Tropical Freeze (27 page)

She turned in her seat, raised the water gun, and got a spurt directly in his left eye. He squinted hard, rolled her back onto land, and rubbed at the eye, smearing the sight back into it.

“You ignorant crone,” Benny said.

But she had rolled away, up the sloping yard back toward her houseboat. Benny shook his head. Christ, look at him. Here he was, the CEO of a eighty-million-dollar company, a man with a vision and a mission, the general of an army of ex-cops and federal agents, and he was chasing around after a crippled-up colostomy case.

He jogged up the yard and caught her as she was rolling up the ramp to her houseboat. The woman could roll. He had to give her that much. Rock and roll.

Benny took hold of the grips and dragged her back down the ramp. The gristly old dame locked the wheels with her hands, but Benny got her back to the grass. He was starting to sweat, breathing a little heavy now.

“What? You going in there, bring out a water hose, really spray me good?”

He moved around to stand in front of her. A couple of her cats came to the doorway to see the commotion. She raised that Luger again, aimed it at him. He flinched, but she didn’t shoot. Probably down to her last couple of squirts, wanted to save them.

“Hey, listen, Miss Spottswood. Save us both any more of this bullshit, would you? It might seem like a little thing you did, asking my computer about illegal immigration. But we’re talking about a project here, it’s top secret, classified. People like you, if they’re asking questions about an area like this, then we got a leakage problem. It could mean we got a serious national security breach. Do you see where I’m taking you?”

Priscilla looked at the narrow gravel lane that led out to the highway. Her eyes lingered there for a moment; then she brought them back to Benny.

She said, “Then let me see some ID. If you’re a government official. If this is all legitimate, then you show me some official ID and I’ll consider being civil to you.”

Benny felt the pierce of those tongs again. ID, Jesus. Everybody was so hot for ID.

He said, “It was this Thorn character, wasn’t it? You just give me a nod, yes or no, and we’ll call it settled between us. Thorn put you up to it. Am I right?” He stepped up closer to her, bent over so he could get his face on the level with hers.

She raised the Luger and got him in the other eye. A real stinger.

Thorn had the VW up to sixty, but he was boxed in behind a Bronco pulling an Aquasport and a Toyota full of college kids. Two bare feet sticking out the front passenger window. He honked at the college kids, flashed his lights. Got two birds back. One out the driver’s window and one from a guy with a big neck in the back seat.

It was ten more miles to Priscilla’s. He’d told Nan to call Sugarman and have him meet Thorn there and to make sure he knew it was an emergency. He held his horn down, and it croaked like a strangled fowl.

He kept the accelerator flat to the floor, a gap opening as he pulled even with the Bronco. He motioned to the driver to let him cut in front, and the guy scowled at Thorn and sped up just enough to pull even again with the Toyota.

He held the horn down now, straddled the center line, and mashed the gas pedal flat. When he angled in between these two clowns, both of them yelled at him, honking back. But giving him room.

He’d crept ahead twenty, thirty yards when the siren sounded. In the rearview mirror Sugarman’s lights flashed. He was shaking his head at Thorn. The Bronco and the Toyota slowed, and Thorn edged over into the right lane, up to sixty-five now. Sugarman got in front of him and led the way, still shaking his head.

Darcy’s Eastern flight to Mexico City had taken three hours and twenty minutes. She had chosen it to coincide with the arrival of an Iberian flight from Madrid. In the concourse she eased away from the passengers on her plane, mingling with those who flooded down the concourse. She tore up her ticket and dropped the remains into two different trash cans. She was probably overdoing all this, but she was running on such high-octane paranoia now that she couldn’t help it.

At Immigration she stood behind a group of Americans, the women in bright stretch pants, the men smelling of whiskey. When one of the men turned to her and asked her if this was her first time abroad, too, she answered him in Spanish. He smiled awkwardly, mangled a quick
muchas gracias
, and turned back to his group.

The immigration officer examined her passport and took a lazy look at her. He spoke to her in Spanish, asking her the purpose of her trip. She said, a vacation. No luggage? She said no, none. The man looked again at the passport, flipped through the pages, Maria’s border crossings for the five years before she’d run back to Spain.

The phone on his desk rang. He picked it up, still holding her passport, his fingers rubbing the plastic seal over her photo. He listened to the phone for several moments and said
sí
, he would. He would do that, watching her while he talked, feeling the edges of the plastic on her passport.

She wished now she had dressed more formally. She’d worn faded Levi’s and a black short-sleeved cotton blouse with a button-down collar, labels removed. And a pair of old Keds.

The immigration officer hung up the phone, took one more curious look at her photograph, and said in careful English, “Enjoy your stay, Miss Iturralde.”

She took her passport and moved through the turnstile into another line through Customs. She had distributed the ten thousand dollars about her clothes. Two thousand in each pocket, some more in her shoes, a thousand in her purse. But the woman at Customs simply waved her through into the main lobby. Anything Darcy wanted to smuggle into Mexico fine by her.

Darcy found a women’s room. She locked herself in a stall and closed her eyes, leaning her head against the door. She began to hyperventilate.

It took her five minutes to gather herself. Then she left the stall, stood in front of a mirror next to a Mexican girl. The girl looked up at Darcy and smiled. She wasn’t more than seven. An infant in a leather sling was lashed to the girl’s back. A girl of fifteen came out of one the stalls, took the child by her hand, and led her away.

Darcy went back out into the noisy lobby, bumped into the same group of Americans. The man who’d spoken to her winked over his shoulder and moved along with his herd.

She went to the Pan Am information counter, where Benny had instructed her to stand. She was about to ask the attendant the time when a man in a white uniform stopped beside her. He was blond and over six feet. His uniform had no patches or markings.

“Maria Iturralde?” he said.

“
Sí
.” She stepped away from the man.

“I was told you speak fluent English.”

“I do,” she said.

“Well, I’m sorry I’m late. I’ve been circling the airport for an hour. Dadgum air traffic here is worse than Atlanta.”

He had blue simple eyes. He’d been an Eagle Scout, won merit badges in innocence.

“So, how was your flight?”

“Fair,” she said, breathing smoothly now. “It’s a long way.”

“Well, this leg’ll be a lot easier.”

“I certainly hope so,” she said.

Benny wheeled her over to the rock pile. He came around in front of her and took hold of that water gun and twisted it out of her grip, shaking his head at this, at the silliness of it.

“People know,” Priscilla said. “People know you’re here. I called for help.”

Benny dropped the water pistol on a rock and stepped on it. Gave it a good heel crunch.

He said, “Well, then. I guess we should pick up the pace.”

He found a very big slab of rock in the pile. A heavy flat black thing. He grunted it up to his belly. The boulder about crushed his vertebrae as he moved it over to the old lady. He settled it onto her lap. As he let go of the full weight of it, he thought he could hear the snap of her thighbone.

Right away the lady’s eyes lost their sting. She drew her head back, and the breath rattled in her throat. He came around behind her, took hold of the grips again, and headed back to the water.

“You can tell me who put you up to this,” Benny said as he bumped the wheelchair toward the shoreline, “or you can keep doing this name, rank, serial number bullshit. Though, I got to tell you the truth, at this point I’m not sure I even care anymore.”

On the northern edge of her property, near a dense covering of hibiscus and oleander, there was a concrete boat ramp. It was coated with green algae. Benny changed directions and headed for it.

The old lady was nodding her head slowly from side to side. Her eyes squeezed shut. She was making gagging noises, grunts. Of all the people Benny had ferried across to the other side lately, she took the goddamn cake for orneriness.

He brought his mouth down to her ear and whispered, “Was it Thorn put you up to it?”

She gagged some more, her head slumping forward now.

He brought her to the top of the slimy boat ramp. He could feel the pull of that tilt to the bay water, and he drew back a foot.

“You could tell me, and we’d just let bygones be bygones, just get back to our business. How’d that be?”

She raised her head, turned it around so he could see her profile. Her eyes were still clamped shut. “Up yours,” she said.

He let her go.

The wheelchair bumped down the ramp. For a moment it teetered to the right and he thought it was going to flop on its side, but it stabilized and got all the way to the water, little front wheels going in. And it stopped. The old lady had hold of the wheels.

She was cranking them backwards, dragging herself and that hundred-pound slab of rock back up the ramp. But the slime on the ramp kept the wheels from getting a bite. She pumped them around in place, the chair not going either direction.

Benny started walking to his car, looking back at her. The pathetic old woman was trying so hard to stay dry. He got all the way to the Mercedes before her arms gave out on her, and she let go, and the wheelchair picked up speed and splashed her into the bay. He waited for the bubbles.

Yeah, well. There you go. This was no Sunday afternoon pickup game. Ask Gaeton Richards, ask Priscilla Spottswood. Any of the others. He believed he knew how the coroner or these half-assed police would read it. The lady had taken on a boulder bigger than she could handle. And she lost it on the ramp. Hidey, hidey, hidey ho.

What the old woman needed now was a set of gills.

Thorn called out her name, but she wasn’t inside the houseboat. No signs of disturbance, but the cats were nervous, roaming around, slapping and hissing at each other. He ran back outside. Called out her name again. Sugarman stood by the rock pile, watching him. His eyes dark and professional. His cop face.

Thorn hustled over to him, saw the broken water pistol in the grass nearby.

He cursed and squatted and picked up a piece of the barrel.

“What? What is it, Thorn?”

Thorn showed him the crushed plastic.

“So?”

“We’re too late,” he said. “He’s got her.”

“Thorn, what the hell’re you doing?”

He turned from Sugarman and loped down to the shore. The bay water was spattered with miniature suns. It was almost noon, a northwestern breeze chopping up the surface.

On the edge of the seawall Thorn called her name. A black tabby rubbed against his bare ankle, laced around his legs, and leaned against his other ankle.

Then he saw her hair. He’d noticed it a minute earlier but thought it was trash. It was spread out on the surface of the riffling water. A tangle of white yarn.

He sprinted down the seawall, leaped into the water. He scooped up her body, found a solid footing in the bay bottom muck, and brought her face up into the air. He cradled her over to the seawall and to Sugarman.

He could tell she was dead. Though he hadn’t checked her pulse, he knew it, as he lifted her up to Sugarman. He could feel the similarity between her and Gaeton. The quiet hum of current no longer circulating inside her. A new skill Thorn was acquiring, the curse of a new sensitivity.

Doris Albritton of the volunteer ambulance corps arrived in five minutes. By then Thorn was woozy from blowing into Priscilla’s mouth, taking turns with Sugarman. A little gurgle of bay water had erupted from her at first, but there was no sudden revival, no flutter of eyelids. Doris’s young male assistant moved Thorn aside and laid Priscilla on a stretcher, and they rolled her back to the ambulance, the useless IV bottle swaying as they went.

Thorn and Sugarman followed the ambulance in Sugarman’s patrol car. Neither of them spoke. Thorn stared at the shops and restaurants of Islamorada, Windley Key, out at the Atlantic. It was glowing a dull green today as if lit from below.

Alone in the hospital waiting room, Thorn sat watching the Channel Six noon news. His flannel shirt was dry now, pants almost there. On the local news they were bulldozing drug houses. Knocking down the flimsy homes of early Miami settlers. Public officials smiled and bragged to the camera that they were getting serious now.

The weather was coming up after the commercials.

Sugarman came into the room, sat down beside Thorn, and said, “So let me get this straight. This is your chain of events. We got a phone call made by Miss Spottswood to Mr. Benny Cousins several days ago to inquire about Mr. Cousins’s business enterprises. You say you witnessed that. Then we got a voice on the phone this morning calling to the library to find out about computer research. Then we have Priscilla with salt water in her lungs. Therefore, we’re going to say that voice is attached to Mr. Benny Cousins. And he was responsible for pushing her into the bay. Am I following your logic here? Is this being fair to your view?”

“It’s shit, isn’t it?”

“Thorn, I wouldn’t dignify it by calling it shit.”

“Yeah,” he said. “I must be losing it.”

“Sometimes I’m not sure you ever had it, Thorn. I’m concerned about you, man. Priscilla’s dead, and you’re coming on with this Benny Cousins obsession again. Like this guy is the source of all evil. A lady drowns and it’s got to be Benny held her under. If you just stand back and look at this, switch on the common sense for a minute, you’d have to say implicating a man like Benny in a thing like this is … I don’t know. I’d call it insane maybe. Nuts.”