Paul Levine: Riptide

And now he knew it all. She had killed Berto and tried to kill him. She had tried to push him off the cliff and, dangling there, thought he knew. But he hadn’t known until now. He never figured she would kill him for slips of paper that could be exchanged for more paper that could be exchanged for cars and furs and jewels. Now he stood paralyzed in the ashen morning light.

Seconds passed.

Then he ran after her. Or after the bonds. He didn’t know which.

He ran toward the end of the dock, his feet picking up splinters from the wooden planks. He heard the engines turn over before he saw the Crooked Rainbow. It began to pull away, Lila on the flying bridge, guiding the big boat into open water, leaning a little on the throttle. He neared the end of the dock and had to slow down to keep from falling in.

He yelled her name.

She didn’t turn around.

Jake Lassiter would remember many things about the next few moments of his life. One was that Lila Summers didn’t turn around. She must have been able to hear him, even over the rumble of the twin engines. She wasn’t that far away and he had good pipes. But she didn’t turn, she just watched the water in front of her and kept heading toward the open bay. Later, remembering the scene, he decided she had heard him but wouldn’t turn, because tears were running down those granite cheekbones. He wanted to believe it, but he would never know.

The rest was frozen. Slowly, so slowly, like a dream. Jake Lassiter stood there yelling, but no words came out.

First he saw the flash.

Next he heard the roar.

Then he felt the concussion.

The flash was orange, the smoke black, a fireball from within the Hatteras, reaching to the sky, scattering a dozen gulls, drowning out their cries. A splintering of wood, fiberglass, canvas, plastic, and metal.

The huge gas tanks exploded, one after another, launching a thousand missiles of shrapnel, the boat tearing itself apart, leaving nothing above the water, and what was left floating was disintegrated or burning, tiny pieces of indistinguishable matter disappearing into the tomb of a black sea.

Jake Lassiter was standing at the end of the dock, staring at the burning wreckage when the first police car pulled up. Captain Mikala Kalehauwehe got out and walked slowly toward him. The cop could have been checking parking meters the way he took his time. Behind him was Lee Hu. Found herself another beau, Lassiter figured later, her mourning taking its usual twenty-four hours.

The captain stopped when he was four feet away. His eyes were hidden behind aviator sunglasses, and when he spoke, his voice was detached and calm. “Looks like you missed your boat, lucky for you.”

Lassiter was silent and the captain continued, “Damn shame how some people forget to hit the blowers and clean out the exhaust fumes before turning the ignition. Those fumes ignite, they blow the fuel tank to kingdom come. A real shame, to die like that, but at least it’s quick, lot better than having your guts ripped open or being cooked to death.”

Jake Lassiter moved a step toward him. He could take the cop right there, could crush his skull against the wooden piling. The cop spread his legs and rested his right hand on the butt of his revolver. He returned Lassiter’s stare.

“Still investigating those two homicides. Seems the hotel’s entertainment guy spotted someone suspicious hanging around the imu that day. A malihini, a tourist, tall guy with an acre of shoulders, dirty blond hair. Hey, somebody puts out a BOLO, you could get picked up.”

Lassiter kept an eye on the cop’s right hand and said, “Or maybe somebody talks to the FBI and DEA, they drag the bay, come up with evidence of plastiques and a timer. Wonder how many people on this island know how to rig something like that?”

The cop’s voice hardened. “I could bust you right now if I wanted. Accessory to two first-degree murders, no bail, a guy could have an accident in the county jail waiting for trial.”

Lassiter looked at the bay where orange flames still licked at black fuel spread across the water. A dozen bleary-eyed tourists gathered on the dock, gawking at the scene. Lassiter turned back, staring into the reflection of the fire in the cop’s sunglasses. “If that’s supposed to scare me, forget it, I’m done being scared. Nothing you can say, nothing you can do, means anything. Do you understand?”

The captain studied him.

“Go ahead, arrest me. I’ll sing a tune about a corrupt police captain that’ll get headlines all the way to Tokyo.”

Lassiter watched Mikala Kalehauwehe sizing him up.

Maybe figuring he underestimated the haole first go-round. I’m still alive and that beat the odds, Lassiter knew. A guy who could cause trouble. They both heard radios crackling, a woman dispatcher’s voice, two more police cars pulling up at the end of the dock.

“You want to talk, go ahead,” the captain said. “Or if you want, it’s over, no more blood. There’s a flight to the mainland this afternoon. Be on it.” Which is what Jake Lassiter did, there being nothing to do on Maui but get framed for two murders, maybe get shot in the back by a cop in a holding cell.

Jake Lassiter returned to Miami the day somebody stole the mayor’s gun. And somebody else stole the fast-food bandit’s gun. The newspapers were brimming with stolen gun stories.

Most readers hadn’t even known that Mayor Rafael Benitez kept a city-issued 380 Beretta automatic in the glove compartment of his city-issued Buick. Apparently, the mayor needed protection in case citizens objected to an increase in cable television rates. Mayor Benitez lost the pistol when his car was stolen from his reserved parking place in front of Les Violins, a downtown nightclub where he solicited advice and cash from the Hispanic Builders’ Association.

The fast-food bandit lost his gun and then some. Trying to hold up a supermercado on Lejeune Road, the bandit ran into two female vice detectives taking a break from a “John detail.” The bandit loped into the parking lot carrying $104.75 from the cash register and when he laughed at two women in leather hot pants who ordered him to freeze, they peppered him with five shots in the chest. In the confusion that followed, a bystander with a fine eye for firearms picked up the bandit’s Desert Eagle. 357 Magnum and coolly walked away.

Neither event would have mattered much to Jake Lassiter if Metro hadn’t cordoned off two lanes of Lejeune Road, backing him up into a vicious gridlock on the way home from the airport. Not that he was in a hurry. Jake Lassiter was in a fog. The flights from Maui to the West Coast, then to Miami, were a blur. He hadn’t talked to anyone, hadn’t touched the cardboard airline food.

After working his way out of the traffic jam south of the airport, Jake Lassiter drove to Cindy’s place where they talked about Tubby. He held her while she wept and then he left.

The next day, Lassiter lay in the hammock behind his coral rock house between Poinciana and Kumquat. He unplugged the phone and didn’t bother to read the mail. At sundown, he coaxed the old yellow convertible to turn over and drove toward Key Biscayne, where he parked on the sandy berm of the Rickenbacker Causeway and walked under the bridge. Leaning against the third piling from the end, a short man with bowed legs in canvas shorts expertly flicked a wrist, and his casting reel whined in the evening air.

“If I were you, I’d use an oil-colored George-N-Shad rubber fish, maybe three-quarter ounce,” Jake Lassiter said.

The man turned and waggled his bushy eyebrows. “If you were me,” Charlie Riggs said, “you would have called an old friend when you had some trouble out there in the islands. And I’m using a Bang-O-Lure shallow running plug, blue on the back, white underneath.”