Baja Florida by Bob Morris Read Free Book Online

previous tenants who were either too fried to notice or in one giant hurry to get the hell out of Dodge City on the Biscayne.
    A little ahead of my time. Still, I felt a certain kinship to the era if only for the fact that I occasionally found myself in the position of having to stash money in places where I hoped it wouldn’t be found. The money had come my way via circumstances that, while wholly honorable, were not, by strict definition, legal. Money acquired for services rendered. Money that would take some explaining. Far be it from me to strain the resources of the good and overburdened people who work for the IRS. Better that they should pursue those who acquire their money by dishonorable means. So, to make it easier on both of us, my mattress of choice was currently a bank in Bermuda. A nice little pile of money. I didn’t play with it. No sheltered investments or real estate schemes. Just money sitting around, drawing very little interest, but there if I needed it. I thought about it sometimes, fondly, but not so much that it consumed me. Otherwise, it was money not worth having.
    No sooner had the bellboy delivered us to our suite than Boggy went into his room and closed the door. Mr. Sociable.
    Another way the Mutiny endeared itself to me: It didn’t have minibars. I hate minibars. Minibars are the scourge of a gracious hotel experience. The very name—minibar—diminishes the entire expansive notion of imbibing.
    So I happily called room service and ordered two bottles of Heineken, cashew nuts, and some extra sharp cheddar cheese. After it was delivered—with a proper flourish, on a tray, with a starched white napkin and a tiny orchid in a bud vase—I sat on the balcony and snacked and drank beer and tried to sort out where things stood.
    I needed to get Boggy and myself to the Bahamas, find Jen Ryser, put us all on her father’s yacht in Nassau and take us down to Lady Cut Cay. A straightforward enough proposition.
    Getting to the Bahamas was the easy part. A pilot buddy, Charlie Callahan, was on standby, just waiting for my call. And I’d already contacted the shipyard in Nassau. Mickey Ryser’s yacht was ready to go.
    But where, oh where, could Jen Ryser be?
    To find someone, it helps if you actually know a little something about that someone. And I knew precious little about Jen Ryser. Not much other than her name, really. I knew that she had graduated from the College of Charleston, bought a sailboat, enlisted some friends to join her on a cruise through the islands, and set off first for the Bahamas. I didn’t know exactly where in the Bahamas. I didn’t know what kind of sailboat it was, nor its name. I didn’t know how many friends were on board, nor their names. I didn’t even know what Jen Ryser looked like or how to describe her to anyone who might have seen her. I didn’t have a photograph of her. That’s because Mickey Ryser didn’t have a photograph of her. He hadn’t laid eyes on her in more than twenty years. He didn’t know what color her hair was, what color her eyes were, how tall she was, how much she weighed. She was just a voice on the phone to him. And he to her. And it was up to me to connect the two of them after all these years so they could have their father-and-daughter reunion. And then Mickey was going to die.
    I opened the second Heineken, finished off the cashews.
    I called around and got the number for the main Bahamas customs and immigration office in Nassau. I spoke to a clerk and then the clerk’s supervisor and then the supervisor’s supervisor, all of whom told me what I already knew: Under no circumstances could they give out information about who had entered the country to private citizens such as myself.
    â€œI could have lied and told you I was Homeland Security,” I told the supervisor’s supervisor.
    â€œGood day, sir,” she told me.
    I called the U.S. Embassy in Nassau. I