Part 19 (1/2)
Susan looked confused. ”How do you know?”
Joey said, ”Makes sense.”
”Why?”
Joey looked pleadingly at me. I said, ”I guess they could mean any island within driving distance, Susan. But Dog Island is hard to get to; they've got an isolated cottage there; they're used to doing business there; and there aren't any cops on the island.”
Susan said, ”Okay.”
”None of that means we're right. But I think we are.” I looked around. ”Where's Kelly?”
Loutie said, ”Still asleep. She hasn't got any business in this. She works for you, Tom. But that's what I thought.”
”You thought right. Kelly needs to get back to Mobile. And I guess Joey and I need to head for Dog Island. Try to beat Purcell there.”
Joey said, ”Yeah. And Loutie, you get on over to Purcell's place. Hang around outside. Don't let him out of your sight.”
Joey turned to me. ”Tom, did you get that tracker box stuck under Purcell's Caddy?”
”Yeah, the first day here.”
Joey caught Loutie's eye to make sure she'd heard me and then looked at Susan. ”Can you handle the listening equipment?” Susan said yes. ”Okay, then you stay here and listen and work the phones. Tom and I will keep you up on what we're doing. Loutie, you do the same. I mean, you keep in contact with Susan to let her know what you're doing.” He stopped and looked around the room and smiled. ”I never been around such a bunch of gloomy people. We know where she is. This is the good part.”
chapter twenty-five.
After two days without a decent bath, one of which was spent hurling digestive juices on a rolling shrimp boat, a hot shower was not a luxury. I made a quick job of it, left Susan upstairs getting dressed, and met Joey downstairs. He had loaded his Expedition with guns, blankets, and fooda”what he described as his ”rescue kit.” Loutie would stay by the listening equipment until Susan came down; then she would head over to watch Purcell.
By eight, Joey and I left the strained charm of Seaside behind.
Neither of us spoke much. Joey pulled out a paper sack of Dolly Madison cinnamon rolls and canned drinks, and we made a breakfast of that as we listened to the news on NPR. On the eastern side of Port St. Joe, as we neared Apalachicola, Joey said, ”I called about a boat while you were in the shower. Susan knew somebody. We don't need to be trying to ride a ferry with all these guns in the car, and we sure as h.e.l.l don't need to be standing around waiting for the ferry after discharging firearms into the locals.”
I asked, ”You really think that's going to be necessary?”
”Never know. I sure as h.e.l.l hope not. We have to kill a couple of those Bodine boys, and you're gonna have to take up the life of the hunted again.”
I said, ”The life of the hunted?” And Joey smiled.
He drove straight through Apalachicola and Eastpoint to a marina called ”The Moorings” in tiny Carrabelle, Florida. It was where we had caught the ferry when we went out to watch Thomas Bobby Hayc.o.c.k.
As Joey put his vehicle in park and pulled the key, he said, ”Why don't you wait in the car? After your adventure with the Teeters, you're probably a minor celebrity around here.” And he closed the door.
So I hunkered down in the seat feeling a little embarra.s.sed to be left behind but lucky not to be goinga”like a child waiting for his father to come out of the liquor store. Four interminable minutes pa.s.sed, and the door locks snapped as Joey shot them with his remote. He opened the door and stepped in. He said, ”Got it,” and backed the Expedition out and pulled around the side of the marina.
Dozens of luxury sailboats and motor yachts were huddled so tightly around a maze of concrete docks that it looked as though the first guy in would never leave again. But then, no one seemed to be leaving. Retired couples in baggy shorts and slouch hats polished bra.s.s or coiled ropes between trips to other boats to talk sailing or diesel motors or maybe a little fis.h.i.+ng with someone from Wilmington or Bar Harbor or some other place where money intersected with seacoast.
Our little Boston Whaler was tied up among the working boats, which were kept well away from the yacht trade, and we had clear access to the waterway leading out into the bay. Joey popped the hatch on his Expedition. The food was in a cooler; the blankets were loose; and the firearms were discreetly zipped inside a fatigue-green duffel bag. As we loaded the blue-and-white Boston Whaler, Joey and I looked like nothing more than a couple of friends out for a day of fis.h.i.+ng, except maybe for the complete absence of fis.h.i.+ng equipment.
Joey said, ”You know how to drive one of these things?”
”Well, yeah. On a lake. I thought you were in the Navy.”
”We didn't spend a lot of time tooling around in p.i.s.sant fis.h.i.+ng boats in Naval Intelligence.” I looked at him. He said, ”How hard can it be? Crank it up. The guy in the marina told me how to get to the island. h.e.l.l, it's just over there. Soon as you pull around that place there where the land boops out you can see the d.a.m.n thing.”
”Boops out, huh?”
Joey ignored me.
I asked, ”Did he tell you where all the oyster beds are too?”
”I asked about that.”
”That was nice of you.”
”He said they're not too bad between here and Dog Island. Just don't drive too fast.”
”Like Rus Poultrez did?”
”Just like that.”
While Joey rummaged in the cooler for additional sustenance, I puttered the boat away from the dock. Then, ever so gently, I steered a course in the general direction of Dog Island. The sour-sweet, almost carnal scents of the coast swirled in the spring air as a persistent chop paddled the hull and sprayed us with salt mist. Thirty minutes out of Carrabelle, I judged that we were not quite halfway there. I asked, ”How far is it supposed to be out to the island?”
”The guy in the marina said seven miles.”
”It didn't look that far when we came out into the bay.”
”You can't tell lookin' over water. Everything looks closer. The way to tell is you gotta turn around and bend over and look across the water through your legs.”
I said, ”Uh-huh.”
”No s.h.i.+t. It works. An old forester taught me that. One summer in high school, I worked on a survey crew cutting land lines through the woods. We'd hit a stretch of swamp every now and then. The only way to tell how much wading you were gonna have to do was to bend over and look through your legs.”
I said, ”Uh-huh.”
Forty minutes later, we were maybe a hundred yards off the narrow strip of island, and Joey said, ”Hook around the left end of the island there.”
It took another half hour to putt around the tip of the island and land the boat on the same desolate stretch of beach where I had parked my Jeep a week earlier as we hunkered in the dunes watching Hayc.o.c.k's place.
I had been working at keeping things lighta”trying to behave as though none of this bothered me. But, as Joey unzipped the green duffel and pulled out some kind of machine pistol, I could feel the morning grow cooler as light perspiration covered my face and neck and hands. Acid churned my stomach and adrenaline fogged my mind, and I had to concentrate to follow what Joey was saying.
”This is a Tech 9. It holds twenty rounds in the clip, plus one in the chamber. This is the safety. Up is on. Down is off. Push it down to fire.”
”I've got my nine millimeter.”
Joey said, ”That's fine. You're used to shootin' it, so you should stick to it if you can. But we don't know what or who's waitin' for us. If six guys come around a corner with guns, you're gonna get your a.s.s shot off if you count on that Browning. The Tech 9 is automatic, or at least the way I've got it set up it is. Pull back like this to chamber the first round and then just hold down the trigger. It'll squeeze out four rounds a second. So don't waste 'em all on one guy. Spread it around if you have to use it.” Joey pulled out two black shoulder bags and tossed one to me. ”Put it in there till you need it. We could run into somebody.” Then he pulled out an identical weapon for himself, which he put in his black nylon bag. He also dropped in a Glock 9mm before zipping it up. Finally, he produced a tiny Walther PPK .380 and put it in his hip pocket.