Ten thousand isles

Fifteen

A long time ago, in a different hemisphere, they made us take martial arts instruction. One of the weeklong evolutions was an introduction to kendo and kenjutsu, Japanese stick fighting and sword fighting, two very serious disciplines.

The martial arts were useful in that they taught pressure points and power points-unexpected places on the body where it is painful or dangerous as hell to hit or get hit. To this day, I cannot see a man wearing an open-collared shirt without looking at the third button down and thinking solar plexus.

They drove us hard, drilled us so incessantly that we learned to react without thinking.

Some of it stuck. Most of it did not.

I took away from those evolutions two memorable lessons. I learned that, nine times out of ten, a mediocre wrestler can beat a martial arts "expert" senseless, because all fights, if they last beyond the first series of blows, end up on the ground. The second important lesson I learned is that I have absolutely no talent as a swordsman or stick fighter. Zero. My peripheral eyesight is not good to begin with, and I'm at a marked disadvantage if I lose my glasses.

But even a talentless stick fighter such as myself knew more about it than Tony.

As I walked toward him, I noticed that he shortened his grip on the shovel. Unknowingly, he'd just told me something very important. He'd gone from a defensive posture to an attack posture.

Had he recovered from his fright? Seemed so. He looked not just ready to fight but eager. Lots of nervous movement. Probably because his chubby girlfriend was still watching, urging him on, yelling, "Kill 'im, Tony! See what he did to Derrick? Knock his head off, man!"

I approached him carefully. He was big enough, plus he had that look of fast-twitch quickness. A more compelling reason was that Tomlinson's paranoid assessment was probably accurate: the kid had the pinched manner of someone who enjoyed cruelty. It is a hyena furtiveness; a snap-at-the-heels, eat-them-when-they're-down demeanor that is subde but unmistakable.

If Tony got me on the ground, he wouldn't stop. That was my guess. He'd damage me and enjoy it. Maybe even kill me if he allowed it to go too far. He would probably enjoy that, too. What I had to do was find a way to hurt him badly enough so he'd no longer pose a threat to me and Nora.

At least, that's what I told myself. When emotion takes control, when the roaring comes into my ears, it is difficult to say what is true and what is justification for my behavior.

I listened to him say, "Dude, let's drop the sticks. You got the balls for that? Just you and me, using our hands."

I stopped as if considering. Let him see me relax for a moment, which is when he swung the shovel hard at my face.

It was not a surprise.

I ducked under the shovel, moving to my left, and used the tree limb to hammer him hard just above the pelvis, kidney high. The limb Derrick had chosen had a sapling springiness to it. The spring added a whipping effect. Wood hitting flesh made a hollow sound like bamboo smashing a pumpkin.

Tony moaned, dropped to one knee-then tried to cut my legs out from under me when I took a step closer. "Fucker, you hurt me."

"Put down the shovel, I'll stop."

"Sure-after I knock your head off!" He lunged at me as he got to his feet; took a series of wild cuts, driving me toward the mangroves. I backed away, sucking my stomach in, feeling the wind off the blade, he was that close. He had a split grip; the rhythm was consistent. When I got the timing down, I anticipated his backswing and smashed his right hand, then his left elbow, with a kayaklike stroke.

He dropped the shovel, moaning.

I took one step toward him, and put much of my weight behind a golf stroke that caught him just above the knee. His scream was a terrible thing to hear, and he fell to the ground in a fetal position.

"Stop it! You're going to kill him!" Tisha had gone from cheerleader to protector.

No, I wasn't going to kill him. But I was going to get some information out of him.

To Nora, I said, "I'm really getting tired of her noise."

I liked her quick reaction. She seemed to know instantly what I wanted her to do-stay between the hysterical girl and myself. I didn't want to be put in the position of having to light her off.

She gave Tisha a warning look. "I'm getting kind of sick of her myself."

Just like that, Tisha became very, very quiet.

Tony wasn't being cooperative. He was hurt and furious and he had a very nasty mouth. His attitude was as foul as his language. I was getting sick of both. Now I nudged him with the stick and said, "You need to answer my questions, little man, or I'm going to get mad. You don't want me to get mad, do you?"

He told me to go do something to myself-a physical impossibility.

He was still on the ground. I was standing over him. I said, "Did I mention that was your last warning?"

"Get away from me, asshole!"

"See? A perfect example. You don't seem to have any concern for my feelings." I knelt, put a knee in his side, slapped him twice in the face when he tried to fight me off, then I reached and got a good grip on his earrings, left hand and right hand. They became very effective steering devices. I turned his head until he was facing the ground, neck bent upward, toward me.

"That hurts, damn it!"

"I bet it does. But know what's gonna hurt worse? From now on, every time you don't answer a question, I'm going to rip a pretty little ring out of your nasty little head. First one that goes is that nose ring. That's going to hurt."

"Ford."

I turned to see Nora's quizzical, worried expression-I wasn't really going to torture the man, was I? I gave her the slightest nod in answer. It changed her face; changed the way she looked at me.

I said, "Okay, let's try it again: tell me why you dug up Dorothy Copeland."

"I didn't!"

I changed my grip on his head so fast that I had the nose ring in my fist before he could react. I gave it a sharp tug, hard enough for him to feel it, but not hard enough to rip it away.

"Shit!"

"I don't think you heard the question: Why'd you open her grave?"

"Honest, I didn't! I swear to Christ I didn't! I don't know who did, either. Some sicko, man, but it wasn't us."

"Then why were you at the funeral? And don't give me that crap about nothing better to do."

"To see what was in the coffin. People on the island knew there was something buried with her. That was always the story. I grew up hearing it, man, and I wanted to see for myself. Derrick and the two chicks, they were just tagging along."

"You have no idea who did it?"

"Not a clue. Honest to God. Yeah, we've been digging out here, but we haven't found shit. Some bones, that's all. Some pottery. But digging up the girl's grave, no way, man. I had absolutely nothing to do with that."

"Your dad's such a nice guy, he loaned you all this expensive equipment. He must be big on hobbies."

"When he sees what you did to his shit, you're going to find out how big my dad is, asshole!"

"There's that mouth of yours again." I twisted the nose ring until he made a squeaking noise. "Sneaking onto an island, digging up an important archaeological site. I hope you're nicer to the cop who arrests you."

"We ain't sneaking, man. We don't got to sneak. My dad's general contractor for the dude who owns the whole fucking island, man. They're gonna start clearing and building in a couple of months anyway. What we done here, shit, this ain't nothing compared with what my old man's gonna do when he gets the rest of his permits."

I said, "See how easy it is? I ask a question, you give me an answer." I released the nose ring. "Who does your dad work for?"

His eyes were watering; he had the sniffles, too. "The old man who was at the funeral today. The rich dude, Ivan Bauerstock."

Tony was Tony Rossi, son of Frank Rossi, the big man with the florid face and the T-shirt I'd seen at the funeral. He'd been working for Bauerstock for nearly fifteen years, according to his son, and both men had a passion for Indian artifacts.

"It's like their thing, you know? They collect the shit, trade it back and forth. It's what they got in common. Mr. Bauerstock, he's into all kinds of stuff. Artifacts, that's just one of the things. So when they get a construction deal going, and it's at a place that might have something to find, they make it a point to get in a little early. Dig and sift; no big deal. Which is my whole point, man. You think we're gonna get arrested? Shit, dude, you're the one who's gonna get arrested. My dad's boss owns the fucking place."

I thought I was going to have to restrain Nora when he said that. I waited patiendy while she lectured him. I saw at least one point hit home-"We'll have Ivan Bauerstock arrested and make you testify!" — before I asked him a few more questions. We were both standing now; me leaning on my stave, him limping around when he moved, nursing an elbow that had already swollen to the size of a baseball. Whenever he balked at a question, all I had to do was take the stave in both hands. It kept him talking.

It wasn't unusual for his dad to pay him and some of his buddies to do that hard, hot labor. He'd been doing it off and on for years. The difference this time was, his dad had been so insistent that they put in a lot of hours and make a very, very careful search. Tony was vague about what he hoped they'd uncover.

"Stuff like the girl found, that's what my old man said. I'd seen those pictures a thousand times. Wooden masks, Spanish beads. That thing you took out of the girl's coffin, they'd love to have that, man. They're big on carvings or anything made of gold. Something major, Mr. Bauerstock is gonna pay me a big bonus. Two thousand bucks cash plus a thousand each for my friends."

"Plus he was paying you to dig."

"Hell yes, he was paying us. Lot more than I'd make at Wendy's."

I asked him, "Does that make any sense to you? To pay so much for a carving?"

"A rich man doesn't have to make sense. He just has to be rich. Know what you might try, dude? When my old man figures out where you're hiding and comes to beat your ass, you might try offering him that carving in trade. Get yourself off the hook."

Before I turned him loose, I told Tony his old man wouldn't have to look hard. I'd be on Key Largo.

We were nearly to the long bar off Lostman's River before Nora spoke. We'd ridden all that way in silence, past Panther Key and Jack Daniels and Pavilion Key; the Ten Thousand Islands off to our left, mangroves so dense that they absorbed sunlight; they seemed to create a dark dome beneath the bright blue October sky. I saw only two other skiffs the whole way, plus a sailboat on the far horizon probably outward bound from Key West or the Dry Tortugas. The two of us sat side by side but alone, as silent and remote, it seemed, as the dark islands touched one after another by my skiff's trailing wake.

Violence releases a potent chemical cocktail into the muscles and the brain. The aftereffects can be a little like a hangover. It produced a gloom in us both. I had drifted so deeply into my own thoughts that I actually jumped a little when she spoke.

"Ford? You really would have done it. Why's it so hard for me to believe that?"

It took me a moment to understand the question. "The rings, you mean."

"Yes. You'd have torn them out to make him talk. You really would've."

I thought about lying, then decided to hell with it. "Probably. A couple of them, at least, just to let him know I was serious. Until he convinced me that he wasn't the one who dug up Dorothy, it seemed like the thing to do."

"It was so… brutal."

"He wasn't all that nice to me, if you think about it."

She touched her fingers to my arm, a signal of some type. "I wasn't criticizing you. It was an observation. I've never seen anything like that. The whole scene keeps going through my mind over and over. Wasn't that girl awful?"

I nodded.

She touched my arm again and looked at me. "Some puppy dog. Delia called you that. You're no puppy dog."

We cut in close to the beach at Cape Sable where mangroves grow a hundred feet high, then ran Tin Can Channel past Flamingo. Had I been alone, I might have stopped and placed a wild flower on a little marker that commemorates the passing of someone who was once very near and dear. Instead, I accelerated over a shoaling bottom, feeling the skiff gather buoyancy as the bottom pressure created lift.

Doing an easy fifty, we flew through the narrow cut at Dump Keys, then past Samphire Key where the water changed from gray to iridescent green over a coral bottom that showed a blur of sea fans and sponges. To the east was Key Largo. The big micro tower there punctured a cumulous cloud that was feeding on exhaust fumes and asphalt thermals.

The water continued to clear until it had the density of bright air. The eye told the brain that to fall from the skiff meant a drop of ten or twenty feet. I waited until I found a perfect basin of clear water, then backed the throttle and switched off the key.

"Why are you stopping?"

"Water like this, I've got to swim. The starboard locker, beneath all the ice, you'll find botdes of beer. There are a couple of Cuban sandwiches, too. Help yourself. All I've got is underwear, so turn the other way if you want."

"My God! Look at your side."

I had my shirt off. I looked where she was pointing and saw a tubular bruise where Derrick had hit me. A very serious hematoma that appeared as if it might still be bleeding. The bruise was black in the middle, green and red at the edges.

"If he'd hit you in the head, he'd have killed you."

I said, "I don't doubt it," and dived in, feeling the cleanness of water cover me. I swam out another twenty yards, letting my muscles stretch, my hands feeling the weight of water, and then I dived to the bottom once again. I surfaced to see Nora standing on the casting deck, ready to dive. She'd stripped down to bra and panties; a tall, flat-chested woman with ribs showing beneath dark skin. Bony hips and very long, smooth legs with a firm muscularity.

It was a nice image: dark, lean woman, lucent water, green horizon. Seeing her brought some light back into me and brightened my thoughts.

She did a pretty good dive, had a very nice, long-distance stroke.

Back in the boat, her black hair dripping, unselfconscious about her body showing through wet bra and bikini panties, she said to me, "I know what you mean. Water like this, you've got to get in."