Part 9 (1/2)

I was guessing that he might be fifteen or sixteen, but on closer inspection, the barely discernable mustache he was trying to grow made me think he was possibly older, just a little behind in maturity. A follower? A simple ride-along? When I was still a cop in Philadelphia, I'd shot and killed a twelve- year-old tag-along who had joined one of his buddies for a late-night convenience store robbery. I'd been responding to an alarm and when the first guy out of the store took a shot at me, splitting the muscle and tendon in my neck, I returned fire and hit the second person out, a child who took the 9mm slug in the middle of the back. Just a boy, dead at the scene. It was the event that led to my resignation for medical reasons. It was the reason I'd come to South Florida to escape my inner-city dreams. Maybe it was part of the reason I was standing here, stuck to some natural destiny.

”Let's flip it over,” I instructed. ”It might be easier to disa.s.semble these legs. It will be a lot easier to move that way.” I started to turn my end and the movement forced the kid to expose his left hand for the first time. I'd noted his reluctance from the moment I'd seen him standing in the open, his s.h.i.+rtsleeves hanging down past his fingertips, his hand held slightly behind his hip. At first I'd thought-weapon. A handgun or even a knife. Now as he reached to twist the metal frame of the bed, I saw that he was missing his thumb. The scar told me it wasn't something that happened at birth. It was a definite injury and one he was careful about showing. I thought of the round, quarter-size scar of white tissue on my own neck where the bullet on the street had burrowed through. I had not caught myself reaching for it in quite some time. I'd lost the habit, if not the memory of killing a child.

Wayne got down on his knees to inspect the bolt system on the legs of the cot and then looked around.

”Y'all got any tools?”

I was right about his mechanical inclination.

”I had to bend the metal of that strap to get it off, just worked it until it broke,” I said.

”Yeah, I seen that,” Wayne said, like I'd pulled some third- grader stunt on the thing. He got up and I watched as he walked to the sink, now disregarding me. He went through a drawer and came out with some silverware-a spoon, a couple of b.u.t.ter knives with blades so dull they'd have a time cutting b.u.t.ter. I'd pa.s.sed them all over on my earlier inspection.

”So none of you guys seem to be injured from the hurricane,” I said, continuing my interview. ”Your place must have held up pretty well.”

”Yeah,” he said, giving up nothing more. Not a storyteller.

I watched the kid set to the bolts, using the straight lengths of the two knife handles to pinch the metal nuts in parallel and then turn them. The fingers of his left hand worked in an odd but efficient manner, making up for the loss of his thumb. He'd adapted. Maybe this kid had never heard of the evolution of the opposable thumb that let man crawl out of swamps like this one a million years ago. Right now I was hoping for a little less sophistication in his perceptiveness.

”Mr. Morris said your camp was up to the northwest, so are you all from Belle Glade or Clewiston or what?” I said.

”h.e.l.l, no,” the kid reacted, like I'd put him in some rival high school. He started to go on but thought better of it.

”How 'bout I loosen these up and you can finger twist 'em off, sir,” he said instead, looking over at me before moving on to the next leg.

”Yeah, sure.”

I changed positions with him and we worked together. The kid was either naturally closed-mouthed or savvy enough not to let loose any more information about himself and his buddies than he was forced to. His could be an att.i.tude from too many times in the backseat of a police cruiser or in the local juvenile lockup, or a simple backwoods avoidance of people unlike himself. A perceptive kid would have noticed the difference in our clothing, my speech, even in the way I moved. I'd already done the same with this trio. I was leaning toward the supposition that they were Gladesmen, or closely descended from. Easy in the water. None of them carried a sweat in the humidity, meaning their bodies were used to the climate. Their boots were old leather, the kind that was oiled and waterproofed the old-fas.h.i.+oned way. They were all lean, the leader with a cabled musculature that meant tough manual labor and a diet that was more local and natural than the empty calorie, fat-filled urban or suburban fare. But my eye had been a lazy one too. I'd searched the kid over, looking for clues, and missed the biggest one.

Wayne took a few steps back after he loosened all the nuts and stood while I finished the job. I looked up a couple of times, continuing to ask questions that might give me more information to size his crew up, give me some clue why they were rattling my internal cop alarms. A couple of times I caught him looking down at Sherry, who had gone quiet. It was hard to read her pain now or tell how much her head was in the moment or moving deep into survival mode, concentrating only on the internal, on keeping her core together. From where I was I couldn't even see if her eyes were open.

Not for a moment did I think of the kid's eyes roving over her body, the fabric of her sweats cut away almost up to her crotch when I'd cleaned and bandaged the leg wound. Her blouse, soaking wet and transparent, stretched across her b.r.e.a.s.t.s. Then she said something-”water”-in a rough whisper.

The kid jumped, and then started looking around.

”Over there. The bottle by the end of her cot,” I said, directing him.

He stepped over and picked up the bottle and moved to Sherry's side. She turned her hand slightly, opened her palm and he had to bend over to get the bottle to her. But instead of taking it, she motioned to her mouth with her fingers and the kid bent lower, nervous about pouring the water into this woman's open lips. I stayed on one knee, watching, but still working the other bed's legs. All I could see were the tops of both of their heads from behind and then the sudden, violent movement of Sherry's hand, clawing at the boy's throat.

”You thieving little b.a.s.t.a.r.d,” she suddenly shrieked in a voice I had never heard before.

The kid's head started to snap back, but inexplicably stopped for a fraction of a moment, and then, suddenly loosed, reeled up away from her.

”You f.u.c.king little thief,” Sherry screamed again, the rough dryness of her throat making the words come out like a shovel blade stabbing gravel. ”You picked the wrong cop to f.u.c.k with this time, you little s.h.i.+t.”

The kid's eyes were wide as saucers, eyebrows dented by fear, like he'd seen a witch come alive in his face, and I jumped up wondering if he actually had.

”Jesus, Sherry!” I shouted, and stepped over the bed frame I was working on. ”What the h.e.l.l?”

She was up on her elbows now, her face turned a crimson color that was such a stark contrast to the paleness it replaced that it looked devilish. She was staring at the kid, her eyes focused and hateful. Without saying a word she opened the hand that I'd seen her go at the kid's throat with. Two stones, one a diamond and the other an opal, tumbled from her palm on the end of a broken gold chain.

It didn't take a second for me to recognize the necklace Sherry's husband had given her, the one that she had finally removed before the last time we'd made love on a soft Everglades night that seemed impossibly far in the past now.

I stepped toward the kid, not even realizing that I'd stood up from our dismantling job with one of the wooden bed frame legs in my fist.

”Where the h.e.l.l did you get that!” I started. But the words had barely left my lips when the cabin door burst open and Morris stepped in with a big .45 in his right hand, its big black nosehole pointed at me.

”Whoa now, folks,” the man said. ”How about we just settle down some, OK?”

”They're cops, Buck,” Wayne started shouting. ”G.o.dd.a.m.nit- all, they are cops.”

Morris, whose name had now turned into Buck, moved his eyes from me, to the boy, to the bed frame on the floor and finally to Sherry, who was still on one elbow, but otherwise p.r.o.ne on the cot.

”Now just calm it down there, boy,” he said and the kid seemed to snap his mouth shut like it was a command he was familiar with.

”Uh, Mr. Freeman, sir. Would you kindly lay that there chunk of lumber down, please, and move over that way?” Buck said to me, using the muzzle of the gun to indicate the direction. He stepped farther into the room and the other boy, whose eyes were now only slightly smaller than his friend's, followed him, dropping a canvas sack holding something that clunked heavily onto the floorboards.

The fact that I now had two names, Wayne and Buck, wasn't much of a trade-off for having a handgun pointed at my chest and a band of thieves as Sherry's only chance of survival out of this h.e.l.lhole. I laid the bedpost down.

”Now if you don't mind, sir,” Buck said, ”could you tell me just what the h.e.l.l is goin' on?”

I gathered myself. I now knew I was looking at a crew of looters. I have seen it before as a cop in Philadelphia and everyone with a television has seen it on the tube following major rioting or disaster in American cities coast to coast. In some instances it's an ”I'm gonna get mine” att.i.tude. The storefront window is blown out, cops are busy helping others, I'll go in and take what I can take. In the aftermath of Katrina it was sometimes people just taking something that floated, something to eat, something to live. In places like Miami and L.A., it was just brazen, crowd-incited criminality and greed. I knew the only way Wayne had gotten Sherry's necklace was by rummaging through the ruins of the Snows' cabin where she must have lost it. This group had been there and this place was their next target.

I wasn't going to guess the motivation. Right now I was going to be the greedy one and try to make the best of the situation for Sherry and myself.

”I don't know,” I lied. ”I think my friend just woke up and freaked or something. Your buddy here was giving her something to drink and she just woke up and started clawing at him. He got scared and jumped back when she started screaming and it surprised the h.e.l.l out of me too.”

Buck looked down at Sherry, who now collapsed off her elbow and was lying flat again with her eyes closed. I stepped over to her and went down on one knee and he let me. Wayne started to whine: ”She said she was a cop, Buck. She ripped that necklace off me and said I stole it and she was a f.u.c.king cop.

I tipped the water bottle to Sherry's mouth and had to pour it through her parted lips just to get any of it in.

”That true, Mr. Freeman?” Buck said behind me. ”She's a law enforcement officer?”

”She used to be,” I said. ”Long time ago up north somewhere. Some little town in Michigan but she retired down here years ago.

”Look, Morris,” I said. ”She's delirious. She's dehydrated, lost blood, is in some deep pain and isn't making a whole lot of sense. I just need to get her some help, get her in to land, the state park boat ramp where we can get her to an ambulance.

”And,” I added, ”could you not point that gun at me? That's really uncalled for and it makes me nervous.”

The guy looked out at the end of his arm, like he'd forgotten he even had the .45 in his hand even though I knew from experience that particular weapon is heavy as h.e.l.l. He lowered the gun and crooked his finger in a ”come here” command to Wayne, and then bobbed his head to the other one.

”We're gonna step outside if you don't mind, Mr. Freeman,” he said like he was asking permission. ”So I can sort this out.”