Driving Big Davie (Dan Starkey) (27 page)

'Get out of here is what we're supposed to do. I've packed up our stuff. We pick it up, JJ's getting the car, we get the fuck out of here.'

He took a deep breath. 'Fuck. Christ. What the hell are you like?'

'I know. I know. It was an accident. Honest to God.'

'Right. Okay. You're right. We'll get out of here. The gold — we have to get the gold.'

I glanced up the road at the Sheriff still talking outside the bank. My instinct was just to leave it. To get as far away, as quickly as possible. Although I knew Davie wouldn't agree, not in a million years. But there was no way I was going to risk falling into conversation with the Sheriff. I would break down and confess all. Or, more probably, he would read me like a book. 'Okay, okay,' I said. 'You get it. I'll go to the hotel and get the bags and—'

At that moment JJ drove out from the car park behind the Mountain View. He hadn't had to go back to the workshop at all. He'd worked on the car and then driven it down to save him the exertion of walking a hundred yards for lunch. Easiest fifty bucks he ever made. He paused at the car-park entrance to check for traffic. He'd drive up in full view of us and he wouldn't be the least bit fazed by being caught out. And I'd pay up like the biggest sucker in town because I had to.

Behind us, Kelly Cortez came out onto the veranda. 'Davie,' she began, 'your dessert's on the table. Is everything all right?' She paused on the top step and her brow furrowed as she looked out along the main drag.

I looked to Davie to make her go away, but he too was now staring beyond me.

JJ still hadn't pulled out of the car park, even though there was no traffic. He was looking towards us — but not at us. Behind us. Up at the bank, the Sheriff had pushed himself off the hood of his vehicle and was now stepping down onto the road, with EC at his side. Behind Kelly Cortez the swing doors opened and DJ stepped out onto the veranda looking pale and worried. Behind him came CJ and MJ.

They were all looking in the one direction, back up the main street towards the beach.

It was a slow-motion moment stretched to eternity.

When birds beat their wings twice in a lifetime.

When the air freezes and breath becomes impossible.

When every creature but one on God's earth stops and turns to study an object of overwhelming absurdity and horror.

When finally that one creature turns, slower than the rest because he knows all about the curse of inevitability, but that knowledge does not make it any easier to behold the figure staggering up the main street.

The naked girl with no arms.

With the sand stuck by blood to her body.

With the gash across her forehead and the insects buzzing around it.

With the twitching flippers.

With the mouth open and the tongue hanging and the eyes blinking blinking blinking as she forced herself, mind over matter, towards us.

But she just didn't have the strength to do it. She finally collapsed to her knees with an agonised groan. If she could have reached out to me, she would have. But all she could do was to try and make words. Her mouth wouldn't function. She squirmed in the dust of the road like an insufficiently clubbed seal. Her eyes were wide and horrified by her own predicament, she was staring at me, panting, choking on her own blood. She managed to say something through the bubbles of blood erupting from her throat.

'Whhhhy?'

Terror in her eyes.

Terror in mine.

I couldn't move to help her.

She tumbled forward.

'Nooooo!'
DJ bellowed from behind and leaped down the steps towards her.

I stood frozen.

'It was an accident,' I said.

It was an old-fashioned cell in an old-fashioned wooden three-storey building. There were metal bars and a couple of bunks, just like you'd see in the movies. John Wayne and a boozed-up Dean Martin could have sauntered through the door and not looked out of place. Apart from the fact that nobody could just wander through the door without first getting past Sheriff Sterling Baines, sitting on the porch outside drinking beer from a coffee cup, with a shotgun just out of sight behind him.

Once in a while he came in to check on us. He provided coffee and doughnuts, paid for by the state, and for free he deconstructed our sorry lives for us. He seemed decent enough for a cop, but like most aging professionals was inclined to sentimentalise the past and philosophise at length about the present, when all we wanted was for him to shut the fuck up so we could wallow in our own misery without it being pointed out to us.

'I knew you boys were trouble the moment I saw you,' he said. 'You been in this business long as I have, you know trouble.'

Considering the state we were in when he first saw us, Stevie Wonder could have guessed we were trouble.

'I told you to keep yourselves to yourselves, told you this was my last fortnight an' I wanted it to pass peaceful, but you just couldn't do it. Just couldn't.'

I sat with my head in my hands. Partly through abject misery, and partly because I'd a huge bump coming up on my forehead. When it grew to full size it would match the bump on my arm and be colour co-ordinated with the bruises now emerging on my chest. Davie was similarly well-endowed with external evidence of internal bleeding.

They weren't exactly a lynch mob — they weren't that well-organised. But they showed potential.

It was more of a sudden hysteria, and it would have ended more tragically, especially for me, if they hadn't been torn between venting their fury on me and showing their concern for Michelle, having a fit in the middle of the road. If Dr Cortez hadn't yelled for calm, the numbers taking part in the assault on me and Davie would have doubled; and if Sheriff Baines hadn't discharged a couple of shots into the air then we wouldn't have ended up in a cell at all, but on or in Everglades City's equivalent of Boot Hill.

So we were quite lucky, really.

But, as Oscar Wilde often proclaimed, we were also royally fucked.

The Sheriff knew it too. We didn't even have the nerve to ask for a lawyer. Everything was going to come tumbling out of its own free will: he just had to push the right buttons. But for now he'd make us sweat while he sat on the veranda outside, Methuselah with a shotgun, exuding a calm, confident presence, hoping it would wash out over his city in general and the Mountain View Bar and Grill in particular.

Sheriff Baines had a Deputy called Jesse Stone, an ungainly big fella who would have been considered handsome if he'd had any kind of a chin; it just seemed to slip away under his bottom lip as if it had been hacked off and then reconstructed without the benefit of a jawbone. The Sheriff was inside getting a re-fill when Stone returned from the Mountain View looking hot and bothered. Kind of the way I'd looked since we'd arrived in Florida.

They tried to talk quietly, but it was a tiny station. Baines gave Stone his drink and poured himself another.

Stone said, 'They're not happy.'

Baines grunted.

'They're talking about coming over here, talking to you.'

'Talking to me?'

'Talking to you with guns.'

Baines nodded. He offered Stone a doughnut. Stone turned it down.

'I'll have it,' Davie said.

'You shut your mouth,' Baines snapped.

I don't know what he was so upset about. At least Davie was talking to him. He hadn't uttered a word to me for hours. Like I'd done something wrong.

'How's the girl?' Baines asked.

'DJ's with her at the hospital. A few of the others. Doesn't look good.'

'So who's leading the war party?'

'No one really. Everyone.'

Baines nodded sagely. 'They're waiting for DJ to come back. They won't do anything without him. His wife, his call.' He glanced back at me. 'I warned you, don't go near her.'

'I didn't,' I said.

Baines shook his head.

'I don't like it,' said Stone. 'We should get them out of here. It's not safe.'

Sheriff Baines lifted his beer-coffee in one hand and his shotgun in the other. 'Deputy, in about two weeks when you get to be Sheriff, I'll give a damn what you think, but right now I'm the Sheriff, and they stay where they are until I get to the bottom of this. Understand?'

'Yes, Sheriff.'

Baines nodded and moved to the door. Stone looked up and saw Davie watching. 'What the fuck are you looking at, asshole?'

'You,' said Davie.

'You want I come in there and whack you with this?' He put a hand on his nightstick.

'Yes, please,' said Davie, 'just so as I can take it off you and ram it up your hole.'

'Would you ever shut up?' I hissed.

'You
shut up,' Davie snapped back, jabbing a finger at me. 'And I'm not talking to you.'

'Aw, grow up.'

Stone shook his head and went to join Baines outside.Davie glared at me. 'Yeah, sure, that's fucking rich.'

'It was an accident, I'm sick of telling you.'

'We were
this
close to getting away with it and you couldn't keep your hands to yourself.'

'It was
her.'

'She hasn't got any fucking hands.'

'You know what I mean. She was all over me.'

'Yeah. Sure. Right. That's just about your fucking level.'

'What's that supposed to mean?'

'Nothing. You and a fucking cripple. Christ.'

'She's beautiful.'

'Not any more she's not. Thanks to you.'

'I didn't do anything.'

'Yeah — right. Your Honour, I was chasing her naked across the beach and she had a sudden urge to commit suicide.'

'It wasn't the beach. It was the rocks. And it wasn't like that.'

'I don't know what the fuck it was like, Dan, but I know how a fucking prosecutor's going to make it sound. Look at your knees, man. There was a struggle, she was naked, you were chasing her across rocks, she had no arms and couldn't defend herself.'

'She didn't
have
to defend herself!'

'Tell it to the judge, Dan.'

'Brilliant. Great. Don't believe me. Fab friend you are.'

'Fab friend
you
are. If you thought with your head instead of your dick we wouldn't be fucking banged up in here.'

'I didn't . . . ah, what's the fucking point? Here we are. Here we fucking are.'

'We
being the operative word. What the fuck did
I
do?' He gripped the bars. He called out: 'It was him, Sheriff! Let me go!'

I sat and shook my head at him. Next time he asked me to go on holiday with him I'd definitely dither over it for a while. All I ever wanted out of it was a suntan and a couple of beers.

There was movement at the door and we turned to see Sheriff Baines leading Dr Cortez into the station. She looked grim.

'Howse she doing?' I said.

'Never mind him,' said Baines. 'How's she doing?'

'They're operating on her now. There's a clot.'

'Here's another one,' said Davie, pointing at me.

'Would you ever fuck up?' I snapped.

'You
fuck up.'

'You make me—'

'Will you both just
be quiet.'
It was Baines. He was an old guy, but authoritative. We stopped arguing. I came to the bars of the cell and asked if Michelle was going to be all right.

Kelly Cortez shook her head. 'They're going to be a couple of hours at least. Won't really know what the damage is until they get in there. What
were
you thinking of?'

I shrugged helplessly. 'I wasn't thinking of anything. We were having fun. Why doesn't anyone believe me?'

Sheriff Baines came to stand beside her. 'Didn't say I didn't believe you, son. Michelle fucked half this town — if you'll excuse my French, Doctor — no reason to believe she didn't try to fuck you as well. But like I say, I warned you, you play with fire you're going to get burned.'

I put my hands on the bars. 'What about DJ?'

Kelly raised her eyebrows. 'I gave him a ride back from the hospital. Nothing he can do until it's over. He's gonna collect some of her things, take them to her later on.'

'Did he strike you as being in a forgiving mood?'

Before she could respond, a stone came through a side window of the police station. It rolled across the floor and sat there, worrying us.

From outside Deputy Stone hollered, 'Sheriff! You better get out here!'

Sheriff Baines calmly lifted his shotgun again and checked that it was loaded. He nodded at me. 'DJ's back. They've had a few minutes to discuss the situation. Now I expect they've all gone and had a vote. I guess we got ourselves a lynch mob.'

He turned for the door. Davie came to stand beside me at the bars. As Dr Cortez turned to follow the Sheriff he reached through the bars and grabbed her arm. Gently. 'You still owe me a dessert,' he said.

She shrugged his hand off. 'And you still owe me an explanation.'

'That's easy,' said Davie. 'I'm travelling with a cretin.'

I would have responded, but I was too busy cowering down as I caught the briefest glimpse of the angry mob that had gathered outside the station. Sheriff Baines closed the door firmly behind him before Dr Cortez could reach it. Instead she moved to a window and looked out.

'Ten or twenty of them?' Davie asked.

'More like fifty.'

'They have clubs and stuff to beat us?'

'They have guns and stuff to shoot you.'

'Why doesn't he call for help?' I asked.

'Doesn't reckon he needs any,' said Dr Cortez.

'You should go out there and say you're sorry,' said Davie.

'They'd hang me,' I said.

Davie shrugged. There was actually a hint of a smile on his face. I hated him deeply. There was clearly a part of him that was enjoying this situation. I'd seen the same look on his face in the penthouse bedroom of the Don CeSar after I'd shot Michael O'Ryan in the head. It was the exposure to danger. The not knowing whether you'd escape from a given situation. Whereas I knew perfectly well. We were totally safe in our cell. Outside, a United States Sheriff on the point of retirement and his chinless wonder Deputy were having a nice chat with the locals, who were kind-hearted but inclined to let off steam once in a while.