The Black Silent

CHAPTER 2

Sam's chair sat on a large wooden veranda about one hundred feet above the ferry dock and overlooked the waterfront street on the hillside of Friday Harbor, San Juan Island, in the state of Washington. It was November, the Sunday after Thanksgiving. A cloud slid in front of the sun, turning the water more green than blue. In every direction beyond the small village, the abundance of trees and rough granite, of current-frothed deep waters, the land and sea presented a ruggedness that nourished Sam's soul. When the sun re-emerged from behind the small cloud, the water, as if by magic, took on a bluer hue, the whites of the boat hulls looked bleached, the seagulls contoured and gleaming like ornaments aloft.

It was a place of eagles and whales.

In the summer the harbor was like a carnival; in the winter it was more like a town of cousins going about their business. Those who thought of themselves as die-hard island people from way back tended to live inland, like their ancestors, the original settlers who saw beaches as weather-blown, joyless places where you couldn't grow a turnip.

The harbor, which was shaped somewhat like a bowl cut in half, with the hillside making the rim and the water making the bottom, bristled with houses and small business establishments, a haphazard road grid connecting it all.

To Sam's right stood a large, old home converted to a coffee shop, ironically named the

"Doctor's Office," selling its wares to every caffeine-craving, nature-loving, ferry-riding, hippie dude on the island. And some of the moderate Republicans as well. To his left was a covered outdoor oyster bar that had dried up for the winter, leaving no oysters and no oyster girls to cook them. Some winter afternoons he missed the college girls as much as the oysters.

These days Sam made it a point to keep his life in time with the rhythms of the land. On San Juan, like the other islands, it was easy to be close to the land because they hadn't put concrete everywhere and the ocean kept things scrubbed of heavy civilization. Four-story buildings were rare to nonexistent. They had no malls, supermarkets of consequence, freeways, youth gangs, chain stores, doctors who specialized in something, multiplex movie theaters, or anything that amounted to much more than a village shop. There were no traffic lights, but there was a great farmers' market once a week in the more temperate months. And that was enough.

In abundance, San Juan featured pastures, forests, lakes, swamps, rolling hills, small farms, seals, seabirds, eagles, hawks, rabbits, deer, and peaceful places, all requiring little tending. It felt warmish two or three months a year and a bit chilly the rest, but not so damp or cloudy as Seattle. The places built by people felt quaint, homemade, handmade, and the places made by nature teeming with all but intelligent life-forms otherwise known as people.

In the old days you could smell the fish guts mingled with the beach, but these days there were far fewer fish and far fewer fishermen, so you mainly caught the natural sulphur smell of the beach at low tide.

The chill today would drive most inside, but in a wool shirt and medium parka, Sam felt comfortable for hours at a time, his big hands able to hold things even in a stiffening breeze without the usual ache from the cold. His body was accustomed to the outdoors and he spent most of his time there. He preferred to read in the light of the day even when it was cloaked in its mist-laden winter finery. If the cold did manage to work its way through the muscled layers of his torso or set his legs to being a bit numb, he would rise and walk as best he could with the injuries, and these days he did quite well. At the local San Juan physical therapy, he had even begun running on a treadmill.

There was a breeze over the harbor that kept Sam's long, dark hair slightly mussed. His carefully trimmed beard was black, with premature salt-and-pepper for a man of forty-two.

He sat and watched the harbor, as usual enjoying its unique harmony between man and nature. It was better here than most places. The people of San Juan Island were a similar breed, by and large, for they chose to live here, surrounded by water, separated from most of the twentieth century.

Sam came from a different world. A world of adrenaline and death, of great deeds, great fights, dark shadows, and deep secrets. He had run a form of private espionage business created by a newly dangerous world. Despite any number of close calls, that world had not killed him, but it had bitten him and bitten him hard. Now he'd left it behind, but he still felt the fangs, both in his body and in his mind. He hadn't decided what to do next in his life. He had enough money and plenty of time to figure it out. One thing he had decided on was putting an end to the killing business.

A bit sore from a hard workout, he rose and let his six-foot-two-inch body slowly uncoil. The intensive physical therapy had bulked his long and elegant musculature more than usual, making it all the more important for him to remain limber. His chest was big and well formed, built from bench-pressing 350 pounds. His torturers hadn't gotten to his upper body like they had his legs, so every curve remained as it should be above the thighs. From the thighs down, Sam was the work of plastic surgeons.

The sound of loud, annoying voices came from behind him. Sam pretty much stayed out of other people's trouble, but he turned to look, more curious than anything else. Seemed that an ugly-sounding man was giving the coffee girl a hard time.

"You made a deal," he was saying in a raised voice. "I need the money and I need it now."

"I don't owe you nothing," she said.

Obviously, they were discussing more than the price of the coffee. The guy was big, a black man who looked like a noseguard, and not friendly. Sam decided that his beard must have stood for something other than tolerance. The fellow had a friend who didn't look much better than a sheep turd. Long Rastafarian hair glued with mud.

"I want what I bargained for," the black man said through gritted teeth.

"You never said you wanted that. I was selling a stereo. That's it."

"That was no thousand-dollar stereo and you understood my meaning."

Sam figured that people took a long time to build character and usually they didn't change overnight. Sherry, the coffee girl, was solid and fair, good-hearted-she'd feed a stray cat and pay respect to those that didn't deserve much. Sam had seen that and knew what the woman was about. She hadn't gotten that way overnight and would not behave unreasonably greedy with the stereo or money or anything else. What this man apparently wanted, Sherry would never have knowingly sold.

Sam had walked up to within three feet of them. The big fellow had a two-inch slab of belly fat that was probably undergirded by a fair portion of muscle. The arms were big and the man had obviously lifted. Maybe prison. From the shoes and the pants it was obvious the man came from the city. Maybe Seattle.

His fingers reached out to grab Sherry's upper arm.

Sam moved quickly and in a second or two his ringers were buried at the base of the man's neck, to the brachial nerve, just as he'd practiced a thousand times, and done more times than he cared to remember.

"Jeeeeeeezzz!" the man screamed.

"It's a big nerve," Sam said. "It wouldn't hurt if you'd quit with the girl."

The guy started struggling, and Sam's grip tightened, and the fingers got right down on the nerve and took hold of it as if it were a cobra's neck. To control the rest of him Sam got the fingers of a hand and twisted the hand back at his side. Screaming religion in the form of cuss words, the guy tried to escape a second time. Sam let him come down to the sidewalk, as if laying his head on the concrete might bring some comfort.

"This is a quiet place, but you aren't a quiet person. Calm down."

The guy's buddy suddenly got active, seemingly over the shock of Sam's attack, and actually took a swing at Sam's torso. Without thinking about it, Sam knew this man had no training. He blocked the punch and kicked him hard in the ass so as not to hurt him.

Not much for valor, the man held his butt and backed off, while the big guy kept screaming. Then he started begging. "Lemme go, lemme go." Next it was back to the colorful cursing.

"Sam, don't hurt him. He looks like he's gonna die," Sherry said. "Even if he is a pig."

The man was on his knees with his nose about six inches from the pavement, and Sam knew the man couldn't think about anything but that big nerve near the base of his neck and the hand behind him that felt as if it were about to be wrenched off.

"Have we got your attention?" Sam said.

"Yes." He'd stopped cursing at least. Sam let go. His buddy was still rubbing his butt and keeping his distance.

"I oughta kill you," the black man began. Obviously, what had happened had not yet become a part of his reality. He was used to being the aggressor.

He took a good swing, pretty fast under the circumstances. Sam caught the fist as one might catch a fastball.

"You need to stop fighting and start-"

Before Sam could finish his sentence, the man grabbed for his throat. It was skilled, with ringers closed, and only his thumb open. Now the fellow was starting to act like he knew something about fighting. Before the man could close his grip, Sam stepped inside and delivered a moderate blow with his palm to the point of the chin. It stunned the man, and for a second the man lived in suspended animation. It was enough to force the man to relax his hands. Sam grabbed his little finger and held it as if it were a hot wing ready for the blue cheese.

"If I break the pinkie at the first knuckle, it will hurt a lot," Sam said. "You are not that good at pain."

"I give up. I give up," the man said.

Sam felt obligated to give the man a chance, though he knew that the guy's temptation to throw another punch would relapse like a disease. He dropped the pinkie and waited for the left hook. It came. Sam threw his head back, let it slide by, and then did a short strike, driving the points of three fingers right into the solar plexus. The strike hadn't even approached full power, but the man dropped and flopped like a fish.

Sam stepped back, disgusted with the whole matter. Nothing like this ordinarily happened in these islands. People were civilized and thoughtful. The old stench of unadorned aggression hung heavy over the scene. Sam reached over and tried to help the man up, but he was too badly incapacitated. Sam took off his coat and put it under the man's head. Men like this did not come to this island in winter, and Sam wondered at his wardrobe. Then another thought came to him: already today Sam had seen others like this guy, and it didn't leave him with an easy feeling.

"Who is he?" he asked Sherry.

"Just came a day or so ago. Calls himself Rafe something. Thinks I sold him my body just because he bought my stereo. I told him I didn't want to sell it. Told him it wasn't worth a thousand, but he insisted. And then after he took the stereo, he got real ugly when I wouldn't have dinner with him."

"That other one," she said, meaning the smaller man, who'd already disappeared, "I guess is trying to take up pimping."

"So he's not with the heavyweight champ here."

"Not regular, I don't think."

The insanity was starting to make a little more sense.

"What's this guy doing on the island?"

"I don't know, but he's got friends."

Sam nodded.

Rafe what's-his-name was coming around. When he got up, he kept his eyes pointedly away from Sam, brushed himself off, and walked straight away.

Sam went back and resumed his reading until he felt the weight of someone else's gaze.

Without looking he knew that it was Haley, her brunette curls and eyes like bluish green silk, which were perceptive and inquisitive, and that once might have held just the proper mirth. Sam

hadn't seen that light in her eyes in a long time, not since the Fourth of July, 1994.

She had missed the "Mud Head and Rafe Show" and that was just as well. She would have insisted on fighting.

Following his capture and torture and the death of his wife, Anna, Sam had decided on San Juan Island as the site of his convalescence. His relationship with his uncle Ben and Haley turned out to be the perfect balm. In his growing-up years, he on occasion came to visit Uncle Ben and now-deceased Aunt Helen, and quickly grew fond of them.

During the summer of his twelfth birthday, he had spent the entire three months working with Aunt Helen on the landscaping and Uncle Ben had taken time from work for a number of salmon fishing expeditions. There were various other visits and more salmon. For a time, when she was nineteen and he was twenty-nine, he and Haley had almost been an item. Over his recent months on the island, Sam had found this dormant bond with Ben was growing. Haley was more complicated.

Life had kicked Haley to the ground, but Sam admired her because she kept trying to get back up. The prestigious Sanker Corporation had thrown her out in disgrace, claiming she'd stolen the work and ideas of her fellow scientists. That was shocking because she was the adopted daughter of the eminent Dr. Ben Anderson, also at Sanker, known to be the straightest of the straight.

Sam knew that Haley's life had been a strange mixture of ups and downs. Before her adoption at age nine, life had been very tough. With Ben and Helen her intelligence flourished. By sixteen she could fly Ben's float plane and run any boat that floated.

Academically she excelled, obtaining a Ph. D. degree in marine biology at age twenty-seven.

Because of her success, Sam knew the last great fall was very hard.

For the present she had taken to operating a bicycle and motor scooter-rental business thirty feet from Sam's sitting spot. She owned it, and had part-time employees, but lately seemed to be showing up herself. Sam's return to the island had just followed Haley's expulsion from her job and concurrent ostracization from local scientific society. She hadn't wanted to talk about the scandal much. He glanced her way and waved. She used that iron will of hers to return a good smile left over from better days and waved back.

Then she came closer.

"Can I interrupt your work a moment?" she asked.

He, of course, had no work during his recuperation but his learning, to which he was devoted. In response he put the book of early-island history aside. He was studying the history of the place, what grew in each microclimate, when it bloomed if it did, the resident birds, the migratory visitors, what was in the sea and what was beside it, the terrestrial life, the mammals, the invertebrates, the habits of each, and their place in the order of things. It was an ambition.

If Haley's face was looked at in an unguarded moment, the symmetry of it was pleasing, and the slight round of it and the softness in it had the look of caring. She was only thirty-two and beautiful. In her smile he saw the residue of pain. Lately she was always very welcoming, and when he looked at her, it was starting to feel like Irish cream in his coffee. That Fourth of July in 1994 passed through his mind again. He nodded.

"Of course," he said. "What's up?"

"It's about Ben," she said.

From the corner of his eye he saw Ben Anderson's lady friend and personal assistant, Sarah, approaching, the fourth member of their little family. Sarah was an attractive, forty-five-year-old redhead who looked in her late thirties and always had a good word at the right moment. She was sincere, soft-spoken, and liked corny jokes. Additionally, she was a fitness fanatic and had the strong elastic body to prove it.

"I assume Sarah's arrival is no coincidence," he said.

Ben, Haley, Sarah, Sam, and Haley's best friend, Rachael, had created something of an extended family.

Haley nodded. "I asked her to come."

It may have been Haley's tone, or Sarah's appearance here on a Sunday but Sam had suspected something was up. Also the bicycle-rental business was virtually shut down this time of year and Haley's appearance to repair a bike was a little thin. Sarah lived on Lopez Island, and on Saturdays she didn't typically cross San Juan Channel in her little runabout until later, about the time Ben typically quit his weekend work. Sarah worked for Ben, had for years, but Sam figured there was something growing between them.

Sam stood. Together he, Haley, and Sarah adjourned to the uphill side of the veranda in front of the sidewalk-servicing window of the local coffee shop.

They placed their orders, then retreated from the window to wait.

"Haley looks like a brunette version of Cameron Diaz in that hat," Sarah said, referring to Haley's tam-o'-shanter. Haley always wore a hat of some sort.

Haley gave a smile as if she didn't believe it.

"Haley wanted to talk," Sarah said, "and I did too. Although I have to admit that I'm feeling a little guilty because I didn't mention this talk to Ben. He and I are having dinner tonight after I, quote, 'finish some chores at home.'"

She had Sam's interest. He looked to Haley for an explanation.

"We're worried about Ben," Haley said.

"How so?"

"Well," she said, "he is not acting like himself. He's keeping things secret. Actually, he's keeping everything secret. From me, from Sarah. We want to know if he's told you anything he didn't tell us."

Sarah nodded in agreement.

"Ben doesn't talk much about his work," said Sam. "What do you think is going on?"

"I think he's got more on his mind than his work. Or leaving Sanker."

"You might be right," Sam told Haley. "You know the rumors-that Ben's discovered some sort of longevity secret."

"You heard that?"

"Only vaguely," Sam said. "From everything you do know, do you believe Ben discovered some kind of magic bullet to slow aging? I mean, for significant lengths of time?"

Sherry had their coffees ready, but no one moved to get them.

"Let me put it this way," Haley said in a lower voice. "If you conquered cancer in North America-I mean completely conquered it-you would only increase average life expectancy about 3.5 years. Heart disease is better, but still only about seven years. Isn't it shocking that by eliminating these two big killers, cancer and heart disease, we're only talking a little over a decade of extra life? The real miracle, if someone could pull it off, would be 'youth retention.'"

Sam raised his eyebrows in question.

"Youth retention," Haley explained, "would be truly slowing aging, not just extending life and being old for a heck of a long time."

Sam nodded.

"It's a hot area in biology these days, and the fundamental problem is that so many bodily systems deteriorate with age," Haley said.

"I think he's discovered something about energy, and something about aging," Sarah said. "But it's complicated- I don't understand it, and I'll feel very guilty if I speculate. I think he might have a secret lab and that's all I'm saying. Period." She sat back.

"That's a shocker. What on earth do you mean by a 'secret lab'?" Haley sighed, obviously frustrated that she hadn't gotten much out of Sarah, but Sarah had obviously zipped her lip.

"He's spending time with a lot of different people, I think," Sam said.

"What people?"

"Science people?" Sam speculated.

"Yeah. That's all I know as well. Strange goings-on- people coming into town at night, and Ben hustling off to meetings," Haley said. "He's mum as a mummy about it all."

"To me too," Sarah said.

"Well," said Sam, "we all agree that he's leaving Sanker. It's just a matter of time, right?

Distance from Frick and the corporation has to be a good thing."

"Absolutely a good thing," Haley said. "If they let him leave."