“Sounds like a plan,” I said, glancing at my watch, and seeing it was almost noon. “We’ll be home in a few hours.”
We ended the call and I put the phone back on the charger.
“You told her about my cobia?” Alberto asked.
“I did, and she was amazed.”
He grinned, just as his rod tip bent again. “I got another one!”
Alberto worked the fish away from the ledge. He was still a little clumsy but getting used to the tackle. I could tell by the bend in the rod it was something large.
“Shark!” Tank shouted. “A three-foot lemon.”
“A shark?” Alberto asked, lowering his rod, and reeling as fast as he could.
“Work him alongside the boat,” I instructed. “Get him in close.”
“So you can get him with that big hook?”
“Lemon sharks aren’t the most edible fish in the world,” I replied. “I want to get the hook out if I can and let him go. Tank, grab your phone and we’ll get a picture.”
When Alberto got the little lemon shark alongside, I put a glove on my right hand and grabbed it by the tail, hoisting it aboard. Sharks have denticles on their skin, which can tear the skin right off your palm.
“Stay back,” I warned Alberto, as the fish tried to twist its mouth up to my hand. “He can still bite.”
With the shark on the deck, I pulled a pair of needle-nose pliers from my pocket and quickly removed the hook. There was a second hook, which I removed also. Then I lifted it by the tail again and stood on the forward casting deck, making sure my shadow wouldn’t be in the shot.
“Step over here, Alberto,” I said, as Tank got his phone ready. “Pretend like you’re holding it up, but don’t grab too tight. The skin’s real rough.”
He stepped over to the other side of the shark and looked it up and down. “I never saw a shark in real life.”
“And the first one you saw, you caught!” Tank said, as he knelt to take the picture.
I stepped down and lowered the shark into the water, moving him back and forth to get water across his gills.
“What are you doing?” Alberto asked.
“You’ve seen how fish open and close their mouths to breath, right?”
He nodded.
“That moves water across their gills, which gives them oxygen, like when we breathe air.”
“Even when they sleep?”
“Some sharks never sleep,” I replied. “At least not like we do. They don’t have eyelids and they’re visually aware of everything around them, even those that can breathe at rest like other fish. Some sharks, like the great white, have to swim to move water across their gills. They start swimming when they’re born and don’t stop until they die. I’m just helping this guy breathe.”
I felt movement in the tail and let the shark go. It swam to the bottom and headed back toward the shoal.
“Take a look at this,” Tank said, holding his phone out.
I knelt beside Alberto. Tank got the shot perfectly, with my hand above Alberto’s and completely out of frame.
“Whoa!” he exclaimed. “I can’t wait to show that to Savannah.”
Several hours after the murder in the warehouse, Santiago’s white Escalade crossed the bridge onto Grassy Key. He and Manuel Ortolano were in the back, while Julio Mendoza drove. Bones rode up front, giving directions from his cell phone.
Bones turned in his seat. “It’s just a few more miles, jefe. Just past the airport.”
“Remember what I told you,” Santiago said. “It’s almost noon. If the man isn’t home for lunch, we hold the woman until he gets there. We’ll go in hard and fast.”
Ten minutes later, the Escalade made a U-turn and next to a leaning mailbox that had the right address on it, it turned onto a crushed shell driveway. Bones had been quite proud of himself for getting the address of the guy who owned the boat. Tropical foliage enveloped the big SUV immediately.
Santiago sat forward in his seat as the vehicle emerged into a large parking lot alongside what looked like a restaurant—a low, metal-roofed building with many windows.
“This isn’t a house, Bones,” Santiago said.
“Look,” Bones said, pointing off to the right. “There’s a bunch of boats here. Maybe he uses this as his address and lives on his boat. From what I was told, it was big enough.”
“This complicates things,” Santiago said. “There are a lot of cars here, so there’s bound to be a lot of people.”
“Should I turn around?” Julio asked.
“No. Find a place to park where we can see everything and let’s just wait and watch.”
Julio backed into a spot away from the other cars, where they could see the whole parking lot and the building.
“There’s another place back there,” Bones said, pointing beyond the metal-roofed building. “Looks more like a house.”
Santiago dismissed the house and studied the bigger building directly in front of them, thinking that a man who owned a fishing boat as big as Bones had described wouldn’t own a restaurant too.
He was sure that’s what it was; it had all the markings of a restaurant, even beer signs in the windows, which stretched along the side deck. But there was no name anywhere that he could see.
“Julio, go walk the dock,” Santiago ordered. “What was the name of the boats, Bones?”
“One was called Gaspar’s Revenge and the other was Sea Biscuit.”
“Look and see if either of those is at the docks,” Santiago said. “If not, my guess is that this McDermitt guy and his wife live in the house out back, but I’m betting this belongs to someone else.”
Julio got out and walked toward the dock area. So far, there hadn’t been any people outside, which was good. After a moment, Julio reached the end and returned, then went around to the other side and walked the length of the dock area. The two docks straddled a wide canal.
When
