by A. B. Jewell
Exactly why he’d do that eluded me and, at the moment, didn’t matter so much. What mattered was the Last Dolphin and the clock. Two hours and fifty-eight minutes until I faced a prospect I didn’t want to think about. I did some searching around the desk, looking for clues or phone numbers, whereabouts, and what have you. Nothing.
On the way out, I passed the lady of the house drooling to the beat of cat videos. It put another beat in my step. I was planning to grow old with Terry, care for him as devotedly as the Shipper did his wife. If we both survived the next few hours.
Twenty-Six
I PULLED UP TO the gates of the Donogue residence and discovered Danny waiting there. I’d told him he had an hour to get what he could on the Spirit Box. I parked the bike next to him.
“Have you got something for me?”
“Maybe.”
“Did you send a message to your grandfather?”
“I tried.”
“Prove it.”
He looked stricken. “How am I supposed to do that?”
“What did you say?”
“I said: ‘Grandpa Don, are you out there?’”
He had tears in his eyes. Poor little chump didn’t know which way was up. He couldn’t tell what he was faking and what he was really feeling and neither could I.
“Yeah, so did you get a response?”
He let out a small sob. “‘You can take it with you’ and then an emoticon.”
“What?”
“A note came back: ‘You can take it with you’ and then a smiley face.”
“Your grandfather sent an emoticon from the grave?”
“I seriously doubt it, okay. My grandfather would’ve sooner sucked up to Steve Jobs than use an emoticon. I just don’t think it’s him. It’s a fucking mind fuck.”
I considered it. I asked myself whether I trusted this guy. I said: “Did you ask him about the Spirit Box?”
He nodded. A tear rolled down his cheek. “Same answer: ‘You can take it with you,’ and the smiley face.”
“That’s it?”
“That’s it and then not another word, not a response, not a note.”
“Danny, look at me.”
He did.
“Do you think it’s him—your grandfather?”
More tears, one on each cheek. It was my answer. I started the engine and left him standing in the dust. He was coming apart and I didn’t want to be there for it, and besides, I had two hours and the most indistinct outline of a plan. A very bad plan but a plan.
ELRON DIDN’T SEEMED surprised to see me this time and Honey didn’t even materialize. He asked me what I needed and we got right down to business. “Not a usual request,” he said, “but none of yours are. I’ll need forty-five minutes.”
He finished in less than that while I paced in the green grass and silenced all my theories and the voices of people I’d encountered and focused on the plan. I didn’t doubt that Deuce and his gang had Terry, and my gut told me they were on the Last Dolphin. There was a reasonable chance that the yacht could be anywhere in the whole of the Pacific, which gave me zero chance of finding it in a million years, let alone two hours.
I had to start somewhere and that was at the San Francisco Yacht Club. After that, all I needed to do was sneak onto the boat, disarm the Adderall-fueled Tarantula crew, free Terry, and blast Deuce into his own hellfire afterlife.
That and $6.50 wouldn’t even get me a latte. It didn’t even qualify as a plan.
“Here ya go.” Elron handed me the weapon. “You don’t have any idea what you’re doing, do you, Fitch?”
“I’m doing okay for a Thursday.”
“It’s Wednesday, Fitch.”
Honey had emerged and the two of them stood arm in arm watching me speed off to parts unknown.
ANY OTHER TIME, I’d have loved this drive—weaving on the chopper among bumper-to-bumper vehicles on the 280. Even with the weight of the task ahead, I had to admit: it’s no wonder people come here. Green hills rose on each side of the highway and to my left, the west, the ocean was less than an hour’s drive away. And maybe the Last Dolphin and Terry in it.
I took Nineteenth Avenue through the city and crossed the Golden Gate Bridge. Midafternoon, sun totally blocked, wind sweeping the span. I stopped in the middle and pulled the bike to the right, to the chagrin of the cars behind me. Ignoring the honks, I looked for ships, big ones. There were three to the west of the bridge. One of them was clearly a container ship. Another too small to matter and a third was possibly the Last Dolphin. No telling from here. To my right, in the bay, a mere handful of ships, none of them yacht size, then Alcatraz. Made me wonder: Could they have taken Terry to the prison island? Swim with the dolphins? Maybe the kid meant swim with the sharks—the mythological ones circling Alcatraz.
It wasn’t lost on me that I was still so far from an answer. I was taking a flier. At least I was doing it at high revolutions per minute. I revved the engine and continued in the direction of the yacht club, which was located on the tip of Tiburon. So what if the plan was all wrong? What if there was no boat and no Terry? Deuce was bluffing. He’d give me another chance, right? Try as I might, I couldn’t convince myself of that. I couldn’t do anything but push forward and hope.
THE GUY IN the glass box at the gate looked at me like I might be suitable for chum. “I’m with Deuce,” I said.
“This is a members-only club. Not that we discriminate against nonmembers.” He had a black vest over a white shirt, a round face, an aggressive part in his hair, and glasses. “We very much value our nonmembers and people of all backgrounds and consider them our equals in every way except.”
“Except they can’t come in.”
“They absolutely could come in—if they were members. That’s how equal they are.”
“Deuce,” I repeated. “I’m here for him.”
The guy pursed his lips. I read his name tag: Dave.
“Please, Dave. I won’t cause any trouble.”
“It’s pronounced ‘Dave,’” he said.
“Isn’t that what I said?”
“It’s a soft a. Erring more on the side of ‘Dove.’ My parents really were forward thinkers on vowels.”
“Dove—”
“A tad harder on the a.”
I was just about to bring out my gun when I noticed Dove or Dave or whatever studying me and then the bike. “What’s the top speed on that thing?” he asked.
“I’d like to find out,” I said, which was true but also this was my hitting the ball back over the net to keep this tiny spark of connection alive.
He looked at me and swallowed and then looked back at the bike. “Seat looks like it fits a pair.” Dove or Dave bit his bottom lip. Uh-oh. He was flirting.
“I suppose it could, but I’m in a rush right now.”
He looked at me like I’d promised him something and I could see the lonely in his exhale. I’d have to let him think what he wanted.
“You won’t cause any trouble?”
“No, Dove, I won’t. I promise.”
“I’m working until nine,” he said.
I half nodded and sped off and didn’t get ten yards into the parking lot before my phone rang. Actually, I didn’t hear it, but I felt the buzz against my leg. I thought I’d turned the damn thing off. The caller ID said: Deuce McStein.
And there was a text: Your phone has been automatically turned on courtesy of Bono. U2 can feel safe that your battery is still working!
I answered the phone. “What do you want, Deuce?”
“You know what I want. Do you have it?”
“Do you have Terry?”
“Do you have the Spirit Box?”
“You know how this works, Deuce. You give me my husband and you get what you want.”
“So you have it.”
“Put him on the phone.”
I heard a muffled noise and then a slapping sound and then I heard a voice say: “You slap like my sister.”
It was Terry.
“He’s tougher than you are,” Deuce said. “He barely flinched when I smacked him. Where are you?”
“Bite me, Deuce.”
“Let me tell you how I’m feeling, Fitch. I’m feeling rotten and a little cheated. I let you listen to me slap your husband but you’re not giving me anything. It’s a one-way relationship, just the kind of thing that Dr. Simons said I shouldn’t get involved in.”
“Before you killed him in cold blood.”
“I think that shows I was growing, not letting myself be taken advantage of—emotionally. So tell me where you are.”
“Palo Alto. Around Alice’s, where Captain Don bought it. We could meet in the Woodside Hills.”
There was a pause. “Not so good for me.” Another pause. “How soon can you be in Marin?”
I felt my chest thump. Marin. Not far from here. It made me think I was on target.
“I can be there in ninety minutes, give or take.” I was lying but I wanted to buy some time, let him think I was farther away, get his defenses down.
“That should get you in under the clock, assuming you bring the Spirit Box.”
“Where do you want to meet, specifically—I suggest someplace public.”
“That makes me feel like you don’t trust me, Fitch.”
“I don’t trust you. You’re a lying, murdering drug dealer.”
“Which makes me not trustworthy? It feels like you’re name-calling instead of addressing the issues.”
“You want the Spirit Box or not?”
“Give me five minutes and I’ll call you back with a place.”
I slipped the phone into my pocket. I felt my internal gears engage, a sensation I tended to get when my body took over from my brain. It was what Terry called his Fitch Action Model. Got a laugh out of me the first few times because he’d nailed it; in these moments, the barrier between brain and body dissolved. Thought was emotion was motion. I revved the engine and drove west in the parking lot past the handful of fancy cars and a catering van, left down a service ramp next to a spectacular white structure, doubtless a clubhouse and restaurant, and around the front to the right, where I almost lost my breath. The slips and yachts, even the small ones, magnificently carved and curved woods, sea scent wafting over the top. Enough to make a guy want to get filthy rich, whatever the cost.
I looked out at the boats, seeking a pattern or a sign of where the Lost Dolphin might park or signs of her whereabouts. But it just didn’t compute. This place didn’t seem big enough to accommodate the likes of what I imagined the Shipper would own. Maybe it wasn’t as majestic as all that.
“Help you?”
The voice came from behind me.
I turned to find a codger, a sunbaked deckhand. I assumed he worked for the place. “Who you looking for?” He reeked of fish and cleaning fluid, his white jumpsuit streaked with oil. He held an empty bucket.
“I’m okay, thanks.”
“You look a little lost.”
“I’m okay, like I said.”
“Suit yourself. World’s gone mad if you ask me. You bring a bike down here and say you’re not lost and some weirdo tried to drive down here earlier in one of those tiny little orange cars, looks like a VW bug knocked boots with a station wagon. I told the driver he’d run out of road but he was all hopped up on something and said his goddamn GPS told him where to go and I could talk to her if I didn’t like it. Talk to a computer. Hell, what’ll they think of next?” He looked at the sea. “Kids these days couldn’t find north if you gave ’em a compass and a divining rod.”
“Wait, go back. The guy was driving a MINI?”
“That what you call them? They look like the car version of those little tiny dogs that are good for nothin’ but punting.”
“When was this?”
“This morning, I told you.”
“Did you tell me where he went?”
Now the guy studied me like I was getting too deep into it. “I’ve not seen you around before.” It was as close as this yacht-club worker was going to get to risk telling me to take a hike.
“That guy, he’s the one I’m looking for. Let me know where he went and I’ll be out of your hair.”
“When they first hired me here—that was sixty years ago—they told me there was one rule: people here value their privacy, so you don’t see or hear anything and you don’t say anything to anybody about what you’ve not seen nor heard. I made the mistake of telling them that that was more than one rule, which was the last time that I really listened to anything because, like the man told me at the time, they pay me not to.”
Then he looked around and I could see that he could see there was no one in the vicinity but us and some birds.
“But I’m breaking that rule because I don’t like a newbie coming down to my dock in a tiny dog car and then giving me the what-for. So I’ll tell you that he took a skiff over to a beauty, the seventy-footer just beyond the span.”
“The Last Dolphin.”
He looked surprised. “Didn’t hear that from me, son.”
“Where do I get a skiff?”
“Getting choppy this time of day. Not what I’d be looking for in the way of fun. But maybe you go ask the guy.”
“I thought you said he took a skiff.”
“Brought it back too.”
He pointed to the far end of the dock—in the direction of the farthest slip.
My phone rang.
“MEET YOU AT Sammy’s in Tiburon,” Deuce said. “Place with the outdoor tables.”
“Ninety minutes.”
“You’ll have the Spirit Box.”
“You’ll have Terry.”
“Nearby. See you there.” Deuce clicked off.
THE TARANTULA SAT in the skiff, his back to me, facing the Golden Gate Bridge. The aging speedboat rocked gently with waves softened by the slip it occupied. Wind strong enough to skew my posture blew across the outer reaches of the dock. The noise covered my approach past one stunning craft after the next. When I got a slip away from Deuce’s man on the ground, I stayed low behind a schooner called You’re My Beach. I felt the big gun I’d strapped to my back to make sure it held steady. I pawed in my jacket front pocket for the Spirit Box and the little device Elron had made for me. I pulled out the pistol. Heavy, it nestled in my hand. A thing of substance in a world dominated by words.
A gust blew from the bay and the Tarantula turned away from it, shielding himself, and looked right at me.
Twenty-Seven
I DIDN’T BOTHER TO try to duck. It was coming to this anyway. I pointed the gun at the Tarantula and took two big strides forward. It put me on the edge of his boat, just to the right of the outboard. His eyes danced wide with double-synthetic Adderall and he reached for his belt and I nodded uh-uh, no way, and yanked myself into the skiff. I’d seen this gangster before and couldn’t place where at first and then did: he’d leveled me outside the library. He gave a half smile, a tough-guy confidence grin, and I moved forward and hit him with a flash of backhand right across the jaw. My hand might’ve gotten the worst of it. Even his head was made of beefcake. It only inched to the side and returned to its place with a sadistic look.
“Lucky for you you’ve got a gun,” he said while blood dribbled down his chin. He had braces, the kind that are supposed to be invisible. They must’ve cut the inside of his lip.
“Take me to the Last Dolphin.”
“Yeah, I don’t think so.”
“Wind out here will muffle a gunshot sound pretty good.”
“So kill me and you can drive yourself.”
He had me with this chess move.
“I’m thinking kneecap, maybe Achilles.” I took the gun, shoved it into the back of his knee so he could feel right where it would disable him. He grimaced but said: “We have great health care. Deuce is very forward thinking in that way. You get hurt on the job and you get three months of paid leave.” He got lost in a thought and said: “We’re still negotiating for paternity time.”
>
“Shut your mouth.”
“You don’t believe in paternity leave? One of them, huh? I just can’t get over the ignorance these days; men are supposed to do everything—bring home the bacon, take care of the kids, carry it all without a word and no support from the system.”
He was obviously stalling. Smart one; I’d have to be careful. The boat looked empty. He sat in the middle of three benches. A gun would be stashed somewhere, most likely on his person. His blue windbreaker flapped in the wind and I couldn’t get a read on any gun lumps beneath it. A tattoo ran up his neck, furry tarantula legs grasping at his chin. His phone sat on the bench next to him.
I grabbed it.
“Hey!”
“Nice screen. What is it, six inches?”
“Give it back.”
“Take me to the big boat or this thing swims with the fishes.”
“Put that down! It’s got all my contacts.”
“Let’s go, shithead.”
“I haven’t backed it up in weeks!”
I made like I was going to toss it into the bay. The Tarantula didn’t look so confident now.
I told him how it was going to go down.
WHILE HE PILOTED the skiff in the direction of the bridge and the Last Dolphin, I frisked him and found a long-barreled handgun that I tossed into the water. I turned off his phone. We skipped across the wind-irritated water and I looked at the tip of San Francisco, each eastward block of the city a littler sunnier than the last as the fog grew thicker toward the ocean. Hank Kane, the deceased columnist for the Chronicle, called it Berkshires by the Bay and I could see it, a village, really, at a distance, something quaint, even ancient, even though up close there could be few places on earth more dependent on and reflective of the new. One wave after the next of new people and modern ideas had come to define San Francisco, a gold-rush town to its core, the last stop before the Pacific on the manifest-destiny train.