Death at Devil's Bridge

by Cynthia DeFelice

“This spot stinks,” said Brad, chugging down the rest of his beer and opening another. “Let’s find some decent-sized fish.”

  I watched the muscles in Chick’s jaw twitch. Ignoring Brad’s comment, he said, “Ben, why don’t you get the trolling rods out.”

  “Sure thing,” I said, thinking, Smart idea. If we trolled, there was still a chance for a successful day. We’d run at slow speed, with four rods set off the stern, dragging the lures along behind us. That way Brad’s lack of casting skill wouldn’t matter. The forward movement of the boat more or less hooked the fish, and all Brad would have to do was reel them in. At least we wouldn’t have to listen to his tantrums and excuses.

  We trolled for about an hour. Chick and I watched the rods, and Brad joined Nicki on the bow, where they drank one beer after another. Since the bow was raised, separated from the rest of the boat by a windshield in front of the console, we couldn’t hear them talking over the hum of the engine, and that was fine with us.

  “I’d rather clean up after a barfing kid any day,” I murmured. “That guy is really getting on my nerves.”

  “Hang in there, Ben. It’ll soon be over.”

  But it got a lot worse before it was over.

  Seven

  Several minutes later, Nicki climbed down from the bow, announcing with a giggle, “Gotta pee.” Unsteady from the beers she had drunk, she teetered on the gunwale and grabbed the radio antenna to balance herself. The antenna snapped off in her hand. Chick caught her in time to keep her from going overboard, but the antenna fell from her fingers and quickly sank from sight.

  Without a thank-you to Chick for helping her or an apology for the broken antenna, she disappeared into the head. After she emerged, she rummaged through her backpack, removed a small leather case, and took it onto the bow with her. Taking a cigarette from the case, she lit it, took a deep drag, and handed it over to Brad. He, too, inhaled deeply. A sweet, pungent odor drifted back to Chick and me.

  “What the—?” I looked at Chick, whose face was flushed a deep, angry red. “Take the wheel,” he said. He leaned around the windshield and said in a low voice, “Get rid of that.”

  Brad looked up, took another drag from the cigarette, and held it out to Chick. “Want a hit, Cap?”

  “Throw it overboard,” Chick said emphatically. “Now.”

  “What’s the big deal?” Brad said lazily. “There’s nobody around but us chickens.” He seemed to think that was pretty funny, and laughed until he choked a little on the smoke he was exhaling.

  “I said throw it over,” said Chick.

  Nicki sat up then and said, “Aw, lighten up, Captain Chick. C’mon, join us.”

  “Listen,” said Chick, his voice tight and furious. “If we get busted with that stuff on board, I can lose my license and my boat.”

  I had been watching and listening to the conversation, trying to figure out what Chick was so upset about. Now I knew. Brad and Nicki were smoking dope. I felt stupid not to have figured it out before. I knew kids from school who used drugs, but I’d never been around when they were doing it. We’d all been shown what marijuana looked like in the drug awareness program at school, touched it and sniffed it and all that, but it was different when it was lit. It smelled kind of like burning rope mixed with incense.

  The thing was, the Coast Guard had gotten really serious about stopping drug traffic. They’d started a “Zero Tolerance” policy, which meant that they could seize any boat that had drugs on board, even if the captain didn’t know anything about them. It didn’t seem fair that Chick could get punished for what somebody like Brad did, but that was the way it was.

  Brad swept his arm across the empty horizon. “Who’s going to bust us? Do you see any cops out here? Do you see anybody out here?” Looking at Nicki, he said, “I sure don’t see any fish out here.” That really cracked him up, and he began laughing again.

  Chick wasn’t laughing. In one swift motion, he swung himself up onto the bow, reached down, grabbed the cigarette from Brad’s hand, and threw it into the water. “Is there more in there?” he demanded, pointing to Nicki’s little leather case.

  She clutched the case to her chest and didn’t answer.

  “Is there?”

  “That’s none of your business, pal,” said Brad, rising to his feet.

  Brad and Chick stood face to face, glowering at each other. “It’s my boat, and that makes it my business,” said Chick. “Either she throws it out now, or I get on the radio and report this. Coast Guard headquarters are right in Menemsha, and they’d be happy to meet us at the dock.”

  There was a silence that seemed to go on forever. I didn’t know whether Chick was too mad to remember that the radio antenna was broken, or if he was bluffing, counting on Brad and Nicki to be too stupid to realize it. It didn’t much matter; Chick could still head right into Coast Guard headquarters if he wanted to.

  Finally, Brad reached down and took the leather case from Nicki. Without taking his eyes from Chick’s face, he unzipped the case and took out a small plastic bag. “You know how much this is worth, man?” he asked.

  Chick shrugged. “I don’t know and I don’t care.”

  With an expression of utter disgust, Brad tossed the bag into the water. “Happy now, Captain Blowfish?” he asked.

  Chick turned away. He swung back down onto the center deck and said tersely, “Party’s over.”

  Leaving the engine running at trolling speed, we reeled in the lines and stowed all the gear. Chick took the wheel and called over the windshield, “You’ll want to come down from there. It’s going to be a rough, wet ride heading back.”

  Nicki looked at Brad, who stared back at Chick without saying a word.

  “Fine,” said Chick under his breath. “Stay there.” He pushed the throttle forward, and the Something Fishy responded with a surge of power. Brad and Nicki scrambled to hold on to the railing around the edge of the bow.

  On the return trip, Chick made no effort to ease up at the approach of big waves or patches of rough water. I had to admit, I enjoyed the sight of Brad and Nicki trying to look nonchalant and in control as they thudded and bounced about, getting soaked by wave after wave breaking over the bow.

  It was a little before noon when we pulled into West Basin. Nicki and Brad scrambled off the bow onto the dock. Brad reached into his wallet, removed a couple of bills, and held them out to Chick. “That’s half. Not that you deserve it.”

  Chick kept his hands at his sides. “Keep it,” he said, and turned away.

  I stared at Brad, wanting so badly to say what I thought of him. He smirked at me, and said to Nicki, “What a joke. Come on; let’s go.”

  Neither Chick nor I turned to look as Brad sped away, his Jeep’s tires squealing in the parking lot.

  I slammed my fist on the console. “That snot-faced jerk! Why didn’t you take his money? You should have made him pay for a whole day! It’s his fault we came in early.”

  “Forget it, Ben,” Chick said quietly. “Every once in a while you get a loser like that guy. You can’t let ’em get to you.”

  “Are you kidding?” I said, almost shouting. “I felt like punching his lights out! He loses a perfectly good lure, busts your rod, his drunken girlfriend snaps off the antenna, and he doesn’t even offer to pay for them!”

  “Take it easy, Ben. I don’t want his money.”

  But I wasn’t finished. “Then he has the nerve to say you don’t know where the fish are, when we’re fishing at Devil’s Bridge, for cripe’s sake! Captain Blowfish, he called you, the big, fat”—I shook my head in disgust, unable to think of a word for Brad that wouldn’t get me in trouble with Chick, who didn’t like swearing—“barnacle butt!”

  I saw the faintest smile cross Chick’s face.

  “And how about when he was reeling backward and tried to tell me, ‘I always do it this way.’”

  At that, Chick began to laugh. “I could barely keep a straight face when he came out with that one.”

 
“Unbelievable!” I said, still furious.

  “But I have to say,” Chick said, laughing harder now, “I kind of enjoyed the ride home, didn’t you?”

  I had to smile at the memory of Brad flying around on the bow, sopping wet. “Funny how you kept hitting those waves dead on,” I said.

  “What do you mean?” Chick asked innocently. “I always do it that way.”

  That cracked me up. We joked for a while more about Brad and Nicki while we cleaned up the boat, and it felt good to blow off steam.

  But soon the anger rose in me again. Maybe Jeff was right: there was us and there was them. “Chick, doesn’t it make you mad? Who does that puke-brain think he is, coming here and treating us like dirt?”

  Chick sighed. “He’s one of the ones I warned you about, Ben. When it comes to tourists, you take the bad with the good. Without them, I wouldn’t have a job and neither would you. Neither would your mom, or Barry, or more than half the people you know.”

  “I know, but—”

  “Just hear me out for a second,” Chick said. “Guys like Brad are like sand flies. They’re annoying. You’ve got to learn to brush ‘em off.” His hand brushed away an imaginary fly. “Every job has its hassles. But if you want to eat, you’ve got to work, and I’m willing to work hard to earn my money.” He stopped and looked at me meaningfully. “Still, there are things that are more valuable than money, Ben. Like self-respect.

  “I’ll put up with a guy like Brad until he crosses the line. My line. Nobody can treat me like dirt if I don’t let him. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

  “I guess,” I answered, even though I wasn’t really sure I did. “But, Chick, because of him, you’re out a whole day’s pay. Worse, because you burned up fuel and stuff taking him out for nothing.”

  Chick shrugged. “I’ll tell you what would really be worse. If we were still out there with that gas bag.” He looked at me and smiled. “True?”

  I smiled back. “True.”

  “What would be worse is if I wanted his money so badly I was willing to put up with him to get it.” Chick reached into his pocket and held out my thirty dollars’ pay. “Now go to the beach, have a swim, and forget about Brad.”

  “No,” I said, pushing the money back.

  “Come on, take it. Just because I didn’t want that kid’s money doesn’t mean I’m going to stiff you.”

  “Forget it, Chick,” I said. “You don’t get paid, I don’t get paid. That’s my line, and you can’t cross it.” I gave him a smug look, daring him to try to talk his way out of that one.

  He laughed. “Well, that sure came back to bite me in the rear, didn’t it? Okay, Ben, you win. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  “Who have we got tomorrow?” I asked cautiously.

  “An old client of mine and his son. Nice guy.”

  “If you say so.”

  I didn’t have time to worry about tomorrow’s clients, anyway. I was still ticked off about Brad and Nicki, and I had another problem on my mind, too.

  Somehow, I had to get out of the house to meet Donny without letting Mom know where I was going or whom I was going with.

  Eight

  Since Chick and I had come in early, I had a couple of hours before Mom got home to think about what I was going to tell her. The thing was, Mom and I had come to a sort of understanding after I’d run away during the derby last year. She said she’d try to loosen up and stop worrying all the time that something was going to happen to me, and I said I’d try to let her know where I was and what I was doing and not make her worry.

  So far we’d both been doing pretty well. But Mom would never understand why I wanted to go to the fireworks with Donny. She’d say if I wanted to go to the fireworks, she and Barry would take me, which wouldn’t be the same thing at all. She’d talk about the accident rate for sixteen-year-old boys driving cars, and she’d ask why Donny was all of a sudden asking me to go places with him.

  Which was maybe a good question, but the fact was, Donny did invite me, and I wanted to go. If I didn’t, Donny and Jeff would go without me, and Donny probably would never ask me again.

  Maybe it’s a basic rule of life that mothers don’t care about the same things kids care about. For example, Mom would never understand why I wanted to go out with Donny for a couple of hours just one night, have a little fun, maybe be seen in the Tomahawk by some of the kids from school.

  I argued with her in my head: But Jeff’s going. Of course, I was pretty sure Jeff’s parents didn’t know the whole story. But, really, what was the big deal?

  I called Jeff. “Hi,” I said. “Are you going with Donny tonight?”

  “Yeah. Are you coming?”

  “I’m trying to figure out what to tell my mom.”

  “Tell her what I told mine: Chick’s taking us.”

  I thought about it. It could work. Mom certainly trusted Chick, and she wasn’t likely to call him and check.

  “But what about when Donny comes to pick you up?”

  “I told him I’d be at your house.”

  “Brilliant move, Jeff!”

  “It was kind of dumb,” he admitted. “But it was all I could think of at the time.”

  “I know!” I said. “Call him and tell him to pick us up at the corner of Lighthouse and Lobsterville Roads. You tell your parents you’re coming to my house and getting a ride with Chick from here, and I’ll say I’m getting picked up at your house. We’ll meet halfway, ditch our bikes in the bushes, and wait for Donny.”

  “Okay,” Jeff agreed. “Sounds good. I hope I can get hold of Donny, though. I think he’s working at that garage in Vineyard Haven today.”

  “Well, try.”

  “All right. Hey, about last night? You didn’t say anything, did you?”

  “No,” I said. “And don’t worry. I won’t. After today, there’s a Jeep I wouldn’t mind pushing into the ocean.”

  “What?”

  “I’ll tell you later.”

  After a few minutes, Jeff called back to say the plan was a go.

  The trouble with a guilty conscience is that you can’t relax. I was jumpy all afternoon, waiting for Mom to get home. When she did, she called up the stairs, “Benjamin Daggett? Come down here right now, please.”

  It was her no-nonsense voice. Uh-oh. I hurried downstairs, sure she had already found out about my intended treachery. I could feel my face flaming. When I walked into the kitchen, Mom was putting away groceries, her back to me.

  “Yes?” I said, knowing it drove her crazy when I said “Yeah.”

  She turned around and pointed to the table, where I had left my dirty lunch dishes. “Ben, how many times have I asked you to clean up after yourself? You know the problems we’ve had with ants.”

  Whew. I let out my breath slowly. “Sorry, Mom,” I said, carrying the dishes to the sink and washing them. “I was kind of distracted when I got home today. Chick and I came in at noon.”

  “Really?” Mom asked. “What happened?”

  “We had some obnoxious clients.”

  Mom made a face. “It must be going around. I had a gentleman—and I use the term loosely—give me a hard time today because he left his garbage out uncovered, and skunks got into it. He was furious that the trash collectors didn’t pick it up, even though it was strewn all over the place. I honestly think he expected me to come clean it up for him!”

  I shook my head in sympathy.

  “What happened with you and Chick?” she asked.

  “Well, this guy and his girlfriend were really rude, but the reason we came in was they started smoking pot. Chick threw it overboard and then refused to take their money.”

  “Good for him,” Mom said. She sighed and added, “This summer is the worst I can remember, and it’s only just started. I suppose you heard about the robbery last night?”

  “No,” I said. “What robbery?”

  “I assumed everybody at Squid Row would be buzzing about it.”

  “We didn’t go over to the
gas dock today,” I said. “What happened?”

  “Somebody broke into one of the big cabin cruisers and took cigarettes, liquor, and some expensive fishing equipment. The owner and his wife were out to dinner, I guess. They got back about midnight, discovered what had happened, and called Pete. He’s completely mystified.”

  So was I. In all the years Pop had fished out of the Menemsha docks, he’d never had one thing stolen off his boat. No one I knew ever had. It was just the way it was: no one touched a fisherman’s boat. Or anybody else’s.

  “Must have been a tourist,” I said. “Nobody from around here would do that.”

  “That’s what Pete said,” Mom replied. “Probably whoever did it left on the ferry and is long gone by now. It’s the kind of case the police might never solve.”

  Barry came over after a while, and cooked us some bluefish a friend of his had caught. While we ate, he told us about a woman who had come into the agency early that morning.

  “She wanted a Jeep or a beach buggy so she could go out to Wasque to fish the beach,” he said. “I told her I was sorry, that all my off-road vehicles were already out, and suggested places where she could fish without running the beach. I thought she was satisfied, because she rented a regular car.

  “Well, round about four, four-thirty this afternoon, she called from her cell phone. And guess where she was?”

  I could guess, but I hated when people blew my punch lines and I wanted to hear Barry tell it. “Where?” I asked.

  “Stuck up to her rims out at Wasque and madder than all get-out—at me!” Barry laughed incredulously and shook his head. “She ordered me to come get her right away and said she expected every penny of her money back.”

  “No way!” I said. “What did you do?”

  “I told her I’d be happy to send a tow truck to pull her out, but that she’d be responsible for paying for it. Then I very politely reminded her that her rental agreement specifically prohibited off-road use and that she would also be responsible for any damage to the car.”

  “What did she say to that?” Mom asked.

  “Oh, lots,” said Barry with a little chuckle. “But when she was finished, I simply asked, ‘So, do you want me to send a tow truck or not?’ And I mentioned that if she got back in after midnight, she’d be charged for another day.”