Baja Florida Read online

  BAJA FLORIDA

  Also by Bob Morris

  A Deadly Silver Sea

  Bermuda Schwartz

  Jamaica Me Dead

  Bahamarama

  BAJA FLORIDA

  Bob Morris

  For Debbie, who has yet to see the flash of green

  BAJA FLORIDA

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  “You screwed up. She’s like in a coma or something.”

  “She’ll come out of it.”

  “You keep saying that. She’ll come out of it, she’ll come out of it…”

  “She drank water this morning. She drank some of that juice. What was it…”

  “Mango nectar. It’s healthy.”

  “Yeah, that. Someone in a coma they wouldn’t sit up and open their mouth and drink it.”

  “She drank it and then she passed out again. How much of that stuff did you give her anyway?”

  “Not nearly as much as the other two.”

  “Jesus, I hope not. The other two, it dropped them like bags of rocks.”

  “Yeah, they never even knew what was happening.”

  “You think anyone will find them?”

  “You kidding? A thousand feet of water? Out in the middle of nowhere?”

  “What about the boat? What if someone comes looking for it?”

  “The boat’s taken care of. Not our problem anymore.”

  “But what if something goes wrong? What if…”

  “Look, stop worrying, will you? You’re driving me nuts.”

  “But my mind won’t stop. I can’t think about anything else.”

  “Here’s something else.”

  “What?”

  “Think about the money.”

  1

  I was sitting on the front porch enjoying the breeze off Redfish Lagoon when I heard the crunch of tires on our shell driveway.

  Oyster shells mostly. Early-warning devices. Not as annoying as barking dogs. Cheaper than closed-circuit cameras.

  Small craters and washouts riddled the driveway. Dodging the holes demanded considerable zigzagging. A poor man’s security system. One does not approach Chasteen’s Palm Tree Nursery unannounced or at a high rate of speed.

  It was too early in the afternoon for Barbara and Shula to be returning home.

  I wasn’t expecting any deliveries.

  And the nice people from Jehovah’s Witnesses had long since stopped dropping by to chat. Had something to do with the time I opened the door wearing nothing but my Zackness. An innocent lapse on my part after a long night involving Guayanese rum.

  No telling who might be heading down the driveway.

  An actual paying customer would be nice. They’d been scarce lately. But customers, at least the regular ones, usually got in touch first to make sure I had what they were looking for and to check on prices.

  So who could it be?

  Tourists sometimes pulled in thinking this was part of Coronado National Seashore. A forgivable mistake seeing as how fifty-seven thousand acres of park surrounded us on three sides, running all the way east to the Atlantic Ocean and along sixteen miles of undeveloped coastline, an oxymoron anymore in Florida.

  The federal government would love nothing more than to gobble up our measly thirty acres and add it to their holdings. To his last dying day my grandfather succeeded in fighting them off. The courts ruled that as long as Chasteen’s Palm Tree Nursery remains a viable business then Chasteens can continue to live here.

  I make some money selling palm trees. Make some money doing other things, too. Just call me Mr. Viable.

  The crunching got closer.

  And the breeze blew a little harder.

  It was coming out of the northwest, carrying with it the lagoon’s rich estuarial aroma. Lots of folks, they take a whiff and say it stinks. But it stinks good. The primal stink of Florida—muck and mangrove and all manner of briny things.

  A black limo rolled to a stop at the end of the driveway.

  We don’t get many limos, black or otherwise, in LaDonna, Florida, population four human beings, twenty thousand palm trees, and fifty gazillion mosquitoes, more during the rainy season.

  Down by the lagoon, a contingent of carpenters, dry-wall guys, electricians, and what-all was adding a second and third story to the boat house. Barbara’s new office, the galactic headquarters of Orb Communications.

  When it was done she could finally stop commuting to Winter Park and back, two hours round-trip, which meant taking Shula with her because the whole breast-feeding thing was still going on.

  Barbara had tried the alternative—breast pump and bottles and leaving Shula at home with me.

  “It’s just not working, Zack,” she said after a week of trying it.

  “Am I doing something wrong?”

  “No, not at all. It’s not you. It’s me. The pump, the bottles—it’s all just such an aggravation. Plus…”

  “Plus what?”

  “Plus, I just can’t bear being away from her.”

  I couldn’t bear being away from either one of them, but since Barbara couldn’t just close up shop, and since I was the dispensable part of the feeding equation…

  The addition to the boat house couldn’t get finished fast enough. The two women in my life, I was ready to have them here with me all the time.

  The hammering and sawing and what-all stopped. Eyes turned to the limo.

  No one got out.

  I could see the driver behind the windshield. Big guy in a chauffeur’s hat. The other windows were tinted and I couldn’t see anything behind them.

  I took my feet off the porch rail but I didn’t get up from the chair. A plantation chair with long arms and a rattan back and a plump, soft cushion to sit on. Not the kind of chair one abandons without considerable regret.

  It was April and a waxing crescent moon. Shrimp had been running in the lagoon—browns and whites. We don’t get the pinks up here. You find them more offshore and down in the Keys.

  The prime falling tide was still hours away, but already several small boats had claimed their positions along the channel as it funneled around the puzzlement of islands behind our house. Last run of the season, probably. The shrimp were smaller now, but still plenty sweet.

  Maybe, come dark, I’d g
o out on the end of the dock and try to net a few. Shrimp and grits for breakfast the next morning. Yeah, that would be just fine. Toss in some chunks of Spanish ham first and sauté the shrimp with that. Even finer.

  The driver’s door opened on the limo. The driver got out.

  White guy. Black suit, black shirt, black shoes. Not quite as big as he looked through the windshield but big enough.

  He eyed me on the porch, straightened his hat, started walking my way.

  I put my feet back on the porch rail.

  The driver stopped by the steps.

  “Zack Chasteen?”

  “You’re looking at me.”

  “Mr. Ryser is waiting in the car.”

  The driver read the look on my face.

  He said, “You weren’t expecting us?”

  I shook my head.

  He said, “Mr. Ryser called twice earlier today. Left a message both times to let you know he’d be dropping by.”

  “Didn’t hear the phone and I’m bad about checking messages,” I said. “You’re telling me Mickey Ryser is in that car?”

  The driver nodded.

  “He’d like to see you.”

  I had to laugh.

  Mickey Ryser. In a limo.

  Not that he couldn’t afford it. He could buy a fleet of them if he wanted. But it wasn’t his style.

  Mickey’s last visit, he’d been on a Harley Fat Boy with a flames-of-hell paint job. Time before that, behind the wheel of a vintage Porsche 356 D Roadster, silver as I remember.

  Mickey Ryser. It had been a while.

  “How about you tell Mr. Mickey Ryser he can drag himself out of that fancy car and join me on the porch,” I said. “Meanwhile, I’ll grab us a coupla beers.”

  I got up from the chair.

  The driver hadn’t moved.

  “Please, Mr. Chasteen. If you’ll come with me.”

  Something about the way he said it…

  As if on cue, the breeze laid. Everything got still.

  I stepped off the porch and followed him to the limo.

  2

  A back door of the limo opened as we approached.

  A woman stepped out. A stout black woman in a crisp white uniform. A dainty white nurse’s cap on her head. The hat looked peculiar, like a tiny bird had made a nest in her hair and abandoned it for something better. She nodded me inside the limo.

  I heard Mickey Ryser before I saw him: a gurgling sound, like a straw siphoning the last of a Big Gulp.

  Came from a tube running into Mickey’s nose, a tube attached to a green oxygen tank. More tubes running into his arms. Attached to plastic IV bags filled with clear liquids and dangling from the rail of a stretcher.

  One of the limo’s seats had been removed to make room for the stretcher. Mickey Ryser lay atop it, the head of the stretcher cranked up so that we were eye to eye when I squeezed inside and sat down on the remaining seat.

  My face gave me away again.

  “Aw, c’mon, Zack. I don’t look that bad, do I?”

  But yeah, he did. Shrunken and gray, eyes big in their sockets. Way too much hollow in his cheeks.

  He wore what he always wore—a vintage and gloriously tacky tropical shirt over khaki shorts. This particular shirt was a hideous red with grinning purple monkeys drinking out of big yellow coconuts. A valiant effort at jauntiness on Mickey Ryser’s part, but not enough to hide the fact that he was little more than a cadaver in clothes.

  “Good to see you, man,” I said.

  He stuck out a hand and I gripped it and we held on to each other until it got awkward and then we let go.

  Mickey coughed. And then he coughed some more.

  The short, stout black woman got back into the limo and knelt by the stretcher. She poured Mickey a cup of water, held it while he drank, and toweled off what dribbled down his chin.

  “Zack, meet Octavia,” Mickey said. “She calls herself a nurse. Mostly she just sits on her wide black Jamaican ass and watches TV.”

  Octavia took a playful swat at him.

  “Bettah hold dat tongue, mon. Else you be finding someone else to look after your awful white self.”

  “Me and Octavia, we have a rapport,” Mickey said.

  “Hunh,” Octavia said. “What you and me have is daily combat.”

  She fluffed his pillow, straightened his shirt, made a fuss over him. Then she sat down beside me.

  Mickey said, “Spent the last week in Gainesville, at Shands Hospital. Heading down to Miami now. Got a plane chartered to take me to my place in Exuma.”

  “Didn’t know you had a place in Exuma.”

  “Bought it a year or so ago, right after…” He looked himself over. “Right after all this started.”

  “Whereabouts in Exuma?”

  “About twelve miles north of George Town. Little speck of a place called Lady Cut Cay.”

  “You bought a whole island?”

  “Not like it’s all that big. But it’s got a grass landing strip. Protected harbor with a new dock. Little bit of elevation with a house up top looking out on everything. Used to belong to some actor bought it for him and his wife to go on their honeymoon. Then they split up. It’s beat-all beautiful, Zack. And the sunsets, they’re something else. Saw the flash of green three times last month.”

  “Sounds nice.”

  “It is nice, Zack. That’s why I bought it,” Mickey said. “Man needs a nice place to die.”

  I didn’t say anything.

  “Don’t mean to get all heavy on you. But there’s no other way to tell it.”

  “How long?”

  “Days, weeks. Who the hell knows?”

  I looked at Octavia. She looked out the door. We were quiet for a while.

  Finally, Mickey said, “What you thinking?”

  “I’m thinking you should have gotten in touch before now.”

  “Why? So we could have a pity party on the telephone? You know me better than that, Zack. I don’t go for that moping-around crap. Been too busy planning my wake. Gonna have it in Miami. At Vizcaya Mansion. A real blowout. Loud band. Lots of booze. Fireworks. The whole bit.”

  “I’ll be there.”

  “Damn right you will. I’ve got you down for the eulogy. Make me look good, you hear?”

  “That’ll take considerable lying.”

  “Why I picked you,” he said.

  We laughed. Then we stopped. And we sat there for a while saying nothing. My throat got tight. Octavia shuffled in her seat.

  “Need to get me some air,” she said. She stepped outside and joined the driver, who was leaning against the front of the limo.

  Mickey looked at me.

  “Hell of a thing, isn’t it?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “It is.”

  “I’m good with it though. I’ve made my peace, settled up all my accounts. Except for one thing.”

  I looked at him, waiting.

  “Need a favor, Zack. A big favor.”

  “All you gotta do is ask, Mickey. You know that.”

  He grinned.

  “In that case,” he said, “make it two big favors.”

  3

  “So,” Barbara said. “It’s his dying wish.”

  “Two wishes.”

  “To take his boat out for a last ride.”

  “And to be with his daughter,” I said.

  “The boat’s in Nassau?”

  “Yeah, but it’s more yacht than boat. A sixty-eight-foot Trumpy. One of the last Trumpys ever built. Mickey bought it a few years back and dropped a bundle restoring it. It was getting some engine work done up in Nassau, only it took longer than he planned. Mickey had a crew lined up to deliver it to his place in Exuma, but they bailed on him.”

  “What about the daughter?”

  “It’s complicated,” I said.

  We were in the kitchen. Barbara sipped chardonnay and played with Shula while I finished making dinner. Sautéed snapper with sweet plantains on top. Grilled romaine with blue cheese, lots of it. Cuban
bread, homemade from the James Beard recipe. You roll the dough into a loaf, cut three slashes across the top, brush it with ice water, then put it in a cold oven with a pan of hot water underneath it. Bake at 350 degrees for forty minutes. Comes out nice and crusty. Then you slather an ungodly amount of butter on it. And everything is right with the world.

  The last bit of daylight was seeping from the sky. Redfish Lagoon basked in the afterglow, its waters gone purplish now. We had the windows open and the no-see-ums were coming in through the screens. They didn’t seem to be bothering Barbara or Shula. But I was slapping my ankles and scratching at my head and cussing all of insectdom.

  Barbara poured a bit more chardonnay, her two-glass limit. I opened another beer. Shula slurped juice from her brand-new sippy cup. The family happy hour. Life was good. Except for the damn no-see-ums. And the news about Mickey Ryser.

  Barbara said, “He seems so young.”

  “Seven years older than me.”

  “Tell me again how the two of you met.”

  “It was right after my parents died.”

  “What were you, six?”

  “Yeah, almost,” I said. “A couple of weeks after the funeral, Mickey showed up here at the house and asked if I wanted to learn how to surf.”

  “Just out of the blue?”

  “That’s the way it seemed then, but looking back on it now it was probably my grandfather’s idea. Most likely, Mickey saw the chance to make a little money and he grabbed it. He was a hustler, even back then. Had to be.”