By Roger Owens
Well, that Deputy Undersheriff Carl Willard Schoolie, as he identified himself, thought he was a hell of a man, that was plain as grass, and he went about the Horny B. like she was his very own, with us all bitchin’ and complainin’ at his fat rear end to no effect whatsoever I could see. The sweat soaked his armpits and the back of his shirt and I for one was glad. I hoped he was suffering. I wished for a time that he might fall on the deck and die gasping from heat exhaustion, but as I have already admitted I was much less forgiving back in those days. We all knew if Blackie was here he’d have run him off so fast he’d think he was back home at the orphanage, being sodomized by the older boys, but nothing we said impressed him. Like I said, he was already too all-fired impressed with himself to hear much of what we were saying. Blackie was meeting a new buyer for our future catch and wouldn’t be back for another few hours.
LC, our new buddy from the hills of South Caroline, sat on the bait well hatch braiding an eye on the bitter end of a dock line, and he looked nervous to me, but I reckon most folks wouldn’t have seen it. LC, cousin Lester Clayton, was a very – and I do mean a very – nervous man, and he had every reason to be, but he hid it well, and anyone but another boy from the hard rock South like me would have mistaken it for simple lack of friendliness or even a mean streak. I’m not saying that at the time he didn’t have one - a mean streak, I mean. Yet somehow, in spite of what we all gathered was an uninspiring past, to say the least, LC had become a decent guy, and we all had a right notion it was on account of Miss Porcelain.
Oh, she was a fine-looking lady, taller than Miss Lottie, whose stock had gone up because we couldn’t hardly start right off calling Miss Porcelain Miss Porcelain and not give the same consideration to our very own Miss Lottie - not and continue to call ourselves gentlemen, now could we? At least that’s the argument I put forth and I believe it was accepted by the other fellas because, hell, it was just plain true. Anyway she had an outstanding pair of headlights, a classy chassis, and legs that wouldn’t quit. Miss Porcelain, I mean, not to imply that Miss Lottie didn’t have all those things, and in spades. We all loved Miss Porcelain, and I think Miss Lottie loved her the most. Except for LC of course. As for Miss Lottie, I believe it was me who loved her the most in the early days, but it was not to be so later on. Oh no, Blackie came to love her with a great passion. I think it was the smartest thing he ever did, and nobody ever one time called Blackie Wainwright dumb, not that I ever heard.
So this great jackass from the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Department was lumbering around on the Horny B. making accusations and giving us all many valid reasons to wish his father had been a homosexual – that is, all of us on deck, I intend to say. That was me, Jackson Lee Davis, with Miss Lottie in the wheelhouse with a hand shading her brow, and LC sitting over there nervously knotting his rope. I mean “line.” We all felt we had to keep up with the nautical terms – I am not sure why. Miss Porcelain was downstairs – sorry, I mean she was “below” – and Joe Hook was nowhere to be seen. Normally he’d be just inside the wheelhouse door, or beside of it, as long as he was in a bit of shade, but he was always there somewhere, watching, not saying anything, but ready if you needed him, and a damn good hand to have when the time came. But no sir, not today. You’d have never known to look at him, but the little weirdo was strong as a baboon. I hear tell, anyway, that baboons are really strong. Now the porky deputy pulled a box of smokes from his top pocket and shuffled out a card from the inside.
“Is there anyone here by the name of Lester Clayton Tottenmann?” LC kept right on braiding that line and I spit over the outboard rail – the port rail, by God, even though right then that rail was away from the port – and was about to tell him to take himself a long walk on a short pier – and undoubtedly get myself in a lot of trouble – when Miss Lottie spoke up again and told him we didn’t know anyone by that name, and would he please absent himself from our vessel? Well, actually, she said he should “get the fuck off the Horny B. before I call a real cop, one from Dade County with jurisdiction here, and have him cut your balls off,” and it seemed to work. At least, it stifled him for a second. Then his eyebrows went up like a monkey’s, like he’d thought of something really smart, and he started in again.
“We found this card on a beach in Palm Beach County,” and he glared at Miss Lottie like he would slap her. And then we would all have been in a lot of trouble, because we would have killed him. I could tell LC was ready for it, and I got the feeling he’d been in more than a few fights before. “We only found it because a couple of fishermen took us right there, and told us the man with this card, or maybe some friends of his, murdered one Adrian Franklin Slater, aged twenty-one. One of the fishermen was treated at the Palm Harbor Maritime Hospital for a gunshot wound in the buttocks, inflicted as they ran from the murderer. A forty-five caliber bullet was extracted from his buttocks...” and he trailed off as Miss Lottie screamed in laughter.
“You mean somebody shot him in the ass? Well whoever it was, I wish him a steadier hand in the future. Maybe he will be so neighborly as to turn his attention on you. Now will you kindly get off my boat?” The deputy glared at her, trying hard, I thought, not to look at her boobs. I knew personally that it was impossible not to look at her boobs. Her entire presence demanded that you looked at her, and by God you had better like what you saw or she just might turn her smile away from your sorry face forever, and you would be cursed, having once seen the Sun in all its glory, to live out the rest of your life in the dark. The deputy took the chance. “The same place we found the card we found five forty-five caliber pistol shells, not army automatic type but revolver shells, and an oar with blood on it. Anybody care to tell me what’s going on before I call the local Sheriff myself?” I spit over the rail again. I’d seen Blackie do it, and I thought it made me look tough or something.
“So what? You found some shells and an oar with red copper paint on it. And some kind of card with somebody’s name we don’t know. Big deal. What’s all this crapola got to do with us?” Oh, I was a spunky young scrapper, and I’m positive if that deputy had come after me right then I would be deader than a mackerel these many years ago, but he didn’t, and so I’m not. The deputy, who had proclaimed his name as Deputy Undersheriff Carl Willard Schoolie so many times I have never been able to forget it for one damn second, now turned his considerable bile on me.
“It has to do with you and this boat because one Lester Clayton Tottenmann, a white man in his twenties,” and he glared at me and LC in turn, “sold a 1938 Buick to a man at a car lot right around that corner over there. The car salesman said the guy came from the docks and smelled like fish. And the Slater Crab Company believes that man is responsible for the murder of Adrian Franklin Slater. I’m here to bring that man to justice.” Miss Lottie, who had already called this guy things that would have started fights in any bar, now seemed to become truly enraged. She marched out of the wheelhouse and with her finger backed Deputy Undersheriff Carl against the rail, the starboard rail if you please.
“What the hell do you mean, justice? What do you know about justice? You’re being paid by this crab company, right? That gives you nothing here. You’re not a cop, you’re a company dick, and doing it on Palm Beach County’s dime, I’ll bet. There’s a pay telephone in that drugstore you can see right across the road. My name is Lottie Jane Miller and it’s on the title to this boat, God damn you, and if you don’t get off my boat right now, I’m going to go right to that telephone and call the Dade County Sheriff’s Office and have you arrested for trespassing. I’m sure they won’t like it when I tell them how a Palm Beach County deputy on the take is calling them a bunch of pussies, and how he can mess with folks in their territory and nobody will do a damn thing.” He swelled up something awful at that, saying he didn’t ever, and she shook those lovely cans at him and smiled. His eyeballs bulged out so far, I swear you could have sat on one and sawed the other off.
Lottie went on: “When I get done with them, honey, they’ll believe everything you said whether you said it or not. Now get off my boat.”
That did it. Off her boat he went, pissing and moaning all the way down the gangplank, which I promptly pulled back aboard, slamming shut the hinged doorway that allowed passage onto the Horny B. Lester cringed at my rough treatment of his handiwork. LC took care of damn near everything on that boat and got touchy if he thought you mistreated anything.
Miss Porcelain came out on the deck from below and went to hugging on him. God, I envied that man. I still do, I swear. I never had a woman like that to love me my whole life. Joe Hook appeared and stepped over to the starboard rail where Miss Lottie watched the deputy getting into his car, and put his hand on her shoulder. He turned to look at Deputy Undersheriff Carl Willard Schoolie too, and the deputy looked back. The deputy’s jaw fell open. Joe Hook’s jaw fell open too. It was plain as palm trees they knew each other. Joe Hook ducked back down the hatch into the hold and that deputy snatched his radio mic and started hollering. “Joe Hook,” he screamed, “Joe Hook is right here in front of my eyes. Palm Beach, do you copy, I got Joe Hook!”
Winchell Sanford Wainwright III was frankly surprised by their success at fishing. He had never fished commercially, his job was to design, build, and if necessary maintain ships – or boats in this case. Joe Hook of all people had known how to use the longlines, and they managed to bring in a decent catch. Lester was a born bosun, the man responsible for all the gear on the boat, and Winchell wondered what it was the man had done for a living. Lester worked hard and learned fast, and the women did their share of the work, baiting hooks and repairing torn nets and frayed lines. They had set out to catch mackerel, but like a lot of folks wound up with a mixed bag. In spite of this they had been able to sell their catch at the Miami docks as soon as they got there, every time. The wide range of fish attracted a certain clientele, he had found, and he was also a good negotiator. So his meeting today had gone very well.
There was this kind of consortium of fish buyers, agents of different companies who wanted certain types of fish. The fellows from New Jersey wanted tuna and mackerel, the locals wanted snapper and grouper, but the oriental guy, Mr. Chang, now he wanted stuff the other buyers wouldn’t go for. Sharks. Sawfish. Blue marlin, bonito, tarpon, and sailfish. Octopus, of all goddam things. There was even a Jewish guy who said that if Winchell ever caught any salmon to please look him up. Winchell didn’t think salmon came this far south, but took the man’s card anyway. He was making money on stuff other fishermen would throw away. His connections with the shipping industry gave him access to markets others didn’t know about.
He honestly hadn’t thought about whether he could keep the fishing enterprise running once he got started. He had just been determined to do it for a while as a way to get over his old life. He hadn’t counted on someone like Lottie coming along and knocking him off his feet. Literally. That girl liked to do it as much as he did. She could, as his daddy would say, trip a man and beat him to the floor. He’d said that as if it were something bad, but Winchell Sanford wasn’t so sure anymore. Just the thought of her made him itchy. He’d tried living his life the civilized way and gotten the short end of the stick. Now, with Lottie, he was doing things his way, and he liked it one hell of a lot better. He had a wad of cash from his latest catch in his pocket, and a promise of a market for almost anything he might come across. If nobody else wanted it, Mr. Chang would take it.
When he rolled up to the dock, it took him a second to get it that the Horny B. was gone. It wasn’t there. No, it was not in another spot farther up or down the waterfront; no, he was not at the wrong street. Where in God’s name was his boat? Half a dozen police and sheriff’s cars were parked at the spot where she’d been docked, and cops wearing different uniforms stood among them arguing loudly, pointing their fingers this way and that. Then Winchell spotted her, out on the water. The Horny B. was under way, headed south. He looked at the cops for a second and turned right, following the boat.
It wasn’t long before they saw him as he drove south on the coast road, blowing his horn at every little rise of the dunes. He watched the Horny B. cut towards him and he pulled over into the grass and the sandspurs. He set the brake and waited for the boat to reach the short little beach of muddy grey sand and oyster shells.
Lottie Jane was scared half out of her new silk panties, but she hadn’t let it stop her from thinking straight. When that Palm Beach deputy started screaming into his radio that he’d got Joe Hook, she knew the shit, as her worthless daddy would say, had hit the fan. Not that she’d ever had a fan, not even one of those massive black Army jobs with the open grille that allowed children to cut off their fingers. Not with Daddy drinking all the money away. Now she had everything she could ever have dreamed of and she would be damned if she was going to let some shit-heel cop take it away, and go to hell before she’d let him have Joe Hook, either.
“Joe, you know how to run this boat.” It was not a question. She nailed little Joe Hook to the rail with a finger in his face, then patted his head. None of them had ever conned the Horny B. besides Blackie, but Joe Hook needed to get out of town and they both knew it. She whispered to him that he would tell her the story when they had the time, and no bullshit, or she would personally cut his little excuse for a pecker right off and use it for fish bait. He smiled and gave her a smooch on the cheek. She loved him like a little sister, one she’d never had. Not that lived anyway. “Get her started.” He turned to the wheelhouse and she rounded on Jackson and Lester.
“Cut her loose, boys, it’s time to make a move!” They jumped to it, so fast she wondered that neither of them questioned her, and by the time Joe Hook had the diesels thudding at a low pace, the lines were cast off and they pushed away from the dock. Deputy Underwear, as she had named him, was still hollering into his radio like a pig stuck in the neck to bleed out, and that image gave her a disturbing feeling of pleasure. Lottie Jane had grown up poor, and the few times she’d heard that squeal she knew she would soon get to eat sweet pork, and her mouth would water with the sheer delight of anticipation. It was not beyond her, she considered as she pointed Joe Hook down the channel, to think of that meddling cop dead and roasting like a fat hog. She had a life now and she would do anything she had to do to keep it.
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[Editor’s Note: The novella of which this installment is a part can be ordered from Amazon.]
| Copyright © 2017 by Roger Owens |
A murder inquiry rocks the boat in Roger Owens’s artful novella with some real characters.
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