King Tide

by A. J. Stewart

  I didn’t turn. I didn’t need to. I knew the voice well. And I knew it was going to drive Detective Ronzoni a little nuts that I didn’t spin around in shock. I kept my eyes on the English desk guy until the detective came around from behind me.

  “Rice-a-roni,” I said.

  “Ronzoni, smart guy,” he said. Like me, he was wet to the core. Only he was wearing a JC Penney suit that hadn’t fit well before it got drenched. Unlike the desk guy, Ronzoni had an unusual frame that didn’t wear clothes well. He was thin in the arms and legs and chest, but he had developed a bulge of a gut that made it look like he had gobbled a watermelon whole. It was the curse of the cop. They didn’t do as much running in real life as they did on television. The ones who kept trim had to work at it like everyone else. And like everyone else, if they didn’t work at it, well, watermelons.

  “Nice to see you, Detective.”

  “Why are you here, Jones? We’re closing the island down.”

  “You are? Looks like Mother Nature’s closing it down for you.”

  “Whatever. You need to get gone now.”

  “I’m halfway out the door, Detective. ”

  He didn’t answer. His attention turned to the desk guy, and Ronzoni flipped open his ID. “Ronzoni, Palm Beach Police Department.”

  “Andrew Neville, The Mornington Hotel,” replied the Englishman with just the right level of sarcasm that it flew right over the earnest cop’s head.

  “We’re evacuating the island,” said Ronzoni.

  “So I understand.”

  “You have any outstanding guests?”

  “All of our guests are outstanding.”

  Again I watched the comment fly over Ronzoni’s head. He was a good cop, not necessarily as honest as the day is long, but a good deal more honest than the gems of society he put away. He worked hard and was dogged. But wordplay was not really his thing. I wondered if it was the Englishman’s accent that was confusing him, because everything that came out of the guy’s mouth sounded superior as hell.

  “How many guests do you have here?” Ronzoni asked as if the previous exchange had never occurred.

  Neville clicked at his computer, and spoke as he looked at the screen.

  “Ten, as of now. Mr. and Mrs. Walter are about to leave with an evacuation service. So, eight.” He glanced over Ronzoni’s shoulder at me. “And this gentleman, whose status is unconfirmed.”

  “I’m here to collect Ron Bennett and the Lady Cassandra.”

  “Ah, the Bennett party.”

  I shrugged at that. Ron and Cassandra weren’t married, unless things had gone sideways overnight. Perhaps they felt it better to check in to a hotel as a married couple because Palm Beach was such a conservative place. Perhaps it made them giggle like teenagers. Perhaps it was just the Englishman’s assumption .

  “So that makes six.”

  “Where are they?” asked Ronzoni.

  Neville sighed. “Mostly in the lounge.”

  “Okay. How many staff?”

  “Myself, my assistant manager, one maid, the chef, and I think our groundsman is on his way in.”

  “On his way in? From where?”

  Neville might have shrugged, or might have been my imagination. He didn’t strike me as a shrugger. “I’d have to check the employee files to know where he lives, Detective.”

  “But we can assume he doesn’t live on the island,” said Ronzoni.

  “Yes, I think we could safely assume that.”

  It was a pretty good assumption, unless he was the world’s most highly paid groundsman. Palm Beach was an island separated from the mainland by the Intracoastal Waterway, and had become the winter retreat of choice for wealthy families from New York and Boston when Henry Flagler put the train line down from St. Augustine to Miami. But because it was an island the train had to stop on the mainland before the well-heeled made their way across to their estates. As happened all over the country a town sprung up around the train station, and became the imaginatively named West Palm Beach. The rich lived on the island; the help lived in West Palm. West Palm grew to dwarf its salubrious sibling, but some things never change. The help still came from the mainland—only now they came via bridges. Bridges that were rapidly disappearing under what Mick had called a King Tide.

  Ronzoni nodded to himself. “If he’s not here yet, he’s not getting here. Do your staff have Palm Beach IDs?”

  “Yes, of course. ”

  “All right. Your groundsman will be able to help with the cleanup. Any staff who want out need to be here in the lobby in two minutes. I will lead them off the island. You say the only guests left are in the bar?”

  “The lounge.”

  Ronzoni turned to me. “Be ready to follow me out of here in two.”

  “Yes, chief.”

  He nodded like he enjoyed being called chief and paced off toward the bar. I noticed a couple standing just outside the entrance to the bar. They were both young and blond, and the woman was slightly taller, but not particularly tall. Although I couldn’t hear them, my mother would have said that they were having words . He wore the look of a scolded schoolboy and she was laying down some version of the law. When Ronzoni reached them he spoke, and the blond guy nodded and strode away, while the woman led Ronzoni into the lounge.

  I heard the elevator ding and the doors opened to reveal Ron and Cassandra. They had less luggage than I would have thought. One small roller case each. Whenever I think of the kinds of folks who stay at The Mornington I always picture large trunks covered in stickers from exotic locales, but my source material might have been out of date.

  Cassandra smiled in a fashion that looked designed to minimize the wrinkles around her eyes.

  “Thank you for coming for us, Miami.”

  “Not a problem.”

  “I don’t think the Camry was built for this kind of weather.”

  I nodded. Ron still drove the same beat-up Camry he had before he met Cassandra, and she didn’t seem bothered by it at all. I actually thought she saw it as part of Ron’s charm. But she was right—the Camry wasn’t built for a tropical storm, let alone a hurricane. Ron had changed clothes, into chinos and a fresh polo. I didn’t see the point. We were going to get drenched getting to the Caddy.

  “You want to change?” he asked me.

  I shook my head. “Slight oversight. I forgot my duffel at home. I’ll get a new shirt when I get to Tallahassee.”

  The elevator let out another ding and the doors opened again. The big guy from EvacJet stepped out, carrying a proper Palm Beach amount of luggage. He dragged three large suitcases, two of which had Louis Vuitton duffels on top of them. Another duffel was strapped across his chest. An older couple dressed for a jungle safari followed behind. She carried a fan like those Japanese geisha used, and he wore a pith helmet. I couldn’t recall actually ever seeing one in real life before, except with a little fan attached to it. This one looked authentic, but I couldn’t say for sure what made a pith helmet authentic. Certainly not a trip to Palm Beach.

  The big guy spoke to his clients and then launched out the door with the luggage. As we watched him stride down the stairs Ronzoni returned from the bar.

  “Foreigners,” he said, to no one in particular, and then he turned to Neville the desk guy. “They won’t go. Say they’re here for their bachelor party and it’s this weekend or never. I can’t make them leave until the hurricane hits category two.” He shrugged as if to say they were now Neville’s problem.

  “Don’t worry, Detective. We have everything in place. The Mornington has seen hurricanes bigger than this one and we are still here.”

  That sounded way too much like tempting fate to me, but I decided I’d keep that thought to myself.

  “And your maid?” asked Ronzoni.

  “Behind you. ”

  We all snapped around to see a petite girl standing with her hands clasped in front of her. She was a Latina, lightly boned and dark haired. She was one of those people who could run without
making any noise and move around a room as if invisible.

  “You have a vehicle?” Ronzoni asked.

  She nodded, although her head was already bowed to begin with.

  “Yes.”

  Ronzoni stepped to me and was about to speak when the big guy from EvacJet pushed in through the door like he was a running back in football.

  “You are?” Ronzoni asked.

  “EvacJet,” the guy said.

  Ronzoni was processing what that meant when the elevator dinged one more time and the blond guy from the lounge stepped out, bag in hand.

  “What was your name, sir?” asked Ronzoni.

  “Sam, Sam Venturi.”

  “All right, Mr. Venturi. You’re riding with me,” replied Ronzoni. “Everyone else who wants off the island, we’re heading to the mainland now. Follow me.”

  Chapter Three

  We followed. The EvacJet guy swept up the old lady he was chauffeuring like she was a bouquet of roses. He carried her in his arms while holding the umbrella above her. It really was a champagne service. He deposited her in the rear of his Escalade and then dashed up for Mr. Walter. The old guy was too proud to be carried but not too proud to stay under the umbrella. We watched them come down from inside my Cadillac, and then Ronzoni pulled around to lead our little convoy onto the mainland. The Escalade followed him out, and I waited until the maid joined the line in an old Civic and then took up the rear.

  Ronzoni led us south along A1A. We knew Flagler Memorial Bridge was out as they constructed a new bridge alongside, and the tide surge had cut access to Royal Park Bridge, so we kept going to the southernmost of the retreats from the island into West Palm. Southern Boulevard Bridge crossed nice and high above the raging Intracoastal waters. The problem was that before it did that, it was a causeway running across Bingham Island, a low, flat sliver of land that sat in the middle of the Intracoastal Waterway. The island was a popular launching spot for kayakers, with a sandy beach north of the road and Audubon bird sanctuaries on the islands to the south.

  But not this day. The birds were gone. Hell, the island was gone. As we hit the causeway the water looked like category six rapids, whirling and churning and crashing against the seawall and cascading over us like we were surfers inside a wave. The water had breached the seawall at the Mar-a-Lago club just to the north and the usually lush lawn had been reclaimed by the sea. We drove on slowly, but a sinking feeling of futility wrapped itself around me. My wipers thrashed across the windshield but barely made an impression in the sheet of water. I focused on the brake lights of the maid’s car ahead.

  As we reached Bingham Island our convoy stopped. The water beat against the window like we were in a car wash. I knew why we had stopped. The road was cut, the water had taken Bingham Island as its own, and the bridge ahead was literally a bridge too far. That I knew. What we would do next was the question. I was pushing the selector into reverse when my phone rang. The Cadillac had a groovy hands-free system, but I couldn’t make heads or tails of it so I answered the old-fashioned way. It was Ronzoni.

  “No good,” he said. “Lead us out.”

  “Gotcha,” I said, wondering where he had gotten my phone number, or more importantly, why he had it stored in his phone. I pushed into reverse with the phone still to my ear and heard Ronzoni.

  “Don’t do it.”

  “What?” I said. “You said to— ”

  “Not you, Jones. This moron.”

  I leaned forward to look through the windshield as if that was going to make the view clearer and peered through the torrent. I saw the taillights of the Escalade move left out of the convoy and pull forward.

  I said, “Is he . . .”

  “Don’t be crazy,” I head Ronzoni yell. Not at me, at the Escalade. But it was moot. There was no conversing through the sound of crashing waves. The taillights moved forward until I couldn’t make out their fuzzy outline anymore.

  “What’s he doing?” I yelled into the phone.

  “He’s going for it. The idiot is going for it.”

  I glanced back at Ron and Cassandra, who were both leaning forward to hear my conversation with Ronzoni like they were gathered around the radio, listening to an account of the bombing of Pearl Harbor. We waited in silence for an update from Ronzoni. I was thankful he didn’t work in broadcasting because he was mute. I pictured his chin dropped down into his chest with his mouth gaped open.

  “Ronzoni,” I yelled.

  “He’s in it. Damn, it’s deep. Must be tire-high. No, scratch that. Maybe window-high. Jeez, I hope that thing converts into a submarine.”

  Those SUVs had all the latest gizmos, but I didn’t think nautical controls were part of the package. We waited again, the waves crashing over us. I knew we needed to go, to turn around and get off the causeway before it disappeared too, but I was paralyzed. It was like listening to someone describe a train wreck while another train bore down on us.

  “Ronzoni,” I yelled again.

  Nothing.

  “Ronzoni.”

  I waited for a response and heard none, so I looked at my phone to make sure the connection hadn’t been cut.

  “Ronzoni, are you there? ”

  “He’s gone.”

  “What do you mean, gone?”

  “I can’t see him. Hell, I can’t see anything. But his lights are gone.”

  I looked at Ron and Cassandra. They looked funereal. I wondered if they knew the old folks, the Walters. Folks in Palm Beach tended to know each other like that. They frequented the same ballrooms.

  “Let’s get out of here,” I said to Ron and Cassandra and the phone.

  I backed up and swung around. I was looking toward West Palm, but it wasn’t there. Just a gray wall of water. I pointed the Cadillac back toward the island and waited to see the maid do the same turn. But she didn’t. She stayed put. Then I heard Ronzoni through the phone.

  “I don’t believe it,” he said.

  “What?”

  “I don’t believe it.”

  “Believe what, Ronzoni?”

  “He made it. He made it.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I see taillights. On the bridge ahead. I see them going up.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “Nope. He’s off the island.”

  “Can we do it?” I asked.

  “No chance. That water was up near his window, and he’s driving an Escalade. That’s a hell of a big truck. We’ve got a Crown Vic, a Civic, and whatever that thing is you’re driving.”

  “It’s a Cadillac.”

  “No way.”

  “Yep. ”

  “If you say so. Still not getting through that water. We need to get off this causeway a-sap.”

  “Roger that.”

  “I’ll turn round and tell the girly.”

  I assumed the girly was the maid, and I was glad Danielle wasn’t around to hear him use that descriptor. I watched in my rearview and saw Ronzoni’s brake lights flash off, and then his headlights appeared as he swung in behind me. Then I heard a honk.

  “Not yet,” I said to myself. “Let the girl turn around.”

  Then he honked again. And again. Then rapid fire. Then he must have remembered he was in a police vehicle because a siren bleep cut through the sound of wind and water.

  “What the hell do you want?” I spat into the phone.

  He didn’t reply, but he didn’t need to. I saw the answer in my rearview. The maid had come to a decision. If the Escalade could get to the bridge, so could she. It was a poor decision but I could see her point. The water was eating up all of the land around us, and our plan B was to retreat back to a thin finger of an island. But plan A was worse. The Escalade got lucky.

  The water was getting higher and the flow faster. I saw the brake lights in my rearview dull as the maid slipped her foot off the brake, and she slid forward into the raging water.

  “No, no, no,” I said as I slipped out of my seat belt and cracked open the door. The door s
lammed back on me and the wind drove it closed, but I pushed myself out and was wet again before my feet hit the ground. My shoes were underwater and my eyes were on the taillights of the Civic. It wasn’t a car designed for crossing large puddles, let alone hurricane storm surge. The maid eased forward and I ran .

  The rain hit my skin like bullets and the breaking waves knocked me down, and then knocked me down again. My knees were grazed against the blacktop but I pushed past Ronzoni’s car. I didn’t stop to look at him. I knew his mouth would be open like a cave. That was his reaction to a lot of things I did. But I dashed past him. The water was pulsing at my legs as I reached the trunk of the Civic. I banged as hard as I could on the trunk. I don’t know if I made the woman at the wheel reconsider her options, but the effort stole my stable footing, and a good burst of water crashed into me and knocked me off my feet again.

  Only this time I didn’t hit pavement. I was swept across the road, the surge of water stronger than any car. I slid right across the road and for the briefest moment wondered how things were looking in Tallahassee, and whether Danielle was even getting wet, and if she was thinking of me at that exact moment. The water washed across me and kept on going, and my feet hit a small berm of grass on the roadside. I wedged my heels in deep and ducked low as the next wave crashed across me. I dug in hard. After the berm, there was nothing. Just water, and not the Florida postcard kind. It was a washing machine torrent thrashing its way south to Lake Worth.

  I felt the energy of the second wave moving onward, so before the next set could muscle its way into me I pushed up and ran. The water was knee-high and moving in the opposite direction and I was going nowhere, so I broke right and cut behind Ronzoni’s car. I used the police vehicle as a break and was able to move forward until I could grab the rear door handle. I yanked it hard and flung it open as another wave crashed across the top of the car, and I dove into the back of Ronzoni’s car.

  “Are you crazy, Jones? ”

  I sucked in some deep ones as I lay across the bench seat and considered his question. I didn’t think I was crazy. But I also knew I sure as hell wasn’t normal. Both Ronzoni and the blond guy, Venturi, were looking at me from the front. The door to Ronzoni’s car was still open, but it was on the leeward side of the surge, so I spun around and leaned out of the car.