Blackwater Sound Page 9

  “We got a stowaway,” Arnold called up to Lawton.

  Lawton turned and looked down.

  “Hey, Arnold? You remember my wife’s name? I was trying to recall.”

  “Her name was Grace, Lawton.”

  “Yeah, yeah, that’s right. Grace. Grace Collins.”

  “Lawton, you just keep us going downriver, me and my friend are going to socialize a bit. Okay?”

  “Grace is a pretty name,” Lawton said. “I like that. Grace. It’s got kind of a religious connotation to it.”

  Arnold nodded.

  “That’s some captain you got,” said Johnny. He smiled at Arnold in that bleary hey-this-is-great-shit way he had. “What’s wrong with the dude?”

  “He lived too long,” Arnold said. “That’s all.”

  “Yeah, that seems to be going around.”

  “Johnny, listen. You got some problem with me, fine, we’ll handle that however we can. But that old man up there, he’s got no part in my business. Get that straight. He’s an innocent bystander, that’s all.”

  “Whatever you say, Arnold. You’re the head goomba. At least for the time being anyway.”

  Arnold shook his head, got the fighting chair between him and the boy.

  “You know, Arnold, I’m disappointed in you. Old fuck like you, you shoulda known you couldn’t break the omerta. Finger your own people and we’d sit still for it. And here all this time I thought you were a stand-up guy.”

  “Johnny, Johnny, Johnny. I told you once, I told you a million fucking times, I’m not in the Mob. I’m not a fucking Godfather. All I am is a bookie, for Christsakes. I take bets. Football, basketball, the ponies. Nothing more than that.”

  “Sure, Arnold. However you want to play it.”

  Up on the flybridge, Lawton kept the boat idling along. He glanced back, showed Arnold a worried look, then turned back to the river.

  “ ‘In Italy, for thirty years under the Borgias,’ ” Johnny said, “ ‘they had warfare, terror, murder, and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland, they had brotherly love; they had five hundred years of democracy and peace—and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock.’ ”

  “Yeah, yeah, I know,” Arnold said. “Orson Welles, The Third Man.”

  “Good, Arnold. You remembered.”

  “Listen to me, Johnny. Let’s put the knife away, we’ll have a cocktail, talk this thing through, take a little boat ride, enjoy the sun. When we’re done, we swing by the Jockey Club, pick up a couple of girls I know. You’d like that, wouldn’t you? A couple of girls.”

  They were passing beneath the Brickell Avenue drawbridge, cars backed up in both directions. Moving along slowly, almost to the mouth of the river.

  “What girls, Arnold? What kind of girls could an old brontosaurus like you show me?”

  Johnny smiled but there was nothing behind it. He pushed himself up from the gunwale and took a step toward Arnold and stopped.

  “I like you, Arnold. I like your boat, I like how you live. I always thought you were a classy guy. For a goomba, you got refinement. You have that John Gotti thing going. Dapper don, old Moustache Pete.”

  “That’s movie bullshit, Johnny. You lie there and you watch Edward G. Robinson and Robert Mitchum all the fucking day and night and your brains are turned to mush, boy. That’s not how the world is. It just isn’t, son.”

  The boat passed beyond the no-wake zones, and Lawton Collins pushed the throttle forward and got them up on plane. The big mirrored windows of the office buildings slipping away to the north. Behind them a jet ski bounced across their wake, crisscrossing back and forth, searching out the best bumps.

  Arnold looked out at the watery blue dazzle. He wasn’t sure why he’d never learned to swim. Probably too busy running errands for guys on Miami Beach, getting his start in the business.

  Arnold took off his glasses and wiped the salt spray off the lenses with his shirt tail. When he put them back on, Johnny had moved a step closer to him, watching the jet ski cutting back and forth over their wake.

  Peretti looked ahead at the big Rickenbacker Causeway coming up, all the joggers and skaters and bicyclers pedaling across it. Everybody out enjoying the weather, the sun. Staying young and healthy, gonna live forever, this generation.

  “Now look, Johnny, if your dad or Morgan has a beef with me, then I’m going to talk directly to them. A family meeting, fine. But I’m not doing this with you. You could wave the biggest fucking knife in the world, I’m not saying another word. A. J. wants to hear my side of things, we do it face to face.”

  Eyes drowsy, Johnny said, “We’re out on this boat, Arnold, nice sunny day, know what I’d like? I’d like to catch a fish, put some meat on the deck.”

  “What?”

  Johnny tucked the knife in his belt, grabbed one of the rods out of the rod holder, opened the bailer on the reel, reached up to the tip of the rod and pinched the big stainless steel hook and pulled out some line.

  “You got any bait around here, Arnold?”

  “What’re you doing, Johnny? What is this?”

  “You should always carry bait. You got all these rods, you need fresh bait.”

  “I got some frozen squid down below. Take a minute to thaw it out.”

  “What I want, Arnold, I want some fresh bait. Something still alive, full of blood, you know what I mean. Maybe about the size and shape of a finger. You see anything like that around here?”

  “Johnny, listen. Don’t push this thing where it doesn’t have to go.”

  “Live bait, Arnold. You got any idea where we could rustle some up?”

  “Hey, come on, Johnny. You’re not like this. You’re no gangster. You’re a rich kid, runs his father’s fishing yacht, keeps the reels filled with line, the drag set right. That’s who you are. You’re my grandson, my sweet little boy. Not some thug out of the movies.”

  Johnny’s smile hardened. He set the rod in the holder and drew out the knife.

  “You been fucking with my family, Arnold. We don’t stand still for that.”

  Arnold felt his legs freezing up. The time to jump was past.

  “Am I right? You been fucking with the family, Arnold?”

  Arnold raised a hand. “It’s not like that, Johnny. I swear it’s not.”

  Johnny moved across the six feet of deck quicker than seemed possible. He grabbed Arnold’s right wrist, and held it in his iron grip.

  “Sooner or later, always comes a time,” Johnny said. “Castellano whacks Gambino, Gotti clips Castellano. It’s how it happens, the baton pass, old man, one generation stepping up, taking over. That’s what time it is here. So no more yapping. You’ll just stand there and take your medicine, and learn to like it.”

  “Stop it, son. This isn’t you. This isn’t who you are. You’re a good kid.”

  “You don’t know me, Arnold.”

  “Sure I do. I knew you since the day you were born. Held you in my lap, changed your fucking diapers, kid. You’re a good boy. You’re not like this.”

  Johnny’s eyes lost their focus for a moment. Working out this problem. Not the brightest bulb. Not somebody you’d send alone to do a job unless you were spread thin and there was no one else. Arnold watched as the boy’s eyes cleared. And his grip tightened. He twisted Arnold’s arm back against his elbow joint. The air blew out of the old man’s lungs.

  “You should always keep live bait aboard your boat, old man. You never know when you might need to catch your supper. Live bait, that’s the number-one rule of the sea.”

  Johnny wrenched Arnold around and bent his hand toward the wooden step plate on the starboard gunwale. He pressed Arnold’s palm flat to the step plate and laid the edge of the blade against the base of his little finger.

  “Johnny! No.”

  Lawton slowed the boat and said, “Hey, you. What’s going on down there? What’re you up to?”

  Johnny eased his face close to Arnold’s. Holding him in t
hat arm lock.

  “Johnny,” Arnold said. “You can’t do this to your own flesh and blood.”

  “What flesh and blood? You’re not my granddad anymore. My granddad wouldn’t betray his own family. You lost your union card, old man. My sister and my dad, that’s my family.”

  “Johnny, I’m pleading with you.”

  “Sorry, Gramps. Your time’s come.”

  He gave Arnold a sad smile, then leaned into his work, pressing down with all his weight, and sliced through the first knuckle of Arnold’s little finger.

  The old man howled and dropped to his knees. A cold spike hammered through his heart and he collapsed against the transom. He was still conscious, but the daylight was thickening to a yellow haze. Blood spilled onto the deck.

  “Jesus, Granddad. You got some porky digits on you.”

  Johnny held up the finger and grimaced as he curled the sharp point of the hook through the meat. Then he opened the bail on the reel, whipped the rod back, and cast the plug of flesh out into the wake. He put the rod in the holder on the arm of the fighting chair and watched the finger skip across the bay.

  “Now I got your full attention, Arnold, I want to know where you put it, that thing you stole from my family.”

  Hunched against the transom, Arnold was trying to draw a breath. He pressed the stump of his finger against his thigh and a jolt of current ripped through him.

  He opened his mouth to speak but found no air to fill his words. Johnny was letting out line, trolling with Arnold’s little finger.

  “And the second thing is,” Johnny said, lifting his head, looking off like he was struggling to summon up his orders, “I want to hear the name of every asshole you been sharing our private affairs with. And once I hear that, we’ll get onto our main business. Baton pass time.”

  Lawton Collins could see it wasn’t right, the things happening on the deck behind him. He could see the old man getting cut. The old man with white hair and a thick neck. Blood spilling on his yellow shirt. Lawton knew the thing on the deck below was all wrong, probably illegal. But the problem was, he wasn’t sure whose side he was on.

  He tried to remember these men’s names. That was always the place to start. The name led to the other things. That was what worked in the past. Once you remembered their names, the other things started to flow back.

  There was the old man down there and there was a young one. He had long blond hair and looked like a punk. Though these days, it wasn’t easy to tell. He could be a rock star or own a restaurant, be a CEO. Hell, these days everyone was trying hard as they could to look like a criminal.

  The old man gripped his bloody hand. Pressing it against his shirt. His glasses had come off and were lying on the deck. Lawton kept the boat going along the channel, glancing behind him to check on the activities down below.

  He thought the old man looked familiar. The other one didn’t. He’d never seen him before. He was pretty sure of that. He was usually good with names. Names and faces, that was his strength. But this old guy’s name was hanging out there in the mist, in the half light. A name he knew. A name he’d said a hundred times. He knew that guy, that much he was sure of. He looked at him and something felt good inside him, warm and easy.

  And that’s all he needed. The old guy had to be a friend. He didn’t need to know the guy’s name. All he needed to know was that the guy was his friend and this punk was cutting him.

  Lawton swung the wheel hard and the Bertram swerved toward a piling that marked the Intracoastal Waterway. The old man sprawled onto his back and stared up at Lawton. The kid with the bloody knife and topless sombrero rode the lurch of the boat like it hadn’t happened. An old hand on deck.

  Aiming the point of the bow for the piling, Lawton pressed the throttle forward, then swerved at the last second so they took a glancing blow. Still, it banged Lawton’s ribs against the chrome rail and nearly knocked him off the flybridge.

  Behind him the marker pole was bent cockeyed and another boat coming up the channel cut hard to starboard to get out of Lawton’s path. The old man with the bloody hand was crouched in the corner, his back against the transom. He was grimacing at Lawton. The old man he recognized but couldn’t name. And the punk, the one in the sombrero, had vanished. Lawton was looking back into the wake to find him, when the kid’s blond hair and stupid hat appeared on the ladder. The guy was peering up at Lawton, using one hand to hold the ladder, the other gripping his knife.

  Lawton spun the wheel all the way to starboard, accelerating again, heading for the seawall. Ram it hard, sink the goddamn boat if he had to. Anything to shake the bastard loose from that ladder. The baby-faced kid with a dull smile, coming up that ladder one step, then the next, then the next, till his face was even with the flybridge deck.

  Lawton swung around and aimed a kick at the boy’s teeth, but the boy ducked to the side in time. Lawton tried another kick and missed again. Down on the deck, the old man was on his feet. The old man’s name was starting to appear out of the fog. He watched it take shape a letter at a time. And then there it was. Of course, Arnold, old Arnold Peretti. Now he remembered. The bookie. His fishing buddy from way back.

  Arnold was up on his feet, clawing at the blond boy’s ankles, trying to drag him down, slinging blood across the deck.

  Lawton turned back to the wheel and saw the seawall coming up fast. Rocks along the bank, boulders big enough to gash a serious hole in that Bertram’s hull. Lawton mashed the throttles flat, milking the last trickle of power. Roaring at the seawall. Going to shake that bastard loose. Sink the goddamn boat if he had to. Arnold had plenty enough money to buy another one. No problem there.

  Lawton Collins snatched the end of the red coiled line attached to the kill switch, and snapped the free end to his belt loop. Now if he was thrown overboard, the kill switch would activate and the boat would shut down and no one would be able to get it started unless they pulled him out of the water first.

  Lawton pressed hard on the throttle. That yacht was turbocharged, a hotdog of a boat, a drag racer. Tuned that way so it could fly from one fishing spot to another. They had to be doing over forty knots.

  Sitting on the seawall, a young black man with a cane fishing pole lifted his head and saw the Bertram and he looked at it for a couple of seconds, then he dropped his rod and scrambled to his feet and screamed at Lawton. Then the man swung around and galloped through the tall grass of the vacant lot. Another hundred yards, that’s all it was before they’d crash.

  The boy in the sombrero was kicking his leg at Arnold Peretti, and he must’ve got Arnold in the face because Lawton saw the boy grin and the old bookie stumble backwards, lose his balance, and grab for the outriggers. He missed them by a few inches, then staggered to his left and smacked into the gunwale and tumbled headfirst over the side.

  A second later the kid was on the last step of the ladder, drawing back his knife, looking up, and for the first time seeing where they were headed, how close they were to crashing. The kid cocked his knife, took aim at Lawton’s back and that’s when Lawton swung the wheel hard to port, slammed the gears into reverse and held on for all he was worth.

  Seven

  “I know this guy,” Lt. Romano said.

  He peered over Alexandra Collins’s shoulder as she videotaped the body, then gently raised the camera to record the alley, the overturned garbage cans, moving in on the young woman, her long blond hair tangled with candy wrappers and gummy with blood. Early thirties for the guy, while the young woman was maybe late twenties. The male was wearing khaki trousers, a blue button-down shirt. The woman’s outfit was also casual but classier. Green silk blouse, designer jeans. Paying big bucks to look laid-back.

  There were three bullet holes in the man’s chest, two more in his forehead. Somebody making damn sure. Very damn sure.

  Alexandra eased down the alley, zooming in on the man’s wounds, holding there, then slowly zooming out and lifting the camera to show the narrow space between those two warehouse
s, a freeway for rats. The remains of a cardboard refrigerator box lay on its side down below the fire escape stairs. An army blanket and some fast-food boxes spilling out of the opening. Someone’s campsite.

  Then Alexandra slid her viewfinder to the right and taped the young woman. She was on her back, staring up at the narrow slot of sky. A blue heavenly day. Her arms were flung out to her sides as if she were about to embrace her lover, lowering himself above her. She had a smile.

  Alex didn’t see many of those on the people she recorded. Usually it was some kind of grimace, scowling at the pain and unfairness of it all. Every once in a while she saw a flash of serenity on their lips, blessed relief as they fled this mortal plane, abandoned their hungering and impossible search for money or cocaine or love. Lots of grimaces, but hardly ever a smile.

  This one was small, just a Mona Lisa hint, as if some big secret had broken into view at the moment of death. One bullet hole in her temple, a second in her left breast. Her shirt had been ripped open by the killer or some passerby, exposing the shapely contour of her bosom, the bullet hole centered perfectly in her nipple as though her killer hadn’t been able to draw his aim away from that beautiful target.

  But that wasn’t Alexandra’s concern. Speculating about motives or indulging in suspicions was for the detectives. She was merely an ID technician, a crime scene jock specializing in photography. Her only issues were with light and shadows, keeping her hands steady so she could document the stark authenticity of the moment. She didn’t care what explosion of emotion put this handsome couple in this narrow alley. She didn’t care how these two young people had wound up together. It was Alexandra’s job to remain detached, float above the scene, a single all-seeing eye. Occupied only with the exposure settings on her thirty-five-millimeter or the Sony recorder, framing each shot, slow panning, lingering on their facial expressions, trying in her way to do justice to these people who had only Alexandra Collins to speak their last words, send their dying signals to the world. That’s how she thought of it, those final looks and gestures were like notes in bottles, quick desperate communiqués frozen on their faces and in the arrangements of their bodies and their clothes—a last message flung out into the departing tide.