Randy White - Shark River

“Cordero is currently on a life-support system. The prognosis is not good. At best, he’ll be a functioning paraplegic. Amador Cordero is the oldest son of Edgar Cordero. I’ve already told you about Edgar, and I can assure you that he is extremely interested in any information relating to you. I suggest you be alert, and be aware. Very alert. Very aware. If I learn anything else, I’ll contact you immediately.” He added, “My best to Mister Tomlinson,” and hung up.

I deleted the message and took the notepad across the room and out the door, Ransom following along, talking behind me. “He referrin’ to the person in the mask you hurt yesterday, that’s what that all about, ain’t it? He telling you it worse than you think, he warning you. Something scary ’bout his voice, too, it so deep. Who was that? Maybe you better call the po-lice, my brother. Let them handle it.”

It was an unsettling thing to contemplate a person connected to tubes, being inhalated by a machine, frozen in his own immobile body because of something I’d done. I had to stand there and think about it for a moment. Had to remind myself of Amador Cordero’s behavior, his assault on two innocent women, before I answered, “I’m not calling anybody. Neither are you.”

By now, she’d followed me through the door into my lab, with its odor of chemicals and alcohol, old wood and ozone from aerators oxygenating the aquariums along the south wall. The aerators made comforting, burbling, Flubber-like sounds. She continued to press me to seek help from the police until I told her knock it off; I wasn’t discussing it anymore. That what I wanted to discuss was her cryptic interest in investing a large sum of money in the stock market.

“You think I’m going to introduce you to Mack? No way. You’re not talking to Mack until you give me the whole story. That figure you mentioned-seventeen thousand dollars? Where’d that come from? You pull a figure like that out of the blue?”

“It just a number that come into my head.”

“Don’t do that to me, Ransom. I’m telling you right now. Tell me everything or I’m not going to waste my time talking with you.”

“Just because I lied for you don’t give you the right to call me a liar.”

“See? That’s exactly the sort of thing you do that really pisses me off. It’s another one of your devices. I know you lied for me, but please don’t try and use it to manufacture guilt. I asked you a simple question.”

“You don’t believe I could make that much money waitressing?”

“On Cat Island? Absolutely not. I’m not stupid. So tell me-if you really do have that much money, where’d you get it?”

Ransom was looking out the window, suddenly not so interested in what I was saying. Heard her say, “Uh-oh!” but very soft, like she didn’t want me to hear.

I looked out the same window to see two large black men, one of them wearing a red, black, and green Rastafarian headnet, the other with dreadlocks matted long and hanging down like a mane. The two of them were walking along the boardwalk toward my house. On their faces were forced expressions of neighborly confidence and familiarity-contrived since they certainly were not my neighbors. One of them used an ebony-handled walking stick. He wasn’t limping. A walking stick in the hands of a healthy man is a weapon, not a cane.

“Do you know those men?”

“What men you talking about?”

I put my hand on the back of her head and forced her to look through the window that her eyes were suddenly now trying to avoid. “ Those men. Tell me the truth. There’s a reason I’m in a hurry, so don’t screw around.”

The reason was that if the two men had been sent so soon by Edgar Cordero, I needed to open the old locker from beneath my bed and dig out a firearm. I’ve dealt with enough drug people, and more than enough Colombians, to know that if men came all that way to take revenge, they’d fire without hesitating and shoot to kill.

Ransom was frightened. There was no mistaking the involuntary muscular tremor. She said, “Goddamn, man! What them two no-account Jamaican boys doin’ here on this fancy island?”

Yeah, she knew them alright. I said, “Then tell me. Who are they? Why’re they here?”

“That mean man I tell you about, the witch man. Sinclair Benton? He like the Jamaicans ’cause they so smart and they work so hard. Those two, one named Izzy, the bigger man, he named Clare. They worked for Mr. Benton. They at the restaurant that day he call me a cow, the day they all laughed.”

The men were looking at the house now as they walked. Heard one of them call, “Yoohoo, Ransom girl? You got ol’ friends come here to lay the visit on you. You in there, Ransom girl?”

I had her elbow now and gave it a squeeze. “But why are they here? Tell me.”

She really was scared now. It was in her voice. “I’m sorry, my brother. If I’d known they’d come this far looking for me, I wouldn’t a done what I did. Them Rastamans, they ain’t supposed to like to leave the islands, man. They call a plane an iron bird, like it something bad.”

Before I could ask again, she turned her face to me and said, “Could be, they think I stole something from Sinclair Benton. From his house after the man died. Could be that the reason they come to Florida looking for me.”

I said, “Seventeen thousand dollars? Is that what they think you stole?”

She smiled, her blue eyes looking into mine. “Man, Daddy Gatrell, he were sure right about how smart he say you are. How you know that?”

Outside, the two men were coming up the steps to the top deck. I heard the same voice call, “Come out and see your friends, Ransom girl. Or we come in and see you.”

As I went toward the door, she said behind me, nearly whispering now. “And a ring. They maybe think I stole a ring from that bad man, too.”

I looked at the gold ring on her right hand. I’d noticed the ring because of its unusual size but hadn’t taken a close look. “That one?”

She was twisting it off, in a hurry now to slide the ring into her pocket. “Could be,” she said.

Izzy was the talker, standing there with his big smile, golden stars on front incisors, his dreadlocks matted and waxed like combed wool hanging to the small of his back. Loose blue drawstring pants, white tank top that showed muscles and cordage and veins when he moved his arms, his skin very black except for his palms, which he showed often because he was a showman. He used big hand gestures. The palms of his hands, they were salmon-colored, nearly pink.

Clare stood beside Izzy, a step behind, his silence making him seem bigger, a man who filled his own space and spilled out into the space of everyone else. It was impossible not to be aware of him. He stood there listening in his knit Rasta cap, red, green and black, which was huge on his head, holding all the hair we could not see, Clare with his tiny black eyes set deep beneath his forehead, the frontal plate of his skull wide and very flat, leaning his weight on the ebony-handled walking stick. I noted that the handle was a death’s head, another skull, this one polished bright, jaws thrown open, laughing. Or screaming.

What was Sinclair Benton’s Obeah nickname? Ransom had told me. Mr. Bones.

Izzy said, “So that how we find you, my sister! It not so hard. We know you fly Air Bahamas to Lauderdale, and the Greyhound bus people, they very helpful. And you a girl who like to talk! You talk to the ticket lady, you talk to the bus driver, tellin’ ev’body your plans. What Clare and me, what we don’t understand is, we come all this way to see you, why you not happy to see some your old island friends?”

His speech pattern and delivery were much faster than Ransom’s, his accent a rounder, Jamaican lilt. I heard, Wha-we dawn unerstan-eeze, we cawm all dese way… as I sat, leaning my hip against the railing, close to the front door of my house. Ransom was standing in front of them, face to face. She’d stepped out to meet them as if dealing with guests from the instant I said, “You fellas have a reason to be here?” preparing to tell them to leave. But Ransom had told me, “I’ll handle this mess,” and left me there to watch and listen.