Read Online Key West Connection by Randy Wayne White - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Randy Wayne White
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canât fight alone. Some things are just too big. This is one of those things. Weâre after them, Dusky; after them this very moment. And weâll get themâI promise you that.â
âThe way you got Ellsworth?â
âGoddammit, thatâs not fair, Dusky.â
I knew it wasnât fair. But I didnât care. So I promised everything Rigaberto wanted me to promise. I didnât plan on honoring any of the promises, but Herrera was a good friend. Why put him on the spot by telling the truth?
âWe figure they got hold of someone who knew your personal habits. Not hard to do on an island as small as this. But they donât figure on Billy Mackâs funeral screwing up your routine. Normally, every evening, about eight-thirty or nine p.m., you hop in the car and drive down to the docks to check on your boat. So they planted a little ignition bomb. Nothing fancyâbut just the right amount of explosives and in just the right spot. Professional. Very professional.â
âSo I try to avenge the murder of my best friend, and end up getting my wife and kids killed. God. . . . â
âDusky! It wasnât your fault, dammit! Mourn for Janet, mourn for Ernie and Honor, but donât mourn for yourself. Donât let yourself go to ruin, Dusky. You owe them better than that.â
That was true. I owed them better. Right then and there I decided to preserve myself, my strength, my sanity, and give them better. How many other Janets and Ernies and Honors had been left in the ruthless wake of those drug-running bastards? How many more would there be? The ones they didnât blow up would just end up among the walking dead: glazed eyes, vague smiles, hated pasts, and hopeless futures.
I would give them better. I would give them all better.
So I checked myself out on Friday morning. A hot Key West morning; the kind where the odor of asphalt shimmers up off the streets and the white clapboard houses and blue sea catch the sunlight and glow with oppressive, sleepy heat. Not a breeze, not a bird stirring. There was only the desperate whine of overworked air conditioners, vacationing cars on the molten streets, trapped smells of rotting fruit; mangos and limes and bananas.
Come to the happy tropics, historic Key West. Drink at Sloppy Joeâs, walk past the Audubon house. And watch your life dissolve while your brain cures like a Virginia ham.
Upon my request, Rigaberto had moved my clothes and a few other personal effects onto my boat. I would never go into that pretty little house on Elizabeth Street again. It was just another corpse, and I had had a stomach full of corpses. I climbed onto the Sniper feeling, as I did, a soft rush of nostalgia. I felt as if I hadnât been aboard in a year. I opened the cabin door, pushed open the forward windows, and stripped off my sodden clothes. I loved that boat. And love for a boat does not come with looking at blueprints in a boatyard, or with delivery day. It comes gradually, slowly, after years of working heavy seas, rainy nights underway, of fighting big fish and bigger blue northers, and always coming out on top, together. The Sniper was Janetâs wedding present to me. She had her built up in Port Canaveral, with design help from Billy Mack and a naval-architect friend of ours from Sanibel Island. She was all the boat I could ever want. LOA: thirty-four feet, six inches. Thirteen-foot beam. Plenty of headroom in the salon, and 140 square feet of cockpit. She had an enormous fuel capacity that gave me a range of four hundred miles, with a safety factor of about fifty miles. She felt good, she smelled good. I got a cold beer from the little refrigerator, and turned the VHF to the AM band, and Radio Havana came blasting in. Bright conga music: steel drums and guitar. I washed the sweat away with a quick shower, and was already sweating again before I slipped into soft cotton shorts, knit shirt, and leather sandals.
This was my
âThe way you got Ellsworth?â
âGoddammit, thatâs not fair, Dusky.â
I knew it wasnât fair. But I didnât care. So I promised everything Rigaberto wanted me to promise. I didnât plan on honoring any of the promises, but Herrera was a good friend. Why put him on the spot by telling the truth?
âWe figure they got hold of someone who knew your personal habits. Not hard to do on an island as small as this. But they donât figure on Billy Mackâs funeral screwing up your routine. Normally, every evening, about eight-thirty or nine p.m., you hop in the car and drive down to the docks to check on your boat. So they planted a little ignition bomb. Nothing fancyâbut just the right amount of explosives and in just the right spot. Professional. Very professional.â
âSo I try to avenge the murder of my best friend, and end up getting my wife and kids killed. God. . . . â
âDusky! It wasnât your fault, dammit! Mourn for Janet, mourn for Ernie and Honor, but donât mourn for yourself. Donât let yourself go to ruin, Dusky. You owe them better than that.â
That was true. I owed them better. Right then and there I decided to preserve myself, my strength, my sanity, and give them better. How many other Janets and Ernies and Honors had been left in the ruthless wake of those drug-running bastards? How many more would there be? The ones they didnât blow up would just end up among the walking dead: glazed eyes, vague smiles, hated pasts, and hopeless futures.
I would give them better. I would give them all better.
So I checked myself out on Friday morning. A hot Key West morning; the kind where the odor of asphalt shimmers up off the streets and the white clapboard houses and blue sea catch the sunlight and glow with oppressive, sleepy heat. Not a breeze, not a bird stirring. There was only the desperate whine of overworked air conditioners, vacationing cars on the molten streets, trapped smells of rotting fruit; mangos and limes and bananas.
Come to the happy tropics, historic Key West. Drink at Sloppy Joeâs, walk past the Audubon house. And watch your life dissolve while your brain cures like a Virginia ham.
Upon my request, Rigaberto had moved my clothes and a few other personal effects onto my boat. I would never go into that pretty little house on Elizabeth Street again. It was just another corpse, and I had had a stomach full of corpses. I climbed onto the Sniper feeling, as I did, a soft rush of nostalgia. I felt as if I hadnât been aboard in a year. I opened the cabin door, pushed open the forward windows, and stripped off my sodden clothes. I loved that boat. And love for a boat does not come with looking at blueprints in a boatyard, or with delivery day. It comes gradually, slowly, after years of working heavy seas, rainy nights underway, of fighting big fish and bigger blue northers, and always coming out on top, together. The Sniper was Janetâs wedding present to me. She had her built up in Port Canaveral, with design help from Billy Mack and a naval-architect friend of ours from Sanibel Island. She was all the boat I could ever want. LOA: thirty-four feet, six inches. Thirteen-foot beam. Plenty of headroom in the salon, and 140 square feet of cockpit. She had an enormous fuel capacity that gave me a range of four hundred miles, with a safety factor of about fifty miles. She felt good, she smelled good. I got a cold beer from the little refrigerator, and turned the VHF to the AM band, and Radio Havana came blasting in. Bright conga music: steel drums and guitar. I washed the sweat away with a quick shower, and was already sweating again before I slipped into soft cotton shorts, knit shirt, and leather sandals.
This was my
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