“You were both young,” Thorn said.
“That’s no excuse,” Sugarman said.
“Something good came out of it,” said Thorn. “The girls.”
Sugarman was silent. Eyes closed, worry creasing his forehead.
Thorn watched a shadow stealing along the shoreline. Raccoon probably, or maybe a possum. There’d been an outbreak of rabies lately and the health department was trying to catch all the varmints they could. Last week Thorn put out his one cage baited with peanut butter, but so far, nobody had dropped by. They were probably holding out for extra-crunchy.
“A guy dressed like a pirate?” Thorn said.
Sugar opened his eyes and nodded solemnly.
“Bandanna on his head, knife between the teeth, yeah.”
“Had to be a joke,” said Thorn. “Too goddamn goofy to be real.”
“Yeah,” Sugarman said. “A birthday party thing.”
“Had to be,” Thorn said.
Eleven
“‘If I own a cow,’” Lawton said, “‘the cow owns me.’”
They were having breakfast at the long picnic table on the upstairs porch overlooking Blackwater Sound. The water was iron gray and kicking up. Thorn noticed in the stiller water close to shore the V of ripples spreading out behind the fin of a bonnet head shark.
“And who said that, Dad?”
Alexandra sat beside the old man. She had on a white polo shirt and blue jeans and tennis shoes. Her long hair was tied back in a ponytail and her dark eyes sparkled quietly in the rising light. She didn’t look like a woman who’d seen a thousand corpses. A woman who’d probably see twice that many more before she retired.
“Ralph Waldo Emerson said it. The famous American Buddhist.”
Lawton brushed a crumb off the chest of his white T-shirt and reset the blue baseball cap, tightening it down on his thick white hair.
Through the open bedroom door Thorn could see Sugarman perched on the edge of the bed with his cell phone pressed to his ear. Sugar wore the same faded black jeans and blue work shirt he’d had on yesterday. Wrinkled and saturated with the harsh essence of his fatigue and anxiety.
A minute earlier he’d finally gotten through to his ex-wife, Jeannie, and now he was hunched forward, listening to her voice. Even from twenty feet away Thorn could hear her metallic screech. Sugarman looked up with a pained squint, then stooped back down to endure more of the chewing out.
“I think Emerson was a poet, Dad. And a New England minister.”
“Jesus, girl. You’re always looking for something to argue about. Just like your mother. So goddamned contrary. I don’t know how I endured it all those years. All that negativity. Nag, nag, nag.”
“You loved Mother, Dad. You two never fought.”
“If you want to believe that, go ahead. Live in a goddamn dreamworld.”
Alex flinched, her right hand drifting up from her lap, moving to her face. With her palm she smoothed away the bruised clench in her mouth. Thorn could see in her eyes that she was struggling to locate the reservoir of patience. “Only words, only words.” That was the mantra she and Thorn had been using lately, but with limited success.
She watched her father pour more syrup on his stack, then use a forkful of pancakes to sop up some of the bacon grease that glittered on the edge of his plate. He wedged the flapjacks into his mouth, then spoke around the unchewed lump.
“A man can be a Buddhist and not even know it,” Lawton said. “Take me. I thought I was a Catholic, now I come to find out I been a Buddhist all along.”
“More flapjacks?” Thorn offered the plate around, and when no one accepted he speared another.
“‘If I own a cow, the cow owns me,’” Lawton said to Thorn. “That’s a line from Ralph Emerson, the famous New England Buddhist.”
Lawton looked sternly at Alexandra, daring her to contradict him.
“I knew about your dog,” Thorn said. “But I didn’t realize you owned a cow, too.”
Lawton used his knife and fork to straighten up the remaining stack on his plate, then he sliced them into ten neatly identical pie wedges.
“I don’t own a cow,” Lawton said. “I don’t own anything.”
“What about the dog?” said Thorn.
“I don’t own Lawton. Hell, I didn’t pay anything for him. He was free. So it doesn’t apply.”
“But you have to keep him up, food, vet bills. That costs something.”
“You asking me to let that pup starve to death? That what you want?”
Alexandra sighed and pushed her plate away. They’d been trying, whenever they could, to use logic on the old man, force him to stay on the steel rails of reason. And though it seemed to work okay some of the time, more and more lately Lawton would veer off into absurdity.
Beneath the table Thorn felt the puppy sit up and lean against his leg. The scent of bacon stirring him awake. Lawton had bathed and brushed him and his coat was gleaming and smelled like lilacs.
“You’ll have to excuse me, gentlemen,” Alex said. “Miami calls. Thanks for the carbs, Thorn. You’re a masterful chef.”
“Wait’ll you taste my toasted cheese sandwich.”
“It’s a date.”
“I loved your mother, goddamn it.” Lawton’s eyes glossed and there was a small tremble in his jaw. “I loved her bones. Her lips and eyes, the smell of her hair. We never raised our voices to each other. Not in forty years. And don’t say we did, Alexandra. Because it’s not true.”
“I know,” she said. “I know.”
Alexandra looked at her father for a moment more, then took her plate inside, rinsed it, and went into the bathroom to touch up her minimal makeup.
A minute or two later Lawton lost interest in his breakfast and he stood up and wandered down to the yard. The puppy followed, cantering along beside him as unsteady as a child in outsize galoshes. The Lab nipped at the old man’s bare ankles, inviting him to play. The two of them came to a halt in the tall grass that grew in the shade of the tamarind tree and Lawton lay back in the grass and the puppy settled in beside him and the two of them fell into an almost immediate doze.
Thorn was washing the dishes when Sugarman came striding out of the bedroom. His face was pale and the skin was as pinched as a man rocketing out of the pull of the Earth’s gravity. He snapped his cell phone shut and jammed it into the front pocket of his jeans.
“She never misses an opportunity to slam you.” Thorn rinsed the soap off a plate and set it in the drying rack.
“There weren’t any pirates scheduled for the birthday party,” Sugar said.
Thorn ran some water over his hands and toweled them off and followed Sugarman out onto the porch.
“She’s sure of that?”
“No pirates, no harem slaves, nothing like that. Markham left out of Morada Bay Marina down in Islamorada and was supposed to be back by ten-thirty last night. The whole gang had reservations at Cheeca and everyone was going to hang out on the beach this morning, then drive back to Lauderdale later today.”
“She hasn’t heard from him?”
Sugarman shook his head.
“Never checked into the motel. Doesn’t answer his cell.”
“We have to call the Coast Guard.”
“Jeannie’s doing it. She says I blew it once already. I can’t be trusted. According to her, I should’ve stamped my feet last night, made a big fuss, got them going. I’m a worthless wimp. She says I didn’t have enough gumption to protect my own daughter. And I think maybe she’s right.”
Thorn moved up beside Sugar and put a hand on his shoulder.
“Bullshit. You did what you could with the information you had. You were trying to get the facts. You were staying calm, thinking it through.”
“I should’ve done something right then. At least we could’ve taken out the Heart Pounder, gone looking for her.” Sugarman waved out at Thorn’s ancient cabin cruiser moored at the coral dock. “But hell, no, I’m dillydallying around here in the middl
e of the night, digging my toe in the dirt, acting like some gutless civilian without a clue.”
“We’ll take the Heart Pounder,” Thorn said. “It’s gassed up.”
“What about Lawton? You’re supposed to watch him.”
“He’s always up for a boat ride. I’ll get the keys; we’ll go out to the shipping lanes, get on the radio, see if anybody’s seen anything.”
“Goddamn guy dressed like a pirate,” Sugarman said. “It’s too weird.”
“You know better,” said Thorn. “This is the Keys. Nothing’s too weird.”
Narrow pressure gradients were squeezing a thirty-knot wind out of the east, kicking up five-foot swells even at the mouth of North Creek on the way out of Largo Sound. A clear sky, no sign of rain, but as blustery as the leading edge of a hurricane. And though the bulky Heart Pounder plowed smoothly enough through the waves, the rhythmic rise and fall of the deck was more than the puppy could endure. About a mile offshore, Lawton, the dog, stumbled toward the transom and began to dry heave. He chose a spot near the transom, strained his neck forward, and unloaded his breakfast in a strangled rush.
“Oh, well,” Lawton said. “Little guy has to get his sea legs sooner or later.”
While Lawton used buckets of seawater to wash down the deck, Sugarman stayed on the VHF radio, talking to the Coast Guard station operator. It was half past nine, a standard-issue May morning, already easing toward ninety degrees, eighty percent humidity, a few downy cumulus bloomed along the horizon. Overhead, riding the mile-high currents, a single frigate bird shadowed them like a dark angel.
Hunched down out of the rush of wind, Sugarman thumbed the mike of the scratchy VHF, spoke in rapid sentences, then leaned his ear close to the speaker. A long burst of something closer to static than language crackled back. Thorn watched as Sugarman shook his head and the microphone dropped from his hand and bounced at the end of its spiral cord.
Backing off the throttle, Thorn waited for Sugar to join him at the wheel.
“What is it? You hear something?”
“Not good. Not good at all.”
Back by the transom, Lawton was on his knees scrub-brushing the last of the mess. The puppy nipped at the bristles while the old man worked.
“They found bodies,” Sugarman said.
“Aw, shit.”
“Coast Guard and Marine Patrol are working the scene. They said we could come on out, but we have to stay out of the search zone. Bodies are snagged on the anchor buoys at Carysfort Reef.”
Thorn rammed the throttle forward, cut the wheel so they swung around into the stiff, quartering sea. The Heart Pounder battered the swells and the rear deck was drenched in spray. The pup shook water from his coat and went sliding into the starboard hull.
“No sign of Janey,” Sugarman said. “That’s the good news. No sign of the boat, either.”
“And the bodies?”
“One female, late sixties, early seventies, wearing a ball gown. One old male in white pants, a red ascot. Shot in the head. Execution style.”
“Ball gown, ascot?” Thorn said. “Does that sound like Markham?”
Sugarman’s eyes searched the middle distance.
“The idiots in his inner circle take this past lives bullshit seriously. A date with Markham is prom night for these people. Get out the patent-leather shoes and the tuxes. Yeah, that’s them.”
“Christ, Sugar.”
“It’s okay,” he said. “It’s going to be okay.”
Sugar patted Thorn on the back. Comforting him. The way he always did when the shit rained down, bucking up his buddies—more concerned about them than the steel shaft buried in his own heart.
It was probably some syndrome with a fancy name, some blood disorder that could be cured with long-term therapy. Chronic altruism, post-traumatic selflessness. It was how Sugar had been since childhood. Some inborn alchemy transformed his anger or grief into serenity, as if the grimmest moments triggered some spurt of psychic morphine. More than once Thorn had tried to use Sugar as his model. Tried to smooth his own ragged breath, flatten the spike in his blood. But it was no use. Thorn’s emotional fulcrum tilted hard in the other direction. A tinderbox forever on the verge of conflagration.
A head-on slam into the face of a wave sent Lawton lurching into Thorn’s back, their arms briefly tangling like bedmates waking from conflicting dreams.
“You want me to put the trolling lines out?” Lawton said.
“We’re not fishing, Lawton.”
“Good sailfish weather.”
“Not today, Lawton.”
“Not fishing?”
“No, we’re just taking a boat ride. That’s all. A little fresh air.”
“Well, you picked a damn shitty day for pleasure boating.”
“Maybe you should go down below. Stay dry.”
“I’m all right,” the old man said. “But little Lawton’s a bit on the queasy side. Then again, if he’s going to be a boat dog, he’ll damn well have to get used to rough seas. That’s what we Buddhists say: ‘It’s not the same to talk of bulls as to be in the bullring.’”
Sugarman peered at the horizon, face into the spray, the bow hammering wave after wave. As they worked into deeper water, the wind stiffened and the swells rose to seven and eight feet. Not dangerous yet, but banging that old wood hull pretty good. In the troughs, they lost touch with the horizon. Just the foamy crests blocking the sky, then they wallowed back up the cliff for a quick view and slid down the other side. The deck was slick, and seawater piled up at the scuppers. Behind him, Lawton swayed and stumbled, gripping hard to the handrail and chattering to himself—more wisdom from the East.
Thorn fought the wheel until his hands were crabbed and nearly useless, his arms on the verge of cramping. By the time they sighted the lighthouse tower at Carysfort he was ready to give up boating, move to Kansas, plant his feet forever in the firm soil of the heartland.
On the eastern edge of the reef they spotted the Coast Guard cutter and a couple of Marine Patrol cruisers working. Sugarman got on the radio and asked one more time if they could assist with the search. When he got the response, he settled the microphone back in its slot.
“Stay where we are.” His gaze drifted to the cutter. “This is a crime scene.”
Laying up behind the reef, Thorn found a patch of smoother water and was about to drop anchor on a patch of sand when the dog began a frantic barking. Stretching up on his hind legs, he stuck his nose over the gunwale and clawed at the side until he found a hold and began to lever himself over.
Just in time Thorn scooped him up, ready to stow the Lab in the cabin, but he was wild and slimy with sea spray and he squirmed and bucked and with a yelp he tore free from Thorn’s grasp and pitched over the side.
“Aw, Christ.”
A gray wave snatched the dog away, and a moment later he was surfing on the leading edge of the swell, headed toward the rim of the reef.
“Don’t do it, Thorn.” Sugar put a hand on his shoulder and drew him back from the side. “Way too choppy for a swim.”
Lawton was standing at the port rail, two fingers poked in his mouth, whistling and shouting the dog’s name. His yellow head bobbed into view, then disappeared as he pawed forward toward the reef. Since boyhood Thorn had snorkeled across that acre of elkhorn coral, and he was very aware that lurking only a foot or two below the surface was a solid mass of bony, unforgiving razor teeth. Beautiful but treacherous, that coral could shred the flesh to pulp with a glancing brush.
Thorn didn’t take off his boat shoes. He climbed on the gunwale and was stretched out into a flat racer’s dive before Sugarman had a chance to grab him.
Two strokes, then ducking into the curl of a rolling wave, then two more strokes and he was beside the puppy. He grabbed Lawton by the scruff and yanked him to a stop and was turning to haul him back to the boat when the dog yipped and squealed and tore from his grasp and pointed his nose to the white drifting mass a few inches below the surface of th
e sea. Thorn let the puppy loose and he promptly turned and paddled back toward the boat, leaving him with the waterlogged body.
It was as if the dog had heard the undetectable pierce of a whistle, a subsonic death song rising from the sea, and he had been unable to withstand its allure.
Staring up at Thorn through inches of salt water was a man’s face, his white teeth showing. The blue cloud of iridescent damselfish that had been pecking at his lips scattered like some gorgeous last belch.
Thorn grabbed a handful of the man’s white shirt and dragged the body to the surface, broke the corpse loose from the elkhorn coral’s grasp, and then behind him, in a rush of white bubbles, came another body. In a blur he saw her blond hair, her flesh as white and luminescent as a newly minted pearl. Her eyes were stretched wide open, a sharp blue, bluer than the sky or the ocean, those blue eyes and white skin flooding up, bumping the man’s corpse aside and ramming into Thorn’s chest, into his arms, her cold flesh and bony limbs clutching like some lost lover come to reclaim him, drag him down with her into the seabed, the cold depths of longing and loss.
The middle-aged woman who surged into Thorn’s arms wore a white cocktail dress that clung to her waifish frame. She’d been shot through the temple—one small hole, and a much larger hole exiting her opposite cheek. As he dragged their bodies toward the boat, Thorn recognized the man as Dr. Andrew Markham, psychic Sherpa.
One after the other, Thorn heaved the bodies up to Sugarman’s waiting hands, then he climbed aboard. Silently they laid the bodies out in the cabin, stripped the sheets from the bunk, and covered their faces.
“Bad day at Black Rock,” Lawton said.
Sugarman looked at the old man for a long moment but said nothing.
After delivering the bodies to the Coast Guard cutter, Thorn and Sugar were granted permission to work alongside the Marine Patrol and the other Coast Guard ships. They took their place in the strict search pattern, spreading out in concentric circles, farther and farther from the reef. Just after noon they were joined by two helicopters that crossed and recrossed the search area.
Off the Chart Page 13
