I climbed up on the dock. Jellyroll hopped up behind me. “Hey, Jellyroll,” I said in a special voice. He snapped around to attention, his lip caught on a canine. “Do you want to see Crystal?”
His head spun, looking for her. I leaned down to pat his side. “Later,” I said quietly. Later is a hard concept for dogs. Expectancy. Maybe it’s hard for all creatures. I always feel guilty when I do that, but I love to see his delight. I hauled out the disguise one more time, and he rolled his eyes as I put it on him.
We walked out to the road. Pilgrims were still coming, but they were coming by foot, because the road was now closed. Approaching, couples lugged blue plastic coolers while their children stumbled along behind with stuffed animals trailing. Where would Crystal have to park? I sat down on a planter box in front of the Cod End to wait. Jellyroll sat beside me. By the time I straightened out my legs, somebody had recognized him.
As usual in crowds, it began with a twitter of recognition. One person over here recognizes him, another over there independently recognizes him, and they make eye contact.
“Huh? Am I right?”
“Naww—”
“It is!”
“…You’re right! It is!”
Soon everybody knows.
“It’s the goddamn R-r-ruff Dog!”
That opens the gates to a crowd. Crowds like that make me edgy. My smile gets tired as I scan the crowd for the one—or more—with crazy eyes.
“Hey, what’s that on his back?”
“Some kind of pelt.”
“Some kind of coat.”
“Must be hot in a pelt coat in goddamn August.”
“Yeah, look how hot he is—panting, even.”
They began to compress in on us. I stood up. Jellyroll, who was not panting, didn’t mind a bit that his fans had gathered. Jellyroll was wagging his rump and smiling—but then suddenly without warning or direct provocation, he began to retch. His tail plunged down as if that were the lever that started the hooping machine. His whole body began to heave. When the effluvient reached his throat, he seemed to yawn. He then curled back his lips and expelled a gob of yellow bile.
The crowd gave out a collective “Ugghhh—” and recoiled. The last of the bile hung in a string from his lower lip. I wondered if I could teach him to do that as a method of crowd control.
A large woman with thick ankles snapped his picture, though she didn’t reapproach us.
I retreated into the marine hardware store and shut the door, but I knew that would never stop them, not after they got over the initial shock of seeing the R-r-ruff Dog blow lunch right before their very eyes. They hesitated for a little while, gathering at the door, peering in. I pretended to examine some enormous anchors.
The door opened. They were coming in.
But someone behind me, someone I hadn’t seen, planted his foot in front of it. The crowd came up hard against it. As they recoiled, the stranger footed the door shut, locked it, and turned the sign on a string from OPEN to CLOSED—
It was the guy from the sportfisherman—His face was odd. I hadn’t just imagined it out in the boat. It really was odd. It was elongated, as if drawn on a balloon and stretched. He looked like a caricature of himself. Even his eyebrows arched like upside down V’s. I had seen that face before yesterday. Where?
He was tall and lanky, and he had an expensive haircut. He wore fresh khakis, a crisp denim shirt, a maroon pullover draped around his shoulders with the arms tied together at his sternum. He looked like an aging Gap model on location. There were streaks of gray at his sideburns.
He offered me his hand. “Richard,” he said. He had a sonorous voice.
Richard? I peered into his eyes for a sign, for some knowing glance between us, but he introduced himself like a boring guy named Richard.
“Artie,” I said.
He turned to the owner, who sat on his stool behind the glass counter. “You don’t mind closing for a few minutes, let this man catch his breath.”
“They weren’t buyin’ anyhow,” said the owner. “ ’Mornin’, Cap’n,” he said to me. “How do you like them binoculars?”
“Excellent binoculars,” I said.
“You’ve been buying, too?” said Richard to me. “That’s the fact of life afloat. Buy, buy, buy.” He chuckled, shook the shopping bag he held.
“Where’s your boat?” I asked, still watching him closely for some indication of something.
“Out at the end of the dock. My son’s taking some local-color footage in the village. How about that murder? Happened right out here, you know. I guess it doesn’t only happen in your large metropolitan areas these days. Violent death happens everywhere, I guess. But senseless, really senseless.”
I nodded, looking to extricate myself—
“So this is the R-r-ruff Dog—” He knelt face-to-face with Jellyroll. Jellyroll licked his cheek.
“Are you the cutest dog in the world? Yes, you are. Are you the most famous dog in the world? Hmm? I didn’t mean to disturb you about the stalker out there in our boats,” said Richard without looking up, as if he were talking to Jellyroll.
“Oh, that’s all right. You didn’t.” I turned to the man behind the counter. “Excuse me, but do you have a back way out?”
He pointed over his shoulder with his thumb—“Out that way’ll put you on the Cod End porch or the dock. Depends which way you turn. The Cod End’s closed, of course.”
“What is this,” said Richard, “a disguise?”
“He gets cold. Chilly out on the water. Well, listen, thanks a lot, and take care. Boat’ll leave without me.” I headed for the back exit, whistled, and Jellyroll trotted behind me. The door opened onto a catwalk. The porch was empty, but there it was—the cubicle-like john where the young woman was chopped. Several strands of yellow crime-scene tape were wrapped around it.
I hurried down the ramp toward the Hampton boat. I nodded at a small convocation of old salts dressed exactly alike.
“Say, Cap’n,” said one in a friendly manner.
“Say, Captains,” I said.
I climbed aboard my boat and sat on the engine box to wait. So did Jellyroll. I poured him some water in a bowl I’d brought, and I had a cup of lukewarm coffee from the thermos.
A man appeared above me at the dock dressed entirely in black. His long hair was slicked back and tied in a stubby ponytail. This guy looked like an East Village club hopper. What the hell was he doing here? He had a hard set to his face behind black Ray-Bans. He just stood there staring down at me.
“What?” I demanded.
“Is that the R-r-ruff Dog?”
“No.”
“That’s what I thought,” he said slowly. Then he walked away.
My hands were trembling. Jellyroll was watching me nervously.
“Artie—”
“Crystal!”
I generally try to avoid the mushy, but I felt mushy at that moment, choked up at the sight of her standing up there on the edge of the dock where an instant ago a possible psycho had stood. She blew me a kiss. She looked tired from travel, but I could tell she was glad to see me, too. Jellyroll and I sprinted slowly up the steep ramp. He was yapping in frustration at the delay this ramp was causing him.
Crystal and I hugged while Jellyroll hopped about on his hind legs to be noticed. I didn’t see the man in black anywhere on the dock.
“I’ve been feeling very funny since I got out of the car back there,” she said in my ear.
“Funny? What do you mean, funny?”
“You know, funny.”
“Really!” She felt it, too! Hurray! “Let’s go, then. I’ve got a very fast boat.” I wanted to hear some whoop-dido songs. Or maybe sing some.
“I remember feeling like this in seventh grade.”
I imagined the raw carnality of Crystal lowering a refrigerator to the deck. Panting, I shouldered up her stuff. She was traveling light compared to Jellyroll and me. Reduced weight would aid in speed to coitus.
“I
s this where it happened, Artie? The killing?”
“You heard about that already?”
“I had to park way down the road, and people were talking about it as we walked.”
“It happened in the rest room on that porch right over there.”
We paused a moment to look before going down the ramp.
“Was it political?”
“What? Political?” I looked at her profile. She was looking at the Cod End rest room.
“I walked from the car with two women, sociologists from UCLA, who came to study this whole thing.”
“What thing? The murder?”
“No, the expectation. That’s what they call them. Expectations. Remember when all those people gathered in somebody’s backyard in New Jersey? That was an expectation, as opposed to a visitation. I’m just telling you what they told me. They said if the expectation doesn’t become a visitation in a reasonable length of time, people begin to factionalize. That was the word. Factionalize.”
“You mean like left and right?”
“I guess. Conservatives and liberals. Sometimes they turn violent. But nobody’s ever been murdered before.”
“What would the factions want? I mean what’s their objective?”’
“That’s not clear.”
We went down the ramp to my new boat. “How do you like her?” I asked proudly.
“It’s wonderful!”
“Got to have a boat if you live on an island.”
“Okay, Captain.”
I gave her a hand coming aboard. She kissed me. “I don’t think we’ll factionalize, do you?”
FOURTEEN
We stood side by side at the wheel. The sea was flat and friendly. Jellyroll stood in the bow, ears flapping.
“Gorgeous,” Crystal said of Cabot Strait. Her face was alight. “Does anybody swim here?”
“It’s pretty cold.” That was cant. It was bloody freezing. Briefly dunking my hand caused great throbbing, but maybe I was being wimpy. I didn’t want to discourage Crystal. Crystal loved to swim. And I could then strive to warm her up.
“Would you like to go to the submarine launching?” I asked. I had told Crystal by phone about Commander Hickle and Edith and the orange submarine.
“This is the guy who abuses his wife?”
“Well, maybe he’s just an asshole.”
“What’s the difference?”
“You don’t want to go?”
“Whatever you want, Captain.” She smiled at me lasciviously. I loved it when she smiled lasciviously. It wasn’t exactly a smile. It was barely even a grin. The corners of her lips turned upward, and her eyes glistened. That was the most erotic thing about it to me, her glistening eyes. However, I still needed to hit the island. There was still that. There was no smoke beacon going this way, and I hadn’t been paying attention to anything but Crystal. The wages of lust claim another small craft. I studied the lobster pots to see what the water was doing.
“What’s the matter?” Crystal asked.
“Oh, nothing. Us seamanly fellows are attuned to our environment. The minutest thing has meaning to us.”
“Oh.”
The lobster pots stood straight up, which meant that there was little current. I could see the smoke behind us. I looked at the compass. It said we were going in the correct general direction, but it didn’t feel right. Had I gotten turned around? Should I turn around? People who know more than their compass are never seen again. I had read books about it. That would be a drag.
“Would you like some water?” I asked.
“Water? No thanks.”
“Don’t want to get dehydrated.”
“Oh, look,” said Crystal. “Land.”
“Land?”
“Isn’t that land?”
Sure enough, land. Dead ahead, a hill just above the horizon. It was probably the hill the Castle used to stand on.
“Wow, Captain, well done,” enthused Crystal.
I supposed it was unseemly for a captain to slow like a boy of ten at the World Series in Ebbetts Field. Perhaps I could work up a stolid visage, exuding nautical confidence, jaw set. Perhaps I’d look for some sort of salty hat. Maybe a blue wool watch cap like the locals wore.
I showed Crystal the islands of Dog and Outer Dog, and she sighed with contentment. She said she loved Dog Cove. I pointed out the rocks awash in Dog Cove. “Dwight calls those sunkers.”
“I can see why.”
“There it is, the boathouse. Well, it’s not really a boathouse, but that’s what Clayton always called it.”
“Where?”
“I know. It’s hard to see. It blends with the surroundings.”
I docked us with some dignity, even some aplomb, against the flat rock, where we unloaded Crystal’s stuff. Then I put the boat on the mooring and dinghied back in.
Crystal loved the boathouse, too. We took a quick tour. I showed her all the food the Selfs had sent. And then we sort of dove out of our clothing. Perhaps we should just move here and live in sexual splendor for the rest of our days. I watched a single bead of sweat roll down the inside slope of Crystal’s right breast toward the sweet valley floor. I envisaged myself in lilliputian scale wallowing in bliss between the mounds.
Crystal heard it first. She stiffened, a move that would have sent the miniature me bouncing down her belly. “Hear that?”
“Dogs,” I said.
“What dogs?”
“Jellyroll, stay,” I said. “This pack of dogs runs wild. I don’t think they do any harm, but he wants to run with them, and I don’t want him to.”
“He’s the boss,” said Crystal to Jellyroll, who at the sound of the dogs had stood up at Crystal’s side of the bed and stared at her as if requesting that she intercede. “I can’t help you, pal.”
“Do you think I’m cruel?”
“He’s a city dog. He could run off a cliff.”
We went out on the porch naked. I thought of Clayton, who’d said we could do that. He was right. Hawley’s boat was gone, there was no one else around. It felt wonderful to be outside naked in the sun.
“Why don’t you take Jellyroll and me for a boat ride instead, Captain?”
“Really? You want to?”
“Yes, that was fun.”
“I’ll show you the Crack,” I said.
“What are you trying to say, Captain?”
“That’s what they call it…No, it is.”
“Look at this place—” said Crystal after a short gasp of amazement as we entered the Crack. The light dimmed, the cliffs loomed. Crystal moved from side to side to see each in turn. A few people looked over the edge on the left side, but I didn’t know any of them. A line of boats was tied nose to tail on moorings down the center of the Crack, a crowd for these parts, here to see the launching, I assumed.
The submarine still sat on its cradle halfway up the cliff at the apex of the Crack. I could see Commander Hickle atop his steed. He fidgeted from thing to thing, tightening, adjusting, moving in sharp jerks almost like someone in strobe light. He wore rubber flip-flops and a yellow slicker that fell just below his knees with nothing visible underneath. His naked legs scurried like a little shore bird’s. Commander Hickle looked like a flasher. There had been a flasher disturbing the dog walkers in Riverside Park a while back. In the middle of a pizza-oven heat wave, he wore about ten layers of jackets and coats. It took him so long to flash that most people just walked off. Those who stuck around, for reasons of their own, said it was a frightening sight.
I was a little excited by the submarine. It touched a boyish chord. It could probably go deep without getting crushed like a Dixie cup. And maybe Dickie was right, maybe the Commander was some kind of genius mad scientist. What else could possibly explain building such a thing in isolation on an island without electricity?
But Crystal didn’t give a shit about any of that. I had told her on the phone that Hickle was mean to his wife, and that cooked his goose with Crystal. She hates all spouse abuse. There cou
ld be no redemption for Hickle, certainly not through technology. But cruelty notwithstanding, I liked the old coot’s contrariness, even though you could tell by watching him work up there that he was a wacko. The launching, apparently, had been delayed.
I stopped with reasonable accuracy at the Hampton boat’s old dock. As I did so, Crystal looked up—almost directly up—at the submarine on its rack of creosote railroad ties. I loved the curve of her neck seen from that angle and those two bones on either side of the indentation at the base of her throat.
Commander Hickle lifted a round hatch, dropped on his butt, and shimmied, hands overhead, down into the bowels of his submarine. He next appeared in the nose bubble. He had a walkie-talkie in his hand, and though we could hear none of it, we could tell he was screaming at Edith, out of sight on the clifftop, at the controls of the crane.
“Afternoon, Artie.” It was Alistair sitting in his boat with his feet propped on the transom as if he hadn’t moved since yesterday.
“Oh, hello, Alistair,” I said. “I didn’t see you there.”
“Man’s got to pay attention to his pilotin’. Woman, too, for that matter.”
I introduced Crystal to Alistair. He actually stood up and bowed slightly with a lecherous glimmer in his old eyes, which amused Crystal.
“You sell lobsters?” she asked.
“Why, I certainly do. I take pride in my lobsters. Between you and me, there are those who’ll sell you a soleless boot and call it a lobster, but I won’t accept that. And that’s why I can guarantee your satisfaction on every lobster.” He never took his old but twinkling eyes off Crystal through all that bullshit.
“Let’s get some, Artie,” enthused Crystal, making eyes at Alistair.
“Sure.”
His jaw bobbed twice before he could speak. “Tell you what I’ll do. Since you are new visitors to Teal Island, I’d like to welcome you with two nice ones free of charge.”
“Aww, that’s so nice,” said Crystal. “But I thought this was Kempshall Island.”
“Yes, that’s a common misconception. It’s always been Teal Island. Why don’t I hold on to your lobsters in their natural habitat until after the launchin’. ’Course that could take a couple of years.”
Don't Explain: An Artie Deemer Mystery Page 11