Hurricane Read Online Free Page B

Get out of here.”
    “ I’m here to see that you leave the boat.”
    “ Get out of here before I scratch your eyes out.”
    “ I’m not leaving.”
    “ Little man, if you don’t stop bothering my mother I’ll jump down there and kick the shit out of you.” Meiko stood up and looked down at him.
    “ Officer,” he said, grabbing the sergeant’s arm. The sergeant shrugged him off and the little man stepped in front of the taller man and added, “I demand you put these women off this boat. I’ve got a court order and it’s your duty to uphold it.” He punctuated his words with pointed fingers, shaking them in the sergeant’s face.
    “ Is it true? Did this woman’s husband just pass?” The sergeant asked.
    “ It’s not relevant.” The man poked the sergeant in the chest with the pointed finger.
    “ It is to me,” the sergeant said. He slapped the little man’s hand away with a crack that could be heard halfway down the dock.
    “ You can’t.”
    “ Shut up,” the sergeant said.
    “ But—”
    “ Another word and I’ll arrest you and forget where I put you. Do you take my meaning?”
    The little man glared at the policeman and nodded his head.
    “ Go,” the policeman said, and the little man went, walking stiff-legged down the dock toward the club house. He moved fast. A pressure cooker ready to blow. The policeman had made an enemy, Julie thought, and so had she.
    “ Thank you,” Julie said. She saw the policeman she had been so prepared to dislike in a new light. For him to strike a white man was a big thing, even if nobody in Trinidad would admit it.
    “ I am truly sorry,” he said. “I didn’t know about your husband. I should have shown some respect.”
    “ You couldn’t have known,” Julie said.
    “ We have to ask you some questions about yesterday.”
    “ About the dead man?”
    “ Yes.”
    “ All right,” Julie said.
    “ Why didn’t you report it?”
    “ I was going to, but when we got back to the boat there were two policeman here and they told me about my husband. The dead man just didn’t seem important anymore.” Julie flicked a few strands of hair from her eyes with the back of her hand. She wished she had her sunglasses on.
    “ Do you remember anything about the man?”
    “ Not a thing.”
    “ I do,” Meiko said.
    “ Yes, Miss.”
    “ He was white and he was fat.”
    “ We already know he was white and the corpse was probably bloated.”
    “ I’m premed, in Los Angeles. I’ve attended my share of autopsies. I’ve seen floaters before. I know the difference. This man was fat. Fat with small feet and close cropped hair. It looked like he might have had a bald spot on the top of his head, but I couldn’t really tell, fish had been at the corpse. If I had to guess I’d say he was between four-six and five feet, a short man.”
    “ Anything else?”
    “ Yeah, the man had a scar, big, almost like a brand across his chest. It reminded me of a lightning bolt.”
    “ You’ve done very well. Most people can’t give us as good a description of a living person.”
    “ Like I said, I’ve been trained.”
    “ How come you’re not writing it all down?” Julie asked.
    “ It isn’t necessary. From what the young miss has said I know who the man is. All of Trinidad knows who that man is.”
    “ Who is he?” Julie asked.
    “ Don’t you read the papers?”
    “ Not really. Ever since my husband and I bought this boat it’s been all we could do to keep up with it.”
    “ Michael Martel, Martel’s Magic Manufacturing. He makes and ships magic tricks all over the world. Very famous, but not because of his magic tricks. He was the witness in the Chandee murder.” The policeman shifted his weight from his left foot to his right and fixed Julie with a steady, brown-eyed gaze.
    “ The attorney general?” she half gasped, meeting his steady eyes. He wasn’t the lazy policeman his slow, ambling gate suggested.
    “ The one and the same.”
    “ I don’t