LITMIR.BIZ

       TWO

      By the time they reached the off-loading site, Teach had calmed himself and treated his headache with whiskey. His first job, he knew, was to keep quiet about what he had seen. There would be plenty of time later to explain to Naylor. No telling how Naylor would react if Teach told it now.

      Teach eased the Santa Maria as close to the canal bank as she could go. Naylor always hid in the scrub beyond the bank until Teach gave the signal to bring the truck up the last half mile. Teach idled the engine, picked up his flashlight, and shot the beam at the scrub. Naylor flashed back twice. Teach waited in the wheelhouse while Naylor threw aboard the two lines he kept secured to the trunks of cypress trees. When the boat was moored fore and aft, Naylor lowered a gangplank fixed by hinges to the base of a cypress. A block and tackle in the treetop let the gangplank down across the twenty feet of water to the shrimper’s rail. It was a good and speedy arrangement. The plank was the only permanent apparatus, and when it was upright you had to be in the water directly opposite the tree to see it.

      Naylor waved his flashlight to Teach and took off jogging for the truck. Teach went down to the deck. He hadn’t spoken to the Guatemalans since the shooting. He found them in the stern, smoking, their heads together. They stopped talking when he approached. He stood only a few feet from them, but he and they were separated now by more than land and language. It had been crazy stupid to kill Frank Deeks. If they had given Teach the chance, he could have explained Deeks to them, told them the guy was poaching traps. Told them Deeks would have cut off his hands before admitting he’d seen the Santa Maria.

      Teach said, “Mi amigo va por el camión. Regresa en unos minutos.” He could already hear in the distance the slow whine of Naylor’s engine.

      Esteban stepped away from the other two, looked at Teach. “It is just as it always is. Hurry with the unloading.”

      Teach nodded. Ordinary nights, Teach had ten bales ashore before the truck arrived. He looked at Esteban. The man was different. Teach was not sure how. Was this the way you were after you shot someone? Esteban was always tense, wired. Now he seemed relaxed, serene, satisfied. The change frightened Teach more than the pistol under Esteban’s arm.

      He looked at Carlos and Julio and saw it there too. Their faces settled, their eyes uncurious, decided. Maybe he saw a little sorrow in the eyes of Carlos, the fisherman. The man who knew boats.

      Teach humped bales until the truck arrived. When Naylor’s face loomed out of the darkness, sweating from the half-mile jog, Teach only smiled and said, “Get aboard, buddy, and put some weight on your back. Those clouds are blowing south. Pretty soon it’s gonna be moon over Miami.”

      Naylor looked at him. He sensed it. Something was wrong, different. Teach turned back to the gangplank, hurrying for the next bale.

      When the unloading was finished, Teach went to the truck cab. As he passed Esteban, who stood at the back of the truck looking at the bales with those uncurious eyes, the man said, “Adónde vas?”

      Teach stopped. “To the truck. For a cigarette.” Esteban nodded.

      In the truck cab, Teach found the .38 Smith & Wesson Chief’s Special that Naylor kept in the glove box. He remembered Naylor showing it to him the day they had done their dry run before the first trip. Teach laughing. “What’re you gonna do, shoot it out with the DEA?”

      Naylor getting sulky, his masculinity damaged. “White man, you never know when that piece might come in handy. Better safe than sorry, I always say.”

      “Right,” Teach had said. “Don’t shoot yourself in the foot.”

      Teach put the pistol in the back of his waistband, under his shirt. He had been thinking white hot since Frank Deeks had gone up in flames, his mind trying for some clear, certain place where he would know what he had to do. He kept seeing things: How the three Guatemalans had stopped talking when he approached them on the stern of the Santa Maria, some evil fog around them of what they knew and he didn’t. Their eyes holding that serenity. It meant, Teach knew, that they had decided. They had made up their minds.

      Teach pushed out of the cab and walked back past Esteban. “Out of cigarettes,” he said.

      “Take one of mine.” Esteban reached into his coat pocket for the cheesy gold cigarette case all three carried.

      Teach waved no and pinched his nose. “Too strong for me, man.”

      Esteban gave an elaborate shrug, shook his head at the weakness of gringo lungs.

      When the truck was closed up and ready, Teach stood in front of Naylor. He looked over at the three Guatemalans standing together by the gangplank. “Last trip, Blood,” he whispered. “Wish me luck.”

      Bloodworth Naylor laughed, then looked at him. “What’s going on, man? Everything cool? You seem a little—”

      Teach slapped him hard on the shoulder to stop his mouth. In a hearty voice he said, “See you tomorrow, man. The bar, just like always. Drinks on me.”

      Teach always pushed the shrimper out along the same route he had taken coming in. Only it couldn’t be the same. Not this time. He knew it now: the Guatemalans wouldn’t do anything until he had taken them back to the Gulf, deep water under the keel. Then, something would happen. If Teach read those satisfied eyes right, there would be another body burning in a boat. The boat would be a Boston Whaler, cut loose from the stern of the Santa Maria. The body would be Jimmy Teach.

      So the route tonight would be different, and Teach had to hope that the three Guatemalans didn’t notice. He had to hope that they trusted him, believed in his seamanship, hadn’t counted the turns he always took in this maze of mangrove canals.

      Teach was approaching the place where he

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