“Suppose she asks why.”
“Just tell her I said to go. Tell her I’ll explain later.” He turned back to the phone. “I’m sorry, Sally. All I can tell you for sure is that we went out to where Ben’s boat is anchored. We went on board and Ben wasn’t there. We looked around, downstairs and everything.”
Meadows and Hooper walked into Brody’s office. He motioned them to chairs.
“But where could he be?” said Sally Gardner. “You don’t just get off a boat in the middle of the ocean.”
“No.”
“And he couldn’t have fallen overboard. I mean, he could have, but he’d get right back in again.”
“Yes.”
“Maybe someone came and took him off in another boat. Maybe the engine wouldn’t start and he had to ride with someone else. Did you check the engine?”
“No,” Brody said, embarrassed.
“That’s probably it, then.” The voice was subtly lighter, almost girlish, coated with a veneer of hope that, when it broke, would shatter like iced crystal. “And if the battery was dead, that would explain why he couldn’t call on the radio.”
“The radio was working, Sally.”
“Wait a minute. Who’s there? Oh, it’s you.” There was a pause. Brody heard Sally talking to Grace Finley. Then Sally came back on the line. “Grace says you told her to come over here. Why?”
“I thought—”
“You think he’s dead, don’t you? You think he drowned.” The veneer shattered, and she began to sob.
“I’m afraid so, Sally. That’s all we can think at the moment. Let me talk to Grace for a minute, will you please?”
A couple of seconds later, the voice of Grace Finley said, “Yes, Martin?”
“I’m sorry to do this to you, but I couldn’t think of anything else. Can you stay with her for a while?”
“All night. I will.”
“That might be a good idea. I’ll try to get over later on. Thanks.”
“What happened, Martin?”
“We don’t know for sure.”
“Is it that … thing again?”
“Maybe. That’s what we’re trying to figure out. But do me a favor, Grace. Don’t say anything about a shark to Sally. It’s bad enough as it is.”
“All right, Martin. Wait. Wait a minute.” She covered the mouthpiece of the phone with her hand, and Brody heard some muffled conversation. Then Sally Gardner came on the line.
“Why did you do it, Martin?”
“Do what?”
Apparently, Grace Finley tried to take the phone from her hand, for Brody heard Sally say, “Let me speak, damn you!” Then she said to him, “Why did you send him? Why Ben?” Her voice wasn’t particularly loud, but she spoke with an intensity that struck Brody as hard as if she were yelling.
“Sally, you’re—”
“This didn’t have to happen!” she said. “You could have stopped it.”
Brody wanted to hang up. He didn’t want a repetition of the scene with the Kintner boy’s mother. But he had to defend himself. She had to know that it wasn’t his fault. How could she blame him? He said, “Crap! Ben was a fisherman, a good one. He knew the risks.”
“If you hadn’t—”
“Stop it, Sally!” Brody let himself stamp on her words. “Try to get some rest.” He hung up the phone. He was furious, but his fury was confused. He was angry at Sally Gardner for accusing him, and angry at himself for being angry at her. If, she had said. If what? If he had not sent Ben. Sure. And if pigs had wings they’d be eagles. If he had gone himself. But that wasn’t his trade. He had sent the expert. He looked up at Meadows. “You heard.”
“Not all of it. But enough to gather that Ben Gardner has become victim number four.”
Brody nodded. “I think so.” He told Meadows and Hooper about his trip with Hendricks. Once or twice, Meadows interrupted with a question. Hooper listened, his angular face placid and his eyes—a light, powder blue—fixed on Brody. At the end of his tale, Brody reached into his pants pocket. “We found this,” he said. “Leonard dug it out of the wood.” He flipped the tooth to Hooper, who turned it over in his hand.
“What do you think, Matt?” said Meadows.
“It’s a white.”
“How big?”
“I can’t be sure, but big. Fifteen, twenty feet. That’s some fantastic fish.” He looked at Meadows. “Thanks for calling me,” he said. “I could spend a whole lifetime around sharks and never see a fish like that.”
Brody asked, “How much would a fish like that weigh?”
“Five or six thousand pounds.”
Brody whistled. “Three tons.”
“Do you have any thoughts about what happened?” Meadows asked.
“From what the chief says, it sounds like the fish killed Mr. Gardner.”
“How?” said Brody.
“Any number of ways. Gardner might have fallen overboard. More likely, he was pulled over. His leg may have gotten tangled in a harpoon line. He could even have been taken while he was leaning over the stern.”
“How do you account for the teeth in the stern?”
“The fish attacked the boat.”
“What the hell for?”
“Sharks aren’t very bright, Chief. They exist on instinct and impulse. The impulse to feed is powerful.”
“But a thirty-foot boat …”
“A shark doesn’t think. To him it wasn’t a boat. It was just something large.”
“And inedible.”
“Not till he’d tried it. You have to understand. There’s nothing in the sea this fish would fear. Other fish run from bigger things. That’s their instinct. But this fish doesn’t run from anything. He doesn’t know fear. He might be cautious—say around an even bigger white. But fear—no way.”
“What else do they attack?”
“Anything.”
“Just like that. Anything.”
“Pretty much, yes.”
“Do you have any idea why he’s hung around here so long?” said Brody. “I don’t know how much you know about the water here, but …”
“I grew up here.”
“You did? In Amity?”
“No, Southampton. I spent every summer there, from grade school through grad school.”
“Every summer. So you didn’t really grow up there.” Brody was groping for something with which to re-establish his parity with, if not superiority to, the younger man, and what he settled for was reverse snobbism, an attitude not uncommon to year-round residents of resort communities. It gave them armor against the contempt they sensed radiating from the rich summer folk. It was an “I’m all right, Jack” attitude, a social machismo that equated wealth with effeteness, simplicity with goodness, and poverty (up to a point) with honesty. And it was an attitude that, in general, Brody found both repugnant and silly. But he had felt threatened by the younger man—he wasn’t really sure why—and the sensation was so alien that he had reached for the most convenient carapace, the one Hooper had handed him.
“You’re picking nits,” Hooper said testily. “Okay, so I wasn’t born here. But I’ve spent a lot of time in these waters, and I wrote a paper on this coastline. Anyway, I know what you’re getting at, and you’re right. This shoreline isn’t an environment that would normally support a long stay by a shark.”
“So why is this one staying?”
“It’s impossible to say. It’s definitely uncharacteristic, but sharks do so many uncharacteristic things that the erratic becomes the normal. Anyone who’d risk money—not to mention his life—on a prediction about what one big shark will do in a given situation is a fool. This shark could be sick. The patterns of his life are so beyond his control that damage to one small mechanism could cause him to disorient and behave strangely.”
“If this is how he acts when he’s sick,” said Brody, “I’d hate to see what he does when he’s feeling fine.”
“No. Personally, I don’t think he’s sick. There are other thing
s that could cause him to stay here—many of them things we’ll never understand, natural factors, caprices.”
“Like what?”
“Changes in water temperature or current flow or feeding patterns. As food supplies move, so do the predators. A few summers ago, for example, a completely inexplicable phenomenon took place off the shore of parts of Connecticut and Rhode Island. The whole coastline was suddenly inundated with menhaden—fishermen call them bunker. Huge schools. Millions of fish. They coated the water like an oil slick. There were so many that you could throw a bare hook in the water and reel it in, and more often than not you’d catch a menhaden by foul-hooking it. Bluefish and bass feed on menhaden, so all of a sudden there were masses of bluefish feeding in schools right off the beaches. In Watch Hill, Rhode Island, people were wading into the surf and catching bluefish with rakes. Garden rakes! Just shoveling the fish out of the water. Then the big predators came—big tuna, four, five, six hundred pounds. Deep-sea fishing boats were catching bluefin tuna within a hundred yards of the shore. In harbors sometimes. Then suddenly it stopped. The menhaden went away, and so did the other fish. I spent three weeks down there trying to figure out what was going on. I still don’t know. It’s all part of the ecological balance. When something tips too far one way or the other, peculiar things happen.”
“But this is even weirder,” said Brody. “This fish has stayed in one place, in one chunk of water only a mile or two square, for over a week. He hasn’t moved up or down the beach. He hasn’t touched anybody in East Hampton or Southampton. What is it about Amity?”
“I don’t know. I doubt that anyone could give you a good answer.”
Meadows said, “Minnie Eldridge has the answer.”
“Balls,” said Brody.
“Who’s Minnie Eldridge?” asked Hooper.
“The postmistress,” said Brody. “She says it’s God’s will, or something like that. We’re being punished for our sins.”
Hooper smiled. “Right now, anyway, that’s as good an answer as I’ve got.”
“That’s encouraging,” said Brody. “Is there anything you plan to do to get an answer?”
“There are a few things. I’ll take water samples here and in East Hampton. I’ll try to find out how other fish are behaving—if anything extraordinary is around, or if anything that should be here isn’t. And I’ll try to find that shark. Which reminds me, is there a boat available?”
“Yes, I’m sorry to say,” said Brody. “Ben Gardner’s. We’ll get you out to it tomorrow, and you can use it at least until we work something out with his wife. Do you really think you can catch that fish, after what happened to Ben Gardner?”
“I didn’t say I was going to try to catch it. I don’t think I’d want to try that. Not alone, anyway.”
“Then what the hell are you going to do?”
“I don’t know. I’ll have to play it by ear.”
Brody looked into Hooper’s eyes and said, “I want that fish killed. If you can’t do it, we’ll find someone who can.”
Hooper laughed. “You sound like a mobster. ‘I want that fish killed.’ So go get a contract out on him. Who are you going to get to do the job?”
“I don’t know. What about it, Harry? You’re supposed to know everything that goes on around here. Isn’t there any fisherman on this whole damn island equipped to catch big sharks?”
Meadows thought for a moment before he spoke. “There may be one. I don’t know much about him, but I think his name is Quint, and I think he operates out of a private pier somewhere around Promised Land. I can find out a little more about him if you like.”
“Why not?” said Brody. “He sounds like a possible.”
Hooper said, “Look, Chief, you can’t go off half-cocked looking for vengeance against a fish. That shark isn’t evil. It’s not a murderer. It’s just obeying its own instincts. Trying to get retribution against a fish is crazy.”
“Listen you …” Brody was growing angry—an anger born of frustration and humiliation. He knew Hooper was right, but he felt that right and wrong were irrelevant to the situation. The fish was an enemy. It had come upon the community and killed two men, a woman, and a child. The people of Amity would demand the death of the fish. They would need to see it dead before they could feel secure enough to resume their normal lives. Most of all, Brody needed it dead, for the death of the fish would be a catharsis for him. Hooper had touched that nerve, and that infuriated Brody further. But he swallowed his rage and said, “Forget it.”
The phone rang. “It’s for you, Chief,” said Clements. “Mr. Vaughan.”
“Oh swell. That’s just what I need.” He punched the flashing button on the phone and picked up the receiver. “Yeah, Larry.”
“Hello, Martin. How are you?” Vaughan’s voice was friendly, almost effusively so. Brody thought, he’s probably had a couple of belts.
“As well as could be expected, Larry.”
“You’re working pretty late. I tried to get you at home.”
“Yeah. Well, when you’re the chief of police and your constituents are getting themselves killed every twenty minutes, that kind of keeps you busy.”
“I heard about Ben Gardner.”
“What did you hear?”
“That he was missing.”
“News travels pretty fast.”
“Are you sure it was the shark again?”
“Sure? Yeah, I guess so. Nothing else seems to make any sense.”
“Martin, what are you going to do?” There was a pathetic urgency in Vaughan’s voice.
“That’s a good question, Larry. We’re doing everything we can right now. We’ve got the beaches closed down. We’ve—”
“I’m aware of that, to say the very least.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Have you ever tried to sell healthy people real estate in a leper colony?”
“No, Larry,” Brody said wearily.
“I’m getting cancellations every day. People are walking out on leases. I haven’t had a new customer in here since Sunday.”
“So what do you want me to do?”
“Well, I thought … I mean, what I’m wondering is, maybe we’re overreacting to this whole thing.”
“You’re kidding. Tell me you’re kidding.”
“Hardly, Martin. Now calm down. Let’s discuss this rationally.”
“I’m rational. I’m not sure about you, though.”
There was a moment of silence, and then Vaughan said, “What would you say to opening the beaches, just for the Fourth of July weekend?”
“Not a chance. Not a fucking chance.”
“Now listen …”
“No, you listen, Larry. The last time I listened to you, we had two people killed. If we catch that fish, if we kill the sonofabitch, then we’ll open the beaches. Until then, forget it.”
“What about nets?”
“What about them?”
“Why couldn’t we put steel nets out to protect the beaches? Someone told me that’s what they do in Australia.”
He must be drunk, Brody thought. “Larry, this is a straight coastline. Are you going to put nets out along two and a half miles of beaches? Fine. You get the money. I’d say about a million dollars, for openers.”
“What about patrols? We could hire people to patrol up and down the beaches in boats.”
“That’s not good enough, Larry. What is it with you, anyway? Are your partners on your ass again?”
“That’s none of your damn business, Martin. For God’s sake, man, this town is dying!”
“I know it, Larry,” Brody said softly. “And as far as I know, there’s not a damn thing we can do about it. Good night.” He hung up the phone.
Meadows and Hooper rose to leave. Brody walked them to the front door of the station house. As they started out the door, Brody said to Meadows, “Hey, Harry, you left your lighter inside.” Meadows started to say something, but Brody stepped on his words. “Come on back in
side and I’ll give it to you. If you leave it around here overnight, it’s likely to disappear.” He waved to Hooper. “See you.”
When they were back in Brody’s office, Meadows took his lighter from his pocket and said, “I trust you had something to say to me.”
Brody shut the door to his office. “You think you can find out something about Larry’s partners?”
“I guess so. Why?”
“Ever since this thing began, Larry has been on my ass to keep the beaches open. And now, after all that’s just happened, he says he wants them open for the Fourth. The other day he said he was under pressure from his partners. I told you about it.”
“And?”
“I think we should know who it is who has enough clout to drive Larry bullshit. I wouldn’t care if he wasn’t the mayor of this town. But if there are people telling him what to do, I think we ought to know who they are.”
Meadows sighed. “Okay, Martin. I’ll do what I can. But digging around in Larry Vaughan’s affairs isn’t my idea of fun.”
“There’s not a whole hell of a lot that is fun these days, is there?”
Brody walked Meadows to the door, then went back to his desk and sat down. Vaughan had been right about one thing, he thought: Amity was showing all the signs of imminent death. It wasn’t just the real estate market, though its sickness was as contagious as smallpox. Evelyn Bixby, the wife of one of Brody’s officers, had lost her job as a real estate agent and was working as a waitress in a hash house on Route 27.
Two new boutiques that were scheduled to open the next day had put off their debuts until July 3, and the proprietors of both made a point of calling on Brody to tell him that if the beaches weren’t open by then, they wouldn’t open their stores at all. One of them was already looking at a site for rent in East Hampton. The sporting goods store had posted signs announcing a clearance sale—a sale that normally took place over the Labor Day weekend. The only good thing about the Amity economy, as far as Brody was concerned, was that Saxon’s was doing so badly that it laid off Henry Kimble. Now that he didn’t have his bartending job, he slept during the day and could occasionally survive through a shift of police work without a nap.
Jaws Page 9