High Season

by Jon Loomis

  Jamie pointed the gun at Plotz’s head. “Less talking, more leaving.”

  Plotz slowly edged past her while she kept the gun aimed at his forehead. He unlocked the door, crossed the screen porch, and stepped onto the walk. She followed him, naked, out into the street, holding the gun in both hands. He climbed into his borrowed Toyota and started the engine. The beige sedan pulled away from the curb, then accelerated down the street. Jamie leveled the Colt and fired, punching a dime-sized hole in the trunk. Applause and raucous laughter erupted from a house across the street.

  A group of women dressed in shorts and T-shirts stood on the big front porch, around a keg of beer.

  “You go, girl,” one of them called.

  “Nice shootin’, honey,” said a heavyset redhead.

  Jamie waved away the gunsmoke and dropped a little curtsy. Another round of cheering and applause broke out. “Want a beer?” one of the women said. “Want to take a hot tub?” said the redhead.

  “Thanks,” said Jamie, trotting back to Coffin’s house. “Maybe some other time!”

  It was nearly high tide. A forty-foot lobster boat was tied to a cleat near the end of the wharf, nose pointed out, rising and falling on the slight swell. It had a small, boxy pilot house near the bow and a low, open stern, designed to allow the strings of lobster pots to pay out, one after another, into the sea. On the starboard side, there was a tall winch for retrieving the catch.

  Billy climbed out of the truck and dropped the tailgate. He moved the concrete blocks aside and looked under the tarp. The lesbo-cop was still breathing, but she was pale and lay very still. He pulled the wheelbarrow out and flipped it right way up. He dragged Lola out of the truck and into the wheelbarrow and pushed her out onto the wharf. When he got to the boat, he tipped the wheelbarrow up and dumped her onto the deck. He made another trip back to the truck for the four concrete blocks and the rope. Then, on the third trip, he pulled Coffin out of the cab and into the wheelbarrow.

  “It’s a hell of a note, Frankie,” he said, blowing hard as he wheeled Coffin down the sagging wharf. “I guess the Coffin jinx is the real deal. All your life you tried to avoid it, but here it is, jumping up to bite you in the ass.” He dumped Coffin a few feet from Lola. Then he climbed in, untied the bow line from the cleat, and pushed the boat away from the wharf.

  “Jesus Christ,” Billy said, standing at the wheel in the small pilot house, trying to catch his breath. “This serial murder thing is killing me.” He turned the key. The big inboard throbbed to life.

  Lola felt the vibration of an engine. She heard its low mutter and the sound of rushing water. She opened her eyes. She was on a boat. Her vision blurred; she could just make out the pilot house and the man at the boat’s wheel. A squat, broad-shouldered man. Billy. He took a bottle from his pocket, screwed off the cap, and took a long drink.

  She lay on her right side. Her head throbbed; the pain centered at a point behind her ear. Her mouth tasted like she’d been chewing a latex glove. When she closed her eyes, she still saw swirls of color, but they were faint. She watched them awhile, then opened her eyes again. She turned her head a few degrees, afraid that Billy might notice even a slight movement. She could feel the cool stainless steel jaws of handcuffs circling her wrists, pinning her arms behind her back.

  Three wire-mesh lobster pots were stacked behind her. Frank lay just beyond them, his eyes and mouth open. She couldn’t tell whether he was breathing or not.

  The boat turned, a long slow sweep. Lola heard the plastic honk of the Long Point foghorn. They were rounding the outer breakwater, she realized—leaving the harbor. The boat straightened its course, then seemed to shift gears; the engine got louder, the bow lifted, and spray blew wet and cold across the deck.

  Lola flexed her left hand. She made a fist, let it go. She closed her eyes and watched the colors slowly fade to black. She wasn’t sure how much time passed before the engine stopped and the boat began to drift in relative silence—the only sounds were the wind and the waves slapping against the hull. Billy stepped out of the pilot house. Lola watched him loop the coil of rope around his shoulder, then pick up a concrete block in each hand. She closed her eyes, heart beating fast. He stopped at her feet.

  “Just look at Sleepin’ Beauty,” he said. He poked her leg with his toe. “Still out like a light. I’m gonna take care of Frankie here, and then it’s your turn for a swim, honey pie.” He walked on, moving easily with the motion of the boat. Lola exhaled as quietly as she could.

  Billy set the concrete blocks near the winch. Then he came for Coffin and dragged him across the spray-slicked deck. Billy uncoiled the rope and measured off a few arm-lengths. He took a Buck knife from his pocket, opened the blade, and sawed at the rope.

  Lola flexed her wrists. The cuffs were fairly loose, which was good. She bent a little, trying to reach for the gun in her boot, but it was no good with her hands behind her back. The effort was exhausting—she rested a minute, breathing deeply. She’d seen more than one arrested suspect slide their handcuffed wrists under their butts and pull their feet through the loops of their arms, bringing their hands from back to front; as an MP, she once watched a young soldier hop through his own cuffed arms as if they were a jump rope and run away. She rolled onto her back, got her feet under her, and lifted her butt off the deck. It wasn’t easy, sliding her wrists under her buttocks—her arms weren’t that long, and the cuffs cut her flesh; she felt something wet running down her fingers and knew she was bleeding.

  Billy was intent on his work. He looped one end of the cut length of rope several times through the center holes of the two concrete blocks before tying it off in a double square knot. Then he tied the other end around Coffin’s ankles.

  Lola’s shoulders felt as though they might pop out of their sockets. She bit her lip against the pain. She curled her torso forward, flexed her shoulders down, and tried again, wiggling her butt and straining, and that did it—her hands were behind her knees. She pulled her feet through—her hands were in front!—and tugged at her pants leg. The .38 was gone. Billy had taken her gun.

  “We got to do this the right way, Frankie,” Billy said, raising his voice to make himself heard over the wind. “It’s not just a matter of feeding your ass to the freakin’ crustaceans. It’s got to be aesthetically correct. We got to have a little ceremony. Somebody’s got to say a few words, for Christ’s sake.” He bent over, hooking the winch line to the rope that connected Coffin to the concrete blocks. He worked the lever and the take-up wheel reversed, pulling the cable taut, slowly raising Coffin and the two blocks from the deck, letting him swing out on the winch’s arm until he hung head down over the water, arms dangling.

  “I dedicate the body of this man to the bottom of the sea,” Billy shouted into the wind. “He’s a good boy, and his old man was the salt of the freaking earth. There’s worse fates than having lobsters eat your liver, although I’m fucked if I can think of any.”

  Lola scrambled to her feet, trying to stay out of Billy’s peripheral vision. She kept low and directly behind him, moving slowly across the deck until she got within nine or ten feet. She could use both of her fists as a club, she thought, or jump on his back and use the cuffs as a crude garrote.

  Billy spun around. “Mornin’, honey pie!” he shouted. “Sleep well?”

  Lola advanced another yard. Her vision was blurred, and she felt as though she were moving in slow motion, walking through a lake of glue.

  Billy spread his arms as if he meant to embrace her. “You comin’ to play with Uncle Billy, sweet cheeks? A little dance before you go swimming?” His hand dipped into his jacket pocket and came out with Lola’s pistol. He grinned. “Why don’t you sit down and keep still, like a good girl?”

  Lola stepped on something and almost stumbled. She looked down. It was a four-foot gaff with a beautiful, gleaming hook. As she bent to pick it up, the gun cracked and a bullet whistled past her ear, punching into the bulkhead behind her. She grabbed the hook and dove t
o the right, sliding on her belly across the slick deck as the gun cracked again—Billy’s second shot missing high, pinging off a broken lobster pot. She rolled onto her back and swung the gaff with both hands, cracking the top bone in Billy’s forearm with the long handle. The gun squirted out of his hand and bounced off the gunwale, into the dark water.

  “Now, God damn it,” Billy said, shuffling backward a few steps, holding his forearm. “What you just did was extremely fucking impolite. Good thing I’m pumped full of hillbilly heroin, or that might have hurt old Uncle Billy.”

  “Let him down,” Lola said, on her feet now, brandishing the hook.

  “Let’s see,” Billy said, taking a few limping steps to his right. “Let Frankie down and go to jail, or chuck you both in the drink and go free. It’s a tough one, I have to admit.” He fished in his pocket with his left hand, pulled out the Buck knife, and flicked it open with a quick wrist snap. “But I think I’ll take door number two, sweet cheeks.”

  Lola charged and swung the gaff hook at Billy’s head. He ducked under its arc and slashed with the big knife. Lola stepped back. There was a long, diagonal slice in her T-shirt and a burning line of pain across her belly, from the point of her left hipbone almost to her right breast.

  Billy laughed. “You may have the reach advantage,” he said, “but old Uncle Billy’s trouble in close.”

  I’m not gutted, Lola thought, touching her belly, feeling the shallow gash in her flesh. The pain was a rising, metallic taste in her mouth. But next time, I might be.

  “Am I on a boat? I fucking hate boats!” Coffin shouted, swinging from the winch.

  Billy turned, and Lola swung the gaff hook.

  Billy’s hands twitched. “That’s no way to treat your old Uncle Billy,” he said, his voice coming out watery and strange. The four-inch hook was buried in the back of his neck. The long handle wagged obscenely.

  He took a step back, clawing at the gaff hook. He stumbled and fell against the winch, bumping the lever forward with his hip. The winch hiccupped and whirred, and Coffin plunged headfirst into the black water, the line paying out fast as he sank, a flurry of bubbles breaking the surface.

  “That jinx of yours is a bitch, Frankie,” Billy said, leaning heavily on the winch’s steel frame, one hand reaching back, fingering the base of the steel hook that protruded from his neck. “Fuckin’-A—who knew a gaff hook in the neck would make you feel so weird? Talk about pins and needles—”

  Lola kicked him hard in the ribs, then charged him, using her weight and the strength of her legs to deliver a mammoth shove. He toppled over the gunwale and into the ocean.

  “Hang on, Frank,” she said, grabbing at the winch’s control lever. “Jesus Christ—hang on!”

  The water glowed a deep, electric blue. It pressed Coffin’s eardrums, streamed past his face. It was so cold it shut his mouth and stopped his lungs, so dense he couldn’t see beyond the trail of magenta bubbles coming from his nose. There was still the bright universe of color, too, though it seemed less intense, his brain toggling back and forth between realities a thousand times a second. He felt he was being reborn, squirting through a watery birth canal. He saw his father—sinking, too, in his red armchair, hair waving like seaweed, crabs clambering one after another out of his mouth. Coffin’s lungs ached. He could hear his heartbeat slowing in his chest.

  Something tugged his ankles. The water stopped, then began to stream the other way, as though he were rising through it, or it was falling past him—up and down were meaningless, there was only space, darkness, the sensation of motion. He took a breath of water, and the colors dimmed—the glowing entities were long gone, taking their love and reassurance with them. He was alone and about to die. The water streamed through his clothes, his hair. And then the ocean spat him out, squeezed him from its womb and hung him, puking, in the world of air.

  “God damn,” Lola said, pulling Coffin into the boat. “Thought I’d lost you, Frank.”

  “You can’t do this,” said Brandon Phipps. A cold rain had begun to fall, and he was shivering. His right hand was cuffed to the handle of the Pilgrim Monument’s locked steel door. A small Vuitton bag, embossed with the initials brp and stuffed with cash—mostly tens and twenties—lay at his feet.

  “The hell I can’t,” Rudy said. He was holding a very large pistol. A somewhat larger suitcase, similarly embossed and stacked to the brim with neatly wrapped bricks of hundred-dollar bills, lay in the bed of his pickup truck. “Now give me those pants.”

  Phipps unbelted his pants with one hand, let them drop, and stepped out of them. He bent awkwardly to pick them up. “Here,” he said, holding them out.

  Rudy took them, wadded them into a ball, and threw them as far as he could down High Pole Hill. The rain fell slow and cool. The Pilgrim Monument reared above them, its crenellated peak lost in fog.

  “Nice underwear,” Rudy said, waving the gun at Phipps’s crotch. “What are those—boxer briefs?”

  Phipps nodded miserably. “Calvin Klein,” he said.

  “Underpants for men who can’t make up their minds,” Rudy said. “I’ve always been most comfortable with boxers, myself.” He put the gun in his jacket pocket and lit a cigarette. Then he walked across the monument’s wide stone veranda, climbed into his blue Chevy pickup truck, and drove away.

  Chapter 32

  Coffin woke up from a long, troubled sleep and realized he was lying in a hospital bed, covered with blankets. He wasn’t sure, at first, how he’d gotten there. He closed his eyes and remembered the ride to MacMillan Wharf on the lobster boat, Lola’s T-shirt soaked in blood. He pressed the call button and asked the nurse for water, which she brought, then coffee, which she also brought, then a cigarette.

  The nurse was a tall, pretty black woman named Estelle. She wagged a finger at Coffin. “You should quit, Mr. Coffin,” she said.

  “I have,” Coffin said. “Lots of times.” He asked if Lola was okay.

  “She’s fine. A bunch of stitches and a tetanus shot. We sent her home last night with some Vicodin.”

  “Why am I still here?”

  “You were hypothermic. Plus, you had a lot of ketamine in your system. The ER doc wanted to keep an eye on you.”

  “What about Billy?”

  “He’s upstairs in the ICU,” she said. “He’s got some numbness on the right side of his body. Might have been the gaff hook, might have been a small stroke. We’re treating him for both.”

  “I want to see him,” Coffin said.

  “You’re supposed to stay in bed,” Estelle said. “Until the doctor says you can get up.”

  “I feel fine,” Coffin said. He felt a wave of nausea and dizziness as he swung his legs out from under the covers. “Fuck the doctor.”

  Estelle clucked her tongue. “Let me get a wheelchair. You can go, but you’re not walking.”

  Billy lay handcuffed to his bed. He looked old and a little frail in his pale blue gown. Coffin knew better. A uniformed trooper sat in a hospital armchair beside the bed, reading a magazine.

  “Detective Coffin to see the patient,” Estelle said, pushing Coffin into the room.

  The trooper stood up and shook Coffin’s hand. “Nice work on the collar, Detective,” he said.

  “I had nothing to do with it,” Coffin said. “Officer Winters had to save me from drowning.”

  “That’s right,” Billy said. “Frankie here was incapacitated.”

  “Mind waiting outside for a minute?” Coffin said.

  The trooper frowned, thought for a minute. “The door stays open.”

  “Don’t you get out of that wheelchair,” Estelle said. “I mean it.”

  “Damn,” Billy said when Estelle and the trooper had gone into the hallway. “Is that your nurse? Mine looks like a drill instructor.”

  “Is that you or the Viagra talking?”

  Billy grinned. Then he looked down at his blanket. “I feel kind of bad about almost killing you, Frankie.”

  “You should,” C
offin said.

  “You gotta do what you gotta do. Once those dumb-asses arrested Kotowski, I was in the clear. Except for you.”

  “There’s something I don’t get,” Coffin said.

  “Just the one thing?”

  “How’d you know about the Project? How’d you know about Merkin and Serena Hench?”

  “Phipps. He came into my place about a month ago—wanted to buy it. I told him to go pound sand. Next thing I know, I’ve got the health inspector and the building inspector and the men’s room inspector and every other goddamn inspector breathing down my neck—fining me for this, citing me for that, threatening to shut me down. So, not being a complete moron, I put one and one together.”

  “You went to see Mr. Phipps.”

  “I did. In private. Unlike our friend Kotowski.”

  “He told you everything.”

  “I was holding a very large knife to his throat at the time.”

  “Then he offered you a deal. He wanted to get rid of the other partners.”

  Billy nodded. “A big old bag of cash. He helped me set them up. He had it all figured out. Thought he did, anyway—I had a little list of my own, with his name at the bottom. The funny thing about all this is, you and the lesbo-cop saved his life. Got a cigarette?”

  “They won’t let me have any,” Coffin said. “So you did it for the money? Killed four people?”

  “Yes and no. It was a shitload of dough, and God knows they all deserved to die. What they were planning was morally offensive—legalized robbery, if you ask me. The way I see it, I’m a freakin’ hero. I mean, I saved the damn town from those assholes—not that anybody around here would ever thank me, the worthless cocksuckers.”

  “It was a crackpot scheme,” Coffin said. “It never would have worked.”

  “The hell it wouldn’t,” Billy said. “It’s working all over the country. They were going to turn Provincetown into one big gated community—everything fake and tarted up like some kind of overpriced Disney World for rich queers. People like you and me wouldn’t be welcome there. We couldn’t afford it.”