Blackwater Sound

by James W. Hall

  Otherwise she was unmarked, though her teeth still chattered, hands quaked. She was probably in shock, had a mild concussion, needed fluids, needed to get out of the sun and away from the billows of bitter smoke. From what he could see, there was a triage area being set up near the pool. The chaises were filled with customers, maids and gardeners in attendance, moving among the guests with trays of drinks and first-aid kits. As soon as Alex’s breathing evened out, he’d carry her there.

  Farley peeled off his sunglasses and glared at Thorn.

  “What’re you doing, man? This is our chance.”

  “Go,” Thorn shouted. “Go on. Catch that goddamn fish.”

  Behind Farley, A. J. and Johnny were throwing off the lines. The exhaust bubbled hard. On the rear deck, Morgan Braswell stared at Thorn. She wore a baseball cap and sunglasses, but he could feel the sting of her look and see by the fierce set of her jaw that she had him in the crosshairs of her fury.

  “Go with them, Thorn,” Alex murmured. “I’ll be okay.”

  She squinted up at him for a half second, then shut her eyes.

  “What happened to her?” Sugar dropped to one knee beside Thorn.

  “Took a knock, swallowed some water, stayed under for a while.”

  Sugarman glanced around at the fires and sinking vessels.

  From the other side of the shattered dock Farley called out Thorn’s name.

  “They’re pulling out, man. Let’s move.”

  “Go, Thorn,” Sugar said. “I’ll watch after the lady.”

  Farley called out his name again.

  Thorn pressed a quick kiss to Alexandra’s forehead, then rose and sprinted down the dock, hurdled the fiberglass panel, hustled over to Farley, and as the ByteMe was separating from land, the two of them ran to the end of the dock and vaulted aboard.

  Lawton stood at his cabin door and listened.

  The boat was under way, the rumble of water and the engines masking all human sounds. Once he’d gotten the cuffs off, he’d spent a few minutes poking around the guest cabin, but he found nothing that triggered any memories, so he decided to move on. He wanted to know where the hell he was and why. The handcuffs, this boat, these people, none of it made any sense. Like waking up inside someone else’s bad dream.

  Warily, he turned the handle and nudged the door open an inch. Enough to peek down the hall toward the stern. He could barely see through the dark-tinted door that led out to the sunny cockpit. Three shadowy men moving around out there. He squinted but couldn’t make them out.

  Lawton eased the door all the way open. Took one more good listen, but heard nothing, so he sucked down a breath and ducked across the narrow hall and opened the door and stepped inside the cabin.

  Another stateroom. This one larger. Wall covering and curtains done in a man’s colors, brown and burgundy and green. A half-full bottle of rum on the bedside table, a cell phone, a key ring, an empty glass. On the dresser was a brush with curly white hairs snagged in the bristles. Some nail clippers, an assortment of tiny bottles of aftershave that looked unopened. A room that gave little sign of its occupant’s character.

  Lawton had investigated enough cases, been in enough rooms, snooping through the possessions of the deceased or the suspected. He knew how trifling things could signal the hidden secrets of the heart. Magazines, postcards, geegaws on the shelves, items pinned to bulletin boards, trash in the waste can. But as Lawton made the rounds of this room, prowling through the drawers, peering under the furniture, he found none of those things. This was the room of a man without enthusiasms.

  The only decoration in the cabin was a color snapshot in a tortoiseshell frame propped up on the dresser. Lawton picked it up and held it close. A blond boy and an older man stood to one side of a marlin that hung from a rope at a weigh station. The boy held a fishing pole and the dad had his arm around the boy’s shoulder. They bore a clear resemblance to each other. Both of them with the same narrow face and deep-set eyes and the mop of curly blond hair. Both beaming into the camera, a proud moment. Father and son.

  On the other side of the big dead marlin was a stumpy silver-haired man in thick glasses and a yellow polo shirt and khaki shorts that exposed his bandy legs. He had his arm around the waist of a dark-haired woman who had the same wide forehead and thin-lipped mouth as the silver-haired man.

  Lawton took another quick look around the room, then marched into the small bath. He peeled off his smelly clothes, dropped them on the floor, and went into the shower stall and soaped himself clean. He dried off on a fluffy blue towel and went back into the stateroom and dug around in the clothes locker until he found an outfit he liked. Emerald green shorts with an elastic waistband and a white crewneck shirt made of silk.

  He pulled them on, then combed his hair in front of the dresser mirror. When he was finished, he set down the hairbrush and picked up the photo again and gave it another look. The stumpy man was familiar. More than familiar. Lawton studied his clothes, his thick glasses, his bowed legs, his heavy gold jewelry. He walked over to the window and tilted the photograph so it caught more light. And then the name of the silver-haired man came to him. His friend, his dear friend.

  “That was Andy, my son.”

  Lawton turned and looked at the man standing behind him. It was one of the men from the photograph. Same rawboned body, same curly hair, only now the blond had faded to gray.

  “And that other man is Arnold Peretti,” Lawton said.

  “That’s right,” the man said. “You know Arnold?”

  “He was a friend of mine.”

  “Arnold’s a good man.”

  “He was a bookie,” Lawton said. “I used to arrest him twice a year.”

  “Is that right? So you’re a police officer?”

  “I’m retired. But at one time I was a damn good cop.”

  The man nodded vacantly. Lawton took a longer look at him. The man’s bluish eyes were flat and blurry like somebody just coming out of anesthesia.

  “This your room?” Lawton asked.

  The man glanced around as though seeing the place for the first time.

  “Yes,” he said. “Yes, it is.”

  “I’m Lawton Collins.”

  He put out his hand and the man took it in his and gave it a single shake.

  “A. J. Braswell.”

  Lawton had seen eyes like his before. Guys who’d rotted away too long in solitary. Guys who’d taken one blow too many, one drink, one snort, one too many long looks into the empty spaces inside their head. And there were the scary ones, zombies who stayed in their rooms too long, dreaming, concocting a world that didn’t exist. When they left their rooms one idea filled their brains, one course of action. Sometimes they brought a gun with them and used it in ways that made perfect sense, were completely reasonable, according to the zombie pledge of allegiance.

  “You didn’t know I was aboard your boat?”

  “I try to stay out of my daughter’s affairs,” Braswell said. “I assume you’re a guest of hers.”

  “I don’t know,” Lawton said. “Truth is, I’m not sure why I’m here. I’m a little lost.”

  He smiled and Braswell smiled back.

  “Yes,” A. J. said. “I know the feeling.”

  “Are we acquaintances, you and me? Do we have a history?”

  “No,” Braswell said. “I don’t believe so. I think we just met.”

  “Where are we headed, do you know that?”

  “We’re chasing a marlin. The one that killed my boy, Andy.”

  “Yeah, I’ve heard about that fish. Somewhere.”

  A. J. was looking at the photograph again. Lawton looked along with him, a father and son, and on the other side of the fish, a father and daughter.

  “I have a problem with my memory,” Lawton said. “I get a little fuzzy. Can’t seem to piece it all together. Things out of sequence, missing steps.”

  Braswell nodded. “There’s a few things I wouldn’t mind forgetting.”

  “Oh, s
ure, you think that when you’re young,” Lawton said. “If you could just take a little scalpel and dig out those bad memories things will be better. Christ, I wish it worked that way. I’d buy a scalpel tomorrow.”

  Braswell drifted over to a leather chair. He sat down and laid his arms along the arms like a pharaoh in his throne.

  “So, A. J., are you involved in your kids’ lives? Know what they’re up to?”

  “They’re adults,” he said. “They’re free to come and go as they please.”

  “Too bad you didn’t do a better job raising them,” Lawton said. “From what I can tell, you kind of dropped the ball.”

  Braswell’s eyes were fixed on Lawton, but they were still numb and flat.

  “Maybe you were preoccupied,” Lawton said. “They didn’t matter that much to you.”

  “Why are you talking to me this way? You don’t even know me.”

  “I have a daughter,” Lawton said. And as he heard the words leave his lips, he knew it was true. He saw her in his head. A chubby baby, a scrawny, anxious teenager, a fine-looking woman. The pages of a private picture album flashing past. “Alexandra is her name. A nice girl. She takes care of me now. Watches over me, makes sure I don’t wander off.”

  Braswell nodded vaguely as if Lawton’s words required careful analysis.

  “I don’t relish it,” Lawton said. “Being a burden to the girl. I can be one hell of a cross to bear. I wish it were different, but there it is. An old man with a moth-eaten memory.”

  Braswell’s eyes turned inward and his right hand floated up from the armrest and cupped his temple for a moment, then swept back through his curly hair, fingers massaging his scalp.

  When he spoke, his voice came from far away inside him. Lawton had heard that tone dozens of times over his long career, lawbreakers confessing their sins, a voice that was equal parts shame and bragging.

  “I guess I’m something of a cross to bear myself.”

  Lawton nodded but was silent. It’s what you did when they were ready to talk. You stepped back, let them ramble, didn’t try to steer them or you might wake them from their daydream.

  “My daughter, Morgan,” he said. “She dropped out of college and came home to work with me at the plant. And to help with Johnny. He was screwing up at school, flunking all his classes, in trouble with the law. Fights and drugs and drunkenness. I didn’t know what to do. I was helpless. But when Morgan returned all that rowdiness stopped. She straightened him right out.”

  “Well, if she did,” Lawton said, “I don’t believe he’s stayed that way.”

  Braswell didn’t seem to hear.

  “I’d lost my eldest son, then my wife. I felt like my guts had been scooped out. I had no reason to go on. But then Morgan came home and took charge. To tell the truth, I guess she’s been acting as something of a nurse to me, too.”

  “Thank God for daughters,” Lawton said. “What would sick old men like us do without them?”

  Lawton looked off at the small window, the foamy splash of the wake, the distant blue. They’d been under way for maybe an hour and now it felt like the engines were cutting back.

  As Lawton was turning back to Braswell, the cabin door swung open and Morgan stepped into the room. She looked back and forth between the two men. A flush darkened her cheeks.

  “We’ve arrived, Dad. We’re right on top of the ping. It’s time to fish.”

  A. J. rose from the chair and gave Lawton another careful look.

  “Will you join us, Lawton?”

  From the doorway, Morgan said, “I need to have a word with him first. You go on, Dad, entertain your guests. Lines are in the water. We’ll be right there, won’t we, Lawton?”

  Twenty-Four

  About a mile to the west across the flat span of sea, Thorn watched another white fishing boat heading toward a distant flock of circling birds. It was what any fisherman in his right mind would be doing, following the birds to a school of bait-fish where the large predators were likely to be congregating.

  But as far as Thorn could tell there was no one on the ByteMe in his right mind. Including his own damn self, or else he’d be back in Key Largo clipping the last thread of a bonefish fly, fluffing its bristles. Or out in the backcountry, poling across the shimmering flats.

  Thorn and Farley were perched atop white fiberglass fish boxes on either side of the cabin door. Farley with his arms across his bulky chest. Through his black wraparounds he stared out at the boiling wake, every few seconds swiveling his head from side to side to scan the unvarying blue, its flat surface marked only by a few yellow drifts of seaweed and waxy ambergris. Off to the south, the pillars of black smoke from the marina fire were breaking up, carried out to sea by the steady trade winds.

  Johnny Braswell, running the boat from up on the flybridge, eased back on the throttle as they reached a seam in the coloration, passing from the faded cornflower blue to a shadowy rich sapphire.

  “A drop-off?” Thorn said to Farley.

  “Abaco Canyon.” He shrugged his heavy shoulders. “Not the spot I would’ve picked, but what the hell.”

  Johnny came down from the flybridge and lowered the outriggers and set the lines. He didn’t look at either of them as he went about his work, doing it all with a cold, joyless efficiency. When the four lures were skipping nicely, he stood for a moment looking out at them, then climbed back to the controls.

  Thorn slid down from the fish box. The salon door was shut and Johnny was up in the noisy breeze. Still, he lowered his voice.

  “Well, here we go.”

  “So what’s the plan, Thorn?”

  “Wish I knew.”

  “Goddamn,” Farley said, “I was afraid of that.”

  “You got something against improvising?”

  “I say we throw the whole bunch of them overboard, then take all the time we want checking over the boat, find that old man if he’s here.”

  “It has a certain appeal.”

  “Better than sneaking around.”

  “I was thinking we’d wait a while. See what exactly we’re up against.”

  “I can tell you right now what we’re up against,” Farley said. “Bunch of crazies.”

  “Yeah, but we’ve got them outnumbered.”

  “We do?”

  “In the moral sense.”

  Farley sniffed. He hadn’t brought along his sense of humor.

  “Never found being on the right side made a lot of difference.”

  “What I was thinking,” Thorn said. “When we raise a fish, things’ll get busy, that’s when I’ll disappear, go look for Lawton.”

  “Assuming we find a fish.”

  Farley stared out at the skipping baits and at the endless sweep of blue.

  “So, do your thing, Farley. Tune up your radar, this is when we need it.”

  He looked at Thorn, showed his teeth, but it wasn’t anything you could call a smile.

  “If it were as simple as that, Thorn, I’d own a fleet of marlin boats.”

  A. J. Braswell opened the salon door and stepped out in the sunshine.

  “Any sign of her, boys?”

  Thorn shook his head. Farley drew a breath and resumed his watch.

  “Johnny!” Braswell called up to the flybridge. “Anything on the screen?”

  Young Braswell came to the lip of the bridge and leaned over the rail.

  “We’re sitting on the spot, Dad. Last ping came in two minutes ago. She’s damn close.”

  “Try circling.”

  “Hey, Dad.” Johnny took off his sunglasses and let them dangle from the cord around his neck. “What the hell we need these guys for?”

  “They’re our guests, Johnny.”

  Johnny’s grip on the chrome rail tightened.

  “Be nice,” Thorn said. “We’re here to help you land this fish you can’t seem to catch.”

  “You don’t think I know what you’re doing here?”

  Johnny settled his sunglasses back on his nose and jabbed t
hem into place with his middle finger.

  “I’m sorry,” A. J. said. “I invited you along without consulting my children. It wasn’t really fair of me.”

  “It’s your boat, right? You’re the daddy. I’d say that puts you in charge.”

  “If it were only that simple.”

  “Why isn’t it?”

  “We’ve always fished as a team. That’s why Johnny’s upset.”

  Farley grunted and stared out at the blue distance.

  “Either you’re boss or you’re not,” he said, the sinews in his neck flexing as he spoke. “Isn’t no middle ground.”

  Before he could answer, Morgan came out of the cabin. Her sunglasses were propped up in her hair. She glanced at Farley, then trained her eyes on Thorn.

  Braswell said, “These are my guests, Morgan. I believe you already know Farley Boissont. Jelly’s son.”

  Her eyes were an intense blue and had a silver shine as if they were backed by tin foil. They seemed independent of the rest of her, more volatile, more severe, powered by some dangerous fuel that throbbed inside them. She wore a white T-shirt that hugged her body tightly, showed the pleasant swell of her breasts. The T-shirt was tucked into a pair of black bicycle tights that molded firmly over her narrow hips. The sum of her parts should have added up to a remarkable beauty, but those harsh, indifferent eyes undercut it all.

  “Name’s Thorn.”

  “Yes, we meet again.”

  Braswell stepped forward and laid a hand on his daughter’s shoulder.

  “You know this man?”

  “We had a brief encounter last week. At the airplane crash.”

  “The crash? You were there, Morgan? The one in the Everglades?”

  “Oh, did I forget to tell you, Dad? Sorry. Yes, Johnny and I were out there fishing when the plane came down. Isn’t that right, Mr. Thorn?”

  “That’s one version.”

  Braswell looked back and forth between his daughter and Thorn.