Mortal Sin jl-4 Page 23

  I felt a hand on my shoulder, shaking me. Apparently, I had found a comfortable spot to sleep, my face resting on the tabletop. I jolted to attention.

  “Up and at ’em, Jake. We’ve got business to discuss.”

  I pried my eyes open and ran my tongue across my teeth. I don’t care how much the wine cost. My mouth tasted like it had been stuffed with rags soaked in 10W-40 Quaker State. Nicky Florio still had his hand on my shoulder. Jim Tiger stood at the railing, watching us both, a pistol on his hip, the stun gun in his hand. “More vino,” I said. “Bring on the grapes.”

  “I didn’t know you had an appreciation of the finer things in life,” Florio said.

  “Oh, but I do. Wine, women, and…”

  “Song,” Florio helped out.

  With that, I broke into “Fight On, State,” giving the arms-up touchdown sign when I got to the part about rolling up the score, fighting on to victory ever-more.

  “Have you enjoyed our little tasting?” Nicky Florio asked.

  “Sure have. Now where are the women?”

  “There are wine experts who would have killed to taste the 1961 French Bordeaux you’ve been guzzling.”

  “But not you, Nicky. You wouldn’t kill for wine. Or for a woman, for that matter. You didn’t murder Gondolier because of Gina. If you had, I’d be dead, too. You kill for money. Maybe Gondolier cheated you, or maybe you didn’t want to share the casino with him. Either way, it was just for the dollars. Peter Tupton was going to cost you a bundle, so you aced him. And now, there’s me…”

  My little speech had made me thirsty. I picked up a bottle of Chateaux Latour and put it to my lips. Hey, it tasted good this way, too. “Powerful yet still youthful,” I said, licking my lips. “And red. Red as blood.”

  “Why do you think I invited you to join me in this special event?” He gestured across the table at the half-empty bottles. My gaze followed his hand, but my eyes were unfocused. My head was swimming in an ocean of wine.

  “You’re trying to impress me, but I’m not impressed. Next, you’re going to tell me about some trip to France where you bought all the wine from Chateau LaDouche at double what it’s worth. That’s your style. You married Gina because she looks good on your arm, so people would say, ‘Oh, that Nicky Florio’s got great taste.’ But what Nicky Florio’s got is a major case of self-deception. Or do you really know? Maybe deep inside, you know that you’re a chickenshit small-timer who hasn’t done anything straight since the sixth grade.”

  “I see that wine loosens your tongue.”

  Actually, it was my brain that seemed loose. I looked at Nicky Florio, and there were two of him.

  “Sure, Lassiter, I bought the wine in France. But I didn’t pay double. I paid next to nothing, because I recognized early just how-special the 1961 Bordeaux was. I have always been able to recognize quality. It is why I am where I am today, and why you are…”

  He held up both hands as if to indicate the utter insignificance of me. I took a healthy swig of the Latour.

  “At any rate, it is time to discuss our business,” Nicky Florio said. “We have a matter to conclude.”

  “I’m not shining any note,” I slurred. “Wait a she-cond.” I tested my numb lips with my tongue. Was that wine or Novocain?

  “You probably wonder why I haven’t had you killed already,” Nicky Florio said, matter-of-factly.

  From somewhere in the darkened swamp, a bird cawed, and another one ca-cawed right back. I looked at my watch. The big hand was on the nine, and the little hand was spinning around. “Yesh. You’ve been tardy, naughty boy. And what kind of a host are you, anyway? Wine, wine, wine, but no munchies. Where are the chips and onion dip?”

  I grabbed another bottle. Something from Saint-Julien.

  “Like it says in the Bible, Lassiter, it all comes around. Ashes to ashes…”

  I took a gulp from the bottle.

  “…dust to dust,” he said.

  I gagged. “Wine to vinegar!”

  Nicky Florio tugged the bottle from my hand and sniffed. He-wrinkled his nose with displeasure. “It happens,” he said, almost apologetically. “A defect in the cork, improper storage. Pity.”

  “Ah, what one has to put up with,” I said sympathetically.

  “All right, that’s enough.” Florio’s mood had changed. “I want to know some things.”

  “Me, too. What really happened to the dinosaurs? Charlie Riggs says it was a big asteroid, but some people think it was a bunch of volcanoes. And how does Dan Marino release the ball so quickly?”

  “Who have you told?”

  “Told what?”

  “What you know.”

  I squinted at him. “I don’t know. What you know?”

  “No, what you know!”

  “I know plenty. What you know?”

  He tilted his head and looked at me, trying to figure out if I was drunk or just jerking him around. Even I wasn’t sure. My eyelids were as heavy as theater curtains.

  “Look, Lassiter, I know you told Socolow, and I know you told Osceola. Who else did you tell about the casino?”

  “Mike Wal-lash. That is, Mike Wallace. There’ll be a camera crew here soon.”

  “Did you tell Doc Riggs?”

  “If I say yes, are you going to give him some of the vino, too?”

  “You did, didn’t you?”

  “It isn’t just the casino, though, is it Nicky? The casino’s secondary. That’s what Osceola said. There’s something even bigger, right?”

  “What would that be?”

  “I know, but I’m not telling. I’ve got a secret.”

  He looked skeptical. “Osceola says you don’t know anything about it.”

  I sang it out. “That’s because it’s my seeeeee-cret! And I told only people I trust.”

  “You’re trying too hard, Jake. It isn’t going to work. You don’t know shit. There’s no way you could know.”

  In the slough, the blackness began to fade to gray, and pink slivers of light appeared at the eastern horizon. Florio stood and headed toward the front door of the cabin. With a shrug of his head, he motioned to Jim Tiger, who was leaning against the rail.

  “Gina told me,” I said. “Gina knows a seeeeee-cret.”

  Nicky Florio stopped in his tracks. He turned to face me. “Either you’re lying, or you’re trying to get her killed. Which is it?”

  He had pushed the right button. I looked at his face, dark with concern. He was dead serious. I had underestimated Florio. He knew me better than I knew me. He knew I cared more about Gina than he did.

  “I was lying,” I said.

  “Were you, or are you lying now to protect her?” He thought about it a moment. “Either way, you’re through.” Florio turned back to Tiger. “Close the transaction.”

  Florio went into the house, letting the door bang behind him. A moment later, Guillermo Diaz came out the door, carrying the briefcase to the picnic table. Tiger opened the latch and pulled out the same paper I had looked at last night, or was it a thousand years ago? “Sign it, shithead.”

  “Whatever you say?”

  He handed me a fat Mont Blanc fountain pen. I made a couple of exaggerated arm motions, found the signature line, and wrote a single word.

  Tiger picked up the document and drew it close to his face. He may have been nearsighted. “What the fuck! What the fuck is this?”

  “You said to sign it ‘Shithead,’”I explained calmly.

  “Why don’t we just feed him to the gators?” Guillermo Diaz suggested. His chubby face was pinched in a frown. Maybe his cowboy boots hurt his feet.

  “Look,” Tiger said, “let me tell you where you’re at. In a few hours, you’re going to be hanging by the neck from the ceiling fan in your living room. Somebody will find you the first day that’s hot enough to carry your stink to the neighbors’ yard. Now we can do this easy or hard, it’s up to you. You want to spare yourself some pain, just sign the paper.”

  Die easy or die hard. I was
hoping for a third alternative.

  Tiger reached into the briefcase and pulled out another copy and slammed it down in front of me. Then he lifted the stun gun and tapped me on the side of the head with it, just above the ear. “Sign!”

  I held the expensive pen, and this time, in my best penmanship, wrote three words:

  Tiger bent close to look at it, his index finger tracing under the words. I shifted the pen from my fingers into my fist, fourteen-karat gold tip pointed toward the sky.

  He squinted at the words. “The fuck is this?”

  When his face was a foot above the table, I brought the fist up. Straight and hard.

  The dagger-sharp tip sank into his right eye, and I jammed it home. I pushed it through lens and iris and cornea and the orbital bones and the optic nerve, and judging from the gush of blood that spurted like a garden hose, I’d pushed it straight through the internal carotid artery, too. Then, with a final shove with the palm of my hand, I rammed it straight into the frontal lobe of the brain.

  The scream was the wail of a dying beast. Blood gushed from his eye socket over his face, down onto the table and over the papers. The lens and iris popped out and hung, suspended from his face, dripping a jellylike fluid. Tiger staggered backward, his hands groping for the pen, which had vanished inside his eye socket. He whipped his head back and forth like a horse trying to toss its bit, spraying blood in every direction. He opened the other eye, then screamed that he was blind, which he would have been from the severed nerves. Finally, he fell, his body twitching, his screams silenced.

  Jim Tiger was stone-cold dead, and I was stone-cold sober.

  Guillermo Diaz stood, frozen. By the time he reached inside his nylon jacket, I had picked up the stun gun and aimed it at his chest. The first electric zap buckled his knees and opened his mouth. The second sat him down. The third drove a palsy through his arms and legs.

  I heard the door bang open behind me and turned in time to see Florio, a twelve-gauge shotgun cradled in his arms, coming toward me. I dived to the deck and rolled just as a blast tore out a chunk of the railing, the noise ringing in my ears. The shotgun barrel followed me to the floor, and I kept moving, scrambling hand over hand. I looked over my shoulder to see Florio pump and raise the gun once more. I took two steps and dived over the railing, a blast of pellets tearing at my coattail.

  Into the blackness.

  The fall took forever.

  I expected to be shot out of the air, like a clay pigeon.

  And then the splash.

  It was something between a belly flop and an Olympic medal, closer to the former. I went under, not knowing how deep it was but thankful for once that Nicky Florio had dredged, with or without permits.

  I heard another blast and felt the ping of pellets in the water above me. I stayed under as long as I could.

  I surfaced and took a breath, my lungs exploding with pain. My breathing sounded like a locomotive in my ears. I tried not to splash. The sun was sizzling on the horizon, the black water glinting with morning light. I wondered what Nicky could see from the high-stilted porch.

  I listened to the sounds of the swamp. Birds chirping, frogs burping, the screech of an animal I had never heard before. I floated on my back, my legs weighted down by my wing tips. I discarded the shoes and kicked gently, moving away from the house.

  Another roar from the shotgun, but farther away.

  Still moving backward, I bumped into something rough and scaly.

  A log?

  I whirled around, searching for yellow-green eyes, or worse, red ones…

  It was a large branch of a lignum vitae tree.

  I resumed my easy backstroke, tearing off my suit coat and letting it float away. I maneuvered around the hardwood hammock, putting more distance between the house and myself. Five minutes later, I could barely see the light from the windows through the tops of the mahogany trees.

  I was trying to conserve my energy, floating, swimming, floating again, when I heard it.

  A heavy breath beside me. I rolled to the side and was sprayed by a fine mist from two nostrils just above the water’s surface. The rest of the animal was hidden below the surface.

  From diving, I remembered what to do when you encounter a shark. Don’t panic; don’t splash; don’t strike out. I wondered if the advice applied to alligators. No matter. I was too scared to do anything. I just floated there while it moved closer and breathed its hot breath on me and finally nuzzled me with its snout.

  Chapter 23

  Siren of the Sea

  I treaded water and the animal raised its head.

  Dull gray, the color of an elephant, with a blunt-nosed face. It reminded me of a hippo.

  Then it squeaked and nuzzled me.

  A big, lumpy manatee. A sea cow with bad breath. It squeaked again. I treaded water some more, backpedaling. Lumpy moved its arm like front flippers and came close enough to kiss me. This guy, or gal, must have weighed half a ton.

  I didn’t know what to do, so I imitated its sound. Mine was more of a squawk, a little off key. I hoped it was the manatee version of hello, and not a war whoop. Or a mating call.

  The manatees are essentially harmless and friendly. They eat grass and drift through life not bothering anybody. Man is a much greater danger to the manatee than the other way around. The big lugs float just below the surface in our waterways and canals, where power boaters frequently slice them up with their propellers.

  Sirens of the sea, they are the sea maids from A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Five hundred years ago, Columbus saw manatees floating by as he approached the New World. His log revealed he thought they were mermaids. Columbus had been at sea too long.

  Another squeak from Lumpy, another squawk from me.

  Then it did a pirouette, slowly spinning 180 degrees, showing me its wrinkled gray back. I tentatively stroked its head, provoking a squeak-squeak.

  I stopped stroking, and it turned and faced me again.

  The sun was an orange fireball just above the horizon. A heron croaked as it flew overhead. There was the splash of feeding fish nearby.

  I was tired of treading water. “What do you want, pal?”

  Another squeak. Then another pirouette.

  It just floated there, its back to me.

  Waiting. It expected me to do something. But what?

  Growing even more tired, I put my arms around its neck and held on. Lumpy started swimming. So that was it. The manatee was a cabbie, and I was the fare. We would not break Mark Spitz’s records, but we were moving. Judging from the position of the rising sun, we were headed north and maybe a little east. Not that it made much difference, since I didn’t knowhow to get out of here anyway, but we were going deeper into the Glades and away from Tamiami Trail. Keep it up, and we might hit Lake Okeechobee.

  We passed dozens of hardwood hammocks, staying in the deep water well offshore. Live oak and royal palm trees were outlined as silhouettes against the brightening sky. I heard a woodpecker rat-a-tat-tatting and watched a black-and-white wood stork wading in the shallow water near shore. We swam through patches of green water lettuce and lilies and kept on going.

  I saw an osprey dive-bomb the water and come up with a fish in its talons, then head back toward a hammock and what I imagined was its nest filled with young birds. A black-and-yellow snake slithered by, and I told myself it wasn’t a diamondback rattler.

  By the time we approached a strand of bald cypress trees, my arms were starting to cramp. In the distance I heard two thudding explosions, the same sounds I thought had been thunderclaps the morning after Gondolier was killed. A heavy mist hung over the water, and the air was cooler here. This time of year, the trees were bare of their needles but were cloaked with ethereal tapestries of Spanish moss. I was trying to figure it out. We had headed north, farther from the national park, farther from the Trail, deeper into Micanopy territory.

  Of course. We were in the Big Cypress, the part of the Glades that truly looks like a prehistoric swamp.
The water, stained by tannin, was the color of richly brewed tea. The rising sun was shimmering behind the Spanish moss. Air plants and red bromeliads and white orchids grew out of the cypress trees, which, in turn, grew out of the dark water.

  Figuring the water was shallow, I let go of Lumpy and tried to stand. The water closed over my head, and I never did touch bottom. I came up and found my friend waiting, squeaking, then turning around for me. I felt unworthy of such tender care but climbed on anyway.

  I lost track of time. The sun was high overhead, and my throat was constricted with thirst when I saw the hardwood hammock in front of us. It seemed larger than the others, and there was another difference, too. At the shoreline, covered by gumbo limbo trees, was a wooden dock that even Lumpy knew was the sign of man.

  I figured the manatee brought me here thinking I wanted to be with my own kind. You’re wrong, Lumpy. I’d had enough of Nick Florio and his buddies to prefer the company of a thousand-pound creature with halitosis. But maybe this place had a fishing cabin where the thoughtful owner left a six-pack of beer behind.

  Lumpy stopped about twenty yards from shore. I let go, swam three strokes, and was able to wade the rest of the way on the rough limestone shelf. I heard the manatee squeak again, then watched it turn and drift away in the current.

  My knees buckled, and I collapsed on the beach. Total exhaustion. I lay there a few minutes, then began shivering as a breeze rattled through the cabbage palms and chilled me. I remembered from my windsurfing days just how easy it was to suffer hypothermia. And die from exposure. Which made me think of Peter Tupton all over again.