'They know what I look like.'
'We'll figure something. Be ready at eight-thirty. I've got to get back. See you tonight.'
'You'll tell me the plan then?'
'If I figure it out.' He cracked a sly grin. 'Kathy, thanks for the help.'
She nodded, said nothing.
Walking with Dave down to the beach, I asked if he thought Kathy could be in any danger?
He smoothed his hair with both hands, an angry spark flashed in his eyes, then his eyelids narrowed slowly. He looked at me and his face relaxed to a look of understanding at my question. 'I can't see any. They don't know who she is or where she's staying. If there was the slightest chance of harm to her I'd move her out.'
Pawing at the loose sand with a sore foot, I said, 'For your information, the Renoir woman is worth over a billion dollars. She's about to take control of her father's business that previously has been handled by Joe Glossman in Ocean Springs.'
Dave looked at me with hard, knowing eyes. 'Yeah, Max Renoir. I knew him. But no ransom demand on her sister. Interesting.'
We pushed the cigarette boat back into the water and he roared away.
Kathy and I stood in the kitchen watching the boat carve a foamy opening in the calm, emerald waters of the Sea of Abaco. The open wound slowly healed until soon all was as before, no trace, not even a scar left to what had passed before.
Shafts of sunlight slanted into the house hitting walls of polished Caribbean pine. There were a few pieces of hand-made furniture, a ceiling of bare rafters. An archway with some kind of carved hieroglyphics opened into the small kitchen with rough shelves, a bare wooden table made of one-inch thick planks, and there was a butane gas stove. The place had the primitive simplicity of a seaman's cabin, reduced to essential necessities, but done with elegant, modern skill and sat down smack in the middle of Valhalla.
With seven hours to kill, it was time to do some serious thinking. Sitting on the small couch in the living room, the drumming of the overhead fan began to pulse to a slower beat, like the throb of great engines below deck. They whispered the same warning over and over. The air grew weighted and all times felt troubled. A dangerous voyage was about to begin.
Kathy came and sat beside me. Her breath, sweet and soft, brushed across my cheek. Her body shimmered under the white shorts snugged tightly around the smooth firm buttocks, like the promise of life itself. She was good company, and helped the afternoon pass quickly.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
A cool breeze blew through the house making it pleasant and comfortable. Looking north toward Cornish and Sandy Cay, I could see the mainland behind them. Two white markers used to line up the pass through the North Bar channel stood like sentinels. On the sloping hills of Abaco dark pyramids of Casuarina pines stood immovably straight in defiance of the seasonal hurricanes, their needles trembling in the sun and wind.
I thought about Dave's brush with death on the reef at Sandy Cay. If it hadn't been for Karl Strange, he would have drowned.
A young woman's brother hired Dave to get her out of Marsh Harbor and bring her back to the United States. She'd gotten in over her head with a mean-tempered New York mobster who was running a money laundering operation in Abaco. She wanted away from him, but he wouldn't let her go, and there was a lot of abuse.
Dave made some mistakes, and one of the Italians chained him to a concrete block at low water on Sandy Cay reef. He left him there for high tide and sharks to finish the job.
Karl Strange risked his life to get him loose from the chain. At one point he thought Dave's foot would have to be amputated to get him out, and Dave urged him to cut it off. On his last attempt, Karl cut through a link in the chain. Dave owed him one.
Getting Will out from under the Snowpowder boys was one way he had of repaying Karl. How he worked his way into the dope pusher's inner circle, I had no idea. Always good at infiltration, it was his specialty when he was a Special Agent with the FBI. It was also his undoing. He got too close to his work.
Kathy brought coffee from the kitchen and sat back down on the couch. 'Anything you want to talk about?' The sun threw broken bits of light across her face. She had a serious look of intimate concern.
'I'm working out some details. It's better you not know.'
'I see.'
'What's your last name?'
She threw her head to one side, black hair moving like pages of a book blowing in a stiff wind. 'Peirce, with the 'e' and 'i' reversed.'
'Yes, there was an artist from Maine, Waldo Peirce, spelled his name like that. I have some of his work.'
'You do not?' The words were pronounced with a singular emphasis. 'That's my grandfather.'
'Small world.'
'What works do you have?'
'A book illustrated by him, a painting titled, DEATH IN THE GULFSTREAM, and a lithograph of him by another artist. Not much really.'
Kathy made me forget the reason I was here was to find the sadistic killer of Rene Renoir.
Dave arrived at eight-thirty. Meeting him down at the beach, I noticed that his long, narrow face and taught skin made it appear as if he had to stretch his facial muscles to keep his mouth closed. This gave a suggestion of sternness to a face that displayed nothing else.
There had not been a lot I could do to change my appearance. An old sailor's cap, a peacoat B.J. kept for cold days, and a pair of eyeglasses with the lens removed. Dave thought I could get away with it.
Pointing the cigarette toward Bridges Cay, we pulled in behind the north point of the cay out of sight of the Sun Dog. Dave shut the engine down, and we lay ahull in the calm waters in darkness so black it was scary.
A half-mile to the south, we could see the lights of the Sun Dog anchored in behind Bridges Cay. We had twenty minutes before Dave was to arrive and pick up his part of the load. I still did not know the plan for tonight.
The stars suddenly brightened to their full radiance. To the west, out over the shallow flats known as the 'Marls,' thunderstorms appeared as giant billowing pillars reaching sixty thousand feet into the night sky. Lightening illuminated each individual storm from the inside, making them look false, like a theater stage prop. Having fought my share of wars with these huge battlements that contain enough force to rip an airplane apart, I have seen them make cowards of the bravest of airmen, and make them wish desperately to be somewhere else.
The night was still warm. The peacoat, hot, even though I wore it unbuttoned. Sweat glistened on Dave's face. There was no breeze and the mosquitoes quickly found us.
'Run me through the Nassau thing again.'
It gave us something to talk about, so I repeated the whole story starting with how Lynn Renoir's concern for her missing sister led to Glossman in Ocean Springs and the Will that Max Renoir left. How Rene ended up dead in Miami from a gallon of drugs coursing through her veins. My meeting with Mako, and finally, getting caught on board the Sun Dog.
'You should have known someone like Ignacio Sanchez would not leave a boat load of cocaine unguarded.'
My mistakes did not need to be pointed out.
'There was a small arsenal of automatic rifles, AR-15s, with enough ammo to take Cuba.'
'Another clue for you.'
'Ignacio Sanchez…I know that name.'
'Used to run the strip joints along the coast, Biloxi, Gulfport.'
'Of course. He's been gone since the big cleanup back in seventy-five.'
'That's right. He and his brother ran the gambling, dope, and prostitution all the way from Bay St. Louis to Ocean Springs. Ignacio was the brains behind the operation. His brother, Miguel, the muscle. When it all went
