It was a twenty-four-hour cruise down to Panama City and the entrance to the Canal and, keen to be away from the scene of Lou Malta's murder, Dave decided to avoid any ports of call and sail through the night. Happy to keep out of Al's murderous way, he stayed up on the flybridge, snatching the occasional hour or two of sleep on the sofa. Al himself remained in his stateroom, drinking beers, watching movies on his VCR, and eating several microwave meals before falling asleep around midnight and sleeping until well after lunchtime the next day, when they arrived off the coast of Panama. The journey through the Canal itself took a full day and a half, and, Dave decided, was probably the most interesting thirty-six hours he'd had in five years. Three sets of locks -- Gatun, Pedro Miguel and Miraflores -- raised ships entering from the Pacific side on a kind of liquid stairway to the Caribbean side. There were no pumps. Gravity performed all the necessary water transfer.
Summoned by Dave's calls to come and take a look at one of the modern wonders of the world Al finally emerged from his cabin, reeking of sweat and beer and wearing a Dolphins shirt and a pair of cutoff jeans. He nodded without much enthusiasm as Dave explained what a feat of engineering the Canal was and seemed quite unimpressed by the close proximity of so many larger vessels.
Al said, 'So what's in it for them?'
'Who?'
'The fucking Panams, that's who.'
'The Canal's controlled by some kind of international body.'
'Yeah? And what's their angle?'
'They charge a toll to get through the canal, of course.'
'You mean like on the Florida Turnpike?'
Dave smiled slowly and said, 'Kind of. Except it costs a little more than a quarter.'
'What?'
'Tolls are based on a ship's tonnage.'
'What?'
'OK, they once charged a guy who tried to swim the canal thirty six cents. And that was back in 1928. So guess how much it is for a boat like this today?'
'What is this? Family Challenge? How the fuck should I know. Five, ten bucks? What?'
Dave was enjoying his anticipation of Al's reaction. Finally he said, 'It was $1,000.' He smiled as Al's jaw hit the deck.
'Get the fuck out of here. It was not.'
'I swear.'
'A thousand bucks? You're putting me on.'
Dave handed Al the receipt. 'Average toll for a big cargo ship is around $30,000.'
'Get the fuck out of here. And they pay it?'
'They've no choice but to pay it. Unless they want to go round Cape Horn.'
'Shit man, that's what I call a shakedown.' Al looked up uncomfortably at the oil tanker that was moored alongside them in the Pedro Miguel. 'Most expensive fucking drain I've ever been in,' he said and, without another word, returned to his stateroom to watch the US Military's Channel Eight on TV.
Dave suspected that Al's reaction was mostly based on fear. Being at the bottom of a forty-foot screw lock as it filled up with millions of gallons of water felt very claustrophobic. He had set a north by north-west course for Cancun on Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula, a distance of some 900 miles. From there he intended to sail north by north-east across the northern coast of Cuba. It was a course he hoped would keep them close to land in the event that they encountered anything worse than the roughish sea that, according to the weather station on the radio, now lay ahead of them. The boat was fitted with Gyrogale Quadrafin stabilizers but, in an effort to make time, and because he also wanted to punish Al for what had happened to Pepe, Dave avoided using them altogether. He himself was an excellent sailor. Al, he had already surmised, was not; and by the time the coast of Honduras was behind them, Al was looking as green as a wet dollar bill.
Watching him throw up over the side for the third time in eighteen hours, Dave grinned sadistically. 'Seems like you've thrown up just about everywhere in Central America. You're one hell of a tourist, I'll say that much for you, Al. Kind of like a tiger, the way it marks out its territory with piss. Only you seem to prefer to use vomit.' He glanced back at some seagulls now making a meal of what Al had just thrown up. 'The gulls seem to like you anyway. At least they like what you had for breakfast.'
'That smart mouth of yours again.' Al collapsed on the flybridge sofa and closed his eyes biliously.
'Smart?' Dave smacked his lips experimentally. 'You mean, as in not covered with flecks of vomit? Yeah, I guess it is at that.' He glanced down at one of the screens in front of him as the auto pilot made a small course correction and simultaneously stored the information in the computer's dead-reckoning log. Then, taking a deep, ostentatiously euphoric breath, Dave stood up, stretched and said, 'Hey, Al. Doesn't this sea air give you an appetite? Reckon I'll go below and fix myself a big lunch. Right now I could really murder a big plate of rock oysters.'
Al swallowed loudly and said, 'I'm gonna murder you if you don't shut the fuck up.'
'Not hungry, huh?'
'How long,' groaned Al, 'before we get to Florida?'
