Trap Line - Carl Hiaasen [82]
Augie nodded grimly. “Get the anchor up.” The vessel Black Star, he thought sourly, what next? He peeled off his T-shirt and surrendered to the noon sun, raw in a cloudless sky.
Jimmy was right about one thing: another miserable day in the mangroves would be unendurable. Augie punched the ignition and the Diamond Cutter’s diesel coughed to life. The young Cuban deftly backed the crawfish boat from its berth in the swamp, wheeled her 180 degrees in the current, and aimed the prow toward open water, the Gulf of Mexico.
“What about the dope boat?” Jimmy yelled from the bow. Augie shrugged. It felt good to be moving, to be free of the whining colonies of mosquitoes and horseflies.
After stowing the anchor, Jimmy joined Augie in the wheelhouse and offered him a warm Pepsi. The Diamond Cutter had been out of ice for a day and a half.
“I’m sorry about all that,” Jimmy said. “But I really need to talk to Kathy. I was s’posed to take her up to Miami this weekend.”
“Sure, we’ll get you to a phone. There’s a fish camp up on Ramrod Key. I’ve known the guy all my life, and he won’t say shit to anybody. A quiet man. The best kind.”
Satisfied, Jimmy retired to the stern and stretched out to watch the Mud Keys melt on the horizon.
It was then that he saw the charcoal column of smoke, rising from the mangroves in fierce billows and smeared by the wind across the pastel sky. Jimmy knew where the fire came from. Augie had spotted it, too. He stood in the pilothouse, his back to the wheel, transfixed by the incineration of five tons of marijuana. He flinched at the explosion that wooshed across the Gulf when the flames engulfed the gas tanks of the pirated crawfish boat.
“Jesus,” Augie murmured and opened the Diamond Cutter to full throttle.
“Let’s go,” Jimmy cried, pointing to the distant speck of a speedboat racing from the Mud Keys. The saboteurs were now dead on a course for the Diamond Cutter. The profile of the big lobster boat rode high on the calm seas. There could be no hiding this time, Augie knew.
Jimmy bounded to the wheelhouse, panting, the Remington on his shoulder; a shirtless, fuzz-faced Johnny Reb. “You see what they did to the other boat?” he said. “Looked like a fucking atom bomb. Augie, don’t slow down now.”
The Cuban was smiling, his arms folded. His coffee-brown eyes were fixed on the chase boat, drawing closer, its V-shaped hull slicing the afternoon chop.
Jimmy had added binoculars to his uniform. “Looks like three of them,” he said, peering, “and two of us.”
Augie smiled broadly and killed the engine. “Looks like a bonefish boat to me.”
THE MAYHEM ALONG Mallory Docks had prompted one of Huge Barnett’s epic fits of perspiration. Every pore had been a geyser. He smelled like a goat and knew it.
As he changed clothes, even the apparition of Laurie Ravenel bouncing on top of him failed to brighten or elevate him. It had been a catastrophic day for law enforcement in Key West: Tom Cruz was missing, the water was full of freaks, and the island’s most renowned lawyer had been murdered. Murdered—shit, Barnett fumed, his police department had no homicide experts. Murder didn’t happen that often. When it did, it was usually a domestic quarrel or a bar fight among the shrimpers on Caroline Street. A knife in the gut, a bullet in the heart, an act of contrition later. Witnesses galore. Made a policeman’s job downright easy.
Barnett elbowed his way into a crisply pressed Western shirt, Arizona cactus plants on each shoulder. He stepped into his trousers and belted them high, above his navel.
Drake Boone certainly had ruined the day. This was one that they’d want solved. There would be newspaper reporters all the way from Miami, and inquiries of an official nature. No medals from the Governor on this one, damnit.
Barnett wedged his pale, sockless feet into a new pair of Tony Llama boots. He arranged the Stetson and walked out to the Chrysler, grunting with each step.
He could hear Freed, the buttfucker, harping away at the next city council meeting. Any suspects, chief? Suspects? Boone had more enemies