Hell's Bay

by James W. Hall

  “Somebody’s got to stand up to the bitch,” Holland yelled. “Nobody on this motherfucking boat has the guts.”

  “Do it, Holland. Let her have it.” Annette thumped him on the shoulder. “Do it. What’re you waiting for?”

  Holland sighted along the stumpy barrel of the flare gun and let one go.

  The plug of spewing magnesium lofted high above the bay and trailed behind a shower of red sparks. On a windless day it had a range of 250 feet, but in such heavy weather it made less than half that. It was a bad shot all around, thirty yards to the right, with the wind pushing it even farther off course. Not that it mattered much, but the meteor was going to fall well short of the bass boat.

  I tracked each of the dozen trails that sputtered behind the rocketing canister. Like flaming skeins of yarn they drizzled down around me. Red-hot slag and ash. Two or three landed dangerously close to the skiff. I didn’t know how much flammable material was still coating the decks of my small boat, or if the fumes rising from the open gas spout were sufficient for an explosion. I’d smelled gasoline earlier, or something in the same family. For all I knew the wooden decks were already smoldering and the boat was about to blow.

  Above me Rusty made a lunge for the flare gun, but Annette put her shoulder down and butted into her, flashing her crimson claws at Rusty’s face. A full-fledged mutiny. Holland had reloaded and was taking aim.

  I swung the kayak toward the skiff and paddled hard enough to ram its stern and knock it ahead two or three feet. Best hope was to thrust it out of range of the next set of fiery trails. Get it around the front edge of the Mothership and let the wind grab it and take it for a ride.

  If the skiff was destined to explode, it was my only chance to spare us. That sixteen-footer had been mine since I was ten. My first, best boat. On its poling platform and behind its wheel, I’d learned my way around those waters. Studying the fish, their habits, the mysteries of tides, how to spot treacherous coral heads and shoals. On her deck, I’d learned to read the clouds, the fickle winds, acquired what water skills I had. It was the vessel I’d used to stalk fish from one stunning end of the Everglades to the other. Over the years it had proved more faithful than half my friends or lovers, and if it was doomed, then some part of me was doomed as well.

  The rushing sea and north wind jammed the skiff hard against the underside of the Mothership. I butted the kayak’s bow into the skiff’s stern again, struck off-center against the engine casing. I plunged another stroke deep, pushing forward, then again, using what leverage I could rouse from arms, shoulders, and back, milking the maximum from each paddle stroke.

  I’d driven the skiff ahead until it was five feet from the bow when Holland fired his second round and dozens more twisting threads of slag showered around me. I watched two streams of glowing sparks spiral down and separate from the others, then catch some malevolent gust that sent them corkscrewing toward the skiff.

  One glowing shard landed on the poling platform and winked out, while the second hit the gunwale on the starboard side and began to dance and sizzle not more than a foot from the open gas spout.

  I kept an eye on the red-gold sputter and banged the nose of the kayak hard against the port rear-quarter, dug in another paddle stroke and one more after that and sent the skiff around the bow of the Mothership, where the wind was ripping the tips of foam off the whitecaps. A gust caught the skiff, turned it on its fulcrum, and it went skidding away.

  Breathing hard, I lingered in the shelter of the Mothership’s underbelly. Five seconds, ten seconds, then realized my mistake. The houseboat might be more precariously settled in the muddy bottom than she’d seemed, not able to withstand what was likely to happen. If she dropped even a few feet from her present perch, I’d be crushed beneath her keel.

  Just as I began my backpaddle the blast sent a rush of scalding air around the corner of the bow. The concussion was short and deep, and its shock waves thumped me backward in the kayak. Overhead the big ship shuddered, rocked, and began to dip. I sat up, paddled two quick strokes, and scooted past the upraised pontoon, out of range, into the open bay.

  The Mothership quivered but somehow held her lock on the bottom and absorbed the punishment without so much as a broken pane. In only a second or two the trembling died away and the big ship was still again.

  I set the paddle across my lap and looked off at the rich blue smoke tearing south toward the Keys. I didn’t need a further look to know the skiff’s condition.

  I took a breath and let it go, picked up the paddle, and swung the kayak back beneath the uplifted pontoon. Out in the yellow bass boat I watched Sasha Olsen bend down for a moment and come up with a rifle. She flicked its bolt and checked its readiness with practiced efficiency.

  I was around the stern, about to tie up, when the first shot came. Then the second and the third, and from above, the bodies began to drop.

  Sasha watched the blue smoke ripping south. Griffin flying off.

  His atoms scattered toward the Gulf. Mingling already with the rest of what was out there. Becoming other. At last her boy was breathing easy, running loose in the wider world just as he’d wanted.

  She aimed again and held her aim as she’d been instructed.

  Held her breath and fired.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  Sheriff Whalen would be back first thing Monday morning. And no, her phone was unlisted, her address not public information. That’s what gaudy Nina, the sheriff’s secretary, informed Sugar as she was locking up her desk and file drawers.

  “You guys close up shop for the weekend? Down my way, things just start to get interesting on Friday afternoon.”

  “It’s the sheriff’s down time. There’s three deputies on this shift. Use nine-one-one if you have a legitimate emergency.”

  “I only need a word with her. I promise not to pester.”

  “I said no. No’s no. Got it?”

  “I’ll have to find another way.”

  “If she wants to talk to you, she’ll find you. You don’t need to find her.”

  Sugarman tried to untangle the illogic of that, but stalled.

  Nina shooed him out of the office and locked the door behind her.

  By the time he found his way to the Olsen house on Prairie Avenue on the eastern fringes of Summerland, his belly was rumbling and he could feel the first contractions of a headache. It was almost six. He’d skipped lunch, and his only breakfast had been a greasy bag of road food from Burger King. The hunger was throwing him off, making him uneasy in the gut.

  Or maybe the cause was worry. In particular that second phone call from Thorn, the strain in his voice, the splashing in the background, and the odd, gurgling disconnection. Was it a distress call interrupted by an act of violence, or simply Thorn fumbling with that unfamiliar device? Sugarman decided it must be the latter. Thorn’s manual dexterity was impressive, but it didn’t seem to extend to objects containing silicon chips.

  The Olsen place was a one-story redbrick shingled in gray. Brick was a sufficiently uncommon building material in Florida to make the house stand apart from all the others on the block. Children were playing down the street, a game involving two soccer balls and lots of screaming. In a couple of front yards there were mud-caked four-wheelers, and parked in the driveway beside the Olsen house were three Camaros in various states of rehab.

  A single sabal palm shaded the Olsens’ front walk, and a hibiscus bush with scattered yellow blooms and a scraggly bougainvillea inhabited the planter beneath the picture window. Efforts to beautify had lately gone unattended.

  Sugar rapped on the door, then used the knocker and heard nothing. Down the street, a mother called a couple of kids to supper, and a bulky yellow dog with tiny seashell ears and a smashed-in pit-bull face came stumping up the walkway to give Sugar’s pants a sniff, then moved on, unimpressed.

  He pressed the doorbell but heard no sound.

  He tried the handle and it was open. Small-town customs still hanging on. He looked u
p and down the street and saw no one monitoring his presence. Maybe someone was peek-ing from behind a curtain across the way. It didn’t matter. If someone called the cops about a black man breaking and en-tering, at least he was likely to get another word with Timmy Whalen.

  He opened the door and stepped inside.

  Called out “Hello” and got back only a hollow echo.

  From the video, the impression Sugarman formed of Sasha Olsen was one of a stalwart mother. Raw anguish had pinched her face—natural enough, given the situation of her boy using his dying breath to summon the citizens to arms. It had been hard for Sugar to watch, for he’d naturally thought of his own twin girls, the obvious what-ifs.

  On the drive over, he’d started to consider this visit to the Olsen house as his last stop in Summerland. Meet Sasha one-on-one, take her measure, that’s all. If he got one more crack at the sheriff, fine, if not, he could live with that. For-get the motel, just drive home tonight with what he had. He’d need to talk things over with Thorn, lay it out, get his buddy’s approval before Sugar went public with what he knew and what he suspected. A sheriff who had either bungled a murder investigation or was intentionally concealing criminal activity. An international corporation knowingly poisoning children, and using all means necessary to avoid detection.

  He called out “Hello” again and made another step into the room. A gold couch ran along one wall, a painting of a mountain stream with a deer drinking from its edge hung above it. A cheap breakfront full of china and tarnished silver. The wall-to-wall carpet was burgundy and a worn trail led across it toward the kitchen. The air was warm and smelled of fried onions and dust and moldering laundry.

  He went to the kitchen and stood at the sink and looked out at the woods that bordered their property. Pines and scrub oaks, a few palmettos, then the land beyond this neighborhood turned again to cattle country and citrus groves.

  There were large crows working the field out back. Cawing and hopping. Big-shouldered birds, glossy black, making the kind of persistent and eerie noise that could infect your daydreams.

  The kitchen was clean and orderly. On the counter was a wicker bowl of yellow apples going bad, a single milk glass in the sink. Silverware and plates filled the plastic drying rack.

  To the left of the phone was a notepad from a local motorcycle shop. Sugarman held it up to the light from the kitchen window and angled it back and forth till he saw the impressions. Two lines of writing, a carefully printed series of numbers and letters. He looked through the drawers till he found a yellow wood pencil, then lightly shaded the page till the print emerged.

  25 degrees 17′ 17″ N

  80 degrees 59′ 35″ W

  GPS coordinates. Some intersection of latitude and longitude. He knew the Upper Keys were at latitude 25, and that 80 degrees longitude could be anywhere from the middle of the state to the east coast. But the finer fractions weren’t in his memory banks. Weird to find such a thing on a notepad in a kitchen in Summerland, Florida. Actually a good deal more than weird. He tore off the sheet and put it in his shirt pocket.

  He made the rounds of the three-bedroom house. The boy, Griffin, had covered his walls with posters. Einstein with his white electric hair, two rock groups Sugar didn’t know and one he vaguely recognized as rappers. An M. C. Escher black-and-white. One of those Sugar had always liked. The more you stared at it, the more your eyes lost focus.

  There was a guest room full of cardboard boxes and a computer set up on a small desk. Books were piled on the floor beside the desk, and more books were crammed in a metal bookcase that looked like army surplus. A stack of papers with red-ink scribbles in the margins. C.C.’s office. Where he’d done his grading, planned his speeches. Where he’d studied the science, written his letters of appeal to politicians and state agencies and all the others whose job it was to protect people like C.C., but rarely found the time.

  The parents’ bedroom was cramped. They’d chosen the smallest of the three for themselves, given the master to Griffin. The bed itself was only a double, a black-and-white quilt for a cover, a single painting on the wall of a slightly sexy portrait of a naked lady sitting in a rocking chair. It wasn’t Sasha and wasn’t even close to her body type. But it hung directly across from the bed like some aphrodisiac that both of them found arousing.

  He went into the blue-and-white-tiled bathroom. One toothbrush, the usual soaps and lotions and shampoos. Hanging on the back of the bathroom door was a green one-piece bathing suit. Sugarman touched its silky fabric and wondered about it hanging there so long out of season.

  The tour told him nothing except these were ordinary people. A family of modest means. A couple of splashes of color in an otherwise unexceptional home. He stood in the living room awhile and scanned the furniture and walls to see if there was anything he’d missed, to pick up any stray vibrations.

  On the big screen at the multiplex, homicidal monsters inhabited rooms with obscene scrawls on the walls, notebooks full of depraved drawings. Violated Barbie dolls hung by strings from their ceilings, jelly jars full of eyeballs and minced-up body parts, all the sick, bizzaro stuff that scared audiences silly. But Sugarman had been in enough killers’ houses to know that most were indistinguishable from their neighbors’. Peanut butter on white bread and cable TV.

  He went back to the kitchen, opened the fridge. The usual OJ, butter, head of iceberg lettuce turning brown, jelly, skim milk, and a white paper sack.

  Sugar looked back toward the living room. No one kicking the door down to take him off to prison. Not yet anyway.

  He took out the paper sack and rolled it open and peeked in at half a bagel. Exciting stuff.

  There was something he hadn’t come across in his cruise through the house. Something almost every family had and that usually told more about them than any other item.

  After a few minutes going through closets and drawers, he found it in the bedside table that stood by Sasha’s side. He deduced that it was her side because ajar of hand cream sat by the base of the lamp. Call him Sherlock.

  In the second drawer was a fat red leather photo album.

  Sugar sat down on the black-and-white quilt and flipped it open. He was feeling no sense of urgency, no reason to hurry except for the churn of hunger in his belly. He paged through the baby pictures, the first bike, the football phase. Griffin had been a wide receiver, it seemed, won a varsity letter. A scholar athlete. And there were report cards, all A’s, an SAT printout with the boy’s scores. Missed a perfect 2400 by five points. Slipped on the verbal part, must’ve flubbed an anal-ogy. There were photos of fishing trips, some of C.C. and Griffin barbecuing out back. Father and son shooting lighter fluid into the Weber grill and ducking back from the flames.

  Love. Fun. Pride. One shot after another of those same three things. Then there was Sasha in camouflage uniform and boots—standing awkwardly for the occasion, a hokey salute and grin. A page later was another of Sasha wearing jeans and a white T-shirt and sitting at a picnic table beside a black woman. Griffin was in the background tossing a Frisbee to a kid about his age. A family outing at some park. The black woman mugging for the picture, a toothy smile, her arm slung over Sasha’s shoulder, giving her a girl-pal hug.

  Of course.

  Sasha and Timmy Whalen. Same age. Small town. Maybe former classmates. Two strong women, outcasts who’d found each other.

  Sugarman flipped to the last pages.

  A black-and-white photo was fixed cockeyed to the page. Sasha Olsen standing with some army buddies. Behind them was the famous square, Saddam’s statue broken off its pedestal and dragged into the dirt. Sasha was the only soldier not smiling. “Love you, miss you, be home soon, Mom” was scrawled at the bottom of the shot.

  And that was it. The rest of the pages were blank.

  Sugar put the album back in the nightstand.

  He sat for a while looking at the naked woman in the rocker. Big nipples, a fringe of pubic hair peeking above her crossed thighs. Not smutty in a
ny way. Just a natural pose. A naked woman in a rocking chair. Sugarman was still staring at that, trying to imagine what it signified to Sasha and C.C., when he heard the front door shut hard.

  He got up and walked to the bedroom door.

  Whoever had come inside was standing out of view in the living room.

  There were times when Sugar wished he carried a concealed weapon. This was one. But he’d driven to Summerland to sniff around, not shoot anyone, and still, even now, even caught in the act of burglarizing a house, he considered civility to be his best defense.

  Going toe-to-toe with a war hero was not an inviting prospect. He kept in shape and still had a few take-down moves from his cop days, but he couldn’t recall when he’d last used one.

  He looked around the room for something to defend himself with. A fireplace poker would’ve been nice. But all he saw were lamps.

  So he did the only thing he knew to do. He called out hello.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  The person in the living room didn’t answer.

  “My name is Sugarman. I’m not armed. I’m not here to steal anything. I came on a social call. Door was open, I just walked in.”

  He heard the crack of a floorboard, maybe out front, maybe beneath his own feet. His pulse was chunking so loud in his ears he couldn’t be sure.

  “I’m in the back bedroom, and I’m stepping into the hallway now. I’ve got my hands up. No weapon. No gun, no knife, nothing. I’m stepping through the living room door now. Don’t get nervous on me.”

  She was sitting in the fake leather recliner. Changed from her uniform of khaki trousers and blue shirt into scruffy jeans and a black top. Her nine millimeter lay in her lap, a Glock, her hand around the grip, finger resting against the edge of the trigger guard.

  “Come here often?” Sugarman took a step into the room.

  “Let’s drop the wiseass thing, what do you say? It’s such a strain.”