Miami Skyline, Kevon Andersen, Sailing novel

Sample Content From SoBe Boatees

Chapter 1:

Carjacked

On a February day in Miami in the recent past . . .

Blackie Petersen decelerated in the left-lane exit dumping him off of elevated I-395. No longer headed for Miami Beach, he descended to ground level and into the seething masses of downtown Miami. Blackie downshifted his Z3 Beamer twice to keep from hurtling through the intersection at the bottom of the ramp. Landing a 767 wasn’t nearly as dangerous.

Taking this exit had been his fourth choice for a route home from Miami International Airport. His primary drive – Highway 112 – was closed again for endless landscaping. The first alternate was out since the west Venetian Causeway Bridge was still stuck in the up position after being rammed by a yachtee with many dollars and little sense. And a traffic alert – of another Royal Palm on the MacArthur Causeway median toppled by a distracted, but still speeding tourist – had turned this into his remaining route back to the boat from MIA.

Miami drivers were almost as bad as Miami boaters. Years ago he was near this spot that first time they held the Grand Prix in the park right off of I-395. He came upon a recently arrived islander stopped in the middle lane of the freeway, standing outside his car, leaning on the roof and watching the race. He recalled that was the year of the bad fatalities at the Miami Grand Prix – all of them occurring on the freeway running above the hairpin curve of the track.

Today, he was driving home on a gorgeous February afternoon, a day begun at Chicago O’Hare waiting on the tarmac for deicing before he could flee zero degrees Fahrenheit and a foot of snow. Winter layovers up north were awful, and the warm Miami weather had made him put the top down and his guard as well. He tried not to drive home without the protective top if there was any possibility of taking this alternate route through the homeless/arts district on Biscayne Boulevard, and here he was trapped at the long stoplight without protection.

Blackie was pleased with himself for having changed into “civvies” in Flight Ops back at the airport so that he wasn’t broiling in his flight uniform in the subtropical sun. But he lost the smile as he looked up and a shadow passed over him. A tire thrown off the elevated expressway appeared headed straight for his face. But it passed in front of him, toward the passenger seat, shrinking. He realized that it was the sole of one of those old hippie sandals with a tire-tread bottom. The sandal was attached to a long, hairy leg and a lanky, cadaverous hulk of a body.

“Going my way?” asked the tall, but aging man as he slid the big foot to the floor and, with surprising ease, set his oversized frame into the tiny confines of the passenger seat.

“Depends on where you’re going,” Blackie replied, bewildered and even relieved that he would end up being hijacked on the ground, not in the air. “Just as long as you don’t want me to drive you from Miami to Cuba.”

“Funny, but dated,” said the big man, not laughing. “I’m headin’ north on Biscayne Boulevard, like you.”

Blackie considered bolting from the Beamer and seeking help. But even if he could find a cop, he figured the Z3 would already be in a Hialeah chop shop or on a Colombian-bound freighter by the time he returned.

The light turned green, and in his millisecond of hesitation, Blackie was accosted by the pack of drivers behind him pounding on their horns. He turned left, swerving to avoid a homeless jaywalker in a makeshift chariot built from a grocery cart and being pulled by a Great Dane mix. Blackie glanced to his right so later he would have a description of his passenger. To Blackie he looked like the Marlboro Man, long retired and on his deathbed. He had been a rugged, good-looking man at one time, but now with all the scars, the broken nose and way too much sun those days were long gone.

The man reminded Blackie of an old, leather saddle he had seen as a kid in a Wild West Museum. Blackie could smell his parched, brown skin; it was a burning ozone smell. He also noticed that his hijacker held a fat, letter-sized manila envelope in his hands.

“You live around here?” Blackie asked, following the old book on establishing a rapport with one’s hijacker.

“Used to live in Lauderdale,” replied the man, who gave a glance his way and added, “You a pilot with a sailboat?”

Blackie paused, wondering where that had come from (had this guy been stalking him?) since he wasn’t in uniform and was behind the wheel of his Beamer convertible, not the wheel of his cutter, a 38-foot Island Packet. “Yeah, how’d you know?”

“Way you sit in your seat and hold the yoke. Your Topsiders with the specks of Awlgrip paint on ‘em – means you’re a real boater and don’t just bring the shoes out to go to Hooters. Those cuts on your knuckles probably came from working on an engine or generator in too small of an engine compartment. If you were a powerboater you’d probably have a diesel mechanic do the work.

“Oh yeah, and you got a Dade County airport decal next to the one for Te Cuesta Isle Marina,” he added, pointing his immense, knarled finger at the windshield, “and a flight-crew uniform between the seats.”

Suddenly Blackie felt that he wasn’t quite outwitting his aging hijacker. “Yeah, so what’s this all about?”

“I needed a ride. And in Miami, even those who do the carjackings have to be careful,” the old man added, pausing to let out a sickening, almost dying cough. When he recovered he went on while still trying to get air. “I had a really nice houseboat once, slept on a half-acre of bed. Made a decent living self-employed. But these last few years I’ve had a run of bad luck, my health’s gone – I’ve dropped almost 70 pounds. Life is catching up with me.”

“A colorful life, no doubt,” Blackie replied.

“I have a few stories I could tell. Listen, I know you have to turn up here for the Julia Tuttle Bridge – that’s where you’re headed, right? Only way to Te Cuesta Isle Marina from here. But can you drive up Biscayne to the next causeway – to the Barracuda Grill – and drop me off? I really don’t want to be late.”

“The Barracuda Grill? Yeah, I know where it is, at the turn up there near 79th Street.”

They headed north in silence until Blackie pulled into the pot-holed lot and stopped. “This is all you wanted?”

“Unless you want to buy me a beer.”

Blackie reached back to grab his wallet, a small handout being a cheap way out of a carjacking, but the old man grabbed him by the arm with surprising strength and said, “Come in and buy me a beer.”

Blackie felt the old man might not let go if he didn’t agree, so he nodded and turned off the ignition. He was intrigued by the old man and had all but dismissed him being a threat.

Although the place was on the west side of the Intracoastal, Blackie didn’t have any trepidation about leaving the Beamer in the parking lot. For a short time the place had been his former hangout on his days off from flying.

The two-room, cinderblock building sat at the end of a short, squalid canal that spewed into Biscayne Bay, sort of an abbreviated version of the infamous Miami River. The grill’s owner lived in an old Holiday Mansion houseboat parked in the debris floating beside the stone wall. When Blackie had first seen the houseboat he wondered why they didn’t declare the unused outdrives artificial reefs. The place was a cheap dive with a small bar along one wall with a dirty grill tucked behind it. There were maybe six tables inside with a few more than that on the veranda. The deck overlooked the back entrance of an adult theater and two half-sunk hulks rotting in the canal. Definitely not bay-front at Turnberry Isle, but with Miami’s condo-boom, maybe someday.

The food at the Barracuda Grill was incredibly cheap and a much better deal than the beer. On Wednesdays Blackie and a cheapskate neighbor, Yul Grant, would drive over the causeway and up Biscayne to get half-chicken dinners for $5 a piece. Blackie asked the owner why he didn't advertise or get the word out, since the place was always empty. The owner, who was probably the strangest character in the place, said, “If word gets out then I’d get way too busy and that would ruin it for me.” Blackie never talked business with him after that.

The incident that made it a former hangout was the coral poisoning. It seemed that “Baha Fish Taco Night” (Thursdays) was such a good deal because the owner was using the grill’s namesake, barracuda, for the fish tacos. He bought them cheap from a semi-pro Cubano fisherman who bottom fished at the end of the big sewer pipe five miles off Virginia Key (in a 12-foot skiff, no matter what the weather) and then peddled the Great Barracuda at the back doors of several less-than-reputable restaurants.

These weren’t the small ‘cuda that a few Crackers consider a delicacy, but the big monsters that had a good chance of having ciguatera, a potentially fatal form of food poisoning. They were saw-toothed revolvers in a gastronomic game of Russian roulette. Blackie had been off flying on a 3-day trip to Seattle and missed the “Baha Fish Taco Night” that sent a dozen patrons (including his marina neighbor, Yul) to Jackson Memorial Hospital to have their stomachs pumped like a bunch of dirty bilges. If the hospital hadn’t misplaced the puke samples and bloodwork, the health inspectors might have had the evidence needed to shut down the place.

Today, Blackie figured he’d limit himself to beer.

Blackie and the old man found a table on the patio and the old man ordered them a couple of Buds. Blackie faced the canal, and gazing at the flotsam he saw a gargantuan manatee popping his head out amidst the trash and oil and slime. He remembered the manatee cow and calf he had seen a few months before as he motored to the boatyard far up in the filth of the Miami River. It was obvious why some of these poor creatures were in bad health.

None of the other patrons, regulars at the grill, took notice of the manatee. Blackie thought that most of them probably considered it a competitor just slightly below them on the food chain.

“So what’s your name?” Blackie asked with a smile, “I figure the FBI and NTSB will ask me when they investigate my hijacking.”

“Name’s Tr – ,” he began, but paused. “You can call me Skipper. You a cap’n? Seem a little young to be one to me.”

“Captain? In the air? No, still an F/O, a first officer. Almost made captain a few months ago, but they retired the last of the old Seven-two’s a little early so I’m still stuck in the right seat for a while.”

“Hang in there, you’ll be a cap’n someday. What’s your name?”

“You can call me Blackie.”

“Blackie? What the hell kinda name is that? You look Scandinavian.”

“I am – Blackie Petersen. How I got the surname is too long a story. So, is carjacking your preferred method of transport to Happy Hour? I’m your designated driver-under-duress?”

“No. Here to meet someone and I got a ride with you because it’s real important that I make this meeting. Thanks to you I’m early. Gonna have a discussion about one of your marina neighbors. Guy named Ted,” the old man replied in a hoarse whisper.

The name brought a strained smile to Blackie’s face. Ted lived at the end of the T-head on Pier Three, one of only nine slips at Te Cuesta Isle big enough to fit an 89-foot Breakwater motor yacht. Rumors about Ted flowed like scotch on a Hatteras, and Ted’s actions did nothing but fuel them.

“Ted Jones? On the big Breakwater? You’re running with some wild company there, Skipper.”

“I hardly know him. He’s involved with one of my clients.”

“Clients? You’re still working? What are you, a down-on-his-luck attorney?”

“No, more of a PI. I help people recover things for a percentage.”

“You have an office? But no car?”

“At this point in my life I have to freelance. I told you I was sick; it’s the cancer. In my lungs, and nothing they can do. Even starting to affect my memory. Simply a matter of time.”

“And you’re still working? Where do you live?”

“The Camillus House. One of their shelters.”

“You’re doing PI work out of the Camillus House? A homeless shelter? How in the world –“

“I’ve got a cell phone.”

“That doesn’t bother the bum on the next cot, Skipper, when you get calls all hours of the night?”

“Bum? That’s pretty insensitive there, Blackie, seeing as how I’m a current resident. I got one of those phones that ring or vibrate. And with Miami’s homeless tax, the shelter even gives me an office the size of a broom closet to work out of.”

“Sorry for the remark. But nobody’s tried to roll you for the phone?”

“No, I’m pretty discreet. And why are you giving me the third degree here?”

“You’ve got to admit it’s different. I see a TV show here. Get a James Garner type as an older, poorer Jim Rockford. He’s lost the trailer in LA and retired to Florida, in the role of the ‘Skipper.’ You have an agent?”

“Man, I would have to carjack a smart-ass.”

Blackie felt a presence to his right and looked up. A bodybuilder in his mid-twenties with SoBe-model looks was standing there, staring at the Skipper. With the tan and the muscles and his spiked blonde hair he looked vaguely familiar.

“Say, don’t I know you?” the bodybuilder asked the old man with a hint of a German accent.

The Skipper gave him a long look and asked, “Am I supposed to know you?”

“Guess not,” he replied, a smile still plastered on his face.

The old man dismissed him with a wave and the words “So long then.”

“Oh. Well, sorry asshole. Didn’t mean to bother you,” he said without meaning it, trying to hide the sarcasm in his voice. He turned and walked away. Blackie watched him leave and perform a SoBe ritual: he paused for a self-absorbed gaze at his reflection in the door pane, then pulled a cell phone from his shorts and punched in a call before disappearing into the dark interior of the grill.

Blackie and the Skipper had the hackneyed discussion about the pervasive rudeness in Miami. Blackie told the Skipper about a recent scene he had observed while getting gas at the Chevron near the airport. A rather large woman had pulled up to the air compressor and deposited her two quarters and filled a low rear tire before getting back in her car. Another motorist pulled up behind her, and finding the compressor still running, grabbed the hose to fill his tires. Blackie watched the woman pull her large frame from the car with surprising dexterity and scream, “Hey, you! That’s my air! That’s my air!”

“This place sure isn’t like one of the old Coke ads, where the meltin’ pot of humanity is singing in perfect harmony,” the Skipper observed.

“They do seem to scream and honk together to a perversely harmonious world beat,” Blackie added.

Blackie finally flagged down the waiter for another beer and orderd a pair of Presidentes. He watched the old man’s eyes glaze over as his impatience began to show.

Looking away toward the canal, Blackie saw a brand-new, center-console Mako 252 pull up to the stone pier. Onboard were what looked like a pair of Franciscan monks in long brown robes and beards – beards so long and bushy they almost appeared fake, a disguise. But he didn’t give their outfits or their appearance a second thought. For more than a year a small waterborne religious sect had been anchored out on a pair of dilapidated sailboats just off his marina. They wore those identical outfits and beards even in mid-summer in Miami’s sweltering heat – probably cult followers of both St. Francis and St. Peter. Blackie figured the two guys on the Mako were probably a power squadron offshoot.

He watched the monks turn the boat around so that it pointed back down the canal. One of them took the lines and tied them off on the cleats bolted to the decrepit dock.

Blackie felt an urge to pee, stood up and headed through the screen door inside. Returning, he rounded the corner coming out of the windowless bathroom, squinting in the bright light as the Barracuda Grill erupted into chaos.

The two monks on the Mako had stepped inside, turned, and ran back out onto the veranda. As they left each pulled an automatic weapon from under his heavy robe. Passing behind Blackie’s carjacker at the table, they opened fire. The bullets tore into the worn fabric of the madras shirt of the Skipper, still seated with his back to them. Yet another slug pierced the back of the old man’s head, exploding out of his forehead, spraying the wall behind where Blackie had been sitting with a splash of bright red.

Screams filled the room, then shouts and the sound of bar stools skidding across the floor. One of the monks patted down the corpse and yelled, “Not here!”

The gunmen both ran the few steps to the waiting Mako, but one tripped on his cassock and fell on the splintery deck, causing him to let loose with a long round of wild automatic fire. A few holes appeared in the screen door, followed by the sound of bullets whizzing past and ricocheting off the stuccoed walls. Blackie joined the others by diving to the concrete floor.

From there he could only hear the roar of the twin 150 Johnsons as the driver gunned the throttles and the boat sped away down the canal. The Barracuda Grill became unusually quiet but for the sound of a stream of beer hitting the hard floor, a bullet having pierced the line of a tap. Blackie and the others stood up. He followed the rest out through the screen door, and there was the Skipper, definitely on his way to Valhalla. It was a sickening sight. Blackie turned away, toward the canal, as the sliding door of the Holiday Mansion slowly opened. The faded Coleman air conditioning unit on the top deck of the houseboat hummed sinisterly. Blackie noticed a pattern of holes running diagonally up the chalky gel-coat of the cabin. The houseboat’s faded curtains, billowing out of the open glass door, parted as the owner of the grill lurched out. On his face was a desperate, almost pathetic expression. He had his hands cupped over his barkeeper’s apron, soaked a deep and shiny crimson. Blackie figured the owner must have been gut shot inside his houseboat by a wild slug from the monk’s AK-47.

Blackie felt like he was at a dinner theater, watching a maudlin play. Holding everyone’s attention, the owner took a few steps, and – ever the pessimist – said, “They’ve ruined it for me,” before collapsing under the awning of the houseboat’s front deck.

As Blackie and the crowd herded forward, he saw a brown blob surrounded by a murky, rust-colored cloud floating near the houseboat. At first Blackie thought that someone must have returned fire, killing one of the perpetrators in their escape – or maybe the monk had shot himself accidentally when he tripped. But slowly, like a polluted iceberg recently calved, the brown blob rolled over. It wasn’t a dead monk, but the third victim shot by the assassins. It was the manatee.

The growing crowd milled in and around the Barracuda Grill, and Blackie noticed most of the witnesses performing a vanishing act, ducking out in the confusion. Blackie had a split second to make a decision and he did what most any Miamian would do – he headed straight for the door. He leapt into the topless Z3 and made a hasty exit down Biscayne Boulevard toward the Julia Tuttle Causeway and home. He could sort this all out on the boat and decide at his own pace and on his own terms when and what he would tell the police. As he turned onto the causeway he glanced over to the passenger seat, where just a few minutes ago the late Skipper had sat. Blackie saw the corner of a manila envelope poking out from under the seat. He reached down and pulled it out. A cell phone stashed inside tumbled onto the floorboard. Blackie held the envelope up and glanced at it. And he punched down harder on the accelerator.

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