AllFreeNovel
Share Us
It was a nine millimeter Sig Sauer, an elegant and expensive weapon that Nicky needed about as much as he needed a Sharp’s buffalo rifle, but he had it and so far he hadn’t blown off his foot with it. I was hoping he would stay lucky.
“Ahoy, mate,” called Nicky, pointing the gun off to the south, “thar she blows.”
I turned to follow his point. A bleach bottle was sailing slowly out into the Gulf Stream.
“Come on,” Nicky urged, “pedal to the metal, mate.”
I tightened the main sheet and turned the boat slightly to give him a clear shot and Nicky opened up. He fired rapidly and well. The bleach bottle leaped into the air and he plugged it twice more before it came down again. He sent it flying across the water until the clip was empty and the bottle, full of holes, started to settle under.
I chased down the bottle and hooked it out with a boathook before it sank from sight. There’s enough crap in the ocean. Nicky was already shoving in a fresh clip.
“Onward, my man,” he told me, slamming home the clip and letting out a high, raucous, “Eeee-HAH!” as he opened a new beer.
We were moving out further than we should have, maybe, out into the Gulf Stream. It’s easy to know when you’re there. You see a very abrupt color change, which is just what it sounds like: the water suddenly changes from a gunmetal green to a luminous blue. The edge where the change happens is as hard and startling as a knife-edge.
“Ahoy, matey,” Nicky called again, pointing out beyond the color change, and I headed out into the Gulf Stream for the new target.
“Coconut!” Nicky called with excitement as we got closer. It was his favorite target. He loved the way they exploded when he hit them dead on.
I made the turn, adjusting the sheet line and again presenting our broadside, and swiveled my head to watch.
Nicky was already squinting. His hand wavered over the black nylon holster clipped to his belt. He let his muscles go slack and ready. I stared at the coconut. From fifty yards it suddenly looked wrong. The color was almost right, a greyish brown, and the dull texture seemed to fit, but—
“Hang on, Nicky,” I said, “Just a second—”
But the first two shots were already smacking away, splitting the sudden quiet.
I shoved the tiller hard over and brought us into
the wind. The boat lurched and made Nicky miss his second shot. He looked at me with an expression of annoyance. I nodded at his target. He had hit the coconut dead center with the first shot. It should have leapt out of the water in a spectacular explosion. It hadn’t. The impact of the shot pushed it slowly, sluggishly through the water and we could both see it clearly now.
It wasn’t a coconut. Not at all.
It was a human head.
Chapter Five
A lot of people have gotten into the habit of bad-mouthing the Coast Guard, but let me say this in their favor: they really know how to handle a dead body that’s been in the water a week, nibbled by sea-life, and then shot in the head.
It was only about half an hour from the time I raised them on my radio to the time the Coasties were sliding the black body bag up into a French-built helicopter, and whisking it away. They did it with casual efficiency, flicking off the clinging sea life without losing any body parts.
Lieutenant Ray Harkness, a short guy with the square silhouette of a body-builder, was in command of the chopper. He had grown up in Key West and I knew him slightly. When the body was loaded he leaned out. “Billy,” he said.
“Yeah.”
“The way this works, I’m supposed to take you in. But I know you, and you’re not going anywhere, right?” He looked at me a little harder than he needed to, but I guess a dead body is a good excuse.
“That’s right, Ray,” I said.
He nodded. “So you just get yourself in to the Sheriff’s office. They’re waiting on you.” His eyes flicked to Nicky. “Two of you don’t show up in the next couple of hours I’m in trouble. But not as much as you.”
“We’ll be there, Ray.”
He looked at me again, then nodded. He pulled his head back into the chopper and a moment later it was whistling away towards Key West.
Under the circumstances we took the sails down and motored in. Nicky didn’t have a lot to say on the ride in. He seemed shaken. He sat with his head down and for the first time since I’d known him he looked like a very small guy with no chin. When we were only about twenty minutes away from the dock he shot up suddenly, lurched his body over the side of the cockpit and threw up.
I didn’t say anything. Death hits some people harder than others, and this was an ugly death, a death complete with rot and bloating. Nicky was not used to death in any form, had not seen the things I had seen, and he probably felt guilty, too, in some weird, illogical way. He had shot this man in the head and immediately afterwards seen the decomposed body. So it became his fault.
