Damned in Paradise

I drifted over, stopping by the barbecue pit, very near where they were playing.

I spoke to the fat one: “What’s in the pot? Tea or coffee?”

The fat one looked up from his hand of cards with the disdain of a Michelangelo interrupted at his sculpting. “Coffee,” he grunted.

“Is it up for grabs?” I asked pleasantly.

Lyman, not looking up from his cards, said, “Take it.”

“Thanks.”

I reached for the pot, gripped it by its ebony handle.

Casually, I said, “I hear somebody’s looking for a boat to the mainland.”

Neither Lyman nor the fat guy said anything. They didn’t react at all.

Some tin cups were balanced along the stones; I selected one that seemed relatively clean—no floating cigarette butts or anything.

“I can provide that,” I said, “no questions asked. Private boat. Rich man’s yacht. Comfortable quarters, not down with the boiler room boys.”

“Gin,” the fat man chortled.

“Fuck you,” Lyman said, and gathered in the cards and shuffled.

“You’re Lyman, aren’t you?” I said, slowly filling the tin cup with steaming coffee.

Lyman looked up at me; his face had an ugly nobility, a primitive strength, like the carved stone visage of some Hawaiian god. The kind villages sacrificed maidens to, to keep him from getting pissed off.

“No names,” he said. He kept shuffling the cards.

I set the coffeepot on the stones that edged the pit. Tried to sip my cup, but it was too hot.

I said, “Tell me what you can afford. Maybe we can do some business.”

“I don’t know you,” Lyman said. His dark eyes picked up the orangish glow of the torchlight and the coals in the pit, and seemed themselves to glow, like a goddamn demon’s. “I don’t do business with stranger.”

That’s when I threw the cup of coffee in his face.

He howled and got clumsily to his feet, overturning the table, cards scattering, and the fat man, quicker than he had any right to be, pulled a knife from somewhere, with a blade you could carve a canoe out of a tree with, and I grabbed the coffeepot and splashed the fat bastard in his face, too.

It wasn’t scalding, but it got their attention, or rather it averted it, the knife fumbling from the fat man’s grasp, while I drew my nine-millimeter. By the time Lyman had wiped the coffee from his face and eyes, I had the gun trained on him.

“I’m not interested in you, Fatso,” I said. “Lyman, come with me.”

“Fuck you, cop,” Lyman said.

“Oh, did you want sugar with that? I’m sorry. We’ll get you some downtown.”

He was facing a gun, an automatic, the kind of weapon that can kill you right now, and he had every reason to be afraid, and I had every reason to feel smug, only feeling smug is always dangerous when you’re facing down the likes of Daniel Lyman, who wasn’t afraid at all and came barreling at me so fast, so suddenly, I didn’t think to shoot till he was on top of me and then the shot only tore a place along his shirt, cutting through the cloth and a little of him, only, shit, it was me going backward into that barbecue pit, and I had the presence of mind to clutch him like a lover and squeeze and roll and we hit not the coals but the stones, which was good, but we hit them hard, or I did, my back did, which wasn’t good, pain sending a white lightning bolt through my brain.

We rolled together, locked in an embrace, onto the ground and his shoulder dug into my forearm and I felt the fingers of my hand pop open and the gun jump out. Then I was pinned under him, and when I looked up into the contorted bearded orange-cast face hovering above me, the only thing I could hit it with was my forehead, and I did, hitting him in the mouth, and I heard him grunt in pain as teeth snapped, and he let go of me and I was squirming out from under him when the same massive fist that had no doubt broken Thalia Massie’s jaw slammed into mine.

This time there was no lightning bolt, but a flash of red followed by black, and consciousness left me, just momentarily, but long enough for Lyman to get up and off of me. Groggily, touching my jaw—unbroken jaw—I got to my feet and could see him cutting down a pathway between shacks, toward the road, I thought.

Meanwhile, the fat man was bending to pick up my nine-millimeter. He had it in his hand when I kicked him in the ass, hard enough to score a field goal, sending my gun flying again and him hurtling toward, and into, the barbecue pit, where he did a screeching scrambling dance, yow yow yow yow yow, sending orange sparks flying as he got himself out of there.

Where was my goddamn gun?

I didn’t see it, and hell, it couldn’t have gone far, only if

I took the time to look for it, Lyman might get away. I had to go after him, right now, unarmed or not, and he didn’t seem to have a weapon on him, so what the hell—this was why I came to the luau, wasn’t it?

I trotted down the path Lyman had taken, stopping at a crossroads, not seeing my quarry anywhere. Had he ducked into a shack? The way the shacks were nestled in and around thickets and trees made for a maze of pathways. Squattersville seemed suddenly a ghost town—whether at the sound of a gunshot, its inhabitants had hidden inside the shacks, or had scattered into the woods or the street, I couldn’t say.

Not daring to move too quickly, knowing Lyman could leap at me from any shadowy doorway, I moved cautiously if not slowly, and damned if I didn’t find myself back at the central area, at the barbecue pit. No sign of