Trap Line - Carl Hiaasen [57]
“No.”
“Don’t give me that shit. I know about radios, shortknees. You try and cover up for Albury and you’re in deep shit with me, hear?”
“I’m trembling, Tom, I really am. Do you want the message, or what?”
“Tell me, Stumpy. Give me the message from Mr. Breeze fucking Albury.”
“Breeze says you can have your grass back for fifty-three thousand …”
“Shi-it.”
“… that’s fifty you owe him for something—he didn’t say what—and another three for his traps. He says to let him know if you want to deal, and he’ll tell you when and how.”
“He’ll tell me, huh? Big-shot Breeze Albury will tell me. You tell him I’ll get back to him.”
Crystal had nodded and for the first time looked up from the radio he was fixing.
“One more thing, Tom.”
“What?”
“Breeze didn’t say it right out, but I think that after this deal goes down you’d better haul ass out of Key West.”
“Ain’t that too bad? You tell him he’ll hear from me. A message he can understand …”
Tomas Cruz wheeled the Corvette off the highway onto a gravel track that led to a dilapidated marina a few miles north of Key West.
El Gallo lay at its berth. It seldom left, for Willie Bascaro never fished. At first glance, El Gallo seemed a spanking-new Key West crawfisherman, ready for sea. Tom knew better. The engine wheezed before its time. The brightwork was pitted, a deck seam needed caulking, the bottom was fouled, and the radar had quit working two weeks after it was installed. Easy come, easy go. Willie had earned enough for the boat in one night’s work. He was a Marielito, one of the tens of thousands of misfits Castro had flushed from Cuba to South Florida in a fit of pique. He was unskilled, barely literate, a slob. But he had lived long enough around the Havana docks to learn to run a boat, more or less, and sometimes he was useful. Tom picked his way across the littered deck and went into the cabin to awaken the captain of El Gallo from a rum-fueled siesta.
“AT LEAST TELL ME what kind of trouble my dad is in. I’m not a kid.”
“Ricky, take it easy, OK?” Tomas Cruz eased the Corvette through the afternoon traffic toward Stock Island. “He told me to pick you up after work and bring you to see him. That’s all he said, OK? He didn’t say anything about trouble.”
“He must be in trouble.”
“What makes you think that?”
“Or else he would have come himself. Or maybe sent Jimmy. He wouldn’t have sent you.”
“You think your dad doesn’t like me, don’t you? Well, you’d be surprised. Him and me, we’ve done a lot of business together. And I know all about you: best right-handed prospect in the state of Florida, that’s what he says about you. A real prospect.”
“Yeah, sure.”
“Wait and see.”
Cruz maneuvered slowly along a pier littered with fishermen’s debris: traps, buoys, lines, a discarded anchor, a stove-in dinghy. He stopped alongside a lobster boat, its engine idling.
“This is not the Diamond Cutter,” Ricky protested.
“No shit. Your dad’s waiting offshore. We’re going out to see him.”
Instinctively, Ricky shied.
“That’s OK, Tom. I’ve got someplace to go. I’ll wait till my dad comes in.”
The Beretta appeared in Tom’s fist. A silencer glared from the end of the barrel.
“Get in the boat, kid.”
They rode in silence for about twenty minutes until they were alone on the sea. Ricky could see only the angular back of the man who was running the boat. Winnebago Tom lounged on the engine cowling. His gun never wavered.
“Basta?” called the man in the wheelhouse.
“Basta,” Tom replied.
Ricky felt the engine go into neutral. The helmsman walked back to join Tom. He was a short, wiry man with sharp features and three missing teeth on the right side of his jaw. Ricky thought of him as Rat Face.
“This is my friend Willie, kid. He doesn’t speak much English, but he’s a mean sonofabitch, believe me. He likes to hurt people. You answer some questions for me or I’ll let Willie hurt you. Understand, Ricky?”
Rat Face saluted with a tire iron. Ricky licked his lips.
“Fuck you, Tom, and fuck your Rat Face friend, too.”
Tom fired once. Ricky flinched.