Dead Winter

by William G. Tapply

I went back to the outer office. Julie had shrouded her computer with its dust cover. She was brushing her hair.

  “What’re you doing?” I said.

  “Getting ready to go.”

  “One thing?”

  She sighed. “I figured.”

  “See if you can get me a flight to Asheville.”

  “Asheville, what?”

  “North Carolina. Try Piedmont.”

  She rolled her eyes. “Like for when?”

  “Friday. Returning Saturday.”

  She pressed the tips of her fingers together under her chin and bowed. I went back into my office and poured myself a shot of Jack Daniel’s. Flying to Asheville was the sort of move that, if I weighed its merits, I would not make. I recalled the advice of Machiavelli: “It is better to be impetuous than cautious, for fortune is a woman, and if you wish to master her, you must conquer her by force.”

  Julie—and my ex-wife, Gloria, as well—never hesitated to remind me, whenever I cited these immortal words, that while Machiavelli undoubtedly had been a male chauvinist of the first rank, he might be excused on the grounds of pervasive cultural bias. But a contemporary man who chose voluntarily to quote him deserved gelding, twentieth-century Boston differing as it did from fifteenth-century Florence.

  They never let me finish the quote before they started screaming. It went like this: “… and it can be seen that she lets herself be overcome by the bold rather than by those who proceed coldly. And therefore, like a woman, she is always a friend to the young, because they are less cautious, fiercer, and master her with greater audacity.”

  It was odd that, before my consciousness was raised, millimeter by millimeter, kicking and screaming, by the women around me, I found nothing offensive in Machiavelli’s metaphor.

  I sipped my Tennessee whiskey and stared out at the gloomy skyline. Sulky, sodden clouds had been dribbling misty rain all day. I wondered if Kat would try to beg off our surfcasting expedition. I decided not to let her. If she wanted to fish like a man, she should enjoy misery the way a man does. Anyway, the weather, if anything, would enhance her chance of nailing a bluefish in the surf.

  Julie scratched on the door. “Enter.”

  She came in, bearing a notepad.

  “Sit,” I said. “Please sit,” I hastily amended. “Shot of Black Jack?” Sure.

  I went to the sideboard and poured a generous finger into a glass. I set it in front of Julie and resumed my seat. She took a quick, nervous sip, then put it down and picked up her notebook. “Departing Logan at 7:05 Friday morning. Forty-minute layover in Charlotte, arriving in Asheville at 10:23 if you don’t fly into the side of a mountain, which might serve you right. Returning Saturday. All for a mere $462.50. With seven days advance booking, it’s only $170.50. Except you couldn’t fly on a Friday, and you’d have to stay over a Saturday. Nobody except Piedmont flies into Asheville from Boston.” She put the notebook down and took another sip.

  “What’s this all about?”

  “I did what you asked.”

  “I mean about me crashing into a mountain.”

  “How long you known the Scarlett O’Hara broad?”

  “You mean Miz Jones.” An insight—some connection between Julie’s knee-jerk distress when I quoted Machiavelli and her instinctive jealousy whenever I talked to any woman other than my ex-wife—flitted in my mind. There was an irony there. I didn’t bother pursuing it. “This is business,” I said. “The Winter case.”

  She smiled. “A case, now, is it?”

  I shrugged. “Whatever you’d like to call it. It’s Marc’s wife, and he’s sort of a suspect, and the police are incompetent.”

  She nodded with mock sagacity. “Ah. You’re going to solve it, then.”

  I lit a Winston. “Maybe.”

  She stared at me until she made me smile.

  “Hey,” I said. “It’ll be a little adventure. I’ve never been to Asheville.”

  “Me neither. I don’t feel especially deprived. I’ve never been to Nome, either.”

  “I’d like to go to Nome someday,” I said.

  Julie downed her drink. “The tickets will be waiting for you at the window. You should get there at least a half-hour early.”

  “Thank you.”

  “You’ll be in tomorrow?”

  “Of course. I work here.”

  “I was wondering,” she said.

  I called Slavin, Jones. Victoria Jones was unavailable, so I left a message. I would be arriving at 10:23 Friday morning and would call her from the airport.

  Julie and I walked out of the office together. “You’re leaving early,” she observed while we waited for the elevator. “Got a hot date?”

  “Going fishing.”

  “Oh,” she said, smiling. She sounded relieved, and I felt an unaccountable pang of guilt.

  Actually, I had a date to go fishing. I remembered the way Kat Winter had kissed me in the parking lot. A hot date to go fishing, maybe.

  10

  KAT WAS WAITING ON the side lawn when I pulled into Des’s driveway. She was wearing cutoff jeans, sneakers, and a pink and white tank top under a man-sized beige windbreaker. She had found one of Des’s old long-billed fishing caps, which had been liberally stained with motor oil and fish gore. Her short hair was tucked up into it.

  “I love your chapeau,” I said as I climbed out of my car.

  “Daddy says it’s good luck.”

  I squinted up at the sky. “Might rain some more.”

  She shrugged. “So we get wet.”

  A pair of surfcasting spinning rods leaned against her Saab. A big rusted tackle box sat on the driveway. Kat gestured to the gear. “He said this is all we’d need. You want to bring some beer?”

  “Nope. Don’t like to drink and fish. Afterwards we can stop somewhere if we’ve got something to celebrate.”

  I cranked the window on the passenger side of my BMW and pushed the rods in. “Going to be tight quarters for you in the front seat,” I said to her.

  “I’ll just have to squish over close to you.”

  “It’s a short drive.”

  She climbed in the driver’s side and clambered over the console into the other seat. I got in and started up the engine, and had just shifted into reverse when Barney came waddling importantly out from the back of the house. Des was right behind him. He held up his hand. I waited for him to approach my car.

  “I just got a call from Marc,” he said.

  “And?”

  “He’s at the police station.”

  “Are they going to arrest him?”

  “He didn’t know. Fourier wanted to talk to him again.”

  I glanced sideways at Kat. “Did he want me there?”

  Des shook his head. “No. He was just telling me not to wait dinner for him. No, you two go ahead, have a good time. Bring me back a blue. I want to try this recipe. You slather them with mayonnaise and sprinkle on a lot of dill before you grill them.”

  “Why don’t you come along?”

  He sighed. “Can’t surfcast any more. Damn arthritis.”

  “We’ll get out on the boat sometime.”

  He forced a smile. “I’d like that.”

  “Look,” I said. “Call Zerk. I think it’s time Marc had a lawyer with him.”

  Des frowned. “You think?”

  I nodded. “It’ll do no harm.”

  He waved us away. “I will. Now you two go fishing.”

  I backed out and headed for Plum Island.

  “Why’re they hassling Marc again?” said Kat as we drove down High Street. “I thought you said he was in the clear.”

  I shrugged. “He’s about all they’ve got, maybe. Unless they’ve come up with new evidence.”

  “What about the guy who was with Maggie?” Kat’s knee was pressing against my thigh. It was hard to ignore.

  “I don’t know anything about him.”

  “Do you really think he needs Mr. Garrett with him?”

  “Zerk Garrett is
the best criminal lawyer I know. He can prevent things from happening. He’s better at that sort of thing than I am.”

  She nodded. I turned left heading for Plum Island.

  “Daddy can surfcast fine,” said Kat after a few moments. “I think he’s just lost his heart for it.”

  “I’ll try to persuade him to take me out on the boat.”

  Ten minutes later we crossed the causeway and turned right onto the road that bisected the long, narrow island. We parked among a couple dozen other vehicles, the majority of them four-wheel-drive Jeeps and Broncos equipped with rod holders. Beside them, my BMW looked like a poodle on a fox hunt. We unloaded our gear and followed the designated pathway to the outer beach.

  The fishermen had strung themselves along the sand at approximately fifty-yard intervals. Some of them were casting from the beach. Others wore chest-high waders and stood out in the crashing surf, presumably closer to where the fish might be lurking. Kat and I took off our sneakers and walked on the cold, hard-packed sand where the sea lapped the beach. We paused at each fisherman to ask what luck. None had taken a bluefish. Nobody seemed the least bit gloomy about it. Picnic baskets, coolers, and unlit lanterns sat in clusters on the beach. These men were here for the night. They had barely started.

  We found space to cast several hundred yards down the beach. I snapped dark-bodied Rapalas onto the swivels at the ends of our lines and handed one of the rods to Kat. “Come on,” I said. “Might as well get wet. We can wade into the water a little. Then we cast as far as we can.”

  She took off her windbreaker and followed me into the surf.

  The sky was mother-of-pearl, glowing faintly in the dying daylight. The tide was still curling in. It smacked softly against the tilt of the hard sand, oozed forward, then hissed back. The coarse sand jangled like a pocketful of birdshot under the eternal grinding of the sea. Out beyond the surfline the sea was an angry gray-green. It seemed to pitch and roll—the leftover effect of the day’s storm. I scanned the water for a swooping swarm of gulls that might signify a school of blues chasing baitfish, but saw none.

  Kat and I sloshed in up to our knees. I turned to her. “Okay,” I said. “You hold the rod like this.” I demonstrated, with my left hand down near the butt end and my right just above the big spinning reel. “Back up the reel just a little and catch the line on your forefinger. Like this.” She watched, frowning in concentration, and then imitated me.

  “Okay, good,” I continued. “Now cock back the bail—that’s this piece of wire here—like this.” She did. “Now stand back and watch.”

  I brought the rod over my right shoulder until it was horizontal, bent my knees and arched my back, and heaved mightily. The Rapala sailed out majestically until it was a speck descending from the darkening sky into the ocean.

  “Wow,” breathed Kat. “That was a good one.”

  “Average.” I was, in truth, very pleased with my manly demonstration, and Kat, bless her, fed my ego.

  “Okay,” I said. “Now you tuck the butt of the rod into your stomach, or your crotch, or under your arm if you’re squeamish about that sort of thing, and you start cranking. Reel as fast as you can, and every couple turns give the rod a yank. Makes the fish think your lure is a frightened baitfish.”

  Kat frowned at her reel. “Like this?”

  I moved closer to her and adjusted her hands into the proper position. “This way,” I said. My arm rubbed against her bare shoulder. I stepped back. “Try it.”

  On her first attempt the line slipped off her finger and the Rapala splatted onto the beach behind her. “Shit,” she muttered. I laughed. “What’s so funny, Coyne?” she said.

  “You in that hat.”

  She reeled in and repeated the process. This time the plug slapped into the water almost at her feet. She turned to face me. “Don’t say a God damn thing.”

  I held my hands up in surrender. “I didn’t say a word.”

  “Yeah, well I know what you’re thinking. It’s a man’s sport. Right? Huh? Huh?”

  I shook my head emphatically. “No. That’s not what I was thinking at all.”

  She smiled. “Good.”

  “What I was thinking,” I said, “was that it’s a sport for coordinated people. That’s all.”

  She stuck out her tongue. “Up yours,” she said.

  “Which,” I observed, “may not make you a man, but it sure as hell shows you ain’t a lady.”

  “I thought you’d never notice.”

  The next time she got it right. It didn’t go far, but she did cast the plug in a satisfying arc out into the ocean.

  “Not bad. More oomph next time,”

  “That,” she said, “was a hell of a cast.”

  “For a lady, it would’ve been.”

  After a few more tries she seemed to get the hang of it. She became completely engrossed in the mechanics, frowning, biting her lip, and muttering to herself. I moved down the beach from her and began to cast.

  I found a pleasant, hypnotic rhythm in it, the sudden uncoiling energy of the cast and the long leisurely reeling in, accompanied in counterpoint by the muffled crash of waves and the gentler lapping of water against the fronts of my thighs. I did not regret the fact that no bluefish struck. Somehow it would have destroyed the harmony.

  After perhaps half an hour of it I waded out and sat on the beach. I jammed the butt of my rod into the sand and lit a cigarette. The sun had set behind us. The fishermen down the beach were black smudges on the light water. The sea seemed to have captured the daylight. It radiated a faint greenish fluorescence.

  Kat was in up to her hips. Des’s silly fishing cap sat cockeyed on her head. She seemed to be casting easily now. Her little cotton singlet was wet from the splash of the surf, and it clung to her body. I admired her grace, the pivot of her torso, the stretch and contraction of the smooth muscles of her arms and shoulders.

  As I smoked and watched Kat, I noticed that a cluster of gulls had materialized out beyond where her casts were landing. The birds were darting and diving at the water. I could hear their squawks and cries. They seemed to be moving directly toward Kat.

  I yelled at her, and she turned and cupped her ear. I pointed at the gulls. “Out there,” I shouted. “Baitfish. The blues’re chasing them.”

  She nodded and cast toward the birds. On her second attempt her rod suddenly arched forward. “Hey! I got one!” she shouted.

  I jogged toward her. “Keep your rod up and keep reeling,” I said when I was beside her.

  “I’m reeling in but the line is going out,” she said.

  “That’s all right. It’s the way the drag of the reel is set. So your line won’t break. It’ll tire your fish out, pulling against that.”

  “If it doesn’t tire me out first. Boy!”

  She gained line slowly. The blue was strong. When it found it couldn’t swim straight out to sea, it dashed off parallel with the beach. Kat turned it. Suddenly she said, “It’s gone.”

  “Reel in,” I said.

  “Damn. It’s gone.”

  Suddenly her rod bucked. “No it’s not,” she said.

  “He was swimming toward you. He’s tired now. Back up. You can beach him.”

  “He’s a big one, huh?” she said as the exhausted fish came lolling in on its side.

  “A beauty. Five or six pounds. Let me unhook him for you.”

  “No way, buster. Unhooking them is part of it, right?”

  I shrugged. “Be careful. They’ve got cruel teeth.”

  She knelt beside the fish and gingerly grabbed the plug where it was hooked onto the side of the fish’s mouth. The bluefish thrashed and flopped. Suddenly she said, “Ouch! Dammit!”

  The fish fell to the sand, flipped into the water, and after a moment of frenzied churning darted away. “Too bad,” I said. “Would’ve made a nice breakfast for Des.”

  “Brady…”

  I looked at her. Her face was contorted under Des’s ridiculous cap. She extended her left han
d toward me. The Rapala dangled from it like an ornament from a Christmas tree. Two hooks of the rear set of trebles were imbedded in the meaty part at the base of her thumb. I took her hand and examined it. “Both points are in over the barb. How bad does it hurt?”

  “Not bad,” she said between clenched teeth. Pain glittered in her eyes.

  “It’ll hurt more when I take them out.”

  I went to the tackle box and found the one absolutely essential item of fishing gear for the surfcaster, a sturdy pair of long-nosed pliers with built-in wire cutters. I went back and kneeled beside Kat. She clenched her bottom lip tightly between her teeth.

  “First,” I said, “we get rid of the plug. Hold on.”

  I cut the treble where it joined the Rapala. Now just the treble hook was left, two of the three hookpoints jammed deep into her hand. “Now comes the hard part.” I looked up into her eyes.

  “Go ahead,” she said.

  “I can’t back the hooks out. The barbs won’t allow it. I’m going to have to work the hooks forward all the way through so that they come out past the barbs. This will hurt. It would hurt anybody, so it’s okay to holler and curse if you feel like it. But I’ve got to snip off those barbs if we’re going to get the hooks out. Ready?”

  Her narrowed eyes met mine evenly. “Hurt me,” she whispered. “Just try it.”

  I nodded. I held the hook firmly and pushed, twisting it so that the pointed ends would reemerge from her flesh. There was no way to be gentle about it, so I didn’t try. The twin points broke her skin. A pair of droplets of blood appeared.

  “That was the hard part,” I muttered. I continued pushing until the barbs broke through. “Now hold steady so I can snip off those barbs.”

  She gripped her left wrist in her right hand. She did not quiver or flinch. I placed the pliers flat against her hand and snapped off first one barb and then the other. I looked up at her. “Okay?”

  She nodded firmly. “Okay.”

  I worked the debarbed hooks back out of her hand the way they had gone in. When they were out, she said, “Thank you.”

  “Had your shots?”

  “Yes.”

  “Suck on it,” I told her. “Try to make it bleed. When we get back you should soak it in hot salty water.”