I dressed and went out to the kitchen where I found the coffeemaker loaded with fresh grounds and ready to flip on, and a note from Billy:
"I have gone to check on Diane and will he in my office later. I will call O'Kelly and contact you. I checked on Rodrigo and he is fine. Can you stop in to see him?"
Even though we'd stayed up well into the morning hours, Billy was an early riser. He would have consumed the Wall Street Journal and that horrid fruit and vitamin concoction of his and then been out the door dressed in Brooks Brothers before seven.
I looked at my watch. It was almost noon. When the coffee was brewed I took a cup out onto the patio. There was a nor'easter starting to kick in. The water was gray-green and moving like an enormous blanket being shaken from four corners at the same time, waves of varying sizes swallowing each other and an uneven chop strewn with foam. The sky was overcast and tightened down and the wind was blowing hard enough to snap the single American flag that the faux British manager had raised at dawn. Before my first cup was empty I could feel a film of warm, clammy moisture on my skin. I went back inside and my first call was to O'Shea. He gave the same report he had when I called him at three in the morning, before I passed out: Marci was in her apartment. No sign of Morrison.
"How you doin'?" I asked.
"You ever trying sleeping in a Camaro?" he said
I didn't answer.
"Hey, I'm a security guard, Freeman," he said. "I can handle security."
My next call was to Richards's office number. Her answering machine was on and I left a message telling her I had more information about Morrison and one of the bartenders who we had recently met who might know more than was offered. I hoped at least the bartender reference would cause her to call back.
I finished the coffee and left, pulling Billy's apartment door closed and checking the automatic locking mechanism before taking the elevator down. Outside in the front lot I instinctively scanned the cars, looking for one backed into a spot with signs of a cameraman. Now I wished I had confronted the guy the first time.
I took A1A south and traffic was light. It wasn't a beach day and the tourists and regulars would stay inside or inland somewhere out of the wet wind. The grayness gave the dunes and seaside mansions a look like old antique oil paintings, the colors dimmed and the landscape lonely. I was pulling into the Flamingo Villas when my cell phone rang.
"Yeah."
"It's Sherry, Max."
"Hey. You got my message?"
"No. I haven't been into the office yet. What did you need?"
If she was calling me unsolicited, I immediately wondered why. To offer me something? To ask for help? If I let her go first, it would put me in a better position to state my own case. I hesitated, then realized I was playing the info-for-info game and shook my head like I could just toss off a million years of human social behavior like a bead of sweat.
"I uh, wanted to get with you and tell you about a conversation I had with the bartender," I said. "Marci, at Kim's. The younger one who is fairly new."
"OK. Has this got anything to do with patrolman Morrison?" she said.
"Yeah, it does. How'd you know?"
"Well," she said, and now it was her turn to hesitate, and maybe for the same reason I had.
"I understand that you two had a bit of a face-to-face yesterday," she said. "I know that's your method of operation, Max. And I'm interested in what that finely tuned perceptive gut of yours told you when you looked him in the eye. But wasn't that a little outside the envelope, trying to tail a cop while he's in his squad car?"
There was a bit of a lilt in her voice, like she was smiling when she said it, and not a smile that held a comeuppance.
"Yeah, I suppose it was. But how did this information come to your attention?"
"O'Shea called me," she said, flat and matter-of-fact.
"You're kidding," I said, spinning the conversation I'd just had with O'Shea.
"He was concerned about you. He thought you were working something that was going to get you into trouble on his account and he said he didn't want to be responsible. He said he figured that I should know the truth before the facts got twisted around to suit the uniforms."
"The truth?" I said.
"Meet me over in the covered parking lot at the Galleria at two, under the west side," she said. "It's raining like hell down here."
I told her I would be there by two, as soon as I checked on another client. It was still only gray here. The clouds were heavy and had not yet opened up but I could hear the surf beginning to slash at the beach as the wind increased. The fronds of the rubber plants and white birds of paradise that sheltered each bungalow were clacking and the smell of salt and flotsam was thick in my nose when I came around the corner and stopped.
The door to Billy's hideaway was standing open. There was a light glowing somewhere behind the front window. Probably the one over the sink in the kitchen, I thought, putting the layout together in my head while I squinted and tried to pick up any movement inside. I stepped closer to the sea grape tree next to me and knelt with one knee in the sand. The wind swung the door a foot more and I could now see a bar stool on the floor and the small dining area light was missing from its spot suspended above the table, only a bare cord left hanging in the air. I was unarmed. My 9mm was back at the shack, wrapped in its oilskin cloth where I had retired it.
Don't jump to conclusions, I told myself, and then got up and took a couple of steps closer, listening through the rumble of the ocean and wind. There was still no movement from inside. I looked around for neighbors but the weather had sent most people indoors.
On the flat concrete stones that started a path in front of the patio I picked up on a trail of dark droplets and one didn't have to be a CSI to recognize blood, and that's when I moved faster. At the door I peered around the corner. The front room had been tossed and glass and half a bulb from the hanging light lay shattered in one corner. The blood trail led to the couch and joined a stain there that formed the shape of Italy in the fabric. I was about to step all the way in when the panicked voices of women came from behind me in the wind.
"Help! Somebody help him!"
I turned and jogged toward the beach and saw three women, one with children huddled into her skirts, waving their arms and pointing out to sea.
I had my shirt off by the time I hit the railing of the bulkhead and then used the top rung to swing over and down. I kicked my Docksides off after landing in the sand and I was honing in on a splotch of yellow that was bobbing fifty yards out. The shape expanded at the top of a crest to something human and then disappeared on the backside of the wave and a prayer seemed to bring it back to the surface again.
I hurdled the first three waves and then launched myself like a spear down into the next one, grabbed a handhold of the bottom sand, pulled myself into a crouch and used my legs to launch again. Each time I dolphined I tried to catch a breath and a glimpse of the yellow shirt. Sometimes I got one, sometimes the other.
When it got too deep I started to freestyle, looking forward each time a wave picked me up to the top of a crest. It didn't take long to close in on the shirt. When I got to within ten yards I could see it was Rodrigo, one side of his face a pale white, the scarred half an angry red. But his eyes were still wide and he was flapping with one arm, trying to stay on top in the oxygen while the white water tried to drown him. I went to a breast stroke and got into the same swell with him and yelled his name. There was no recognition in his face but he saw hope and grabbed for it.
I'd learned enough about water rescues to keep a struggling swimmer off your body. If you let them get a choke hold, you were both going down. I grabbed his wrist when he reached for me and held him at arm's length.
"OK Rodrigo!" I yelled. "You're OK, you're OK!"