Night Moves (Doc Ford) - By RandyWayne White Page 0,108

to Diemer. Once I heard the splash of Kondo’s body, we would be going our separate ways. I would reconnect the system later.

No telltale splash. Instead, a full minute passed before I heard the Brazilian call, “I want you to follow me—but run side by side. Better if fishermen mistake two boats for one boat. Understood?” He was topside again, dismantling electronics, hurrying to stack everything in a box, his rain suit blood-splattered, the face shield tilted up like he’d just come from surgery.

I started to say, “Not following you clear to Lostman’s River—” but realized I was being dense again, so amended, “Tell me what you’ve got in mind. The little son of a bitch was dangerous—I wouldn’t have killed him, but that’s not the issue. I’m shitting in my own nest here, so tell me the truth.”

“No time!” Diemer hollered over the rumbling engines. “Follow for a mile, maybe two—whatever it takes. I’ll have the autopilot on. Due west. No radio contact. I’ll be down below—but watch for me! When I come up, I’ll give you one of these”—he waved an arm side to side—“then I’ll dump the electronics and jump. Got it? At twenty knots, planing speed, I go over the transom.”

“Jump while the Haitian’s boat’s on autopilot,” I said, confident I’d figured it out, picturing the Stiletto cruising two hundred miles until fuel was sucked dry, a dead man aboard—and hope to hell no innocent vessel got in the way of a drug deal that had, from all appearances, gone bad.

I was wrong about one detail.

“My client’s boat,” Diemer corrected. “It was stolen, the registry, all the papers changed—and Kondo almost got away with it.” Then stressed again, “Watch for me! It’ll happen fast.”

He didn’t add Then you will stop and pick me up.

But I did.

—

I WAITED UNTIL the Brazilian was aboard the Zodiac, hidden from view, sitting beside me on the deck, to ask: “Now what? I’m not taking you back to Dinkin’s Bay.”

Diemer shook his head. “Of course not!” He had brought only the tactical bag with him—heavier or lighter, no way to know—but it at least contained running shoes, shorts, and swim goggles, which he was changing into. His bloody rain suit, apparently, was already somewhere on the sea bottom with the box of electronics. “The emptiest stretch of beach you see,” he added, “a half mile off, that should be safe.”

“Sanibel, you mean.” I turned the wheel toward a distant hillock of coconut palms and gumbos, south of the Island Inn.

Diemer nodded and asked, “Do you have bottled water?” his accent sharpening as he reacquainted himself with the role of the class-conscious Castilian. When the bottle was empty, he said, “I’ll call Captain Futch and ask to fly with him tomorrow.”

The man was still interested in the Avenger wreckage—either way, I wouldn’t have been surprised—so I nodded. Yeah, it was better if his yacht stayed in plain view right where it was.

“The hippie will be flying?”

I replied, “I knew there had to be a reason you didn’t want Tomlinson with me.”

“He was smart to hide. Kondo is . . . he was a nasty little predator. A lucky break for me, him showing up this morning.” Said it in a way that suggested he’d been tracking the Haitian for a while, waiting for an opening.

Again, I nodded. “It happens that way sometimes.”

Diemer, too focused to respond, pointed ashore and told me, “Don’t slow down. I’ll roll off the seaward side, no one will notice. And do not look back.”

“Swim half a mile to the beach, then run to Dinkin’s Bay,” I said, impressed. I was thinking, Whatever happens with Hannah, maybe I’ve found myself another workout partner.

Sliding his belly onto the Zodiac’s portside tube, getting into position, Diemer reminded me that his alibi had been established, saying, “Every morning, the tourists, your local people, they see me taking my exercise. Always I am friendly. I wave. So friendly, you Americans!”

The jet-set assassin in a joking mood after a good day’s work.

I was closing the distance on the No Wake buoys, half a mile away, only a few strollers on the beach at this hour, the tide too high for serious shellers to be out. So I glanced back to tell the Brazilian, “A couple more minutes.”

Too late—the man was gone.

Still on the deck, though, was his tactical bag. No accident—swimmers and joggers don’t carry luggage, so he’d meant to leave it aboard. But . . . had he left it to somehow