Dark Light

“Well, Doctor. Why don’t you do something?”

Whap. He slapped me again, then once more. I threw my hands up, expecting him to hit me again. Instead, he pivoted to the side, and kicked me, a boat shoe in the butt. Not hard—it was a message. It demonstrated contempt.

I lost it. Which is what he expected. I ducked and charged, my vision blurry. As easily as the man dodged Tomlinson, he dodged me, pivoting like a matador. My hair wasn’t long enough to get a handhold, but he did the same quick trip-step, turning my body as he drove me hard, back first, onto the limestone.

Then…I was looking up into the September sky, colors returning, Bern Heller’s face hanging over mine. He was close enough so details weren’t blurry. The man had an oversized head like a robot: forehead, cheeks, and chin. His jaw mandible was a structure of interlocking cordage covered with skin.

Something I hadn’t noticed before: no beard stubble. Heller’s face was wiener smooth, his small blue eyes looking out. He’d managed to pin my right arm with his knee; had his forearm on my throat. The jugular vein side, shutting off the blood to my brain.

I struggled to move. Couldn’t. Tried to speak. Couldn’t.

He leaned his nose near mine, and whispered so only I could hear. “You snobby-assed motherfucker, if we was alone, I’d strip those pants off you and stick a broom up your butt just to see you wiggle. I’ve done it to pigs, and some of them like it. What about you? If you ever come back here, I’ll give it a try. Stick it right up your ass.”

The man was giving me a private glimpse of the craziness inside him. Delighted with his secret profanities, the control he wielded. It was a glimpse of the demonic little boy who lived behind those blue eyes.

Not quite blue, though. Up close, the intensity of his eyes, altered their color a few shades to cobalt. They were glassy receptors, hunting probes that I associated with reptiles and certain birds. Animals accustomed to dampness and night.

Somehow, I got my left arm free. Formed a fist and hit him with a couple of weak shots to the kidneys. He responded by driving his forehead into my nose. Head butt. Almost got me square, but I turned my face in time. Still, I felt a dizzying explosion in my brain, then warm rivulets of blood.

“That’s enough, goddamn you. You’re hurting him. Let ’im up!”

A familiar voice. Whose?

It seemed to come from miles away, a voice that was energized with the rage of a victim who’d snapped after being cornered.

I’d never before heard this man enraged.

Tomlinson’s voice.

I n the hazy, graying world of unconsciousness, I considered hitting Heller in the kidneys one more time. Decided no. Paybacks were hell with this guy, as the weight of Heller’s forearm on my throat, anvil heavy, squashed me into a blackness.

“Get off him!”

Tomlinson again. My weird friend. “Heller, I’m not going to tell you again!”

Rage and violence. Strange. Hard to associate those emotions with Tomlinson.

“Goddamn it, I warned you—”

Through the darkness, I heard a whooping sound. Felt a jolt…and, suddenly, the weight was gone from my throat. Light gathered beyond my eyelids. I opened them to see a storm-blue sky, Heller no longer hanging over me like a vulture.

I rolled to my side, then sat, fingers exploring esophageal cartilage for damage. I was aware of men shoving, Tomlinson in the middle. Grunting sounds, strained voices swearing. Noises men make when fighting.

I turned. Focused. Could this be real?

Tomlinson had his big, bony hands around Bern Heller’s throat. Had his fingers locked deep in neck tissue, and he was backing the larger man toward the water. He didn’t seem to feel Heller’s fists pounding at his shoulders and ribs. Ignored Jeth, who was alternately shoving Augie and trying to separate Tomlinson from Uncle Bern.

“Jesus, Tomlinson, you’re gonna kill the asshole if you don’t stop!”

The absurd grin remained fixed on Heller’s face. He made gurgling noises, trying to talk. He didn’t take Tomlinson seriously, despite what was happening.

His attitude: I’ll end this when it stops being funny.

Tomlinson’s face had turned a mottled gray, his expression grotesque, as he continued to push Heller toward the bay—Heller’s grin beginning to fade now. Suffocation is the first of primal horrors, and he realized that Tomlinson wasn’t going to quit.

“Let go of his throat! Damn it, they’re going to shoot Javier!”

I glanced toward the fence, seeing that Javier was now on marina property, still holding the gun but that it was pointed at the ground. He appeared stricken, the central figure in a shrinking circle as deputies moved into position.

Something else I saw: Cowboy was headed our way carrying the five-gallon bucket he’d taken from my boat. The bucket, plus the jumble of cable dragging it behind, and a couple of wet towels under his arm—the Nazi artifacts.

“Javier!” Jeth shouted, and ran toward the fence. His voice finally registered with Tomlinson, who had the confused expression of a man trying to disentangle reality from a bad dream. He looked into Heller’s plum-bright face for a moment, then slowly removed his hands from the man’s neck. He stared at his fingers as if they were strangers.

Before Heller could recover, I had Tomlinson by the arm, pulling him. “This guy wants them to shoot Javier. Let’s get over there.”

J avier appeared dazed by what was going on around him, a man who’d paddled an inner tube across a hundred miles of ocean but who now looked as indecisive as a child, standing motionless in his red T-shirt and ball cap.

He was encircled by uniformed deputies who were using whatever they could find for cover—a fifty-gallon drum, abandoned pontoons, trees—as they kept their guns trained on the man, leapfrogging into position. More than once they’d told him to drop the weapon, get down on the ground, don’t make them shoot.

Javier just stood there.

But the cops were taking it slow, which told me Javier had gotten lucky. These were pros who’d read the signs correctly: The man was frozen; immobilized by emotional overload, the same way some kids freeze when they get to the highest limb on the tree.

“Javier! Don’t move.”

Jeth’s voice. Magic today because it was like watching Tomlinson again, the way Javier’s face changed: puzzled, then aware but confused.

He focused; saw Jeth and Tomlinson running toward him, me not far behind. His face came alive. Javier smiled wanly, and shrugged his shoulders: See the stupid thing I’ve done?

The cops were not reassured. They wanted Javier to remain catatonic, not suddenly alert and maybe thinking of doing something stupid to impress his friends. They also didn’t want civilians running toward them, screwing up their lines of fire—something made clear when a pair of deputies faced us, one of them yelling, “Stop! Get on the ground!” Pointing a left index finger at us but his weapon drawn.

We were close enough to hear Javier call out, “Hey, those are my friends. Don’t shoot my friends, okay? They didn’t do nothin’. If you want, I’ll drop my pistol. Okay? Watch. That’s what I’m doing. I’m dropping my pistol”—the deputies had Javier’s chest centered above their gunsights, leaning as he let the pistol roll off his finger to the ground—“See? I tell you something, I do it. My friends, though, they just want to help—”

Which is as far as he got before he was tackled from behind. Other deputies charged in, one of them kneeling to take Javier’s pistol.

“It’s not even loaded, man, ’cause I couldn’t find the bullets.” Javier, now being handcuffed, sounded apologetic. “That storm, the cabrone, Carlos. Everything in my house is wet, piled up like garbage. But I don’t want to shoot nobody anyway. I just want my boat.”

They had him on his feet, frisking him again. “See the pretty green boat over there? That’s mine, man.”

A deputy checked the cuffs as he told Javier that he was under arrest, then began to recite his Miranda