Surface Tension

by Christine Kling

  The still air felt thick with humidity. Two little open boats anchored by the channel markers rolled uneasily in the small, glassy swells, and the Sunday fishermen watched our procession with little curiosity, their eyes still squinty with sleep, coffee mugs in their hands. A large white cruise ship passed us on her way into the port with surprisingly few people on deck. One man alone at the rail lifted a small child, who waved. I stepped out of the wheelhouse and waved back.

  About three-quarters of a mile beyond the sea buoy, Nestor started his wide turn. He circled around until he was following the last boat. He blew his air horn again, idled his engine down, and we all followed his lead. Soon we were all stopped, gently rolling on the light sea in a circle formation.

  Nestor spoke first, through his loud-hailer, telling a quick story about how Neal had once helped him out when a fat charter guest had fallen off the dock and Nestor hadn’t been able to hoist him out of the water alone. Neal had figured out a way to use the dock fish hoist as a derrick. Everyone laughed at the comments Neal had supposedly made. They were funny, although not kind.

  Then Jimmy told a story, with his loud-hailer in one hand, a can of Old Milwaukee in the other.

  “Neal Garrett knew boats. He knew every goddam thing there was to know about the sea, divin’, and boats.” He belched into the hailer and the crowd cheered and applauded. “One time, down ’n the Tortugas, Neal was anchored next to me on his little Wind Dancer when a squall come through, an’ it blew like stink. Most o’ them boats dragged an’ ended up on the beach that night, but not Neal’s. She hung in there while he spent the whole night helping everybody else get theirs off. He worked his butt off, even though he was the only fucker smart enough not to drag.” He held his beer can high. “To Neal.” Everybody cheered.

  Other people told their own stories after that, and I could feel eyes watching me, wondering what I would say or do, but I refused to be the star of this show. I could not eulogize a man I really did not believe was dead.

  The boats were drifting farther apart and the tales had died when Nestor finally threw a flower wreath into the sea. I sprinkled the bougainvillea blooms I had picked that morning onto the surface of the calm water.

  Nestor blew his air horn. On each and every boat, horns, whistles, bells, and sirens sounded, the cacophony as loud as the victory celebration after a championship game. They were celebrating Neal’s life. He would like that, I thought. It was a hell of a racket.

  The circle broke up, some of the boats heading out for a day of fishing, others heading back to the port. I was among the latter group.

  As I motored through the group of sailboats waiting for the Seventeenth Street Bridge to open, I saw George Rice, a broker I knew who actually wore a blue blazer and an ascot. He was puttering toward me in his launch, a varnished clinker hull with a silly-looking white awning with scalloped edges.

  “How’s it going, George?” I asked as he pulled his launch up alongside Gorda.

  “Fine, fine,” he said, waving his manicured hand in the air. “I saw Madagascar yesterday at Gulf Stream. He told me Gorda is about to come on the market, and I took the liberty of filling out a listing notice for you.” He looked around the aft deck, and flashed an expensive display of dental work my way.

  “George, Maddy only owns one third of this vessel.”

  “Really . . . hmmmm . . .” He was eying the boat, looking her up and down like a convict on his first night out in a singles’ bar.

  “She really is very unique, isn’t she? Is it too much to assume she’ll pass survey?”

  It was one thing for my brother to go behind my back and try to fist Gorda with a broker but when the broker started suggesting that she might not be sound, I couldn’t take it anymore.

  “George, Gorda’s not for sale. Take your listing agreement and cram it...” At that moment the bridge horn blew, and George Rice did not have the privilege of hearing my detailed description of what he could do with his contract.

  After securing the boat and hosing her down, I marched into the cottage, yanked the phone off the cradle, and dialed Maddy’s number.

  Jane answered.

  “Let me speak to my brother, Jane.”

  “He’s sleeping right now, Seychelle, and I don’t want to bother him. See—”

  “Jane, go in there and wake him up. It’s almost nine o’clock in the morning, for Pete’s sake. That asshole is trying to sell my boat out from under me to pay his gambling debts. Did you know he’s back at the track, Jane?”

  “Yes. But listen, Seychelle, he—”

  “I can’t believe you’re still making excuses for him. He’s a bum. He’s—”

  “Sey, somebody beat him up yesterday.”

  “What?”

  “Robbed him first. He was hurt pretty bad.”

  “Maddy?” I sat heavily on one of the barstools. “Yeah, he’d had a good day. He was coming home with nearly three grand. They jumped him in the parking lot.”

  “What’d they do to him?”

  “It’s bad. His face is a mess, and they broke two fingers. But thank God they didn’t kill him. They had a gun, he said. But he didn’t want to hand over the money; we need it bad. He looks awful. They had to fix his retina. They said he’ll never see right with that eye.”

  “Jane, I don’t know what to say. I’m really sorry.” I didn’t know my sister-in-law well, and I couldn’t find words that sounded right. “I... well, tell him I called. I guess I’ll try to talk to him when he’s feeling better.”

  “Sey, he said if you called, to tell you to take their offer and settle this.”

  “What?”

  “I don’t know what it means. He was all woozy from the pain pills and his mouth is all messed up, so he was really hard to understand. He made me repeat it. Take their offer and settle it, he said.”

  After I hung up the phone, I just sat there and stared for several minutes. When I finally began to comprehend the red light, it took me ages to pull my mind back to a conscious state. I blinked and hit the play button on the answering machine.

  “Miss Sullivan. Hamilton Burns. I have been authorized to make a final settlement offer in regards to your efforts in towing the Top Ten to port. You will receive fifteen thousand dollars, after which you will sign a waiver agreeing to have no further interests in the affairs of the vessel and the members of her crew, including any court testimony. I will expect your phone call, and we can meet in my offices on Las Olas. Miss Sullivan, I must impress upon you that it is in your best interests to agree to this settlement. These are very powerful and influential people, and they will reward you for your cooperation. On the other hand, if you refuse, they won’t hesitate to deal with you, Miss Sullivan.” Click.

  I turned the machine off and leaned on the counter my forehead resting on the heels of my hands. Deal with me? And how on earth did Maddy know about these offers from Burns? Whoever the real owner of the Top Ten was, he seemed to have an incredibly long reach. Right into my brother’s life.

  It must be the debt again. Someone he’d borrowed from was pushing his buttons.

  I pushed the speed-dial number for Jeannie. After four rings her answering machine picked up, and I hung up. She’d probably taken her boys to the beach. That sounded pretty good right about then. I used to try to go down to the beach almost every day, but it had been a while now since I’d taken the boat out for an ocean swim. Neal had been diving off the Top Ten. Maybe it was time to have a look around the place where all this started.

  I changed into my royal blue tank suit, then grabbed a beach towel and my keys. My scuba gear was gone, but I always kept an old mask in the dock box. I considered taking the Larsens’ Jet Ski, but my thirteen-foot Boston Whaler was up in davits at the far end of the seawall. I hadn’t run it in over a month, and I didn’t want the fuel in the carburetor going bad from lack of use. I was glad when the twenty-five-horse Merc fired up at the first turn of the key. Abaco jumped down off the seawall, her tongue lolling and her tail
wagging. She knew where I was headed. She loved to swim, too, and wasn’t about to be left behind.

  Once I got the Whaler outside the entrance channel, I opened her up. Abaco had always been a daredevil bow rider and a trip in the Whaler, nose in the wind, was even better than going for a car ride. She stood all the way in the front of the boat, her ears blowing back, her legs bending to the boat’s motion. There wasn’t too much chop, but we pounded a little on the wind waves as we headed up the coast. I throttled down, searching about for approximately the same spot where the Top Ten had been drifting when I found her. There are very few reference points out on the ocean, and even with the coastline on one side, I knew I could be off by up to half a mile.

  I started from the shallows where the yacht had wallowed and headed southeast, offshore, the direction from which the Top Ten would have drifted, allowing for the current and wind. When the water turned dark blue, I dropped the anchor over like a lead line to measure the depth. I had about twenty feet of line left when it touched. So, about eighty feet deep. I pulled the anchor back up. I didn’t want to snag it on anything at that depth without my scuba gear. There was all kinds of junk on the ocean floor off the coast of Fort Lauderdale. South Florida has a very active artificial reef program. They take rusty old ships, barges, even a jet airplane, tow them to the spot where they want to create a reef, and then blow holes in them and sink them to make underwater habitats for fish—and anchor snares for unwary boaters.

  I cut the engine on the Whaler and just let her drift. In the bow locker, I found the dive flag, stuck the pole in the flag holder on the stern, and flipped over the side the old piece of carpet that I had tied to a couple of cleats. That way Abaco could climb her way back into the boat by herself—her claws could get a grip on the carpet better than on the slick fiberglass. The dinghy painter on the Whaler was an extra-long length of nylon line I used whenever I towed the little boat behind the tug. I tied the rope around my waist, grabbed my mask, and slipped into the water. It was freezing, probably all the way down to seventy-two degrees. Abaco barked at me a couple of times, and then she dove in, too.

  The visibility wasn’t great, but I could make out some shadowy shapes. Several threads of silver bubbles wound their way to the surface. Scuba divers. I tried to pick them out in the blurry murk. Two of them. I lifted my head and looked around for their boat. There to the east, about a quarter mile off, was a twenty-foot Sea Ray. From the line angling off the bow, it was obvious she was anchored, but it looked like she was slowly dragging. Not surprising in this depth. It shouldn’t be a problem for them, though. They could swim to it.

  From the corner of my eye, I could see Abaco’s legs underwater doing that mechanical even-stroked dog paddle of hers. She circled around me.

  The divers were swimming across the sand and grass bottom, heading toward a big dark shadow just to the south of us. I wasn’t sure whether it was natural coral or an artificial reef. I untied the line around my waist and began hyperventilating, fooling my brain into thinking that it had plenty of oxygen. Then I took an extra-large breath and dove.

  I’ve always preferred free diving to scuba. There is no rasp and burble of air drawn in and out through a regulator. It’s quiet except for the distant buzz of propellers far away, the pop and crackle of tiny oceanic shrimp, and the crinkling noise as I squeeze my nose, popping my ears during the descent. Since I’d started practicing, the length of time I could hold my breath had grown longer and now I could stay down for over two minutes. My deepest free dive was to sixty-five feet. But not today, not without fins. I did get down deep enough, though, to see the scuba divers. The divers were about twenty feet off the bottom, swimming toward what looked like a small wrecked freighter. Judging from the number of holes in the thing, it was no accident that brought it to rest on the seabed. It definitely had been sunk intentionally, probably part of the artificial reef system.

  It was also obvious that these divers were weekend warriors, not dive junkies. No expense had been spared in the gear they wore. I knew their type: more money than experience, and they bought everything the dive shop guys suggested. The smaller guy even had a bang stick strapped to his leg for shark protection. It was a pressure-sensitive device that when jammed into the side of an overly friendly shark would fire off a single shot gun shell. It worked, but you were more likely to hurt yourself diving with the equivalent of a gun strapped to your leg.

  The bigger one noticed me, and I waved. I always felt superior to scuba divers. I felt free as a dolphin. He touched his partner’s arm and pointed up.

  There was something familiar about the smaller guy. I used my last reserves of air to swim a little deeper. Just as I began kicking for the surface, it hit me: his black hair floating upward around the top of his mask, the dark inkblot of a tattoo on his right hand, last night at the Mai Kai. Cesar Esposito.

  By the time I hit the surface, the black was beginning to close in around the periphery of my vision. I had come too close to passing out. Abaco had climbed back into the Whaler already, and she was barking like crazy. She hated it when I dived. I rolled onto my back and floated for several seconds, my eyes closed, waiting for my breath and strength to return.

  Cesar Esposito! I pictured him leaning over James Long’s shoulder and the feeling that I had seen him somewhere before last night returned. My eyes popped open, I rolled over and I began swimming fast and furiously for the Whaler.

  I pulled myself over the gunwale, threw my mask onto the floor of the boat, and scrambled for the varnished bench behind the wheel. The outboard sputtered and died at the first turn of the key. I glanced back at the engine, and in the distance, I saw the divers at their Sea Ray. Esposito was already in the boat, reaching over the transom and grabbing for his buddy’s gear. The other diver climbed onto the swim step. He towered over Cesar. Even at this distance, I could tell he was huge; his chest and arm muscles were so big, his arms couldn’t swing comfortably at his sides. He reminded me of a cormorant, the way they stand on rocks or buoys, their wings spread wide, trying to dry them.

  I tried the key again. No go. Nothing but dying whines from my little starter battery.

  Both men had dropped their scuba gear. I heard their big twin Johnsons roar to life. Shit.

  Yanking the cover off the Merc with one hand, I reached into the stern locker with the other and pulled out my can of quick-start ether. I sprayed the carburetor keeping my head turned upwind.

  Cesar was on the bow of the Sea Ray, bent over, pulling in their anchor line.

  The Merc coughed to life on the next try. The Whaler was pointing north, away from the inlet, but I jammed it in gear and shoved the throttle to the max.

  I looked back over my shoulder. Now both men were on the bow of their boat, their butts up in the air yanking on their anchor line. Whatever their anchor had snagged on, all that beef wasn’t budging it. The bigger guy looked up when he heard my engine rev up. I turned back toward the inlet in a wide arc and waved to them as I passed.

  Seeing them together had made me remember the night on the beach with Ely. I was looking at Big Guy and Shorty.

  XIII

  It was nearly one o’clock in the afternoon when I parked on the south side of Bimini Lane and fed the meter all three of my quarters before crossing over to Harbor House. I didn’t see James’s Jag anywhere on the street, but for all I knew there might be a fancy employees’ garage behind the buildings somewhere. It was my fervent hope that he wouldn’t be there on a Sunday afternoon and I’d get a chance to talk to Sonya alone. Minerva was on the desk again, and she buzzed me into the building with a smile. I didn’t smile back.

  “May I speak to Mr. Long, please?”

  “I’m sorry, he isn’t in on Sunday. Would you like to make an appointment to see him on Monday?”

  Excellent, I thought.

  “Damn,” I said.

  Minerva looked at me with arched eyebrows.

  I plastered an on-the-verge-of-tears look on my face. “I guess I’l
l have to tell her parents that I just couldn’t do it.”

  “Who?”

  “The Daggetts. Elysia’s parents asked me to stop by and pick up some of her things.”

  “Well, miss, I don’t really have the authority . . .”

  “They wanted me to speak to her friend Sonya, too, because . . . well, you know how parents are. They just have to find out everything she did on that last day. It’s all they have left now.”

  Minerva scrunched her brows together and pursed her lips. The fine web of wrinkles deepened around her eyes and lips. “Well, I don’t see any harm in that. Specially seeing as the two girls were roommates and all. You should have told me right off. You don’t need Mr. Long’s permission for that.”

  She picked up the phone and dialed an in-house extension. “Sonya? There’s a lady here who’d like to talk to you about Elysia. You got a minute? . . . Uh-huh . . . Okay. I’ll send her on back.”

  James hadn’t mentioned Sonya was Ely’s roommate.

  Minerva pointed to the door opposite her desk. “Just go on through to room twelve. I’ll open it for you. It’ll be on your right. She’s expecting you.”

  “Thanks.” When I reached the door a buzzer sounded and the lock released.

  The bedroom door opened within seconds after I knocked. Neither one of us said a word at first, although we recognized each other. She was the blond girl who had run into James in the hallway yesterday. He’d called her Sunny. There was open distrust in her eyes.

  “May I come in?”

  I saw the gap in the door start to close, so I pushed my way in and just started talking.

  “Thank you so much for seeing me like this. I know it must be very hard on you, losing a friend like that.” I crossed to the far side of the small room, noticing the open suitcase on the unmade bed. I pointed to the other bed. “Was this Elysia’s bed?” She nodded.