James Hall - Miami Noir

Before the top of the sun could glimpse over the water, Jacques and Emania began the swim together, and to Jacques’s disillusion, were followed by the Avrils.

Once Paul and Bahy jumped into the depths from where they could stand, Bahy had begun swatting the water in hysteria while Paul treaded at her side, trying to calm her and keep her afloat in the current. They both became exhausted, and Paul used all of his remaining energy to hold her in his arms. Bahy responded by halting her frenzy to hold him. She held him so tight that it forced all his air out, but he didn’t let go. They sank until they were standing on the sand and coral, and in the darkness she gave him a quick peck on the lips while the surface heaved only four feet above. Their bodies were found still together two days later by a fisherman about a mile north, so bloated that they at first looked like the body of a single strange sea creature being carried in by the tide.

Jacques reached the beach first and ran to the shadows beside a hotel to wait for Emania, and to put on the tennis shoes he had wrapped around his neck for the swim. Five minutes passed and she didn’t show. He leaned his face as close to the shadow’s edge as he dared and squinted, but couldn’t see past the unlit beach to the water. The sound of squeaking wheels echoed off the wall, and he ducked behind a large shrub against the building in time to avoid a cleaning woman pushing her cart. The woman’s cell phone rang and she stopped the cart on the concrete path in front of him to spend valuable minutes scolding what must have been her child or husband.

After she moved on, Jacques came out from behind the shrub and saw Emania face down in the sand about thirty feet up the beach, toward the small building on stilts. He began to move in her direction through the knee-high grass along a low fence marking the upper border of the beach, then saw the headlight of the ATV turn on and heard the engine fire. Within seconds, the machine was roaring and bouncing at full speed toward her. Jacques stepped into the darker shadows, then leaned against the hotel building behind him. As he watched, he beat his palms against the concrete until his wrists hurt.

At last he decided there was nothing he could do. He cut through the hotel property and ran west as fast as he could — only stopping while crossing the deserted width of A1A to snatch off his sloshing tennis shoes and throw them into a cluster of shrubs beside a bank. He crossed a canal bridge and found cover in the semidarkness of a strip mall parking lot where the bridge reached the mainland, then keeled over and vomited.

After heaving a few minutes, he walked behind the strip mall and found a faucet on the building in the alley. He drank until he was full, and then washed his face to flush the sea salt taste that was migrating to his mouth from his face and hair. A light wind funneled through the alley and chilled his body under the wet clothes. Part of the sun appeared and poured through the hotels and across the canal. Jacques looked to the direction of the beach.

He tried to conjure the image Emania must have glimpsed as she struggled against the waves with her throbbing lungs and tight heart, choking on saltwater and tears: the silhouette of Jacques reaching land, then springing from all fours and running across the beach in panic. Then the hardness of the dry, dark beach after she had crawled from the waves and waited in exhaustion for Jacques to reappear and take her numb arm into his grip. She had told him she could make it, and she had. She had done her part, and now he was to come forth and carry her on his back, not like a boat then, but like a car or that ATV, all the way to Sonoma Valley. But she did not feel his grip, and not trusting her sense of touch, kept her eyes open slightly to see if she was being carried or dragged. And when she heard the ATV fire up, she must have realized he was truly gone, that he had already begun in America, perhaps had already made his fortune and was happily married. And again she was alone, and so this time gave up. Her face showed no indication, nor did she make a sound — she merely tucked her arms under her head like a pillow and fell asleep, oblivious to the dry sand pasted to the wet on her lips.

Jacques couldn’t know what happened after she was found; that she was given a bed in a clean hospital where she slept and was hydrated. That she was questioned days later and admitted to the officials that the middle-aged couple found drowned had been on the sandbar with her, but no one else. That she was transferred to Krome Detention Center outside Miami to be incarcerated for over a year and raped twice before being repatriated to Haiti, where she had never been and knew no one. He couldn’t have known all this, but still he dropped his gaze to the tangle of shadows on the concrete behind the strip mall, and began crying.

The ink had bled on the contact card Paul had given him, but the penmanship was still clear. He had seven American dollar bills, folded together and pasty. He washed his face one more time under the faucet, then shook the drops from his fingers and began to walk.

Kevin Allenhas been a newspaper reporter, and is currently completing his MFA degree at Florida International University, where he also teaches. He is the fiction editor of Gulf Stream magazine and has lived in Florida since 1982.

Preston Allen, recipient of the State of Florida Individual Artist Fellowship, has authored the thriller Hoochie Mama , as well as the Sonja H. Stone Prize — winning collection Churchboys and Other Sinners . He teaches English and creative writing in Miami, where he is presently at work on the Hoochie Mama sequel, While Infants Wailed.

Lynne Barrett, recipient of the Edgar Award for Best Short Story, is the author of The Secret Names of Women and The Land of Go. Her stories have been anthologized in A Dixie Christmas, Mondo Barbie, and Simply the Best Mysteries. She is coeditor of the anthologies Birth: A Literary Companion and The James M. Cain Cookbook, Guide to Home Singing, Physical Fitness and Animals (Especially Cats).

David Beatygraduated from Columbia College and received his MFA in creative writing from Florida International University. His story “Ghosts” appeared in The Best American Mystery Stories 2000.

John Bondhas written articles and books about poker, real estate, travel, and scuba, and is coauthor of 2005’s Cooke’s Rules of Real Poker. He is a freelance writer, attorney, scuba instructor, boat captain, adjunct professor, realtor, poker player and raconteur, living in Dania Beach, Florida with his wife Jeannie and their two Shi Tzus.

Tom Corcoranis the author of five Alex Rutledge mysteries set in the Keys and South Florida. His most recent novel is Air Dance Iguana.