“Mike? This is Seychelle. Did I interrupt something?”
“Nah, I just couldn’t find the damn phone. I’m glad you called, young lady, ’cuz I wanted a chance to give you hell for sticking me with that sniveling bastard Perry Greene.”
“That’s why I’m calling, Mike, to apologize, even though there wasn’t much else I could have done under the circumstances.”
“Apology accepted.”
“Good. And look, promise you’ll get that electrical system fixed. I mean, what were you thinking out there all night using all that juice?”
“It was my buddy Joe, I swear. He called me up to shoot the shit, and we got started talking fishing. I told him I lived aboard a fifty-three-foot sailboat now, and next thing I knew, we were motoring out through Port Everglades. We had lots of catching up to do. Joe always did like flash, and my boat impressed the hell out of him. He wanted me to turn everything on. See, he was DEA back in the eighties when he got to go undercover with flashy cars, big houses, and fast women. I think he misses those days.”
“Yeah, right. The good old days.”
“That isn’t really why you called, the apology thing, is it?”
“Maybe not the only reason.”
“So spit it out.”
“It’s hard to explain. I need someone to talk to—about this Haitian kid. Mike, I’ve got to help her stay in the States, and I don’t even know where to begin. What if her father doesn’t want to be found? What if he’s some married guy who doesn’t want his wife to know he has this kid. I mean, doesn’t it strike you as a little weird that an American father would bring his daughter to the States on one of these cattle boats?”
“Yeah, you’re right. But then again, if there was no birth certificate, no way of proving paternity, he might not have had much of a choice. It’s not like the old U S of A is exactly welcoming Haitians with open arms these days. She could’ve died on the streets of Port-au-Prince waiting for a visa.”
“Okay, then where is he? Shouldn’t he have been waiting for her to arrive?”
“Give it time, kiddo. Tomorrow the kid’s story will be all over the papers and the TV. Maybe he’ll show up, maybe he won’t.”
“It seems like after everything she’s been through, it’s like she’s earned it. The right to stay, I mean.”
“Tell that to the rest of the people here. You know how crowded it’s getting. The last one here wants to slam the door and not let anybody else into Paradise. We may have to rewrite that little plaque on Lady Liberty.”
“But the Haitians are getting an especially raw deal. Back home they face death squads and starvation. They escape that only to die here in America.”
“Like the woman in the boat, you mean.”
“She’s not the only one. Collazo stopped by tonight. He told me that she was the fourth Haitian found dead. They’ve all had massive head injuries. Sounds crazy, I know, but somebody is killing off these immigrants. Maybe they do it to set an example for the others, I don’t know. Hell of a way to prevent mutiny. Collazo says the Haitians are still protecting the smugglers, even when they’re killing off a few on the way over.”
“And Collazo’s pretty certain all four murders are related?”
“I guess so. He says they’ve put together a task force with FLPD, Border Patrol, and the FBI. They call themselves DART—the Deceased Alien Response Team.” It sounded so silly when I said it out loud.
“Oh, that’s good.” He laughed, and I could hear the sound of clinking ice cubes as he took a drink. “Sounds like the pilot for a bad sci-fi TV show.”
“They think Solange can ID the killer, but she’s not talking. Mike, I don’t want to make her any more of a target than she already is.”
“Have they got a guard at the hospital?”
“Yeah.”
“Then don’t worry about her. She’ll be fine. They got nothing on the identity of these smugglers?”
“Nothing they shared with me. Collazo sounded ‘out there’ on this one. He has to be to ask for my help.”
“Yeah, I’d agree with you there.”
After I hung up the phone, I headed back outside with my beer to sit on the dock, my feet dangling over the river. I watched the water swirl past the pilings with the tide. There weren’t many stars visible, but the few that could outshine the glow from the city lights appeared as dancing white dots in the black river water.
The thoughts in my head were churning like the ocean caught between a current and a crosswind. And it was creating just as much turbulence. If Erzulie was already dead, why did someone set her adrift in a boat? Why not just throw her overboard? If they were aboard the Miss Agnes, how did they wind up drifting off Pompano? And why would people who are supposedly making money off immigrant smuggling be killing their cargo? Why didn’t they kill Solange, too? How was I going to find her father? Where would I start?
I was still clutching the sunglasses I’d found on board the Miss Agnes, and I wondered if they belonged to Solange’s “bad man,” the one who had killed Erzulie. The skulls painted on the glasses were in some thick glossy paint, maybe fingernail polish. I could feel the design as I ran my fingers over the plastic, the rounded skulls, eyeholes, crossed bones beneath. Over two hundred years ago, ships had sailed these same waters bearing that insignia. Then, too, the design had signaled that the bearers were dealers of death.
When I’d finished the last of the beer, I had no more answers than when I’d started, but I did feel my eyelids drooping. It took a fair amount of willpower to force my fatigued limbs off the dock and into bed. I felt completely whipped. Seeing a person dead made me feel how fragile human life is. In my bathroom, as I brushed my teeth in front of the mirror, I examined my face, skin over bone and cartilage, brain only a few centimeters below the surface, and I marveled that so many of us live into old age. We are not a well-armored species. With my hand on my neck, I felt the rhythm of the blood pumping through my veins. I thought about the only real armor we humans have—our intelligence and our will to survive.
VII
The night seemed to pass in one quick blink of deep, dreamless sleep. I awoke around 7:30, late for me, but I felt refreshed. A front had moved in overnight, and the dark sky seemed almost to touch the masthead of the ketch moored across the river. The air was thick and heavy with moisture.
I generally tried to fit in some kind of exercise about three mornings a week. Jogging, swimming, paddling—something that was more interesting than using a machine in a refrigerated gym. I pulled on a black tank suit and put the teakettle on the stove for my morning coffee. The wheezing window air conditioner refused to cycle off, so I finally decided to open up and let the humidity in. I gave Abaco fresh water and filled her bowl with dry dog food. In the bathroom, I grabbed a rubber band to pull my hair into a ponytail. This was typical June weather, the start of the hurricane months and the wettest season of the year in Fort Lauderdale.
Grabbing a mug of coffee and my handheld VHF radio, I walked out to the dock where I kept my thirteen-foot Boston Whaler up in davits. I began cranking the winch to lower the boat into the water. Abaco made quick rounds of the yard, checking for new smells, adding her own. When the Whaler hit the water, she came over and whined, begging to go. I told her no, and she dropped onto her belly in the grass and gave me her sad-dog look. It didn’t work this time.
I motored slowly down the New River, waving to the gardeners and the professional boatmen, the only ones out and about at that hour. Channel 16 was fairly quiet, even considering that it was a weekday morning. The only calls I heard were the occasional charter skipper hailing a buddy and switching to another channel for fish gossip.