Submerged

by Thomas F Monteleone

Dex smiled. “What kind of revolvers. Police stuff?”

  “Smith and Wesson?” Tommy shook his head. “Nah, I think they’re Colts. Big caliber stuff.”

  This was good news to Dex. He liked his firepower on the big side. He never saw anything wrong with killing a fly with an elephant gun. “Sounds like good stuff. They’re not antiques, are they? You know, like the wild west?”

  Tommy shrugged. “Not sure. They don’t look super-old. I never really messed with ’em, so I can’t really say.”

  “I’ll take a look if we can get into your place safely. Otherwise, we’ll have to move on without them.”

  Tommy looked ahead at all the cars snaking through the city. “Which reminds me—just exactly where’re we ‘moving on’ to?”

  “I’m still working that out,” said Dex. “Once we see what’s going on at Augie’s, I’ll firm it up and tell you what I’ve been thinking.”

  “Not now? How come?”

  “Because it might sound dumb as hell if the situation doesn’t warrant it. Just give me a few hours to think it out, okay?”

  Tommy rolled his eyes, trying to add a little humor to the mix. “Hey, you seem to dig this mess a lot better than me. I can wait.”

  He drove forward in silence for a few minutes until he snailed their way closer to the toll booths for the McHenry Tunnel. “Okay, here’s a problem.”

  “What?”

  Dex pointed to the little white square on his windshield. “If they have access to the right computers, they could track us with the EZ Pass transponder.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “And we don’t have any cash to get through the tunnel.”

  “You’re givin’ the bad guys a lot of credit,” said Tommy.

  “Listen, until they show me they’re a bunch of fuck-ups, I’m going to assume otherwise.”

  He drove through the electronic toll booth and hoped for the best.

  By the time they reached Little Italy, the daylight was starting to fade. After parking the truck on South Central between a dumpster and van, they waited until dark when the dinner and tourist crowds would begin to fill the neighborhood with pedestrians. Walking the narrow sidewalks among lots of people would be sufficient cover to get them the four blocks west and into the alley by the bocce ball courts.

  Dex was hungry and thirsty. He needed to stretch out and assess the situation, then hope he made the right moves. The streets were already lined with cars looking for curbside parking that didn’t exist. Parking valets from many of the larger restaurants were helping to jam things up even more. Tommy weaved through the people while Dex carefully scanned the random faces they passed to see if anyone was paying more than cursory attention to them.

  Nobody was.

  “Holy Mother of God!” screeched Augie. He’d just peeked around the crack of his open kitchen door, and under the dangling security chain, saw Tommy standing in the shadows on the back concrete stoop. “Hang on, hang on!”

  Dex waited on the lower step while Augie closed the door, followed by loud rattling and scraping and some cursing. Tommy chuckled. “He always has a hard time with that chain.”

  “I don’t have the heart to tell him they’re worthless,” said Dex. “Once he opens the door, a good leg kick can take out the chain and the jamb.”

  More rattling and chunking of metal, and a latch being thrown. Finally, the door swung inward to reveal the little Italian guy with the rounded shoulders and scoliatic spine. He was still wearing his Orioles cap which looked like it was being stabilized by his large ears. Augie’s smile was wide and genuine, accenting the deep lines in his face. He was a very old guy, but he also looked very healthy.

  “C’mon, get in here, you two… I was startin’ to get worried about you boys.”

  “We’re cool,” said Tommy. “Just a little hungry and plenty tired.”

  “My baby sister brought over a big dish of lasagna—we got somethin’ to eat, don’ worry aboudit.”

  Augie led them through the kitchen, which looked like it had been outfitted in 1959. There was a small formica table with chrome tubular legs, and matching chairs with red vinyl seats. The toaster and the stove and the refrigerator were big retro-looking things, only Dex knew they were actually electric antiques. The clock on the wall looked like a cat, and its eyes moved to the swing of its pendulum tail. It was like they’d stepped out of a time machine, and the place had tons of kitschy charm.

  “Take a load off in the livin’ room. I’ll heat up the oven. You guys need a Natty Boh?” Augie waited for their answers as he leaned slightly to the right with his head tilted that way.

  “You betcha,” said Tommy. “Grazie, Augs.”

  The old guy smiled, then shuffled into the kitchen. Dex continued to look at all the old furniture crammed into the narrow confines of the house. The décor had been a pleasant distraction from the pressures of their situation, but he needed more information. There was a small television opposite the couch where he sat, and a remote control on an ottoman with feet that looked liked claws holding spheres in their taloned grips.

  He flipped it on, checked his watch, and thumbed through the channels. “Looks like we missed the local news.”

  Tommy leaned forward. “Try the cable stuff.”

  Just then Augie re-entered the room with two bottles of National Bohemian lager and handed them out with obvious pride. “Baldymore’s finest, amici! Drink up.”

  They thanked him as he sat down in a big worn Barcalounger and looked at them with sudden seriousness. “Your boat was on the news…”

  “That’s what I wanted to ask you. What’re they saying?”

  Augie looked upward as he tried to recall the exact words. “They didn’t say much—said there was a boating accident on the Bay. Four people confirmed dead and that they were looking for possibly two other divers—and I almost shit when they gave your names, right on the air.”

  “Christ, Dex, you were right. They got onto us quick!”

  Dex nodded. “They say anything else?”

  Augie brightened. “Yeah, they said the crew was investigating a sunken Nazi sub.”

  “Probably got that from the Coast Guard.”

  “They give the name of the sub?” Dex wondered if it even mattered. He could feel the net closing in on them already.

  “Can’t remember,” said Augie.

  “If the old gal who gave us the clothes and the ride saw the evening news,” said Tommy. “I’ll betcha she’s already called the police.”

  “We can’t stay here.” Dex looked around as if he’d find some answers within the cramped space of Augie Picaccio’s living room.

  “What’re we gonna do?” said Tommy.

  “They’re going to be all over this place.” Dex stood up.

  Augie chuckled. “Forgot to tell you—they already have.”

  Anger flashed through Dex as he looked at the little gnomish figure, but he quelled it right away. No sense being angry at a guy who has trouble remembering what he said five minutes ago. “What? Who?”

  Augie warmed to the chance to be in on the action. “A big tall guy, in a suit, going bald, them little wire eyeglasses. He knocked on the door about an hour before you guys got here.”

  “Jesus, Augs, why didn’t you tell us before?”

  “Tommy, c’mon…I just remembered it, you know?”

  Dex retained a neutral expression. No sense getting the old guy worked up. “What did the suit want? What questions did he ask?”

  Augie looked up at the ceiling as if the info he needed might be written there. Then: “Well, he wanted to know if I knew Tommy, and I told him hell no—he was a fireman workin’ weird hours and the rest of the time he was out chasin’ the girlies. I told him I hardly ever saw ’im, but didn’t know ’im from Jack Robinson.”

  “Okay, you did good, Augie. What
else?” Dex was grateful the old guy had paid attention to Tommy’s earlier phone call.

  “He asked me if I’d noticed anything strange going on around the house, any strangers coming or going, and of course, I said I didn’t know nothin’. I told ’im I watch the Orioles games and Turner Classic Movies, and other than that I don’t see much of anything.”

  Dex grinned. “He go for that?”

  “Yeah, I think so. I wasn’t nervous or anything. At my age, lyin’ ain’t the worst of my problems.”

  “Did you see him leave?” said Tommy.

  “I peeked through the blinds. He climbed into one of them SUV-things—you know, the big ones. It was black. Then he drove off real slow.”

  Dex considered this, then: “Odds are he’s still hanging around. Probably watching your place, Tommy. We took a chance coming here. If there’s a team in place, they might know we’re here already.”

  Tommy looked worried. “Augs, I’m really sorry we dragged you into this…”

  “You jokin’ me? This is the kinda crap makes life worth livin’. Let’s eat while we figure out what to do.”

  “If they come for us, we have a decision to make,” said Dex.

  “You mean fight or give up?” Tommy sucked down the rest of his beer.

  “Something like that.” Dex moved to the front window and eased a heavy fall of drapery away from the glass a tiny sliver of an inch. His vantage point of High Street was too obscured to see anything. “And I can’t see us giving up when we have no idea who we might be surrendering to.”

  “Good point,” said Tommy. “So what’ll we do?”

  Dex was thinking. An odd, impulsive thought hit him, and he pulled his Trac phone from his pocket, started keying in the number of his Verizon answering service. “Hang on,” he said. “I just had a nutty thought.”

  Tommy and Augie watched in silence as he waited for the automated prompt for his password to get his messages. He punched in the numerical equivalent of “diveshop” and waited.

  You. Have. Seven. Teen. New. Messages. You. Have. No. Saved. Messages, said the computer voice, followed by instructions to access the new ones. Dex listened to the beginnings of each one—a variety of sales pitches, requests for donations, and a few ominous hang-ups. There were also a few forwarded calls from Barnacle Bill’s, his dive shop, and the stack of calls on his service were typical.

  Except for the last one.

  “Hello,” said the voice of a young man. It was tentative and questioning. “I’m trying to reach someone called Dexter McCauley. I hope this is the right number. My name is Jason Bruckner, and I have a message for Mister McCauley. A message from…from Erich Bruckner.”

  Chapter Thirty

  Jason Bruckner

  Lancaster, Pennsylvania

  Earlier in the day

  Around 9:30, Jason unlocked the door to Manny’s Tap Room. It was a ritual he’d been doing since his days at Penn State, when his father had started to teach him the family business. More than twelve years now.

  Pushing open the front door, Jason smelled the familiar aromas of exhaled smoke, spilled beer, and fried foods. As he lifted the shades in the front windows, late spring sunlight blasted the old, dark woods of the bar and surrounding fixtures. As he walked through the place, inspecting everything for the neatness and cleanliness his father had always demanded, he nodded. The night crew had done their usual good job and Manny’s looked as ready as ever.

  Grabbing the remote off the back bar, he keyed on the big flat screen, where he’d catch up on the world with a little Fox News, then slip over to ESPN for some scores. He wasn’t the biggest sports fan in Lancaster, but if you owned a bar, you needed to know enough to talk a good game.

  Most taverns would love to be like Manny’s—a comfortable, affordable place with local charm and genuine warmth. Jason’s father, Richard, had always worked hard to maintain that standard; and even though these days he spent most of his time driving golf carts around the Overlook course.

  The television droned on with a story about highway fatalities on Memorial Day weekend, and Jason hardly listened as he re-counted the deposit from the bar register. But when the next story splashed in from a Fox correspondent in Baltimore, Jason found himself more than half-listening to a young blonde female reporter as she unfolded a tale about a dive boat explosion in the Chesapeake Bay. It was one of those “news alerts” with few early details. As with most unfolding tales of tragedy, the network promised updates and film as soon as it became available.

  Jason was distracted by the front door opening. A flash of blonde hair and a fresh white polo shirt signaled Nevah’s arrival. She was Manny’s most popular waitress for a lot of reasons—the way she looked in low-slung jeans and her effusive personality being up there near the top of the list.

  “Hey, Jase, how’s it going?”

  “Can’t complain,” he said as he watched her glide past him on the way to the kitchen.

  “Cedric not here yet?” she said, noticing their short-order cook’s absence.

  “He’ll be here. He always is.” Jason continued to get the bar ready for the first customers of the day.

  It wasn’t until around 2:30 that the lunch business slacked off, giving Jason and his staff a breather. As he polished the bar, Nevah started talking, making small talk as she normally did, and for the first time in hours, Jason could actually hear the audio on the big TV.

  Even though he had been barely paying attention, something hooked him in his subconscious and he began screening out Nevah’s words. He grabbed the remote, notched up the volume.

  “—explosion in the Chesapeake Bay this morning. We have an update from Roger Powell on the scene in Annapolis.”

  Jason watched as the face of an earnest young TV journalist appeared with a marina in the background. “Thanks, Allyson. The Coast Guard has identified the boat as the Sea Dog, which was a charter vessel out of Annapolis. Early this morning, its captain, Donald Jordan, had taken members of a dive club out on the Bay to investigate a sunken ship. So far, the cause of the explosion which killed the captain and divers Andrew Mellow, Kevin Cheever, and Lawrence Schissel is unknown. Ensign Gary Hawkins of the Coast Guard had this to say…”

  The screen cut to an interview with a young officer, who said, “It’s really strange because we had a distress call for this boat just yesterday—they had a diver drown while he was inside the shipwreck.”

  “What kind of wreck had the divers found?” said the reporter.

  “World War II submarine.” The Ensign looked on the clipboard he was carrying. “It was called the U-5001. It’s the second Nazi sub ever found in the Chesapeake Bay waters and—”

  “Hey, Jason, we’re running out of napkins!” Nevah emerged from the kitchen with a half empty pack of them.

  “Wait!” he said, waving her off and looking up at the screen.

  “What?”

  “Ssshhh!” Jason glared at her, then back to the screen, where the segment played on with the reporter wrapping it up. Jason grabbed a pen and a waitress’s order pad. “What did they say the name was?”

  “—and local police are investigating the possibility there were two additional divers on the boat still missing. Thomas Chipiarelli, a firefighter from Baltimore City, and Dexter McCauley, the proprietor of an Annapolis dive shop. More on this tragic story as it develops, Allyson. This is Roger Powell, Fox News.”

  “What’s wrong?” said Nevah. True concern in her voice.

  “Nothing. Nothing’s wrong,” he said. “I…just wanted to hear that story, that’s all.”

  “Well, we’re going to need more napkins by tonight,” she said.

  “Okay, you can go up to BJ’s and get some,” said Jason, who was trying to collect his thoughts. There was something about that news story that nagged at him. He wasn’t sure he’d heard it right, but it sounded like that gu
y had said U-5001. If he’d heard her right. Could it be possible?

  “Okay if I leave now? While it’s slow?” said Nevah.

  “Sure, go ahead.” Jason said absently, then: “I need to stop back at the house. I’ll be back in a little while.”

  U-5001.

  The mention of the name struck deeply in him. Oh, man, he thought, are you kidding me?

  Ten minutes later, Jason pulled his Murano SUV up to the house on Foxshire Drive. Everything looked serene, and it was.

  Dad was probably finishing up the front nine by now—something he was doing with great regularity since Jason started to assume most of the duties down at the bar. Jason was happy to see the old guy have some time to enjoy himself after sending two kids to private schools and college. Richard Bruckner had become obsessed with turning in a card that broke 80 at least once before he died.

  His mother was in the backyard working on her gardens, which had become a hobby years ago, and now consumed her with constant weeding, pruning, and replanting. The lawn behind the house had long ago disappeared and the multi-tiered gardens looked like something out of an English village in the Cotswolds. As he passed through the gate on the side of the house, he saw his mother doing something to a bed of day lilies that already looked spectacular.

  “Hey, Mom, how’s it going?” She looked nowhere near her true age, never having needed to dye her strawberry blonde hair or torture herself with crash-diets. She’d lived an active, fulfilled life working at Manny’s, raising two kids, and lately becoming a horticultural expert.

  “Jase, what’re you doing over here? Is there something wrong?” She took off her gardening gloves with the little green dots all over the inside fingers.

  “No, not at all,” he said, smiling his best disarming smile. “I need to ask Opa something.”

  Mom looked at her watch. “Your grandfather’s taking a nap, I think.”

  Jason grinned, nodded. He loved the old man, and it was mutual. Opa Erich had long ago decided he loved Jason more than anyone in the world, and had made it his lifetime job to teach his grandson everything he knew about everything. And it had been a great ride. Some of Jason’s most favorite memories involved time spent with his grandfather—or as he’d preferred to be called—his “opa.”