Near the water’s edge were several thousand stacked forty-pound bags of ammonium nitrate fertilizer being moved by a half dozen Hispanic men, with one driving a forklift. Another Hispanic man stood by a large piling at the water’s edge, holding a fishing rod with one hand and watching the line where it entered the water. The other hand was at his side, a forty-ounce bottle of beer hanging from one finger inserted into the neck.
Somebody whistled from far off and the forklift driver turned his ball cap around so the bill pointed down the back of his neck.
“It’s showtime,” Hondo said. I could feel the sun warming my shirt and the heat settle into my skin. Small beads of sweat tickled my upper lip and I felt one drop run out of a sideburn and slide by my ear and down my neck. I glanced at Hondo but he wasn’t sweating. He probably had a towel secreted on his person.
We could see into the turning basin and watched as a long, sleek white yacht angled toward us. Soon the sun was directly behind it, turning the water an orange red and making the yacht appear to be churning through an ocean of copper and blood.
Hondo and I stood forty or so feet from the dock’s edge, with the workers and the pile of fertilizer on our right. The Americas came in and with the grace of a beautiful ship and a good captain, settled against the dock cushions. Two men hopped off and slipped ropes fore and aft around two old, rusted dock cleats. The Hispanic fisherman had to move a bit to his right to have his line clear the bow of the yacht.
A gangplank slid over to the dock and we watched people moving about on the Americas deck. Rakes crossed to the dock and I almost snorted at him. He was wearing a white, long-sleeved shirt open down the front, with an oversized collar and puffy sleeves, like something out of an old pirate movie. I figured he was a closet Fabio fan.
Bond and Frank were the next two off the yacht. The two men who tied off the boat moved to flank the others. I noticed one of them was missing the top half of an ear.
In my head things got very still. I could see everything in perfect detail, from Frank’s twitching eye to the two hard nubs pushing out the front of Bond’s silk blouse; hear every sound from the creak of the ropes to the lapping of the waves against the pilings underneath us.
The men working at the fertilizer sacks paid us no attention, and the forklift moved pallets of the stuff from back to front in a never-ending cycle some twenty feet on our right.
“You have de trade?” Rakes said.
I held up a plain green gym bag.
Rakes said, “Open.”
I opened it, took out the egg, the crucifix and the necklace one by one, then put them back.
“Bring it to me.”
“Nope.”
Rakes said something in Russian and the two outside men started forward. Hondo made a tsk-tsk sound, pulled two Glock forty-fives from the back of his waistband, and let the pistols hang at his sides. “The man said, ‘Nope’.” Hondo glanced at me, “I get that translation right?” I nodded.
The men stopped and looked back at Rakes.
The men working the fertilizer glanced over, but didn’t change anything they were doing. The fisherman yawned and took a pull off the forty, like he saw people carrying weapons in each hand every day.
Bond said, “Give him the jewels, Ronny. It’s best if you do what he says.”
“Nope.”
Carl and Bond murmured to each other and Frank moved toward them, only to have Carl put his hand in Frank’s chest and shove him away, hard. Frank staggered back five or six feet, his face flushing red. He stood there shifting weight from foot to foot in an awkward, antsy rhythm.
Bond went below deck and several minutes later we saw Landman and two small women appear. Their hands were tied behind them and even from here, I could see Landman’s face had been worked over as bad as if Mike Tyson in his prime had pinned him in the corner.
Rakes said, “Dey are here. Now give chew-els to Carl.”
“Nope,” I said.
Hondo said to me, “You’re just a little chatterbox today, aren’t you.”
Carl and Bond conferred some more, this time with Carl animated, swinging his arms and pointing at us. Bond touched his arm and he slapped her hand away. She sighed then turned to us and said, “So, we have a stalemate. We won’t turn them over without the jewels, and you won’t turn the jewels over without them. Do you have a suggestion?”
“In a minute. First, I want some things cleared up.”
Bond said, “Go ahead.”
“Frank and Carl were in on it from the first, when you hired us to find Bob. Your little scared act was to keep me off balance, and the play by Frank and Carl at my house when you were there was to reinforce that. Am I right so far?”
Carl and Bond conferred. Bond said, “You’re right. We’d been searching for Bob, but it was as if he’d vanished. We asked around and heard you were very good, but that you were even better when you had an emotional attachment. So I used myself to pull you further in, with Frank and Carl pushing you and keeping you off balance so you wouldn’t catch on.”