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Authors: Jeff Lindsay

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BOOK: Red Tide
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When we stepped outside there was a small cheer from the clot of protesters, and Nicky gave them a little speech. He told them the fight wasn’t over and letting him out of jail couldn’t break his spirit. Then he said there would be a big rally for Haitian Awareness tomorrow night and they should spread the word.

The sound of four people clapping was thunderous, but I managed to get him safely through the crush and home.

• • •

But as I drove Nicky home it hit me that he had a master plan for getting justice, and I was a big part of it. So when he stopped talking to a take a breath, I asked him. “What is it you think I can do?”

He beamed at me. “Fix it, Billy. It’s something you’re good at. You’ll get this whole thing straightened out.”

“What
 whole thing?”

He just kept smiling. “The Haitian thing, Billy. The Haitian problem. This body I found is only the tip of the iceberg. I’ve checked into it. The coppers aren’t interested because this is an ordinary event. Happens all the time.” He whacked my arm.

“Ow,” I said.

“Does that strike you as a wanky little bit bizarre, mate? There’s so many of these bodies they think of it as 
normal?
 I mean, if the captain got hit on the head by a frog turd he’d investigate, but if seven tons of reptile shit fell from the sky he’d call it weather? Eh? That make sense to you?”

“Yes,” I said. “It’s the way cops work. You can put your finger in a dike. You can’t put your finger in the ocean.”

He waved his finger at me. “Wrongo, Billy. Hundredth monkey. We can make a difference. Every one of us. Mass murder happens because nobody can believe it’s happening. Nobody thinks they can stop it. And so Hitler invades Poland—”

“Nicky, hold on. This isn’t mass murder—”

“Isn’t it?”

“—this is just one Haitian refugee who didn’t make it. I’m sorry, but it 
does
 happen all the time. They sail in tiny, leaky boats, so crowded they can’t float—”

“With no money, Billy? With nothing in their pockets except a picture of Saint Patrick?”

I blinked and turned to look at him. He was still smiling, but it looked a little dangerous now. A horn snarled and I turned back in time to avoid broadsiding a van filled with bright pink Canadians. “What the hell are you talking about, Nicky?”

“I saw the file, Billy. The man’s pockets were empty. A refugee has some cash, something of value. He has an address of friends or relatives tucked away. Christ on a bun, mate, he has a wallet on him any road. This man didn’t.”

I shook my head. “That doesn’t mean anything.”

“Aw spit, Billy. You know it does.”

“It might have fallen out. It might have been in a backpack. His wife might have been holding it. There are a hundred explanations—”

“Or one very simple one. Somebody went through his pockets before they chucked him over into the drink.”

“And anyway this isn’t my problem. I’m not James Bond, Nicky. I take people fishing.”

Nicky just shook his head. “You can’t fight it, Billy. You’re already in this. You may not know it yet, but you’re hooked.” And he settled back with a smug look on his face.

I got a very ugly suspicion. “Nicky,” I said.

“Yeah, mate?”

“Why did you get yourself arrested?”

He tried to look surprised. “To wake you up, Billy. To get your attention. To get you involved.”

I felt like I was in one of those old cartoons. I was Elmer Fudd with steam coming out of my ears while Bugs Bunny calmly chewed one of my prize carrots in my face. “You went to jail just to get me involved?”

Nicky smirked. “And here you are. The hook is set. You’ll fight it, but it’s too late. You’re in.”

I came as close to hitting Nicky as I’d ever been since I’d met him. But nothing I could think of to say made a dent in his cast-iron smug certainty that I was going to get involved and fix everything.

I got him home without strangling him, but that may be because the hangover had slowed me down. I told Nicky there was a lot in what he said and I would think about it. Then I made him promise not to do anything more about making people aware of the problem without telling me first. That cheered him up. It meant I was involved. He agreed, and was happily opening a couple of beers when I closed his front door and hopped the short coral wall to my own yard.

I spent most of that day circling around my living room until I couldn’t stand it any longer. I rode my bicycle over to the marina, dodging around Art’s dockmaster shack. I didn’t want to listen to a list of my shortcomings right now.

Nobody had stolen my boat. Nobody had cleaned the moss off the bottom, either. I sat and looked at it for a while. I could almost see the barnacles grow.

This was supposed to be what I wanted. This was why I had come here. To take a small boat out onto the flats and catch fish every day. Lately every day had turned into every now and then, but the desire to do it was still there. Wasn’t it?

I didn’t know. There was a hollow place where hope and desire had been carved out of me. Maybe it would grow back. Maybe it was dead, burned away by the August heat.

I wondered if Nancy was happy.

Chapter Eight

It was about an hour from sunset when I got back to my house. Nicky waited for me in my kitchen. “Mate,” he said pleasantly. “Have a cold one.” He generously handed me one of my own beers.

“Thanks,”

“So,” he said casually. “What’re your plans for the evening, mate?”

“I’m off duty tonight. I don’t feel up to saving the world.”

Nicky gave me a look of complete and permanent innocence. It was one of his best. “What’s that, eh? Did I say fetch the Batmobile? Put on the cape? Didn’t I say have a beer? Your name’s Billy, not Silly.”

He said that last like it solved everything, with the complete satisfaction of an Australian who has ended an argument with a rhyme. I don’t know why they feel that way about putting two rhyming words together, but they do. Rhymes had a magical power for Nicky and his countrymen. Even if it doesn’t mean anything, an Australian hit with a rhyme will back off, mutter, “Right, sorry,” and call for another round, on him. Maybe it comes from living in a place where all the towns have names like “Woolamaroo,” “Kalgoorlie,” and “Wollongong.” In a landscape littered with impossible sounds, putting two of them together is so unlikely it must call for an automatic celebration.

 “You’ve gone all sour,” he told me, grabbing himself another beer.

“I know,” I said. “Art already told me.”

“It’s more than Nancy. Though that might have turned it loose. But it was already there.”

“Think so?”

“Too right. I think Nancy sensed it first, and that may have had something to do with why she pulled out.”

“Good to know.”

“The point is,” he said, after draining half the bottle, “you’ve lost your 
zest
.” He wagged a finger at me. “Can’t do that, mate. Man’s got to have his zest.”

“I know. Grab for all the gusto you can get. I’ve seen the commercials.”

“You can laugh if you want,” he said, looking slightly hurt.

“Actually, I don’t think I can.”

“But the point is, you’re a bloody mess.”

“Are you going someplace with this?”

“Too right I am. Finish your beer.”

I finished my beer. Nicky finished three in the same time. It didn’t seem to affect him. I’ve never seen beer affect him in any way. Then he led me out the door and, to my surprise, over to Mallory Square.

Mallory Square is a small cross-section of life on earth. Nobody knows where it came from, or how it started, but it keeps growing and leaving a bigger mess. Originally the Square was a big parking lot next to an old concrete wharf. Now it’s a carnival, a street fair from one of those out-of-focus Italian films. There are jugglers, a sad magician, a high-wire act, trained animals, musicians, food vendors, and because it’s Key West, T-shirt salesmen. And the whole thing is supposed to be a celebration of sunset. But for me it was like going to the top of the Empire State Building if you live in Manhattan. It’s strictly for tourists.

“Bet you haven’t seen ’er for a while,” Nicky said as we walked through the parking lot and towards the crowd at the far end.

“Why would I, for God’s sake?”

He winked at me. “It’s fun. Remember fun?”

“Not really,” I said.

“Sour,” he said again, shaking his head.

We pushed in past a row of tables selling cheap jewelry. Nicky seemed to enjoy himself. He laughed at the performers’ bad jokes, clapped at the silly tricks, put dollar bills in the hat each time it was passed.

He dragged me all the way down the line, pausing for each act. I let him, stewing in a kind of uninvolved stupor. But eventually it all started to get to me.

“Nicky,” I said, with a small edge of anger.

“Relax. This is just exactly what you need. Straight up, you’ll see.”

We pushed through the crowd. I didn’t try to get too close. I had seen all the acts, practically memorized some of them, the ones that had been there the longest.

Nicky was humming happily, in spite of the constant threat of getting lost in a large crowd of steadily moving people, all a foot taller than he was. He had bought a couple of gigantic cookies and was working through them like a termite with rabies, spewing cookie dust in all directions. He always eats like that, with reckless disregard for community standards.

One small girl, about six years old, stopped to watch him eat the cookie, unable to believe that anybody was allowed to eat like that. A large hand yanked her back into the stream of gawkers.

We moved along the line of performers. There was a certain familiar rhythm to the place, like the tides. Nothing changed here; it was a look at the heart of Key West, with the steady rhythm of the people moving through, dropping their money into the stream, and disappearing again. The fact that there were new faces every night was less significant than the fact that there were always faces.

After a while I started to relax a little. Nicky was right. This was a great place to not think, and it provided just what I needed, a reminder that life goes on.

Just as I was starting to pick up the rhythm and blank my mind, I heard something new, and it jolted me out of my trance.

A crowd was gathered where there was not supposed to be a crowd. This had been a dead area on the dock. A guy with dreadlocks and a guitar had the spot staked out, and he droned half-hearted reggae to two or three people at a time. He’d been doing it as long as I could remember.

Something was different tonight. For the first time the guy sounded interested in his own music.

Normally there would be one small child watching him, clinging to the hand of an impatient adult. Now the crowd was three people deep, elbow to elbow, and they were craning their necks to see. Curious, I moved around the edge of the crowd and found a place where I could see.

A beautiful young woman with short blonde hair was doing a gymnast’s floor routine, working to the reggae beat with the grace and intensity you only see in Eastern European athletes at the Olympics. I watched her do an amazingly elegant walkover, up onto her hands and then over into a perfect split. As her hands went up for applause I caught her eye, and—

“That’s a whacka-toodly in the fan-doodly, eh?” said Nicky.

I stared at him. “What language is that?”

He nodded at the woman. “Bet that hurts.”

I looked back at the gymnast. Her back was to me as she began another complicated series of moves. It was a good back; slim and sleek.

I must have watched her a little too long. When I looked up, Nicky was staring at me with his gigantic, gleaming eyes.

“What,” I said.

“Nothin’, mate. Ab-so-toodly nothin’.”

Somewhere between irritation and embarrassment, I turned away and shoved through the crowd, down to the far end of the dock where they sell a pretty good conch fritter. I bought some and munched grumpily, staring out over the water at the idiots on the sunset cruise boats. Probably thought they were having fun. Bah. Humbug.

After a few minutes Nicky joined me. He went through three or four of the fritters with the same whacked-out recklessness, making chunks fly in all directions, completely unaware that he was attracting stares.

“You should put down a hat,” I told him. “Make people think you’re trying to do that.”

He shoved in the last chunk of fritter. I waited for applause, but the sun was gone and the crowds were thinning now. And as the last glow of the sun faded from the water and the circus trickled away, Nicky dragged me from Mallory Square and over to a battered old conch house near the cemetery in Old Town.

The house was owned by a woman who worked publicity for one of the big hotels. Like most local parties this one ignored class lines; there were cleaning crews from the hotel, writers, waiters and bartenders, hotel executives, even lawyers—every level of local society mixed together in a crazy swirl.

There were a lot of sarongs showing, most of them on women. I had a beer and ate some bad sushi. I listened to a man lecture me about the bond market before excusing himself to throw up in the back yard. A large woman in a floor-length muumuu explained to me that musical theatre was America’s one great contribution to world culture and I really should see 
Cats
 next time I was in New York.

I had a few more beers.
So this is fun
, I thought. I edged towards the door.

“Billy! Mate!” came the small foghorn voice. I turned, cornered.

Nicky chugged at me with a beer in one hand and towing a beautiful woman with the other. I felt a strange churning somewhere inside; it was the gymnast from Mallory Square. She wore white overalls and an expression of patient embarrassment. “Billy, this is Anna.”

Our eyes met. There was a sort of electric thump at the back of my head and then she looked away, blushing. “How do you do,” she said. She had an accent I could not place, something middle European that sounded harsh and musical at the same time.

“Hello,” I replied, still trying to figure out what I was feeling.

BOOK: Red Tide
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