by P D Singer
A stick? “I have my reasons about diving or not with Lee.”
“Your problem. Also, get your ass on deck. We’re ready to start laying line.” Johnny Ray jerked a thumb at the gangway. “You’re here to fish.”
Helping the other two hands toss out a buoy and anchor to mark one end of their cod line and feeding out seventy-pound-test filament studded with hooks didn’t keep Bobby from staring at the water. What the hell was under there? Because it sure brought the fish. Whatever lived at the top of the water column might not be what they hunted, but the water churned with the passage of something finny. Lots of them, enough that one of the other hands threw out a baited line and screamed for help when something monstrous bent the pole in two. Three of them wrestled with the behemoth, taking turns fighting and feeding out the cod lines.
Half an hour of battle, of Bobby willing his arms not to jerk clean out of their sockets, brought a huge bluefin tuna to the side of the boat. Gasping for air harder than he’d ever done on the bottom, Bobby helped winch the fish in with chain and hooks threaded through its gills.
“Goddamn, boys, I think we just caught ourselves six thousand bucks!” Johnny Ray charged down the steps from the wheelhouse, where he’d spun and backed the boat to help land the giant tuna. “This fella has to be eight hundred pounds.”
“Bet the bastard ate half the cod we’re after to get that fat.” His yellow-slickered colleague made completely sure the bluefin wouldn’t swallow any more of their mutual prey. His knife flashed, taking head and tail off. “We can use this for bait.”
They caught another tuna, much smaller but still twice the size of a man, before they had all the cod line out and marked with another buoy and an anchor that took 150 feet of chain before it bit.
Johnny Ray slapped everyone’s backs and insisted they cast out again on the way back to the head of the cod line. “If there’s tuna the size of school busses, boys, they’re ours.”
How did these guys do it, day after day? They hooked another bluefin and fought a two-hour battle to capture it, taking fifteen minute stints at the rod to bring the giant in. Bobby wiped blood out of his face and spat out a scale while wrestling their catch to the hold and shoveling ice over the six-hundred-pound carcass. Throwing a fifty-pound fish anywhere might be beyond him, and they hadn’t even arrived at the buoy to see what their longline had been blessed with.
Every fish fillet sandwich served in Delaware could be carved out of the cod they hauled in. Johnny Ray hadn’t exaggerated—thirty-pound fish were almost too small to keep. Forty pounds, fifty, something on every other or every third hook.
They whooped when they hauled something huge and flat up, and everyone screamed when it flapped itself half into the boat and then out again. Seawater met Bobby’s cheeks in freezing droplets with every thrash.
“Gaff it!” a deck hand roared. “Or it’ll beat us half to death.”
“Or get away.” Johnny Ray stampeded into the fray again to bludgeon the halibut. Its skin flashed white and brown in its attempt to regain the safety of the sea. Three exhausted men contemplated hauling it to the hold and the waiting ice while Johnny Ray held a tape measure to the disk of the halibut’s body. “Caught ourselves some more money,” he gloated, comparing the diameter to a weight table. “Two hundred twenty pounds. I’ll take it.”
They released the last seven codfish on their line, but kept the lone black bass. “Cod limit’s a thousand pounds a day, and the hold’s already full.” Bobby flipped the lucky fish back into the salt water. “They’ll be there when we come back for ’em.”
“Long as nobody bird-dogs us out here.” Both hands turned to stare at Bobby. “This is our fishing spot, you hear?”
One poked Bobby’s shoulder with a fishy finger. “You check your cell phone GPS, I’ll drop it overboard for you.”
“Don’t worry about it.” Just because his share of today’s haul would let him replace his phone three times over didn’t mean he wanted to wreck that much trust, though the device lay below in his gear bag, taunting him. “If I want the coordinates, I know who to ask. And you know I don’t give a rat’s ass about anything down there that swims.”
They’d stowed their line as they’d hauled it in, so all that remained to do was head back to shore and the fish market. Except—black bass meant rough outcroppings, and big fish meant an active ecosystem. Whatever lay below had to be wall-to-wall sea anemones.
And something he had to know about. Bobby hotfooted it up to the wheelhouse, nearly missing his footing on a wet step when the boat rocked in the swell. The thrum of the engines followed his footsteps into the enclosed bridge.
“Hey, Johnny Ray,” Bobby called. “Where to next?”
“Home, buddy.” Johnny Ray planted one big seawater-roughened hand over a screen. “Turn that fish into folding green.”
“Is the bottom finder on?” That surely wasn’t the display the captain guarded.
“Not now.”
“Turn it on, would ya?” Bobby grabbed at the railing when a wave tossed the fishing boat as if to remind it how fifty feet of man-made was nothing against the sea.
“Why?” The smirk playing at the corners of Johnny Ray’s mouth said he was playing with Bobby. He knew.
“We’re here, we could see….” Bobby took a step backward against the pitching of the boat.
“We could, I s’pose.” But the captain didn’t reach to a knob or a button.
“Oh come on, damn it. Won’t cost you nothing to see.” Bobby wished he had sonar vision to peer through the deep blue-green water.
“Tetchy, tetchy.” But Johnny Ray flicked a screen live. Rainbow bright squiggles left a trace across the screen, bumping up over a ridge and settling flat again as the boat chugged toward home.
“There! That!” Bobby shouted. “Turn around. We need to sweep over it, see what’s there.” He stuck his face into the monitor, demanding it return more details than 140 feet average depth, probable 120 at the ridge.
“No, we don’t.” Johnny Ray cuffed Bobby’s head.
“But five or six passes ought to—”
“We ain’t gonna mow no hay on my fuel bill.”
“But we found it! We could….” Bobby shut up when Johnny Ray’s lobster claw mitt collided with his skull again. Not hard; definitely a warning.
“We could. But we won’t. This ain’t no dive boat. You want to map the bottom, you do it with a captain who cares more than I do.” The screen Johnny Ray guarded flared and went dark. “I just have the coordinates, and all I want is the fish.”
“Then what are the numbers?” He’d risk activating his GPS if he weren’t so certain his erstwhile crewmate would make good on his promise to drown technology.
Setting the autopilot and checking the radar, Johnny Ray went stern. He swiveled in the captain’s chair to regard Bobby with knitted brows. “Told you. Lee Preston has the numbers. You want to go down and check it out, you talk to him.”
“I can’t.” Bobby slumped. He’d have to let go of this mystery, the way he’d let go of so many other dreams.
“You fight with him again?”
Damn it all to hell, did nothing stay private? “Not exactly. But none of the problems I have with him have changed.”
“When was the last time you talked to him?” Johnny Ray turned to scan the horizon, painted with the last of the sun.
“Ten days back.” Ten long, twisting days, spent debating how he could bend on the inflexible.
“Then you better check with him one last time.”
“I kinda thought last time was the last time.” How sober was the captain? never did get a real answer.
“Might want to chat, then. You could be surprised.” Johnny Ray grinned. “But right now, you can get your ass into the galley, ’cause we have three hours back to the mainland and we elected you chef.”
Chapter 6
FLUSH WITH fishing money, Bobby headed down to My Brother’s Place. Best bacon cheeseburger in town, and that was the
important thing, right? Not to talk with Lee or ask what kind of recon he’d done on the dive site.
The burger kept his attention, mostly, like he hadn’t scanned the entire bar twice over before sitting down in a booth alone. Not that he stayed alone: Tip and Johnny Ray and another dozen pals swung by to gab awhile, not staying when they realized he still had one eye on the door the whole time. Two bites and half a plate of fries remained when Lee walked in.
Looking better than Bobby remembered too. Dark hair in thick straight sheets, combed smooth in a way that went to angles under a diving hood. Standing straight, nostrils flaring, like he challenged the bar or everyone in it. But the way his dark eyes widened when he scanned the place and finally lit on Bobby…. It had been too long. Or maybe not long enough. Maybe never would be long enough to get over the hitch in his chest when Lee Preston looked at him and smiled.
Bobby had twelve seconds to finish chewing and swallowing the boulder in his mouth. He fought it down, doing scarcely better than he was at coming up with something sufficiently calm to say when the man he’d spent the three best and one worst years of his life with sat down across the table.
“Hey, Bobby.”
“Hey, Lee.” Hey, Lee, why do you look so good now? What cleared your eyes and got that grayish cast out of your skin? Why do you have to torment me, smiling with lips that would rather wrap over the edge of a highball glass than my cock?
“How’s things?” Lee paused to glance up at the bartender, who’d abandoned his bottles and spouts. “Hey, Alford. The usual.”
Oughta kick the barkeep’s scrawny old ass for turning away with a nod. Have to talk to Lee before he sucked down the amber liquid that turned him into someone else.
“Fishing, for a change.” Bobby’d choke if he took another bite out of the burger. “Went out with Johnny Ray for shits and giggles.”
“He’s been catching the big ’uns, I hear.” Lee turned again to greet the bearer of his drink. The bartender set down a glass taller than bourbon usually came in, filled with ice cubes and bubbling clear liquid with a slice of lime. Lee’d never bothered with a straw in his drink before: maybe vodka tinted with soda went down harder that way. “Thanks, Alford.”
“My pleasure.” He stumped away, wiping his hands on the dishcloth tucked into his waistband.
“On the tab?”
“Alford and I have an arrangement.” Some shadow passed over Lee’s face. He took a sip through the straw, bringing back some memories Bobby didn’t want to contemplate here. “Catch anything besides a cold?”
“Couple of tuna that could pass for Chevys.” Bobby kept his voice low enough to drown in the party noises coming from the pool tables. “Cod like my granddad talked about.”
“Not bad.” Lee took another sip. “Know where you were?”
“No, but the bottom finder said there’s something down there.”
“Already told you that. Offered to let you take a look-see.” Lee’s hand tightened around his glass, his fingers squeaking against the condensation. “Think you ought to come find out what it is.”
Bobby picked up a fry gone cold with his indecision. “I would, except….” He crushed the potato to white pulp between shaking fingers. “I got this problem with the captain of your boat.”
“Maybe not.”
“Wish I could believe that.” The strip of potato wavered as Bobby poked it toward Lee’s drink. “You’ve got the ‘usual.’ When did you start drinking vodka?”
“It’s 7UP.” Lee cradled the glass with both hands, a gesture Bobby remembered only too well.
“Gin and tonic, more like.” Bobby dropped the potato onto the plate and wiped the mash off his fingers. He dropped the napkin onto the plate on top of the rest. The burger sat like ballast in his guts.
“Taste it.” Lee shoved the glass across the table, his eyes never leaving Bobby’s. “Don’t take my word for it.”
Challenge accepted. Bobby picked up the glass, poking the straw at the general direction of his mouth. Nothing in Lee’s eyes wavered—he could be telling the truth. Finally able to take a swig, Bobby braced for the bite of alcohol under the sweetness.
No astringent tang underlay the sugar. Bobby took another sip, just to be sure.
Damn. A soft drink. In Lee Preston’s hand. Without specifying. “This is the new usual?”
“Yeah.” Lee didn’t reach for the glass.
“Is it going to stay the new usual?” Bobby set the drink down carefully—he mustn’t spill a miracle.
“I’m working on it, Bobby.” Lee’s lips twitched. “I can’t make promises, but I am working on it.”
“How long now?” A week? A day? Ten minutes spent on the phone with the barkeep?
“Since I decided your question needed a better answer than I could give when you asked it.” Lee dropped his gaze to the glass and twirled the ice cubes around with the straw. “So just shy of two weeks.”
Setting his hands down flat on the table might keep them from shaking. Picking the words one by one, Bobby dared ask, “How’s it going?”
That brought a harsh bark. “It sucks. It just flat sucks. No booze, no quiet, nobody to tell me it’ll get better. Just Alford’s big brown eyes across the bar, ready to get all squinchy and judgy if I ask for anything with some booze to it.”
“I think it’ll get better, Lee.” It was better already. Maybe. He wouldn’t reach across the table to take Lee’s hand here—oh hell, why not? But Lee’s hands were out of range, lifting the glass to sipping distance again.
“I hope to hell it does because it would be so much easier to say fuck it, gimme the bourbon.” He chewed more than sucked on the straw. “But I got this dive boat that needs running, and some commercial gigs I got no diver for, so I gotta get my ass back into shape.”
The world slid sideways. When Bobby could speak again, he choked out, “That’s better for sure.”
That earned him a wry grin. “Ain’t there yet, though, and Guldbrandsen’s making off with my clients. Know anybody who needs a short-term dive gig?”
“Yeah.” It took three tries to find enough air to say, “Might be real short-term if you quit drinking soda pop.”
“I know.” Lee closed his eyes and left them shut a long while, his absurdly long lashes making lace on his cheeks. “Think you can find your way to the boat?”
WORTH IT. Worth every fucking minute of the hell Lee embarked on when he made the deal with Alford.
Worth the long nights with the sad, bad thoughts and too many trips to the head. Worth staying strong no matter how his buddy Jim called from his glass prison. Worth it, just to know Bobby MacArthur would drag his gear back on board the Bottom Hunter.
Things were better already.
They might get better still.
Chapter 7
BOBBY SLUICED his rebreather in the freshwater well. Four hours welding in the dark, even breathing trimix, would keep him out of the water for a couple of days until he’d desaturated. That’s why he got the big bucks: damned few could do what he did, and nobody could spend more time doing it than physiology allowed. Not even Rafe Chatham could decompress and off-gas nitrogen faster than he could.
“Get the struts back on okay?” Lee offered a towel.
“That was one jacked up jack-up rig.” Bobby wiped his face and neck. “But the leg won’t buckle now.” He unzipped his dry suit and started to shuck out of it. Two layers of fleece this time—he wouldn’t underdress again. The current made this section of the Atlantic just that much colder than where the Andrea Doria lay, and he had to stay under far longer. He’d still finished with twenty minutes to spare of his planned down time, and since the client supplied a communications rig, he hadn’t surprised Lee by surfacing early. No fair freaking the guy out.
Plan the dive, dive the plan. Make the dive captain happy at the same time. Not that Bobby planned to make Lee any happier than he’d been by just talking again. Bobby sluiced his neoprene one-piece and let Harley hang it in the equipmen
t locker.
“Ready for some chow?” Tip handed over a mug of soup, covered so broth wouldn’t slop across the deck while the dive boat rocked. Decent seas today: a four-foot swell was enough to remind him he was out in open water.
Bobby took a deep swig, still losing some liquid across his cheeks when the boat tipped slightly sideways. “Yeah, and a hot shower.”
“You can use the captain’s head,” Lee suggested, sluicing down the tanks.
Sure, no big. Another diver had already headed below. Bobby had to wait his turn in the microscopic stall. Lee was just being thoughtful.
The kind of thoughtful Bobby couldn’t handle. Not when everything else was so unsettled. Taking that first step into the captain’s quarters when he had only a few weeks to see how Lee was holding together seemed like making a promise. “Thanks.”
Trudging down the hatch gave him a few moments to contemplate turning right into the cabin that had been home for so long. He turned left and thunked his knuckles against the head door. “Leave me some hot water, Steve.”
He lounged on one of the blue plastic mattresses lining the bunk room. Bunks for fourteen, stacked two high and with a couple of doubles, were littered here and there with dry gear bags. They hadn’t planned to stay out overnight—the crew’s sleeping bags were still rolled up. No one lived in here full-time. Tip and Harley liked sleeping ashore more than they enjoyed the hard plastic mats that pretended to be comfortable. Tired as Bobby was, the double bunk he sprawled on might have been goose down.
He heard steps on the gangway. No one came into the bunkroom, though, and only the rumble and cough of the big diesel engines firing up to take them home disturbed him, and then just for a moment.
The rocking of the boat knocked him out before Steve finished in the shower—the ocean had been his cradle for so many years. Bobby woke half an hour before they arrived in port, and he didn’t have to ask who had draped the blue and white blanket over him.