Thin Slice of Life

Chapter 39

Colonel Bao tossed two heavy duffle bags over the stern, where they landed with a thud on the crab-slick deck of Nu Dang’s shrimp boat. Both Nu Dang and Sammy recognized one of the bags instantly. It was the same bag they’d collected from the fat politician—and the same one they’d handed over to the Texas Ranger. Now it lay like a carcass smack-dab in the middle of Nu Dang’s boat. They’d never expected to see the bag again—and the sudden appearance of Bao shocked them. “I need your boat,” Bao said in Vietnamese. “We are going for a ride.” His tone was flat and non-negotiable. It wasn’t a request. Sitting cross-legged on the boat deck, Sammy looked at his uncle with alarm. Nu Dang yelled at the intruder, “You have no right!” The Colonel was in no mood for debate. All day long he’d anxiously awaited the bank transfer from his Cayman Island accounts, and for the money promised to him by Senator Cudihay, which finally materialized in a dumpster behind the Sea-Tex fishhouse. An anonymous phone call—it sounded like it could have been Cudihay’s voice—told him the location of the duffle. Now it, along with all the cash he’d been able to scrape together by liquidating his local and offshore accounts, lay bundled up in a pair of canvas bags on the deck of the boat. CHAPTER 39 270 39| Assembling the narcos’ money had taken all day and time was running out. Everything had to be ready for his appointment with the Mexicans. Bao didn’t even want to think about what would happen if it wasn’t. Heading straight for the rendezvous was out of the question. Somebody, probably that meddlesome Texas Ranger, had ordered one of Rockport’s patrolmen to watch him, and other law enforcement agencies might be monitoring his activities too. He couldn’t simply whistle up one of his own surviving boats and make straight for the barrier island rendezvous, no matter how anxious he was to transact his business. He needed a decoy. Had Bao paid any attention to American sports (although a big fiberboard sign on the Rockport Pirates’ high school stadium read “Sea-Tex Marine Proudly Supports the Pirates!”), he would have called his plan an end run. Easing his Lincoln Continental up to the entrance of Fulton Harbor, Bao recognized the marked Rockport PD patrol car in the parking lot of Charlotte Plummer’s restaurant. The cop—who Bao knew vaguely from his previous interaction with the local flatfoots— was far from RPD’s best and brightest, but he was probably sitting behind the tinted window scanning the outer harbor area with binoculars. He was about as subtle as a ten-foot tall pink flamingo. God damn it, thought Bao. He was tired, filthy, paranoid and strung out on coffee, cigarettes and raw nerves and he’d just recently killed two men. He was unraveling, he could feel it. He hated making decisions when he was like this. But he had to do something, and quick. Before the policeman could spot Bao’s distinctive car, the gangster put his automobile into reverse and jammed the big car into a concealed space between a bait shop’s big refrigerator unit and the hull of a dry-docked oyster boat. From that angle, Bao’s eyes lighted on the hull of Nu Dang’s trawler, New Hope. My harbor, my boat, he thought. The usually calculating and methodical Colonel Bao would not have ordinarily considered a sudden impulse to hijack a boat at random. But that Colonel Bao wasn’t running the show now. Bao exited the car and walked to a pay phone on the side of the boarded-up bait shop, still out of sight of the oblivious cop, and fished a dime out of his pocket. He gave the man on the other end of the line crisp instructions about meeting him in Port Aransas 271 |39 with a speedboat. From there, in his own boat, he could proceed to the meeting with the Mexicans. There was still time. He quick-walked back to the car, eyes jittering in every direction . He pulled his revolver out of the glove compartment and stuck it in his waistband under his jacket. Then he opened the trunk and hoisted two...