Dead Winter (14 page)

He sighed. “Can’t surfcast any more. Damn arthritis.”

“We’ll get out on the boat sometime.”

He forced a smile. “I’d like that.”

“Look,” I said. “Call Zerk. I think it’s time Marc had a lawyer with him.”

Des frowned. “You think?”

I nodded. “It’ll do no harm.”

He waved us away. “I will. Now you two go fishing.”

I backed out and headed for Plum Island.

“Why’re they hassling Marc again?” said Kat as we drove down High Street. “I thought you said he was in the clear.”

I shrugged. “He’s about all they’ve got, maybe. Unless they’ve come up with new evidence.”

“What about the guy who was with Maggie?” Kat’s knee was pressing against my thigh. It was hard to ignore.

“I don’t know anything about him.”

“Do you really think he needs Mr. Garrett with him?”

“Zerk Garrett is the best criminal lawyer I know. He can prevent things from happening. He’s better at that sort of thing than I am.”

She nodded. I turned left heading for Plum Island.

“Daddy can surfcast fine,” said Kat after a few moments. “I think he’s just lost his heart for it.”

“I’ll try to persuade him to take me out on the boat.”

Ten minutes later we crossed the causeway and turned right onto the road that bisected the long, narrow island. We parked among a couple dozen other vehicles, the majority of them four-wheel-drive Jeeps and Broncos equipped with rod holders. Beside them, my BMW looked like a poodle on a fox hunt. We unloaded our gear and followed the designated pathway to the outer beach.

The fishermen had strung themselves along the sand at approximately fifty-yard intervals. Some of them were casting from the beach. Others wore chest-high waders and stood out in the crashing surf, presumably closer to where the fish might be lurking. Kat and I took off our sneakers and walked on the cold, hard-packed sand where the sea lapped the beach. We paused at each fisherman to ask what luck. None had taken a bluefish. Nobody seemed the least bit gloomy about it. Picnic baskets, coolers, and unlit lanterns sat in clusters on the beach. These men were here for the night. They had barely started.

We found space to cast several hundred yards down the beach. I snapped dark-bodied Rapalas onto the swivels at the ends of our lines and handed one of the rods to Kat. “Come on,” I said. “Might as well get wet. We can wade into the water a little. Then we cast as far as we can.”

She took off her windbreaker and followed me into the surf.

The sky was mother-of-pearl, glowing faintly in the dying daylight. The tide was still curling in. It smacked softly against the tilt of the hard sand, oozed forward, then hissed back. The coarse sand jangled like a pocketful of birdshot under the eternal grinding of the sea. Out beyond the surfline the sea was an angry gray-green. It seemed to pitch and roll—the leftover effect of the day’s storm. I scanned the water for a swooping swarm of gulls that might signify a school of blues chasing baitfish, but saw none.

Kat and I sloshed in up to our knees. I turned to her. “Okay,” I said. “You hold the rod like this.” I demonstrated, with my left hand down near the butt end and my right just above the big spinning reel. “Back up the reel just a little and catch the line on your forefinger. Like this.” She watched, frowning in concentration, and then imitated me.

“Okay, good,” I continued. “Now cock back the bail—that’s this piece of wire here—like this.” She did. “Now stand back and watch.”

I brought the rod over my right shoulder until it was horizontal, bent my knees and arched my back, and heaved mightily. The Rapala sailed out majestically until it was a speck descending from the darkening sky into the ocean.

“Wow,” breathed Kat. “That was a good one.”

“Average.” I was, in truth, very pleased with my manly demonstration, and Kat, bless her, fed my ego.

“Okay,” I said. “Now you tuck the butt of the rod into your stomach, or your crotch, or under your arm if you’re squeamish about that sort of thing, and you start cranking. Reel as fast as you can, and every couple turns give the rod a yank. Makes the fish think your lure is a frightened baitfish.”

Kat frowned at her reel. “Like this?”

I moved closer to her and adjusted her hands into the proper position. “This way,” I said. My arm rubbed against her bare shoulder. I stepped back. “Try it.”

On her first attempt the line slipped off her finger and the Rapala splatted onto the beach behind her. “Shit,” she muttered. I laughed. “What’s so funny, Coyne?” she said.

“You in that hat.”

She reeled in and repeated the process. This time the plug slapped into the water almost at her feet. She turned to face me. “Don’t say a God damn thing.”

I held my hands up in surrender. “I didn’t say a word.”

“Yeah, well I know what you’re thinking. It’s a man’s sport. Right? Huh? Huh?”

I shook my head emphatically. “No. That’s not what I was thinking at all.”

She smiled. “Good.”

“What I was thinking,” I said, “was that it’s a sport for coordinated people. That’s all.”

She stuck out her tongue. “Up yours,” she said.

“Which,” I observed, “may not make you a man, but it sure as hell shows you ain’t a lady.”

“I thought you’d never notice.”

The next time she got it right. It didn’t go far, but she did cast the plug in a satisfying arc out into the ocean.

“Not bad. More oomph next time,”

“That,” she said, “was a hell of a cast.”

“For a lady, it would’ve been.”

After a few more tries she seemed to get the hang of it. She became completely engrossed in the mechanics, frowning, biting her lip, and muttering to herself. I moved down the beach from her and began to cast.

I found a pleasant, hypnotic rhythm in it, the sudden uncoiling energy of the cast and the long leisurely reeling in, accompanied in counterpoint by the muffled crash of waves and the gentler lapping of water against the fronts of my thighs. I did not regret the fact that no bluefish struck. Somehow it would have destroyed the harmony.

After perhaps half an hour of it I waded out and sat on the beach. I jammed the butt of my rod into the sand and lit a cigarette. The sun had set behind us. The fishermen down the beach were black smudges on the light water. The sea seemed to have captured the daylight. It radiated a faint greenish fluorescence.

Kat was in up to her hips. Des’s silly fishing cap sat cockeyed on her head. She seemed to be casting easily now. Her little cotton singlet was wet from the splash of the surf, and it clung to her body. I admired her grace, the pivot of her torso, the stretch and contraction of the smooth muscles of her arms and shoulders.

As I smoked and watched Kat, I noticed that a cluster of gulls had materialized out beyond where her casts were landing. The birds were darting and diving at the water. I could hear their squawks and cries. They seemed to be moving directly toward Kat.

I yelled at her, and she turned and cupped her ear. I pointed at the gulls. “Out there,” I shouted. “Baitfish. The blues’re chasing them.”

She nodded and cast toward the birds. On her second attempt her rod suddenly arched forward. “Hey! I got one!” she shouted.

I jogged toward her. “Keep your rod up and keep reeling,” I said when I was beside her.

“I’m reeling in but the line is going out,” she said.

“That’s all right. It’s the way the drag of the reel is set. So your line won’t break. It’ll tire your fish out, pulling against that.”

“If it doesn’t tire me out first. Boy!”

She gained line slowly. The blue was strong. When it found it couldn’t swim straight out to sea, it dashed off parallel with the beach. Kat turned it. Suddenly she said, “It’s gone.”

“Reel in,” I said.

“Damn. It’s gone.”

Suddenly her rod bucked. “No it’s not,” she said.

“He was swimming toward you. He’s tired now. Back up. You can beach him.”

“He’s a big one, huh?” she said as the exhausted fish came lolling in on its side.

“A beauty. Five or six pounds. Let me unhook him for you.”

“No way, buster. Unhooking them is part of it, right?”

I shrugged. “Be careful. They’ve got cruel teeth.”

She knelt beside the fish and gingerly grabbed the plug where it was hooked onto the side of the fish’s mouth. The bluefish thrashed and flopped. Suddenly she said, “Ouch! Dammit!”

The fish fell to the sand, flipped into the water, and after a moment of frenzied churning darted away. “Too bad,” I said. “Would’ve made a nice breakfast for Des.”

“Brady…”

I looked at her. Her face was contorted under Des’s ridiculous cap. She extended her left hand toward me. The Rapala dangled from it like an ornament from a Christmas tree. Two hooks of the rear set of trebles were imbedded in the meaty part at the base of her thumb. I took her hand and examined it. “Both points are in over the barb. How bad does it hurt?”

“Not bad,” she said between clenched teeth. Pain glittered in her eyes.

“It’ll hurt more when I take them out.”

I went to the tackle box and found the one absolutely essential item of fishing gear for the surfcaster, a sturdy pair of long-nosed pliers with built-in wire cutters. I went back and kneeled beside Kat. She clenched her bottom lip tightly between her teeth.

“First,” I said, “we get rid of the plug. Hold on.”

I cut the treble where it joined the Rapala. Now just the treble hook was left, two of the three hookpoints jammed deep into her hand. “Now comes the hard part.” I looked up into her eyes.

“Go ahead,” she said.

“I can’t back the hooks out. The barbs won’t allow it. I’m going to have to work the hooks forward all the way through so that they come out past the barbs. This will hurt. It would hurt anybody, so it’s okay to holler and curse if you feel like it. But I’ve got to snip off those barbs if we’re going to get the hooks out. Ready?”

Her narrowed eyes met mine evenly. “Hurt me,” she whispered. “Just try it.”

I nodded. I held the hook firmly and pushed, twisting it so that the pointed ends would reemerge from her flesh. There was no way to be gentle about it, so I didn’t try. The twin points broke her skin. A pair of droplets of blood appeared.

“That was the hard part,” I muttered. I continued pushing until the barbs broke through. “Now hold steady so I can snip off those barbs.”

She gripped her left wrist in her right hand. She did not quiver or flinch. I placed the pliers flat against her hand and snapped off first one barb and then the other. I looked up at her. “Okay?”

She nodded firmly. “Okay.”

I worked the debarbed hooks back out of her hand the way they had gone in. When they were out, she said, “Thank you.”

“Had your shots?”

“Yes.”

“Suck on it,” I told her. “Try to make it bleed. When we get back you should soak it in hot salty water.”

She thrust the side of her hand into her mouth. Her eyes were large and gray as they watched me. She mumbled something.

“I couldn’t understand you,” I said.

We had been kneeling on the wet sand. She hitched herself closer to me. “You suck on it,” she said.

She held her hand toward me. I arched my eyebrows. She nodded. “Please,” she said softly.

I took her hand in both of mine, as if it were a turkey drumstick, and examined it. The meat at the base of her thumb had begun to swell and darken. There were two sets of punctures, red but bloodless. I glanced up at her. She was staring intently at me. I raised her hand to my mouth and sucked on her wound. She tilted back her head, closed her eyes, and moaned.

I took her hand away from my mouth. “I’m sorry,” I said. “That must hurt.”

“Oh, Jesus, no,” she whispered. “Don’t stop. Please.”

“Kat…?”

I let go of her hand and stood. She gazed up at me from beneath the bill of Des’s fishing cap. I held my hands to her. She lifted her unwounded hand and allowed me to help her stand. She leaned against the front of me. Her cap fell onto the sand. Her hair was in my face. It smelled of the sea.

I held her for a moment, then leaned back and tucked the crook of my forefinger under her chin.

“What was that all about?” I said.

She pushed up on tiptoes and kissed my neck softly. “You jerk,” she said.

By the time we got back to where my car was parked it had grown dark. I examined Kat’s hand by the dome light. The flesh at the base of her thumb had turned the color of a ripe plum. “I think I should take you to the hospital,” I said.

“Just take me home.”

I shrugged. “Okay.”

Kat’s condo was on the second floor of a square old converted warehouse, in the rear, overlooking the river. She had decorated it in white and black. Starkly geometric furniture. Vast expanses of bare wood and glass and chrome. An enormous abstract painting dominated one wall, a rendering, as well as I could interpret, of a yellow triangular sail spattered by arterial bleeding. Strangely, the colors worked perfectly in Kat’s room.

She disappeared into the bathroom. I found a big bowl and filled it with scalding water from the tap. I poured in some salt and set the bowl on the dining table.

She came out barefoot wrapped in a terrycloth robe that stopped halfway down her thighs. She had brushed out her hair and done something to her eyes that made them look larger.

“Sit,” I said. “Stick your hand in there.”

She sat. “Want a drink?” she said.

“Beer in the fridge?”

“Yes. One for me, too.”

There was a six-pack of Budweiser on the bottom shelf. Her brand surprised me. I’d have expected something imported, expensive, and low-caloried. I took two cans, cracked them both, and placed one beside her where she sat, her wounded hand poised over the steaming bowl of water.

“I can’t. It’s too hot.”

“The hotter you can stand it the better.”

She grabbed the wrist of her injured left hand with her right and forced it into the bowl. She winced. I saw her mouth move. She was counting. “… ten!” she said, and removed her hand. After a moment, she repeated the process, getting up to fifteen. She was, I decided, a strong and willful woman.

We sipped our beer and I smoked while Kat soaked her hand. When the bowl of water had cooled down, I brought her a towel. She dried her hand and then held it toward me. I took it and she stood. “Come on,” she said.