Cuban Death-Lift Read Free Page A

that’s in advance—with no guarantees. And the reason I’m not going is that no one I know has asked. The Cuban-Americans I do know are close friends, and I suppose they just don’t want to put me on the spot.”
    â€œAnd what if they did ask?”
    I thought for a moment. Would I go? Castro was making a fool of everyone who went to Mariel Harbor, no doubt about that. He was making a fool of Americans, his own people—everyone but himself. But the bottom line was that there were good people who looked upon this sealift as their only chance to rescue their relatives from Castro’s little commie paradise. Some paradise.
    Stevie stared at me with his mocking brown eyes and began to grin. “If one of your friends asked, you’d be gone in a minute, MacMorgan. You know it’s true.”
    I snorted. Maybe it was. And maybe that’s why I had decided to isolate myself on my stilthouse—to escape being asked. I didn’t want to haul Castro’s castoffs, so I was taking the coward’s way out. You don’t have to make any decisions when the world can’t find you. And I was tired of decisions. I wanted to sit in my little weather-scoured shack on the sea, drink cold beer, read good books, and catch fish—just to let them go and watch them swim free again. Key West could have its traffic and its Mariel Harbor madness. And it could have it without me.
    I finished rescheduling my charters, shoved the long black calendar back under the counter, and turned to leave. As I did, Stevie stopped me.
    â€œHey, Dusky—I almost forgot.” He began shuffling through a stack of papers on a metal spindle. “You got a message here someplace. . . .”
    â€œIt’ll keep.”
    â€œNaw, the guy said it was very important. Had nothing to do with a charter—hey, here it is.”
    I took the narrow envelope he handed me and opened it. It was from Norm Fizer. Stormin’ Norman we had called him on one very secret mission a long, long time ago back in Cambodia. I had been a Navy SEAL back then, more fish than man, more killer than fish. It was a dirty, nasty, dangerous time, but I had come to respect and admire Fizer during our mission there. He’s a fed—and one of the rare good ones. I owed him a lot—and not just because of Cambodia. When the drug runners—the pirates who roam the Florida Strait and call Key West home—made the mistake of murdering my family and my best friend, Norm had seen to it that I had the chance to get even. He had hired me as a government freelance troubleshooter, working outside the law to expedite the work of the lawkeepers.
    The note read:
    Â 
    Dusky,
    Wanted to congratulate you again on the Marquesas affair. Well done. May have something else for you. Since you moved off Sniper, I don’t know where you are staying so it is important you call me at the Atlanta number as soon as possible.
    NF
    Â 
    It was typed in plain block pica, just typed initials for a signature. So it was business. But I wasn’t ready for any more business. Not now, anyway. I had been having a bad time of it since that brutal night off the little chain of mangrove islands called the Marquesas. At night I couldn’t sleep, and during the day I couldn’t seem to wake up. I was drinking too much beer, and my hands shook slightly when I tied new leaders. That’s what killing does to you. It steals into the middle of your brain and begins to eat its way out again. I needed more time to shake it, to put it all behind me, to crush the nightmares in the peace of isolation.
    I crumpled the note and jammed it into the pocket of my khaki fishing shorts.
    â€œYou never gave me this.”
    â€œWhat? Huh?” Stevie had a swatter in his hand, and he was swinging at a luminous deerfly that buzzed its complaints about the invention of glass windows.
    â€œDo me a favor, Steve, and play along.”
    He gave me an unconcerned