Deep Shadow

by Randy Wayne White

  King started to say, “Without a wet suit? When I was lifeguarding, we had decent equipment—”

  Perry interrupted. “Go naked, for all I care. I want some of that gold and I want those truck keys. I’ll help push the damn truck, but there ain’t no damn way I’m going in that water.”

  Perry was an angry man, but it wasn’t just anger I was hearing. He had seen something in the lake that scared him. I was sure of it now.

  Arlis, I remembered, had said the rancher who sold him the property had behaved the same way. He had refused to come near the place.

  “Even the roustabouts who work for the man,” Arlis had told me, “are afraid to go near that lake.”

  NINE

  THE THING THE PROFESSOR-LOOKING DUDE, FORD, called a “jet dredge” reminded King of a pressure washer he’d used to clean aluminum siding at a motel where he’d worked for a few months outside Kirkland, Illinois.

  It was the same motel where King had robbed guests’ rooms half a dozen times, but then pushed what was a sweet setup a little too far. He had surprised one of the guests showering—a decent-looking brunette, although a little chunky—then exposed himself to the woman, who turned out to be a librarian from Moline who didn’t take shit off anybody, particularly a skinny maintenance man wearing a soiled blue uniform that smelled of wine and Pine-Sol.

  When King had tried to calm her down, telling her he was on leave from the Air Force, that he didn’t know a soul in town—he was just lonely, that’s all—she had thrown an ashtray at him, and that’s when things had really gone to hell. A military man deserved respect, after all, and King had tried to force the issue by forcing the woman, naked, onto the bed.

  Next stop, Statesville Correctional. King had been sentenced to seven years but got out in three. At Statesville, the work coveralls were orange, not Air Force blue.

  The pressure-washer gizmo that the old man and Ford had brought—the dredge pump—was the size of a bread box but heavy. It floated on an oversized inner tube, connected by a waterproof cord to the generator onshore. Coiled beside the pump was a hundred feet of commercial garden hose, the end clamped to PVC pipe and fitted with a nozzle. Hit the trigger, and water jetted out in a stream finer and harder than any pressure washer King had ever used—Ford had tested it, even though he was in a hurry.

  The rig was homemade, with redundancy kill switches in case water breached the power contacts. Ingenious, King had to admit. The old man and the professor dude were smart, he had to admit, too.

  So what?

  He had met a ton of men like these two. Superior acting. Always so sure of themselves. Smart, yes, but all of them born with a sort of governor inside their heads that stopped them from crossing certain lines of behavior. They were like dogs chained to a wall, which made them easy to tease. Self-important suits, too good to sink to the King’s level.

  King hated them for it. He always had, he always would.

  Early on, King had learned that he would never be accepted by these superior asshole types. He would always be considered an inferior. It was pointless to challenge their tight-ass behavior one-on-one, so King had learned how to choose his shots. He had learned how to erode their authority, and how to get even, by picking away at their weaknesses like a crow picks at garbage.

  Sabotage and slick tricks. Bosses, his asshole sister’s friends who had dissed him, his teachers—especially his pompous eighth-grade science teacher—King had become expert at disrupting their plans, at screwing up their work, at inflicting small, sly wounds without them even knowing.

  Common examples: Spitting in drinks, when no one was looking.

  Robbing wallets, a few bucks at a time. Dragging his feet when someone was in a hurry or making excuses when an important job needed to be done.

  Like now, pretending to help Ford.

  It was best when the superior assholes suspected that he was doing it but couldn’t prove it. It gave King a tight, glowing feeling of victory in his belly. If they failed, the King won.

  That feeling was in his belly now, as King held on to the inner tube, floating neck-deep in the chilly water, following the professor dude toward the orange buoy that the man claimed marked the wrecked airplane.

  King wasn’t totally convinced there was a plane full of gold down there, but he sure as hell wanted it to be true. He was desperate to believe. Five counts of first-degree murder in a state that still strapped killers in the electric chair? Man, King needed all the help he could get.

  That goddamn Perry and his goddamn knife!

  Shit! Loading that shiny diesel truck with gold bars and coins was their only hope. If they actually got the stuff, if the asshole, Ford, wasn’t lying—man, what a break. First, they would fence enough to buy passage on a boat to Mexico. After that, they’d be in the clear, living rich, kicking back with enough wine and young girls and cash to finally tell the world, Screw you!

  What had convinced King was the way Ford had rattled off his story, detail after detail, never once hesitating. No way he could have made up a tale like that. King was sure because he couldn’t have done it, and he had spent his life making up stories about himself.

  No, Ford was the straight type. Just another dog chained to the wall—a tight-ass suit with boundaries—which only made the man easier to tease. It also made it more unlikely that the guy could invent some wild lie about a plane crashing, loaded with Cuban gold.

  “Hurry up, come on! What’s your problem?”

  Ford was yelling at him again. King looked over the inner tube, seeing the man’s dive mask tilted up on his forehead, seeing the man’s assholish superior expression of contempt as they swam the jet pump toward the orange buoy.

  Truth was, Ford was doing all the work, pulling the heavy load, kicking with his fins. King was making it harder for him, mostly by just hanging on, but also by letting the fins he was wearing create drag. Sometimes King even backstroked to slow things down.

  No way Ford could prove it, although the man knew. King let him read the truth in his innocent Who? Me? smile as he replied, “Take it easy, Jock-a-mo. We’re almost there.”

  “No thanks to you. Look over there—see that?” Ford motioned to a yellow scuba tank that had just popped to the surface near the buoy. The tank was floating away.

  “What about it? It belongs to your friends?”

  The expression on Ford’s face said Dumb-ass.

  “It’s my tank. I left it down there for them and it means we’re almost out of time. Quit fighting me. I’m not stupid, I know what you’re doing!”

  No, Ford wasn’t stupid. But there wasn’t a goddamn thing in the world he could do to change the fact that King didn’t give a damn about the man’s two friends who were running out of air beneath them. Ford’s friends had screwed up. So what? It was their problem, not the King’s. Besides, why help save the assholes when it was easier to deal with only two people—Ford and the old man, who Perry would soon kill, anyway.

  Perry had whispered that to him as King stripped down to his Fruit of the Looms.

  “I’m thinking a knife in the throat is the only thing that will make the old bastard shut his mouth,” Perry had said. That was true, but it was more than that. Perry wanted to do it. He had a thing for knives now after using the switchblade on the brats and the Mexican girl back in Winter Haven.

  Perry had said to him as they’d pedaled the bikes south, “You ought to try it—using a knife, I mean. It’s kinda cool the way they just lay there when they know it’s happening. Like, they want me to finish—you know? Get it over with, so they lay real still all of a sudden, wanting me to end it for them.”

  His former cell mate wasn’t asking for permission to use the knife on the old man. Perry was asking to borrow King’s switchblade because he’d lost his during all the excitement—this was before he’d snagged the professor’s big stainless dive knife, of course.

  Perry wasn’t like Ford. Perry had no boundaries. Not anymore. Perry hadn’t even realized he was no better
than a dog on a chain until two nights ago at old man Hostetler’s house. But Perry had a taste for it now. King had seen the same sort of change in cons back in Statesville, two- or three-time losers who had discovered themselves when they finally tasted blood.

  Not King, though. He’d never killed anyone, ever. Not even at the Hostetler place, although he had helped in certain ways. What choice had he had? Perry, who had been speed crazed and drunk, was nuts enough at the time to use the knife on King if he hadn’t pretended to join in the fun.

  No doubt about it, Perry got off on killing people, and there was no going back. Perry had found himself.

  Question now was, how would King deal with that? He would have to come up with a way, he knew it, and he would—later.

  Ford was bitching at him again. “Okay . . . enough. Take off your damn fins and lay them on the inner tube beside the pump. I know what you’re doing and I don’t have time for your crap!”

  King had been letting his fins drag, but now subtly began kicking in reverse, as he said, “I’m doing the best I can. If I take off my fins, I might drown. Then who’s gonna help you with this hose?”

  The expression on Ford’s face, pure frustration—and King loved it.

  “I thought you said you could swim. You never spent one day as a lifeguard. Have you ever told the truth about anything in your life?”

  King used that smile again—Who? Me?—teasing the man with the truth. “You think I’m lying? Well . . . maybe you’re right. But don’t tell Perry, he’s just a kid. You wouldn’t want to disillusion a kid, would you?”

  As he grinned at Ford, the King was thinking, Now who’s the dumb-ass?

  The hell he couldn’t swim. Swimming was one of the few things King was pretty good at. He’d done a lot of it at the municipal pool, growing up. Of course, he had never actually been a lifeguard like he’d told Perry. But he could have been. Maybe. So what was the difference?

  King was enjoying it, teasing the professor-looking guy because the guy was such a damn tight-assed nerd.

  “Maybe my technique’s wrong,” King said. “Let me try something different. Don’t think you’re the only one worried about your pals trapped down there under all that rock.”

  When Ford replied, “Sure you are,” King told him, “Seriously. I believed it when you said we need four men to salvage the stuff ’cause it’s so heavy. I’m looking at this as a business deal—you’re the one who got us into this, so don’t blame me!”

  As Ford started to say something else, King floated his legs out behind him, then kicked hard with his fins. The sudden thrust caused the inner tube to shoot forward and almost run over the man.

  When Ford surfaced, spitting water, King said, “Now look who’s slowing us down. You expect me to push this heavy bastard all by myself?” He couldn’t help laughing—Christ, the expression on the dude’s face!

  It didn’t matter whether he cooperated or not now. They were already at the orange buoy.

  King watched Ford check his watch, his eyes cold, then look around until he said he could see two sets of air bubbles not far from the buoy. The bubbles weren’t well defined because the wind was coming up, raking the pond’s surface into rows of moving water.

  “How much time do your girlfriends have left?” King asked.

  Rinsing his mask, then positioning it on his face, Ford replied, “Just shut up and make sure the hose doesn’t kink. Think you can handle that?”

  King was grinning as the professor dude disappeared beneath the surface.

  Perry was standing next to the truck, with its tailgate open, scuba gear scattered on the ground near the little Honda generator. The guy, Ford, had gotten ready in a hurry, yelling orders, throwing things around. That’s why the area was such a mess.

  Perry was watching Ford now as King helped him swim the inner tube, loaded with gear, toward the orange buoy, where the color of the water changed from silver-blue to black.

  Water was deeper out there, Perry guessed.

  It gave Perry the creeps, wondering about what might be living deep in the black water below the two of them, looking up from the bottom at their shapes and bare legs.

  Man . . . it was scary just thinking about it.

  Perry wouldn’t have admitted that, though, even to King. Not after what he done two nights ago, the way he’d felt, chasing the woman and those kids through the dark house. Perry believed he would never have to show fear again.

  After feeling that kind of power? The night had changed him in an unexpected way, made him feel larger, more knowing—treetop tall—a man who could look down and choose his targets instead of living in fear, as Perry had lived all his life.

  People died so easily beneath his hands.

  It was the most surprising truth he had ever experienced. It had created a power in him, a soaring feeling that connected his brain and his heart, and a strange hunger, too, that was ready and waiting, close beneath the surface, eager for the next time.

  There would be a next time. It would happen. The power was there, a bottomless hunger, like jonesing for a cigarette. So what did he have to fear?

  Black water, that’s what. That was true, too. He couldn’t admit it, but there it was.

  Perry let his eyes move to the trees, then to the curving shoreline. Automatically, his hands went to his pockets, seeking a pack of Marlboros that wasn’t there.

  It brought the memory back to him, Sunday afternoon, lighting his last cigarette, crumpling the pack and lobbing it into the lake. Wind had pushed the silver-cellophaned Marlboro 100s toward the black water, not far from where the orange buoy was now anchored.

  That’s when something . . . something had ascended beneath the pack, a long black shape that was blacker than the black water, with a tail that looked to be almost as long and wide as a man.

  Perry hadn’t imagined it. He’d been jazzed on Adderall, sure, but he wasn’t drunk. He had seen it.

  The thing—whatever it was—had appeared suddenly, as if it had rocketed up from the depths to swallow the cigarette pack. At the last second, though, it had slowed itself, large and dark beneath the surface, and the big tail had swirled a whirlpool of water that was half the size of the truck that Perry now leaned against, trying to freeze that image in his mind . . . .

  “Your idiot friend swims like a damn anchor. Look at him, holding Ford back.”

  Goddamn old man. He never stopped talking.

  Perry said to him, “The only reason you talk so tough is ’cause you’re too old to fight. Shut your mouth for a change.”

  Arlis snapped back, “I might be too old to fight you, but I ain’t too old to kill you. If you had any brains, you’d know how dangerous it is to mess with a man too old to fight.”

  Perry muttered, “Fucking old dudes . . . man.”

  “You hear what I said?” Arlis pressed. “Or maybe you’re whacked out on some kind of drug—marijuana and crack cocaine, maybe. Where’d you scum come from? Wherever it is, I wish you’d go back and climb under your rock.”

  Damn it. Arlis Futch had just ruined the way Perry’s mind had been replaying the scene. Even with a busted mouth, the man couldn’t stay quiet.

  Perry’s mind blanked, and the dark creature vanished. That quick, he was standing next to the truck again, where the generator was running smoothly and not too loud for him to hear the old man yammering away, bitching and criticizing, despite the blood seeping from the back of his head.

  “Our friends are down there dying and your hotshot pal is dragging his ass. Look at him! He’s doing it on purpose.”

  The old man had gotten to his feet and walked away from the blanket that Ford had spread for him in the grass beneath a tree thirty yards from the truck. Now he was standing knee-deep in the lake, filling a water bottle, then pouring it over his head, after having just been sick, kneeling behind a tree for privacy, coughing until there was nothing left in his belly.

  Perry had felt good, hearing the old man be sick. He had caused it.


  As the old man washed, Perry watched King and the professor-looking dude as they approached the orange buoy. The buoy was bouncing like a punching bag as waves passed beneath it, but the thing stopped when Ford got a hand on it.

  “Ten minutes, maybe, that’s all the air our guys have left. You two Yankee scumbags don’t care what happens to them. All you want is our damn gold! And you’re trespassing on private property, which I’m gonna keep reminding you until you two turds go off and leave us alone.”

  There was something about a redneck accent that was grating, and Perry tried to ignore the man. Later, after he had loaded his backpackful of Cuban coins, he knew how he would handle it. Perry would march Futch into the trees—the old man’s hands would be tie-wrapped, of course—then he would use Ford’s big steel knife with the serrated blade, not the switchblade he had borrowed from King. Right in the throat, that’s how he would start, just like he’d described it to King.

  Knives. Perry liked them. In Mexico, after they put money in the bank and found a big house with maids—a “hacienda,” King called such places—maybe he would buy himself a nice knife. Good steel that didn’t rust, and a genuine bone handle, not plastic, like the one in his pocket.

  And, of course, he would keep Ford’s knife. The man soon wouldn’t have any use for it, anyway.

  Until then, though, Perry knew that he had to tolerate the old bastard. Kill him now, they would have no way to leverage Ford, the expert diver. Ford might try to drown King, then sneak off into the swamp without sharing a penny, if the old man wasn’t there to give Ford a reason to come back.

  “You’re not going to get one ounce of that gold if you let our friends die. You know that, don’t you? One of them’s just a boy, a teenage Indian kid off the Oklahoma reservation, and now this happens to him!”

  Perry, who was holding the rifle in the crook of his arm, said to Arlis Futch, “Shut up and keep your opinions to yourself. You want some more of me?” He swiveled just enough to point the rifle toward the lake where Gramps was standing.