“No,” Darling said.
“What do you mean, ‘No’?”
“Here are my terms,” Darling said, looking at Manning. “You’ll burn the note now, in front of me. Before we leave the dock, you’ll give me fifty thousand dollars in cash, which will stay ashore here, with my wife. The balance in her name in escrow in the bank, in case we don’t come back.”
Manning hesitated, then opened his briefcase again and took out the note and a gold Dunhill lighter. “You’re an honorable man, Captain,” he said as he held the note out over the lawn and touched the flame to it. “We know that much about you. But so am I. Once a deal is done, I don’t quibble. You shouldn’t distrust me.”
“This has nothing to do with trust,” Darling said. “I want to provide for my wife.”
Darling watched Talley and Manning walk away up the drive and turn into the parking lot at Cambridge Beaches, then he put the stack of bills into his pocket and went down the path to the boat. He started the engine and climbed up to the flying bridge, and he was about to put the boat in gear when he suddenly remembered that it was still tied to the dock.
He felt as if somebody had punched him in the stomach, and he blew out a breath and leaned on the railing. It was the first real evidence he’d had that Mike was gone. He stayed there for a few moments, until the feeling passed, then went below and untied the lines.
As he rounded the corner out of Mangrove Bay on his way to the fuel pumps at Dockyard, Darling tried to think of somebody he could hire as a mate. He had no reason to believe that Talley and Manning knew anything about setting rigs or keeping the boat pointed into the wind or any of the scores of other chores involved in running a boat.
No, he concluded, there was nobody. He had friends and acquaintances who were capable and might even be willing, but he wasn’t about to ask them. He wasn’t about to be responsible for another death.
He’d do it alone. Well, not quite alone. He had one ally, in a box down in the hold, and he’d use it if he had to.
One chance, Mr. Manning, he thought. I’m giving you one chance. And if you screw up, I’m gonna blow that motherfucker to kingdom come.
It took Darling almost three hours to pump two thousand gallons of diesel fuel and seven hundred gallons of fresh water into the tanks on the Privateer, and to buy six bags of groceries: fresh and dried fruits and vegetables, corned beef, canned tuna, blocks of cheddar cheese, loaves of bread, stew meat and a variety of beans. By the time they’d eaten all that food, he figured, they’d either be home or they’d be dead.
When he returned to his dock, evening was coming on. He removed extraneous gear from the boat: broken traps, scuba tanks, parts of a dismantled compressor. He came across the pump Mike had been working on. He held it in his hands and looked at it, and he thought he could feel Mike’s energy in it.
Don’t be stupid, he said to himself, and he put the pump ashore.
Charlotte was in the kitchen, doing what she always did when things were bad and she didn’t know what else to do: cooking. She had roasted an entire leg of lamb and made a salad big enough to feed a regiment.
“Company coming?” Darling said, and he went to her and kissed the back of her neck.
“After twenty-one years,” she said, “you’d think I would have known what you’d do.”
“I even surprised myself. Until today, I thought there were only two things in the world that really mattered to me.” Darling reached into the refrigerator for a beer. “I wonder what my old man would say.”
“He’d say you’re a damn fool.”
“I doubt it. He was a big one for roots—that’s why they all loved this house. It was their roots. It’s our roots, too.”
“What about us?” Charlotte turned to face him, and there were tears in her eyes. “Aren’t we roots enough, Dana and I?”
“We wouldn’t be us without this house, Charlie. What would we be, living in a condo downtown or taking up Dana’s spare room? Just a couple of old farts waiting for the sun to set. That’s not us.”
The phone rang down the hall, and Darling answered it, told the caller to piss off and returned to the kitchen. “A reporter,” he said. “I guess there’s no such thing as an unlisted number.”
“Marcus called earlier,” said Charlotte.
“Did you tell him what’s going on?”
“I did. I thought maybe he could think of a way to stop you.”
“And could he?”
“Of course not. He thinks you walk on water.”
“He’s a good lad.”
“No, just another damn fool.”
Darling looked at her back. “I love you, Charlie,” he said. “I don’t say it too often, but you know I do.”
“Not enough, I guess.”
“Well …” He sighed, wishing he could think of comforting words to weave.
“Or is it you you don’t love enough?” Charlotte said, whipping gravy into a froth.
That was the strangest question Darling had ever heard. What did it mean, loving himself? What kind of person loved himself? He couldn’t think of an answer, so he turned on the television to get the weather forecast.
They left the television on while they ate, letting the local newscaster fill the silence, for they both sensed that there was nothing more to say, and that any attempts at conversation would result in words they would regret.
After supper, Darling went out onto the lawn and looked at the bay. There was still some light—the soft violet that ushers in the night—and he could see two egrets standing like sentries in the shallows by the point, perhaps hoping for a twilight meal of mullet. A gentle fluttering sound, like the opening of a paper fan, heralded the arrival of a school of fry, skittering in flight across the glassy water.
When he was a child, he had spent his evenings watching the bay, as enraptured by it as other children were by radio or television, for from the bay came sounds, and sometimes sights, that excited his imagination as vividly as had any ever fabricated on a sound-stage. Marauding barracuda slashed through schools of mackerel, and the water boiled with a bloody foam. Sharks came, too, sometimes singly, sometimes in twos or threes, their dorsal fins slicing the surface as they calmly cruised in search of prey, exercising some primal rite of plunder. Crabs scuttled on the beach sands; turtles exhaled like tiny bellows; irate kiskadees chastised one another in the treetops.
The bay was life and death, and it had given him a feeling of peace and security he could not articulate. It carried with it the reassurance of continuity.
There was still life in the bay, though less, still much to love.
The crown of a full moon peeked above the trees in the east, and cast arrows of gold that flashed on the egrets and lit them like golden statues.
“Charlie,” Darling called, “come look.”
He heard her footsteps in the house, but they stopped at the screen door. “No,” she said.
“Why not?” he asked.
She didn’t answer. Instead, she thought to herself, Oh William, you look like an old Indian, sitting on a hillside, getting ready to die.
PART FOUR
43
DARLING WAS AWAKENED by the sound of the wind whistling through the casuarinas behind the house. It was still dark, but he didn’t need to see to know the weather; his ears told him that the wind was out of the northwest and blowing fifteen to twenty knots. At this time of year, a northwest wind was an unstable wind, so before long it should shift, either back around to the southwest and settle down, or veer into the northeast and crank up into a little gale. He half hoped for a gale: Maybe a rough ride would make Manning and Talley get sick and decide to quit.
Not a chance, he thought. Those two were in the grip of forces they probably didn’t understand and certainly couldn’t defy, and nothing short of a hurricane would put them off.
Charlotte lay on her side, curled up like a little girl and breathing deeply. He bent down and kissed the back of her neck, inhaling her aroma and holding his
breath, as if trying to carry the memory of her with him.
By the time he had shaved and made coffee and heated up some of last night’s lamb, the sky was lightening in the east and the kiskadees were gathering in the poinciana tree to announce the advent of day.
He stood on the lawn and looked at the sky. There was still a stiff breeze on; low clouds were being shoved to the southeast. But a ridge of high cirrus was creeping northward, signaling that the wind would soon shift back to the south. By noon, the chop would be gone from the shallow water and the swell would have faded from the deep.
The boat was straining against its lines, rocking gently. He was about to step aboard, when suddenly he sensed that someone was there, in the cabin. He wasn’t sure why he knew, so he stopped and listened. Over the routine noises of the lines creaking and water lapping against the hull, he heard breathing sounds.
Some damn reporter, he thought, one of those smartass kids who think that “no” means “try harder” and that they’ve got a God-given right to invade a man’s privacy.
He crossed the gangplank and stepped down onto the steel deck and said, “By the time I count three, your ass better be up and ashore, or you’re goin’ for a long, long swim.” Then he stepped over the threshold into the cabin, said, “One …” and saw Marcus Sharp sit up with a start and strike his head on the upper bunk.
Sharp yawned, rubbed his head, smiled and said, “Morning, Whip …”
“Well, I’ll be damned,” Darling said. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”
“I thought maybe you could use some help today.”
“I’d welcome a pair of friendly hands, that’s for sure, but what does Uncle Sam have to say about this?”
“Uncle Sam sent me … sort of. Scientists from all over the country—all over the world—have been trying to goose the navy into launching an expedition to hunt for the squid, but the navy claims it doesn’t have the money. I think the truth is that the navy doesn’t want to tackle something they don’t know anything about, and run the risk of looking foolish. Anyway, they’ve been getting on Wallingford’s case, as if he’s supposed to come up with some magic formula. When I told him you were going out, he thought it would look good to have the navy go too, sort of show the flag—that is, me. I’m supposed to make it look as if Wallingford is actually doing something.” Sharp paused. “I tried to call. I thought you wouldn’t … I hope you don’t mind.”
“Hell no. But look, Marcus, I want you to know up front what you’re signing on for. These folks—”
“I’ve seen the beast, Whip. Or almost.”
“Okay, then. You’ve had demolition training, right?”
“A year.”
“Good. We’re gonna need it.” Darling smiled. “Meantime, first thing to do is make some coffee.”
At six-thirty, they cast off and motored slowly across the bay to the town dock, where Talley and Manning waited beside a rented pickup truck piled high with cases. Talley wore a windbreaker, khaki pants and short rubber boots. Manning looked as if he had stepped from the pages of a catalog: Topsider boat shoes, pleated trousers, a beige shirt with a club logo on the breast and a crisp new Gore-Tex foul-weather jacket.
“What’s all that crap for?” Darling asked from the flying bridge while Sharp tied the boat to the dock. “You aiming to build yourselves a skyscraper?”
Neither of them answered, and Darling realized there was tension between them. Curious, he thought: What now? They’ve gotten their way, everything should be peachy.
They unloaded twenty-two cases in all, placing them aboard the boat under Talley’s supervision. He wanted some of them inside the cabin, protected from the weather, but most were stacked on the afterdeck.
When all the cases were aboard, Manning reached inside the cab of the truck and brought out a long case. From the way Manning carried it, Darling could see that it was heavy, and from the care he took not to bang it on anything, he could tell that it was precious.
“What’s that?” Darling asked him.
“Never mind,” Manning said, and he disappeared into the cabin.
Is that so? Darling said to himself. Well, we’ll see about that.
A van from the local television station wheeled around the corner at the end of the lane and stopped at the edge of the dock. A reporter got out, followed by a cameraman who scrambled to assemble his equipment.
“Captain Darling?” called the reporter. “Can we talk to you, please? For ZBM.”
“No,” Darling said from the flying bridge.
“Just for a minute.” The reporter looked behind him to make sure the camerman was ready and rolling. “You’re going out after the monster. What makes you—”
“No we’re not. Hell, son, nobody in his right mind would do that.” He looked aft and said to Sharp, “Cast her off, Marcus,” and when he saw that the last of the lines were aboard, he put the boat in gear and began to move slowly through the dozens of boats moored in the bay.
He waited until he was sure that they were out of earshot of the dock, and then he leaned over the side of the flying bridge and said, “Mr. Manning, would you come up here a second?”
Manning climbed the ladder and walked forward and said impatiently, “What is it?”
“What’s in the case?”
“I told you all you need to know.”
“Uh-huh,” Darling said. “I see.” A hundred yards dead ahead, a sixty-foot schooner lay broadside to their path, flanked by two fifty-foot fishing boats. “Okay, then …” He reached over and grabbed one of Manning’s hands and put it on the wheel. “Here you go.”
Then he turned and walked off the flying bridge and headed for the ladder.
“What are you doing?” Manning shouted.
“Gonna take a nap.”
“What!?”
“It’s your show; you run it.”
“Come back here!” Manning cried, looking ahead. The schooner was fifty yards away now, and they were closing on it. He had nowhere to turn; there were boats on all sides.
Darling started down the ladder. “Call me when we get there,” he said.
Manning pulled back on the throttle and spun the wheel, but the boat didn’t stop; it yawed; it was aimed directly at the schooner. He jerked the throttle back, and the boat rumbled into reverse and began to back toward the stern of a fishing boat. “What do you want?” he shouted.
Darling said, “You want to run the show, go ahead and run it.”
“No!” Manning protested. “I … help!” He slammed the throttle forward, and again the bow aimed for the schooner.
Darling waited for another second, until Manning, panicked, flung his hands in the air and lurched backward. Then he took two steps up the ladder, walked quickly across the deck and took the wheel. He spun it, gunned the throttle and, like a tailor threading a needle, nosed the boat between the bow of the schooner and the stern of the fishing boat, missing each by no more than six inches.
“Funny, isn’t it?” Darling said when they were clear. “The things money can’t buy.”
Manning was angry. “That was completely unne—”
“No, it was very necessary,” Darling said. “Look, Mr. Manning, we have to work together. We can’t have folks running all over the boat with their own agendas. Talley knows the animal but doesn’t know anything about the ocean. Marcus knows the ocean but doesn’t know the animal. I know something about each, and you, I figure, don’t know shit about anything but making money. So: What’s in the case?”
Manning hesitated. “A rifle.”
“How did you get it in? Bermuda doesn’t take kindly to guns.”
“Disassembled. I spread the pieces around in Talley’s cases. It would have taken an armorer to put the puzzle together.”
“What kind of rifle?”
“A Finnish assault rifle. A Valmet. It usually shoots a standard NATO seven-point-sixty-five-millimeter cartridge.”
“What do you mean, ‘usually’? You’ve had something done to
it?”
“To the bullets, yes. The clips are loaded so that every third bullet is a phosphorous tracer, and the others are filled with cyanide slugs.”
“And you think you can kill the beast with that.”
“That’s our arrangement. Talley will find it, do whatever studies he wants, and then I’ll kill it.”
“It has to be you.”
“Yes.”
Darling thought for a moment, then said, “Do you really think there’s anything you can do for your kids at this point?”
“It has nothing to do with them, not anymore. It has to do with me. This is something I have to do.”
“I see,” Darling said with a sigh. “Okay, Mr. Manning, but take a word of counsel: Do it right the first time, ‘cause I’m only giving you one chance. Then it’s my show, I’m taking over.”
“And doing what?”
“I’m gonna blow him into dust. Or try to.”
“Fair enough,” Manning said. “Want some coffee?”
“Sure. Black.”
Manning walked aft toward the ladder, and said, “I’ll tell the mate to bring you some.”
“The mate, Mr. Manning,” Darling said, “is a lieutenant in your United States Navy. Don’t tell him; ask him. And say ‘please.’ “
Manning opened his mouth, closed it. “Excuse me,” he said, and he went below.
At the mouth of the bay, Darling turned to the north. As he rounded the point and headed for the cut, he looked back. Between two Norfolk pines on the end of the point stood Charlotte, her nightgown billowing in the breeze. He waved to her, and she waved back, then turned away, and walked up the lawn toward the house.
Sharp brought Darling some coffee and stood beside him on the flying bridge. They looked to the northwest, to the spot at the edge of the deep where the Ellis Explorer had anchored.
For a moment, neither of them spoke, then Darling said, “You liked that girl.”
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