Mean High Tide (Thorn Series Book 3)

by James W. Hall

  Thorn stripped to his bathing suit, put on his mask and flippers. And without further thought he scooted over the side and went feetfirst into the water.

  He swam for over an hour, tracing back and forth, trying for a methodical mapping of the reef. He dove, and each time he stayed down for as long as his breath allowed, poked his arm into the walls of rock and coral, looking for a spot where she might have been caught. But nothing looked right.

  Back to the surface for another breath, then ducking and going down again for a minute or two, coasting along the sandy bottom, the water dim today, the colors drained from the coral. Seeing a few lobsters, shorts, and some schools of yellowtail and wrasse, but little else.

  He was rising up for another breath, when he saw at the base of a mound of brain coral an object that broke apart from its surroundings. Something black and inert.

  And though he was almost out of air, his chest beginning to tighten, he turned back from his ascent and churned his fins, and dug back down through the water. When he was near the object, he recognized it, and felt a sharp twist in his chest. He pushed himself deeper and as he was reaching out for it, he noticed to his right a lobster, twice as large as any he'd seen till then. It was looking at him from a cleft in the rock, waving its antennae, daylight showing through the latticework of the rock behind it. The lobster's escape route was a slot where a human arm might fit, might grab at the succulent creature, might become lodged, might be gripped tight from the other side of the high wall of rock.

  In his temples Thorn felt the warning pricks of oxygen starvation, the yellowing dusk of his consciousness beginning to fade. He held himself still in front of the lobster's hiding place and waved his hand at the lobster, watched it disappear into its hole. Then he pushed his hand in after it, felt the snag and burn of the rock jagged against his flesh, but he shoved deeper, up to the elbow in the rock, his hand feeling nothing back there. No sign of the lobster, nothing solid.

  Then he drew his arm out, came close to the opening and peered in. And yes, there was an opening back there, a cave of some kind that was large enough for a diver to swim into unnoticed from his position. Large enough for the diver to turn and wedge himself into place and grip the hand that clutched at the lobster.

  Thorn turned and found the black object in the sand beside the hole, and picked it up and angled himself upright and waved his fins at the floor of the sea, rising through the water as Darcy must have risen, feeling the shriveling of his veins, the last vapors of oxygen being consumed. Rising up through the gray sea to the boat rocking above.

  As he swam, he held out his left hand and peered at the black plastic scabbard Darcy had always worn around her right ankle. Its buckle was twisted, the strap mauled as though from repeated scraping against the rough rocks of the reef. It had broken free, fallen into the sand, and lay there like some last note she'd dashed off to him in her desperation. A final message to him from across the void.

  ***

  Sugarman parked his Mustang in a vacant lot next door to the Albright residence and got out. Doris and Philip Albright lived in a concrete stilt house at 16 Seahorse Lane. Behind it was a canal that led out to Rodriguez Key and the Atlantic beyond. It was one of several canals hacked into the limestone of that treeless neighborhood behind the Winn-Dixie. Tidal canals, straight as rulers, crisscrossed the whole island, laid out by the same mindless bastards who built the houses.

  All through the Keys, that's what they did. Tripled real estate values by hiring a midnight bulldozer to clean out stands of mangroves that obstructed views. Or over several nights gouged a trench from a landlocked piece of property direct to the sea. Never mind that it was illegal, or that doing it sent chalky silt far out into the bay, destroying the sea grasses. And never mind that all those canals had fatally weakened the land mass, so one day when Key Largo got its inevitable hurricane, there was a damn good chance the storm would shred the land to rubble and carry it far away.

  Their house was white with yellow trim. Two cactus plants in ceramic pots shaped like burros sat by the bottom of the concrete stairway, and the yard was full of glossy Carolina river rock. Like so many on the island, it was a low-maintenance place. The kind of house you could lock up and walk away from for six months and not have to ask anyone to water anything or feed anything you'd left behind. Like walking away from a bus locker.

  Throughout this subdivision all the houses were the same. The half-million-dollar ghetto. Most of them with yachts tied up out back, big sloppy boats that were at least as expensive as the houses. The architecture had all the grace of a federal prison. Big concrete rectangles up on big concrete pilings. Flat roofs covered with pea rock, screened-in porches that stared across the canals at other screened-in porches. Every house with the same concrete slab driveway, concrete stairway, concrete picnic table. All of it hard and permanent and painted white to reflect the sun. There was probably so much damn sun being reflected in that neighborhood that the migrating birds had to veer miles out of their way to keep from being blinded.

  Standing out in the street, Sugarman couldn't tell which houses were inhabited and which weren't. In neighborhoods like this the lights came on and went off, radios poured out endless strains of Benny Goodman, but no one ever seemed to come outside. Even the cars in the carports could be misleading because a lot of these folks left their vehicles behind when they returned north. Apparently they kept duplicate Lincolns back in Muncie and Rochester.

  Sugar didn't know anybody for ten blocks in any direction. That's the way it had become in Key Largo. He'd lived on this island all his life, a town with only ten thousand permanent residents, and still, he was a stranger in certain neighborhoods, and might easily have been mistaken for one of the hitchhikers who from time to time ambled in off U.S. 1 to see if they could find an open door.

  Nothing stirred inside the house when he rang the bell at the bottom of the stairs. And when he climbed them and hammered on the front door, no one answered. So he paced along the wraparound porch, peeking in at the edges of blinds, seeing only glimpses of a powdery pastel living room.

  He was about to give up and leave when he saw the man in the wheelchair down by the seawall.

  It was Philip P. Albright in a blue terry cloth shirt and matching shorts and a pink terry cloth hat. The man was gripping a fishing rod, and as Sugarman approached he gave the line a practiced pop. Snapper fishing.

  Sugar said hello, but Mr. Albright didn't turn his head. So he pulled up a bench from the picnic table and sat down beside him and looked down into the dark canal water. A black-and-white angelfish was hovering next to Albright's shrimp, the fish flipping its side fins to stay still in the incoming tide. Philip Albright didn't seem to notice.

  Twenty-five years before, Sugarman had been deeply intimidated by this man. The owner of the island's only seafood market, Albright had been a commercial fisherman of great renown. And from time to time when Gaeton, Thorn, or Sugar made a catch of yellowtail or grouper that was more than they and their families could immediately consume, they peddled their surplus at Albright's Fish House. Which meant they had to stand up to the hard bargaining of Philip P.

  Only Thorn was good at it. Gaeton took whatever Albright offered first, and Sugarman halfheartedly stayed in the contest for a round or two. But Thorn was always icy tough with the tall, gaunt Albright. Stood up to his disparaging remarks, his withering putdowns of their fish and fishing abilities. Once, Thorn hauled a thirty-pound warsaw grouper off the scales of Albright's Fish House and carried the dead fish out onto the dock and pitched it into Snake Creek rather than accept the price Albright was offering.

  Now Philip P. was partially paralyzed from a stroke. And he'd apparently lost the muscles in the right half of his face. The corner of his mouth turned down, a glisten of drool shone there, and his right eye was drooping, pulled south by gravity and the weight of the atrophied muscles in his cheek.

  With some effort, Philip looked over at Sugarman, grunted quietly, then turned h
is face back to his fishing.

  "Hello, Mr. Albright."

  The man grunted again, and labored over a word that got lost in the useless muscles of his tongue.

  "I'm Sugarman. I used to sell you fish once in a while, a long time ago."

  Again Albright sputtered and Sugar leaned close to hear. Some glottal malfunction, a garble of larynx and phlegm, but through it all, Sugar managed to decipher the word.

  "Philip," said Sugarman.

  And Albright nodded his head, yes, yes, call him Philip. And the man unfastened his right hand from his fishing rod and offered it to Sugarman. He shook it. Boneless and cool.

  "Good to see you again, Philip."

  The man nodded. Same here.

  Sugarman felt a fleeting wave of vertigo, the images of the two Philip Albrights failing to merge. The one from long ago, the rawboned, aggressive, penny-pinching fisherman who stayed out at sea for weeks at a time in the Ocean Fox, his old Hatteras, and only came back to land when the ship was about to sink under the weight of his catch. That man who took those thousands and thousands of pounds of fish and from them built, over thirty years, one of the largest businesses in the Keys. That Philip Albright, and this new one, the terry cloth man, who glowed with triumph when Sugarman understood a single word he uttered.

  "I came by to speak to Doris," Sugarman said after a while.

  Philip slurred out a word and Sugar leaned close.

  "Work?" Sugarman said. "Doris is at work?"

  Philip turned his head and gave Sugarman a lopsided smile.

  For the next hour Sugarman sat with him in silence. The angelfish nosed around his bait, but did not strike. It never would. The angel was a filter feeder, from the low end of the food chain. It ate only what it trapped in the web inside its gills. Algae, or tiny particles that the meat-eating fish had left behind.

  At a quarter after six a small mangrove snapper showed up, zipped in and stole the shrimp from Philip's hook. He didn't seem to notice, but kept on popping his line every few minutes, a motion he did with such effortless grace that Sugarman knew he was in the presence of one of the truly great ones.

  When Doris Albright hadn't returned by six thirty, Sugarman asked the old man if he was ready to go back inside the house. Albright shook his head no, and kept his eyes on the water.

  Then the old man warbled something deep in his throat, something which Sugarman took to mean that Philip P. Albright, master angler, was convinced that now as the sun was setting the fishing was about to improve dramatically.

  As Sugarman was settling into the seat of his Mustang, Doris wheeled into the drive in her gold Eldorado. He got back out and met her as she parked. Opened her door for her.

  She drew herself out and they stood there in the gravel drive. She'd changed into white shorts and a denim shirt. The faint scent of fresh fish clung to her clothes.

  "Mrs. Albright, I've decided I can't take your case. I came over to tell you in person."

  "Very sorry to hear that."

  "It's not that I couldn't use the work. No, ma'am. But something's happened, a personal thing, and until I clear it up, I can't see how I can spend time on anything else."

  She peered past him, looking at Philip by the canal. Her eyes emptying.

  "My husband," she said. "He's very ill, you know. And there's no more money. The fish house is almost bankrupt. The health insurance isn't covering the bills."

  "I'm sorry. I really am."

  "But if you could help me, help me find this man," she said, "I think he might be willing to lend me money. Keep me afloat."

  "This man, he was your first husband."

  "Yes," she said, and drew her eyes away from Philip Albright and settled them on Sugarman. "Will you come inside?"

  "Out here's fine."

  She walked over to the front steps and sat down. Her legs glistened coppery in the amazing light. Sugarman walked over to her.

  "I'm crazy, aren't I? Thinking the man I abandoned would loan me money. That's kooky, isn't it?"

  "Well, I'm no great judge of kooky."

  "I married him when I was very young, not even out of high school. He was very dashing, a military man. Our marriage lasted a while, but it was terrible. He suffocated me; I was his prisoner. So I ran. Fifteen years ago, it was. Then just a few weeks back, there he was on my doorstep. Saying he'd made himself into a rich man, and asking me to return to him. Fifteen years, and the man is asking me to come back to him like it was only a week or two had gone by."

  "You said no."

  "I said more than that."

  "But you changed your mind. Now you want to find him."

  She hugged her knees and said, "I appreciate your coming over, Mr. Sugarman. But it's just as well. It's a stupid idea. It wouldn't work. I was just desperate, not thinking straight."

  Something splashed in the canal and Sugar glanced back and watched as Philip labored over his reel, cranking up a small blue runner.

  "Well," he said. "I suppose I could call around a little. I got time to do that much. Get in touch with some people I know. See if they can locate him."

  "Would you do that?"

  "I'd need his last known address, full name. Social security number, military records, if you have them. Anything like that."

  "When we were married we lived on a farm over near Naples. No telephone, no mail delivery out that far. Very isolated, no neighbors or anything. We got our mail in town. That farm's the last place I know he lived. But I doubt very much he's still there. It was so long ago. I just don't know where to start. I guess I could drive over there, ask people. See who he sold the farm to, maybe they'd know something about him. But I'm just so busy with Philip. I don't know what to do."

  "When your ex-husband was here recently, he didn't leave an address?"

  "No," she said. "I didn't give him a chance, I threw him out so fast."

  "You try calling Information over there, see if he has a phone now?"

  "I tried that, yes. No listing for him. He could be anywhere."

  She caught Sugarman sneaking another look at her legs, and managed a tired smile.

  "Hell, I guess I could give it an hour or two, call around, see what I can find out."

  "You're a kind man, Mr. Sugarman."

  "Right now I think I better help Mr. Albright get that fish off his hook. He seems to be having a little problem."

  She held him with her intense blue eyes for a moment more, then she let the light go out of them, and by god, Sugarman felt like the sun had suddenly dimmed by half.

  CHAPTER 9

  It was just after eleven when Thorn made it to Key Biscayne. He parked his VW outside the Rosenfeld Science Building and went through the double glass doors into the harsh refrigerated air. Ten minutes later, after being passed to four different offices, Dr. Paul Ludkin's secretary assured Thorn that if her boss didn't know what a red tilapia was, nobody this side of Saturn did.

  The professor didn't look up from his computer when his secretary introduced Thorn, and he kept staring into the screen while Thorn explained what he wanted to know.

  "There's no such thing," the doctor said, his eyes still fixed on the monitor.

  "What do you mean?"

  "No such thing as a red tilapia. There's a black tilapia and there's a white tilapia. But no red. It doesn't exist. It's as if you came in and asked me to tell you about a red shark. I'd have to say the same thing. A red shark doesn't exist. I could tell you what a shark is, just as I could tell you about a tilapia, but if you put the word red in front of it, then no, I can't say a thing."

  "Okay," Thorn said. "Then tell me about a tilapia."

  "Now, that I can do."

  Dr. Paul Ludkin was a small man. Five four, not more than a few pounds over a hundred. Wearing a white shirt with a red bow tie, a blue sport coat. His horn-rimmed glasses looked like they weighed more than his entire muscle mass. A good finger-poke could break through his chest wall. Thorn had begun picturing that possibility. Obviously the guy hadn't
been keeping up with his interpersonal skills exercises. Sitting behind his army-surplus green metal desk, tapping a few keys, lifting his head to listen to Thorn while he kept watch on the screen.

  Ludkin was head of the University of Miami's marine science program. Professor emeritus, his secretary told Thorn. Apparently that meant Ludkin was so used to speaking to a hundred and fifty people at a time, he'd lost the ability to talk to just one.

  Thorn tranquilized himself by glancing at the long view out Ludkin's window. Looking north from Key Biscayne out across the green-blue shallows to the brash skyline of Miami. Even on that hot, hazy day, the city looked energized. Wired on Cuban coffee, giving off a jittery light.

  "What is this about anyway?" Ludkin said. "You walk into my office, barely introduce yourself, and I'm supposed to give you unlimited quantities of my time."

  "What it's about," Thorn said, "is a murder."

  That got two seconds of Ludkin's attention, then his eyes lost interest in Thorn and drifted back to the screen.

  He pecked in two or three words, kept his eyes on his work.

  "Well, to begin with," he said, "we're not talking about one particular fish here. There's about a hundred and fifty known species of tilapia. Oreochromus aurea, hornorum, mossambica, nilotica, on and on. They are lake fish, a species indigenous to the Middle East, Israel, Egypt. Supposedly the Pharaohs raised them for food.

  "And they're mouth breeders. Which means the mother fish holds the eggs in her mouth for protection. Even when they get bigger, at the first sign of danger, the fry come swarming back into the mother's mouth, swim in through her gills, however they can manage it. And when the fish get larger, their fathers stand guard over them. The net result is, these fish survive at rates a great deal higher than normal fish. Much, much higher rates."

  "Like what?"

  Ludkin looked over at him again. His eyes were shrunken and watery behind the thick lenses.

  "A murder?"