Surface Tension

by Christine Kling

  “Where is Matt? I need to talk to him.”

  “That’s the other thing. He’s gone. Left town awful fast. Said he was headed up to Newport to find a job up there.”

  “Man . . . that is strange. Neal was a pretty decent mechanic, but he wasn’t good enough to keep the engine and generator running on the Top Ten. And owners of a boat like that surely wouldn’t cheap out on keeping an engineer.”

  I turned to Raymond to see if he had anything else to offer. “Lady, I don’ like da people Neal was workin’ for.”

  “Do you know anything about them? Who they are?”

  “I don’ know dey names.” He pushed his shades down his nose and looked at me over the top of the dark glass. “But I see dey bad men. Be careful wit dem, lady.”

  On my way back home, as I crossed over the Seventeenth Street Causeway, I noticed the soot-colored clouds building up out over the Everglades. It was still sunny here along the coast, but it wouldn’t be for much longer not once the dropping sun slid behind that dark wall. It was early in the year for that summer weather pattern.

  My last stop was at Lauderdale Divers. When I pulled the Jeep into the parking space in front of their display window, I saw an example of a typical hookah rig in their window. It was a small compressor mounted inside an inner tube. It was similar to the compressor Red had on the Gorda, although ours was not portable or floatable. These little compressors didn’t have big accumulator tanks like the one on the Top Ten.

  A couple of cruise-ship-type tourists were browsing through the T-shirt display, but otherwise, the fellow at the back of the store was alone, immersed in an issue of Scuba Diver magazine.

  “Hello?”

  He dropped the magazine. “Hi, what can I do for you?” He was about fifty, with graying hair, and he had that grizzled, squinty-eyed, old-time diver look.

  “I just want to ask you some questions about compressors.”

  “Do you want to use it for tank fills or for hookah diving?”

  “I don’t want to buy one. But I saw a compressor on a boat, and I’m trying to figure out what it might have been used for.” I reached into my shoulder bag and pulled out the info I had copied off the side of the compressor. I showed it to him.

  “That’s not a dive compressor. See, right here it says ‘contractor.’ That unit would be used for running air tools. On a boat, you don’t need to keep the air like they do. We put it right into the scuba tanks, so we don’t use the big accumulators.”

  “What kind of air tools?”

  “Could be anything: air hammers, nailers, impact drivers. Mechanics use them a lot. You know, like the tools you’ve seen when they change your tires in a garage.”

  I nodded. The older woman from the front of the store walked back carrying a Divers Do It Deeper T-shirt and asked if she could try it on. He pointed to the back of the store, then went back to his magazine.

  “Do you have any idea what someone would use that compressor for on board a ninety-two-foot Broward?”

  He raised his eyebrows and looked out the window across the parking lot. “Not a clue,” he said. “But he sure as hell wasn’t using it to breathe.” He went back to his magazine.

  Neal had done enough work in boatyards over the years to know his way around tools. What was he planning? Was he going to build something? I wished I’d had more time to look around on the boat. Maybe the tools themselves would have told me what it was he had in mind.

  I wandered over to the glass case the diver guy was leaning on and examined the books and charts on display there. One book, Diving Locations, particularly caught my eye.

  “Could I see a copy of this?” I asked him.

  He sighed, moved behind the counter, and handed me the book. I flipped through the pages. It was a collection of all the coordinates of the major wrecks and reefs off the South Florida coast.

  “They’re not all in there. That’s over a year old now. Been some sunk since then.”

  “Some what?”

  “Ships, barges, whatever. You know, artificial reefs.” His voice took on a different quality as he launched into this well-rehearsed explanation. “We have some coral off our coast here, but mostly it’s just a sand bottom. In order to have fish, there have to be places for the fish to hide. You take an old abandoned shipwreck, and after it’s been on the bottom awhile, it will be full of little fish—and where there are little fish, there will soon be big fish trying to eat them. Divers love to dive on shipwrecks, and since these days ships just don’t sink often enough, we make our own. They’re sinking new shit out there nearly every other month. Keeps me happy—more places to dive, more people will go diving. It’s good for business. You interested in going out for a dive?”

  “No, just curious, that’s all.”

  He tapped a newspaper clipping pinned to a bulletin board on the wall behind the counter. “You’d like this one here—she’s new, the Bahama Belle, a nice little freighter. She’s going to be real rich when she gets a little more growth on her. It takes a while, you know. They sink this stuff so the fish will have hiding places, but they also need the food source. Right now, there’s not enough coral or algae growth there to support much of a fish population.”

  I squinted at the blurry black-and-white photo of a vessel surrounded by puffs of white smoke.

  “So that’s all people are interested in, huh, fish? Do you think somebody could find anything of value on any of these wrecks?”

  He laughed. “Are you kidding? First of all, the Coasties have guys strip these ships clean of everything before they sink ’em. Then they blow holes in every single compartment to make sure that divers can’t get caught in any little holes. Then there’s hundreds of divers a week exploring all over these things. Honey, you couldn’t find diddly-squat on one of these wrecks.”

  I handed him back his book. “Hmmm. Okay, well, thanks for all your help. See ya.”

  I paused on the sidewalk outside the store and took a last look at the hookah equipment in the dive store window. The hand on my arm was totally unexpected because I had not heard the slightest sound of his approach.

  “Hey, lady,” he said, and I jumped, yanked my arm from his grasp, and backed off, ready to run. James Long was staring at me, equally startled by my reaction. “I didn’t mean to scare you.” He held his hands up in the air and I noticed he was wearing a white martial- arts getup, and even that outfit was ironed, with sharp creases on the sleeves. “It seems every time I touch you, you bolt like a startled deer.”

  I laughed. “Geez, James, I was a million miles away. I didn’t even hear you come up on me.” I didn’t go into the fact that somebody had tried to kill me last night, and that does tend to make one a little jumpy.

  He looked at the name of the store written across the top of the window and raised one eyebrow. “So the lady captain is a diver, too?”

  I tried, unsuccessfully, to raise one eyebrow as well. “And the gentleman executive is a kung fu artist?”

  He flashed those incredibly white teeth of his at me again, and I felt like an idiot grinning back at him. “Tai chi, actually. I like the study of the Taoist philosophy, and it keeps me in shape, teaches me things about the body. I try to come for classes here several times a week.” He pointed a few doors down to a storefront with Chinese characters across the front window and the words Florida Kung Fu and Tai Chi Chuan. “Don’t suppose you’d be willing to join me for a late lunch?”

  Truth be told, I was starving. My eating habits these last few days would have had Red steaming mad. He was always trying to get me to eat more regularly. He claimed I preferred to graze, eating only when I was hungry. The thing was, though, I needed to get back to the cottage and call Jeannie. I’d promised B.J.

  “James, I’m tempted, but I’ve really got to get back. If you’ve got a second, though, there is something I’d like to talk to you about.”

  “Certainly, Seychelle. How can I help you?”

  “I went by Harbor House yesterday.” I decid
ed not to get into his little deception about Sunny/Sonya when I’d first met him on Saturday. “When I was leaving, I heard Minerva on the phone with somebody named Burns. Do you know Hamilton Burns, an attorney?”

  “Of course. We’ve been involved in legal matters with Mr. Burns on several occasions. He is very well known in this town.”

  “What kind of legal matters?”

  “I’m sorry, Seychelle, I really can’t discuss that with you. You realize, of course, that there is a very sensitive side to what I do. Sometimes these runaways come from families that would rather not let it be known that their little darlings ended up on the streets. They want to make any criminal charges go away and whisk them back to their former lives. Burns helps them with that.”

  “That’s not right.”

  “It’s not a bad thing. What about the ones no one ever misses? Look, are you sure you won’t join me?” he went on. “We could continue this conversation over margaritas over at Carlos and Pepe’s?” He pointed to the restaurant across the parking lot.

  I sighed and looked at him and came real close to giving in and going. James Long was damned likable. Some other day, when all this is over I thought, if we are both left standing when the dust clears, I would really like to get to know him better.

  XIX

  I was about to turn onto my street when I noticed the white unmarked car parked across and a few doors up from the Larsen place. The thunderheads had cast an early dusk over the street, but I could still make out two shadowy figures sitting in the front seat. I just kept driving right into the cul-de-sac, where the street dead-ended at the New River. I parked the Jeep and climbed over the wood fence around the Martinez place. The fences on these riverfront properties, when there were any, ran only to the seawall.

  The Larsens’ yard was clear. I didn’t even see B.J. around. I had hoped he might be on the Gorda piecing that head back together, but no such luck. Once inside my cottage, I knew I had to do something about food. It was already past four and I hadn’t eaten a thing since the quick meal I’d grabbed from Burger King the night before. I rummaged through my cupboards, finally coming up with the last dented can of Campbell’s bean-with-bacon soup. While it cooked in the microwave, I tried Jeannie’s number again, and amazingly, she picked up on the second ring.

  “Jeannie, it’s Seychelle.”

  “Oh, thank God. I was just about ready to call the police and report you as a missing person. Honey, you’ve got to stop worrying me like this. You’ve got to check in

  more often. These are not nice people you’re playing around with.”

  “This is not something you need to tell me, trust me, Jeannie. I’ll tell you all about that in a bit, but first, have you found out anything sure about the owners yet?”

  “Okay, well, here’s the deal. Everywhere I turned, I kept getting the door slammed in my face. Finally, I decided the only way I was going to get through was to use a little deceit. I won’t go into details, but suffice it to say I could get disbarred over this one. Anyway, I was right, it’s Benjamin Crystal still . . . he never really sold the boat. Well, I mean, he sold it, but he sold it to himself. The company that owns the boat is located in the Caymans and it goes through subsidiaries of larger corporations, but it all comes back to Mr. Benjamin Crystal.”

  “That son of a bitch.”

  “He is that.”

  “That’s not exactly what I meant.” Neal had known all along. He had to have known, he was captain of the boat. All that bullshit he’d given me about how it would be different once the boat was sold. Lies. All lies. “What does this mean to us, Jeannie? To my salvage claim?”

  “Well, it’s not going to be easy. I couldn’t exactly explain to a court of law the way I found out. I think we should continue dealing with Burns. I’ll fire him another counteroffer and let’s keep our knowledge of the real owner as our trump card.”

  “Okay, that sounds good.”

  Suddenly someone started pounding on the front door. My heart felt like it was trying to leap out of my chest. Abaco began to bark.

  “Seychelle, open the goddamn door.”

  Abaco stopped barking, and she was wagging her tail. We both recognized that voice. “Honey,” Jeannie said, “what is going on over there?”

  “I thought for a second it was the cops, but it’s my brother, Maddy. I’ve got to go, Jeannie. Call Burns and then call me back. Talk to you later.”

  Maddy strode in with his face looking like a bruised, overripe peach. One eye was covered with gauze and bandages, his lip was swollen and split with black knotted thread holding the two halves together and the swellings on his cheek and forehead were that greenish purple color of day-old bruises and bottle flies. Metal splints like birdcages surrounded the index and middle fingers of his right hand. He headed straight for the fridge, opened the door, and helped himself to a beer. Popping the top one-handedly, he settled on the low couch with a loud exhale.

  “We gotta talk.” He gulped the beer.

  “You really look awful. What are you doing out of bed?”

  “I’ve got a business to run. Family to support. You don’t look so good yourself.”

  I rubbed the bruise on my temple. “Yeah, well, long story.”

  “I need the money. Now, Seychelle.”

  “Maddy, I’ve got the cops sitting out front watching for me—they’re probably on their way back here right now. I don’t have time for this. You’ve got to get out of here.” Standing over him, I tried to pull him up off the couch.

  “I came here to say something and I’m gonna say it. Settle this salvage business and sell the boat. That’s it.”

  “Maddy, what the hell is happening with you? You know I’ll fight you any way I can on this—that boat’s my life.”

  He lowered his face into his hands. He was still for the longest time.

  I sat down next to him and put my arm around him. He shook me off, irritated.

  Sinking back into the far corner of the couch, I tried breathing slowly. Stop reacting like a twelve-year-old, I told myself. Calm down, relax. “Maddy,” I said in a soft voice, “can you tell me what this is really all about? What have you got yourself into?”

  At first he didn’t say anything. I was tense, poised for flight, not sure what my volatile big brother might burst out with.

  “They sent me over here, Sey.” He spoke quietly, his hands on his knees, and then he stuck out his chin, letting me get a good look. “See my face? The people who did this to me—they sent me over here to talk to you. I owe ’em . . . shit, I don’t even want to tell you how much. I know it was stupid, but like every other goddamn sucker out there, I thought I would win.” He shook his head and sighed. “Anyways, they’re threatening to take my boat. I got a family, Seychelle. There ain’t squat I can do besides take assholes out fishing. I know you can always go back to lifeguarding or something. Hell, you’re really smart, you could go back to college and get out of boats for good. You and Pit, you were always the smart ones—you could do anything. Not me. I can’t lose that boat. They told me to make you settle with them—to call in the debt on the Gorda, to put the screws on you so you’d see things their way. They said if you don’t help them out, they’re gonna hurt you, bad.”

  “What are you talking about, Maddy? Who are these people you keep referring to as ‘they’?”

  “See, that’s just it, Seychelle. You ask too many questions. I’m at the track and I’m losing, and some guy tells me that if I call this other guy, he can loan me some money. I don’t ask for no references. I don’t really want to know who the guy is. The point is, I owe these guys a lot of money. And now they’re sending some dude about as wide as he is tall to play basketball with my head in the track parking lot. He’s saying, ‘Shut your sister up, we want her out of the salvage business for good.’ They beat the crap out of me because I can’t make you cooperate, and they’re going after you next. Only next time it won’t just be a beating.”

  “It doesn’t make sense,
Maddy. What do loan sharks at the track have to do with what happened on the Top Ten?”

  “Like I said, Sey, you ask too many questions. If you want to save both our boats, and butts, then just shut the fuck up, take their money, tell them whatever they want to know, and count yourself lucky.”

  Maddy stood and crushed the beer can in his good fist as though to punctuate his sentiments. He walked over to the counter and lifted the photo of me and Neal I had found on the Top Ten. He squinted as though trying to recognize the people in the picture. “What do you reckon happened to Neal?”

  “I don’t have any idea, Maddy.” I snatched the photo from his hands and slid it out of sight into the zippered side pocket of my shoulder bag along with the photo of my mother and us kids I’d rescued from my trashed cottage.

  “If he was still alive,” he said, “I suppose he’d probably contact you—if he contacted anybody. These guys I’ve been talking about, they’d pay a lot of money to know where Neal is—enough money to get me out of debt for good.”

  “I don’t know any more about it than you do.” “Seems Neal was mixed up with these people pretty deep. Wouldn’t make sense for you to protect him, after the way he treated you and all.”

  He never was very subtle, my brother but I had always at least thought he would honor family loyalty. It appeared he had sold out loyalty to anybody but himself a long time ago.

  “That’s it. Just shut up and get out of here, Maddy. I’m going to take care of it. If they ask again, you tell your ‘friends’ that I don’t know anything about Neal. In the meantime, I am going to come up with some way to get us all out of this. I can’t get you out of debt—that’s your problem—but I am not going to let anybody else get beat up or killed.” With that I shoved him out the door and shut it in his face.

  I wished I could believe what I’d just said.

  Through the closed door I heard him say, “Leave it be, Seychelle. Listen to me. Don’t fuck with them.”