A second later, both men were treading water, the Jet Ski purring softly, turning tight circles in the channel. Steve’s right shoulder flared with pain. It felt as if someone had stabbed him with an ice pick, then hammered it into the bone. Next to him, the man’s hand was clapped protectively over his neck.
A thick neck. Strong jaw with high cheekbones. Light-skinned African-American. His helmet had been knocked off, revealing a shaved head. Illuminated only by the moon and the lights on the gate, the guy looked a little like that wrestler turned actor. The Rock. Dwayne Johnson, the guy who gave all that money to the University of Miami.
“Corporate goon,” the man groaned.
Steve treaded water and massaged his right shoulder. “Hey, asshole. You scared the shit out of my nephew.”
“You don’t think dolphins are scared when they’re taken from their mothers?”
“Don’t start that crap with me.”
The two men faced each other in the water, each pedaling to stay afloat. On the causeway, a police siren wailed.
“You think your nephew’s life has more value than a dolphin’s? Or a turtle’s? Or a harbor rat’s?”
“As a matter of fact, I do.” No use telling this guy, but Steve valued Bobby’s life more than his own.
“You’re with them, aren’t you?” the man demanded.
“Them who?”
“The circuses and the zoos. The testers and the torturers. The users and abusers.”
“I’m just a guy with a nephew who loves dolphins.”
The man reached under the water and came up with the dive knife that had been sheathed at his ankle. Serrated blade, glimmery in the moonlight. With his free hand, he started paddling toward the Jet Ski. “Try to stop me, I’ll cut your throat.”
“Isn’t my life worth as much as a harbor rat’s?”
A light blazed, blinding Steve. “Hold it right there! Both of you!” boomed overhead.
Steve squinted toward the shore. Police car on the bank. Two cops at the water’s edge. One gripped a Maglite the size of a Barry Bonds bat. The other aimed his 9 mm Glock at them. Two-handed grip, legs spread and knees flexed, just like they teach them at the academy.
Steve continued treading water.
“Hands where I can see ’em!”
What’s the cop think I’m gonna do, the backstroke?
Steve threw both hands above his head. He immediately sank. He kicked hard and popped up just as Darth Vader called the cops “establishment thugs.”
“For the record,” Steve interjected, spitting water, “I play softball in the Police Athletic League.”
One cop started to say something but was interrupted by the blast of a shotgun, the sound rolling down the channel. Instinctively, Steve whirled toward the park.
Bobby! Where’s Bobby?
The last Steve had seen the boy, he had stopped along the seawall, waiting for his uncle to be a hero.
An instant later, a second blast echoed in the warm ocean breeze.
SOLOMON’S LAWS
1. Try not to piss off a cop unless you have a damn good reason…or a damn good lawyer.
Five
The cops cuffed Steve and slammed him facedown onto the hood of the cruiser. Water dripped down his legs into his Reeboks.
All that mattered was Bobby, and Steve couldn’t get to him. “C’mon, man. My nephew’s back there.”
“How many of you are there?” the bigger cop demanded.
“I’m not one of them!” Steve lifted his head. A hand slammed it back down. Steve’s eyes teared and his nose dripped blood. A fire burned deep in his shoulder. “Did you hear the gunshots? I gotta find Bobby.”
“Shut up.” The cop clipped the back of Steve’s skull with his Maglite. Just a practice swing. Steve decided he didn’t want to feel the real thing.
“Don’t they teach you in cop school that gunshots are bad?” Steve asked.
“Got other units there.” The cop was going through the soggy contents of Steve’s wallet. Seventeen dollars, a year-old Fantasy 5 lottery ticket, and his Florida Bar card. “You’re a lawyer.”
“Yeah, and you’re gonna need one.”
Steve liked most cops, even the ones who stretched the truth in their testimony, forcing him to cross-examine the crap out of them. They had their job to do, and he had his, which was to make them look like idiots or liars. Or both.
These two were young. One Hispanic, one black. Both with sleeves tight against bulging biceps.
Don’t they test cops for steroids the way they do ballplayers?
It was something he’d look into the next time some cop roughed up one of his presumably innocent clients. ’Roid rage.
“My nephew’s got a medical condition. So if you could be a pal and-”
“Shut up,” the Hispanic cop repeated. His partner separately questioned Darth Vader over by a scrubby palm tree. Steve couldn’t hear the questions, but several answers seemed to include the words “Gestapo thug” and “global corporate conspiracy,” sprinkled with mentions of Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo.
Steve explained how Grisby called him about Bobby, how he drove to Cetacean Park, stumbled into an animal liberation raid, chased this yahoo in the wet suit, then saw a second Jet Skier, who’d already made it to the Bay with two dolphins.
“Another perp,” the cop said, sounding interested. “You get a look at him?”
Steve shook his head, water dripping from his hair. “Too dark. Too far away. He was herding the dolphins into open water, and that jerkoff was bringing up the rear.”
The radio in the squad car crackled, and the Hispanic cop ducked inside to take the call. When he emerged, he said, “Is it safe to assume your nephew’s not around forty years old, maybe two hundred pounds?”
“He’s twelve and built like a broomstick.”
“Good. Then he’s not the dead guy.”
Six
They drove back to Cetacean Park in the cruiser, along an unpaved access road. The cops told Steve everything they knew from the radio call. Wade Grisby had shot someone, another guy in a wet suit. A third perp, the cop said. It happened on a path near the security shed. Steve’s nephew wasn’t near the shooting, didn’t even see it happen. The kid was talking to a detective now. He was just fine.
Steve felt the relief immediately. If Victoria was his heart, Bobby was his soul. Eighteen months earlier, Steve had risked everything to rescue the boy-kidnap him, really-from his own mother. Janice Solomon, Steve’s drug-addled sister, was an abusive parent and a pathological liar, and those were her best qualities. When Bobby came to live with Steve, the boy was terrified and helpless, plagued by night terrors, his psyche a scrambled mess. Steve decided then that he’d do anything to make the kid’s life better. Bobby had made great progress, but not without some setbacks. Overall, the kid was so sweet and innocent he gave Steve faith in the goodness of the species, notwithstanding all evidence to the contrary.
Three more police cars and an ambulance angled alongside the seawall, lights flashing. A covey of cops in uniform and two others in plainclothes milled about. A fire-rescue vehicle was pulling up, two EMTs leaping out. On the causeway, another siren wailed.
A few yards from the killer whale tank, Bobby sat in the front row of the bleachers, wrapped in a pink beach towel, sipping soda from a can. A Miami-Dade sheriff’s deputy Steve recognized from the Justice Building took notes on a pad. “Then Uncle Steve took off after the guy,” Bobby said, his voice stoked. “You shoulda seen him. Awesome! Like a zillion miles an hour.”
“Hey, kiddo. You okay?” Steve scooped up his nephew and hugged him.
“Did you catch him? ’Cause they should pay you a big reward, a big chunk of cheddar.”