'Whoa there,' I warned, holding the briefcase over the railing. 'One more step and it's in the drink.' Now that was some threat. After all, they wanted the tape to destroy it. That fact escaped Sergio, who kept inching toward me.
'Throw it over, you're gator bait, mamalon.' He bunched his forehead into little wrinkles and dropped into the straddle-leg stance, feet wide apart facing front, knees slightly bent, hands on hips, an attack position.
My move, but what to do? If your life is circumscribed by the four walls of the courthouse, your conduct is regulated by a myriad of rules. You become, in a word, civilized. You are not accustomed to dealing with those whose only rules are their own. In the swamp there is no court of appeal, no petition for rehearing. You depend either on the mercy of the one wielding the biggest stick, or on your own wits and strength. Of course, if I had any brains, I'd have a gun, not a product liability video, stashed in the briefcase.
The briefcase.
'Take it,' I offered, extending the thin case across my body. Sergio relaxed, reached for the handle, and I brought it around, a tight backhand swing with a full follow-through. Three hundred dollars of Schlesinger Brothers leather caught him flush on the nose. He yelped, and a torrent of red spurted over both of us.
Sergio fell back against the railing, stunned, blood streaming over his sleeveless muscle shirt, looking far worse than he probably was. I watched Orlando, waiting for his move. The big guy still blocked the ramp. A concrete pillar came through the center of the deck, supporting the slab above. If he rushed me, he would have to choose one side or the other. I would go around the pillar the other way and down the ramp. But he just stood there, not moving, holding his ground like a defensive end unwilling to be faked out on a misdirection play.
And here was Sergio, swiping at his nose, his eyes teary but just as mean. 'Orlando. Fuck up his knees.'
My knees were already fucked up. Two cartilage scrapings through the scope, one major-league scar thanks to a ligament tear.
Sergio leaned his head back, trying to stop the flow of blood. His voice was thick. 'Fuck him up good, Orlando, then throw his ass to the gators.'
Sometimes it is best to turn an apparent weakness into your strength. Here was Br'er Wolf threatening to throw me into the briar patch. I leaned over the railing, stretched high and let go with a hook shot, sliding the briefcase onto the deck above me. Then I hopped over the railing, took a breath, and dropped toward the malevolent swamp.
I don't know how long it takes to plummet sixty feet. Ask Newton or Galileo or one of those guys. But it's long enough to do a lot of thinking. If an alligator wants to have you for dinner, do you smack him in the snout? Or is that a shark? I thought of Susan Corrigan, the lovely tough-talking Susan Corrigan who cared for me and worried about me and now would be left without me. And then I felt the splash.
And went under.
Deep.
Never touched bottom, and a long way up.
Warm and mucky. Brown algae clung to my legs. Leaves stuck in my hair.
I was treading water, kicking off my wing tips, swiveling my head, picking up a thousand sounds, birds fluttering away, a splash on a far bank. Something bumped my leg and I jumped. Jumping is hard to do while treading water, but I popped up like a jack-in-the-box, then fell back against the branch that had impersonated an alligator.
I heard something. A hiss like the air brakes of a bus. Behind me, not six feet away, were two nostrils exhaling spray and two eyes exuding menace above a flat, broad snout. All that was visible. The flat eyes locked on mine. The hissing grew louder. He didn't like me in his territory. That made two of us.
I started doing the backstroke. Slow, smooth strokes with my head up so I could watch him. More like Esther Williams than Mark Spitz. When I was twenty yards away, I turned over, and did a wild Australian crawl until I got to the bank.
Shouts in Spanish, the sounds of leather on concrete clomping down the ramp.
The bank was muddy and I lost my balance, slipping back into the water, trying to remember to breathe again. As I reached for the stalk of a leather fern, a large, strong hand swallowed mine and dragged me out. Now what?
Wheezing, I looked up into the face of a huge black man who now had me by the arm.
'You the lawyer?' he asked.
'Why, you need one?'
'You must be. She said you make lousy jokes.'
She. Another of the widow's henchmen.
Then I recognized him. Two hundred sixty-five pounds of coal jammed into blue jeans, narrow waist rising to shoulders the width of a two-car garage. Stand leeward of him, you'd stay dry in a hurricane. Unlike some football linemen, there was no trace of fat. Six thousand calories a day burned off on the practice field and the weight room. Huge, yet Tyrone Hambone Washington moved with the grace of a dancer. He could bull rush an offensive tackle onto his backside, or with that high arm motion, swim by him. Strength and speed.
The big man wiped his hands on his jeans. 'The little lady sportswriter said you might need some help. So here I am. All her good pub got me AFC first team, so I owe her one.'
'Susan? Susan Corrigan sent you!'
'She say, you play some defense out here, only you don't know whether they run or they pass. Hambone's good at reading defenses. You just watch.'
Sergio was down the ramp first. He stood there with front leg bent, back leg straight, left arm extended with fist up, right arm curled alongside his jaw, a little slab of evil. His nose had stopped bleeding, but his muscle shirt was splattered with red.
Washington looked at him and said, 'Shee-it, every little fucker in this town thinks he's Chuck-frigging-Norris. But you, shitface, you look like chuck meat to me.'
'Negro hijo de puta-'
Washington's forehead seemed to drop over his eyes like a knight securing his visor before the joust. 'Whadid the little Cube say?'
'Something uncomplimentary about your mother,' I interpreted helpfully. 'Don't think he wants you to marry his sister, either.'
'Shee-it. His seester pull the train for every brother in Liberty City. She crazy about USDA government inspected, prime cut, Grade-A African beef.'
Sergio had forgotten all about the videotape and about me. Now it was personal. Orlando watched from his perch on the ramp. He was good at watching.
'Singao, I keel you now,' Sergio spat at Tyrone, 'with my bare hands.'
'Anytime, you Cuboid fag, body-building steroid-sucking cornholing midget. And stop pickin' your nose with your elbow, it won't bleed so much.'
'Filthy Negro mamalon.'
'You gotta choice, Jose. Either git the fuck outa here now, or I'll drop kick your ass back to Havana.'
I wanted to tell Sergio not to get excited, that Tyrone Hambone Washington probably says worse things to offensive linemen every week. In some quarters, his banter would be considered good-natured locker room joshing. Apparently Sergio was not well versed in this form of humor. Though his mouth was closed, a guttural noise came gurgling up from deep within him, a garbage disposal trying to digest a kitchen fork.
Seconds ticked by. Behind us, I heard a gator slip back into the water. The sun had dropped beneath the horizon, and a faint orange glow provided our only light. In minutes, we would be enveloped by the blackness of the prehistoric slough.
Sergio tensed his arms, flexed his shoulders. Hambone Washington stood with feet spread, arms loosely at his sides. Finally, the eruption. With a banzai charge, Sergio launched himself into the air, a jumping side kick. As he did so, he yelled, 'Tobi yoko-geri!' His right foot was five feet off the ground, aimed at Washington's Adam's apple. A chunky Baryshnikov sailing through the air.
Tyrone Hambone Washington was on the balls of his feet. At the last second, he stepped deftly to one side, a small step, and moved his head to the left, like the young Muhammad Ali dodging a punch. 'Tofu Yoko Ono,' he said.
