Sergio flew by him with perfect form and landed in the muddy sawgrass. I didn't have time to watch the rest. As Sergio drew an eight-inch stiletto from the waistband of his pants, Orlando came at me with the baseball bat. I stood there, sopping wet and barefoot, watching the pinch hitter, and not possessed of any particularly bright ideas. When Orlando was thirty feet away, I stooped at the base of a coconut palm and grabbed a yellow coconut, still in its husk, big as a volleyball and lots harder.
I heaved the coconut at Orlando. He swung and caught a piece of it. Foul ball. Strike one.
He kept advancing, triceps flexing with each warm-up swing, belly jiggling. Unlike Sergio, he was expressionless. Cold, black eyes that were all business. The mud smacked under his leather boots as he advanced. I backed up slowly, letting him close a little of the distance. Twenty feet away I flung a high, hard one with another coconut. He ducked. High and away. Count even at one and one.
This time he stayed put and I had time to scoop up a smooth round one that St nicely in my hand. Made a motion as if to throw, held up, then came at him with a submarine pitch, an upward trajectory that caught him right in the shin. A satisfying crack, but he didn't drop the bat. He leaned on it like a crutch, and I came at him. Four giant steps, then, out of a crouch, shoulders square, legs driving, I made the tackle. Picture perfect. Head up, arms wrapping him, running through him, my shoulder catching the point of his chin. He went down and lost three yards.
I turned around in time to see Tyrone tossing Sergio's knife into the pond. I hadn't seen how Tyrone had disarmed him, but Sergio's right arm was hanging at an unusual angle. Then Tyrone scooped up the smaller man by the seat of his pants and dragged him across the path.
Sergio was moaning, but Tyrone was short on sympathy. 'Shee-it, just a little shoulder separation. When it happens to me, they jam it back into place, tape me up, and I don't miss but one series.'
Sergio did not seem to be NFL material. As he hobbled away, he turned to me and said weakly, 'I owe you one, hombre.'
'And I know you're good for it.' I started up the ramp to retrieve my briefcase.
'Now git!' Tyrone ordered, and the two men took off, wobbling, limping, and cursing until they disappeared into the darkness.
Charlie Riggs was tending a fire and scalding peanut oil in an iron skillet when I pulled up at his fishing cabin just off Tamiami Trail a few miles east of Shark Valley. The old upholstery in the 442 was smeared with mud, and I made squishing sounds as I eased out and walked barefoot into the campsite.
'Jacob, where you been?' Charlie Riggs didn't sound alarmed. 'Either I'm seeing things or you've got a water lily in your ear.'
'Been up to my ass in alligators, Charlie.'
'I do believe there's a story in this. You'll find a bucket, a towel, and some shorts on the porch. Then tell me.'
I cleaned up and told him. As I did, Charlie fixed dinner. He bent over a slab of pine with a nail stuck through it. He jammed a Glades bullfrog onto the nail, piercing its belly, then made a quick incision with a knife, and with a pair of pliers, he pulled off the pants of the frog.
'You like frog legs?'
'Like eating them better than watching them prepared.'
Charlie shrugged. 'Thirty years in the ME's office, I don't get queasy about much.'
He heated some fresh tomatoes in the skillet, poured milk over the frogs' legs, dragged them through seasoned flour, then sauteed the whole mess in a sauce fragrant with butter and garlic.
'Love that country cooking,' I said.
'Country nothin'. This is cuisse de grenouilles provenqale.'
We ate and I talked, Charlie listening silently. Finally I asked him what to do.
'I suggest we visit Susan at once,' he said. 'This has taken on a whole new dimension. Those two thugs might have killed you. They were certainly going to hurt you.'
'What's this have to do with Susan?'
'They must know she gave you the tape. For whatever reason, they seem to place great importance on getting it. Frankly, I don't know why.'
'That's easy, Charlie. First, it's embarrassing to the widow, prancing around with three men. Second, it contradicts her sworn deposition. She denied having an affair with Roger.'
Charlie licked his fingers, sticky with garlic butter. 'You may be right, but I get the feeling there's something more to the videotape than that. Regardless, the widow apparently will do anything to get it. Maybe harm anyone who's seen it. Shall we leave?'
We shall, I said. Not really believing Susan was in danger. But making a mental note to watch the videotape again, to look for something. Something Melanie Corrigan didn't want us to see, something other than her swiveling bottom.
22
We tried calling Susan Corrigan from a gas station on Tamiami Trail. No answer at the cabana. We roared toward town, an evening thunderstorm slanting gray torrents across the two-lane road. For a while we listened to the machine gun rhythm of the rain on our canvas top. Cement trucks lumbered along, tossing filthy spray over our windshield. Charlie was thinking so I kept quiet. Then we argued.
'Your strategy won't work,' Charlie Riggs said. 'You want the jury to believe that Melanie Corrigan and this martial arts thug killed Philip Corrigan, then framed Roger to cover it up, right?'
'Sure, if you can tell me how they did it, how whatever they did ended up looking like succinylcholine poisoning.'
Charlie Riggs stroked his beard. 'Who says it looks like succinylcholine?'
'The ME says, choline and succinic acid found in the brain and liver.'
'But none around the needle track in the buttocks?' 'Right.'
'Hmmm,' Charlie Riggs said, tamping tobacco into a corncob pipe.
'Well?'
'Regardless whether the succinylcholine played a role in Philip Corrigan's death, your strategy is flawed. The timing is way off. What motive would they have for framing Salisbury now? It would only draw attention to themselves.'
'Plenty of motive once we dug up the body. They knew something was going on, needed to plant the drug and get Roger charged.'
Charlie concentrated on lighting his pipe. 'Foolish. They'd be better off sitting it out.'
I laughed. 'You're too logical. You're smarter than they are, Charlie, but you're forgetting one thing. The malpractice suit was intended to blame Roger or at least focus attention on the aneurysm. It's what Susan called the old fumble-rooski.'
'The what?'
'A misdirection play. A plaintiff's verdict would establish the aneurysm as the cause of death and close the case. Even the defense verdict was no problem for them because the evidence still showed an aneurysm killed Corrigan. The jury just didn't blame Roger Salisbury for it. But then we grab Corrigan's body, and all of a sudden, they need a fall guy in case the tests are positive for poisoning. They break into Susan's cabana to get the drug, then plant it and get the murder indictment against Roger. Everything's coming up roses until they learn a nurse can place both of them in the hospital room after Roger left. Plus they know we have the videotape.'
Charlie's face was shadowed in the lights of oncoming traffic. 'No good. The video establishes Roger's motive for the murder, his lust for Melanie.'
'But it also shows Sergio was just as bewitched, bothered, and bewildered and therefore would have the same motive to kill Corrigan. The tape furnishes reasonable doubt as to which of Melanie's admirers did him in. It also shoots some sizable holes in Melanie's grieving widow routine.'
