Red Tide Page 2

  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.

  Chapter Two

  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, Pea
rl, 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.

  “Sure,” he said. “Just—sure.”

  It turned out he got the deep tan from ocean racing. It was a rich man’s sport, running the massive floating engines across the Gulf Stream to the Bahamas and back at impossible speeds. I’d made one of those runs with a friend once, as a last minute substitute for a drunken navigator, and for a week afterwards I walked bent over, my back twisted and throbbing from the pounding waves give you at that speed.

  Some people like that. Rick was one of them. His uncertainty dropped off when he talked about his boat, the way he positioned the big fuel tanks to improve the trim, a new way to get more from his carburetor.

  After about forty-five minutes of ocean racing a guard appeared on the better side of the bars. “Richard Pearl?” he called.

  Rick stood up, looking embarrassed again. “My dad’s got some pretty good lawyers,” he said.

  “I guess so.”

  He shifted his weight from foot to foot for a moment. “I’m sorry I can’t spring you,” he said. “But if there’s ever anything I can do—I mean, I definitely owe you one.”

  “Forget it,” I said.

  “No,” he told me, looking very serious. “I mean it. I owe you. You ever need anything, I owe you. Anything at all. Look me up.” He flashed a smile. “There’s only one Pearl in these waters,” he said, using the slogan from his dad’s store. “On Star Island.”

  “Come on, Pearl,” the guard said, and Rick was gone, turning at the last minute to add, “I mean it.” Then he was gone down the hall with the guard.

  I leaned back and closed my eyes again, sinking right back into thinking of the mess I’d made with Nancy.

  The night seemed to last a lot longer than it was supposed to. My hand was throbbing along the knuckles, and I was cold without my shirt. I’d left it on the floor of the bar. I had known the holding cell would be air-conditioned to a frosty 68 degrees, but at the time, cold had seemed better than wearing a vomit-soaked shirt all night. Now I wasn’t so sure.

  I was too cold to sleep so I sat and thought. After a while I got up and paced the cell, hoping the walking might keep me warm.

  I thought about a big turtle I’d seen a week and a half ago. He’d come up just ahead of my boat and I’d almost lost my charter over the side when I turned fast to dodge him.

  And I thought about Nancy, how things had turned bad and what I might be able to do to make them right again. I wondered if maybe she would be willing to consider all that had happened as meaningful dialogue. It didn’t seem likely. I wondered if I would ever see her again.

  I remembered my trip to Los Angeles last year when I’d met her. I’d ended up in the drunk tank there, too. I’d been framed for drunk and disorderly by a corrupt cop, and as I sat in a much dirtier cell I had thought about Nancy then, too. It seemed to me I’d spent way too much time sitting in drunk tanks thinking about Nancy Hoffman. I wondered if it meant anything. It probably did. I thought about asking the bald captain but he was still asleep. But what the hell. If it did mean something I probably wouldn’t like it.

  They let us out early the next day. The court appearance was a month away. We all promised we’d be there. I shook hands with the bald charter captain. Tiny was still trying to fit his belt back into his pants. I figured it would be a bad idea to offer to help. I left.

  At this early hour of the morning Key West was deserted, almost as if a plague had swept through and taken away all the people, leaving only stray dogs and cats and the smell of stale beer. In the half hour it took me to walk home I saw nobody except a few joggers, and from the serious and strained looks on their faces as they jogged by, they might have been running from the plague.

  Nancy was mad. I knew she was mad, but maybe what had happened to make her mad was good. Maybe it would give us a starting place to really talk out our differences. After all, the main reason I was hanging out in the Moonlight Room was that I was not happy with our relationship. Now that this had happened she would know that. We had something definite to talk about.

  I wondered what I could say to Nancy to make it right. I remembered reading somewhere that every great disaster is actually a blessing in disguise. You just have to know how to look at it the right way, to turn your disadvantage into a strength. It might have been Sun Tzu, that wise old man who wrote The Art of War. Maybe I could do that with the bar fight, turn it into a new strength. Sun Tzu was always right about these things.

  I got home. I walked across my small yard, part rock and part weed, and climbed up the three cement steps. I wasn’t inside long enough to sit when I heard a pounding on the door. It was a loud, frantic pounding, sounding like a gang of bikers trying to get into a room filled with beer and teenaged girls. I figured it had to be Nicky.

  I opened the door. Nicky Cameron roared past me, nearly five feet of non-stop energy. “Bloody fucking hell, Billy! Where have you been, eh?” He spun and fixed me with his gigantic eyes.

  “Hello, Nicky,” I said. “What’s up?”

  Even as I spoke he was cocking his head to one side and then, almost faster than I could follow with my tired eyes, he circled around me, sniffing. “Well, well,” he said. “Well well well well well. Lumbered again, eh Billy? What’d they cop you for this time, mate? Loitering?”

  “Drunk and disorderly. How did you guess?”

  He stood squarely in front of me, hands on his hips and feet planted wide. “Guess. Guess!? Is that what you think, Billy? That this is guesswork I do? Oh, mate, you bloody fucking wrong me.” He tapped his nose with a finger. “The Beak knows all, Billy.”

  I shook my head, tired and cranky but intrigued. “You’re saying you smelled it on me.”

  He winked. “That and your chart. You see, mate, your rising sign right now is on a cusp. This means change, trouble with authority—there’s lots of water in there too, mate, travel and conflict over water. And a snake. I haven’t figured that bit out yet.”

  “I’m sure you will, Nicky.”

  “’Course I will, mate. I’m working a new chart for you now. That’s not the point—”

  “So there’s a point to this?”

  “Too right there’s a point. I came by last night to warn you. Soon as I started your chart and saw—oh.” He stopped suddenly as something else occurred to him and looked thoughtful. I didn’t feel like hearing his thoughts. I was suddenly too tired, too fed up with everything, and all I wanted was a shower. I pushed past him.

  “Billy, lad, slow down, hang on a bit.” He grabbed my arm. “Nancy was here last night.”

  I blinked. “Okay.”

  “She went in empty-handed and came out with a couple of bags of stuff. I didn’t figure she was absconding with the silver or I’d have stopped her.”

  “You were probably right. Her silver’s better than mine. What did the bags look like?”

  He shrugged. “One of ’em was that bright red fishing tournament th
ing. You know.”

  I knew. I remembered the bag well. I had given it to Nancy and she had used it to carry some personal stuff over to my house. It had been in my closet for six months. If she took it now, then—

  I closed my eyes and leaned against the wall, exhausted and feeling slightly sick. It was over. Nancy had moved her stuff out. She was slamming the door shut on any chance I had of working things out with her.

  Sun Tzu was wrong.

  Chapter Three

  The next few days were hard. Nancy would not see me. She didn’t answer her phone and she wasn’t home when I went over. Just before I went out to the hospital to lie down in front of her car, something pulled me back and I decided to let her alone for a while. Let her cool down, think things out, get over her anger.

  But the waiting, the not knowing, took its toll on me. I stayed up late and watched too much television. I let my personal routines slide. And eventually the Key West New Age Emotional Rescue Committee kicked into high gear to rescue me from myself.

  The K.W.N.A.E.R.C. consists of one person: Nicky Cameron. He’s the Executive Administrative Board as well as the Chief Field Operative. He monitored carefully, and when my aura finally drooped into an unhealthy color he swooped in.

  Nicky, just a bottle cap taller than five feet, looks at the world through a pair of enormous, pale brown eyes. They are set under a rapidly retreating hairline, above a large hooked nose and a receding chin.

  Taken one feature at a time he was a lost cause. But there was so much energy pouring out of those eyes that nobody ever noticed he was an ugly dwarf. I have seen fashion models well over six feet tall fall helplessly into Nicky’s eyes and follow him around with a soft and devoted look. He ran the New Age store in town and was probably the Keys’ greatest expert on aroma therapy, past life regression, channeling, crystal healing, and astrology, although I was never sure he really believed all that stuff.

  He was also the Keys’ greatest expert on beer. I couldn’t remember ever seeing him without at least one in his hand.