* * *
Tethered to the Genesis, he floated at a slow swimming speed through the dark, nothing but himself, the glow of the computer and the hum of the Genesis to prove he was alive.
At the estimated pickup, he checked the computer for his decompression status, was told that he was good to surface. He did, checked the GPS watch, found he was a few hundred feet off. He carefully made his way toward the pickup spot, much slower now, the top of the lift bags just kissing the surface. When he was at the pickup spot, he hung there, watching far-off boat lights, and one fast-moving vessel that passed him well toward the brilliantly lit coast.
He had thirty minutes to wait; he did it on the surface, sitting wrapped in the wing almost like a rocking chair. His body was still cool from the deep dive, but getting warmer. Ten minutes before the pickup, he started looking for lights toward the north. At five minutes, he saw the first of the lights, then picked up another. A bright light winked at him, as agreed.
He took the hooded flashlight from its case and shined it toward the boat. The sailboat made a small correction, until it looked like it would run over him.
Virgil thought: This was too fuckin’ easy. He pulled off his fins and let them dangle from his hand.
The boat slowed until it was barely moving, but Virgil could still hear the prop. Somebody on board shone the light on the boarding ladder and the prop noise stopped and Virgil caught the barely moving ladder with one hand and held up the fins with the other, and yelled, “Fins!”
The fins were taken and he unbuckled from the backplate and he shouted, “Don’t dump the lift bags, don’t dump the bags,” and the vest and tanks were pulled over the rail and on board, Regio, Lange, and Rae all lifting. He started climbing the ladder; both arms were grabbed and he was hauled unceremoniously over the side like a large rubber billfish, and dumped butt-first on the deck.
He could hear Cattaneo chanting, “Get the lines, get the lines,” and then Regio, “I got ’em, I got ’em,” and the two orange lift bags came over the side, and then, with Regio and Lange and Rae all lifting, straining, the cargo bags came over the rail, one at a time, and Cattaneo was calling, “We good? I’m firing it up,” and Regio calling back, “We’re good, let’s move,” and then Lange, “Man! We are way more than good! Way more than good.”
Virgil pulled off his face mask as the engine started, and then Cattaneo was standing over him. “Willy! Willy! You’re a rich man, Willy. You’re a rich man!”
Virgil said, “What?”
Rae squatted next to him and put her arm around his neck and she said, “I knew you were good, but I didn’t think you were this good!”
* * *
Regio and Lange had disassembled the bed in the forward cabin and now they stashed the eleven cans under it, and screwed the mattress support back down. A variety of gear, including a bicycle, went on top of the platform, and then the scuba gear was piled around it, neatly done, as if it had been there for a while.
Virgil went down to a cabin, stripped off the wet suit and bathing suit, dried himself with towels, and his hair with a hair dryer, and dressed in his street clothes. Rae smoothed his hair with her hands so it didn’t have that tangled fresh-out-of-the-ocean look.
The wet suit was squeezed and wiped dry with paper towels; the towels were wadded around a bolt and dropped over the side. The wet suit was draped over the bicycle in the forward cabin; the bathing suit and towels went in the clothes dryer.
When it was all done, Virgil came back up on deck. Cattaneo, at the wheel, said, “We’ll give you that package of peas when we get back.”
“Hope you’ve done this right,” Rae said. “Hope there are no cops on the dock.”
“That’s not a likelihood at all,” Cattaneo said. “We’ve got a man watching the dock from a condo parking lot across the water, haven’t heard a peep.”
Regio asked, “You talked to the guy yet?”
“Not yet. Not calling until we get inside the port. I don’t want any calls from my phone coming out of the Coast Guard search area.”
They were an hour and a half getting back to the Port Everglades cut, taking it easy; Lange broke out a Whole Foods salad and a bundle of chicken-salad sandwiches, and beer; Cattaneo turned down the beer in case they were boarded by the Coast Guard, but they made the food and beer cans prominent on the dining table: party boat, coming back from Boca Raton.
“We need to talk about something,” Cattaneo said to Virgil and Rae. “You guys don’t seem like the type that might have a lot of cash around—the kind of cash we’re talking about here.”
“We do all right from time to time,” Rae said.
Lange: “This is more than all right.”
Cattaneo: “Way more than all right. What we’re trying to say is, don’t go flashing that cash all over town. Most people buy stuff with bank loans and credit cards and so on. If you go into a car dealer and try to buy a car with thirty thousand in cash, they’ll call the cops. They’re going to be thinking ‘dope money.’ You want to buy a little toot, or a little weed, cash is fine—but don’t go buying a kilo or something. Keep it small.”
“I need some more shoes,” Rae said.
“Shoes are fine. Couple dresses, no problem. You want to buy a car, you take the cash out to Vegas, tell the car dealer that you hit a number. They’ll take the cash, but you might have to fill out some forms and pay taxes on it. Be better to buy used, a private sale, but, you know, what happens in Vegas . . .”
Virgil said, “I love that place. I once took two thousand golf balls out of a pond out there. Did I ever tell you about that?”
Rae said, “Ah, for Christ’s sake, Willy, don’t tell that story . . .”
Instead of telling that story, Virgil told the others about the dive, and that he thought he’d cleared out the south end of the string. “With eleven cans, you should be able to map out where the new south end is. The cans were maybe twenty feet apart. We’ll need new GPS numbers for the next drop.”
“Got it all on my laptop at home,” Cattaneo said. “I’ll figure it out tonight. Goddamnit, Willy, you really don’t appreciate what you’ve done here. I’m so fuckin’ excited, I mean, this is large.”
* * *
Coming into Port Everglades, Cattaneo made a call, which was picked up instantly. He said one word, “Eleven,” and clicked off. At the dock, they spent a half hour tying up and cleaning up the boat, bagging trash. Cattaneo told them to leave the trash on board, “I’m going to need it later.”
As they were about done, a tall, heavyset man came walking down the dock under the overhead lights. Cattaneo looked up, surprised, and said, “Hey, man.”