Surface Tension

by Christine Kling

  The barracuda cruised down for a closer look, attracted by the sudden movement in the water.

  Down in the murky water, Neal was slowly surrounded by floating shapes. For a moment, I thought it was a school of fish swimming out the forward hold, like the blue tangs that travel in schools so thick they can cast a single dark shadow on the bottom. But these shadows moved too slowly for fish. And there were hundreds, thousands of them, waving in the current like gentle sea fans. Neal swam out and grabbed one, then another, and another. He stuffed them into his trunks. They were bills.

  At that moment, I noticed a string of bubbles rising off the port side of the ship, headed toward the bow. James. His dark head appeared over the bulwark, and he paused to watch for a moment as Neal worked both hands down in the forward hold. Neal was so intent on his work, plucking the bills like fruit from the sea, that he didn’t spot James rising over the ship’s gunwale behind him.

  I’d already thought Neal was dead once. I’d loved him, mourned him, and almost been killed by him, but I couldn’t sit back and watch him be murdered.

  I started hyperventilating, puffing, blowing, in, out, super-oxygenating my system for a long free dive. Neither man had seen me yet. Divers often don’t look up. I sucked in air until my lungs ached, and I was so dizzy I nearly passed out. Then I dove.

  They were below me, moving in slow motion, one man gliding up behind the other with a fluid, graceful movement, wrapping his arms around the other like a ballet dancer hoisting his partner into the air. James held Neal from behind, sliding his arm around Neal’s neck.

  Neal’s legs splayed, his fists beating on James’s arm and head and body, but the bicep crushing his air supply held firm. James’s head was cocked to one side, and even though I could not see his face, I knew the smile that danced around his eyes.

  Ely. God knew how many others. Not Neal.

  The borrowed fins flapped loosely on my feet as I kicked and stroked and pulled deeper, faster. As I approached the two struggling men, I swam through the school of money, surprised at the coolness of the paper as I pushed aside the bills with each stroke. Swimming up behind James, I grabbed his air hose, braced my shoulder against his tank, and yanked with all my strength. The regulator pulled free, waving through the water like a dancing serpent, spewing silvery bubbles. His head jerked around as I kicked to distance myself from him. Neal swam off as James grabbed my leg with one hand and with the other reached around for the life-giving hose. I kicked and struggled, but his grip only tightened around my ankle. I had to get to the surface. James pulled me toward him by the leg, grabbing my knee, then my thigh, reeling me in. He clamped his arm around my waist like a metal bar the strength of his embrace so unyielding that my body went limp with fear. His fingers clamped around my throat.

  Neither of us had a regulator; neither would last much longer without one.

  This was where I would die, drowning, like my mother, I thought. After all these years of being so angry, angry at her, angry at myself, I now saw it differently. I felt sleepy. It would be nice to sleep for a long time. I even thought for a moment that I saw my mother, a shadowy presence swimming out of the darkness to welcome me. My body relaxed, and James let go of my throat to reach back for the regulator. Let him have it, I thought, let me sleep.

  Suddenly James jerked and arched his back, squeezing my abdomen. I tried to hold on to what air I had, but bubbles trickled out of my mouth. The faceplate on my mask seemed to be shrinking, the blackness closing in. The water was growing even more murky, with inky trails of darkness, and his arm still encircled me, squeezing away my life like a giant squid. My own arm reached back, more from reflex than thought, to fight, to deliver one last blow, and my elbow hit cold steel projecting out from James’s left side.

  It wasn’t ink. It was blood, and James Long was pulling me down, wouldn’t let go, and I knew for certain then I was going to die there with him in that sea of blood and money.

  Out of the darkness a hand grabbed my face, pried open my mouth, and inserted a regulator. From years of dive training, I blew out the salt water before I inhaled the cold, sweet air. Neal’s eyes behind the glass of his faceplate peered into mine, checking to see if I was conscious. I stared back and blinked several times, trying to say thank you with my eyes.

  Then I heard the muffled whoof, felt the concussion through the water and saw his face jerk and the light go out in those familiar blue eyes as his body convulsed from the blast of the bang stick. I screamed into the regulator as his face disappeared into the dusky crimson water.

  XXIX

  Whether I lost consciousness or simply went to some deep, dark place inside me, I don’t know, but eventually, I became aware that the grip around my waist had loosened. I pushed the arm aside and slid out of James’s grasp. Through the cloudy water I could make out the rest of his body, resting on the deck of the Bahama Belle, his arms floating upward, head slumped forward, looking more like a resting marionette than a dead man. He would not have liked this pose. Tiny silvery fish darted in, pecking at the ragged flesh on his side. Blood continued to spiral from the wound. I fought down the urge to vomit. I was still breathing off the regulator attached to the tank on his back, and now that I was loose from his grip, I had to hang on to his backpack to keep from floating to the surface.

  I heard the sound of an engine and propellers through the water. Above, the shadow of a larger hull was pulling alongside the Gorda. It had to be the Hard Bottom, with Zeke and Crystal. They would surely have dive gear aboard and be ready to splash over the side at any moment. The currents were carrying off the blood in the water around me, and I could see more clearly. Neal’s body was gone—drifted off or perhaps snagged somewhere on the ship out of sight. Bills continued to waft out of the anchor hold. The water all around me was littered with money.

  The early morning rays of sunlight slanted down toward the depths, toward the millions of live creatures, plankton, and single-celled animals that swam in the shafts of sun. It was so peaceful down here beneath the taut dome that separated the worlds of water and air. A part of me still didn’t want to return to the surface.

  A shadow rising over the Bahama Belle caught my attention. At first I thought it might be Neal. Then it passed behind the bridge, and when it emerged on the other side, I recognized the thick-bodied profile of a bull shark. This one was an old fish, his body mottled, pockmarked, and scarred from battles, yet swimming effortlessly. A short, stocky shark, his form dense with pure muscle, he seemed to assert his dominance by actually passing through the bridge deck. They were nasty predators—I’d seen what a bull shark had done once to a wounded baby manatee that washed ashore on the beach off Lauderdale. Today there had been enough blood in the water to attract dozens of them. I could tell from the angle of his fins that he was agitated and excited.

  I unlatched the bottle of air from James’s backpack, tucked it under my arm, and began swimming across the bottom, in the direction of the tug’s stern, slowly rising toward the surface. I hoped that what was left of James would be enough to keep the shark’s attention focused below.

  My face broke the surface at the corner of Gorda’s transom. The Hard Bottom was rafted up to the tug’s starboard side, and even with the calm seas and lots of fenders, the two boats were grinding and bumping awkwardly. Someone had let out more line on the dinghy’s painter so the Whaler now floated just off the stern of the two boats. Both the engine and the generator were running on the sportfisherman, and I could hear voices from inside the air-conditioned cabin.

  I ditched the tank and let it sink slowly to the bottom. Keeping my head below the level of the gunwale, I eased forward alongside the dinghy. If I could get into the Whaler, cut myself loose from the Gorda, and drift off, I could probably go for help.

  I lifted my body over the bow, but weighted down as I was by the big T-shirt and shorts, it seemed to take forever. My arms nearly gave out as I pulled my legs into the boat. At the same time, I heard the aft cabin door slide open o
n the sportfisherman. My foot slipped from the oversized fins I was wearing, and I stumbled as I grabbed at the pistol and rolled onto my back, sighting down the barrel. It nearly dropped from my wet hands, but I got my finger on the trigger and pointed it at the aft deck of the sportfisherman as a diver stepped through the door.

  He moved awkwardly, lifting his knees high to flop his fins onto the outer deck. He was clad only in BC, backpack, boxers, and body hair. He pushed the blue silicon mask up to the top of his head, spit out the snorkel, and smiled, showing that huge gap between his front teeth.

  “It’s not real smart to go pointing guns at cops, Seychelle,” Collazo said as Mike Beesting hopped out of the cabin, followed by a bandaged and grinning B.J.

  XXX

  I holed up in my cottage for days, just sitting on the couch, rubbing Abaco’s belly and watching it all on the TV news. South Florida went a little crazy as hundred-dollar bills washed up on beaches from Pompano to Palm Beach. Several Haitian women got into a brawl with some blue-haired retirees. Vendors flooded the beaches hawking T-shirts with photos of hundred-dollar bills and the words Florida Sand Dollars. The reporters were having a grand time covering the little festival of greed.

  They recovered both bodies eventually. There was a hell of a hole in Neal, probably from more than just the bang stick. I remembered the bull shark. On TV I saw Crystal, Cesar, and Zeke all being led into the courthouse wearing handcuffs and smirks, and the news anchors bantered back and forth wondering if this time the authorities would be able to make a good case against Benjamin Crystal. State officials raided Harbor House and seized records, then brought in a new interim staff while they tried to figure out what to do about the place.

  I’d found out later that Mike had been up all night and had finally gone to the police station and raised Collazo out of bed sometime around 4 a.m. They had busted into the Larsens’ house at daybreak expecting to both save me and then arrest me, but instead they’d surprised Cesar Zeke, and Crystal preparing to board the Hard Bottom with Sunny. The cops had then jumped aboard the Hard Bottom, and refusing to be left behind, B.J. had joined them, helping them pilot the Hard Bottom to the Gorda offshore. When they found Gorda and the Whaler both abandoned, Collazo decided not to wait for the regular police divers who were on their way, and he put on the dive gear himself.

  When Collazo took my preliminary statement the next day, he told me that once they knew what questions to ask, they had indeed found a couple of witnesses who had seen what they described as a “crazy man all wrapped up in towels” panhandling on A1A the day the Top Ten nearly went aground. Apparently, after swimming ashore, Neal had begged for bus fare and then ridden Broward County Transit to within walking distance of the Larsens’ place.

  There were reporters camped outside the gates to the estate for a couple of days, trying to get me to tell my version of what happened beneath the surface that day. I didn’t even go out to pick up the newspapers or the mail. Eventually the story became old news and they left.

  It had been five or six days—I’d lost count—when I heard a knock on the door followed by Jeannie’s voice hollering, “Seychelle! I know you’re in there. Open this door it’s damn hot out here.”

  When I opened the door, she clucked, shook her head, and said, “I knew it. He wanted to come over here by himself, but I told him he’d better let me come first and talk to you. Look at you. Your hair . .. have you even bathed once this week?” She was wearing another of her muumuus, this one with maddeningly perky bright yellow daisies. She had a grocery bag under each arm.

  She marched me into the shower and when I emerged, combing out my dripping hair, she was cooking something that smelled pretty good.

  “Girl, you don’t have any real food in this place. What have you been eating?”

  I was surprised when I managed to get down a bowl of her homemade chicken soup, along with two slices of whole-grain bread and some fresh fruit salad. B.J. would have been shocked to see such healthy food pass my lips. It tasted like seaweed or old hemp rope. Nothing appealed to me anymore.

  “He’s going to be here in less than an hour so we’d better talk fast,” she said.

  “What? Who’s coming over?”

  She waved her hand in the air. “Don’t worry about that. Listen. While you’ve been in here drooping around, I’ve been working my tail off. Collazo said the prosecutors wanted to come talk to you right away, but I’ve fended them off.”

  “But I already gave a statement after it happened.”

  “Yeah, yeah, but that’s just the start, honey. They have been trying to build a case against this Crystal guy for years, and they think that now, with your help, they can do it. The stuff they found on the hard drives at that house included at least six snuff films. It seems they solved several missing-persons cases, too. At this point they’re even looking at the fire that killed Long’s grandmother when he was only twenty-something. And of course, the feds are technically the owners of the Top Ten now, so I’ve been dealing with them about your salvage claim. I think I’ve figured out a deal that will make everybody happy, so you just give me the go-ahead, and I’ll see if it will fly.”

  Across the room, my mother’s painting of the bird-of-paradise and the dark, angry sky drew my attention. It was as though I were seeing it for the first time. My breath rasped in my throat as I choked on a chunk of bread.

  “What is it? Seychelle? Are you okay?”

  I now understood what she had painted, what had sent her into her “bad days.” Mother was trying to show evil.

  I nodded. Then, still facing the painting, I asked, “I’ve been wondering about Sunny. Where is she? Is she okay?” Jeannie chuckled. “She’s great, Sey. She’s with a foster family, and she’s back in school, tenth grade. She asked about you, too. She’d like to see you.”

  “Good. I’d like that.” I turned away from the painting and faced her. “Okay, what deal?”

  “Well, thanks to you, the government is over four million wet dollars richer and they’ve seized a multimillion- dollar yacht to boot—on top of which they got their bad guy. So I just tell them that you will be happy and cooperative as their star witness in the case against the kiddie porn king, and they will give you a very lucrative salvage settlement on the Top Ten. I think we could probably go for the hundred thousand figure or close to it.”

  “That means I have to testify?”

  “You’ll have to no matter what, dear. They’ll just subpoena you. You might as well go to them first and get something out of the deal. So all I need is the thumbs-up from you, and I’ll be on my way. What do you say?”

  I pushed my fruit bowl away. I’d lost what little appetite I’d been able to muster at the thought of looking again at Zeke Moss, Cesar Esposito, and Benjamin Crystal. Yet if I could help keep them away from girls like Sunny ... hell, yes. “Go for it, Jeannie.”

  She came over, bent down, and gave me a smothering hug. “Just think, honey, the Gorda will be all yours. You’ll be able to buy your brothers out.” Standing and putting her hand on one hip, she asked, “Don’t you think it’s time you got back to work? I think you need to get outside and get on the water again.”

  I nodded. “You’re probably right.”

  She collected her things and turned toward the door. “You want to know something really stupid, Jeannie? I don’t think Patty Krix ever did double-cross Neal. I think this whole thing started to unravel because of Neal’s paranoia. When Neal surfaced that day out on the Top Ten, Patty was talking to the Coast Guard, but Neal didn’t know that—he just assumed she was calling Crystal. He didn’t have to kill her.”

  “He didn’t have to try to steal that money, either. Don’t you think about him anymore. Time to move forward.”

  I stood in the doorway watching her walk down the brick path. She turned, glanced down at the river, smiled, and waved, calling, “I’m out of here. She’s all yours.” Jeannie turned back to me. “On second thought, Seychelle, you could probably use a few more
days off.” She winked and disappeared around the side of the Larsens’ house.

  I stepped outside and looked toward the river. There, tied to the dock, was a nearly new thirty-six-foot catamaran, and B.J. was standing in the cockpit wearing only flower-print surfer trunks and a smile.

  After examining the length of the boat, I squinted at him. “You didn’t steal it, did you?”

  “Belongs to a lady friend of mine. She once said if I ever wanted anything, all I had to do was ask. So I asked. I’m headed down to the Keys for a few days. I sure could use a hand. You interested?”

  With her shallow draft, B.J. was able to take that cat far into the backwaters of Florida Bay, anchor off little no-name keys, and zigzag back to the coast to find the few rare patches of sand along the Atlantic side of the Florida Keys. I slept in the spare cabin, alone in a queen- size bunk, and B.J. pretty much left me to my thoughts, giving me some of that infamous space he was noted for. We avoided people and civilization and ate what we caught, though my appetite for most good things seemed to have vanished. I had to admit that all that fresh food BJ. was making me eat, along with the fresh air and sun, was starting to make me want to rejoin the human race, but I just couldn’t muster up the desire for much of anything. There was something, some sour taste, in the back of my throat that I could not wash away no matter how many ice-cold Coronas I swallowed.

  It was that black pit, taunting me again.

  One afternoon when we’d returned to the boat after an afternoon’s snorkeling, and B.J. was down in the galley cooking up the grouper he’d just speared with his Hawaiian sling, I rinsed off under the sun shower we had hanging on the afterdeck, then toweled off my white nylon swimsuit. I helped myself to a Corona and, on an impulse, took the two photos out of the side zipper pocket of my shoulder bag: the photo of my mother and the three of us kids, and the picture of Neal and me in the Dry Tortugas. I went up forward to sit in the netting between the pontoons. I’d thought about those photos lots of times over the last few days, after Neal was really dead and finally gone. I’d thought about him and me and Ely and my mother and the choices we’d all made. I’d come close to pulling the photos out of my purse several times, but I just hadn’t felt up to looking at them yet. What was different now, I didn’t know, except that I wanted to make that sour taste vanish, and maybe I had to look at the dark places to make that happen.