Livingston finished his coffee. “Well, I’d like to chat about whales all day, but I’ve got to get back to those onerous statistics whether I like it or not.”
I got up. “No problem. I appreciate your taking the time to talk to me.”
“I don’t know if I’ve helped you in any way in making a career choice.”
“I think what you told me was that whales have gone after trainers, but they probably had good reasons.”
He nodded. “That’s it in a nutshell.”
Livingston walked me to the door. Before he let me out, I said, “You’ve worked with these animals a long time. What do you think about John Lilly? I’m just curious.”
“Lilly? I see you’ve been doing some reading. My reaction is the same as most legitimate scientists. Lilly had some interesting ideas, but he went off the deep end. I thought it was ironic that as part of his research, he hammered electrodes into the brains of animals he thought might be equal, and possibly superior in intelligence to man.”
“He did that?” The bruise on my head twinged. “Doesn’t seem quite friendly, does it?”
“You’ll find a lot of ambiguities in this business. You hear a lot of holier-than-thous,” he said, smiling bleakly, “but none of us is quite as clean as we would like people to think. Thanks for stopping by.”
We shook hands. As I was drove along Route 6A, Livingston’s closing comment echoed in my ears. With a couple of exceptions, maybe, none of the people I had met in the course of this investigation could say with a straight face that they were squeaky clean. And to tell the truth, I was beginning to feel a little grimy myself.
Chapter 19
Uncle Constantine had company. Two attractive young women were stretched out in aluminum lounge chairs on the deck of the Artemis. The lotion on their aerobically trim bodies glistened under the dazzling rays of the summer sun.
I walked along the finger pier and leaned against the boat. “Excuse me,” I said “I’m looking for my uncle.”
One of the women, a blonde, lifted her head an inch off the plastic webbing of the chair and peered at me through burgundy sunglasses. “You must be Aristotle.” She gave me a lazy smile. “Your uncle’s below.” She rose and went over to the hatchway.
“Constantine,” she called down sweetly, “your nephew is here to see you.”
I climbed on board as my uncle’s snowy thatch of hair emerged into daylight, followed by his muscular nose, his generous mustache, and his crooked grin. “Hopa! Aristotle!” he roared like an old sea lion. “You don’t forget your uncle.” He threw his arms wide and gave me a rib-crushing hug and a battery of back thumps. His face had lost the grayness I had seen in the Hyannis jail. He wore a clean white shirt and baggy black pants. His hair was combed and slicked into place, his mustache looked waxed, and he smelled as if he had taken a shower in cologne.
“Come meet my new friends.” He grabbed my arm and introduced me to the women. The blonde was named Kara. Her brunette companion was Maureen. They were in their mid-twenties. Both were from Boston. Uncle Constantine had excellent taste. The ladies were leggy and tanned, but these were no airheads. Kara was a psychologist for Mass. General Hospital. Maureen was a lawyer for a law firm that had more names in it than a telephone book.
“They come to visit me,” Uncle Constantine said happily. “I show them Artemis and we have lemonades. Wait.” He scuttled below.
“How do you know Uncle Constantine?” I asked.
Kara removed her sunglasses. She had pretty green eyes. “We met the other night. He defended our honor against a couple of drunken idiots who were bothering us.” She laughed. “It was like a scene out of Indiana Jones. I’ve never seen anything like it.”
Maureen said, “We’d just gotten off the Nantucket boat and were having a couple of drinks when those two goons started drooling down our necks. Your uncle was incredible. He came over to help us. He was very courtly, very polite, but they went after him. We told the police it wasn’t his fault.”
Kara added, “Maureen and I were just saying how hard it is to find someone like your uncle. Most of the men we know are so full of themselves. He’s been telling us about his wife and fishing for sponges in Florida. It’s been fascinating.”
Uncle Constantine emerged with a tray bearing a pitcher and a thick tumbler. He splashed some lemonade into my glass, replenished everybody’s drink, and sat on the deck between the two women. He drank half his down in a single gulp and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “No more ouzo, Aristotle. Only lemonades and coffee.” He squeezed his forehead. “Too much headache. Too much stomachache. Too much trouble with police.”
Life’s funny. My mother had practically ordered me to take care of Uncle Constantine. From where I sat, it looked as though he were taking care of himself damned well. We talked for a while until Kara looked at her watch and said they had to go. She and her friend shook hands with me, then hugged my uncle.
“Don’t forget,” Maureen said. “You promised to take us out for a cruise.”
“Tomorrow I work, but you come back next week and we go out. We bring food and ouzo and—” He glanced at me, aware he was about to break the pledge he made minutes before. “No ouzo,” he said manfully. “We drink lemonades.”
“Bye, Connie,” Maureen said, kissing my uncle’s cheek. “You have our number, so be sure to give us a call.”
The women folded up their chairs, climbed off the boat onto the pier, and walked across the parking lot, their progress scrutinized by every male in the marina. They waved and got into their car. Uncle Constantine waved back, then roared with laughter and gave me a slap between the shoulder blades that knocked the wind out of me.
“Put your eyes back in your head, Aristotle,” he said.
I shrugged. “Nice girls.”
He put his arm around me and drew me close in a conspiratorial huddle. “For fifty years I am married to your aunt Thalia. All this time I never touch another woman, not even the pretty tourist girls who come to Tarpon Springs with makeup on their faces. But excuse me, I’m a man.” He tapped his brow. “So I look. But I don’t touch. Never. Now my friends say, ‘Constantine, don’t be lonely, find yourself another wife to keep you warm at night.’ But I think, what if what the priest says is true, and we all come together in heaven again? The angels will shake their heads and say, ‘There goes Constantine and his two wives. Poor man, he can’t say a word.’ So even now, with Thalia in heaven, I still don’t touch. Come inside. We talk business.”
I followed him into the pilothouse. He moved fast despite his limp. He pawed through a pile of charts, grunting triumphantly when he found one of Nantucket Sound. He rolled it flat and put his finger on a smudged X that was penciled in to mark a position about ten miles south of where we stood.
“This is our business,” he said. “We make a big salvage job here.”
“Salvage? For what?”
He lit a thin cigar and took a few puffs. His eyes twinkled. He was deliberately drawing out the suspense. He used the same gimmick when I was a kid listening to sea adventure stories at his knee. He threw out the hook, and once he was sure he had my attention, he reeled me in.
“One hundred years ago, a big storm comes off Cape Cod. Lightning and thunder, and a wind that makes waves as big as a house. A boat sails from New York. English, with iron hull, no motor, three masts. She carries too much weight. Down she goes. Some of crew is rescued, some die. But nobody knows where boat is. Until now, Roger finds.”
“Who is Roger?”
“My good friend I drink with in Tarpon Springs. I know him from many years. Roger makes much money on antiques. Buys them cheap, sells to rich people. One day Roger buys a big load of books. Inside one book he finds a map and other papers. Map shows this place.” He pointed to an X on the chart. “Roger and me, we play dominoes. His legs are bad now and he is in a wheelchair. One day he says
, ‘Constantine, I have a map that shows wreck of boat off Cape Cod. Big, rich cargo. Close to shore.’ I say, ‘Roger, I bet you this wreck is empty.’ But Roger says, ‘No, Constantine. Only a few people know where the wreck is, and the cargo is not like silver and gold that drives everybody crazy and makes them look for ships. The boat has tin.”
“Tin?”
“Sure, Aristotle. Fifty thousand pounds from Singapore. Worth thousands of dollars. Maybe more. So Roger says, ‘You have the Artemis. You have family in Massachusetts. I lend you money to go up north and find the boat. We split fifty-fifty.’ ”
“Uncle Constantine, I hate to disappoint you, but it’s real tough to find a wreck, even one this close to shore.”
He chuckled and pinched my cheek so that it hurt. “You are very smart, Aristotle, but your Uncle Constantine is smart, too. I work for years looking for sponge beds. I know the sea is very big. I tell Roger the same thing. So he buys me sharp eyes to see with. Look!”
Uncle Constantine pulled a plastic dropcloth off a homemade stand of plywood built next to the helm. Clean-lined boxes of electronic gear gleamed in the sunlight streaming through the windows. Dumbfounded, I ran my hand over the side-scan sonar, the magnetometer, and sophisticated depth sounder. State-of-the-art treasure-hunting tools.
“This is top-of-the-line stuff, Uncle Constantine. Do you know how to operate it?”
He covered the equipment and smiled mysteriously. “I come to Cape Cod from Florida last week. For four days before I bring boat to Hyannis I go back and forth with the machines. Back and forth, up and down, until I find something. Then I come here.”
That’s why my mother didn’t hear from Uncle Constantine. He had arrived off the Cape, but lay low while he did his treasure hunting.
“Did you find the ship?”
He slid the chart under my nose and put his finger on the penciled X. “Here, Aristotle. Easy job. Forty feet of water. Now I dive down for a closer look.”
Alarm bells went off in my head.
“Uncle Constantine, when was the last time you did any diving?”
He waved me off. “Aristotle, I dive since I am sixteen years old. It makes no difference when I stop. You are a diver, too; it runs in the blood. You help me?”
“Of course I’ll help you.” My mind was churning. Maybe I could delay him until his boat broke down or he lost interest in the project.
“Good,” he said, clapping my shoulder. “We go out tomorrow.”
Tomorrow? Damn. I nodded. I’d have to think up something else. “This is costing a lot of money, with the equipment and running a boat up here from Florida. How do you and your friend Roger expect to make any money?”
Frowning as if he had a stomach pain, Uncle Constantine said, “Ah, Aristotle, now you sound like your mother. She thinks life is to make money so I can die a rich old man in my bed. Phooey. Hard work, yes. Good woman and children, yes. I do all that. But life is to live. Life is to dream, Aristotle. That is why we do it, not for money. When you are old like me, or cripple like Roger, you will know. Don’t ever stop dreaming, Aristotle.”
I wrapped my arms around him and gave him a hug, feeling the bones under his muscle. He seemed almost fragile, and I realized that what I had mistaken for his strength was his unquenchable spark of vitality.
“I won’t stop dreaming, Uncle Constantine. I promise.”
I left the marina and headed back to Oceanus to pick up my scuba gear for the next day’s dive with Uncle Constantine. On the way, I tried to pull together what I had so far.
Outside of Eddy’s dead body, his perforated wet suit, and a lot of talk about what a fine lad Rocky was, I didn’t have one tangible piece of evidence. Unless I could find Eddy’s electrical prod. It was hard to believe Eddy would be dumb enough to use shock treatment on an eight-ton killer whale, but if he were angry enough and drunk enough . . . .”
Ben said he saw Eddy with a “stick.” The prod had not been found near the whale tank. Did that mean it was in the pool? I might just have to go take a look. Hold on, pal, better chew that one over. I had seen the holes in Eddy Byron’s wet suit. More important, I had seen the teeth that might have made them.
Before retrieving my scuba gear from the locker room, I walked over to the orca stadium. The gate was unlocked and partly open. For a suspected murderer, Rocky was a popular guy. I went through the passageway, emerged into the bleacher section, and saw a slim, blond-haired figure in a blue jersey standing on the stage next to the pool. It was Jill.
I hailed her, my voice echoing in the empty stadium. Jill whipped around like a startled doe, then waved. I walked down to the splash area. Jill stood in a half foot of pool water. Her socks and sneakers were neatly placed next to a towel on a bleacher seat. She had a Canon camera and zoom lens hanging from a strap around her neck.
I sat down next to the sneakers. “Taking pictures for Rocky’s family album?”
“I just like to have photographs of the animals I work with.”
Whoof!
Rocky’s tall dorsal fin and glossy black back surfaced about twenty feet away. He cruised by, his huge body creating tidal waves that sloshed onto the stage. Jill quickly brought the camera to her eye. She fired off a round of shots.
“He’s not being very cooperative,” I said. “Has he smiled for the camera?”
“A couple of times,” she said. “I made him say cheese.”
She sloshed across the stage and came over to sit beside me.
“What brings you to Oceanus on your day off?” she said.
“I could say I like this place so much I can’t stay away, but I wouldn’t be telling the truth. I came by this morning because nobody told me I get Saturday and Sunday off. Now I’m here to pick up the scuba gear I left on my first trip. As you can see, I’m very organized.”
Jill toweled her feet dry and put her socks and sneakers on. “That’s okay, I often come in on my day off to see Rocky and the dolphins. I could spend hours watching them, they are so graceful.”
Rocky swam underwater where we could see him behind the transparent pool panels. He was looking out at us.
“You’re right about that. For a big hunk of blubber, Rocky moves like Pavlova.”
Mesmerized, we sat without speaking, watching the whale’s underwater ballet. Jill spoke finally. She turned, her child’s face as serious as it could be.
“Soc,” she said, “what do you think about Rocky and the dolphins being here?”
“I don’t get you, Jill.”
“You know. Do you think it’s right for them to be prisoners against their free wills?”
“I haven’t thought about it, Jill.”
“Well, please think about it, for me.”
Jill’s cornflower-blue eyes were pleading. Her lips were compressed as if she were trying to will me to answer. The playful gamin had vanished. In its place was an intensely serious young woman.
What had Uncle Constantine said when he left the jailhouse? Eleftheros! Freedom! Constantine was a free spirit who hated bonds of any kind. I felt the same way. I chafed at restraints. I was looking for freedom when I quit a paying job and moved to this sliver of sand where the only barriers were the ones I erected around myself. My Cretan genes again. The Greek air is holy; surely freedom was born here, said Nikos Kazanzakis. But was freedom just for people?
“I guess I don’t like seeing any living thing locked up against its will,” I said. “Maybe that’s why I’ve always been uncomfortable in zoos, even as a kid.”
The grim look evaporated from Jill’s face. She was beaming. “I knew you’d say that, Soc. How far would you go to set them free?”
“Hold on, Jill. I said it bothered me to see them in captivity. I didn’t say anything about turning them loose.”
The serious look again. “I’m sorry. I spoke too soon. We just wanted to know where you stood.”
“I don’t understand, Jill. Who is this ‘we’ you’re talking about?”
She sighed deeply. “Soc, do you really know who I am?”
“Sure, you’re a college dropout lucky enough to have parents who own a house on Cape Cod, and you’re trying to find yourself. That’s what you told me.”
“That’s not the whole story. I’m like you, Soc. I’m not what I seem to be.”
“Jill, I don’t want to seem impatient,” I said gently, “but we could spend the entire afternoon playing metaphysical word games, so why don’t you get to the point.”
Her mouth curled in an impish grin. “Okay, since you asked for it, I will, Mr. Private Detective.”
My chin dropped down to my belt buckle. Jill knew I was a private cop! Good undercover job, Socarides. Less than seventy-two hours on the job and this kid blows your cover!
There was no use in denying it; she had me cold. “How did you know?” I growled. I was irritated at myself.
“Walden told me.”
“Walden Schiller? How do you know him?” Even as I asked the question I knew the answer. It lurked in Schiller’s passionate story about the tuna boats, how he had shipped out as a crew member to take the controversial pictures of the dolphin massacre, and in Ed Shaughnessy’s story about the inside-job sabotage at the tuna factory and aquarium. Shaughnessy had said they were better at infiltrating targets than the FBI. “Let me guess,” I said. “You’re spying on Oceanus for the Sentinels of the Sea.”
Jill nodded. “Walden said he had been visited by a private investigator. We compared notes. It didn’t seem likely there would be two detectives with a name like yours and a gold earring. We figured it must be you. Right?”
“Very careless on my part. I just assumed there would be no connection between the people at Oceanus and Walden. But why are you telling me this? You could have watched me bumble along and gotten a big laugh at me doing my cloak-and-dagger imitation.”
Death in Deep Water Page 19
