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8

Bern looked forward to telling Moe that he was fired, then slapping the man stupid. Stupider. The loser: he’d just stood there and admitted to the cops that he’d taken the stuff from that jerk’s boat. Moe had time, he could have made up a story.

When they unfolded the towels and saw the Nazi badges, even the cops didn’t say anything for a while, all of them breathing through their noses as they moved closer to look. A diamond swastika. Silver skull with diamond eyes. A German eagle on metal that might have been brass, it was so black.

In Milwaukee, by the airport, there was a shop that sold stuff like that. On the south side, near the nudie bars Bern frequented whenever he was in town, always staying at the best hotel in the world, the Pfister, down by the convention center.

The store called itself a war museum, but was really a place that sold retail. Japanese samurai swords, uniforms, old medals, a German Luger pistol engraved with SS lightning bolts—Bern had bought a working replica for his collection—and similar things. Expensive.

Nothing in the place, though, as impressive as the diamond swastika. Probably nothing as valuable, either.

“Who knows what else was in that glob of stuff?” Bern had said to Moe as the cops pulled away, the lunatic Cuban handcuffed in back of a squad car. “Damn it, we may never know now!”

Which was true because the cops had made Moe give back everything he’d taken from Ford’s boat.

Ford, being a smart aleck even with his swollen face, had thanked the cops for the diamond swastika, and offered to let Heller keep the bucket, which the jerk had filled with rotten fish. His tone had been so easygoing, eager to be fair, that the deputies had actually said, “There you go, Mr. Heller. Dr. Ford’s not filing charges, and he’s willing to compromise.”

Redneck Cracker jerks, sticking together, even though the cops pretended to be impartial—they’d as good as told Ford he should press charges. They probably bowled together on weekends. Belonged to the same lodge.

He’d like to get Ford alone. The man thought he’d taken a beating? Bern hadn’t even gotten started good. On his grandfather’s farm outside Baraboo, what they’d done to pigs to get a laugh before slaughtering them—that’s what he wanted to do to Ford. No…the hippie first, then Ford. Catch them someplace in the middle of nowhere, nobody around to hear.

Moe had it coming, too. Slap him a few times, then use elbows on his kidneys. Let him piss blood for a week to remind him how stupid he was. That’s what Bern wanted to do.

Problem was, he couldn’t fire Moe. Not now. Moe knew how to scuba dive. In fact, he’d taken Augie and his chubby butt-buddy, Trippe Oswald, to the same instructor, Korzeps, in Fort Myers, where they both took the course, while Moe completed some kind of higher certification.

Bern needed the man’s scuba skills. Maybe there were more diamond-studded badges out there in the Gulf.

Another small problem: Moe knew things that could cause Bern trouble, maybe even put him in jail. The boat barn that had collapsed—he’d bribed the building inspector, so it wasn’t up to code. Also, Moe had been on site when Bern had bulldozed the mangroves, then used the Indian burial mounds for fill—which added a couple more acres of waterfront property but was a felony.

Hurricane damage could explain everything. Unless someone like Moe started talking.

Bern needed something on the man. Something that could put him in jail. Let Moe use his scuba skills until they didn’t need him anymore, then fire that loser’s butt.

Bern gave it some thought, and came up with an idea, the sort of thing his grandfather had pulled on his employees all the time. Relatives included.

But Bern couldn’t trust himself to talk to Moe right away. He was too mad. So he waited a couple of hours, then called Moe to tell him they had to load diving gear on the Viking tonight because they were diving tomorrow.

“We need to go looking for the place where they found those diamonds,” Bern told him. “Get out on the water before those Sanibel jerks do. Can you get back to the marina by nine?”

Bern also mentioned that, in an unrelated matter, they had something important to discuss.

Moe was suspicious. “Unrelated to what?”

Unrelated to your being choked to death, Bern wanted to say. “Don’t worry. It’s good news.” Good news for me, anyway.

He turned his thoughts to Augie. Another idiot. But at least Augie had told Bern what he needed to know.

Right after the confrontation, he’d dragged Augie inside the Viking, insisting he remember where they’d found the artifacts. Augie had just played dumb, pissing him off, and further pissing him off because Augie had seen the hippie and Ford make him look like a fool. Worse, Augie would tell the rest of the family. By Christmas, when nearly a hundred Roths, Pittmans, and Hellers gathered in Appleton, every branch of the family would know that a hippie had beat his ass, and a dork had made him look dumb.

Finally, Augie had mouthed off just one time too many.

In a tone that was supposed to show he was an adult, not a kid anymore—like that was possible—Augie had told him, “Out there on the Gulf of Mexico, all you see is waves, and every wave looks the same. It’s not like driving the boat ten miles down the channel for dinner at South Seas. Next time, maybe I’ll take spray paint and make an X on the fucking water.”

Jesus, that did it. Bern was punching buttons on the GPS one moment, next Augie was on the floor after being slapped so hard that his vision was blurry. Then Bern was grabbing Augie’s belt. He lifted him one-handed and slammed him against the cabin wall.

“You worthless little punk, you’ve been tit fed all your life. Never smart-mouth, ever.”

“Sorry, Uncle Bern. I mean it, I really am.”

“Grandy’s dead, so you can’t go tattling to him. I’m God, as far as you’re concerned.”

Grandy—Augie’s great-grandfather, Bern’s grandfather. Augie had been the old man’s favorite.

“I don’t know what I was thinking. It’ll never happen again.”

His uncle had nodded toward the boat’s controls as he lowered Augie to the floor. “Maybe there’s something you can tell me. Yesterday, I put some numbers in that GPS, just messing around. Today, you and stuttering what’s his face used the boat. Now I can’t find those numbers. Someone erased them from the memory.”

Augie had shrugged, afraid to speak.

“Did you or your butt-buddy, Oswald, screw with the machine while you were fishing?”

Augie shook his head. “No. Just Jeth.”

“When you stopped to fish, did he say anything about the GPS? That the spot was already marked…was he surprised?”

“Well, the first time we found the wreck, we did slow down kind of sudden-like. He mentioned something about a ‘waypoint,’ then we started going back and forth, back and forth, like plowing a field. He was watching the fish-finder, looking for something.”

“You didn’t find it right away?”

“No.”

Bern had begun to smile, feeling better about things, more like his old self. That explained why someone had erased the coordinates Bern had punched in three nights ago—the numbers he’d copied from the old man’s map. Turned out Stuttering Jeth wasn’t such an idiot after all.

Bern had thought: I know where the wreck is.

B ut first, he had to create a way to control Moe.

By ten that night, with Bern supervising, Moe had finished loading scuba gear onto the Viking, including the old nautical map with the latitude/longitude coordinates in his grandfather’s writing. Then it was time to carry out his plan.

He said, “Let’s go for a walk. We have important stuff to discuss.”

Bern practically had to shove the man to get him moving. That’s how suspicious Moe was.

Now it was 10:35 P.M., the two of them walking toward the canal that was cement seawall on one side, mangroves on the other. The rubble of the boat barn was to their right, the fuel docks brightly lit ahead, as Bern said, “I’ve been discussing your progress with some of the people in the organization.”

Moe said, “Your family back in Wisconsin?”

It was irritating, the way he said it, but Bern remained pleasant. “The company employs hundreds of people, not just relatives. Don’t ever think that some of us get ahead just because we’re related. Hard work, that’s all that counts. And talent. Just like in the NFL.”

Moe nodded. His boss had played two seasons of professional football, and liked to drop it in whenever possible.

“Anyway, we’ve been talking. We like your initiative, your organizational skills. We’ve been thinking maybe it’s time for the next step. Like maybe it’s time you were director of a place like this.”

Moe kept his lips pursed, sometimes nodding, as if he somehow had a brain that analyzed information.

“As director of a resort community,” Moe asked, speaking thoughtfully, “are you saying I’d be doing, existentially, what your job is now?”

Existentially. Did the idiot mean essentially?

Bern put his hand on Moe’s shoulder, moving him along. “Exactly right. I’ll keep my condo here, of course. But we’d find something just as nice for you.”

“Housing, too?”

“One of the perks of being an executive. Expense account, too. You’ve got to make nice with people, after all. It’s what we do.”

“Dealing with the public,” Moe said, relaxing enough to make a chuckling sound, “I do it every day.”

Moe had been so jumpy when he’d arrived that, if Bern moved a hand to swat a mosquito, or to wipe his bald head, the man had flinched. He was calmer now as they walked along the seawall beneath the sodium lights that made the boats and fuel pumps look yellow, the water black.

“Funny thing is, Bern, I thought you were mad at me because of this afternoon.” That laugh of his, it was as disgusting as his tattoos, both arms looking like he’d dipped them in Easter egg dye.

“Mad because you told the cops the truth? No, no, it was a tough situation. You and me, we didn’t have time to discuss what you found on the boat, to agree on a story. If it wasn’t for you, we wouldn’t have had the stuff back in the first place.”

They were almost there.

They had crossed the parking lot, all the empty boats making it seem quieter, and were nearly to the bay where there was more seawall and a boat ramp. Security lights were bright along the water, showing docks, and the gravel area where Bern had parked the bulldozer.

Nearby, spaced along the seawall, were a dozen fifty-gallon drums in various colors. They stored dirty oil from boat engines in black drums. The yellow drums held insecticides. The green drums were for fertilizers, used mostly on the golf course.

When Moe noticed the barrels, he said, “What are those doing there?”

Bern said, “I mentioned that someone from the EPA was coming, right? I requested an inspection so they could test our water quality, take soil samples, that sort of thing.”

Which was craziness, but Moe listened. Listened to Bern tell him that, when the state had declared the marina a hazardous area, it was only good for a month. The month was up in a few days, which meant that boat owners would be allowed to come onto the property. Bern said they needed more time to move the boats to a secure area where they could be auctioned before the owners knew if their vessels had been damaged or not.

A few more weeks, they’d be ready.

“I told the EPA we were missing drums of oil, poisons, and stuff because of the hurricane. The feds could close this place for another month if our water’s so polluted it’s dangerous.” Bern used his smile. “They pay for cleanup, plus reimburse us for lost business—and the public won’t be allowed within a mile of the place.”

“FEMA, because it’s a disaster area. Right?”

Bern gave Moe a nudge toward the bulldozer. “You’ve got a brain. That’s what we like about you.”

For the next ten minutes, Bern used a digital camera to film what Moe was doing under the security lights. He was intentionally dumping petroleum products and pesticides into the bay, which also happened to be a federal wildlife preserve.

Lots of close-ups of the face: Moe beneath his cowboy hat, oblivious at the controls.

The only time Bern got nervous about Moe using the bulldozer was when the retard made a beeline toward a mound of fill dirt on the far edge of the property. Nobody was supposed to disturb that, Bern had told everybody.

Moe remembered in time, and swung the bulldozer around.

Enough. Moe’s ass was his anytime he wanted it. Bern switched off the camera and headed back to the condo.

His thoughts swung back to that dork, Ford. Just let him get the man alone…