Читать книгу Blackwater Sound - James Hall - Страница 12

‘I thought we were going fishing,’ said Lawton Collins.

‘Soon as we’re done here, Lawton. Another minute or two.’ Arnold gave him a pat on his bare knee.

They sat side by side in the high-backed leather booth, Lawton Collins and Arnold Peretti. Both of them seventy-two years old. Longtime buddies.

Lawton had on his yellow Bermudas with a blue sleeveless T-shirt, nicely weathered by paint specks from projects over the years. His daughter, Alex, said that outfit made him look like a trailer park derelict and tried to dress him better. But the clothes were comfortable and they reminded him of things from the past. Things he couldn’t name, but he could still sense them when he put on those clothes. So he wore them as often as Alexandra would allow.

Lawton Collins held the box on his lap like Arnold had told him. Everybody at the table was aware of it, like the thing was glowing. Lawton didn’t know what was inside it, but it was as heavy as a goddamn box of rocks.

Across the booth from them were a couple in their late twenties, early thirties, Charlie and Brandy. Good-looking young folks. Especially the girl. Charlie had a two-day beard, the shadow of dark bristles covering his cheeks.

The four of them had been sitting there quietly since the food arrived. Waiting for somebody to break the ice.

So Lawton said, ‘You know what Harry Houdini’s real name was?’

The two young people stared at him.

‘It was Erik Weisz,’ Lawton told them. ‘Houdini’s family came from Hungary. He did his first trick at six years of age. Made a dried pea appear in any one of three overturned cups.’

The young man gave Lawton a careful look.

‘What’s wrong with this guy?’ Charlie said.

‘Nothing’s wrong with him. He’s getting old. Same as me.’

‘What’s this shit about Houdini?’

‘I like Houdini,’ Lawton said.

‘He likes Houdini,’ Arnold said. ‘So there.’

Lawton smiled at the young woman. Brandy was her name. She had a large smile and even larger breasts.

‘Me and Arnold go way back,’ Lawton said. ‘In the old days I used to bust him about twice a year. Didn’t I, Arnold?’

‘Like clockwork,’ Arnold said.

‘You’re kidding me. This guy’s a cop?’

‘Used to be,’ said Arnold. ‘A good one, too.’

‘Yes, sir, I was a cop and now I’ve got a daughter in law enforcement. She’s a photographer for the City of Miami Police Department. Crime scenes, corpses, bullet wounds, blood spatters, gore. You name it, she snaps it.’

Charlie frowned.

‘I don’t like this, Peretti. Some fruitcake listening in.’

‘Hey,’ Lawton said. ‘I may be retired, but I still got full arrest powers.’

‘Yeah, right,’ Charlie said. ‘Cardiac arrest.’

Brandy giggled, then caught herself and tried to look serious.

‘Look, Charlie, not that it’s any of your business,’ Arnold said, ‘but after we’re done here, me and Lawton are going fishing. I’m looking after him today.’

Charlie closed his mouth and shook his head. The shit he had to endure.

‘I think he’s cute,’ the girl said. ‘You hear, Lawton? I think you’re cute.’

Lawton let go of the box and extended his left hand across the narrow table and cupped the girl’s right breast, lightly feeling its contour. Lawton knew how to touch a woman. He’d never been rough, even when he was young and full of fever. Her breast was round as a honeydew and just as solid.

‘Hey!’ Charlie said. ‘Watch it, asshole!’

Brandy drew back carefully, easing out of Lawton’s grasp. She flattened herself against the leather seat, trying to keep her smile together.

Charlie Harrison leaned halfway across the table.

‘Touch her again, old man, you’re dead meat. You hear me?’

‘Relax,’ Arnold said. ‘He’s confused, that’s all. He makes mistakes.’

‘I’m cracked,’ Lawton said. ‘That’s what they say. Loopy doopy. There’s a name for it, but I forget.’

‘Jesus,’ Charlie said. ‘You okay, Brandy?’

‘I’m fine, I’m fine. Leave him alone, Charlie. He’s okay.’

‘Cracked,’ Lawton said. ‘But still full of beans.’

Everyone was quiet for a minute, eyes wandering the room, trying to put the moment behind them.

Truth was, even in his heyday, Lawton Collins’s brain had never been what you’d call razor sharp. For one thing, he’d always been lousy with time stuff. Most of his life, you could ask him the day of the week, he’d have to puzzle on it a while. Season of the year was the same thing. But that was partly Miami’s fault. Anywhere else in the world, somebody asked you what month it was, you looked out the window, you could tell. Leaves turning gold, snow on the ground, jonquils blooming. But in Miami, windows were useless. January looked exactly like June and August was the same as November.

Back in his police days, faces were Lawton’s strength. Faces and the names attached to them. But that other stuff, time and dates, chronologies, what happened when, he was never good with that. Like he’d gotten a head start on old age. So when all the rest of the stuff started evaporating in his head, like the fizz going out of a soft drink, it took Lawton and everybody else, even his daughter Alexandra, a good while to notice anything strange was happening.

Right then it was lunchtime, Wednesday. Easter coming up. Beyond the curtained windows the sky was full of juicy spring light, while the interior of Neon Leon’s Riverside Café was as murky as an underwater cave, most of the light coming from one big-screen TV that was tuned in to a pro wrestling match.

Charlie had another tug on his beer, wiped his mouth, and fixed his glare on the box in Lawton’s lap like he was cranking up his X-ray vision.

‘So that’s it?’ Charlie said. ‘You got it.’

‘Like I promised,’ Arnold said. ‘My word’s my bond.’

‘So what do you want from me, Arnold? Credit report? Take a polygraph, what?’

Arnold said nothing. Just eyed the young man in that leisurely way he had.

The boy was wearing khaki slacks and a blue button-down. A long way from the scruffy crowd around the rest of the bar. Tattoos and pierced eyelids everywhere you looked. Ratty T-shirts and torn jeans.

Brandy was silent, smiling nervously at Lawton. Brandy had on a shapeless shirt of pale green and baggy jeans. But the clothes didn’t conceal her. Already several of the guys at the bar had quit watching the wrestling match, swiveling their stools around to give Brandy their total attention.

‘Always in a hurry, this generation. Can’t wait to get to the end of the story, find out what happened. Lost the ability to savor. Isn’t that right, Lawton? Not like us old guys, sitting back, swishing the wine around in our mouths before we swallow it, enjoying every tick of the clock.’

‘True,’ Lawton said. ‘But I gotta say, this young lady certainly has nice bosoms. Firm and round. They’ll come in very handy for suckling her young.’

‘All right, that’s it,’ Harrison said. ‘Come on, Brandy, we’re out of here.’

Arnold reached out and thumped his knuckles on the manila envelope.

‘Keep your ass planted right there, Charlie. You’ll get what you want, but first I got to get what I want. Quid pro quo. You know your Latin, right?’

Charlie stared down at the baskets of fried food that sat in front of him and resettled himself in his seat.

For thirty years Arnold and Lawton had been friends and in all that time Arnold hadn’t changed a bit. Still master of ceremonies wherever he went. For five decades he’d run a sports book out of his condo up in Hallandale. Anybody that was anybody in South Florida knew Peretti.

Seventy-two and still commanded respect. Didn’t matter he was silver-haired with a short, stocky build. Didn’t matter he dressed like a dork. Like today in his lemon-yellow shirt, black shorts, and sandals with white knee-high socks. Big square glasses with gold frames. Behind the thick lenses his eyes were watery and dark. Everywhere he and Lawton went, people knew Arnold. The right people. They were always happy to see him, slapping him on the back, buying him drinks, lighting his cigars.

‘I think it’s me,’ Brandy said. ‘I think I’m the problem, Charlie. Your friend doesn’t want to do business with a woman present.’

Arnold glanced her way, then looked at Lawton, gave him a small, disappointed shake of the head.

‘What’re you going to do with this generation? Never had a decent war or a good Depression to give them any depth of character. Minute they were born, they thought they were entitled to the first-class seat without doing a damn thing to earn it.’

Brandy scooted to the edge of the booth.

‘Would you gentlemen excuse me? This lady needs a potty break.’

She stood up and ambled across the room, with Arnold and the gang at the bar following her movements reverently. As she passed by the last stool and turned into the murky back room, a rack of pool balls exploded.

‘Nice girl,’ Peretti said. ‘At least we know that much about you, Charlie. You got good taste in broads.’

Someone cheered at the bar, and Lawton turned in time to see a big guy on the TV with long hair and a beard toss a guy who looked just like him over the ropes into the first row of the crowd. A murmur passed along the bar. A couple of guys talking on cell phones pulled them away from their ears to watch.

‘I can’t tell which ones are the bad guys,’ Lawton said. ‘Used to be, you could tell.’

‘They’re all bad these days,’ Arnold said. ‘That’s what sells.’

‘Bad against bad? Where’s the fun in that?’

Out on the river a Haitian freighter piled high with mattresses and bicycles moved slowly downstream. Along the dock Arnold Peretti’s big Bertram bumped lightly against the pilings in the swell of the freighter’s wake.

Arnold selected a fried shrimp, dunked it in the cocktail sauce, sucked it down. He patted his lips with the napkin and smiled at Charlie.

‘Look, kid, I like to have a feel for the people I’m doing business with. Especially a thing like this, the likely repercussions.’

‘I’m an average guy. Let’s just leave it at that.’

Arnold settled a sharp look on Charlie. He tapped the manila envelope.

‘When you write this exposé, you’re going to piss some people off. You ready for that, Mr Average Guy? You ready to go into hiding for a while?’

Charlie pushed his Heineken aside. His eyes settled on the envelope.

‘Don’t worry, kid. It’s all there. Everything I promised. Blueprints, schematics, the whole deal.’

Charlie swallowed.

‘How’d you get hold of it, Arnold? Tell me that.’

‘Not to worry, kid. It came into my possession, now it’s about to pass into yours. And this thing, it’s a prototype. You know, a scale model. I don’t know if the goddamn thing even works, but there it is.’

‘It seems damn small for what it’s supposed to do,’ Charlie said.

‘Like I told you, all I know is what I overheard. Sounds to me like it’s a contraband weapon. Somebody’s doing a little arms dealing on the side. I thought somebody with some investigative training should look into it, expose the bastards.’

Arnold helped himself to another onion ring.

‘I need to know if you stole this stuff, Arnold.’

‘What? You think they said, Hey, Arnold, why don’t you take this thing out for a test drive? Damn right I stole it.’

‘So my article would be based on information acquired illegally.’

Arnold waved the thought away with his big paw.

‘Tell me something, Charlie. All this time I been talking to you, not once have you asked me why I’m exposing this guy.’

Charlie closed his eyes and opened them again, like Peretti was trying his patience.

‘All right, Arnold. So tell me. Why’re you exposing him?’

Arnold smiled. Showed his big teeth.

‘Long and short of it, I want to save his ass, set him back on the right course.’

‘Save him?’

‘Yeah,’ Arnold said. ‘I’ve known him a long time. There’s a loyalty factor at work. But I still got to expose him. For his own damn good.’

Arnold swiveled his head and stared at his smoky reflection in the mirror.

‘Why not go to the cops, the FBI?’

‘Like I got such a good working relationship with the law enforcement community. They’re going to jump up and salute when I walk in the door.’

Charlie picked up a limp onion ring, inspected it for a second, then let it drop back in the basket.

Arnold said, ‘Next thing you should’ve asked me but didn’t is, how come I chose you. Why the hell didn’t I call up the New York Times, Washington Post? Shit, anybody would kill to get this story.’ Arnold took off his glasses, wiped his eyes, put them back on.

‘You like how I write.’

‘Fuck, no. What do I know about writing?’

‘So why?’

‘’Cause of that Sugar Bowl, ten years ago. Way you played that night.’

‘Aw, Christ.’

With a corner of his paper napkin Arnold blotted the catsup from his lips.

‘Yeah, I know,’ Arnold said. ‘People bring it up all the time, you’re sick of hearing it. But that’s the truth. I remember that game fondly. Then like I say, one of my people showed me your byline in that piece-of-shit paper you write for, what’s it called?’

‘The Miami Weekly.’

‘Yeah, yeah. But it was basically the Sugar Bowl. Jesus, that was a classic. Smallest guy on the field, but every fucking play, there you were batting down a pass, squirting through the line with all those corn-fed linemen trying to crush your ass. Man, it hurts my ribs just thinking about it.’

‘So you called me up. And here we are.’

Arnold selected another onion ring, held it in front of his lips and said, ‘So let’s hear what you know about him, kid. Tell me.’

‘Oh, come on. A pop quiz?’

‘I need to know if I’m talking to a schmuck or what.’

Charlie Harrison shook his head, closed his eyes again. Lawton had to hold himself back from reaching over and smacking a little common courtesy into him. The young man leaned back in the booth, got a bored sound in his voice.

‘He lives in Palm Beach, runs MicroDyne Corporation. Used to manufacture computer hardware, silicon chips, all that shit. But six, seven years ago they were losing their asses to the California heavyweights, profits slipping, so his sexy daughter drops out of MIT, swoops in and saves the day.’

‘Sexy?’ Arnold said.

The kid rolled his eyes.

‘Yeah, Arnold. How you think she got on the cover of Forbes, Fortune?’

‘By being smart.’

‘There’s lots of smart girls. Except most of them have thick ankles and thicker glasses. Morgan Braswell’s a babe. Photogenic as hell. Don’t tell me you haven’t noticed.’

‘She didn’t save the company with her looks.’

‘She comes swishing into a room full of five-star generals, I bet she makes an impression.’

‘She’s a smart girl. It’s not about her appearance.’

‘Hey, Arnold. You want to know if I’ve done my homework. Well, okay. The fact is, yeah, I’ve invested some time in this already. One thing I found out, MicroDyne doesn’t actually manufacture anything. What they do is coat stuff with some hot-shit enamel or metallic powder or something. It’s all classified. Some kind of glaze that goes onto the chips and microcircuitry modules that run the telemetry systems and onboard computers for military weapons and fighter jets. All that hardware comes in the front door, they zap it with their coating and send it back to McDonnell Douglas or whoever, and those other guys build the planes and missiles.’

‘And that’s what you know. The sum total.’

Charlie frowned. He reached into his shirt pocket, came out with a little notebook, and flipped through the pages until he found the one he wanted.

‘F-22 Raptor, the Bell V-22 Osprey helicopter, AIM-120 C missile guidance systems. The ALQ-99 jammer carried by the F/A-18F Super Hornet, and the Sanders situation awareness integrated system that regulates all deception countermeasures for the Hornet, the expendable decoys and signal and frequency emission systems. Those are a few of the systems coated with this shit.’

He flipped the notebook closed and put it back in his shirt pocket.

‘Satisfied, Arnold? Do I get an A?’

Arnold was staring down at his thick hands spread out on the tabletop.

‘That’s good, Charlie. That’s good stuff. Very specific.’

‘I’m pleased you’re pleased.’

‘But you still got some more digging to do.’

‘I’m aware of that. I just got started.’

‘You study up on the rest of the family?’

Charlie sighed.

‘Braswell’s wife was a suicide, ten, eleven years ago. That what you mean? Went into a funk after her son died and jumped off a chair with a rope around her neck. Not very creative.’

Arnold swallowed and looked across at the television.

‘So you know the story about the son, Andy Braswell, how he died.’

‘A fucking marlin ate him, that’s what I read.’

Arnold turned his head and looked at the kid.

‘It didn’t eat him,’ he said. ‘It drowned him.’

‘Okay, okay. So, what’s your point, Arnold? You think all this personal bullshit goes into the piece? What? Like Braswell’s son dies, that’s supposed to excuse the bad shit he’s gotten into?’

Arnold popped the onion ring into his mouth, then reached out and thumped a solid finger on Charlie’s forearm, munching while he spoke.

‘Braswell’s a decent guy. He got derailed from all the suffering he’s been through. I think that’s the slant you take.’

‘I’ll figure out my own goddamn slant.’

Charlie put his elbows on the table and leaned forward.

‘What is it, Arnold? You change your mind? Decide you don’t want to do business with me? All right, fine. So just take your goddamn envelope and your prototype and slither back under your rock. I got other stories. But don’t jerk me around.’

Arnold topped up his beer mug from the pitcher, then leaned forward quickly to suck away the overflowing foam.

Eyes on the wrestling match, Arnold said, ‘That was some kind of fucking night, that Sugar Bowl. Unassisted tackle record still on the books. You were golden, kid. You were ten feet tall and you fucking glowed.’

‘We lost the game, that’s what I remember.’

‘Yeah, yeah,’ Arnold said. ‘But you gotta keep in mind, kid, like they say, it’s not whether you win or lose, it’s whether you cover the spread. And you did, Charlie. You covered it just fine.’

‘I made you some money.’

‘You made me a shitload, Charlie. But that’s not why I’m here. Reason I’m here is ’cause I like guys with grit, tenacious little pricks like you.’

‘Thanks.’

‘I like ’em, mainly ’cause I can trust ’em not to give up their sources. I got a feeling about you, Charlie. A guy puts a gun to your head, you’re not going to let somebody’s name slip out. That’s real important to me, to stay the hell out of this thing.’

‘Okay, I’m a tenacious little prick. I don’t give up my sources. Yeah, you picked the right guy.’

‘Because what I haven’t told you yet, Charlie, I’m a member of the family.’

‘What? The Braswells?’

‘A.J. married my daughter. Her name was Darlene. She’s the one jumped off the chair with the rope around her neck. Not very creative.’

‘Hey, I’m sorry. I didn’t realize.’

‘Well, now you do.’

‘You’re Braswell’s father-in-law?’

Arnold nodded solemnly.

‘I got an interest in this turning out right, Charlie. I want this exposed, but I don’t want you disemboweling these people. Is that clear?’

Charlie searched Arnold’s eyes for a moment or two, then nodded. It was clear. He didn’t much like it, but yeah, it was clear.

Brandy reappeared, crossing the room through the gauntlet of hungry eyes, and she eased back into her seat.

‘I miss anything?’

Lawton leaned forward, inhaling deeply.

‘Nice perfume,’ he said.

‘Thanks.’

‘Like fresh-cut clover with a rainstorm approaching.’

Lawton sat back, basking in Brandy’s smile.

Charlie Harrison grumbled and pushed his beer bottle out of the way and stared at Arnold.

‘All right, Arnold. You gonna give me this or what?’

Arnold took one more look at the young man, then nudged the envelope across the table. Charlie peeled back the tabs and pulled out the papers and started glancing through them.

‘So how you gonna make out on the story, Charlie?’ Peretti gave Brandy a wink. ‘Gonna be a good payday, I bet.’

Harrison was studying the blueprint.

‘Just my regular salary.’ Mumbling, not even looking up.

‘Charlie doesn’t care about money,’ Brandy said. ‘It’s one of his virtues.’

‘Whoa!’ Arnold peered at the boy. ‘Say that again.’

Charlie glanced up from the page. Gave Arnold a cute smile.

‘I get a weekly wage, Arnold. That’s how it works in the real world.’

‘You telling me you’re just going to give the story to this Miami Weekly?’

‘That’s right.’

‘What’re you, crazy? Only reason anybody looks at that pissant rag is for those sleazy personal ads. Bunch of perverts trying to find each other.’

‘That pissant rag has been buying my groceries the last five years.’

‘What about Time, Newsweek, one of those big guys? This isn’t some little local story. It’s national. Bigger than that, even. You take this story, peddle it to one of the big guys, I bet they’d pay you more than your biweekly salary. Ten thousand, fifteen at least.’

‘Twenty-five,’ Brandy said.

Arnold blinked, then swiveled his head slowly and peered at her.

‘I have a friend.’ Brandy smiled at Charlie. ‘Her name’s Julie Jamison, she’s an editor at Rolling Stone.’

‘You didn’t,’ Charlie said. He let the blueprint flutter to the table.

Brandy closed her eyes and opened them, trying to be patient with him.

‘I was very discreet. I told Julie about the story and she thought about it and called me back to say they’d probably do it as a three-parter, pay fifteen up front and ten more when the last section was printed.’

‘Jesus Christ,’ Arnold said. ‘When’d you do this?’

‘A couple of days ago. Why?’

‘When?’ Arnold said. ‘What day?’

‘I don’t know, Monday, Tuesday. Hey, it’s a big story. You said so yourself, Arnold, it should have major circulation. Charlie should get some financial benefit from it. A career boost.’

Arnold took off his glasses, rubbed his eyes. Then he put them back on and peered around the bar as if these men had suddenly become dangerous.

Lawton shifted in his seat. He lifted the lid of the box and looked inside, then dropped the lid back into place.

‘Can I press it now, Arnold?’ he asked. ‘Can I press the button?’

‘No, Lawton. Just sit there, okay? Let me think.’

‘Christ, Arnold,’ Charlie said. ‘Don’t get paranoid on me. Relax, everything’s cool.’

Arnold leaned forward against the table, raised his hand and flagged their waitress, flicked his hand for the check. Then he looked across at Charlie and lowered his voice. ‘Is that what you think? It’s cool?’

‘Julie won’t mention it to anyone,’ Brandy said. ‘I told her to keep it on the q.t. The secret’s safe, Arnold.’

Lawton opened the lid of the box and peeked down at the contraption inside. It was a wild tangle of wires and a stack of circuit boards connected to several cylinders filled with blue fluid. The contraption reminded him of something. He wasn’t sure what.

‘The q.t., huh? This Julie, she’s real tight-lipped, is she? Like maybe she got that figure, twenty-five thousand, it just came out of her head? She didn’t have to go to her boss, run it by anybody else. She’s not sitting around right now with the magazine’s lawyers, discussing the possible libel case? Maybe calling up Braswell, trying to confirm a few items of interest. Nothing like that.’

Charlie leaned forward and laid a hand on Peretti’s.

‘Tranquilo, Arnold.’

Arnold jerked his hand away.

Lawton was staring down at the device. There was a blue button and a green one beside it. On one side of the contraption there was a small cone like a megaphone, or the speaker on an old Victrola, and behind the cone a bird’s nest of wires, and those tubes connected to the circuit boards.

Lawton remembered what it reminded him of. The microwave oven he’d taken apart, trying to repair. There on his workbench in the garage, all those circuit boards and wires and transistors. He had no idea what any of it was. Never even got the thing put back together.

Lawton snuck his right hand into the box and pressed the blue button but nothing happened.

Beside him Arnold was staring out the window muttering to himself. Lawton tried pressing the green button and still nothing.

‘Look,’ Brandy said. ‘I don’t know why you’re getting worked up. Julie’s professional. They do big stories all the time without leaking anything.’

She pouted at Arnold. Then turned the pout on Charlie.

Lawton could feel the box humming on his lap. It hadn’t been humming before. So at least he’d gotten it started. Revving a little. Maybe what he should do now, he should press both buttons at once.

‘How about my name?’ Arnold said. ‘You happen to let that slip?’

Brandy pressed her lips together, fluttering her lashes. It was probably how she’d gotten out of trouble in the past. But it wasn’t working with Arnold.

‘You did, didn’t you? You told them my fucking name.’

Brandy gave a guilty nod.

‘Jesus God,’ Arnold said. ‘You fucking idiots.’

Lawton slid his hand inside the box and pressed both buttons at once. The hum deepened. It sounded like a tuning fork held close to the ear. Lawton could feel his knee joints buzzing.

Across the room the television made a pop and went black.

At the bar, the two men with cell phones jerked them away from their ears. One man tapped his phone against his palm, then pressed it against his ear again. He shrugged and set the thing on the bar. The bartender was fiddling with the remote, trying to get the TV on again. The Christmas lights twinkling along the top shelf of liquor bottles had gone out.

Arnold grabbed Lawton’s wrist and pulled his hand out of the box.

‘Aw, shit, Lawton, what’d you do?’

‘Nothing.’

Arnold looked across the room at the dead television.

Then he snatched the blueprint off the table and slid it into the envelope. He prodded Lawton with his knee and the old man slid out of the booth, and Arnold got out after him.

‘Wait a minute,’ the kid said. ‘Let’s talk about this like adults. Nothing’s changed. Not really.’

‘The fuck it hasn’t.’

Brandy was looking at the blank television.

‘That’s what it does? It turns off televisions?’

Arnold stood there a moment staring at the two of them.

‘Peretti, you’re overreacting, man.’

Arnold headed for the door. Lawton padded behind him, lugging the box.

Outside in the daylight, Arnold halted and took the box out of Lawton’s hands. Overhead a jetliner was roaring into a thin spray of clouds, lifting off, heading east out toward the Atlantic.

Lawton said, ‘So what is this thing, some kind of ray gun?’

Arnold looked at him for a second or two.

‘Yeah, I guess that’s what it is. Yeah, a ray gun.’

‘What’s the range on this baby?’

‘Now that’s the question, isn’t it? That’s the million-dollar question.’

Lawton glanced up at the rumbling sky, then back at his friend.

‘All right,’ Arnold said. ‘Come on, old buddy. I need to get you home.’

‘You said we were going fishing.’

‘Plans’ve changed,’ Arnold said. ‘You and I, we’re going to have to keep our heads down for a while, Lawton. Not have any contact.’

Lawton followed Arnold over to the Bertram. Printed in gold letters across the stern was the boat’s name: You Bet Your Ass.

Arnold climbed aboard and Lawton loosened the lines from the dock cleats and tossed them over the rail to Arnold. Arnold grabbed them and let them fall at his feet. He didn’t coil them like he usually did. He just let them lie there, in a mad tangle on the deck.