Red Tide (Billy Knight Thrillers 2)

“The point is,” he said, after draining half the bottle, “you’ve lost your zest.” He wagged a finger at me. “Can’t do that, mate. Man’s got to have his zest.”

“I know. Grab for all the gusto you can get. I’ve seen the commercials.”

“You can laugh if you want,” he said, looking slightly hurt.

“Actually, I don’t think I can.”

“But the point is, you’re a bloody mess.”

“Are you going someplace with this?”

“Too right I am. Finish your beer.”

I finished my beer. Nicky finished three in the same time. It didn’t seem to affect him. I’ve never seen beer affect him in any way. Then he led me out the door and, to my surprise, over to Mallory Square.

Mallory Square is a small cross-section of life on earth. Nobody knows where it came from, or how it started, but it keeps growing and leaving a bigger mess. Originally the Square was a big parking lot next to an old concrete wharf. Now it’s a carnival, a street fair from one of those out-of-focus Italian films. There are jugglers, a sad magician, a high-wire act, trained animals, musicians, food vendors, and because it’s Key West, T-shirt salesmen. And the whole thing is supposed to be a celebration of sunset. But for me it was like going to the top of the Empire State Building if you live in Manhattan. It’s strictly for tourists.

“Bet you haven’t seen ’er for a while,” Nicky said as we walked through the parking lot and towards the crowd at the far end.

“Why would I, for God’s sake?”

He winked at me. “It’s fun. Remember fun?”

“Not really,” I said.

“Sour,” he said again, shaking his head.

We pushed in past a row of tables selling cheap jewelry. Nicky seemed to enjoy himself. He laughed at the performers’ bad jokes, clapped at the silly tricks, put dollar bills in the hat each time it was passed.

He dragged me all the way down the line, pausing for each act. I let him, stewing in a kind of uninvolved stupor. But eventually it all started to get to me.

“Nicky,” I said, with a small edge of anger.

“Relax. This is just exactly what you need. Straight up, you’ll see.”

We pushed through the crowd. I didn’t try to get too close. I had seen all the acts, practically memorized some of them, the ones that had been there the longest.

Nicky was humming happily, in spite of the constant threat of getting lost in a large crowd of steadily moving people, all a foot taller than he was. He had bought a couple of gigantic cookies and was working through them like a termite with rabies, spewing cookie dust in all directions. He always eats like that, with reckless disregard for community standards.

One small girl, about six years old, stopped to watch him eat the cookie, unable to believe that anybody was allowed to eat like that. A large hand yanked her back into the stream of gawkers.

We moved along the line of performers. There was a certain familiar rhythm to the place, like the tides. Nothing changed here; it was a look at the heart of Key West, with the steady rhythm of the people moving through, dropping their money into the stream, and disappearing again. The fact that there were new faces every night was less significant than the fact that there were always faces.

After a while I started to relax a little. Nicky was right. This was a great place to not think, and it provided just what I needed, a reminder that life goes on.

Just as I was starting to pick up the rhythm and blank my mind, I heard something new, and it jolted me out of my trance.

A crowd was gathered where there was not supposed to be a crowd. This had been a dead area on the dock. A guy with dreadlocks and a guitar had the spot staked out, and he droned half-hearted reggae to two or three people at a time. He’d been doing it as long as I could remember.

Something was different tonight. For the first time the guy sounded interested in his own music.

Normally there would be one small child watching him, clinging to the hand of an impatient adult. Now the crowd was three people deep, elbow to elbow, and they were craning their necks to see. Curious, I moved around the edge of the crowd and found a place where I could see.

A beautiful young woman with short blonde hair was doing a gymnast’s floor routine, working to the reggae beat with the grace and intensity you only see in Eastern European athletes at the Olympics. I watched her do an amazingly elegant walkover, up onto her hands and then over into a perfect split. As her hands went up for applause I caught her eye, and—

“That’s a whacka-toodly in the fan-doodly, eh?” said Nicky.

I stared at him. “What language is that?”