“Shut up,” the Hispanic cop repeated. His partner separately questioned Darth Vader over by a scrubby palm tree. Steve couldn’t hear the questions, but several answers seemed to include the words “Gestapo thug” and “global corporate conspiracy,” sprinkled with mentions of Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo.
Steve explained how Grisby called him about Bobby, how he drove to Cetacean Park, stumbled into an animal liberation raid, chased this yahoo in the wet suit, then saw a second Jet Skier, who’d already made it to the Bay with two dolphins.
“Another perp,” the cop said, sounding interested. “You get a look at him?”
Steve shook his head, water dripping from his hair. “Too dark. Too far away. He was herding the dolphins into open water, and that jerkoff was bringing up the rear.”
The radio in the squad car crackled, and the Hispanic cop ducked inside to take the call. When he emerged, he said, “Is it safe to assume your nephew’s not around forty years old, maybe two hundred pounds?”
“He’s twelve and built like a broomstick.”
“Good. Then he’s not the dead guy.”
Six
They drove back to Cetacean Park in the cruiser, along an unpaved access road. The cops told Steve everything they knew from the radio call. Wade Grisby had shot someone, another guy in a wet suit. A third perp, the cop said. It happened on a path near the security shed. Steve’s nephew wasn’t near the shooting, didn’t even see it happen. The kid was talking to a detective now. He was just fine.
Steve felt the relief immediately. If Victoria was his heart, Bobby was his soul. Eighteen months earlier, Steve had risked everything to rescue the boy-kidnap him, really-from his own mother. Janice Solomon, Steve’s drug- addled sister, was an abusive parent and a pathological liar, and those were her best qualities. When Bobby came to live with Steve, the boy was terrified and helpless, plagued by night terrors, his psyche a scrambled mess. Steve decided then that he’d do anything to make the kid’s life better. Bobby had made great progress, but not without some setbacks. Overall, the kid was so sweet and innocent he gave Steve faith in the goodness of the species, notwithstanding all evidence to the contrary.
Three more police cars and an ambulance angled alongside the seawall, lights flashing. A covey of cops in uniform and two others in plainclothes milled about. A fire-rescue vehicle was pulling up, two EMTs leaping out. On the causeway, another siren wailed.
A few yards from the killer whale tank, Bobby sat in the front row of the bleachers, wrapped in a pink beach towel, sipping soda from a can. A Miami-Dade sheriff’s deputy Steve recognized from the Justice Building took notes on a pad. “Then Uncle Steve took off after the guy,” Bobby said, his voice stoked. “You shoulda seen him. Awesome! Like a zillion miles an hour.”
“Hey, kiddo. You okay?” Steve scooped up his nephew and hugged him.
“Did you catch him? ’Cause they should pay you a big reward, a big chunk of cheddar.”
The deputy held up a hand. “Give us a minute, Mr. Solomon.”
Steve studied his nephew. “Sure you’re okay, Bobby?”
“Abso-posi-tutely. But where are Spunky and Misty?”
“In the Bay somewhere.”
Bobby’s expression froze. The energy drained from him.
“Where in the Bay?”
“I don’t know, kiddo. They were headed for the southern tip of the Key.”
Meaning they could be in the deep, blue Atlantic by now, but Steve chose not to say that.
“Can you find them, Uncle Steve?” Fear in his voice. “Can you get them back?”
“I’ll try, kiddo.”
“Please, Uncle Steve.”
“Gonna do my best.”
“Not enough!”
“What?”
“Not enough. Not enough. Not enough. I want them back. Now!”
Whining. Swaying. His mouth contorted. The old Bobby. Insecure and frightened. Bobby had made so much progress, had become so socialized, it was difficult to remember the skin-and-bones, bruised and grimy kid locked in a dog cage, his legs festering with open sores.
Steve picked up Bobby. The boy slung his legs around his uncle and locked his ankles together. Steve gave him a squeeze and whispered in his ear, “It’s gonna be okay, kiddo.”
“Sure.” He didn’t sound convinced.
Steve felt teardrops roll from Bobby’s cheek to his own. “I know how much Spunky and Misty mean to you. They’re like the brother and sister you don’t have.”
“You could change that,” Bobby said.
“How?”
“You and Victoria, I mean.”
“Oh, that. Let’s get the dolphins back first, then we’ll discuss whether the world needs any more Solomons.”
“Deal,” Bobby said. Sounding better. He untangled himself from Steve, rubbed his nose with a thumb, and turned back to the deputy. “Would you like to hear the rest of my statement now, Officer?”
Sounding like an expert witness who’d been doing this for years. That was Bobby for you. One moment a babbling kid, a second later he’d name every turnpike stop from Homestead to St. Lucie.
“You sure you’re okay?” Steve asked.
“Go,” Bobby said. “Maybe you can pick up some clues.”
Steve left Bobby with the deputy and headed toward a semicircle of cops on the path that led to the security shed. Two large feet in rubber dive booties stuck out of a low hedge of ficus trees.
Moving closer, Steve caught sight of the body. A man in a black wet suit, just like the one worn by the Jet Skier. The man lay on his back in a pool of blood. A deep pool. More blood than it seemed any one body could hold. The man’s chest had been blown wide open. Shotgun blast at close range. Ugly.
A second blast-or more likely the first-had torn through the man’s right hip. Near his feet was a roll of duct tape, flecked with gore and body tissue. A small coil of nautical line curled near one knee. A police photographer hovered over the corpse, snapping off rapid-fire pictures.
Two plainclothes detectives stood nearby, listening to Wade Grisby, who sucked at a cigarette, his leathery hands trembling. “A man’s got a right to defend himself, don’t he?”
Grisby was in his early fifties, short and wiry, with sunbaked skin and a gray-flaked beard. He looked up as Steve approached. “This fellow knows me. Tell them, Steve. I wouldn’t shoot a man unless it was self- defense.”
Steve joined the circle. “Wade, you might not want to make any more statements until you have a lawyer.”
“I got nothing to hide.”
“Still, Wade. It’s time to lawyer up.”
Steve was about to announce his own availability at reasonable rates when he heard a familiar voice. “Don’t need a mouthpiece when you got the po-lice.”
Steve turned and saw Ray Pincher striding toward them. The State Attorney wore a dark suit and a dress shirt, leaving off only the tie, perhaps a concession to the pre-dawn hour. Pincher was a fit African-American man in his forties with a narrow mustache and an irritating habit of cracking his knuckles to emphasize that he’d just made an important point. He’d grown up in the Liberty City projects and won some amateur boxing titles as a
