“I don’t want to get too close! I’m afraid I’ll run him down!” Gator yelled into the wind. “Do you see him?” He was dashing from one side of the cockpit to the other, his voice high-pitched with panic. “Can you see him?”
One minute she couldn’t find him anywhere, and then he was there, about twenty feet downwind, and they were going to pass him moving at a pretty good speed. She swung the fist back and shouted at him, “Here!” Just before she let go, she saw his face, saw his lips moving. He was talking — he wasn’t listening to her. She let the monkey’s fist fly, and a fraction of a second later she released the coils in her left hand. The line fell short, splashed into the sea. As they steamed on past the yellow dot bobbing in the trough, she felt the corner of her lip twitch.
“Goddamnit!” Gator yelled. “I’ll come around again. Cindy, try to keep your eyes on him!”
“Where is he?” Cindy shouted. She raced to the stern and threw the yellow horseshoe life preserver into the night. It skittered across the surface as the wind caught it, then it disappeared in a trough.
A strong gust caught the headsail and Gator fought to bring the boat around. When they came around again Gator kept screaming, “Can you see him? He’s got to be here! Can you see him out there?”
The Coast Guard told them via radio to keep circling in the area, to keep searching. Cindy and Gator clutched each other wrapped in a blanket, standing at the helm as they circled round and round. Occasionally, Cindy ducked below to read their position off the GPS for the Coast Guard radioman. The two of them were cried out by the time a Coast Guard cutter reached them four hours later.
Her eyes were red too, mostly from the salt sting of squinting into the misty night. After an hour on deck, she had retreated to the corner of the cockpit where she sat huddled under the dodger, staring into the blackness. When the cutter appeared at last, they launched a fast black inflatable speedboat with four men aboard wearing orange rainsuits. She climbed out of the cockpit, still clutching the heaving line. Their boat was about twenty feet off when she let fly the monkey’s fist, and it landed squarely in the hands of the yeoman in the bow of the boat.
“Nice shot,” Cindy said.
“Yeah,” she said, “I’ve been practicing.”
About the Contributors
Preston L. Allen is a recipient of a State of Florida Individual Artist Fellowship, and has authored the novels All or Nothing, Jesus Boy, and the allegorical Every Boy Should Have a Man (a finalist for the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award). The New York Times has called him “a cartographer of autodegradation,” placing his work on a continuum with that of Dostoevsky, William S. Burroughs, and Charles Bukowski. Allen is associate professor of English and creative writing at Miami Dade College.
Lynne Barrett has received the Edgar Award for best mystery story and, for her collection Magpies, the Florida Book Awards’ fiction gold medal. Some of her recent work has appeared in Mystery Tribune, the Hong Kong Review, Necessary Fiction, and Just to Watch Them Die: Crime Fiction Inspired by the Songs of Johnny Cash. Jai-Alai Books has just released her anthology Making Good Time: True Stories of How We Do, and Don’t, Get Around in South Florida.
David Beaty was born in Brazil of American parents. A graduate of Columbia University, he earned an MFA in creative writing from Florida International University. He has lived in Greece, England, and Brazil, and currently resides in Miami. His story “Ghosts” was selected for Best American Mystery Stories 2000, and his story “The Last of Lord Jitters,” originally published in Miami Noir, received an honorable mention for Best American Mystery Stories 2007, edited by Carl Hiaasen.
James Carlos Blake was born in Tampico, Mexico, and raised in Brownsville, Texas, and Miami, Florida. After service in the US Army Airborne and a stint as a properties officer in a county jail, he earned an MA degree and taught literature at various colleges and universities before devoting himself to writing full-time. He venerates the music of Jelly Roll Morton and Philip Glass.
Edna Buchanan won a Pulitzer Prize and a George Polk Award for her work on the Miami police beat. She reported more than five thousand violent deaths, and lived through the Cocaine Cowboys, the Mariel boatlift, and major riots. When editors insisted she cover only the “major murder” of the day, she resisted. How does one choose? Every murder is major to the victim. So she covered them all. Then she wrote novels. Lots of them.
Lester Dent (1904–1959) is best remembered for Doc Savage, but he was distinguished beyond that series. He wrote only two stories for Black Mask magazine, both featuring Miami detective Oscar Sail. Dent’s first stab at the character resulted in “Luck,” the story in this volume, which stars a different version of Sail. In the 1930s, Dent lived on his schooner, Albatross, which led to creating Sail, and which may have also influenced John D. MacDonald’s houseboat-dwelling Miami sleuth, Travis McGee.
Marjory Stoneman Douglas (1890–1998), best known for her 1947 book The Everglades: River of Grass, was a conservationist, author, journalist, and women’s suffrage advocate. Initially a reporter for the Miami Herald, Douglas became an outspoken advocate for preserving the Everglades, earning her the nickname “Grand Dame of the Everglades,” and was instrumental in its gaining status as a national park. Douglas was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by Bill Clinton.
John Dufresne has written two story collections and six novels, including Louisiana Power & Light and Love Warps the Mind a Little, both New York Times Notable Books of the Year. He has also written four books on writing, two plays (Liv & Di and Trailerville), and has cowritten two feature films. His stories have twice been selected for Best American Mystery Stories. He is a Guggenheim Fellow and teaches creative writing at Florida International University in Miami.
Douglas Fairbairn (1926–1997) was an American author from Elmira, New York. Aside from his memoir, Down and Out in Cambridge, Fairbairn’s books, including A Squirrel Forever, A Squirrel of One’s Own, and Street 8: A Novel, focus on South Florida, where he lived for the greater part of his years until his death in 1997. His novel Shoot was developed into a movie starring Cliff Robertson in 1976.
Carolina Garcia-Aguilera is the Cuba-born, Miami Beach — based, award-winning author of ten books, as well as a contributor to many anthologies. She is best known for her Lupe Solano mystery series. Her books have been translated into twelve languages. Garcia-Aguilera became a private investigator — a profession she has practiced for over thirty years — so she could credibly write the novels featuring a PI as a protagonist.