Paul Levine - Mortal Sin

Florio went into the house, letting the door bang behind him. A moment later, Guillermo Diaz came out the door, carrying the briefcase to the picnic table. Tiger opened the latch and pulled out the same paper I had looked at last night, or was it a thousand years ago? “Sign it, shithead.”

“Whatever you say?”

He handed me a fat Mont Blanc fountain pen. I made a couple of exaggerated arm motions, found the signature line, and wrote a single word.

Tiger picked up the document and drew it close to his face. He may have been nearsighted. “What the fuck! What the fuck is this?”

“You said to sign it ‘Shithead,’”I explained calmly.

“Why don’t we just feed him to the gators?” Guillermo Diaz suggested. His chubby face was pinched in a frown. Maybe his cowboy boots hurt his feet.

“Look,” Tiger said, “let me tell you where you’re at. In a few hours, you’re going to be hanging by the neck from the ceiling fan in your living room. Somebody will find you the first day that’s hot enough to carry your stink to the neighbors’ yard. Now we can do this easy or hard, it’s up to you. You want to spare yourself some pain, just sign the paper.”

Die easy or die hard. I was hoping for a third alternative.

Tiger reached into the briefcase and pulled out another copy and slammed it down in front of me. Then he lifted the stun gun and tapped me on the side of the head with it, just above the ear. “Sign!”

I held the expensive pen, and this time, in my best penmanship, wrote three words:

Tiger bent close to look at it, his index finger tracing under the words. I shifted the pen from my fingers into my fist, fourteen-karat gold tip pointed toward the sky.

He squinted at the words. “The fuck is this?”

When his face was a foot above the table, I brought the fist up. Straight and hard.

The dagger-sharp tip sank into his right eye, and I jammed it home. I pushed it through lens and iris and cornea and the orbital bones and the optic nerve, and judging from the gush of blood that spurted like a garden hose, I’d pushed it straight through the internal carotid artery, too. Then, with a final shove with the palm of my hand, I rammed it straight into the frontal lobe of the brain.

The scream was the wail of a dying beast. Blood gushed from his eye socket over his face, down onto the table and over the papers. The lens and iris popped out and hung, suspended from his face, dripping a jellylike fluid. Tiger staggered backward, his hands groping for the pen, which had vanished inside his eye socket. He whipped his head back and forth like a horse trying to toss its bit, spraying blood in every direction. He opened the other eye, then screamed that he was blind, which he would have been from the severed nerves. Finally, he fell, his body twitching, his screams silenced.

Jim Tiger was stone-cold dead, and I was stone-cold sober.

Guillermo Diaz stood, frozen. By the time he reached inside his nylon jacket, I had picked up the stun gun and aimed it at his chest. The first electric zap buckled his knees and opened his mouth. The second sat him down. The third drove a palsy through his arms and legs.

I heard the door bang open behind me and turned in time to see Florio, a twelve-gauge shotgun cradled in his arms, coming toward me. I dived to the deck and rolled just as a blast tore out a chunk of the railing, the noise ringing in my ears. The shotgun barrel followed me to the floor, and I kept moving, scrambling hand over hand. I looked over my shoulder to see Florio pump and raise the gun once more. I took two steps and dived over the railing, a blast of pellets tearing at my coattail.

Into the blackness.

The fall took forever.

I expected to be shot out of the air, like a clay pigeon.

And then the splash.

It was something between a belly flop and an Olympic medal, closer to the former. I went under, not knowing how deep it was but thankful for once that Nicky Florio had dredged, with or without permits.

I heard another blast and felt the ping of pellets in the water above me. I stayed under as long as I could.

I surfaced and took a breath, my lungs exploding with pain. My breathing sounded like a locomotive in my ears. I tried not to splash. The sun was sizzling on the horizon, the black water glinting with morning light. I wondered what Nicky could see from the high-stilted porch.

I listened to the sounds of the swamp. Birds chirping, frogs burping, the screech of an animal I had never heard before. I floated on my back, my legs weighted down by my wing tips. I discarded the shoes and kicked gently, moving away from the house.

Another roar from the shotgun, but farther away.

Still moving backward, I bumped into something rough and scaly.

A log?

I whirled around, searching for yellow-green eyes, or worse, red ones…

It was a large branch of a lignum vitae tree.

I resumed my easy backstroke, tearing off my suit coat and letting it float away. I maneuvered around the hardwood hammock, putting more distance between the house and myself. Five minutes later, I could barely see the light from the windows through the tops of the mahogany trees.

I was trying to conserve my energy, floating, swimming, floating again, when I heard it.

A heavy breath beside me. I rolled to the side and was sprayed by a fine mist from two nostrils just above the water’s surface. The rest of the animal was hidden below the surface.

From diving, I remembered what to do when you encounter a shark. Don’t panic; don’t splash; don’t strike out. I wondered if the advice applied to alligators. No matter. I was too scared to do anything. I just floated there while it moved closer and breathed its hot breath on me and finally nuzzled me with its snout.

I treaded water and the animal raised its head.

Dull gray, the color of an elephant, with a blunt-nosed face. It reminded me of a hippo.

Then it squeaked and nuzzled me.

A big, lumpy manatee. A sea cow with bad breath. It squeaked again. I treaded water some more, backpedaling. Lumpy moved its arm like front flippers and came close enough to kiss me. This guy, or gal, must have weighed half a ton.

I didn’t know what to do, so I imitated its sound. Mine was more of a squawk, a little off key. I hoped it was the manatee version of hello, and not a war whoop. Or a mating call.

The manatees are essentially harmless and friendly. They eat grass and drift through life not bothering anybody. Man is a much greater danger to the manatee than the other way around. The big lugs float just below the surface in our waterways and canals, where power boaters frequently slice them up with their propellers.

Sirens of the sea, they are the sea maids from A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Five hundred years ago, Columbus saw manatees floating by as he approached the New World. His log revealed he thought they were mermaids. Columbus had been at sea too long.

Another squeak from Lumpy, another squawk from me.

Then it did a pirouette, slowly spinning 180 degrees, showing me its wrinkled gray back. I tentatively stroked its head, provoking a squeak-squeak.

I stopped stroking, and it turned and faced me again.

The sun was an orange fireball just above the horizon. A heron croaked as it flew overhead. There was the splash of feeding fish nearby.

I was tired of treading water. “What do you want, pal?”

Another squeak. Then another pirouette.

It just floated there, its back to me.

Waiting. It expected me to do something. But what?

Growing even more tired, I put my arms around its neck and held on. Lumpy started swimming. So that was it. The manatee was a cabbie, and I was the fare. We would not break Mark Spitz’s records, but we were moving. Judging from the position of the rising sun, we were headed north and maybe a little east. Not that it made much difference, since I didn’t knowhow to get out of here anyway, but we were going deeper into the Glades and away from Tamiami Trail. Keep it up, and we might hit Lake Okeechobee.