Tropical Freeze

by James W. Hall

  Roger brought his feet off the stool. He stood up. He looked like he was waiting for Thorn to stand up. But Thorn just leaned back against the couch, gazing out at all that turquoise and jade. From where he sat he could see the patches of white sand, the shadowy stains of turtle grass mixed in. But the bonefish tails were gone. Probably scared away by a passing cloud or a blip in the barometer. Probably in Nassau by now.

  “I wondered,” Roger said, “why Benny didn’t get upset, you coming in his office like that the other day. Those weird photos on his car. Slashing the man’s tires. That was you, wasn’t it?”

  Thorn said nothing.

  “Yeah, well,” Roger said. “It was you, and I wondered why Benny took it so smooth. But now I see it. It’s ’cause you’re nuts. You come across normal just enough of the time, but then it gets too much for you and you zone out. That’s it, isn’t it, Thorn? Benny knows it, he doesn’t take you seriously. You’re a fucking loon, aren’t you?”

  He was about to say more, do a thorough analysis of Thorn’s psychological dysfunctions, when they heard scuffling in the hall. Roger moved to the French doors that led back into the house.

  Joey was prodding Ozzie Hardison in front of him with his walkie-talkie. Every poke of the walkie-talkie got a snarl from Ozzie. He was wearing his yachting clothes. A white shirt with striped epaulets, the front stained with jelly. Blue jeans and flimsy tennis shoes.

  Joey gave Ozzie a push, and he stumbled into the room.

  “We’re being invaded,” he said. “This one I caught coming over the barbed wire on the south perimeter. He snagged his pants in the wire. If I hadn’t gotten him down, the juice would’ve come on tonight and fired his ass.”

  “Should’ve waited,” Thorn said.

  “You know this guy?” Roger said.

  “Like a cat knows his litter box.”

  Ozzie growled and broke from the guard and lunged at Thorn, got him in a quick headlock, and ground his arm hard against Thorn’s ears. Thorn went slack, let the rage that’d been simmering for days gather for a moment; then he swiveled and spun Ozzie one quick rotation, slinging him backwards into Roger.

  Ozzie clipped him in the hip, and they both stumbled back into the rattan couch. Roger got his balance first and took a chokehold on Ozzie. And the other guy started to do the same to Thorn but thought better of it, halted, drew out his Smith instead. He stepped back and covered Thorn.

  Ozzie was gasping, holding on to Roger’s forearm with both hands. Roger gave his throat a little squeeze, then lowered him slowly, sitting him down on the couch.

  There was something in Ozzie’s eyes Thorn hadn’t seen the other night. He wasn’t the smily, love-dizzied guy in Darcy’s kitchen. This Ozzie had lost a ton of innocence in a few days. His eyes clear now, the fog burned off. A smartass curl on his lips.

  Ozzie straightened himself slightly and said, “I want to see Benny. I’m not fucking with the help.”

  “He’s not fucking with the help,” Roger said.

  “You heard me,” Ozzie said. “I got serious business with the man.”

  Roger said, “I handle all Mr. Cousins’s serious business.”

  Ozzie shifted his eyes to Roger.

  “Sure you do.”

  “OK, Joey, throw these assholes out on the highway,” Roger said, looking at Thorn now. Shaking his head. “We’re not gonna bother the boss with these fucking loons.”

  “All right, then,” Ozzie said. “You tell the scum sucker that Ozzie Hardison was here. Every bit the man Papa John was, and then some. Tell him he’s dealing with the genuine article from here on out.”

  “Get this genuine article the hell out of my sight,” Roger said. “Put him and Thorn in the back seat, see who gets out.”

  As Thorn was walking through the French doors, he turned and said to Roger, “And tell Benny that Gaeton’s doing a lot better. Almost back to a hundred percent. And he wants to have a sit-down with Benny about this witness protection scam.”

  Turning, he walked ahead down the marble hallway, Joey poking him in the spine with a three-inch barrel.

  As Joey was starting the car, Thorn glanced back at the house, at the windows on the second floor. The lowering sun put a golden wash on them.

  Ozzie sat beside him in the back seat of the Mercedes, breathing hard, digging his fingers into the plush upholstery.

  They were rolling down the drive when a white Plymouth with darkened windows turned into the entrance.

  “Oh, boy, now what?” Joey said. He pulled over.

  The other man said, “Go on. It’s just the delivery.”

  “Great, another asshole,” Joey said. “All we need.”

  Thorn waited till the Mercedes was almost to the highway before he turned and looked back at the house. A man in a white uniform was opening the rear door for a woman in jeans, sunglasses, and short black hair. She wasn’t bound. She wasn’t bleeding. No one seemed to be pointing guns at her. She got out, stared up at the house.

  “Whatta you looking at, dingleberry?” Ozzie said.

  Thorn turned, brought his face to Ozzie’s. He stared at him for a moment at that range. Looking into those lightless eyes that were as shallow as the eyes of fish. The brain behind them probably only a bundle of tropistic impulses. Feed, screw, run.

  Ozzie said, “I asked you, dingleberry, whatta you looking at?”

  “I’m not sure exactly,” Thorn said, “but it looks a lot like the decline of Western civilization.”

  “What’d he say?” Joey asked.

  The other man had his arm on the seat, looking back at Thorn. He said, “I think he called the redneck the decline of Western civilization.”

  Joey chuckled and said, “He may have something there.”

  The other man said, “You ask me, both of them got a good many of their marquee lights burned out.”

  The two men laughed. Ozzie faced forward, folded his hands in his lap. Thorn counted the royal palms as they passed by. Fifteen. He stared at the new hole W. B. had just finished digging.

  30

  Thorn and Ozzie walked along the shoulder of millionaire’s alley. The Mercedes idled for a moment at the entranceway, then U-turned and headed back down the drive.

  Humming to himself, Ozzie walked a few yards ahead of Thorn. He stopped at a white pickup parked in the weeds along the road. “Bomb Bay Bar” was stenciled in red letters on the door. He opened the door and leaned in.

  As Thorn approached, Ozzie said, “Hey, look what I found.”

  He straightened up out of the cab, pointing a gleaming blue pistol with a silencer fixed on the barrel.

  “My magic lamp,” Ozzie said. “I rub it and my dreams come true.”

  Thorn stared at him for a moment. Saw again Ozzie’s new eyes, that feverish glaze. “So shoot me,” he said, and turned and kept walking.

  He made it a few more feet, then stumbled forward, caught himself, and stared down at the shredded flesh and cloth at his left shoulder, the blood spreading through his plaid shirt. It began as just a burn, and then his arm went numb from the shoulder down. Hung heavy at his side. At his wrist a prickle began to seep in, becoming a sharp tingle as it worked up his arm. His eyes suddenly muddy.

  Ozzie was behind him, pressing the hot barrel into his spine, hiding it there as a group of bicyclers passed on the road.

  “I shot you, lifeguard,” Ozzie whispered into Thorn’s ear. “What do you think about that? I winged your ass.”

  Thorn said something. Or maybe not. If he did, it was almost certainly not grammatical.

  As Ozzie was driving the pickup north up U.S. 1, he held the pistol on his lap with his left hand, steered with the other. Thorn tore a swatch from the sleeve of the flannel shirt and stanched the blood, pressing hard against the throb. He clenched his teeth, managed to keep his eyes open. He was feeling oddly alert. Probably flushed with adrenaline.

  The bullet had skimmed him. Tunneled an inch into his tricep and come out an inch later. He wasn’t going to die.
But he wasn’t going to be doing any push-ups for a while.

  Ozzie smiled, leaned his head back against the headrest, soaking up the moment. He said, “I think I found me something I like even better than money or sex.”

  Thorn took a deep breath, his throat aching. He said, “The asshole’s killing them. He brings them in and executes them. They want to go underground, he’s putting them there.”

  Ozzie craned forward for a better look at Thorn.

  “Who’s killing who?”

  He gripped his shoulder as a jolt of electricity flared there. Then a spasm in his heart. He held himself still and breathed his way past the pain, swallowed. Came gradually back to himself.

  Hours passed, months. He watched Key Largo drive past. Everything out there was numb. The billboards were bleached to grays. The bait houses and motels, their signs were wavering smoke. A blur on the world.

  He had to speak. To say something. He heard the words inside himself long before they surfaced. Bringing them up from his gut in a grunt as if he were lifting a tub of bricks. He said, “Planting them in his yard. Keeping score with palm trees.”

  “The fuck are you talking about?” Ozzie looked over at him. “You’re not going to barf in my truck now, are you?”

  Thorn heard himself say in a raspy voice, “Maybe she knew it. Didn’t let on and went in there anyway. Suicidal guilt.”

  Ozzie stared at him. Thorn leaned his head against the window. His thoughts helter-skelter now. He would have to focus. Bring things into line. He’d never been shot. Never had a hot hole torn through his body. Maybe he was dying. Maybe Ozzie was driving him somewhere to put more hot holes into him. He would have to force himself to keep the edges lined up, keep the red mist that was rising inside him from fogging his eyes. Had to think. Didn’t want to lie down in the refrigerated box of an ice cream truck.

  His head bounced against the window as he thought about wolves. Wolves. Yeah, wolves. Deer and wolves. He’d read about them once a long time ago. Wolves and the deer they hunted.

  How sometimes, as a wolf approached a herd, there seemed to be some silent transaction between hunter and hunted. The wolf halted at striking distance from the herd, seeming to ask in a voice no human could hear if there was a deer ready to die. And a deer, maybe sick, maybe just weary of the chase, separated itself from the others, answering back, all right, OK, for the sake of the herd, take me.

  And the wolf, who could have brought down any of them, took the volunteer. In his best interests, too, keeping the community of deer vigorous. Maybe that’s how it was. Darcy, for the sake of the herd, had stepped apart, relaxed her hold on living. A fatal altruism.

  Maybe that’s what had fueled Gaeton, too. And Sugarman. All cops, all heroes. A suicidal willingness to risk. Standing on the cliff edge, looking down at the surf, the swan dive beautifully executed in the mind, but some instinctive voice saying, step back, go have a rum drink, why risk it? And the other one, prodding them half a step forward, saying, aw, fuck it, man, take the chance. You’re going to die anyway. Fly, for godsakes. Fly!

  Maybe it was the death defiers who pushed the world forward, made it all happen, and the others, the ones digging in their heels, padding themselves deeper and deeper inside their safe husks, maybe it was their job to keep the world from lurching totally into chaos. Took both of them. A waltz of daring and fear.

  Thinking this. Considering wolves. Something he’d read a long time ago, before a blast of lead had entered his body. In the time before hot holes. Before palm trees were gravestones. Before cannibals and killers were lured up close to the boat with the great bait of America. Thorn held his shoulder, the place where vaccination scars were. Gripping it hard and looking out at Key Largo, at the Winnebagos, dusty station wagons from Indiana. At this paradise gone gray and shadowy.

  Thinking to himself, no, no, this deer isn’t ready. They’re going to have to chase Thorn, run up his backside, and bring him down. And then be prepared for a goddamn fight.

  Benny liked the puffy sleeves. He liked the red vest, the black felt hat, the brim pinned up on both sides, the purple ostrich plume. He liked the skull and crossbones cuff links, the hug-your-ass knickers, the scabbard and wide black leather belt. But those goddamn shoes, pointy slippers cut shallow like a woman’s. They made him feel silly, fruitcake shoes. It took the edge off the whole costume, the whole damn festival, knowing that he was stuck wearing faggy ballet slippers or whatever the fuck they were.

  He got out of the Mercedes, walked into the house, and Roger was just inside the front door in his swim trunks and rubber sandals, giving Benny a look. And Benny had all he could do to keep from taking out his balsa wood sword and poking both Roger’s eyes out.

  “Joey tells me somebody was by,” Benny said. He adjusted the scabbard.

  “Thorn and some other guy. That redneck works for Papa John.”

  “What? They together?”

  “They were when they left,” said Roger.

  “Jesus Christ,” Benny said. “The two of them fucking fall in love or something? They’re hanging out together. I don’t believe it.”

  Roger looking off at the ceiling now.

  Benny said, “What’d they want?”

  “Thorn said some bullshit about witness protection,” Roger said. “You and Gaeton were going to have a talk about some scam.”

  “Jesus Christ,” he said, and groaned. Massaged his forehead. “I got this headache, it’s like somebody shot me in the head. And it’s not like I don’t have enough to think about, I got to consider a guy, whether he’s dead, he’s not dead. A guy, he’s jerking my chain, for what reason I’m not sure yet. And I come home, and the people who I pay a lot of money to look out for my interests, they’re standing around with their thumbs in their butts, smirking at me.”

  Roger was looking out one of the windows, maybe trying to find something out there to keep him from breaking up. Benny could see his lips wriggle a little, a chuckle just under the surface.

  Benny said, “What is it? You think I look silly?”

  “Maybe a little,” he said.

  “I’m supposed to look this way. It’s historically accurate.”

  “Well, that’s different,” Roger said.

  Fucker still wouldn’t look at him.

  Benny massaged his head some more, said, “The lady arrive?”

  “An hour ago.”

  “She give you any trouble?”

  Roger said no.

  Benny said, “From here on, we keep them upstairs till they move on. No shopping. No phone calls. Nothing. I’ve had enough of that Claude shit, catering to these assholes so they’ll send a nice report home.”

  “Right,” Roger said.

  “I don’t want anything else fucking up this weekend. I been looking forward to it.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Now, I’m going up and talk to the lady. And I don’t want you to bother us. You hear noises up there, ignore it.”

  Now Roger looked at him. All the humor gone from his face.

  “Yeah, you heard me,” Benny said. “I got a thing for these Latin types. And these goddamn tight pants, they’re giving me a terminal hard-on. Goddamn things’re probably the reason why the pirates had to rape when they’d finished pillaging.”

  Benny knocked and asked if he could come in.

  Darcy jerked awake from her nap, blinked. She’d been flying inside clouds, thick dark ones. Inside the leading edge of a cold front that rumbled down the continent like a C-141B, powered by heavy Arctic air. Swirling inside that gaseous mass, plowing into the moist tropical atmosphere. Explosions of lightning all around her. The thunderous clash of yin with yang.

  She woke drenched. Benny knocked again and opened the door a crack and slipped his head in. He said, “You decent?”

  Darcy cleared her throat, rubbed her eyes. She nodded that he could enter. No lock on her side anyway.

  He was a stumpy man in leggings and red vest, his pirate gear making him seem young, har
mless. A boy at play. But his eyes up close were different from anything she had made out in her long-distance photographs. A caginess. Flirting with her as he came across and sat on the edge of her bed.

  “Do you mind?” he said.

  “Mind what?”

  “I sit here?”

  “It’s your house,” Darcy said.

  “Yes, that’s a fact. It’s my house.”

  She didn’t like this. Fencing like a dating couple. No. No, like hooker and client. See who had the power.

  “Good trip?” he said.

  “All right.”

  “They treat you OK? They didn’t try to pry into who you were or anything, I hope.”

  “They treated me very politely,” she said. “Who were they anyway?”

  “People I know. That’s all,” he said. “It’s not your concern.”

  Benny half turned to look at her now, planted his hand near her hip to steady himself.

  He said, “So tell me, we had a hard time pulling anything up on you. Anything recent. Last jobs you pulled were what, two, three years ago? Banks, was it?”

  “Two years ago,” she said. “That was massage parlors.”

  Benny nodded, said, “So, how about lately? You retired, kicking back or something?”

  “I’ve been with ETA. It’s a political organization.”

  “Political organization.” Benny pronouncing it, smiling. He was looking across at the window, palm fronds wavering in the dusky light. “This is one of those political groups, it shoots generals on the sidewalk. Isn’t it? Walk up behind them, they been at mass praying, and you say to their wives, excuse me, senora, but your husband was once a friend of Franco. Bang, bang. This political organization, it parks cars out front of bars where police hang out. Cars full of TNT. That it? You do shit like that?”

  Darcy said, “You interrogating me? Is that it? Do I need my lawyer with me?”

  He turned and brought one leg up on the bed. One foot still on the floor.

  “It’s a hobby of mine,” he said. “I like to get to know you people. See who it is I’m dealing with. How your brains work.”