Red Tide (25 page)

Pick up the blood. The snake likes blood
.

Ah, said the part of me that had already quit. But I can’t really move. So it’s useless, you see?

Try. Wiggle your fingers
.

All right, but what’s the point? Look, they wiggle, so what?

So pick up the bowl of blood. Pick it up now!

My right arm was free from just below the elbow down, outside the snake’s coils. It hurt like hell, but I could just do it. I picked up the bowl of blood.

Okay; now what?

The snake moved its head past my face, tongue flicking. I had its attention and for a moment it wasn’t squeezing quite so hard. That huge flat head moved past mine and waved down to the bowl. It dipped into the blood.

Cappy moved close, purring to the snake, coaxing it back to duty. He put one hand out for the bowl and one on the snake’s head.

Now!
 screamed my annoying little voice.

I threw the bowl. It wasn’t much of a throw, more like a flip using just my wrist, but it worked. It hit Cappy in the chest and the blood soaked him.

Cappy looked at himself, annoyed. The snake looked at him, too. And slowly, very deliberately, it moved off me and onto Cappy.

He scolded it. He wheedled. But the scent of blood was too strong. The snake slid onto his shoulders and threw a couple of gentle coils around Cappy, relaxing, exploring the blood.

I leaned on the altar, panting, watching. The most wonderful feeling I had ever had was the air moving into my lungs. Breathing took everything I had. If Cappy wanted to kill me with his bare hands now, I could not raise a finger to stop him.

I watched, wondering what I would do when Cappy had the snake back under control again. And it seemed like he did. He turned toward me, the snake wrapped around him, weaving its head at me again. I had bought a little time, a couple of beautiful breaths, no more.

Cappy stepped towards me, the snake coiled around him, head raised alertly. And somewhere far away I heard a small flat sound that didn’t fit with the background of the drums. The snake jerked, convulsively squeezed. Cappy’s eyes bulged and his hands went to the coils around his neck.

I looked for the sound. I saw nothing anywhere on deck but the last of the party, a final group, mostly children, moving toward the rail and looking over at the skyline of Miami so close.

The last two guards were running towards me at full speed. Too bad. I had almost made it, but there was nothing I could do to stop them. I could barely move.

The flat popping sound came again, twice, three times.

The closest guard pitched forward onto his face without slowing down and slid another six feet before ramming headfirst into the altar. The man behind clutched his stomach and crumpled to his knees, then fell over and lay still.

I looked far away, up to the top of the wheelhouse. Something moved. A small form stood there in classic pistol shooting stance, both arms out in front.

Nicky had found his gun.

He waved at me and I blinked back. Closer at hand I heard a gurgling. I looked.

Cappy had gotten one hand between the snake and his throat. It wasn’t helping. Nicky’s shot had taken the snake in the head and it was in its death throes, squeezing with everything it had, loosening for a half second, squeezing again. Each time it squeezed, it forced Cappy’s knuckles deeper into his throat. Each time, Cappy got a little weaker.

He dropped to one knee. He was not smiling anymore. I saw his lips move, trying to whistle, but he didn’t have enough air. The snake squeezed, there was a delicate crunching sound, and Cappy fell over. The snake still thrashed around, squeezing convulsively, and I did not want to get too close to check for a pulse. But Cappy’s eyes were already glazing.

He was dead.

I turned to Anna. As I fumbled to stop the bleeding, Nicky ran up beside me.

“I thought you were dead,” he said.

“I still might be,” I said. “Help me with Anna.”

He ripped a large chunk of the white gown she was wrapped in and made a pad of it, winding another strip around to hold it in place. I watched him work. There was strange mad light in his eyes, like he wasn’t sure what to do but wanted to do it at top speed.

 “You saved my life.” I nodded at Anna. “Both our lives.”

He looked up at me, eyes burning. “It was good shooting., eh? Real fucking great, wasn’t I?”

“The best I ever saw. Thanks.”

He looked at Cappy. He looked at the two guards, one motionless and one still struggling with the hole in his guts. Nicky pulled the pistol from his waistband and looked at it for a minute. Then he threw it as hard as he could, over the rail and into the deep waters of the Gulf Stream.

“Filthy fucking thing,” he said.

They took me to Jackson Memorial Hospital, I guess because it was an airlift. Or maybe they weren’t sure I could pay for all the work I was going to take, and Jackson is where they take you if you can’t pay. I didn’t look like the kind of guy who pays cash for a new Bentley. Or even a pair of tube socks. My clothes were battered, ripped and stained with blood. So was I.

I was going to take a lot of work. They all agreed on that. The X-ray technician clucked and shook her head and hurried away to get the doctor. The doctor hissed and called for a couple more doctors. The three doctors went into a huddle over the X-rays and kept looking at me sideways.

It came down to five broken ribs and a broken arm, with a whole lot of assorted tissue damage and subdural hematoma over two-thirds of my body. One lung was punctured, they were very optimistic about the liver damage and the tendons in my arm, but there was a toxic residue in my blood none of them could figure out—except for one intern from Jamaica who didn’t say anything, but made an extra wide circle around my bed when he had to go past.

They wouldn’t let me go with Anna and I couldn’t move that far by myself. So Nicky went with her and shuttled back and forth with progress reports: she’s lost a lot of blood but seems okay; they can’t identify the sedative she’s been given but it seems like some kind of organic compound; and finally that she had opened an eye for a couple of seconds.

I drifted in and out of sleep with the painkillers they dripped into me. I woke up when they taped my ribs and again when they put the cast on my arm. I slept through most of the stitches.

And then much later I woke up again knowing I was not alone. The painkillers had lost their edge and I felt like I’d been through a threshing machine. A circle of cold eyes stared down at me, not doctors.

Two of them wore Coast Guard uniforms. The others were wearing the kind of suits you wear if you’re a politician and you think you’re going to make the six o’clock news.

There must have been something really strong in my IV after all. I had the damnedest time figuring out what they were saying, until finally it occurred to me that I was being grilled. A couple of the suits were from INS, and the rest were local and federal law enforcement.

They were on me like hyenas onto bad meat. I saw Deacon at the back of the pack, leaning against the wall and cleaning his fingernails with a large buck knife.

I tried to concentrate on what the hyenas were saying, but they all had a speech they had to make, and they couldn’t decide who was more important, so it was tough going for a while.

It seemed to come down to this: they were considering charging me with a number of things, including piracy, murder, felonious assault, hijacking, and fifty-nine separate violations of INS code. That was the first time I’d heard the number of Haitians they’d managed to save. The longer they talked, the lower that number seemed.

In the end they stood around and took turns making threats, and when I didn’t say anything they looked at each other for a minute and then left, assuring me I hadn’t heard the end of it and it was a very serious matter.

Then they were gone and only Deacon was left. He put away the buck knife and gave me a short smile. “How you feeling, buddy?” he said.

“My left toe feels great,” I told him. “Thanks for coming to my hanging.”

“A real pleasure. Haven’t seen that many agencies show that much cooperation my whole career. Inspiring. You got a real talent.” He moved over and stood close the bed. “They sent them back, you know. The people they fished out of the water.”

“Back to Haiti?”

He nodded. “That’s right. Priority mail, on the first cutter that got to the scene.”

I closed my eyes. I wasn’t dumb enough to expect a parade and instant citizenship for the refugees, but it seemed like I’d been through an awful lot just to keep things the same. I said so.

“Life isn’t perfect, Billy. And alive is better than dead any old time. Most of ’em probably try again.”

“That’s very encouraging,” I said.

“Well, hell, buddy. You got the bad guy, and that’s a big step forward.”

“Hard to feel good about that,” I said.

He winked. “That’s what makes you one of the white hats,” he said.

A nurse came charging in and started clucking at Deacon. He waited for her without saying anything. She checked my dressing, my pulse, my temperature, and gave me a new IV bag with what I truly hoped was more painkillers.

Then she glared at Deacon and said, “He needs rest.”

Deacon smiled at her. “Yes, ma’am. He’ll get it.”

They had a staring match for just a second, then the nurse shook her head and went racing out again.

I let my eyes fall closed again. “What do you think will happen with all that other stuff?”

“The piracy charges, all of that?” He made a sound that was either clearing his throat or a dry chuckle. “Hard to say. Guess we could get you an eye patch and a peg leg. But I have this gut feeling that somehow a pretty good local reporter is going to get a hold of this story and shake it ’til all the bugs drop off. There’ll be a lot of noise for a while, but in the end there’ll just be too damned much public pressure to do anything. They’re not going to name a bridge after you, but they won’t dare file charges, either. They’re mighty damn scared of looking bad.”

I could feel myself drifting off again, and I guess I looked it. Deacon leaned a little closer.

“One last word on the subject,” he said.

I managed to get one eye open. “Just one word?” I asked.

He nodded. “Proud,” he said. He tapped the side of my face with his open hand, and then he was gone.

It was a too-bright day in September with no trace of autumn in the air when they wheeled me out the front door of Jackson Memorial Hospital. They made me stay in the wheelchair until I was out the front door—hospital regulations—and I didn’t fight them. I was too grouchy, groggy, and grungy to fight anything.

Nicky danced beside me the whole way out like a leprechaun on speed. He led me down to my car. It stood at the curb—

—with Anna in the front seat.

She was looking straight ahead when I saw her. The sunlight coming through the windshield lit her, made her near-perfect profile stand out like it was carved in marble. She looked like the girl who pets the unicorn. She was so pale and pure and clean that I almost couldn’t believe she was real.

As I got into the back seat of the car she turned to me with a funny smile and reached to touch my hand, then blushed.

I wanted to say something. But then Nicky jumped into the driver’s seat, laughing and burbling like a demented elf.

“Right! Off we go, then! Buckle up, Billy. Can’t have you bouncing through the windscreen. Hee hee!” Anna turned around to face the front.

The ride home was long and strange. We went through prolonged spells where nobody could say anything, and then suddenly everybody had something stupid to say at the same time.

Maybe it was my pain pills. They had given me some pretty strong stuff and I kept drifting in and out of focus. The world had an extra edge of brightness to it, and time was doing funny things. We made it from Florida City to Key Largo in the blink of an eye, but crossing the Seven Mile Bridge took a lifetime and a half, the rails going past like they had always been there and would never end. And every time I looked at Anna—which was a lot—she was staring out the window, watching the flat blue of the water below.

And so in a cloud of anxiety, fake jolliness, and anesthesia, we rolled into Key West as the sun was about an hour from closing in on the horizon. Nicky and Anna helped me into my house, one on each side, and into bed. They got me propped up, with a large plastic cup filled with ice water and a straw on the table beside me, and promises of chicken soup.

Nicky bounced away to his house to get a pot of the stuff ready for me, and I was finally alone with Anna.

She stood beside the bed, clenching and unclenching her hands, looking at everything but me. I wondered if the sight of me so banged up was bothering her. Maybe it brought back bad memories, or she felt guilty, since she might think it was her that got me into this.

“Hey,” I said, holding out my hand, trying to get her to relax just a little. I touched her arm; she jumped like she’d been shocked. She settled down with a small smile and took my hand in hers. “What’s wrong?”

“Ah,” she said. “Surprisement. Too much of think.”

“What kind of think?”

She was very quiet for a long time,. Finally she shook her head slowly. “Is very much the ball of roach,” she said, and I didn’t have any idea what she was talking about. She made a knotted, confused gesture with her hand. “Like so.”

“Worms?” I asked her. “A ball of worms?”

“Yes, worms. As I say,” she said. She pulled her hand away and I let her. “There is so much, and it is all exactly nothing.”

“That’s just the way I feel,” I said.

She looked at me, then shook her head. “When you are better, then I say these things,” she said.

“Anna,” I said. “There is a small spot on my right leg with no pain. You’re making it hurt. You’re raising my blood pressure, and that cancels out my pain medication. If you have something to say, say it fast before I pop a blood vessel. Otherwise, just sit still for a few minutes and look perfect for me.” And I collapsed back into my pillows, feeling the pulse throb in all my broken bones.