by Paul Levine
"What the hell?" Steve said.
The Harley pulled ahead of them and the object shot from the guy's hand, striking the Caddy's windshield with a crack. Seconds later, a black, greasy liquid covered the glass.
"Shit!" Steve flicked on the wipers. That only smeared the gunk. With zero visibility, he hit the brakes, trying to keep the wheel straight, but the front right tire hit the curb of the raised walkway and blew out with a bang. Steve steered left, but the exploded tire's rim was grinding into the concrete, throwing off sparks, and dragging the Caddy back into the curb. The car leapt onto the walkway. The right rear tire blew out, the right front fender grazed the railing with the skull-jarring rattle of a dentist's drill.
"Fuck!"
"Uncle Steve!"
Steve's right arm shot out reflexively and pushed Bobby back into the seat. His left hand gripped the shuddering steering wheel. The car bounced off the walkway and back onto the bridge, skidding straight into the oncoming lane. The wipers had cleared enough of the gunk from the windshield to see the Harley was gone. But something far worse was coming at them. Eight beams of light, which Steve hoped was only one car, its headlights quadrupled as the beams refracted through the black goo.
The oncoming car's horn blasted, and Steve yanked the steering wheel right again, but still the Caddy dragged left, screeching across the oncoming lane. As he fought the wheel, Steve was aware of several sounds.
The honking of the car rushing straight at them.
The grinding of the Caddy's rims on the pavement.
His own breathing.
Steve steadied the wheel, but the rear end fishtailed left. He gave it some gas—braking would only heighten the spin—and tried to straighten the wheel. The car fishtailed right, and when the rear end passed the midpoint, they slid backwards toward the oncoming car.
The next five seconds passed in slow motion.
The oncoming car swerved into the left lane and sideswiped the Caddy.
Sliding ass-backwards, the Caddy skipped over the walkway on the left side of the bridge and crashed through the guardrail.
They tumbled toward the water, Steve pressing an arm into Bobby's chest to lock him into his seat. The Caddy flipped over a half turn and landed on its side with a splash that was surprisingly quiet.
"I'm okay! I'm okay!" Bobby's voice was ragged as the car sank, the headlights glowing eerily, a greenish yellow, in the murky water.
"Attaboy," Steve said, forcing himself to stay calm. "We're going for a swim."
The car headed downward, nose first. The headlights flickered and went out. The Caddy hit the bottom with a muted thud. Steve's chest smacked the steering wheel and his head banged into a metal strut in the canvas top. Pain shot across his skull. He heard the rush of water. His feet and legs were wet. Everything was black, except for the sparks that ricocheted in his brain.
"Bobby?"
He groped across the seat. The boy was gone.
"Bobby!"
Water poured through a gash in the canvas top. Colder than he had expected.
"Bobby! Where are you? Bobby!"
Steve fumbled with the release of his harness and felt it give way. He floated toward the torn roof where water rushed in.
"Bobby!"
Taking a breath, he dived into the backseat, his hands feeling for the boy.
Nothing.
Stay calm. Think it through. Okay, Bobby is out. That's good. Now, how the hell did he get out? Because if one person can do it...
Steve floated into the front seat, sucked in another breath, went under again, and tried to open the door. It weighed a ton.
He came up and kicked at the closed window, but in the rising water, he had no purchase.
He groped at the top. The tear in the canvas had to be there somewhere. One hand broke through. The opening wasn't large enough for him. But Bobby, all skin and bones, must have gotten out. Was he hurt? What about the current? Would it take him toward land or out to sea? With both hands, Steve tried tearing at the canvas, but it wouldn't give. Fear gripped him. He had to find Bobby, get him to shore.
As water rushed in, the air pocket shrank. No choice now. Steve sucked in a breath and rammed his head through the hole in the canvas.
His shoulders stuck.
He tried wriggling through but could not.
He corkscrewed his body, twisting violently. He was jammed tight. He might as well have been in a straitjacket.
His lungs on fire, he thought again of Bobby. He was ready to make a deal.
Okay, God, take me down. Save the boy.
He thought of his father. So many regrets.
Dad, I should have been a better son.
He thought of Victoria and how much he adored her.
Vic, from that first day, I . . .
His lungs gave out and he sucked in a mouthful of water. He choked and gagged. Then as his chest bucked and his throat spasmed, another thought hit. If he had Junior Griffin's lung capacity, he could live another couple minutes. It pissed him off, dying like that, thinking of the son-of-a-bitch who would comfort the woman he loved.
Bobby's question came back to him. When was the last time he'd told Victoria he loved her?
I am such a fool.
Now, there's a dying thought for you.
Why hadn't he told Victoria how much he loved her? Why hadn't he told her every damn day?
Twenty-four
GIMLET-EYED
Victoria stood on the balcony of her suite at the Pier House, sipping a vodka gimlet. Just like you-knowwho. The Queen drank gimlets. In fact, she was quite particular about them.
"Always squeeze fresh limes, dear. Get your vitamin C with your vodka."
Must have worked. Her mother never came down with scurvy.
It was nearly midnight. The TV trucks were gone from the parking lot, but they would be back. A cooling breeze fluttered from the Gulf, and Victoria was drinking alone. She wondered where her mother had gone. Uncle Grif, too. She hadn't seen either one since they stomped out of the suite, seconds after she accused them of being David and Bathsheba and causing her father's death.
In the hours since, Victoria hadn't left the room, except to stand at the balcony rail, watching a ribbon of clouds dance across the face of the moon. She'd called Junior and told him her suspicions. He seemed shocked and hurt, and in their mutual sorrow, she felt closer to him than ever before. Junior vowed he would talk to his father and demand to know the truth.
Was there some irony at work here? If her father hadn't committed suicide, she would most likely have become Mrs. Victoria Griffin. It's what all four parents had wanted. It's what she herself wanted, at least as an adolescent. So, if her mother's affair led to her father's suicide, which led to the shame and guilt that sent Uncle Grif globe-trotting . . . well, weren't the illicit lovers to blame for laying waste to her fated marriage, too? The domino effect of fate.
It was all too much to contemplate, and definitely called for another gimlet.
Seconds passed. Or minutes. Or an eternity.
If I'm dead, Steve thought, would I feel the passage of time?
It was dark and wet and cold.
Something tugged at Steve, and then he was moving.
Or was he still and everything around him was moving? He couldn't tell.
There was the slushing sound of gushing water. Something click-clacked and tapped him in the chest. Or maybe not.
He tasted salt water and choked and coughed. A thin beam of light cut through the darkness, a slice of an eerily beautiful moon.
Where the hell am I?
Then darkness again.
Victoria went back inside, but left the balcony door open to feel the breeze and catch the pale moonbeams.
Earlier, she had scanned the room service menu, decided she wasn't hungry, then raided the mini-bar for the third time. Two little bags of pretzels, a bottle of Rose's sweetened lime juice—Sorry, Mother—and a bunch of miniature Belvedere vodkas. Now the bottles were lined up like Lilliputian bowling
pins on the conference table where the State v. Griffin files were stacked. The bottles were empty, the files unopened and unread.
"What kind of a lawyer are you?"
Steve's question echoed in her brain. A lousy lawyer. Maybe a lousy daughter, too. She could be wrong about her mother and Uncle Grif. She wasn't thinking clearly. Her lips were vodka numb and the moon in the night sky kept disappearing. Either clouds were scudding by, or she was woozy. Or both.
She wondered if Steve, driving down the Overseas Highway, was looking at the same moon. Then she giggled.
He can't be looking at a different moon.
She hoped he wasn't consuming alcohol at the rate she'd been.
At the poolside bar, below her balcony, a band was playing Jimmy Buffett. Something about a big pile of work and the boss is a jerk. If Steve were here, he'd want to go down to the bar and sing along. She wondered if he'd been telling the truth about fishing with Jimmy Buffett. With Steve, you never knew.
She thought back to the day Uncle Grif's boat crashed onto the beach. The day she'd told Steve she wanted to fly solo. Meaning professionally. At least, that's what she had said.
Who's kidding who? Or whom? Or whatever?
The realization hit her along with the ocean breeze. She'd lied to Steve and to herself. She'd been cowardly. What she really wanted was to break up the relationship. Dump Steve. That had to be it, right?
Yes, dammit. I should have followed my gut instincts from the start. And I should have listened to The Queen.
Hadn't her mother—Bathsheba Lord—been right about Steve, even if she'd put it rather badly?
"Leave it to you, dear, to find a Jewish man who's not a good provider."
But it wasn't the material success or lack therof that so aggravated Victoria. It was the fact that Steve was so—what's the damn word? Could she ferret out the damn word through a four-gimlet haze?
Unconventional. Undignified. Unruly. Unpredictable. And a bunch of other un-words she couldn't quite grasp just now. Unsuitable. That's it!
One of The Queen's words. Growing up, how many times had she heard her mother say about one boyfriend or another: "He seems a nice enough boy. But unsuitable for you, Princess."
Steve was fun and challenging and a great lover. And aggravating and overbearing and . . . clearly unsuitable. How could she even think of him as a forever-and-ever mate? No, she needed to break up with him. But how to do it, what to say?
For some reason—maybe because she was just a few blocks from Ernest Hemingway's house or maybe because she studied American Lit at Princeton—she thought of Agnes something-or-other, the nurse who tended to Hemingway's wounds in France. When Agnes broke off their affair, she'd written him, saying they must have been in love, because they argued so much.
Maybe she should write Steve a letter.
No. That's stupid. I'll see him tomorrow and tell him then. "You're wonderful. But unsuitable."
Then she remembered something else. After Agnes broke up with Hemingway, she married a wealthy Italian. A count or something. And just now Victoria had reconnected with Junior.
No, this has nothing to do with Junior.
She told herself she was going to stay away from him, too. Truly fly solo for a while, at least until she got her bearings. Then she wondered if that was true.
The band struck up another Buffett number, "Trying to Reason with Hurricane Season," and Victoria wondered if she should close the balcony door and batten the hatches. Instead, she opened the mini-bar and pulled out another little bottle of vodka.
"Are you cold, Uncle Steve?"
"Mmm."
" 'Cause you're shivering."
Steve tried to lift his head, heavy as a bucket of concrete. "Ooh."
It was dark, but he could see the faint crescent of moon peeking in and out of a passing cloud. He was lying on his back. The air was sticky with salt, moist and primordial. Water splashed softly against a sandy shore. In the distance, another recognizable sound, tires whizzing on asphalt. He turned his head cautiously to one side. Headlights shot across the bridge, silhouetted in the distance.
"Where are we, Bobby?"
"A little island."
"How'd we get here?" Steve's head throbbed. He touched his forehead. Tender, a bump already forming.
"Bucky."
"Who?"
"Bucky the dolphin."
"Don't shit me."
"Well, not him, exactly. But one of his friends, maybe."
Maybe he was dreaming. Or worse—dead. "A dolphin brought us here?"
"I got through a hole in the top, but you got stuck. I tried to pull you through but I couldn't. Then this dolphin grabbed you by the shoulder and got you out."
Steve ran a hand experimentally over one shoulder, then the other. "I don't have bite marks. Tell me what happened. The truth."
"I am telling you. When you got to the surface, the dolphin pushed you. And I held on to his fluke till we got to shore."
"Aw, c'mon, Bobby. Did you get me out?"
Somewhere, a police siren wailed. On the bridge, two cars had stopped. Three or four people stood at the railing, looking their way and gesturing.
"I wanted to save you, and you saved me," Steve said.
"Tursiops truncatus did it, Uncle Steve."
Steve knew that Bobby's athletic abilities were limited. In a footrace, the boy was all flying elbows and churning knees, a whirlwind of inefficient motion. Unkind kids called him a "spaz." But Bobby was a natural swimmer, his long legs and skinny arms cutting smoothly through the water in a precise cadence. Steve was just the opposite. He ran with his head still and a powerful sprinter's stride. In the water, he flailed and splashed.
Steve rolled onto an elbow. Everything started spinning again, and he eased back down.
"You've got a big bump on your forehead." Bobby gently touched a raw area just above Steve's eyebrow. "I hope it's not a subdural hematoma."
"What the hell's that, Doogie Howser?"
"An intracranial lesion. It's pretty common with blunt trauma to the head."
"So, 'common' is good, right?"
"Unless the cerebral hemisphere is lacerated. Then you shouldn't be buying any green bananas."
"Jesus."
Bobby leaned closer, looked into Steve's eyes. "Your pupils look good, Uncle Steve. I think you're gonna be okay."
Steve did not believe in a grand scheme. There was no general contractor or master architect of the universe. But what about this? When Bobby needed someone to break him out of the commune where he'd been locked up, there was Steve, outrunning half-a-dozen guys with shotguns, zigzagging through the woods, carrying the boy to safety. And now, seconds from drowning, Steve was sure he'd been rescued by Bobby, not Trunky turnip, or whoever.
From the bridge, someone was shouting, "Ambulance coming. Hang in there!"
Fine, Steve thought. He wasn't going anywhere.
There was a soft splash in the water, and Bobby said, "There! The dolphin jumped."
Steve painfully turned his head, but it was gone.
Sure, it could have been a dolphin leaping in that parenthetical shape. Or a plain old fish. Or a little asteroid hitting the water, for all he knew. "I didn't see anything, kiddo."
"You never do, Uncle Steve."
Twenty-five
HEAD CASE
The headache floated away on a sea of Demerol and Steve dreamily wondered why his sense of smell had suddenly become so acute. When the paramedics had loaded him into the ambulance, the salty evening breeze seemed to blossom like a fine tequila. When the orderlies wheeled him into the ER at Fishermen's Hospital, his nose was on sensory overload, inhaling a mixture of iodine and limestone dust, crushed shells and wet mud. Then, in the hospital, the harsh metallic tang of cleansers and solvents.
Later, sedated in his room, he sensed the sweetness of English Leather cologne. He'd known that aroma since childhood. Opening his eyes, he found the room dark, but heard a familiar Southern drawl. Saying Bobby was fine.
"Not even a scratch. Don't worry about a thing. Sleep well, son."
Now, with the morning sun peeking through the blinds, he dreamed he was on a Hawaiian beach, a Polynesian girl draping a lei of fresh gardenias around his neck, the fragrance as intoxicating as a wahine's smile. For some reason, he thought the girl's name was Mauna Loa, but that could have been the jar of macadamia nuts in his cupboard at home.
A few minutes later, Steve's eyes half opened and he saw a bouquet of flowers on the sideboard.
Aha. White gardenias.
He wondered if he could get a job as a police dog, sniffing luggage at the airport. Maybe his other senses had sharpened, too. Maybe the knock on the noggin had made him smarter. Then he drifted back to sleep. A minute later, or maybe an hour, another aroma. Something spicy but with a hint of vanilla. A woman's perfume. He thought he heard a soft voice calling his name, but that could be a dream, too.
"Steve, are you awake?"
"Mauna Loa?"
He opened his eyes. Victoria was standing over him. Little vertical lines creased her forehead. She looked at him with such tenderness and care that he nearly choked up with emotion.
"When's the last time I told you how beautiful you are?" he asked.
"You okay, Steve?"
"And that I love you. I really, really love you. And cherish you. I really cherish you." He began singing, "Cherish is the word . . ." and the lines in Victoria's forehead deepened.
The goofy smile was so un-Steve-like, Victoria thought. His sharp-featured face was almost cherubic and all the rough edges of his personality seemed rounded off.
"You're beautiful," Steve said. "Have I told you that lately?"
"Thirty seconds ago."
"And I love your outfit," he continued.
"This rag?" She looked down at her wrinkled, spaghetti-strapped tank dress. She'd pulled it on hurriedly when Herbert called. And she wasn't feeling beautiful. She'd splashed on a drop of Must de Cartier but hadn't taken the time to put on makeup, and she felt pasty and dry-mouthed from the river of gimlets the night before. "I've had this dress since college. You've seen it a hundred times."
"It picks up the color of your eyes."