by Paul Levine
“Hey, guys,” Bobby said, heading for the counter and picking up a slice of prosciutto. He was wearing his regular uniform, baggy shorts and a Miami Heat T-shirt with a flaming basketball dropping through a hoop.
“You were supposed to be back before dark,” Steve said.
“I'm not a baby,” Bobby said.
Victoria popped the cork on the wine bottle. “Bobby, you should have a sweater on. It's cold out.”
“Only girls wear sweaters.”
“Listen to Victoria, kiddo,” Steve said, running water over a colander filled with fresh shrimp. “Where you been?”
“Riding my bike.”
“Without a helmet?”
“When you were a kid, did you wear a helmet?”
“Objection, irrelevant,” Steve said.
“Sustained.” Victoria poured two glasses of wine. “Wear your helmet, Bobby.”
“Jeez, why are you two ganging up on me?”
“Because we love you,” Victoria said.
She had just astonished herself. Blurting it out like that.
We love you?
As if they were a couple. She put down the wineglass. “I've got to go. See you tomorrow, guys.”
“See you,” Bobby said.
She slipped into a tailor-cut black leather jacket. “Steve, we'll work on the poem tomorrow, okay?”
“What poem?” Bobby asked.
“You really believe Katrina doesn't know what it means?” Steve asked her.
“Absolutely. She's not real strong on allegory and metaphor.”
“What poem!” Bobby demanded.
Steve took a knife and started deveining the shrimp. “Something Barksdale wrote. Doesn't concern you.”
“Why not?”
“Because I'm not supposed to get you involved in my cases.”
“Little late for that, Uncle Steve.”
Steve glanced at Victoria, who shrugged her okay.
Then he recited:
“Hide a few contretemps Defer a competent wish Cement a spit-fed whore.”
“Cool,” Bobby said. “Each line has nineteen letters.”
“I didn't notice.”
“Then I guess you didn't notice they're all the same letters.”
“What!” Steve was stunned. “You're saying it's an anagram?”
“Duh,” Bobby said, grabbing another piece of prosciutto.
“Bobby, what else can the letters be arranged to say?” Victoria asked urgently.
Bobby made a show out of it, wrinkling his forehead, closing his eyes: “Lots of things. ‘Ferment a cowhide pest.' ‘A deft timeworn speech.' ‘A west morphine defect.'”
“But there's only one we want,” Steve said. “A message to Katrina. Or about Katrina. Something like that.”
“It's called the ‘source gram,' Uncle Steve. The one he used to make all the others.”
“So help us out here, Bobby. What other phrases do you see?”
“Get outta town! There'll be hundreds, maybe thousands.”
“C'mon, kiddo.”
“I'm hungry. Can we do this later?”
“Bobby, this is important.”
“I'll do it for a glass of wine.”
“No deal. What else do you see? Any phrase with ‘wife' or ‘woman' in it?”
Bobby pouted.
“We could get them all with a computer program,” Victoria suggested.
“No, no, no, no, no,” Bobby singsonged. “I wanna do it.”
“Make up your mind,” Steve said, letting his frustration come through. “Do you want to help or not?”
“Fuck it!” Bobby yelled.
“Cool it!” Steve said.
“Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!” Bobby grabbed a handful of shrimp and threw them across the kitchen, where they thwacked against the cupboards. “You don't care about me! Don't care! Don't care!” He was rocking back and forth, eyes unfocused.
“Aw, jeez,” Steve said. “How long since you've eaten?”
“Who cares? Who cares?”
“Your blood sugar's low. You know you're supposed to-”
“Don't care! Don't care!”
“C'mon, Bobby. Calm down.”
“Don't care! Don't care!”
“Bobby, you're really, really good at this,” Victoria said tenderly, “and we really value your help.”
The boy's eyes were welling up. “That all you care about, my helping you?”
“Of course not. You're a wonderful boy. Sensitive and sweet.”
“I'm not a wuss.” A tear streaked down his face.
“No, you're not. You're all boy, and I want to be around to see the man you become.”
“Really?” Bobby used the back of his arm to swipe away a tear.
“Watch this,” Steve said, picking up the cue from Victoria. He grabbed a handful of shrimp and tossed them against the cupboard. Two or three stuck, and the rest slithered toward the floor.
“Cool.” Bobby picked up a handful of shrimp, hurled them at the wall, and started giggling.
“There are still some left,” Steve said.
“Victoria's turn,” Bobby said.
She grabbed a few shrimp and lobbed them at the cupboard.
Bobby laughed. “You throw like a girl.”
Steve put his hand on the back of the boy's neck, gave him a squeeze. “Know what, kiddo?”
“What?”
“No father ever loved a son any more than I love you.”
Bobby put his arms around Steve's waist and hugged. Steve wrapped an arm around the boy's shoulders.
“I think I know the source gram, Uncle Steve.”
“Sure you do.”
“Wanna know what it is?”
“Nah, I want to hug some more.”
“C'mon, Uncle Steve.”
“It can wait. Tomorrow. Next week. A year after your Bar Mitzvah.”
“Now!”
“Okay, kiddo, shoot.”
“‘The woman is perfected,'” Bobby said. “That's your source gram. ‘The woman is perfected.'”
Thirty-five
THE RUNNING MAN
Saturday morning the weather guys and gals were all atwitter about the arctic blast that was working its way south. “Freeze Watch!” the announcers screamed.
Steve watched the histrionics while standing at his kitchen counter, slicing a carambola, the yellow star fruit that grew on neighborhood trees. On the screen, Ricardo Sanchez, the Channel 4 weather guru, was garbed in a parka. Standing in front of an irrigation canal, Sanchez held his microphone in a gloved hand and interviewed a handsome, blond man in a bombardier jacket, a white silk scarf tied at his neck. Bruce Bigby, looking like a World War I aviator. The Green Baron, maybe?
In the background, Steve could see farmworkers wrapping palm fronds around the trunks of avocado trees. They wore jeans and T-shirts and didn't seem to be suffering hypothermia, even though most would have been natives of frost-free Caribbean islands.
“Could be the coldest night since the freeze of December 1894,” Sanchez said.
“We can battle Mother Nature a lot better now,” Bigby assured him. “Sprinklers, heaters, wind machines. Plus, I've got an army of two hundred workers.”
Not one with a green card, Steve felt certain.
Bigby droned on, explaining the difference between radiation frost and advective frost, then smoothly moving to his favorite topic. “Let me remind your viewers that no matter the weather, the Bigby Resort and Villas' sales office will be open tomorrow, regular hours. Affordable vacation units for a lifetime of enjoyment.”
It was only eight A.M., but he'd already had his fill of Bigby. He turned off the TV, and five minutes later, Victoria called.
“‘The woman is perfected,'” she said. “I fell asleep thinking about it.”
With Bigby alongside, no doubt.
“Me, too,” Steve said. “It's a lot different than saying, “‘The woman is perfect.' But what's it mean?”
“Can we work on it Monday? I'm g
onna be stuck on the farm all weekend.”
“I saw your guy on the weather forecast. He looked dashing.”
“I'm so worried,” she whispered. “Bruce is trying to act brave, but inside he's terrified about what might happen.”
In the background, Steve heard someone shouting. “Smudge pots, pronto! Comprende?”
“You're coming down here tonight, aren't you, Steve?”
“Not if I have to watch the two of you smooching around a campfire.”
“We'll be working to save the farm. You know that.”
“Look, I wouldn't be much use. Even my weeds die.”
“Bruce likes you, Steve.”
“Bruce is a lousy judge of character.”
“Please, do this for me, Steve.”
After that, what choice did he have? He told her he'd be there by sundown to shovel shit or whatever Bigby wanted. She said to dress Bobby in several layers, and for a moment, it sounded very domestic to him, like she was his wife and Bobby their son. But that thought passed when Victoria said she had to go. Bruce was calling her, something about sandwiches and soup for two hundred men.
It was sunny and windy, the temperature plunging when Steve, in cotton sweats, took his run. He followed the usual route through South Grove, across the Gables Waterway bridge, to the end of Cocoplum Circle. Bobby rode his bicycle twenty yards ahead. Bribed with the promise of a papaya smoothie, the kid had pulled a windbreaker over his Marlins jersey.
Steve was hoping to get into the zone, that relaxed place where the body goes on autopilot and the mind relaxes in the La-Z-Boy. Sometimes, zoned out, ideas would pop into his head-new sandwich recipes or trial strategies-and he'd race home and write them down. But today he had only questions.
What did Charles mean? “The woman is perfected.”
Steve's gut told him it was the key to the case.
Questions in Bobby's case, too.
How do we discredit Kranchick and Thigpen? Who's the mystery rebuttal witness? And how the hell do we win?
A question about Victoria, too.
If we'd met before she hooked up with Bigby, would things have turned out differently?
All questions, no answers.
Passing the halfway point, Steve concentrated on his form. Arms relaxed, head still. There wasn't much traffic, just a few real estate brokers chauffeuring clients past waterfront homes. He saw Bobby half a block ahead, carving figure eights on his bike, then swerving back on course.
Steve called out: “Hey, kiddo, wait up!”
The boy turned, waved, then pedaled faster, heading away from him, toward LeJeune Circle.
Where does he get that rebellious streak?
Standing upright on the pedals, Bobby turned right at the circle and disappeared from view.
“Dammit.” Steve picked up his pace.
Sometimes Steve thought he was overprotective. When he considered his own childhood, he was sure of it. When he was just a little older than Bobby, he would ride his bike from Miami Beach across the Julia Tuttle Causeway, cars whizzing by, horns blowing. He'd look for pickup baseball games in a park near the Liberty City projects. He was usually the only white kid in the game, but he couldn't remember anyone ever hassling him. At least, not until he started betting five bucks he could beat anyone in a race.
Any race. Around the bases, straight down the foul line, from home plate to deepest center field. They'd laughed at him, skinny Jewish kid from the Beach who thought he was a brother. But he'd won six races in a row, pocketed the cash, then dashed off on his bicycle, a couple of sore losers chasing him with baseball bats.
Now Steve crossed the bridge over the waterway, turned on Edgewater, and headed toward the bay.
Bobby was not in sight.
He'd probably turned up Douglas Road, the quickest route home, Steve figured. Not to worry, right? Still, he sped up.
Edgewater was quiet on a Saturday morning. No cars, no pedestrians, just a chorus line of wood storks. He turned left on Douglas, heading up a slight incline, a hill by Miami standards.
Still no Bobby.
He tried to calculate how far the boy could have gone, pedaling with those legs, as spindly as the wood storks'. He didn't like the answer.
Bobby should be here. He should be in sight.
Then, just past Battersea Road, Steve saw it. Bobby's red Schwinn, on its side, its front wheel poking out of an azalea bush.
“Bobby! Bobby, where are you?”
The only sound was the caw of an unseen bird.
“Bobby! C'mon, no screwing around.”
He forced himself to remain calm. The boy could have walked down Battersea to the seawall. He could be skipping stones across the flat water of the bay. He's on the rocks at the shoreline, Steve told himself. He had to be.
Halfway down the street, Steve could see all the way to the bay.
“Bobby!”
No answer.
He turned around, got back to Douglas, started running north. Cars were backed up at the Ingraham intersection, an arts festival in the Grove jamming the traffic all the way to Old Cutler Road. He picked up speed, running along the berm in the shade of palmetto trees, looking into each gridlocked car as he passed. Families in sedans, teens in Jeeps, hotshot guys in convertibles. Horns honked; drivers craned out windows; a man cursed.
Breathing hard, Steve willed himself to stay loose. He knew that tensing up would drain his energy. He had to make a quick decision. Douglas Road split in two. Bear right, you head up Main Highway into the downtown Grove and even worse traffic. Stay straight, and you hit South Dixie Highway. If Bobby had been snatched, the car would head for South Dixie. Once there, it could turn north toward I-95, go straight into the Gables, or turn south and head for Kendall. It could go anywhere.
If the car gets to South Dixie, Bobby's gone.
Steve stayed straight, running full bore. He was at De Garmo when he heard the screech of burning rubber. Ahead of him, one of the cars pulled out of the pack. But it wasn't a car.
A muddy green pickup with oversize tires.
It peeled into the oncoming lane and tore left across traffic onto Leafy Way. Steve was too far away to see into the truck.
Was it Janice?
Or Zinkavich's thugs?
Or some freaking pedophile?
No way to see if Bobby was inside. But there are some things you sense. He felt Bobby's presence. His heart raced now, not from the exertion of running but from the fear boiling through his veins.
Steve headed toward Leafy Way, a block ahead. A strange choice if they were looking for a shortcut. The street dead-ended three blocks from the intersection.
He figured he had one minute, at most, before the truck pulled a U-turn at the end of the street and came back out to the intersection. The only sounds now were the pounding of his own heart and the slap of his running shoes against the pavement. For the first time, he was aware of his aching legs.
He pictured Bobby at the park, tossing the ball. Herky-jerky movements, no natural coordination, but the kid loved to play. They would pretend Bobby was a Marlins pitcher; Steve would get in the catcher's crouch and call balls and strikes. “Stee-rike three! Bobby Solomon, the rookie sensation from Miami, strikes out Barry Bonds to end the Giants' threat.”
That someone could hurt this boy filled Steve with a hot, murderous rage.
Then the spigots opened, the adrenaline poured, and Steve flew. Alongside him, the gridlocked cars were a blur, the faces of motorists featureless smudges. He jumped on the hood of a blue BMW and leapt off on the other side, the driver yelling, “Ay, cabron!” as Steve crossed Douglas and spun into Leafy Way.
Sure enough, the muddy pickup with the bug screen was growling back out, coming straight at him. Now he saw it had a reinforced steel bumper mounted with a recovery hook, waist high. There could have been three people in the cab or three hundred; Steve couldn't see past the windshield glare.
He ran straight at the truck. Playing chicken. The hook would be t
he first thing to hit him, entering the stomach, exiting his back. Steve had several seconds to imagine the autopsy photos.
He kept running; the truck kept coming.
The truck's horn blared, a steady blast.
He had maybe five seconds to dive over the curb and into a flower bed.
Suddenly, the truck braked hard, tires squealing. It fishtailed to a stop ten feet from him. Bouncing over the curb into a yard alongside a one-story stucco house, it smashed through a ficus hedge.
Steve chased after it.
From a neighbor's yard, someone yelled, “Hey! Fuck!”
The truck plowed through the property at the rear of the house. Churned up chunks of grass, sideswiped a pool cabana, crunched through a planter made of railroad ties. An elderly man in a bathrobe watering flowers leapt away, screeching something unintelligible.
Looking for a shortcut, Steve ran through an adjacent yard and headed for the next street, El Prado. He was betting the pickup would turn right and make a run for LeJeune, away from the snarled traffic. He headed on an angle to intercept it.
Turn right. Damn you, turn right.
Engine roaring, wheels tearing through the soft grass, the truck bounced into El Prado just as Steve emerged from the yard of an adjacent home.
The truck turned right. He had the angle. If he timed it perfectly
…
You can do this. You can make it.
Running at full speed, Steve reached out. The rear gate of the truck was inches away. He launched himself, his foot catching on the bumper, his hand grabbing at the gate. He tumbled into the truck bed, sliding on his belly until his head hit the base of a lockbox, jamming his neck into his shoulders.
Shit, that hurts. That really hurts.
Bleary, unable to catch his breath, blood trickling down into his eyes, he scrambled to his feet just as the truck swerved right and tossed him into the left side-rail. Then it swerved hard left, and he was flung into the right side-rail. As he bounced off, he got a fleeting look into the tinted rear window of the cab. A man drove; a woman was in the passenger seat. Sitting between them, looking directly at him, tears streaking his face, eyes wide with fear, was Bobby.
Dizzy, his head throbbing, Steve grabbed the handle of the lockbox and steadied himself. He sensed movement behind him and whirled around. There were two old tires with no tread, a rolled-up tarp, and two cans of paint rolling around.