Wreckers' Key Read online

  “He’s not that bad,” he said, lifting his hands, palms upward as if he were a weight lifter. “Okay, you’re right. And if he did have a hand in putting that boat on the stones, then he’s a major asshole.”

  Nestor put his elbows on the table and leaned his forehead against his clasped hands. He was muttering what sounded like curses in Spanish. Then he raised his head and looked at his wife. “Berger heard or he didn’t. He’ll fire me or he won’t. In the meantime, I need to get Jorge down here to look at the boat. I’ll call him tonight, see if he can come down tomorrow. Time to go on the defensive.”

  He reached for her hand and they sat there for several seconds, not talking. Once again I felt like an intruder just sitting there.

  Nestor had met Catalina two years earlier when he’d returned to his hometown in the Dominican Republic after his father was admitted to a hospital, near death. The young, chocolate-skinned woman of mixed race had been his father’s favorite nurse. After the funeral, Nestor returned to Fort Lauderdale and the two started an e-mail correspondence that ended with a marriage proposal six months later.

  They made a striking couple with matching heads of black hair, yet so different in their body types. Tall, slender Nestor had his Spanish ancestors’ olive skin and sharp features, while Catalina’s beauty came from the lushness of her African lips, carved cheekbones, and a figure that even when pregnant evoked desire in men and women—the women desiring to look half that good. Being around them made me a believer in marriage. Maybe it wasn’t something that would ever work for me, but for these two, their union made them better, stronger, wiser. I envied them that.

  And now I could understand Nestor wanting to believe that the grounding wasn’t his fault. It could, probably would, ruin his chances of ever moving up, of getting the highest-paying jobs on the megayachts. Gossip spread like the wind on the waterfront. But I knew how quickly things could change when a yacht was traveling at a speed like twenty knots. Only a few seconds of inattention could result in disaster. Obviously, Nestor wanted to believe this wasn’t his fault.

  We paid the bill and rose to leave. On the sidewalk, I embraced Catalina and smiled at her. “Berger was right about one thing. You look great.”

  She lowered her eyes, embarrassed by the flattery. She really had no idea how lovely she was. “I feel great.” She took my hand in hers. “Why don’t you come back with us to the yacht? There is not so much else to do. We have movies, computers—many toys.” She elbowed her husband in the ribs. “And we can send him off windsurfing while we have an afternoon for the girls.”

  “Thanks, but not this afternoon. I haven’t been down to Key West in a while, and I want to wander around— been cooped up on the boat too long on the trip down.”

  “So tell me, why did you make this trip alone?” Catalina asked. “Where is that wonderful man of yours?”

  I winced at the possessive term. While B.J. and I were lovers, we continued to take things one day at a time. Thing is, I was the one balking at commitment. Catalina had met B.J. once, and he had made his usual impression. Women were drawn to him like iron particles to a magnet. It usually took more than a brush-off to shake them loose. I think it was something about his long, sleek black hair and part-Samoan heritage that made him seem like a tall, brown island king. We all just wanted to picture him wearing nothing but green leaves.

  “B.J. was busy,” I said, not really wanting to explain at what, “and I couldn’t find a good deckhand on such short notice. Besides, the autopilot did most of the steering. I’ve had some stuff going on in my life, and I needed the time alone. I enjoyed it. The light has been spectacular. Gave me time to do some thinking, and I got some great photos of scenes I hope to paint when I get back.”

  Catalina wouldn’t let it be. “He is busy at what?”

  Geez, these people were Latins. Machismo and all that. I knew how they were going to react. But I needed to say it as though it didn’t bother me. “My friend Molly asked B.J. to take some classes with her. They’re studying to be midwives.”

  Nestor burst out laughing and pretended to bury his face in his wife’s hair. He was standing behind her, his arms casually wrapped around her waist, and he patted her swollen belly like a tom-tom. “Sorry,” he said when he caught his breath. “I just never heard of a man wanting to be a midwife—or do you call it a midhusband?” His face was turning red as he held his breath trying not to laugh again.

  “Well,” I said, “If you think about it, it fits right in with his fascination with shiatsu and aikido and all that enlightenment and Eastern religion stuff. Besides, B.J. is very secure in his masculinity. He’s really interested in this, and he—”

  This time they both exploded with laughter.

  “You guys, stop it. I know how it sounds. I think he’s really doing it for Molly. Geez, I don’t know what to think.”

  “Have you checked to see if he’s still got cojones?” Nestor asked.

  “Mi amor, ” Catalina said, a playful huskiness coming into her voice, “this man—there is no question. He is beautiful. Perhaps, too beautiful.”

  “You know, you’re not making this any easier on me.”

  “Maybe you should call him to come down to Key West,” Nestor said. “There are lots of bars on Duval Street he might like.”

  “Okay, you two, you go ahead and yuk it up.” I hitched my bag up over my shoulder. “I’ll see you both later.”

  In fact, I thought, as I headed back toward Schooner Wharf to admire the charter yachts of Key West, it had been good to see Nestor laughing like that, even if it was at my expense. The young man had sounded so somber when I’d received his first phone call. He was in a pretty bad spot, and he might find himself having to look for another line of work after this.

  Maybe I should join him, I thought, as I walked down Greene Street, shoving my hands deep in the pockets of my sweatshirt. I had done a job recently that was now hanging over me like a threatening storm, only I didn’t know how to prepare for this one. That’s what had made me so quick to say yes to the opportunity to leave Fort Lauderdale for a while. My career just might be in need of salvage, too.

  There’s a reason why I normally don’t try to pick up distress calls on channel sixteen, I thought, as I settled onto a bench to watch the activity in Key West Bight Marina. There was once a time, back when my dad first built Gorda and he was one of only a couple of guys in the business, that he would answer every call that came up on the radio. But things had changed in recent years— changed drastically. As the yachts grew bigger and more expensive, the salvage and towing business became more lucrative, and dozens of companies had sprung up to try to cash in on the bonanza of idiots who could afford to buy boats but didn’t have the sense to get any kind of training to run them. There was Sea Tow, Offshore Marine Towing, Cape Anne Towing, Ocean Towing, Big Tuna Salvage—the list went on and on.

  Unlike cars, boats don’t require a driver’s license for personal use. Anybody can go buy a vessel that can run at speeds up to sixty and seventy miles an hour, then just jump in and turn the key. And the waters around South Florida have been chewing up boats for centuries. While Ted Berger had just been complaining about Ocean Towing, they weren’t the only ones out there slapping boat owners with outrageous salvage claims. I’d heard from captains who’d applied for jobs with these outfits that it was company strategy to do anything they could to upgrade a job from a tow, which paid by the hour, to a salvage operation, which could result in an award of 20 to 40 percent of the value of the boat. Plus, they all needed the bucks to buy bigger and faster towboats and put up higher land-based VHF radio antennas. The end result? Gorda and I just couldn’t compete.

  And then there was that afternoon just over a month ago when I answered an emergency call and the boat sank and a child almost died. And now I was being sued for $1.3 million for damages and mental anguish.

  The whole situation was causing me a fair amount of mental anguish of my own, so when Nestor Frias called and re
quested my assistance with getting the damaged Power Play back up to Lauderdale, I didn’t care if B.J. was off taking lessons in how to deliver babies. I grabbed at the chance to get out of town.

  I stood up now, stretched, and told myself to stop whining. It was a sunny, crisp January day, I was in Key West, and I had lots of nerve to complain. There were thousands, probably millions of people all across America who hated their jobs at this very moment, and they weren’t standing outside in the warm sun gazing through a sea of rigging in Key West Harbor. The seafood restaurant to my left was broadcasting Buffett’s “Boat Drinks,” and I was admiring the fleet of schooners at the docks in the boat basin tucked behind breakwaters. Some were smaller workboats like the Wolf, some more than a hundred feet like the Western Union—industrial-strength charter head boats built to carry crowds—and others were classics like that black-hulled, immaculately varnished schooner with the name Hawkeye written in gold leaf on her bow.

  Okay, so you’ve been thinking about getting out of the boat business, but listen to yourself. What else do you think you could do?

  I started to stroll back toward the dinghy dock on the waterfront, thinking I might stop off at the Schooner Wharf Bar for a cold one before heading back out to the boat.

  Paint. That’s what I really wanted to do. Like my mother. She had been a fairly successful watercolor artist before she died. We spent many happy hours standing in front of the easel together, her warm body pressed to my back, her hand guiding mine. Yes, that’s it. Well done. You've really got a talent for this, darling. Her work still graced the walls of some of the most prominent homes in Fort Lauderdale from the days when the galleries sought her work. And now I’d been invited to enter several paintings in the prestigious Las Olas Art Show, and at least one gallery was hinting at wanting to show my work. I knew the statistics, the very small number of people who actually made a living as artists, but maybe if I sold Gorda, I could use the money to take a year off just to paint. Just to see if I really had it.

  “Seychelle?”

  I turned my head in the direction of the distant shout. At first I didn’t see anyone. Then, far down one of the Schooner Wharf piers, I saw a man stepping off the schooner I’d been admiring just a few minutes before. He came trotting up the dock toward me with an incredulous look on his face.

  “Seychelle Sullivan? Is that really you?”

  Ill

  I was pretty sure I would have remembered this guy if I’d ever met him before. The fabric of his white T-shirt was stretched tight across his broad chest, and where the sleeves of the shirt had been cut off, his tanned biceps bulged as he half ran toward me, waving. His slim hips were encased in cargo shorts, and his thick brown hair was streaked with strands of sun-bleached gold. All in all, I was figuring it was my lucky day that he was running toward me, whoever the hell he was.

  My face must have shown my confusion. He stopped about five feet away from me and smiled. “You don’t remember me, do you?”

  “Um, no. Are you sure we’ve met?” There was something about his eyes that was ringing bells somewhere deep in the recesses of my brain, but I couldn’t nail down the connections.

  He opened his mouth wide and laughed. His teeth were whiter than a puppy’s and the look he was giving me, enthusiastically waiting to see if I would come up with his name, made me think that if he’d had a tail, it would have been wagging.

  He dropped his head to his chest for a few seconds, as though giving up. Then he looked up, showing off those gorgeous teeth again, and said, “Ben. Remember? From high school? Ben Baker?”

  “Benjamin Baker?” I said, my voice rising nearly an octave on his last name. “Oh my God, Glub? Have you ever changed!” When I’d called him his old childhood nickname, he’d dropped his eyes for a moment and his dazzling smile dimmed by just a few watts. I reached out for his shoulders and held him at arm’s length. I knew I was babbling, but I couldn’t believe it. “Look at you. Oh my God. You’re gorgeous!”

  As I walked around him, surveying the transformation from head to bare feet, he cocked his head sideways and watched me.

  “Changed a little, huh?” he said.

  “A little? Geez, I never would have recognized you.”

  Benjamin Baker had been one year ahead of me—in my brother Pit’s class at Stranahan High. He was one of those nerdy boys, shaped like a pear with a wide ass and narrow shoulders. His mother always buzzed his hair short, making his head look even more pinlike in relation to his enormous butt. I used to think he would have made a good singing Country Bear in a Disney attraction.

  Ben had been totally into marine science, though, and that was our connection. That and the fact that we lived in the same neighborhood, and Pit and I often had to save him from the cruel teasing of our older brother Maddy. I’d spent hours with Ben going over all the creatures he had in his slide collection and peering into the powerful microscope his mother had bought for him.

  In high school, Ben had suffered from the triple curse—he’d had braces, acne, and glasses all at once. His face had been a red, bumpy field of scabs and pus, and if it hadn’t been for the fact that he had the coolest hermit crabs as pets, I don’t think I would have gone over to his house anymore.

  “What happened to you?”

  He laughed again in that openmouthed way that was so unlike anything he had ever done as a kid. He’d always been trying to disappear into the woodwork back then, hoping not to stand out so the other kids wouldn’t tease him or beat him up as they did regularly. If he did laugh, he’d hold his hand in front of his mouth so you wouldn’t see his braces.

  “Hey, people change, you know? After high school, my dad wanted me to go to work for him at the car dealership, but you can guess how I felt about that.” He stretched his closed mouth until his lips were so thin they nearly vanished.

  Yes, I knew more than I wanted to know about the relationship between Ben and his father. The older Baker never passed up an opportunity to remind his son of just how much of a disappointment he was.

  “Soon as I turned eighteen, I joined the Coast Guard. Got the braces off, got contact lenses, went to boot camp, and started eating right. Got away from my mother’s cooking and discovered I liked working out. Within a couple of years, nobody from back in Lauderdale even recognized me. I passed people right on the street and they had no idea it was me.”

  “You know, I can believe it. You really look great. I am so happy for you, Ben,” I said, and I meant it. But, there was something about seeing him again that made me remember moments in my childhood when I hadn’t been the person I wanted to be. I’d never teased Ben like so many of the girls had. Any teasing was always just between us, as a friend. But there had been times, many of them, when I’d seen other kids being really mean to him, and he had looked at me with those sad eyes, beseeching me to do something. I was a scared kid, too, and I hadn’t stepped forward to defend my friend. I wasn’t proud of those moments. “What are you doing here in Key West?”

  “I live here,” he said. “See that black-hulled schooner back there, Hawkeye? She’s my boat. I live aboard and do sunset charters and snorkeling cruises, that sort of thing.”

  “I always thought you’d become a marine scientist.”

  “Yeah, well, that was what I wanted to be when I was a kid. But after I joined the Coast Guard and started spending all that time on boats, I just couldn’t face going back to school. Whenever the guard would make me go in for training, it just brought back all those memories of high school—and they weren’t particularly good memories.”

  I nodded. “I can understand that.”

  “I spent a year stationed on a cutter here in Key West, and I really liked it. Decided this was the place I’d return to when I got out of the service.”

  “How are your folks?”

  “My dad’s still the same.” He lifted his shoulders and spread his hands wide. “We don’t talk. My mom died about a year ago.”

  “Oh, Ben. I’m so sorry to hear th
at.” Ben’s father owned Baker Ford, a large dealership on Federal Highway in Fort Lauderdale. I was always afraid of Mr. Baker when I went to Ben’s house as a little girl, and Ben literally shook when his dad called his name. His mother was a soft-spoken woman, but she was a society type, Junior League and Garden Club and all, keeping herself busy and out of the house. When we were kids, Ben used to come over when his parents were fighting, and though I never saw his mother wearing dark glasses or anything like that, I’d known it was pretty bad. There was always an air of barely suppressed violence in that house.

  “I heard about your dad,” he said. “I read the local boating magazines, and I saw a couple of articles about him when he died.” He shook his head. “I really liked Red. I wish I’d had the opportunity to sit and listen to some more of his stories. Too late now, I guess. So, you’ve taken over the business?”

  “Geez, Ben, you sure know a hell of a lot more about me than I do about you.”

  His lips stretched wide again, this time showing those teeth, but I noticed that the smile didn’t quite reach his eyes. “Wasn’t it always that way?” he said.

  I’d always suspected Ben had liked me more than I’d liked him. Not like a boyfriend-girlfriend kind of thing, but he had always wanted to have a friend who shared his love of the sea and all things marine. I came closest to that of the people he knew, but I already had a best friend in Molly. She lived next door to me, and we were fast friends right up through high school. Ben yearned for a friendship like I had with Molly, but few kids wanted anything to do with him. “That’s quite a boat you have there,” I said, trying to change the subject. “I was admiring it earlier. You sure do keep her in great condition.”

  “Thanks. I work at it. She’s a special boat, a real Alden, designed and built in 1922.”

  “How big is she?”

  “Seventy-five feet overall, but only fifty-nine on deck. The problem for around here is that she draws seven feet. That’s no good here in the Keys. The water’s a little thin. The guy who owned her before me did all the restoration work, but it’s still a full-time job keeping her in shape. I renamed her after my great-great-grandfather.”