Diving Deep

by P D Singer

  “Oops.” He sheathed the knife. “Looks like your suit has a hole in it. Can’t go down until you get that fixed.”

  “Damn you!” Lee stomped off belowdecks, whether for a patch kit or topside clothing remained to be seen.

  “Rule number one: you only dive when you can trust your gear and your partners.” Daring the group to comment, he gave them all the hairy eyeball. “Anyone else here have too much to drink last night?”

  One man lifted his hand to chest height and dropped it again.

  “If you’re doubtful, you’re done. The ocean doesn’t care if it kills you.” Bobby gave what had to be Lee’s partner in crime the boot. The diver standing next to a new gap in the lineup sighed, whether in relief or because he might have been the one to go belowdecks as well, Bobby didn’t know, but his eyes were clear and alert. He let the diver stay.

  “Hup to, last check.” Bobby inspected his gaggle of divers, all with some experience, all wanting to certify for higher ranks. “Everyone tank up.” He lifted tanks to their shoulders, eyeballed their gauges, and watched them topple into the water one by one. They bobbed in the swell until everyone gave the A-OK, and in a gurgle of bubbles, Bobby let the sea embrace him in its frigid grip.

  They had forty minutes of bottom time, less if someone burned through a third of a tank sooner, and an hour and a half of decompression time, hovering in the water at 40 and 20 feet degassing their nitrogen. Two hours before he had to face Lee’s wrath.

  He came back to a screaming match that ended, finally, with a defeated “I can put my gear on consignment at the Brass Anchor, or keep it as boat stock.”

  “It’s worth a couple of grand, Lee.” Be twice that to replace it—they dove commercial, they needed top-of-the-line equipment. “You can use it again if you keep away from the sauce. I’ll repair the hole and service the whole suit too.”

  His offer got a grudging “All right” and a sterner “Don’t ever countermand the captain again, Bobby.”

  That crap only got the steely glare. “If the captain makes an ass of himself and looks like he’s going to compound his error, maybe endanger someone needlessly, he’s going to get countermanded, and maybe kicked down the hatch.” The boat was Lee’s since before they’d met—he was the captain, but not the kind of captain who could order his men to their deaths. The rank issue had never come up, and Bobby wouldn’t tolerate it now. “Don’t pull that kind of shit on me again. Not the rank, not the drinking.”

  Lee kept his consumption down, not dry but not getting shitfaced, and Bobby kept his promise on the suit. But the neoprene one-piece hung in a gear locker; Lee never put it on again. Not until the day he brought down two tanks and saved a couple of lives.

  A couple of SCUBA diving’s governing bodies had asked the same question, and Lee’s certificate to train divers for more advanced certificates had quietly evaporated. Why the hell didn’t he see what he was costing himself? Could he really love the booze more than everything and everyone else in his life?

  Yeah. He could. And not a damned thing could Bobby MacArthur do about it.

  OKAY, THE next call would put him on another boat. Jersey, Miami—hell, how about Cozumel and he could look at wavy tentacle things and fish with sharp teeth?

  But the next call would have taken him to Cape Cod, and the one after that to the Port Authority in New York City. Sure, they offered double what he pulled down in a smaller port, but the city would eat it all up, and divers of his skills weren’t thick on the ground. They’d have to offer triple. Or not. He hadn’t lost anything in New York. And with his dry suit getting dusty and his middle getting soft, what the hell was he waiting for? A miracle?

  Bobby didn’t believe in miracles. The next call. No matter what. The saltwater content of his veins was getting low.

  Almost low enough to keep talking when Johnny Ray Slidell called.

  Bobby had left the house, headed out for a walk, anything to get out of the four walls that closed in on him in a way a boat’s bulkheads never did. Maybe he’d get a cup of coffee, chat with somebody, although who’d be on shore loafing around when the skies were clear and the ocean calm if they had a choice?

  His phone rang long before he got to the main street. He leaned against a white picket fence in the dappled shade of a plane tree, trying to identify the number. To hell with it, a local boat could call with an offer. Not that he expected to hear from the captain of the Tracy Bolden.

  “Hell, Johnny Ray, I don’t know a thing about fishing.” Fishing and diving were both wet, and that was the only overlap between them. He could walk while he talked, since this wouldn’t go anywhere; he was a diver, not a fisherman.

  The lazy laugh coming back at him might have just as well said, “Calling bullshit.” Because Johnny Ray had heard enough stories between trips. “How about all that time you spent hauling in tuna the size of Volkswagens?”

  “Like that has anything to do with longlining?” Bobby paused outside a Starbucks. The caffeine called, but curiosity called louder.

  “Like you have to know how to do anything more than throw fifty-pound fish? The real fishermen will take care of the rest.”

  “That big, huh?” Bobby didn’t have to be a fisherman to know cod that size were common before he was born and hardly seen now. He’d heard as many fisherman’s tales as he’d told.

  “Hell yeah, but they’re too big for a weenie diver.” Johnny Ray snorted. “You just look at ’em. Or swim away from ’em.”

  “Or try not to get tangled in all the crap you lose overboard.” The knives Bobby strapped to calf and forearm weren’t for show. He hadn’t missed sawing himself free from hook-strewn nets.

  “Well, if I have cack-handed help like yourself, shit gets loose. Or maybe you can do it better than the pros.” Johnny Ray let the challenge hang in the air.

  “The drooling mouth-breathers you scrape off the dock and call fishermen are pros?” Bobby shot back. “Hell, maybe I should sign on and show ’em how it’s done.”

  “You are welcome to try, hotshot. You don’t know shit about shit about fishing, you said so yourself. Don’t know why I even called to offer you a berth, let alone a percentage of the catch. ’Cept a fishing-boat captain might be the only one nuts enough to take you on, ’cause you’re supposed to stay out of the water.” Johnny Ray snorted. “I need enough hands to take the boat out come tomorrow morning, and I’m down two ’cause they’re busy drinking up their share from the last trip out.”

  That had a real familiar, unpleasant sound to it. Bobby made a face.

  “And the last trip was good enough they might be at it awhile.”

  Okay, that was a pot-sweetener. Fifty-pound fish at market price, or better than market for big fillets…. Bobby did some math, multiplying fish and weight and dollars and comparing it to expenses. If it wasn’t underwater, it could still be a damned fine paycheck. And if those fifty-pound fish had anything to do with Lee’s mystery wreck, well, Bobby would be back, sooner or later, with full tanks and an empty haul bag.

  “What time tomorrow and how long do you expect to be out?”

  “Be on the dock at 6:00 a.m., and we stay out until we’ve hit limit on cod and tuna.” A full and throaty laugh chased that uncertain time. “Might be back for supper.”

  “Oh really?” That would make a fine change from waiting for a call that didn’t come. Or saying no to the calls that did. Letting go of one part of his life, for a day or two, might make it easier to let go of the hope that Lee would ever say, “Heya, I’m sober.” He could put down the Jane’s, pick up a gaff, and work himself so dog-tired he wouldn’t hear those longed-for words even in his dreams. “You got weather gear that’ll go across my shoulders?”

  Chapter 5

  TWELVE STEPS. Sounded so simple. Simple wasn’t the same as easy. And damned near next to impossible when Lee didn’t accept one of the basic premises, that there was a benevolent Somebody who’d look out for him if he’d just surrender. Because that just worked out so wel
l for the world in general.

  Nope, anything that required him to wear the religious hat wasn’t going to work. Lee’s God was the wind and the waves and the physics that drove them. Big and glorious and not giving a rat’s ass about whatever puny, defiant men like him thought. The water would do as it would, and he could ride it or fight it, but supplicating to it? There wouldn’t be so much as a hollow cosmic laugh when he got slapped down to the bottom of the sea.

  But with a hand full of glass and eyes full of tears, something had to change.

  Someone held the door open for him, and he found a chair in the group of those with sad eyes and those whose gaze was clearer. And eventually he said to them, “Hi, my name is Lee, and I drink too much.”

  Messing with the script, yeah, but he wasn’t…. Maybe he was, but he couldn’t say the rest.

  “Rock bottom in my world lies under hundreds of feet of seawater. I have a boat and a business and a thirst that doesn’t leave me alone. Nobody wants to dive with me, and my lover left. The two best things in my world are gone.”

  He couldn’t explain more than that, but the group mumbled sympathetic things and when the meeting broke up, a few of them offered words of hope. “It doesn’t have to always be like this.”

  Lee found the way back to the Bottom Hunter, but he hadn’t found his way back to the meeting, not after the second one, where someone found Jesus in front of the audience. Good for her, but this didn’t look like a path where he could take what he needed and ignore the parts that everyone was telling him were essential but he couldn’t swallow.

  But he’d made it three nights, three horrible, whirling nights without a drink. He’d had the Bottom Hunter out on day jobs and stayed aboard once he’d brought the crew home from dropping riprap and laying cables. Tip and the boys were good, but he didn’t have anyone who could find his way into or out of any damn space with zero visibility and two hundred pounds of gear. Not like he used to. Or like Bobby still could.

  Dropping riprap on bridge footings didn’t pay near as good.

  Staying out of My Brother’s Place kept the bucks in his pocket.

  But Lee hadn’t been lying about the thirst that wouldn’t leave him alone. Alone on the boat, he could hear the need whispering that he could pour that first glass and find company. Find love. Find silence. Find something to fill the void.

  Alford jerked a double take when Lee sat down in his usual spot. “Sorry to see you here, Lee.”

  “Sorry to be here, Alford.” But only some, because the familiar background noise soothed him—a quick laugh and the tinkle of ice, the smack of a cue against a ball at the back. The familiar odors settled in his sinuses like they’d never left.

  “You sure you shouldn’t be somewhere else right about now?” Alford swiped the bar cloth over the scarred wood. “Say, the yellow church at Sixteenth and Adams? Since it’s Tuesday.”

  “Maybe so. But I’m here.” Lee selected a peanut from the dish on the bar and proceeded to render its shell into fine dust.

  “It doesn’t always stick the first time, but you gotta keep trying.” If Alford kept that up, the bar would be back to its 1994 gloss.

  “Not saying something hasn’t stuck, but I don’t think I overlap all that much with the church basement people.” Lee pulled another string out of the peanut shell. “Gotta be another way for me.”

  “You ain’t gonna find it in a bar, Lee.” Alford stopped swiping at ancient moisture rings.

  Lee looked up to see nothing but concern in the barman’s eyes. “You don’t want me here?”

  Throwing the wet cloth at the sink, Alford pursed his lips. “Ain’t that. More like, you’re a guy that don’t belong in any bar.”

  “But that’s where the bourbon is.” Lee popped the peeled peanuts into his mouth. “You know that. You sell the stuff.”

  “There’s days I wish I didn’t. There’s guys that buy it for an evening’s good time, and there’s guys like you.” Alford stepped away to pull glasses of draft for the man drumming his fingers on the worn wood.

  Lee selected another victim from the dish. He popped the shell in two, crushing half of the shell against the defenseless nut inside. He had one nut entirely disrobed before Alford came back his way. “Hey, I’m here for the good time.”

  The barman cocked his head, regarding Lee with a long, thoughtful stare. “Is that so? Then I bet you can have just as good a time without your pal Jim Beam.”

  He could snarl at Alford and have a glass of amber oblivion in front of him, with a side of disapproval, or he could play along another couple of minutes and have a real conversation. Even if it wasn’t one damn thing he wanted to hear. “You think so? Jim’s been a good pal on some lonely nights.”

  “Your nights wouldn’t be so lonely if you weren’t already snugged up to ol’ Jim.” Alford reached for a glass.

  Damn him for the perception. He and Bobby had never made a big deal out of being a couple, just showed up together, and anyone who checked the bunk arrangements on the Bottom Hunter would know the master’s cabin had one bed and two occupants—until it didn’t. Didn’t do to be too open among the fishermen and the divers, but nobody’d made an issue out of it. Well, maybe that once, but Bobby’d decked the guy before he’d said anything beyond “Cute little—”

  They’d been inseparable. Once. And then a trio: him, Bobby, and Jim from the bottle. Guess anyone who cared to look would know he’d had a lot more Jim than Bobby for a long time.

  And not a bit warmer at night for it. Not one bit less lonely. And as close to rock bottom as he ever wanted to get. How sober is the captain? If the answer to that question was wrong, he’d never lure Bobby back on board, let alone into the captain’s bed. Three nights of hell had to pay off somehow.

  Hadn’t he earned a drink after that? Lee demolished another peanut, nearly pinching it into peanut butter. He opened his mouth to ask, but the bartender cut him off.

  “I’ll give you all the Coke you want, free, if all you want is a place to set, with friends around.” Alford scooped ice into the glass and aimed the soda dispenser. “Ginger ale or 7UP or whatever.”

  Not once, ever, had Lee thought to order a soft drink here. “You won’t make much money doing that.”

  Alford’s brows narrowed. “I don’t much like taking your money when it feels like it’s shoving you another couple of steps toward hell.” He shot something clear and bubbly into the glass. “You can drink all the soda you want, on me. But you order booze and it’s fifty bucks a glass.”

  What the hell was this? The peanut he was torturing fell from his fingers. “For that price, you gonna pour from the top shelf?”

  “Hell no.” Alford set the glass of soda down, avoiding the pile of tan crumbs. A splash of liquid slopped over the rim. “You want that, it’s seventy-five. On account of making me reach that high, and making me watch you fall that low.”

  How low had he already fallen? Lee picked up the glass and sipped the too-sweet, too-bubbly drink. The bourbon sang to him from behind the black label. Somebody yelled for a drink from down the bar. Someone else hollered for a pitcher of Bud. Alford stared at him, his dark eyes demanding to know what the deal was gonna be.

  He could drink Coke, or he could haul his ass back to the church basement, or he could lock himself up in rehab and hope he still had a boat and a business when he got out. Or he could call bullshit on Alford. Or find another bar. Or….

  Somebody behind him yelled, “Hey, Bobby!”

  “Guess I better develop a taste for sweet fizzy shit.” Lee sucked down the lemon-lime swill. He didn’t dare look over his shoulder to see if that Bobby was his Bobby, or if his Bobby wasn’t coming over to say hello. “How ’bout you pour me another?”

  BOBBY JOINED Johnny Ray on the docks before the sun came up. Crazy, this: he wasn’t meant to be on the water, he was meant to be in it, but if he was going to pick Johnny Ray’s brain, he was going to fish.

  He baited a goodly share of the longlines, not near
ly as fast as his two companions at getting chunks of clam and whole small squids impaled on the hooks. By the time they’d baited every available hook, they’d traveled three hours, and Bobby was absolutely certain he’d never want another clam in his life, steamed or in chowder, and especially not raw. He headed up to the wheelhouse to have a word with the captain.

  “Come to snitch a look at the numbers?” Johnny Ray threw a glance over his shoulder and softened his accusation with a grin. “Ain’t telling you where we’re going. Just some nice, featureless stretch of Atlantic.”

  Bobby had hoped for a gander at the longitude and latitude but— “Wasn’t going to snitch it. Since you know the only fish I’m ever gonna pull out of these waters will go straight into your icy hold.”

  Johnny Ray adjusted course a fraction to starboard and dimmed a display. “Damn right they are.”

  “And if there’s something down there only a diver can get at? Dontcha think a diver ought to know?” Bobby’d try wheedling the information out of him. “To find out what’s under your fishing ground?”

  “Already told Lee Preston. Ain’t gonna set up some kind of rivalry. Him and Guldbrandsen already have enough bad blood between ’em.”

  “Wait, what?” Bobby quit trying to not look at the gauges and stared at the back of Johnny Ray’s head. “I wouldn’t take that kind of information to Bert Guldbrandsen.”

  “Didn’t think you would, since he’s not gonna piss off his prize diver to get a set of numbers that might be nothing at all, and Rafe ain’t going nowhere with you.” The engine dropped to a throbbing hum when Johnny Ray pulled back on the throttle. He turned to glare. “And Lee Preston already has ’em, so you go out with him, you already got ’em, with my blessing. You bring another dive boat into this, all it’ll be is a big mess. I ain’t screwing over a friend ’cause you got a stick up your ass.”