BELOW
MiLE
ZER0
(A novel of Key West)
Brooke
Babineau
My name isn’t on any tax rolls and I’m not in the phone book. I’ve been pretty thorough about ensuring my privacy, and that will probably get me screwed.
With my history I can't go to anyone for help because most of the police I’ve met are corrupt, and those who aren’t have no reason to believe or help me.
I am a survivor. I got through Vietnam and the drug wars in America in the 70's, more or less intact. There were casualties in both wars; I lost my family in the last one, but I got out with a little piece of paradise I could call my own. I've been living comfortably in Key West since the 80’s and figured on being here until I’m old and gray. But all that has changed….
Let me explain: This guy I met washed up here about five years ago. He was flat broke and on the run from some pretty bad people in New Orleans. An old partner of mine helped him dry out and get back on his feet. Eventually he became a friend of mine…and I don't make friends easy, experience has taught me it's a good way to get dead.
Looking at what's been happening over the past couple of weeks, and what's probably going to happen next, most likely I will be dead or in prison for the rest of my life by the time you get around to reading this.
I’ve been talking to this writer I know. I figure the only way I have of getting the record straight is to have him set it up like a work of fiction. I know this has been done before, so that the truth can come out.
He’ll have to change the names and the details enough, so that no one else can be hurt, but with enough truth in it to get people asking questions about why the DEA is importing cocaine from Cuba and killing people in America.
This writer doesn’t know I’m writing to you. I don’t want anything out of this, I’ve got enough to live well, if I can survive this mess, but I’d like him to catch a break, so I’d appreciate it if you could not mention my contacting you. I’d like him to think he got a book deal on his own.
Tony Amundsen
People who like this sort of thing
will find this the sort of thing they like.
- Abraham Lincoln
In this world a man must be either
anvil or hammer.
- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Let the blow fall soon or late,
Let what will be o'er me;
Give the face of earth around
And the road before me.
Wealth I seek not, hope nor love,
Nor a friend to know me;
All I seek, the heaven above
And the road below me.
- Robert Louis Stevenson
A letter to the Publisher:
CHAPTER 1
March (?) 1992:
I remember—I use the term loosely—driving non-stop, fueled mostly by Scotch and cocaine. The need that carried me across three states, an inexplicably compelling need, was to see the Art Deco district of Miami Beach. For what purpose, as I crossed the Florida State line, I no longer recalled, though it had seemed supremely important when I’d set out. Given my nearly hallucinatory state, I was amazed to find myself still in one piece and nearing my goal. That is, until the Alligator Alley Parkway threw me headlong into a Gordian confusion of interchanges, turnpikes and cloverleaves. Using the rather limited deductive powers at my command, reasoning, since Miami was on the southeastern tip of the mainland and I was traveling east then, naturally, I had to turn right and go to the end of the road. The next major signage announced Homestead and Key Largo. The former I'd never heard of, the latter was the title of a pretty good 'Bogie-Bacall’ movie. Mentally I shrugged and said, "Why not?” After all, it really didn't matter where I was going, only that I was going.
Mourning the loss of a business, a friend, and the only woman I’d ever loved, my one-man wake, most of it on auto-pilot, had begun two days earlier, on the first day of Mardi Gras, when I found out that Bobby, my friend and office manager, had put all the assets of our company up his nose.
We had managed acts, primarily club bands and dancers. I'd been content to live on the road, babysitting players and romancing club owners while Bobby ran the office, doing the bookings and cooking the books. Every night since Nicole's death was spent in pursuit of oblivion, so I was more numb than surprised when L'Angousette's bill collector found me.
The air at Le Clubbe Jazz Hott was thick and steamy as a cauldron of jambalaya, the band was cooking, and I was immersed in the humid press of flesh as I made my way backstage through the flashy crowd of hedonists. As usual, I was smashed and the people-jam was lush with beautiful women on the prowl. The promise of sex throbbed to the primal beat of Cajun rhythms when the crowd parted and something large loomed in front of me. Nearly seven feet tall and almost as big around, Gordo would have made a good wall. Two things convinced me to follow him; the first, my reluctance to make a scene in the crowded nightclub that was a place of business to me; the second, Gordo's nerve-killing grip. His hand clenched my upper arm as easily as a normal human might grasp the handle of a baseball bat—the word normal had probably never been associated with this guy or with his owner, Pierre Auguste L'Angousette.
Langouste, a French corruption of his name, or the Lobster, as he was called on the street—though, never to his face—was someone you didn’t screw around with and live to brag about it, at least not in one piece. I'd had history with him, none of it had been good, so I knew that if Bobby had let L'Angousette get his hooks so deeply into the business that his leg breaker had been sent around to collect directly from me, then there probably wasn't much left.
Pinned against the sweaty walls of the men's room, wondering if I'd leave with two functioning knees, the message was short and to the point: Twenty-four hours to make good on my partner's debts. A message was being sent but it wasn’t about money, I knew it was a different kind of debt. Gordo's obligatory "or else" gave me a cold, hollow feeling in the pit of my stomach exactly the size and shape of his fist, so I did what any sane person would have done under similar circumstances. The evening was a liquor-sodden blur of leering faces and rundown places, which reinforced the futility of trying to prevent my already tenuous world from further crumbling to pieces.
It was sometime after four when I stumbled back to the suite of rooms in the Vieux Carré, which served as the agency's office and provided a convenient pied-a-terre where I could stay when I wasn't on the road. Sleep was out of the question. I sat on the balcony listening to the rain, thinking, remembering:
I was twenty-three when I got married, a kid really, and much, much too young. We'd gotten along beautifully during the year of our engagement, mostly because I was blissfully unaware there was an agenda, not mine. I was in love, mostly with the idea of being in love. Francesca— “...pronounced: Fran-sess-ka, not –chess-ka...” —was in love, too. The problem; she was in love with the idea of being the first of her high-school girlfriends to get married. For her being first was very important. However, once the deed was done and it dawned on her—rocket scientist that she was—that I was quite happy designing, building, and riding custom motorcycles and not in using my Fine Arts degree to climb any sort of ladder, either social or—according to her—evolutionary, she left. In so doing, Francesca scored once again; she became the first in her club to achieve the delicious status of divorcée.
During the hearing, the lawyers had had a ball getting her to talk about the abuse she'd never experienced, and the judge had gotten his jollies watching her show where imaginary bruises had been.
It wasn’t all bad; I finally won her approval for the "filthy, dirty, little motorcycle business" I'd built up from nothing when she saw the amount of the settlement that landed in her lap. To pay my way out of that den of thieves, I'd had to sell everything: shop, tools, the inventory of parts and bikes, and the house I’d inherited when my parents died in a head-on with a drunk driver. The works!
According to the people who make up aphorisms: misery loves company. The only thing I wanted after the feeding frenzy was to run as far as possible from everyone and everything. With running came the wildness. I didn't realize it then but I was running from myself, and in the process I began to find myself.
The past was steep and rugged,
The wolves they howled and whined;
But he ran like a whirlwind up the pass,
And he left the wolves behind.
- Thomas Babington Macaulay, Baron Macaulay
After too many odd jobs and going down to the end of every road just to see what lay there, burning out the pain along with several million brain cells, my odyssey landed me in New Orleans. All I had was a mint '52 Harley Davidson panhead I’d hidden from the divorce lawyers, a rouged-out leather jacket, a pair of greasy jeans, and a few crumpled-up bills in my pocket. I wore a ponytail that reached my belt, had a thick copper-red beard and I was loving the hell out of ‘The Big Easy’. Given my predilection for sticking my nose where it didn’t belong, an affinity for the unusual and truly bizarre, it wasn’t long before I discovered that a coal-eyed Cajun princess had permanently perched herself on the back of my bike and in my heart. A ‘dancer’ by profession, Nicole was the most beautiful woman I'd ever seen. Not stilt-legged, cool, and untouchable like a fashion model, but beautiful in the manner of real flesh and blood women, she did things to me that still get me hard when I think about her, which, regrettably, is most every night.
The first thing "Nikki" taught me was not to drag my knuckles when I walked. Once I'd grasped that concept she then eased me into learning about entertainers and entertainment as a business. I mourned selling the bike, seeing my escape route vanish, but the seed money it provided had been necessary to give the business a fair start. Over the next five years we built one of the best independent operations in the state. A talent agency with the prettiest women and the hottest bands, we weren't big but we were good, and we were founded predominantly on goodwill and reputation. Everyone knew, loved, and respected Nicole.
"The personal touch, Cher," Nicole used to insist, "is more important than anything else.” She believed that we had to be there for our clients and customers alike. It was solely because of her, her caring and her great, good heart that our clients became family. It was people first, and the money really did take care of itself, until....
March 1, 1992:
Tap City! Other than the slender roll in my pocket and the classic '64 Continental convertible parked around the corner, I was at ground zero. The smiling vulture behind the Service counter in my bank had cheerfully snipped my credit cards into little pieces while I stood there in stunned silence wondering how I'd been so blind. A hot needle of agony stitched a thread of knots above my left eye. I needed anesthetic. I needed a drink.
In the office, sipping Johnny Walker Black Label from the bottle, staring at the posters on the walls, I was seeing things the way they'd been, remembering how it was when Nicole and I had first gone into business. The one tiny room—all we could afford—had been lit by her enthusiasm, her eyes bright with a vision of the future. Anything had seemed possible...then.
The dupe of friendship, and the fool of love;
have I not reason to hate and to despise myself?
Indeed I do; and chiefly for not having hated and
despised the world enough.
- William Hazlitt
A key rattled in the lock, bringing me back to the present. I low- ered the bottle to the desk with my left hand. The fingers of my right found the .380 resting in my lap.
"Howdy, partner.”
Bobby spun around. His suitcase banged into the wastebasket, sending a scatter of balled-up papers across the floor.
"What's wrong, Cher? Not even a happy-birthday, where-you-at?” My cheery voice belied my true feelings.
"You, you supposed to be on your way to B-B-Baton Rouge with F-Fat City. You know how Elmo g-g-gets when he has to travel with the band and you're n-not there to hold his hand.”
His slight stammer was more pronounced than usual, the weak grin curling his lips was little more than a reflex action.
"Save the crap, Bobby.” I said softly.
Playing for time, he turned to close the door.
"I don't—“
Noticing the carpet in the corner pulled back and the open floor safe, the denial died in his mouth. The sound of the door clicking shut behind him seemed magnified in the tiny office.
"There's a—" he tried to jump track.
"No, there isn't...not anymore.” When I took the baggie from my inside pocket—there was almost an ounce of white powder—and dropped it on the desk, Bobby's Creole-dark skin paled to gray. He reached for it but his hand froze in mid-air when he saw the pistol in my hand. Slowly, he slumped down on his side of the partners' desk.
"Oh! Yeah-h-h! And Gordo, you remember L'Angousette's bill collector...?” I asked warmly, as if reminding him of an old friend. "He and I, we had ourselves a little tête-à-tête at the club last night. You know, telling me about my good friend and partner; letting me know what's been going down with your ‘white line fever’ while I've been on the road? Most enlightening, if you know what I mean?”
Bobby swallowed nervously, easing a suddenly too-tight collar. His finger left a dark smear on the sky-blue silk.
"Then this morning, I saw the nice man at the bank.” I fingered the baggie on the desktop. “Too bad I got here before you could get away with that, hey?"
Light glistened on the sweat blossoms dotting his receding hairline. He was scared, and with good reason. Part of me—the not-so-nice part—had been looking forward to this all morning. Bobby's mouth began to jerk out of neutral, beginning what would surely prove an award-winning plea for help. Seeing his resemblance to a rodent, a pop-eyed rat with a greasy twirled moustache, I wondered why I'd never noticed that before.
"For the moment," I began, cutting him off.
"B-b-but—"
The sound of my hand smacking the desk was loud, sudden as a gunshot. He jerked back as if struck by a bullet. I absorbed the sting and used the pain to focus my anger.
"Listen to me..." The words were spoken quietly, which may have scared him more than if I'd ranted and raved.
"For the moment, this—" I indicated office and contents, "—is still mine, so I can hire or fire anybody I want.” I saw resignation and defiance stiffen his posture, relief lightened his eyes. Stretching it out, I continued with mock sincerity. "I really regret having to do this, after all we've been through, but...” I slid the contract across the desk. "I'm firing me."
He looked at me in disbelief; waiting for the second shoe to drop without realizing that it already had.
"Of course, there isn't much left.” I added in the conciliatory tones of a game show host. "But, hey! I guess you know that.”
The pistol in my hand made a lie out of my cheery consolation. The paper trembled as he picked it up and read. I was acutely aware of the hard weight in my hand. I could feel the slight resistance of the trigger against my finger. It would take only the merest flinch, but that would be too quick, too kind. This was better, much better.
"Sign it.” The words were spoken softly, the tone deadly.
Scarcely able to hold the pen, Bobby scrawled his signature on the line opposite mine.
Stuffing my copy, along with the bag of white powder and pistol into my jacket pocket, I headed for the door but he couldn't leave it alone. I had planned to avoid any physical contact, mostly because I wasn't sure I would be able to stop. Hearing him whining about being the victim and how it wasn't his fault, I felt myself slipping over the edge. Reason receded into the background as the wild man came out. An animal growl rumbled in the back of my throat as familiar hands grabbed the front of his trademark giraffe-skin vest. Twice, in quick succession, they crashed him against a wall before lifting him clear of the floor to slam him bodily across the desk.
Punk!
The sound of his breath, as the wind was knocked out of him, blew into my face. The rank metallic stench of panic aroused a sudden and urgent need inside me, like a sex-starved alley cat catching a scent of heat-musk, I wanted his naked throat in my hands, to feel the life squeeze out of his wretched body through my fingers.
Our faces were scant inches apart. His eyes were stretched wide in terror.
Out of nowhere I heard Nikki's voice, "Life's one big joke, baby...just gotta remember to laugh at it.”
I did. Once. It was a sharp, harsh sound like something breaking. With it, the room came back into focus. Breathing heavily, I willed my fists open.
Pausing at the door, my hand on the knob, I turned for one last look. Congratulating Bobby on his promotion I wished him luck, knowing that none of it would be good.
A strangled cry flew out of the open transom behind me. I felt a nasty grin—the like of which I hoped never to see on anyone else—twist my face and tighten the skin around my eyes.
Only a few scattered fragments of my last Mardi Gras remain. The rest of the downward pirouette, into the insanity that marked my thirty-fifth birthday, remains lost forever in some dark corner of toxic blackout.
* * *
Numb from the neck—both down and up—I may not have consciously understood that I was in Key West. What I do remember is wandering through quaint pastel neighborhoods, being waved to by strangers as they wobbled down lumpy roads on fat-tired bicycles, singing aloud from the sheer joy of being alive in this garden paradise. The mood was infectious. I felt I must have accomplished something momentous when passersby cheered as I pressed my lips to the worn center of the Mile Zero sign on the corner of Whitehead and Fleming Streets that marked the ‘End’ of Route 1. On the other side of the street was the ‘Begin’ sign.
Needing to discover what Nirvana must surely lay hidden there I crossed Fleming Street. What followed was a succession of crowded watering holes where I was so well liked that I quickly drew an entourage of kindred spirits, which multiplied as my spendthrift bar tour progressed ever deeper below Mile Zero.
Licker talks mighty loud
w'en it git loose fum de jug.
- Joel Chandler Harris
It was with the high-flying clarity borne on whiskey wings that I knew I had found my destiny. After only a few hours in Key West I'd found more true friends than I had to show for the ten years I’d left behind me in Louisiana. What I couldn't find, the next morning, was my wallet, car, or any of those warm-hearted ‘bubbas’ who had taken me into their bosom. All that was left was a smelly pile of crumpled rags on the floor of the city drunk tank, with me inside them. Having collected enough musicians from assorted jails and lock-ups, I couldn't help recognize my new surroundings for what they were. Though, try as I might, I could not remember how I came to be there. When I sat up, my missing custom-tailored silk suit and hand-made Italian shoes assumed a secondary importance to stopping my head from exploding.
The arresting officer later explained to the judge that the owner of the Cadillac Eldorado didn't know me, didn't want to know me, and though he hadn't seen anything funny in my using the back seat of his car as a crash pad, he wasn’t interested in pressing charges. The judge had a more liberal sense of humor, except when it came to swallowing my "tall tales" of being a man of some importance. Without wallet or ID to back up my story, I chose to not further try his patience and closed my mouth.
One of the pieces of paper stuffed into my hand was a voucher for a free meal. The mere thought of food was violently repellant; I was perspiring pure alcohol, my mouth tasted like something left on the road for dead, and the hydraulic vise grinding my brain rendered any attempt at human speech or thought virtually impossible. My benefactor, a fast-talking, New Age church lady, had steadfastly waited for me, the last "unfortunate" from the morning's docket. In addition to the meal ticket, she had a program for me that included counseling, job assistance, and "...a golden opportunity to take responsibility for (my) life by accepting Jesus into my heart as my one true Savior."
Despite her obvious sincerity, I couldn't help but notice the involuntary wrinkling of her nose at my proximity. In the growing heat of the day, even I didn't want to be standing that close to me.
I jammed the giveaways into an unfamiliar pocket, mumbling a promise to go and see about the job right away. ―I would have promised anything to escape the churning noises my insides were making not to mention the shrill scrape of her voice across the vast and tender galaxy of my hangover.― She pursued me down the courthouse steps, as I went in search of a drink to steady my nerves, reminding me, at the top of her voice, that there'd be a cot saved for me at the Men's Shelter. The looks I got from a hunting party of lawyers confirmed that I really had it made. Lucky me!
The papers and my promises went into a trash basket on the corner.
I got maybe a foot inside the cool oasis of the Green Parrot saloon before the bartender hollered, grabbed a baseball bat and chased me back out into the street. I was just as quickly shooed away from the next bar I looked like I might try to enter. This was a totally different greeting from the other night, a completely new reality. All alone on a crowded street, everyone saw me but none would look at me, save to ensure avoiding contact. Surrounded by shiny sleek stiletto heels and gleaming patent leather pumps, a grimy and disheveled creature with a patchy beard and long bedraggled hair stared back at me from the reflection in the store window. Inside, the clerk looked like he was reaching for either a gun or a telephone.
Beset by images of men on street corners with spray bottles and squeegees, will-work-for-food signs and cardboard boxes for homes, men with loss in their eyes, men I had ignored in my former life, I wept openly as I pawed through soggy clumps of waste in a trash basket for those precious slips of paper.
Every agonizing step of the four miles from the candy-colored antiquity of Key West, over the Cow Key Channel Bridge to Stock Island, was a living purgatory.
I remembered having once heard someone joke how falling from a tall building doesn't really hurt...it’s the sudden deceleration at the bottom. I didn't feel like laughing. My fall hadn't been from a very great height but it had been unbelievably quick and the impact had been shattering. The worst part was in knowing it was my own fault. I could have saved Bobby from his fate and me from mine, if I had had the guts to take control of the business after Nicole's death. Instead, I had gone into hiding. I was good at hiding. Road trips, nightclubs, concerts; with enough drugs and liquor to keep reality at bay, it was easy to hide.
I would've killed for a shooter of Wild Turkey...anything to numb the pain.
When in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes
I all alone beweep my outcast state,
And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries,
And look upon myself and curse my fate...
- William Shakespeare
For of fortunes sharp adversitee
The worst kinde of infortune is this,
A man to have ben in prosperitee,
And it remembren, when it passed is.
- Geoffrey Chaucer
Half out of my head from heat and hangover, dying of thirst, and near exhaustion, I hobbled down a desolate dead-end road on Stock Island, beyond a decayed dog racing track, past an auto wrecker. A stinking mosquito-laden mangrove swamp crowded in on the right, on my left, junkyard dogs snarled and barked at me through barbed wire. I saw more value in the rusted and gutted wrecks behind the fence than the one inside tattered rags I was wearing.
An insistent honking woke me from my mutterings to the fact that I was reeling down the middle of the road. I turned around, stuck out my thumb, and got my first sight of Charlie. ―Cabs of Japanese pickup trucks were never designed for something that big, few things are.
Stopping beside me with the engine running, he stated, "There's nothing down that road.” I heard the implied "for you" in the tone of his voice.
Scrabbling for the do-gooder's chit in my pocket, I held it out to him in a shaking hand, explaining that I had business out there, that I had a job at a salvage company located at the end of this very road.
Refusing to touch it, he looked at the stained and wrinkled scrap of paper. I saw his eyebrows arch in disbelief. There was a skeptical half-smile stretched across his round face and a challenge in the steely-blue eyes surrounded by webs of sun-scorched lines.
"I need a whole man, not a half-drunk.” He grunted a sour chuckle.
The crushing despair, seeing my last chance vanish before my eyes caused something to snap. I heard a crackling, sizzling pop somewhere inside my head. My vision blurred to red. The next thing I knew I was trying to drag a man well over twice my size through the window of his truck. I must have passed out because I next found myself lying flat on my back with him towering over me—he would have towered if I'd been standing, but from that angle he looked twelve feet tall.
"You either got guts or brain damage. I'm not sure which," he said in a thoughtful Virginian drawl then laughed; this time it was with genuine humor. "Bubba, if you want work bad enough to tackle me then work you'll git.” He gestured over his shoulder with his thumb. "In the back. ‘Til we can get you smelling a damn-sight better that's where you ride.”
Unsure what I was in for—but knowing that riding was infinitely preferable to walking—I scrambled aboard fitting myself into a small corner amid a rusty jumble of cables, tools and odd machine parts.
It was from this vantage that I saw my new life appear in front of me as we rounded the last curve in the road.
Inside a tall chain-link fence topped with rolls of razor wire, five fuel tanks, each as big as a house, framed the gateway; faded logos on their dirty and rusting, white exteriors admitted that they had, in better days, owed allegiance to Gulf Oil. Ringed with water on three sides, the rest of the spit of land was almost a quarter mile long and nearly three hundred yards at its widest. Heat waves shimmied above a bare coral expanse graded flat and baked hard by the sun.
The east and southern shorelines were natural, lightly fringed with mangroves and congested with a large amount of debris at the water's edge. Just offshore, a large black barge had been grounded. It sat tilted at a slight angle beneath steel construction members and several large pieces of heavy equipment, the nature of which I could only guess.
A row of decrepit fishing boats, propped up on shores, dominated the center of the spit of land. Near the closest of the four derelicts, stood a faded blue Trav-l-lift. Several wheels were missing and the engine compartment was a gaping hole. Abandoned and forgotten, apparently, this was the end of the line for those decaying hulks, which drove home the nature of my own status.
I saw a dust devil spring into life, stir the pale-yellow ashes of someone's dreams of prosperity, and die. It was well over ninety degrees but a shiver ran down the middle of my back and gave my shoulders a violent rattle.
We stopped in front of a large single-story building. Of the layers of painted over names and signs, each a testament to the progression of businesses that had tried to make a go of it one word, in letters over six feet tall, was still partially decipherable: CO M S RY.
Beyond, perhaps half a mile across at its widest lay a deep-water inlet. Beginning in the shadow of a large ice plant at its mouth, the opposite shore was a profusion of boats of all sizes and descriptions filling the docks four-deep, unloading at fish packing plants and taking on supplies from row upon row of warehouses. Everywhere, people were working, money was being spent and made, everything was motion and momentum. At the narrow end of the watery cul-de-sac, clustered about finger piers, fuel docks, bait shops, and marinas, a forest of sailing masts swayed, rigging rapping and tinkling brightly in the wakes of cabin cruisers and speedboats. Brilliant hulls, sparkling brightwork, and pristine pennants radiated a multi-hued psychedelia of wealth and grace.
On this side of the inlet a rectangular cove of cracked concrete had been cut into the coral, reinforced here and there with rusty sheets of pleated steel and hung with rotting tires. Moored to the near side, in front of the “CO M S RY” building sat one of the saddest looking rust-buckets I have ever seen. ―While living on the Mississippi I'd seen plenty, though usually from a comfortably insulated, air-conditioned distance. ― Having begun life as a steel barge, nearly a hundred feet long it was maybe a third of that wide. Squatting on the starboard bow, like the skeletal remains of some prehistoric insect, was a scabrous old crane, minus its track-driven chassis. A dredging bucket lay open on its side by the base. Further aft, nearly twenty feet high, was a wheel-house, its roof festooned with an array of antennae and spotlights.
I felt a sinking sensation inside of me, like riding an elevator in a tall building, plunging downward, ever downward.
Between the floating disaster and the defunct tank farm sat a huge mound of trash that dwarfed the barge in sheer mass and ugliness. Ragged pieces of boat cabins, sections of hulls, miles of rusty chain, cable, machinery, parts, pieces, and seaweed covered fish traps, supported the half-rotted carcass of a sea-plane, complete with a pair of impact-crushed pontoons and half a wing.
The elevator gathered speed as it passed the sub-basement level.
Everything looked almost as bad and confused as I felt. Since I didn't have many options, anything, even this was better than the nothing I had. I jumped down from the pickup. Tremors rattled my bones as my knees absorbed the impact. When my internal elevator ride lurched to a stop, a little voice called: ‘Everyone out for Rock Bottom.’ * * *
Each day, I soon learned, began at first light and ended well after sunset with me so totally whipped I could hardly see straight let alone walk. I quickly fell into a love-hate relationship with the job; I loved hating it. But I was determined to show this guy that I was worth something.
Thinking back, I guess I was trying to prove it to myself.
The majority of the work seemed to revolve around adding to and whittling away at the huge pile of junk on the dock, which I’d dubbed Mt. Trashmore. We scavenged every kind of wreckage on and under the water then cut down and chopped up everything into usable and saleable parts. Marine and aviation rigging was broken down and sorted into basic components, saving all of the little bits; nuts, bolts, and fasteners in plastic pails. Every bit, no matter how small, exotic, damaged, or obsolete, had value. I sometimes wondered how far down the list of salvaged items my name would appear?
My probation lasted for two weeks; most of that time was spent trying to keep up with a guy who didn't seem to know the meaning of the word ‘tired’. One of Charlie's favorite tricks, when we had finished working on a particular section of Trashmore, was to heft the two oxy-acetylene tanks, in one smooth motion, up onto his shoulders as if they were nothing and set off to the next site. I was the pathetic wretch struggling not to fall behind as I tried to keep the torch and long loops of double hose from dragging across the ground.
Slowly, days stretched into weeks, gathered momentum and spun into months. Hard work and good food filled out the work clothes Charlie'd found for me—what I'd arrived in he’d deemed only fit for burning. A sensible person—not me—would've stood upwind. I clearly remember the foul taste, burning eyes, racking coughs, and the sound of Charlie's booming laughter, as the remnants of my past went up in flames.
Adapting to the workload, I began missing my vices but quickly learned that alcohol and tobacco had no place in the scheme of things. Charlie'd made a promise, which I learned was to him a sacred bond, that "I would shape up and fly right come Hell or high water.” True to his word he kept me on a pretty tight rein and increased the daily chores proportionately, so that they continued to demand every last bit of strength I could muster. Before long the cravings were gone.
At six months I tipped the scales at a hundred and eighty; in New Orleans I had averaged one-thirty. The dark-brown hair I'd tied back in a long ponytail, was now sun-bleached to copper and gold, and cut hot-weather short. I also noticed that my eyes, previously a smoke and booze tinted red, had deep amber and green irises surrounded by clear sparkling whites, and instead of the pasty green-gray night-crawler pallor the sun had baked my skin to a rich golden bronze. Each day still finished with me dog-tired but I was now keeping pace and Charlie noticed. Despite our size difference—my slender five-eight to his massive six-foot four—the almost twenty-year age difference between us had become a determining factor. More often than not, sweat running from his thick black hair that was generously salted with life, when Charlie called it a day I was still going strong.
I knew that my place on the salvage list had moved up when he included me in the planning phases of our jobs and began teaching me the intricacies of marine salvage. I thrived on each new challenge, and as my experience grew, we began implementing, with increasing frequency, many of my ideas.
New Orleans slipped further into the past.
Over the next two years our mutual respect grew and developed into a friendship the quality of which I'd never before known. There were no ulterior motives only a quiet and genuine liking for each other, strengthened by shared risk and hard work. There wasn't a job we wouldn't tackle from installing piers to raising sunken fishing boats. Once, we salvaged a crashed helicopter far out in the heart of the Gulf of Mexico...but that's another story.
* * *
Where lies the land to which the ship would go?
Far, far ahead, is all her seamen know.
And where the land she travels from? Away,
Far, far behind, is all that they can say.
- Arthur Hugh Clough
July 1, 1994:
I was going through the latest batch of mail, sorting bills into ‘gotta pay’, ‘they can wait’, and ‘gimme a break’. Standing out from the shopping flyers and political pamphlets destined for the circular file folder, was an invitation for bids to deliver Customs-seized drug boats from Key West to the government docks near Jacksonville for auctioning,
As long as there is a market for contraband there will always be people willing to take the risk. The one thing Key West is and has always been famous for is smuggling. Consequently, four Federal forces: Customs, DEA, Coast Guard, and the Navy all actively hunt the waters surrounding the Florida Keys.
Charlie’d rated our chances of winning the contract at somewhere between slim to none, but I had argued long and hard, so (probably just to shut me up) he sent in the forms. We’d been experiencing a long dry spell and had been praying for some activity. According to Baseball philosopher 'Satchel' Paige: "Careful what you ask for, 'cause you might get it.”
Well, we asked and we got:
Upon our return from our first one-boat delivery, we found three newly confiscated vessels awaiting transport and reports of three more en route. It had taken us two days to ready the first for the voyage, followed by three days at maximum throttle to reach the impound docks, a half day to secure a rental van and transfer our gear aboard before the nine-hour drive back to the Keys. If we were going to keep up with the rapidly building felony fleet and not default on our contract, we had to find a better way of doing our job. I cannot tell how many times I’ve regretted coming up with the "great idea" that Charlie agreed to try.
Watermen tend to be a strange lot, a breed unto themselves, addicted to the drug of being afloat. Like junkies without a fix, many seem unable to function for extended periods of time on dry land and need a rolling deck beneath their feet in order to feel the world is right. In the Keys there’s seldom a shortage of men looking for work; some between seasonal fishing runs; others land-locked from their vessels being cash-poor or laid up for repairs. Shore-bound for any of an infinite number of reasons, in order to survive, many are willing to take risks outside the law. We hired ten sailors who preferred staying hungry to breaking the law then divided them into five two-man crews. Each boat was fitted with a main radio and a back up, along with provisions, tools, and emergency gear to cover any contingency. For our tug we chose the largest of the now-seven vessels, a decommissioned Coast Guard cutter (caught off Loggerhead Key loaded to the gunnels with fifty-pound bales of Colombia's finest hemp), to which we cabled our half-mile long string of boats. We then herded our motley convoy out into the Gulf Stream and headed due north.
Chugging through that first night, the rhythmic beat of the heavy diesels thrummed and resonated through the steel hull. Above me the sky was filled with constellations just beyond my fingertips. Orion's belt glinted sharply in the inky blackness, pointing the way as it had done since man first went to sea. There was comfort in that constancy, because on the water the touchstones of one's existence often assume a different perspective. Things left behind can change radically during one's absence; wives can take lovers; possessions can vanish forever; the past can jump out suddenly, viciously appearing without warning; or worries may fade into obscurity. New Orleans, for me, may as well have been on the other side of the planet and my time there of no more substance than the fragments of a bad dream.
Money doesn't talk...it shouts. Good-paying jobs in the Florida Keys were rare. Lawful good paying jobs, rarer still. Word of our success spread so quickly that hardly a day went by without calls looking for openings on our burgeoning crew list. The continuous carousel over the next six months generated a river of cash. The bank was happy; Charlie's accountant was happy; scarcely able to stop long enough to draw breath, a sea of red ink evaporated before our eyes.
I suppose it was inevitable that a black cloud would appear, if only to complement the silver lining we’d built. Perversely, it came on a clear day, pounding on the bay door of the CO M S RY building then throwing open the Judas-gate with a resounding crash. I watched through parted flash curtains from the welding cubicle, as Charlie listened to the black cloud, a paunchy red-haired gorilla in a Deputy Marshal's uniform whose diatribe was punctuated by sharp and pointy gestures. As the extended index finger rat-tat-tapped the breast of his coveralls, I thought Charlie might, after considering him a new and particularly loathsome variety of bug, step on him. Many's the time I've wished he had. The spit of land the salvage yard was on—some twenty-five acres —had been confiscated from the estate of the former owner; some-thing to do with taxes, I supposed. Because Charlie leased the section with the cove and warehouse from the government, we were, there-fore, operating at the sufferance of the bureaucracy. When the drones in Tallahassee figured out that, due to the sensitive nature of the cargoes of the impounded vessels, it might be prudent to control the area where they were unloaded, they installed Deputy Marshal Ronald Schott to oversee the dock and harbor area. With an official presence, to keep an eye on the vessels, pending their disposition, the auctions could now come to the boats. Which meant our transportation contract was unnecessary.
A true martinet, Schott lost no time in imposing a host of rules and regulations to be strictly adhered to by anyone setting foot in his domain, as I quickly found out one morning when he refused to let me through the gate. I was only admitted when Charlie, who’d been in town picking up parts, showed up and verified that I did, in fact, work there. That one of our salvaged fishing boats had almost sunk at the dock, due to the delay and a faulty bilge pump, was of less con-sequence to our conscientious Deputy Marshal than the misspelling (his) of my name on the access list. Doubtless, there was a good reason for everything he did, but no one—me especially—much cared for the way he went about it.
As it has long been my belief that somewhere in the world there is, in addition to one's true love, someone who is in direct opposition to every thing we do or are, day-to-day events soon indicated that my special someone might be Ronald Schott. Although I was ever willing to bury the hatchet, anatomically speaking, my choice of burial sites would have done little to ameliorate the situation beyond granting me temporary relief plus a prolonged stay in some correctional facility.
Unfortunately, quite a bit of the antipathy Deputy Marshal Schott felt towards me fell on Charlie. I suspected that it must have been costing him dearly, but he would never have said a word had I not confronted him.
Hardheaded to a fault, Charlie's loyalty was fierce to behold. I was deeply touched by his sincerity when he argued with me, suggest-ing we look for another site for the salvage operations, but I understood that the universe had decided it was time for me to go.
I’d learned a lot about myself during our association, and had grown to like the guy I saw in the mirror. Rather than see my friend continue to get his assets stuck in a crack because of my presence, I decided to see what the future might hold in store for me back on the beach. A few nights later, over herbal tea and pizza, Charlie and I toasted the dissolution of our partnership. At his insistence, I accepted a full share of the boat delivery profits and a near-new maxi van, the one we’d used to transport crews and equipment from Jacksonville. My bankroll, however generous, was far from adequate to support a lifestyle as a playboy, especially in a money sponge like Key West where it's often been said that the only sure way to leave the island with a small fortune is to arrive with a large one.
Among other things, the Rock, as the island of Key West is affectionately called by its inhabitants, is a party town; there's always a dozen or so get-togethers in full swing. Many are promotional launches for the latest daubings of a newly discovered artiste, some foster great opportunities “potentially worth a ton of money with room to maybe squeeze in one or two more lucky investors.” Seasonal events are usually based on survival, primarily of hurricane and tourist seasons. Most happen out of equal parts boredom and the ‘just for the pure hell of it’ attitude that distinguishes the long-time denizens. Outside of transient ‘snowbirds’ and tourists, it really is a very small town; the kind of place where everyone seems to know everyone else, or pretends they do. Again and again I saw the same faces saying the same things, lit with the same faint hopes that somehow tonight might be different, while knowing—perhaps, fearing—it never would. That really wasn't what I needed. Party scenes were no longer my metier, and though I appreciated the good intentions of one particular hostess who appointed herself my personal matchmaker, I really wasn't ready for another relationship. I wondered then, even as I do now, if ever I will be?
After two months playing on the water during the day and drifting through the evenings like a ghost, from one party to the next, all I managed to accomplish was to teach myself the rudiments of wind surfing and how to smile a lot while saying nothing. I knew I needed a challenge, something productive, someplace to channel my energies.
* * *
Monk:
The heat index was striving for a triple-digit day. Inside the narrow lanes and alleys of Old Town, melting asphalt swallowed motorcycle kickstands while air conditioners growled from windows, dripping and filling the air with a musty stench. A mile off Smathers Beach, on Key West's eastern shore, I was covered in cool salt spray, working a 15- to 25-knot wind. After three hours of windsurfing near the limits of my skill level I was starting to feel the strain, so when the wind started to gust up, I decided to call it a day and leave the fast stuff to the half-dozen or so die-hards and hot-doggers. I was maybe half a mile offshore and working the long leg of an easy run back to the beach when suddenly, from the direction of the Casa Marina Hotel (where the rich folks vacation) a Hobie-Cat blew past the point off White Street Pier. It was running before the wind, dangerously heeling over onto one pontoon. I watched in horror as each course correction caused the Cat to slew further sideways to the heavy wind until a gust caught the tiny vessel between hull and water and lifted it clear of the surface. The Cat’s lightness, speed, and high center of gravity conspired to send it tumbling through the air. Halfway through its second rotation, the tip of the mast whipped around smartly and whacked the water, snapping the hollow aluminum shaft in half with a sharp crack. Wobbling, horribly, the Hobie performed one last aerial three-sixty before slamming down hard, lost inside a spectacular burst of spray.
Shearing across the face of the wind toward the capsized vessel, I looked for survivors. A couple of empty orange life vests floated near one of the pontoons. Abandoning my board on the fly, I smacked into the water in a shallow dive that carried me well under the spread of pink and white Dacron. Snagged in a tangle of lines and trapped under the sail I found the unconscious pilot, floating face down. I dragged him clear and supported the back of his neck to keep his face out of the water. Blood ran freely from a deep gouge above his hairline. He wasn't breathing. Treading water, administering mouth-to-mouth, I was aware of the blood in the water and its potential attraction to the shark and barracuda that haunted the nearby reefs. Also, my board and the capsized catamaran were both drifting rather briskly before the wind. I couldn't leave off trying to resuscitate the stricken man to go and fetch either of them.
I saw a movement to my left and turned. Instead of dreaded gray fins slicing through the water, a couple of young wind-surfers were coming over for a closer look. After several very long minutes the two teens had caught and righted the battered vessel then helped me load the injured man aboard. Working at getting him breathing on his own, I sent one of the teens ahead to call for help then directed his partner in rigging a makeshift gaff then had him short-reef the sail to the remaining piece of mast. Though broken from the accident, the catamaran still represented the surest way to get the injured man to help.
While Trey, of the pierced nose and acid-green wet suit, steered a line toward the beach, I concentrated on blowing air into the unconscious man's lungs and pumping his chest. As I tried to force life into him, the repetitive movements focused my mind on death and the suddenness with which it can come.
"Dude...?” Trey asked. "Is he...like, gone?”
Just then the man bucked once, coughed, and began retching up gouts of Atlantic Ocean.
"Maybe not.” I laughed aloud without really knowing why.
"Coo-o-l!” Trey and I beamed at each other. A warm shiver ran up my spine and brought tears to my eyes. Trey blinked rapidly several times before turning his attention back to keeping us on course.
Despite his injuries and having narrowly survived a harrowing experience, the man, upon learning from Trey that I was the guilty party, launched an embarrassing and non-stop praise of my efforts. My refusal to accept reward for happening to be in the wrong place at the right time served only to make him all the more determined. Not only was his face a mask of blood, but he slurred his words and seemed disoriented. Also, the pupils of his eyes, I noticed, were unequal in size and wandering disconcertingly in the classic pattern of severe concussion. I had seen enough of death, and his agitation began to worry me, so, in order to calm him, I agreed to accept his repeated offers of dining with him to discuss his appreciation for my "noble deed.”
A siren became audible in the distance and rapidly grew louder as we neared land. A fair-sized crowd had already gathered on the beach. Arnie, Trey’s surfer friend, led the way for two paramedics carrying a cervical board and emergency kits. He flashed us a thumbs-up as they came forward, and, with the assistance of a half dozen volunteers, helped beach the Hobie Cat. Our injured man insisted he was going to walk to the ambulance until he tried to get up and almost collapsed. Under weak protest, he allowed himself to be strapped to the board then lowered from the catamaran. The crowd parted, closed ranks and turned to follow the paramedics and their burden to the ambulance. The two surfers and I stayed behind. Quietly, we untied our boards from the stern of the ruined Hobie.
"No big deal..." they responded when I thanked them for their help, but it was and we each knew it. We shook hands then made good our escape.
No good deed goes unpunished,
- Clare Boothe Luce
Several days later, I was in the parking lot across from the beach setting up my board, when one of the people from Boats 'n Boards rentals came over and handed me a business card from my rescuee. Printed on the back was a request for me to contact him at my earliest convenience. I tossed the card onto the dashboard, along with receipts and other useless scraps of paper, locked up then headed for the water. A few hours later, when the winds shifted and tapered off, I decided I'd had enough. By the time I had my board beached, broken down, and stowed I had accumulated no less than seven identical cards— another half dozen or so were tucked under the windshield wipers on the van.
Now and then, I have been known to take a hint.
Later that night I was treated to an evening at Antonia's, the premiere Italian restaurant on Duval Street where, over a sumptuous feast of Osso Buco accompanied by the single glass of red wine I allowed myself in honor of the occasion, I listened to an impeccably attired attorney—sporting two black eyes and a bandage covering half his forehead—as he reaffirmed his intent to see me suitably rewarded for having saved his life.
"I simply will not take no for an answer. Now, tell me: what do you want?”
"A good meal," I answered, raising my glass in toast and taking a microscopic sip of an exceptionally good San Geovese.
"Dear boy...! You saved my life. And, I estimate my existence to be worth considerably more than a little lamb and a giggle of grape," he said, offhandedly referring to what must surely have been a healthy three-figure tab.
"Now that that's said, how can I thank you? Do you want anyone sued?”
"Not that I can think of," I said, laughing.
As our meal progressed and we discussed some of the things I had done prior to my inadvertent role as lifeguard, I confessed that I was, indeed, at loose ends.
"A job? Do you need one?”
I couldn't see myself working in a law office, and said as much.
"I," Monk said, his spoonful of Spumoni poised in midair, “have an idea. What do you know about buildings?”
"We're inside one," I offered fatuously. The look I received was in direct contrast to the sweetness of the rum-flavored ice cream, and precluded any further pursuit of facetiousness; this was business.
"You mean construction?”
"Precisely," he mumbled around another spoonful. "I have—or rather—I look after a number of clients who own various properties and buildings throughout the Keys. And, I am in need of a project superintendent, someone to oversee—“
"Whoa, cool your jets, Mr. Rothschild, I know nothing about—“
"One of the first things you have to learn, dear boy, is..." he said, gesturing imperiously with his spoon "...if I'm going to make your fortune for you, when I'm creating, you will kindly do me the courtesy of not interrupting, and..." he added warmly, "...my friends call me Monk.
"Now, as I was saying, I need someone I can trust. As you've already proven yourself on that count, the rest is academic.”
He waved his spoon denying any refusal.
"Tut-tut, don't look so concerned, you will be amply compensated for ensuring that my clients and I aren't cheated. I've made up my mind. I won't hear another word on the subject, except yes.”
Weighing my options, bizarre as it might seem, I really had no reason not to take him up on his offer; since nothing else had come my way, so if an obviously wealthy and influential pillar of the commun-ity wanted to make life easier for me who was I to say no?
"Why not? I'll try anything once.” Echoes of Charlie's ritual response rang in my ears as I took Monk's already outstretched and waiting hand. Monk positively glowed.
"And twice, if it feels good...said the actress to the bishop," he added, laughing aloud at what I was soon to learn was one of a seemingly endless series of variations on his favorite joke.
Within the next three days I found myself embroiled in my first assignment: renovating the project superintendent's (my) residence, a spacious cottage incongruously located in the Bahama Village—read: po’ folk—section of Old Town directly adjacent to the high wall sur-rounding the Truman Annex enclave (read: rich folk). Understanding if I was going to oversee the work of construction people, I'd better be able to talk their language and know what I was talking about. Also, because I would have to live with whatever mistakes I made, there was an incentive to get the job done right...the first time.
In order to preserve its architectural heritage (one of the attract-ions that draws tourists and tourist dollars to the island) the City of Key West imposes a host of rules and regulations whenever any of the buildings in Old Town are renovated. Introducing a different color scheme or replacing window shutters with anything other than the original style required the written approval of the OIHS. The Old Island Historical Society wields considerable power and can, if it so chooses, stop a job in an instant. The resulting paperwork, fines, and penalties, not to mention time wasted in variance hearings before the red tag is lifted can easily double or treble the cost of any project, unless of course, one is well-connected or wealthy enough to get the Bubba-system working on their side.
The lessons I'd learned from Charlie, about doing business with fairness, integrity, and hard work paid off. I played fair and square making sure that every item on the job lists was done according to code. There were plenty of headaches in the course of my education, but once the contractors and tradesmen saw that I really was trying to do it right they responded in kind. With their help, I learned the ins and outs of antique joinery; a legacy of the old-time ships' carpenters whose work can be found in many of the elder structures on the Rock.
At the end of the first year, when I received an unexpected bonus check for ten thousand dollars, I figured Monk and his clients must have been satisfied with my efforts, too.
* * *
