Driving home from work at one in the morning, AJ mused on the never ending
nightmare she’d been living with day and night for a week and half since waking up to the
TV broadcast she’d seen with Lorna and Suzy aboard Slo Motion. Later on that
same morning, her worst fears had been confirmed when two DEA agents came strolling down the docks looking for her. They were not especially communicative. They essentially wanted to know if she’d been left in control of Vamp, what her relationship was with Clark, if she’d given Clark permission to use the vessel, and how to contact the boat‘s owner. Her every question was answered simply with the advice that she should contact the U.S. Attorney’s office. Later on in the afternoon, she got a phone call from Clark telling her he was being held at the Federal Detention Center out on Krome Avenue on the edge of the Everglades.
That call began with a tearful plea from Clark for help in hiring a lawyer, which hope AJ
had totally demolished with a few choice words. She had let him know that their
relationship had been terminated the instant that he’d chosen to betray her by using Vamp
in such an inane venture, and putting her in an indefensible position with Jimmy and
Birgit. AJ had made multiple calls to Jimmy’s cell phone, getting only voicemail before
realizing that Jimmy’s cell phone was sitting on Vamp’s chart table, and turned off. That night, she’d done the only thing she could think of, and driven over to South Beach. She waited until Desmond took a break, and explained her problem to the Jamaican. He’d taken her upstairs to see Felipe without comment. Felipe had listened to her impassively, saying only that he’d try to get a message to Jimmy and Birgit, but promising nothing.
Turning onto her dark street was always a little spooky in the middle of the night. Usually she could rest easy, knowing Clark would have the lights on, and be waiting for her kicked back in his recliner, nursing a Corona, and watching TV. As she pulled into the driveway, she cursed her forgetfulness in not turning on a few lights before heading off to work. When Castro had emptied his prisons during the Mariel boatlift, several nasty characters had been apprehended in the aftermath camping out in the rough near her house. AJ made a quick dash for the door, and wasted no time turning on all the lights.
The blinking red LED on her message machine told her that she’d had four new messages since leaving for work. The first three were more of the same entreaties from Clark, and she quickly hit the delete button on each of them, cutting off his pleas for forgiveness in mid sentence. The last call was the one she’d been waiting for, and dreading. It was from Jimmy at 6:45, sounding worried and asking her to call him back. AJ set her alarm for seven in the morning, turned in, and tried to get some sleep.
As had been the norm for the past few nights, getting a good night’s rest proved once again to be an elusive goal that just could not be met. AJ tossed and turned for what seemed like hours before finally drifting off just before dawn. The buzzing of her alarm clock at seven was like a persistent mosquito that would not go away. While she waited for the coffee maker to do it’s thing, AJ accessed her voicemail one more time to jot down the phone number Jimmy had asked her to call. With coffee in hand and no little trepidation, she picked up the phone and dialed.
There was a series of clicks and buzzes while the call was connected, and then Jimmy was on the line. “Hi there, AJ. Is that you?”
“Hi Jimmy. I don’t know how to tell you this, but ........
“Hold on, AJ. I’ve already heard from a friend a bit about what’s going on. Where’s Clark and where’s my boat?’
“Clark is being held out on Krome. They are charging him with possession of a controlled substance with intent to distribute. He’s been calling me every day, and asking me to hire him a lawyer. I’ve told the little bastard I don’t care if he rots there. Jimmy, you’ve got to know that I never would have let him use Vamp. I can’t believe he could have been that stupid. The Herald said in the paper that Vamp was seized by the DEA under the zero tolerance law. The two agents that came to talk to me wouldn’t tell me much of anything except to call the U.S. attorney's office. They did ask how to contact you, and if you knew Clark. I didn’t tell them anything. I feel awful about all this.”
“It’s not you that’s to blame, so don’t beat yourself up over it. However, that Goddamned Clark should be thankful he’s in a cell where I can’t get to him. There is one thing you can do for me, and that’s call this lawyer for me in Miami this morning. Explain the situation to him, telling him everything you know, and ask him to find out where things stand. Let him know I’ll call him later on today. He should recognize my name. I’ve delivered a couple of boats for him in the past.”
Jimmy gave her the lawyer’s name and address before saying goodbye. Their offices were located in downtown Miami in one of the newer high rise towers on Brickell. AJ hung up the telephone, and reset her alarm clock to nine-thirty. reasoning that ten am would be the earliest she might be able to reach someone at the law firm. She tuned the TV to the Today show with Katie Couric, and curled up on the couch.
She listened with half an ear to the morning news, but thoughts of Jimmy and Birgit’s Vamp tied up at the pier on the Miami river where seized assets were stored by the government kept intruding into her mind. She been living in Miami now for almost five years, following a hasty escape from her drug addicted mother and an abusive step father back home in Kansas city. She’d tried waiting on tables when she first arrived in Florida, but soon discovered that the meager salary plus tips were not really enough to live on in South Florida. After a year and a half of saving her tips working as a stripper, she’d saved enough to put a down payment on this bungalow south of the city. Shortly thereafter, she’d met Clark through one her friends at work. He’d moved in with her just a few months later, offering to pick up half of her mortgage payment. Now that was beginning to look like yet another of many bad decisions she’d made along the path that led her to the Sunshine state.
Birgit's only comment as Jimmy hung up the telephone was to say, "That was a lot more charitable than I might have been under the circumstances."
"You're quite correct there, sweetie, but venting my frustration at AJ would not help matters. I'm going to wait and see what the lawyer I asked her to contact can find out. Remember Frank Donlon? He was the fellow whose Donzi we ferried over to Nassau. AJ's going to call him for us this morning. Unfortunately, I'm pretty sure I know just what he'll find out."
After a quick breakfast, I settled our bill with the office up at the clubhouse and we were soon underway again up the Hudson heading for the first of the locks that would lift La Forza up to Oswego for the crossing to Toronto. I reached Frank by phone at noon, and the news was not good. Vamp had indeed been impounded pending trial, and that was looking like a slam dunk for the prosecution. Even more troubling was the fact that the prosecutor in charge of the case wanted to speak with me, questioning my connections to Clark and AJ.
