Flesh and bones

14

I was gnawing my third ear of corn when Roberto Condom showed up and sat down across from me at the picnic table outside the ribs joint on South Dixie Highway. It was dusk and still rush hour, a steamy heat rising from the pavement. Plumes of carbon monoxide mixed with the tang of smoking ribs as traffic clogged the north-south road, horns bleating.

I offered to buy Roberto a pork sandwich or a slab of ribs, but he declined, shooting nervous glances from side to side and whispering anxiously, "I can't get busted, Jake. You gotta know that. You, of all people, gotta know that."

"I need you, Roberto. You have to trust me. I did get you out on bond."

"Yeah, well, if I'm busted-"

"I know. I know. I'll handle the case for free."

"Hell with that! I'll flip on you. You're gonna need your own lawyer."

At the next table, a truck driver with tattooed forearms shot us a look. I slathered my ribs platter with barbecue sauce-heavy on the vinegar with a touch of cayenne-slopping some onto the fries.

I decided to play the guilt card. "They always talk about a lawyer's loyalty to a client. What about the other way around?"

'' Chingate! '' Roberto Condom said.

"I guess playing the guilt card only works with someone who has the capacity to feel guilty."

"Fuck you," he told me, in case I hadn't gotten it the first time.

I was wearing an old Oakland Raiders jersey, one of the black ones, turned inside out so the silver numbers wouldn't glow in the moonlight. It belonged to a left-handed quarterback who had left it behind at my house following a Super Bowl to which neither of us had been invited. My recollection is hazy, but I seem to recall the QB leaving the party with a blonde who had started the evening as my date, leaving me with his jersey and several empty tequila bottles. And you wonder why I hate quarterbacks.

Roberto Condom was wearing an army camouflage outfit, his pant legs neatly bloused into paratrooper boots, his face greased with eye black. A bit overdone, I thought, but with his Latino good looks, he could have been a recruiting poster for the Panamanian Defense Force.

We were crawling on our bellies through a muddy field fragrant with the scent of ripe mangoes. I had left the Olds at the ribs joint, and Roberto had driven us to the edge of the Bernhardt farm in a Ford Taurus with Manatee County plates.

"You rented a car?" I had asked him.

"No, I borrowed it."

"What?"

"I'm a valet parker at Flanigan's Quarterdeck Saloon, so I just-"

"Flanigan's doesn't have valet parking," I said.

"How many tourists you think know that? I stand there at the front door, a guy gets out of his car, I rush over and take his keys."

"Doesn't he want a receipt?"

"I give him a used trifecta ticket from jai alai, he gives me his new Taurus."

A three-quarter moon was rising in the east, darting in and out of a thin layer of scudding clouds. We continued moving along in what the marines call the high crawl, weight on the forearms and legs, knees behind the butt to keep close to the ground without belly slithering. A swarm of tiny gnats the locals call no-see-ums buzzed around my ears and invaded my nostrils. The night was moist with the fecund bouquet of growing things. We crept past a fragrant bush of white ginger, what Granny calls the butterfly lily. I remember its scent on a lei worn by Lila Summers in Maui. Not far away was a wild blooming jasmine, the fragrance heavy and overpowering.

" Cristo! Smells like a funeral parlor out here," Roberto muttered.

The earth itself gave up the fertile aroma of freshly plowed soil, and the night was alive with the sound of feeding birds and singing crickets.

Suddenly, I caught the scent of a woman.

Or of perfume.

Eerily like Chanel No. 5.

"Do you smell that?" I asked Roberto.

"Ilang-ilang trees. They're planted along the irrigation ditch, so we must be getting close."

"Intoxicating. I've never smelled a tree like that."

"Jake, you gotta learn to appreciate nature more."

"Like you, the thief of palms?"

"Among other things," he admitted.

To the west, heat lightning reflected off clouds billowing over the Everglades. The only other illumination came from sodium-vapor lights on poles spaced every fifty yards or so. Along with the cawing of the night birds, there was the crickety noise of insects and the incessant whine of a rodent named Roberto Condom.

"Jeez, Jake, I'm telling you, if I see any of those chichi cabron guards with shotguns, I'm gonna shit my pants."

"C'mon, Roberto. We're almost there."

Suddenly, a whirring as one of the giant irrigation towers' guns came on, spraying us with a mist from a hundred yards away. "Shit, now I'm gonna catch pneumonia," Roberto complained.

As we headed toward the house, Roberto kept up his patter. "If you get disbarred for this, Jake, where does it leave me?"

"Stop worrying."

"If you go down, I don't want some ca-ca lawyer representing me," Roberto said.

"Not politically correct, Roberto, making fun of the Cuban-American court-appointeds."

"Yeah, well, I don't want an abogado just off the boat from Mariel. I want you, Jake."

"And you're my favorite two-time loser," I said, trying to reciprocate.

A moment later, I silently raised an arm, signaling Roberto to stop. "Do you hear something?"

"Yeah. I hear my probation officer calling the state attorney."

"Water. Running water." Rising up on one knee, I saw what looked like the outline of a mountain on the horizon. "There's the levee along the irrigation channel."

"Jeez, look at that!"

His tone startled me, and I whirled around but saw nothing except a clump of small trees.

"Sago palm," Roberto said. "Smart to hide them in the middle of a mango field. I could get a thousand bucks easy for a six-footer. Damn things only grow an inch a year."

"C'mon, Roberto."

"You think we could fit one in the trunk of the Taurus?"

"Roberto!"

The sound of rushing water grew louder, and in a moment we were slogging up the soggy levee and looking down into a river. Glowing silver in the moonlight, the water tumbled down the channel, gurgling merrily, rippling over rocks, tree branches, and clumps of dirt.

"The well field's a mile to the west," Roberto said. "They're pumping God knows how much water into the channel. Some is siphoned off for the irrigation towers, some for drip irrigation, but most of it just flows, west to east, toward the open bay."

"Why?" I asked. "Why waste all that water?"

" No se, man, and I don't want to know. I just want to get out of here."

We were five hundred yards from the farmhouse when Roberto started bellyaching again. "Ain't gonna add B and E to trespassing, no way."

"We're not going inside," I assured him. "Just a little surveillance."

The house was surrounded by rows of rosebushes, I hadn't thought about it before, but now, working through them, they were a pretty good perimeter defense. Not as good as a minefield maybe, but still..

"Ouch!" Roberto winced and pulled a thorn from his shoulder. "Jake, I'm telling you, this is crazy."

"Quiet down."

Two Jeeps were parked in the driveway. So were Guy Bernhardt's Land Rover and Lawrence Schein's Jaguar. Another house call.

"Roberto, stay here. If there's any trouble, take off. I'll meet you at the car."

"Like I'd really wait for you. It ain't Hershey's Kisses they got in those shotguns."

As I crawled toward the house, I thought I heard him praying in Spanish.

The jalousie windows to the den were cranked open, and inside, paddle fans spun. The walls were Dade County pine, varnished to a gloss. A boar's head was mounted on one wall, a rack of antlers on another. I squatted in a bush of Spanish bayonet, and every time I moved, another thorn pierced my skin. Through the louvered windows, I could see about half the room. I was staring at the back of Lawrence Schein's bald head, which appeared above a leather sofa. Somewhere out of sight was Guy Bernhardt.

"Regrets? Hell, no!" It was Guy's voice from a corner of the room. There he was, standing at the bar, dropping ice cubes into a Manhattan glass. "We both got skeletons in the closet from way back, so trust me when I tell you to look ahead. Don't look back."

"My life's been devoted to opening those closets, shaking those skeletons," Schein said.

"Spare me the Hippocratic horseshit, okay?"

I strained to get a closer look, pressing my cheek to the glass. Bernhardt walked toward Schein, carrying two drinks. "Will he figure it out? Before the trial, I mean."

"I suspect he will," Schein answered. "Like his buddy said, he's smarter than he looks."

Bernhardt handed one drink to Schein, then sat down on a leather chair that faced the sofa. Though I knew he couldn't see me through the darkened window, from this angle it seemed as if he was looking right at me, and I caught my breath.

"Then what? What the hell will he do?" Bernhardt asked.

"He'll have an ethical dilemma."

"And…?"

A pause before Schein spoke. "Who knows? MacLean says he's honest."

Somewhere in the distance, a dog barked. And somewhere inside my head, cymbals were clanging. "So we're better off than if she had a top-flight lawyer," Bernhardt said.

I was trying to process the information.

The "he" was definitely me.

The "top-flight lawyer" was definitely not me.

What "ethical dilemma" would I have?

"You know what I was thinking?" Bernhardt again. He didn't wait for an answer. "Pop would be proud of me."

"That is a transparent rationalization, Guy."

"No, hear me out. Pop took Castleberry's money and multiplied it tenfold. What I'm doing… well, it's even bigger."

"Your methods, Guy. What about your methods?"

Bernhardt snorted a mirthless laugh. "They're okay. I checked them out with my inner child."

"Go ahead, mock me."

Bernhardt laughed again.

What the hell were these guys up to? What methods? The dog barked again, and a second later, splat. A clod of mud landed in the bushes, startling me, and giving me a crown of thorns as I leaped backward. Ping, a pebble this time, banging off the window. Shit. I turned around and saw Roberto's silhouette, arms waving madly.

"What was that?" Bernhardt said, from inside the house.

I flattened myself into the soft earth as Guy Bernhardt walked over to the window. My head buried in my arms, I could sense him above me, barely inches away.

The dog barked louder, then stopped. Maybe it was the Hound of the Baskervilles. Or the Bernhardts.

Guy Bernhardt turned away from the window. I lifted my head and saw that Roberto Condom was gone.

"… water."

Bernhardt's voice again.

"Are the permits in order?" Schein asked.

"All the i 's dotted and t 's crossed."

"You're a man ahead of your time."

"You got that right," Bernhardt said. "Twenty years from now, they'll be writing books about me."

Now what the hell were they talking about? Too many questions, too few answers. I didn't have time to think about it, because I heard a husky voice somewhere behind me. "Whoa, girl! Slow down."

Near the corner of the house, not thirty feet away, I caught a glimpse of a man with a German shepherd tugging at a leash. A shotgun was cradled in the man's arms. A radio crackled, and he said, "B-two, I'm at the house. Blossom's got a straw up her ass. Got the scent of something, probably a possum."

Blossom. I liked that way better than Killer.

"Okay." The radio clicked off. "Go on, girl, but don't be bringing back any road kill."

Why did "road kill" sound like a lawyer joke, a dead lawyer joke, just now?

I heard him open the collar latch, and then Blossom headed straight for me, head down, shoulders low, panting hard. Maybe a German shepherd's impression of the high crawl.

I burst out of the bushes, the thorns clawing at me.

"Shit!" the guard cried. "Halt! Freeze!"

I zigzagged away from him, through the rosebushes, giving him a moving target. Yapping loudly. Blossom was at my heels.

The shotgun blast echoed over my head. Way high.

Of course. He wouldn't risk killing his dog. The shot was meant to scare me into stopping. Instead, it sped me up. Maybe all those years of gassers after practice were worth something after all.

I was into the mango grove when the spotlights came on. I was still cutting back and forth, making like Emmitt Smith, when it occurred to me that Blossom was alongside, running in stride. She could have taken me down with a firm crunch to the calf, but there she was, barking loudly. Happily keeping pace with me. Much more fun than being tethered to a guard.

I slowed to a trot, and so did she. I put my hand out and she licked it, then started barking again. In the distance, I saw the headlights of a Jeep, heard men shouting.

"Quiet, Blossom," I told her.

She barked louder.

I reached up, pulled a mango from a tree, and rolled it a few feet away. Blossom trotted over and picked it up in her mouth. No more barking. Then she brought the mango to me, dropped it at my feet, and barked some more.

I picked up the mango and hurled it as far as I could. Barking happily, Blossom took off that way, and I ran the other.

I was nearly to the levee when I heard an engine kick up. A second Jeep was there, waiting. The headlights came on, freezing me. Engine growling, it headed straight for me. I pivoted and ran up the levee, scrambling on all fours in the soft dirt. I heard the Jeep slam to a stop, heard the men yelling behind me.

At the top of the levee, my knee buckled, the one with the railroad track scars, and I tumbled down toward the water. A shotgun blast kicked up mounds of dirt alongside me. With no Blossom running interference, I was in their line of fire now.

I either dived into the water or fell into it. Either way, it was deep enough and fast enough to carry me off. I took a breath and went under, going with the flow. I came up, heard another shotgun blast, and went under again. I held my breath as long as I could and came up again. The shouts were well behind me now. I was gone, body surfing down this channel of clear, fresh water, so recently sucked up from the aquifer.

In a few minutes, the water grew deeper, the current faster. I tried to touch the bottom but couldn't. I slid onto my back and floated farther still. It is not easy to judge the passage of time when your adrenaline is pumping. Maybe it was ten minutes, maybe it was forty, but it wasn't long before the water slowed. A tree branch floated alongside me, and I grabbed it. A black mangrove. Then I caught the scent of brackish water and knew I was nearing the bay.

A mist rose from the moist soil into the night air and then, shining eerily above me, a light. And then another.

I was passing through the orange glow of a string of high-intensity lights, and above me, through the ghostly mist, I saw the silhouette of a building. Or at least the skeleton of one, under construction. Girders and framing a dozen stories high, rising like a spooky dreamscape. Bigger than anything in these parts, power-plant-sized, with a concrete smokestack poised like a missile next to the building.

And then it was gone. The gleam of the lights grew weaker, then disappeared, too. As I floated along, a strange thought worked its way into my consciousness. Had I seen anything at all rising out of the mist, or was it the product of my imagination, my fears, my dreams? Dr. Millie Santiago, where are you when I need you?

The water picked up speed again, and when I tried to swim toward the side of the levee, I was so exhausted I just let it carry me on. In a moment, the current slowed again, then stopped. The water was suddenly warmer. And salty. And endless. I was in Biscayne Bay. Keep swimming east and I'd hit the coast of Africa.

A gentle tide was headed out to sea, and so was I. Floating on my back again, I turned over and did a slow crawl, angling north along the shoreline. Just offshore, the lights of a shrimp boat twinkled in the night. I swam in that direction. A fish jumped from the water, silvery in the moonlight.

I swam some more, picking up strength, cutting smoothly through the flat, warm water. Suddenly I was thirsty, and I thought of Harrison Baker and his tale of fresh water spouting up in the middle of the bay. I thought of the coral reef not far south of here, alive with fish. I thought of all that lay beyond the horizon, so much of it unknown. As a boy, I had wanted to run away to the sea. Now, here I was, wanting to come back to land. There, too, to face the unknown.