I was looking to find his other arm when a wave broke over both our heads. While we were under I reached for his other arm and held it. When we both cleared the white water Rodrigo was screaming in pain like he'd been hooked with a sharp barb and I realized the arm I'd grabbed was hanging limp.
"Broke, Mr. Max! Broke, broke," he spit out, his face twisted in agony and I let go of the arm.
"OK, OK. Let me pull you, Rodrigo. Let me pull!"
He may have understood me or maybe he went into shock but I was able to hook him under the pit of his good arm and turn his back so it was on my hip and I began sidestroking for shore. The waves had no rhythm and in the white water it felt like all I was doing was pulling at air bubbles and getting nowhere. I was breathing heavily and trying to scissor kick each time a wave pushed us, and then I'd rest when it left us bogged down in the swell. It seemed like thirty minutes and I started counting strokes to give myself a goal.
In the middle of my second count to fifty I felt my right foot touch the ocean floor and the next wave pushed both of us onto solid sand. I struggled with Rodrigo's sudden weight and then heard yelling, "We got you, man! We got you!" and we were suddenly surrounded by hands and arms and other bodies in the water around us.
"Watch his arm, watch his arm, it's broke," I said as two men took Rodrigo from me and I felt another strong arm around my own waist.
"Oh, shit, man and his leg, too, watch his leg, man!" another voice said.
On the beach there was a red-and-white rescue truck with a red gumball light spinning on its roof and the lifeguards lay Rodrigo down in the lee side out of the wind and had me sit beside him. The little Filipino had an unnatural lump in the side of his arm where his bicep should have been and from the thigh of his left leg a stark white splinter of bone was protruding, blood trickling from the gash and mixing with the water and running a spiderweb of red down through the hair on his leg. One of the guards wrapped a blanket around the leg and someone draped one over my shoulders.
While my heartbeat tripped down I heard the sound of a siren growing and two of the guards brought out a backboard, strapped Rodrigo onto it, and then carried him to the street end, where an ambulance was backing up to the bulkhead. After they took him away a guard crouched down next to me. It was Amsler, the guard whose chinning bar I used.
"You want a ride to the E.R., Mr. Freeman? Let them check you out?"
"No," I said. "I'm all right. Swallowed a little salt water is all but thanks, thanks for helping out. You, uh, know what hospital they're taking that guy to?"
"Probably North Broward," he said. "Man, I've never seen anyone break bones like that in the surf. That guy was messed up."
"Yeah," I said, "he was."
When I stood I could see up over the Royal Flamingo's bulkhead where the group of women whose call for help had set me off was talking with a uniformed Broward sheriff's office deputy. One of the women pointed to me and the cop looked up. I didn't recognize him. He was writing on a pad that looked like a reporter's notebook and the pages were flapping in the wind. I started toward the bottom of the stairs as he passed out cards to the women and by the time I reached the top he was heading for me.
"Excuse me, sir."
I stood near the shower and waited.
"Excuse me, I'm Deputy Cardona. You are the rescuer?"
He was a young man with a tight Spanish accent but his English pronunciations were careful.
"Sure," I said, offering nothing more and looking down at my soaked pants, now covered with a crust of sand from sitting wet on the beach.
"The ladies there," he said, tipping his pen back toward the group, which had not moved. "They say they were calling for help when they saw the gentleman in trouble and then you came flying in from nowhere and into the water."
"Yeah, a real Superman," I said, not really meaning to be a smart-ass but coming off that way while I was trying to piece together the sight of the smashed bungalow, Rodrigo's broken bones and whether I wanted to talk about any of it with this cop.
"OK. First of all, I will require a name, sir," the officer said and raised his pen to his pad.
"Max. Max Freeman. Look, do you mind if I shower this stuff off?" I said, dropping my fingers to my pants and nodding at the shower. He said, "Not at all, please," and stepped back to the windward side and let me turn on the water.
I let the stream run over my head and kept my eyes closed while I thought of what I was going to say to the guy. I rinsed the sand off my pants as best I could and when I couldn't stall any longer I cranked the valve shut. The cop stood patiently by, looking out to sea and then to the bulkhead, and if he was perceptive enough he would pick up the deep impressions that my landing on the beach had made and then follow my running footsteps leading back to the bungalow. The door was still wide open.
When I stepped away from the shower one of the ladies was there with a towel.
"Thank you," I said, caught off guard.
"You were marvelous," she said. "That man owes you his life."
I started to say something but she held up a palm and then walked away to join her friends. I turned back to the cop, raised my eyebrows and then motioned to the chickee hut nearby.
"Can we sit?"
I picked up the shirt I'd tossed on the ground when I'd bolted for the ocean and pulled it over my head. I ducked under the dried fronds that formed the roof of the open shelter and took a chair facing my bungalow so that the officer's back would be to it. It didn't help. He was perceptive.
"You live here, Mr. Freeman?" he said, pointing the pen over his shoulder.
"Actually, it belongs to a friend. I was just borrowing it for a while."
"Was the drowning man your friend?"
It figured that I'd get one of the bright ones.
"Why do you ask?" I said. It was one of those sophomore techniques; answer a question with a question. He checked his notebook.
"One of the ladies, she says she saw the drowning man limping down to the beach and saw him go into the water with his clothes on."
No question had been asked, so I didn't respond. I used the towel to dry my hair and avoid eye contact.
"She also says a larger man who appeared to be chasing him came down these steps with anger and with a baseball bat in his hands."
David, of the infamous Hix brothers, I thought. I could picture him in the bungalow, taking down the dining room light with a single swing.
"The limping man appeared to escape into the water because the other refused to follow."
I draped the towel around my neck and then stretched out one leg and reached into my pants pocket. The cop did not tense. He had already seen me without a shirt and knew I wasn't carrying.
"Do you mind if I make a call?" I said and pulled a dripping cell phone from my pocket but then looked dumbly at it when I saw that the power button brought no light or noise.
Cardona seemed patiently amused. He reached into his own shirt pocket and took out an even smaller cell phone and handed it to me.
"I will take it that the call is local?" he said.
I nodded my assent and dialed a number while he watched.
"Lieutenant Sherry Richards?" I said for the cop's benefit when she picked up on the other end.
"You stood me up, Max," she answered.
"No. I've had an unexpected emergency up here, Lieutenant," I said, loud enough for the deputy to hear.
"Are you OK, Max?" she said and the concern sounded real.
"Uh, yeah, there's already an officer here at the scene," I said, and Cardona was now looking into my face.
"What scene are you talking about?" Richards said, now letting worry creep into her voice. I ran through what I figured had happened, that Rodrigo had been tracked by David Hix, who saw his chance to impress his ugliness on the little man and scare him out of the country. I talked loud enough for both Richards and the cop next to me to hear. He looked skeptical.
"Here, I'll let, uh, Deputy Cardona explain," I said and handed the officer his own phone. He turned away and I looked out at the whitecaps, hoping the concern I'd heard in Richards's voice meant she wasn't so pissed at me that she would leave me swinging. After a minute, Cardona snapped the phone shut.