White Shark (35 page)

There was another difference; very quickly
its lungs began to ache, there was a pounding in its ears, and its brain
commanded it to find air to breathe.

It arced upward, broke through the surface
and gasped.
 
As it breathed in and out,
its buoyancy changed, and it had to kick slowly to maintain its position.

Its simple brain was challenged.
 
The changes required adaptations if it was to
survive.

After a few moments, it felt comfortable
enough to swim gradually away from shore.
 
Across the water it saw land.

Staying underwater as long as it could,
surfacing only to breathe, it swam toward the land.
 
There, it sensed, it could find safety.

There it could hunt.

Part Six

The White
Shark

38

"Say hey, Ray," Rusty Puckett
said as he pulled out a stool and slapped a twenty-dollar bill onto the bar.

"Seven-and-Seven?" asked the
bartender.

"Make it a double; I got a terrible
thirst."
 
Puckett glanced around;
the room was less than half full.
 
It was
seven-thirty, the early drinkers had done in to dinner,
the
late ones hadn't arrived yet.

Ray mixed the drink, put the glass in
front of Puckett and took the twenty.
 
Smiling when he made change, he said, "I hear you been on a
holiday, courtesy of the borough."

"Bastards," Puckett said.
 
He drained half the glass and waited for the
warm feeling to pool in his stomach.
 
"They didn't even apologize.
 
I got half a mind to sue Rollie Gibson."

"For what, drying you out?
 
You look pretty good to me; never hurts a man
to take a day or two off."

Puckett finished his drink and signaled
for a refill.
 
The truth was, he did feel
good, and not only physically; he felt vindicated.
 
Gibson and the others hadn't believed a word
he'd said, thought he was lying or hallucinating, and then all of a sudden this
afternoon they'd gotten real interested, wanting to hear his whole story from
the beginning.
 
But he'd shown them, he'd
stonewalled Gibson and that Simon Chase, claimed he couldn’t remember.
 
Why should he give anything away for free
when there might be money in it?
 
Some of
those TV shows — what did they call them?
 
Docudramas — paid big bucks for exclusive interviews, and he was pretty
sure he was the only one who'd seen that thing, whatever it was.
 
All he had to do was
wait
,
the word would get out and they'd be coming to him.
 
He could be patient; he had all the time in the
world.

"Nate Green was in here before,"
Ray said.
 
"Looking
for you."

"I bet he was."
 
Puckett smiled.
 
"What'd you tell him?"

"That I hadn't seen you."

"You still haven't, okay?"
 
To hell with Nate Green, Puckett
thought.
 
There were bigger fish to catch,
lots bigger, than the Waterboro
Chronicle
.

"Sure, Rusty," Ray said.
 
"No skin off my nose."

Puckett finished his second drink.
 
Now he was feeling really good.
 
Even Ray was treating him with respect.

A man entered from the street, sat at the
far end of the bar and ordered a glass of wine.
 
As Ray poured it for him, the man said, "Do you know a man named
Puckett, a Mr. Rusty Puckett?"

Puckett froze and pretended to read the
menu on the blackboard over the bar.

"Uh-huh," Ray said, without
glancing Puckett's way.
 
He returned the
wine bottle to the cooler and resumed slicing limes.

"Have you seen him?"

Puckett heard an accent in the man's
voice, not American, foreign, like from somewhere in
Europe
.

"Might have," Ray said.
 
"You got business with him?"

"Possibly."

Puckett chewed on an ice cube and
reflexively scrolled through his brain for potential trouble.
 
He didn't own anybody any money; he hadn't
poached anybody's lobsters recently; he hadn't cut away any buoys, hit any other
boats or struck anybody with his truck... as far as he knew.
 
Then he searched for potential good
news.
 
Maybe the guy was from a big
magazine or one of the docudrama shows, and wanted to make a deal.

When he had sorted through all the
possibilities, he felt safe enough to turn to the man and say, "I'm
Puckett.
 
Who wants to know?"

"Ah," the man said.
 
He smiled and rose from his stool, carrying
his glass of wine, and as he passed the bartender, said, "Very discreet of
you."

Puckett watched the man approach.
 
He was tall, a couple of inches over six
feet, broad-shouldered and narrow-waisted, a guy who took care of himself,
probably worked out.
 
Puckett guessed he
was in his late forties:
 
hair that had
once been blond was light gray, and swept straight back from his forehead.
 
He wore a gray suit, a white shirt and a dark
tie.
 
His skin was pale... not sickly,
just pale from never seeing the sun.
 
Puckett decided he looked like an undertaker.

"May I join you?" the man asked.

Puckett gestured at the stool beside him
and thought:
 
European, no question.
 
Join
came out
choin
.
 
German, maybe, or Dutch, or
one of those pissant countries that kept breaking apart over there.

The man said, "There is a gentleman
outside who would like to meet you."

"Why?"

"He has heard of you... of things you
have said."

Puckett paused,
then
said, "Okay, so bring him in."

"I'm afraid that's not
possible."

"Why?
"
Puckett
laughed.
 
"Too big
to get through the door?"

"Something
like
that."

Some
sing
... some
sing
like
that.
 
German.
 
Had to be.
 
"Hey, Ray," Puckett said, "you
got no rule against fat guys, do you?"

Ray didn't laugh.

"Would you please come outside?"
the man said.
 
"I think it would be
worth your while."

"Worth my while
how?"

"Financially."

"Well, hell, why didn't you say
so?"
 
Puckett stood up.
 
"Keep my seat warm, Ray.
 
If I'm not back in ten minutes, call
nine-one-one."

A van was parked across the street.
 
It was black, its windows were tinted so no
one could see inside, and Puckett noticed that its license plates were
New York
handicapped
permits.

"Fuck is this?" he said.
 
"An ambulance?"

The man slid open one of the side panels
and gestured for Puckett to climb in.

Puckett leaned over and glanced
inside.
 
It was dark and, as far as he
could see, empty.
 
For no good reason, he
felt a chill.
 
"No way," he
said.

"Mr. Puckett—"

"Look, Hans, I don't know who's in
there, I don't know you, I don't know
nothing
.
 
All I know is
,
I'm
not gettin’ in there.
 
Tell him to come
out."

"I told ou—"

"Forget it.
 
You want to do
business,
we do it in the sunlight.
 
End of
story."

The man sighed.
 
"I'm sorry," he said.

"Yeah, well..."

Puckett never saw the man's hands move,
but suddenly he was spun around, his feet were off the ground and he felt
himself flying into the darkness of the van.
 
He hit the carpeted floor and lay there, dazed, listening to the side
panel slam and the engine start, and feeling the van begin to move.

39

Chase pulled the last page of the fax form
from his machine, read it quickly.
 
"Another
oid
," he
said disgustedly.

"Which one this time?" asked Tall
Man.

"
Elasmobranchoid
:
 
manifesting the characteristics of the
cartilaginous fishes."
 
He tossed
the paper onto his desk.
 
"Some of
these guys must take advanced degrees in covering their asses.
 
They're geniuses at stringing together
sentences that sound great and say nothing."

For the past forty-eight hours, Chase had
faxed every marine scientist he had ever met, sent photocopies of Polaroids of
steel teeth and claw marks on dead animals, described every incident that had
happened since the discovery of the Bellamy brothers and pleaded for opinions —
guesses, speculations,
any
thing; he had
promised to keep them confidential — about what kind of creature they might be
dealing with.

The few scientists who had deigned to
reply had been vague and guarded, none venturing to identify a specific animal,
all hedging their bets by attaching the suffix
oid
, which told Chase nothing he didn't already know.

"So now," he said, "we've
got
carcharhinoid
— it could be a
class of sharks;
ichthyoid
—
 
it could be a fish;
pantheroid
— it could be a seagoing lion or tiger; and
elasmobranchoid
."
 
He stared for a moment at the pile of faxes,
then thumbed through them and selected one.
 
"You know the only one that makes any sense to me?
 
This one, from the
cryptozoologists."

"The sea-monster people?" said
Tall Man.
 
"But they're—"

"Fringe.
 
I know.
 
Pseudoscientific, nobody takes them
seriously.
 
But they're the only ones
with the guts to use the
oid
I
like:
 
humanoid
.

"Come on, Simon."
 
Tall Man shook his head.
 
"You know the stats better than I
do.
 
The thing that killed the sea lion
was at least two hundred feet underwater; there were no bubbles on the tape, so
it wasn't wearing scuba gear.
 
And nobody
free-dives two hundred feet, not long enough to kill and eat a sea lion."

"I didn't say it
is
a human, I said it may be human
oid
... a kind of human... humanlike.
 
Hell, I don't know."

"You're beginning to sound like Puckett.
 
Has anybody found him yet?"

"Nope, he's gone, disappeared, nobody's—"

The phone rang; Chase picked it up.
 
He sighed, covered the mouthpiece with his
hand, said, "Gibson," then closed his eyes, leaned back in his chair
and listened to the litany:
 
the chief's
budget was out of control; he was running police boats twenty-four hours a day,
keeping his officers on double shifts; the press was hounding him; Nate Green's
story in the
Chronicle
, headlined
MONSTER EATS DOG
, in which he had alluded to the unsolved deaths of
the Bellamys and Bobby Tobin, had drawn reporters from every news service in
the land; a producer wanted to do a TV movie called
The Fiend From the Deep
; real-estate brokers, restaurateurs and the
town's burgesses were keeping the police station's phone lines lit up like
Christmas trees.

As always, Gibson's litany ended with the accusatory
question:
 
Chase was supposed to be the
big honcho scientist around here; what was he going to
do
about it?

"What d’you expect me to do, Rollie?
"
Chase said when Gibson had finished.
 
"Run around the great big ocean in my
little tiny boat?
 
I don't even know what
I'm supposed to be looking for.
 
Did the
lab boys come up with an analysis of the slime on the floor of the
garage?"