“Who learned you all this?” Fonny Boy asked in awe.
“Some of it was in Trooper Truth the morning before you kidnapped me. And I’ve always loved Virginia history.”
Lights were beginning to fill windows in the small houses across the island, and Fonny Boy jumped into his father’s bateau and began to imagine gold and treasure as they sped through the bay in the pitch dark. It would have been a good idea for him to have checked out how much gas was onboard and perhaps brought along an auxiliary tank or two for the hour-and-a-half voyage. As it was, they were five miles west of Tangier and inside restricted area R 6609 when the outboard motor began to hiccup and sputter just before it quit.
“Oh, no,” Dr. Faux said as he began to fear that God hadn’t answered his prayer after all, but had merely thrown him into worse trouble to punish him for his fraudulent life. “What do we do now, Fonny Boy?”
Every waterman kept a flare gun in his bateau, but Fonny Boy couldn’t possibly resort to that because he could not be rescued by his own people and then face the unthinkable punishment that would await him for running away with the dentist. He was also mindful of the military restricted areas all around the island and wasn’t sure it was a good idea to shoot something up into the air. What if the military shot back?
“You think the current will eventually drift us to Reedville?” Dr. Faux asked as frigid air began to work its way through his inadequate clothing.
“Nah,” Fonny Boy replied.
He began digging around in the various compartments in the bateau, moving aside rope, a rusty pocket knife, several bottles of water, and mosquito repellent, which the dentist used liberally, even though it was too cold for insects to be on the prowl. The compartment under the pilot’s seat was secured with a padlock, and Fonny Boy tried to conjure up the combination. Anything of true value, including the flare gun, would be inside that compartment, and although he wasn’t certain, he was hopeful that his father might have left the handheld radio in there instead of taking it home.
Twenty
Cruz Morales evaded state troopers by cutting through a series of alleyways and parked by a Dumpster behind Freckles, just off Patterson Avenue. He sat in the dark, breathing hard, listening, his eyes nervously jumping everywhere. Country music and the murmur of voices sounded from inside Freckles, which Cruz took to be a small local bar. Suddenly he wanted a beer more than anything else. His nerves were fried, and he was as scared as he had ever been in his life. He was certain all those huge helicopters flying low with searchlights probing were in pursuit of him. He had no idea what he had done to cause such a manhunt, unless it was that package in the tire well. But how did the authorities know about it? When those white dudes at the automotive shop had taken him in back and given him the package in exchange for another package, Cruz knew he was participating in an event that might get him into trouble, but the dudes certainly wouldn’t have snitched on him. What would be the point? And no one saw the transaction, and as best he could recall, it seemed the helicopters were already out before he even pulled into the automotive shop parking lot. So were the authorities looking for him before he did anything? How could that be?
He climbed out of his car, opened the trunk, and retrieved the package from the tire well, which really wasn’t much of a hiding spot since there was neither a spare tire nor carpet, and the first place a cop would check for illegal items was under the very conspicuous tire-well door. Cruz was about to heave the package into the Dumpster when the back door of the bar swung open, spilling light and loud voices into the dirt alleyway.
Major Trader was drunk and feeling macho and decided to pee outside, even though Freckles had perfectly adequate restrooms. But relieving himself in the great outdoors returned him to his roots, and pirates and watermen were quite skilled at adapting to inconvenience. Bateaus, for example, did not have heads, and when Trader was coming along, his family had had an outhouse, which he rarely used, unless he had more serious business than peeing to manage. Trader staggered a bit as he struggled with his fly, and stubborn zipper teeth bit into the cloth of his ill-fitting pants and held on for dear life.