by Play Dead
“Not much really,” the sheriff began. “David Baskin left a note for his wife saying he was going swimming and he hasn’t been seen since. I questioned the lifeguard at the hotel. He remembers seeing Baskin shooting baskets by himself at around three in the afternoon. Two hours later, he saw Baskin walking up the beach heading north.”
“Then David didn’t go for a swim?”
Graham shrugged. “He might have. There are swimming areas all over the place but there’s no supervision where he was walking, and the current is mighty powerful.”
“David’s a great swimmer.”
“So his missus tells me, but I’ve lived here all my life, and I can tell you when one of those damn currents wants to drag you down, there’s not much a man can do but drown.”
“Have you begun a search for the body?”
Graham nodded his head. “Sure have, but not a trace of the lad so far.”
“If he had drowned, should the body have shown up by now?”
“Normally, yes, but mate, this is northern Australia. More things could happen to a man in that ocean than on your subways. He could have washed up on one of the small unmanned islands or gotten snared on jagged coral in the Barrier Reef or been eaten by Lord knows what. Any one of a million things could have happened to him.”
“What’s your theory, Graham?”
The large Aussie stood and crossed the room. “Coffee?”
“No, thanks.”
“In this heat, I don’t blame you. How about a Coke?”
“Sounds good.”
Graham reached into a small refrigerator behind his desk and took out two bottles, handing one to T.C.
“You say you’re mates with this Baskin, right?”
“For many years.”
“Do you think you can be objective?”
“I think so.”
The sheriff sat back down with a long sigh. “T.C., I’m just a sheriff of a small, friendly community. That’s the way I like it. Nice, quiet, peaceful. You know what I mean?”
T.C. nodded.
“I’m not looking to be a big hero. I don’t want no glory and I don’t like complicated cases like you mates in Boston handle. You know what I’m saying?”
“Sure.”
“Now, being a simple man, let me tell you how I see it. I don’t think Baskin drowned.”
“You don’t?”
Graham shook his head. “I may have made a nice speech about all the possibilities for a corpse in the Pacific, but the truth is almost always much simpler. If he had drowned, his body should have been here by now. Not one hundred percent of the time, mind you, but almost.”
“What then?”
The large man took a swig of Coke. “Could he have developed a classic case of cold feet? It wouldn’t be the first time a mate has run away on his honeymoon. Almost did it myself once.”
T.C.’s answer was a grin. “Have you taken a good look at his wife?”
Graham whistled his appreciation. “Never seen anything like that in my life, mate. My eyes almost popped out of the sockets.” He took another sip of his Coke, lowered the bottle, and wiped his mouth with a forearm the size of an oak tree. “I guess we can assume he’s not on the run. But let me ask you something else, T.C. I’ve been doing some research on this Baskin—part of the job, you know—and he seems to be quite the joker. Any chance he’s just out for a last kick or something?”
“And worry her like this? It wouldn’t be like him, Graham.”
“Well, I’ve radioed all the nearby towns and the coast guard. None of them wants a lot of press around either, so they’ll keep mum. Other than that, I’m not sure there’s much we can do.”
“I’d like to ask a favor, Graham.”
“Name it.”
“I know I’m out of my jurisdiction, but I’d like to help out with the investigation if I can. David Baskin is my best friend, and I know him better—”
“Whoa, whoa, slow down there,” Graham interrupted. The sheriff stood. His gaze traveled north to south, from T.C.’s face to his scuffed-up Thom McAn loafers. He took out a handkerchief and dabbed the sweat on his forehead. “I’m undermanned as it is,” he continued slowly, “and I guess it wouldn’t hurt any to deputize you for this case.” He pulled out a sheet of paper and handed it to T.C. “Here’s a list of places I want you to call. Report back to me if you hear anything.”
“Thanks. I really appreciate this.”
“No worries. But let me ask you one last question: Is there anything wrong with Baskin?”
T.C. felt his pulse begin to pound in his throat. Memories flashed across his brain. “Wrong?”
“Yeah, you know, does he have any injuries, a bad heart or something?”
“Not that I know of,” T.C. lied.
“And who would know better?” Graham grinned. “After all, you’re his best mate.”
T.C.’s eyes met the big sheriff’s for a brief moment. They revealed nothing.
LAURA and T.C. remained silent during the short ride back to the hotel. T.C. checked in, left his bags at the front desk, and followed Laura to the honeymoon suite.
“So what do we do now, T.C.?”
He drew in a deep breath. He scratched his head, his fingertips wading through the thinness of the strands as they made their way to his scalp. No gray hairs yet, he thought, though he hoped his hair would last long enough to develop some. He doubted it. The light brown strands were quickly losing ground, his forehead taking over his scalp like Sherman through Atlanta.
T.C. looked out the window of the suite and felt in his pocket for a cigar. None was there.
“Call around. Search the area.”
Laura’s voice was surprisingly steady and matter-offact. “By calling around, you mean the morgues.”
“Morgues, hospitals—that kind of thing.”
“And by searching the area, you mean the ocean and beaches to see if David’s body has washed up.”
He nodded.
Laura walked over to the telephone. “Do you want to change or rest up before we get started? You look like hell.”
He turned and smiled. “I just got off a long flight. What’s your excuse?”
“I’m not exactly ready for a cover shot, huh?”
“You’d still put the competition to shame.”
“Thanks. Now do me a favor.”
“Name it.”
“Go down to the lobby and buy a couple of boxes of their finest cheap cigars.”
“Huh?”
She lifted the receiver. “Stock up your supplies. We might be here awhile.”
FIRST, she called the morgues.
Laura had purposely wanted to call them first, to get them out of the way as fast as possible. Better to dash madly through the valley of the shadow of death than to take a casual stroll. Her head sat on a guillotine from the moment the coroner said, “Hold on a moment, luv,” until a hellish decade later—or so it seemed—when he came back on to say, “No one fitting that description here.”
Then relief would flood her veins for a few seconds before T.C. gave her the next number to dial.
The room reeked of cigar stench like a poker table on the boys’ night to play, but Laura did not notice. She felt trapped, suffocated—not by the smoke but by each ring of the phone, her body constantly crossing between hope and dread as she now began to call the hospitals. She wanted so much to know—needed to know—while at the same time, she was afraid to find out. It was like living in a nightmare—one in which you were terrified to wake up because then the nightmare might become reality.
An hour later, the calls were completed.
“Now what?”
T.C. flicked an ash onto the tabletop. He had smoked many cigars in his day but this Australian stogie was like smoking duck manure. One puff from this baby would have done to Fidel what Kennedy and the Bay of Pigs could not. He decided this would be his last one.
“I’m going to run downstairs and get you a few more numbers to call from the p
hone book,” he said. “Then I’m going to start questioning the staff. No reason for both of us to sit by a phone.”
He stood, walked to the door, sighed, turned slowly back around. He reached back and grabbed his Australian cigars. What the hell? His taste buds were dead already.
A little while later, as Laura sat alone in her room waiting for T.C. (or better yet, David) to return, she decided to call home. Glancing at the clock, she realized that it was around eleven p.m. in Boston.
Her father, Dr. James Ayars, would be sitting in his immaculate study at his immaculate desk. Medical files for tomorrow morning’s rounds would be neatly stacked, the right side for those already reviewed, the left for the ones not yet read. He would be wearing his gray silk robe over neatly buttoned pajamas, his reading glasses gripping the end of his nose tightly so they would not slide off during one of his frequent sighs.
Her mother, the lovely socialite Mary Ayars, would probably be upstairs waiting for her husband’s nocturnal voyage to their bedroom. She would be propped up in bed, reading the latest provocative novel assigned for her reading group—a clan, really, containing some of Boston’s most influential pseudointellectuals. They enjoyed spending each Thursday evening dissecting the “in” books and attributing meanings that even the most creative of authors could not have imagined on the loftiest of drug trips. Laura had gone to one session (they were sessions, her mother had told her, not meetings), and decided that the dictionary should have a picture of this group next to the word “bullshit.” But this was merely her mother’s latest in a long series of Thursday night attempts at female bonding, running the gambit from bridge games to sexual-awareness encounter groups.
“Hello?”
For the first time since David’s disappearance, tears suddenly came to her eyes. Her father’s voice was like a time machine. She fell back over the years, wanting to wrap herself in the past, wanting to wrap herself within her father’s strong and confident voice, where she had always been safe and warm.
“Hello, Dad.”
“Laura? How’s everything going over there? How’s Australia?”
She did not know how to start. “It’s beautiful. The sun shines all the time.”
“Well, that’s great, honey.” His tone grew business- like. “Now why don’t we cut through all the red tape, okay? What’s up?”
That was her father. Enough haggling and small talk. He wanted to get to the bottom line. “Something’s happened to David.”
His voice was as authoritative as always. “What, Laura? Is he okay?”
She was very close to crying now. “I don’t know.”
“What do you mean you don’t know?”
“He’s missing.”
There was a long silence that frightened Laura. “Missing?”
His voice was more full of dread than real surprise, like when you hear your friend who smokes three packs a day has developed lung cancer. Tragic and yet obvious. She waited for him to say more, to request all the details as he usually did, but he remained quiet. Finally she spoke.
“He left me a note that he had gone swimming. That was two days ago.”
“Oh, God,” he mumbled. His words formed into a sharp needle that punctured Laura’s skin. Gone was the confident voice that was her father’s trademark. She could feel him struggling to regain his normal tone, but the sound was hollow, distant. “Why didn’t you call sooner? Have you contacted the police?”
“They’re looking for him now. I called T.C. He arrived a few hours ago.”
“I’ll catch the next flight. I’ll be there—”
“No, that’s okay. There’s nothing you can do here.”
“But—”
“Really, Dad, I’m okay. But please don’t tell Mom.”
“What could I tell her? She doesn’t even know you’re in Australia. Everybody’s wondering where you and David are.”
“Just keep the elopement a secret for a little while longer. Is Mom there?”
Dr. Ayars froze. “No.”
“Where is she?”
“She’s in Los Angeles for the week,” he said. “Laura, are you sure you don’t want me to fly out there?”
“No, really, I’ll be fine. I’m sure we’ll find him soon. He’s probably just pulling another stunt.”
Again, there was silence. Laura waited for him to agree with her, to say of course David would be back, to tell her to stop worrying like a typical wife. But he didn’t. Where was his comforting voice of reason? Where was the man who was supposed to be strong for everyone else? Her father—the man who was always calm, always in control, the man who had seen death and suffering on both a professional and personal level for his entire life and had never let it affect his cool exterior—was strangely without words.
“I’ll call you as soon as I know something,” she said while a small voice in her head told her that her father didn’t need to be informed, that he already knew what the outcome was going to be. But that was silly. She was just overtired and frightened. This whole episode was turning her brain into mush.
“Okay,” Dr. James Ayars replied, defeated, crushed.
“Is there something else, Dad?”
“No,” Dr. Ayars said mechanically. “I’m sure every- thing will work out for the best.”
Laura listened to his words, puzzled. The best? She suddenly felt very cold.
“Is Gloria around?”
“No, your sister’s working late again. You should be very proud of her.”
“I am,” Laura replied. “When’s Mom going to be home?”
“A few days. Are you sure you don’t want me to fly over?”
“I’m sure. Good-bye, Dad.”
“Good-bye, Laura. If you need anything …”
“I’ll let you know.”
Laura heard her father replace the receiver.
SHE tried not to let the conversation bother her. After all, there was nothing specific in his words, nothing concrete her father had said or done that she could truly call troublesome. And yet the feeling that something was wrong—very wrong—lay like a heavy weight in her stomach. She opened her purse, rifled through its contents, came up empty.
God, why had she ever quit smoking?
Again she glanced out the window, away from the beach and toward the start of the Australian bush. She remembered once when she and David had decided to slip out of their city-slicker facade and head out into the New England bush. Because he had grown up in Michigan, David had had some experience with camping out. He enthusiastically billed it as a weekend away from the world. Laura, who had been a content city dweller all of her years, saw it as more of a chance to sleep in the dirt with a lot of bugs.
“You’ll love it,” he insisted.
“I’ll hate it.”
They drove up to Vermont, where they strapped heavy knapsacks onto their backs. They walked through the muggy forest for what seemed like a millennium until, mercifully, they arrived at their secluded camping site. Laura cleaned herself off in the nearby stream, unrolled her sleeping bag, and climbed in.
Then David began to join her.
“What do you think you’re doing?” she asked. “I thought you had your own sleeping bag.”
“I do. But we have to cuddle for warmth.”
“Body heat?”
“Exactly.”
“One problem.”
“Oh?”
“The thermometer reads ninety-five degrees.”
“That warm?”
She nodded.
David thought a moment. “Then I suggest we sleep au naturel.”
Their lovemaking was fierce, frightening in its intensity, and afterward, they lay naked in each other’s arms.
“Wow!” David managed, finally beginning to catch his breath.
“What?”
“I just love being in touch with nature. I don’t know, Laura, these surroundings … they make me feel so alive, so at one with nature, so …”
“Horny?”
&n
bsp; “Bingo.”
“I’m becoming a bit of a nature lover myself,” Laura pronounced.
“I noticed. But you have to be more careful.”
“Why?”
“That screaming of yours, woman. You’ll scare our furry friends to death.”
“You love it.”
“True.”
“Besides, you were hardly Marcel Marceau.”
“Meaning?”
“That was some moose call. I kept waiting for a female to emerge from the bushes.”
“No such luck. I guess you’ll have to do.”
“Vicious, David.” She reached into her crumpled jeans and pulled out a pack of cigarettes.
David groaned. “Are you going to smoke those?”
“No. I’m going to feed the animals.”
“Smokey Bear says people start forest fires.”
“I’ll be careful.”
“Listen, Laura, I don’t mind when you smoke back home—”
“Bullshit.”
“Okay, bullshit. But out here in the wilds, we have to think of our furry friends.”
“Why do you hate my smoking so much?”
David shrugged. “Aside from the fact that it’s disgusting, terrible for your health, and a habit without one redeeming quality, I guess I just don’t like French-kissing an ashtray.”
“But I have an oral fixation.”
“I know. It’s one of the reasons I love you.”
“Pervert. You should be used to smoke by now. You lived with T.C. for four years. And what about Clip? The two of them are always smoking those stinking cigars.”
“Yeah, but I rarely French-kiss those two. I mean, maybe T.C. every once in a while …”
“I suspected as much.”
“Plus T.C. could never survive without his cigars. They’re a part of him, a personality appendage so to speak. And Clip is both seventy years old and my boss. We don’t make it a habit of criticizing our boss. Besides, I like it when Clip smokes.”
“Why?”
“The Victory Cigar. It means we’re about to win a game.”
She wrapped her arms around him. “My cigarette is kind of like a Victory Cigarette.”
“Oh?”
“Clip likes to smoke them after a game. I like to smoke them after an especially powerful org—”