Cross Current

by Christine Kling

  “You are so out of your element on this one, Rusty. Hell, we both are.” I spun away, out of range of his touch. “I’m not sure you and I have an explanation for what happened to her at the hospital the other night or out at Mambo Racine’s tonight. But didn’t you hear what I said? It worked. She’s talking again. And one thing I do know is that those people were not faking it. What I saw tonight—” I paused, not knowing how to explain it to him, how to give it the reality and the dignity I had seen. “Rusty, they believed completely. I’m not sure I'm ready to believe they were possessed by spirits, but it sure as hell was every bit as real as what your cousins up in the Georgia mountains do when they handle snakes and speak in tongues.” I crossed the living room and plopped down on the couch, leaned back, and closed my eyes. “Man, am I tired.” My stomach gurgled, and I pulled my arm across my belly to try to muffle the sound. “And starving. Haven’t eaten anything since about noon.”

  Rusty walked over to the front door, crossed his arms again, leaned against the doorjamb, and stared out into the yard.

  Jeannie had one of those couches with tons of throw pillows and cushions, and the cushions seemed to be pulling me down, relaxing me. I’d just about nodded off when I heard Rusty say something.

  “What?”

  “They’ll still be serving over at the Downtowner. Do you want to go over and grab a bite? I’ll buy if you’ll stop yelling at me and tell me what’s really going on with this kid.”

  I opened one eye and looked up at him. I wasn’t thrilled about being seen with him in that uniform. Could scare off some of my clients who sometimes tread lightly on the wrong side of the law. But I was starving. “Conch fritters and fries?”

  He lifted his cell phone off his belt and dialed a number. “Hi, it’s Rusty. Think you could pick me up at Cooley’s Landing in about ten?... Thanks.” He put away the cell phone, then reached for my hand to pull me up off the deep couch. “Let’s go. The Water Taxi’ll pick us up at the marina.”

  I took his hand but let my body remain a dead weight. He had to strain to lift me up from those deep cushions.

  “Man, you are heavy, Sullivan.”

  “Wimp,” I said, and smiled as he pulled me to my feet, and I bumped into his left side, where the cold steel of his gun brushed against my arm. “Seeing as you are wearing a gun, however, I guess it’s Mr. Wimp.”

  “Damn right.”

  I stopped briefly to tuck Solange in like my mother used to do for me and wondered, as I kissed her forehead, why I was flirting with Rusty. As I passed by the master bedroom, I told Jeannie we’d be gone for about an hour.

  Rusty came down the hall and motioned to me with a “let’s go” signal. I turned back to Jeannie.

  “Thanks again, Jeannie. I know she’s better off with you than anywhere he wants to send her.” I cocked my head in Rusty’s direction.

  “So I’m the bad guy, eh?” Rusty said over my shoulder.

  “Yes,” Jeannie said. “Get over it.”

  “Jeannie,” I said, “I’ve got a connection to the Miss Agnes from my visit to Pompano tonight. I’ll tell you all about it in the morning.”

  “Sounds good. Animal sacrifice, Voodoo, secret meetings. I can’t wait.” She winked.

  The walk to Cooley’s Landing Marina was only about three blocks, but being tired, I began to wish we’d taken the car. The Downtowner was on the other side of the river, and they had a large parking lot, so the car would have been easy. I feared we’d have a long wait for a Water Taxi.

  Rusty sensed that I was not in a talkative mood. The streets were dark under the heavy canopy of old trees that covered most of Sailboat Bend.

  “Over there,” Rusty said when we reached the marina parking lot, and he pointed to the boat idling at the dock next to the launch ramp. There were no other passengers aboard. “Hey, Carlos,” he said to the captain, a kid about twenty years old. “Thanks for the lift. This is Seychelle Sullivan.”

  “Sullivan Towing? Gorda?"

  I nodded.

  “Thought I recognized you. Seen you go by on your boat a lot.”

  “Carlos’s dad works with me at the Border Patrol.” He clapped his hand on the young man’s back. “We’ve been fishing together since this guy was in diapers.”

  I leaned back and watched the lights of the parks and businesses downtown as we motored downriver. Too often lately, the river became just the place where I worked. It was pleasant being a passenger for a change, enjoying the view without worrying about bridges or currents or traffic.

  The restaurant and bar were nearly empty inside. I waved hello to Pete behind the bar and his one customer, Nestor, a charter-boat captain. Pete raised his eyebrows at me when he saw I was with a guy wearing a gun.

  “You want to sit outside?” I asked Rusty. The privacy of it would make it much easier to tell him about the evening’s events—the story still sounded weird even to me—and more difficult for the guys inside to eavesdrop.

  I waited until the server had taken our orders and brought us our cold draft beer.

  “So tomorrow I’ll go see this friend of Juliette’s at the Swap Shop. I’m fairly certain that this girl actually came over on the Miss Agnes."

  “I don’t think it’s a good idea for you to get involved like this. You should leave this to the professionals. We could round up the people who work in this Swap Shop booth and question them all.”

  “Come on, Rusty. From the first minute I saw that kid’s face, I’ve been involved. Do you really think these Haitians are going to say anything to Immigration? In their eyes, you guys are worse than the smugglers—even if the smugglers are bashing in a few heads.”

  He took a long swig from his beer, then reached for my hand. “I worry about you. I don’t want anything to happen to you.”

  “That’s nice, but I’m just meeting a kid at the Swap Shop—one of the most populated tourist attractions around here. I’m not walking into some den of bad guys. Not this time.”

  He shot me a questioning look, and I hurriedly changed the subject. “On the way home tonight, Solange said she saw ‘Le Capitaine’ at the Toussaint house. The guy on the boat that brought her here. He must have been the guy who knocked me down running out of the altar room. I didn’t get a good enough look at his face to say whether or not he’s the same guy who was in her hospital room, but the height, build, and facial hair were about right. And I remember seeing rings, several of them on the left hand, both times.” I thought about mentioning the skull and crossbones on the sunglasses I had found on board the Miss Agnes but thought better of it. I didn’t want to be accused of tampering with evidence. “It’s got to be the same guy, but I don’t know that I could pick him out of a lineup.”

  “Here’s a question,” Rusty said, and he hitched forward in his chair, now grasping my hand in both of his. “What was he trying to do to her tonight, and why didn’t he succeed?”

  “I assume he was going to shut her up—permanently,” I said. “As to why he didn’t succeed, well, according to Racine Toussaint, he couldn’t do it because the lwa protected her. Racine wanted me to leave her there overnight. She said it was the only place Solange would be safe.” With my free hand, I fingered the pouch Racine had given me that I had tucked inside my T-shirt.

  “I’m sorry, Seychelle, but that’s bullshit. I hope you don’t believe that.”

  I pulled my hand back out of his grasp and finished off the last of my beer, feeling light-headed and confused from the combination of beer, exhaustion, and an empty stomach. “You know, Rusty, I don’t know what to believe.” Looking around me, at the glamorous yachts docked along the river, and above me at the blue and white lights of the downtown highrises, I found it hard to believe what I had seen in that yard in Pompano just hours before. “I’m not going to just dismiss this as hocus-pocus, though. I can’t. I was there and something very powerful was going on,” I said. “Just because we don’t understand it doesn’t mean it isn’t real.”

  “You’re more
open-minded than I am.”

  “Trust me, open-mindedness doesn’t come all that easily to me. I’m having to work at it. This guy, though, this Capitaine, he scares me. He’s so persistent in going after this kid.” I leaned forward and put my arms on the table. “Let’s just say Solange did see him kill that woman. What can she do to him? She doesn’t know his name. She can’t do anything except maybe pick him out of a lineup. So what’s he doing still hanging around here? Why hasn’t he gone back to the Bahamas? And here’s another thing: If we assume that this guy is the one who killed the other three, then there have been witnesses before, and there are probably more witnesses among the people who came on the Miss Agnes. What makes this kid different?”

  “You’re right. And I don’t buy that business about some kind of spirits protecting the kid. He had the chance to kill her tonight, and he didn’t. That means he didn’t intend to. So what does he want with her?”

  The waitress brought our food then, and I didn’t say another word as I filled my mouth with conch fritters. The ground conch was sweet and chewy and drowned in fresh lime juice. Rusty had ordered chicken wings, and I found I was unable to look at his plate without my stomach twisting in a little queasy twinge. It might be a while before I felt like eating chicken again.

  “I hate all this,” Rusty said, pointing a chicken bone at the brightly lit buildings across the river from us. “Look at that skyline. Have you counted the construction cranes lately? Seven. I counted seven the other day. What are they doing to our town? Remember what it was like when we were kids?”

  I smiled. “‘Course I do. But I also remember when downtown was dead, the storefronts were mostly empty, and there were homeless guys wandering all around here. There was good and bad in those good old days.”

  He gnawed on his last wing and began licking the sauce off his fingers. I watched each finger slide between his lips and then slip out, making the sound of a kiss. It took every bit of energy I had left to concentrate on what he was saying.

  “Nowadays, everywhere’s changed. They’re building on every last scrap of land. And places where there is no more land, they’re just building straight up.” He finished cleaning his fingers and drank off the last of the beer in his glass. “Everywhere you go nowadays, the person serving your food, bagging your groceries, cutting your lawn, or cleaning your hotel room arrived here just a few months ago. And they got here by slipping past me.” He leaned back in his chair and pushed his plate of bones away. “They’re changing this place I call home, and I can’t stop it. I hate it.”

  “So get over it, Rusty. All these immigrants make this place the town I love. The cultures, the languages, the religions, mix together here. Sure, Fort Lauderdale is no longer a little dusty, white-bread, cracker town. But hey, some of us happen to think that’s a good thing.”

  He grumbled as he waved at the young Latina waitress, signaling her to bring our check.

  Rusty and Carlos talked fishing on the way back to Cooley’s Landing. Carlos was saying how he and his dad had chartered with this great fishing guide, fellow by the name of Bouncer, who worked out of Miami. Carlos was saying it was like Bouncer had some amazing sixth sense—he just knew where the fish were, and with Bouncer’s help, Carlos and his dad had won some big deal tournament down in Key Largo.

  I thought about how it was okay for a fishing guide to have a little inexplicable magic, but if it was a Haitian doing it, we called it hocus pocus. I felt the weight of the leather pouch around my neck. What did I believe? I wasn’t sure, but I didn’t see the harm in a little extra insurance. I did not intend to remove the pouch any time soon.

  I was jerked out of my reverie when the boat bumped up against the dock and the fenders squeaked as the air was squeezed out of them.

  “Time to head for home,” Rusty said, hopping out of the boat first and reaching back to offer me his hand. Once on the dock, he didn’t let go. We both said good night to Carlos and started the walk back, still holding hands like a couple of kids.

  “Thanks for dinner,” I said.

  He didn’t say anything. We walked across the asphalt, listening to the sound of our shoes crunching bits of barnacle from the launch ramp. Just as we reached the grass on the far side of the launch ramp, Rusty pointed to the river on our left. “Look, a manatee.” He let go of my hand, put his arm around my shoulder, and pointed through an empty boat slip. “See those rings in the current mid-river?” Just then the fuzzy snout surfaced, and we saw the black nostrils and the little cloud of mist around them.

  “It’s late for a manatee here,” I said.

  “Uh-huh,” Rusty said, and from the sound of his voice in my ear, I knew he was looking at me, not the manatee. Then he said, “I’m not very good at this,” and he placed a hand on the side of my face and kissed me on the mouth. While I would have to agree with him that his technique for getting there was rather abrupt, when it came to the actual kissing, he wasn’t half bad.

  An alarm sounded several blocks over in the neighborhood, and we broke apart, taking an air break. The alarm continued to whoop, and I said, “Sounds like somebody can’t remember their code.”

  “Damned gadgets,” he said. “What the hell good are they when everyone ignores them?”

  I didn’t get to answer him. It was then I heard the shot. It wasn’t a little pop like they say gunshots make, and not a whomp like an explosion, either. It was a muffled boom. Like it had come from inside a house. We both started running.

  XIX

  I leaped up to the second step, and my sneaker slid in a puddle of something wet. Blood. I didn’t stop to examine it but took the rest of the steps two at a time, calling out Jeannie’s name as soon as I hit the landing. The alarm was still whooping, but I heard Jeannie’s voice inside.

  “I’m in here,” she shouted.

  The screen door was shredded and part of the wood frame hung in splinters. Where was Rusty when I needed him? I wondered if Jeannie was alone in there or if somebody was with her holding a gun to her head.

  “Everybody okay?” I called out before approaching the door.

  “Yeah, we are,” she said. “Not sure about the other guy, though.”

  When I went to reach for the handle to open the door, I realized there was no handle left. I grabbed a piece of the dangling wood and made an opening between the screen and the shredded door frame big enough to climb through. Just inside, to the right of the door, the plaster was blown off the wall, the bare cinder block exposed. Jeannie was standing on the far side of the room, staring at the alarm system’s control panel, the shotgun still cradled in her arms. She turned to look at me, her eyes slightly out of focus, as I came through what had been the door.

  “Damned if I can remember the code right now,” she said.

  All three kids were standing in doorways in the hall, their eyes huge. One of the twins called out the code to his mom, and soon the alarm shut down. No sooner did it stop than the phone started ringing. In the distance, a siren wailed.

  Jeannie took a few steps into the living room and looked around for the portable phone. “Geez,” she said as she stared at the damage to her door and wall. Her hands still gripped the shotgun tight across her body, and her fingers, wrapped around the stock, looked white and bloodless. I peeled her hands open and took the gun from her so she could answer the phone. As she lifted the phone, she winced and reached up to massage her shoulder.

  The door frame scraped open, and Rusty slipped into the room, holding a handgun down low with both hands. I started to tell him that everyone was okay, but he swept past me, running in a sort of simian crouch, checking every room down the hall. Jeannie finished talking to the alarm company on the phone and hung up about the time Rusty came back into the living room, tucking his gun back into its holster on his hip.

  “What happened, Jeannie?” I asked.

  Rusty crossed to the front door and looked down into the yard.

  “The bastard cut the screen with a machete,” she said. “I grab
bed the gun when I heard the alarm go off. When I got into the hallway, he was coming through the door swinging that big old blade. I guess he heard me pump the action on the gun. He must have jumped back and to the left, behind the wall. I’m pretty sure I winged him, though.”

  “The cops are here,” Rusty said, looking through the remains of the screen. He turned around and looked at Jeannie. “You definitely grazed him. I followed the guy through the backyard, over the fence, and into the street, but he must have had a car waiting back there. He was losing blood all the way. Anyway, get the kids settled back down. The cops will be up to talk to you when I’m done.” He started out through what was left of the door.

  Jeannie made coffee after the kids got settled, and we sat in the living room, wired on caffeine and adrenaline but too tired to talk. A couple of uniformed cops had searched the apartment, examined the torn-up doorway, then just stood there, hands clasped behind their backs, staring at us, waiting. For what, I wasn’t sure. I should have known that a call that involved Solange and me would end up getting to Collazo. I shouldn’t have felt surprise when the raggedy screen door scraped open, and I heard his voice saying, “Miss Sullivan ... again.”

  After Collazo, more uniformed officers came through the door, followed by several folks in plainclothes. I didn’t know if they were detectives or technicians. The living room was getting damned crowded. Rusty brought up the rear. They all huddled around the door and mumbled, examining the damaged wall and wood.

  Collazo pointed to the shotgun lying where I had left it. He looked at Jeannie. “That weapon belongs to you.”

  “You asking me?”

  “Jeannie, that’s just his way,” I said. “He doesn’t ask questions. You get used to it after a while.”