Roy and his friend Willy Duda were looking for a summer job. They were both fourteen years old and temporary work that paid decently in Tampa, Florida, in 1961, was hard to find. Tampa was a small southern city then, a fishing and cigar town with a large ethnic Cuban population. Roy’s uncle Buck, with whom Roy lived during the summer months, was in the construction business; he would have employed both his nephew and Willy Duda, as he had in better times, but the building trade was slow at the moment so the boys had to look elsewhere to make money. Buck, who had been a lieutenant commander in the navy during the second world war, suggested they sign up to work on a shrimp boat.
“These little boats have small crews,” Buck told them, “usually only the captain and two or three helpers. The boats go out for ten days, two weeks, maybe three at most, then bring in their catch, sell it, take a few days off, and go back out again. Come on, I’ll take you down to the docks and we’ll see if someone needs hands.”
Roy and Willy didn’t know anything about shrimping but Roy’s uncle said the work was pretty simple. It was a cloudless, sunny day, as usual, and Buck talked while he drove.
“You toss out the nets into the shrimp beds, haul ’em in and load ’em in a cooler. It’s repetitious, hard work, and there’s nothing to do but work on a shrimp boat in the middle of the Gulf of Mexico. You sleep on deck.”
“It’s hot as Hades out there,” said Willy. “We’ll fry like catfish being on the water twenty-four hours a day.”
“You boys can hold up for a fortnight,” Buck said. “It’ll be a good experience.”
The shrimp boats docked under the Simon Bolívar Bridge. Roy’s uncle drove his 1957 Cadillac Eldorado convertible right onto the wharf, parked, and he and the two boys got out. Most of the boats were empty or their captains were asleep under a canopy. Buck, Willy and Roy walked along the wooden planks until they came upon a man in a boat mending nets. The boat’s name, painted on the stern in faded black letters, was Lazarus.
“Ahoy there, captain,” Roy’s uncle called out to him. “I’ve got a couple of strong young men here looking for work. Are you hiring?”
The man had a lobster-red face with a six day beard and a dead cigar sticking out of the right side of his mouth. Roy thought he looked to be about forty years old, maybe older. The man’s left eye was closed and did not open during the time he spoke to them. He was wearing a sleeveless green sweatshirt inside out that had brown and black stains on it.
“These boys are young but they’re able bodied,” Buck shouted.
The man took a quick look up at Roy and Willy then returned his attention to the nets.
“Too young,” he said. “A shrimp boat ain’t no place for clean cut kids. Only lowlifes work shrimpers. Alkys, criminals, cutthroats, perverts. Nothin’ to do but haul, mend, swill bad hooch like the devil’s slaves and bugger each other.”
“Maybe this isn’t such a good idea, Unk,” said Roy.
Two weeks later he and Willy were watching the TV news when a picture of the shrimp boat captain Buck had talked to came on the screen followed by a female reporter standing on the dock under the Bolívar Bridge.
“Albert Matanzas,” said the reporter, “captain and owner of a shrimp boat out of Tampa, was discovered by the Coast Guard drifting in Tampa Bay close to death tied with a rope to the wheel of his boat with stab wounds in his left arm and shoulder and a bullet wound in his right leg. Two men were lying dead from gunshots on the deck. According to a statement Captain Matanzas gave to the Coast Guard, a third man was lost overboard in the Gulf after being shot by one of the dead men. It has not yet been determined what caused the dispute among the men. Matanzas remains in critical condition in Tampa General Hospital.”
“Let’s not ask your uncle if he has any more ideas,” said Willy.