the eye. But wasn’t that a little outside the envelope, trying to tail a cop while he’s in his squad car?”
There was a bit of a lilt in her voice, like she was smiling when she said it, and not a smile that held a comeuppance.
“Yeah, I suppose it was. But how did this information come to your attention?”
“O’Shea called me,” she said, flat and matter-of-fact.
“You’re kidding,” I said, spinning the conversation I’d just had with O’Shea.
“He was concerned about you. He thought you were working something that was going to get you into trouble on his account and he said he didn’t want to be responsible. He said he figured that I should know the truth before the facts got twisted around to suit the uniforms.”
“The truth?” I said.
“Meet me over in the covered parking lot at the Galleria at two, under the west side,” she said. “It’s raining like hell down here.”
I told her I would be there by two, as soon as I checked on another client.
It was still only gray here. The clouds were heavy and had not yet opened up but I could hear the surf beginning to slash at the beach as the wind increased. The fronds of the rubber plants and white birds of paradise that sheltered each bungalow were clacking and the smell of salt and flotsam was thick in my nose when I came around the corner and stopped.
The door to Billy’s hideaway was standing open. There was a light glowing somewhere behind the front window. Probably the one over the sink in the kitchen, I thought, putting the layout together in my head while I squinted and tried to pick up any movement inside. I stepped closer to the sea grape tree next to me and knelt with one knee in the sand. The wind swung the door a foot more and I could now see a bar stool on the floor and the small dining area light was missing from its spot suspended above the table, only a bare cord left hanging in the air. I was unarmed. My 9mm was back at the shack, wrapped in its oilskin cloth where I had retired it.
Don’t jump to conclusions, I told myself, and then got up and took a couple of steps closer, listening through the rumble of the ocean and wind. There was still no movement from inside. I looked around for neighbors but the weather had sent most people indoors.
On the flat concrete stones that started a path in front of the patio I picked up on a trail of dark droplets and one didn’t have to be a CSI to recognize blood, and that’s when I moved faster. At the door I peered around the corner. The front room had been tossed and glass and half a bulb from the hanging light lay shattered in one corner. The blood trail led to the couch and joined a stain there that formed the shape of Italy in the fabric. I was about to step all the way in when the panicked voices of women came from behind me in the wind.
“Help! Somebody help him!”
I turned and jogged toward the beach and saw three women, one with children huddled into her skirts, waving their arms and pointing out to sea.
I had my shirt off by the time I hit the railing of the bulkhead and then used the top rung to swing over and down. I kicked my Docksides off after landing in the sand and I was honing in on a splotch of yellow that was bobbing fifty yards out. The shape expanded at the top of a crest to something human and then disappeared on the backside of the wave and a prayer seemed to bring it back to the surface again.
I hurdled the first three waves and then launched myself like a spear down into the next one, grabbed a handhold of the bottom sand, pulled myself into a crouch and used my legs to launch again. Each time I dolphined I tried to catch a breath and a glimpse of the yellow shirt. Sometimes I got one, sometimes the other.
When it got too deep I started to freestyle, looking forward each time a wave picked me up to the top of a crest. It didn’t take long to close in on the shirt. When I got to within ten yards I could see it was Rodrigo, one side of his face a pale white, the