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still lives in the Key West area, I think. He used to drop around now and then to talk a bit. I changed the boat’s name from Sea Swell to The Buccaneer. Don’t think Red minded. More than likely he renamed it when he bought it.”
    “Wonder where he got the boat. I mean, did he buy it from a boatyard new, or maybe buy it secondhand from a friend?” I took a deep drink of soda and let it trickle down my throat, still hoping to work our conversation around to Diego and last night.
    “Said he bought it from Captain Snipe Gross and that Snipe bought it from a captain name of Bucky Varnum. That dates it back to 1980.”
    “Almost thirty years ago. How’d you pinpoint that date?”
    “That’s the year the Mariel Boatlift began—and ended. Lasted about six months. Bucky made big bucks off the boatlift—the Cubans. At that time, Castro let everyone leave Cuba who wanted to leave—and plenty of people wanted out of there, wanted to come to America. Diego was one of them. He came here on that boatlift—along with about 125,000 other people.”
    Good. Now the conversation was touching on Diego. “Do you know what kind of a job Diego held in Cuba?”
    “Worked with his family in the cane fields, I think. Guess they owned a big spread in the countryside somewhere near Havana. He never talks much about it. My guess is that they didn’t want him to leave.”
    For a moment I thought I’d succeeded in directing our talk back to Diego. Wrong.
    “Castro opened his prisons and gave free and legal passage to any criminal who could find space aboard a boat. Plenty of hardened criminals sailed to the Keys—the closest land to Mariel Bay.”
    “Kane! Are you hinting that Diego had been a criminal in Cuba? Is that what you believe? I suppose that might be true, but…”
    Kane ignored my question which made me even more curious about Diego’s family and his past. Someone had murdered him. Could it have been someone from his Cuban past? Now I listened with more interest.
    “Rafa, we’re both too young to remember this, but I’ve always liked history and I’ve read about the boatlift. Never talked much to Diego about it. For a while, President Carter didn’t realize Castro had opened Cuba’s open jail cells. He welcomed the immigrants, and Florida offered the closest shore. I knew an old guy who hung around the Raw Bar. He told anyone who’d listen to him about his flight from a stinking Cuban jail.”
    “He rated criminal status in Cuba, but he became a free man in Key West?”
    “Right. You got the picture.”
    “That must have been scary for the locals.”
    “This guy didn’t impress me as a dangerous person, but he told the Cuban authorities he was a druggie. Castro’s officials wanted the druggies out of Cuba. They put them on any boat handy that headed away from Mariel Harbor.”
    “Kane! Are you sure that’s true? After all, the guy admitted to being a druggie.”
    “Who am I to doubt? Nobody, no country, wants to claim a hop-head. Anyway, that guy said he came over for free. Said he stood waiting on an almost-collapsed dock in Mariel Bay and then followed the guy ahead of him onto the boat. He had no big plans for his life in Cuba. Didn’t even think about a goal for living free in America.”
    “Sounds like a great fellow. Surely Diego wasn’t anything like that. Diego seemed like a guy who knew where he was going.” Again I tried to direct the conversation back to Diego and keep it there. Again, I failed.
    “Castro and Carter changed shrimp fishing in the Keys—for a while.”
    “Kane, do you think someone from Diego’s distant past could have murdered him last night?”
    “It’s something to think about. May not be a bad thing to point out to Chief Ramsey.”
    “I’m certainly willing to think about it. Tell me more. I’m guessing shrimp boats became water taxis—something like the gondolas in Venice only a lot less glamorous.”
    “Right. Shrimp boats and any other crafts that would float