by The Web(Lit)
I bought two bags of kettle-boiled Maui potato chips and some jerky. As she took my money, her eyes drifted back to the TV.
Another blackout. She switched the set on automatically, as if used to it.
"Bad reception?"
"The satellite keeps going in and out, depending on the weather and stuff She counted out change.
"I'm having a baby. Dr. Bill's gonna deliver it. In six months."
"Congratulations."
"Yeah... we're excited. My husband and me. Here you go. After the baby's born we'll probably be moving away. My husband works construction and there's no work."
"Nothing at all?"
"Not really. This here is the biggest building in town. A few years back Dr. Bill was thinking of redoing it, but no one else really cared."
"Dr. Bill owns the Trading Post?"
She seemed surprised that I didn't know.
"Sure. He's real good about it, doesn't charge rent, just lets people order their own stuff and sell it outta the booths. There used to be more business here, when the Navy guys still came in. Now most of the stall keepers don't come in unless someone calls to order. It's actually my mom's stall, but she's sick bad heart. I've got time, waiting for my baby, so I take over for her and my husband delivers most of our stuff's delivery."
She touched her still-flat belly.
"My husband would like a boy, but I don't care as long as it's healthy."
Laugh-track noise from the TV. She turned her head and smiled along with the electronic joy.
"Bye," I said.
She waved absently.
When I got back to the beach, Robin's snorkel was a tiny white duck bobbing near the outer edge of the reef. Our blankets were spread, and Spike was leashed to the umbrella post, barking furiously.
The object of his wrath was Skip Amain, stark naked, peeing a high, arcing stream into the sand, several yards away. Anders Haygood stood next to him, in knee-length baggies, watching. Skip's bleached-bone buttocks said skinny dipping wasn't a habit. His green trunks lay next to him like a heap of wilted salad.
Spike barked louder. Skip laughed and aimed the stream closer to the dog, shaking with glee as Spike growled and spat drool.
Then the arc dribbled and died. Spike shook himself off theatrically, and moved closer to them.
I ran. Haygood saw me and said something to Skip, who stopped and turned, offering a full frontal view. I kept coming.
Grinning, Skip looked over his shoulder at Robin's snorkel.
His urine trail was drying quickly, a brown snake sinking into the sand. Spike was pawing the blanket, finally moving enough of it to reach sand and scatter it.
Skip stretched and yawned and massaged his gut.
"Is that going to be the official welcome at your resort?" I said, smiling.
His face darkened, but he forced himself to smile back.
"Yeah, living naturally."
"Better watch the ultraviolet radiation. It can lead to impotence."
"Who?"
"The sun."
"Your hard-on," said Haygood, amused.
"What the man's trying to tell you is bruise it and lose it. Watch the UV on your tool or you'll be hauling limp wiener."
"Fuck you," Skip told him, but he looked at me edgily.
"It's true," I said.
"Too much UV to the genitals heats up the scrotal plexus and weakens the neurotestostinal reflex."
"Boil it and spoil it," said Haygood.
"Fuck you in the ass," said Skip. Looking for his trunks.
Haygood lunged, grabbed them up, and began running down the beach. Stocky but fast.
Skip went after him, potbelly quivering, holding his crotch.
Spike was still drooling and breathing hard. I sat down and tried to calm him. Robin had moved into shallower waters. She stood, lifted her face mask, and waved. Then she saw the two men running and came out of the water.
"What was that all about?"
I told her.
"How rude."
"He was probably hoping you'd come out and see him playing fireman."
"Shucks, I missed it." She squatted and petted Spike.
"Mama's all right, sweetie. Don't worry about those turkeys. It's gorgeous down there, Alex. Come on in."
"Maybe later."
"Is something wrong?"
"Let me just stick around for a while in case they return. Though I may have traumatized old Skip."
I recounted my UV warning and she cracked up.
"You probably ruined what little sex life he's got."
"Reverse therapy. My education is now fully validated."
"Don't worry about them, Alex dive with me. If they come back, we'll give Spike a run at them."
"Spike can be drop-kicked by a twelve-year-old."
"They don't know that. Tell them he's a neurotestostinal pit bull."
We visited every crag in the reef side by side and emerged an hour later to an undisturbed beach. Spike slept noisily, under a cloud of sand flies. The drinks had warmed, but we poured them down our throats. Then Robin stretched out on a blanket and closed her eyes, and I picked up the spring 1988 issue of Island World.
The article that had caught my eye was on page 113, after come-hither tourist pieces on Pacific Rim archaeological sites, choice dive spots, restaurants and nightclubs.
"Bikini: A History of Shame."
The author was a man named Micah Sanjay, formerly a civilian official of the Marshall Islands' U.S. military government, now a retired high school principal living in Chalan Kanoa, Saipan.
His story was identical to the one Moreland had told me: failure to evacuate the residents of Bikini and Majuro and the neighboring Marshall atolls. Clandestine nighttime boat rides doling out compensation.
The exact same story, down to the amount of money paid.
Sanjay wrote matter-of-factly but his anger came through. A Majuro native, he'd lost relatives to leukemia and lymphoma.
No greater anger than when recounting the payoff.
Sanjay and six other civil servants assigned the job.
Six names, none of them Moreland.
I reread the article, searching for any mention of the doctor.
Nothing.
If the old man had never been part of the payoff, why had he lied about it?
Something else he said the first night resonated:
Guilt is a great motivator, Alex.
Feeling himself culpable for the blast? He'd been a Navy officer.
Had he known about the winds?
Was it guilt that had transformed him from a trust-fund kid in dress whites to a would-be Schweitzer?
Coming to Aruk to atoned Not that his lifestyle had suffered living in a grand estate, indulging his passions.
Aruk, his fiefdom... but his daughter couldn't be permitted to fraternize with the locals.
Did he want the villagers isolated? So he could enjoy Aruk on his own terms an idealized refuge for noble savages with good hygiene and clean water?
Maybe I was judging him unfairly residual anger about the cockroaches.
But it did appear that he'd lied to me about the Marshalls' compensation program, and that bothered me.
I looked over at Robin's beautiful, prone body, gleaming in the sun. Spike slept too.
I was hunched, fingers tight on the magazine.
Maybe Moreland had indeed been in those boats. Another payoff team, not Sanjay's.
One way to find out: talk to the author.
Sanjay had worked for the government forty years ago, then as a school principal, meaning he was Moreland's age or close to it.
Still alive? Still on Saipan?
Robin rolled over.
"Umm, this sun is great."
"Sure is," I said.
"Hot, too, and the drinks are all gone. I'll bop over to the Trading Post and get us some more."
21. I jogged this time, veering from the beach to the docks where Skip and Haygood sat dangling fishing poles. Hay
good watched me. Skip kept his eyes on the water. He had his trunks on and a T-shirt, the most clothes I'd seen him in.
Inside the Trading Post, Betty Aguilar was watching a game show and munching a Mars bar.
"Hi. Back so soon?"
"Couple of beers, two more Cokes."
"You're definitely my best customer hold on, I'll get them for you."
"Does the pay phone work?"
"Usually, but if you want to call Dr. Bill's place, I can let you use the one in back for free."
"No, this is long distance."
"Oh do you need change?"
"I thought I'd use my calling card."
"I think that'll work." She went in back and I lifted the receiver.
Another rotary. It took a while to get a dial tone, a lot longer to work my way through several operators and finally obtain permission to use the card. Each successive connection was worse than the previous one, and by the time I reached Saipan Information, I was speaking through a hail of static and the echo of my own voice on one-second delay.
But Micah Sanjay was listed, and when I called his number an older-sounding man with a mild voice said, "Yes?"
"Sorry to bother you, Mr. Sanjay, but I'm a free-lance writer named Thomas Creedman, on temporary stopover in Aruk."
TJh-huh."
"I just happened to come across your article in Island World on the nuclear testing in the Marshalls."
That was a long time ago."
Unsure if he meant the disaster or the magazine piece, I pressed on.
"I thought it was very interesting and extremely well done."
"Are you writing about Bikini, too?"
"I'm thinking about it, if I can get a fresh slant."
"I tried to sell that article to some mainland magazines, but no one was interested."
"Really?"
"People don't want to know, and those that do know want to forget."
"Easier on the conscience."
"You bet." His voice had hardened.
"I think some of the most powerful scenes were your descriptions of the compensation process. Those nighttime boat rides."
"Yes, that was tough. Sneaking around."
"Were you and the six other men the entire compensation staff?"
"There were bosses who ordered it from behind a desk, but we did all the actual paying."
"Do you remember the boss's names?"
"Admiral Haupt, Captain Ravenswood. Above them were people from Washington, I guess."
"Are you still in touch with the other men on the team? If it would be possible for me to talk to them..."
"I'm not in touch but I know where they are. George Avuelas died a few years ago. Cancer, but I can't say for sure if it was related. The others are gone, too, except Bob Taratoa, and he lives in Seattle, has a boy there. But he had a stroke last year, so I'm not sure how much he could tell you."
"So there's no one else still in the Marianas?"
"Nope, just me. Where'd you say you were from?"
"Aruk."
What is that, one of those small islands up north a bit from here?"
"That's it."
"Anything to do there?"
"Sun and write."
Well, good luck."
"There's a doctor who lives here named Moreland, says he was in the Navy when the tests went off. Says he treated some of the people who'd been exposed."
"Moreland?"
"Woodrow Wilson Moreland."
"Don't know him, but there were lots of doctors, some of them pretty good. But they couldn't do anything for the people even if they wanted to. Those bombs poisoned the air and the water, radioactivity got into the soil. No matter what they say, I'm convinced they'll never get the stuff out."
As I left the post, I saw Jacqui Laurent and Dennis standing in front of the Chop Suey Palace. The mother was talking and the son was listening.
Scolding him. Being subtle about it no hand gestures or raised voice but her eyes flashed and the displeasure on her face was evident.
Dennis stood there and took it, his giant frame slightly bowed.
She looked so young a casual observer might have thought it a lovers' spat.
She folded her hands over her chest and waited.
Dennis scuffed the ground. Nodded.
Similar look to the one Pam had worn after Moreland had reprimanded her.
Same issue?
Lord of the manor dropping in on one of his tenants this morning? Letting her know his displeasure about Dennis and Pam?
Dennis looked from side to side, saw me, and said something.
Jacqui put a hand around his thick forearm and propelled him quickly inside.
Back at the estate, I sat through a lunch of broiled halibut and fresh vegetables, walked Robin and Spike down to the orchard, and headed for my office.
Moreland had left another folded card on my desk.
Alex:
Cannot locate cat woman file.
Spirits overwrought Were making night do penance for a day Spent in a round of strenuous idleness.
Wordsworth A fitting quote for that case, don't you think?
Bill I sat at my desk. Night do penance... strenuous idleness.
The philandering husband?
Always riddles.
As if he were playing with me.
Why had he lied to me about the payoff?
Time to talk.
* * * The door to his office was unlocked, but he wasn't in there, and the lab door was closed. I went over to knock and, passing his desk, noticed the reprints of my journal articles fanned like playing cards. Next to some newspaper clippings.
Clippings about me.
My involvement in a mass child-abuse case years ago.
My consultation to a grade school terrorized by a sniper.
Accounts of court testimony in several murder cases.
My name highlighted in yellow.
Milo's, too.
I remembered the message he'd written about Milo's call:
Detective Sturgis. Off the job Milo generally didn't identify himself by tide.
Researching him, too?
Thick pile of clippings. On the bottom, a homicide trial. My testimony for the prosecution, debunking the phony insanity plea of a man who'd savaged a dozen women.
Moreland's notation in the margin: Perfect!
So I'd been selected for something other than 'a fine combination of scholarliness and common-sense thinking."
Moreland, definitely worried about the cannibal killer.
Had he lured me here under false premises in order to pick my brain?
Dr. Detective. What the hell did I have to offer?
Did he have reason to believe the murderer was still on Aruk?
A crash from inside the lab made me jump, and my hand brushed the clippings to the floor. I picked them up quickly and ran to the inner door.
Locked.
I knocked hard.
A groan from inside.
Bill?"
Another groan.
"It's Alex. Are you all right?"
A few seconds later, the knob turned and Moreland stood there rubbing his forehead with one hand. The other was palm down, dripping blood. He looked stunned.
"Fell asleep," he said. Behind him, on the lab table, were brightly colored boxes, plastic cartons. Test tubes on the floor, reduced to jagged glass.
"Your hand, Bill."
He turned his hand palm up. Blood had pooled and was trickling down his wrist and narrowing to a single red line that wiggled the length of his scrawny forearm.
I led him to the sink and washed the wound. Clean gash, not deep enough to require stitching but still oozing steadily.
"Where's your first-aid kit?"
"Underneath." Pointing drowsily to a lower cabinet.