Текст книги "Cross Current"

Автор книги: Christine Kling

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Текущая страница: 17 (всего у книги 24 страниц)

XXII

I thought about Collazo’s words all the way home, thought about what I’d seen beneath that tarp. How could someone do that to another human being? Even that scowl of hers, the anger she’d wrapped herself in, none of that had obscured the fact that she was a beautiful child. Could Margot have been lying to me? I didn’t think so. The hate for Malheur I had seen on that girl’s face was real. She had taken a risk by talking to me. And I had put her in terrible danger by talking to her. If only I hadn’t gone to speak to her, if only I had taken her with me, put her in the same house with Solange. If only the world weren’t a place where children were abused and killed. And then there was Juliette. I had seen it in her eyes, too. Someone was hurting her. On the one hand, I was terrified that my blundering around would result in someone else getting hurt or killed. Yet, on the other hand, no one else was doing anything to stop this restavek business. Whether or not Collazo and D’Ugard believed me, this was real.

When I came around the hedge on the side of the Larsens’ house, I saw Pit sitting at the picnic table in the backyard, charts and papers and books spread out on every surface of the table and wood benches.

He looked up. “Hey, I got something to show you. Come here.”

After scratching Abaco’s ears, I joined my brother in the shade of the live oak.

“What have you got?”

“I think I can see what might have happened that night. From what you told me earlier, and from looking at the charts, I’d say their base camp is probably out in the bush somewhere on Bimini.”

“Yeah, that makes sense. A girl I met who came on an earlier trip on the Miss Agnes” —and a girl who is now dead because she talked to me, I thought but didn’t say—“told me that Malheur, the captain, is heading back to Bimini on one of those interisland freighters.”

“Here’s the way I see it.” He pointed to the chart of the Straits of Florida, and we both stared while he gathered his thoughts. The coast of South Florida and the Keys ran down the left side. The Great Bahama Bank bordered by the Biminis, Gun Cay, Cat Cay, and, to the north, Great Isaac’s Light, were on the right side of the straits. Flowing north through the middle of all this was the Gulf Stream, pouring through this narrow slot at speeds of three knots or better. “So they house the people over here” —Pit pointed to Bimini—“until the weather is calm, and then they try to make a quick run across the Gulf Stream to dump their load and run back to the Bahamas. Their boats are primitive, and they don’t have fancy navigation gear because it’s only a forty– to fifty-mile run. They count on conditions being the same for each run. I suspect the night Solange was set loose out there the current wasn’t exactly cooperating.”

“What do you mean?”

“Sey, you found the kid right here” —he pointed to a penciled letter X on the chart—“on Wednesday morning around eleven a.m. The Miss Agnes had sunk going into Hillsboro about thirty hours earlier. In a two– to three-knot current that kid would have traveled sixty to ninety miles north by then.”

“Right. That’s why I couldn’t make any sense out of it.”

“I think the Miss Agnes was originally headed for Miami Beach. Say they left Bimini early Monday morning planning to unload their cargo late Monday night. They assumed the current was hauling ass as usual, so they cranked an extra thirty degrees into their course to compensate. Only, due to a cross current and a slowing of the stream from the previous week’s norther, they ended up down off Elliot Key by mistake. I still can’t explain how Solange and that woman ended up in the boat. But if they got in the boat off Elliot, and the stream was running at less than two knots, which, by the way, I have verified to be the case with a windsurfing buddy of mine who works down at the Rosenstiel School—”

“Where?”

“You know, the oceanography place down at UM? They do satellite imaging of the oceans and, by looking at temperature and all that, they can determine how fast the current is running. Very cool stuff. Anyway, it was abnormally slow that night—that whole week, as a matter of fact.”

Trying to keep Pit on track sometimes took some nudging. “Okay, so they’re down off Elliot Key, and they dump those two into the dinghy. Then how did the Miss Agnes end up at Hillsboro sixty miles north?”

“Easy.” He reached under the chart and pulled out a wrinkled newspaper. He pointed to a story he had circled with a yellow highlighter. “This article is about the huge Art Deco festival they’ve been having on the beach. Been going on all week. There were concerts and lights and all kinds of stuff happening down on Miami Beach. Scared ’em off. They’ve been dredging Haulover Inlet, so the lights on the barges there probably made them pass on that entrance. They kept heading north, looking for a quieter place to land. Coming into Port Everglades was too dangerous with the Coast Guard station right there. Eight hours later they were coming into Hillsboro Inlet in the wee hours of the morning. That captain must have been desperate to get rid of his cargo by then.”

“So you’re saying the Miss Agnes motored up the coast in eight hours, but the dinghy drifted the same distance in just under two days.”

“That’s how it would have happened with the current running less than two knots, which my buddy says it was.”

“Okay.” I shrugged. “Lots of things are beginning to make more sense.”

He cocked his head to one side and looked at me. “This kid, why are you putting yourself in danger for her? These guys have killed people, Sey.”

“I know it doesn’t make much sense to anybody else. And I don’t know how to explain it.” From down the yard, out on the river, the deep rumbling of a high-powered ocean speedboat’s idling engines was making the brass dividers jump and vibrate on the picnic table. My world was boats, engines, saltwater. I knew nothing about kids, how to do their hair, what kind of toys or clothes to buy them, and I was so afraid I’d end up like my own mother, unable to handle it. But for some reason something was different with Solange. “Pit, if I hadn’t found her, she probably would have died. Yeah, maybe someone else would have come along, but the thing is it wasn’t someone else. It was me. That makes us connected somehow. And if I just let them send her back to Haiti, there’s a good chance she’ll die there. I can’t just sit back and watch that happen. Do you know anything about what it’s like for a street kid in Haiti? Okay, I know I’m not going to change the world, but if I can just save this one kid...”

Pit was shaking his head. “Okay, I get it, I get it. Why did I even need to ask? I should have known. Just tell me you’re not planning on talking to this captain dude.”

“Pit, I’m sure he knows where this kid’s father is. I mean, if he was just bringing her over as a restavek, she’d be dead by now. He’s had two chances to kill her, and he hasn’t done it. I know a Haitian woman who thinks it comes from some sort of magic. I’m not quite ready to go that far yet. But I do think there’s something special about this kid.”

“So you’re just going to find this Haitian captain and walk up to him and ask him where the kid’s dad is?”

“Not exactly. I’m still working on that part. I think if I can find some evidence that he is importing these kids as child slaves, and locate him, the police will take him into custody and maybe I’ll get the answers to my questions then. I hope to get some help from this Border Patrol guy I know.”

“Sey, sometimes I wish you were as concerned about yourself as you are about all these wounded birds you adopt.”

We both started collecting the charts and books and instruments that were spread out on the picnic table. When my arms were full, I headed into the cottage, dumped the stuff on my dining table, and went to the fridge for a cold beer.

“By the way, sis,” Pit said as he came through the door. “B.J. came by looking for you earlier. He told me a little bit about what was going on with you two. All joking aside, what’s up? B.J.’s a great guy, and last time we talked on the phone, it seemed like you thought so, too.”

I carried my beer bottle across to my bedroom door, then turned to face him. “Pit, I told you, I don’t want to talk about that. Besides, look how late it is. I’ve got to change, then get down to Hollywood and check on how things are going, say hello to Solange. Want to come along?”

“Can I bring my board?”

I rolled my eyes at him. “You haven’t changed.”

As soon as I parked in front of Rusty’s building, Pit pulled his sailboard out of the back of the Jeep and was ready to go. I noticed the Paris Kids bag back there and I picked it up. Might as well give it to her. She probably wouldn’t like it anyway.

I undid the clasp on the dive watch on my wrist and handed it to him. “Meet me back here at seven, okay?” He disappeared across A1A in the direction of the beach. The breeze was decent, a solid twelve to fifteen knots out of the south– southeast. Storm clouds lined the eastern horizon, but that wouldn’t matter to Pit. I figured I wouldn’t see any more of my brother until it grew too dark to see the waves, which, in June, wasn’t until after eight.

There was no sign of Rusty’s vehicle in the parking lot. Back at the cottage I’d found myself standing in front of my closet trying to decide what to wear, knowing that there was a chance he would be here. Then, of course, I had felt really stupid and had just thrown on some baggy cargo shorts and a T-shirt. At the last minute, on my way out of my bedroom, I’d grabbed a Hawaiian print shirt and tied the shirttails around my waist so I could at least look a little feminine.

Jeannie opened the door with a curt nod, and when I stepped into the condo, I was hit smack in the center of my chest by an airborne miniature helicopter.

“Ouch, that hurt!” The slightly larger of Jeannie’s twins had collapsed in hysterics at my dismay, and his brother pounced on him and took away the ’copter launcher.

“Mom!” the older boy screamed, and punched his brother in the back as he fled into a bedroom.

“Welcome to the madhouse,” Jeannie said. She sat back down on a tiny chair in front of a computer and seemed to ignore the screaming and the sound of fists hitting flesh that was coming from the bedroom.

“Don’t you think you should do something?” I pointed to the bedroom door.

She didn’t even look up from the computer screen when she said, “They’ll work it out.”

And I felt it again, that I could never be a mother.

“Where’s Solange?”

Jeannie inclined her head toward the other bedroom. “She’s been asking about you all day.”

Solange didn’t hear me enter the room. She was sitting on the bed, playing with two stuffed animals, and while the bear was neatly tucked in with the covers up to his chin, it appeared that the monkey was getting a hell of a chewing out in Creole. I didn’t understand the words, but I sure knew that tone of voice.

“Hey, kiddo, how are you?”

Her face lit up, and she slid off the bed, dashed over, and wrapped her arms around my waist, her head pressed against my tummy. I patted the back of her head and hoped that was a correct response to this kid hug.

“Everything going okay? You having fun around here?”

“I don’t like boys,” she said, looking up at me with a very serious look on her face.

“Trust me, kiddo. You’ll change your mind one day.”

I remembered the bag I’d brought and I told her to sit on the bed. I pulled out the white dress and held it up. “This is for you,” I said.

She reached out and fingered the lace at the hem, a look of disbelief on her face. I could see already that it would be much too big for her.

She jumped off the bed and hugged me again, rubbing her cheek against the fabric of the dress where she had pinned it against my body.

I heard the sound of the front door opening, and then someone else was enduring an attack from the twins. I let go of Solange to go see who had arrived. After I’d spread the dress on the bed, she slipped her hand into mine and followed close by my side.

On his back in the middle of the living room, Rusty Elliot, special agent to the INS, lay pinned to the floor by two blond dervishes who straddled his body, threatening him with Super Soaker squirt guns nearly as big as they were.

Jeannie looked up from her computer and shrugged. “He didn’t know the password,” she said.

“It’s his house! Doesn’t that count for something?”

She indicated her sons and smiled. “Not with them.”

At that point the floor erupted with flying limbs, streams of water, and giggles. Apparently the special agent was fighting back by tickling, and he was winning. The boys tumbled off of him and retreated to the far side of the room. Then Rusty held up his hand.

“Hold it.” The water streams stopped. “I think this battle needs to continue in the pool. What do you say, kids?”

The boys cheered and Solange smiled. I didn’t think she understood the word pool, but the entire scene had been extremely entertaining. I wondered if she’d ever seen an adult horsing around with kids like that before.

Rusty got up and brushed the water off his clothes and hair. He was wearing a white knit sport shirt and khaki cargo shorts. There was no avoiding it. The man looked good. He nodded to me. “Good afternoon, Miss Sullivan.”

“Hey.” I started to say something, but he’d turned and disappeared into the bedroom. He came out a few seconds later, drying himself off with a towel. “You’re good with kids.”

“I got a bunch of rugrat nieces and nephews. They keep me in shape.”

“You seem to like them as much as they like you,” I said, thinking that if most men had any idea how attractive it made them to be comfortable around kids, they’d all be pushing strollers.

“What’s not to like? They’re great. Anyway, how’re things around here? You been here long?”

“I just got here a few minutes before you. Jeannie? How’s the day been?”

She turned from the computer as the page she was browsing shut down. “Nobody but me’s been near these kids today—not that I haven’t felt like killing them myself a few times this afternoon. My boys are set on getting that girl to play with them, and she doesn’t want to have a thing to do with them. She’s a quiet little thing.” She heaved herself up out of the chair and walked to the bedroom door. She turned back to Rusty. “You sure it’s safe to take these kids down to the pool? I’d love to get out of here for a while. I’ve got a serious case of cabin fever.”

“We’ll be all right. I’ve checked with the local PD, and they say no one has shown the least interest in this place all day. The pool is screened from the road, and we’ll all be there watching them.”

She turned into the bedroom. “Okay, boys, swim trunks on, now.”

“What about Solange?” I asked.

A pair of red swim trunks flew out of the bedroom and hit me on the side of the head. I handed them to the girl. “Go put these on.”

She started toward the bedroom, dragging my hand. “You don’t need me to come with you.” I looked around the room and my eyes lit on Rusty’s. He was smiling.

“Don’t look to me for help, Sullivan.”

The kid squeezed my hand even tighter and looked up at me with those big brown eyes.

“Oh, all right,” I said. “Let’s go.”

The pool deck at the Heron Heights condo complex was on the north side of the building, just two steps higher than the wood docks where a collection of power and sail craft were tied up to pilings and small finger piers that jutted out into the Intracoastal. A rough wood fence shielded the pool on three sides, effectively keeping out the neighbors and the noise and prying eyes of the motorists passing on A1A. The view, however, was open on the water side, and when Rusty opened the gate and the boys darted through, I thought about how nice it would be to live like this someday. Across the tops of the boats in the marina, on the other side of the Intracoastal, I could make out a flock of egrets roosting in the mangroves of West Lake Park. Except for the occasional passing boat and the balconies up above, the little pool area was surprisingly private. Solange pressed her body against my side and held my hand tight as I arranged a chair in the shade at one of the umbrella tables.

“Don’t you want to go into the water?”

She shook her head.

“Tell you what. We’ll go check it out together in a few minutes,” I said, and pulled her onto my lap as Jeannie and Rusty installed themselves in chairs around the table. Jeannie, whose webbed pool chair was creaking in a disconcerting manner, was the only adult who had changed into a swimsuit, although she was still wearing her muu-muu over the top. Today’s version had green curly-tailed lizards pictured in the tropical print.

“Seychelle, we need to talk,” Rusty said. “I heard about what happened this afternoon.”

“Hey, not here,” I said, nodding my head to indicate the child sitting on my lap.

“Then let’s go where we can talk. Collazo called me. This situation is becoming very difficult to defend. After today’s events, it’s time to turn her over—”

I cut him off. “Rusty, I said we’d talk later. After we let these kids burn off a little energy and we give Jeannie a break.”

“Speaking of which,” Jeannie said, “I think I’m ready to try out that water before this chair demonstrates what happens when you exceed its load capacity.”

“I think we are, too. Right, kiddo?” Solange didn’t look too happy about it. She was wearing red boys swim trunks and a bright yellow tank top. We both sat on the edge of the pool, dangling our feet in the water, and watched Jeannie as she unzipped the front of her muumuu and stepped out in a matching lizard-covered swimsuit. The great thing about Jeannie, though, was how at ease she was in her body and how light on her feet. She walked down the steps and lowered herself into the water, bobbing right into the middle of a splash fight between her boys, dunking one and splashing the other with a playfulness and ease I envied. Some people seemed to be born knowing how to act around kids.

Little fingers tapped my upper arm. Solange was looking up at me and speaking softly. “I go home with you? I stay with you and Abaco?”

“No, look, I can’t keep you at my place. I... you know, I’m not set up to take care of kids, with the right food and all that.”

“I don’t eat much.”

“Ah, geez, Solange, it’s not that.” I put my arm around her narrow shoulders and hugged her to me. “It wouldn’t be safe. We’re keeping you here because the Capitaine doesn’t know about this place. He could find you at my place.” Bringing up the Capitaine’s name reminded me that I needed to get over to Port Laudania to look for the freighter. After another half hour or so around here, I’d have to bow out and take a quick trip up to Dania.

Solange tapped my arm again to make me look at her. “You stay here, too. You be safe.”

“Oh, I’m okay. And I’m hardly ever at my place these days. You know, I’m going to have to leave in a few minutes. I’ve got to find your father, your papa.”

She didn’t say anything after that. We just sat together and watched as Jeannie threw her boys into the air and the three of them laughed and hooted and splashed.

Rusty stood and called out to us, “You guys want to see my boat?”

His boat was the last one at the north end of the condo complex’s docks. He’d trotted on ahead and was already standing in the boat tying a canvas strap to the side of the hull when Solange and I arrived on the dock off the stem of his boat.

“Oh my God, Rusty. Why do rational people completely lose it when it comes to naming their boats?”

“You like it?” He looked so damned cute standing there grinning up at me, his shaggy blond hair falling in his eyes, that knit shirt showing off his sculpted chest.

“Folks must figure you either work for Immigration or Allstate,” I said, pointing to the lettering on the stem that read INS AGENT. “What were you thinking?”

Rusty’s boat was not the prettiest thing on the dock, but the man kept it immaculate. For a boat that was over twenty-five years old, it looked great. He had repainted the fiberglass hull with one of the new polyurethane paints, and all the stainless was polished to a mirror finish. The blue canvas bimini that provided the shade Rusty was standing in looked brand new. The tide was such that the deck of his boat was almost perfectly level with the wood dock, and even Solange had no trouble hopping aboard. The steering wheel was offset to the left, and just forward of that and down a step, double wood doors stood open, revealing the tiny sink and V-berth in the cuddy cabin.

Solange let go of my hand and moved away from me for the first time since I’d arrived. As she scampered down into the cramped forward cabin, I thought that I should feel relieved, but I was starting to enjoy the attachment.

“There you go, young lady,” Rusty said, bending forward at the waist to look into the cabin. Solange was stretched out on the bunk. “You’re just about the right size for that cabin.” He stood up and faced me. “She’s a twenty-five-foot Anacapri with double bunk V-berth in the cuddy cabin along with an enclosed head. Well, the head is mostly for people about Solange’s size, too.” He went on to show me his collection of rods stowed neatly in the cabin’s overhead, his fresh bait well, his cast net for catching bait, lifejackets, flares, the inflatable dinghy in the seat locker with C02 cartridges so it could double as a life raft. I understood that he was damn proud of that boat, but it wasn’t like I had never seen a standard boat U.S. flare kit. I was beginning to think the term obsessive-compulsive might apply. Then I saw him rub my fingerprints from the gel coat after I touched the topsides rail, and I was convinced.

“So, this is your ‘classic,’ eh? I gotta admit, you keep a clean boat, Agent Elliot. I assume your engines are just as clean?”

“You bet. Twin Mercs. They’re not the newest engines, but if you spend the time and give them a little TLC, they’ll keep running for a long time.”

“I wish more people thought that way. If it weren’t for all the yahoos out there breaking down every weekend, there probably wouldn’t be so many people jumping into the towing business. It’s getting harder and harder for a slow boat like Gorda to make it.”

“You do all right.”

“How do you know? You been checking up on me, Agent Elliot?”

“Let’s just say I wouldn’t have let this child go into the hands of people I knew nothing about.” He pointed down toward the cuddy cabin where Solange, lying on her belly on the blue canvas mattress, watched us with her head propped up on her two fists.

Rusty looked at his watch. “Hey, it’s almost five-thirty. You getting hungry?”

“I guess I could use a little something. I haven’t eaten much all day.”

“What do you say we take the boat down the Intracoastal a bit and hit one of those waterfront restaurants? That would also give us the chance to talk in private.”

I had just been thinking about getting a look at Port Laudania, and here was the perfect way. “Sounds good to me, except, there’s this place up the Dania Canal—”

“Sure, I know the place. Tugboat Annie’s? Perfecto. Then I’ll be able to say—”

“Just stop it right there,” I said. “There is nothing original about making a Tugboat Annie joke to me.”

Tugboat’s was a favorite waterfront bar and restaurant with an outdoor dining area that served up barbecue and reggae, along with cans of Off on weekend afternoons for those brave enough to face the no-see-ums. Their logo and namesake was a caricature of an old crone smoking a pipe, leaning out the wheelhouse window of a tug. I’d been the object of way too many jokes that noted some physical similarities between the crone and me. I kept pointing out to folks that I’d never smoked a pipe.

“Okay, I promise. No Tugboat Annie jokes if you’ll lay off the name of my boat.”

“Deal.” I shook his hand, then peered down into the cuddy cabin. “Come on, kiddo. Let’s get you back to Auntie Jeannie.”

The boys were still splashing and shouting in the pool, but Jeannie had installed herself on a wrought-iron bench that looked far sturdier than the webbed pool furniture. The bench backed up against the wood fence around the pool and Jeannie looked absolutely regal surveying the pool deck from beneath the brim of a white floppy hat. She turned to us and waved as we came around the corner and up the steps from the docks.

“I wondered where you two had disappeared to.” Rusty had stayed behind to prepare the boat.

I pointed to the north end of the dock. “Rusty’s boat.” I sat down on the bench next to her, and Solange squeezed in next to me. “I don’t get him, Jeannie. On the one hand, he does a damn good job of playing the rustic redneck type. But then there’s this condo with a million-dollar view, finished like something out of Southern Living magazine. And his boat down there? It’s old, but it’s immaculate. He wants me to think otherwise, but my guess is it’s professionally maintained. Where does a Border Patrol agent get the money for all this?”

“You like him, don’tcha .”

“What?”

“Seychelle, my friend, you are so transparent. Soon as you like a fellow, you start picking on him. I pity the poor man you marry.”

“Marry? Why’s everybody got to talk about marriage all the time?”

“Everybody? Seems like I’m the only one around here just now.” She leaned forward and looked past me at Solange. “Tell me, missy, did you discuss marriage with this lady?”

Solange giggled and hid her face behind my back. Whether or not she understood Jeannie, the tone of voice and the face were enough to make anybody crack up.

“Seems to me, Seychelle, that you are the only other one around here who could have been contemplating marriage just now. Hmm ... Was it to B.J.? Or to Rusty?”

Rusty came bounding up the steps from the docks.

“You ready?”

“Oh, uh, Jeannie and I were just talking. Jeannie, Rusty and I are going to run up to Tugboat Annie’s in his boat and get some dinner. That is, if you don’t mind.”

“You go on. After all, this is just what I went to law school for—to be a babysitter.”

“I’m sorry. Forget it. We’ll stay.”

“Girl, you are taking me way too serious today. You two go on. You’ve got a lot to talk over. Besides, my boys are always with me. And this little thing?” She reached over and poked Solange in the belly button. “She’s so quiet you don’t hardly notice she’s around.”

“You want us to bring you something back?”

“Barbecue? Absolutely!”

I told Rusty I would meet him at the boat after I put a note on the Jeep for Pit. He ran upstairs to grab his wallet. I peeled Solange’s hand out of mine, knelt down next to her, and told her good-bye for now. The look on her face made me feel like a real creep, and I could feel her eyes on me as I crossed the pool deck on my way to the parking lot.

After I’d finished the note to Pit, I noticed the dark clouds gathering out west over the Everglades, and I decided to take the time to snap the side windows back onto the Jeep. I didn’t have a rain jacket, but I did find an old zip-front hooded sweatshirt.

Rusty and I arrived back at the boat at nearly the same time. Without a word, I untied the dock lines while he started the engines. We were like a couple of kids trying to sneak off.

“So,” Rusty said over the noise of the idling outboards when we were about five yards from the dock, headed north up the Intracoastal. “I hardly recognize you without your shadow.”

I turned away from him and looked through the windshield, up the waterway toward the Sheridan Street Bridge. The sun had slid behind the mass of clouds and squalls out to the west, bringing on an early twilight, and the cars driving over the metal grate in the bridge already had their headlights on. The air had that thick, menacing feel of an impending storm.

“I know what it’s like,” I said, “to really want to have a mom. At least when I was Solange’s age I still had my dad.” Rusty put his hand on the back of my neck and squeezed lightly. I felt his touch course through my body like heat lightning.

“Hey, I was just kidding,” he said.

“I know, but I can’t get over thinking about how alone she must feel.” I looked into his eyes. “Sometimes ‘alone’ feels really rotten.” I turned away again and spoke to the mangroves on the west bank of the Intracoastal. “The thing is, I don’t know how to be a mom, and I can’t be her mom.”

“Don’t sell yourself short. You’re doing all right with the kid. In fact, it’s kind of neat watching you with her. There’s some kind of special bond between you two.”

“Thanks,” I said, keeping my face toward the mangroves, not wanting him to see how much I wanted that to be true.