The smell of wet green earth and the sound of rain pattering through high trees woke me and I was startled in the way you are when you can't register where the hell you are. I blinked the dream away and pushed my hands up into my face and realized I was already sitting up on the edge of a bed.
Billy's, I recalled, noting the deep ivory color of the wall in front of me and the chill on my bare shoulders from the air-conditioning. I was in his guest room. I was still wearing my canvas pants and looked around to see that I had not pulled the bed covers back and had simply fallen asleep atop them. I rubbed my eyes and again caught the smell of turned and rotted soil on the palms of my hands and stared stupidly down at them. Clean.
I pushed myself up and walked into the bath and stood at the basin and splashed water up into my face and the odor disappeared. When I was a child my mother described how my dreams had seemed so vivid and my recollections of them so detailed that it made her uneasy. She said she would walk to the Italian Market in South Philly or to church and half expect to come around the corner and see the shear cliffs or talking dogs or some falling child that I had foretold from a dream the previous night. There were times now that I fell back into that vividness when dreaming or daydreaming of past experiences. As a cop who saw too many ugly scenes I often considered it a curse. Still, they were dreams. I had never had them portend the future before.
I dressed and went out to the kitchen where I found the coffeemaker loaded with fresh grounds and ready to flip on, and a note from Billy:
"I have gone to check on Diane and will he in my office later. I will call O'Kelly and contact you. I checked on Rodrigo and he is fine. Can you stop in to see him?"
Even though we'd stayed up well into the morning hours, Billy was an early riser. He would have consumed the Wall Street Journal and that horrid fruit and vitamin concoction of his and then been out the door dressed in Brooks Brothers before seven.
I looked at my watch. It was almost noon. When the coffee was brewed I took a cup out onto the patio. There was a nor'easter starting to kick in. The water was gray-green and moving like an enormous blanket being shaken from four corners at the same time, waves of varying sizes swallowing each other and an uneven chop strewn with foam. The sky was overcast and tightened down and the wind was blowing hard enough to snap the single American flag that the faux British manager had raised at dawn. Before my first cup was empty I could feel a film of warm, clammy moisture on my skin. I went back inside and my first call was to O'Shea. He gave the same report he had when I called him at three in the morning, before I passed out: Marci was in her apartment. No sign of Morrison.
"How you doin'?" I asked.
"You ever trying sleeping in a Camaro?" he said
I didn't answer.
"Hey, I'm a security guard, Freeman," he said. "I can handle security."
My next call was to Richards's office number. Her answering machine was on and I left a message telling her I had more information about Morrison and one of the bartenders who we had recently met who might know more than was offered. I hoped at least the bartender reference would cause her to call back.
I finished the coffee and left, pulling Billy's apartment door closed and checking the automatic locking mechanism before taking the elevator down. Outside in the front lot I instinctively scanned the cars, looking for one backed into a spot with signs of a cameraman. Now I wished I had confronted the guy the first time.
I took A1A south and traffic was light. It wasn't a beach day and the tourists and regulars would stay inside or inland somewhere out of the wet wind. The grayness gave the dunes and seaside mansions a look like old antique oil paintings, the colors dimmed and the landscape lonely. I was pulling into the Flamingo Villas when my cell phone rang.
"Yeah."
"It's Sherry, Max."
"Hey. You got my message?"
"No. I haven't been into the office yet. What did you need?"
If she was calling me unsolicited, I immediately wondered why. To offer me something? To ask for help? If I let her go first, it would put me in a better position to state my own case. I hesitated, then realized I was playing the info-for-info game and shook my head like I could just toss off a million years of human social behavior like a bead of sweat.
"I uh, wanted to get with you and tell you about a conversation I had with the bartender," I said. "Marci, at Kim's. The younger one who is fairly new."
"OK. Has this got anything to do with patrolman Morrison?" she said.
"Yeah, it does. How'd you know?"
"Well," she said, and now it was her turn to hesitate, and maybe for the same reason I had.
"I understand that you two had a bit of a face-to-face yesterday," she said. "I know that's your method of operation, Max. And I'm interested in what that finely tuned perceptive gut of yours told you when you looked him in the eye. But wasn't that a little outside the envelope, trying to tail a cop while he's in his squad car?"
There was a bit of a lilt in her voice, like she was smiling when she said it, and not a smile that held a comeuppance.
"Yeah, I suppose it was. But how did this information come to your attention?"
"O'Shea called me," she said, flat and matter-of-fact.
"You're kidding," I said, spinning the conversation I'd just had with O'Shea.
"He was concerned about you. He thought you were working something that was going to get you into trouble on his account and he said he didn't want to be responsible. He said he figured that I should know the truth before the facts got twisted around to suit the uniforms."
"The truth?" I said.
"Meet me over in the covered parking lot at the Galleria at two, under the west side," she said. "It's raining like hell down here."
I told her I would be there by two, as soon as I checked on another client. It was still only gray here. The clouds were heavy and had not yet opened up but I could hear the surf beginning to slash at the beach as the wind increased. The fronds of the rubber plants and white birds of paradise that sheltered each bungalow were clacking and the smell of salt and flotsam was thick in my nose when I came around the corner and stopped.
The door to Billy's hideaway was standing open. There was a light glowing somewhere behind the front window. Probably the one over the sink in the kitchen, I thought, putting the layout together in my head while I squinted and tried to pick up any movement inside. I stepped closer to the sea grape tree next to me and knelt with one knee in the sand. The wind swung the door a foot more and I could now see a bar stool on the floor and the small dining area light was missing from its spot suspended above the table, only a bare cord left hanging in the air. I was unarmed. My 9mm was back at the shack, wrapped in its oilskin cloth where I had retired it.
Don't jump to conclusions, I told myself, and then got up and took a couple of steps closer, listening through the rumble of the ocean and wind. There was still no movement from inside. I looked around for neighbors but the weather had sent most people indoors.
On the flat concrete stones that started a path in front of the patio I picked up on a trail of dark droplets and one didn't have to be a CSI to recognize blood, and that's when I moved faster. At the door I peered around the corner. The front room had been tossed and glass and half a bulb from the hanging light lay shattered in one corner. The blood trail led to the couch and joined a stain there that formed the shape of Italy in the fabric. I was about to step all the way in when the panicked voices of women came from behind me in the wind.
"Help! Somebody help him!"
I turned and jogged toward the beach and saw three women, one with children huddled into her skirts, waving their arms and pointing out to sea.
I had my shirt off by the time I hit the railing of the bulkhead and then used the top rung to swing over and down. I kicked my Docksides off after landing in the sand and I was honing in on a splotch of yellow that was bobbing fifty yards out. The shape expanded at the top of a crest to something human and then disappeared on the backside of the wave and a prayer seemed to bring it back to the surface again.
I hurdled the first three waves and then launched myself like a spear down into the next one, grabbed a handhold of the bottom sand, pulled myself into a crouch and used my legs to launch again. Each time I dolphined I tried to catch a breath and a glimpse of the yellow shirt. Sometimes I got one, sometimes the other.
When it got too deep I started to freestyle, looking forward each time a wave picked me up to the top of a crest. It didn't take long to close in on the shirt. When I got to within ten yards I could see it was Rodrigo, one side of his face a pale white, the scarred half an angry red. But his eyes were still wide and he was flapping with one arm, trying to stay on top in the oxygen while the white water tried to drown him. I went to a breast stroke and got into the same swell with him and yelled his name. There was no recognition in his face but he saw hope and grabbed for it.
I'd learned enough about water rescues to keep a struggling swimmer off your body. If you let them get a choke hold, you were both going down. I grabbed his wrist when he reached for me and held him at arm's length.
"OK Rodrigo!" I yelled. "You're OK, you're OK!"
I was looking to find his other arm when a wave broke over both our heads. While we were under I reached for his other arm and held it. When we both cleared the white water Rodrigo was screaming in pain like he'd been hooked with a sharp barb and I realized the arm I'd grabbed was hanging limp.
"Broke, Mr. Max! Broke, broke," he spit out, his face twisted in agony and I let go of the arm.
"OK, OK. Let me pull you, Rodrigo. Let me pull!"
He may have understood me or maybe he went into shock but I was able to hook him under the pit of his good arm and turn his back so it was on my hip and I began sidestroking for shore. The waves had no rhythm and in the white water it felt like all I was doing was pulling at air bubbles and getting nowhere. I was breathing heavily and trying to scissor kick each time a wave pushed us, and then I'd rest when it left us bogged down in the swell. It seemed like thirty minutes and I started counting strokes to give myself a goal.
In the middle of my second count to fifty I felt my right foot touch the ocean floor and the next wave pushed both of us onto solid sand. I struggled with Rodrigo's sudden weight and then heard yelling, "We got you, man! We got you!" and we were suddenly surrounded by hands and arms and other bodies in the water around us.
"Watch his arm, watch his arm, it's broke," I said as two men took Rodrigo from me and I felt another strong arm around my own waist.
"Oh, shit, man and his leg, too, watch his leg, man!" another voice said.
On the beach there was a red-and-white rescue truck with a red gumball light spinning on its roof and the lifeguards lay Rodrigo down in the lee side out of the wind and had me sit beside him. The little Filipino had an unnatural lump in the side of his arm where his bicep should have been and from the thigh of his left leg a stark white splinter of bone was protruding, blood trickling from the gash and mixing with the water and running a spiderweb of red down through the hair on his leg. One of the guards wrapped a blanket around the leg and someone draped one over my shoulders.
While my heartbeat tripped down I heard the sound of a siren growing and two of the guards brought out a backboard, strapped Rodrigo onto it, and then carried him to the street end, where an ambulance was backing up to the bulkhead. After they took him away a guard crouched down next to me. It was Amsler, the guard whose chinning bar I used.
"You want a ride to the E.R., Mr. Freeman? Let them check you out?"
"No," I said. "I'm all right. Swallowed a little salt water is all but thanks, thanks for helping out. You, uh, know what hospital they're taking that guy to?"
"Probably North Broward," he said. "Man, I've never seen anyone break bones like that in the surf. That guy was messed up."
"Yeah," I said, "he was."
When I stood I could see up over the Royal Flamingo's bulkhead where the group of women whose call for help had set me off was talking with a uniformed Broward sheriff's office deputy. One of the women pointed to me and the cop looked up. I didn't recognize him. He was writing on a pad that looked like a reporter's notebook and the pages were flapping in the wind. I started toward the bottom of the stairs as he passed out cards to the women and by the time I reached the top he was heading for me.
"Excuse me, sir."
I stood near the shower and waited.
"Excuse me, I'm Deputy Cardona. You are the rescuer?"
He was a young man with a tight Spanish accent but his English pronunciations were careful.
"Sure," I said, offering nothing more and looking down at my soaked pants, now covered with a crust of sand from sitting wet on the beach.
"The ladies there," he said, tipping his pen back toward the group, which had not moved. "They say they were calling for help when they saw the gentleman in trouble and then you came flying in from nowhere and into the water."
"Yeah, a real Superman," I said, not really meaning to be a smart-ass but coming off that way while I was trying to piece together the sight of the smashed bungalow, Rodrigo's broken bones and whether I wanted to talk about any of it with this cop.
"OK. First of all, I will require a name, sir," the officer said and raised his pen to his pad.
"Max. Max Freeman. Look, do you mind if I shower this stuff off?" I said, dropping my fingers to my pants and nodding at the shower. He said, "Not at all, please," and stepped back to the windward side and let me turn on the water.
I let the stream run over my head and kept my eyes closed while I thought of what I was going to say to the guy. I rinsed the sand off my pants as best I could and when I couldn't stall any longer I cranked the valve shut. The cop stood patiently by, looking out to sea and then to the bulkhead, and if he was perceptive enough he would pick up the deep impressions that my landing on the beach had made and then follow my running footsteps leading back to the bungalow. The door was still wide open.
When I stepped away from the shower one of the ladies was there with a towel.
"Thank you," I said, caught off guard.
"You were marvelous," she said. "That man owes you his life."
I started to say something but she held up a palm and then walked away to join her friends. I turned back to the cop, raised my eyebrows and then motioned to the chickee hut nearby.
"Can we sit?"
I picked up the shirt I'd tossed on the ground when I'd bolted for the ocean and pulled it over my head. I ducked under the dried fronds that formed the roof of the open shelter and took a chair facing my bungalow so that the officer's back would be to it. It didn't help. He was perceptive.
"You live here, Mr. Freeman?" he said, pointing the pen over his shoulder.
"Actually, it belongs to a friend. I was just borrowing it for a while."
"Was the drowning man your friend?"
It figured that I'd get one of the bright ones.
"Why do you ask?" I said. It was one of those sophomore techniques; answer a question with a question. He checked his notebook.
"One of the ladies, she says she saw the drowning man limping down to the beach and saw him go into the water with his clothes on."
No question had been asked, so I didn't respond. I used the towel to dry my hair and avoid eye contact.
"She also says a larger man who appeared to be chasing him came down these steps with anger and with a baseball bat in his hands."
David, of the infamous Hix brothers, I thought. I could picture him in the bungalow, taking down the dining room light with a single swing.
"The limping man appeared to escape into the water because the other refused to follow."
I draped the towel around my neck and then stretched out one leg and reached into my pants pocket. The cop did not tense. He had already seen me without a shirt and knew I wasn't carrying.
"Do you mind if I make a call?" I said and pulled a dripping cell phone from my pocket but then looked dumbly at it when I saw that the power button brought no light or noise.
Cardona seemed patiently amused. He reached into his own shirt pocket and took out an even smaller cell phone and handed it to me.
"I will take it that the call is local?" he said.
I nodded my assent and dialed a number while he watched.
"Lieutenant Sherry Richards?" I said for the cop's benefit when she picked up on the other end.
"You stood me up, Max," she answered.
"No. I've had an unexpected emergency up here, Lieutenant," I said, loud enough for the deputy to hear.
"Are you OK, Max?" she said and the concern sounded real.
"Uh, yeah, there's already an officer here at the scene," I said, and Cardona was now looking into my face.
"What scene are you talking about?" Richards said, now letting worry creep into her voice. I ran through what I figured had happened, that Rodrigo had been tracked by David Hix, who saw his chance to impress his ugliness on the little man and scare him out of the country. I talked loud enough for both Richards and the cop next to me to hear. He looked skeptical.
"Here, I'll let, uh, Deputy Cardona explain," I said and handed the officer his own phone. He turned away and I looked out at the whitecaps, hoping the concern I'd heard in Richards's voice meant she wasn't so pissed at me that she would leave me swinging. After a minute, Cardona snapped the phone shut.
"The lieutenant says she wants you down at your prearranged meeting place, asap, Mr. Freeman."
"I think this will go much better this way," I said to him, and without another word I went inside to change my clothes.