Little Tiny Teeth

by Aaron Elkins

  “What’s more…” Scofield continued, “this is known to be the only species—”

  Cisco laughed abruptly. “Hey, piranhas,” he mumbled, apparently his first notice of them. “Whoa. How you doing, little guys?” He put his emptied bowl aside and leaned forward to run his fingers over the razor-sharp teeth.

  “Little… tiny… teeth,” he said dreamily, moving from tooth to tooth with each word. And once again, as if he were reciting something: “Little… tiny… teeth.”

  The helper behind the buffet table tonight was the cook, Meneo, a wizened, five-foot-tall Huitoto Indian who spoke no English and only a few words of Spanish, but who seemed to find everything the passengers said sidesplittingly funny. Cisco’s crooning was no exception. Narrow shoulders jiggling, tears of glee streaming from his eyes, small, brown hands keeping time, he sang along with Cisco.

  “Widdoo… ty’ee… teet’. Widdoo… ty’ee… teet’…”

  Meneo’s hilarity was hard to resist, and pretty soon everybody was doing it, hooting with laughter and beating time on the table. “Widdoo… ty’ee… teet’…”

  Gideon, chortling and beating away with the rest of them, shook his head in self-amazement. “Somebody send for a doctor,” he said to Phil. “I think we’re all getting jungle fever.”

  ON Wednesday afternoon, twenty minutes into their trek to meet with the famous Orejón curandero Tahuyao (celebrated for his plant cure for inflammation of the kidneys, reputed to be highly effective and entirely risk-free — other than its propensity to turn the skin iguana-green for four to six months), the outing was called off. Cisco was not feeling well. According to what he told Scofield, his headaches had flared up. According to what he told Phil, an old knee injury was bothering him. To Tim he explained that his back just wasn’t up to a long hike that day.

  Whatever the cause, he disappeared back toward the ship, sighing and groaning piteously. The passengers had to content themselves with a self-guided botanical exploration of the jungle within easy range of the Adelita, a disappointment to most, but not to Duayne. Before he left, Cisco had pointed to some pendulous, bulbous birds’ nests hanging from low branches over the river. “Oropendela nests,” he’d told Duayne. “There ought to be some cockroaches in there. They love the birdshit.”

  Ten minutes later, an overjoyed Duayne had come back cradling a trembling, monstrous, black, gold, and brown cockroach that completely covered the palm of his hand. “Blaberus giganteus,” he’d proudly told anybody who would listen. “I admit, it may not be the most massive cockroach in the world — that’d be the Australian burrowing cockroach — but it’s every bit as long or even longer. This particular beauty measures more than four inches in length, and that’s not counting the antennae! And I’m betting the wingspread is a good twelve inches, maybe even more! And they can actually fly, you know — really fly — unlike our earthbound homegrown variety. They say they do it in great hordes. Wouldn’t that be something to see? Ten thousand of these on the wing, flapping away?” His eyes turned dreamy at the thought; a small, blissful smile played about his lips.

  Gideon too enjoyed the outing, but for a different reason. Not long after Duayne had returned to his cabin to carry out the regrettable but necessary execution of his Blaberus, Gideon noticed that the already dim rain forest was growing rapidly darker. Then came a sound he couldn’t place at first, a deep, resonant thrumming from above, like thousands — millions — of wingbeats, that made him look up apprehensively, with thoughts of giant flying cockroaches. But after a moment he realized it was the sound of heavy rain hitting the canopy. Despite the volume, it seemed a mere sprinkling at first, barely getting him wet, but that was only because it was working its way down through the foliage. When it finally hit with all its force, it pelted him in huge, warm drops, and then in streams, as if a thousand faucets had been turned on, and then in choking sheets. Most of the others ran for the boat, but Gideon just stood there, arms and face held up to the sky, coughing as the clean, fresh water filled his mouth and nose, but letting it soak him through. It was like a baptism, a wonderful break from the unrelenting closeness and humidity of the jungle.

  AFTER dinner, Gideon found his mood depressed. Unlike John and Phil, he still hadn’t adjusted to the temperature, and especially not to the strangling humidity. He’d been in climates with 100 percent relative humidity before, so, technically speaking, it was impossible for this to be any worse. Except that it was. The air was more like damp wool than air, lying heavy and hot on the skin and making breathing a struggle. He was listless and restless at the same time. And Lord, he missed Julie. Not feeling very social, he lasted only a few minutes at the by-now de rigueur night session on the roof, before saying good night. Back in his cabin, although he’d been told his cell phone wouldn’t work, he tried calling her. Nothing, not even static.

  At nine o’clock he slid open his window to let in the river’s night breeze — after dark, it made things cooler than the air-conditioner did — and went to bed, hoping that a long night’s sleep would pep him up. It had been a mistake not to bring any work with him. The idea had been that this was to be a genuine vacation for a change, an opportunity to relax in an interesting locale with nothing pressing on his mind to interfere with the enjoyment of the experience. It had worked for a little while, but now he had gotten fidgety. How many days were left? Two? It seemed like a long time still to go.

  He needed something to do.

  HIS opportunity wasn’t long in coming.

  It was the stifled, piercing cry — “Ai!” — that broke through to his webbed, sleeping mind, but even as he swam unwillingly to the surface, he thought he remembered that it had been preceded by some kind of distant thumping or scraping. (He’d incorporated it into a nonsensical dream, something to do with a dying horse trying to stomp its way into its locked stall.) With his head still on the pillow, he looked at the softly glowing dial of his watch: 1:45. It was perfectly quiet now, with no sound but the hissing of the water along the side of the ship below his cabin window. Had there really been a cry, or had he been — The hollow, ponderous pa-loosh of something substantial plunging into the river dissolved the last shreds of sleep.

  “Somebody’s overboard! Stop the ship!” he yelled instinctively, jumping out of bed and springing for the cabin door. Before he reached it there was another cry, this one shrill with panic: “Help me, somebody! I can’t swim! I can’t swim!”

  Maggie?

  Then, with his hand on the door handle, there was yet another resounding pa-loosh. Two people overboard? Good God—

  In another second he had yanked the door open and was on the deck, leaning over the railing and peering into the darkness. After a moment he was able to make out Maggie, thrashing and gasping in the black water about twenty yards behind the slowing Adelita.

  “Hang on!” he called. “I’m coming!” He jerked an orange M/V Adelita life preserver from its clasp, hooked it over his arm, and vaulted feet-first over the railing, trying not to think about the fact that the last lifesaving instruction he’d had had been in junior high school. Or about little tiny teeth and the fact that his toes were bare.

  He panicked slightly himself as the warm, rank-smelling water closed over his head — Gideon had never been altogether at home in the water and especially not under it — pulled himself to the surface, grabbed the life preserver, which had been plucked from his grasp by the impact, and sidestroked toward the struggling Maggie, who was beating her arms against the surface to keep from going down. When he reached her and touched her shoulder she fought him blindly, catching him painfully in the mouth with her fist, but then she saw who it was and calmed down enough for him to get the ring over her head and under one of her arms.

  “Thank you!” she gasped. “I thought it was — Thank you!” He hardly recognized this wild-eyed woman as the formidable person of the last few days. Her face was bunchy with distress, and her hair, ordinarily so neatly arranged, was plastered over her face in limp, black stran
ds that looked like seaweed. And she was weeping frenziedly, a sloppy, snuffly, child’s sobbing that convulsed her body, or at least the little of it that Gideon could see.

  “You’re okay, Maggie,” he said, his hand comfortingly on her shoulder. “I’ve got you, you’re safe. Are you hurt?”

  “No, I’m — I don’t think so, no.”

  “What happened?” he asked. “Is there someone else in the water? I heard two splashes.”

  “Yes — uck—” Choking on swallowed water, unable to speak, she turned her head away from him, coughing and spluttering.

  The Adelita had swung around now and was turning to get back to them. Some of the others were out on deck in their underwear or pajamas, gesticulating and calling encouragement. Maggie, held by Gideon and supported by the life preserver, had sighed shakily a couple of times and begun to relax, when suddenly she went rigid. Her hand clamped on his forearm. “You have to get him!” she shouted, her face only inches from his. “He’s going to get away!”

  “Who’s going to get away? Maggie, what happened?”

  “No, you have to get him! He grabbed me! He threw me over!” She was crying again, and shoving against him.

  “Catch hold now.” John’s reassuring voice came from above. “We’ll pull you up.”

  The ship had come up alongside them, and the gate in the railing had been opened. John, dressed in T-shirt and boxers, as was Gideon, was kneeling in the opening, holding out a boat hook with a ten-foot-long shaft.

  “You have to get him!” she said to Gideon again, even more urgently. “Don’t you understand what I’m telling you? He tried to kill me! He… he…”

  “We’ll talk about it when we’re aboard,” Gideon told her firmly. “Let’s get ourselves up there first.”

  “No, but… !” She stopped herself and nodded. “All right, yes.”

  She caught hold of the proffered pole, and with Gideon steadying her from below and John pulling from above, she more or less climbed up the side of the boat to the deck, a distance of perhaps five feet. Gideon quickly followed. They both stood dripping on the deck while questions came at Maggie from all sides: “Are you all right? Are you hurt?”

  Still wracked with coughing, she shook her head at them. “Not hurt.”

  “What happened? Who tried to kill you?”

  In frustration, she shook her head again. “That’s what I’m trying to tell you—” She held her hand up while she went through another bout of deep, painful coughing. When it had run its course, she took in a slow, steadying breath, and let it out, cheeks inflated. Then she raised her head, feeble but very much more in control of herself.

  “Cisco,” she said.

  FIFTEEN

  “CISCO tried to kill you?”

  It seemed to Gideon that everyone there — John, Tim, Mel, and Vargas — said it at the same time, in exactly the same astonished tone. He wasn’t sure if he’d said it himself, or only thought it.

  She seemed taken aback by the chorus of incredulity. “Well, I… I think it was Cisco. I mean I couldn’t see. It was dark, it was—”

  She shuddered, then suddenly glanced down at herself, at the flimsy, wet summer bathrobe that was clinging to her and the men’s pajamas underneath, and then at the circle of males surrounding her. She lifted her chin and drew the robe around her with her arms. “I have to change,” she said stiffly. “Give me twenty minutes, if you please. Captain, I don’t suppose there’d be such a thing as hot chocolate on this ship?”

  “Of course there is, professor. I’ll have it for you at once.”

  “Thank you.” She turned to leave.

  “But wait, where is he?” John asked. “Where is Cisco?”

  “He jumped,” she said. “He’s gone. After he threw me in, that’s what I was trying to tell you!” An angry glare at Gideon. “But you’ll never find him now, not after all this time.” Then, with a final, penetrating, accusing glance at Gideon, she turned and swept away and up the stairway, with considerable élan.

  “What did you do to her?” John asked Gideon. “I thought you just saved her life.”

  Gideon shrugged. “I thought so too. I guess I took too long.”

  “Dames,” Mel said, the voice of experience. “You can’t please ’em.”

  SHE had been sound asleep, she explained. She had been roused by what she thought was scuffling that seemed to be coming from next door — not from Gideon’s cabin, of course, but from Scofield’s, on the other side. Then, still three-quarters asleep — she wasn’t sure if it was minutes later, or only seconds — she heard what seemed to her to be someone being violently sick outside her cabin. She put on her robe and went out on deck to see if she could help. Cisco — if it was Cisco — was standing there with his back to her in what looked like a nightshirt, or maybe it was just a long shirt down almost to his knees, gripping the railing with both hands, mumbling to himself, and staring fixedly down into the moving water.

  She paused to sip the hot chocolate that Vargas had given her, hunched over the cup and holding it with both hands as if to warm them, although the temperature was still in the eighties. It was two-thirty in the morning, still pitch-black. Everybody but Scofield, who had been observed to have had a couple of pots of his “digestive” tea up on the roof earlier that night, was there now, gathered around her at their table in the dining room. They were all in walking shorts and polo shirts or tank tops, the established daily uniform of choice. Vargas had made “fresh” coffee by opening a new jar of Nescafé.

  She continued. Something about his rigid posture, about how tightly he was clutching the rail, told her that something terrible had happened. She was frightened. She began to back quietly away, back to the safety of her room, but the movement must have caught his eye. He had her before she’d taken two steps, both of his arms around her, squeezing the breath out of her. In what seemed like a fraction of a second he’d wrestled her to the railing and heaved her over. Cisco was incredibly strong, far, far stronger than he looked. If it was Cisco.

  “Maggie,” Duayne said, “Cisco’s a pretty strange-looking man. So skinny… and the way he holds his head… I’d think he’d be recognizable, even from the back.”

  “Well, he wasn’t,” Maggie snapped. “It was dark, he had on this long thing, he was turned the other way. Maybe I should have asked him for an ID?”

  “No offense, Maggie,” Duayne said, taken aback. “I only meant—”

  “Captain, where does Cisco sleep?” John asked.

  “In the next to the last cabin on the port side, next to the storage rooms.”

  “Tim, would you go check that room, please? Knock, and if you don’t get an answer, open the door and peek in, see if he’s there.” Gideon could see that John had assumed his cop persona. A crime had been committed, there was no responsible official there to look into it, and so John, being John, had readily jumped in as the man in charge, a state of affairs that no one seemed about to challenge.

  “Why didn’t you yell for help?” he asked Maggie.

  She blinked, as if it was something that hadn’t occurred to her before. “I don’t know,” she said, frowning. “You think that’s what you’d do, you know that’s what you should do, but when it happens to you, your mind doesn’t work right. And it was so quick! The whole thing couldn’t have taken two seconds. I was flying through the air before I knew what was happening. It was as if I was paralyzed,” she mused. “I couldn’t struggle, couldn’t scream, couldn’t—” She ran out of words and shook her head.

  “Maggie, that’s a pretty bad gash you’ve got on your leg,” Gideon said. He’d only noticed it a moment before. “You’d better get some antiseptic on that and cover it up. In this kind of climate you don’t want to take any chances.”

  “What?” She stared down at her leg — the wrong leg first, then the right one, then reached down to touch, very gingerly, a still-bleeding wound on the inside of her left ankle. Blood had seeped down into and spotted her white sneakers, worn without socks.
“I didn’t even know I had this,” she said with wonder. “I didn’t feel a thing.” She produced a Kleenex and dabbed it against the wound.

  “That’s because your system’s still in shock. Don’t worry, you’ll feel it when the vasoconstriction reverses. Any minute now.”

  “I remember, I hit my leg on the railing as I was going over. That’s when it must have happened. I think I even gave a yelp, but—”

  “You did,” Gideon said. “That’s what woke me up.”

  “And thank heavens it did!” she said fervently, and then her face softened. “Gideon, I haven’t really said thank you to you.”

  “As a matter of fact, you did. The very first thing. After you finished slugging me.”

  She laughed. “I’m sorry about that. I thought you were Cisco. Oh dear, I split your lip, didn’t I?”

  “It’s nothing,” said Gideon, who had been dabbing a tissue at his mouth. By now the bleeding, hardly copious to begin with, had almost entirely stopped.

  “Well, when we get to Leticia, I owe you the biggest, best dinner money can buy.”

  “Oh, I think a beer’ll cover it,” he said, smiling.

  She returned the smile. “You’ve got it. Anyway, as soon as I landed in the water my brain started working again and I screamed for help. Then when somebody yelled ‘Man overboard’—”