Black Tide

by Brendan DuBois

  Through it all, Diane Woods steered the car, talking to me but looking at what was going on. Little things like burned-out taillights or open containers of beer didn't even cause her to tap her brake pedal: she was out for bigger prizes. She finished her hot dog and took a sip from a cup of Coke that been stored between her legs, and then was going to say something but just stayed quiet instead. A woman skated by on rollerblades, eyes half closed, listening to a tiny tape player strapped to her tanned upper left arm. She had on a lime-green string bikini and her flesh was tanned and taut and seemed to spill over the tiny green fabric. There was a chorus of shouts and car horns as she skated south. I even saw Diane sneak a look in the rearview mirror.

  "Not a bad view," I observed.

  "You get them all the time around here," she said, braking again as the traffic ground its way north. "Jesus, I'm beat, Lewis. You know, I wouldn't mind a summer here, just listening to the music and skating around. Not a bad lifestyle, at least for a change. Get to sleep late, at least."

  "What's new with the diver case?"

  She looked over at me, a bit of mustard in one corner of her mouth, and said, "Officially and what I tell the news media, the case is proceeding along."

  "Unofficially, the story's different, then."

  "Yeah." She brought the cruiser to a stop again. "Damn traffic. Yeah, the case isn't going anywhere. First of all, no one's claimed the body. No missing person report has been filed, no landlord has gone into a cottage and found that his tenant was missing, and no empty boat's been washed up ashore. The wetsuit had no rental tags on it, and none of the dive shops report any of their gear missing. Autopsy… Well, the diver certainly didn't drown, that's for sure. Not enough water in the lungs. So the case is gong in the 'I'll get around to it when I can' file unless something breaks soon."

  She eased off the brakes, and I said, "Well, obviously some people know, Diane. The guy or guys who took care of the diver, the diver's friends or family. Which tells me that this wasn't a dispute over a title search. Something a bit heavier."

  Diane flicked her tongue out and caught the bit of mustard, and I felt better for some strange reason. She said quietly, “Maybe I'll have a talk with your buddy Felix."

  I said, "Not sure if buddy's the word. But feel free to try. How’s the rest of the department working?"

  By now the traffic in the left lane had come to a complete halt, and there was a blare of traffic horns from up ahead. Diane sighed and said, "We're not getting squat information about the chief and how his treatments are going, so everything's up in the air. Both of the deputy chiefs are busy setting bureaucratic land mines for each other, and I'm turning into one of their favorite weapons."

  "For example?"

  "For example, one deputy's supposed to be in charge of administration, and the other is supposed to be in charge of operations. With the chief around, I usually went straight to him and left those guys out of it. But now both are fighting for the detective bureau --- i.e., me --- and I'm getting conflicting orders --- like how to file certain reports, when I should be working and when I should be talking to the state. Petty crap like that. And then I got the diver case, the usual summer nonsense, the felonies and stuff and phone calls like you wouldn't believe."

  We moved up ahead some, but the left lane was stock-still, the sounds of the horns were getting louder. "Sounds like it's time for a vacation."

  She had both hands on the steering wheel and I could tell she was tensing up. Something was bothering her. She said, "No, it sounds like I need something more permanent, Lewis. Like a change in direction, or maybe careers." She turned to me, her tanned face looking weary. "But being a cop's all I know. That's all I've ever done, and I've given practically everything I've got to this department and this town, and I haven't been winning much all summer."

  "Has that Roger Krohn been helping much?"

  Another blast of horns from up ahead, and Diane actually smiled. "He's a funny character, that one. One day he's the tough, cynical Massachusetts detective who's seen it all, and another time he's just amazed at how things are up here in New Hampshire. I tell you, he keeps on talking about how he wants to get out of Massachusetts and come here, maybe find a nice local job, and I get the idea he's scouting out the chief's position."

  "Sounds morbid," I said. We moved forward a bit more, and then stopped. Nothing moved in the left lane.

  "Maybe so," she admitted, "but you know how it is with cops. We have a secret network that lets us know who's hiring and who's firing. Who's in at what department and who's not. Roger's just taking advantage of what's here. I really think he's gunning for the chief's job." She paused, was going to speak, and then seemed to change her mind.

  I said, "You were about to say?"

  That same smile. "I was about to say that I believe he's gunning for something else besides."

  "Oh," I said. I thought for a moment and said, "Think he's gunning for the Tyler detective bureau? In a truly nonprofessional way?"

  She grinned this time. "Unh-hunh. That I do."

  "So how is your love life, Diane?"

  Before she could answer we found out why the left lane had been at a standstill while our lane had continued to move ahead. A late-model Chevrolet, bright red and with mag tires and increased suspension, was stopped in front of a dress shop while the driver talked to two young ladies, who were leaning over and talking back to him, and while in the process of doing so, were revealing a remarkable amount of cleavage from their skimpy bathing-suit tops. The driver didn't seem to mind the tie-up he was causing and seemed to ignore the blaring horns, and based on the view at the time, it seemed understandable. Not particularly bright, but understandable.

  Diane muttered something and pulled up next to the Chevrolet and yelled out, "Hey, you! Move it!"

  The driver kept on talking and Diane leaned on the horn and said, "I'm talking to you, mister. Move it!"

  He turned and looked over at us. He had on a black baseball cap, worn backward, and his long brown hair fell to his shoulders, which were bare, and it seemed as if he had spent about two weeks growing his mustache. He was smoking a cigarette and he removed it with one hand, the better, I suppose, to speak to us. He flipped the butt toward Diane, saying, "Fuck you, lady. I'm busy."

  Well.

  Diane said something under her breath and slammed the Crown Vic in drive and pulled it ahead and over, blocking his way. She threw the Crown Vic back into park and the cup of Coke that was on the seat fell to the floorboards, but by then she was out of the car, pulling a nightstick from underneath the seat and carrying it one hand. I got out just in time to see her reach into the Chevrolet with the nightstick, and then pull the young t=man with the foul mouth out, using the nightstick under his chin. His two female friends, seeing what was going on, melted back into the crowd.

  God, Diane moved fast. The driver swore and swung at her, just barely missing her face. I went around to the front of her cruiser, going to give her some help, but Diane had grabbed one am and had tucked the young man's thumb under his hand, and was pulling the arm up against his back. He yelped and his legs gave way, and Diane slammed his chest down on the front of the Chevrolet. I winced. Diane had him in what she called a "thumb come-along," which was guaranteed to make prisoners do what cops wanted. As a joke once, she had tried it on me, and after a few seconds she had let go when I started yelling. The pain and stiffness in my arm had stayed for almost a week. Using the thumb come-along, Diane could have made me do anything she wanted, from tap dancing to signing over my bank account. It hurt like a son of a gun.

  Diane told me once that one of the Tyler police's secret fears was drawing a crowd along Atlantic Avenue during the height of the beach season and ending up with a riot that would drive a stake into Tyler Beach's reputation as a family beach. With the amount of drinking going on, all it would take would be a couple of guys shouting "Off the pigs" and throwing a couple of bottles. Things could get nasty real quick. So by virtue of that fear and D
iane's natural speed, by the time I had gotten around to the left fender of the Crown Vic, ready and willing to offer any assistance that I could, she had handcuffs on the driver and was walking him to her cruiser. His hat had come off in the process, his head was down and he was moaning, probably wondering what the hell had happened to him. I opened the rear door of the Crown Vic and said to Diane, "Here you go, Detective. Always glad to help."

  I swear, her smile had dimples by then. "Thanks," she said, tossing him into the backseat. He lay down, his arms handcuffed behind him. On his left shoulder blade, there was a tattoo of a bulldog.

  "Do me a favor?" she asked, breathing fairly hard.

  "Name it." She nodded over to the Chevrolet. "Pull this nitwit's car over to the side, will you? Gotta open up the traffic."

  I felt somewhat odd as I did what she asked, stepping into this stranger's car and driving it all of six feet so it was next to the sidewalk. Hardly any type of crowd had formed during the sixty seconds or so of this little incident, but those people who did glance at me gave me a look that said "cop." Since I've been called worse things, I didn't let it bother me.

  After switching off the engine and locking the doors, I went back into the Crown Vic and handed the keys over. She threw them down next to her metal clipboard and we headed down one the lettered side streets that connect Atlantic Avenue with Ashburn Avenue--- both streets run parallel to the ocean --- and from there it was just a short drive to the Tyler police station. As she drove, the guy in the backseat moaned a couple of times and said, "You broke my goddamn hand, lady. You broke my goddamn hand."

  Diane said, "Save it for when we get to the station."

  She looked over at me and said, "You know, once I get this fool processed, I'm just gonna head home to my condo, shower in cold water and go to sleep."

  "Sounds like a hell of a schedule."

  The moaning resumed, and I spared him a glance and almost felt sorry for him. Here he was, young and probably considering himself good-looking, driving a car that he's proud of owning and being in Tyler Beach during a hot summer night. All wants is some action, some good times to take back to his life Massachusetts, and he almost gets there, talking it up to a couple of babes in good-looking bathing suits, and in the process of trying to impress them on how tough he is, he ends up in the rear seat of a police cruiser, being taken to the police station by one member of the Tyler police department that I guarantee does not have a bleeding heart. Diane would probably have let everything slide if it weren't for the language and the flying cigarette butt. It'd be enough to make me vacation at home.

  The Tyler police station is a one-story concrete structure that looks like it belongs at a nuclear testing site. It didn't take much of an architectural genius to design the building, and this lack of effort shows in a lot of ways: it's always too cold in the winter and too hot in the summer, and during a few spring and winter storms, when Ashburn Avenue floods out, the police dispatchers have to use two chairs: one to sit in and the other to rest their legs on, so as not to be ankle-deep in water for an entire shift.

  It's adjacent to the beach fire station of the Tyler fire department, and Diane rolled her cruiser out back, where the door for the booking area leads. As she brought the cruiser to a halt, I said, "Diane, you know, it would have been just as easy for me to bring this nut's car to the station, instead of leaving it on the street. "

  She was smiling again. "I know, Lewis. Haven't you figured it out?"

  I reached for the door handle. "Sure. You're going to call to have it towed." "Right," she said, getting out of the cruiser. "That way, this clown gets to pay a seventy-five-dollar tow-and-storage charge, in addition to his other fines."

  I got out and she looked over at me from across the roof of the Crown Vic. "That'll give him a little lesson in the pocketbook on how not to talk back to ladies."

  I said, "I'm not too sure if he's going to take it that way."

  She laughed. "Ask me if I care."

  Diane went to the rear door with a smile and said, "You know, this just put me in a good mood. Driving along, bitching and moaning to you, and bang, the adrenaline rushes right through you and cleans out your whole system. I'd recommend it to anyone."

  "Thanks, but I prefer something a bit quieter."

  From inside the cruiser I could hear the driver moaning again and Diane said, "Thanks for dinner."

  "You're welcome. But next time, let's do it someplace that doesn't involve driving."

  With that, Diane got her prisoner out of her car and I headed over to my Range Rover, which was also parked in the police lot. Through the good graces of Diane Woods, I have a "Press Parking" pass which I can toss onto my dashboard and which lets me park for however long I need to at the Tyler police station. One of the many secret privileges of being a magazine writer, I suppose.

  When I got to the Rover and unlocked the driver's door, someone called out "Lewis! Lewis Cole!" and I turned and saw Roger Krohn walking out of the booking-door entrance to the police station. He had on jeans and a pressed light pink polo shirt, and around his left wrist he was wearing a gold bracelet. His thick brown hair seemed as perfect as ever, and he was smiling at me as he strode across the parking lot.

  I shook his outstretched hand and he said, "How are you doing, Lewis? Gotten over that crazy swim you had, pulling in that body?"

  "Oh, I guess so."

  "Yeah," he said, shaking his head. "I talked to a couple of m friends down at 1010 Commonwealth in Boston, and they couldn't believe what had happened up here. Man, what a case. Headless and handless diver. Something as crazy as that belongs in New Jersey, not New Hampshire."

  "I'd have to agree with you there, Roger."

  He glanced around the parking lot and said, "I was just getting free for the night, and wondered if you want to go get a beer and maybe something to eat. You've been here awhile, you probably know the places. That sound okay?"

  At first I was going to say no and head home by myself, but his smile was so wide and his tone was so eager. I'm sure it must be lonely sometimes, being up here in a resort town by yourself.

  "Yeah, I know a good place," I said. "It's within walking distance, but it can sometimes get noisy. You mind noise?"

  "Hey," he said, holding his hands open. "I'm from Boston!"

  "It'll help," I said, relocking the Rover's door. "But not by much."

  Chapter Eight

  We were on the outside deck of Grace's Beach House, so we couldn't make out too much of the screaming coming from the second-floor dining room, but I could tell that Grace Grayson was in her usual form. A couple of older men were standing at their table --- which I could see through the sliding-glass doors leading inside --- while Grace went at them. A waitress with long black hair slid open one of the doors and I heard Grace yell, "I told you, and I told you again, we don't take no American Express. Now you get me something else or some cash or I'm calling the cops on both of you."

  The waitress, laboring under a tray that looked as if it was holding a squadron of boiled lobsters, merely shook her head as she went by, but some of the diners inside were cheering Grace. The door slid shut and it got somewhat quiet. Roger Krohn, sitting on the other side of our dinner table, raised his Budweiser and said, "Hell of a way to run a restaurant. Thought the trick was to make the customer happy."

  I lifted my glass of ice water in a return salute. A beer had sounded nice for dinner, but the memories of Felix's disapproving gaze a couple of days ago was still too fresh, and so I had decided to go with a cup of Tyler's best. There had been a line to get in but a little wheedling on my part and the fact that I had made an earlier reservation had helped. The furniture out on the deck was wooden chairs and tables, and most were stained with the remains of past dinners. There were no empty tables.

  "Grace doesn't care about making her customers happy," I said. "She just cares about bringing customers in. Most of these people are transient, just tourists. They hear about Grace's Beach House from friends and de
cide to go see the show. They have a hell of a time and go home and tell their friends and family, and then they show up in a month or so. A nice little cycle."

  Before us were the leftovers of a typical summer dinner: a few cold French fries and half-eaten rolls for Roger, who had taken care of a fried clam dish, and the empty shells of two one pound lobsters for me. Roger turned to take in the view. From the deck you looked over tiny cottages that are rented on a weekly basis by tourists from places as nearby as Salisbury and as far away as Quebec City, and a few hundred yards from the mass of cottages and stores is the harbor that is shared by the fishermen and boaters of Tyler and Falconer. Beyond the harbor are the flat grasslands of the marsh, and the squat concrete-and-steel buildings of the Falconer nuclear power plant, still quietly humming away, generating electricity for a million New Englanders and producing radioactive wastes that squabbling politicians couldn't decide where to store.

  Roger said, "You know, a guy could get used to this view could get used to living up here in a place like this."

  That was something Roger had talked about through most of the dinner, about how much he had enjoyed his brief time up here in Tyler and how he wasn't looking forward to returning to Boston. We had exchanged the usual small talk about our backgrounds, and once again I was surprised at not feeling any guilt about glossing over my years in government service. Instead of telling him the truth --- which could have gone on for a half hour or more --- I said, "So after a couple of years at DoD, I got tired of shuffling papers and lucked out in getting this magazine job."

  A convenient lie, but one I've never had the guts to use with someone who knew anything about magazine work. They would have raised an eyebrow or two, then would have rushed back to their office and made some phone calls, and I would have gotten some very unnecessary and dangerous attention.