Key West Connection Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Introduction

  I

  II

  III

  IV

  V

  VI

  VII

  VIII

  IX

  X

  XI

  XII

  XIII

  XIV

  XV

  XVI

  XVII

  XVIII

  XIX

  Teaser chapter

  PRAISE FOR RANDY WAYNE WHITE AND HIS NOVELS

  “What James Lee Burke has done for Louisiana, Tony Hillerman for the Southwest, John Sandford for Minnesota, and Joe R. Lansdale for east Texas, Randy Wayne White does for his own little acre.”

  —Chicago Tribune

  “White take us places that no other Florida mystery writer can hope to find.”

  —Carl Hiaasen

  “White brings vivid imagination to his fight scenes. Think Mickey Spillane meets The Matrix.”

  —People

  “A major new talent . . . hits the ground running . . . a virtually perfect piece of work. He’s the best new writer we’ve encountered since Carl Hiaasen.”

  —The Denver Post

  “White is the rightful heir to joining John D. Mac-Donald, Carl Hiaasen, James Hall, Geoffrey Norman. . . . His precise prose is as fresh and pungent as a salty breeze.”

  —The Tampa Tribune

  “White doesn’t just use Florida as a backdrop, but he also makes the smell, sound and physicality of the state leap off the page.”

  —South Florida Sun-Sentinel

  “This satifying, madcap fare could go seismic on the regional bestseller lists.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “He describes southwestern Florida so well it’s easy to smell the salt tang in the air and feel the cool gulf breeze.”

  —Mansfield News Journal

  SIGNET

  Published by New American Library, a division of

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  Published by Signet, an imprint of New American Library, a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  First Printing with Introduction by Author, April

  eISBN : 978-1-101-53063-4

  Copyright © New American Library, Inc., 1981 Introduction copyright © Randy Wayne White, 2006 All rights reserved

  REGISTERED TRADEMARK—MARCA REGISTRADA

  Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

  PUBLISHER’S NOTE

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

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  To Scooter and Lee Wayne

  “. . . and they died with the smiles on their faces.”

  WILLIE NELSON

  Introduction

  In the winter of 1980, I received a surprising phone call from an editor at Signet Books—surprising because, as a Florida fishing guide, the only time New Yorkers called me was to charter my boat. And if any of my clients were editors, they were savvy enough not to admit it.

  The editor said she’d read a story by me in Outside Magazine and was impressed. Did I have time to talk?

  As a mediocre high school jock, my idols were writers, not ball players. I had a dream job as a lighttackle guide, yet I was still obsessed with my own dream of writing for a living. For years, before and after charters, I’d worked hard at the craft. Selling a story to Outside, one of the country’s finest publications, was a huge break. I was about to finish a novel, but this was the first time New York had called.

  Yes, I had time to talk.

  The editor, whose name was Joanie, told me Signet wanted to launch a paperback thriller series that featured a recurring he-man hero. “We want at least four writers on the project because we want to keep the books coming, publishing one right after the other, to create momentum.”

  Four writers producing books with the same character?

  “Characters,” Joanie corrected. “Once we get going, the cast will become standard.”

  Signet already had a template for the hero. He was a Vietnam vet turned Key West fishing guide, she said, talking as if the man existed. He was surfer-boy blond, and he’d been friends with Hemingway.

  I am not a literary historian, but all my instincts told me the timetable seemed problematic. I said nothing.

  “He has a shark scar,” Joanie added, “and he’s freakishly strong. Like a man who lifts weights all the time.”

  The guys I knew who lifted weights were also reakishly clumsy, so . . . maybe the hero, while visiting a local aquarium, tripped during feeding time?

  My brain was already problem-solving.

  “He lives in Key West,” she said, “so, of course, he has to be an expert on the area. That’s why I’m calling. You live in Key West, and I liked your magazine story a lot. It seems like a natural fit.”

  Actually, I fished out of Sanibel Island, on Florida’s Gulf Coast, a six hour drive from Sloppy Joe’s, but this was no time for petty details.

  “Have you ever been to Key West?” I asked the editor. “Great sunsets.”

  Editors, I have since learned, can also be cagey. Joanie didn’t offer me the job. She had already settled on three of the four writers, she said, but if I was willing to submit a few sample chapters on speculation, she’d give me serious consideration.

  Money? A contract? That stuff was “all standard,” she told me, and could be discussed later.

  “I’ll warn you right now,” she said, “there are a couple of other writer we’re considering, so you need to get at least three chapters to me within a month. Then I’ll let you know.”

  I hung up the phone, stunned by my good fortune. My first son, Lee, had been born only a few months earlier. My much adored wife, Debra, a
nd I were desperate for money because the weather that winter had been miserable for fishing. But it was perfect for writing.

  I went to my desk, determined not to let my young family down.

  At Tarpon Bay Marina, where I was a guide, my friend Ralph Woodring owned a boat with Dusky painted in big blue letters on the side. My friend, Graeme Mellor, lived on a Morgan sailboat named No Mas.

  Dusky MacMorgan was born.

  Every winter, Clyde Beatty-Cole Bros. Circus came to town. Their trapeze artists, I realized, were not only freakishly strong, but they were also freakishly nimble.

  Dusky gathered depth.

  One of my best friends was the late Dr. Harold Westervelt, a gifted orthopedic surgeon. Dr. Westervelt became the Edison of Death, and he loved introducing himself that way to new patients. His son, David, became Westy O’Davis, and our spearfishing pal, Billy, became Billy Mack.

  Problems with my hero’s shark scar and his devoted friendship with Hemingway were also solved.

  Working around the clock, pounding away at my old black manual typewriter, I wrote Key West Connection in nine days. On a Monday morning, I waited for the post office to open to send it to New York.

  Joanie sounded a little dazed when she telephoned on Friday. Was I willing to try a second book on spec?

  Hell, yes.

  God, I was beginning to love New York’s can-do attitude.

  The other three writers (if they ever existed) were fired, and I became to sole proprietor of Capt. Dusky MacMorgan—although Signet owned the copyright and all other rights after I signed Joanie’s “standard” contract. (This injustice was later made right by a willing and steadfast publisher and my brilliant agent.)

  If Joanie (a fine editor) feels badly about that today, she shouldn’t. I would’ve signed for less.

  I wrote seven of what I would come to refer to as “duck and fuck” books because in alternating chapters Dusky would duck a few bullets, then spend much-deserved time alone with a heroine.

  Seldom did a piece of paper go into my old typewriter that was ripped out and thrown away, and I suspect that’s the way the books read. I don’t know. I’ve never reread them. I do remember using obvious clichés, a form of self-loathing, as if to remind myself that I should be doing my own writing, not this job-of-work.

  The book you are now holding, and the other six, constituted a training arena for a young writer who took seriously the discipline demanded by his craft and also the financial imperatives of being a young father.

  For years, I apologized for these books. I no longer do.

  —Randy Wayne White

  Cartagena, Colombia

  I

  We were out at the edge of the Gulf Stream, trolling for the big ones, when I got word that my best friend was dead.

  I was up on the fighting deck boning a six-inch silver mullet—an ideal sailfish bait—when my Konel VHF-780 marine radio started squawking at me. It was Nels Chester of the Southern Cross II, a fellow charter captain out of Key West. I went below, adjusted the squelch, and took the mike.

  “This is the Sniper. This is the Sniper. What’s up, Nels?”

  “Oh Christ, Dusky. Jesus. I don’t know how to . . . ”

  Even over the VHF I could tell that his voice was choked with emotion. The first thing that crossed my mind was that there was something wrong with my wife, Janet, or one of my twin boys, Ernest and Honor.

  “Get hold of yourself, goddammit, Nels. Give it to me straight.”

  “Dusky, they got him. They got Billy Mack. He was out here ’bout a mile or two from me. Fishin’ for dolphin. They hijacked his boat, Dusky. And they killed him. Slit his throat. Oh, Christ. I found him floatin’ just now. . . . ”

  “Shut up, Nels! Listen to me!” My heart was pounding loud in my ears, the adrenaline roaring through my body like a drug. “What kind of boat were they in? And which way did they take off?”

  Nels was starting to regain a little control. “There were four of them, Dusky. Two black guys, two white. In one of those racing boats. Cigarette hull. Dark-blue. Saw them through my binoculars, heading Billy Mack’s way. Then I got a call from Billy Mack. Said he was going to the aid of a disabled power vessel. I knew goddam well there was something funny about that. I watched them, Dusky. I watched them climb up on his boat, all thank-yous and appreciation, then the biggest black guy got behind him, and I saw the knife, Dusky, but there was nothing I could do, I swear! I saw it all through the binoculars. Oh, lordy, lordy, he’s layin’ on my deck now like he’s got two mouths; one with this bloody awful smile on it. . . . ”

  So they had killed him. Killed my best friend. Billy Mack. We had served three tours together in Nam. The United States Navy. SEALS. The best of the best, the toughest of the tough, and if you know anything at all about the Navy’s Underwater Demolition Team—especially the exclusive branch of SEALS—you would know that we are all closer than brothers. The Brotherhood of Hell, that’s what our old chief called it. Once, when Billy Mack and I were in the first round of training, out in Coronado, just kids, really, trying to win our fins, they had come to our barracks at three a.m. And they ran us all out into the Pacific seven miles.

  “See those lights?” our chief said, pointing to the faint blaze of lights over the California mainland. “You maggots swim to breakfast. And if you’re late for chow call, you don’t eat.”

  We had no lights, no moon, no fins, no nothing. Billy Mack was just a farm boy from a place called Kunkle, Ohio. A tough little guy, but scared to death of swimming at night. Later, in Nam, when we patrolled the harbors every night underwater, we laughed about it. But back then he was scared shitless. He stuck close to me. In fact, everybody stuck close to me. I was their leader; leader without rank, but I knew everyone depended on me. I was the biggest, the fastest, the strongest. I think even the chief was a little afraid of me. One time I overheard him talking with the OIC:

  “Jesus Christ, have you had a look at that Henry MacMorgan kid? Looks like he was built out of fourby-sixes. And his shoulders—like some kinda freak or somethin’. Must be four feet wide across the goddamn back. You see that blond hair, that little angel kid’s face of his, and you figure he oughtta be in the back seat of a Dodge copping feels off some high school girl. But then you get a look at those eyes—kinda battleship-gray they are—and you know, you just know he ain’t gonna balk when it comes his turn to kill.”

  “I got the dope on him,” the OIC had said. “Strange case. He was an orphan. Raised in the circus by an Italian family that worked the trapeze. That’s where he got those shoulders. Seems they were playin’ some small town and some local toughs thought it would be funny to cut a rope here and there and watch the big top tent fall. Happened right in the middle of their act. Everyone was killed but MacMorgan. He caught up with those toughs. I don’t know what he did, but it musta been nasty. When he got here the federal boys were hot on his tail. They said, ‘You take him or else.’ We pretended like we didn’t know that he lied about his age. You know how old he is? Sixteen goddamn years old. I wouldn’t get on his bad side, if I were you, Skip. After this training, he’s going to be one thoroughly dangerous SOB.”

  So they dropped us seven miles off in the Pacific. A hot August night and back on the mainland other kids our age were riding the one-ways in their hopped-up cars and listening to the Beach Boys, planning their surfing parties. We stuck close together, heading toward shore in a tight V. Just when we thought we had it licked, only a mile or two from shore, that’s when the shark moved in, throwing up a big green glowing wake of bioluminescence. We knew it was a shark by the way it circled, and we knew it was huge by the force of the wake.

  Everyone started to panic. Billy Mack was going wild, screaming at it, kicking at it madly. I grabbed him by the hair and jerked his ear up to my lips. I whispered hoarsely:

  “Listen, you stupid farm-boy bastard. If that shark kills us he kills us. But if he doesn’t kill us, you can bet these guys are gonna remember how you acted. And the
y ain’t ever gonna respect you. Never. And you’d be better off being dead, I can guarantee you that.”

  It settled him better than a slap in the face. The shark’s circles were getting tighter and tighter. I knew our only chance was to try to scare it off. I pulled my knife from the scabbard belted to my calf; the good Randall attack-survival model 18; the one with the seven-and-a-half-inch blade of the finest stainless made, the one with the threaded brass butt cap and waterproof O-ring, and flared holes in the hilt for converting it to a spear. That knife had cost me a month’s pay, and now I was going to see if it was worth it. I moved out away from the V, thrashing my arms, trying to set myself up as bait. Strangely, I wasn’t surprised to see Billy Mack right beside me. If I was going to be bait then, dammit, he was going to be bait too. A tough little guy. On the shark’s first pass, I expected to be bumped. That’s the way it happens in the survival books they had pounded into our heads. A shark first bumps, then circles back to attack. But this was the deep-water Pacific. At night. And this shark wasn’t a member of any literary guild. I felt no pain, only impact. It was like being dragged behind a ski boat without skis. Water was being forced up my nose, my face contorted by our speed through the water. Somehow, I got around behind the shark, holding onto his back for dear life. Only I knew I was already a dead man. He was too big for me to get my arms clear around him, and I thought: This is one magnificent son of a bitch. Again and again I stabbed that fish, probing for its heart with that good Randall knife. I tried to remember my shark anatomy: over 250 species; single circulation system, phylum Vertebrata, no true bone cells, skeletal support from cartilage, tiny cordlike brain—none of that information was worth a damn. What I did know was this: sharks, like some people, die very very hard. The shark began to sound, swimming toward the bottom. I didn’t care. In that black underwater world, all I knew was that I was going to kill that shark or die trying. My air was gone. Funny colors, red and green and yellow, exploded in my brain. With one last great effort, I buried the knife in the shark’s underbelly and pulled with all my strength, trying to slice clear to the anal cavity. I felt the huge shudder, felt that great fish list sideways in its final, convulsive, circular death dance.