Choke

by Stuart Woods

  Chuck accelerated toward him, and as he approached, he saw through Harry’s mask that his eyes were open, staring. No bubbles were rising from him. There was blood in his mask.

  Chuck reached the unconscious Harry. His own heart was racing, his lungs pumping air out rapidly. He felt very sick. He decided to forget the tank, since Harry wasn’t breathing anyway. He yanked the mask off the inert man, grabbed him by the wrist, and started for the surface. He had only gone a few feet when suddenly he vomited. He spat out his mouthpiece and heaved his guts out, expelling the air in his lungs. He tried to put the mouthpiece back in for some air, but he vomited again. Involuntarily, he tried to breathe and sucked saltwater into his lungs.

  Panicked now, he let go of Harry and yanked the CO2 cord on his life jacket. The jacket inflated immediately, and he shot toward the surface, kicking wildly to increase his ascent, terrified every foot of the way. What seemed minutes later, he broke the surface, gasping for air, choking on seawater and vomit, still unable to breathe. Then he retched again, bringing up bile and saltwater, and that cleared his breathing passage. He bobbed on the surface, gulping down great lungfuls of air, trying not to vomit again. He saw Fugitive at anchor, maybe a hundred and fifty yards away, upcurrent, then he saw Clare’s yellow tank. She was clinging to the diving platform.

  He thought about Harry, about going down again for him, but he knew he could not. He was still nauseated. He began swimming weakly toward the yacht, but he made little progress. He unbuckled his harness and sloughed off the tank and his weights; then he was able to make better progress. As he neared the yacht, nearly exhausted, he could see that Clare had vomited, too.

  He swam up to her and grabbed hold of the dive platform. “Clare, are you all right?” he gasped.

  “Sick,” she said weakly. He undid her harness and got the tank off her, letting it fall into the water. He was too weak to deal with both Clare and the heavy tank. He heaved himself onto the diving platform, then got hold of Clare and dragged her up beside him.

  The two of them lay there for a couple of minutes, taking deep breaths. Clare rolled over onto her stomach and vomited again. “Oh, God,” she moaned, “what’s wrong with me?”

  “Me, too,” Chuck said weakly. He knew he had to get up the ladder and to the radio, but he couldn’t manage it just yet. He lay there and tried to gather strength.

  “Harry,” she said. “Where’s Harry?”

  “Gone,” Chuck replied, then started slowly up the ladder.

  19

  Chuck felt remarkably well now, considering how ill he had felt twenty minutes before. “How are you feeling?” he asked Clare.

  “Better,” she said. She was huddled in a beach towel across the cockpit; she had hardly said a word since he had gotten her out of the water.

  “Here they come,” he said, looking east. The Coast Guard cutter was steaming toward them at a great rate of knots, and he was glad to see it.

  The cutter’s skipper, a lieutenant, seemed impossibly young to be in command of such a vessel, something Chuck noticed about a lot of authority figures lately.

  “Are you both all right?” the young man asked as he clambered aboard.

  “Yes,” Chuck said, “we’re fine.”

  “Then why did you send out a mayday?” he asked.

  “We’ve got one still in the water, dead,” Chuck said.

  “How do you know the man is dead?” the lieutenant asked.

  “Because he’s been underwater without a mask for at least half an hour,” Chuck replied. “But he was dead when I reached him.”

  The lieutenant nodded. “Where is the wreck?”

  “Zero-three-zero, a hundred and twenty yards, is my best guess,” Chuck replied, pointing in the direction of the reef. “There’s at least a knot of current running east.”

  The lieutenant leaned over Fugitive’s railing and began crisply giving orders. “Two men in full diving gear,” he said, then told them the bearing and range. He turned back to Chuck. “Now tell me what happened.”

  “We were going diving. Harry-that’s Mrs. Carras’s husband-went ahead of us, toward the wreck. I was worried because he’d had some surgery the past couple of years, and he wouldn’t wear a life jacket.”

  The lieutenant turned to Clare. “What sort of surgery, ma’am?”

  “He had five bypasses and prostate surgery,” Clare said listlessly. Tears began to roll down her face.

  “He was in very good shape, though,” Chuck said. “He beat me at tennis yesterday.”

  “Go on,” the lieutenant said.

  “Harry said the wreck would be a hundred yards away, but it was farther,” Chuck said. “I finally came upon it, and Harry was lying on deck-well, not exactly lying; his tank was on deck, like he’d gotten out of it, and his mask was holding him in place against the current. His eyes were open, and there was blood in the mask.”

  “What did you do then?” the lieutenant asked.

  “I was feeling nauseated by then, but I pulled the mask off him and tried to get him to the surface. Then I began vomiting, and I guess I panicked. I let go of Harry and popped my jacket. I was lucky to make it, I think. I tried to swim back to the boat, but I was too weak, so I dropped my tank, and then I made it back. Clare was holding on to the dive platform; she was being sick when I got there.”

  “What do you think was making you sick?”

  “Must have been something in the tanks.”

  “Where are your tanks?” he asked, looking around.

  “I ditched both of them,” Chuck replied. “We were too weak to handle them.”

  “Is that right, ma’am?” the officer asked Clare.

  Clare shrugged and said nothing.

  The lieutenant leaned over the railing again. “There are three tanks down there somewhere; bring me all of them, if you can.”

  The divers went into the water.

  The lieutenant came back. “You said there’s a compressor aboard? I’d like to take a look at it.”

  “Below,” Chuck said, nodding at the stairs. “In the engine room.”

  The officer disappeared below. He was gone less than five minutes, and when he came back, he was carrying a foot-long piece of clear plastic tubing by his thumb and forefinger. “Ever seen this before?” he asked.

  “No,” Chuck replied.

  The lieutenant nodded. “Funny,” he said, “neither of you look very sick to me.”

  It was nearly dark when the cutter came alongside the Coast Guard dock near Key West Bight. Fugitive, driven by a Coast Guard crewman, docked behind them. Chuck saw Tommy Sculley and a very young man waiting on the dock. He waved at Tommy and Tommy waved back. When the gangplank was down, the policeman came aboard and introduced himself and the young man to the skipper.

  “Come to my cabin a minute, will you, Detective?” the lieutenant said.

  “Sure,” Tommy replied. “Chuck, stick around, will you. Mrs. Carras, we’ll take you home in just a few minutes.”

  Clare nodded. She had changed into shorts and a tight T-shirt. Chuck thought she didn’t look at all like a widow. He went and sat next to her.

  “I’m sorry about Harry, Clare,” he said. “I had hold of him, but I think he was already dead; then I got sick, and I had to let him go.”

  Clare nodded. Her face was still expressionless, and the tears had stopped.

  Tommy, and the lieutenant appeared on deck again. “Give me another couple of minutes,” he said to Chuck and Clare. Then he followed the lieutenant aboard Fugitive. Chuck saw the two men go below.

  When they returned to the cutter, Tommy approached Chuck. “I need to talk with both of you,” he said. “Why don’t we do it at Mrs. Carras’s house?”

  “Sure,” Chuck said, gathering up his gear. He took Clare’s arm and escorted her down the gangplank to the police car. This police stuff had to be done, he supposed; a man was dead, after all.

  Chuck and Tommy sat on a sofa in the Carras living room; Clare was downstairs in her bedr
oom, changing clothes; Daryl, the younger cop, sat on the opposite sofa, notebook at the ready. Tommy motioned to him.

  “Put that away for now,” he said to the younger man, then he turned to Chuck. “Listen to me,” he said. “I want you to tell me everything that happened, from the time you got on the boat this morning, and don’t leave anything out. I haven’t read you your rights, so this is off the record, just between you and me and Daryl, okay?”

  “Rights?” Chuck said, alarmed. He had watched enough television to know what it meant when the police started advising somebody of his rights.

  Tommy put a hand on his shoulder. “Don’t worry about that right now; I just want to know what happened out there today.”

  Chuck started at the beginning and related everything he could remember about that day, from the time he’d set foot aboard Fugitive until they had returned to Key West.

  Tommy listened with complete concentration, occasionally asking a brief question. When Chuck had finished, Tommy looked at him with some sympathy. “You’ve had a rough day,” he said. “Why don’t you go home and get something to eat. We’ll talk more later.”

  “Thanks,” Chuck said. “I’ll do that.” He was relieved to have this session over with.

  “Where do you live?” Tommy asked. “Daryl will give you a ride.”

  “Aboard my boat in Key West Bight,” Chuck replied. “I can walk; it’s only a few hundred yards.”

  “I’ll call you tomorrow,” Tommy said.

  As Chuck left the house he turned back to see Clare leaving her bedroom and starting up the stairs. She was wearing a simple cotton dress, and she looked beautiful. But then, she always did.

  Chuck walked slowly back toward the Bight, feeling exhausted. Maybe Meg would fix him some dinner. As he neared his boat, something seemed wrong, but it took him a moment to figure out what it was. The catamaran was gone. The berth next to Choke was empty.

  Chuck didn’t bother with dinner. He fell on his bunk and was immediately asleep.

  Clare waited until the policemen had been gone for an hour, then got into the car and drove north. She parked in an empty supermarket parking lot and dialed a number on the car’s phone.

  “Hello?”

  “It’s me.”

  The voice tensed. “Tell me.”

  “It’s done.”

  There was a whistle of relief at the other end. “Any problems?”

  “No, it went pretty much the way you said it would. I stayed close to the boat, so when I got sick I wasn’t in any real trouble.”

  “How about Chandler?”

  “He tried to get Harry to the surface, but he had to let him go. The Coast Guard came and looked for him, but there was a current running, and he had drifted away.”

  “Damn! I was counting on an autopsy.”

  “So was I, but they recovered all three tanks, so that may not matter.”

  “Harry’s body might turn up yet,” he said. “Sometimes they do; you read about it in the papers.”

  “I guess.”

  “Are you okay?”

  “I’m just tired. It’s been one hell of a day.”

  “Try and get some sleep tonight,” he said. “We can meet tomorrow.”

  “No!” she blurted out. “We can’t go anywhere near each other, maybe for weeks.”

  “I can’t stay away from you that long,” he said, and his voice was shaky.

  “You have to. Florida has capital punishment, remember? And these days they’re in a mood to use it. We have to be very, very careful, and that means staying away from each other until I can get Harry’s estate sorted out and make some sort of move.”

  “I guess you’re right,” he admitted. “But I’m not going to like it.”

  “Neither am I,” she replied. “I’m going to miss fucking you.”

  “I know you,” he said. “You can’t go long without sex. You’ll have Chandler in bed again in a week.”

  “That might do us some good,” she said, “but I don’t think he’s going to want to be anywhere near me.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because before we went diving, he broke it off.”

  “Why the hell would he do that?”

  “I don’t know. God knows I was keeping him happy.”

  “I believe that, but I just don’t get it.”

  “Neither do I. Maybe he was feeling guilty about Harry.”

  “I doubt it; there was nothing in his history that suggested any guilt about husbands.”

  “Another woman,” she said. “That would account for it.”

  “I don’t believe another woman could stack up to you, husband or no husband.”

  “You’re sweet, baby, but that’s my best guess.”

  “I can sniff around and find out.”

  “No! Don’t you dare follow him, or me either. We have to be very, very cool. Things went well, and I think they’re going to go even better. What I told the cops will make sure of that.”

  “What did you tell them?”

  “I have to go now. Remember, no contact at all. I’ll call you when I think it’s safe.”

  “Whatever you say, lover. I love you.”

  “I love you, too. Good-bye for now.” She hung up, started the car, and drove back to the house.

  20

  Chuck picked up a paper at the Waterfront Market on his way to work. The incident occupied half the front page, and he was prominently featured. The reporter obviously had a source with the Coast Guard, maybe even the skipper of the cutter.

  When he arrived at the club, Merk called him into his office, and a moment later Victor walked in.

  “What the hell happened, Chuck?” Merk asked.

  “I take it you’ve read the papers,” Chuck replied.

  “Sure,” Victor said, “but what really happened?”

  “The paper got it right,” Chuck said. “They got it from the Coast Guard, I think.”

  “How about Clare?” Victor asked. “Is she okay?”

  “She’s fine.”

  “Glad to hear it,” the pro said, smiling. “I’d hate to think of anything happening to that sweet body.”

  “Oh, shut up, Victor,” Chuck said.

  “Hey, listen, the husband’s out of the way now; you’ve got a clear shot, haven’t you?”

  Merk broke in. “That’s enough, Victor. Chuck, I take it you’d been seeing her.”

  “Don’t believe everything you hear, Merk,” Chuck replied. “My student’s here; I’ve got to go.” He walked out of the clubhouse to find Billy waiting for him, and Billy’s father as well.

  “I hope you don’t mind,” the father said. “I just want to see how Billy’s doing.”

  “I don’t mind,” Chuck said. He was too numb to mind.

  “Say, listen, what happened out on that boat?”

  “The papers got it right,” Chuck replied. “That’s all I can say about it. Come on, Billy, let’s get warmed up.”

  Billy was sharp that morning, and when Chuck played points with him, the boy won most of them. When they had finished playing the father motioned Chuck to sit down with him.

  “What’s up?” Chuck asked.

  “There’s a tournament in Naples this weekend,” the elder Tubbs said. “I’d like Billy to play in it.”

  “That’s a pro tournament,” Chuck said. “Nothing major, but a pro tournament, nevertheless.”

  “I’m aware of that,” Tubbs said.

  “It’s too soon,” Chuck said. “Anyway, he’d blow the rest of his high school season; they wouldn’t let him play again.”

  “We both know he’s too good to be playing high school kids,” Tubbs said. “You’ve done wonders with him; it’s time to see how he plays under that kind of pressure, how good he really is.”

  Chuck shrugged. “I can’t stop you,” he said.

  “Come on, Chuck, we want you there,” Tubbs said. “It’s important that you see how Billy does against that kind of competition. Assuming you still want to coach
him, of course.”

  “Sure I do.”

  “Then come with us. I’ll talk to Merk, get you off for the weekend, and I’ll pay you for your time, of course. We’ll fly up in my airplane; it’s only half an hour.”

  Chuck shrugged. “Okay, what the hell.” Today he couldn’t care less.

  Tommy Sculley sat across the desk from the lab technician and tried to see what the woman was typing on the form.

  “I’ll be just a minute more,” she said.

  “Take your time,” Tommy replied. “I’ve got all day.”

  “I haven’t.” She typed a few more lines, ripped the form out of the typewriter, took it to a copying machine, and punched some buttons. Finally, she handed a copy to Tommy. “Carbon monoxide,” she said.

  Tommy looked at the form. There were three columns of figures, headed SOURCE AIR, AMBIENT AIR, and AIR STANDARD. “What does ambient air mean?” he asked.

  “Each tank was tested twice,” she replied. “Source is one test, ambient is the other. The results are expressed in parts per million. The right-hand column, air standard, is what you find in ordinary air-what you should find in compressed air from a clean source. All three tanks are high in carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, and methane. The red and yellow tanks both had more than twenty-five-hundred parts per million. Normal air contains ten parts per million.”

  “Pretty rich, huh?”

  “Very rich.”

  “Enough to kill?”

  “Plenty. If your man had put his mouth over a car’s exhaust pipe, it couldn’t be richer. The blue tank is different, though; while it’s abnormally high in carbon monoxide, it contained only about seven hundred parts per million, less than a third of the other two tanks.”

  “Not enough to kill?”

  “Sure, if you breathed it long enough.”

  “How long?”

  “Difficult to say-it would depend on the physical condition of the breather, his respiration rate, other things.”