The End of the Pier (30 page)
Read The End of the Pier Online
Authors: Martha Grimes
“And there was all these endangered fish flopping on the floor, some of them you could say were nearly extinct, like you will be, Joey, you pull this shit on us again. Yeah. The job'll get done when the job gets done. Goodbye.” Karl stowed his cell in his inside coat pocket.
“We saw Hess leave through the side door. You'd think he knew they were coming.”
“Jesus, I'm tellin' you, C, the book business is like rolling around fuckin' Afghanistan on skateboards. You could get killed.”
“You got that right.”
They walked on, Karl clapping Candy on the shoulder, jostling the water pitcher as they walked along the street. “Good thinking, C. I got to hand it to you, you got everyone in the place rushing to save the fish.”
The water was sliding down Candy's Hugo Bossâjacketed-arm. “Don't give me the credit; it was that blond dame, that girl, who did that. She was the first one to ditch her wine. You see her?”
“The blonde? I guess. What'd she look like?”
Candy shrugged; a little wave of water spilled onto Lexington. “I couldn't see her face good. She had a barrette in her hair. Funny.”
“You didn't see her face but you saw a hair barrette?” Karl laughed. “Crazy, man.”
They walked on.
*Â Â *
There are those girls with golden hair you half-notice in a crowd. You see one in the outer edges of your vision amid the people flooding toward you along Lex or Park or Seventh Avenues, blond head, uncovered, weaving through the dark ones, the caps and hats, your eye catching the blondness, but registering nothing else. Then you find when she's passed it's too late.
A girl you wish you'd paid attention to: a girl you wish you'd paid attention to.
A girl you knew you should have seen head-on, not disappearing around a corner.
Such a girl was Cindy Sella.
*Â Â *
Some of them would talk about it later, and for a long time. The businessmen climbing into a cab, the girl with the LeSportsac, her Droid lost inside it.
As if there'd been an eclipse of Apple, a sundering of Microsoft, a sirocco of swirling iPhones, Blackberrys, Thunderbolts, Gravities, Galaxies and all the other smartphones into the sweet hereafter; yes, as if all that had never been, nobody, nobody reached for his cell once the fish were saved and swimming. They were too taken up with watching the fish swimming, dizzy-like, in the wineglasses.
Nobody had e-mailed or texted.
Nobody had sent a tweet to Twitter.
Nobody had posted on Facebook.
Nobody had taken a picture.
They were shipwrecked on the shores of their own poor powers of description, a few of them actually getting out old diaries and writing the incident down.
Yes, they talked about that incident in the Clown Fish Café the night they hadn't gotten shot, told their friends, coworkers, pastors, and waiters at their clubs, not to mention their partners, wives, husbands, and their kids.
Their kids.
Way cool. So where's the photos?
Remarkably, nobody took one.
Wow. Neanderthal.
But see, there were these neon-bright blue and orange and green and yellow fish, see, that we all scooped up and dropped in water glasses, and, just imagine, imagine those colors, the water, the candlelight. Look, you can see it. . . .
But the seer, seeing nothing, walked away.
ALSO BY MARTHA GRIMES
The Old Contemptibles
Send Bygraves
The Old Silent
The Five Bells & Bladebone
I Am the Only Running Footman
Help the Poor Struggler
The Deer Leap
Jerusalem Inn
The Dirty Duck
The Anodyne Necklace
The Old Fox Deceiv'd
The Man with a Load of Mischief
DOUBLE DOUBLE
is a dual memoir of alcoholism written by Martha Grimes and her son Ken. This brutally candid book describes how different both the disease and the recovery can look in two different peopleâeven two people who are mother and son.
THE WAY OF ALL FISH
is a wickedly funny sequel to Grimes's bestselling novel,
Foul Matter
, “a satire of the venal, not to say murderous practices of the New York publishing industry” (
The New York Times Book Review
).
Martha Grimes eBooks available from Scribner
First in the Richard Jury Mystery Series
The Man with a Load of Mischief
A bizarre murder disturbs a sleepy Yorkshire fishing village.
The Old Fox Deceiv'd
Murder makes the tiny village of Littlebourne a most extraordinary place.
The Anodyne Necklace
In Shakespeare's beloved Stratford, Miss Gwendolyn Bracegirdle of Sarasota, Florida, takes her last drink.
The Dirty Duck
Jury has himself a mysterious little Christmas set in a chilly English landscape and Gothic estate.
Jerusalem Inn
Around bleak Dartmoor, where the Hound of the Baskervilles once bayed, three children have been brutally murdered.
Help the Poor Struggler
In Ashdown Dean, a little English village, animals are dying in a series of seemingly innocuous accidents.
The Deer Leap