"That goal has been my life," he said. "The only thing I've ever worked for. Work awhile, buy a boat, sail New England. Work some more, buy a bigger boat, sail the Caribbean. Luck into a berth, crew across the Atlantic, sail the Med. Everything was leading toward the big one, the circuit."
Lukens fell silent for a moment, his green eyes far away. He was seeing the vast indigo Pacific, I imagine, while I was lounging safe and coddled in my eighty-gallon hot tub. It was humbling, I admit it. Shut me right up.
"Finally I thought I was ready," he went on. "Found a nice ketch in Lauderdale, a Morgan forty-one. Bit of a wreck, of course, or I couldn't have afforded it. So I went back to the old pattern—tending bar to feed the boat. Buying one winch, one shackle at a time. Filling, sanding, painting ... Spent two years that way. Fiberglass all over me. Band-Aids on every finger. At last the boat was sound. I spent my last paycheck on provisions, did a shakedown cruise to Bimini, then headed out for real. Hit Hawk Channel . . . and made it as far as fucking Sugarloaf—Sugarloaf Key!—before I got dismasted. White squall, freak wind shift. Ripped the shrouds, shredded the main.
"Devastating. One gust and I'm right back where I started. I limped into Key West and got another bar job, raising money for repairs. But the money came too slow. I needed fourteen, sixteen thousand dollars. How many more nights pouring shooters for drunk kids? That's when I started stealing."
He looked at me without a shred of remorse, and I felt a grudging sympathy. The fellowship of disappointment, the brotherhood of frustration. The rare dream that is accomplished sets a person apart; the usual, thwarted dream makes a bond, brings home to us our baleful kinship.
"Bar business," he went on, "everybody steals. Forty, fifty bucks a shift. Pays the rent but it doesn't get you launched around the world. So I got impatient. One night I faked a robbery."
I sloshed in the tub. "Don't tell me," I said. "Please. I don't want to hear it."
"I had the thing thought out," he rambled. "It was a weeknight. After midnight I was on alone. Only got the hard-core regulars then—mostly tough and mumbly guys who talked like they all had different deals going with the owner."
I heard myself say, "Different deals?"
My visitor shrugged. "Who knows? Treasure salvage, gambling—the guy seemed to be involved with lots of stuff. Anyway, the closing routine was simple: Get the assholes out, lock the front door; balance the register, put the cash in one of those bank-deposit pouches; put the pouch in the safe, and leave through the back. So I bagged the money and opened the safe. There was a second pouch in it. That was unusual, but I figured it was the take from the shift before. So much the better. I took both sacks, slipped down the alley to the harbor, got in my dinghy, and sailed across to Tank Island. Buried the two bags, sailed back. Took all of twenty minutes. It was after four a.m. and I don't think anybody saw me.
"I let myself in the back entrance, trashed the office, tore my shirt, called the cops, and made up some bullshit about two strung-out black kids with a gun. As far as I could tell, they bought it."
"They didn't suspect?"
Kenny Lukens sucked his orange lips into a dismissive smirk. "Who knows what they suspected? Who cares? They weren't the problem. The owner was the problem. Lefty Ortega. They phoned him. He came down and right away I knew I'd fucked up big-time. This was not someone you messed with."
"You didn't know that before?" I asked.
"I got hired by a manager. I'd never met the man. I don't think he'd actually worked the bar in years. But now he came in and I was scared from the very first second. His eyes were never still. They flicked around, they jabbed. He had a thick neck with a flat pink scar on it. Hulking shoulders, hairy hands. The cops sucked up to him. He treated them like personal servants. There was some chitchat, then he sent them away, dismissed them.
"Now it was just the two of us," Kenny Lukens continued. "Lefty paced around the office, looked thoughtfully at the empty safe. Very casually he said, 'So, you blamed it on the niggers. Not very original,' he said. 'And not very smart. The niggers don't steal from me. Know how I know that? Three years ago I had a holdup. Couple fucked-up crack-heads. Took me a while but I tracked them down. Had their fingers cut off and delivered to people of influence in Bahama Village. Word got out. Don't fuck with Lefty. So I know it wasn't niggers and I know you're full of shit.'
"He kept pacing, but slowly. He wasn't any bigger than me but I knew he could destroy me. He had that kind of violence that just makes you freeze. I said, 'Lefty, I'm telling you the truth!'