“Hey, you okay down there?”
The voice came from behind and above me, close enough to make me jump and then twist around. A guy carrying a fly rod in one hand and a polypropylene tackle box in the other was standing on an outcrop about twenty yards away. Had been standing there, anyway, no telling how long; now he stepped off and made his way down over a scatter of loose rock and gravel toward where I was.
I went to meet him on the bank. At first I took him for a stranger, but when we were close enough I recognized him—another of the first-timers, the pale-eyed Mr. Average. Jacob something; I still couldn’t remember his last name.
He said in his medium voice, “What’d you do it for?”
“Do what? Oh, the fish.”
“Looked like a nice cutthroat. You’re not one of those catch-and-release types, are you?”
“No.” At least, I thought, I didn’t used to be.
“So how come you let it go?”
I shrugged. “Momentary whim.”
“Why’d you laugh like that, afterward?”
“No particular reason. Just feeling good.”
“I thought maybe you were having some kind of attack.” He seemed puzzled by what I’d done, as if he couldn’t conceive of anyone behaving that way. It made me a little uncomfortable. A touch embarrassed, too, in spite of myself, as if I’d been caught performing an unnatural act or exhibiting signs of an acute mental disorder.
“One of those mornings when you’re glad you’re alive,” I said. “I figured the trout deserved to enjoy it, too.”
“Why? It’s nothing but a fish.”
“A fish is something. One of God’s creatures.”
“You should’ve killed it,” he said.
“But I didn’t.” Strayhorn, that was it. Jacob Strayhorn. “My business either way, right? I’m the one who caught it.”
He stared at me for a few seconds, then made a movement with his head, a kind of cranial shrug, and said through a small, pale smile, “Sure, that’s right. Your fish, you could do whatever you wanted with it.”
To change the subject I asked, “How about you? Any luck this morning?”
“Not much. Couple of brookies.”
“Well, it’s early yet.”
“You going to keep working this pool?”
“For a while.”
“If you hook that brown again, what’ll you do?”
One-track mind. “Chances are I won’t.”
“But if you do. Let it go again?”
“Why does it matter so much to you, Strayhorn?”
“It doesn’t matter. I’m just curious.”
“I don’t know what I’d do. Does anybody know exactly what he’ll do in every situation?”
“Some people do,” Strayhorn said. “I do.”
“Every situation, every time?”
“That’s right.”
“Circumstances, intangibles—they don’t matter?”
“Not when you’ve got a definite purpose.”
“Like fishing.”
“Fishing, hunting, whatever. You ought to be that way, too, the kind of business you’re in. How can you be a cop and not be sure of yourself, what you’re doing every minute?”
“I didn’t say I didn’t know what I was doing. I said I don’t always react the same way. It’s a mistake to equate purpose and dedication with an inflexible mind-set. A good cop keeps an open mind.”
“The way you did with that fish,” Strayhorn said. “Momentary whim, no real purpose or objective.”
He smiled to take the sting out of the words, but they annoyed me just the same. He annoyed me. In not much more than five minutes Mr. Not So Average had pried open the drain on my high good mood.
I said, “Suppose we drop the subject, okay? Get on with what brought us out here.” I hefted my rod and started to turn away from him.
“Answer one question first,” he said.
“All right, one question.”
“You ever do anything like that with a lawbreaker?”
“Like what?”
“Let him go. Somebody you caught, somebody who committed a crime. A man instead of a fish.”
It threw me for a few beats. There was no way he could know about recent events in my life, but in his irritating fashion he’d managed to cut straight to a still-tender nerve. “No,” I lied. “Never.”
“But you might someday. You’re capable of it. If the circumstances and intangibles are right.”
I didn’t say anything.
“I wouldn’t. No matter what.” He laughed abruptly and then said, “I think I’d make a good cop myself. Maybe a better one than you.”
“The take-no-prisoners kind? The kind that uses fists and nightsticks instead of reason and common sense? I don’t think so, Strayhorn. Whatever you do for a living, I hope like hell it has nothing to do with law enforcement.”
“It doesn’t,” he said, and laughed again. Then, as I swung away from him, “Nice talking to you.”
“Yeah.”
He let me get out onto the rock again before he offered up his parting shot. “I still think you should’ve killed that fish,” he said.
He went off downstream without a backward glance. Leaving me to stand there with a sour taste in my mouth and nothing left of the good-to-be-alive feeling except a memory.
It was ten-thirty when I got to Judson’s. I parked in the lot and walked around to the gas dock with the five-gallon can I’d found in Zaleski’s boathouse and put in the car earlier. Hal Cantrell, the talkative glad-hander, was there ahead of me, pumping unleaded into the Johnson outboard on his rented skiff. He gave me a rueful smile as I came up.
“Man,” he said, “you see the gas prices here?”
“Not yet. Pretty stiff?”
“Three bucks a gallon.”
“Well, it’s a long haul in here from Quincy.”
“Still. Three bucks a gallon.” He shook his head. “Any luck out at Two Creek Bar?”
“Not much,” I said. I hadn’t done much more fishing after the episode with Strayhorn, and what little I’d indulged in had not produced another catch. Just as well. I’d probably feel like going out again tomorrow, but for today I had lost my taste for the sport. “How about you? Find a good spot?”
“Fair. Little inlet on the east shore. Don’t tell anybody, but I’m the lazy kind of fisherman. Rather find a shady spot on the lake, sit in a boat and drink beer for breakfast and contemplate my sins.”
“Doesn’t sound bad to me.”
“It’s not. I work hard enough at home—my wife sees to that. The one week a year she lets me off by myself, I take full advantage.”
“Where’s home?”
“Pacifica. Not far from your bailiwick.”
“I know it well.”
“Not a bad little town, but the fog gets to you after a while. That’s why I come up to the mountains on my fishing trips. I’m in real estate, by the way. I’d give you one of my cards, but I don’t suppose you’re in the market for coastal property?”
“Not right now. Someday, maybe.”
“Well, look me up if that day comes. San Mateo Coast Realty, Pacifica. Put you on to something nice and affordable.”
“I’ll remember that.”
He finished with his outboard, shut off the pump, and peered at the total. “Thirteen-sixty,” he said, shaking his head again. “Pay inside. Judson’s on the honor system.”
“Faith in his fellow man.”
“Wish I had it,” Cantrell said. “I’ll bet he gets underpaid or stiffed altogether more than a couple of times a season. At three bucks a gallon, I’m tempted to under-report myself.”
“But you won’t.”
“Nope. I’m not into petty crime.” A grin stretched the broad oval of his face. “The big stuff, now ...”
“Big stuff?”
“You know, major scams. That’s what I’d get into. If you’re going to run a risk, you might as well do it for the biggest possible return.”
“And the biggest possible penalties.”
“If you get caught.”
“Most scam artists do.”
“But not all of them,” he said. “You don’t think I might’ve already taken the plunge, do you?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “You tell me.”
Another grin; he put his right hand over his heart and said solemnly, “In the famous words of a famous man, ‘I am not a crook.’ ”
“A famous man who didn’t get away with it.”
“No? He got caught, sure, but then he was pardoned and handed plenty of money and a comfortable retirement and a library to house his papers, and when he died he was eulogized as a great statesman by a bunch of other statesmen who claimed they weren’t crooks, either. Who says crime doesn’t pay?”
Cantrell wandered off to pay his tab, and I thought as I unhooked the hose: Another strange bird. Deep Mountain Lake seemed to attract them; something in the thin air, maybe—a migratory lure similar to the smog or whatever atmospheric mixture brought wackos from all over the country flocking to L.A. I wondered how many more of the apparently well-wrapped folk I’d met last night would turn out to be flakes once I got to know them better. I wondered if Nils Ostergaard and Marian and Pat and even Chuck would turn out to be flakes. I wondered if I’d wound up at Deep Mountain Lake because I was a strange bird myself.
After that, I stopped wondering. There are some avenues of speculation that are better left barricaded with Do Not Enter signs.
Sun., June 30—12 noon
That private cop worries me.
I’m not sure why. He’s porky, he must be close to sixty, he moves as though he’d have trouble getting out of his own way, and he’s got a soft side, yet there’s something about him that makes me nervous. Something in his eyes. You look into them and you can see that he’s intelligent, good at what he does, but it’s more than that, it’s a kind of steel inside all that flab and sentimentality. Like the old cons in prison, the ones who’d seen it all and done it all that you didn’t dare provoke, no matter how frail they seemed. This one, this private cop, would make a deadly enemy.
I keep thinking about yesterday afternoon, when the kid found the boathouse padlock missing and first the cop and then old man Ostergaard started nosing around. They had no idea I was watching through my binoculars, anchored over on the far shore, but I can’t chance a regular surveillance or one of them is sure to become suspicious. The old codger worries me a little, too, but mainly it’s the private cop. He’s the one I’ve really got to watch out for.
Careful. Very careful from now on. I’m just another fisherman. Keep everybody thinking that, keep the stage set just as it is, and when Dixon shows next Tuesday or Wednesday it’ll be party time. A surprise blowout nobody around here will ever forget.
SIX
TOM ZALESKI’S BOAT, LIKE TOM ZALESKI’S summer tenant, had seen better days. It was a twelve-foot aluminum skiff, dented on the starboard side and on the prow; but it didn’t seem to have any holes in its bottom, and when I floated it out alongside the dock and then stepped down gingerly into the stern, it wobbled and sank a few inches but stayed afloat. The ten-horsepower Johnson affixed to it was at least twenty years old; Zaleski seemed to have taken reasonably good care of it, though, and had thought to wrap it with plastic sheeting for the winter. A pair of emergency oars tucked under the seats looked as if they had been hand-carved in the days of King Arthur and then made the principal weapons in a series of violent jousting matches. I hoped I would not have occasion to use them.
I gassed the outboard, primed it, and yanked the starter rope. An emphysemic cough was all the response I got. I sat there in the hot midday sun and primed the thing twice more and yanked on the rope maybe fifteen times before it finally came alive in a chattering rumble, only to croak again four or five seconds later. Three more pulls resurrected it, and this time it clung precariously to life, hacking and wheezing all the while. I held its tiller for a minute or so, trying to decide if I really wanted to risk taking the old fart out onto all that bright blue water and having it expire on me once and for all somewhere in the middle. Well, what the hell. A little adventure is good for the soul, right?
I pushed away from the dock, eased the throttle up to crawling speed. The Johnson kept right on muttering and stuttering. So I throttled up a little more and worked the tiller and pretty soon we were scooting right along, the engine seeming to gather strength and vigor from the exercise. At least it no longer complained as loudly as it had at the dock.
Out on the lake the air was cooler and the breeze felt good on my face. By the time I’d veered over toward the west shore I was a fine old hand at the helm, Captain Somebody-or-other. There were only two other boats out, both on the east end near Judson’s; I had this section all to myself. I skimmed along a hundred yards offshore, checking out the summer homes down that way. A couple were large; one had a terracelike dock that jutted forty feet into the water. Some people were having their lunch out there; they waved and I waved back. Ahab in his longboat, saluting the crew. More waves came from an elderly couple sitting on the deck of the last cottage at that end: Nils Ostergaard and his wife, Callie. Ostergaard had a pair of binoculars looped around his neck and I’d have given odds that he’d been watching me during most if not all of my launching difficulties. He didn’t miss much, especially with other forms of entertainment at a premium up here.
I swung around and turned in close to the north shore. Forest primeval along there, so thickly grown that you couldn’t see more than a few yards into the jungly green shadows. Some of the pines overhung the water; the shoreline and a series of narrow inlets where the watershed creeks emptied into the lake were matted with ferns, weeds, snarled roots, collections of dead brush and decaying vegetable matter. The fishing would probably be pretty good in the deeper inlets. So would the kind of beer-for-breakfast, sin-contemplating morning Hal Cantrell had had for himself. Maybe I’d try some of that lazy-man’s style of angling myself later in the week.
I was about halfway to Judson’s, more or less directly opposite the Dixon and Zaleski cabins, putt-putting along at a couple of knots, when the Johnson quit on me.
No warning; it was running well enough, if a little wheezy, and then all of a sudden it wasn’t running at all and the skiff was adrift on the current. I yanked the starter rope. Nothing but a noise that sounded like a death rattle. Fine, dandy. I jerked the rope again, and again, and kept on pulling it until my arm got tired. Then I sat there wasting my breath on a string of not very original oaths, as if the thing were alive and had ancestors. Then I just sat there, sweating in the hot sun, looking at the battered old oars in the bottom. Assuming they didn’t fall apart in my hands when I picked them up, I’d have a third of a mile of rowing while the sun broiled my sixty-year-old flesh like a chunk of tough flank steak. It was exertion like that that finished off men my age. Heart attack, stroke, brain aneurysm. Struggling along one second, belly-up the next. Just like the goddamn outboard.
Ahab, hell. Helmsman on the Titanic was more like it.
The sun had begun to burn my neck. The skiff was still adrift, moving slowly now, and in so near the overgrown shore that I could almost reach out and touch some of the drooping branches. That gave me an idea. Another inlet was just ahead, part of it in deep shade. I hoisted up the oars—they weren’t in quite as bad shape as they looked—and sculled into the inlet and the cool tree shadows. The skeletal arm of a rotting log jutted up from the shore mud; I tied the skiffs painter to it. Then, muttering, I tilted the Johnson out of the water to see if I could figure out what was wrong with it.
Fat chance. My mechanical knowledge is skimpy at best. I lowered it again, made sure the propeller was free of entanglements, and jerked the starter rope. Nothing. Not even a whimper this time. The son of a bitch seemed to have passed beyond the limits of resuscitation and resurrection.
Well?
It was either row and risk the big whopper, or sit here and wai
t for somebody to rescue me. I didn’t care for the second alternative much more than the first. I could chafe my butt for hours on this hard seat before anybody—
Rising noise behind me to the west, engine noise. I looked, and from over that way a bright red skiff was powering in my direction. Nils Ostergaard’s skiff. Good old binocular-spying, trouble-sniffing Nils Ostergaard.
He approached at a fast clip, slewed around broadside and cut power just before he reached me—creating a series of wavelets that rocked my boat and made me grab on to the gunwales with both hands. The thought occurred to me that he’d done it on purpose, a gesture of disdain for urbanites who got themselves lost, stranded, or otherwise inconvenienced mountain dwellers like him. I didn’t mind. I figured I deserved his scorn, even though this particular predicament wasn’t really my fault.
He called out as he maneuvered alongside, “She just quit on you? Won’t start again?”
“Dead as a doornail.”
“Nope,” he said.
“Nope?”
“Ain’t dead. Just up to her old tricks. I’ll have her up on her feet again in a couple of minutes.”
His skiff bumped gently against Zaleski’s, prow to stern. He told me to hold us steady, and when I obeyed he took a screwdriver from one of his vest pockets, then leaned over and tilted the Johnson out of the water.
“Watch what I do,” he said.
I watched while he removed a section of housing, poked around inside—a process that took just about two minutes. When he tilted the engine back into the water and pulled the rope, the thing coughed once and rebirthed into its old wheezing self.
“Now you know what to do next time it happens.”
“Next time?” I said.
“Crotchety bugger, that Johnson. I told Tom Zaleski he ought to get himself a new outboard, but he’s too cheap. Rich shyster like him and he won’t even spend a hundred fifty bucks for a rebuilt motor. Lawyers,” Ostergaard said, and shook his head.
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