Aftershock & Others: 19 Oddities Page 14

  “I guess that means you two’ll be spending most of the night here,” Terry said.

  “You betcha,” Rick said. “Watchin’ the storm.”

  Boo nodded. “And countin’ the spouts.”

  “Some guys sure know how to have fun.”

  Rick and Boo laughed and hoisted their Rolling Rocks in reply.

  They all quaffed together, then Terry glanced up at the TV monitor. The sight of a bunch of flak-jacketed federal marshals toting riot guns around a tandem tractor trailer shot a spasm through his stomach lining.

  “Turn the sound up, will you, Ern?”

  Ernie touched a button on the remote. The audio level display flashed on the screen, zipped to a preprogrammed volume, then disappeared as the announcer’s voice blared from the speakers bracketed on the ceiling.

  “—tainly put a crimp in the black market in medical contraband. This haul was most likely bound for one of the renegade floating hospitals that ply their illicit trade outside the twelve-mile limit in the Gulf of Mexico.”

  The screen cut to an interior of one of the trailers and panned its contents.

  “Syringes, sterile bandages, dialysis fluid, even gas sterilizers, all bound for the booming offshore medical centers. President Nathan has called on Congress to enact stiffer penalties for medical smuggling and to pass legislation to push the offshore hospitals to a hundred-mile limit. Insiders on the Hill think he is unlikely to find much support on extending the twelve-mile limit due to the complexities of maritime law, but say he might get action on the stiffer penalties.”

  The president’s intense, youthful face filled the screen.

  “We are talking here about trading in human misery. Every medical item that is smuggled offshore deprives law-abiding citizens right here at home of needed medical supplies. These racketeers are little better than terrorists, sabotaging America’s medical system and health security. We’ve got to hit these criminals hard, and hit them where it hurts!”

  “Okay, Ern,” Terry said. “I’ve heard enough.”

  Poor President Nathan—thoroughly pissed that some folks were making an end run around the National Health Security Act.

  Nothing new in the trucker bust, other than somebody got careless. Or got turned in. Terry wondered who it was, wondered if he knew them. He’d tuned in too late to catch where the bust had gone down.

  “Excuse me,” said a voice to Terry’s right. “Is there a Mister Havens here?”

  Terry didn’t turn his head. Rick and Boo acquired a sudden intense interest in the “33” inside the labels on their Rolling Rocks.

  Ernie cleared his throat and said, “He comes in now and again. I can take a message for you.”

  “We wish to hire him for a boat trip,” the voice said.

  Terry swiveled on his barstool. He saw a moderately overweight golden-ager, white hair and a sunburned face, wearing cream slacks and a lime green golf shirt.

  “Where do you want to go?”

  “Are you Mr. Havens?” the guy said, eagerly stepping forward and thrusting out his hand.

  Terry hesitated, then said, “That’s me.” Hard to lie to a guy who’s offering you his hand.

  But the immediate relief in the guy’s eyes made him wish he hadn’t. Here was a man with a problem, and he seemed to think Terry was his solution. Terry was not in the problem-solving business.

  “Joe Kowalski, Mister Havens,” he said, squeezing Terry’s hand between both of his. “I’m so glad we found you.” He turned and called over his shoulder. “It’s him, Martha!”

  Terry looked past him at a rickety, silver-haired woman hobbling toward them, supporting herself on the bar with her right forearm and leaning on a four-footed cane clasped in her gnarled left hand. Her wrinkled face was pinched with pain. She couldn’t seem to straighten out her right leg, and winced every time she put weight on it.

  “Thank God!” she said.

  Terry was getting a bad feeling about this.

  “Uh, just where is it you folks want to go?”

  “Out to the Osler,” Joe said.

  “You missed her. She took on her patients this morning and she’s gone.”

  “I know. We missed the shuttle. Martha wanted to say good-bye to the kids before the surgery. You know, in case…you know. But our car broke down last night just as we were leaving and what they said would take an hour to fix wound up taking much longer. Damn car’s probably still up on the lift back there in Stewart. I finally rented a car and drove down here fast as I could. Collected two tickets along the way, but we still missed the boat. We’ve been driving up and down Route One all day trying to find someone to take us out. No one’s interested. I don’t understand. I don’t want a favor—I’m willing to pay a fair price. And it’s not like it’s a crime or anything.”

  Right. Not a crime or anything to ferry someone out past the twelve-mile limit to one of the hospital ships. But bad things tended to happen to good boaters who engaged in the trade if officialdom got wind of it. Bad things like a Coast Guard stop and search every time you took your boat out; or all sorts of lost applications and inexplicable computer glitches when you wanted to renew your boating tags, your fishing permits, even your driver’s license. Terry had heard talk that the good folks in question seemed to suffer a significantly greater incidence of having their 1040 audited by the IRS.

  No, not a crime, but lots of punishment.

  Which was why the hospital ships ran their own shuttles.

  “What excuse did they give?”

  “Most said they were too busy, but let me tell you, they didn’t look it. And as soon as those clouds started gathering, they used the storm as an excuse.”

  “Good excuse.”

  Terry glanced back at the western horizon. The afternoon sun had been swallowed whole by the storm and its white bulk had turned a threatening gray.

  “But I hear you’re not afraid of storms,” Joe said.

  Terry stared at him, feeling his anger rise. Shit. “Who told you that?”

  “Some fellow in a bar up on the next key—is it Cudjoe Key? Some cantina…”

  “Coco’s.”

  “That’s the place! Fellow with bleached hair and a fuzzy goatee.”

  Tommy Axler. Terry wanted to strangle the bigmouthed jerk. In fact, he might give it a try next time he saw him.

  “He must have thought you wanted to go fishing. Sometimes I take people fishing in the rain. I do lots of things, but I don’t ferry folks out to hospital ships.”

  That last part, at least, was true.

  Joe’s eyes got this imploring look. “I’ll pay you twice your regular charter fee.”

  Terry shook his head. “Sorry.”

  His face fell. He turned to his wife. “He won’t do it, Martha.”

  She halted her labored forward progress as if she’d run into a wall.

  “Oh,” she said softly, and leaned against one of the barstools. She stared at the floor and said no more.

  “But let me buy you folks a drink.” Terry pointed to his Red Stripe. “You want one of these?”

  “No,” Joe said through a sigh, then shrugged. “Aaah, why not? Martha? You want something?”

  Still staring at the floor, Martha only shook her head.

  Ernie set the bottle in front of Joe who immediately chugged about a third of it.

  He stifled a burp, then said, “You won’t reconsider, even if I triple your usual fee?”

  Terry shook his head. “Look, the Osler’ll probably be shuttling patients in and out of St. Petersburg in a day or two. Hop in your car and—”

  “Martha’s got an appointment for a total hip replacement tomorrow. If she’s not on board the Osler today they’ll give her appointment to someone on the waiting list.”

  “So reschedule.”

  “It took us six months to get this appointment, and we were lucky. The fellow who had the original appointment died. Might be another ten months to a year before Martha can get rescheduled.”

 
; “That’s as bad as the regular government wait lists.”

  “No,” he said with a slow shake of his head. “There is no government wait list for Martha. Not anymore. She’s too old. HRAA passed a regulation barring anyone over age seventy-five from certain surgical procedures. Total hip replacement is on the list. And Martha’s seventy-seven.”

  Martha’s head snapped up. “Don’t you be blabbing my age for all the world to hear!”

  “Sorry, dear.”

  Terry looked at him. “I thought the cutoff was eighty.”

  “Right: was. They lowered it last year.”

  Terry had assumed that most of the hospital ship patrons were well-heeled folks who didn’t want to wait in the long queues for elective surgery in the government-run hospitals. And since all the hospitals in America were now government run, they had to go elsewhere. But cutting people off from procedures…

  The Health Resources Allocation Agency strikes again.

  “I didn’t know they could do that.”

  Joe sighed. “Neither did I. It wasn’t part of the regulations when the Health Security Act became law, but apparently the HRAA has the power to make new regs. So when they found out how far their Health Security Act was running over projections, they started making cuts. What really galls me is I supported the damn law.”

  “So did I.”

  “Yeah, we all thought we were getting a bargain. Ten years later we find out we got the shaft.”

  “Welcome to the twenty-first century, Pops. Believe in the future but always read the fine print.”

  “Tell me about it.” He slugged down some more beer and stared at the bottle in his hand. “It’s not fair, you know. We busted our butts since we got married—fifty years come next July—to make a good life for our family. We educated our kids, got them married and settled, then we retired. And now we’d like to enjoy the years we’ve got left. Nothing fancy. No trips around the world. Just hang out, play golf once in a while. But with Martha’s hip, we can’t even go for a walk after dinner.”

  Terry said nothing as Joe polished off his beer. He was trying not to listen. He wasn’t going to get sucked into this.

  Joe banged his bottle down on the bar. “You know what really bugs my ass? We’ve got the money to pay for the surgery. We don’t need the government to pay for it. Fuck ’em! We’ll pay. Gladly. But they won’t let her have the surgery—period. Their letter said total hip surgery at her age is ‘an inefficient utilization of valuable medical resources.’ I mean, what the hell did we work and skimp and save for if we can’t spend it on our health?”

  “Wish I had an answer for you,” Terry said.

  “Yeah.” He pushed away from the bar. “Thanks for the beer. Come on, Martha. We’ll keep looking.”

  He took his wife gently by the arm and began helping her toward the door. Terry stared across the bar at Rick and Boo so he wouldn’t have to watch the Kowalskis. He saw a grinning Rick accepting a ten from a grumpy-looking Boo. He wondered what the bet had been this time.

  He looked out the window at the towering storm, black as a hearse now, picking up speed and power. If he was going to head out, he’d better get moving.

  Terry waited until Joe Kowalski had eased his wife into the passenger seat, then he waved to Rick, Boo, and Ernie and headed out. The August heat gave him a wet body slam as he stepped outside. He slid past the Kowalskis’ idling rental but couldn’t resist a glance through the windshield.

  Martha was crying.

  He averted his gaze and hurried to his pickup.

  Life really sucked sometimes.

  He jumped into the blisteringly hot cab.

  That didn’t mean he had to get involved.

  He turned the key and the old Ford shuddered to life.

  Wasn’t his problem.

  He threw it into reverse.

  As he was backing out he saw Joe put an arm around his wife’s thin, quaking shoulders and try to comfort her.

  He slammed on the brakes and yanked the gearshift back into neutral.

  Shit.

  Cursing himself for a jerk, Terry jumped out of the cab and stalked over to the Kowalskis’ car. He rapped on Joe’s window.

  “Follow me,” he said as the glass slid down.

  Joe’s eyes lit. “You mean—?”

  “Just follow.”

  As he was heading back to the pickup, he heard a voice call out behind him.

  “Aw, Terry! Say it ain’t so!”

  He turned and saw Rick standing in the doorway, dismay flattening his weathered features. Boo peered over his shoulder, grinning.

  “You’re takin’ ’em, ain’t ya,” Boo said.

  “None of your damn business.”

  Boo nudged Rick none too gently and rubbed his palms together. “See. I toldja he would. I win. Gimme back my saw plus the one you owe me. Give it now, Rick.”

  Rick handed the money to Boo and gave Terry a wounded look.

  “Y’disappointed the shit outta me, Terr.”

  “Yeah, well,” Terry muttered, slipping behind the wheel again, “there’s one born every minute.”

  “You really think he’s going to risk this storm?” Cramer asked.

  Pepe Henriques looked at his mate. Cramer’s round, usually relaxed boyish face was tight with tension.

  He’s scared, he thought.

  Which was okay. Showing it wasn’t.

  Henriques looked past Cramer at the storm that filled the sky. Giant forks of lightning occasionally speared down to the Gulf but mostly jumped cloud to cloud, illuminating the guts of the storm with explosions of light. Thunder crashed incessantly, vibrating their fiberglass hull. He could see the rain curtain billowing toward them.

  Almost here.

  When it hit, visibility would be shot and they’d have to go on instruments. But so would the runner.

  “He’ll be out here. Why else would that hospital ship be dawdling fourteen miles out? They’re waiting for a delivery. And our man’s going to make it. That is, he’s going to try. This’ll be his last run.”

  He tossed Cramer a life jacket and watched him strap it on. Saw the black ATF across the yellow fabric and had to shake his head.

  Me. An ATF agent.

  He still couldn’t believe it. But he’d found he liked the regular paycheck, the benefit package, the retirement fund. Sure as hell beat taking tourists tarpon and bone fishing on the flats.

  But he might be back to fishing those flats if he didn’t catch this runner.

  Henriques had run up against him twice before, but both times he’d got away. Two things he knew for sure about the guy: He ran a Hutchison 686 and he was a Conch. Henriques had seen the Hutch from a distance. The registration numbers on the twenty-six-foot craft were bogus—no surprise there. What had been big surprises were the way the boat handled and its pilot’s knowledge of the waters around the Lower Keys. The Hutch 686 was popular as hell in these parts, but this one had done things a propeller-driven shouldn’t be able to do. It ran like a VMA impeller—like Henriques’s craft. The runner had customized it somehow.

  And as for being a Conch, well…nobody could dodge among all these reefs and mangrove keylets like that runner unless he’d spent his life among them. A native of the Keys. A Conch. Took one to know one.

  Take one to catch one.

  And I’m the one, Henriques thought. Tonight’s his last run.

  The rain hit just as they neared the inner rim of the reef. Terry pulled back on the throttle and idled the engine.

  “Thank God!” Martha Kowalski said. She clung to the arms of her deck-fast seat with white knuckles. “That bouncing was making me sick!”

  “What’re you doing now?” Joe shouted over the mad drumming of the big drops on the deck and the roof of the open cabin.

  Terry didn’t answer. His passengers would see for themselves soon enough.

  He unwrapped the molded black plastic panels and began scampering around the deck, snapping them onto the sides of the superstructure.
Two of the strips for the hull sported a brand-new registration number, fresh off the decal sheets. Another went over the transom to cover the name, replacing his own admittedly corny Terryfied with Delta Sue.

  Joe looked bewildered when Terry ducked back into the cabin enclosure.

  “I don’t get it.”

  “Just a little insurance.”

  The less Joe knew, the better.

  The panels changed the boat’s lines and color scheme. Nothing that would hold up against even casual inspection in good light, but from a distance, through lightning-strobed rain, his white, flat-bottomed VMA impeller craft looked an awful lot like a black-and-white V-hulled Hutchison 686. The black panels also broke up the boat’s outline, making it harder to spot.

  “That’s what you said when you were playing around with the light on that channel marker,” Joe said.

  “That’s right. Another kind of insurance.”

  “But that could—”

  “Don’t worry. I’ll undo it on my way back in. No questions—wasn’t that the deal?”

  Joe nodded glumly. “But I still don’t get it.”

  You’re not supposed to, Terry thought as he gunned the engine and headed into the wind.

  The hull jumped, thudded, shimmied, and jittered with the staccato pounding of the waves, and all that rhythmic violence worked into every tissue of his body. Once he zipped through the cut in the barrier reef it got worse—two, three, maybe four times worse. Riding at this speed in this weather was a little like getting a total body massage. From King Kong. On speed. Add to that the tattoo of the rain, the howl of the wind, the booming thunder, and further talk was damn near impossible. Unless you shouted directly into someone’s ear. Which Martha was doing into Joe’s as she bounced around in her seat and hung on for dear life.

  Joe sidled over. “Think you could slow down? Martha can’t take the pounding.”

  Terry shook his head. “I ease up, we won’t make enough headway.”

  Joe went back to Martha and they traded more shouts, none of which Terry could hear. Joe lurched back.