by Dick Cluster
“But if you had to bet…?”
“I already told you, didn’t I? Everything I had to wager, I’d put it on what we’re doing right now.”
8. A Million Sand Fleas Waking Up
They turned off the highway and followed a narrow, twisting blacktop lane to where it dead-ended in a small parking lot occupied by one pickup truck, its windows covered with dew. Nobody emerged from the truck to greet them, so they zipped their coats and stepped out into the damp salty air. When they got over the top of the dune, the wind came pouring off the Atlantic, cold through Alex’s cotton jeans, cold even through the woolen jacket from Hudson Bay. They followed a path that angled down the sandy cliff. The sky was still dark enough to show a few stars overhead.
To the east over the water, the stars were gone. The wind piled the edge of the ocean into wild breakers that darted forward and upward in the leaden waves. This was shipwreck country, or it had been, not long ago. The ocean at night always made Alex feel that here was nature reminding humanity who was boss. Today he didn’t need any reminders. There was something foolishly arrogant, if also daring and hopeful, about thinking you could take out somebody’s marrow and know you’d be able to put it back.
They sat on the beach and waited for sunrise. Alex didn’t find any second thoughts. He sat and watched the breakers settle down as the wind subsided and the sky went from black to dark blue, developing pinkish streamers in the east and turning very pale, ethereal, overhead. The wispy clouds became tinged with red, suggesting coral reefs, outriggers of the continent, first signs of land. The sun rose a red-gold ball, rose very quickly. Alex stood up and hefted the mailbag full of cash.
“Do anything you can think of to put them at ease,” Jay advised. “This isn’t a trap, and we want them to know it. For your safety, and Linda’s, we don’t want anybody to overreact.”
Alex shouldered the mailbag like Santa Claus. The tide was low now, but high tide must have come all the way to the base of the dune, because the whole beach was wet. Alex kept his shoes on, though earlier he’d imagined himself trekking without them. He’d formed a picture of his trail of barefoot prints, marching north till it met up with a similar trail coming south, sort of like the Union Pacific meeting the Central Pacific at Promontory Point.
He looked at his watch. Just past five-thirty. Jay’s meteorologists had been right. “See you later,” he said.
Jay said, “I’ll be right here.” Alex started walking, bent over to put the bag’s weight on his back, but Jay said, “Wait.” Alex turned to see a figure coming down the dune from the lot with a big surf-casting pole. He waited a minute. The man got to the bottom and waved but headed the other way, south, and then stopped and got to work casting his lure out into the water.
“Now I’m late,” Alex said. “I better get going.”
Bent forward under the bag, it was hard to look ahead. Periodically he stopped and straightened and shielded his eyes. All he could see was the waves on one side and the dune on the other and the long slowly curving stretch of sand, empty except for gulls, in between. The dune had a red-gold cast to it, the same as the sun but much fainter. The sun made a shimmering gold path on the sea, which everywhere else was a surprisingly light blue. Alex couldn’t help but take all this as a good omen— a beautiful start to what would have to be a successful day. As he trudged on, getting warmer, he watched a million sand fleas waking up. At every step their translucent bodies hopped about his shoes. He stuck to the middle of the beach, halfway between the breakers and the dunes. Away from the hollow that held the road, the dunes now towered more than a hundred feet high.
When he’d been walking for ten minutes by his watch, he was sweating. He stopped, lowered the mailbag to the sand, stripped off his wool jacket, and stuffed it in the bag. He thought about the kidnapper, or the kidnapper’s contact, watching him reach into the bag to retrieve the jacket before handing the bag over or placing it as directed on the sand. He might appear to be reaching for a weapon. He took the jacket out again, tossing it toward the dunes to collect on his way back.
As the sun rose higher, the clouds were losing their color, turning to white. The concave fronts of the breakers were starting to darken in their own shadows. They looked almost black, like immense hollow logs, dissolving as they broke into bright white foam. Alex wanted Linda Dumars to be able to come here, to see this. Up on the dune he began to notice green, wispy grass, and gray-green leafy plants like desert sage. The sun’s path on the water had widened and grown yellower. The sky was a richer blue. It was really day now, not dawn.
“Here I am,” Alex yelled. “It’s time.” Only as his words were drowned did he notice the sound of the surf, which up till then he must have tuned out because it was so constant, like the white noise of the blowers in the transplant unit rooms. He picked up the bag and kept walking, watching the jumping bugs or crustaceans or whatever sand fleas really were. He watched his shoes sink into the damp, clinging sand. Every now and then he looked ahead. As the Cape curved back toward the mainland, the beach curved to the left behind the line of dunes.
In the sharper light, he could see a double image of the cliff formed by his misaligned eyes. Damn, he thought, because each day he really expected this problem to disappear, as the neuro-op said it might if it was viral in origin. If the goddamn eyes were car wheels, Alex could adjust camber, castor, toe-in just by adding or subtracting shims until the angle was just right. He wouldn’t have to wait or get CAT scans or depend on anybody else.
Suddenly he saw a fishing boat ahead offshore, with a faint light blinking. Way ahead on the beach, he made out what might be two tall poles. No— he looked sidewise and squinted— it was only one. He heard an engine behind him. He turned around, walking backward, watching the vehicle approach. This was an enclosed four-wheel-drive rig, like a Cherokee or a Land Cruiser. Two tall fishing rods extended upward like whip antennae. They threw long shadows up the base of the dune. The vehicle came toward him, the long lancelike shadows traveling beside it.
The car got closer, its growl sending the gulls wheeling and squawking. Jeep Cherokee. It came alongside him, swerving to pass above him, slowing but not stopping. Two guys in caps and nylon jackets, one bearded and one not. The bearded guy, the driver, waved. Alex stopped and hefted the mailbag. The Jeep kept going, though the passenger turned around to stare at Alex and his bag. I’m in training to be a peddler, Alex wanted to say. Or I’m out here collecting seashells and I’m going home to glue them into the largest shell sculpture ever devised by human hand. He willed the driver to make rapid tracks up the beach so as not to scare off the contact. Or else to decide that all was well, the coast was clear, and swing back around to come to a stop in front of him and complete the deal.
The Jeep kept going. Alex stopped, thinking he might be near the right spot but the vehicle might have thrown the timing off. Had the kidnapper carefully plotted time and distance, like a NASA engineer plotting where and when a space probe ought to meet its target? Or, at the other extreme, was this all a wild-goose chase, a test, a tease? Alex put down the bag. He planted his feet and swung his hips and arms. He stretched and, deliberately but faster than usual, moved through the opening positions of the t’ai chi form. He wasn’t a beach lover— that was, he didn’t like lying still and baking in the sun— but he did like the beach off-season, and he did like being alone on a beach where he could do his stuff without an audience. The t’ai chi, like his investigative sideline, was something he’d gotten into after his diagnosis— something he’d come to value both for its own qualities and because it seemed to help keep him alive.
When he got to White Swan Spreads Wings, he was facing the cliff, which here was fringed with long grass at the top. One well-aimed shot was all it would take, and the contact could collect the money, no trade and no questions asked. But the operating assumption was that the kidnapper wanted to limit the crime to extortion, or whatever the hell this was in a legal sense. Alex held the position, balancing on hi
s right foot, his left toe just touching the sand, one hand up and the other down, until the intrusive vehicle was nearly out of sight.
The boat was closer, clearly a fishing boat, not trailing any dinghy to bring anybody ashore. His watch said twenty minutes past sunrise. He stopped after White Swan, swung his arms a little while, and then picked up the bag and walked again. He plodded, switching shoulders with the sack, bending over and keeping his head down. He passed an old wooden staircase, half collapsed, that led up to the top of the dune. Jay had said there were houses up there, grandfathered in when this became National Seashore in the fifties. And some ruined shacks.
By Jay’s estimate of how long it would take, Alex thought, he must be almost halfway to the next beach access now. He looked ahead and saw the pole he’d seen before. It wasn’t so tall, not as tall as himself, but it was stuck into a sort of ridge, a place in front of which the waves had worn away the beach. The ridge ran out to a sandbar sticking into the sea. Opposite this, on the dune, a second bleached, half-ruined stairway came down. Somebody was standing on the steps, about fifty feet up, waving. He waved back. The figure stopped waving and then flung something in an arc down onto the beach. Alex trudged toward it, angling up the sand. It was a bottle, a green bottle. It had landed about ten feet from the base of the steps— from what had once been the base of the steps, now just the tops of two posts rising out of the sand. It was a green wine bottle, corked. Alex put down his bag of money and picked up the bottle. Somebody had a sense of humor. There was a rolled message inside. And somebody was careful. They’d found a way to communicate without getting too close. He looked up at the figure on the steps. It was a woman, in a black wetsuit with red stripes down the side. She looked like a resort advertisement, a good figure, long blond hair, shades over her eyes. They were reflective shades, flashing yellow in the sun. Twisting the cork out of the bottle, Alex shook out the note, neatly rolled and secured with a rubber band.
Leave the bag at the bottom of the steps, it said, and walk away, down to the water. Don’t try to come close. When I get back up where I am now, come back where you are. The note had been typed by a dot-matrix printer, anonymous as could be. Alex did what it said. He walked down to the edge of the ocean. As an added touch, he rolled up his pants and took off his shoes and socks and stood where breakers would wash over his feet.
The cold brought shock and instant pain. Late April, no time to be in the water. Why was she wearing a wetsuit? Could she have swum ashore from the boat? She was leaping down the dune over the buried steps. The legs of the suit came to her ankles. Her feet were bare. She moved easily, but Alex couldn’t guess her age. She had to work to drag the mailbag back up to her perch, where the stairs were not yet buried in the sand.
Alex approached the bottom of the steps. She seemed to be checking the money. Then she reached down in the sand beside the steps, came up with another bottle, threw it. She was left-handed. Alex walked over to where the bottle landed. The woman in the wetsuit picked up the bag and started climbing. This cork was in tighter. Jay hadn’t thought to issue him a corkscrew. The contact method seemed amateurish but sensible. Finally Alex worked the cork loose. The message read, Dig under the pole. Alex took off his sweater, realizing he was drenched again with sweat. He tried to pull the pole out. It was smooth, not driftwood but a milled piece, with some remaining flakes of red and white paint. It had to be buried deep, because it wouldn’t budge. Had the woman buried it, early this morning, or just made use of the fact that it was here? More important, did it mark where the treasure was? Digging in a circle around the pole with his hands, he uncovered a blue nylon strap. By the time he unearthed the cooler itself, the woman in the wetsuit had disappeared over the top of the dune. In her absence he noticed the crashing sound of the waves again.
9. More Genie Smoke
Alex found the going a lot easier with the little cooler riding on his hip than it had been with the big mailbag on his back. The cooler was of a size to hold a six-pack and a few sandwiches. Alex fingered the hard plastic exterior, dark blue, which ought to cover a rigid core of insulating polystyrene foam. The plastic was cool but not freezing to the touch. A thin white line of frost had formed where the top of the container met its body. So far so good, he hoped. He jogged down the beach with the cooler hanging from its strap on his left shoulder and his hand bracing it against his right hip. He jogged not pell-mell but steadily, as if his friends were waiting at the picnic and he was bringing the beer. He stopped only to tie his sweatshirt tighter around his waist.
When he got to where he’d left his jacket, he paused to pick it up and catch his breath. Only then did he notice how different everything was. The bits of cloud looked pure white now, the dune yellow, minus its gold cast. The sun on the water was an ordinary yellow too. A lone long-necked goose flew overhead, and a few crows pecked at something near the bottom of the cliff. Far ahead a beachcomber came toward Alex, then stopped to examine something swirling in the low tide. Alex jogged some more, slowed to a walk, waved at the beachcomber, and finally broke into a run when he saw Jay. By the time he reached the doctor, he was panting hard.
“I haven’t messed with it,” was all he said. “It seems full enough and cold enough to me.”
“No trouble?” Jay asked, taking the cooler and giving it a very slight experimental shake. Should he have handled it like glass? Alex wondered. If so, he’d still be halfway back along the beach with the day continuing to warm up. Jay held the cooler in both hands as he climbed the path up the sand to the parking lot. Three more cars had joined his, and the pickup was gone. Alex watched him unlock the front door, reach to open the back one, and then fiddle with a knob on the nitrogen supply tank. From the car floor Jay pulled up a pair of heavy gloves and a pair of metal tongs like the ones in the blood bank.
“Okay,” he said. “Let’s see.” He put on the gloves and snapped open the latches that held the top of the beach cooler. A wisp of steam appeared along the rim. Not steam, Alex corrected himself. What had Jay called it? Vapor. Alex leaned over Jay’s shoulder and felt the cold. “Get back,” Jay said. “This stuff can burn your skin if it splashes or boils up fast.”
Worse could’ve happened, Alex thought, but he pulled his head out of the way. Jay lifted off the top in a swirl of that genie smoke and reached in with the tongs. Alex craned his head over Jay’s shoulder again.
“Get back, damn it,” Jay said again. Then he said, “What?” and groaned. He turned and pushed Alex out of the way and poured the hissing liquid onto the asphalt, where it didn’t stay liquid very long.
With the tongs, Jay was holding a plastic bag about the right size, but he wasn’t rushing to get it safely into the freezer in the back seat. When the vapor cleared Alex saw the bag was empty. No, it wasn’t empty. It contained something white, a note. Another fucking note, again typewritten. Alex groaned too. He felt kicked in the gut. He felt teased, foolish, duped, and drained.
“What’s it say?”
“Wait,” Jay said, but Alex couldn’t wait. He grabbed for the bag, only realizing at the last minute that the plastic was all cracked, shredded, from being handled while frozen. Jay pulled it away. “Jesus,” he said, “let the damn thing thaw.”
Alex dropped his hand, sat down on the pavement where the puddle of liquid nitrogen had just been. Back here, in the hollow behind the top of the dune, the sun was only now peeking over the wispy grass that grew out of the sand. Sunrise all over again, this time heralding a more frightening and difficult day. “Sorry,” he said. “Read it to me, okay?”
“Yeah. It’s, um, it’s a poem I guess. Rhymes and verses. Promises delivery in two days. But it doesn’t sound too… clearheaded.” Jay’s brow came down in that visor again.
“Read it, okay?”
“Yeah. Sorry. It goes like this.” Jay read in a singsong rhythm, and shakily:
“A bone that has no marrow
what ultimate for that?
It is not fit for table,
for beggar or for cat.
A bone has obligations,
a being has the same.
A marrowless assembly
is culpabler than shame.
You’ve met your obligations,
you’ve handed me the sack.
Two more days from now,
You’ll get the marrow back.
But no police, no dragnet,
Nothing that isn’t pretty.
If you err, I swear,
I’ll feed it to my kitty.”
Alex swallowed, a dry swallow. No, it didn’t sound clearheaded. The first part made no sense that he could follow. The second part felt very dangerously flip. “That’s all?”
“There’s a little sketch. In pencil.” Jay held the letter out to Alex with the tongs. “Don’t touch,” he said.
The sketch was of a stick figure. Alex knew he’d been thinking about stick figures recently but couldn’t remember when. The stick figure had a horizontal line for the body, four legs, a round head with pointed ears. Below the head was a bowl, a flat oval with a semicircle below. In the bottom of the bowl was a splash of brown, either a good imitation of dried blood or else the real thing. Next to that, in block letters, the single word MEOW.
DAY ZERO
10. The Snowman With a Club
Linda Dumars knew it meant trouble when Yvonne looked at Dr. Harrison that way. It was the look you used when the sauce doesn’t thicken, when the car doesn’t start. The look that says come on, hurry up, don’t poop out on me now. She couldn’t understand why Yvonne should look at Harrison that way. Unless there was something wrong— something important that he needed to hurry up and do. It turned out there was nothing he could do, it was just something she wanted him to hurry up and say.