Death in Deep Water
Page 33
“What happens to Oceanus?”
“They’ll scale down. They’ll scrap their expansion plans and go more for education than entertainment. Might be a nice little place for the kids to learn about the sea.”
“What about the dolphins?”
“They stay.” I pointed to the whale pool. “They’ll have Rocky’s old pad. It’ll give them more room. I know you’d like to see it otherwise, but that’s just the way things are for now. Maybe you can get them set free eventually without blowing the place apart. Which reminds me. We discussed a quid pro quo for springing Rocky.”
Schiller nodded. “There’s a package in your truck. Don’t leave it alone.”
Lucky me. I now had enough plastic explosive to blow Hyannis off the map. I hoped I still had Flagg’s number. “I’ll take care of it,” I said.
We shook hands again and Schiller left. The orca stadium was quiet. Sally was still standing by the pool, now empty, looking into the water. I went over and put my arm around her. She had a tear in her eye.
“Don’t worry about Rocky,” I said. “He’s going first class all the way. He’ll be at Logan Airport in a couple of hours. By this time tomorrow, he’ll be in a halfway house on the West Coast. When’s he’s ready to go back into the wild, they’ll put him into the water off British Columbia. The guys in his pod are probably planning a welcome-home party for him.”
“I know it’s for the best,” she said, sighing, “but I’ll miss him.”
“I will, too. But you’ve still got Huff and Puff and Froggy. And you’ve got me.”
She put a slender arm around my waist. “Yes, I’ve got you.”
“I’m glad you agreed. My mother wants to have us to dinner again. She told me to stay home if I don’t bring you.”
“I accept, with one condition.”
“What’s that?”
“I want to see that picture of you again. The one when you were twelve, in the Greek soldier uniform with that cute little pleated skirt and pom-poms on your shoes.”
“We’ll talk about it,” I said, taking her arm. “But first, let’s get something to eat. I know a little shack near the beach that makes the best fried clams in the world.”
About the Author
My fiction-writing career owes it start to the bad navigation of an 18th century pirate. For it was in 1717 that a ship, the Whydah went aground, reportedly carrying a treasure. In the 1980s, three salvage groups went head-to-head, competing to find the wreck. The controversy over the salvage got hot at times and I thought there might be a book in their story.
I developed my own detective, an ex-cop, diver, fisherman, and PI named Aristotle “Soc” Socarides. He was more philosophical than hard-boiled. Making his first appearance in “Cool Blue Tomb,” the book won the Shamus award for Best Paperback novel. After many years in the newspaper business, I turned to writing fiction and churned out five more books in the series.
Clive Cussler blurbed: “There can be no better mystery writer in America than Paul Kemprecos.”
Despite the accolades, the Soc series lingered in mid-list hell. By the time I finished my last book, I was thinking about another career that might make me more money, like working in a 7-11.
Several months after the release of “Bluefin Blues,” Clive called and said a spin-off from the Dirk Pitt series was in the works. It would be called the NUMA Files and he wondered if I would be interested in tackling the job.
I took on the writing of “Serpent” which brought into being Kurt Austin and the NUMA Special Assignments Team. Austin had some carry-over from Soc, and another team member, Paul Trout, had been born on Cape Cod. The book made The New York Times bestseller list, as did every one of seven NUMA Files that followed, including “Polar Shift,” which bumped “The DaVinci Code” for first place.
After eight NUMA Files I went back to writing solo. I wrote an adventure book entitled, The Emerald Scepter, which introduced a new hero, Matinicus “Matt” Hawkins. I have been working on the re-release of my Soc series in digital and print, and in 2013, responding to numerous requests, I brought Soc back again in a ninth Socarides book entitled, Grey Lady. Christi and I live on Cape Cod where she works as a financial advisor. We live in a circa 1865 farmhouse with two cats. We have three children and seven granddaughters.
To learn more about Paul Kemprecos, check out his website at http://www.paulkemprecos.com/.