Red Tide (Billy Knight Thrillers 2)

“There’s four dead bodies, mate. All found in the Stream, all with empty pockets. And if they’ve found four, how many you reckon they’ve missed, eh?”

“That doesn’t prove—”

“Prove is a word for lawyers. We’re not lawyers. Just simple human fuckin’ beings. Just like the ones turning up dead. Get your fuckin’ head out of the sand, mate.”

And he was away out the door, madder than I could remember seeing him before.

It wasn’t right to say I didn’t know what had gotten into him. I did; I just hadn’t known it had gotten that far into him,

And anyway, what the hell was I supposed to do about it? Even if he was righ

t—even if some cold-blooded maniac, for whatever reason, was killing Haitians and dumping them in the Gulf Stream—what did Nicky think I could do to stop it?

I knew he had a warped picture of me as a sleepy, sun-dazed killer. Nicky saw me as a kind of human alligator, dozing until lashed up by the smell of meat. He had an almost supernatural confidence in my ability to handle anything physical.

But this was far beyond anything he had ever expected from me before. Find a hypothetical killer working on a hypothetical ship somewhere in the Atlantic Ocean—this wasn’t even a job for Superman. He would politely decline and ask for a little more evidence first. Because damn it, the world didn’t work that way.

Besides, I had come to Key West to retire. The only thing I wanted to find was fish.

I explained all that to Anna that evening. I laid it all out for her, almost word for word, telling her exactly what had happened and trying to tell it in a light, funny way. It was hard to get her to smile, but it was worth it and I was hoping she would try it when she heard of Nicky’s innocence.

We were sitting at a small table overlooking the water. It was Friday night, after all, and I was celebrating. Spending money I didn’t really have on an unclear relationship to celebrate the end of a week in which I had done no real work; Friday night in America.

I had pulled out all the stops and taken Anna over to Louie’s Back Yard, one of the classiest restaurants in the Keys. Anna had been so impressed she had even had half of a glass of white wine.

But a slow flush was climbing up her neck and onto her face. I trickled to a stop.

“Why is this funny?” she said slowly.

“It’s not funny,” I said. “Nicky’s funny.”

“He is having very high opinion of you, of what you can do.”

“He is wrong.”

She looked at me for just a moment, then pushed back her chair. “Yes,” she said. “I think so, too.” And before I could do more than drop my jaw she got up and walked out of the restaurant.

I found her on the small spit of sand next to the restaurant. She was looking out over the water and throwing rocks with a controlled fury. A light, easy chop moved across the water and Anna skipped a rock across the top of a whitecap. It seemed like a good idea not to say anything, so I didn’t. She didn’t look up or acknowledge that I was there, just threw a couple more rocks.

“You are most furyfying man I am knowing ever,” she said at last. She flung another rock far out into the water. “I am now knowing what is inside you, I think. Nicky is knowing this too, better as you. Inside you is wonderful strong man who can do what no one else can do. But you are not knowing this. Instead you are acting as the little boy. Instead you are saying, is too big the problem and too small the me. Is nothing that can be done by me. And this is cow-shits.”

“What is it you think I should do?”

She turned to me, a look of angry surprise on her face. “But how am I knowing this? If I am knowing, I am doing it. You are once a policeman, you have guns and boats. Why do you not stop the killings?”

A little light flickered on in the back of my head. “You’ve been talking to Nicky,” I said.

“Yes? And this is now bad to talk to him?”

“Only if you believe him.”

She turned away again, stooping to pick up some rocks. She threw one. “What I believe—is there are dead bodies. If is by accident they are dead, fine. You will find this out, feh—” she made a kind of final gesture with one hand, “—is over.”

She flung down the rocks and turned to me, stamping her foot. “But God-damness, if is not accident, it is an evil. A killing of so many—! And you must stop it.”

“There are police to do that. Not me. I’m just a fishing guide, I don’t—”

“No. Listen. I come here to this country to escape a very bad thing. And it is getting very bad there because everyone is saying the same. This is not my problem. This has to do with those others, not with me. I know this because I am saying it. And of a sudden are the soldiers there, inside my house, killing my family.”