Free Men in Miami Hotels by Charlie Smith Page A

waded into the clear, lightly soughing current. Across the channel a quarter mile off they could see houses poked out from among bushes and palm trees behind a short flat beach. Okay, he said stuffing his flip-flops in the back pockets of his shorts, and they slipped in, not taking time to say good-bye to land or struggle. Behind them nothing at first but halfway across he looked back and saw Bert taking aim. Saw as well the other two abruptly conjured, miscreant experts, one holding his pistol with two hands, the other crouching among refuse carefully drawing a bead. Pop, pop.
    The shots weren’t close, hit the surface like skids, kicking up aught in the sea’s big mitt.
    They were both strong swimmers, but he kept himself between her and the assailants behind who were not getting into the water, were not shouting or threatening, only taking—Bert was taking—a long last look, a steadying and fixing look, and tucking back into the smelly boondocks.
    A bit later they caught a ride out on the highway from Bubsy Mannix, a local woman who’d run off at sixteen to join the rodeo and come back at twenty-five with a permanent limp and witty stories of livestock and cowboys throwing their weight around, now a seller of fruit pies and bakery goods, a woman with pulled-back blonde hair and a cowboy hat hanging behind her head on a string, who stopped by Randy’s Imperial Room and picked them up, two sea-damp escapees, and let them off a few minutes later in front of his mother’s misaligned house.
    Marcella immediately stepped next door and hooked a ride with Delilah Strake, who had her cab parked out front while she sat under the wheel eating a slice of devil’s food cake on her break.
    “I have to fetch my car,” she said as he followed her over.
    “I wouldn’t do that just yet.”
    “I’ll get somebody from the station to pick it up.” Standing under a big flower-filled flamboyant she called the police on Delilah’s phone—hers was wet—explained the situation, and they said they would get right on the problem. Problem of Bert and his confederates. He stood in the shade listening to her talk to the police. It was like somebody talking to one of her feckless and amusing former boyfriends.
    “They already have a cordon—that’s their word—thrown up around Stock Island,” she told him.
    I t’s in the paper that night, Internet version: three men, possible assassins, picked up lost in undergrowth and transported to jail. They are all in jail. Cot goes down there, and they let him in to talk to Bert who as usual is sick with regret.
    “I don’t know what came over me, Cot,” he says.
    “You mean trying to kill me?”
    “Well, that too, yeah. But I mean losing my head about it. I felt so ashamed when you pulled my clothes off.”
    “It was the quickest thinking I could do at the time.”
    “You were always a strange quick thinker, Cot.”
    “So, Spane sent you?”
    “Yeah, well, the first time. Before you had me put in jail. The other time was my own. They say you got to show initiative. Big A’s awfully mad at you, Cot.”
    “I’m getting a little worked up myself.”
    “I mean they told me to leave you alone. At least until four P.M . tomorrow.”
    “That’s what had me confused.”
    “Yeah, I know. Would you tell Mrs. Bakewell that I’m sorry.”
    “She already knows you are.”
    “But if you’d tell her I’m sure it would be a big help. Maybe she’ll take the case.”
    Out the window Cot can hear children shouting. Or maybe they are only childish adults, frolicking. He feels sick to his stomach.
    On the cab ride home he stops to pick up some Chinese food at Chee’s and then he has Slocumb drive over to the botanical garden to help fetch his mother. As usual she doesn’t really want a ride but because it’s him she consents. He explains what the trouble is, more or less.
    His mother, who was once a heavy woman with a light step and is now headed in the opposite direction, leans her head