Skeleton Sea

CHAPTER 10

“Gone?” Sandy Keasling pressed her cell phone to her ear, thinking she hadn’t heard right.

“Gone,” the twit on the other end repeated. “Left the building.”

She couldn’t believe this. John Silva had been semi-conscious when they took him to the hospital yesterday. She knew. She’d phoned last night. And if he’d improved this morning, wouldn’t the hospital keep him there awhile longer? Run tests. Run up a bill.

“When was he discharged?” she asked.

Twit asked in turn, “What was your name?”

She stood on her dock, squinting through the bright afternoon sunshine at the passengers boarding the Sea Spray. Wishing Silva back out at sea where he’d come from. Wishing she’d never found him. She said to the twit, “Where’d Mr. Silva go?”

“I can’t give out that information.”

“I’m his aunt.”

Twit said, “Then you should know where he went.”

“I’m from out of town. I just heard.” Sandy decided to put some spin on it. “I left early this morning. I’ve been driving for hours.” Driving, that was true enough — although it was driving the whale-watching bird-watching bucket out to sea and back on its morning run. “Just tell me where my nephew John went. I'm worried. He still living at… Oh for Pete's sake, I’m dead tired and I can’t recall the street name.”

A silence, and then Twit said, “He skipped out. Flew the coop. Delirious when they checked him in, so no records. No insurance. No billing address. How about, Auntie No-name, you come in and arrange for payment of his bill and we’ll see about helping you track him down. Or maybe you should talk to the cops. Or the other ‘relative’ who called. Last night, this morning, he's really worried, too.”

She hung up.

What other relative?

When she returned from the afternoon bucket-run she had an idea where to start looking for John Silva. She'd thought it over, what she knew about him. Name, occupation, and something a whole lot more useful.

It took her awhile to get the location.

A long shot, but not too long of a drive.

She drove her old Dodge pickup along the highway and took the turnoff inland, following the two-lane road through the coastal oaks until she came to the little village in the clearing. Not even that. Couple dozen houses, couple businesses. Mostly bushes and trees. Pretty. Perfect, if you wanted privacy. Perfect, if you spoke Portuguese and had nowhere else to go.

If she was an illegal, she’d be living in the back of nowhere, too.

She parked outside the Café Oporto. She pulled her ball cap low and slumped in the seat. Raised a newspaper to hide her face. Feeling like a damn fool.

A woman was approaching on the sidewalk. Middle-aged, cropped dark hair, jeans and sweatshirt. Sandy was slightly disappointed. But what had she expected — ruffled blouse and peasant skirt, like they wore at the Portuguese Festival? Sandy had been a kid when she went. She'd wanted her own ruffled blouse and peasant skirt, for about a week.

At least she'd learned a few words of Portuguese, in that week.

And the memory had brought her here, now.

The woman peered in the car as she passed. Sandy slumped lower.

Three more people passed by. None of them John Silva. Maybe she’d have to start asking around. Yeah, and people here were going to tell an outsider where John Silva could be found? But ten minutes later she spotted him coming up the sidewalk and she didn’t feel so foolish.

She got out and headed his way.

He was a short wiry man in the jeans/sweatshirt uniform. He had curly blond hair, a lot tamer than her own bushy curls. A lot blonder — from the sun, not the bottle, she guessed. Squarish face, set jaw, hideous red welt crawling up his cheek. He moved slowly but at least he was functioning. He saw her coming. He stopped, deer in the headlights, then turned and headed the other way.

She went after him. “You’re John Silva.”

He picked up his halting pace.

She easily matched him. “Joao?” she tried.

He glanced her way then snapped his look to the sidewalk.

“Do you speak English?”

“No English,” he muttered. He suddenly veered across the street. No crosswalk. No traffic either.

She came along. “I can say a couple things in Portuguese. Learned at the Festival when I was a kid, eating sopas.” Boiled meat and cabbage poured over a slab of bread. “Boa comida.” Good food.

It worked. He smiled.

She seized the chance. “I’m Sandy Keasling. Captain of the Sea Spray. I’m the one who pulled you out of the ocean yesterday.”

He gave a shudder. He said, finally, “Thanks you.”

“No English?”

“Little English.”

They’d nearly stopped. There was a park just ahead, a patch of grass with kiddie swings and picnic tables. She pointed. “Can we sit?” She angled off the sidewalk, onto the park path, throwing him a look. “Please? Por favor?” Shit — that was Spanish.

Well, good enough. He came along with her and sat on the bench opposite her, arms folded on the table. If she was reading his body English right, he thought he owed her for the rescue but he didn’t trust her.

She said, “What happened to you out there?”

He sat silent.

She touched her cheek.

He reddened. The welt itself purpled.

“Jellyfish,” she said. No clue how to say that in Portuguese. She cupped her hands and wiggled her fingers like tentacles.

He nodded. Face suddenly going pale.

“One of those purple-stripe jellies?” she asked.

He stared at her.

She looked around the park. Nothing purple. Not that she expected a purple wildflower here, now.

He said, almost a whisper, “Grande.”

She figured ‘grande’ meant big, just like in Spanish. Purple-stripes were big, all right. She’d seen them with bells up to two feet across. She nodded. “Grande.”

He whispered, “Enorme.”

“You saying enormous? Okay, I got it. Big.” If she had the language — or the mime skills — she’d ask him if he came across any Humboldt squid, or any whacked-out fish, anything like she’d seen yesterday out at Birdshit. On today’s runs, both morning and afternoon, she’d avoided the rock. No reason to rile the passengers. Yesterday’s load had been so freaked they didn’t leave tips. Eh, no reason to think Mr. Joao Silva came anywhere near Birdshit yesterday. But then where did he come from?

She said, “Where? How far away?” She flung her head back, flung out her arms, treading water. Body Portuguese, she hoped, for you were floating in the water half-dead. She straightened. “How far from where I found you?”

He shrugged. Universal body language.

“What happened to your boat?”

He shrugged.

“What were you doing? Why were you diving?”

He smiled, helpless.

“You had a dive bag. You had something in the bag. It was red.” Now she looked around for something colored red to point to but everything in this damn park was brown and green, except the swings and they were kiddie-pool blue. She held out her hands and shaped a bag. Mimed opening it, putting something into it.

“Nao compreendo,” he said.

She narrowed her eyes. Oh yeah, I bet you do compreendo. You just don’t want to say. She said, “I saved you. You owe me an explanation.”

“No so much English.”

“Why’d you leave the hospital?”

He shook his head, smiling.

“You illegal?” she snapped.

He jerked. She might as well have slapped him.

She said, “It’s okay. I don’t give a… I’m not a cop. No policia. Whatever.”

His hands were flat on the table. Ready to shove him up and get gone.

She’d hoped he would talk to her, right here. But she hadn’t counted on it. She said, “If you’re scared the policia will find you — or anybody who’s looking for you — guess what? Took me about ten minutes to figure out where to look.” That was a lie. It had taken her all afternoon but no reason to tell Silva that.

He was sweating now.

She was hurting. Migraine starting up. Too little sleep, too much worry. All thanks to Lanny. She needed to find out what was in the dive bag, why it was so damn valuable that Lanny had to steal it, lie about it. She could hope that Lanny hadn’t done something unfixable, like he'd done five years ago. Like she'd done. The Shitstorm. She breathed deep. Knuckled her forehead. The sea snake that liked to squeeze her brain began to uncoil.

Silva stared at her.

She held his look. Set the bait. “Look Joao, you want your dive gear? That how you make a living? I bet you can’t afford to replace it, right?”

He went rigid. Listening hard.

She pointed at him. “Joao’s dive gear.” She pointed at herself. “Come to my house. Compreendo?”

He slowly nodded.

“You come to my house, we’ll see about your gear, maybe talk a little more?”

“You house?

“Yes. I saved your life. I wish you no harm.” She placed her hand over her heart. “Friend.”

He took a long time with that, maybe calculating the cost of new dive gear, but then at last he placed his hand over his own heart. “Amigo.”

Same as the Spanish. So we got big, and friend. Her Spanish was iffy but in a pinch, worth a try.

Sandy did not try to question Silva during the drive to her place.

Best to get him there first.

She pulled off the highway, onto the windy road that ran through the pines, and when her house on the bluffs came into sight Silva let out a huh of surprise. People always made some sound when they first saw the place. Surprise, awe, jealousy. Not the house they thought of when they thought of Sandy Keasling.

The hacienda rambled long and low, commanding its view of the sea, red tile roof and wood-trim windows and whitewashed walls and a long narrow porch with carved oak posts. It took people’s breath away, until they got close enough to see the flaking paint and windows that did not sit flush on their sills.

She stopped the car and they got out. Silva started for the front door. She was going to have to disappoint him. No hacienda tour. She touched his arm, motioning him in a different direction.

“Dive?” he said. “Mine?”

She nodded. Just keep him following.

She led him along the path that skirted the northern end of the house, that ran along a jutting ridge to the gazebo sitting on the thumb of rock above the sea. He made that sound again. What’s wow in Portuguese? She opened the gate in the gazebo fence and started down the steep steps. It was a moment before she heard his halting steps on the metal mesh. The steps led down to a long skinny cove, rock-floored, walled by shaly bluffs that had yet to crumble under the onslaught of high tides.

She had a sudden ache, a need to sing out the tide.

Low tide now, so they did not have to navigate the high rocky path. They walked on sand, all the way back to the skinny mouth of the cove.

When they reached the cleft in the wall, and he could see the chain-link gate and the darkness beyond, he halted.

“It’s safe,” she said, “in there.”

“Seguro?”

“Yes, seguro.” She took out her key, unlocked the padlock, and went in first. She turned on the two electric lanterns that flanked the entrance. Between that and the overhead cracks that admitted sunlight, the cave glowed.

She heard Silva behind her. Making that wow sound again. Oooh. Aaah.

She smiled. She never much liked showing off the hacienda because she had not created the hacienda. But she had created this. Well, her father had installed the gate, but then he’d turned over the cave to his kids. Sandy’d been in charge. It was Sandy’s vision that made this place. She showed it off, now, to Silva. Glowing bone-white was a network of driftwood. Driftwood dragged in here over the years by her and her brothers, driftwood crafted into tables and chairs and shelves and sleeping pallets and coat racks and candle holders and at the back of the cave a driftwood ladder that spiraled from the floor to the hole in the ceiling. She and her brothers used to go up and down that ladder, in and out the hole, hide-and-seek, spying on each other, wicked little pirates.

She pointed out the ladder to Silva and shook her head and drew a finger across her throat.

Silva’s eyes widened.

“Danger,” she said. “No climb.”

His focus shifted away from the fantastical shapes and came to rest on the line of storage bins. “Dive?” he repeated.

“In a minute, Joao.” She sat on top of the closest bin. “Sit.” She indicated the next bin. “Talk first.”

He sat, edgy.

She sat facing him. Put him at ease. “When I was a kid,” she said, “I played in here. Pirates.” She covered one eye and slashed an imaginary sword.

“Corsario!” He actually grinned.

“Real corsarios used to come here. Prohibition rum-runners. Come in by boat, offload their cases of whiskey, hide them in here until the men with the trucks came.” She saw she’d lost him. It didn’t matter. “Corsario…illegal. Like you.”

He was frowning now.

“I don’t care. But policia might care. They might come looking to your little village.” She jerked a thumb, in the general direction of the highway. “But if you want to hide, you can stay here.”

Still he frowned, showing the effort of trying to understand. He sagged now, giving up the effort of sitting straight.

She thought, he’s exhausted. Toxic purple-stripe sting, hypothermia, allergic reaction, delirious. Or faking it — could you fake unconscious, in the hospital? Anyway, he’d been well enough to escape this morning, to get himself to the village somehow. But he didn’t look so well now. She said, slowly, “The cave stays dry. There’s blankets, pillows, air mattress.” She pointed at one of the bins. “Make a bed.” She pointed at a rocky ledge, mimed sleeping. “I’ll bring you food. Boa comida.”

He started to nod.

“Stay until policia stop looking. Stay long as you want. It’s safe.”

“Seguro?”

“Right, seguro. Sometimes I stay here, to be alone.” Away from Lanny and his neediness. “Nobody comes here. For Joao now. Seguro.”

He rose from his bin and went to the gate and pointed at the lock and shook his head.

“You don't want to be locked in?”

He kept pointing and shaking his head.

“Fine.” She removed the padlock.

He slowly smiled. He held out his hand.

She took it and they shook.

“Dive gear?” He still smiled.

Now, she thought, the rubber meets the road. She opened the closest storage bin.

He came over and looked inside. His smile died. He looked up at her, outrage squaring his face. “No dive gear.”

“No,” she said. “The cops took your dive gear. And I didn’t really lie to you back at the park, I told you to come to my place and we’ll see about your gear.”

He gaped.

Either he didn’t have enough English to understand that, or he didn’t appreciate splitting hairs. “Joao,” she said, “we will see about it. I’ll help you get it back. Unless you want to go to the cops and ask for it?”

He shook his head, tight. He understood that.

“I will help you,” she repeated. “But you have to help me.”

He sagged again. Nearly collapsed onto the rocky ledge.

Sandy went to the bin he’d been sitting on, opened it, and pulled out a black mesh bag. Held it up, let him look at it, its emptiness.

His eyes widened.

“With your gear there was a dive bag like this one.” She’d bought it at Morro Marine. Standard style. She held it out to him. He didn’t want to take it. “There was something in your bag, Joao.” She opened the drawstring, mimed putting something into the bag. “What was it? Que in bag?”

He shook his head.

“And then somebody took it out. Stole it.” She mimed taking something out of the bag. “I didn’t take it.” She put her hand on her chest, shook her head. “But I think I know who did. I can get it for you.” That was stretching the truth. She had no idea where it was. Whatever it was. Red mystery object. Last night when Lanny was at Jake’s place — and what was up with that, Jake inviting Lanny over to watch the idiot box? — she had gone through Lanny’s closet, his drawers, all his special hidey-holes. The red thing wasn’t there. But come hell or high water, she was going to find out where Lanny had put it.

She gave Silva a straight look. “Joao, tell me what was in the bag. Where did you find it? Why did you have it? What does it mean?”

He shook his head. Lifted his palms. Smiled sadly. Nao compreendo.

She said, softly, “You will.”