He nodded. “I have no secrets from her.”

“How is it that your father was legal and you’re not?”

“You’re assuming he was legal. My father started with one grocery store, and for my first few years of life, we lived in the back of it. I can remember sleeping in the big walk-in refrigerator where we kept all the produce during the August heat. Then my dad figured out how to import rum from his brothers and sell it out the back door. Soon, we were selling it out of the back of his truck, then trucks, then stores—plural.” He smiled. “Dad was mostly legal. More than that, he knew how to make a dollar.”

“Cocaine and rum are two very different things. That doesn’t bother you?”

“If you’re a drunk, don’t blame the man who sold you the alcohol. I’m an entrepreneur. I provide a service. If not me, then someone else.”

The problem with his line of thinking was that I completely agreed with him. “How’s it work? Pragmatically. Like what’s your business model?”

“Spoken like a man with an education.”

So I showed Colin one of the cards I was holding close to my chest. “Harvard MBA.”

He smiled and nodded. “Those people down there are just junkies with money. They think their money insulates them. Only difference is that they don’t want their bad habits paraded across the front page of the newspaper, so they pay me to provide them what they want and keep their secrets. And they pay me a premium to keep it that way. They place an order, a minimum of fifty thousand—some are much higher—they transfer the money to an offshore account, and I make the delivery. Or drop. I have several runners in major cities across the country. I need one around here and up the East Coast.”

“What happened to the last one?”

He pointed at a tall, thick Mr. Clean sitting off to one side with an Amazon on his lap. “He’s moved into trucking. Wanted to own and run his own business, so I set him up. Sent him on his way.”

“No hard feelings?”

Colin shook his head and offered nothing more.

“How about competition?”

“Competition exists when others know what need you are meeting. Others don’t know of”—he waved his hand across the crowd—“their need. So, I have little—if any—competition.” He shrugged. “I don’t sell on street corners. Don’t employ men with guns.”

“If you, in fact, operate this way, then your buyers trust you.”

“It also means that if I don’t deliver on what I promise, that my boutique model will come crumbling down. While I possess what they want, they possess the ability to tear down my house of cards with just a few aptly spoken words. It’s a”—he weighed his head side to side—“delicate relationship. So, I do what I can to massage it and make them feel at ease with me. Reassure them that they can trust me because they trust very few people. My legitimate business provides us with a fine life. All the money we want. My illegitimate business provides us with the lifestyle, entertainment, and adventure that my wife and I enjoy.”

“What would I do? How would you pay me? I imagine I wouldn’t see you too often.”

He set a cell phone on the railing in front of me. “I’ll get you a new SIM card with every drop. It’ll either be in the boat or some place we designate. You’ll never make two drops with the same SIM—”

I interrupted him. “That might make it difficult to remember the number.”

“I didn’t get this good and stay in this business this long by getting lazy or being stupid. The law around here knows that I exist, but that’s about it.”

“You keep your hands clean and I get mine dirty.”

“We’re all dirty. Anyone that tells you otherwise is selling something.” He motioned to the phone again. “I’m the only one who will ever know this number. You don’t give it to anyone. Not your mother. Sister. Hack. And certainly not your girlfriend. Keep it on 24-7.”

“Sort of like a tether.”

“Exactly. I’ll send you coordinates, you plug them into the GPS on the boat, follow my instructions to the T, and leave the package exactly where I tell you. You never handle the people or the money. Just the drop. You’re in, out, and you get to see some beautiful places and people in the process.”

“What’s my percentage?”

“Ten percent of whatever you’re carrying with a five-thousand-dollar minimum.”

“That seems like a lot of money to drive a boat.”

“You won’t think that if you find yourself staring through bars. In a sense, I am buying your silence. Both now and if and when you find yourself staring at prison walls.” He let the truth sink in. “I treat my people well. I’ll wire the money to your offshore account before you make the drop.”

“You’ll pay me before I drop?”

He nodded.

“You trust me that much?”

“I need you that much. If you want to burn me? Great. Keep the money. Even in this business, loyalty means something. If you want to make a lot of money, then do what I ask, when I ask, every time I ask.” He shrugged. “In some cases, because of the various businesses people are in and their desire to eliminate a paper trail, people pay me only in cash. When that occurs, I’ll pay you in cash. But there will never be cash and dope in the boat at the same time. In those instances, I’ll arrange payment separate from the drop, and I can’t promise you it’ll occur before you run.” He held a finger in the air. “What you do with the cash is your business, but you do realize that if you want to continue in this line of employment you can’t just go deposit it in a bank.”

The pendulum had swung. I was no longer delivering pizzas, but I was back doing something I was good at. “When would I start?”

He pointed below us at a sleek black Intrepid that looked to be about forty-five feet long and powered by four outboard engines. Each engine had 350 horsepower. That meant the boat had 1,400. “I need that in the Abacos by tomorrow evening.”

I slid the cell phone into my pocket and shook his hand. “I’ve been wanting to see the Abacos.”

It was the beginning of a beautiful and profitable relationship. Colin made me an employee of Specter Import Nationale. He said the acronym didn’t occur to him until after he’d filed the corporation papers, but he never changed it. From a certain perspective, it fit.

Before we left the crow’s nest, he whispered, “One thing you need to know from the beginning. This business has a definite life span. There is a ticking clock for every guy like me—and now like you—who steps into this. The trick is pushing the envelope just far enough—enjoying the life and making all the money we can—and then getting out before the clock strikes twelve.” He stared out across the canals and the neighborhood filled with $10 million and $20 million homes. “There will come a day, and it will come in a flash, when this will end. When this ride is over. When the only business that remains is legitimate. When the pool deck is empty. And when that day comes, you have to be willing to walk away. Period. We are simply riding a wave.”

Chapter Eleven

I slept in a hammock hanging on the balcony of the master bedroom. The breeze was cool and the sound of the ocean reminded me of my hurricane shack on Bimini. I thought of Hack; his laughter; his love of boats, bonefish, cigarettes, and women—all women. From there I wandered to Shelly and the pain etched across her face when she’d met me on the beach. It was the same look of pain worn by Amanda the last time I’d seen her standing in the snow outside her parents’ house. What was it with me and women standing in some form of water, experiencing pain of my doing? I left and wondered what sick scheme Marshall was up to and just how miserable Brendan had become now that he was waiting for the old man to die so he could get his money. I ended, as I did most nights, staring into the emptiness that had become my life. At the series of disconnected events that marked moments of direction in my life. I often tried to connect these dots. To see one event through the meaning of another. I could not. They shared no relation. They did not connect.