“Well, Thorn and Farley have had a couple of encounters with Big Mother. They’re going to help us find her. They had her up to the boat twice.”
“Oh, really? And you believed that?”
Braswell gave Thorn an apologetic shrug.
Farley slid down from the fish box and stepped around Morgan and climbed up the ladder to the flybridge.
“Where do you think you’re going?”
Farley stopped halfway up the ladder and looked down at her.
“Sooner we find that goddamn fish, sooner I can get the hell away from you people.”
They circled for an hour and got no more pings on the GPS screen.
Thorn joined Farley on the flybridge and they planted themselves on either side of Johnny at the control console. Before them on the long, sleek bow, a dinghy was lashed to the deck. An overpowered Zodiac with a fiberglass transom and stand-up steering console. Beyond the point of the bow, the featureless blue sea spread in all directions. No other boats, no birds, just a gentle two-foot swell.
Johnny steered the boat and mumbled to himself. Down in the cockpit, Braswell stared back at the skittering lures. He was slumped forward in the fighting chair, elbows on his knees like a ballplayer sulking on the bench. Morgan had stationed herself beside him, and every few seconds she turned and cut a look at Thorn.
As they passed again across the line between the light blue sea to the dark, bottomless depths, Thorn pressed his shoulder against Johnny and used his best conspiratorial voice.
“Hey, Johnny. Shot down any planes lately?”
The kid twisted back and gave Thorn an ugly sneer.
“I’m not talking to you, jingle-brain. I’m not talking to either of you. You don’t belong here. You can just shut your yap, smart guy.”
“You and sis, you’re quite a pair. Gunsel and Gretel, lost in the woods.”
“Fuck you, cheeseball.”
Thorn tapped a finger on the back of Johnny’s bandaged hand.
“What happened to your thumb, kid? Been sucking on it too hard?”
Johnny jerked his shoulder away, but Farley was tight on his other side and the young man had nowhere to go.
“ ‘Not only don’t you have any scruples,’ ” Thorn said. “ ‘You don’t have any brains.’ Detour, 1945.”
Johnny turned and peered at him.
“What’s wrong, pork rind?” Thorn said. “You think you’re the only person in the world ever saw a movie?”
“Okay, Johnny boy,” Farley said. “Take it up to eleven knots.”
“What!”
“You heard me, boy. Bump it to eleven.”
“Eight’s what we do. We were doing eight when we caught her last time; that’s what we do, eight knots.”
“That’s ten years ago,” Farley said. “She’s bigger now, faster. Likes a faster target. Take it to eleven.”
“Hey, who the fuck do you think you are?”
“You want to catch that fish, Johnny? Or spend the rest of your life chasing it? Do what Farley tells you.”
“I’m the captain of this goddamn vessel. I decide how fast we go.”
“Just because your hands are on the wheel, John boy, doesn’t mean you’re running the show.”
“Over there.” Farley was peering to the right. “Hundred and twenty yards, that riffle.”
Farley’s posture was straighter, eyes locked to water.
“I don’t see anything,” Johnny said.
“Two o’clock,” Farley said. “Eleven knots. Unless there’s some reason you don’t want this fucking fish.”
“I don’t see what you’re looking at.”
“Just do it,” Thorn said.
“Man, I don’t know what you’re seeing out there.” Johnny turned the wheel and nudged the throttle forward. “I must have the wrong sunglasses.”
“Kid,” Farley said, “you got the wrong eyes.”
Thorn turned and looked back at their wake, watched the big lures flitting across the surface, then diving a few inches below, leaving a trail of bubbles, then resurfacing for another brief ride across the sweet polished surface of the sea.
He was watching the back starboard lure when the dorsal fin rose and the long narrow bill knifed into view. It came so fast and the shadow was so large Thorn thought for a moment it was just a wishful mirage, a phantom rising from the depths of his reverie.
Then the outrigger popped and the slack belly in the line vanished.
“Fish on!” Braswell yelled. “That’s her, that’s her.”
Johnny eased the throttle till the boat was almost dead in the water.
“It’s big,” Farley said.
Thorn rubbed the sweat sting out of his eyes.
“Hell, it looks like a goddamn limousine.”
Down on deck, Braswell wrenched the rod out of the holder and fit the butt into the socket on his waist belt. Morgan reeled in the other lines and settled the rods back in their holders, then turned to her father, lowered his chair back and clipped the harness to the reel and eased it around her father’s back. She cocked the chair back into place and both of them watched as the line whirled off the reel. Braswell fumbled with the drag, almost lost the rod as he braked down on the fish. Even from twenty feet away, Thorn saw the tremble in his hands.
Johnny had them in neutral, then slipped it into reverse, facing astern, his butt pressed to the console, steering by feel, trying to keep the fish directly behind them, but the slanting line moved from starboard to port and back again with amazing speed. Though the fish was already down in the heavy depths, it zigzagged so quickly it might have been gliding across the airy surface.
“Get down to the cockpit, Johnny,” Farley said. “Make yourself useful.”
“Fuck that. I’m running the boat.”
“Maybe if we were catching a minnow, boy. But not this fish. Get down there, give your daddy water, rub his shoulders. Going to be a long afternoon.”
Face in the wind, Alexandra drew down breath after breath of fresh salt air, reviving slowly. By the time Sugarman had Thorn’s old Chris-Craft a mile offshore, Alexandra’s wooziness had mostly cleared. She could feel the puffiness growing around her left eye and a three-inch spike driving deeper and deeper into her temple with every breath. She was wearing a new set of Thorn’s clothes. A black-and-white checked cowboy shirt with pearl snap buttons. A pair of old blue jeans shorts with frayed cutoff legs. She didn’t remember selecting them or putting them on. A missing hour or two.
“You all right?” Sugarman gave her a quick look, then resumed his watch out the blurry windshield.
She told him she was going to be fine. It was nothing, she’d taken worse knocks playing with a litter of kittens. She said he should just keep steering the boat, keep his eyes sharp for the ByteMe.
“It’s a big goddamn ocean,” he said.
And that’s what echoed in her ears as the blood emptied from her head and she stumbled backwards, it’s a big goddamn ocean, and bumped against the wooden side panel, a big goddamn ocean, and went down on the deck. Sprawling there, squinting up into the sun, watching the handsome black man bend down and scoop her up and carry her into the shadowy cabin and lay her out on the cot where Thorn slept the night before. Thorn’s smell in the pillow. It’s a big goddamn ocean. Breathing his earthy scent of sweat and suntan oil and fish and the musky undertone of sex. A smell she recalled only vaguely from her distant past. It’s a big goddamn ocean, Sugarman said. Like they might never find the boat. Might never see her father alive again. Or Thorn. Whose smell she inhaled, like hay, or dry summer grasses, a pungent spice that filled her lungs and filled them again.
The boat was still grumbling along when she woke. Mouth dry, spike still hammering at her temple. She sat up slowly. A bolt of pain shutting her eyes for a moment. But she pressed her feet to the deck and pushed herself up and steadied herself against the bunk. She breathed in and out with great care, tried to keep herself erect. She was twelve feet tall and her head was full of helium. She was one of tho
se giant balloons in the Macy’s parade, unwieldy, anchored to the earth by a dozen cords handled by a band of drunks.
She stood in the center of the cabin, tugged to the left, then the right, forward and back. She looked out the narrow doorway and all she could see of Sugarman was his legs and his narrow waist. Steering that old boat, still searching for her father. Her father, Lawton Collins, who had been out of her sight for days. Never in the years that he’d been sick had they been separated this long. Never in all those years had she felt so hollow, so lost, so helpless.
With a hand against the cabin wall, she tottered forward into the narrow V-berth. Looking for the supply locker. A bottle of water was on her mind. Even if it was warm water, or hot. It didn’t matter. So parched. Tongue pasted to the roof of her mouth.
She found the narrow locker door cut flush into the wood of the cabin wall. She thumbed back the latch and drew open the door. No water. Nothing but a large file box with a loose lid.
She shut the locker and turned away. Staggered briefly, caught herself. She moved down the narrow aisle, headed toward the sunlight. But she couldn’t shake the feeling that she should go back, have another look. Not sure why, not sure what nagged at her. She stopped, stood there, dazed, head throbbing, and then a long sequence of connections fired off in her mind. A box, a box, a cardboard box.
She turned around, went back to the locker, opened it and pulled the lid off and looked inside. She drew a sharp breath, then put the lid back on and carried the box out to the deck and stood next to Sugarman cradling it in her arms. It weighed maybe twenty-five pounds. About the same as a portable television set.
“You okay?”
“Fine,” she said. “Any luck?”
“Nothing yet,” he said. “I’ve been on channel sixteen, monitoring the chatter. I put the word out, asked if anybody’d seen the ByteMe, but so far, nobody’s come back. Mostly they’re talking about the explosions at the marina.”
She scanned the horizon but saw nothing in any direction. An endless stretch of blue water, blue sky, stringy white clouds.
“We’re heading south now. I heard someone on the radio mention another fishing grounds. The canyons.”
She nodded, shifted the box in her arms.
“What’s that?”
“I found it below. I was looking for a bottle of water.”
Sugarman nudged the throttle forward, made a small adjustment in their course. Alexandra pulled off the lid and tilted the box in his direction.
He stared down into it for several moments, then looked into her eyes.
“Is that what I think it is?”
“Yeah,” she said. “Dad must’ve hidden it the night he was at Thorn’s.”
“Jesus, be careful,” Sugarman said. “That could be dangerous.”
Alexandra peered down at the tangle of wires and the clear cells filled with colored fluids. It didn’t look dangerous. It looked silly. It looked like a high school science project, a third runner-up in the half-assed terrorist division.
“Alex?”
She looked up at Sugarman. He was steering with one hand, the other reaching out for her as if he thought she was about to take another tumble.
“I’m fine,” she said. “Don’t worry about me.”
“I know I don’t need to tell you,” said Sugar. “But that thing is evidence in the murder of dozens of people.”
She nodded and settled the lid back in place. And turned around and set the box down in a corner of the cockpit. She stood next to Sugarman, staring out the windshield at the gentle rollers.
“You and Thorn,” she said. “You’re pretty good friends.”
She looked out at the empty blue.
“Since grade school,” Sugar said. “Since forever.”
“Tell me about him,” she said. Eyes on the distance. Still smelling the pillow. The scent of his sweat.
“What do you want to know?”
“Whatever you think is relevant.”
“Relevant to what?”
She turned her head and let him have a good look at her face.
“Oh,” he said. “I see.”
Twenty-Five
A. J. reeled in line and reeled in some more, then watched an hour’s work fly off the reel in seconds. It was sweaty labor, hot and wordless. Grunting and lifting and cranking. Harnessed to the fighting chair, Braswell seemed to age a year each hour. His hands turning into cramped claws, muscles in spasm. Sweat tormenting his eyes.
Thorn knew the crushing ache in his shoulders and his lower back and quadriceps. Feet grinding against the deck for hours until his toes were blistered and bloody. Muscles stiffening, in revolt. A. J. was probably having the same silent conversation with himself that all big-game fishermen had sooner or later, a debate about hanging on, balancing the cost of his pain against the shame of defeat. Taking measured sips of the anger and hate that propelled him, that unreasoning, masochistic joy. It was mindless work. Connected to a creature who had only two reactions, attack or flee. It was, if you weighed it against mankind’s vital concerns, trivial in the extreme. Mad and childish.
Hours and hours of agonizing immobility. Every act on display, every slump of shoulder, every groan and squirm and whimper. That old Cuban fisherman in his fictional boat had only himself to please, only his private demons to conquer. But A. J. Braswell had a larger audience, a more complicated one. More at stake in his struggle than simply proving his worth. This wasn’t about fishing. This wasn’t about any triumph of the spirit. It was the finale to a long sequence of calamities that had wrecked his family and everyone they had come into contact with. Instead of meaning, instead of love, the Braswells had this fish.
Thorn came down off the flybridge and sat on the gunwale and watched the fight up close. He spoke the customary encouraging words, the patter of solidarity. Every time he spoke, Morgan or Johnny glared at him as if he’d uttered a blasphemy, which of course he had. They were their own exclusive church, these three, their own holy trinity. They’d shared the same poisoned communion bowl for so long no one else could possibly know their pain or enter their hallowed sanctum.
Thorn smiled back at Morgan, deflecting her laser eyes as best he could. He was looking for his moment, sensing he only had one chance. And if it failed there would be no recourse but to do it Farley’s way and take them head-on, toss each of them overboard and while they treaded water, proceed with a thorough search for Lawton.
The moment he chose was late in the afternoon, nine hours into the battle. The silence was grim, the sun only moments from setting the sea on fire. They might be locked in this contest all night. It might last all the next day or longer. There was no way to tell. Morgan looked exhausted. She had her head down, staring at a square of deck between her feet. Johnny stood close behind his father’s chair looking out to the spot where the line entered the water. The giant blue had not shown herself again. She’d run steadily downward until nothing was left but the last few coils of line. The knot that held the line to the reel was only one layer away. One more run of even a few feet, a swish or two of her powerful hindquarters, and the game was over. A. J. Braswell was soggy with sweat and his arms looked limp and uncertain. Probably hallucinating, having some loony conversation with his marlin, bonding with her, a supernatural union.
Thorn eased to his feet, waited for a moment to see that no one had noticed, then stole across four feet of deck. Johnny still flanking his father, staring out to sea, Morgan watching her toe tap against the deck. Thorn opened the salon door and stepped inside. He was halfway across the cabin when the cold metal hooked around his neck. He stopped mid-step, and in the mirror wall behind the bar he saw the two of them frozen. The crook of the aluminum gaff curved around his throat. Morgan gripped the handle with both hands, the gaff’s razor point pricking his flesh an inch below his Adam’s apple, pressing so tight against his skin that if he sneezed he’d rip out his own larynx.
“You’re not real smart, are you?”
Thorn sl
ipped a breath past the pressure of the gaff. He managed a guttural noise. Holding still, seeing in the mirror a dribble of blood seeping from his throat.
“Did you think I wouldn’t recognize you? Or what? I’d just say hello, oh my, what a coincidence, it’s the hero from the plane crash. Is that what you thought?”
She tugged on the gaff and the blood began to stream in earnest.
“You came nosing around the plant the next day. I saw you on the security video. Then you’re on my boat in the Bahamas. Tell me, Thorn. Give me a good reason why I shouldn’t tear out your throat right now?”
He met her gaze in the mirror. Those shocking blue eyes were glazed by a crisp layer of frost. They professed a toughness that her mouth contradicted. Her lips were soft and uncertain, warped by a schoolgirl’s shy discomfort. As if some part of her had been stunted long ago, and just below that crust of harsh indifference there was still a teenager who’d never overcome her unease around adults. A girl who had been banished from her childhood before she was ready. Thorn knew the look. He’d seen it more than once in his own face. A boy who was continually surprised to see the man he’d become.
“Have you ever thought, Morgan, that you might’ve been better off if you’d stayed in school, finished your degree, married a nice guy with patches on the elbows of his corduroy coat?”
“You don’t know me. You don’t know anything about me.”
“That’s true,” he said. “But I do know something about taking on more responsibility than you can handle. About cracking under the pressure. Trying to live up to some gold standard that’s out of your reach. I know a few things.”
She tightened the gaff against his throat.
“I’m not cracking. I’m handling things fine.”
“Oh, yeah, you’re doing great, Morgan. Just take a look around you, if you can see over the stack of bodies you’ve surrounded yourself with.”
“Who are you? What’re you doing here?”
“Your dad and your brother,” Thorn said, “do they reciprocate in any way? That’s how it’s supposed to work, you know? Give a little, take a little. But it doesn’t look that way to me. Looks to me like those two are both full-time jobs. And you’re working the night shift and the day shift just to keep up.”
Blackwater Sound Page 28