Gagliano,Anthony - Straits of Fortune.wps (13 page)

on the phone. I cremated the thing pretty good, didn't I?" I nodded. "It sounded to me like even the ashes have blown away." He looked at me for a moment. "Let's get back to you. What were you doing so far out from shore, and don't tell me you were swimming either, not that far out." I told him about the kayak but omitted the sinking of The Carrousel. The omission was louder than the truth itself would have been. We both heard it. "What time did you head out? In the kayak, I mean," he asked. "About five in the morning." "Little early to be out in a kayak, wouldn't you say? There's something else. There's always something else. You're no smuggler. But you were up to something out there. What was it? Drugs?" "How much coke can you fit into a kayak? Come on. And where did I get it? You think maybe I paddled down to Co- lombia, loaded up a few kilos, then paddled back? That's a long way, Ruben." "You were a cop once. If you still were, would you believe that story?" "Probably not." "I rest my case. Whatever it was, maybe it will come out, but then again maybe not. But it's there, and you know what I'm talking about. Personally, I don't give a shit. It's not in my domain. I'm just telling you man to man, cop to cop." I sat quietly. We had a bit of a staring contest, but Cortez got bored and stood up. He turned his back to me and seemed to be reading his own commendations on the wall behind his desk. He stretched his arms above his head and turned to me again. "You say you went into the ocean at five. We got you at seven. We get a lot of people come out of the water down 109

here, and I've been on patrols with the coast guard. After a while you get a feel for how long a man's been in the ocean, and you were in the water for a lot longer than you say. I just want you to know that." "All right. So now I know. Any chance I can make a phone call?" "You just made one." "How about a little slack for a fellow cop?" "Ex-cop." He looked annoyed for a moment. "Okay, fuck it." He slid the phone across the desk. "How about a little privacy?" "Don't push it." I punched in Vivian's cell-phone number. Everything had been screwed up, including, of course, our rendezvous. But she was out there somewhere, probably wondering what had happened to me. It was possible, however, that she already knew, that she along with her father had been part of the setup. That was something I didn't like to think about, but I had to consider it all the same. I couldn't ask very many ques- tions with Cortez sitting across from me, but I would be able to get much from the tone of her voice, or so I believed. Williams's voice said hello. I started to say something, then thought the better of it and hung up. Cortez sat watching me. "What's the matter?" he asked. "You look a little pale-- even for a guy from Nebraska." I didn't say anything. "It's time for you to get out of here," Cortez said. "Go and meet all your new friends. The food's lousy and the weather is hot, but you'll only be here for a little while, which is more than I can say for most of them down there. Stand up. "It's too bad I don't like you," he said. "Otherwise me and you could be friends." He opened the door and called in Heckle and Jeckle. They 110

came in looking skeptical, like a couple of nervous fathers let into the delivery room. They had no idea what was going on. Cortez put a hand on my shoulder. "Treat this guy right," he said. "Vaughn here used to be a cop up in New York. This whole thing is just a fucked-up misunderstanding. He's going to be here for a few days, so keep an eye on him." Heckle and Jeckle were a lot friendlier to me as they es- corted me out to the pen. "How come you stopped being a cop?" Ellis asked me. "I got tired of writing traffic tickets," I told him. "That don't sound like a very good reason to quit your job," he said. "You're right. Maybe I was too hasty." The outdoor cage where they put me might have passed for a schoolyard, except for the razor wire spiraling along the top of the Cyclone fence that surrounded the compound. The sunlight pressed down on the concrete, and the dank air wriggled with the heat, but out to the west the clouds had begun to mass, collecting their strength for the late-after- noon storms that came with the summer months. It was the time of year when hurricanes are born above the coast of West Africa and speed across the ocean like demons made of wind. There was no malice in them, but they were full of destruction. Most died as soon as they were named or else wandered off and disappeared. Some, like Andrew, make it to land, where they changed history. Lay a thousand yards of sidewalk a day and the jungle rains would come again someday and try to take it all back. But I had a more personal storm to worry about. How had Williams gotten hold of Vivian's cell phone? I walked through the gate and looked around and wished that a tempest would suddenly appear and scatter every- thing I saw to the four directions, including myself. There 11 1

are places on this earth so full of distress and inertia that only chaos can set them free. Neither is it a mystery that all of those places are made by men and maintained by men, and such a place was the Krome Detention Center that day in late August. I heard the gate close behind me and felt the heat clamp down on my neck in the same instant. No way I can stay here until Monday, I thought. I had to know what had happened to Vivian. What was he doing with her cell phone, and why had he tried to kill me? Those thoughts kept circling in my mind like dust devils in a sandstorm, and the only way to stop their incessant whirling was clear though far-fetched. I had to get out of Krome. Two days was too long to wait for answers. I walked across the yard toward the shadows and the promise of shade. The asphalt threatened to burn through the thin soles of the worn-down sneakers they'd given me. There was a long, dented canopy of corrugated steel that ran the length of the fence and abutted a concrete shoe box of a building. Under the canopy were wooden benches and picnic tables with canisters of water on them. Thirty or forty people sat in the shadows, some of them playing dominoes and others reading quietly in the bad light. A few merely sat staring over the expanse of the yard, watching me come. I was just another stranger walking across the desert toward them, bearing no gifts and bringing no good news. At the west end of the yard where the clouds were closing fast, three men were playing basketball under a rim with a net made, appropriately enough, of chain. The ball refused to bounce more than a foot above the ground. The man drib- bling was forced to run doubled over like a hunchback in order to stay with the ball. When he was twenty feet from the basket, he straightened up suddenly and launched the ball at the rusted rim. It sailed through the hoop and landed in a puddle without bouncing. The men came and looked 112

down at the ball the way you look at a dead dog that belongs to somebody else. There was a brief discussion, and then the men turned and walked away, forfeiting the ball to the sun- cracked concrete. The Haitians sat with the Haitians, and the Cubans sat with the Cubans. There was a blond man who looked like a sun-drunk German, and a small group of Central Ameri- cans with straight black hair and Mayan faces. It was like being at the United Nations, except we were all in jail, a fact that tends to kill much of the joy of the multicultural experience. Everyone was speaking either in Creole or in Spanish. The beleaguered-looking man with the blond hair stood alone by the fence, talking to himself. In his natty, beige, well-tailored if rumpled linen suit and blue bow tie, he was the best-dressed man in the compound. No one paid him any attention. His was a private club, at least until they took him off to the rubber room. Two men, whom I assumed to be Chinese, sat with them- selves. They sat so close together I thought they would merge. I could not imagine the length of their journey, and the dejection concentrated in their faces matched the storms over the swamps in the west. It is a long way back to Haiti when you've nearly died trying to escape from it, but it was not so far that you couldn't try again. The Cubans were, for the most part, home free. But China was another planet. It may have taken them months to get here, and now they were going back. They had the tired faces of men without hope and whose only luck is to endure, yet despite all this, when I smiled at them, they smiled back. Their eyes were unexpect- edly kind. I gave them the thumbs-up and went past them into the shade. There didn't seem to be an American section, so I sat with my back against the corrugated wall of a Quonset hut. A man with muscles like wrought iron dipped in black enamel 113

walked over and asked me for a cigarette by forming a peace sign with his index and middle fingers and moving it back and forth in front of his lips. I patted my empty pockets, and he left me, looking only mildly disappointed. After all, he was in a place where disappointment was as chronic as the sunlight. I sat there and watched as six of the men marched out from under the canopy and began playing soccer with the defeated husk of a basketball. I have to get the hell out of here, I thought. I'll go nuts if I have to sit here much longer. I glanced around, but all I saw was razor wire, low clouds, and unhappy people. Then, quite suddenly, the fatigue I had been holding at bay with fear and adrenaline swept over me, and I decided not to fight it any longer, so I tilted my head back, closed my eyes, and tried not to think.

I must have dozed off, because the next thing I knew, a guard was shaking my shoulder and telling me that my lawyer was there to see me. There was a crack of thunder in the west, and the wind picked up speed. I got quickly to my feet and followed the guard as he walked toward the main building. We had all but made it to the gate when the first heavy drops of rain began to hit the ground. I was led into a large, rectangular room with rows of benches and tables and bars on the windows as a reminder of how things were. The guard at the door patted me down before I went in and told me I would be patted down again on my way out. His voice was devoid of inflection; it was the voice of an automaton who had repeated the same words so many times that he was no longer capable of hearing his own boredom. I would not have traded his life for my own despite the alternative. Even the prisoners were better off. They could at least go home, and home, regardless of how much a hell it may turn out to be, still possesses certain latent pos- 114

sibilities. The guard was just waiting for a pension to set him free; his was a life sentence, and time was a conveyor belt heading a day at a time toward the pit. The room, which smelled of cigarettes and sweat, was nearly empty, and I saw Susan Andrews almost as soon as I walked in. She was seated at a table, her head down, reading what looked to be a brief. There was a bulging leather valise sitting on the table beside her like a mascot, and a can of soda was cupped absentmindedly in her hand. I walked over and sat on the bench across from her. She didn't look up immediately the way most people would have in a place like Krome, and I was reminded of how fierce her concentration could be. She made one violent slash with her pen, then lifted her head and smiled at me. She had a beautiful face, but the smile ruined it, at least temporarily. The smile she flashed was thoroughly imper- sonal, a practiced gesture, a concession to civility, a bright coin tossed without consequence to the beggars of the world. There was nothing for Jack Vaughn in that smile, but per- haps I was hoping for too much under the circumstances. Then the smile vanished and something human came into her expression, and I thought she looked sad and drawn out, though her beauty was still vibrant enough to hide it, except if you had met her back when I had. She smiled for real this time and shook her head as she studied me. "You look like hell," she said. "I didn't expect you to make it down here until Monday." "I almost didn't. The prosecutor asked for a postponement in the case I'm trying. Seems someone down at the property room misplaced a few kilos of evidence. So here I am." She lifted the valise off the table and set it down beside her. "How's it going?" I asked. "You're asking me that?" I looked her over. She looked like money. Her days as a 115

prosecutor were way behind her, and the drug money of her former adversaries was making her rich, one overpriced hour at a time. "How does it feel to be making decent money for a change?" I asked. She thought that over for a moment. "You may have trou- ble believing it, but in a lot of ways I liked being a prosecutor better." "No, I'm not surprised. You're the type that likes to get her hands dirty. Money can't change that, though that is a pretty nice suit you're wearing." "It's starting to come back to me now," she said, frown- ing. "What is?" "What it was I liked about you. Now, before we get too comfortable, tell me again how you wound up in the drink this morning with a man in a speedboat shooting at you." I told her almost everything but left out the juicy parts. It was just me, the kayak, and some good and bad luck mixed together. As for Williams, I told her I didn't have a clue. Maybe a case of mistaken identity. Lying to your lawyer was a dead-end street, but I couldn't very well tell her the truth. She would have wanted the whole story, and I could not yet afford to give it to her--especially as there was so much of it I didn't know myself. "A little suspicious, at least from a cop's point of view, but legally speaking it doesn't sound all that bad. Like I said on the phone, though, I can't do a thing until they bring you down to federal court for arraignment." "For smuggling?" "I know it's all bullshit, but they have to go through the motions." "How long am I supposed to sit here while they figure out I didn't do anything?" 116

"Maybe it would help if you told them why that guy in the speedboat was shooting at you. That's really what they're after." Before I could answer, her expression changed and she stood up abruptly, the way you stand up in a bar when the time for talking has passed. I turned around and saw Inspec- tor Cortez walking toward us. His hands were in his pockets, and he was grinning cautiously. I glanced back at Susan. She looked like a tomahawk about to hurl itself across the room. "Well, now, what a surprise!" Cortez said. "Just couldn't stay away from me, could you, babe?" Never let it be said that time heals all wounds. Whoever said that must have suffered from acute amnesia. The lids of Susan's eyes lowered ever so slightly, and the corner of her mouth twitched. She leaned over and hoisted her valise onto the table, slipped the brief she'd been reading inside, and then, with very careful movements, fastened the straps again. She looked up at me. I stood. "I'll see you down at federal, Mr. Vaughn. Until then have a nice weekend." Susan came out from behind the bench and went by us like a cold wind from north of the Arctic Circle. The guard at the door started to say something to her but was enough of a survivor to let her pass unmolested. It was just as well he decided to do so, as very few of us are greatly improved by a quick knee directed at the scrotum. After she had left, Cortez turned to me. "You ever notice how some skirts make a woman's ass look bigger than it actually is?" he asked in a confidential tone. "I guess it depends on the cut." "She likes you. I could tell by the way she froze up when I came in. What were you two talking about?" "About me getting out of here, what else?" 117