In Flames Read Online Free PDF Page B

club, and I stood as if nailed to the ground, the band banging away like mad bats out of hell, and Ferg leaning over one side of his chair as if he were about to roll off and curl up on the terrace tiles like a beggar sleeping in cathedral plaza shadows.
    At two a.m. Elaine was back behind the bar, locking up. A few remaining guests heading toward the beach for a moonlight skinny dip called out to me. “C’mon, Dan, don’t be shy.” The band was packing up their gear. I polished off an iced coffee and was feeling better, walking without support, which was more than anyone could say for Ferg, wobbling off in the direction of his manager’s suite, muttering to whoever would listen. “I’ll be right back. Where the hell’s my band? I don’t feel so good, Elaine, the doctor still here? Where’s Doc Sánchez? Florio Sánchez, you here…” No answer. “Where’s Vinny? He here?”
    I looked around and the other remaining guests looked around. A couple of servers were busy cleaning tables. “Ferg,” a guest said, “you ought to go lie down.”
    “Go fuck yourself.” Ferg regarded the speaker with murder in his eyes. “Hey, Elaine, get Doc Sánchez, I feel awful.”
    This baffled me, I didn’t know what was happening, and some other guests clearly didn’t want to know, as they headed straight for the parking lot.
    “Elaine…” Ferg’s voice, distraught. “Get everybody out of here. It’s too goddamn late.” He staggered off and somewhere inside a door slammed. Elaine appeared exhausted. She stood still as though listening to a faint noise growing closer. Skinny-dippers stumbled half-dressed from the palm grove and onto the terrace. At first I couldn’t make out what they were saying, a hurried word here and there.
    “Vinny’s in the mud…”
    “God almighty, poor bastard’s dying out there.”
    I followed the swimmers racing through the palm grove, skidding along sand dunes down to the shoreline. Delgado Vinny’s body lay crumpled at the water’s edge, his head a shapeless mass in moonlight, a tangle of red tissue and bone shards above his shoulders to which it was difficult ever to attribute life much less a capacity to surrender it. I stood rooted in terror, blinking, staring down at his corpse, at the cloud of insects whirring around his shattered skull. A point-blank shotgun blast was how it appeared, but the band had been playing so loudly I’d heard nothing. No one had heard. Confusion and fear seized my brain, a panicky wash of blood rushed over my face, and I struggled for breath, wanting to cry out, but I couldn’t. I’d never seen a murdered person.

Police
    When the cops arrived that night, they questioned everyone separately and briefly, almost ritually, as though going through the motions of a procedure they’d performed too many times before and appeared relieved to finish the job and leave.
    They barely listened as they questioned the remaining guests, including me. The skinny-dippers were no less terrified, even as the cops seemed to be merely going through the motions of investigation, unsurprised, uncaring, perhaps even glad a radio loudmouth was gone for good, the island better off with Delgado Vinny’s permanent silence. They detained no one and were gone well before sunrise. They seemed to want to learn as little as possible and from me they found out nothing. I shared my confusion with no one.
    When Florio Sánchez, the doctor who came to treat Ferg, left the club, I said to Elaine, “If I can help here, in any way, please…” and she only turned her back and walked away.
    Later I got little sleep and by morning sea breezes rattling the window screens woke me. I hadn’t closed the shutters and my room was awash in sunshine. San Iñigo light, always intense, was rarely what you’d call blissful, and this was an especially harsh light the morning after a man—a funny, charming man, popular and perceptive—had his head blown off for no apparent reason. Which of his