Dust from Africa carried on the wind colored the Miami dawn pink. On the far shore of Biscayne Bay, windows flared orange as the sun heaved out of the sea.
Hans-Peter Schneider and Felix stood on the patio of the Escobar house beside the hole in the lawn.
Umberto had made the hole bigger with a pick and a spade. From the dark below them came sucking noises. As the sea pulsed through the opening under the seawall and into the cave beneath them, the hole breathed out foul air. They turned their faces away from the stench.
Bobby Joe and Mateo brought some equipment out of the pool house.
A stacked echelon of pelicans passed over, heading for a fish drive.
“The fuck can I know what Jesús told Don Ernesto?” Schneider said. “We take it out the front, out the back, I could care less. What about the guy in Lauderdale?”
“Clyde Hopper, the engineer,” Felix said. “He’s got the equipment. He’ll meet us and work it out. He wants a meet at the boat.”
“Is his number on this telephone?” Hans-Peter said. He tapped his palm with the blue burner phone from the trunk of Felix’s car.
“What is that? I don’t know,” Felix said. He licked his lips.
“It’s the phone from the trunk of your car. Tell me the code to open the phone or Bobby Joe will blow your brains out.”
“Star six nine six nine. It’s just to talk to my girlfriend without the wife—you know.”
Hans-Peter pursed his lips as he poked the telephone and confirmed the code. He could explore the phone later.
“Okey-dokey,” Hans-Peter said. “Okey-dokey. Maybe we won’t need to pull it out, this fucking thing. Maybe we can crack it from the back. We’re going into the hole to look.”
“Who’s going into the hole?” Felix said.
Standing behind Felix were Bobby Joe and Mateo. Umberto was with them and he was holding a harness.
The line from the harness ran through a pulley on a big limb of the sea grape tree above the hole and on to a winch, a hand-cranked coffin hoist.
Bobby Joe held up the harness.
“Put it on,” Schneider told Felix.
“I didn’t sign up for this,” Felix said. “Anything happens to me you got trouble with my office.”
“You signed up for any fucking thing I tell you to do,” Schneider said. “You think you’re the only one in your office with their hand stuck out?”
Bobby Joe strapped Felix into the harness and hooked it to the line. Felix kissed a medal he wore around his neck.
Hans-Peter stood in front of Felix to have a pleasant little sip of Felix’s fear before the mask covered the man’s face.
It was a hazmat mask with two big charcoal filters on the cheeks, and headgear with a video camera and a miner’s light. Attached to his harness were a big flashlight and a large holster. Felix was wired for sound.
It was hard for him to suck enough air through the filters of the mask.
Birds passed across the sky, crows mobbing a hawk. Felix looked up and thought I love the sky. He had never thought about it before. His legs felt weak. “Give me a gun,” he said.
Bobby Joe put a big revolver in the holster and snapped the flap over it. “Don’t put your hand on the gun until you are under the ground,” he said.
They lowered Felix into the hole. The air below-ground felt warm on his legs. He spun a little, hanging on the cable.
Once his head was below the grass it was hard to see. Daylight coming down through the hole reflected very little off the rough concrete of the seawall. Gloom became black darkness as the cave stretched away. The distance from the surface of the water to the ceiling varied from six feet to four feet as the water surged in the cave. When Felix was submerged to his waist, his feet found the bottom. The water swelled and fell from his hips to his chest and back again. The snaky roots of the sea grape came down through the ceiling. The roots were too stiff to push aside. Felix’s light bounced off the water and threw big shadows of the roots. He could see in patches the underside of the concrete patio and hanging dirt above him.
Hans-Peter Schneider watched on a laptop, Felix’s voice tinny on the speakers.
“The bottom’s pretty flat, I can walk. Water’s up to my chest. Shit—that’s half a dog!”
“You are doing just fine, Felix. Go look at the fucking cube,” Schneider said. “Do it now.”
Felix moved slowly toward the back of the cave. The pilings supporting the patio were around him like the pillars of a flooded temple. He was sweating. The light on his head reached the shelving beach and reflected off metal. His big flashlight revealed the beach was littered with bones, and a single human skull. The cube was big all right.
“It’s a box, taller than it is wide. Steel diamond plate, like a nonslip floor. Edges are welded.”
“How big?” Schneider said.
“Size of a refrigerator, bigger, like a deli refrigerator.”
“Any lifting rings? Handles?”
“I can’t see.”
“Well go up close and look at it.”
A fizzing sound behind Felix. He turned toward the sound. He saw concentric rows of small bubbles rising in a coffin shape.
Felix scrambled onto the beach.
“No handles, no lift rings, no door, no lid. I can’t see all of it, there’s dirt around some of it.”
A fizzing noise and Felix swung his light around. A pair of eyes reflected red in the dark water. He fired the pistol toward the eyes and they disappeared.
“I’m coming out, I’m coming out.” He waded fast to get back under the hole in the ceiling of the cave. “Pull me up! Pull me up.”
The winch was turning, the line was moving in front of him, the line was out of the water, dripping. The winch took up the slack and Felix was beginning to rise when a tremendous jerk moved him sideways and he went down in the water, the flashlight flying from his hand, the pistol fired into the ceiling.
Up in the garden the winch spun backward, the handle whacking Bobby Joe on the hands and arms, whirring as the line paid out, the line slithering fast down the hole.
Down in the cave the line slithered out the hole under the seawall, came taut and sang, throwing drops of water. Then it fell limp to the floor of the cave.
“Crank him up!” Schneider yelled.
Watching the laptop, Schneider could see through Felix’s head camera the sea floor passing underneath him, the miner’s light beam bouncing along the bottom. Mateo and Umberto worked the winch, raising the harness.
It came out of the hole containing the lower half of Felix, his lower torso and legs draped with loops of pink and gray intestine.
In the distance, out on the bay, Felix’s hand broke the surface, cutting the water in something like a wave, until it was pulled down out of sight.
The men were quiet for a minute.
“That was my fucking pistol,” Bobby Joe said.
Umberto tried on Felix’s hat and his shades. “What about the house?” Umberto said.
Hans-Peter took the shades back from Umberto.
“A person in Felix’s office admires the glasses,” he said. “You can keep the hat.”