?”
“His name is asshole. Like the rest of them, “Jimmy snorted.
When Augie appeared a few minutes later, a young Colombian frog-marched before him, arm twisted cruelly behind his back. Augie was panting, and he said nothing. He branded the passenger with a bitter glare.
“This Oscar?” Albury said.
Augie shook his head. “Oscar is busy, Breeze, getting a hum job from one of his lady friends. This one here”—Augie gave the Colombian a rough shove—“he’s had his turn. Haven’t you, Lover Boy? And a few feet away, one of his buddies is bleeding to death from bullet holes. A real touching scene, Breeze.”
“Easy, Augie.”
“And afterwards this one here sneaks down to your cabin for a little scavenger hunt and helps himself to this.” Augie tossed Albury the pair of socks in which he had hidden his money. “Only took you about two minutes to find the loot, eh, amigo?”
The Colombian stared at his own feet. Albury felt his control going. In a moment of self-pity, he saw himself at the helm, middle-aged, potbellied, once the master of a proud fishing boat, now only the whoremaster of a garbage scow. He reminded himself that the money that awaited was purely a one-way ticket off the Rock. Albury allowed himself a calming breath; his hands loosened their vise grip on the hickory wheel.
“Let him go, Augie.”
“Shit, Breeze.”
“Let him go now. Ask him if he speaks any English.”
The Colombian flexed his throbbing arm. He ran his hands through oily black hair and, with an almost feminine gesture, curled two fingers along his droopy mustache.
“He doesn’t speak English.”
“Then talk to him for me,” Albury said. “Tell him that he is escorio and that he annoys me.