The sea was calm despite the forecast of a fifteen-knot easterly breeze. The three- to five-foot swells predicted from the rising wind would be perfect for testing the new gyroscopic stabilizer I had installed on the Anything Goes. Pablo and I were conducting sea trials of the 48-foot trawler in the waters south of Stock Island. When the boat rolled from side to side in rough water it made my wife seasick, and I hoped the stabilizer would eliminate the motion and protect her from future suffering. It was either that or I had to sell the boat.
“What’s taking so long, Frank?” Pablo called from the helm.
“Keep your serape on, Pablo. I’m still calibrating the inclinometer. What about your end?”
“Don’t talk to me about serapes, gringo, or I’ll take siesta twice a day.” He grinned. “And the flywheel’s not at ten thousand rpm yet.”
Pablo worked full-time for me in my insurance business. He was still learning and made lots of mistakes, but he spoke fluent Spanish and interfaced easily with the local Hispanic population. He doubled as first mate on the Anything Goes when I needed a hand, like I did that day.
Pablo swiped through his phone to kill time. “Hey Frank—Crazy Eddie’s on another one of his rants.”
I grunted as I focused on reading an instrument dial.
“He’s really pissed. Something about Karen stepping out on him.”
“People shouldn’t discuss their personal lives on Facebook.”
“He’s on Twitter.”
“It doesn’t matter!” What did matter was Eddie knew about his wife’s extramarital activities.
“He says he’s going to get even.” He paused. “What do you suppose he means by that?”
“I have no idea,” I said.
But people didn’t call him Crazy Eddie for no reason. Eddie was a Haitian immigrant and used car salesman, one of those excitable characters who would leap on a car in a television commercial and bust out a windshield with a sledgehammer. “This is Crazy Eddie,” he would yell, “and I’m smashing prices!”
“Well, he is your brother-in-law…”
Eddie’s wife Karen was my wife Cindy’s sister. They were beautiful, passionate, and as close as two coats of paint. Things were about to get messy.
We were heading south between Key West Airport and Boca Chica Key, toward the choppy waters of Hawks Channel. Pablo pointed west to the Hyatt residence club.
“Frank—look.”
A single-engine prop-driven aircraft flew over the four-story building doing barrel-rolls. That wasn’t normal.
“What the hell?” No sane pilot would perform a stunt like that over residential buildings.
I glassed it with our 10 x 50 binoculars. Navy surplus optics yielded a bright image that popped into focus.
“That’s not a civilian aircraft,” I said. “That’s Eddie’s P-51 Mustang.” The image of the vintage WWII fighter plane grew larger as it approached. Eddie had painted the snarling face of a shark on the forward fuselage, its snarling jaws dripping blood.
Eddie had evolved from being an auto mechanic to a used car salesman, but along the way he acquired a private pilot license and became a certified aircraft mechanic. He had worked on restoring the WWII fighter plane for two years. I didn’t know he had finished it.
The P-51 ceased its barrel-roll and began doing loop-de-loops—not the smartest move in a 70-year old aircraft. I couldn’t see how Eddie would ‘get even’ performing suicidal acrobatics in an antique airplane, but then again, he was crazy.
“That man is nuts,” Pablo muttered.
“No shit,” I said.
The fighter plane leveled out at a low altitude and headed in our direction.
“What’s he up to now?” Pablo said.
The P-51 came at us broadside at no more than fifty feet above the water. The ancient aircraft engine roared overhead. The plane’s propeller wash stirred up the water as it passed, creating a wake like a motorboat and spewing spray like a rain squall.
The new gyroscope did its thing and the boat barely moved despite the turbulence. Eddie wagged his wings in a classic pilot greeting which I interpreted more as a jeering taunt.
“Jesus! That man is certifiable!” Pablo had to yell above the din.
The war plane banked left and then veered right into a sweeping circle and headed back at the Anything Goes. Pairs of thin white geysers preceded its approach, the twin colonnades of water rising and fading in resonance with a staccato rat-tat-tat-tat emanating from the plane.
“What the fuck? Is he shooting at us?” Pablo shouted.
That’s exactly what he was doing. Eddie’s restoration must have included making the armaments functional, which had to be illegal. Who do you complain to about that? I might not live long enough to find out.
“Duck, Pablo!” I yelled as I dove and hid behind the gunwale.
We both sprawled on the teakwood deck as the fighter plane approached. The sounds of gunfire, breaking glass, and ricochets reached our ears. The engine noise faded into a Doppler whine.
I peered at the bow from my hiding place. Several smoking bullet holes punctured the foredeck and forward hatch.
“What the hell is he doing?” Pablo screamed.
“Getting even,” I said.
“You mean you…and Karen? Your sister-in-law? What about Cindy? What were you thinking, man?”
“I wasn’t, I guess.” It just sort of happened. We bumped into one another at the gym. Maybe it was the sweaty bodies, or all that Spandex. We met for a latte after, and one thing led to another. And another. It was pheromonal. We couldn’t stop.
Eddie repeated his three-sixty turn and headed back toward us.
“Pablo! Life jackets!”
We donned our PFDs and tried to gauge where Eddie would aim next. We guessed the stern and rushed to the damaged bow.
The engine noise of the P-51 rose in pitch, playing harmony to the chug-a-chug-a-chug-a melody of twin .50-caliber machine guns. Bullets ricocheted off brass fittings and teakwood splinters exploded everywhere. Odors of gun smoke and cordite filled the air as the blazing gun barrels streaked overhead.
“We gotta get out of here!” cried Pablo.
I jumped to the helm and slammed the twin diesels into full throttle and pulled a U-turn. We took evasive action and serpentined toward the Stock Island Yacht Club, figuring even nutso Eddie wouldn’t attack us there.
But Eddie was faster. He strafed the bow a second time, perforating the engine compartment. Both diesel engines coughed, sputtered, and died.
Without propulsion we were stranded and exposed like sitting ducks in a Bedard painting.
“Launch the dinghy, Pablo!”
We dashed to the fantail and scrambled to launch the Zodiac inflatable. I shook so much I couldn’t untie the knots tethering it to the trawler.
“Here he comes!” Pablo warned.
Eddie had come about and was headed at us again, this time from the rear. At that angle his machine guns would slice the trawler in half from stern to bowsprit. The dinghy didn’t stand a chance.
I yelled, “Abandon ship!” and leapt over the starboard gunwale, while Pablo hauled his ass over the portside.
We bailed just before Eddie and his P-51 Mustang zeroed in on the Anything Goes and peppered it with .50-caliber cannon fire.
A 700-grain bullet traveling at 3,000 feet per second punches its target with 13,000 foot-pounds of force—enough, said the investigators, to rip apart an 800-pound flywheel rotating at 10,000 revolutions per minute in a near vacuum. A thousand screaming shrapnel fragments punctured every part of the trawler including the fuel tank. A pyrotechnic tracer round ignited the fuel, and the resulting explosion and fire did the rest. The boat sank in less than five minutes. The Anything Goes had gone and went.
The Coast Guard rescued us soon after. Pablo and I survived with a few scratches and minor burns.
Crazy Eddie headed southeast and flew fast and low below radar range. Maybe he made it to his native Haiti, or maybe he ran out of gas over the Straits of Florida. It’s 735 air miles to Port au Prince and the P-51 had a flight range of 750 miles. Subtract out what he had burned in his aerial acrobatics and making to Haiti would have been a close call. He might have had to swim the last few miles. No one ever saw him or his P-51 Mustang again.
The Anything Goes hadn’t been the only one on a sea trial that day. Crazy Eddie acted as my judge, jury, and executioner. He found me guilty and exacted what he saw as just punishment for my crimes.
Not that he was wrong. I had been guilty—of cheating on Cindy, and of betraying my friend and brother-in-law Eddie.
Of course, Cindy left me, and cleaned me out in divorce court. And Karen won’t speak to me—both for Eddie disappearing and for me hurting her sister.
I had to let Pablo go. He had failed to pay the premium on my boat insurance as instructed, so the Anything Goesbecame a total uninsured loss. Plus, the Coast Guard sued me to remove the vessel’s sunken wreckage as it posed a hazard to navigation.
If I ever buy another boat, it’ll be a small one. I’ll call it Everything’s Gone.
Note: This story appeared in the Key West Writers Guild’s 2022 anthology, More Words from the End of the Road.