The Bahamian cruiser looked even worse out of the water than it had sitting on the bottom. Peeling paint, soaked cardboard boxes, clothing, and garbage littered the decks and what I could see of the interior of the cabin through the fogged-up windows.
“I’ll tell you about it once we get under way. I’d like to get this boat into the yard before quitting time. Think we can get started and finish pumping her out on the way?”
“I think so. She’s still pretty tight, considering.”
“Okay, let’s do it.”
B.J. and I worked well as a team. We always had and, fortunately, the emotional awkwardness of our current romantic separation didn’t extend onto the deck. We rigged my pumps on the cruiser’s deck, got a good towing bridle secured at her bow, said our good-byes to the Gilman crew, and took off back toward Port Everglades.
Even as late in the day as it was, the heat in the deckhouse was stifling. We set her on autopilot and went up on the bow to catch the breeze we made by traveling at six knots. If it wasn’t for our forward speed, there wouldn’t have been any breeze at all.
I kept seeing Solange’s face, those high cheekbones and big dark eyes—eyes that looked far too old for a child who had lived barely a decade. Though I’d had my share of pain in my childhood, compared to this kid I felt lucky. I could not imagine what her short life had been like.
“You’re different,” B.J. said, not looking at me but scanning the horizon for boat traffic.
“What do you mean, different?”
“Something about finding that kid, it changed you.”
I knew it was true, but somehow his saying it seemed to imply that I had instantly become the maternal type. “Oh, B.J., cut the crap with your pseudo-psychological paranormal bullshit. Geez.” I ran my fingers through my hair. “She’s just a kid.” As I turned and made my way aft to check on our tow, I heard his soft laughter.
It was after six by the time we made our way up the Dania Cut-off Canal toward Playboy Marine, the yard that had contracted to haul and store the Miss Agnes. The yard workers had quit for the day, but they had left the boatyard travel lift parked over the slip, the slings lowered to the perfect depth for the cruiser. B.J. and I tied the boat up and shut down the pumps. If she sank during the night, she would go down no more than eighteen inches and settle right into those slings. They could pump her out again in the morning before they hauled her out.
I climbed aboard the Miss Agnes to take one last look around. B.J. had loaded the pumps back on Gorda, and I’d replaced my towlines with some raggedy old dock lines we’d scrounged off the travel lift. Standing on the cruiser’s deck, I imagined again the scene of fifty people and the belongings they had brought for a new life crammed into these few square feet of space.
Beads of moisture fogged the window in the aft cabin door. As I reached for the door handle, I wondered again if there was a connection between the two jobs I’d worked that day: a boat bringing in some illegal Haitian immigrants sinks, and a day and a half later I find two Haitians offshore in a half-sunk boat. Had Solange started out aboard the Miss Agnes? The problem was that the numbers just didn’t add up. The current should have carried her much farther north. Was there a third boat we didn’t know about? When I swung the door open and peered into the cabin area, the smell of wet, rotting clothes, ammonia, and dead sea critters hit my face, and the rank sun-heated air flowed out of the enclosed space. Coughing and gasping for air, I stepped back and turned my face away from the cabin door.
Abaco growled a low throaty growl from her post aboard Gorda. I could hear the sound of her claws clicking on the aluminum decks as she paced, wanting desperately to come protect me.
B.J. looked down at me from atop the cement dock. “Isn’t it amazing how ripe people’s belongings can get after just a couple of days underwater? After we brought her up, we closed all those windows for a reason, Sey.”
“Oh, man.” I closed the door to the cabin. “I don’t envy the cops who are going to have to go through the stuff in there.” The side decks were clear, so I made my way forward and tested the latch on the door to the wheelhouse. It turned, and this time I took a deep breath and held it before opening the door.
“Sey,” B.J. said, “you do remember that we had clear instructions from the authorities not to touch anything?”
I ignored him and peered inside.
“You told me that this morning,” he said, “and I was careful not to disturb any evidence. Anyway, aside from that, there’s a bad vibe in there.”
Smiling at his comments, I stepped into the wheelhouse, risking the boat’s “bad karma.” Abaco growled again, and B.J. said, “See? Even she knows.”
“Think I’m risking some kind of Voodoo curse, eh, B.J.?” I did not consider myself either a religious or a superstitious person, and, admittedly, I did at times make light of B.J.’s mishmash spirituality, which was made up of bits of Transcendentalism, Eastern religions, aikido, and who knows what all. But deep inside, I knew that he saw and felt things that were totally beyond my ken.
I took a breath, testing the air. It wasn’t as bad in here as it had been aft. The inside steering station on most American boats this size would boast a control panel of electronics rivaling that of an airplane cockpit. The Miss Agnes, however, had an ancient, pre-digital depth sounder with a circular flasher, and that was it. Not even a VHF radio. The compass had clearly been salvaged from a sunken sailboat. It was mounted on the cabinetry above the helm with wood blocks and nails, and I wondered what those nails did to the instrument’s accuracy. That compass had once cost somebody a bundle, but now all the plastic and metal surfaces were covered with bits of calcified shell where barnacles had once grown. It was the helm of the cruiser, though, that really showed the ingenuity of the island people. In place of a steering wheel, the boat was piloted with bicycle handlebars attached to the steering gear that protruded from the cabinetry.
A couple of waterlogged charts were plastered to the woodwork, and other bits of paper and plastic trash littered the cabin floor. Everywhere I looked in the little cruiser’s wheelhouse, I saw another jury-rigged contraption that would have thrown most American yachtsmen into a conniption. I don’t know if it was real or just the power of suggestion from B.J., but I began to feel there was something creepy about the boat. It was depressing to think about the poverty and desperation of the people who struck out in boats like this to try to get to America, but there was something more. Despite the hot muggy air, I felt a distinct chill.
I turned around, overcome by the desire to get off that boat as soon as possible, and I was about to step back through the doorway when I saw something stuck to the glass windshield. It was a small white rectangle of paper, and when I started to reach for it, something skittered through the trash at my feet. I jumped, letting out a high-pitched squeak.
“Are you okay?” B.J. was squatting on the dock next to the cabin door, ready to jump to the boat’s deck.
I pushed aside the wet cardboard on the floor and a small, pale crab scurried for another hiding place. “This place is spooking me out. I just got scared by a crab, for Pete’s sake.”
B.J. stood up. “Come on, Sey. Let’s get out of here.”
Leaning over the makeshift helm, I peeled the paper off the windshield. It was a business card. “Racine Toussaint” was written in plain type above a Pompano Beach address. It didn’t say what business Racine was in, but I slid it into my pocket anyway, careful not to rip the soggy paper.
It was when I was almost out the door that I noticed the sunglasses hooked under a bungee cord that ran across the top of the steering station. Miss Agnes’s crew probably used the bungee to keep charts and equipment from blowing or rolling away out at sea. The shades stood out in that dilapidated cabin because they were obviously very expensive Polarized glasses. That brand started at over a hundred dollars a pair. A beaded string was tied between the two earpieces of the shades to keep them on the mariner’s head, and on the wide sides of the frame someone had drawn crude designs in white enamel paint: little skulls with crossbones.