Dead of Night df-12

by Randy Wayne White

I waited until the shark turned, tail to me. Then I fixed my goggles in place and began to swim hard.

  I caught the last section of nylon rope in my left hand, careful to match the bull shark’s speed because I didn’t want to add additional drag. We swam together for a time before I gradually began to kick and pull on a slightly different course, toward shore. I discovered that by applying light pressure via the rope, I could steer us toward the shallows.

  I also began to work my way up the rope, closer and closer to the fish’s huge, beating caudal fin.

  We didn’t have much time. The shark was visibly less animated. It was exhausted, and exhaustion can kill a fish just as surely as a weapon, because the muscles, saturated with lactic acid, begin to fail. The acid overload causes a domino effect of physiological imbalance in organ tissues and nervous system. Exceed a certain level of stress, and all the complicated mechanism shuts down.

  So I was rushing-maybe too much.

  When I was close enough to touch its tail, I nearly killed the thing inadvertently. I’d been using my survival knife to cut away sections of net. The reduction in drag, I reasoned, would reduce the energy drain. I also anticipated that it would cause a minor surge in speed.

  The result was just the opposite. The floats attached to the net were keeping it afloat, so, when I cut the rope, the shark gave one last feeble tail thrust that instead of pushing it forward drove it head-heavy toward the bottom like some dead, inanimate weight.

  For a moment, I stayed on the surface and watched: watched the great shark sinking with the trajectory of a dark and cooling star.

  Then I was after it, pulling myself down through the murk.

  Almost immediately, I saw the tail and grabbed it. A shark’s skin is covered with placoid scales, or denticles, which are similar to teeth. They’re saw-edged and pointed, which is why shark skin was once commonly used as sandpaper.

  The tail was abrasive, but also lifeless. I held on without difficulty as it pulled me downward. Through goggles and green water, I could see that my hand appeared tiny on the caudal lobe, and that the shark’s body had turned from gray to black. The fish was too heavy for me to swim it back to the surface, and so I waited the few seconds it took for us to bump bottom. Then I went to work.

  I got my feet under me, wrapped the animal in both arms, and began to walk it underwater, cross-tide, toward shore. The key to doing anything strenuous while free diving is to do it slowly. Conserve oxygen and you gain bottom time. So I took long, deliberate strides, switching my body into what I think of as conservation mode: used only the muscles required, everything else relaxed.

  As my oxygen supply dwindled, I also began to play a little tune in my head, something I’ve always done when struggling to extend bottom time. Concentrate on the intricacies of the tune and I pay less attention to the capillary burn of lungs.

  We’d hit bottom in maybe ten or fifteen feet of water. I covered enough distance toward shore that by the time I had to bounce to the surface for another gulp of air, the water wasn’t more than a foot over my head.

  I submerged a second time, lifted the shark into my arms again, then walked it over sand, sea grass, and shell until my eyes… then my nose… then my head breached the surface. I continued walking until I was in waist-deep water, using my knees to gently boost the animal upward whenever I lost my grip.

  The backpack was still strapped over my head and shoulder. I found wire cutters, and soon had the web of net, rope, and floats cut away. I inspected the rope abrasions-they weren’t too bad-and applied antibacterial cream to the wounds.

  As I worked, I kept the shark’s head pointed into the tide so that current swept through its gills. The shark remained motionless. Seemed near death. If I could get the respiratory system going, though, get sufficient oxygen into the bloodstream to dilute the overload of lactic acid, the animal still had a chance.

  To increase the flow of water, I began to walk against the tide, slowly, slowly. I waded toward Lighthouse Point, floating five or six hundred pounds of shark along with me.

  There’s a row of condos near that section of shore. People were watching me from their balconies. One was a buddy of mine. He used his index finger to make a spinning motion next to his ear, then pointed at me: You’re crazy.

  Hard for anyone who lives at Dinkin’s Bay to argue.

  I walked the shark for ten minutes or so before I felt an intramuscular tremor that was not unlike a small generator trying to fire. Then the tail fin began to move… swung slowly and randomly, at first, then with increasing purpose and control. It fanned the current like a metronome, steady, steady, rhythmic as a heartbeat.

  The fish was alive but weak. Not yet strong enough to release, or even endure the minor stress of being tagged. It would take another fifteen minutes to get sufficient oxygen into the bloodstream, but the tail thrust was increasingly powerful. Soon, I wouldn’t be able to control the animal’s body. Release it too soon, though, it would swim off and die.

  So I tried a technique I learned years ago while working with a team of locals on the Zambezi River in Africa. Turn a big shark upside down and it will go limp in the water within twenty or thirty seconds. It’s a physiological response called “tonic immobility.” Keep it inverted and the fish will remain motionless for as much as half an hour.

  Gently, I now rolled the bull shark onto its side, waited for it to stop struggling, then used its pectoral fin to push it over onto its back. I held it there, letting water flow through its mouth and gills-a sort of makeshift ventilator.

  I got my first look at its underbelly. The most obvious indicators of a shark’s sex are the absence or presence of twin penile-shaped claspers used singularly to deposit sperm. They’re located just behind the pelvic fin. Because they calcify with maturity, male sharks have the equivalent of a permanent erection.

  This was a male.

  I also got my first close look at the great fish’s eyes. The opaque, nictitating membrane, which is a protective third eyelid, was closed like a curtain, but its eyes were visible beneath. The optic discs were yellow, the pupils black. In bright light, a shark’s pupils contract to a vertical, feline slit. In darkness, they dilate, becoming a million times more sensitive to light than human eyes.

  It was an hour before sunset; a bright, late afternoon. The shark’s pupils looked like obsidian bands set into molten gold. The eyes were goatlike from a distance. Closer, the impression changed. A shark’s retina has a prominent visual streak: a lucent horizontal band due to higher cell density in both cone and ganglion layers. Because of the streak, the eyes reminded me of a faraway nebula that I’ve seen many times through my telescope. The nebula is found in the belt of the constellation Orion.

  That glittering streak on the optic disc, silver on gold, gave the impression that there was astronomy in the shark’s eyes. Comet streaks, galactic swirls, and the black vacuum of space.

  I walked it another twenty minutes before I risked turning the big fish onto its belly again. It was soon conscious, but remained docile. I paid close attention, gauging the steadiness and the strength of its caudal stroke. The respiratory system was working, flushing water through its gills. Its head swung in opposition to its tail.

  I continued to walk against the tide; walked until the animal began to thrash against my grip. I held it for a few moments longer, then released it with a firm and final push toward deeper water. He swam tentatively, as if dazed, big dorsal cutting the water… then exploded-torpedoing off at speed, throwing a burrowing wake.

  Behind me, I was surprised to hear applause coming from the boats.

  I waved Rona to shore and climbed aboard.

  “That was incredible,” she said as I toweled off. She was bubbly, energized. “I’m so darn glad I came. I was dreading the trip… but to see something like that…”

  I’d been cleaning my glasses but stopped. “Dreading what? I don’t get it.”

  I watched her excitement drain. “Watching you save that shark, I’d almo
st forgotten. I wish I could forget. I wanted to wait, though, until you were done working before I told you.”

  What the woman had come to tell me was that my friend Dr. Frieda Matthews had been involved in a terrible accident.

  20

  Serpiente

  Talking on his motel phone, Frieda’s husband, Bob, had told Dasha, “My wife’s got the computer with her, but she won’t be home until late this afternoon. Should I have her call FedEx? Or I can give you her cell phone number.”

  Jesus. The guy had the mentality of an eight-year-old. He was open to any stranger with a question.

  Dasha repeated the number aloud while Aleski, sitting beside her in the white Mitsubishi SUV, wrote in his notebook.

  One of Mr. Sweet’s stooge vice presidents at Tropicane Sugar had already told her that Frieda Matthews had been snooping around, asking questions about her dead brother. She claimed she was going to review his work, visit some of the water sample sites personally.

  “They’re all remote places,” the stooge VP had told her. “Not easy to find.”

  Dasha liked remote places. But she much preferred Mr. Sweet’s Bahamas retreat to this isolated section of Central Florida, miles of sugarcane planted close to narrow asphalt. Black earth that smelled of chemicals; vultures perched hump-shouldered on wires above their SUV rental as they sat parked on the side of the road making phone calls.

  She now dialed the Tropicane VP a second time. The man’s secretary put her right through.

  Dasha said to him, “I have a number for you to dial. Yes? Ask Dr. Matthews where her next stop will be, then call me with directions. Tell her we’d like to talk, share some stories about her brother.”

  The stooge said he’d do it. Didn’t ask why, his manner making it clear he didn’t want to know.

  Dasha started the car and touched a button, lowering her window.

  There was that chemical stink again, but it was warm at least. The woman loved heat.

  They’d flown in that morning, just the two of them and their pilot, Aleski’s cousin Broz. Came in one of Mr. Sweet’s three private aircraft, the Piper Malibu, a sevenseater prop plane that had three seats removed because it was used mostly to carry supplies. The man’s personal aircraft was a Gulfstream business jet; range: 6,000 miles, cruising speed: 550 knots. No one else was allowed to ride in the thing. Germs in a contained space? Unthinkable.

  Mr. Earl would come later in the third plane, a refitted DC-3 cargo plane. It had a bed in the back, a VCR and stereo system. Nice.

  The Piper was okay. Economical and fast. It covered the 187 nautical miles between Cay Sal Bank and West Palm Beach, where they cleared customs, in less than an hour.

  The customs people recognized them. The “Vitamin Crew”-that’s the way they were known-always puddle-jumping back and forth, hauling supplies.

  Inspectors hustled them through.

  From West Palm, they’d barely gotten off the ground before they were landing again at Tropicane’s private airstrip between Kissimmee and Belle Glade. The rental was waiting, and now they’d been on the road less than an hour, things already falling into place.

  Aleski rode in silence for a few minutes, the hectares of sugarcane reminding him of Cuba, his mind drifting, before he asked, “When we find this woman, how do you want to work it?”

  Dasha said, “Remember the Greenie Weenie who started getting nosey? Maybe handle it the same way. Rent a storage garage, pay a year in advance. A place to dump this car. Maybe the body, too, depending on how it goes. Lock the doors, and fly out. Thirteen, fourteen months later, they find her. Maybe never.”

  “Did you bring the drug?”

  He meant the stuff Dr. Stokes provided. Hypodermics and a vial of something called Versed. Ten ccs would knock a two-hundred-pound man to his knees in seconds. Keep him out for half an hour, if that’s what she wanted. But the amount had to be right. Too much and he’d go into respiratory arrest.

  Sometimes she wanted that, too.

  Dasha told Aleski, “Yes, I have the hypodermic kit. But we don’t have to use it on the woman. Not right away, if that’s what you’re asking.”

  Aleski had a deep, slow voice that fit his slow, slow intellect. But there was a little touch of excitement mixed in when they discussed Frieda Matthews. Dasha could guess why. He’d found a photo of the woman on the Internet. She wasn’t bad looking, with her short hair, the smile, the outdoorsy body.

  Aleski liked what he saw.

  “If we have time… if there’s no one around when we get to this storage garage, would it be possible for me… because I’ve been working so hard lately. Would it be okay for me to have a little fun? I haven’t had fun for a very long time.”

  Oh yes, the man was excited. Dasha smiled, knew what was going to come next. “Of course, Aleski. You deserve your fun.”

  “You could be there. In the same room, if you wanted, Dasha. I wouldn’t mind so much.”

  He threw it out there as if it were a new idea.

  “Would you like that?”

  “I wouldn’t mind so much.”

  Always the same.

  The first few times, she’d found what the man did to women interesting. Once it had even excited her, because the woman was very beautiful even though she was in her fifties. Intriguing, the way a mature woman dealt with pain and humiliation. Now, though, the thought of seeing Aleski naked made her cringe. Even so, she said, “Whatever makes you happy. You are my partner.”

  He grinned wickedly. “Yes, we are the best of partners! You give me such nice presents to unwrap! My little moodozvon pimp.”

  Russian profanity. It was a game they played.

  Dasha said she wasn’t a pimp; Aleski was a brainless bull, adding, “Ti deegeneeraat zasranees!” You’re a degenerate asshole!

  He shot back, “Bliad! Yob tvoyu mat!” Whore! I would like to screw your mother!

  “Shliushka? Pizda na palochke? Da, pajalsta.” That slut on a stick? Please do.

  “Shob tebe deti? sup srali.” I hope that your children shit in your soup.

  They were both laughing.

  “Ti menia dostal, Brat.” I’ve had enough of you, brother.

  “Ya tebia dostal, Sestra!” I’ve had enough of you, sister!

  Sestra and Brat: pet names used fondly among members of secret Chechen guerrilla cells.

  But Dasha had noticed that, lately, Aleski was treating her less like a sister and more like her keeper. Something in his manner.

  Instinct.

  They found a storage facility off Route 441 near Yeehaw Junction. Called the number, drove to the village, and paid the off-site attendant cash. Returned and made sure the key worked. As they were pulling away, Dasha’s phone began to ring. She looked at the caller ID: the stooge from Tropicane. She listened for a moment before telling Aleski to get ready to write directions.

  They had a road map. Frieda Matthews was less than twenty kilometers away.

  Dasha put up her window, driving faster, as Aleski said, “Our luck has been so good, it may be possible to fly back to the island tonight.”

  Idiot. The woman slapped the wheel. “Don’t do that! Why have you put your mouth on it? Now our luck is certain to change.”

  Aleski’s face colored. Sick of her criticism, but not ready to show it. “I’m sorry. I was only hoping the best for you. I know you don’t like spending nights at the ranch.”

  Tropicane maintained a housing complex for staff and guests, miles from anything, pasture all around. Mr. Earl had his own minimansion there. A man who controlled enough proxies to be majority stockholder.

  “It’s not that I dislike the ranch. I don’t like being away from the island. You know that. So don’t risk screwing our luck by being so stupid.”

  Aleski was eager to change the subject. “You love those islands so much, I feel you should own them one day. When the rich man dies.” His tone insinuated that it could happen. All she had to do was ask.

  Dasha said severely, “Don’t speak
of our employer in such a way. Dr. Stokes is very good to us.”

  There were so many ways of recording conversations, it was the smart thing to say.

  “Besides, his assistant would then be in control. He’s in charge of all the doctor’s personal property.”

  Aleski said, “Mr. Earl? I like Mr. Earl. Sometimes, we drink vodka at night and talk.”

  Dasha was aware of that, too. But was thinking, My islands. Yes, it could happen. Even before Mr. Sweet dies…

  Dr. Frieda Matthews was sitting in her green SUV, waiting for them, the small dents in the fender, the cracked tail-light, and DISNEY WORLD bumper sticker telling Dasha the woman wasn’t rich. That she had at least one child, but still worked for a living. She found her at the end of a dirt service road that ran beneath power lines and dead-ended at a canal, not far from State Route 60 and Canoe Creek Road.

  Right where the Tropicane VP said she’d be.

  Dasha wondered what the stooge would think when he read about this in the papers. Not that he’d call the cops. If Mr. Sweet had something on the guy, which he always did with his top people, there wasn’t a chance. But would he feel guilty?

  Dasha hoped so.

  As they got out of the car, Aleski said to her in Russian, “Wonderful. She’s even more beautiful than her photograph.”

  The woman was attractive in a handsome sort of way. Short maple-colored hair parted at the side, cargo shorts, plaid blouse. She had a sociable smile on her face, teeth very white. Also a cell phone clipped to her belt-that could cause trouble.

  “She’s bigger than I thought she’d be. I like that.” Aleski was walking faster, bouncing along. It meant she wouldn’t be as easily broken. The man couldn’t wait.

  “Don’t do anything stupid until we get the computer. Make sure it’s the right one.”

  “Of course. But then leave her to me. This woman, she will be fun. I can tell.”

  Matthews had her hand extended-nice to meet you-her smile broadening as Dasha got to the green SUV. Looked in the side window and there it was: a silver PowerBook computer.