Undertow

by R. M. Greenaway

  He followed York to the cockpit and sat in the passenger seat with Dallas in his arms. She was shivering as bad as he was now, which was a good sign. It was better than good, it was fabulous. York took the radio mic, yanked hard, snapping the cable, and threw it sideways, into the ocean. Dion blinked.

  “We’ll get to land okay without the coast guard,” York said. “You saved her life. I can’t believe it, but you did. So this isn’t going to end well, obviously, and I have to ask you something. I really want to know. Do you believe in life at all costs? Or do you believe in dying with dignity?”

  “Don’t give me that line,” Dion said. “This has nothing to do with dignity.”

  “It’s all I want. For her and for Melanie and for myself. There’s going to be no dignity in our lives. Have you seen these challenged kids when they grow old? Have you seen their parents growing old trying to care for them? Is that what you want for me? For Mel? For Dallas?”

  “I can think of a million better ways —”

  “No,” York interrupted. “You can’t. You’re not torn in half like I am. Look into my future for a moment. Dallas is cute now but won’t be for long. She’s going to wind down early and need constant care. And you know where I’m coming from, because you asked me about it yourself, how I’d cope. I told you I was scared, but I didn’t tell you the half of it. I’m frantic, Cal. I’m out of my wits. I won’t cope. I’ll leave Melanie, in the end, and she’ll be alone. She doesn’t even realize what she’s getting herself into.”

  “So you threw Dallas in the ocean and hoped I wouldn’t notice till it was too late. Was the engine even stalling, or did you set that up, too?”

  The lights of the city were visible now, blurred by the rain on the windshield, still far too distant for comfort. The boat chugged toward those lights, but slowly. York shrugged. “You can blame me for bringing her along and not keeping a closer eye on her. But I didn’t throw her in the ocean. She fell in herself.” He snapped his fingers. “In fact you saw her there, remember? We lost power. I went back to deal with the spark plugs. You were at the wheel. You turned around, and I was making my way back to you. She was there behind me, safe and sound. You recall that, right? I did not throw her in the ocean.”

  He was right. Dion recalled it distinctly. He had turned to watch York stepping around obstructions, coming back to take over. Dallas had been one of those obstructions, just sitting there. She was looking toward the back of the boat, though. Which was odd, but no warning of what she would do next.

  She was wakening now, in his arms. She whimpered and twisted, an awkward bundle starting to protest this unwanted physical contact and the pain of her abused lungs. She arched her back and growled. He needed to unload her. He had to get her to the warmth of the little cabin below.

  He looked down at her slack but troubled face, at her small hands trying to hit out at everything in anger. With an effort he contained her, held tight. She only squirmed harder.

  The night air felt warmer, now that the chill was seeping out of his muscles and tendons, but he had a new kind of struggle ahead, a rebellious little girl who refused to be cradled. Where was that coast guard hovercraft? The thing travelled at 130 k, if he recalled right, and should have been sprinting within view minutes ago.

  “You didn’t call SOS,” he told York, as it dawned on him it was just another lie. “They should be here by now. Where are they?”

  York kept chugging them toward land. He said nothing.

  The little girl bleated a near word as she slithered and kicked.

  “You’re looking for your horse?” Dion asked her. He gathered her close and stood, fought for balance, and made his way back to the pile of blankets where she had been playing. He set her down so he could search for her damned toy, and instantly she was up on hands and knees, too weak to stand, shedding her covering and crawling single-mindedly toward the rear deck. Exhaustion slowed her, but it slowed Dion, too, and he had to work hard at recapturing her. She squealed in a panic, stretching both arms to the wake churning its pale line in the darkness behind them.

  “Jesus, Dallas,” Dion shouted, trying to collect her limbs into a manageable package. He’d had enough. He carried her down to the cabin, locked her in, then clambered back up, breathing like a marathon runner on his last leg, to keep the menace York under surveillance.

  There was nothing menacing about York now. He was slumped tiredly at the controls, maintaining his route for the coastline, not too fast, not too slow.

  “I get it,” Dion said, with ragged anger. He stood behind the killer, adjusting his stance with the motion of the boat. “You didn’t throw Dallas overboard. You threw her horse.”

  York’s shoulders juddered, as if he was laughing or crying. “How d’you figure that? Probably was in her hand when she fell. Probably that’s why she was up on deck in the first place, leaning over, trying to give the thing a dip in the ocean.”

  “No chance.” Back on the island Dion had watched Dallas scoop the fallen animal from the surf, gripping it to her chest in her relief. She would never risk its life as York suggested. “You threw her horse. You knew she’d go after it.”

  “Never.”

  Dion heard the catch in York’s voice. In profile, he could see the man’s eyes fill with tears, and he could feel his own heart shattering. “I’m your alibi,” he said, pounding in the spikes. “Problem is, I’m smarter than you think.”

  York laughed. “I know how smart you are. I just thought you couldn’t fucking swim.”

  “I can swim,” Dion said, bitterly. “It’s the one thing I do well.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “You never asked.”

  York sobered up. Dion sat next to him in the passenger seat once more, knowing that if he had any say, this would be his last boat ride ever. “I didn’t throw her horse out to sea,” York said. “I put it on the edge of the deck, and it blew away. Which is as good as throwing it, I guess, ’cause I knew it would blow away. I shouldn’t have done that. I don’t know why I did. Just being mean.”

  Something banged against the hull, a deadhead or sea monster, but they kept going. York said, “I honestly didn’t think she’d jump after it. I honestly really truly didn’t, I wish you’d believe me. My only crime was hoping we couldn’t save her.”

  Dion almost believed him, that this had been a spiteful act toward the little girl, but not attempted murder.

  Except he knew York. He was a planner. In business, he was the logic, and Oz had been the impulse. But for all York’s planning, he lacked luck — and definitely a fully developed conscience. Maybe intent had only formed when he picked up that horse, looked down at that little girl, and his soul had flooded with new hope.

  “You didn’t think I’d jump after her,” he told York. “But when I did, you decided to let us both die. I’m not going to let it slide. What d’you think, I’m going to take pity on you? What’s it all about, really? Money?”

  York was deflating before his eyes, as if he no longer cared. “To save Mel from a life of sorrow,” he said. “To save myself from a life without Mel. But sure, the money that would pass to Mel would be nice. Not enough to save Diamonds, but enough to get Sea Lane up to lock-up stage. That’s all I want. Once I’m in Sea Lane, I’ll rebuild. That’s what I’m good at, turning shit into gold. I’ve got ideas, Cal. With that location, forget the nightclub biz. Imagine that setting, take out the go-go girls and install a world-class chef. Live music, fine dining, one-of-a-kind view. What d’you think, hey?” He grinned at Dion, saw Dion was not looking impressed, and glared again at the oncoming harbour lights. “Before you jumped in, I was going to myself. Make every effort to save her, and fail, and we’d all forgive ourselves and live happily ever after, knowing it was just a tragic accident. But then you fucked it all up, didn’t you? You dove in like a pro. The man who’s afraid of water.”

  “Is
it the same with Cleo?” Dion asked, as it occurred to him that pushing a woman to her death was not so far from letting a little girl drown.

  York appeared shocked, amazed, hurt. “What? No!”

  Because of the money, Dion thought. The fall meant the full inheritance moved from Cleo and Dallas to Dallas and Melanie, and now a tragic drowning, and once the dust settled the money would be Melanie’s, and what else would Melanie do with the cash but prop the falling timbers of their lives. Sure, it was all premeditated. Pressuring Dion to go boating today was part of the plan. It had nothing to do with friendship.

  “How the fuck could I have killed Cleo?” York exclaimed, throwing a hand out, like a man on stage proving how dismayed he was. “I wasn’t even there at the time. I was picking you up.”

  In a way, Jon York had just confessed.

  “Yeah?” Dion said. “So how d’you know what time she fell?”

  York closed his mouth in a tight grimace.

  “You know because you were there,” Dion told him.

  “No. I know because it happened early that morning, because your detective friend said so. And I was nowhere in the area, because I was talking to Ziba, and from Ziba’s I went straight to Diamonds to pick you up. When I say I wasn’t there, I mean generally, not specifically, and you’re a real bastard, you know that?”

  “You showed up in my room. Walked right in. You wanted to get away early. To avoid the rain.”

  “Sure.”

  “There was no rain in the forecast. That was just an excuse.”

  “My God!” York shouted it out, a man falsely accused. Railroaded. Betrayed. “I looked at the sky. I saw clouds moving in. I’m a man of the ocean. I can read the skies. Now and then I get it wrong. I got it wrong. You’re going to hang me because I didn’t predict the weather right?”

  A new thought hit Dion, so outrageous he had to rise to his feet. He stood bracing against the dash panel, staring down at York’s profile. “You took my phone,” he said. “You changed my alarm clock. You changed the time on your vehicle. Every clock I looked at confirmed what time it wasn’t.”

  York grinned up at him. “You’re crazier than Oscar,” he cried, and with sudden enthusiasm spun the wheel to veer them away from the oncoming shore. Dion lost balance, but grabbed at the dash, gathered his wits and swung a fist, cracking York on the side of the head. York sprawled against the controls. He righted himself, swearing, and punched out sideways. Dion dodged the blow, and both men grabbed at the wheel. York shoved blindly at the shift and throttle by his knee, and again the boat swerved out to sea, nosing up and cracking down. Dion’s feet went up and he went down, smashing a hip against something, shoulder against something else. He struggled back to his feet and dropped on York so they shared the pilot’s seat like a vaudeville team, gripping each side of the wheel and tugging. The boat swung in circles, tacking wildly to centre, bringing in an icy spray of seawater.

  Weakened by his swim and losing ground, Dion fought dirty and used his elbow to bloody York’s nose. Which did wonders. He climbed across the writhing body and pulled down the lever. The boat settled, and York, in surrender, moved to the passenger seat, palm over nose and mouth.

  Dion was in control now and only had to figure out how to work the machine, as a bleeding York wasn’t going to give him lessons. He took a breath and looked forward, through windscreen into the rugged distance. He would be okay, he felt, with the glimmering prospect of land in sight, but in so many ways he was still so lost at sea.

  Thirty-Nine

  Rock Bottom

  “Okay.” York was muffled-sounding as he used the hem of his shirt to staunch the bleeding. He sat in the passenger seat, looking not as beaten as Dion wanted him to be. “You’ve got me. I don’t know what came over me. It was just there, like a sign from God. Door was open. I went up, and Cleo was in Oscar’s office. She was on the phone. When she saw me she told whoever was on the line that she’d call her back. She was right there by the window, like an accident waiting to happen. I walked over, and it was the last thing she expected. Barely a touch.” He brayed another laugh, through all the wetness on his face, blood, rain, ocean spray. “Sick, I know. And then I had to think. I set the scene. Pushed the desk over to make it look like she’d climbed up on it. There was a drape on the floor that looked like it was waiting to be put up. So I put it up, partway. Blame it all on being so close to perfect. If it wasn’t so close I wouldn’t be such a maniac, I swear, swear to God, this is not me. I wouldn’t keep killing everyone in sight, except I was always this fucking close.”

  “You rigged my clock. And you swiped my phone, too, because you couldn’t change the time on that so easily, could you?”

  York nodded. “Yes, I rigged your clock and swiped your phone. If you’d made a fuss about the phone, I would have magically located it on the counter, or whatnot, and the gig would be up. But you were like, oh well, must have left it somewhere, so I went with it. Kind of clever, right? Both vehicles, too. Easy to change the time. I really had you in a little time warp there. Actually, it’s the oldest trick in the book, if you read the classics.”

  Dion had never read the classics. He thought back on the deception. Later all the clocks got set back to normal, except his little alarm clock. But if he had noticed, he blamed it on the batteries. He just wasn’t so sharp anymore.

  “I bet you killed Oscar, too,” he said, only to be nasty. He didn’t mean it, and didn’t believe it. Oscar’s death was one that York couldn’t have done, since he was in Victoria at the time.

  “Actually, yes,” York said. “I did.”

  Dion wasn’t sure he could stand another surprise. A hired hitman, then. He was steering them back to land, and not doing so well. The engine was choking up again, gagging as he tried to pick up speed. He was starting to wonder if he would ever step on that wharf again.

  “Inadvertently,” York said. “Chain reaction, really. There was this electrician, Sig, who I had working on the dance-floor lighting. At Diamonds. I hired him cash under the table — but that’s a long story, has to do with my binding contract with the firm that won the bid. Anyway, one night I caught this guy Sig walking out with a bottle of something in his tool bag. Scotch, I think, not even the high-end stuff. We had a good talk. He begged me not to turn him in, said he was just getting started, the rap would ruin him. All those liquor bottles, he said. They put him in a trance.”

  York smiled as he recalled the confrontation with the electrician Sig — Sigmund Blatt, that would be — and in spite of his damaged face and flapping wet hair he seemed to be enjoying himself, like this was just another day on the water. “It’s the fuel-line connector,” he said. “I jinxed it, then guess I didn’t fix it so well. Don’t worry, you’ll make it.

  “So,” he went on, “I did this guy Sig a favour, absolved him of the crime, and asked for a favour in return. Plus I’d drop him a buck or two if it worked out. I didn’t want to tip Oz over the edge. I just wanted to get him put away for something, just for a while. He sells drugs, I guess you figured that out, too. Just grass. Just on a social level, amongst friends, wouldn’t get much more than a slap on the wrist. Few months plus probation, max. So I asked this electrician Sig to follow him around, gather some evidence. If nothing else, it would cool Oz off a bit, distract him. I’d have leverage, if he was in trouble. I could roll back his plans. It might even break the partnership. That would be best-case scenario. Oz was a great guy, a visionary, but he was a businessman’s nightmare.”

  Dion didn’t know Oscar Roth had dealt drugs. If he had, it was on such a small scale that it had never set off any alarms in the RCMP’s drug section. “You tried to frame him? So you could nix his plans for Diamonds?”

  “Don’t give me that look. I know it sounds crazy, but you never met Oz. He’s relentless, when he wants something. I needed a break from him and his big ideas. Diamonds needed a break from Oz. Our shareholders n
eeded a break. Oz needed a break from Oz. His ideas were fabulous, if your funds were too. Philosophically there, we differed. He says go for gold right out of the gate, I say go for break-even for a few years. We were getting debt-heavy, Cal. Oz just didn’t get it.”

  So York had strong-armed the electrician Sigmund Blatt to tail Oscar Roth with some hare-brained idea of getting Oscar straitjacketed for a bit of a reprieve. But Oscar was paranoid. Something had happened, involving Jamie — probably because of Jamie — and he was seeing Asian killers in his rear-view mirror. Not Sig Blatt, but Blatt’s partner, Lance. Blatt had delegated the tailing job to Lance, and Lance got killed for it. Along with his wife and child. It was one hell of a rogue bullet York had fired, knocking out an innocent family and orphaning a small boy.

  “But how did that get Oscar killed?” he said. Because here the chain broke. If the Asian gang was real, not imaginary, it seemed likely they had done the deed. Mr. Noon, maybe. Nguyen. The dead girl on the rocks with the ligature marks and “Jane Doe” on her toe-tag tied in with Oscar’s totalled Stingray, he was starting to be sure of it. And if that was the case, York’s prank had nothing to do with it.

  “I don’t know how,” York said. “But one way or another, I got him killed. And I’m sorry. For everything I did. But at least I came back for you. Didn’t I? You know what? You really want to know why I came back for you?”

  Dion kept his mouth shut. The dock was coming in sight. He saw water traffic, too, some nighttime boaters heading in, and one or two heading out.

  “Because I admire you,” York said. “You’re what I wish I could be.”

  Dion didn’t care what York wished, because he was starting to panic. “What do I do now? I’m going to crash!”

  “Slow down,” York said. “You’re going to have to swing around and ease in. I’m sure you’ll figure it out.”

  Dion slowed the boat till it puttered. He was staring through the darkness, and if he wasn’t tensed to breaking point already the pistol blast might have jolted him overboard. He glanced sideways at York’s body slumping from passenger seat to deck.