From Herring to Eternity

by Delia Rosen

  “Actually, the night air feels good,” he said. “Let’s get a little cross-ventilation going.” He reached behind him and cracked the window. “So this person you know was killed—”

  “A man named Lippy, a street musician,” I said, focusing on the lamp but seeing his not-quite-six-pack, but close enough, abs. “He was sitting next to Barron in my deli where he was apparently poisoned. After he left and was about to play down the block he collapsed and died. As he lay there, his trumpet case was pinched.”

  “And you suspect Robert?”

  “I don’t suspect him,” I said. “I’m just curious. There’s reason to believe—a slight reason, I’ll grant you—that there was a map hidden inside.”

  “You believe this because . . . ?”

  “Lippy bought the trumpet at a hock shop in Hawaii.”

  “A hock—?”

  “Pawn shop,” I interrupted. “One that specializes in sailing memorabilia.”

  “That’s pretty thin.”

  “Like the ice,” I agreed. “But that’s not all. The next day, I met Lippy’s sister when she came up to Nashville. She was murdered too. Before she died she said her brother had been e-mailing her about a treasure, but he never told her what it was.”

  Yutu nodded then lay back on the sofa. I half turned, saw the chart table, went over. I began sifting through the papers looking for something that could be folded and stuck in a case. Barron had straightened up since I’d been here; the Fiji map was gone. Normal housekeeping or . . . ?

  “You’re not a police officer, are you?” Yutu asked.

  “No. But I dated one. Briefly.”

  “Then what is your interest in this matter? I ask because, as an impartial outsider, I might mistakenly suspect that you are after this hypothetical map for your own greedy purposes.”

  “Hey, I used to work on Wall Street,” I said. “There are easier ways of making money than treasure hunting.”

  He laughed.

  “No,” I said. “I’m just—curious.”

  “No one breaks into another man’s igloo because he is ‘just curious,’” he said. “Either he is cold or hungry or seeking company.”

  I reflected on that. “I’m bored,” I said. “Empty and disappointed and restless enough to take stupid chances. Oh, and angry.”

  “At whom?”

  I said, “Myself. Why are you here? Did you know Barron before this?”

  “No,” he said. He got back up on an elbow. Now he looked like a Playgirl centerfold. “I wanted to do something for my mother and father. He still takes his fishing boat out every morning but it’s hard work, and cold, and dangerous, and he should be retired.” Yutu laughed. “How I wish I were on that boat now, in rough seas, instead of here.”

  “Am I that unwelcome?” I asked. Okay, I was fishing . . . I knew he didn’t mean me. But I needed to hear something positive.

  “You?” he said. “No, you’re—”

  Don’t say “a challenge” or “funny” or— “—terrific.”

  Okay, I thought. That would do.

  “And attractive,” he added.

  Even better.

  “Stop, I’m blushing,” I said ham-fistedly. “I only look good compared to ‘Robber’ Barron.”

  “Please, you’re not even from the same species,” he said.

  “Are you not having fun with him?” I asked as I finished fingering through the thinned-out pile.

  “He’s a necessary evil,” Yutu said. “Most daredevils are slightly unhinged. They have to be.”

  “Have you known many adventurers?” I asked. I began wandering around the cabin, looking for trumpet-case-size hiding places, hollow sections in the bookcases behind tomes of seafaring and various other atlases.

  “I’ve known a few,” he replied. “Mostly the usual breed—mountain climbers, dog-team racers, skiers. There have been a few oddballs, like scientists who think it’s a good idea to go seventy-five thousand feet up in a balloon to study solar storms. Also, before you decide to break anything else, I don’t think he would have kept the trumpet case if he’d stolen it—why would he? There’s a big lake out there he could have thrown it in.”

  “Did he take the boat out while you were here?”

  Yutu shook his head. “But he could have dropped it anywhere along the shore. Or filled it full of rocks and dropped it. I’m usually a sound sleeper. Also, there’s something else you should consider.”

  “What’s that?”

  “That Barron may be innocent,” Yutu said. “Of this crime, anyway.”

  “Is that what you think?”

  “I have absolutely no idea,” he said. “But you can’t rule it out, can you?”

  “No,” I admitted.

  “Sometimes, scoundrels are just that and no more. I knew of a man who liked to eat dolphin meat, which was legal—though the killing of dolphins was not. When a dolphin was found dead and gutted, he was blamed. Until the polar bear that actually did the killing showed up.” Yutu lay back down again. “I have to sleep—I have a long trip ahead of me. Do you think you can nose around some other time?”

  “How about if I check in the back room? I’ll shut the door.”

  “I’ll still hear you,” he said.

  “Well, this is supposed to be a breakin, even if I tried to use a dead bat to cover it up,” I pointed out.

  “Despite which, I did not call the police,” he said.

  “Yes, why didn’t you?” I asked. “Could it be that you aren’t especially fond of Barron?”

  “I’m not,” he laughed, “but the truth is that your ploy was so incredibly inept I felt sorry for you.”

  I didn’t like that explanation very much. “I don’t need your pity, Yutu.”

  “That’s true,” he replied. “But you could use my help.”

  “How?”

  “Barron usually comes back in a very happy mood, quite talkative,” Yutu explained. “If he knows anything about the trumpet case, that would be the time to ask him.”

  “Makes sense. What time would that be?”

  “Probably around midnight. That’s when the Seashore Hoist closes.”

  “Right. I know the place.”

  He shrugged. “So, you can wait here with me, I’ll verify the bat story, he’ll draw the reasonable conclusion about why you’re here, and you can chat him up before getting away clean.”

  “The reasonable conclusion being that I slept with you.”

  “Exactly,” Yutu said. “He’ll never believe that I actually did sleep for those two or three hours. You can hang out on the deck if you want.”

  I liked that even less. Was I completely resistible? Had I reached a place where the offense was in the absence of an advance? For the first time in a long time I was actually rooted where I stood.

  “Or you can stay with me,” Yutu said. “That would be more convincing.”

  And now I was completely famisched thanks to a smorgasbord of options. I told myself to relax. I didn’t realize how tense I was until my shoulders went down.

  “Let’s be convincing,” I said and walked over. I didn’t know what to do next, though. Sit, lie, take off just my shoes—I wasn’t sure what he really meant.

  Thank God he held out his hand to me. It was a lifeline drawing me in. I still didn’t know what I really wanted, but I wanted to be wanted and went with it. Yutu made all the decisions after that. Whatever nausea he may have felt when he was vertical did not impact him horizontally.

  It was a wonderful and unexpected turn in the road. Until Barron’s early arrival with a drinking buddy.

  One I was not pleased to see.

  Chapter 13

  “What the hell happened to my boat?”

  I woke to the voice of Robert Barron bellowing through the opening I’d made. I thought I recognized the voice of the person who was with him; I was still drowsy and couldn’t be sure.

  I hadn’t intended to fall asleep. The truth is, until I got under the top sheet, I wasn’t sure wh
at I intended to do. That didn’t happen until Yutu pulled the rest of my arm across his very smooth, very hard midriff. So I did that, and then more, and then I closed my eyes, and the next thing I knew—after a dream about Great-uncle Oskar milking cows—I heard Barron’s voice and the chirrup of a woman.

  “Jesus, no,” I muttered as I placed the voice.

  I didn’t jump from Yutu’s arms—which were still around me, and he was still asleep. I was on my side, my bare back to the door. I lay there waiting to see what happened.

  “Damn, damn, and damn,” Barron said. “Do you see this, Candy?”

  “It’s a bat,” she said. “Poor thing must have been chasing mosquitoes or small winnow mayflies and whammo.”

  “That little fur ball broke ten-millimeter-thick panes?”

  “It may not have been just the bat,” Candy said. “The window and the hull expand at different rates. That puts stress on the sealant. I’ll bet the glass was kind of wobbly when the little guy hit and it just snapped.”

  “Did you do a report on boat windows?”

  “I’ve done a report on everything,” Candy said. “Twice. That’s why I want to know more about this trip of yours. But this—Hec, get a shot of this.”

  “Yo.”

  I felt a burning in my belly. A bad one. A bright white light flashed on and I saw jagged, translucent marks on the wall I was staring at with wide, horrified eyes. My own shape was there as well, right past the still-sleeping Eskimo.

  “Well, there’s a how-de-do,” Barron snorted.

  “What?” Candy asked.

  I saw the shadow of a pointing finger. “Yutu, you tawny little rascal,” he said to no one in particular.

  A head joined the finger on the wall. “Oh, this is wrong,” Candy said.

  Thank you, God, I thought—prematurely, as Yutu woke then and turned toward the window. He covered his eyes against the light.

  “Robert?”

  “Yeah, sorry—”

  “No, it’s okay,” Yutu said. “We were waiting for you and fell asleep—would you kill the flashlight?”

  “We?” Barron asked.

  “Yeah, Gwen—” he rocked me gently with his butt. “Robert’s back.”

  That didn’t prove there wasn’t a God. Just that I was not on his list of favorites.

  Or maybe it’s the witches, I thought. They’ve cursed me.

  “Gwen . . . Katz?” Candy said with the kind of hungry enthusiasm reserved for celebrities or heads of state.

  “Hi, all,” I said over my shoulder.

  “Who else is out there?” Yutu asked, obviously confused.

  “Candy Sommerton, WSMV-TV News,” she said.

  “And Hec Paladin, camera operator,” said the other man.

  “We were shooting an act at the bar when Mr. Barron told us about his next venture,” she said. “We thought it would make a terrific story.”

  “Wow, that’s a long day for you, isn’t it?” I asked.

  “I’m filling in for Donna Meeche on the morning show this week,” she said. “Say, do you want to put on clothes? That sheet doesn’t hold much back.”

  “Or much backside,” Barron added with a chuckle.

  “Right,” I said, still watching the whole thing play out on the wall. “Maybe if you killed the light, like Yutu asked?”

  “Sure, sure,” Candy said. “And then maybe we can do that interview we discussed? If now isn’t convenient, perhaps tomorrow?”

  The light remained on. Apparently, my submission was the price of throwing the off switch.

  I hesitated as my mother and I argued in my head. I won. “Actually, tomorrow isn’t good for me, either,” I said as I threw off the top sheet, stood, gathered my clothes from the floor, and quickly dressed in the darkness of the vessel. When I was finished, I headed for the nearest door, which of course was the bathroom. Or, I think they call it a “head” but that sounds pretentious, so I refuse to. Undaunted, I turned around and went out the main hatchway. Candy and Hec were still standing there with Barron. The light had been snapped off. Through the broken window, I saw Yutu looking for his briefs.

  “On the photo of Barron and Nancy Pelosi,” I called in to him.

  “Thanks.”

  “Do you know Nancy Pelosi?” Candy asked Barron.

  “We—went sailing, once,” he said evasively.

  I looked at the odd little grouping. They were quietly discussing the local bat population and Barron’s experiences with them around the world. Though they were facing in my direction, collected around the bat, none of them looked at me when I came over.

  “During the nineteenth century, guano deposits were actually mined on Baker Island in the Central Pacific, used in fertilizer and explosives,” Barron was saying.

  “Now there’s a ship I wouldn’t have wanted to be on,” I remarked. “Crap piled high—what a stench. Hey, wait. It has something in common with this boat. Let me think what that could be.”

  “Now hold on, Gwen,” Barron said. “Don’t diss me. All I did was come home to my own boat—”

  “Where you gawked at my ass and made jokes and failed to safeguard the honor of a guest of your guest—which, if I’m not mistaken, is something no Eskimo would ever do. Am I correct in that, Yutu?”

  “That is true,” he agreed from the other side of the broken glass. “An Eskimo would not. Nor a gentleman.”

  Barron fired him a disapproving look, but Yutu didn’t flinch. Even if it only lasted the night, at least the guy showed some loyalty to his lovers. His host backed down, looked at me. “Okay, sorry,” Barron grumbled. “That was—not very chivalrous of me.”

  “Apology accepted,” I said. I turned toward Candy and Hec. It was her turn to retreat.

  She got the message. “Robert, we can do your mission profile some other time,” she said. “We should really get to work on the video. Of that band.”

  “Right. Sure.” Barron went back to looking at his broken window—he was still evidently puzzled by the impact of the bat—then shrugged and went inside. Hec went down the plank, the newswoman putting the chain back and shooting me a hostile look followed after him, vanishing into the darkness.

  I wasn’t certain how I’d gone from a person who simply wanted privacy to being an enemy, but somehow that transition had been made. Which was fine. I couldn’t imagine anyone except a narcissist or an undemanding male actually wanting to be around Candy.

  Which brought me back to my host.

  I followed Barron in, mouthing a thank you at Yutu. He winked and went into the bathroom—how could I have mistaken it for an exit?—leaving us alone. Barron had been drinking, but not much. Or else he could hold his liquor really, really well. He sat heavily on the edge of his chart table.

  “So, yeah, I guess that was pretty rude of me,” Barron went on. I didn’t stop him. The more he flagellated himself, the more he might talk to me. “I just didn’t expect anyone to be here. Least of all you.”

  “I surprise myself sometimes,” I admitted. “I’ve been distracted—just trying to forget.”

  “Forget what?” he asked, taking the bait like a big carp.

  “Lippy Montgomery,” I said, shaking my head. “What happened to him really hit me hard.”

  “It did? I mean—did you know him well?”

  “Only as a customer,” I said. “But he seemed unusually distracted that morning.”

  “He did?”

  I gave Barron a chance to think back. “Didn’t he?” I asked.

  “I don’t think so,” Barron said. “He was whistling the whole time. Pretty annoying. I tried to ignore him, mostly.”

  That’s right, I thought. Lippy was—I wouldn’t say he was exactly whistling, but “hissling.”

  “I got the feeling,” I said, “from the way he was hugging that case of his, that it was something really precious. Maybe that’s what made him anxious.”

  Barron snorted. “He spilled a little juice on it, is probably why. Wiped it off with his sleeve. Tha
t could be it.”

  “That wouldn’t explain why he was hugging it,” I mused.

  “Maybe it just looked that way to you,” Barron said. “I didn’t notice that he was. Anyway, you said you were trying to forget him. So why are you talking about him?”

  “It’s how I forget,” I said.

  He looked at me as if I were a talking squid. “You’re strange,” he decided. “So, what’s happening? Are you staying with Yutu? I can make myself scarce—”

  “No, he needs to rest,” I said.

  Barron smirked.

  “Because he’s getting up early,” I said. What was it with men and sexual innuendo? Did they have no other default setting? “But there is something I wanted to tell you, now that you’re here.”

  “Oh?”

  “Yes, that Fiji map?” I said. “Sorry I upset you before.”

  He stiffened. “It’s all right,” he said.

  Our eyes locked for the briefest moment, and I confess, I considered it: we were standing about four feet apart and I thought about moving closer, trying to coax him out with irresistible Katz pheromones. But I balked. I had already caved to one schmuck, Reynold Sterne. That was my quota of self-abuse for the week.

  “I’ve never been there,” I said. “What’s it like?”

  “I was there for two weeks,” he said. “It was overcast every day.”

  “What were you there for?”

  “Look,” he said, “I really don’t want to talk about Fiji or the map. In fact, I’m kind of tired, so if you are leaving—I’ve got to put something over that window and then I’m going to turn in.”

  “Let me help,” I said.

  “Not necessary,” he insisted, then turned angrily toward the bathroom. “Hey, Yutu—I’ve got to get in there and your girlfriend’s leaving!”

  “Coming,” he said.

  I’m not his girlfriend, you shmendrick, I thought. Why say it? Guys like him didn’t hear anything women said anyway.

  The bathroom clicked open and Yutu stepped out.

  “Aren’t you worried about doing business with a guy who won’t talk about a freakin’ map?” I asked the Eskimo.

  “I wasn’t,” he admitted. He looked at Barron. “Should I be?”