Key West Connection Page 6

  “What the hell’s the matter? Why’re ya smiling like that? Listen, I realize this is a tough time for you, buddy, but I need a story. Came all the way down here from New York—”

  I nailed him with an amber stinger—full in the right eye. He dropped his little notebook, howling.

  “Goddam it, you can’t treat the working press like that! You’ll be hearing from our—”

  He tried to sucker-punch me. Soft chubby roundhouse in slow motion. I brushed it away and stuck him good with a left. His nose collapsed, blood spattering the other reporters.

  And then Rigaberto was there, guiding me away.

  “Any of you other vultures want a story?”

  “Don’t bother with them, Dusky—they aren’t worth the trouble.”

  “How about you, fat boy? UPI? I’ll be glad to give you a story, too.”

  The reporters scattered in the face of this madness. I called them names. Childish obscenities you might hear from teenage boys readying for a fight none of them wanted. Only, I wanted to fight. Fight them all. I was ready to kill, and someone was going to die—them, me, it didn’t matter.

  “This is Dr. Robinson, Dusky. He’s going to give you something to calm you down.”

  Muscular, good-looking man in a suit. There was a needle in his hand.

  “How’d you like me to stick that hypo up your ass, sawbones?”

  I never got a chance to hear his answer. Something stung my arm, and then, mercifully, there was nothing. . . .

  Oh, the killers had done a professional job, all right. Rigaberto filled me in, sitting in a chair beside my hospital bed. Someone had sent flowers. Red roses. I didn’t even bother to read the card. Outside, in the sterile hallways, nurses in white uniforms hurried back and forth while doctors so-and-so were paged softly over the telecom system.

  “Before I tell you anything, Dusky, I want you to promise me something. This is a job for professional law enforcement, and I want you to promise you’ll stay out of it. Okay?”

  “Absolutely, amigo. Absolutely.”

  He knew I was lying. “I mean it, Dusky. This has all been tragic enough. I don’t want to end up having to arrest you.”

  “Write out an oath and I’ll sign it in blood.”

  He reached over and patted me on the forearm. “Dusky, there are just some things one man can’t fight alone. Some things are just too big. This is one of those things. We’re after them, Dusky; after them this very moment. And we’ll get them—I promise you that.”

  “The way you got Ellsworth?”

  “Goddammit, that’s not fair, Dusky.”

  I knew it wasn’t fair. But I didn’t care. So I promised everything Rigaberto wanted me to promise. I didn’t plan on honoring any of the promises, but Herrera was a good friend. Why put him on the spot by telling the truth?

  “We figure they got hold of someone who knew your personal habits. Not hard to do on an island as small as this. But they don’t figure on Billy Mack’s funeral screwing up your routine. Normally, every evening, about eight-thirty or nine p.m., you hop in the car and drive down to the docks to check on your boat. So they planted a little ignition bomb. Nothing fancy—but just the right amount of explosives and in just the right spot. Professional. Very professional.”

  “So I try to avenge the murder of my best friend, and end up getting my wife and kids killed. God. . . . ”

  “Dusky! It wasn’t your fault, dammit! Mourn for Janet, mourn for Ernie and Honor, but don’t mourn for yourself. Don’t let yourself go to ruin, Dusky. You owe them better than that.”

  That was true. I owed them better. Right then and there I decided to preserve myself, my strength, my sanity, and give them better. How many other Janets and Ernies and Honors had been left in the ruthless wake of those drug-running bastards? How many more would there be? The ones they didn’t blow up would just end up among the walking dead: glazed eyes, vague smiles, hated pasts, and hopeless futures.

  I would give them better. I would give them all better.

  So I checked myself out on Friday morning. A hot Key West morning; the kind where the odor of asphalt shimmers up off the streets and the white clapboard houses and blue sea catch the sunlight and glow with oppressive, sleepy heat. Not a breeze, not a bird stirring. There was only the desperate whine of overworked air conditioners, vacationing cars on the molten streets, trapped smells of rotting fruit; mangos and limes and bananas.

  Come to the happy tropics, historic Key West. Drink at Sloppy Joe’s, walk past the Audubon house. And watch your life dissolve while your brain cures like a Virginia ham.

  Upon my request, Rigaberto had moved my clothes and a few other personal effects onto my boat. I would never go into that pretty little house on Elizabeth Street again. It was just another corpse, and I had had a stomach full of corpses. I climbed onto the Sniper feeling, as I did, a soft rush of nostalgia. I felt as if I hadn’t been aboard in a year. I opened the cabin door, pushed open the forward windows, and stripped off my sodden clothes. I loved that boat. And love for a boat does not come with looking at blueprints in a boatyard, or with delivery day. It comes gradually, slowly, after years of working heavy seas, rainy nights underway, of fighting big fish and bigger blue northers, and always coming out on top, together. The Sniper was Janet’s wedding present to me. She had her built up in Port Canaveral, with design help from Billy Mack and a naval-architect friend of ours from Sanibel Island. She was all the boat I could ever want. LOA: thirty-four feet, six inches. Thirteen-foot beam. Plenty of headroom in the salon, and 140 square feet of cockpit. She had an enormous fuel capacity that gave me a range of four hundred miles, with a safety factor of about fifty miles. She felt good, she smelled good. I got a cold beer from the little refrigerator, and turned the VHF to the AM band, and Radio Havana came blasting in. Bright conga music: steel drums and guitar. I washed the sweat away with a quick shower, and was already sweating again before I slipped into soft cotton shorts, knit shirt, and leather sandals.

  This was my home now.

  The Sniper.

  Appropriate.

  She had been equipped for hunting down and taking the big ones; the blue-water rogues that stalk the Gulf Stream. Si-Tex/Koden 707 digital readout loran C. Benmar autopilot. Furuno FE-502 white-line commercial fish finder. The best outriggers, the best rods and reels and line; the best of everything because that’s what I, as a professional, demanded. Now I needed to outfit her for a different quarry. A bigger, smarter, and far less noble kind of game.

  I sat at the little table in the salon and made a list.

  D. Harold Westervelt was a friend of mine. One of my stranger friends. We had both survived military life and war, commando raids and espionage missions, but where I had married and found a new life, D. Harold could never leave the conflict behind. He loved it all too well. He lived in an ironically peaceful setting: suburban house near the naval base on Boca Chica Key. When he got too old for midnight assaults, the state department kept him on as sort of a freelance inventor. When it came to killing, Westervelt was indeed ingenious. They financed his sometimes strange notions and, in return, he produced for them highly sophisticated—albeit unusual—weaponry.

  Those of us who held D. Harold’s friendship—and there weren’t many—and those of us who knew how he made his living—even fewer still—often referred to him as the Edison of Death.

  It not only fit. It was accurate.

  He was eating lunch when I arrived. Tossed salad and unsweetened tea. A man of severe discipline, he looked much younger than his fifty-odd years. Shaved head, icy blue eyes, the lean steely look of an Olympic 170-pound-class wrestler. He was dressed in a white golfing shirt, blue serge pants with razor creases, and well-oiled topsider shoes. He looked like a retired German executive who had come to the Keys to enjoy bridge and lawn sports.

  “I was expecting you, captain.” He got up from the table, poured me a glass of iced tea, added the teaspoon of honey. I had been to his home maybe twice in eight years, and st
ill he remembered how I took it. We sat across from each other.

  “It goes without saying that I was very sorry to hear about your wife and children.”

  “How did you know I was coming? I didn’t call.”

  He shrugged. “I know you, captain. Why belabor the obvious?”

  “Then maybe you know why I came?”

  He stood, removed his dishes from the table, washed them carefully in the sink, and stacked them neatly to dry.

  “Come with me.”

  I followed him through the kitchen, past the Jelloblue swimming pool on the patio, down the hallway to a padlocked fire door. He unlocked it and swung it open, revealing his workshop. Except for one wall lined with a marble workbench, there were locked gun cabinets everywhere. Every kind of handgun and military rifle. There were mementos of the Second World War, his many decorations framed and pinned to blue velvet; and American and British, Nazi and Russian uniforms on racks.

  “We’re similar end products from two different wars, captain. There’s an interesting story behind the Nazi combat helmet with the bullet hole in it—but I won’t bore you with my recollections. That’s what happens to most old soldiers, you know. Like the warriors of all time, we become very, very boring.” He studied me for a moment. “What have you gained? Ten, twelve pounds?”

  “About seven.”

  “Hmm . . . I would have thought more. You’ll need to lose the excess. At your age—thirty-five?—it can make a great deal of difference. Still using the snuff, I see. The stain on your index finger tells me so. Good. You never did use cigarettes—such a childish habit. I never could understand how people could obtain pleasure by slowly killing themselves. Sucking and exhaling smoke.” He shook his head. “So! You’ll want to work in stealth, I assume.”

  “That’s right, colonel.”

  “There are many ways to create the illusion of accidental death. But it can take more time, and you sometimes forfeit efficiency.”

  “I have plenty of time. All the time in the world, colonel.”

  He studied me for a moment. “Yes. Yes, I see that you do.” He walked to the wall, pushed an unseen button, and a small patch of workshop floor slid open to reveal a large gunmetal-colored floor safe. He twisted the dial, pulled the door open. “I have been working on a few things which might interest you. But before we get to them, is there anything . . . more obvious . . . that you might need?”

  I handed him my list. He went over it quickly. “The RDX explosives are excellent—but a little obvious. If they are detected, they would, of course, implicate a military man, or a former military man.”

  “I’m dealing with a mob, and wars between mobs are not all that uncommon. At any rate, I will use the explosives only when and if I have to.”

  He nodded, still studying the list. “Of course. The smoke bombs will be perfect for diverting attention. And you need more clips for that AK-47 of yours. A beautifully efficient weapon, but . . . ”

  “I have no permit for it, colonel. It can’t be traced. And the Cuban army uses them.”

  The slightest smile crossed his face. “Forgive me, captain. You see, I am so used to command. I’m not questioning your judgment.”

  “I would be proud to serve under you anyplace, anytime, colonel. And I welcome your suggestions.”

  He nodded, reflecting for a moment. “So!” He glanced at the rest of the list. “I have all these things. You are welcome to them.” He walked to his marble workbench, lighted the paper with a match, and washed the ashes down the sink. “But I have some other things I want you to look at.” He reached into the floor safe and pulled out a Webber 4-B dart pistol. I recognized it from Vietnam.

  “You are familiar with this, I see.”

  I nodded.

  “Well, this one is just a little different. The one you used had twenty-six steel darts, all armed with saxitoxin. Saxitoxin is—”

  “—made from the sex glands of the southern puffer—or blowfish. A deadly poison,” I finished.

  “Yes! But the problem with the saxitoxin is that when a medical examiner finds traces of it—especially in concert with the dart wound, which he may or may not discover—he must immediately suspect foul play. It’s fine for wartime, but not ideal, I’m afraid, for these ostensibly peaceful times when an enemy’s death must look . . . ”

  “Accidental?”

  “Yes. So I have devised a new dart, a better poison. The dart is made with lignum vitae—one of the strongest woods in the world. The needle is made of superhardened glucose. The poison is from pelvic and anal spines of the scorpionfish, which, like the southern puffer, is a tropical species. But unlike the southern puffer—which can poison a person only through ingestion—the scorpionfish can sting anyone unlucky enough to pick it up, or step on it, or swim over it. The dart’s needle dissolves upon the release of the poison; the dart becomes just another stub of sunken wood. And the victim immediately feels a shocking wave of pain over his entire extremity. He begins to swell, goes into convulsions, and then dies a very ugly death. Did you read about the KGB agent who had the misfortune of stepping on a scorpionfish while wading in the shallows off the Isla de Pinos in Cuba? No? Very sad. He was one of their best men—the one behind all of the problems they’re now having in Haiti, I understand.”

  He didn’t break a smile as he said it. I had always respected him, but now I felt slightly in awe of this methodical inventive genius.

  “I assume it is best if the victim is stung on the feet, hands, or stomach?”

  “Yes. And it is imperative they be in or near the water when they are found.”

  He reached into the floor safe and brought out something else. It looked like a thirteen-inch bear trap, only there were several rows of teeth. It was colored in a green-and-black camouflage design, and there were handgrips on two stocky aluminum handles.

  “My God, what’s . . . ”

  “What’s this? Think back, captain. What was always the toughest strategic problem of any underwater reconnaissance? The X-factor: if your man was challenged and forced to kill, how many seconds or minutes would he have to complete his mission before the enemy challenger was found or missed?” He lifted the tooth contraption. “But this can eliminate the X-factor. Accidental death—by shark attack.” Again there was the wry sharp smile. “You, above all others, should be able to appreciate this weapon, captain. You with that awful shark scar of yours. The first time I saw it, I remember thinking it was phenomenal that you survived.”

  Carefully, he explained the weapon to me. Hydraulic cocking device, safety, and trigger release. Made of a combination of Kevlar and aluminum—both superstrong and superlight. Teeth honed razor-sharp. It could snap an arm off or partially sever a leg.

  “Death is not instantaneous,” D. Harold Westervelt warned. “But if properly effected, even the victim won’t know that he has been attacked by something other than a shark. I have not quite perfected it yet. I need to find a way to ‘load’ it with one or two actual shark’s teeth so that they may be left behind in the victim’s body. A small thing, but the small things often make all the difference.”

  He handed it to me. Very light, very strong, and very, very wicked. The ragged jumble of teeth I had seen a hundred times in the big open-water makos.

  “Notice the clip, captain. It attaches easily to a weight belt. I have a couple more things you might be able to use. How about a bulletproof wet suit? Very light, very flexible.”

  I shook my head. “Not this time, colonel. Thanks, but no thanks.”

  “I hope you are not setting yourself up for sacrifice, captain.”

  “No. No, I’m not. I have too much work ahead of me.”

  “I see.”

  Obviously, he didn’t want to hear the specifics. He went to one of the weapon cabinets, unlocked it, and removed a weapon with which I was very familiar. The Cobra military crossbow.

  “I too am an admirer of this weapon,” the colonel said. “So ancient in concept, so quiet and deadly in design.
It links the warriors of all time. Quite romantic, when you think about it. You know, of course, the specifics: arrow velocity of about three hundred feet per second, range of more than three hundred yards. Self-cocking mechanism. Would you like a scope?”

  “No. I won’t need it.”

  The colonel nodded. “I remember. Your work with the crossbow became almost legendary in Vietnam, did it not? What did the Marines call you? SEAL of Sherwood—”

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  “Of course. A long time ago, and a nasty little war. Some great individual bravery, but no overall bravery. None. Nothing noble about it. Not like my war. . . . Do you still have that fine Randall knife of yours?”

  “Yes.”

  But just barely. It had taken me nearly twenty minutes of steady diving to find it after Ellsworth had been carted off by the Coast Guard. Mr. Johnson was anything but pleased at the delay. He thought it quite cruel of me. And he was probably right, but I wasn’t about to lose that knife. We had been through too much together. It was my good-luck charm, and I happen to believe in good-luck charms.

  D. Harold Westervelt walked me to the door. “When does the assault take place, captain? Not where, not how—but when?”

  “Very early tomorrow morning. One of them.”

  “Hmmm. . . . I think, captain, you should take a little bus trip tonight. Spend tomorrow in Miami, say. I have a lady friend there.”

  “What! I can’t . . . ”

  He rummaged around in a nearby closet and produced a short blond toupee. “The shoulders might be a problem. Especially in warm weather. But I’ve encountered tougher problems of disguise—I should be able to pass for you. Elevator shoes, dark glasses, the right pads—yes, I’ll have no trouble. Just let me have a quick look at your signature. Oh yes, that will be very easy. Right-handed, blocky script—the very easiest. What about a credit card? Good, I think you will sign for dinner tonight at the Fontainbleau, and be seen walking off some insomnia at . . . what time?”