Don't Explain: An Artie Deemer Mystery (13 page)

“Yeah, that’s where I live. Aboard.”

I wondered if he lived in the boathouse when it was guest-free. “Dwight says you’re a sea urchin diver.”

“It ain’t a good time for fishin’, but it’s a good time for urchins. They’re out there by the fuckin’ billions. Japs buy from me in Micmac, little peckers. Twelve hours later some electronics magnates is slurpin’ them up in Tokyo. Say, let me ask you. You wouldn’t have connections in New York who might want to buy top-grade urchins? Like for restaurants, coffee shops?”

“I doubt it.”

“Yeah, too bad. I’m lookin’ for a wider outlet, since there’s so many urchins. It’s a problem, though, since they taste like a gob of tuberculosis snot.”

“I’ll bet the water’s cold.”

“You think it’s cold on the surface. It’s fuckin’ toasty compared to the bottom.” He slid a spliff the size of a toilet paper roller out of his vest pocket and put a match to it. “Smoke?”

“No, thanks.” I used to smoke some doo-dah while listening to music or while not listening to music, but I stopped, mostly. It was not making my edge any keener.

“A guy comes and stumbles on your stash and goes, ‘No, thanks’? That’s opposed to the code.”

“The code?”

“Yeah.”

“What code?”

“
The
code.”

Okay, so we smoked. It was clearly something special. My friends Sarah and Stuart would speak quietly in its presence. I sat down on a chunk of round rocks still cemented in a mass.

“Are you the gardener?” I asked.

“Pretty excellent, wouldn’t you agree?”

“I certainly would.”

“Yeah, this is the best crop yet, but the pressure’s gettin’ too hot. The long dick of the law. Too bad, I was just learnin’ what I was doing. I’ve always been interested in growin’ things. I see you’re interested in wildflowers.”

I was carrying the guide to wildflowers. “I am, but I don’t know anything about them.”

“There’s a lot of them. My mother cooks with them some-times…So is Clayton comin’ up?”

“I don’t think so. He went to California.”

“California, huh? L.A., I suppose. Beverly Hills. So he just said, ‘I got this rustic place on this backward island, why don’t you borrow it, laugh at the locals?’ ”

“He didn’t laugh at the locals. I’m here because somebody’s stalking my dog,” I said.

“What do you mean?”

“Do you know what a stalker is?”

“Like a hunter?”

“It has a special meaning. It means a nut who follows celebrities. Sometimes the nut kills the celebrity.”

“No shit? Why?”

“For publicity. It usually doesn’t happen with dogs.”

“Somebody’s tryin’ to kill this dog?”

“Maybe.” I told him about the stalker because I wanted a local ally. Dwight was an ally, but he didn’t live on the island itself. Even if this Hawley Self didn’t care to be my ally, I wasn’t taking much of a risk telling him. A guy who’s never even heard of Jellyroll isn’t going to call the nearest TV station to sell them the news that Jellyroll has arrived.

“So you mean you’re hidin’ out here?”

“Yes.”

“Well, look, if I see any stalkers, I’ll let you know.”

“Thanks, I’d appreciate that—”

Hawley saw something in the woods to my left, beyond the front of the ex-Castle. I looked that way. So did Jellyroll. Something had moved over there.

“Dickie, goddamnit, get over here!” Hawley sprang up and started after the apparently universally loathed Dickie. Maybe there’s one on every island. “Look, this joker is my partner.” He waved an arm that included the entire ruins, but I took the gesture to refer to the curing weed. “Of course, only a total asshole’d have him for a partner. Excuse me, okay, Artie? It was nice meetin’ you. I’ll see you around. How long are you around for?”

“It’s kind of up in the air.”

“Well, then I’ll see you around.” He started off at a jog, but he put on the brakes, turned, paused, then said, “Say, Artie, have you seen Clayton?”

“Seen him? Where?”

“Wherever.”

“He’s in L.A.”

Hawley seemed to ponder some question, but he didn’t pose it. “Well…bye.” Off he went after Dickie, his partner.

Jellyroll watched him for a long time after he’d gone. I remained seated until I felt reasonably confident I could walk without herniating any discs. Jellyroll idly licked my cheek.

TWELVE

I
 made it back to the boathouse intact. So did Jellyroll, but then he didn’t ingest dangerous doo-dah. He went to his place and waited for food. I fed him, made a cup of coffee, and settled back on the porch. Helen Humes sang the Earl Hines tune “Blue Because of You” as the tide came in, and in and didn’t stop until it had reached the foundation of the boathouse.

The phone rang. “Artie, how is it?” Shelly asked.

“It’s great, Shelly. Quiet, remote. You’d love it.”

“I hate remote. The Upper West Side’s too remote for me. Listen, the R-r-ruff idiots have been calling all morning. You ought to hear them. Nobody’ll take responsibility. They’re making a scapegoat out of that poor fucker who fired you. He’s gone. They’re implying he had a drug abuse problem. They’re so relieved Crystal’s a woman, they’ll do anything. Guy called to offer you a Mercedes-Benz, the big one, four-door. A bonus.”

“To do what?”

“To come back, of course. I’d like to let them swing a little just for fun, then you can decide what you want to do.”

“Okay, Shelly.”

“Artie, another bowling sheet arrived today. It was from the Atomic Bowl in Seabrook, New Hampshire. It had those TV cartoons. Like the others. The, uh, stalker was explaining to the interviewer how he loved the R-r-ruff Dog so much he just had to…do it, the fucker. Do you want me to send it out to you?”

“No. Shelly, you don’t think the R-r-ruff people are behind this somehow, do you?”

“How?”

“Well, like you say, there’s no such a thing as bad publicity.”

“I’ll get Myron to look into it. He’ll lay a cease and desist on the scumbags, see what they have to say. That idiot who fired you, he didn’t mention stalkers, right?”

“Right.”

“Okay, Sid—my brother-in-law—he’ll be in touch with you. I suggest you do whatever he says. He knows how to handle these things.”

“Okay, Shelly.”

I drove the boat out around the Dogs and headed generally south toward open water. I told myself to notice things that might be useful later as landmarks. The twin hills on this side of Kempshall Island would stand out, and so would the Dogs. Visibility was unlimited. I’d never seen such clarity.

Three wooded islands came into view, and I headed for the middle one, beyond which I think there was no dry land until Portugal. The sea was flat calm. The center island was called Hope. Hope Island. Artie Deemer of the Hope Island Deemers…I carefully ran my finger along the chart from Dog Cove to Hope Island. There was nothing to hit. The water was over a hundred feet deep in places.

Jellyroll stood in the bow, ears flapping. I munched some oatmeal cookies the Selfs had made. Suddenly I was in a sea of lobster pots. As far as I could see in all directions, there were markers floating languidly, all colors and combinations of stripes and bands, each trailing ropes that could tangle in my propeller to leave me floating fucked and banjaxed. I put the transmission in neutral and we coasted almost to a stop. Could I pick my way along? They weren’t quite as close together as they seemed at first.

Nearby, a lobsterman in a spattered yellow rubber apron aboard a salty green lobster boat worked a row of yellow and black banded floats. I watched through my binoculars. The man
had a round face with a spotty, reddish beard. He wore a red plaid hunting hat. He was just a kid, I realized. Seventeen, maybe.

A wire lobster trap popped out of the water and leapt up onto the side rail of his boat. All those old-fashioned values of perseverance, ingenuity, endurance. No one from here lived off their dogs. The guy saluted at us as he dug in his trap with rubber gloves and threw things he didn’t like back overboard. I returned the salute, the brotherhood of the waves, here on the way to Hope Island. And suddenly I was out of the crowded lobster fishing grounds. There were no more traps, clear sailing. The traps had been placed in one area about the size of an Upper West Side block. I wondered why, what was there on the bottom that attracted so many lobsters. Baited traps?

A three-story white frame house with a green roof and a veranda overlooked the water from Hope Island, but it seemed to be boarded up. “Hey, Jellyroll, you want to buy that house?” He looked back at me from the bow and wagged. Sure, he’d be delighted.

I motored down the side of the island as close in as I dared. Hope was typical of this ocean full of islands, wooded, surrounded by rock in piles with a central, rounded peak. I went around behind Hope. There were no other houses visible. Feeling confident, I kept going for a while—

What was that ahead? White. I looked through the binocs. Waves. Big waves were breaking over black saw-toothed rocks in a line across my course. Reflexively, I slowed the boat as if I were about to hit one, and Jellyroll slipped off his feet. I consulted the chart.

The Disappointments.

That’s what they were called, this alligator’s back of sunkers. It wasn’t a wall. The Disappointments consisted of rock in piles, clumps, and pinnacles that were very close together; according to my inexperienced reading of the chart, there were only two places
a boat like this could squeeze through in four miles of malevolence. Hope behind—the Disappointments ahead.

There were barely any waves around us, gentle swells, perhaps you’d call them, but big combers crashed over the Disappointments and exploded in glaring white spray—

I saw the white wake while the boat was still far away. Spray flew from its bow. I put the glasses on the boat. It was a sport-fisherman type, very modern and expensive with a flying bridge. The hull was black, the deck and all the rest of the stuff above was white. Boats like that were used in the charter fishing business in Florida and the Bahamas. People paid five hundred dollars a day to murder fish. Two men sat side by side at the topmost steering wheel—the flying bridge—under a white canvas top. The boat was still far away, but it was coming very fast right for us.

I looked back at the Disappointments. If the waves broke like this on a calm day, imagine what it would be like in some wind. I felt good. The vicious look of those rocks didn’t stiffen me up with indecision. It excited me. I was happy to be out here. I should have done this sooner. Maybe boating would be a new career for me. But I didn’t like that black sportfisherman. And it was getting closer by the minute.

I turned around and headed us back toward Hope Island. I had our Hampton boat going as fast as she could. I watched and waited. The sportfisherman’s sharp bow was still pointing at us. Maybe that was merely an illusion caused by unfamiliarity with relative speeds and converging courses in clean air. I kept going, and soon it became clear that the black boat was turning at us the whole time. This made me edgy. The sportfisherman began to take on a menacing aspect…

He caught up with us suddenly, it seemed to me. He slowed down and turned parallel to my course. The boat was bigger than I’d thought. I didn’t know boat lengths by sight, but it was over twice as long as my boat.

“Hello.” The man waved from the bridge. “I tried to call you on the radio—”

“What’s wrong?” I shouted back across the water without slowing down.

“Oh, nothing, sorry to alarm you. But my son wanted to meet the R-r-ruff Dog—”

I couldn’t see the son’s face, because it was completely hidden behind a big camcorder. He was hanging over the side aiming the damn thing at us, getting a shot of me scowling back at him. The father had an oddly elongated face, as if it had just begun to melt, and a long beak of a nose. His eyebrows met in the middle. Everything else being vertical, his smile seemed surrealistically horizontal. He wore a captain’s hat with yellow braid on the bill. He sat there rocking atop his enormous gleaming boat, grinning down at Jellyroll and me. We rocked in his waves. Jellyroll scratched for footing on the wooden bottom.

“Where are you headed?” he asked. We were going along slowly side by side now, shouting across the gap.

“Nova Scotia,” I said. Jellyroll looked edgy.

“In
that?
” His eyebrows arched sardonically.

“No, I have a mother ship. Waiting for me. A gunboat.”

He chuckled and nodded.

I was icy. He was a nosy intrusion on my fantasy of remoteness, a shithead from the world of pop values busting in on my fantasy of connectedness to permanence and peace. Fuck him and his son with the camcorder in my face.

But then the guy said, still grinning, “I heard some bastard’s stalking him.”

“Wha—? Where? Where’d you hear that?”

“On TV. You know those kind of shows, those celebrity shows. Channel surfing.” He made a motion over the side as if flipping a remote. “I can’t remember.”

All this time, the kid continued to shoot at me. I never did get a look at him.

“Yeah,” I said unconvincingly. “We hear that a lot. All kinds of rumors.” Everybody in the world knew! “Just rumors.”