I said, “That’s very kind of you, Izzy. You, too, Clare.” “Your white gentleman friend, Ransom, he a very reasonable man.”
I said quickly, “I wasn’t finished. Thing is, when your employer died, I’m sure an attorney had to be involved in settling the estate.”
“Oh yes, you exactly right about that. Mr. Benton, he a very wealthy man. Had him two attorneys and they make everything go real smooth. One of them come clear from Nassau.”
“They handled Mr. Benton’s estate.”
“Of course they did. Everything fine and legal.”
“Then they had to know about the missing cash, right? And the missing ring. Which means that the police are going to be after whoever stole it, no matter if you turn them in or not, Izzy. It’s out of your hands.”
Izzy puffed up a little, confident, very pleased with himself. “That where you all wrong, sir. What you don’t know is, Mr. Benton, he a smart man. The way he get the ring and all that money, it his own business. So why should he pay the tax magistrate in Nassau for the fruit of his own labors?” There was the big grin, again. “Understand my meaning? There no official paper record of them things that was stolen. Which is why, if Ransom cooperate, the magistrate got no cause to arrest her.”
I’d taken a few steps forward. Now I put my right hand on the girl’s shoulder. “There’s no record of Benton owning the ring or the money?”
“No, man! That’s why your girl safe with only me and Clare knowing what she did.”
“Really? Then I’m very confused now. If there’s no official record of the ring and the cash being part of Benton’s estate, how can you or anyone else prove the ring or the cash exists?”
I watched the smile fade slowly from his face as he began to understand my meaning.
“If you or the magistrate can’t prove they existed, how are you going to prove Ransom or anyone else stole them? That’s the part I don’t understand. The cops can’t touch her. So how’re you doing her a favor not turning her in?”
The patronizing tone, the jollyness, were suddenly gone from his voice. “The favor we doing her, my man, is not treatin’ her like the thief she is. The way we’d do it down in the islands.”
“Oh? How do you treat thieves down in the islands?”
I was paying careful attention to the body language of both men, to the signals they gave off. Noticed that they began to move imperceptibly apart-the first feral indicator of attack formation. Noticed that Clare changed his grip on the walking stick, not even thinking about it. Noticed the jerky movements of Izzy’s head, his eyes moving in fast surveillance-was anyone way over there at the marina watching?-as his feet moved him a few inches at a time to my left. Noticed his eyes freeze for a moment, looking down into the water beyond the railing of the deck. I saw the moment of recognition when he realized what those dark shapes were, swimming in slow circles below, and he said, “You got some big biters in there, man!”
“Bull sharks. That’s right.”
“Down in the islands, we catch a thief, what we might do is take ’em out to the deep water, where the color change, and chum up some them biters. Let the thief hang over the water while the frenzy goin’ on. Maybe drop him in among the sharks a few times ’til they get smart and tell us where to find what they stole.”
Which is when he lunged toward Ransom, his mouth telling his brain what to do as it came to him.
He had her by the hair, pushing her toward the railing by the time I got to him with my one good arm.
11
I have no idea what he planned to do once he got Ransom to the edge of the platform. Probably hold her there, threaten to push her in with the sharks if she didn’t come through with the money. Izzy was the spontaneous type, making it up as he went along because he had nothing to fear from me. Him along with his buddy, huge, mean-tempered Clare, against a guy with his arm in a sling. He had the kind of dumb bully confidence that’s seldom challenged and often gets people killed.
He had a fistful of red-beaded braids in his right hand, and had grabbed the back of her shorts with his left, controlling her that way as Ransom tried to battle him with her elbows, but she was unable to get to him because he hugged in close behind her.
You expect women to scream. She didn’t. Furious, her voice became more of a growl. Pure outrage. She knew all the descriptive words and how to use them, as Izzy demanded repeatedly, pushing her toward the water, “Where the money, girl? Where that money?”
Clare moved to intercept me just as I got to Izzy, but not before I got a few shots in. I hit Izzy with a right fist deep in the kidneys, once… twice, then buried my fingers into his face, squeezing hard. I heard his muted scream as my thumb dug up under his jawbone and my middle finger found traction in his eye socket, my left shoulder in the small of his back providing a foundation for torque. I felt Clare’s hands find my shoulders from behind, but I ducked low and under, then came up abruptly, driving my fist into Izzy’s groin from the backside.
It’s an ancient motor response etched in the primitive brain: If something strikes you in the nuts from below, you jump-jump as high as you possibly can, jump and lunge away. Izzy didn’t have great leaping ability, but my fist provided all the additional power necessary to somersault him into the air and over the railing. The microsecond of silence was punctuated by his knowing scream just before he splashed into the shark pen.
I didn’t see him hit the water because Clare was on me by then. On me, holding me, shaking me, suffocating me.
In the first moments of any fight there are certain things immediately known: Is your opponent stronger than you? Is he confident or is he operating on pure adrenaline and panic? Is he skilled? Is he vicious? Has he done this dance before?
With Clare, the answer was yes on all counts.
He wrapped his bearish arms around me, lifting and twisting so hard that I felt the vertebrae in my spine pop as my feet lifted off the ground. I elbowed him once… twice… three times in the stomach, and it was like hitting bone, his abdomen was so heavily muscled.
I tried to strike down on his instep with my heel. Missed because he was holding me so high off the deck. Tried to strike down on his kneecap with my heel, and missed there, too.
Meanwhile, Clare knew just how to work it. He used my every spasm and movement to work his forearm tighter and tighter under my neck, finding the left side of my throat with the sharp, upper edge of his radius bone. Then he used that arm bone to seal off my windpipe and to slow the blood moving through my jugular to the brain.
There is a strange moment, just before unconsciousness, when the ears begin to roar with the thudding, frustrated pounding of heart muscle, and light begins to dim slowly, slowly, like the dilating beam of a spotlight.
Through the slits of my eyes, I could see Ransom’s mouth moving, screaming at Clare, probably, but I could not hear her.
I could feel the overwhelming constricting of the big man’s arms; knew that he was killing me, but felt a sleepy indifference, resigned to the inevitable-death was not as painful as I’d feared. I felt a glimmer of hope when, for some reason, he loosened his grip, but that hope immediately vanished when I realized why: Instead of using his arm to choke me, he was now using the cane. He had both hands gripped on it as if to decapitate me. I used one arm to fight the cane away. .. then ripped my left arm out of the sling and used that too, operating on pure panic… and then, inexplicably, he stopped.
For an eerie moment, I thought I was dead. He’d beaten me, he’d won, so was it true? Had the terrible, crushing pressure on my throat really ceased?
Yes. He still had me in his control, but I could breathe again and my brain began to function again. I sucked in huge gulps of air, trying to clear the fog away. I lifted my chin to create even more breathing room, opened my eyes wide, and I saw why the man had stopped trying to kill me.