Night Moves (Doc Ford) - By RandyWayne White Page 0,118
coming from. Had I been in South America, Indonesia, some far-flung place on an assignment—anywhere but in my own home—I would have taken the fifteen seconds required to grab a flashlight. Probably would had slipped a pistol into my pocket, too.
I didn’t. Another mistake—and it might have killed me.
33
BAREFOOT, WEARING ONLY RUNNING SHORTS AND A tank top, I walked out on the deck and heard it again: Hoo . . . Hoo . . . Hoo . . . Then my eyes followed my ears shoreward, where, in an instant, all seemed to be explained: someone had set a paper bag ablaze at the entrance of my walkway near the gate.
Idiots, I muttered. The oldest of adolescent pranks: scoop animal poop into a grocery bag, light said bag on fire, then laugh from the shadows while an outraged neighbor stomps the fire out, then has to clean excrement off his shoes.
I looked to my right: Friday night is party night at Dinkin’s Bay. The marina’s traditional Pig Roast and Beer Cotillion—acronym, PERBCOT, but is often referred to as PERV-COT because the hilarity sometimes gets out of hand. Music was thrumming, the docks crowded. Now, apparently, one or more of my playful neighbors were challenging my absence with an ingenious practical joke.
Through cupped hands, I called toward the mangroves, “Put it out before you set the dock on fire! I’m late for a date.”
Hoo . . . Hoo . . . Hoo . . . was the reply.
“Goddamn it, I don’t have time for this!”
Silence while the bag continued to burn, sparks thermaling starward.
I hollered, “Tomlinson! If it’s you, I swear to god I’ll . . .” but left the threat unfinished because now I could smell burning wood. My walkway has been braced and redecked in the patchwork tradition of most old docks and some of the planking is vintage Florida pine—highly combustible. If a plank caught fire, a stringer would go next. Time to act or I’d have a mess to deal with. Worse, I’d be late for my date!
Because I was barefoot, I couldn’t kick the bag off the dock, so I looked for the first thing handy. The bamboo shaft I’d snatched from Bambi’s hands was still leaning against the house where I’d left it. Above it, though, hanging from a beam, was an old gaff hook I seldom used but kept around because it was lashed to a fish billy that had once been my father’s—a chunk of mahogany two feet long. Use the hook to yank the bag away or use the disposable bamboo?
I chose the gaff because I hadn’t felt its heft for a while, then trotted down the steps, onto the walkway, the burning bag so bright it fired the lucidum eyes of something feeding in the shallows. I slowed to look—yep, a couple of big stingrays suctioned to the bottom—then had to wait while my eyes readjusted before I continued on. Which is why I didn’t notice a man’s mud black face protruding from the water nearby. Nor the red laser beam I tripped as I approached the walkway gate, which would have told me there was a camera nearby videoing the whole scene.
Instead of excrement, the bag contained only balled-up newspaper—not that I inspected it closely. I used the steel hook to fling the thing into the bay, turned to watch flames create steam . . . then froze, confused by what I was seeing:
White eye sockets blinked at me from a face of black marble, the statue of a man standing in water, ten paces away, his shoulders glistening as the statue pivoted—a throwing motion.
What the hell . . . ?
A shaft of light launched itself toward me, impossible to dodge it traveled so swiftly, a harmless trick of moon and shadows that split my chest with the impact of a sledgehammer and the crunch of splintering bone.
“I got him!”
A man’s voice conveying a reality while a primal voice—my voice—screamed, “Goddamn it!” Then I was on my back, perplexed by the crushing weight on my chest, a sensation levered by all that was above me, the weight of mangrove darkness and stars. No pain, but I couldn’t breathe. Could I crawl? Yes . . . two feet of water helped float me to my knees. My glasses were around my neck on fishing line, lenses streaked but usable. Floating nearby was a frail shaft of wood: the spear that had hit me and broken away from my body.