Page 7 of On the Line

I knocked on the door and heard Mateo yell through the open window to come in. He and Waylan were eating bowls of Captain Crunch at the kitchen table. I looked around atthe beer cans and potato chip bags, a pizza box in the center of the coffee table. They clearly didn’t have adult supervision. “Where’s your mom?” I asked Mateo.

“Up in Miami. She had a charity dinner last night.”

“So she missed the excitement?”

“Thankfully,” Mateo sighed, shoving another spoonful of cereal into his mouth.

“Well…? What the hell happened?” I asked anxiously.

“Fucking cops,” Mateo said, mouth full. “I thought George paid them enough to leave him alone. I guess they’re getting greedy.”

“Don’t worry, Slick. It’s all under control,” Waylan added.

I glared at Mateo before squinting at Waylan, annoyed that he wasn’t giving me details. “What did they find?”

“They wound up with two bales thanks to dumbass Johnny B,” Waylan said, shaking his head. “Had them in the bed of his truck under a tarp.”

I ran my fingers through my hair, processing. They’d found drugs. Only two bales, but they’d know there was a lot more where that came from. This was bad. “Is George in jail?”

“Hell no,” Mateo said. “He’s at home in Miami. His lawyer was there at the party. Told him to keep quiet and told the cops to produce a warrant if they wanted to search the premises. One of ‘em had already seen the bales in Johnny B’s truck though—which they claimed was probable cause to search all the other vehicles. The cops tried to stall long enough to get a warrant for the house but George locked up and went home to Miami, on the advice of his attorney.”

I huffed in relief. “That was smart, I guess.” George was smart enough to have his lawyer around, and to listen to him. It gave me hope that he might have actually escaped this unscathed. “So, now what?”

“I don’t know, really. Wait and see what George says,” Mateo shrugged, crunching another bite of breakfast cereal.

Waylan spoke up, much calmer than I would’ve been. “Maybe we ought to call him?”

Mateo was the only one with direct access to George. I took a deep breath. “That sounds like a fine idea. Why don’t you call him?”

He pushed back from the table and sauntered over to the avocado-green rotary phone on the wall, dialing the numbers like it was a chore.

Mateo’s face grew more worried as he waited, cradling the phone between his shoulder and his ear, its green cord stretched nearly straight. His face finally lit up. “Hey George. Just wanted to check in and see how things are going up there.”

He looked confused as he tentatively replied to whatever George had said. “Happy New Year to you, too.” George must be worried about talking on the phone. Mateo apparently realized, too, replacing the worried tone with something more artificially cheerful. “I was just talking to mybuddies. They were curious what the plan was now, since they missed all the excitement last night.”

I rubbed my palms on the black pants I’d been wearing since yesterday afternoon, waiting. Mateo nodded as though George could hear.Idiot. I couldn’t say a word though. I felt like the biggest idiot on earth to be tangled up in this mess.We were all idiots. Finally Mateo answered. “Alright then, we’ll see you in a couple of days.”

After setting the phone back on the cradle, Mateo frowned. “He didn’t want to talk. He must be worried they’re tapping the line. But he said he’d be back down here just like we’d planned. Seems like we’re still on for Thursday.”

Those two things didn’t seem to add up. If George was worried they were onto him, why would he go through with the drop Thursday? He might not be as smart as I gave him credit for.

CHAPTER 4

The moonlight barely illuminated my path through the mangroves. Revving the throttle on the 40 hp Gale outboard on my Whaler, I steered through the shallow backcountry by memory. The motor hummed in a low roar as I sped up, the Whaler leaping up onto a plane, the white V of my wake spreading out behind me.

I checked my watch and glanced at the scrap of paper in George’s spidery scrawl.Flamingo, 1AM. I was running late. If I missed the drop time, there would be hell to pay.

I forced myself not to think about Ellie, whose catering trays I had finally gotten back from George’s house. I’d hoped to meet her earlier. But when George changed the drop site to thirty miles further north than we’d originally planned, I had a hell of a long run in my little boat.Hopefully Ellie could wait until tomorrow while I went to stand lookout in the Everglades.

Nearly a week after the party, Johnny B was still in jail. George was worse than a hungry bear. I was glad to behearing it secondhand from Mateo. As soon as the crime scene tape came down, George returned from his house in Miami, and he’d been railing at his lieutenants ever since. I had no desire for George to direct his wrath at me.

Ellie was a welcome distraction. It had been a week of long phone calls deep into the night, Ellie stretching the cord from her aunt’s kitchen phone around the corner and as far down the hall as it would reach for privacy. She wasn’t like other girls. She had vision and dreams—she was going places—and the more we talked, the more I wanted to be part of it.

Checking my watch again, I backed off the throttle, the bow of the skiff sinking into the tannin-stained waters of the Everglades as my wake fell flat.The old Gale wasn’t as quiet as I liked, but she was a reliable engine that I could count on to get me out of a pickle. Right now, though, I couldn’t risk her noise.

I killed the motor and grabbled the pole, walking to stand on the bow and pole silently around the mangrove island to the protected flats on the other side. I lined up with the flashing lights on the radio tower at Gilbert’s in North Key Largo, bobbing in what I was fairly certain was the right spot.

From there I would watch and wait.That was my job. Watch and wait, and hope nothing went wrong. So far, so good. I’d made it almost a year with nothing to report.

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