Straits of Fortune Read online

  My lungs were bursting, begging for relief. My only chance was if Williams was looking in the wrong direction when my head broke the surface of the water. There was no other choice. I broke for the surface, knowing that I was heading for either another breath of life or a bullet in the head. I was in the same bad spot I’d been in the night before, only this time there was more light for Williams to see me with.

  I decided to come up near the bow of the boat where the curvature of the hull might give me a little cover, but as I began to rise toward the darkened underbelly of the speedboat, it turned abruptly and sped away at top speed. My head broke the surface of the water just in time to see it careening away, heading north, a spray of white foam spewing outward from its wake.

  There was a roar of engines behind me. I turned and saw a coast guard cutter splitting the waves and coming in from the east, from the open ocean. It was starting to swing away after Williams when it spotted me and came about. I could see the sailors watching me through their binoculars. I waved at them, and a moment later they sent one of those small, two-man inflatable pontoons out to get me. I reached up, and the two fresh-faced sailors pulled me into the craft.

  I asked for water and drank like a bedouin at an oasis. One of the sailors—a young woman—helped me to lie back and put a life jacket under my head. I struggled to sit up, but all at once my body, so long abused, failed me. I tried to speak, but not even my lips would work, so I lay back and breathed hard, and the far sun fell from the sky and crashed into my face like a meteor. After that there was only the darkness, into which I gladly allowed myself to drown.

  I woke up in the infirmary at the Krome Detention Center. The sign on the wall told me that much. I was in a large room with lime green walls, barred windows, and a dozen beds, most of which were occupied. Beyond the windows the sun was still high enough to throw shadows across the white sheets that covered me from the waist down. I had an IV in my left arm, which throbbed where they had stuck in the needle, but aside from a dry mouth and a headache, I didn’t feel all that bad, not considering the night I’d just lived through.

  I was trying to sit up when the door opened and a nurse flanked by two men in uniform came striding purposefully toward me. The men were with the Border Patrol, and I could tell from the expressions on their faces that they hadn’t come to bring me flowers. One of them was close to sixty, with the overstuffed and slightly deformed body of a bus driver. He had small blue eyes that had spent a long time trying to look hard. The other man was too tall for his weight, as though he’d been stretched artificially by machine. He was around thirty, with a mouth full of gum and hair the color of wet hay. His right eye was off center, which made him appear as if he were trying to look behind him. His expression was an imitation of his partner’s, but on him it wasn’t as convincing. He looked as much scared as he did mean.

  Both of them had waists encircled by belts heavily laden with the standard tools of law enforcement: the guns, the cuffs, the pepper spray, and the billy clubs. They were ready for anything except a footrace, but it didn’t matter, because all four of my limbs were manacled to the stainless-steel bedposts.

  The older agent wore a name tag that said COOPER. He gave me a calculated glare of menace that was supposed to strike fear into the heart of any illegal alien it chanced to fall upon. He shifted his belt on his hips and spread his legs like a man bracing for a bar fight. His partner did the same. I had no doubt who led when they danced the tango together.

  “Ask him his name, will you?” the older cop directed the nurse. His partner stood silently behind him with his hand on the butt of his gun, chewing his cud as though it were part of his job.

  “I don’t speak Spanish,” the nurse said. She swabbed my arm with alcohol and slipped the needle out.

  “Who are you kidding? I heard you speak it before. Your last name is Rodriguez, for crying out loud.”

  “Cómo se llama, spic?” the younger cop said.

  I decided to be Hispanic until I got the lay of the land, so I told him my name was Juan. The nurse glanced at me and smiled ever so slightly, then looked away again. Then she stuck a thermometer in my mouth, for which I was grateful, because it gave me an excuse not to talk. The younger officer, whose name tag said ELLIS, sat down on the edge of the bed and smacked the side of my leg.

  “You get well,” he said. “You go bye-bye.”

  They undid my ankle and wrist bracelets and gave me an orange jumpsuit that had been washed so many times that the cloth had faded into a weary paleness. Then they cuffed my hands behind my back and led me down a narrow hallway flanked every few yards by wooden benches spaced out like dashes along the lime-colored walls. We went up a flight of steps that took all my strength to climb and came out into another hallway lined with rows of offices. We made a few turns and stopped in front of a door that had INSPECTOR RUBEN CORTEZ stenciled onto the glass in gold letters with black trim. Cooper opened the door and gave me a short, hard shove in the middle of my back that propelled me into the room.

  It was a small office with a desk and a man sitting behind it. He was forty or forty-five, with dark brown hair with a gray fringe along the temples and a mustache that was all gray and needed trimming. His eyes were shiny and black, with a glint of humor in them, as though he had just recalled something vaguely amusing. He leaned back in his swivel chair as I came in.

  “Who’s this son of a bitch?” he asked.

  “This is the guy the coast guard picked up this morning,” Cooper said.

  Ellis shoved me down into a chair across from Cortez. He looked me over for a long moment, then asked me in Spanish if I were Cuban.

  “Sí,” I said.

  He laughed. “Sí?” he repeated. “Really? Just what part of Cuba are you from?”

  “Omaha, Nebraska.”

  He nodded and smiled. “Just as I suspected. Gentlemen,” he said, pointing his finger at me, “this man is an American. I find that kind of amazing, don’t you?”

  Ellis spoke up. “The coast guard said there was some guy shooting at him from a speedboat.”

  “Is that right?” Cortez said, nonplussed. “That’s very fucking exciting. Just like Miami Vice.”

  “You’re a fucking American,” Cooper said indignantly. He had a whiny, cartoon-character voice that had no business being in law enforcement. “You talk English.”

  “This is America,” I said. “English is pretty popular around here.”

  Cortez grinned and turned his attention back to me. “What’s your name?”

  “Jack Vaughn.”

  The inspector’s eyes narrowed, and his cigarette stalled in the airspace between his lips and the butt-filled ashtray on his paper-laden desk. “Jack Vaughn?” he said. “You’re not a personal trainer by any chance, are you?”

  “Sure I am.”

  “For Christ’s sake,” Cortez said. He spent a few more seconds reading my face, then stood up. “Take the cuffs off and leave us alone,” he said. He stubbed out his cigarette and sat down on his chair again. Ellis and Cooper hadn’t moved. They seemed to be in shock, but after a moment they removed the cuffs and left, looking dejected.

  When we were alone, Cortez swiveled around in his chair and opened the door of a small refrigerator behind his desk. I used the break to read a plaque on the wall to my left. Ten years before, while with the Border Patrol over in Texas, he had saved a Mexican from drowning in the Rio Grande. I wondered if that was why he’d gotten transferred. When he turned around, he had two cans of Diet Coke in his hands, one of which he set down in front of me.

  He opened his and took a long sip, then held the can up before setting it down.

  “You remember Tab?” he asked.

  “Sure, but I don’t think they make it anymore.”

  “Yeah, they do, but it’s hard to find. You can get it in Mexico, though.”

  “You can get anything in Mexico.”

  “Yeah,” he said, “especially the clap.”

  We laughed, but the
n it got quiet all of a sudden, as though a match had been snuffed out, and Cortez and I were just watching one another over the tops of our soda cans.

  “You used to train my wife,” Cortez said.

  “You’re kidding.”

  “No, I’m serious. About a year ago.”

  “Maybe so. I don’t remember. In my business people come and go.”

  “Yeah,” Cortez said. “That’s the way it is around here, too.”

  “What’s her name, your wife?”

  “Susan Andrews. Blond, short hair. Kind of tall. Don’t sit there and tell me you don’t remember her.”

  “Oh, yeah. Sure I remember her.”

  “I bet you remember her ass, right?”

  “That, too.”

  “I bet you do. Don’t get cute with me, Jackie boy. There’s no reason to be. We split up a long time ago.”

  “Sorry to hear it.”

  Cortez leaned forward in his chair and clasped his hands in front of him. He stared down at his mated fingers for so long that I thought he was going to start praying. Then he lifted his head suddenly, his dark eyes beaming with suspicion.

  “Tell me the truth,” he said in a soft voice. “Were you doing her?”

  “What makes you think I was?”

  “Why wouldn’t you?”

  I thought for a moment. “She was married to a cop. How stupid do you think I am?”

  “Considering your current location,” Cortez said, looking around, “pretty stupid.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Don’t mention it.” He lit another cigarette. “By the way, while I have you here, Jack, let me ask you a personal question. What were you doing in the water this morning, and why would somebody shoot at you? You know who it was?”

  “No idea,” I said.

  “So let me get this straight. Some guy just pulls up out of nowhere and decides to take a few shots at you. Is that right?”

  “I don’t see any other explanation,” I said.

  “I do,” Cortez answered. “Let’s say the personal-training gig isn’t bringing in the megabucks you had been hoping for. So you find yourself a partner with a nice fast boat and you go and get yourself a bunch of Haitians or Cubans, take their money, and dump them somewhere. Nice money in smuggling. If they had a better dental plan, I’d get into the business myself.”

  “You think I’m a smuggler?”

  “I think you’re a fucking liar. That’s what I think. I think your partner decided to go solo, keep the cash for himself. So you go overboard like the sack of shit you are, and he takes a few potshots at your head, only we show up and he’s got to boogey. Is that it?”

  “If that’s the case,” I said, “where are the people we smuggled? Oh, wait, I got it now. Me and my partner forgot we were both citizens, and so we were taking turns smuggling each other into Miami. This morning was my turn. Yeah, that’s it. You know, Cortez, Susan told me you were crazy. I’m just glad to see now she was wrong.”

  “She told you I was crazy?” Cortez asked.

  “Let’s just say that she mentioned you were the jealous type.”

  “You telling me she didn’t come on to you?”

  “Not to my face, no.”

  “What the hell does that mean, ‘not to my face’? What are you, some kind of fucking leprechaun or something?”

  I looked at him for a moment, confused. It had been a long time since anybody had called me a leprechaun.

  “I think I need to talk to a lawyer,” I said.

  “What were you doing in the water?”

  “Taking a swim. I’m a personal trainer. I have to stay in shape.”

  “What about the guy with the rifle and the speedboat? We’re supposed to forget about that? Just fish you out of the drink and let you go on your way?”

  “Sometimes you just have to let bygones be bygones,” I told him. “Besides, this is Miami—people get shot every day. Maybe he thought I was somebody else.”

  He smiled thinly, picked up the old-fashioned black phone, and placed it in front of me like an offering.

  “Dial away, scumbag.”

  I dialed a number and listened as it rang. Cortez watched me, grinning.

  “Which lawyer you calling?” he asked. “If I were you, his last name would be Dershowitz.”

  “Can’t afford him,” I said. “I’m calling your ex-wife.”

  Cortez blinked, and then his eyes widened. He smiled broadly as he took a long drag on his cigarette. Then he exhaled. “This is going to be better than I thought,” he said.

  “Won’t that bitch be surprised?”

  Susan Andrews, formerly Susan Cortez, had been a hardworking, highly underpaid prosecutor when she was referred to me by Judge Dryer, a client of mine, who, sad to say, got sent to jail for taking bribes over on Miami Beach. Susan and Ruben—Inspector Cortez—were divorcing, and I was the centerpiece of her personal renaissance, her transformation from unhappy and unappreciated wife to unattached single. It seems she had caught Ruben coming out of the Stardust Motel on Biscayne Boulevard with her best friend, a rather curvaceous fellow attorney, at which time Susan had decided not only to get rid of Ruben but to hire herself a personal trainer and to get back into shape. I had trained her five days a week, which is a lot of time to spend with a woman who’s going through a divorce and who therefore tends to see her husband’s philandering face superimposed over that of any male foolish enough to get within range.

  But for fifty bucks an hour, a man has to be willing to walk through a minefield now and then and trust that his charm will allow him to live long enough to make a profit. But I liked Susan. She was mean and crazy and gave off the kind of chronic bad vibes that lead to the whimsical purchase of handguns, but still, I liked her. She made it clear that she hated men and was indulging me only because of my expertise and Judge Dryer’s recommendation. I, in turn, had made it clear that I didn’t give a shit about her personal problems and was only in it for the money, which, of course, as a lawyer, she seemed to appreciate, at least from the standpoint of a fellow professional.

  For the better part of six months, I ran with Susan, I biked with Susan, and I showed Susan how to lift weights. But what she liked most was putting on the eight-ounce gloves and going a few rounds with me in a park near her new crib in the Grove. Basically, what she liked to do was beat the shit out of me three times a week, weather permitting. Forgetting her violent frame of mind, I had insisted that she wear headgear and padding while I, being Jack Vaughn, “The Motivator” (that’s what it says on my business card), wore only a smile. By the end of the second week, Susan had fractured two of my ribs and loosened an incisor with a roundhouse kick. Seems she had forgotten to mention the brown belt in tae kwon do. After the tooth incident, I wised up and started dressing a little more like the Michelin Man. I even wore a steel cup inside my jockstrap—an accessory I hadn’t needed with any of my other clients, not even the Sheik.

  Not being too bright, I made the mistake of introducing Susan to Vivian so as to dispel the notion I sensed percolating in the latter’s jealous mind that there was anything going on between Susan and me. Vivian had started showing up at the park where Susan and I had our kickboxing sessions, and while I always pretended not to have seen her, I thought it would be a good idea to make a preemptive move before the jealousy got ugly. I made arrangements for us to meet at a bar around the corner from Susan’s office. We met during a happy hour, which failed to live up to its name. Susan brought along a nice-looking fellow named Jason, a nonentity in a business suit who seemed surprised to be alive. It didn’t take long before I realized I’d made a fatal mistake.

  Susan and Vivian had liked one another about as much as the FBI likes the Mafia, maybe less so. They had nothing in common except their anatomy and the fact that each in her own way was beautiful. We were sitting at a small table with a red-and-white-checkered tablecloth and a candle as a centerpiece. I remember this aspect of the decor not because I’m romantic but because of the way the
ir eyes glared in the flickering light. Almost immediately it became clear that they were looking for something to get nasty about, and needless to say they soon found a suitable subject: Chilean wine. I became the mediator while Jason did his imitation of the Invisible Man. I was so anxious to get out of the place that I paid the bill five minutes before the food appeared from the kitchen.

  After that delightful evening, things begin to sour between Susan and me, and she cut her sessions from five to three, then to two, on down until it became every now and then. She let me know that she was dating Jason and had gotten into tennis. The training sessions became increasingly unpleasant and the cup protecting my balls increasingly necessary. I might be slow, but no one ever called me stupid, so I knew it had something to do with Vivian.

  Maybe in some strange female way, she felt betrayed by the fact that I had a beautiful girlfriend, though I had spoken of her often enough—especially in the beginning when I was trying to convince my new emotionally labile client that she was relatively safe with me. Under those circumstances, even if Vivian hadn’t existed, I would have invented her for business purposes alone. Call it Machiavellian if you will; I call it public relations. It had been a way of neutering myself without having to undergo the actual surgery, and it had worked, too—at least until the two women sat down and went to war over the seemingly insane subject of Chilean wine.

  Then, as frequently happens in my business, Susan disappeared from my calendar altogether, became a name consigned to the papery wings of my dog-eared Rolodex. The last time I heard from her, she had left her old job and joined a law firm and was now defending the same money-laundering drug dealers she’d previously been charged with putting in jail. As it turns out, the dealers had a lot more money, and, in the charade that is the war on drugs, no one at her old place of employment thought the worse of her for defecting. Inspector Ruben was now nothing more than a foolish face, fading fast in life’s rearview mirror. Jason had faded, too. She had a new man now, and things were, as they say, getting serious. There was no time for Jack, and I was made to understand that I, too, was part of the past. So long and thanks for the push-ups.