The End of the Pier

by Martha Grimes

  Maud thought for a moment, and then she started to rock. It was as if this were a night like any other night, just the two of them sitting on the end of the pier, chatting. The three of them, she thought, thinking of Ramon.

  “He’s a friend.”

  “Well.” His voice held a note of apology, but he was still sulking.

  “A good friend. Yes, I’ve known him for—oh, years and years.” She turned to look at him now, at the thin and craggy profile, the nail-bitten hand that was now loose on the knife.

  “He ain’t from around here, is he. I guess I’d remember a name like that.”

  “No, he’s not.” She paused. “He lives in Key West.”

  “Key West, Florida? That place where all the queers go? I hope you’re not goin’ to tell me he’s a queer.”

  “He owns a marina. You know, where people berth their boats.”

  Wade was working up to spit again. “Kinda work queers do.”

  “It’s beautiful, the marina. All the boats.”

  “You never been to Florida, have you?”

  Maud kept on rocking slowly and studying the line of boats across the water. “Just the once. It’s so beautiful. The sun goes down right behind the marina. You’ve never seen such a sunset in your life, not up here in the North.”

  “Hell, sun goes down here just like everywhere. What’s so special about Key West? All it is is full of queers.”

  He’d forgotten everything, it seemed. Forgotten the blood, the knife, the reason he’d come here; and she kept on rocking and talking about the Key West she’d never seen except in her mind. And then she felt that what happened didn’t make all that much difference. The most Wade could do would be to take the knife and stick it into her. And in the long scheme of things, of wars and famines, floods, fires—that wasn’t very much. What people thought was important was important only in the way a rattle is to a baby: something bright that makes a pleasant noise, something the baby simply wants. That knife wasn’t much more than a rattle. If he suddenly plunged it into her, it would merely move through particles of light. For the first time in her life, Maud felt free.

  Something would have to be done, nevertheless. She turned and looked at him. “Wade, I guess it’s time for me to go in.”

  He was still little-boy sulky. “I was hoping we could just set here and talk more.”

  “Maybe some other night.”

  She rose. He didn’t move.

  “I’ve got to take the things in.” Maud moved the bottle from the Colonel Sanders bucket and dumped the melted ice out. All Wade did was to look up at her, blinking, as if his eyes were trying to adjust to a new darkness. “You could help. You could just fold up that chair and bring it along.”

  He got up slowly, sighing with impatience. Still holding on to the knife, he folded up the aluminum chair as Maud pulled the bead chain on the lamp. They were in darkness. She flicked it on again, and there was a tiny dazzle of moonlight on the knife, the chair, the silver bucket-stand. She picked up the stand and reached for the lamp. “Do you think you could carry this?”

  “I guess,” he said, his tone still truculent. His big-knuckled hand closed around the lamp.

  Maud looked at him, at the pathetic and rather silly picture he made. He was standing with the chair under one arm, the knife still clutched in that hand, the lamp in the other, holding it by its wrought-iron stem. He was squinting at the light, his thumb and forefinger about to pull the bead chain.

  She shook her head. It was so sad and so simple. No way in the world he could keep his balance, she thought, as she suddenly swung the bucket stand and caught him a glancing blow across the shoulder.

  Wade weaved, looking at her, surprised and puzzled. Then he pitched over backwards into the lake. There was an awful, terrible sound, and she shut her eyes and clamped her hands over her ears.

  Maud stood there, eyes squinched shut, when she felt a softness against her ankle. She looked down to see the black cat had been rubbing against her foot and now had trailed over to the very end of the pier to poke its head over the edge.

  She guessed if the cat could stand it, so could she, though it would help if your eyes were cloudy. Testily, she leaned over. What she had expected to see, she didn’t know: devastation far worse than this. The body of Wade Hayden floated face-down on the water, his work shirt ballooning upward as if someone had pumped in air to inflate it. The lamp, of course, had disappeared, but left behind it the memento of its flowered shade, which floated near Wade’s head . . . as if it were a party hat come off when the silly, drunken fool fell into the lake.

  Out on the black water, another speedboat ripped by. And Maud, sinking into this strange dream of death and water, watched to see what its wake would do to the body, almost as if the pull of water could drag it out to sea. The body barely moved; the rose-colored shade bobbed.

  She picked up the cat for comfort and wondered: Why didn’t you simply turn to ash? Ashes should be scattered there. Tears ran down her face and dropped onto the cat’s fur; it whined and struggled out of her arms. She stood there, arms straight down, looking at the figure of Wade gently tugged by the little waves.

  Someone seemed to be calling her name from a great distance. She barely recognized the sound of it; and she registered the other sounds behind her—the spitting-up of gravel, the car engine cutting off, the thunk of a shutting door—as alien rustles from another universe.

  “Maud? Maud? Are you there? What the hell happened to the lights?”

  Sam came, hurrying, onto the pier. She stood there clasping and unclasping her hands, not speaking.

  “Maud? What’s going—?”

  The overturned chair, the fallen bucket-stand, the bottle lolling . . . He walked over to the edge. “Jesus God!” he breathed, down on one knee. The body rose slightly, fell like a resting swimmer on the ruffled waves. “What in hell happened? Maud, are you all right?”

  Holding her book and the dress tightly against her, she said, “Where are the cops when you need them? It was him all along. It was Wade who murdered them.”

  “Jesus,” Sam breathed. Then he put his hands on her shoulders. “Got to get to my radio. Maud?”

  She merely nodded and stood there looking off at the boats, at the party-goers drifting towards the dock. Drowsy laughter floated across the lake.

  • • •

  Sam was back and taking off his leather jacket. “What the hell happened?”

  “You’re the loot; figure it out. What are you doing?” She was shaking the jacket away from her shoulders. “Why in hell are men always tossing their coats at women? You see too many movies.”

  “Are you going to tell me? What happened?”

  “I had to push him, didn’t I? There wasn’t anybody else around to push him. Here—here’s her dress.” Before Sam could react, Maud said sternly, “Don’t tell me about it; I don’t want to hear.” Then she looked at the old boards at her feet. “What about him—what about her son? It’s not right he should hear it from his father.” Maud’s shoulders started to heave, and she felt her face burning, get puffy, as if a squall of tears were coming. “It’s not fair he should hear it from his father. I don’t care if she felt she had to walk out; she was a good mother.” In a moment, she would start wailing, crying.

  “I thought maybe,” Sam said calmly, “I’d just drive up there, maybe tell him myself.”

  There was a silence. Testily, she said, “You won’t do it right. You’ll probably read him the autopsy report.” She looked off towards the little line of boats, their number diminished now.

  “I thought maybe you could come with me.”

  Maud took in a deep breath of night air, puffed out her cheeks, let it go. “Well . . .” For a long moment, Maud looked across the lake. The lights of the Japanese lanterns still glowed softly. “Are their names really Raoul and Evita? I bet you lied.”

  Sam winced. “For Christ’s sake, Maud. Wade Hayden just got—you were down here with a killer, Maud. Who cares abo
ut Raoul and Evita? Come on. Let’s go up to the house.”

  “Gee, thanks.” She shook his arm away as she had done the jacket.

  “Christ, you’re grumpy. You’re grumpy because I didn’t come back.”

  Maud ignored that. “I guess you’ll get a vacation. You finally solved it. Even though it was really me.” She sighed and started walking toward the house. “Will my picture be in the papers?” she asked, over her shoulder.

  Sam came abreast of her. “I expect.”

  “After we see Dr. Hooper’s son, I want to go to the university and see Chad. To let him know I’m still alive.” She sounded rather proud.

  Chad. Sam had forgotten about Chad. He stopped and looked up at the night sky, purpling now along the horizon. Was it that late? Was it almost dawn?

  “Listen, Maud. I talked to Chad. He telephoned to say he was driving back here this morning.”

  “What? What do you mean, driving? He doesn’t have a car. And why would he be, anyway? He’s in Belle—”

  “Belle Harbor, I know. Well, he called from Meridian. He borrowed his friend’s car.”

  Impatiently, she said, “Meridian? What’s he doing in Meridian?”

  “I thought I just told you. He called from there.”

  “That still doesn’t explain why he’s coming home.”

  Sam thought for a moment as he tried to settle his jacket around her shoulders, with her fidgeting like that blind black cat that was stealthily slinking around the end of the pier. “He forgot his books.”

  Maud shouldered off the jacket. “Oh, for god’s sake. He wouldn’t come all the way back for that; he’d make me FedEx them. Anyway, he can’t read. It’s not a nice thing to lie to me about.” Leaving the jacket on the ground, she walked away.

  “Maud, god damn it! I’m not lying. He’ll probably be here in a couple of hours.” Sam picked up the jacket. He felt like slinging it at her.

  She turned. “You’re sure you’re not making it up?”

  “No. Go ahead—ask Donny if you don’t believe me. Or stand out on the road until he comes.” He was getting pretty impatient with her.

  “You don’t have to get tetchy.”

  “I don’t?” He brought his face down close to hers. “Listen to me: I don’t like seeing women get murdered. Dr. Hooper—I liked Elizabeth Hooper. I don’t want her lying there spattered with blood. I feel pretty goddamned tetchy. Out there, if you’ve forgotten, a dead man’s floating belly-down in the lake!”

  “I should know. I just had a martini with him.” She started up the path again.

  “Oh, for Christ’s sake . . .” Sam caught up with her, put his arm around her shoulders. She didn’t shake it off.

  Then, as if none of this exchange had occurred, she went on, “So after we see Dr. Hooper’s son and after Chad goes back to school, I want to go to New York.”

  She kept on walking, but Sam stopped dead. “New York? What for?”

  In the distance a siren sounded. It was far away, a ghost siren.

  “To see Rosie.”

  Then she turned and stopped, and Sam thought her smile glimmered like the lights in the little boats across the water.

  “Unless you lied.”

  He caught up with her on the path, and as they walked away from the end of the pier, he thought she must have said (but he couldn’t be sure because of the music drifting over the water), said or sighed, “Dear boy.”

  Read on for a preview of The Way of All Fish

  by Martha Grimes

  The sequel to her bestselling novel Foul Matter

  The Way of All Fish Coming January 2014 from Scribner Books

  1

  They came in, hidden in coats, hats pulled over their eyes, two stubby hoods like refugees from a George Raft film, icy-eyed and tight-lipped. They opened their overcoats, swung up Uzis hanging from shoulder holsters, and sprayed the room back and forth in watery arcs. There were twenty or so customers who had been sitting in the café—several couples, two businessmen in pinstripes, a few solo diners—some now standing, some screaming, some crawling crablike beneath their tables.

  Oddly, given all the cordite misting the air like cheap champagne, the customers didn’t get shot; it was the owner’s aquarium, situated between the bar and the dining area, that exploded. Big glass panels slid and slipped more like icebergs calving than glass breaking, the thirty- or forty-odd fish within pouring forth on their little tsunami of water and flopping around in the puddles on the floor. A third of them were clown fish.

  All of that took four seconds.

  In the next four seconds, Candy and Karl had their weapons drawn—Karl from his shoulder holster, Candy from his belt, Candy down on one knee, Karl standing. Gunfire was exchanged before the two George Rafts backed toward the door and, still firing, finally turned and hoofed it fast into the dark.

  Candy and Karl stared at each other. “Fuck was that?” exclaimed Candy, rising from his kneeling position.

  They holstered their weapons as efficiently as if they’d drawn them like the cops they were not. They checked out the customers with their usual mercurial shrewdness, labeling them for future reference (if need be); a far table, the two suits with cells now clamped to their busy ears, calling 911 or their stockbrokers; an elderly couple, she weeping, he patting her, stood nearby; two tables shoved together that had been surrounded by a party of nuts probably from Brooklyn or Jersey, hyena-like in their braying laughter, had been sitting at two tables pulled together but now all still were under the table; a couple of other business-types with Bluetooth devices stationed over their ears talked to each other or their Tokyo counterparts. A blond woman or girl, sitting alone eating spaghetti and reading something, book or magazine; a dark-haired woman with a LeSportsac slung over the back of her chair, who’d been talking on her Droid all the while she ate; and a party of four on a girls’ night out, though they’d never see girlhood again. Twenty tables, all in all, a few empty.

  All of that ruin in less than a minute.

  * *

  The Clown Fish Café was nothing special, a dark little place in a narrow street off Lexington Avenue, its cavelike look the effect of bad lighting, rather than the owner’s artistic flair. A few wall sconces were set in the stone walls, meant apparently to simulate a coral reef. Candles, squat and fat, seeming to begrudge the room their light, were set in little iron cages with wire mesh over their tops, flames hardly flickering, as if light were a treasure they refused to give up. They might as well have been at the bottom of the sea.

  Now these brightly colored fish—clown fish, tangs, angelfish of neon blue and sun-bright yellow—were drawing last breaths on the floor until one of the customers, the blond girl or woman who had been eating spaghetti, tossed the remnants of red wine from her glass, scooped up water and added one of the fish to her wineglass.

  Seeing this, Candy grabbed up a water pitcher, dipped up what he could of water, and bullied a clown fish into the pitcher.

  The other customers watched, liked it, and, with the camaraderie you see only in the face of life-threatening danger, were taking up their water glasses or flinging their wineglasses free of the cheap house plonk and refilling them from water pitchers sitting at the waiters’ stations. The waiters themselves ran about, unhelpfully; the bartender, though, catapulted over the bar with his bar hose to slosh water around the fish.

  Wading through glass shards at some risk to their own skin, customers and staff collected the pulsing fish and dropped them in glasses and pitchers.

  It was some sight when they finished.

  On every table, an array of pitchers and glasses, one or two or three, tall or short, thin or thick, and in every glass swam a fish, its color brightened from beneath by a stubby candle that seemed at last to have found a purpose in life.

  Even Frankie, the owner, was transfixed. Then he announced he had called the emergency aquarium people and that they were coming with a tank.

  * *

  So who the fuck you think they
were?” Karl said, as he and Candy made their way along the dark pavement of Lexington.

  I’m betting Joey G-C hired those guys because he didn’t like the way we were taking our time.”

  “As we made clear as angel’s piss to him that’s the way we work. So those two spot Hess in there or they get the tip-off he’s there and go in with fucking assault weapons, thinkin’ he’s at that table on the other side of the fish tank, and that’s the reason they shoot up the tank?”

  “Call him,” said Candy.

  Karl pulled out his cell, tapped a number from his list of contacts, and was immediately answered, as if Joey G-C expected a call.

  “Fuck’s wrong with you, Joey? You hire us, then you send your two goons to pull off a job in the middle of a crowded restaurant? No class, no style these guys got. Walk in with Uzis and fired around the room, you’d think they were blind. And did they get the mark? No, they did not; they just shot the place up, including a big aquarium the least you can do is pay for. Yeah . . .”

  Candy was elbowing him in the ribs, saying, “Tell him all the fish suffocated and died.”

  “And there was all these endangered fish flopping on the floor, some of them you could say were nearly extinct, like you will be, Joey, you pull this shit on us again. Yeah. The job’ll get done when the job gets done. Goodbye.” Karl stowed his cell in his inside coat pocket.

  “We saw Hess leave through the side door. You’d think he knew they were coming.”

  “Jesus, I’m tellin’ you, C, the book business is like rolling around fuckin’ Afghanistan on skateboards. You could get killed.”

  “You got that right.”

  They walked on, Karl clapping Candy on the shoulder, jostling the water pitcher as they walked along the street. “Good thinking, C. I got to hand it to you, you got everyone in the place rushing to save the fish.”

  The water was sliding down Candy’s Hugo Boss–jacketed-arm. “Don’t give me the credit; it was that blond dame, that girl, who did that. She was the first one to ditch her wine. You see her?”