Trap Line - Carl Hiaasen [4]
Ricky had laughed and found himself a job at the Burger King down on Roosevelt Boulevard.
An internal clock snapped Albury’s reverie. He looked at his watch, then at the sea. He could feel the ridge. The boat had to be over it now. So where—? His eyes narrowed, his jaw muscles tensed. He checked the compass by flicking it with an index finger. He turned on the fathometer, and in moments the Cobia Hole rose in graphic relief on the screen. With fists like claws, Albury spun the wheel until Diamond Cutter turned south-southwest to follow the ridge.
The motion awakened Jimmy.
“Hey, Breeze,” he called without rising, “ain’t we there yet?”
“We’re there.”
Jimmy unfolded and stood up. “Jesus, why didn’t you tell me?” he said groggily, peering out across the bow. “Where are the traps?”
“No traps.”
Jimmy either didn’t hear or misunderstood. He stretched luxuriously, hands high above his naked chest, staring ahead where he knew the orange-and-white buoys would soon be bobbing. He stood like that for what seemed a long time, and then he knew.
Jimmy leaned over the side. “Breeze?” he cried. “Breeze, we’re over the ridge. Where are the fucking traps?”
Albury’s voice snagged somewhere in his throat.
“Breeze?”
“No traps, Jimmy. Not one.”
Jimmy ran to the bow and pressed himself against the rail. “The whole line’s been cut!” His voice cracked. His eyes fanned the water. Under the noon sun, the secret ledge sketched a faint indigo seam, eighty feet down. Albury idled the engine and climbed down to the deck.
“Who?” Jimmy asked. “Marine Patrol?”
Albury shook his head. “This was a legal line. Besides, they’ll just bust the slats out of a few traps, as a lesson. They won’t cut your pots off like this.”
Albury felt sick. Mentally he cataloged a list of his enemies. Nobody hated him bad enough to cut his traps. He couldn’t take his eyes off the water.
“Shrimper,” Jimmy murmured. “Motherfucker probably did it last night. Never looked, just dragged the goddamned nets over the traps.”
Albury slowly guided Diamond Cutter in a wide arc around the ridge, then began tacking back, against the tide, to the north. A shrimp boat is sloppy. The odds of one raking all fifty-five traps were remote. A few of the severed markers should be floating loose, Albury thought. A copper taste rose in his mouth as he scanned the bridge.
“Breeze?”
“It was no shrimper, Jimmy.”
“Shit.” Jimmy sagged back onto the ice chest. “Who? What for?”
“I don’t know.”
They checked four more trap lines on the way back to Key West, all sabotaged. By the time they reached the reef where the last one should have been, Albury had figured out the marauder’s course. He was not surprised to see whitecaps where he should have seen the buoys; he watched unblinking as Jimmy retrieved a single orange-and-white buoy, examined the limp tail of rope, and pronounced it hand-cut with a fishing knife.
“What did you do, Breeze?” Jimmy asked wanly. “Are you screwin’ somebody’s wife?”
Albury shook his head sourly. Jimmy palmed the orphaned buoy like a basketball. “This ever happened before?”
“Years ago when I was fighting with one of the Cubans. He got mine. I got his. But that was only a dozen traps, not three hundred.”
“Three hundred and twenty,” Jimmy said. He hurled the marker as far as he could. A gust of wind caught the styrofoam ball and slapped it gently into the ocean.
They rode home in heavy silence, Albury nipping liberally from a bottle of Wild Turkey he kept on board for times when beer would not do. Was it the twenty-second or twenty-first? he wondered. Didn’t matter, really, the end of the month was now.
Fifteen minutes out of Stock Island, Jimmy could no longer contain himself. “Breeze, I’m scared,” he blurted.
“Well, I’m pissed, but I’m not scared.”
“It’s Kathy,” Jimmy said, embarrassed, fighting tears. Albury stared out the windshield. The island was taking shape on the horizon.
It came with a rush. “She’s pregnant. It wasn’t supposed to happen with the pills, but it did anyway. We can’t have no baby, not livin’ with her