The ship, though, was happy to play with him. As their long arc eastward took them out of the lee of the island, a good wind picked up and Cazar leaned her over hard, making up for lost time and giving the ciegos something to distract them from their Key West Sunset Ale. In fact, some of the ale spilled on the deck. That was good; it was too early to be drinking, when there was nothing yet to celebrate.
Mollified and slightly less bored, Cazar eased off on the wheel and let the tourists collect their tumbled items. The senora tightened the chin strap on her hat, while her son, oblivious to Victoria’s dark look, fetched paper towels from the galley and started mopping up. The boy was a fast worker and eager to please. Cazar wondered if he was looking for a job — the crew down in the islands was a few hands short at the moment.
Victoria joined him behind the wheel and said, “These folks pay to go out on an antique sailboat, not to win some kind of race. You may not need the money, but I want you to know that if they don’t tip us, I’m gonna be eating stale bread for dinner.”
“If they don’t tip you, I’ll take you out to dinner at the Conch House,” Cazar said, turning once again so the wind scooped the sails and sent the Atalaya lunging forward, testing the limits of her shallow keel. This time Victoria laughed, and so did several of the tourists, though they were hanging onto their seats.
The zigzagging upwind journey went quickly after that, Victoria having decided to earn her tip money by teaching the ciegos how to sail rather than by wining and dining them. She changed the nature of the outing from a lazy afternoon cruise to an exotic adventure, and at least some of the tourists bought it. They took pictures of one another tightening the sails and ducking under the swinging boom, the wind blowing their hair and peppering their faces with spray.
The senora gave up on her hat and tucked it away in her beach bag, for which Cazar was grateful. If she’d lost it overboard, he would have been obliged to turn back and retrieve it, and the journey would have lost its cantidad de movimiento, the sense of momentum that grew more pressing as they neared the reef.
What’s out there? Cazar wondered. He watched the shallow turquoise waters to the Atalaya’s port side, a pathway of muddy bottom and turtle grass that wound through the approaching coral. It diverged from the route marked on Jimmy McAllister’s chart, but the tide was still coming in and the water was plenty deep.
The wind agreed. Slipping around to the west, it cupped the jib and sent them sweetly down the middle of the narrow channel, a piece of sailing that certainly deserved a tip, had the ciegos, the blind people, known good sailing from bad in the first place. They didn’t, except perhaps the young Brazilian, who was giving Cazar a strange look from his place at the jib. Cazar made a figure-eight gesture with his right hand, motioning for the young man to tie off the sail and leave it, and he did so, then met Cazar at the helm.
“Capitan,” the young man began, the exacting Spanish of aristocratic South America. “It is masterful sailing, but my mother and I could not help but notice that this is a different direction than the one the old captain, Jimmy, took. Do you have some reason for the change?”
Cazar ignored the question, looking at the boy speculatively with one eye and keeping the other on the subtle gradations of aquamarine that marked the depth of the water. “You’ve been on the tour before,” he said. Glancing once more at Jimmy’s chart, and the route marked in fresh red pen, he transferred both eyes and his full attention to the Brazilian. “And you had an agreement with Jimmy to take you to a certain place on the reef.”
The young man shifted his feet. “Si, Capitan,” he said. “For two trips, now. I think that is why Senora Victoria is so suspicious of us. The first time we went out, I paid Jimmy something extra for his trouble, but I did not think to pay her, and now she will not take my money when I try —”
“— Asombroso,” Cazar said dryly. Amazing. He watched the young man’s growing agitation, and watched, over the boy’s shoulder, the mother’s growing concern. Soon she would get up and join them, and Cazar had no doubt that she was a shrewder negotiator than her son. “What is it?” Cazar asked quickly. “Drugs? You will tell me, or I’ll come to my own conclusions, which you will like even less. What are you looking for on the reef?”
“Nothing like that,” the Brazilian stammered. “Nothing illegal… ”
“Nothing that is any of your business, senor,” said the boy’s mother.
“My ship is my business,” Cazar told her.
“Well,” she said, “your ship is completely uninvolved. If by some chance I should find the thing I am looking for, which is unlikely given the change of course, I will engage a qualified salvage operation at that point. Perhaps I should have already hired a private charter, but I wished to keep both cost and outside involvement to a minimum.”
“Most people do, in your situation,” Cazar said, which aggravated the senora.
“I don’t know what you mean by my situation,” she said. “I am not looking for a sunken boatload of cocaine, but for a crate containing my grandfather’s collection of rare bronze statuary.”
Her expressions were easier to read without the sunhat; her thoughts were as bright and flashy as a school of fish, always moving. The school looked like one big fish, but in fact it hid nothing — just little swimmers, no large secret in the middle. “Bronze sculptures,” Cazar repeated. “I believe you, senora, but there will be a lengthy and costly process involved in proving that to the State of Florida. I am intimately aware that salvage law has become more strict in the last decade.”
The senora regarded him, perhaps wondering how he had gained such intimate familiarity. Cazar searched amid the sunpenny sparkles of her thoughts for a name, but this time he could not see beneath the surface. He might actually be forced to ask.
Before he could, though, she said, “Laws and forms and paperwork, si, por supuesto. But I’m sure you know, Capitan, that the first thing the forms ask is the exact location of the property to be salvaged, which is what we are trying to pinpoint. Mr. McAllister said he would take us to certain areas where debris is more likely to wash up on the reef.”
“Mr. McAllister could not find such places if they were marked with red flags. But he’s right about one thing, Senora, they do exist. Though it would help if your grandfather told you precisely where he dumped this supposedly legitimate cargo of rare artwork overbaord.”
Her dark eyes flashed, reflections over deep black water. “It was not him who dumped it,” she said under her breath. “And it is legitimate.”
About Lake McCullough
