Trap Line - Carl Hiaasen [54]
A shoe box, Fontaine decided with a sour belch. That’s where tonight’s wad was going. Fuck Junior’s rotten teeth.
He got up and weaved a few yards to the edge of a mangrove clump, where he unzipped his jeans and began to urinate. He yelped when a voracious horsefly scored a direct hit on his pecker.
“Eddie!” shouted another off-loader. “The boat’s comin’.”
The men swarmed to the end of the jetty. One of them began to light Coleman lanterns. The belabored sound of a diesel rode the breeze up the channel. Huffing, Eddie Fontaine joined the others, watching from shore.
“For Christ’s sake,” grumbled Tom’s man. “Tuck yourself in, willya, Eddie?”
A crawfish boat with three men aboard hung fifty yards off No-Name Key. Tom’s man could see the bales stacked to the gunwale. With an obliging wind you could have smelled the stuff all the way to the mainland. He lifted a lantern and swung it like a pendulum for several seconds. A spotlight winked back at him from the fishing boat; the captain aimed its bow toward the jetty.
“OK, let’s keep it short and sweet,” said Tom’s man, addressing the group. “We load up as fast as we can, the Winnebagos last. Then give the drivers thirty minutes to get out of here.”
“When do we get paid?” someone asked.
“After the load is gone,” answered Tom’s man. “And if I catch one of you bastards ripping off even a handful of weed, you’ll be swimming.”
The boat nestled up to the jetty. A porky man on the bow tossed a rope to one of the off-loaders; the others formed a makeshift fire brigade from the boat to the beer truck. The first fifty-pound bale was on its way when the shotgun punctured the summer night.
“Fuck me,” whispered Eddie Fontaine, dropping the bale.
Tom’s man raised hands, imploring silence, like the marshal at a big golf tournament. The other men turned their eyes north, to Little Pine Key and a new sound. Another boat.
“Let’s get out of here,” one of the off-loaders murmured.
“No!” barked Tom’s man. “No, not yet. Maybe it’s just trap robbers or something. Sit tight for a second.” He snuffed the lantern he was holding.
The boat came anyway, rounding the point of Little Pine, faster and faster, the rasping of its engine followed by the sound of pushing water.
“That fucker’s crazy,” Fontaine said.
Tom’s man strained to see the new boat. “Where are his goddamned lights?”
Then there was one; blue, whirling ominously in the wheelhouse, firing cool beams every second into the sweaty faces on the shore of No-Name Key. The shotgun roared again, and this time the off-loaders scrambled for their cars. The smugglers cannonballed off the grass boat and hit the water swimming.
Eddie Fontaine lurched through the mangroves to the spot where he thought he had parked the pickup. He was off the mark by forty yards; half-running, half-stumbling, he made it to the truck breathless and nearly sick. The mangrove roots had shredded his jeans and left bloody tracks along both shins.
Fontaine turned the key and gunned the truck in the general direction of escape. As it barreled down the dirt road, another fugitive exploded from the mangroves. Fontaine spun the steering wheel and swerved off the road. The pickup came to a stop at a dump site, crashing into an old Frigidaire.
“Hey!” the runner called. “Gimme a lift.”
Fontaine waved and opened the passenger-side door. It was Tom’s man. His face was damp. The scarlet remnants of an Izod shirt hung from his neck. Fontaine told him to get in.
“Thanks, Eddie. My car’s up the road about half a mile. It’s the El Dorado.”
“Shit.” Fontaine backed his truck out of the trash heap and punched the accelerator. “What happened, man? Who the hell called the Marine Patrol?”
“I don’t know.”
“Was it Haller? Could you see?”
“Couldn’t tell.”
“Fuck me,” Fontaine said, scowling. “Tom said the cops were taken care of.”
“That’s what he promised,” said Tom’s man, glumly.
The intruders waited