Riptide

CHAPTER 14

Two years earlier, the hurricane had buried the marshy hammocks of the coastline under a ten-foot wall of water. The tidal surge, pushed by raging winds, ripped out seawalls and tossed boats onto lawns of waterfront homes. The winds cleaved at the vegetation, shattered roof tiles and rent asphalt felt from its plywood sheathing, splintering trusses from their hurricane straps. Roofs were blown to neighboring zip codes. Road signs were recovered twenty miles away. In an office near the bay, a five-hundred-pound desk flew through a window and was never found. In four hours, the winds and water created three million cubic yards of debris.

Along the southern shore of Biscayne Bay, gusts toppled giant oaks. The eye wall of the storm tore from the ground the shallow-rooted ficus trees and shredded the aerial roots of sprawling banyans. But when the water receded, the red and black mangroves — propped on roots aboveground — were still there, matted with sea grass and debris, gnarled as before. If royal palms were regal in their bearing, the mangroves were the crippled outcasts of a primitive society. Stunted, bent into impossible shapes, rooted in sand and salt, they were the sturdy survivors of eons of evolution and countless storms.

At night, the bowed and hunched trees of the swamp take on ghostly shapes, their silhouettes appearing as the arms of the tortured, reaching out in pain.

Berto splashed through the shallow water, ducking under the branch of a red mangrove, not seeing a curved root. He tripped and fell, banging his knee against the trunk of a submerged, long-dead tree, and dropping the duffel bag into the water. He cursed under his breath, picked up the bag, and kept going. Above him, through the branches of the mangroves, low silvery clouds scudded across the sky, obscuring a slice of moon. He swatted at a mosquito and succeeded in smacking his own ear. Gnats buzzed around his neck and tickled his nose. An unseen animal splish-splashed away in the darkness.

What a place to meet, he thought. Like one of those old black-and-white movies. Creature of the Black Lagoon or something like that. Man, the sooner you get your citified ass out of here, the better. That’s the trouble with the assholes in this business. Too many movies. Passwords on the phone, hand signals, always afraid of wires and bugs. Dress this way, blink your lights three times, meet in the goddamn swamp. What bullshit he had to put up with. If he had it to do all over again…

That made him laugh.

If he had it to do all over again! Man, he’d change everything. Maybe he would have stayed in the practice of law, let clients sign the personal guarantees to the banks. Didn’t he talk to Jake about that in the old days? Hernandez-Zaldivar and Lassiter, P.A. Or was it the other way around? But they never did it. What was it Jake always said?

“Berto, the courtroom’s too small a stage for you. You’ve got to have your name in lights.”

“With my name, it’ll take a lot of lights.”

He laughed again, took two more steps and stumbled.

Shit.

The water splashed onto his trousers. Three hundred bucks in Bal Harbour. Not that Franklin would care in his Sears polyester. Where was the guy? Was he so good at his job I won’t know he’s here?

Berto thought he heard something — a movement, a broken twig. He turned in the darkness but saw nothing, his Gucci loafers sinking into the mud. He strained to hear over the pounding of his heart and the buzz of mosquitoes around his ears. Then a jolt from behind, his feet out from under him, and he landed in the muck, his first thought a wild incongruity — could the dry cleaner get the mud out of his bird’s-egg pleated Italian slacks? A moment later a vague feeling that his neck hurt.

“Heavy links,” said the voice from behind him. “Gold? You would like gold, wouldn’t you?”

The grip tightened on his chain and Berto swallowed and tried to look over his shoulder. A snap on the chain, a knee in the small of the back, and he was staring straight ahead into the blackness. “You’ll turn when I tell you,” the voice said in a controlled tone barely above a whisper.

Dense clouds covered the moon now, the curtain of mangrove trees closing around them, drawing them nearer in the muck of the swamp.

He strained to talk. “What do you want?”

“The money,” the voice ordered.

“In the duffel bag,” Berto whimpered. He kicked at the canvas sack at his feet. “ Por favor, some air.”,’

The gold noose loosened a bit and Berto sucked in a long, greedy breath. At the same time he rubbed his neck, wondering if he could reach the pistol in his ankle holster. It was not going the way it should, not the way it had been planned. Where the hell was Franklin? Another absurd thought — maybe the budget-crunching feds refused overtime for a DEA bodyguard.

“Is it all there?” Another whisper in the darkness.

“Twenty thousand now, the rest when you bring the stuff in. Plus a bonus.”

“Liar!” The voice startled him, strange and unfamiliar, and another yank from behind. The chain lifted Berto to his feet, the links digging into his neck, drawing blood. “Turn around,” the voice commanded, a firm grip steering him. Berto staggered in a circle, gasping, blinking through tears from the pain, a blaze of lights behind his eyelids, torches of agony igniting the darkness.

Silence, then a whisper again, frightening in its softness. “Are you afraid to die? Maybe you will come back as a warrior, instead of the worthless little snitch you are.”

Berto shivered with cold fear. “Please, just take the money,” he begged, the words barely audible above the crazed song of a million insects.

“Of course I’ll take the money.” A hint of amusement now.

The pressure on the chain loosened. Then a hard punch, palm upward, knuckles clenched, aimed precisely at the Adam’s apple. In the dark Berto never saw it coming, never flinched. There was a crunch, then a sickening gurgling sound. Berto collapsed into the mud, gasping for breath that would not come.

A second later, powerful, gloved hands circled his wounded neck. The hands pressed steadily. Deprived of air, Berto’s body began to shake, his feet dancing a palsied jig. Pinpoint hemorrhages popped out on his eyelids and scalp, then the cartilage of the larynx cra-acked like a chicken’s wishbone, and finally, his tongue, elevated by the pressure of the hands on the neck, shot out of the mouth, at first bloody and red, but by sunrise, long after the killer had left, black and grotesque as death itself.