Past Crimes

by Glen Erik Hamilton

  “Lose your taste for killing now? Not so much fun anymore?”

  I thought about my things upstairs. Nothing I couldn’t replace. Or at least remember.

  Dono’s lips curled from his teeth. “Go on, then. Run.”

  There was a thick woolen coat hanging on the kitchen door that Dono used when he went out to smoke and watch the crows in the early mornings. I grabbed it. Threw open the dead bolt. Went out the door into the mist.

  “Don’t you ever fucking come back.”

  I was already gone.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  I HADN’T CALLED TO TELL Hollis I was coming, but before I was halfway down the dock, he was out of the cabin of the Francesca and standing in the cockpit waiting. His was the only boat with lights on, like a lone candle in the quiet, dark cathedral of the marina.

  When I got closer, I saw that Hollis wasn’t looking at me. He was looking down at Dono’s speedboat, still tied up at the Francesca’s stern. Hollis had tied it too close, and its bow rubbed up against the bigger boat like a pup nuzzling at its mother.

  “His escape pod,” said Hollis. “To a whole new life.”

  “Yeah,” I said. The speedboat bobbed gently, little waves popping against its gray hull. Built and stowed for a long, fast run. One-way, if need be.

  Hollis grunted. “Probably helped him sleep easier, having it at the ready.”

  I could empathize. I’d run away to make my own new life ten years ago. My army career, or what was left of it, had been on my mind all through the drive from Ondine’s apartment to the marina.

  “Don’t just stand there,” said Hollis, “Get your ass aboard.”

  He turned and shambled back into the Francesca’s big cabin. I grabbed a stanchion and hauled myself up into the cockpit.

  The inside of the cabin was stale. The lights gave me a better look at Hollis. The usual pink of his face had concentrated into a rosy flush. His yellow polo shirt looked wrung out, wrinkled even where the fabric stretched tight across his belly. His thick paw was wrapped around a glass of whiskey. A strong waft of it came with him as he stepped past me to close the narrow wooden door at the back of the cabin.

  I tossed the blue duffel full of clothes and Dono’s stuff onto the settee, next to a pile of Hollis’s own laundry. “Did you come straight here from the hospital?”

  Hollis was having trouble throwing the bolts at the top and bottom of the door with just one hand. “Fucking things,” he said. “No, I went by Willard’s house first.”

  I tried to imagine Hollis waking up the huge man at two in the morning to tell him about Dono’s death. Hopefully, Willard was an easy riser.

  “I thought he’d want to know,” Hollis said, “and besides, I need the big bastard to work with me on your man’s funeral. Help yourself.” He waved idly at the table, where a bottle of Old Ivory stood open. There was a Tupperware bowl next to it, filled with water and a few slivers of surviving ice.

  “I want a wake,” I said.

  “Damn right you want a wake.”

  “At the Morgen. On Sunday morning.”

  He stared at me. “Well, that’s positively fucking traditional. Good for you. He’d have liked being in the bar one last time. You’re not drinking.” He picked up the bottle and sloshed two fingers into a glass and thrust it at me. “Pay your respects.”

  “To Dono.” I took a drink and let the whiskey ease its way down my throat.

  “And the devil take his enemies.”

  “It’s done.”

  Hollis almost dropped his drink. “It’s done? You found the bastard who shot Dono?”

  “Near enough. The brother of one of the dead men.” I caught Hollis up on recent events, at least where Boone McGann was concerned. I left Alec out of it. Ondine could clean up her own corner.

  “I hope they gas the pigfucker,” Hollis said.

  I couldn’t improve on that. Part of me regretted serving Alec and Boone up to the very different brands of justice that Ondine and Guerin would mete out, even though I knew that was the smartest move—much smarter than hunting them down myself.

  Still, it might be worth something to see their faces at the end.

  “Guerin will close the net on McGann,” I said, “with a whole fucking SWAT team.”

  Hollis smiled grimly. “Never thought I’d be cheering for the cops.”

  “They have their uses. You’re not drinking,” I said.

  He grinned and poured us another round. “You’ll have one more,” he said, “and then you’ll sleep. No arguments. You look like steamrolled shit.”

  “I was just thinking the same about you.”

  He spread his hands wide. “I’m in my own home. A man can be his worst, and it’s just him getting comfortable.” He lifted his glass. “To Moira.”

  My mother.

  “I’d forgotten you knew her,” I said.

  “Oh, sure. At least as well as anyone knows the children of his friends, which means I could wave hello and she might wave back.”

  “Why did she leave?” I said. “I know she was out of Dono’s house before I was born.”

  “Well.” Hollis sat with a heavy exhale on the settee, squeezing in next to the duffel bag. And suddenly he was smiling. “Moira was stubborn. As tough in mind as your grandfather. Or you.” He took a drink. “She wouldn’t give up his name, you see.”

  “My father.” It felt weird just saying the words.

  “She told Dono that since the prick—sorry, boyo—since your father had chosen not to be part of your lives, then he didn’t fucking well exist. And there was no point in telling Dono who he was.”

  Jesus. “I can picture Dono’s reaction.”

  “He wanted to kill the boy. Didn’t we all?” Hollis waved his arms. “But your mother wouldn’t say a word. Not that I think she had much love for the tomcatting son of a bitch.”

  She wouldn’t surrender him to Dono.

  Just like I wouldn’t give Davey up.

  “Do you think Dono would have killed him?” I said.

  Hollis’s brow furrowed, making him look even more simian. “I think he might have, lad. Honestly, I’m glad it never came to a choice.” He sighed. “Anyway, Moira left the house to let things cool off. And found she liked being out on her own, from what I understand.”

  For as long as it lasted. Six years, give or take.

  The speedboat outside caught a wave wrong and thumped against the stern of the Francesca.

  “I’ll move that,” I said.

  “Here.” Hollis reached into the open duffel for the big ring of Dono’s keys. He tossed the loose ball of jangling metal at me, a fraction too hard. I snatched it out of the air a moment before it hit my head, my fingers catching the small chunk of wood tied to the center ring.

  And right as the wood hit my palm, I knew. Before it even became a thought, I knew.

  Here, Dono had said, his hand almost crushing mine with the intensity of it. My hand that held this ring of keys.

  I looked at the piece of wood, the candy-bar-size hunk I’d assumed was just a float, in case the key ring was accidentally dropped into the water. Most of the piece was polished to a smooth grayish red by linseed oil and fingers and time. The deeper grooves of the grain, where fingers couldn’t reach, were the original deep crimson. Blood-colored.

  I recognized where the wood had come from. When it had come from.

  I understood what Dono had been trying to tell me.

  Hollis came closer to stare at me. “Are you crying?” he said.

  “I’m laughing.” That crazy old pirate.

  “What did you figure out? Does one of those keys open something?”

  I looked out the cabin window.

  “It’s the diamonds, isn’t it?” said Hollis. “You lovely bastard, you know where they are.”

  Dawn was coming up strong, the slate-colored sky brushed clean by the earlier storm.

  “I’m taking Dono’s boat,” I said.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

&nb
sp; THE ISLAND WAS NOTHING. A nameless half-mile square of trees and brush and rock and sand, one among dozens along the northern outskirts of the San Juans. It had no sheltered coves or smooth beaches to attract boaters from the main waterway, two miles to the east.

  But it did have the throne. Right where I remembered it.

  Madrona trees grew in bunches around the pitted shore. The orange-red trunks twisted and strangled one another for precious space. Some extended almost horizontally toward the water, straining to get their leaves out of the shade of the taller evergreens.

  There was a big cleft in the shore. The bedrock of the island had cracked an eon ago and made a wide crevice running from the shore fifty feet inland. The high spring tide filled the gap to the top.

  One old tree had forced its way through earth and sandstone to the sunlight over the crevice and grown to huge size, only to finally snap under its own weight in some long-ago windstorm. The thick stump of it still jutted out over the crevice, a few feet above the high tide. The top of the stump was worn almost smooth by the elements. It looked as if it had been hewn by some forest god, as a place to sit at the tip of the island and contemplate the vast sea.

  I put the speedboat engine in neutral and let the little boat bob on the waves. It had taken me almost three hours of pushing through the big swells on the straits to reach the island. The morning sun was high and bright.

  I shook out my limbs and ate one of the energy bars Dono had stored in the cockpit locker. It tasted like chocolate-flavored upholstery.

  The speedboat floated near the spot where Dono and I had fished for rock cod back when I was a kid. When I’d told Luce the story of how my arm had been gashed by the fishing line, I’d remembered the island as being much larger. The stump of the ancient madrona tree that I’d sat on while Dono stitched me up had seemed monstrous. In life it was less than a yard across.

  If I was right about my grandfather’s scheming, he had made a good choice. The island was anonymous and only a short side hop from an escape path north into Canada.

  If he had to collect the gems on the run, he’d want to get to them quickly, preferably without letting the boat out of his sight. That meant somewhere along the shoreline. It might be nighttime when he arrived, so the hiding place had to be distinctive enough to find in the dark or with only the small halogen spotlight to help him.

  The thronelike madrona stump fit the bill on all counts.

  I felt the chunk of red wood on Dono’s ring of keys, rolled it between my fingers, and rubbed the grain. He must have carved the piece from the stub of madrona branch I’d been biting to fight the pain while the fishhook went in and out of my flesh. Whittled it down and polished it and kept it on his key chain. It meant something.

  I guessed Dono’s share of the diamonds at around sixty kilos. Even as heavy as diamonds were, that would still make a bundle at least the size of a suitcase. I looked at the stump for a few minutes, not seeing anywhere that a big package might be hidden around it.

  And then I realized: That was the point. I couldn’t see it at all. There was a whole bunch of shoreline that no one could see.

  Because it was underwater.

  Which was why the clever old thief had kept a full set of scuba equipment on his little boat. It wasn’t for repairs. It was so that he could get to his treasure, no matter what the time or tide.

  It took me three tries to set the anchor’s flukes firmly on the sea floor, until I was satisfied that a shift in wind or current wouldn’t blow the boat free while I was away from it. It would be a dark joke to come so far only to be marooned and die of exposure on this insignificant spit of land. I opened the cabin and began hauling out Dono’s gear.

  The scuba tank in the boat was full, and I could fit into his buoyancy-control vest. I couldn’t say the same for his wet suit. The old man had been leaner than me, and there was no way I could squeeze myself into the neoprene. I’d have his bathing suit, gloves, boots, and fins. Skin diving in April.

  Before putting on the gear, I collected a few tools and bungee cords from Dono’s repair toolbox into the mesh bag that the mask and snorkel had been in. Ugly, but it would do for carrying the tools while I swam.

  I sat on the edge of the cockpit, held the mask and regulator in place, and let myself fall backward into the water.

  The cold squeezed my vitals as I sank. My teeth reflexively clenched the regulator, and I took a first hissing breath from the tank, the air cold and dry. I inflated the vest to keep me level and looked around.

  The visibility was lousy. I could see the kelp-covered bottom and, vaguely, the sloping mass of the jagged shore twenty yards away, but that was about all.

  In the center of the shore, there was a yawning vertical stripe of black water. The mouth of the crevice. I swam toward it, ten feet under the surface.

  I had to grip the mesh bag of tools hard to make sure it was still in my hand. It wouldn’t take long before my fingers would be unable to feel anything at all, gloves or not. Maybe twenty minutes before I started flirting with hypothermia.

  At the mouth of the crevice, I stopped to turn on a flashlight. The crevice was about ten feet wide at its entrance, narrowing as it went farther inward. Crabs on the rock wall scuttled away from the light into the shelter of weeds. The waves pushed me forward into the murk.

  I hooked the bag of tools to the tube of my air gauge so I could use my hands to edge along the crevice wall. Inside, it was nearly pitch-black. The flashlight showed just the wall in front of me. I couldn’t see the bottom at all. Only by looking up at the surface could I get any sense of distance.

  The crevice was growing tighter. Five feet wide, then four. The rolling waves kept trying to bash my head against the rock wall. I looked up again. It was hard to see clearly. My motion had stirred up mud and silt. Was that the tree stump above me now?

  I was still peering up as I moved my hand to get better purchase. My hand missed the wall, and I had to kick hard to keep from toppling over.

  There was a hole in the crevice wall. Not just a depression but a deep gash. Maybe two feet wide and four feet high.

  I hung on to the rock outside the hole and shone the light in, scaring tiny fish into the shallows. Their frantic movements disturbed the muck. Clumps of slime swirled around my mask.

  The hole was almost an arm’s length deep. The back of it was filled with mud and algae and a pile of fist-size stones.

  I brushed my gloved hand across them. For a moment the world was nothing but a tornado of evil-looking sludge. Then the current swept away the floating particles. Behind the stones I saw glimpses of flat gray where there should be mud.

  Yanking at the stones, I let them fall into the depths below my fins. The flat gray was the top of a box. No, not a box, I saw as I shone the flashlight on it. A cooler. An aluminum cooler, just like the kind you might fill with ice and beer for a barbecue. The latch was on top and the hinges at the bottom, so that the lid would open toward me.

  I braced myself and pulled as hard as I could on the sides of the cooler. It didn’t give an inch. It might be bolted into the rock. I fumbled at the latch. My fingertips were numb, barely feeling the metal underneath them. I made my hand into a claw and tugged, and the lid fell open.

  Part of me had expected a small flood of diamonds to come pouring out, like Spanish doubloons in an old movie.

  But instead the cooler held a bunch of black rubber cylinders, each the size of a large thermos. I counted seven. They were hexagonal, for stacking, and secured in the cooler by a net of quarter-inch steel cable. Dono hadn’t taken any chances that the lid of the cooler might somehow come open during a violent storm.

  I reached into the bag of tools. My fingers wouldn’t cooperate. A wrench and a screwdriver fell, and I heard them clink off the rock wall as they sank. But I managed to keep a grip on the small pair of bolt cutters.

  With the heels of my hands, I got the blades of the cutters around the cable and pushed. The blades oozed through the steel, and the c
able snapped.

  I freed the top cylinder from the netting. It was heavy, maybe twenty pounds. Like hefting an iron bar.

  I started removing the black rubber cylinders and lashing them together with the bungee cords from the bag. It was awkward. By the time I finished, the dead feeling had spread to my hands and feet. I sacrificed more air to inflate my vest completely, trying to balance the hundred pounds or more of deadweight.

  Bound together, the seven cylinders made a bundle the size of a big hatbox. I wound my arms around them and pushed off the wall.

  The weight bore me down ten feet to the bottom of the crevice, fast. I kicked hard, fins almost tangling in the thick strands of kelp. I made it to open water and found the long diagonal of the anchor chain leading back up to the speedboat.

  I was just leveling out to make a final push when I felt it. A regular, ominous thrumming. Big propellers on big engines, churning the water.

  Where? Sound in water echoed. There. Four o’clock and closing fast. I grabbed onto the anchor chain and floated, the heavy load of the diamonds in my other hand trying to pull me down.

  A moment later I saw it. A fat, dark triangle on the surface, silhouetted against the high sun, bearing down on the smaller triangle of the speedboat. A big powerboat. Maybe fifty feet in length, with twin props. It had come around the near edge of the island.

  The rhythm of the props slowed as the big boat came alongside the speedboat. Bubbles rose to the surface from my breathing. Would they be visible on the soft surface waves?

  I couldn’t stay here. The cold was bad enough, but my air gauge was at zero. If I were lucky, I had two more minutes. I held tight to the black bundle of cylinders and followed the slope of the sea floor back toward the shelter of the crevice. Behind me there were hollow thumps. The two boats bumping against each other. Maybe someone jumping into the speedboat’s cockpit.

  My breath was coming fast, too fast to be just exertion. My lungs were trying to draw air where there was none. I was still twenty feet below and three times as far from shore. I wasn’t going to make it to the crevice. Not with the cylinders slowing me down.