The Shark Club
Page 23
“We should go,” he said, emerging with a fresh shirt on and his hair combed. “Sam’s meeting us at the Sheriff’s Office.”
I filled two travel mugs with coffee, handed him one, and found a plastic bag for the shark fin. It was evidence and I was taking it with me. Robin walked to the door, stopped, turned around, and I had a sudden fear he was having second thoughts.
“I didn’t mean the things I said to you. The last thing I want to do is hurt you,” he said.
I wanted to believe him. I wanted to be magnanimous, but I wasn’t capable of it right then.
“I’ll drive,” I said.
Thirty-one
The Sheriff’s Marine Bureau was practically surrounded by water, situated on Palermo Point, the conjunction of two canals and Mangrove Bay. I parked the car in the tiny lot and gazed at the small building with the Mediterranean roof tiles, the freshly planted palms, the American flag fluttering atop the flagpole. The place looked more like a visitor’s center than a hub for fighting crime.
We sat there a moment in the quiet without speaking. We were all talked out. Finally, Robin opened the car door and I heard the unmistakable spray from a dolphin’s blowhole drift from the canal.
Sam was in the lobby, waiting. I hadn’t seen him in years, but he looked the same: the neatly parted white hair, red bow tie, and beat-up briefcase.
He led Robin toward a conference room, while I stood in the corridor holding the bag containing the shark fin, lingering in case Robin looked back. When Sam opened the door, I caught a glimpse of Sergeant Alvarez inside seated at a table. Stepping through, Robin turned and looked at me, as I knew he would, and his face was filled with restrained panic. The sight of it triggered a flash of him at six years old, waking from one of his nightmares with this same pale, frightened expression. I remembered how I had touched his forehead back then and told him he was going to be okay.
“Robin,” I called as the door began to close. “It’ll be okay.”
An hour later, after a Fish and Wildlife official and an assistant DA had come and gone, Alvarez found me in the lobby.
“Your brother?” she said, shaking her head. “Unbelievable.”
“What’s going on in there?” I asked.
“Robin’s involvement is limited to interstate commerce trafficking. His lawyer managed to negotiate a plea deal, and in exchange, Robin told us everything: Troy Fuller’s role, the names of the other finners, where they moved the fins, the persons receiving the illegal shipments in Savannah.”
“It’s over, then.”
“Your brother will have a hefty fine to pay, maybe probation, but yeah, it looks like it’s pretty much over. For him, anyway.”
“Here,” I said, handing her the bagged shark fin. “I took it from Sand Devil this morning.”
“My God,” she said. “I don’t know if you were being brave or stupid, but you never should’ve ventured onto the island. It was reckless. But hey . . . thanks,” she said, holding up the bag. “Come on, I need to get your statement.”
In her office, I watched Alvarez transfer the fin into an evidence bag, then seal and label it.
“There were hundreds of those,” I told her.
For the next twenty minutes she took down my account of what had happened on Sand Devil.
She reported that when she’d gotten there, the fins were gone. She’d found nothing but large brown patches where the oilcloths had lain, along with one blue tarp that had been left behind, no doubt in a hurry. Thanks to Robin, though, they now knew where to look for the fins.
“I just hope you catch these guys,” I told her.
“We already have deputies searching for Troy. We’ll find him, but until we do you and brother watch your backs, okay?”
“Yeah, we will,” I said, beleaguered by the last twelve hours.
“Your brother is going to be here a while longer,” she said. “Why don’t you go home and get some rest. I’ll call you when we’ve wrapped everything up.”
Outside, I stood atop a corner of the seawall, letting it sink in: Robin was emerging from this fairly unscathed. Good news for him, but there was little justice in it for the sharks. The current created tiny vortexes that rolled and swirled until they gave out of steam and joined the tidal stream again. I lifted my arms and stretched, letting the sun shine on my face and exhaling loudly like the dolphin had.
At noon I tapped on Perri’s office door, took a breath, a deep one, and walked in, intending to break the news about Robin. To my disappointment and my relief, she wasn’t there. I stood in the empty room and gazed at the framed photo she’d kept on her desk for the last twenty-three years: Robin and me on our seventh birthday, less than one year after our parents were killed. We were posing beside the hotel pool in wet bathing suits and pirate’s hats, holding slices of cake and grinning madly.
I walked to the window and stared at the scene below, the pool fringed in palms, and beyond it, the beach sloping into the Gulf, the same beautiful picture as always, but it felt splintered and muted. I sank into Perri’s desk chair and rubbed my thumb across the glass over the photo, then dialed Perri’s cell.
“I’m down on the landing,” she said. “Marco and I are about to take the pontoon for a spin.”
“I see you,” I told her. “I’m standing at your office window.”
She looked up and waved with both arms. “Marco installed some new speakers on the boat last weekend for his guided tour and wants to test them out on me, but we both know it’s just an excuse for him to throw a fishing rod and get me out of the office.” She laughed. She sounded so happy and unfettered, so insulated from the truth that was about to land on her. How could I tell her the grandson she’d raised was in trouble, and not for pissing in a parking lot?
“We need to talk,” I said.
I could see Marco already on the pontoon, fiddling with the engine. “Wait. I’m coming, too.” I hung up before she could ask questions.
When I reached the landing, Marco asked me to untie the boat. I tossed the ropes into the pontoon and hopped in.
We cruised parallel to shore for a short while before he swung toward open water, pushing the engine wide open, creating a wake for hitchhiking dolphins. Perri and I sat in the back as three of them drafted, leaped, and flopped, and then, one by one, veered off. These moments were a kind of balm. I tried to soak them in.
“So, what did you want to talk about?” Perri asked. With the engine revved and the wind rushing past our ears, I’d barely heard her.
When I didn’t answer right away, she repeated, louder, “What . . . did . . . you . . . want . . . to . . . talk . . . about?”
I held up a hand, motioning for her to wait until Marco slowed down. Finally, he cut the engine and we drifted to a stop. As he lowered the anchor, I said quietly, “It’s Robin.”
“Perri, you want a rod?” Marco called, unaware of what he was interrupting.
There was an awful swell of silence as he turned, and seeing her face, how grave and still it was, he laid down the fishing rod and sat beside her.
“Just tell us,” she said.
I went through it piece by piece, recounting what I knew, trying to say it in order, as if the chronology mattered. I started with the boat that had been reported on the hotline, how I’d stumbled on it at Sand Devil this morning, and the shock of finding Robin there with Troy and the long-haired guy and hundreds of fins. I told them about my confrontation with Robin at the hotel and the part he’d played in it all. It was like laying out the pieces of some bizarre jigsaw on a table, trying to make sense of them. It occurred to me I was doing it for myself as much as for Perri. She didn’t interrupt, not once.
When I explained that Robin was still at the Sheriff’s Office, having spilled his guts, and was being punished with a fine and most likely probation, relief flooded her face. I should have started with that.
“So stupid,” Perri said, shaking her head, then turned back. “What the hell was he thinking?”
Marco, who had been sitting calmly, suddenly stood and walked to the front of the boat. He slammed his fist onto the console. “Troy—that son of a bitch.”
The console was still vibrating when Alvarez called. “You can come get your brother,” she said. “And Maeve, we got Troy Fuller—he’s in custody.”
I hung up. “Let’s head back. I have to get Robin.”
“I’m going with you,” Perri said.
When we arrived, Robin was outside, sitting on the seawall. Perri had been subdued on the way over, but now she crossed the parking lot with resolve, so much so, I had to quicken my pace to keep up with her. Robin stood and buried his hands in his pockets. I didn’t know what was going on behind his sunglasses, but I imagined he had the same fear-struck look he’d had earlier stepping into the conference room.
“Maeve explained everything,” Perri told him. I envisioned him rolling his eyes a little as he considered my version of it.
“If I’d known driving a truck to Savannah would lead to all this I never would’ve done it,” he said, giving her a grin.
“Well, you weren’t just taking a road trip, now were you?” she said, not in the mood to be charmed.
He lowered his eyes. “I’m sorry, Perri. I don’t know what to say, except I’m sorry.”
She wrapped her arms around him, and his face relaxed, but she wasn’t finished. “I’m glad you’re sorry, but you’re thirty years old, Robin. You’ve got to cut this shit out.”
Later that afternoon, in the serenity of my apartment, I showered, lingering under the spray, as the acute shock of what Robin had done began to wear off and settle into a painful reality.
I wrapped my bathrobe around me. Postponing the crushing need for sleep a little longer, I called Daniel, who was down in the kitchen. As I recounted the discovery I’d made on Sand Devil and Robin’s involvement, my voice took on a serrated edge, the anger flaring all over again.
Within five minutes, he was at my door. He put his arms around me and I felt the heat of his breath on my cheek. He said, “For God’s sake, what were you doing sneaking around on that island?”
I felt a little scolded. Like a child who wanders off from her mother in the store and when she’s found is embraced first, then walloped. He was scared, and maybe a little bewildered. He let go of me, and I remembered how flummoxed he’d looked after I’d surfaced from retrieving Hazel’s binoculars from the bottom of the Gulf. Like he didn’t quite know me. He looked that way now.
I sat on the end of the bed, then lay back and rubbed my eyelids, weighted with fatigue.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
“Just tired. And relieved. I’m glad it’s over.”
He sank down beside me. “I can’t believe you got Robin to turn himself in.”
“It wasn’t easy, but he came around.”
“No, I mean, he’s your brother. Your twin.”
I sat up. “Are you saying you wouldn’t have?”
He hesitated. “I honestly don’t know,” he said.
“Well, you have no idea what it was like to be in that position,” I said. “When I saw the hotel boat docked out there, I called the Marine Bureau, but I didn’t know it was Robin. . . . And how could I ignore . . .” I stopped. I didn’t have the reserves left inside to defend myself.
Daniel looked past me as if formulating what to say. “You’re right, you didn’t really have a choice. I know. I’ll let you get some sleep.”
After he left, I pulled the shades, sealing out the brightness of the Gulf, and lay in the dim light. Robin had accused me of loving sharks above everything else. And maybe that’s what Daniel thought, too. It wasn’t fair. And yet, a suitcase sat in the closet waiting to be packed. I was leaving Daniel and Hazel. I was leaving for the whale sharks.
Thirty-two
On the afternoon of the hotel’s twenty-fifth anniversary party, I lay stretched across the Turkish rug in Perri’s room staring at the ceiling, and then at her foot, which bounced near my head as she sat, legs crossed, on her sofa.
It had been almost a week since Robin had turned himself in, and in the immediate aftermath, I’d assumed Perri would cancel the party. That, it turned out, was unthinkable to her. “There has been a Book Bash every year since the hotel opened,” she told me. “Even the year your parents died. I’m sure as hell not going to let Robin’s troubles spoil it.”
His involvement in the shark finning had been a fresh, unquenchable scandal all week, but rather than discouraging guests to attend, Perri insisted it would bring them out in droves just to see if Robin made an appearance.
“Is that a toe ring?” I asked, staring at the thin silver band on her toe.
“I’m trying it out,” she said.
“So what are you going to paint on the clamshell this time?” I asked, pointing to a canvas sitting on the easel, blank except for a pencil tracing of the shell.
“I’m not sure yet. You know, it’s no surprise I’ve got my easel out now, with you heading to Africa. I get very productive when I’m missing you.”
I propped on my elbows. “I’ll be back before Christmas.”
“I know, honey. Have you started packing?”
“A little.” The rug scratched at my elbows, turning the skin red. I got up and sat in the chair beside her.
“Is Nicholas going?” she asked, and I glanced at her sideways, catching something in her voice. As if she were fishing a little about him.
“I think it’s safe to say he’s not. I haven’t heard from him since he left here.”
“Does he know what happened?”
“With the finnings, you mean?”
Perri nodded.
“I don’t know. I imagine Sergeant Alvarez called him about it. Or he caught it on the news.”
“I thought maybe you might have called him about it,” she said.
“He made it clear he couldn’t see me. I’m honoring that. It’s the least I can do.”
“And Daniel? How is he with your leaving?”
“He doesn’t totally understand why I’m going.” I curled my legs in and held my bare feet. For a second I contemplated a toe ring, too, then dismissed the idea. I wasn’t a toe ring person. Maybe when I was seventy-eight like Perri. “Daniel’s birthday is next Saturday,” I added.
“You planning a party?”
“A small one. It’ll be just me and Hazel. Daniel is baking his own cake for a change.”
I thought of all the twelfths of August that we’d been separated, the mornings I’d wakened and realized what day it was, then wished I hadn’t remembered at all. I would wonder how he was celebrating. Would he be alone or would there be a dinner out with friends, with Robin, maybe with a girl? This year he would blow out his candles with me and Hazel there to sing to him. Thinking of him caused me to reach up and touch the shark tooth that hung at my throat, the little white dagger that had once been lodged in my leg.
Perri smacked her hands together, making me jump. “The party’s in less than two hours!” she announced. “I’ve got a ton to do, and you’ve got to dust off your top hat.”
My annual George Sand menswear costume. I didn’t know if I could face it.
“You’re still not going to tell me what your costume is?” I asked, hoping she would leak the big secret.
“You’ll see soon enough,” she said.
I flicked through the hangers in my closet, making a last-ditch effort to go as someone other than George Sand, trying to imaginatively adapt my shorts and sundresses into some sort
of costume. Finally, I pulled out the black wet suit at the back of the closet, the one reserved for winter dives.
My diving fins and scuba mask were stored in a plastic Tupperware container beneath the bed. Flattening my face against the carpet, I pulled it out, along with Robin’s manuscript. For something that had caused me so much distress, the book looked far less threatening now than when I’d kicked it under the bed. I flipped through the pages, looking for a mention of Margaret and Derek, curious how they’d ended up. I placed it on the bedside table. I would finish reading it, finally.
At 7:30, half an hour late, Robin appeared in the living room looking handsome in his Gatsby tuxedo. Wearing the dive suit, I flapped across the carpet in my fins, positioning the mask over my face.
“Is this some Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea thing?” Robin asked.
“I’m Her Deepness, Sylvia Earle.”
Robin couldn’t resist laughing as he said, “Never heard of her.”
“She’s an oceanographer and an author.” I held up my battered copy of Sea Change.
Robin and I were finding our way. Over these past five days, he’d showed up twice at the Conservancy with mango ices and jerk chicken wraps from the Shrimp Shack. A third time he’d appeared in my office with a small package he’d laid on my desk.
“Open it,” he said.
Inside was the birthday painting Perri had given me. The tear was mended; there was a small, neat seam where the gash had been. I’d noticed the painting was missing and suspected he’d taken it to be repaired. He was trying hard to make things right.
“Thank you,” I said.
He couldn’t take back the hurtful words he’d hurled or unreveal some of his long and deeply held perceptions of me; we could only forgive and move on. I feel like that’s what transpired when he brought me the mended painting—a tacit but mutually agreed understanding that we would do just that.
It hit me now, however, that despite our unspoken truce, despite our bond, it wasn’t my job to rescue him or show him the way. I would let that go, as I should have done long ago, and just pray writing would bring him satisfaction or, at the very least, keep him out of trouble.