The Girl at the Deep End of the Lake

by Sam Lee Jackson

  “How about because I jumped in the lake in the middle of the night and saved your ungrateful ass.”

  6

  The girl stared at me a moment, then took the hat and glasses off. I took several pictures, getting up and moving around to get different angles. I sat again and took a sip and said, “Thanks.”

  We sat in silence for a while, then I said, “You ready to tell us what this is all about?”

  She was taking small sips of the Dr. Pepper and staring out over the lake. I glanced at Romy.

  “We are just trying to help you,” Romy said.

  Tears sprang to the girl’s eyes. We sat in silence for a while longer. Sometimes it’s not what you say, it’s what you don’t say. She took the silence for much longer than I would have thought, then she said, “I ran away from home,” wiping her eyes. “Well, I didn’t really run away, I walked away. Nobody noticed anyway.”

  “Where did you run to?”

  “I went to the mall. I met Roland on Facebook and we met at the mall and I didn’t have to go back.”

  “You met just Roland?”

  “No, he has a lot of friends.”

  “What are their names?”

  She looked at me and the suspicion was back, “Why?”

  “If we are to help you, we need information. We don’t know what’s important or not. We’ll just ask questions and maybe something will come together that will help us help you.”

  She was quiet a moment. “There was Emily, she’s nice, and Juanita and Roberto, who was a complete jerk, and the one they called Dog and there was Petey and I don’t know, there were a bunch.”

  “But Roland was in charge?”

  She nodded.

  “What does Roland look like?”

  “He’s good looking. Got a lot of tats.”

  “What kind?”

  She shrugged, “I don’t know. All kinds. Got a cool looking eagle.”

  “A lot of other girls there?”

  “Yeah, I guess so.”

  “How did Roland get on your Facebook?”

  “I don’t know. He was just there one day.”

  “How old is Roland?”

  “I don’t know, older but really cool, you know.”

  “Does he have a last name?”

  She thought a minute. “I guess so, but I don’t think I ever heard it.”

  “Why would someone want to dump you in the lake?” Romy asked.

  She lowered her head and rubbed a forearm across her eyes. “I don’t know. I did everything they asked.”

  I finished my martini and looked at the empty glass. One martini is never enough. I fished out the olives and popped them into my mouth, then stood to fix another. I looked at Romy but she shook her head, holding up the glass, showing it only half empty. Or half full. As I fixed mine, I asked, “Just what was it they asked you to do?”

  Lucinda brought her knees up and hunched forward, hugging them. Her shoulders were boney and thin. She shrugged.

  “Whatever,” she said.

  “What did you eat dear, where did you sleep?” Romy asked.

  She looked up, almost proud now. “They have a whole warehouse. We all just stayed there.”

  “How many people?” I asked.

  She shrugged, “I don’t know, maybe twenty or thirty.”

  “What’s the name of the gang?”

  She looked at me, defiant again, “Who said it was a gang?”

  “Was Roland the leader of the gang?”

  “Everyone did what he said.”

  “And he protected you?”

  “He said I was his favorite. He said I was his good luck charm.”

  “Are they MS13?

  She seemed surprised. “How do you know about MS13?”

  “Were they MS13?”

  She shook her head. “They called themselves the Seventh Avenue Playboy Diablos, but some had MS13 tats.”

  “Roland have MS13 tats?”

  “Nah.”

  “So why would the Seventh Avenue Playboy Diablos dump you in the lake?”

  She shook her head violently.

  “They didn’t do it?” Romy asked.

  She shook her head again.

  “Then who did?”

  I could sense she was withdrawing.

  “Why don’t you tell us what you remember?”

  She was silent for a long moment. I didn’t think she would reply when she said, “We just spent the day hanging out, doing a little blow, playing the new Locust Invaders game someone had brought. Suddenly Petey came and got me and said Roland wanted me to go with him.” She shrugged, “I just thought it was for another date.”

  “Date?” Romy asked.

  “Nobody gets a free ride,” she said defiantly. “Sometimes I’d go on dates Roland set up. Sometimes I’d get a hundred, two hundred bucks.”

  “Did you go on a date, last night?”

  “No. It was kinda weird, Roland had Petey and Dog take me uptown, down by where the Diamondbacks play. They had me stand out on the corner. It was getting dark so I was supposed to stand under a street light. I thought it was so the John could see me but nobody ever came and finally Petey and Dog took me back.”

  “What happened then?”

  “Nothing. Roland was really pissed about something so I just stayed out of his way. Then later he came and made me shoot up. Said he wanted to party.”

  “Shoot up with what?”

  She shrugged again. She seemed to do a lot of that. “I don’t know. I don’t like it. I don’t like needles.”

  “But Roland wanted you too?”

  She nodded.

  “What happened then?”

  “I don’t remember. I guess I got really fucked up. Next thing I remember is waking up here on this boat.”

  “Who are your parents?” Romy asked.

  She shook her head violently, “No. No parents.”

  “They must be worried sick,” Romy said.

  “I’m not going back,” she snarled.

  Romy looked at me and I shrugged. “What is your last name?” I asked.

  She shook her head.

  I held up the camera. “You’ve been going on dates then you might have a rap sheet. I can take your picture downtown and show it to the police and maybe they can tell me who you are.”

  She shook her head again. “I have never been arrested.”

  “How long have you been with the Diablos?”

  She was looking away, across the water.

  “A year? Two years?”

  “I don’t know. Since early summer I guess.” She turned and looked at me accusingly, “You said you would get me cigarettes.”

  I looked at Romy and she was looking back, nothing showing on her face. I nodded.

  “Yes, I did. They are on the bow, on the round glass table. I didn’t know what kind you liked.”

  Lucinda bolted from her chair and went down the spiral staircase, two steps at a time.

  Romy was watching me. I shrugged, “I made a promise.”

  “And you always keep your promises?”

  “Better if you do than not.”

  “Lot of people don’t care.”

  “Yeah, I know.”

  “So what makes you different?”

  7

  I got up and walked over to the bow and looked down. Lucinda was on a chaise lounge holding the open pack, a cigarette in her lips.

  “These don’t light themselves,” she said looking up at me.

  I reached into my pocket and found the book of matches I had picked up at the marina store. I tossed them down and she deftly caught them and lit the cigarette. “Don’t take that inside,” I said.

  “These suck,” she said, holding up the cigarette package.

  “Don’t smoke them,” I said.

  She gave me the finger.

  “Articulate,” I said and went back to Romy. She was watching me. I sat down and took a sip of my drink.

  “What makes you different?” Romy repeated. />
  I could smell the cigarette smoke. I took a drink. “My parents split when I was seven. I learned that I could count on me, but not necessarily on other people.”

  “Sorry to hear that,” she said.

  “Nothing for you to be sorry about. It’s just that I found if I did what I said I was going to do, it was easier for me to count on me.” I looked out across the lake, “It’s going to be a beautiful sunset. Would you like to take a sunset cruise?”

  She laughed, “The Moneypenny is way too big to take out on a short cruise. Two or three days maybe.”

  I smiled and nodded. “No, I wasn’t thinking that. I’ve got a 20 foot Grumman sport deck runabout, wet docked over on the small boat pier. I keep it gassed up and ready. I could walk over and be back here in twenty minutes.”

  “That sounds lovely,” she beamed. She stood up, smoothing out the back of her shorts. “I had steaks laid out, but why don’t I make some sandwiches instead? We could have a picnic on your boat. Are sandwiches okay with you?”

  “Better than what I’d be making.”

  I followed her down the staircase. I had to go to the Tiger Lily to get the keys. “How about a sunset boat ride?” I asked Lucinda as I stepped off the Moneypenny.

  She just looked at me as she lit a new cigarette off the last one. I sure know how to charm them.

  It was a little longer than twenty minutes. When I pulled the green canvas cover off the boat I called Swoop, I found the Arizona dust had still worked its way onto the bench seats. I wet a towel I kept on board and wiped everything down. Ladies like things clean.

  I had named the boat Swoop in honor of my high school buddy, Rich. We were minority kids in a mostly black school and we both had our share of trouble at home. He had said one day that sometimes he just wanted to get up and swoop out of that place. Just “cut and run” as he put it. Rich died in Iraq. Same kind of thing that got him got my foot. When I bought the boat off the lot I knew her name.

  The girls were waiting on the bow when I rumbled up. I had rigged a six-foot aluminum pole with a line attached to the end and also attached to the starboard side of the boat so that I could reach out and snag an anchor cleat on another boat or the dock if I was by myself. I put the 120 horse Johnson outboard on idle and pulled up next to the Moneypenny. I flipped a mooring fender over to absorb the bumping of the two boats. Romy helped Lucinda into the boat, then handed down a wicker basket and a small Coleman cooler and two jackets. Then she stepped in herself. Lucinda was sporting that teenaged bored look that they master around age fourteen.

  Romy pushed off and I put her in gear. We chugged along in the no-wake zone until we reached the no-wake buoys, then I gently brought her up to speed. I’m of the opinion that it’s not good to jump an engine into high gear when it’s been sitting for a length of time. Let her warm up. I put her nose directly at the setting sun and soon we were cruising along at a respectable forty miles per hour. Forty on the water feels fast, especially if your boat only draws a foot of water. On plane, half of it was out of the water. Swoop was made of aluminum so the weight of the motor was the only thing keeping her from flying.

  Lucinda had moved to the bow and had her face into the wind, her hair trailing behind. I couldn’t see her face but I sensed she was enjoying it. I found a cove on the western side and swung about. I flicked on the depth finder and saw we were in twenty feet of water. I swung the anchor over the water and hit the release. When it hit bottom, I released a couple feet of slack so a breeze wouldn’t lift it up. The sun was hovering above the crest of the mountain, so both girls put on their jackets. Romy opened the cooler and offered me a Stella Artois. She offered the girl a Dr. Pepper but the girl shook her head. Romy unwrapped sandwiches and passed them around. The girl ate the center out of hers and threw the rest in the water. Romy tore off small pieces of hers and ate each piece with great care. I devoured mine. It was delicious.

  We all sat quietly, two of us concentrating on the food, the girl staring across the water at the distant marina. She shook out a cigarette.

  “Wait till we’re moving before you light that,” I said.

  “Why?”

  “Because I don’t want to smell it.”

  She sullenly stuck the cigarette in her lips but didn’t light it. It was quiet on the lake with the only moving boats off in the distance where we couldn’t hear them. The sun was setting behind the mountains that rose up on the western shore of the lake and the sky was turning saffron and magenta. Phoenix is famous for its Arizona sunsets but something tells me it is as much the dust and pollution as being the old west. After a while the shadow of the mountain reached us and I pulled the anchor, started the motor and slowly pulled us back into the sunshine. I cut the motor. Lucinda had her hand trailing in the water.

  “The water’s cold. Do you swim in this every morning?”

  “Every morning I can.”

  “You’re tougher than me,” Romy said.

  “I think you’re nuts,” the girl said. I sat in the gently rocking boat and watched the girl and waited for it. I wasn’t disappointed.

  “I’m cold, I want to go back.”

  I looked at Romy and again she gave her imperceptible shrug. I finished the beer and put the empty back in the cooler.

  “It was still a good idea,” Romy said.

  “I’m glad you thought so,” I said, starting the motor.

  It was dusk by the time I had dropped the girls off and returned Swoop to her slip. I covered her with the fitted canvas cover and walked back around to the Tiger Lily. Once aboard, I didn’t turn any lights on. I pulled out my old comfortable pea jacket and fixed a rock glass of scotch. I went out on the stern and sat and sipped the scotch and watched the last of the light leave the lake.

  The next morning the girl was gone.

  8

  I had finished my swim, fixed a small breakfast and was working up a sweat in the topside cockpit. I was replacing a moldy piece of teakwood with another piece I had shaped and sanded. A movement down the pier caught my eye and I turned to watch Romy coming toward me. She was wearing a sleeveless red blouse and a pair of faded blue shorts. She wore a scarf on her head and sported an oversized pair of sunglasses. Anyone else would have been incognito but it was unmistakably Romy.

  I moved to the front where she could see me.

  “The girl’s gone,” she said, peering up at me. Even with the sunglasses she shielded her eyes from the sun with her hand.

  “Gone gone, or just taking a walk?”

  “One of the kids at the store saw her on the payphone in the bar. Next time she looked, she was gone. I walked up to the parking lot but I couldn’t find her anywhere.”

  The store was a small general store where I had bought the cigarettes. It was attached to the restaurant and bar that accompanied the gas pumps and ski-doo rentals and all the other commercial endeavors that took advantage of the lake. On weekends it was packed and I’d enjoyed it more than once myself. The store was usually manned by high school kids. There was a frequent turnover.

  “Maybe she called her parents?” she added.

  I turned and wiped my face and hands with a shop towel then went down the aft ladder way. I stepped off onto the dock. “Not likely,” I said. “Not the way she was acting toward them yesterday. No, she probably called that Roland guy.”

  “After what he did?”

  “She doesn’t believe it. He’s cool. She’s his favorite.”

  “Favorite whore, maybe. He’s just using her. If she did call him, what’s to stop him from finishing the job this time?”

  “The question is, why did he dump her in the lake in the first place? The way she was talking she seemed pretty docile. Hang out, do some blow, turn a trick. Sounded like a money maker.” I shook my head, “No, I don’t get it.”

  She seemed close to tears, “So what do we do. Just forget about her?”

  “What do you want to do?”

  “Find her. Get her back to her parents.” She took off t
he glasses and looked at me, her eyes large and deep. “We have to find her.”

  I looked off over the lake a moment. “How about your husband. You said he’s connected. You think he could get a line on this Roland?”

  She made a sound that could have been a laugh. “You don’t know what you are saying. Frank is the hookup for multi-billion dollar drug dealers. Not street thugs. His clientele carry rolls of thousand dollar bills in their pants pocket. They don’t cook bath salts and stick needles in their toes. And I told you, he’s my husband in name only. Frank is a Catholic and the Pope won’t let him consider a divorce.”

  The breeze was coming up and the Tiger Lily was gently nudging the dock. I looked out across the lake. There was an armada of sailboats, the sails looking like giant white wings. The breeze blew her hair across her face and she brushed it back.

  “What makes you think I can do something?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “Maybe it’s because you went into the lake in the middle of the night without hesitation. Maybe it’s because you are the only one here. Maybe it’s because I’ve been the helpless little rich woman my whole life and I don’t have a clue as to what to do.”

  I looked at her looking at me, a twinge of anger in her eyes, then I turned and looked across the lake. It seemed like a long shot. Even if I managed to find the girl, what then? Maybe she didn’t want to be found. In fact, I’d bet on it. Since I had moved onto the boat, the lake was the only thing I knew. Or wanted to know. I had been determined to drop out of the world. The moment I lost the foot I was out and alone. All the skills I had honed in the previous years were worthless in the world. Find the girl? I wasn’t sure where to even start.

  But I had to admit I had been getting a little bored lately.

  “The two foes of human happiness are pain and boredom,” I said finally.

  “What?”

  “Schopenhauer.”

  “What?”

  I shook my head, “Okay, let me see what I can do,” I said. “I can go downtown and check to see if she was lying about never having been arrested and I can check missing persons. Maybe her parents are more concerned than she thinks.”

  She handed me a slip of paper. “This is my phone number.” She had her cell phone in her hand. “Give me yours so we can stay in touch.”