Jonathon King - A Killing Night

"OK. Has this got anything to do with patrolman Morrison?" she said.

"Yeah, it does. How'd you know?"

"Well," she said, and now it was her turn to hesitate, and maybe for the same reason I had.

"I understand that you two had a bit of a face-to-face yesterday," she said. "I know that's your method of operation, Max. And I'm interested in what that finely tuned perceptive gut of yours told you when you looked him in the eye. But wasn't that a little outside the envelope, trying to tail a cop while he's in his squad car?"

There was a bit of a lilt in her voice, like she was smiling when she said it, and not a smile that held a comeuppance.

"Yeah, I suppose it was. But how did this information come to your attention?"

"O'Shea called me," she said, flat and matter-of-fact.

"You're kidding," I said, spinning the conversation I'd just had with O'Shea.

"He was concerned about you. He thought you were working something that was going to get you into trouble on his account and he said he didn't want to be responsible. He said he figured that I should know the truth before the facts got twisted around to suit the uniforms."

"The truth?" I said.

"Meet me over in the covered parking lot at the Galleria at two, under the west side," she said. "It's raining like hell down here."

I told her I would be there by two, as soon as I checked on another client. It was still only gray here. The clouds were heavy and had not yet opened up but I could hear the surf beginning to slash at the beach as the wind increased. The fronds of the rubber plants and white birds of paradise that sheltered each bungalow were clacking and the smell of salt and flotsam was thick in my nose when I came around the corner and stopped.

The door to Billy's hideaway was standing open. There was a light glowing somewhere behind the front window. Probably the one over the sink in the kitchen, I thought, putting the layout together in my head while I squinted and tried to pick up any movement inside. I stepped closer to the sea grape tree next to me and knelt with one knee in the sand. The wind swung the door a foot more and I could now see a bar stool on the floor and the small dining area light was missing from its spot suspended above the table, only a bare cord left hanging in the air. I was unarmed. My 9mm was back at the shack, wrapped in its oilskin cloth where I had retired it.

Don't jump to conclusions, I told myself, and then got up and took a couple of steps closer, listening through the rumble of the ocean and wind. There was still no movement from inside. I looked around for neighbors but the weather had sent most people indoors.

On the flat concrete stones that started a path in front of the patio I picked up on a trail of dark droplets and one didn't have to be a CSI to recognize blood, and that's when I moved faster. At the door I peered around the corner. The front room had been tossed and glass and half a bulb from the hanging light lay shattered in one corner. The blood trail led to the couch and joined a stain there that formed the shape of Italy in the fabric. I was about to step all the way in when the panicked voices of women came from behind me in the wind.

"Help! Somebody help him!"

I turned and jogged toward the beach and saw three women, one with children huddled into her skirts, waving their arms and pointing out to sea.

I had my shirt off by the time I hit the railing of the bulkhead and then used the top rung to swing over and down. I kicked my Docksides off after landing in the sand and I was honing in on a splotch of yellow that was bobbing fifty yards out. The shape expanded at the top of a crest to something human and then disappeared on the backside of the wave and a prayer seemed to bring it back to the surface again.

I hurdled the first three waves and then launched myself like a spear down into the next one, grabbed a handhold of the bottom sand, pulled myself into a crouch and used my legs to launch again. Each time I dolphined I tried to catch a breath and a glimpse of the yellow shirt. Sometimes I got one, sometimes the other.

When it got too deep I started to freestyle, looking forward each time a wave picked me up to the top of a crest. It didn't take long to close in on the shirt. When I got to within ten yards I could see it was Rodrigo, one side of his face a pale white, the scarred half an angry red. But his eyes were still wide and he was flapping with one arm, trying to stay on top in the oxygen while the white water tried to drown him. I went to a breast stroke and got into the same swell with him and yelled his name. There was no recognition in his face but he saw hope and grabbed for it.

I'd learned enough about water rescues to keep a struggling swimmer off your body. If you let them get a choke hold, you were both going down. I grabbed his wrist when he reached for me and held him at arm's length.

"OK Rodrigo!" I yelled. "You're OK, you're OK!"

I was looking to find his other arm when a wave broke over both our heads. While we were under I reached for his other arm and held it. When we both cleared the white water Rodrigo was screaming in pain like he'd been hooked with a sharp barb and I realized the arm I'd grabbed was hanging limp.

"Broke, Mr. Max! Broke, broke," he spit out, his face twisted in agony and I let go of the arm.

"OK, OK. Let me pull you, Rodrigo. Let me pull!"

He may have understood me or maybe he went into shock but I was able to hook him under the pit of his good arm and turn his back so it was on my hip and I began sidestroking for shore. The waves had no rhythm and in the white water it felt like all I was doing was pulling at air bubbles and getting nowhere. I was breathing heavily and trying to scissor kick each time a wave pushed us, and then I'd rest when it left us bogged down in the swell. It seemed like thirty minutes and I started counting strokes to give myself a goal.

In the middle of my second count to fifty I felt my right foot touch the ocean floor and the next wave pushed both of us onto solid sand. I struggled with Rodrigo's sudden weight and then heard yelling, "We got you, man! We got you!" and we were suddenly surrounded by hands and arms and other bodies in the water around us.

"Watch his arm, watch his arm, it's broke," I said as two men took Rodrigo from me and I felt another strong arm around my own waist.

"Oh, shit, man and his leg, too, watch his leg, man!" another voice said.

On the beach there was a red-and-white rescue truck with a red gumball light spinning on its roof and the lifeguards lay Rodrigo down in the lee side out of the wind and had me sit beside him. The little Filipino had an unnatural lump in the side of his arm where his bicep should have been and from the thigh of his left leg a stark white splinter of bone was protruding, blood trickling from the gash and mixing with the water and running a spiderweb of red down through the hair on his leg. One of the guards wrapped a blanket around the leg and someone draped one over my shoulders.

While my heartbeat tripped down I heard the sound of a siren growing and two of the guards brought out a backboard, strapped Rodrigo onto it, and then carried him to the street end, where an ambulance was backing up to the bulkhead. After they took him away a guard crouched down next to me. It was Amsler, the guard whose chinning bar I used.

"You want a ride to the E.R., Mr. Freeman? Let them check you out?"

"No," I said. "I'm all right. Swallowed a little salt water is all but thanks, thanks for helping out. You, uh, know what hospital they're taking that guy to?"

"Probably North Broward," he said. "Man, I've never seen anyone break bones like that in the surf. That guy was messed up."

"Yeah," I said, "he was."

When I stood I could see up over the Royal Flamingo's bulkhead where the group of women whose call for help had set me off was talking with a uniformed Broward sheriff's office deputy. One of the women pointed to me and the cop looked up. I didn't recognize him. He was writing on a pad that looked like a reporter's notebook and the pages were flapping in the wind. I started toward the bottom of the stairs as he passed out cards to the women and by the time I reached the top he was heading for me.