Salvage

by Stephen Maher

  Karen stuck out her tongue at him. “I don’t give a fuck,” she said. “Anyway, when Bobby really sees them, absorbs their psychological and physical state, he’s like, ‘All right. I’ll be right out.’ Then he comes back in, grabs his keys and coat, kisses me on the cheek. Says, ‘Babe, I got to go out, deal with some business. Might not be back today. Tell me how the movie ends.’

  “As soon as he left, I realized that everything you had told me was true, and he had fed me a complete line of shit. I bought it, too, or mostly did, even though he had a big fucking purple bruise on his back, right where you told me it would be.”

  She took a big drink of whisky and a drag on her cigarette.

  “I didn’t want to admit that I’ve been living with someone could do those things. After he left, I had a big think, and I realized that Bobby’s been moving coke for years,” she said. “It explains a lot of things. Trips he took, people he knew. The fact that he always had really good coke.” She laughed.

  “If I had wanted to see it, I likely would have seen it sooner.” She stubbed out her cigarette. “For the past two or three years, we’ve been living pretty separate lives. He’s away a lot. I’m busy with my art. I started staying down here more often, and now it’s like this is my real home. I think that’s why we started this thing with Angela and Jimmy, and for a while it kind of worked. Put a little spice back in our relationship.”

  She looked at Scarnum, to see how he was taking it all.

  “I’m pretty sure that Bobby had Jimmy killed,” he said.

  “Why do you think that?”

  “You know that scar around the Mexican’s neck?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I put it there.”

  He told her how they had machine-gunned his boat, and how he had knocked over the speedboat and strangled the Mexican until he answered Scarnum’s questions.

  “He said that Falkenham asked them to kill Jimmy,” he said.

  Karen stared at him blankly. “Hold on,” she said. “You fucking strangled that Mexican guy until he answered your questions?”

  Scarnum nodded at her. “He was trying to kill me,” he said. “Likely still is. He’s lucky I didn’t kill him. I likely should have.”

  “That’s cold,” she said.

  She threw off the blanket from her shoulders, stood up, and went to the fridge for a bottle of water. The cold light from the fridge fell on her naked body and Scarnum watched her closely.

  She sat back down, pulled the blanket up, and stared into the fire. “I think that makes sense,” she said. “Jimmy was getting really pushy and Bobby didn’t like it. He’d be calling, wanting to come by for a drink with Bobby. They’d have these conversations downstairs in the bar, and Bobby’d come to bed looking pissed off. Said Jimmy was pushing him too hard.

  “Remember how I told you that Jimmy called me and wanted to come see me? Well, I told him no, but he showed up anyway. Bobby was away, and I was alone, and a bit drunk, so I let him in, telling myself it was just for a drink. Course, he ended up fucking the arse off me. I felt guilty about it and told Bobby.”

  “You shouldn’t have felt guilty,” said Scarnum. “He was fucking Angela behind your back.”

  Karen shrugged. “I guessed that he probably was, but I didn’t care,” she said. “Still don’t. I’m responsible for what I do, and I shouldn’t have done that.”

  She lit another cigarette and waved her hands in the air to blow away the smoke. The blanket dropped from her shoulders and Scarnum looked at her breasts in the firelight.

  “Sooo, anyway, I told Bobby and he flipped out. He said, uh, now that I think of it, he said he was going to, uh, kill Jimmy. That was the end of our little ménage à quatre. Probably Bobby kept fucking Angela anyway, which is what he wanted all along. I had the feeling he didn’t like the way I, uh, responded to Jimmy when we were together.”

  “When was that?”

  “About a month ago, not long after the last time the four of us were together. After that it was like Jimmy had never existed. Bobby never mentioned him again.”

  “I went down to Jimmy’s funeral yesterday,” said Scarnum. “Jimmy’s brother Hughie told me that Falkenham had promised to set Jimmy up to run their operation down there. Said he was going to give him a ‘piece of the action.’ You think Bobby ever planned to do that?”

  Karen laughed. “Would you want Jimmy to run anything for you? He was a really fun guy, wild to the core, but he was no businessman. He’d be fucking everybody over, trying to be the Godfather of Southwest Nova Scotia.”

  She looked into the fire. “Nope,” she said. “I’d say Bobby told him that because he knew it would shut Jimmy up until he had him killed.”

  “The Mexican said Bobby asked the boss, the Mexicans’ boss, to throw Jimmy in the water, let the boat drift,” said Scarnum. “I think they hoped it would drift ashore, somebody’d find it, everybody would think Jimmy had drowned. Prob’ly drunk, they’d say.”

  “But it didn’t work,” said Karen.

  “No. He told me that Jimmy threw the other Mexican in the water instead and took off. The Mexican shot him, but Jimmy was gone and the Mexicans had to fish their guy out of the water. By the time the guy was on the boat again, Jimmy was long gone.

  “When I went aboard the boat, the throttle was wide open and the lights were all off. He musta given ’er, trying to make it to a hospital before he bled out. He was likely headed for Sambro. Got fetched up on the rocks where I found the boat the next day. He fucking swam to shore. In the middle of a fucking storm. Guy didn’t give up. Cops found him, he was dead on the beach.”

  “Poor fucking dummy,” said Karen. “Poor stupid fucking dummy. He was all cock, no brains. He should have taken whatever Bobby was paying him to bring in the drugs and been happy.”

  “That’s about it,” said Scarnum.

  They sat in silence for a while, staring at the fire. Scarnum reached out and took her hand. “They’re going to try to kill me now,” he said.

  “I know,” said Karen.

  “I’m gonna try not to let them.”

  “I know,” she said.

  “Where’s Bobby at?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “He called yesterday, said he had business in Halifax, didn’t know when he’d be back, but who knows?”

  “Did you tell anyone that I was here?”

  “I told him,” she said. “I doubt that he told anyone else, but I don’t know for sure.”

  “Do you mind not telling anyone that I came here tonight?”

  She just looked at him.

  “If anything happens to Bobby, the Mounties are going to be asking questions about me,” he said. “I’m going to tell them we argued at the yacht club ’cause I thought he shoulda done something for Angela.” He affected a strong South Shore accent: “I don’t know nothing about what happened to ’im. Last time I seen ’im was when I ran into ’im at the yacht club.”

  “Does that work?” asked Karen.

  “Almost always,” he said. “Although there’s this French Mountie keeps giving me funny looks.” He laughed.

  “I am but mad north-north-west,” he said. “When the wind is southerly, I know a hawk from a handsaw.”

  “Jesus,” she said. “Shakespeare. Who the fuck you trying to impress?

  They laughed and then sat in silence again. Scarnum ran his fingers lightly through her hair and studied the firelight on her face. He kissed her softly under her ear.

  “I won’t kill him unless I have to,” he said.

  Karen turned to look at him. “I guess I don’t care too much if you do,” she said. Suddenly, she was crying. “That’s terrible, but I don’t,” she said.

  Scarnum reached to hold her, but she pulled away and went and looked out the window, her back to him, a nude silhouette against the shimmering ocean.

  “I loved him,” she said. “I loved him for a few years. He was so fun, so full of life. Very generous, not just to me, to everybody. He made thing
s happen. Made rooms light up. But there was always this other side to him. Greedy. Selfish. Couldn’t see why he shouldn’t always get exactly what he wanted. Over the last couple of years, I’ve watched that side take over.”

  She turned and walked back to the coffee table to get a cigarette, lit it, and went to stand at the window again.

  “Why would he kill Jimmy?” she said. “He was stupid to use him for his coke runs, fucking dummy like that, and stupid then to party with him, fuck his wife, let him fuck me. Then he realizes he’s put his nuts in the hands of this fucking half-psycho lobsterman, and he just figures, fuck it, I’ll have him killed. Why not? It’s OK, because it’s what I want. Jesus.”

  She wept quietly at the window with her back to Scarnum, arms crossed below her breasts.

  “You should go back to Ontario for a while,” said Scarnum.

  “I should fucking go someplace,” she said. “France. Tired of painting this fucking shit anyway. Paint some warm beaches.”

  Then she stamped her foot. “Fuck! How’s that gonna look? I go to the Côte d’Azur and he gets himself killed, or disappears?”

  “Tell them you had problems going way back, lately he had started getting weird, violent, jealous, hitting the coke harder and harder,” said Scarnum. “Think of Scarface when you’re telling them. Tell them you had enough of his shit.”

  “Jesus, you’re cold,” she said, turning to look at him.

  “I’ve learned to be,” he said. “I had to. Tell them he mentioned some Mexicans. Tell them you don’t know anything about his business. Cry. Think about how he was in the good days, and use that to make yourself cry.”

  She started to cry then, hard, disconsolate, head bowed.

  He took her in his arms and she let him hold her this time.

  “I’m sorry to be like this, baby,” he said and he nuzzled her hair, breathing the scent of her deeply, trying to capture it in his head forever. “I’m scared to death and I have to be fucking cold if I’m gonna get through this alive and stay out of prison.”

  She snuffled against his chest, then pushed him to arm’s length and stared at his eyes.

  “How much cocaine did you take off that boat?” she said.

  “A hundred keys,” he said. “It’s mine. It’s salvage. Just like the fucking boat. Those hombres could have asked for it back, made a deal. Instead, they tried to stab me in the fucking eye, beat me on the head. Machine-gunned my boat.”

  His grip on her arms tightened without him noticing.

  “You’ve had it pretty good for the past years, and good for you. Good for you. But I’ve had some lean years. Nobody’s taking anything from me that’s mine. Sorry. No. I’d rather they kill me than give them what they want.”

  He noticed how tight he was holding her and eased his grip.

  “You’re scaring me,” she said.

  “I’m sorry, baby,” he said and pulled her head to his chest again. He ran his fingers through her hair and kissed the crown of her head and held her. He stroked her back, then moved his hands down, caressed her, felt that she desired him, felt himself become aroused, felt her move against him. She turned her face up to his, with her eyes closed, and kissed him, first sensually, then harder, then so hard that she tore the skin on his upper lip with her teeth. He yelped at the sudden pain, picked her up in his arms, carried her to the bed, and threw her down. She stared up at him, darted out her tongue, licked his blood from her lip, smiled at the coppery taste and laughed. He wiped his mouth, looked at the blood on his finger and laughed with her. He climbed onto the bed, took her arms in his, and kissed her tenderly, his lip throbbing, then stared into her eyes as he pushed himself inside her.

  Afterward, he slept and she sat up, smoking and drinking whisky, watching him sleep, until the sun came up and he stirred.

  He was groggy and mute as he put on his dank wetsuit and drank the coffee she made for him. He looked out the big window at the choppy bay awaiting him. She sat on one of the old kitchen chairs in her T-shirt and looked at him.

  He shivered and zipped his freezer bags back into the wetsuit.

  “Tell me you’ll call me when you’re settled someplace,” he said. “Leave a number with Charlie and I’ll call you back.”

  “OK,” she said.

  He walked to her and hugged her hard, smelling her deeply, for a long time. “I still love you,” he said. “Haven’t been able to stop.”

  “I love you, too,” she said.

  He pulled himself away and went to the door. He looked back at her.

  “What?” she said.

  “I tore the ladder off your wharf,” he said. “You need to get it replaced or you won’t be able to get down to the floating dock.”

  Friday, April 30

  THE WIND WAS AT SCARNUM’S back this morning, and it was fun to paddle the canoe down the bay toward the docks of the Chester waterfront with the waves pushing him along. He sang a Stan Rogers song as he paddled along.

  Where the earth shows its

  bones of wind-broken stone

  and the sea and the sky are one,

  I’m caught out of time, my blood sings with wine,

  and I’m running naked in the sun.

  There’s God in the trees, I’m weak in the knees,

  and the sky is a painful blue,

  I’d like to look around, but honey, all I see is you.

  Orion was tied up at the town wharf next to the Kelly Lynn, with yellow police tape along the edge of the dock. Scarnum tied the canoe to the stern of the Orion and climbed up a ladder to the dock.

  Léger was waiting for him, sitting on the deck of Orion, holding a clipboard.

  “Been scuba diving, Scarnum?” she asked.

  “Jesus, Jesus, Jesus,” said Scarnum. “I got some head onto me. Was overserved last night, woke up snuggled up to some missus. Couldn’t find me frigging clothes so I borrowed her husband’s wetsuit.” He laughed, then stopped and rubbed his eyes.

  “Who was the woman?” asked Léger.

  “Well now, I don’t think she’d like it if I told you that,” he said. “Better if her husband never finds out where his wetsuit went. D’you figure out who shot up my boat?”

  Léger handed him the clipboard. “Sign here,” she said.

  “Praise Jesus,” said Scarnum. “I intend to go anchor someplace and have a little sleep. Then maybe I’ll fix those fucking holes.”

  Léger got off the boat and Scarnum untied her lines.

  “What did you do with the cocaine from the Kelly Lynn, Scarnum?” she asked as Scarnum hopped aboard.

  Scarnum looked at her from the cockpit. “I don’t know nothing about no cocaine,” he said, and he cranked the diesel.

  Scarnum anchored a couple hundred feet away, just offshore the Chester waterfront, and went below. He found the little transmitter duct-taped in the bilge. He set it on the chart table and stared at it.

  Then he took off the wetsuit and poured a bowl of cereal. He carried the transmitter with him to the little table in the salon, and he looked at it while he ate his cereal.

  Then he showered and took the transmitter into the V-berth with him. He looked at it until he went to sleep.

  When he awoke, it was late afternoon. He peeked out the window and scanned the waterfront for a time but could see no sign of the Mexicans.

  He put on dark clothes, ate a sandwich, then went above and pulled the anchor and raised the sails.

  He sailed out around the peninsula and dropped the anchor in the lee of Rockbound Island, a windswept chunk of rock in the open ocean. He went below and brought up a flashlight, a paper chart, a small anchor, a coil of yellow nylon line, a small buoy, a freezer bag, and a roll of duct tape. By the light of the flashlight, he put his little handheld GPS in a freezer bag and then wrapped it with a quarter of a roll of duct tape. He tied one end of the line to the anchor and dropped it in the water and let out line until it hit bottom. He left a few feet of slack above the surface of the water. He cut the line, tied
it to the buoy, and then used most of the rest of the roll of duct tape to attach the GPS to the line, just below the buoy.

  He hauled up his big anchor, put up the sails, and sailed past Mader’s Cove to Herman’s Point. It was getting dark as he dropped the sails and then the anchor, then took his binoculars and got into the canoe.

  The sky was dark and cloudy and the water was black and choppy in a strengthening west breeze. He paddled across Herman’s Point and pulled the canoe under a tree. He scrambled through the woods to the edge of the little look-off at the end of Herman’s Point Road. Scarnum went out into the gravel clearing and looked around. He spied a deadfall, heavy with moss, and darted to it. He lay on his belly, under the deadfall. He lifted the binoculars to his eyes and watched the road and clearing.

  The black SUV pulled up about ten minutes later. Falkenham got out of the driver’s seat and walked to the water’s edge, peering at Orion’s anchor light in the distance. He held a little device in his hand.

  Soon the other doors of the SUV opened and four men got out. Scarnum didn’t know the man who got out of the front passenger seat, but he knew two of the three men who got out of the back. Scarnum could see through his binoculars that Villa and Zapata were still wearing the same clothes. They were empty-handed.

  The two new men also looked like Mexicans. They were both carrying machine pistols. One of them was young and skinny. The other was a big man, fat and bulky and strong looking, with heavy, fatty arms and a torso like a bull’s.

  The men stood around for a while. Scarnum could see Falkenham was doing most of the talking, gesturing at the boat in the distance, pointing to the receiver in his hand. Then the fat man talked, gesturing at the bushes on the other side of the clearing. The kid ran and hid there. The other two men got in the SUV and drove away.

  Scarnum waited ten minutes, then crawled backwards, very quietly, from his hiding spot, and then stayed low, moving away from the clearing until he was well down the road, where he crossed and headed as quietly as he could through the woods to the shore. He crept along the edge of the pine woods back toward the canoe, finding it just as dusk was falling.