Trap Line - Carl Hiaasen [53]
Christine Manning turned back to the newspaper on her desk. In red ink she underlined a short and sketchy front-page article under a headline: six die in shooting / van wreck at largo / SMUGGLERS SOUGHT.
Another nasty little yarn.
EDDIE FONTAINE followed the convoy through Big Pine Key, past the federal prison, past the bleached waterfront cottages, past the Old Wooden Bridge Fishing Camp, and over a ten-million-dollar concrete bridge that would have been a scandal anywhere but the Keys. It was a bridge to nowhere, to an island called No-Name Key. No one lived on No-Name. There was no water, no electricity. The bridge and the highway existed only because some clever politician had a stake in such things. Bugs thwacked the windshield of Fontaine’s pickup and hung by the glue of their blood. A tiny Key deer, the size of a golden retriever, dashed between the speeding cars and disappeared into the red mangroves. There was only one reason on God’s earth that Eddie Fontaine would have pulled himself out of that pretty second-grade teacher, kissed her good-bye on the left breast, climbed into his old Army greens, and driven off into the ravenous night.
Eddie Fontaine smelled money. When Winnebago Tom called, Eddie came. He wasn’t proud. Ten thousand bucks was a new trailer, or a new truck, or maybe one of those Checkmate speedboats that Boog Powell was selling. Fontaine chuckled to himself and took another draft from a flask of Jack Daniels. There were a dozen ways to look at it, ten thousand dollars. Enough cocaine to keep that little teacher bucking for weeks.
Fontaine fixed his eyes on the taillights of the car in front of him. The road would be ending soon, not at a fishing village or subdivision, but at water’s edge. Ahead, the other cars slowed and brake lights winked red in the night. One by one, the drivers turned off a dirt road that cut a washboard trail to the loading site. Fontaine put the flask between his knees and used both hands to steer. A family of raccoons, hunkered down at a trash pile, gave a green-eyed stare to the caravan but never budged from its supper. Night swallows swooped through the glare of the headlights to snatch june bugs and mosquitoes.
A car’s horn sounded. The off-loaders cut their headlights and parked. The water of the Big Spanish Channel was visible through the mangroves; Eddie Fontaine and the others wordlessly picked their way through the roots and rocks to the shore. There, parked at the end of a man-made jetty, sat two Winnebago campers and a beer truck.
Eight men comprised the off-loading crew, including Tom’s lieutenant. From past experience, Fontaine knew that Tom’s man wouldn’t be doing much of the heavy lifting. Well, that was fine. As long as he brought the cash.
The men gathered at the tip of the jetty, murmuring, smoking, slapping at their arms and legs to kill the bugs. Fontaine knew four or five of them as neighbors, high school buddies; the rest he knew by sight. It was a small fraternity of regular faces. Tom said it was best that way.
Fontaine looked at his wristwatch. It was ten minutes past midnight.
“What kind of boat this time?” he asked Tom’s man.
“Just a boat,” the man said, frowning. Eddie had been drinking again. How many times had Tom warned him?
“What do we load first, the beer truck or the campers?” said Eddie Fontaine.
“I’ll let you know,” said Tom’s man, walking away.
Fontaine climbed into one of the Winnebagos to look for a place to lie down, but the insides of the camper had been stripped to the bare aluminum. Fontaine hopped out and sat on the corner of a bumper. Across the water, in the distance, was the Seven Mile Bridge. The only lights along the blackened ribbon were trucks and cars; the only sounds in the night were their engines.
Eddie Fontaine took another sip of whiskey. The real question was whether to tell his wife about the money. He couldn’t just go out and buy a speedboat and not expect her to ask questions. She was no damn fool. The kid needs braces; that would be noted, too. The other times he had managed to stash a