Black Tide

by Brendan DuBois

  And through it all, she kept her sunglasses on, which I found disturbing. I had wanted to see her eyes, to see what they were saying to me.

  I drove north along Atlantic Avenue, which is also known as Route 1A. There are a lot of roads in this part of the world that have two and even three names. Some of the old maps show this road being called Ocean Boulevard, but that was changed sometime in the mid-1920s. From what I've been able to figure out, some investors building a hotel at the beach wanted something to mirror Atlantic City, and Atlantic Avenue was as good as they could get. The investors soon went bust and their hotel was never completed. I have a feeling their ghosts knew what had happened to the real Atlantic City and they probably decided they got off easy.

  Atlantic Avenue is twisty and follows the New Hampshire coastline, and in this part of the coast the east side is bordered by the North Beach seawall and the beach itself, and the west side has condos, some motels and a couple of convenience stores. It's been spared the development and the cheek-by-jowl construction that was dumped upon the main beach, Tyler Beach. As a result, it's popular with families who want to bring their kids to the beach without having to put down their blankets and chairs next to a gang of young boys who constantly use the F-word as a noun and adjective.

  In a minute or two of driving, the sands of North Beach disappeared into a collection of rock ledges and boulders, and the road rose up some and curved to the right. Then I came upon a large, Victorian-style hotel, called the Lafayette House. Local legend has it that the Marquis de Lafayette stopped there for a quick drink in 1825 during his famed tour of the United States. Once Betsy Tyler, a selectman in her mid-seventies and a descendant of the Reverend Bonus Tyler, told me that if the Marquis de Lafayette had stopped at every watering hole that claimed him in this country, then no doubt he died of cirrhosis of the liver.

  Most of the original tavern was either burned or torn down, and the current Lafayette House was built in 1902 in the old, Victorian-hotel style. It's near the border of Tyler and North Tyler, and even when business is slow, it always does well from those middle-aged people who want to spend a week at the beach but who don't want to rent a room next to a mill worker from Manchester. Across Atlantic Avenue from the hotel was a tiny parking lot with a sign that said PRIVATE PARKING FOR LAFAYETTE HOUSE ONLY. I turned into the lot and went to the north end, passing the parked BMWs, Porsches, Volvos and Mercedes-Benzes. One Mercedes caught my eye. A red convertible, with its top up. A good decision, for by now the rain had started, big fat raindrops that splattered on the Range Rover's windshield, or windscreen, if you want to be entirely accurate.

  At the north end of the lot there was a low stonewall and a place where some of the rocks had fallen free. There was a path there, wide enough for a bicycle or a four-wheel-drive vehicle. I took the dirt path as it went down and to the right, past two homemade "No Trespassing" signs, and my house came into view. It's a two-story cottage that's never been painted and which has a dirt crawl space for a cellar. The lawn is just some faded green tufts of grass that have managed to poke through the rocky soil. The lawn rises up to a steep rocky ledge that hides my home from Atlantic Avenue. In the time I've lived here only a few people have clambered up the steep ledge and tried to come down to visit me, but my brusque manner quickly induced them to leave. I have no doubt they were helped along by my "No Trespassing" signs and the habit I have of answering the door with a 12-gauge shotgun in my hands.

  But today was the exception. Standing in the open shed that serves as my garage was Felix Tinios of North Tyler. He politely moved to one side as I pulled the Range Rover in. Thunder was rumbling as I got out and stepped onto the packed-dirt floor. Felix's dark skin had been made even darker by his tanning marathon over the summer, and his thick black hair looked like it had just been caught in the rain. He wore a padded leather windbreaker and open-necked white shirt, and had on baggy light gray trousers and matching light gray leather shoes.

  I closed and locked the Range Rover's door and said, "Where's the gold chain around the neck, Felix? Are your standards slipping?"

  He laughed and I only wondered for a moment why he was wearing a jacket in this weather.

  "Carrying, right?"

  His smile was wide and even. "Very good, Lewis. Someone's trained you well."

  "Problems?"

  He shrugged, opened his hands. "Every day, someone's got problems. Today just happens to be mine, I guess. Listen, can I come in for a minute? I got something to ask you." I hesitated for a moment, since I felt grubby and my wet and sand-encrusted shorts were riding up some, making it feel like I was wearing a jockstrap made out of soggy sandpaper. But Felix's face looked earnest, which was an odd description for Felix, since earnest isn't a word that comes to my mind when I think of Felix. Direct, maybe, or even deadly. But not earnest.

  But he had sent me flowers every week I was in the Cambridge Hospital, and had visited a half dozen times and sent cards and chocolates. Once he had sent something extraordinarily thoughtful which still made me feel slightly warm every time I thought about it. And so far my response to that and his phone calls to my house hadn't been equally thoughtful.

  He rubbed at his chin, lightly scraping the blue- stubble. "You haven't forgotten about Christy?"

  "No," I said, giving in with a smile. "Haven't forgotten one bit. Yeah, come on in, Felix. But I've got to take a shower first."

  I walked past him and started running to the front door as the rain tumbled forth. He followed behind me and yelled, "What's the matter, you been swimming?"

  "Fishing," I said as I scrambled through the rain and to my front door, key in hand. ''And you wouldn't believe what I caught.”

  Chapter Three

  Behind us came a flash of light and that awful crack-boom that seems to flutter up your heart valves, and which means that a lightning bolt has struck close, very close indeed, and Felix murmured, "Jesus Christ," as I slammed the door behind him.

  We were in the living room of my house, which has an old and slightly murky history. I've gone through old maps and deeds at the town hall in Tyler and in the county courthouse in. Exonia, and have learned that my house was built about a century and a half ago. It first served as a home for the supervisor of it. Lifeboat Station that was operating at Samson Point sometime in the middle part of the 1800s. When the War Department took over the land and built the Samson Point Coast Artillery Station, the house became junior officers' quarters. Over the succeeding years, it was expanded and contracted, parts of it torn down and added on, until it was turned into a residence and ended up still being owned by the U.S. Government, when the mistake of a dead man in Nevada brought me here to own it.

  "I'm going to grab a shower," I said. "You're welcome to root around and get a beer."

  "Thanks," Felix said, heading for the kitchen. "I'll just make myself at home."

  Making one's self at home or not, I noticed that he kept his leather jacket on. Something was disturbing him, and I hoped whatever it was hadn't followed him here. Felix's problems usually came well armed and angry. I went through the small living room and ran upstairs to the second floor. Before me was the door to the bathroom, and to the left was my study and to the right was my bedroom. The rain was hammering down fairly heavily and I hesitated for a moment before going into the bathroom. I felt cold for a moment, and I thought of the weapons that I had here on the second floor and which were within easy reach: the 12-gauge Remington pump action with extended magazine under the bed, the 8 mm FN assault rifle in the closet, and the 9 mm Beretta in my study.

  Other weapons were downstairs, but these would certainly do. I was tempted for a moment to go into the study and bring the Beretta with me into the bathroom, but there was no reason to do it. I was home. I was safe. The doors were locked. And although our relationship certainly couldn't be easily explained through a Cosmopolitan magazine survey, I knew that Felix would come to my aid if need be.

  Another rumble of thunder. "Stop being a chickenshi
t," I said aloud, and so I went to take my shower.

  The sneakers and the clothes came off and all were dumped in a blue plastic garbage pail that served as a clothes hamper. I flipped on the shower, and in a few short seconds I started feeling better, just letting the warm water wash away the sweat and grit of the sand that seemed to settle in each fold of my skin. In my infrequent trips to the beach, I'm always amazed at the number of people who wallow around in the wet and sticky sand, building intricate castles, tossing mud balls at each other or letting themselves get buried by children. And this type of sandy misery is called fun? As I showered, I was careful washing on my left side, just above the kidney, for the skin there was still sore, and I remembered.

  One day last month, I was reading the Boston Globe and taking notes on the Petro Star spill. I was in a private room on the second floor of the Cambridge Hospital, and all things considered, it was a hell of a lot nicer than the last hospital I had been in, some years ago, in Nevada. For one thing, weak as I was and with an IV tube running into my hand, I could get up and walk out onto the tiled hallway and shuffle my way to an elevator, and head for the streets and Cambridge Square. Oh, I'm sure I would have made the nurses and a doctor or two upset, but they couldn't have held me. By signing a disclaimer and leaving the IV apparatus behind, I could leave if I wanted to. In Nevada, it was different. Quite different. I'm certain that some people wanted me to leave that Nevada hospital as ashes and bone chips in a steel container. Instead, thanks to some luck and timing and good bluffing, I left on my own, breathing and with most of my body intact.

  Not a bad record, considering where I had been and what I had been doing for a living. I put the Globe down when a man a few years older than me stepped into the room: Dr. Jay Ludlow, wearing green hospital pants and a white jacket with the obligatory stethoscope hanging around his neck. He had tan skin and dark curly hair which was receding some, making his forehead shiny, and he was wearing half-glasses, the type favored by this state's senior senator in Washington, when he's not sailing or drinking. He leaned against a pale green radiator and started looking at a couple of papers attached to a clipboard he was carrying.

  "Good news, Lewis," he said. "The lab reports on the tumor came back negative. It's benign. But you know as well as I do that there's no reason you won't get another tumor sometime in the future. It may be next week, it may be next year. I just don't know."

  "That's like telling me the Red Sox need pitching, Doc," I said, resting the Globe on my bed. "It's something that's not really news.”

  "Probably not," he agreed, holding the clipboard against his chest with both hands. "Still, I want to keep you for another week or so. We did some major cutting and I want to ensure you make a good step forward in your recovery. Then you can go back north and I'll see you in a month for a follow-up. Anything you need in the meantime?"

  "Better food," I said, with a joking tone in my voice, but Dr. Ludlow didn't seem to take it as a joke. He scribbled something on a piece of paper and passed it over. It was a man's name, Brett, followed by a four-digit number.

  "Brett works in the cafeteria," Dr. Ludlow explained, "but he also does some outside work. You call and mention my name and he'll take care of you. Even if it means driving up to Saugus to get you a piece of beef from the Hilltop Steak House."

  I thanked him and placed the piece of paper on top of a pile of magazines --- about the only positive thing about a hospital stay is that you can catch up on your reading --- and Dr. Ludlow shifted his feet and said, "I have something to ask you."

  "Go ahead," I said.

  "I'd like some information," he said, not looking at me. "The report on your tumor was an odd one, and it would be helpful if I could learn more about what might have triggered it. What medical records I do have on you and your past history are pretty incomplete…. You know that. If you could give me some family history, some type of exposure or occupational hazard that you might have faced…. Information like that could be helpful."

  I held the Globe in both of my hands and said, "Sorry, Doc. It'd be a hell of a story, but I can't do that, and you know it."

  He just nodded and said, "Well, I knew you'd probably say that, so I plan to send some tissue samples to the CDC in Atlanta and---"

  "Doc, if you do that, it'll be a hell of a mistake."

  "Lewis, I---"

  I didn't let him finish. "Doc, we both have an agreement with men with long memories down in DC. Remember? Guys who have a very focused way of doing business. And our agreement means keeping our mouths shut. Have you forgotten? I haven't. And I like my new life, and I don't feel like passing away in a mysterious car accident the next month or two."

  I thought he was going to argue with me but instead he looked over his shoulder, at the afternoon June sky in Cambridge. His fingers rubbed at the edge of his clipboard and he looked sheepish and said, "You're right. It's just that your case raises questions and I'm one to poke at questions until I get an answer. Your file is quite interesting, Lewis, but there's a lot of blacked out pages. There are times I want to find out what's hidden behind those marks."

  He turned away from the window and smiled and said, "That's a pretty good attribute for a doctor, but not for someone involved in whatever the hell I'm involved in with you."

  "Fair enough," I said, and deciding I needed some humorous reading right about then, I opened up to the Globe's editorial page.

  As Dr. Ludlow was leaving, he said, "One more thing, Lewis."

  "Yes?" "I won't do it again. I don't feel like getting into a mysterious car accident either."

  I nodded and buried myself back in the Globe. At least in those pages were people who thought they had all the answers.

  When I was done with my shower I stepped out and rubbed myself down with a big white towel and then I looked at myself in the steamy mirror. My short dark brown hair had a few more flecks of gray, and there were a few more lines around my blue eyes. I dried myself off and then checked my skin, as I do every day. There's a faded scar along my left side just above my kidney, on my back near the coccyx and on my left knee. And above the faded scar on my left side was the new and bright one, pink and fresh-looking, with the suture marks still quite visible. Eventually the scar would fade away to a dull pink and so would the suture holes, and then the suture holes would close up, and for all intents and purposes, I would be considered healed.

  Yeah. Right. I

  In my bedroom I put on a fresh pair of light blue gym shorts and a T-shirt that said "Glavkosmos," which is the civilian space agency for whatever's left of the old Soviet Union. My bed is an old four-poster oak antique, and I have a matching set of bureaus to go with it. In one corner, sitting on a tripod, is my reflecting telescope, and in another corner is a bookshelf. Near the bookshelf is a sliding door that leads out to a smaller deck on the south end of the house, and which has great views of North Beach and Weymouth's Point. I could check the beach with my reflector telescope and see if Diane Woods and Roger Krohn were still there, laboring in the rain, but since I had company, I let it slide. Besides, I had seen the headless and handless diver up close. I had no urge to see him again, even if it was from a comfortable and considerable distance.

  I padded back downstairs in bare and slightly wet feet and found Felix leaning against the counter, a glass of water in his hand. "

  Thought I'd just have some ice water," he said, swirling the ice cubes around. "It's too early for a beer." He looked down at the glass. "Too bad there's no limes. Lewis, your refrigerator is damn near empty."

  "I hate to shop," I said, joining him in the kitchen, which is always clean because I hardly ever cook in it. That's probably not a philosophy that would go over well with certain PBS home cooking hosts, but it worked for me.

  "Maybe so, but it seems you like to buy some things," and with that, Felix tapped his foot against a light green plastic bin under the counter that had "Tyler Recycles" on its side in white letters. With each tap of the foot came a clink-clink of empty be
er bottles striking one another.

  "Is that a week's worth?" he asked, and I didn't feel like telling him the truth, so I said, "I haven't been to the recycling center for a while, so it adds up."

  "Yeah, well, other things can add up too, Lewis, and I don't want to see you get fat and sloppy."

  "Thanks for your concern," I said, moving past him to get to the refrigerator, and for a moment I thought about getting a beer just to egg him on, but instead I poured myself some lemonade. Outside, the rain was still coming down in thundering gray sheets and I was sure that North Beach was probably now empty, save for Diane and Roger and the cops and maybe even Paula Quinn. What a way to make a living.

  Though it was warm, Felix had kept on his jacket and he said, "What were you up to this afternoon, Lewis? You said something about going fishing?"

  The lemonade was sharp and cold and wonderful, and I said, “About an hour or so ago, I saw something floating in the water. This something turned out to be a diver. I got to North Beach and helped bring him to shore, and when he got there, it seemed pretty sure that his death wasn't accidental drowning."

  "Oh?" Felix said, raising one eyebrow.

  "Unless drowning divers are in the habit of cutting their hands and head off while they're dying. Sound like anything you might have run into, years back?" Then it seemed as if I had insulted him tremendously, for his face flushed and his eyes narrowed down and I saw that the skin on his hand was turning lighter as he squeezed the water glass.

  But instead of cursing at me in his favorite Italian phrases, he just shook his head and said, "Lewis, I don't know much but I do know this: you do not want to write a column about this one. This is heavy, quite heavy. Sounds like some of our South American brethren had a point to make with that guy. Up in these woods at least, if you're taken care of, it's just you and maybe an ally or two. But some of those groups down south…. Lewis, they'll take you and your family and your maid and your dog and your first-grade teacher if they can find her."