The Deep Six

by Striker, Randy

  “Dusky? Hey—you just caught me. Just getting ready to go out and run with my wife. Do me a favor, amigo, and tell me you have to see me right away. My wife will believe that—get me out of this damn torture for tonight at least.”

  I could hear his wife laughing in the background. “Sorry, buddy. Just wanted to see if you’d found out anything more about Gifford Remus.”

  “Naw, not a thing. Coast Guard didn’t find a sign of his tent—just the remains of his fire. And somebody had tried to hide that. Still no body. We figure he drowned, and someone going by saw an unattended camp and stole what was worth stealing.”

  “Do you believe that, Rigaberto?”

  “About as much as you do. Why would a thief try to hide a campfire?”

  “So what are you going to do about it?”

  “Dusky, in the past three weeks we’ve had seven fatalities or near fatalities from bad drugs. Teenagers, Dusky—one girl was twelve years old. Another kid went nuts on some kind of angel-dust crap and stabbed his baby brother. When I get done running that down, and maybe working on the other dozen or so unsolved murders we have on the books, then I might have time to work on the Remus case. You understand?”

  “I’m sorry, Rigaberto. I know how pressed you are. But look, I’m going out to the Marquesas tomorrow afternoon to do a little fishing. I’ll keep an eye open for you, and if you hear anything more, maybe you could give me a call on VHF 16?”

  “Fishing, huh?”

  “I’m taking my poles. Honest.”

  “Why do you lie to an old friend like this?”

  “Because it’s easier than the truth.”

  He sighed. “Just don’t kill anybody, Dusky. I’m busy enough as it is.”

  By the time I got back to my boat with enough canned goods, beer, and food to last three men for two weeks, it was nearing sunset. The charterboats were all in, washed down and secured, and Nels Chester sat in one of his fighting chairs with a beer. Cool of the evening, and people walked the docks, some hand in hand. Ibis flew in white formation against the orange sphere that settled itself over the western horizon of Key West, and the channel markers came on flashing red or white, every four slow seconds.

  “Set a spell, Dusky.”

  I put the box of supplies in the cabin, got a cold Hatuey from the little refrigerator, went back outside, and took a seat beside Nels. It was good sitting there watching the orange light melt into the darkness of the island; a good time for fish stories and friendly laughter. So much had changed, so much had happened, but there was still this.

  “You want to walk on down to Stevie’s houseboat? Sounds like he’s throwin’ a little party down there. Heard there’s a convention of Chicago secretaries in town who get the giggles around fishing guides with southern accents. How’s ’bout it?”

  Sure. Why not. Drink a few beers, exchange a few stories with friends. It wouldn’t hurt to go out and relax before heading to the Marquesas.

  I relaxed all right.

  I almost relaxed myself to death.

  10

  Stevie Wise’s Fred Astaire is a forty-six-foot floating bachelor pad with an interesting history. It had been owned by some northern insurance salesman who had an impressive string of mistresses, all of whom had, at one time or another, made the boat their wayward home. To keep his women happy, the insurance salesman had equipped it with a massive circular bed in the master stateroom, added a hugh bathtub, and moodied up the lounge area with an erotic mural—suggestive enough to be both confusing and shocking—which covered a whole wall. When the insurance salesman’s wife found out the boat was sold by the divorce courts to more business-minded people—drug runners. The drug runners abused the furniture, ruined the engine, and got busted by the feds. Stevie likes to point to the bullet holes in the forward bulkhead and tell how the jealous husband of a famous movie star almost got him. He’s lying, of course. He’s also lying when he promises to someday take the pretty girl he happens to be with on a long cruise. With a bottom hopelessly fouled and no engine, it would take a tugboat to budge the Fred Astaire.

  The party was already in full swing by the time Nels and I got there. They were on the third keg of beer, and had sent a team to go for more. I recognized a lot of the people there, mostly charterboat people and commercial fishermen. But there were also a few outsiders. Stevie came up with mugs of beer for us, smiling broadly.

  “Showed four girls the stateroom tonight! Four.” He wiped his brow as if he had just finished digging a ditch. “Dusky, I’m so tired I just pray I don’t get another chance.” At that very moment, a pretty dark-haired woman with stern-looking glasses came and took him by the arm and led him away.

  “And where’s that funny round bed of yours I’ve heard so much about . . .” she was saying as they disappeared down the corridor.

  It had been too long since I had talked with old friends and laughed, really laughed. No matter what happens, no matter what horrors we encounter, most of us go on living, and the laughter goes on shielding us from the certainty of death. The few secretaries who had not already found a fishing guide to make their vacation memorable stood in a little cluster in the lounge, giggling, tilting their heads, studying the mural on the wall. They kept eyeing us: a half-dozen sunburned city women, most in their mid-twenties. Finally, the two prettiest came over to Nels and me.

  “What exactly are those people doing in that painting?”

  They had obviously made their selections. The one standing by me had long blond hair that was carefully styled to fall over one brown eye. The Bacall look. And with her fine, angular face, it wasn’t a bad try. She wore expensive jogging shorts and a loose open blouse that displayed a burnt-orange swimsuit and the thin but ripe body beneath. Nels’s girl was doing the talking. She had a pixie haircut and a face to match.

  “We’ve been studying it and studying it, and we just can’t figure out what the artist had in mind.”

  Nels winked at me and grinned. “Ladies, let’s just say if them folks was lamp cords, every part of their bodies would be glowin’.”

  “What? Oh!” The pixie broke into loud laughter. Mine barely smiled. “Don’t you get it, Fayette? Look at it real close and you can see that they’re . . .”She broke into laughter again, blushing and slapping at Nels. “I never saw anything like that in Chicago!”

  Nels swept her away toward the aft deck, leaving me uncomfortably alone with the blond, Fayette. She toyed with her drink, her head swinging back and forth as if she were looking for a cab. Someone turned the record player up even farther and the whole houseboat seemed to vibrate.

  “It doesn’t agree with your taste in art?”

  “Hmm . . . ? Oh.” She smiled thinly. “Hardly.”

  “First time in Key West?”

  “Yes.”

  “How do you like it?”

  “I don’t.”

  “Have you noticed how those of us who work around boats smell of fish?”

  She gave me an odd look. “As a matter of fact . . .”

  “Lady,” I said, “you’re the one who approached us with that stupid question about the mural.”

  “It wasn’t my idea, believe me.”

  “And I’m no more interested in charming that dandy little body of yours into bed than you are. I was just trying to make conversation, lady. Nothing more.”

  I turned and moved carefully through the party crowd, outside. It was a nice night: silken mist of autumn stars, and the moon threw a white path across the harbor. And I had just refilled my mug from the tap and leaned against the railing, enjoying the view, when I felt someone touch my shoulder. It was the blond.

  She shook her head as if embarrassed, then stuck out her hand. “My name is Fayette Kunkle. Willing to start fresh?”

  I took her hand—nice hand, dry and firm. “MacMorgan,” I said. “Dusky MacMorgan. And of course I am.”

  She leaned against the rail beside me. “I’m sorry about being so . . . short in there.”

  “Don’t w
orry about it. I’ve actually been grumpy myself.”

  “Oh, it’s not that. Well, maybe I am a little grumpy, but there’s a reason.”

  She thought for a moment. “I’m afraid it’s the way my friends are acting in there. They’re really not like that, they aren’t. In our group are some of the finest legal secretaries in Chicago. They have husbands, some of them even have children. But ever since we came down here for the convention, they’ve been running around like boy-crazy teenagers.”

  “Well, Miss Kunkle, I guess it’s only natural for those of us without halos to occasionally act human.”

  “I’m doing it again?”

  “Maybe.” I laughed. “You’re getting this from an expert, you know. I’m saddled with the malady of self-righteousness myself. And then I see a kindred spirit and realize what a big pain in the ass I must be.”

  “Pain in the ass, am I!” She grinned when she said it.

  “Yes.”

  “And do you mind telling me why . . . MacMorgan, was it?”

  “Because you judge without sympathy. Not that you, or I or anybody else, for that matter, is qualified to judge the actions of another human being. But if you’re going to do it, you ought to throw in a little understanding for good measure.”

  “So now I’m not just a pain in the ass, but I’m also an unsympathetic pain in the ass?”

  “You’re getting this from the horse’s mouth, Fayette. Don’t forget. Okay, so your friends who are upstanding women and wives and mothers in Chicago come to Key West and let their hair down. You can spend a lifetime with one person and never know what her most private hopes and needs are. After they’ve dropped some daydream ballast down here, they’ll probably go back home and carry on their stable business and family lives. I’m not saying it’s right, I’m just saying, who are pains in the ass like you and me to judge?” I took a sip of beer. “And I haven’t talked this much in a year.”

  She told me about herself. She looked about twenty-two and had a nice voice, soft and low amid the insulated din of the party going on within. At first she stuck to the impersonal things: job, education, her childhood in Columbus. She was the daughter of a Lutheran minister, they’d had a real smart collie named Lassie, and her mother was just the best, best cook ever. She had attended Northwestern University on an academic scholarship, and the only reason she was working as a secretary was so that she could go back to school and get a law degree. There had been the usual bad marriage to her high school sweetheart, and now some new involvement. She talked around it, waiting for me to draw her out. But finally she took it up herself. It was a Chicago physician. A brilliant man. And she was in love with him; madly, passionately in love. She had been seeing him for two years. But there was one problem. He was married.

  “And you were disappointed in your friends?” I asked. It was a mistake. I saw her eyes narrow and her nostrils flare.

  “Now who’s being the high-moraled pain in the ass?” For a second I thought she was going to slap me. “I love him, Dusky. And he loves me.”

  “But he loves his wife, too.”

  She nodded. It was a story made trite by millions, but unique because she was involved. She kept asking how it could have happened, and why it happened, and why couldn’t she just damn well give him up. At the prodding of her friends, she had agreed to come to Key West to get away, to think things over. She went to the island bars, and the island parties, all of which served only to make her more depressed and confused.

  “It’s as if I’m just waiting for another man, another good man, to come along and sweep me off my feet.” She caught my eyes when she said it, and was immediately embarrassed. “I didn’t mean to imply . . .”

  “Forget it,” I said. “I meant what I told you in there. I’m not interested—and not because you aren’t attractive and intelligent. I’m just not.”

  She toyed with her drink. “You’re married.”

  “I was.”

  “Divorced?”

  “No.”

  She started to ask the obvious next question, then reconsidered. Smart woman. “It really is a pretty night, isn’t it, Dusky?” She brushed her blond hair off her face and leaned out over the water looking at her own reflection. “Isn’t this hairdo awful? My friends talked me into this, too. Vacation, a new look—but a new life doesn’t always follow, does it?”

  I said nothing.

  “Dusky, would it be proper for a woman to ask a new male friend to take her for a walk?”

  “Absolutely. Let’s go.”

  We walked up past the marina, away from the smoke and the noise of the Fred Astaire. She took fast, long strides—city strides. Hurry, hurry, slip down the sidewalks through the mass of flesh and strange humanity. But she wasn’t in Chicago, and I had to keep reminding her to slow down. We stood on the little cement sweep of causeway which stretches over Garrison Bight. I told her what the different night markers and range lights meant. By then, there was a pleasant understanding between us made uneasy by a musky sexuality. I turned once and felt my arm brush the abundant thrust of breasts. She shuddered, exhaling.

  “Well!”

  “Well . . .”

  I checked my watch. “I guess I’d better be getting back to my boat. Got to get some sleep and it’s after midnight.”

  “That late?”

  “Uh-huh. Going on a little trip tomorrow.”

  “When will you be back?” She said it too fast, running all her words together, and we both laughed.

  “A week. Maybe two.”

  “Hummm. We’ve got three more days here. I don’t suppose you ever get up to Chicago?”

  “Almost never.”

  We walked back in silence. When we were about a hundred yards from my boat, she started to say something. I knew what it was because I had been thinking the same thing. But she never got it out. There was something wrong aboard Sniper. At first I didn’t know what. Too much beer, probably. But then I realized—there was a light coming from the starboard port. And I had left only the salon light on.

  11

  I walked stealthily along the cement pier—ridiculous, really, to try to be quiet when music from the Fred Astaire blasted all across the midnight harbor. I had told Fayette to stay where she was and walked away from her questioning look. There was a light on all right, and I saw the silhouette of a man cross the little oblong hatch. Strange shape to the face. I got closer, looking in, and understood why. He was wearing a ski mask, making a methodical search of my forward berth. I reached for my little Gerber fishing knife, but it wasn’t there. I’d taken it off when I had gone to see Mrs. Ronstadz. And hadn’t thought to put it back on.

  That’s what happens when you let your guard down.

  That’s what happens when you relax. Too much beer, too much relaxing, too stupid.

  I watched him from the window. He found the Russian assault rifle I had hidden beneath the mattress of the port bunk. He picked it up as if he knew how to use it—then put it back just the way he had found it. That told me all I wanted to know. Any common thief would have taken it. This guy was after something special, and I knew just what it was. I touched the weight of the Spanish gold chain in my pocket. He’d have to kill me to get it.

  Quietly, I moved back toward the stern deck, along the finger of pier. I had a plan. There was a shark billy stashed beneath the port rodholder. I’d get it, soften the guy’s skull a bit, then make him talk. I had a feeling he could tell me an interesting story or two about the strange disappearance of a strange little man.

  Carefully, I stepped over onto my boat. I didn’t want any shift in trim to telegraph my approach. In the thin moonlight I found it. The club fit the curve of my hand perfectly. I had him now. I turned to find a hiding place in the shadows of the deck, and suddenly there was an arm across my chest, and the stiletto point of a knife pressed up against my Adam’s apple.

  I expected him to say something, to threaten me with some grim death threat. Instead, he gave an odd sort of low whistle
, and my cabin door opened a moment later. The man with the ski mask I had been watching exited. He was a big rough-looking character, and from the strength with which the other one held me, he was just as big. The one in the ski mask approached me, holding a flashlight in my eyes so that I couldn’t see. I felt his hands searching my pockets. Once they got the chain I knew I was a dead man. I had to make a move and make it quick. I relaxed; let my upper body muscles go limp. When you want someone to loosen their hold on you, the worst thing to do is struggle. I felt the arm around me slacken momentarily. It was the only chance I had. In the same swift motion, I kicked out with my right leg toward the groin area of ski mask, shoved back with my left leg, and drove my elbow as deeply as I could toward the bladder of the man with the knife. I felt the blade slice across my chin and up my cheek, and heard at the same time two loud groans. I’d hit my marks. I had hoped the impact of elbow on stomach would knock us both into the water. If I got him in the water he was a dead man, knife or no knife. But it didn’t. I had no choice but to work on the man with the stiletto first. Keeled over in pain, he made a halfhearted thrust at my eyes when I came at him. I kicked the knife from his hand and, on the backstroke of my leg, caught him just behind the ear with my heel. It was a good shot, but not good enough. He was down but not out. I turned quickly to meet ski mask. But he just stood there. Calm, cool, seemingly unaffected by my kick to the groin. And then I knew why he was so self-assured when I saw what he was holding in his hands. It was a stubby blackness in the weak moonlight—a snub-nosed .38.