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Ray shook his head. “Your Oto worked the boat here maybe six months ago. The mate—his name’s Garcia, by the way. Providencio Garcia.”
“Old Providencio says Oto had a sleep problem,” Deacon said.
“Yep. Says he didn’t like Oto’s looks when he showed up. Sort of wild looking, one side of his face unshaved, big rings under his eyes. Smelled like a bordello floor on Sunday morning. Providencio says he would have turned Oto away if he could, but his papers were all right and with the Unions and all he had to take him on.
“Anyhow, first week out Oto kept the other hands awake all night with his moaning and kicking all night long. And he was drinking, screwing up on the job. Not a real popular guy. And one night he wakes up screaming.”
“What was he screaming?” I asked.
Ray smiled. “Las luces!”
I suddenly got it. Luces, not loozes. “The lights?”
“Yeah. That’s what Providencio says.”
“Did he say what that means?”
Ray shrugged. “Says that Oto woke up in a real bad sweat and grabbed for his bottle. Swigged about half of it down. One of the other hands said something to him and Oto just kept drinking. Tried to take the bottle away and Oto broke the guy’s arm. Two other guys jumped in. Oto puts ’em both down, one with a concussion, the other a busted up kneecap. He goes crazy, starts breaking things up.
“So they fetched Providencio. He talks Oto down a bit, Oto sits back down with the bottle. Takes a big slug, most of the rest of the bottle. Providencio tries to get the bottle away from Oto. Oto won’t let go. Starts babbling, saltan en el agua, todo el mundo saltan en el agua.”
“What’s that?” Nicky demanded.
Ray gave him a half shrug and a small smile. “They all jump in the water,” he said.
“Oh,” said Nicky, frowning like he could make sense of it.
Ray went on. “Anyway, Providencio tells him that don’t make any sense, they’re all on the ship, they’re gonna be okay, and everybody’d like to get some sleep. Oto says yes, he can make you sleep, too, he’s a bocor, he has the powder.”
“Bingo,” Deacon said softly.
“Providencio says maybe old Oto ought to take some of that powder, because he’s keeping everybody up,” Ray went on. “And Oto gets even more worked up, says they don’t even need the powder ’cause they got the lights. He starts laughing, shoutin’ out, ‘¡Crean que estan en Miami! ¡Pero es solamente las luces! ¡Todo el mundo saltan en el agua!’ And after a couple of minutes of that, he falls over, dead drunk asleep.
“Short-handed like that, three guys too busted up to work, and one too drunk-crazy to find his ass with both hands, it was all they could do to get in to port. Old Providencio couldn’t wait to get Oto on shore and off his ship.”
I ran over it in my mind. Oto had taken out three sailors at once, guys who tended to be pretty tough. Oto was tougher. But not tough enough for whatever it was he’d gotten into—like murdering refugees, maybe? But how?
Saltan en el agua. ¡Crean que estan en Miami! ¡Pero es solamente las luces! It didn’t make much sense; most likely it was just drunken ravings. They think they are in Miami. But it’s only the lights. Everybody jumps in the water.
It meant nothing to me. But that last sentence, the one he had repeated. Everybody jumps in the water. Why would they jump in the water? Because of the lights? What lights? What kind of lights made everybody jump in the water?
I shook it off. None of this mattered. All that mattered right now was finding Anna. “Let’s get to the next one,” I said.
Deacon looked at me with sympathy. That made me feel even worse. “Sure thing, buddy,” he said. “That would be the Petit Fleur,” he said to Ray.
Ray picked a clipboard off the dashboard and flipped through a sheaf of papers. “Okay. Just up the way a piece,” he said, and started the car.
We drove in silence for a couple of minutes until Ray pulled the car over beside an empty slip.
“Let me check on this,” he said, lifting his cell phone and calling. “Probably got the slip number wrong.”
Ray turned away and spoke rapidly. But even before he clicked off I knew. This was the right slip. The right ship had been in it. Anna had been on board.
And now it was gone.
Ray looked tired, beat. “Guess we should have checked this one first,” he said. “Petit Fleur cleared Customs and left for Haiti about ninety minutes ago.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
