Red Tide (Billy Knight Thrillers 2)

“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?”