“What happened to your first diver?”
“She decided she didn’t want to do it anymore. She was from the Bahamas and she said she was going to go back and visit her mama after... the problem we had. But she didn’t do that. When we went to pick her up again, no diver, and no mama.”
“Jaquell was a nervous one,” Regio said. “We’re better off with Willy. And Ally.”
After some silence,Rae asked, “You the fools that shot those Coast Guard sailors last summer?”
Lange glanced at Regio, which was as good as a “Yes, he did it,” but Cattaneo said, “We really don’t talk about that kind of thing. It’s impolite. We don’t mess with the Coast Guard.”
“So it was somebody else who shot them?”
Regio was staring at her, his rattlesnake stare, but Rae had been stared at by worse people when she hadn’t had a gun taped to her ankle.
“We don’t talk about those things,” Cattaneo repeated. He smiled at her. “So, you know... shut the fuck up. Please?”
Virgil was floatingon the surface. They spotted him a couple of hundred feet out, off to their left, and Cattaneo cut the motor and they glided on forward, slowing as they went, and then Langethrew Virgil a line. Virgil pulled himself up to the boat, which, as Cattaneo had said, was dead in the water. Virgil stayed five feet away, shed his backplate and tanks, passed them up to Regio and Lange. The lift bag line went next, up to Regio, and Virgil said, “Didn’t do so good this time, but I got five. We got a problem.”
“Five is good, five is fine,” Cattaneo called down to him.
When the orange lift bag, followed by the cargo bag, were pulled over the side of the boat, Virgil passed up his fins, then hooked his bare feet in the stainless steel boarding ladder, rode up and down a couple of times, then stood up on the bottom rung. Lange and Regio got him under the arms and helped him onto the boat. As soon as he was on, Cattaneo kicked the engine over.
“Get the shit below,” Cattaneo said. “And Willy—five is great. We owe you thirty-seven-five. What’s the problem?”
Virgil shook the water off his back and legs and asked Rae, “How’re we doing, Ally?”
“Two more dives, I’m thinking Porsche, sweet pea,” and she again kissed him on the lips.
Virgil sat in the cockpit and looked up at Cattaneo, brushed his hair back, and said, “The ship that dumped the cans wasn’t running exactly parallel to the outer reefs... it was sliding off to the east, into deeper water. The south end of the dump was in a hundred and forty to a hundred and fifty feet. Today I was down at a hundred and sixty-six. By the end of the dump, it could be close to two hundred feet, or two-ten. That’s getting... risky. I’ll need more bottom time to collect the cans and I’ll need more decompression time coming back up.”
“But you can do it?”
“I guess. Depending on how deep it gets—it’s impossible toknow, depending on where the ship went. I might need to go to Trimix instead of straight air. I don’t know about sources for it here in Lauderdale. I’m sure there must be some.”
Cattaneo said, “Hold on to the wheel for a minute. You don’t have to steer, just hold on.”
Virgil did that and Cattaneo went below and returned with a plastic briefcase and took out an iPad.
“Aqua Map,” he said.
He called up a chart of the ocean north of Port Everglades, touched the screen, said, “Here’s the drop site. Did you check the compass heading for the drops?”
“About five degrees off north. That’s probably not exact, but it’ll be close.”
Cattaneo fiddled with the chart for a moment, then said, “Damn-it. You’re right. The north end of the site will be close to two hundred—a hundred and ninety to two hundred.”
Rae said, “Time to bail?”
Virgil rubbed his eyes and said, “Ah, I can do it. I can’t stay down as long without going to Trimix, though.”
Cattaneo said, “Tell you what. I’ll throw in an extra thousand dollars for the deep dives. Don’t cheat me, I’m going to look at whatever depths you get to, but below a hundred and seventy-five, I’ll throw in the extra grand.”
Virgil nodded: “Okay. What’s the weather tomorrow?”
Cattaneo said, “Gonna be smooth as a baby’s butt.”
The rest ofthe run back to the boat slip was routine. On the way, Virgil told them about the dive: “I’m not sure, but I think I mightbe done with the south end. There was more silt stirring around tonight, I might have missed some stuff, so I’m not positive.”
“Don’t worry about it—we’ll worry after we know what is down there. Go north. You’re the dive boss,” Cattaneo said.
