Florida Firefight (6 page)

The Indian seemed to notice his wounds for the first time. Her face paled a little. “Hey, you're hurt. You've been hurt pretty bad.” She gave the Colombians wide berth and came to Hawker's side, inspecting him. “That stab wound in your shoulder is pretty deep, and your nose is a mess.” She touched his arm wound gingerly. “You said something about being on your way to Miami. Maybe I ought to call an ambulance service over there—”

“No,” Hawker said, his voice a whisper. His head was throbbing in the heat, and everything seemed to be coming down a tunnel toward him: noises, sounds, smells; everything. “I'm staying here. I … I bought the Tarpon Inn.”

“Welcome to Mahogany Key, mister,” said the Indian woman as she took his arm, her haunting beauty now a foggy swirl before him. “You're very lucky I'm almost as good at nursing as I am at throwing bottles …”

It was the last thing Hawker heard before he fainted.

eight

He awoke to the sound of a teakettle whistling.

Someone was singing: a woman's voice; a ripe, husky alto. The song was “Desperado.”

The moon-globe glow of Mahogany Key's old-fashioned streetlights glimmered through a lone window. Starch-white curtains and the prissy vanity and knickknacks of a woman's bedroom caught the pale light of winter dusk in Florida.

Hawker jolted upright in bed, wondering just where in the hell he was. When he moved, his shoulder ached and his head throbbed. He threw back the covers and charged down a hall into what must have been the living room.

Suddenly there was laughter.

“God, what an entrance!” The Indian woman stood behind a modern counter that bordered a small kitchen. She wore a white turtleneck sweater and held a steaming mug in her hand. She studied him for a moment, then nodded her head in comic approval. “I'll give you an eight—” She paused as if in reappraisal. “No, let's make that a nine.” She tilted her head, smiling girlishly. “I'm duly impressed, Mr. Whatever-your-name is.”

Hawker suddenly realized he was completely naked.

“Shit!”

The woman threw back her head and roared.

“Why in the hell didn't someone …” Hawker turned tail and headed back toward the bedroom.

“You shouldn't be running!” she called after him, still laughing. “You'll tear those lovely stitches I sewed!”

A few minutes later Hawker returned, trying his best not to look sheepish. Someone had brought in his duffel bag, and he had changed from the bloody clothes of that afternoon into a pair of light cotton corduroy slacks and a navy blue Shetland crew-neck sweater. After the heat of the day, a cool winter wind blew off the bay.

He took a bar-stool seat at the counter.

The woman put a mug of hot tea in front of him. “Feeling better?” She still wore the wry smile.

“Just great—like someone dumped a quart of vodka down me and dragged me behind a car.” Hawker stirred sugar into his tea. “So how did I get here—and what happened to my Hispanic friends?”

“Don't you think introductions are in order first?” the woman asked, chiding him. “After all, I've saved your life, sewed you up, and now I've seen you in all your masculine glory.” She gave him a vampish wink. “Pretty nice set of buns there, fella.”

“What is it with women today? All that talk of liberation, and you immediately get aggressive.”

“Actually, feminist nurses have been slipping Spanish fly into every little girl's pablum. I know so, 'cause I read it in
Cosmopolitan
.”

“Next thing you'll be wanting to fight our wars.”

“Personally, I just want to be able to use your bathrooms—or at least see one. Are the toilets
really
different in a men's room?”

They both laughed, and Hawker stuck out his hand. “James Hawker, formerly of Chicago.”

Her handshake was firm and dry. “Winnie Tiger, formerly of Buffalo Tiger's Miccosukee Reservation, then the University of Florida, and now good ol' Mahogany Key.” She caught Hawker's look and said, “Why the expression of surprise?”

“Well, you have to admit that Winnie seems an unlikely name for an American Indian.”

“Crazy Horse and Tecumseh were already taken, so my parents just did the best they could. Besides, my grandmother was a Winnie. She was a Smithsonian anthropologist who came to the 'Glades to study the Miccosukees' pagan mating rituals. Turned out my granddaddy was just the pagan she was looking for.” She wrinkled her nose into an evil face. “Old Granddaddy always had a thing for the White-Eyes.”

Hawker's chuckle turned into an easy, comfortable laugh. He liked this woman. She was open and bawdy and honest. He saw her closely for the first time. Her beauty was indeed smoky and mystic, and he suspected she had done and seen much in her twenty-five-odd years. She had dark doe eyes and a face like something out of a fashion magazine. Her hair was blue-black in the neon light of the kitchen, and there was a submerged energy about her as if, no matter how much time you spent with her, no matter how well you knew her, you could never see all of her, hold all of her, or understand all of her at once.

It was something in her eyes, some mystery deep and distant and unspoken. Hawker had the sudden impression that if they had met in any other way, it would have taken him months to be allowed past all the little emotional doors she would normally slam in the face of a stranger.

For the first time Hawker didn't mind the beating he had taken at all.

“So what happened to them?”

“My grandparents, or the Colombians?”

“The Colombians.”

“My, you do have a one-track mind, don't you.” She gave him a sharp look. “You a cop?”

“I just bought the Tarpon Inn, remember? And maybe I'm just worried that if you killed those four goons, I'll have to take the rap for it.”

It was supposed to be a joke, but she didn't laugh. Her face grew serious. “I would have, you know—shot them, at least. The looks on their faces …” She shuddered, and held her tea mug as if for warmth. “No, I grabbed the gun when you passed out, and they just ran for it. Jumped into their truck and roared off toward the docks.”

“Who are they?”

“The Colombians?” There was a bitter edge to her laugh. “Haven't you heard? A bunch of ugly little countries got together a few years ago and decided who would get what part of poor old America. The Arabs got New York and L.A.—'cause of their money, you know. The Japanese got Detroit. The Cubans and Haitians got Miami. It's a free country, right? Well, the Colombians pulled short straw and were saddled with Mahogany Key.” She shuddered again. “We natives aren't too wild about you white folk, but these new interlopers … well, they trigger the old gag reflex.”

“Do you joke about everything?”

She slid around the counter and took the stool beside Hawker. He could smell the light shampoo odor of her as she hunched over her tea, studying the mug as if it might hold some great truth.

“I tell you, James, people who live here have to joke about it. If they don't, they'll end up crazy with hatred. Or dead. Very, very dead.” She locked her brown eyes on his, holding him like an embrace. “Which is what you'll be if you don't get out now. Tonight. They'll be coming after you.”

“That's the second time today I've been told to get out of town. I thought this was supposed to be warm and wonderful Florida.”

“It's warm, but it's getting less and less wonderful. It's always been a sort of tacky, pirate kind of state. But in the last few years it's gone crazy. Everyone smells easy money. And I mean
everyone
. A week doesn't go by that some public character—sheriff, district attorney or judge—doesn't get indicted for being party to a drug ring. Smuggling's big. But land swindles are probably even bigger. Not the old land swindles, where real estate hacks sold swampland. The new swindles are smooth and efficient, and kept very hush-hush. It's always the same: Developers with big money buy off politicians. And then, arm in arm, they watch merrily while bulldozers and draglines convert what little wilderness the state has left into shiny new condominiums and trailer parks.”

“I guess you have a right to sound bitter.”

She smiled. “I guess I do—and not just because I'm native. I gave you my name, but I didn't give you my title. I'm
Dr
. Winnie Tiger, a state-employed biologist sent here three months ago to find out why the freshwater from all the canals in Cape Coral and Golden Gate is killing the fish in Florida Bay, and why the bald eagles are being slaughtered because certain developers have passed the word they'll pay a bounty for them. You can't cut down a tree with an eagle's nest in it, you see.”

“Check me if I'm wrong, but it sounds like you already know why the fish and eagles are dying.”

She nodded emphatically. “Of course I know. Most people do. But for a scientist to stop it, she has to build a very powerful case. Plenty of proof and cross proof. And it takes a long time. That's the way the developers and the politicians want it—land swindles, remember?”

Hawker rose to get more tea, cringing at the pain in his shoulder. “I didn't look under the bandage. You really sewed me up?”

The glow returned to her face. “I just grabbed a spare cat-gut suture and went at it. The shot of Demerol I gave you kept you woozy. I keep the stuff around to sew up 'coons and deer and stuff that catch the business end of cars on Tamiami Trail. I've got a bobcat healing out back, and his hide wasn't as tough as yours.” She gave him a mock salute. “It's
Dr
. Winnie, remember. The closest people doctor is fifty miles by car, and you were losing so much blood I knew I had to do something quick. So I called Buck Hamilton—”

“Hamilton knows I'm in town?”

Buck Hamilton was the owner of the Tarpon Inn, Hawker's connection in Mahogany Key.

“He does. In fact, he raced right over to the Shop-and-Go and helped lug that big carcass of yours into your Monte Carlo. He followed us to my place and he lugged you into the bedroom, then lugged your clothes off you. That's a lot of lugging for a man Buck's age.” She hesitated and added, “And you know he has that bad back—”

“Yeah, he told me last time I talked with him.”

Hawker had never talked to Buck Hamilton. Jacob Montgomery Hayes had set up everything.

Winnie Tiger busied herself with her teaspoon. “He said he wants to see you as soon as you feel up to it.”

Hawker rolled his shoulders, working some of the knots out. “I don't feel too bad now. I guess I'll grab my stuff and head over there—if you'll tell me where it is.” Hawker had stood to go to the bedroom, but he stopped suddenly. He turned and gave Dr. Winnie Tiger a quizzical look. “I just realized something, woman.”

“What's that—man?”

“In all this talking we've done, you never answered my original question: Who are those Colombians?”

Her eyebrows narrowed. “You ask an awful lot of questions for not being a cop.”

“A businessman likes to know what he's getting into.”

“Is that why this particular businessman carries an automatic pistol in his pocket?” She swung her head. “It's over on the stereo, by the way. I wanted to keep it handy.”

Hawker retrieved the weapon and returned from the bedroom with his duffel. He leaned down and gave her a brotherly kiss on the forehead. “Thank you for everything, Doctor. You are truly one of the special ones.”

As Hawker opened the front door of her little bayside cottage, she called out to him. “James!” He stopped and looked at her. She said, “I've only been here three months, so I'll let Buck explain the problems this town has.” She tossed her hair back with a motion of her hand, and her brown eyes glistened. “But I will tell you this. If you stay after what happened this afternoon, they'll kill you. I know that. I know it's true. What's been going on here can't go on forever. Remember that, James. And I would hate to see this island's one brave man die for something that's going to change in time anyway.”

James Hawker hesitated, then turned and walked alone into the Florida night.

They attacked when he got to his car.

He had no idea who they were. Hispanics. Two of them. The streetlight showed Hawker just enough to know they weren't part of the foursome he'd fought that afternoon.

One was a meaty, bowling-ball guy with long black greasy hair and hammers for fists.

The other was taller, thinner, with the high-pitched laugh of a psychopath.

Hawker had just opened the door of his Monte Carlo when two dark shapes materialized from the nearby trees. He saw them from the corner of his eye. He heard the metallic double click of a revolver being cocked and dove headlong toward the closest shape.

He hit the thin man hard, driving his head into his soft belly. The air went out of the man with a loud
whoosh
as they tumbled to the ground.

The lunatic had actually been laughing until he was hit. A strange, insane laugh that had made Hawker's hair stand.

With his head down and unable to see, Hawker pawed frantically with his right hand, trying to find the gun and wrestle it away.

Using the revolver as a club, the man with the psychopathic laugh pounded at the back of Hawker's neck. But they were too tightly locked for him to get any momentum behind the blows. Hawker finally got the man's left wrist in his right hand, snapped down brutally, and heard the damp
pop
as carpus bones broke.

The man released a muffled scream, and the gun flew away toward the shadows. Hawker cracked the man in the face with his elbow twice, hard. He did not scream again.

Hawker rolled away as the second man hit him. The man had to weigh well over two hundred pounds, and the impact sent the needles and bright colors of near-unconsciousness roaring through Hawker's head.