White Shark

by Benchley-Peter

  They had tried to sell the island, and discovered that, in fact, it wasn't worth very much at all because nobody — including the family members themselves — wanted to pay its assessed value.

  And so, in a calculated act of revenge against the local ‘taxocrats’, the family corporation, an entity that existed solely to run the island, had taken out as large a mortgage as the local bank would permit —half the assessed value — had split the proceeds among the twelve families within the family... and had then dissolved itself and abandoned the island, leaving its liens, its taxes and its upkeep in the hands of the bank.

  Simon Chase had been welcomed by the bank and the town as the new owner. He had deep roots in the local community, and though as a nonprofit entity the Institute might not pay local taxes, some of Chase's projects might generate substantial revenue for the townspeople. For example, he might find a way to bring the shellfishing industry back. For years, the beds of clams, scallops, mussels around Waterboro had been so badly polluted that no one was permitted to dig, eat or sell any of the mollusks. Perhaps Chase could find a way to clean up the beds.

  Local merchants knew, furthermore, that the Institute wouldn't be competition for any of them. And finally, Chase's grand plans for the island promised to bless the area with what it needed most: jobs.

  Defense cutbacks had slashed jobs from the largest employer in southeastern Connecticut, Electric Boat in Groton, and the ripple effect from EB and other damaged companies had decimated service industries. Restaurants and grocery stores, saloons and gift shops had shut their doors, to be replaced here and there by antique stores and art galleries. Waterboro was being gentrified and ossified, and it was hoped that the Institute would be able to restore life to the community. Hundreds of people would be employed to build it, wire it and plumb it, and when it was completed, dozens more would find full-time jobs there or in one of the many businesses that serviced it.

  For a year, it had seemed that the dream might come true. Chase had taken a course in preparing grant applications, and he had received a hundred-thousand-dollar grant to buy boats and basic scientific equipment. He had also received preliminary approval for grants for projects involving endangered species, commercial fishing and medical research from the federal government, the state of Connecticut and several private foundations. One of the grants would have enabled him to study the curious fact that sharks, which had no bones, were immune to both cancer and arthritis and could exert phenomenal bite pressure — as much as twenty tons per square inch — with a jaw made entirely of cartilage. Another would have let him contribute to studies testing the remote possibility that powdered shark cartilage contained cancer-killing properties. Doctors working with a control group in Cuba had claimed a 40 percent reduction in tumors among patients who were given high doses of the cartilage.

  And then, in late 1995, the bottom had fallen out of the economy. The national debt had grown to six trillion dollars; the President and the Congress, obsessed with reelection, had refused to make the hard decisions necessary to deal with the budget deficit. The Germans and the Japanese and the Arabs, who had supported the vaunted American way of life for more than a dozen years, looked across the water and, disgusted at long last, proclaimed the United States effectively extinct as a world power and pulled their money out.

  Inflation had begun to soar; interest rates were reaching double digits; the stock market had dropped a thousand points and so far showed no signs that it had bottomed out; unemployment nationwide was 11 percent; one family in four now lived below the poverty line.

  In the space of a single week, every one of Chase's grants had been refused. New construction was the last thing he had money for. He could barely pay his staff of three, could barely feed himself. Had he not been successful in obtaining tax-exempt status for the Institute, he would have had to follow his predecessors and abandon the island.

  And he might yet have to pick up and go, if his last roll of the dice came up craps.

  Months ago he had received a call from a Dr. Amanda Macy in California. He knew her by reputation, had read a story about her in some journal or other. She was doing pioneering research in the use of trained sea lions to videotape gray whales in the wild. Notoriously skittish, gray whales resisted being photographed by divers, and even when a diver succeeded in capturing a few images, there was no way to determine if the whales' behavior was natural or skewed in some way because of the presence of the diver. Macy's theory was that since sea lions often accompany whales in the wild, the whales would tolerate them without altering their behavior, so she had trained sea lions to carry video cameras as they swam with the whales. According to the report, she was already rewriting much of science's knowledge of gray whales.

  Now she wanted to try the same technique with another species of whale, the Atlantic humpback. She had heard about the new institute and had read some of Chase's papers on sharks. She knew he had boats, guts and experience with large deep-water animals. She knew the humpbacks passed just to the east of the island every summer on their way north. Would he be willing, she wondered, to have her and her team of sea lions come to the island for three months, to take them to sea and help her research... for a fee of, say, ten thousand dollars a month?

  Chase had agreed instantly, while trying to temper the excitement in his voice. This could be salvation, not only financially but intellectually as well — a terrific project, well funded, with a respected colleague.

  The only problem was, Dr. Macy was due to arrive in a few days, Chase had spent a lot of money, money he didn't have, building facilities for her and her sea lions, and Dr. Macy's first check hadn't come yet. If she had changed her plans, if she had decided to cancel without having the courtesy to call him, if... well, he wouldn't think about it.

  * * * * *

  The Institute's nerve center was a twenty-two-room clapboard Victorian pile that had formerly been the main house for the island's clan. Though its structure hadn't changed, its function had: it was used for the Institute's housing, dining, administration and communications. It was ramshackle and inefficient, and Chase's original, grandiose plans had called for it to be razed and replaced at a cost of more than a million dollars. By now, though, he was delighted that the house had remained untouched, for he had come to love it. His office was large, high-ceilinged and airy, with a working fireplace and French doors that gave him a view of Fishers Island and, on a clear day, Long Island.

  When Chase and Max came into the office, Mrs. Bixler was polishing pewter and watching The Weather Channel.

  "Morning, Mrs. B.," Chase said.

  "Morning's long gone," Mrs. Bixler replied, "and you look like you've been on a three-day toot." She looked at Max. "Did you really take this boy sharking?"

  "I did, and he did just fine... thanks to the sandwiches you sent along."

  "You were lucky," Mrs. Bixler said, frowning and returning to her polishing. "You were lucky, pure and simple. Don't push your luck, I say."

  Nominally, Mrs. Bixler was Chase's secretary; in fact, she was the Institute's majordomo and his self-appointed caretaker. A sixty-year-old widow whose children lived somewhere out West, she was a member of the island's founding family and had lived there year-round since the Korean War, shuttling back and forth to the mainland in her own boat, a 1951 wooden speedboat that she kept in her own cove.

  Initially, when the family had left the island, she had moved to a small house on the water near Mystic, but as soon as Chase had taken over — and had found himself calling her daily for advice and counsel about the island, its buildings, its septic systems, its generators, its wells — he had asked her to come back to the island and work for the Institute. She had, on her terms, which included the restoration of her four-room apartment off the kitchen of the main house.

  The pewter collection, a museum-quality array of seventeenth- and early-eighteenth-century mugs, flagons, plates, candlesticks and flatware, was Mrs. Bixler's own and was probably worth several hundred tho
usand dollars. She could have sold it, stashed it in a vault somewhere or kept it in her rooms, but it had traditionally resided in the room that was now Chase's office, and that, she told Chase, was where it would continue to reside.

  "Why are you watching that, ma'am?" Max asked, pointing at the television set mounted in a bookcase.

  "Can't be too careful," Mrs. Bixler said. "That's one thing you can never be, too careful."

  Mrs. Bixler was tuned to disaster. She had been three years old in 1938, when the colossal hurricane had devastated New England — she claimed to recall seeing houses fly off Napatree Point and float out to sea; she had lived on the island through half a dozen other hurricanes. After Hurricane Bob had knocked down a bunch of trees and blown out a bunch of windows and put a lobster boat high and dry on her lawn in 1991, she had taken out a loan to buy a satellite dish so she could keep The Weather Channel on at all hours of the day and night, and be ready for the next big blow.

  "What's going on?" Chase said.

  "Nothing much, not enough to wet a frog's socks. But there's a nasty-looking low-pressure convection cooking down east of Puerto Rico."

  "I meant about business. Anything from the EPA or the DEP? Did we get an okay to move the whale?"

  "Not a peep. I called ‘em both, and I got a robot that told me to have a nice day."

  Chase ruffled through a pile of letters on his desk. "Did we get the check from Dr. Macy?"

  "Not yet. If I was you, I'd tell that woman you're gonna make two parkas and a pair of gloves out of her seals if she doesn't pay up." Mrs. Bixler paused. "One thing, though. I was over to town collecting the mail; Andy Santos told me Finnegan's fixing to make a run at your tax status."

  "Damn!" Chase said. "He won't give up, will he?"

  "Not till he's got you turn-tail and running... or till you roll over and sell out to him."

  "I'll blow the island off its pins first."

  Mrs. Bixler smiled. "That's what I told Andy."

  Brendan Finnegan was a land speculator whose acumen was very sharp... and usually about a year too late. He had made a fortune in the seventies, lost it in the early eighties, made it back in the late eighties and been hammered by the most recent turnaround. Currently, his empire was teetering not he lip of bankruptcy, and he was in desperate need of a big score.

  A month after Chase had closed his deal for OspreyIsland, Finnegan had received a feeler from a third-rank Saudi prince who was worried about the explosive resurgence of Moslem fundamentalism and was seeking a safe haven for several million dollars' worth of sterling and deutsche marks. Distrustful of markets and banks, he wanted to own hard assets, and he believed that despite America's troubles, waterfront property on the U.S. East Coast was among the world's hardest assets. Its value might stall, might retreat, but would never collapse... not with 70 percent of the population living within fifty miles of the coasts, and more fleeing the middle of the country every day. There were houses for sale by the score between North Carolina and New Hampshire, but no islands, and the prince was a dedicated paranoid who needed the security of a self-contained redoubt.

  Finnegan saw the prince as his big score, if only he could find an island to sell him. He didn't just want a broker's commission; he wanted the seller's profit too. Thus, he'd have to own the island.

  Chase's financial problems were no secret. The price he had paid for the island was public record, and his difficulties meeting the day-to-day expenses were common knowledge.

  Finnegan had first offered Chase the same amount Chase had paid for the island. Ignoring Chase's insistence that he didn't want to sell, Finnegan had upped his ante in increments of 10 percent. His latest offer had been for 180 percent of Chase's purchase price, or nearly two thirds of the assessed value of the island.

  Chase knew the game Finnegan was playing, and he wasn't trying to hold the man up. As he told Finnegan while they were still on relatively amicable terms, he had finally found something he loved, something he wanted to preserve and pursue, and he intended to keep it.

  Finnegan had stopped being friendly. He had begun to file nuisance complaints — with the zoning board, the planning board, the Coast Guard and the EPA. None of the complaints had been sustained, but each had had to be answered, if not by Chase himself then by his two-hundred-dollar-an-hour lawyer.

  "What grounds has he thought up this time," Chase asked Mrs. Bixler.

  "Says you're not doing any real science out here, says your experiments haven't produced anything concrete yet, so why should the taxpayers support you."

  "The arguments' got a certain appeal." Chase paused. "Dr. Macy's arriving just in time... the cavalry to the rescue."

  "Long as she pays the bills."

  Max had appeared to be ignoring the conversation, watching the hypnotic drone of the weather reports. But now he said suddenly, "Can't you afford all this? Are you gonna lose the island?"

  "No," Chase said, forcing a smile. "Now let's go get us some scuba tanks and have a lesson before we go back and dive up that sensor."

  "Not likely," said Mrs. Bixler. "Compressor's down."

  "For God's sake... what now?" Chase said, seeing Max's shoulders slump in disappointment.

  "Gene said it's probably the solenoid. But then, Gene thinks all the world's problems can be traced to solenoids. If I were you, I'd have Tall look at it."

  "Okay," Chase said. He felt panicky; now there were problems with the compressor. What would break down next? What he wanted to do more than anything was take a nap.

  But Max was here, and Chase was determined that Max was going to have the time of his life. He smiled and said, "We'll go talk to Tall, help him feed Chief Joseph. Then we'll go check the tank racks. Maybe there're still a couple of full tanks."

  * * * * *

  Tall Man was already in the equipment shed, working on the diesel compressor, whose problem was not the solenoid but clogged injectors. He'd have it running by late this afternoon, he said; there would be full tanks by tomorrow morning.

  Chase didn't know how Max would react — with sullenness, perhaps, or resignation — but the one attitude he would have bet against was enthusiasm. So he was surprised and pleased when Max said, "That's the great thing about being here for a month; there's always tomorrow." He gestured. "C'mon, Dad, gimme a tour of the rest of the place."

  There were three other buildings on the island. All had been homes, all had been scheduled for demolition and all had instead been jury-rigged as laboratories, storage facilities and, in one case, a makeshift infirmary.

  The living room of the smallest house had been stripped of furniture and carpeting, its floor had been tiled, its Sheetrock walls plastered over. In the center of the room, bolted to the floor, lit by large ceiling-mounted fluorescent tubes, was a cylinder twelve feet long and six feet high, with a round hatch on one end and a small porthole in the middle. Plastic tubing and coated wires ran from the cylinder to a control panel on one wall.

  "That's our decompression chamber," Chase said. "We call it Dr. Frankenstein."

  "What's it for?"

  "Well, let's see how much you learned from your diving lessons. What are the three main dangers in diving? Aside from stupidity and panic, which are the two most important and the ones they don't tell you about?"

  "That's easy. Embolism first — that's from holding you breath on the way up. The bends. And... I forget the other one."

  "Some people call it the rapture," Chase said. "The rapture of the deep." He led Max to a small refrigerator, from which he took two cans of Coke. He passed one to Max and said, "You ever been drunk?"

  Max flushed. "Me?"

  "Never mind, that wasn't a question you have to answer. What I'm getting at is, the thing they call the rapture is like getting drunk under water. Its real name is nitrogen narcosis. When you breathe compressed air in deep water, there's a high ratio of nitrogen in what you take into your body, and nitrogen can become poison, pretty much like alcohol. It affects people at different depths, in
different ways. Some people never get it, some people get it once and never again, some people get it so often they're almost used to it. And some people die from it."

  "Why?"

  "Because getting drunk under water is... well... a real bummer. The worst thing is, a lot of times you don't know what's happening. It's a mellow, dreamy kind of drunk. You forget where you are; you don't care; that deep reef down there at two hundred feet is so pretty you think you'll go have a look for a while, and if you think to check your depth gauge or your air gauge, you find you can't read them, the numbers are all blurry, but you don't give a damn so you go anyway.

  "They've done tests on divers and found that, as a rule, at a hundred and fifty feet a twenty-five-year-old male in peak physical condition can't perform simple tasks he wasn't prepared to do."

  "Like what?"

  "One of those puzzles you did when you were little, where you put the round thing in the round hole and the square thing in the square hole. He can't do that, he can't figure it out. He's lost all power of innovation. He can't change his dive plan. If he has an emergency, if he runs out of air or his mouthpiece pulls away from his regulator, he survives by instinct and reflexes conditioned by experience and training. Or he doesn't survive."

  "Emergencies kill them?"

  "Not always. Sometimes they kill themselves. You'd think it was suicide if you didn't know better."

  "How?"

  Chase took a breath and looked off into the middle distance, remembering. "Ten years ago, I was a safety diver for a guy who wanted to film black coral on the Little Cayman wall. Deep stuff, two hundred feet, two-fifty, about the limit of safe compressed-air scuba diving."

  "People breathe other things?" Max asked.

  "Yeah, if you have to work deeper than that, you use mixed gases. Helium-and-oxygen is one. Anyway, we took all sorts of precautions: put a weighted line down to two-fifty, posted a diver every fifty feet with a spare tank so the cameraman would have someone watching over him all the time and plenty of air for decompression on the way up. I was the guy at a hundred, and there was a guy below me at one-fifty. The cameraman was wearing twin eighties pumped to thirty-five hundred psi — big tanks, so no way he'd run out of air. He said he'd never been narced before, so nobody gave it a thought.