Florida Firefight, page 4
“Bullshit,” she snapped. “It’s different between us, you know that. You’re an ex-husband, and the modern businesswoman doesn’t worry about ex-husbands. She’s happy to be free and single—read Cosmo or Ms. if you don’t believe me.” The tears began to flow again, and her lips trembled. “So why … why do I feel so awful about your … leaving!” The soft weight of her breasts heaved as she buried her face in the napkin.
Hawker had tried hard not to smile. “People are beginning to stare, woman. And your picture has been in the society sections too often for them not to recognize the famous art gallery owner—”
“Fuck ’em,” she cut in.
“My, my, what language!”
She wiped her eyes a last time and gave Hawker a heartbreaking look. “Hawk, you won’t tell me why you’re going to Florida, but I know it’s not just for the sun and surf. You’ve quit the Chicago force, but I know you too damn well to believe you’ll ever give up being a cop.” She took his hand and squeezed it gently. For the hundredth—or thousandth?—time, Hawker fought away his sexual wanting for her. “So promise me this,” she continued. “Promise me you won’t get into trouble down there. And damn well promise me you won’t get hurt.”
So Hawker had promised. And he had promised again on the way back to her penthouse apartment. And he had promised still again as he forced himself from her bedroom door.
So Hawker had rented a Monte Carlo at Miami International Airport and driven west across the Tamiami Trail, through the scent and heat of the Everglades.
Sun shimmered off the highway, and a sea of grass rolled away toward both horizons, golden as Kansas wheat. The air smelled of citrus and sulfur, and white egrets and grim-looking vultures flushed as he drove. Hawker had found something jazzy and Cuban on the radio, and he hummed along.
It felt good to be alone.
The cold, the politics, the complicated relationships of Chicago all seemed long ago and far away. He felt charged and ready.
Mahogany Key was a village on an island connected to the mainland by a concrete drawbridge. The island was four miles long and three miles wide, with draping ficus trees and coconut palms lining the narrow streets.
The houses were built of wood or block and well maintained, but there was a creeping air of decay about them. It wasn’t obvious: a fallen awning that hadn’t been replaced, leaf-clogged gutters, abandoned toys in the drives. And the lawns were gradually going to weed. The public park in the tiny downtown area hadn’t been mowed in weeks. A wooden dock reeled along the bay side of the island, and fishing shacks built on stilts stood in abandoned clusters out in the shallows. The commercial boats there were wrack-stained and unattended.
Something was obviously very wrong on Mahogany Key.
Hawker cruised slowly over the bridge and into the town. It was Saturday, but most of the businesses were closed.
The few people he saw on the streets caught his eyes briefly, then looked quickly away. They all seemed to walk with their heads down. They seemed in a hurry.
The one business still open was a seedy-looking Shop-and-Go. A flea-ravaged dog slept in the sun in the parking lot near a spilled trash can.
Hawker pulled in for gas and directions.
That was when the four Hispanics converged on him.
And that was when Hawker remembered he had lied to his ex-wife and high school sweetheart, the former Andrea Marie Flishmann.
“You understand, gringo,” the Hispanic repeated. “You leave town pronto, or we cut your pretty white ears off, huh?” He was a little shorter than Hawker, heavily muscled, with a Fu Manchu mustache. His grin was a dark scar that showed bad teeth.
Hawker could feel eyes watching from inside the Shop-and-Go: a young mother with a pair of towheaded kids; two beefy-looking middle-aged men with the sun-beaten faces of fishermen; a pretty, Indian-looking woman with long black hair. Their faces were all pressed against the window. Across the street a teenage boy and his father stopped to stare.
Absently Hawker wondered if he could depend on them for help.
But then he saw the look of fear in their eyes, and he knew that he would fight alone.
Theirs were the faces of helplessness, faces he remembered from the Neighborhood Watch days.
He knew he had to give them all a fighting example.
Hawker surprised the Hispanics, taking three quick steps toward Fu Manchu. They stood half an arm’s length from each other, face to face. “I’d planned to drive on into Miami this morning,” Hawker said, returning the Colombian’s grin, “but you know, I’ve begun to take a real liking to this town. Seems like a real friendly place. Think I’ll stick around for a few days.”
Fu Manchu flushed, and his eyes darted to his friends. They nodded, ready to help. The Colombian put his hands on his hips, threw back his head and laughed. “This gringo, he is very brave, eh? Very brave and very stupid!” The laugh became a sneer. “I will call you Rojo—it means ‘Red’—for your lovely red hair.” He gave his three friends a wink. “But remember, Rojo, red is also the color of your blood when it’s spilled.”
Hawker nonchalantly slid his hands into the oversize military pockets of his British twill guide slacks. “And you’re very brave, too—as long as you have these three goons to back you.” The Colombian’s face described outrage. He stepped as if to swing, but Hawker held up both hands, a sign of momentary truce. “Don’t fly off the handle, José—”
“My name is not José!”
“Well, whatever your name is, I’m offering you a fair fight. You and me, José, right here; right now.”
“You must think me a fool, gringo—not that I couldn’t grind your face to basura with one hand.”
“Let’s just say I’ll think you’re a coward if you don’t try.” Hawker smiled and offered a wink of his own. “And so will everyone here.”
“Pedro Cartagena is afraid of no man!” the Colombian spat.
“Then why don’t you fight him!” It was a woman’s voice that interrupted. It was the Indian woman from the Shop-and-Go. She was tall and slim, with a smoky, mystic beauty. Her raven black hair was draped over heavy breasts, and she wore the jeans-and-cotton-knit uniform of college students across the nation. She stood on the step, her face trembling with rage. “I’m so sick of you—you animals roaming this town like a pack of dogs, bullying and pushing, that I’d really like to see if you have the courage to fight alone.” And when the Colombian didn’t immediately react, she seared him with a witting laugh. “It’s just as I thought,” she said. “You’re like all pack animals—cowards when you’re by yourself.”
The Colombian’s eyes were venomous. “Perhaps I will find you alone one night and show you what a coward Pedro Cartagena is,” he whispered in a deadly voice. And in the same instant he whirled on Hawker, catching him across the nose with his elbow.
Hawker back-pedaled across the lot, right hand going toward the oversize pockets of his pants in the event all four Hispanics charged him.
They didn’t. Hawker wiped the gush of blood away with the back of his hand. This was exactly what he wanted: a public fight, one on one.
Back in Ireland his father had fought the professional circuit to earn the few extra quid it took to keep his wife, son and three daughters fed. He had stuck Hawker in the ring before he was in his teens. First it was the Police Benevolent Boxing Association and then the Golden Gloves.
Every tough kid in the city—Italian, black and Pole—had fought his way in and out of the Archer Boxing Club Gym, and Hawker had slugged it out with all of them.
By the time he was seventeen, Hawker was the Golden Gloves light-heavyweight champion of Illinois. And he had the medals—and the nose—to prove it.
Hawker walked straight at Fu Manchu. People had crowded around them, but the only ones yelling encouragement were the Colombians. The others were frightened to call out—except for the Indian woman. Unafraid, she was openly pulling for Hawker.
Fu Manchu was doing his best imitation of a professional fighter, dancing and bobbing. Hawker slapped the jabs away, waiting for his opening. He didn’t have to wait long. Fu Manchu went for the home run punch—a sizzling overhand right. Hawker stepped through it, got Fu Manchu’s toes under his left foot, then cracked his face open with a straight right. The Colombian jolted butt first to the asphalt, a look of surprise on his face. He made a motion as if to climb to his feet, but then his glazed eyes rolled back in his head and he collapsed face first on the pavement.
Surprisingly, the other Colombians weren’t quick to come to his aid—not with their fists, anyway. Hawker had obviously made an impression. They circled him, glaring, each waiting for the other to make a move. Then, as if they all had the same idea at once, they went for their knives.
seven
Someone screamed as they rushed him. Hawker had no idea who. He was too busy trying to stay alive.
He ducked under the first Colombian and flipped him over his back onto the pavement. The man hit with a massive thud and lay bug-eyed, kicking for oxygen with the wind knocked out of him. In that brief moment of victory, Hawker thought he might actually have a chance.
He was wrong.
Someone hit him from behind immediately. Hawker felt a firelike pain in his left shoulder. He tried to jerk away, but a thick arm was locked around his throat. A fist clubbed him twice on the side of the face, hard. The third Colombian approached him warily, knife vectoring in on Hawker’s throat.
“We can’t kill him here,” insisted the man who was holding him. His voice was thick with nervousness. “Too many eyes here, man. Medelli won’t like it.”
The name had an effect on the Colombian, and he hesitated for a moment. But just a moment. “After what he did to Pedro?” The Colombian with the knife spat. “I don’t give a shit what Medelli thinks. We cut him now!” He brought the knife back, ready to lunge—and from out of nowhere a beer bottle exploded against the man’s face. It threw them off balance just long enough.
Hawker drove his right elbow into the stomach of the man behind him, turned and hit him behind the ear with a chopping right. It didn’t put the Colombian down, but it stunned him.
But more important, it finally gave Hawker time to fish the lethal little Walther PPK from the oversize military pocket of his pants. He swung it around, framing each of them in the Walther’s U-notch sight.
“You assholes toss those knives away—now!”
The Colombian who had had the wind knocked out of him and Fu Manchu, his face split and covered with blood, got shakily to their feet.
All four slid their sheath knives across the pavement.
Hawker turned to the crowd that had gathered. “One of you folks get to that pay phone and telephone for the law.”
They acted as if they were deaf. The men studied their worn hands and kicked at the pavement. The women hung their heads, refusing to meet Hawker’s eyes. One by one they turned and slunk away.
Only the pretty Indian girl remained. She flipped her raven black hair back, saying, “There’s no law around here, mister. We’ve got a one-man police force who’s too old to be much good and too scared to care.” The disgust was razorlike in her voice. “And we’ve got a bunch of local men who like to guzzle beer and brag about how tough they are—in the safety of their own homes, or the Tarpon Inn bar. But law? You’re holding the only law around here, mister.”
“Someone tried to help me,” Hawker insisted shakily. He was suddenly feeling faint, weak from those shots to the head and loss of blood. One of the Colombians began to edge toward the knives, and Hawker stopped him with a motion of the Walther. “Someone helped a hell of a lot, throwing that bottle.”
The Indian seemed to notice his wounds for the first time. Her face paled a little. “Hey, you’re hurt. You’ve been hurt pretty bad.” She gave the Colombians wide berth and came to Hawker’s side, inspecting him. “That stab wound in your shoulder is pretty deep, and your nose is a mess.” She touched his arm wound gingerly. “You said something about being on your way to Miami. Maybe I ought to call an ambulance service over there—”
“No,” Hawker said, his voice a whisper. His head was throbbing in the heat, and everything seemed to be coming down a tunnel toward him: noises, sounds, smells; everything. “I’m staying here. I … I bought the Tarpon Inn.”
“Welcome to Mahogany Key, mister,” said the Indian woman as she took his arm, her haunting beauty now a foggy swirl before him. “You’re very lucky I’m almost as good at nursing as I am at throwing bottles …”
It was the last thing Hawker heard before he fainted.
eight
He awoke to the sound of a teakettle whistling.
Someone was singing: a woman’s voice; a ripe, husky alto. The song was “Desperado.”
The moon-globe glow of Mahogany Key’s old-fashioned streetlights glimmered through a lone window. Starch-white curtains and the prissy vanity and knickknacks of a woman’s bedroom caught the pale light of winter dusk in Florida.
Hawker jolted upright in bed, wondering just where in the hell he was. When he moved, his shoulder ached and his head throbbed. He threw back the covers and charged down a hall into what must have been the living room.
Suddenly there was laughter.
“God, what an entrance!” The Indian woman stood behind a modern counter that bordered a small kitchen. She wore a white turtleneck sweater and held a steaming mug in her hand. She studied him for a moment, then nodded her head in comic approval. “I’ll give you an eight—” She paused as if in reappraisal. “No, let’s make that a nine.” She tilted her head, smiling girlishly. “I’m duly impressed, Mr. Whatever-your-name is.”
Hawker suddenly realized he was completely naked.
“Shit!”
The woman threw back her head and roared.
“Why in the hell didn’t someone …” Hawker turned tail and headed back toward the bedroom.
“You shouldn’t be running!” she called after him, still laughing. “You’ll tear those lovely stitches I sewed!”
A few minutes later Hawker returned, trying his best not to look sheepish. Someone had brought in his duffel bag, and he had changed from the bloody clothes of that afternoon into a pair of light cotton corduroy slacks and a navy blue Shetland crew-neck sweater. After the heat of the day, a cool winter wind blew off the bay.
He took a bar-stool seat at the counter.
The woman put a mug of hot tea in front of him. “Feeling better?” She still wore the wry smile.
“Just great—like someone dumped a quart of vodka down me and dragged me behind a car.” Hawker stirred sugar into his tea. “So how did I get here—and what happened to my Hispanic friends?”
“Don’t you think introductions are in order first?” the woman asked, chiding him. “After all, I’ve saved your life, sewed you up, and now I’ve seen you in all your masculine glory.” She gave him a vampish wink. “Pretty nice set of buns there, fella.”
“What is it with women today? All that talk of liberation, and you immediately get aggressive.”
“Actually, feminist nurses have been slipping Spanish fly into every little girl’s pablum. I know so, ’cause I read it in Cosmopolitan.”
“Next thing you’ll be wanting to fight our wars.”
“Personally, I just want to be able to use your bathrooms—or at least see one. Are the toilets really different in a men’s room?”
They both laughed, and Hawker stuck out his hand. “James Hawker, formerly of Chicago.”
Her handshake was firm and dry. “Winnie Tiger, formerly of Buffalo Tiger’s Miccosukee Reservation, then the University of Florida, and now good ol’ Mahogany Key.” She caught Hawker’s look and said, “Why the expression of surprise?”
“Well, you have to admit that Winnie seems an unlikely name for an American Indian.”
“Crazy Horse and Tecumseh were already taken, so my parents just did the best they could. Besides, my grandmother was a Winnie. She was a Smithsonian anthropologist who came to the ’Glades to study the Miccosukees’ pagan mating rituals. Turned out my granddaddy was just the pagan she was looking for.” She wrinkled her nose into an evil face. “Old Granddaddy always had a thing for the White-Eyes.”
Hawker’s chuckle turned into an easy, comfortable laugh. He liked this woman. She was open and bawdy and honest. He saw her closely for the first time. Her beauty was indeed smoky and mystic, and he suspected she had done and seen much in her twenty-five-odd years. She had dark doe eyes and a face like something out of a fashion magazine. Her hair was blue-black in the neon light of the kitchen, and there was a submerged energy about her as if, no matter how much time you spent with her, no matter how well you knew her, you could never see all of her, hold all of her, or understand all of her at once.
It was something in her eyes, some mystery deep and distant and unspoken. Hawker had the sudden impression that if they had met in any other way, it would have taken him months to be allowed past all the little emotional doors she would normally slam in the face of a stranger.
For the first time Hawker didn’t mind the beating he had taken at all.
“So what happened to them?”
“My grandparents, or the Colombians?”
“The Colombians.”
“My, you do have a one-track mind, don’t you.” She gave him a sharp look. “You a cop?”
“I just bought the Tarpon Inn, remember? And maybe I’m just worried that if you killed those four goons, I’ll have to take the rap for it.”
It was supposed to be a joke, but she didn’t laugh. Her face grew serious. “I would have, you know—shot them, at least. The looks on their faces …” She shuddered, and held her tea mug as if for warmth. “No, I grabbed the gun when you passed out, and they just ran for it. Jumped into their truck and roared off toward the docks.”
“Who are they?”
“The Colombians?” There was a bitter edge to her laugh. “Haven’t you heard? A bunch of ugly little countries got together a few years ago and decided who would get what part of poor old America. The Arabs got New York and L.A.—’cause of their money, you know. The Japanese got Detroit. The Cubans and Haitians got Miami. It’s a free country, right? Well, the Colombians pulled short straw and were saddled with Mahogany Key.” She shuddered again. “We natives aren’t too wild about you white folk, but these new interlopers … well, they trigger the old gag reflex.”
