Red Tide (2 page)

My mouth felt dry. I kissed her lightly and she smiled.

The door opened again. Two charter captains I knew came in with their mates, three women and two other guys I didn’t know. One of them, a guy with a deep tan and a shifty, uncertain look to him, started yelling that drinks for the house were on him. They all pushed past us to the bar, cheering and talking all at the same time.

I smiled at Nancy. “Have a seat.”

She looked around the room and then arched a perfect eyebrow at me. “If you’re sure I’m not interrupting anything—”

“But you are,” I said. “And just in time, too.”

I settled Nancy in my booth and went to get her a drink. I came back with her spritzer and slid into the booth across from her. That meant I had to sit with my back to the door.

No man who grew up in America dreaming about cowboys is comfortable sitting with his back to the door. That’s how Wild Bill Hickok was killed, and we’re all half-convinced some cowardly desperado will slink in the door and blaze away at your back. It happens all the time—look at Jesse James.

Most of that uneasiness faded when Nancy locked her eyes onto mine. “Billy,” she said. “I’m sorry I’ve been so—” she fluttered a hand. It was strong, sleek, and smooth, the nails short and clean. “I guess off-and-on is the phrase. I’m sorry.”

“So am I.” I took her hand.

I held Nancy’s hand and she didn’t pull it away and we hadn’t started our evening’s fight yet. Who knows what might have happened next.

“Hey,” she said softly in a voice I hadn’t heard for a while. The rum and honey sound of it sent goose bumps up my arms.

I squeezed her hand. “Hey yourself.”

“I haven’t seen that smile for a while.”

I thought of a lot of things I could say to that—that it hadn’t been around, that she hadn’t been looking for it. But I settled for, “It’s been here. It’s always here for you.”

She pulled her hand away and I wondered what I’d done wrong this time. She looked up over my shoulder and a voice boomed out behind me.

“Well,” said the voice, “do I smell bacon?”

I could only think, at least it wasn’t something I said. “Hello, Tiny.”

“Hello, Bacon,” he said in his annoying voice. “Bacon” as in ex-cop, burned-out pig. He thought that was pretty funny. Tiny had a surprisingly high-pitched voice with a thick Pittsburgh accent that always seemed to pour sarcasm out of his twisted mouth. It kept him talking from the left side. His hairline just missed merging with his eyebrows and his small blue eyes always seemed filled with stupid suspicion. He reminded me of a hornless pink rhinoceros.

He had been sniping at me for a while, taking cheap shots whenever he got the chance, and they had started to get to me, to eat away at my careful self-control, in that slow, sullen August heat. Sooner or later I knew he would catch me when I was worn down by the heat and the dull desperation of the summer, and then I would hurt him.

But this wasn’t the time. Not with Nancy here in front of me, smiling and not looking for a fight for the first time in months.

I turned back to Nancy, but I could tell by her expression that Tiny hadn’t moved.

I looked. He still stood there, staring down at me with stupid delight.

“Bar’s over there, Tiny.”

He curled his lip an extra inch higher. Maybe he thought it made him look like Elvis. It didn’t. “Thanks,” he said. “I didn’t know that.”

I nodded. “That’s what I thought.”

“Billy—” Nancy said with a warning tone in her voice.

Tiny pushed his head toward me. “What’s that s’posed to mean, Bacon?”

“It means you couldn’t find a fish even if it was in your pants, and you can’t find anything better to do than drool on my shoulder.”

Nancy stood up. “That’s enough, Billy. Let’s go.”

Tiny put a hand on my shoulder and leaned down. “Blow me,” he said.

It wasn’t much as an insult. It was about what you could expect from Tiny. But something about the combination of the stupid retort, the sharp words from Nancy, the beer, the lousy ball game, and that damned August heat made it seem a lot worse. Whatever it was, I’d had enough.

I threw a sharp elbow into Tiny’s groin and slid out of the booth. By the time he half-straightened I was already standing. “Son of a bitch,” he said, his teeth showing. I hit him again, in the gut this time, and he folded some more.

“God 
damn
 it, Billy,” said Nancy. “If you think—”

I didn’t think. There wasn’t time. Tiny gave a high-pitched gurgle and charged me. His head went into my mid-section, just above the belt, and drove me backwards.

I had about three steps back before I was going to slam into the wall. I used one of them to move sideways. Tiny kept going straight until his head smacked the wall with a dull bong. He sat down hard and just blinked a few times.

I turned to Nancy. “I’m sorry,” I said. “Do you want to leave now?”

She looked at me, shaking her head. Then she turned away and headed for the door.

“Nancy. Wait.” I caught her just two steps short of the door. “Nancy, look—” I started.

She turned to me. “Billy,” she snapped. Then her eyes widened. “Duck!”

I heard a slight scuffling sound behind me. I grabbed Nancy and swung her away, turning just in time to see a chair fly through the space we had been standing in.

Tiny was up and charging again. A table got in his way. He knocked it over. The thick glass ashtray flew sideways and smacked one of the shrimpers. He turned his head and glared at his partner. “God damn,” he said, and swung a haymaker at his buddy.

The second shrimper flew backwards and landed on the table occupied by the charter captains and their wives. Their drinks spilled on them as the table collapsed.

One of the captains, a bald guy with a beard and a diamond earring, stood up grinning. “Ya-HOO!” he bellowed and belted the shrimper.

In a moment a full-scale bar fight was raging. I wrestled Tiny to the floor, but as I stood up the bearded captain’s mate stepped over and slugged me. “Son of a bitch!” he yelled.

I stepped back and Tiny bit my ankle.

I kicked Tiny in the face. His nose broke and blood poured over my shoe. Then the mate was on me again. I hit him hard in the stomach. He bent over and threw up on Tiny.

I turned to Nancy, who was half-crouched against the wall. “Can we just—” I said, but that’s as far as I got.

“You bastard!” a voice shrilled at me, and somebody jumped on my back. Long red fingernails clawed at my cheeks; it was the mate’s girlfriend. “You bastard!” she repeated. “You leave Bobby alone!”

She clawed again and I felt the blood start to trickle down my face. I have a life-long prejudice against hitting women. So I turned quickly and backed into the wall, just hard enough to knock the wind out of her. “Ucck—” she said and slid off my back.

“Jeannie!” Bobby bellowed, and charged me again. Luckily he ran into Tiny, who had the same idea. The two of them glared at each other as they bumped. Tiny swung first. Bobby ducked under the punch and slapped Tiny hard on the side of the face. Tiny grabbed for Bobby, but Bobby stepped back and fell over his girlfriend. So Tiny grabbed the uncertain-looking guy with the tan who was standing with his back against the wall. Tiny got him in a bear hug and lifted him off the floor, grunting with the effort of his rib-cracking squeeze.

I stepped close to Tiny and hooked him in the kidney, hard; once, twice, and he dropped the uncertain guy and turned on me with a sound like a wild boar charging. But Bobby sat up just then and Tiny stumbled over him, coming to his feet a moment later with a grip on Bobby’s throat.

The bald captain brought a chair down on Tiny’s head from the rear. Tiny dropped Bobby, shook his head, and charged at me again.

Wondering what the hell his head was made of, I hit Tiny three times as he got his arms around me. He pulled me in to his chest and started to squeeze. I rammed the heel of my hand under his chin and then brought my forehead into his broken nose as hard as I could.

Tiny took a half step backward and glared at me. I hit him again, right on the chin, as hard as I could hit. He shook his head at me. “Son of a—” he said, and fell over.

I took a deep breath, which was a bad idea. My shirt was covered with blood and vomit from Tiny’s bear hug. I took the shirt off and tossed it on Tiny. I hoped he’d gotten what he wanted out of all this. I hadn’t. But at least it was over.

“You killed him, you son of a bitch!” said Bobby, and swung at my head.

I ducked the punch and threw Bobby back to the center of the room. He stumbled over a chair, spun, and bumped one of the shrimpers, who slugged him to the floor without even looking.

I looked at Nancy. She had worked herself into the corner and was holding half a chair. She looked ready to use it, her lips pressed together and her eyes flicking angrily around the room.

“I’m sorry about this,” I said, raising my voice over the uproar.

She glared at me and opened her mouth to say something. Before she could say it the door crashed open. “Police! Freeze, all of you!”

I turned to look. Four cops stood just inside the door with their nightsticks ready.

I looked back at Nancy.

“Damn you, Billy,” she said.

The Key West jail doesn’t look like much. It can’t. It has to keep a low profile and look quiet and clean on the outside so it won’t scare tourists. Most people don’t even know it’s the jail when they go past. They think it’s a parking garage.

The inside isn’t bad, considering. Even the drunk tank seems like it was built with repeat business in mind. After all, we have some very important visiting drunks here, and it doesn’t pay to offend them.

That night there had been few enough drunks when we arrived at the station, so they’d stuck us all into the tank instead of into separate cells. Maybe the arresting officers thought that was funny, cooping up a bunch of guys who had just torn up a bar. Maybe they thought we’d keep the fight going in there so whoever pulled the late shift would have to keep breaking us up. That would seem like a pretty good joke to a lot of cops.

It didn’t work out that way. Tiny might have had enough, and maybe all the hard whacks on his head had had some kind of cumulative effect. Or maybe he was just tired. Whatever it was, Tiny had no more fight in him. He just stretched out on the floor and snored all night.

They’d let Nancy go on her own recognizance right after booking her. Being in a nurse’s uniform had probably helped. She hadn’t said another word to me. She hadn’t even looked in my direction.

The last I saw of her as they herded us back to the cell, she was sitting on a bench staring with disgust at the ink on her fingertips. I guess she’d never been fingerprinted before. I wanted to tell her that the ink wore off after a while, but the cop behind me poked me with his clipboard. “Let’s go, killer,” he said.

For the rest of the gladiators, it was over; it had never been personal for them, just something to do in between fishing trips. It was part of the lifestyle, and everybody understood that when the cops come it’s over.

The two shrimpers sat down and went to sleep propped against the wall. Bobby wasn’t feeling well; he just huddled on the floor and moaned himself to sleep. I moved to a corner where the floor looked clean and sat. I closed my eyes, not tired so much as feeling stupid.

After only half a minute of some pretty good self-pity I heard the soft scrape of a shoe nearby. I opened my eyes and looked up. It was a good shoe, one I knew cost as much as a good fly rod. I craned my neck.

The guy with the deep-water tan was standing in front of me looking tanned and uncertain. “Uh,” he said, with a twitch of a smile. I raised an eyebrow at him and he looked sideways, then squatted down beside me. “Rick Pearl,” he said, and held out his hand.

I decided he meant that Rick Pearl was his name, so I shook his hand and said, “Billy Knight.”

“Um,” he said. “I wanted to, you know. Ah, thank you?”

“You’re welcome,” I said. “But for what?”

“Come on,” he said. “You saved my life. That guy would have killed me.” And he nodded across the room to where Tiny sprawled in a snoring heap.

I squinted at Rick. He could be drunker than he looked, or he might be pulling my leg. But I couldn’t remember saving anybody’s life lately. Not even my own.

“Are you drunk, Rick?”

“What? No.” He flushed a little, mad or embarrassed, I couldn’t tell which. “In the bar. You took the guy off me in the bar,” he said, and I vaguely remembered hitting Tiny when he was squeezing Rick.

“I mean it,” he went on, “that guy was scary. It’s—I’ve never seen anything like it before. Like—like some kind of wild animal charging. I, uh—I mean, I’m not a pussy or anything, but—” He shook his head. “Whoa. Talk about needing an attitude adjustment.” And he gave a small hoarse cough of laughter.

I decided he was serious. His laugh, the way he talked, his uncertainty—I’d seen his behavior before. It was the mark of the rich kid out of place, what my mother would have called a slumming playboy. And then I remembered his name, Pearl, and the last piece fell into place.

“You said Pearl? Like Pearl’s Department Store?”

He blushed. This time it was definitely embarrassment. “I don’t have much to do with the store. My dad mostly runs things.”

I was right. For somebody so good at figuring out people, I was sure screwing up my own life.

“I really do mean it,” he went on. “I’m really, uh, you know. Thanks a lot. Um, thank you.”

“Forget it,” I said. “Tiny’s been wanting this for a long time.”

“Tiny? His name is 
Tiny
?”

“Yeah. I think it refers to brain size.”

He snickered. “He’s got a little evolving to do, that’s for sure.”

“Have a seat, Rick,” I said. “It’s going to be a long night.”

Rick settled down beside me. “Um, actually, I probably won’t be here very long,” he said. “Which is why—you know.”

“Let it go, Rick,” I said, getting just a little tired of the ponderous gratitude. It’s not something spoiled rich kids are good at, so they generally tend to overdo it.