Key Lucky Read online

  “I reckon that’s the one you been looking for, then.”

  “Yes, sir. That’s the one. If I can get Consuelo to calm down we’ll take Lydia inside, make sure she’s okay.”

  “I’d say she’s doing a lot better than your boat. Better take a look, cuz she’s almost gone.”

  Taco Bob looked toward the reef. They were closing in on the Wilbur now, but she was on her side, bouncing on the treacherous rocks just a few feet below the surface. They were only a hundred yards away when the stately old boat pointed her bow to the sky and went under.

  A strong arm hugged him around the waist. Consuelo stood next to him holding Lydia with her other arm.

  “I’m sorry, Taco. She was a great boat.”

  Taco Bob swallowed the lump in his throat and nodded toward a shaky, but alert, Lydia. “Let’s get her in the cabin.”

  Shark Hunter marked the spot with the GPS, and made several passes around the rocky area looking for survivors. Other than an ice chest, a couple of lifejackets, some splintered wood, and an oil slick, there wasn’t much left of the Wilbur. Consuelo came back on deck to help search for survivors and announced that other than some cuts and bruises, Lydia was going to be fine. She punched a number on her cell phone and made the people at the other end very happy.

  It was nearly full dark and halftime in the football game when they started back. Miami had scored a pair of field goals to tie the game, so Shark Hunter had calmed down a notch.

  “You seen that big drop-off on the depth finder right next to where your boat went down. That current running so strong, she’ll be pulled into at least a hundred feet of water. I don’t imagine you’ll be needing to worry much about anybody trying to get to that treasure anytime soon. That is, if it’s still on board.”

  He gave Taco Bob a big wink as they headed west, back towards the old fort.

  Taco Bob started to go check on Lydia when his cell phone rang. Lucky.

  ∨ Key Lucky ∧

  64

  Lucky

  “Thank God they got Lydia.”

  Lucky closed the phone and smiled as he came around the fort and turned the powerboat east up the Keys. He didn’t really want to do it, but looked behind as he made the turn. Just as he thought. This was going to be close.

  The rain had stopped and the seas were calming, so he gave the big boat full throttle. According to the gauge there wasn’t a lot of gas in the boat, and he knew he could go further at a slower speed, but that’s why he’d looked behind. He had to go full speed.

  Then he saw the old shrimpboat up ahead, coming his way. It was nearly dark, but the running lights were easy to see. He slowed and turned so the two boats would pass by less than fifty yards apart. And there she was.

  Lydia stood on deck holding onto the fighting chair with one hand and slowly waving with the other. He waved back and smiled, and was glad for the darkness so she wouldn’t see the sadness in his eyes. She blew a kiss and smiled just a little as they passed. He caught the kiss and held it to his heart. Neither of them looked away until the boats were swallowed by the darkness. When the strange old boat with the man on the tower faded, all he could see behind him were the flashing blue lights in the distance coming around the point.

  Lucky didn’t need a map. He’d studied the navigation charts for that particular area so often he’d memorized every marker, island, and bridge for the next twenty miles. But he only went a few more miles before turning towards shore. He could see the bridge clearly in the darkness and slowed again as he came into the channel. He checked the gas gauge and smiled, then aimed for one of the massive concrete bridge pilings as he pushed the throttle to full.

  ∨ Key Lucky ∧

  65

  Reverend Earl W. Sharkey

  If he’d realized how far it was to shore, Reverend Earl W. Sharkey would have tried to get that big boat to pick him up. But he figured whoever it was must have been following him to have shown up so soon after he hit the rocks.

  So instead he swam. Hours later he was hanging onto some slippery mangroves nearly dead from exhaustion with a badly dislocated shoulder, a broken nose, and cramping muscles. Besides the cuts from sharp rocks, his face, neck, arms, and feet were on fire from jellyfish stings. He sat there in the mud and listened to the cars going by on the highway. That’s when he noticed it. The sound of the cars in the quiet night – The Song was gone.

  After a while he took stock of himself while trying to get his mind off the waves of pain surging through his body. Shoes and socks were gone, and his clothes were badly torn. But he had a wallet in his front pocket, so he still had some money and credit cards. He looked up and shook the fist on his good arm at the sky.

  “Goddamn it, I’m not beat yet! I told you I’m a tough son of a bitch! I’ll get through this yet!”

  He pushed off from the mangrove thicket back into the water and slowly walked and swam in the chest-deep water towards lights further down the key. Just needed to get to the road so he could hitch a ride. Lay up in a motel for a few days, maybe get the shoulder looked at. Then go somewhere far away from the ocean. He never again wanted to spend hours in ink-black water with unseen things bumping, biting, and stinging him.

  Maybe Texas had cooled off enough he could go back. The Reverend figured if the Good Lord hadn’t wanted men like him to run scams, then the Good Lord wouldn’t keep making little old ladies.

  But he was going to make it, by God. Everything was going to be just fine.

  Then he could go looking for Lucky.

  ∨ Key Lucky ∧

  66

  Widower

  The widower was getting anxious by the time his suitcase came around on the airport baggage carousel. He hated it when people stared. The doctors had told him it would be months yet before he’d be through with all the operations he needed to get his face looking anything like normal again.

  But at least he was alive, which surprised some of those same doctors and a few others. He’d been close to death for days in the hospital. Having the best medical care money can buy helped, as did his almost overwhelming steel-will desire to live. Even in his current weakened state, the man with the scarred face remained a strong, resourceful, and very dangerous individual.

  He had a lot of friends and a lot of money, so it wasn’t really all that hard to make some discreet inquires and get some answers while lying in the hospital for weeks. A man was located who could run a trace on credit cards, see were they were used, and when.

  The widower could afford to have this matter taken care of by others, professionals, but felt compelled to take a personal, hands-on approach.

  Which is why he was in Key West. There were some for whom revenge wasn’t such a big deal, but it was for the widower. For him it was everything, and just thinking about it had played a big part in keeping him alive so that someday he could get the dirty bastard who’d killed his beautiful Angela.

  ∨ Key Lucky ∧

  67

  Home Sweet Houseboat

  “It’s been three days since Lucky drilled into that bridge piling and they’re just now coming out with some details.”

  “I’m making coffee. Have a seat and I’ll bring you a cup.”

  Slip dropped the newspaper on the low table and sprawled across the old yellow couch in the lounge of the Sandy Bottomed Girl. Since their big evening of dealing with Reverend Sharkey and Lucky, they’d all adopted a low profile while keeping their eyes and ears open for any scrap of news. While there was certainly no shortage of rumors floating around Key West, the closest thing to actual facts continued to come from the newspaper and television. So the morning paper and TV news were hot items as there were still a few unanswered questions since the big evening.

  Slip, Sara, and Josephine had been waiting at the old marina on Stock Island that night when they pulled in with Lydia. The sisters headed for the emergency room to get Sara taken care of, then were up most of the night back at the hotel. Sara told the doctors she’d lost the end of the
little finger on her left hand to a lawnmower, not a gun. The only other person in there was a boater with rope burns on his hands and a small caliber bullet in his leg. He claimed to have no idea why the lobster boat had been shooting at him.

  Skunk and Slip spent the night on the Sandy with Taco Bob after sitting up into the wee hours going over everything that had happened. Consuelo bounced between the two camps most of the night and ended up taking the guest room. Slip commandeered the couch and Skunk made a nest of boat cushions in a corner and slept for fourteen hours straight.

  Since the evening on the water, no one except for Shark Hunter had been questioned by the police. In spite of the darkness, the old captain had sent everyone into the cabin before they passed by the police boat that was in hot pursuit of Lucky. Of course the cops had recognized Shark Hunter’s boat, and early the next morning showed up in force at the old marina. Miami had lost the football game the night before, so Shark was in an extremely foul mood. The police didn’t have a thing on him other than being close enough to see the boat Lucky had stolen, so they eventually grew tired of hearing about the Miami coaching staff and left.

  Taco Bob set two steaming mugs on the table and picked up the paper. Slip glanced out a window at the first light of day, then at a clock on the wall of the old houseboat.

  “I got a charter in a little while. Where’s everybody at?”

  “Consuelo’s got the early shift at the hotel and Skunk finally went back to see Miss Agnes last night after you left.” Taco Bob picked up the newspaper and had a seat. “You going to tell me the latest or am I going to have to read it?”

  Slip was sipping coffee but looked anxious. He set his cup down and stared his friend straight in the eyes.

  “They still haven’t found Lucky, just pieces of that speedboat. Big news is they found his car.”

  “Oh? Where?”

  “Yeah, where is the news. They found the car at an old overgrown home site just past the bridge. Car keys behind the front wheel, full tank of gas, change of clothes in the trunk.”

  Taco Bob tossed this around a bit.

  “So he planned to take the boat far enough to get past the checkpoint on the highway, then drive out?”

  “Rather than just leaving the boat, he might have planned to wreck the boat so the cops would be looking for him in the water while he drove up US1.”

  “But he didn’t do that.”

  “Nope. Says in the paper they think the car had been sitting there since a day or two before the boat went into the bridge piling. Lucky’s luck may have finally run out.”

  Which wasn’t what Taco Bob wanted to hear. He’d kinda liked the daring young man.

  “But they still haven’t found a body.”

  “Nope. After three days they’re still finding pieces of that boat over a mile from the bridge. I know for a fact there’s some serious current in that area.”

  Taco Bob wasn’t ready to give up.

  “With what all you told us was in that beer keg, I wouldn’t put it past Lucky to have left the car there like that on purpose. Anybody had things planned out enough to stock up on replica coins and gold bars like that had a lot on the ball.”

  “I just can’t stop thinking about those few coins he took out of his pocket and showed me at that storage place. Those coins on top in the keg, the ones he threw to the Reverend, were the real thing.” Slip had a pinched look on his face. “Especially since Skunk lost ours when he got thrown in the water.”

  “Well, we may never know what happened to Lucky.”

  “Says in the newspaper they been getting plenty of reports every day of people saying they seen him somewhere.” Slip cracked a wicked grin. “Want to hear some news?”

  Slip picked up the paper and pointed to a short article on page three.

  “Says here they found one Earl W. Sharkey in a motel room at Islamorada in a very deceased condition. He’d been bound and gagged, then put in the bathtub nude with forty-seven sea urchins, a stingray, and a large Portuguese Man of War jellyfish.”

  Taco Bob scanned the article. “Says here the police have ruled out suicide and are describing the death as suspicious.” He looked up at Slip. “Lucky?”

  “Maybe. He sure didn’t seem to like the Reverend kidnapping Lydia like that, but a bathtub full of some of the worst stinging creatures known to man does seem a bit excessive.” Slip glanced over at the clock. “I better get gone and meet my client. See if I can find the man some bonefish this morning.” Slip got up and put his empty cup in the galley. “Paper says the cops are having a news conference later this morning, you might want to check the TV.”

  “I will. Stop by after your charter and maybe we’ll head over to Governor’s for a bite.”

  ∨ Key Lucky ∧

  68

  Skunk

  Not five minutes later Taco Bob felt the houseboat move as someone came aboard. Skunk Johnson.

  “What in the world happened to you, Skunk?”

  The little man had two black eyes and a crooked grin.

  “Remember I told you I come here to find Mumbles’ brother?”

  “Also named Mumbles. Yeah, I remember.”

  “Well, I found him this morning and gave him the ass-kicking his brother in Texas sent me to deliver.”

  “Kinda looks like he gave some of it back.”

  “No doubt. He also hired me to go to Texas and deliver a double ass-whupping to his brother. Paid me cash in advance.” Out came a handful of bills and a full grin. “So I reckon I’ll be catching the bus here in a few.”

  “You do lead an exciting life, Skunk.”

  “Anything in the paper?”

  Taco Bob filled Skunk in on the cops finding Lucky’s car, and the gruesome discovery in the Islamorada motel. This last bit seemed to brighten Skunk’s day considerably.

  “Maybe it was Lucky done it? Whoever it was, I’d sure like to buy him a drink.” Skunk plopped down on the couch. “You know, I had a plan cooking except that big bastard throwing me overboard kinda put a halt to it.”

  “You had a plan? You mean while you were at the helm of the Wilbur you came up with a plan?”

  “Yep. If Lydia didn’t get turned loose I was going to run the boat into the next one of those big iron I-beam channel markers we came to.” Taco Bob looked pained. “Well, I didn’t say it was a good plan, just a plan.” Skunk busied himself picking his teeth with a fishhook.

  “You and Miss Agnes breaking on good terms?”

  “Not so as you would notice. That would be another reason I’m leaving today.” Skunk looked around cautiously. “Where’s Consuelo?”

  “She’s got a shift at the hotel.”

  Taco Bob put down the newspaper and waited for it. Skunk had taken up the favored pacing area.

  “You know, Taco, sometimes with a young woman like that, they get so caught up in the chase they kinda forget about why they’re chasing in the first place.”

  “I can’t believe the same person I once saw eat a whole squirrel raw, on a dollar bet, is giving me advice.”

  “Was I impaired at the time?”

  “Drunk on your ass.”

  Skunk just shrugged.

  “Taco, what I’m trying to say is, if you sleep with her, maybe she’ll stop acting all sexy and such when she’s around you. Maybe y’all can just be good friends then.”

  Taco Bob had gone back to the paper but looked up. “I’ll take your suggestion under advisement.”

  “I better haul ass if I’m gonna make that bus. Tell Slip I said for him to stop by if he’s in Texas.”

  “You just missed him.”

  “Yeah, I know.”

  When Taco Bob went to get a refill on his coffee he glanced out the window and saw Skunk walking down the dock flipping a big silver coin in the air.

  ∨ Key Lucky ∧

  69

  Consuelo

  “You catch that news conference, TB?”

  Taco Bob had only nodded when Slip came in and sprawled in hi
s favorite place on the couch. Now he looked up from his laptop.

  “They went over the thing again about finding the car. Only news is they traced a package from Key West to a post office box in Tampa. The package had one silver bar and had been sitting in the post office since the day before the boat versus bridge incident. After the cops got done there was a short report about the Lucky sightings. People are seeing him all over the country now. Guy’s going to be another DB Cooper.”

  “Who’s DB Cooper?”

  Taco Bob went back to tapping a few keys on his laptop. Both men had been trying to ignore Consuelo in a skin-tight leotard stretching and working out with dumbbells a few feet away. The lounge of the houseboat was spacious for a boat, but the grunts and groans, as well as the faint aroma of overheated girl, proved to be more than a little distracting.

  Taco Bob had turned it over to Slip to answer.

  “DB Cooper was this guy who jumped out of an airliner with a suitcase full of money. Before your time, Blondie.”

  Consuelo gave him a warning look and a middle finger on her way to the shower. Taco Bob smiled at Slip.

  “I bet by tomorrow she knows everything there is to know about DB Cooper. More than you.” Taco Bob gave his friend a wink.

  “Probably will.” Slip rubbed the back of his neck and didn’t look too excited about his impending history lesson.