I didn’t like the shrill laughter he used as a rim shot to his poor jokes. Didn’t like the condescending way he called me sir, not meaning it, letting me know with his inflection that it was a veil for contempt. To Ransom, I said, “How well you know these two guys?”
She said, “It took me a day to know they both idiots, and took fifteen years to try and find a way to ignore ’em.” I was heartened by her tone, her combativeness. She was right there with me.
I said, “Then I think I’m going to ask your island visitors to leave. This guy-” I swung my chin toward Izzy. “He’s either very stupid, or he’s very rude.”
Clare spoke for the first time, opening his eyes slightly, as if I’d just awakened him. “What you just say, my man? You call my brotheren stupid? Man, that a very stupid thing for you to do. You insult my brother, you insult the Lion of Judah, you insult the Holy Piby. Man, you insult me.”
Rasta talk? Apparently.
I told him, “The only one I was trying to insult was Izzy. But if I nailed you and a couple of others, that’s just fine. Ask Izzy to explain that as you leave. Which you’re going to do right now, by the way.”
Izzy held his hands up-hold it, hold it! Said, “Ransom girl, now I understand why you come to this rich Sanibel Island place. You make yourself so beautiful, you find you a nice big white gentleman to look after you. Protect you when you need it. That a very good thing. And sir? You got you a very good woman here. Nice woman who know how to work hard, treat her man right. I make you angry with what I say about my old friend, sister Ransom? Then I apologize. Yes I do. Clare and me, sir, we come from a lil’ island far away. Don’t know nothin’ about behaving in a rich man’s world like this. So please forgive me. Forgive us.”
I said nothing, looking at his golden smile, at Clare’s fuming glare, not certain if I was disappointed I had a bum arm or not. Clare had the look of muscle density and lots of fast twitch quickness. Maybe it was better to have an excuse. A reason to call the cops and ask someone else to make them leave.
Yep. Not much doubt about it. In a way, I was glad my arm was in a sling.
When I still made no reply, Izzy said, “Whether you accept our ’pology or not, sir, we got us a problem. Yes, we do. I very sad to say that. But it not a big problem if Ransom agree to cooperate. Thing is, Ransom, she went into the home of my former employer-his name Sinclair Benton-she go into Mr. Benton’s home after the man die, and she helped herself to a pile of money there, and a ring. That ring, it very valuable, man.”
“It not just any ring,” Clare added, looking at Ransom. “You so ignorant in the ways of the Lord, you probably don’t even know what it was you took. That ring, it a holy ring, girl. It the royal ring of Haile Selassie, the one made a present to him by the Ethiopian Church. That ring, it belonged to King Solomon, who give it to the Queen of Sheba, who give it to her son, Prince Menelik of Ethiopia. And that the way the ring be passed along for three thousand years ’til our Saint, Bob Marley, he lost it somehow on one of the small islands. But our employer, Mr. Benton, he get it back ’cause he know the proper way of certain words and herbs.”
Ransom said, “You mean he a witch. That what you sayin’. Or Benton stole that ring from Bob Marley his own self.”
“Don’t you be talking about Mr. Benton, you know what’s good for you girl. He dead but he still got power on Cat Island.”
“I ain’t on Cat Island no more. Big ol’ fat witch man! He treat me dirty all my life.”
Izzy was still using his peacemaker’s tone. “We all know why that is, Ransom girl. It ’cause your white daddy steal a bunch’a gold coins from him long ago in the back years and Mr. Benton, he not a man to forgive a person easily.”
“He call me a cow! You two boys right there to hear his words. Laughed right along with everybody at New Bight.”
“That give you no right to rob him!” Clare banged his walking stick on the deck for emphasis, then said to me, “She take a stack of cash money, too. American money. Ten thousand dollars was in that box, girl. Izzy, he just happen to count it before she come that night and get his brother so drunk on the cane rum and strip him naked offering to give him the womanly present.”
Izzy cleared his throat uneasily. “Could’a been a little more than ten thousand dollars, my brotheren. I tell you, I count it very quickly ’cause I know it not my money to be touching. Maybe she stole more than ten thousand. That I not so sure about.”
I smiled, seeing it now, understanding Izzy and Clare’s interest. I said, “You’re calling the lady a thief. What I wonder is, why don’t you contact the police? Have her arrested if you’re so sure it was her.”
The reason they hadn’t called the cops was obvious. It was because they planned on stealing the money and the ring for themselves. Not only that, something else was now clear: Izzy had lied to his partner about how much cash there was. Told him there was ten thousand when, apparently, there was nearly twice that. Lied to get a bigger split. But Izzy was staying calm, playing it cool. I listened to him say, “The reason we don’t contact the magistrate, man, it ’cause we care about our island sister. Ransom a good girl. She a hard worker, don’t make no trouble for nobody on the island.” The dazzling golden grin returned. “Man, if’n I knew how beautiful she gonna turn out to be in her old age, I’d taken this woman into my bed years ago. So why should I get her in trouble with the authorities, man? You think I want to see this good woman in jail? That where they sure gonna put her if she choose not to cooperate with us today.”
I said, “That’s very kind of you, Izzy. You, too, Clare.” “Your white gentleman friend, Ransom, he a very reasonable man.”
I said quickly, “I wasn’t finished. Thing is, when your employer died, I’m sure an attorney had to be involved in settling the estate.”
“Oh yes, you exactly right about that. Mr. Benton, he a very wealthy man. Had him two attorneys and they make everything go real smooth. One of them come clear from Nassau.”
“They handled Mr. Benton’s estate.”
“Of course they did. Everything fine and legal.”
“Then they had to know about the missing cash, right? And the missing ring. Which means that the police are going to be after whoever stole it, no matter if you turn them in or not, Izzy. It’s out of your hands.”
Izzy puffed up a little, confident, very pleased with himself. “That where you all wrong, sir. What you don’t know is, Mr. Benton, he a smart man. The way he get the ring and all that money, it his own business. So why should he pay the tax magistrate in Nassau for the fruit of his own labors?” There was the big grin, again. “Understand my meaning? There no official paper record of them things that was stolen. Which is why, if Ransom cooperate, the magistrate got no cause to arrest her.”
I’d taken a few steps forward. Now I put my right hand on the girl’s shoulder. “There’s no record of Benton owning the ring or the money?”
“No, man! That’s why your girl safe with only me and Clare knowing what she did.”
“Really? Then I’m very confused now. If there’s no official record of the ring and the cash being part of Benton’s estate, how can you or anyone else prove the ring or the cash exists?”
I watched the smile fade slowly from his face as he began to understand my meaning.
“If you or the magistrate can’t prove they existed, how are you going to prove Ransom or anyone else stole them? That’s the part I don’t understand. The cops can’t touch her. So how’re you doing her a favor not turning her in?”
The patronizing tone, the jollyness, were suddenly gone from his voice. “The favor we doing her, my man, is not treatin’ her like the thief she is. The way we’d do it down in the islands.”
“Oh? How do you treat thieves down in the islands?”
I was paying careful attention to the body language of both men, to the signals they gave off. Noticed that they began to move imperceptibly apart-the first feral indicator of attack formation. Noticed that Clare changed
his grip on the walking stick, not even thinking about it. Noticed the jerky movements of Izzy’s head, his eyes moving in fast surveillance-was anyone way over there at the marina watching?-as his feet moved him a few inches at a time to my left. Noticed his eyes freeze for a moment, looking down into the water beyond the railing of the deck. I saw the moment of recognition when he realized what those dark shapes were, swimming in slow circles below, and he said, “You got some big biters in there, man!”
“Bull sharks. That’s right.”
“Down in the islands, we catch a thief, what we might do is take ’em out to the deep water, where the color change, and chum up some them biters. Let the thief hang over the water while the frenzy goin’ on. Maybe drop him in among the sharks a few times ’til they get smart and tell us where to find what they stole.”
Which is when he lunged toward Ransom, his mouth telling his brain what to do as it came to him.
He had her by the hair, pushing her toward the railing by the time I got to him with my one good arm.
11
I have no idea what he planned to do once he got Ransom to the edge of the platform. Probably hold her there, threaten to push her in with the sharks if she didn’t come through with the money. Izzy was the spontaneous type, making it up as he went along because he had nothing to fear from me. Him along with his buddy, huge, mean-tempered Clare, against a guy with his arm in a sling. He had the kind of dumb bully confidence that’s seldom challenged and often gets people killed.
He had a fistful of red-beaded braids in his right hand, and had grabbed the back of her shorts with his left, controlling her that way as Ransom tried to battle him with her elbows, but she was unable to get to him because he hugged in close behind her.
You expect women to scream. She didn’t. Furious, her voice became more of a growl. Pure outrage. She knew all the descriptive words and how to use them, as Izzy demanded repeatedly, pushing her toward the water, “Where the money, girl? Where that money?”
Clare moved to intercept me just as I got to Izzy, but not before I got a few shots in. I hit Izzy with a right fist deep in the kidneys, once… twice, then buried my fingers into his face, squeezing hard. I heard his muted scream as my thumb dug up under his jawbone and my middle finger found traction in his eye socket, my left shoulder in the small of his back providing a foundation for torque. I felt Clare’s hands find my shoulders from behind, but I ducked low and under, then came up abruptly, driving my fist into Izzy’s groin from the backside.
It’s an ancient motor response etched in the primitive brain: If something strikes you in the nuts from below, you jump-jump as high as you possibly can, jump and lunge away. Izzy didn’t have great leaping ability, but my fist provided all the additional power necessary to somersault him into the air and over the railing. The microsecond of silence was punctuated by his knowing scream just before he splashed into the shark pen.
I didn’t see him hit the water because Clare was on me by then. On me, holding me, shaking me, suffocating me.
In the first moments of any fight there are certain things immediately known: Is your opponent stronger than you? Is he confident or is he operating on pure adrenaline and panic? Is he skilled? Is he vicious? Has he done this dance before?
With Clare, the answer was yes on all counts.
He wrapped his bearish arms around me, lifting and twisting so hard that I felt the vertebrae in my spine pop as my feet lifted off the ground. I elbowed him once… twice… three times in the stomach, and it was like hitting bone, his abdomen was so heavily muscled.
I tried to strike down on his instep with my heel. Missed because he was holding me so high off the deck. Tried to strike down on his kneecap with my heel, and missed there, too.
Meanwhile, Clare knew just how to work it. He used my every spasm and movement to work his forearm tighter and tighter under my neck, finding the left side of my throat with the sharp, upper edge of his radius bone. Then he used that arm bone to seal off my windpipe and to slow the blood moving through my jugular to the brain.
There is a strange moment, just before unconsciousness, when the ears begin to roar with the thudding, frustrated pounding of heart muscle, and light begins to dim slowly, slowly, like the dilating beam of a spotlight.
Through the slits of my eyes, I could see Ransom’s mouth moving, screaming at Clare, probably, but I could not hear her.
I could feel the overwhelming constricting of the big man’s arms; knew that he was killing me, but felt a sleepy indifference, resigned to the inevitable-death was not as painful as I’d feared. I felt a glimmer of hope when, for some reason, he loosened his grip, but that hope immediately vanished when I realized why: Instead of using his arm to choke me, he was now using the cane. He had both hands gripped on it as if to decapitate me. I used one arm to fight the cane away. .. then ripped my left arm out of the sling and used that too, operating on pure panic… and then, inexplicably, he stopped.
For an eerie moment, I thought I was dead. He’d beaten me, he’d won, so was it true? Had the terrible, crushing pressure on my throat really ceased?
Yes. He still had me in his control, but I could breathe again and my brain began to function again. I sucked in huge gulps of air, trying to clear the fog away. I lifted my chin to create even more breathing room, opened my eyes wide, and I saw why the man had stopped trying to kill me.
There stood Ransom in front of us, holding the golden ring in her fingers, showing it to him. My hearing had returned, too, and she was saying, “This the ring you want, Clare? Yeah, man, I can see in your face, this the ring you come all this way to get. This the king’s ring, that what you say? Man, if’n I knew it was Haile Selassie’s ring, I’d given it right back to your people ’cause I’m not the kind to show disrespect for someone’s religion.”
Clare was still holding me, but loosely, the way a cat whose attention has wandered holds an injured mouse. “Thank you, sistren. That the attitude I expect you to have. Praise most high to Ivertime, Him and Him, I and I. You give me the ring and the money, we go leave you in peace.”
By tilting my head downward slightly, I could see Izzy thrashing in the shark pen below, fighting his way to the edge of the heavy netting, which was held in place by floats. He was gasping and shouting, “The biters’s after me, man! Help me get outta here, man!”
Ransom seemed very cool, knew just what she was doing as she moved toward the edge of the deck, still holding the ring high. “You want this ring, Clare?”
“Ain’t that what I jus’ tell you? It for our people, sistren.”
“Then let my brother go.”
That confused him. “Your brother? Your brothren, he down there fuckin’ with the sharks. How I gonna let Izzy go?”
“No, man. That my brother. You let him go.”
It took a couple of seconds for his brain to process what she meant, then he laughed, amused. “This fella your brother? I let him go, all right. I’m gonna throw him down there with the sharks, let them decide dark meat or white meat.”
“No, you let him go now, damn you!”
“Don’t be swearin’ at me, sistren. You give me the ring, then I release this fella. As it say in the Book of Amos, ‘Are ye not as children of the Ethiopians unto Me, O Children of Israel saith the Lord.’ You do yourself righteous, my sistren. This your chance to please the living God of Abraham and Isaac, He Whose Name Should Not Be Spoken.”
“You know your verse, Clare. That much I give you.”
“Yes, I do. That from the Holy Piby. The one true Bible. Now give me the fuckin’ ring!”
Ransom was looking at me, looking into my eyes as Clare pushed me toward her. She stood there holding the ring high as bait, telling me something. I listened to her say, “My brother? You ready for what I’m gonna do?”
Clare said, “What you gonna do when? Give me that ring, that what you gonna do right now or I’m gonna rip your boyfriend’s head off. That exactly what I’m gonna do, my sistren.”
; She was still looking into my eyes. “You want the ring, Clare? You want it real bad? Then you jump in there with the sharks and get it.” I watched as she tossed the ring in a high arc into the air; watched the ring spin and glitter down, then implode like a bullet slug on the surface of the water.
“You crazy girl! You one crazy bitch!” Clare had made a clumsy, last moment lunge to intercept the ring, but didn’t even get close. He’d taken his hands off me to do it, and I had to fight the urge to use the opportunity to spin away, jump down to the lower deck and escape to the marina. Leave Ransom there alone and run for my life.
I wanted to do it, but I couldn’t.
Instead, I stepped in behind Clare and hammered him in the small of the back with my right elbow. Drove the same elbow down on the side of his neck when he stumbled. Then tried my best to duck under his arms when he swung around to grab me.
I wasn’t quick enough, though and, once again, I was trying to battle my way out of the big man’s stranglehold. I could hear Ransom screaming at him to stop, as the world began to grow drab and gray once more. I knew I had to find a way to break that hold, or probably die, so I let my body go limp and my head fall forward, as if I’d passed out. When I felt Clare relax his grip, keyed by my sudden weight, I didn’t hesitate. I slammed my head backward and felt it strike a cartilaginous mass-his nose. Heard a phlegmy groan as I slammed my head into him once more. Then I dropped, turned, and drove the pad of my open palm into his chin.
Clare’s face was a mess; he was still stunned from the crushing blow to the nose. Even so, the shot to the chin didn’t drop him. When he stumbled backward, I caught him by the throat; slid my thumb and forefinger in and nearly behind the delicate laryngeal. As I pushed with my hand, I tripped his feet out from under him, then held his entire weight against the rail above the shark pen. His eyes were wide, probably from lack of oxygen, but terror, too. He knew what was down there.
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