Past Crimes

by Glen Erik Hamilton

  Beached and tilted as the boat was, the swim platform at her stern was almost chest-high and canted like a playground slide for a small child. I crawled up onto it, on my hands and knees. My left hand wasn’t right. Two of its fingers felt numb, and I couldn’t make them squeeze the platform rungs very hard. Something under the fresh surgical scars on my forearm had twisted and broken again. The Francesca’s transom had been unscathed by the disaster, and the gold paint of the boat’s name sparkled cheerily in the sun. I carefully made my way over the transom into the cockpit.

  I’d forgotten about Alec.

  His pale body lay against the leeward side of the cockpit, face turned to the wall as if in shame. Most of the teakwood on the floor was stained a dark wine color that carried over into pink on the white fiberglass edges. The sandflies had already found the feast. They flew into a small, frenzied tornado as I stepped past the body.

  Once I was inside the boat’s main cabin, I closed the sliding glass door to the cockpit. The quiet was better. There was enough to think about without hearing the flies buzzing.

  It looked like a bomb had gone off in the interior of the Francesca. The thirty-degree tilt to port gave the cabin the appearance of a place in a fever dream. Every object that was loose had been thrown around, repeatedly. Everything breakable was broken. There was a foot-wide hole punched right through a thick cabinet door, maybe by one of Boone’s bullets.

  I needed to concentrate, to find where Hollis kept his satellite phone.

  Guerin. It would have to be the detective.

  All at once I was laughing. I’d found a fortune in diamonds, left it on the ocean floor, and wound up with two corpses and a demolished hulk for my trouble. The Francesca was a pretty fair representation of my life.

  I started rummaging through the drawers nearest the boat’s interior controls. Then I heard it. A light scuffling sound, like pieces of paper rubbing together. As I listened, I heard it again. It was coming from the bow of the boat, past the short flight of stairs leading down to the forward staterooms.

  There was an old diving knife with a red rubberized handle in one of the drawers. I unsheathed the knife and took it with me.

  I walked very slowly down the tilted stairs. There was the noise again, and something else with it. A grunt. It was coming from behind the closed door of the head, the boat’s single bathroom. I reached out and twisted the knob—unlocked—and let the door swing open.

  Hollis was lying curled up on his side on the cramped floor of the head, bound almost rigid with silver duct tape. Loops of the tape were wound around his ankles and calves and thighs and upper arms. His forearms clasped the toilet, and his wrists and hands were completely mummified on the far side of the porcelain basin.

  “Hollis?” I said.

  The lower half of his face was swathed in tight loops as well. He could still turn his neck, however, and he craned it to try to look back toward the doorway. His skin above the bandit’s mask of tape was a furious red, striped with maroon splotches of blood.

  One of Hollis’s bright blueberry eyes went wide as I stepped into the head and started sawing at the tape around his arms. His other eye was puffed shut. Even with the serrated back edge of the dive knife, it took me a few minutes to get his arms and encased hands loose from the toilet.

  He pushed himself into a seated position and pointed angrily with one mittenlike hand at his face—do this first—and then sat very still as I unwound the tape from his head. When I peeled the last bit of tape from his mouth, it took strips of skin with it, and his lips gushed blood.

  “Wher ah dey?” he said as thick dribbles of red fell down the front of his sweat-drenched shirt. The same yellow shirt he’d been wearing when he and I had shared drinks and toasted Dono.

  “Hang on,” I said. I gathered a wad of toilet paper from the roll on the wall and pressed it to Hollis’s mouth. He held it in place with one wrapped hand while I worked on cutting the tape off his legs. Finally everything was free except his hands. He took the pink mass of tissue away from his mouth and said, “’M cramping like fugg. I have to moob.”

  He couldn’t stand on his own. The muscles in his legs were shaking like leaves in a strong wind, and I wasn’t strong enough at the moment to lift him. Together we got him onto his knees and then fully upright and leaning back against the sink counter of the head. I started unwrapping his hands.

  “Oh, Jesus, Van,” he said.

  He started weeping. I let him. I handed him another wad of toilet paper, and he dabbed at his eyes and his lips until the shaking finally stopped and his breath was even again.

  “Tell me,” Hollis said.

  “Alec and Boone are dead. So is your boat. Sorry.”

  “Yeah, I figured tha’ part. I mean you. What happened to you?”

  “You first.”

  “You lef’ in the speedboat. About two minutes later, that fucker Boone came jumping over the side and pistol-whipped me. He and Alec must have been hiding out in one of the boats nearby on the dock. They didn’t ask me shit. Boone just got his rocks off beating on me while his boyfriend played with some computer gadget.”

  “They were tracking the speedboat. My stupidity in action. I’m sorry, Hollis. They needed your boat to follow me.”

  He frowned at me, and the blood welled up on his lip again. “And if they hadn’t? They’d have killed me outright. They told me as much. The only reason I’m still drawing breath is because the fuckers wanted a backup plan, in case you didn’t lead them to Dono’s score. They’d get in touch with you and offer to trade me for the diamonds. Not that you’d be that much of an idiot.”

  “I might have made that trade.”

  “Don’t be daft,” he said.

  “I’ve already lost Dono. When I saw Alec and Boone on the Francesca, I thought you were dead, too. I didn’t care for the feeling.”

  “Well, lad.” Hollis gave me a broken smile. “We’ve no worries about it now. You said the two bastards are where they belong?”

  I let him try his legs. He eased past me, both hands on the downslope wall as he worked his way up the stairs into the fun-house tilt of the main cabin.

  Hollis took a long moment to survey the damage. He shrugged. “Not so bad as all that.”

  He made his slow way through the cabin. When he looked out the sliding glass door to the cockpit, he stopped short.

  After a moment he turned back to me. “Alec?”

  “Yeah,” I said, nodding. I sat on a bench without bothering to clear the broken trash and papers off it.

  He opened the door and looked down at Alec’s corpse and the charnel mess of the cockpit floor. The swarm of flies sounded like it had doubled in number.

  “Where’s Boone?” Hollis said.

  “Ten yards off the stern.”

  Hollis paused and then carefully circled the high edge of the cockpit, holding on to the rail to keep from stumbling into the worst of it. He looked over the transom and down to the beach. The tide was going out, I knew. I wondered how much of Boone would be covered in sand by now.

  Finally Hollis turned around and came back into the cabin. He closed the door and managed to get himself into the captain’s chair at the interior controls.

  “And the day’s not half over yet,” he said.

  “Maybe the island will sink.” I was very thirsty. I got up and lurched back down the crooked steps to the galley. Some of the cabinets hadn’t been latched and had swung open during the Francesca’s crash into the island. The sinks and counters and floor of the tiny alcove were dusted with a mixture of ground coffee and Quaker Oats.

  In the icebox I found a six-pack of plastic water bottles and brought them back up to the cabin. Hollis was leaning forward in the chair, dabbing at his mouth.

  “My tooth’s fucking broken,” he said.

  I handed him one of the bottles. “Let this warm up before you take a swig, or you’ll really feel it.”

  “I think the occasion calls for something stronger.” He got up
and went to the liquor cabinet. “Put something on your shoulder. You’re making a butcher’s block of the place.”

  He was right. Alec had torn a quarter-size chunk out of my deltoid with the fishing gaff. I had forgotten. The rest of my body was making enough thudding noise to drown the jangling sting of blood seeping out. There were little notes of it dotting the carpeted cabin floor.

  I searched through the debris around the room and found two T-shirts, one dark blue and one bright orange with a faded stencil of a mermaid on it. Both shirts looked older than I was. I folded the orange one into a thick square and poured half of one of the bottles of water on it. I put the square on my shoulder. The trickles of water carved little canyons down my side through the layer of grime and sand. I put the blue T-shirt on over the makeshift bandage to hold it in place.

  I downed the rest of the bottle of water and then another. A sugary cloud of liquor fumes wafted over from the cabinet that Hollis was gingerly poking through. “Anything survive?” I said.

  “Not unless you have an unquenchable thirst for club soda. Jesus, why did I ever buy that?”

  “Hollis, do you have a scuba tank? A full one.”

  “Hmm? Yeah, of course. I keep the gear on board, in case the anchor rope snags on something. It’s been a while since I’ve checked it.” He stopped and looked up at me. “You going after the diamonds?”

  I nodded. He hurried back to the stern of the boat, toward the engine room.

  The image of the black hexagonal tubes spiraling out of sight into the ocean clouded every other thought. I’d let the bundle go in thirty feet of water, not far from the drop-off that fell ten times that depth to the floor of the strait. One storm, one surging current, and they’d be gone forever.

  And I wanted to see the diamonds for myself. See what Dono had risked so much for.

  See what had made him call me home.

  “At least he can rest now,” I said out loud as Hollis came stumbling back to the stairs, treading uphill against the tilt of the cabin. A black rubber diving mask and a regulator set were draped around his neck. He dragged what looked like a stainless-steel tank up the steps toward me.

  “You buy all that from Captain Nemo himself?” I said.

  “What? Oh, funny man. It’s old, but it fucking well works. What was that you were mumbling as I came in?”

  “I was saying that Dono would have liked to see this.”

  “And do you imagine he’s not? Your man is laughing his ass off right now—don’t you doubt it.” The sweat had finally dried from his hair, and his orange-white curls stood up like he’d touched an outlet.

  I screwed the regulator set onto the tank with my good right hand. The tank showed about three-quarter pressure. Maybe twenty minutes’ worth, if I could stay in the shallows.

  Hollis sat down heavily in the captain’s chair. “I’m as eager as anyone, boyo, but are you sure this is smart? You don’t look exactly in top form.”

  “I’ll be fine. And if I’m lucky, the diamonds will be right where I left them.”

  Hollis’s face told me he thought I’d burned through enough good fortune today, but he just cracked the seal on his water bottle and drank from it like it was Bushmills.

  “What’s the plan?” he said.

  “I’m going to swim out to the speedboat, see if I can get it started, and bring it in close to shore. You strong enough to wade out to it carrying the scuba tank?”

  “Yeah, not a problem.”

  “We could get you a life vest,” I said.

  “Fuck you right back. Try not to run Dono’s boat aground. One a day is enough.”

  Within twenty minutes Hollis was setting the anchor of the speedboat above where I’d dropped the diamonds. I was sitting on the bow, fitting the straps of the scuba tank around my shoulders. The wound in my shoulder had subsided to a dull throb.

  “You get those diamonds,” Hollis said, pointing at me, “and you could vanish. So far away that even the fucking army couldn’t find you if they tried.”

  I put the mask on. “Maybe there’s a way to have a taste and the bottle to spare.”

  He grinned. “That’s one of your granddad’s.”

  “I know.” I put the regulator in my mouth and dropped into the water.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  WITH NO BUOYANCY VEST, I was pulled down by the weight of the steel tank. I had to start kicking immediately to slow my descent. The cold clutched at me again.

  I kicked over to the anchor chain, cupped a hand on it, and let myself sink. The pressure built, and every few yards I tightened my hold on the chain to stop and give my ears some time to adjust.

  At thirty feet I felt the tension that thrummed through the chain slacken.

  The chain’s slant flattened out, curved, came to rest in one of the loose patches of kelp. Clumps of the thick seaweed waved gently in the current, all their strands pointing toward the open water of the strait.

  I looked back up the long curve of the chain. Fifty feet to the surface. Not far, but already I couldn’t see the boat. Just a wide cloud of bluish color in place of the sky.

  Hollis and I had dropped anchor at the place where I remembered surfacing, after first seeing the Francesca and letting the bundle of cylinders sink to the bottom. If the bundle had sunk straight down from where I’d released it, it should be nearby.

  I could see clearly for about eight feet, by the beam of the flashlight held in my weak left hand. Everything beyond fifteen feet might as well be a solid wall. I swam around the anchor in widening circles, through the storm of mud and silt that my fins stirred up, peering at every thicket of seaweed to see if the black cylinders were hiding within.

  Five minutes passed as I traced that spiral path. Ten minutes.

  A wave grabbed the flashlight beam, made it quiver. I realized that the wave was my own shivering, strong enough to make my whole arm shudder. I was running out of time.

  The cylinders weren’t here. They hadn’t come to rest where I’d dropped them.

  So where?

  If the current had been strong enough to get the heavy bundle rolling, they would have fallen outward, away from the island, toward the deeper sea.

  Toward the drop-off.

  I’d seen the numbers on the depth sounder in Dono’s speedboat when I’d first approached the island. The water had gone from near a thousand feet to five hundred to one hundred in the course of a minute. After that, the underwater slope of the island had become much more gradual, up onto the shore where the Francesca lay now, beached.

  Nine minutes left on the gauge. Time enough for a quick look. I swam in that direction, the flashlight shining feebly into the dark.

  Or at least what I’d thought was dark.

  When I reached the edge of the drop, I learned what dark really was.

  The land fell off at an angle steeper than a ski jump. The depths swallowed the tiny bit of light still present and gave away nothing.

  Staring blankly into that void, I realized just how ridiculous my search was. If the bundle had fallen all the way down there, they might as well be on the moon. It would take an atmosphere suit and a lot more diving experience than I had to reach the bottom. I could sense the crushing weight of it from where I knelt, at the tipping point.

  A muted flash of yellow. A fish, maybe, darting between the strands of seaweed. No, there it was. Ten feet away. I half swam, half climbed down the slope to it.

  A bungee cord. Goddamn. A yellow bungee cord.

  I looked around, almost frantic. Where were the rest? If one cord had come off, had they all? Were the black rubber cylinders scattered nearby?

  The cord had probably been knocked off when the bundle touched bottom. It wouldn’t have floated far before tangling in the kelp. So that point of impact must be near. If the bundle had stayed intact, it could be just below me.

  I checked the gauge again. Three minutes. Less, if I went deeper. And that didn’t count the time to surface.

  I had to look.
<
br />   I swam straight down the slope, sweeping the flashlight from side to side. The pressure increased, mercilessly. I equalized my ears and kept going.

  The black was almost overwhelming. Ninety feet. One-twenty. It was too easy, falling down the underwater mountain.

  My skull was in a vise. I hadn’t felt a headache this bad since Ranger School, when they’d kept us awake for most of a week, with endless drills and tactical exercises. Droning. That’s what we called it, dead on your feet, eyes wide open. My vision blurred.

  Focus. I could go a little farther.

  And a little farther still.

  Something grabbed me and shook me, not outside but in my mind.

  This is stupid, boy.

  Right. Absolutely right. I’d never make the surface from here, not if the air ran out. As it was, I’d be ascending so fast I’d risk the bends. Time to leave.

  I turned, reaching out to touch the slope, stop my descent, and get myself oriented toward the surface. My hand was numb enough that I barely felt the mud force my fingers apart.

  But I did feel the thump of something hard, tumbling in my clumsy wake, bumping against my knuckles.

  I picked it up and stared at it hazily for a moment, the thick, hexagonal cylinder throwing off clumps of mud into the flashlight beam. I was dreaming, obviously. Nitrogen narcosis.

  No. Here it was.

  A treasure, right there in my hand.

  And there was another cylinder, a couple of yards up the slope and to my left, standing almost vertical in the mud.

  I swam to it. My deadened fingers didn’t want to release the flashlight. I had to drop the light to pick up the cylinder and get it under my other arm, both of them cradled like footballs.

  Enough.

  Enough. I kicked hard, my legs reluctantly responding. The glow of the flashlight lying on the ocean floor retreated, became a dot, vanished below me. Nothing in the world but me now, and the black. I kept kicking, exhaling steadily to let the expanding air leak from my lungs. Rising alongside the bubbles, but no faster.