A Beautiful Place to Die (22 page)

“Who cares,” said Zee.

Zee's hair was blue-black and it fell like raven's wings, like liquid night, over her shoulders when she unpinned it. It flowed out over the pillow, rich and thick, dark lava, framing her fair face in a black sunburst. Her skin was smooth and fine textured, and her body was sleek as a sea otter. In my arms she was earth and air, fire and water. She rippled and burned, felt light as ether, deep as the earth. We tangled like vines, ebbed and flowed like the tides, then rose and rose to some peak where I'd not been before and there exploded into space and fell and fell until the earth came back and the Vineyard swirled out of the timeless sea and we were entwined together once again on my bed, hot and slick and smelling of sex.

Zee's head was on my chest, her hair a great swirling black stream tumbling over my face, over her white shoulders and back. She pushed herself up on her elbows and her rose-tipped breasts touched my chest. I cupped them in my hands.

“Well,” said Zee, smiling down. “Well, well.” She sank back down and I put my arms around her.

“By and large,” I said finally, “this beats beer and bluefish pâté.”

She laughed and snuggled down a bit more. I ran my
hands down her back. Her strong hips flared out from her waist in a silken flow, and as my hands explored her she moved those hips and I felt the faint stirrings of resurrecting life.

Zee's voice came from somewhere beneath the dark weight of her hair: “Madieras to Enterprise, Madieras to Enterprise. I think there's intelligent life on this planet. It isn't dead after all!”

It wasn't. “We should call him Phoenix,” said Zee later. “He rose from his own ashes.”

“And he'll do it again,” I said. “But I think it may take him longer than it did before.”

“Shall we wait here or go outside and sit in the sun?”

We went out. It was midafternoon. The warm sun slanted down and the yard was warm. I wore my bathrobe and Zee wore a sheet. We abandoned both and lay in the sun.

“Not too long,” said Zee sleepily. “You'll burn something you don't want to burn.”

Fifteen minutes later she was sleeping. I covered her with the sheet so she wouldn't burn anything
she
didn't want burned and got myself a beer. I drank the beer and looked at Zee. I watched her until finally she awoke, marveling at her, feeling tender and protective toward her, wondering if she'd stay with me that night.

She did.

The next morning she left early so she could drive home and change before going to work.

“Bring some clothes here,” I said. “Stay here. I'll cook and really be a terrific companion. Wait till I get over being shot. You ain't seen nothing yet.”

She kissed me, shook her head, and smiled. “Not yet. I'm not sure I want to live with anybody yet.”

“You might not want to live here, but it's a great place to visit.”

She laughed. “It is that, Jefferson. I've got to go.”

“When will I see you?”

“How about tonight?”

“How about that! Forget what I said about the clothes. I like you just as well without them.”

“Good-bye, Jefferson. Have the martinis cold about six.”

“Trust me.”

I watched her drive out of sight and up the road. I felt good, better than I could remember feeling. Except for my sore spots, of course, but they didn't feel important anymore. I went inside and smelled the sheets, then made the bed and washed up the breakfast dishes. Outside, it was a beautiful day. Another beautiful day on beautiful Martha's Vineyard.

I got dressed and drove down to the Edgartown Police station. Helen Viera was at the desk. She smiled at me and seemed pleased that I was getting better. She told me that the chief was downtown directing traffic. Where else, on a summer's day in Edgartown? Drug busts come and go, but traffic is forever. I limped downtown and found the chief at the four corners telling a driver from New Jersey how to get to South Beach. I leaned against the wall of the bank and waited. After a while a young summer cop came down the street, and the chief put him in charge of answering dumb questions and came over.

“Let's go for a walk,” I said.

We went along South Summer Street, took a right on Davis Lane and another right on Church Street and another back on Main and came down to the four corners again. By that time I'd told him what I thought about Helen Viera.

He looked rather grim and pale. “I'll check it out,” he said in a thin voice. “I hate to think you might be right, but you might.”

“I hope I'm wrong.”

“Yeah.”

As I drove home, I didn't feel as good as I had earlier. It was almost noon by the time I reached the house and the sun was hot. I had some lunch washed down with the last Sam Adams in the house, put on a bathing suit, and went outside to rest in the sun. After a while I nodded off. When I woke up, there was a little puddle of sweat pooled in my belly button. Cute. I got up and the small sea spilled down across my skin.

Over the greening garden I could see the Sound dotted with boats. It was a lovely and innocent scene, one I liked very much. It was the way I preferred to envision Martha's Vineyard: sun, sand, and sails; shellfish and bluefish; cocktail parties attended by casual, tanned people, the women in white or pastel dresses, the men in slacks, alligator shirts, and boat shoes; beach parties with beer kegs and hot dogs and the smell of grass.

The Chamber of Commerce island was the one I liked. But there was another one, too, the one of big dirty money and fast times and violence and stupidity, of drugs and death and lies and deceit. And it was almost as real, maybe just as real, or even more real than the other one.

I thought that the worlds we live in are pretty insular, pretty isolated from other worlds that occupy the same time and space that we do. Summer sailors live in a world that is almost unknown to the fishermen whose boats move over the same waters. Those of us who fish Wasque have neither contact nor interest with the sunbathers and swimmers who share South Beach with us. Policemen
know nothing of the lives of schoolteachers and vice versa.

I thought of the many little worlds there were on the Vineyard and how it was that occasionally someone like me would be nudged out of his normal comfortable niche into another life he'd not normally even notice. Such experience gives you a double vision, makes you aware of things you'd normally not see, makes your life a bit chancier than it usually seems.

I wasn't sure the new knowledge was worth it. Better, maybe, not to have the Janus face, not to see both yin and yang, the dark and the light. Better, maybe, to see only the sloop leaning across the summer wind and not to see Billy Martin coshing Jim Norris with a blunt object, then blowing up the
Nellie Grey,
or not to see, right now, Billy's own body turning in the watery winds of the sea, legs attached to something heavy lying on the ocean bottom. Fish nibbled, shark bit, lobster sampled? Hair waving in the green wind, eyes of pearl, coral for bones, full fathom five.

There isn't a consistent justice in the world, although it does sometimes occur. Sometimes the bomber gets blown up by his own bomb; sometimes the thief is bitten by the cobra he's stolen; sometimes God seems to take a hand. As often as not, though, the universe is indifferent to the things men count as important, and the bad guys do just fine, thanks. No surprise, then, that Sylvia and company slipped away cleanly, for nature does not share man's insistence that the right prevail; by natural law, the prevailer is in the right; if the deer escapes the lion, the deer is in the right; if the lion kills the deer, the lion is in the right. Of all species, only man seems offended by this.

But I am a man and I was offended by Billy and by Sylvia and his kind. And I wanted justice and thought that
it should prevail. Chesterton argued that children, being innocent, prefer justice, while adults, being sinners, prefer love. I had cut myself off from both love and justice for a time, but now I wanted both back again. I saw in Zee the promise of love and wished that I could create it in her somehow. But that I could not do. I could love her, but I couldn't make her love me. On the other hand, I might manage justice of a sort.

Billy, if my guess was right, had already received his dose; he shared the sea with the remains of the
Nellie Grey.
Sylvia, however, looked free and clear. Not much I could do about that unless he came back.

I glanced at the sun and then at my watch. It was one of those two-dollar ones you get at the gas station when you fill her up. I like them. They keep good time and you don't mind when you forget and go swimming with them and they stop. Then you just get a new one. This one had a calendar function. It had been exactly two weeks since the
Nellie Grey
had blown up. Two weeks since I'd first seen Zee. A lot had happened. I went inside and phoned Susie Martin.

I'd thawed out some of last fall's oysters and was laying out a cookie pan of oysters Rockefeller when Susie arrived. I gave her a Coke, got a Molson for myself, and we went outside and sat in the light of the westering sun.

“Susie, do you still play tennis at the club?”

She cocked her head, then nodded.

“I need to know what Maria Sylvia has in her locker there. I can't get into the ladies' locker room, but you can. I want you to empty out her locker and bring the contents to me. After I have a look, I want you to put the stuff back.”

“I can't do that. I don't have a key to her padlock.”

“I'll give you an athletic bag. It'll have a new padlock and a pair of chain cutters in it. I want you to cut her padlock, put her stuff in the athletic bag, put the new padlock on her locker, then bring the bag of stuff to me.”

She twisted her Coke can. “Has this got anything to do with Billy? Where is he, anyhow? The police don't know a thing.”

“It might have something to do with Billy. I have to see the material in the locker before I'll know. Will you help me?”

“What do you think you'll find? What has it got to do with my brother?”

“If I find anything, I'll tell you then. If I don't, I won't.”

She glanced at her watch. “I'll go about six o'clock, then. Most people are home for supper. The locker room should be pretty empty. How do you work the chain cutters?”

I brought the athletic bag from the shed out back and showed her how to use the cutters.

“Something's happened to Billy, hasn't it?” she asked.

“I don't know.”

“Don't lie, J.W.”

“I won't. I have a guest coming over this evening, so I won't be able to see you until tomorrow morning. Can you bring the stuff by about eight
A.M
.?”

“Something
has
happened, hasn't it?”

“I think so. I'll talk to you tomorrow when you bring the stuff here. Don't get caught. One other thing—wear gloves.”

She drove away, a pretty girl who shouldn't be introduced to the dark mysteries quite so soon in life.

I set the table with a white cloth and my best stainless steel. My only stainless steel, in fact. I put both my
matching wineglasses and my best plates across from each other. Zee and I would be able to sigh at one another over the candles I'd found in the Big D the year before and had been saving for just the right occasion.

Zee's arrival made it just the right occasion. I served icy vodka martinis on the balcony, where we admired the view of the sea and watched the late boats easing toward Edgartown.

“A Babar day,” I said.

“A what?”

“A Babar day. Remember Babar the elephant? There's a picture in one of the Babar books of a beach covered with people and umbrellas and the ocean full of boats and such. I think maybe Babar is floating over it in a balloon or something. Anyway, it's all bright and clean and perfect, just the way a scene like that should be. It looks like that out there right now. Sharp colors, just the right number of boats doing just the right things, just the right cars and people on their way home from the beach. Just the right-colored sky and water. A Babar day.”

“Right,” said Zee. “I remember that picture.”

Another link between us—Babar the elephant.

After two martinis (no more lest the taste buds become dulled) we went below and I served the oysters with vinho verde. When the last oyster had been devoured, I cleared the table and we took coffee, apples and cheese, and Cognac out onto the porch where we could sit in the soft evening breeze and look out over garden and Sound.

Zee sat beside me and our shoulders touched. I felt a thrill and a sense of contentment at the same time. I took her hand.

“Not bad,” said Zee. “Not bad at all. I think this is the way it's supposed to be. Woman comes home from a hard
day at the office, finds martinis waiting, an elegant supper, a dutiful stud, a soft summer night.”

“It's the American way.”

She turned and kissed me. After a while we took the Cognac and sat in the yard and watched the stars come out. Then we went to bed and it was indeed the way it's supposed to be.

Zee was gone when Susie arrived the next morning. I stopped washing dishes and we sat in the living room.

“Any trouble?”

She shook her head. I put on a pair of cotton gardening gloves and went over Maria Sylvia's gear. I found mostly the normal stuff I expected to find—a sweater, some clean socks and sundry toiletries, two tennis rackets and a can of balls, wristbands and a headband, a clean towel, odds and ends. I also found a little purse containing vials of liquid similar to that I'd taken off Julie Potter and a packet of pills that looked like the Dexamyl I'd seen years before in Boston. Dex for up, the codeine to mellow out.

“What's going on?” asked Susie. “You said you'd tell me.”

“Wait.” I went out to the shed again and brought in the drugs I'd gotten from Julie and Billy. I put them in the athletic bag along with Maria Sylvia's gear.