Benchley, Peter (27 page)

off a cliff. Any of us might. Better we all know where things are.”

They went up into the house. “Might’s well have a bite to eat,” Treece said as he pushed the chair over the brass ring in the floor. “This is going to be a long day.”

They reached the reef at eleven o’clock in the morning.

It was a clear, calm day, with an offshore breeze barely strong enough to keep the boat off the rocks.

They could see twenty or thirty people, in twos and threes, on the Orange Grove beach, and a mother playing with her child in the wave wash.

While Treece set the anchor, Sanders found a pair of binoculars and focused them on the patch of sand where he had found Coffin’s body. “They’ve raked it clean; you can see marks.”

“Aye. Don’t want to leave anything that might upset the tourists. Hundred a day doesn’t include a corpse on the beach.”

Gail grimaced at the coarse, matter-of-fact dismissal of Coffin. She started to speak, but Treece, anticipating her, cut her off.

“A man dies, girl, he isn’t any

more, least not down here. Respect and all that crap doesn’t serve the dead; it just makes the living feel better. The dead one, maybe he is

somewhere else-maybe all he needs to be somewhere else is to believe he will be somewhere else. I won’t deny a man his belief, and I don’t know any more’n you about souls and all that stuff. But I know this: Speaking good or bad about something that isn’t any more is a bloody

waste of time. I can’t feature Saint Peter sitting up there saying; ‘Hey, Adam, there’s folks bad-mouthing you down there. What’d you do to merit that?”’ his

Gail did not respond. She waited a moment, then said, “I can dive today.”

“No. Stay here. There won’t be much lugging. If we get all’s down there, it won’t be more’n a bag or two. And I want someone on the boat, today specially.”

“Why?”

“Because I think we might have a little excitement today.”

Treece checked the shotgun. “Just be sure you remember how to use this and how to shut off the compressor. If nothing happens, the least you’ll get is a royal fine suntan.” He started the compressor.

Treece and Sanders returned to the cove in the reef where they had found the pine cone. The tide carried the sand from the air lift away to the right, so they had a clear view of the bottom.

For the first few minutes, they found nothing but single ampules, ten in all. Sanders reached to take them from the hole, but Treece waved him off and let the ampules rattle up the aluminum tube. One shattered, and a small billow of pale liquid puffed from the end of the tube. Treece dug deeper, inching closer to the reef.

There was a change in the way the sand moved under the air lift’s suction. Instead of coming away smoothly in an unbroken pattern, now it moved in a rough V, as if it were surrounding something. Treece cupped his left hand over the mouth of the tube, cutting off its suction, and gestured with his hand for Sanders to dig in the hole.

Sanders rubbed the center of the V with his fingers and felt something hard. He brushed sand away and saw gold.

It was a rose, about three inches high and three inches wide, and each of its golden petals had been finely etched with a jeweler’s tool.

Sanders picked it from the sand, held it by the delicate stem for Treece to see, then put it in a canvas bag.

Treece nosed the air lift against the base of the reef. Lying on his stomach a foot from the mouth of the tube, Sanders saw more gold under a rock overhang. He tapped the air lift, and Treece backed off. Sanders reached under the rock, his fingers closed on the gold and pulled. It moved, but it felt heavy, as if it were attached to something. When his hand was clear of the reef, Sanders looked at his palm and saw a gold chameleon with emerald eyes. The chameleon’s mouth was open, and there was an opening near the tail. From the chameleon’s belly protruded a sharp, finlike spike of gold. Two strands of gold chain led from a ring on the animal’s back down into the reef. Sanders tugged at the chain, and, slowly, it came from the reef-ten feet of it, spilling in coils beneath Sanders’ face.

Treece took the chameleon from Sanders and held it to his mask. He pursed his lips and mimed blowing inside his mask at the chameleon’s head, telling Sanders that the figurine served as a whistle. Then he turned the animal on its back, curled his lip, and jabbed the spike toward his teeth: the spike was a toothpick.

They had been down for nearly five hours and had collected four gold rings (one with a large emerald); two huge almond-shaped pearls joined by a gold plate etched with the letters “E.f.” on one side, a Latin inscription on

the other; a belt of thick gold links; and two pearl-drop earrings. Then Treece spotted the first gold rope. It was deep in the reef, almost invisible except when shafts of sunlight caught the woven strands of gold and the tiny pearls held in place by the intricate weaving. Treece directed Sanders to reach for the rope.

Sanders was bitterly cold. Despite his wet suit, the hours of immersion had sucked heat from his body, and by now he was shivering constantly. He obeyed Treece without thinking, without worrying that something alive might be in the hole. His trembling hand reached into the reef, fingers closed around the gold and pulled: the rope was stuck, wrapped around a rock, perhaps, or covered with stones. Sanders withdrew his hand and shook his head at Treece.

Treece raised his right index finger and pointed at Sanders, saying: Watch. He made punching gestures at the reef with the air lift, then cupped his hands and pointed at Sanders.

Sanders didn’t understand what Treece was saying.

He shook his head; a cold tremor ran up his back and made his head quiver. He could not concentrate on Treece’s gestures.

Treece pointed at the surface, set the air lift in the reef between two rocks, and started up.

Sanders grabbed the canvas bag and followed.

“That’s the one,” Treece said when they were aboard.

“There’s our bloody provenance.”

“I know.” Sanders unzipped his wet-suit jacket and rubbed the goose flesh on his chest.

“We’ll have a rest and let you warm up a bit; then we’ll

go get her.” He looked at the sun, then at Gail. “Coming up on five o’clock. Any trouble?”

“No. I’m frying, that’s all.”

Sanders said, “What were you trying to tell me down there?”

“We’ll have to break up the reef to get at the rope. I’ll bang the gun against the coral, and as pieces break off, you take “em and set ‘em aside. Don’t want ‘em to fall into the hole.”

He walked toward the cabin. “Get you a pry bar.

Gun’ll break up the coral all right, but it won’t move boulders.”

They rested for half an hour. Sanders lay on the cabin roof, warming in the lowering sun.

Ashore, the few remaining people on the beach straggled toward the elevator, which moved up and down in the shadows of the cliffs and flashed as it rose into the sunlight.

“Let’s go,” Treece said. He touched Gail’s shoulder with a finger, and a circle of white appeared in her pink-brown skin and faded away. “Stay out of the sun. It’ll burn you, even this late in the day.”

“I will.”

“Go below and stretch out if you like. Charlotte’Us raise a din if anyone snoops around.”

The men went overboard-Treece with a canvas bag, Sanders with a crowbar. Gail watched until she could no longer see their bubbles, then went below.

The work on the reef was slow and, because of the diminishing light, difficult: every time Treece rammed the nose of the air lift into the coral, a cloud of fine coral dust would rise from the broken piece; Sanders had to grope blindly to catch the coral before it fell out of reach into

the hole. The rope of gold was wrapped around the base of a large oval rock, most of it underneath the rock-as if it had fallen loosely into the reef and been forced, by centuries of wave and tide action, into every crevice and cranny around the rock.

Sanders had wanted to use the crowbar to tip the rock backward, but Treece stopped him, demonstrating with his hands the possible danger: the rope might have snaked around the back of the rock, too, and tipping it backward would crush the soft, fine gold strands beneath the sand.

It took them an hour to widen the hole three feet. Now Sanders could put his head and arms and shoulders into the hole and guide the mouth of the air lift along the gold rope, gently prying it free, inch by inch, as the sand was stripped from it. The pearls were set at three-inch intervals along the rope. Sanders counted the pearls already free-seventeen. If Treece’s research was correct, if there were thirty-eight pearls per rope, there were five more feet of gold rope yet to come.

The work became dreamy, unreal: encased in water, hearing nothing but the sound of one’s own breathing and the distant chug of the compressor relayed through the air hose, motionless save for the rote movement of fingertips-Sanders fantasized that he was doing multiplication tables in a cocoon.

Gail was sitting on one of the bunks, trying to concentrate on an article in an old yellowed newspaper, when she heard the dog bark. Then she heard an engine noise, drawing near, stopping.

Then more barks, then voices. She held her breath.

“She empty.”

“Seem so, ‘cept for the dog.”

“Hey, dog! How your ass?”

“Hush your mouth. Sound carry.”

“How carry? Down the water? Shit.”

The dog barked twice, growled.

A third voice, familiar. “Cut that yammering.

Rig up.”

Gail put a hand on the deck and crept off the bunk. Keeping her head below the starboard porthole, she crawled to the ladder. She stopped at the bottom of the ladder, hearing the beat of her pulse, breathing as quietly as possible through her mouth, thinking: If the other boat was abeam of Corsair,

she could crawl into the cockpit without being seen, keep her back to the bulkhead, stand up, and reach the shotgun. If the boat was astern, they’d see her the second she poked her head out of the cabin.

She listened to the sounds of equipment being readied: the clink of buckles, the hiss of valves opened and closed, the thud of tanks on the deck. The sounds seemed to be coming directly from the left, abeam, so Gail climbed the short ladder and flattened herself against the bulkhead. The shotgun lay on the shelf by the steering wheel, four or five feet away.

To reach it, her hand would have to pass in front of the window.

“How many loads you got for that thing?”

“This and two more.”

“You?”

“Same. Shit, man, only three down there, and one a splittail.”

“Just mind you don’t mess with the pink hose. We gon” need it.”

Now, Gail thought; they won’t be looking this way.

She extended her arm, leaned forward, and grabbed the butt of the shotgun. She lifted it off the shelf with no trouble, but, at arm’s length, it was heavier than she remembered: the barrel sank a few inches and struck the steering wheel.

“What that noise?”

“What noise?”

Gail clutched the shotgun to her middle, one hand around the trigger guard, the other on the pump slide.

“That

noise.”

“I don’t hear no noise.”

“Well, I do. Somethin’ on that boat.”

“Shit. Dog only thing on that boat.”

“Somethin’

inside

that boat.”

“You jumpy, man.”

“You go “head over. I gon” cuddle this boat up to that boat and have me a look.”

A laugh. “You be careful. That dog bite your ass.”

“I shoot that sucker with a spear gun.”

A splash, another, a few incoherent words, then silence.

Gail waited. She heard the sound of a paddle sweeping through the water, looked aft, and saw the shadow of the other boat drawing near.

She stepped around the bulkhead, the shotgun at her waist. The man was in the stern of the other boat, looking down at the water and paddling. She didn’t have to see his face; the angry red scar shone black against his dark chest: Slake.

“What do you want?”

Slake looked up.

In the brief glimpse Gail had of his face, she saw surprise, then glee. What followed seemed a single motion: he dropped the paddle, bent to the deck, righted himself. Something shiny in his hand. A twanging sound, tightened elastic released. A flash of metal. The thunk of a steel spear in the bulkhead six inches from her neck.

Then (she would not remember all of this) the click-clack

of the shotgun cocking. The roaring boom

of the twelve-gauge shell exploding. The sight of Slake, three yards away, as the nine pellets struck him in the sternum-a baseball-size hole, red ooze flecked with white-staggering backward across the cockpit, striking the windward gunwale, sagging, hands clutching at his chest. A gurgling rush of breath. Echo of the explosion across the still water. Eyes rolling up in his head. Skin color graying as the blood left the head. Slump to the deck.

The steady chug of the compressor.

Open-mouthed, she watched the twitching body. The slap of water against

Corsair’s

hull brought her out of shock. She put the shotgun on the deck, walked aft to the compressor, found the wing nut, and turned it. The motor sputtered and died.

Sanders freed the last two inches of gold rope.

He tapped the aluminum tube and saw it withdraw from the hole, gathered the rope in his right hand, and backed out onto the reef. The light was fading fast, but in the blue-gray mist he could still see Treece and the reflections off the air lift and the outline of the reef. Assuming that they would keep digging for more gold, Sanders opened his wet-suit jacket and stuffed the gold rope inside.

Sanders sensed a change in the sound patterns; something was missing. He exhaled, drew another breath, and realized what was missing: the compressor. He strained to fill his lungs one last time, looked at Treece, and saw a glint and a shadow falling toward him. The glint moved-a knife. Treece’s air hose stiffened, the glint slashed back and forth, and the air hose went limp. Treece turned

and raised his arms over his head.

Two men struggled in a twisting ball of shadows, a flurry of arms and hoses and bubbles, the shape of the knife falling to the bottom. Thrashing and kicking, the forms rose toward the surface.