Sand Dollars (2 page)

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Authors: Charles Knief

BOOK: Sand Dollars
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I knew the
Mahi.
I'd been inside her more than thirty times. I knew human nature and understood that at least once, for whatever reason, one of my charges would decide to go exploring.
George, one of the other divemasters, had a group of three gung ho college boys from Southern California, smart-ass know-it-alls who were too busy trying to impress each other to listen to instructions. Watching them prepare their equipment, I concluded that even though they had certification cards, they didn't know what they were doing. Had they been mine, I would have canceled their tickets, refunded their money, and let them live. Unhappy is better than dead. But George has six children at home and augments his navy chief's pay with divemaster fees and tips; he probably thought it over too many times and decided they would change their attitudes when they got into the water.
Once on the bottom, their cocky look-Ma-no-hands attitudes got worse. I watched them as hard as I watched my own group, who followed me like baby ducks follow their mama. The kids refused to follow George and, after a brief tour of the upper decks of the
Mahi
, produced lights and plunged into the hull.
I turned my charges over to George and went, knowing they would get into trouble.
They did. A black wall of silted water hovered bulkhead to bulkhead, just inside a hatchway, evidence of their incursion.
After tying my guideline onto the ship's ladder and yanking it tight, I crept forward into the silt, feeling blindly along the companionway to one of the ship's holds. I didn't bother with a light.
The first diver found me within the first twenty feet.
When I touched him, he turned and ripped off my face mask in his panic. I put a headlock on him and dragged him toward the hatch. When we emerged from the silt into clear water, he tried to bolt for the surface. I collared him again, this time applying intense and specific pressure against one of his nerve trigger points, an experience so urgently painful it got his full and immediate attention. He stopped struggling and got quiet, the way people do when experiencing great pain, and I released the pressure, still keeping my fingers close to the spot in case he needed reminding. I brought him to another divemaster and signaled that this one had to go up. When I was certain he would do as he was told, I put my mask back on, cleared it, and went back in.
The other two were together and it took me a long time to find them. When I did, in relatively clear water at the dead end of a large ventilation duct that branched out into smaller ducts that were impossible for a tanked diver to get into, they weren't as panicky as their friend, probably because they could see, but they were anxious. The cloud of silt lay beyond the last bend in the duct and they had realized their problem and stayed put.
I tied them onto the guideline and had them hang on to my weight belt. We inched slowly into the silt, our only path to the surface the thin guideline. It took some time, longer than it should have taken. Halfway there, or where I believed was halfway there, the computer beeped its alarm, an urgent sound, demanding our immediate departure for the surface. All divers know that sound. The hand on my belt pulled me backward as one of the kids tried to get past. I blocked his path. We struggled briefly and suddenly I was fighting two terrified young men, each trying wildly to move ahead of me in the tight confines of the old duct.
This was not what I was trained to do. Killing them would have been easy. My problem was keeping them alive in spite of themselves.
As we fought, I kept moving forward, following the line. My bulk, increased by my tank and other equipment, prevented
the boys from moving me out of the way. There just wasn't enough space. I used my fins to keep them back, roiling water at their faces.
The walls of the shaft opened into a bigger space. One of the youngsters slipped the line and eeled past me, kicking and gouging, an unseen, maniacal force. I got a hand on his gear, but he shook me loose. Then he was gone.
Some people seem determined, aimed at their own destruction like lemmings. There was nothing I could do for that one. I went back for the remaining diver, slowly feeling through the murky water, dependent entirely upon sense of touch, forcing my body to go through the motions and my mind to keep the terror down to manageable levels.
We found each other, outstretched fingers brushing in the dark.
Touch galvanized him. The kid's arms and legs climbed over me, punching me, kicking me, elbowing and kneeing me. It was like dancing with an octopus. I lost my mask. A knee to the jaw knocked my regulator loose. An elbow crashed against my temple. I saw stars.
I went for the pressure point I'd used on his companion but couldn't find it, the kid jumping around like he'd taken a big PCP hit, making it impossible to get my hands on him. I couldn't get him off me and I couldn't reach him. Every time I tried, he'd move away, out of reach.
I'd just exhaled when I lost my regulator and needed air. Fast. I couldn't see in the dark murky water, but black spots began appearing, overlaying the black in front of my eyes, and the roaring of blood in my ears got suddenly louder than the bubbles from our regulators.
We kept fighting and moving along the line and suddenly we were in a tightly enclosed space again. I grabbed the kid around his neck, cutting off blood supply to his brain. He went limp, stopped struggling, and for a moment I wondered if I'd killed him. I let up and he punched me, a weak and ineffective punch, but it made me smile.
Keeping his neck in the vise of my right arm, I reached behind me, feeling for one of the two regulators I use, found it,
and shoved it in my mouth before the black spots entirely covered my vision.
Joni Mitchell was right when she wrote about not missing something until it's gone.
I located the line and hauled on it. Still tight. I began dragging the kid along with me. It took longer that way. He'd become passive in my grip, but I didn't trust his judgment enough to let him loose.
We followed two more turns and the computer beeped again. We had one minute to get out of the
Mahi
and begin our ascent.
I towed the kid along until the black became lighter and suddenly we were out of the blackness and into the blue-gray amphitheater of the Pacific.
George and the other two divemasters hovered above, guardian angels, there to lead us home.
I signaled with two fingers and turned the kid over to one of the other instructors.
George shook his head, holding up one.
Gathering my line, I went back in and they took the kid to the
Mako.
He wasn't very far inside. I found him by accident, making the same wrong turn he had, just ten feet inside a dead end in an old service compartment. He'd cut his line to get free of me, but some of it dragged behind him, and I discovered it against the bulkhead and followed.
The young man had given up to his terror. I pulled on the rope and I felt something float toward me, bubbles erupting from a regulator, no fight left. Reaching out, I groped in the darkness until I grasped a hand that closed on mine. I squeezed and got no response other than the gentle pressure already there.
We went up together, rising slower than our bubbles, stopping at the forty-foot marker while I fed more information into the computer. We got lucky, just missing the painful hours in the hyperbaric chamber at the Barber's Point Coast Guard Station.
I checked his air. His tank was nearly depleted but I
judged we'd make it. I don't use much and had a reserve, but in his panic he had consumed more. We moved to the fifteen-foot bar hanging below the dive boat and held on to the white plastic pipe the way kids hold on to the crossbar on a roller coaster. I looked down and almost got vertigo, the water so clear I could pick out details of the
Mahi'
s upper decks seventy feet below. It was like hovering in the air above the ship. We hung under the
Mako
until my computer told us we'd purged the nitrogen from our systems. I shared my air for the last couple of minutes with the kid, using body language and hand signals to keep him from rising toward the light.
We finally broke the surface, returning to the air and the bright Hawaiian sunshine. The young men, white-faced and sober, kept silent as they boarded. That's what facing your mortality will do for you. I thought about yelling at them, but figured they'd had enough punishment. They were college kids. Maybe they were smart enough to have learned a lesson. If so, this experience would have been worth it.
I had my doubts, but it never hurt to hope.
Everyone else was back aboard the
Mako
. My group—now George's—watched me bring the boys aboard. They spoke rapid and quiet Japanese to one another all the way back to the harbor.
Dennis called me up to the pilothouse.
“Your nose is bleeding.”
I wiped my upper lip. My fingers came away with bright blood. Dennis handed me a bandanna.
“Dumb shits,” he said, his voice heavy with disgust. “They violate every goddamn rule, run from their divemaster, get themselves killed, and we get sued. Thanks, Caine.”
“They looked like trouble.”
“They look like shit now, but they'll be all right. Give them something to talk about when they get home.” Dennis looked at me, squinting against the glare of the hot January sun glinting off the smooth Pacific swells. “You got a call on the ship-to-shore. Fella at the dock needs to speak with you pronto.”
“He say his name?”
“J. Lawrence Tishman, attorney-at-law. What'd you do? Knock somebody up?”
I shook my head. “Can't. Had the operation.”
“If your girlfriend ain't late, then it must be your car payment.”
“Don't have one.”
“Maybe your uncle died.”
“Yeah. That must be it.” The only uncle I had was named Sam. He'd be around long after I was gone.
“He's wearing a tan suit,” Dennis added, wrinkle lines bunching up around his eyes.
“Suit? Like with a tie?”
“Must not be from around here.”
I went back to check on my original group and to apologize for leaving them. I ignored the college boys. If they approached me, we'd talk. Without their initiative, I'd leave them alone.
“We understand,” said the senior executive. “George showed us wonderful things.”
“Thank you,” I said, “for understanding.”
“Thank you.” The elder Japanese shook my hand and then bowed. It was more of a dip than a formal bow, reminding me that I was the lesser being. “We will do it again. With you.”
I nodded.
“I'd be honored.”
He handed me a roll of bills and bowed again. “A token of our appreciation.”
I smiled and bowed and thanked the man again, my bow no deeper than his. When he rejoined his group, I went forward and glanced at the roll. Fifteen pictures of Benjamin Franklin looked back at me. Hundred-dollar bills. The ugly one. I found George and handed the roll to him.
“They already tipped me,” he said.
“They tipped you again.”
George nodded. He needed the money more than I did. “Thank you, John.”
When the
Mako
docked and I finished putting the gear away, I looked for the tan suit. A small, slight man stood patiently
near the bait tank wearing a beige suit and an expectant look, totally out of place on the boat dock, his pale, smooth, office-bound face scrunched up tight against the sunlight reflecting off the water.
“I'm John Caine,” I said. “You are … ?”
“J. Lawrence Tishman.” He handed me a card. Attorney-at-Law. Fort Street. Honolulu. “May I have a word with you?”
I shrugged, watching one of the college kids from the corner of my eye. He hesitated, hovering just within the range of hearing.
“My firm represents a group of real estate investors who believe the general partner guilty of stealing the funds. We'd like you to investigate.”
I shook my head. “Sorry. Not interested.”
“You are a licensed private detective, are you not?”
I nodded, wondering where this was heading.
“You were referred to us by one of the investors, one of the larger investors, a man named Choy. Mr. Choy indicated that he knew you.”
That made me laugh. I couldn't help it. So Chawlie was complaining about someone stealing his funds? Maybe the old guy was starting into decline. “Sorry. I don't do that kind of work.” They would want written reports, spreadsheets, invoices with receipts for expenses. There would be a 1099 in the mail next January.
J. Lawrence Tishman sniffed as if he'd suddenly smelled something foul. And at that moment I understood Chawlie had indulged himself at Mr. Tishman's expense. It had been a joke, typical of the man. Tishman knew it, too, and didn't want to be here, but his client had insisted, and when you work for someone like Chawlie, you do what you're told.

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