Something’s Down There

Chapter Three

Hooker wondered why the hell he had bothered to take a bath. He was sweaty all over again and even though they had cleaned the boat out he still could smell something fishy. My shoes, he thought, damn canvas shoes always smell like fish.

“Hey, Alley...”

The bartender looked around.

“Fill me up, okay?”

A full stein slid down the bar at him and stopped right in his palm.

“Why do you always have to show off?”

“Because you’re the only one who appreciates it.”

“Hell, nobody does that anymore.”

“I do, buddy. A guy just got to exploit his talents, small as they are. By the way, is it true your front name is Mako?” He smiled. “Billy was on the horn before. You know how they pass info around this place. So?”

“Yeah, that’s my front name. Damn, you’re as much native as they are.”

“Ten years here, man. Beats being a New York fireman. Pension check every month, most of it in the bank.”

“How about the rest?”

“Man, you don’t catch the scam around here, do you?”

“Buddy, I’m not interested.”

“Baloney. All that sweet money is going into the project on Corin Island. You know what I got?”

“Tell me.”

“A down payment on a dockside saloon,” he said. “Not a lounge, but a good old-fashioned pirate-style saloon the tourists expect to see in the Caribbean.”

“You sure there’s going to be tourists there at all?”

“Man, don’t you ever read nothin’? That Midnight Cruise company’s already got eleven shore points working for ‘em. They’re even putting down golf courses for the people who get tired of shuffleboard. They’re playing it smart, too, keeping ‘em small and cozy. A guy like me with just one operation can get soaking rich in no time.”

“What about liquor laws?”

“You kiddin’? Midnight Cruise own those island stops and if they’re on the mainland you can bet they own the local constabulary too. Hell, you ought to know about those things.”

“How would I know that?”

“I got a boat, broads and a clientele who likes to rent both items. Good money, I pay my taxes and when I feel like it I can partake of my own damn good fortune, like a boat ride with a beautiful blonde.”

“What a way to live.”

“Don’t con me, old shark man. You got that pension check coming in too.”

“Who says, pal?”

“It figures,” Alley told him. “You busted loose from the big town, you got a spot and you damn well grin all the time. Now... if you’re still doing that next year this time, I know I got you tagged. Am I right?”

“My friend, you are absolutely right,” Hooker told him. “Now get me another beer and bring it to me like it was New York.”

This time Alley came down with an iced stein in his hand. He set it down and flipped the foam from his fingers and leaned on the bar. “Can I ask you something?”

“Sure.”

“I saw you with your shirt off. How’d you get the scars?”

“We had some wars, remember?”

“Yeah, buddy, I remember, I was just wondering what you were gonna tell me.”

“Why?”

“Because I was in the interrogation room on the Gorman deal when those terrorists collapsed the Arby-Bennet building. I was on the arson squad then and they brought in a specialist who had just squandered a half dozen unfriendlies and was pretty shot up himself. I had a quick look at the big heavy before they hustled us out and he sure as hell looked a lot like you.”

“The Gorman deal was a long time ago.”

“I didn’t think you’d forget. It was you, wasn’t it?”

“Hey, I read about it in the papers.”

“Horse manure.” Alley gave him a big grin and said, “Man, you can tell me anything. I’m just a lousy bartender on pension in a crazy island in the Caribbean. We’re both has-beens anyway. Maybe I’ll even think you’re lying.”

Hooker let out a grunt and put down half the stein. It was cold, the way he liked it, and he wiped the froth off his mouth. “It was me,” he said.

“You was a cop?”

“Not New York.”

“Oh boy,” Alley said. “Should I go further?”

“I wouldn’t advise it.”

“Good, pal, we keep it that way. You know Berger, like how he always wants to be the Sydney Greenstreet type? Well, figure me like Hoagy Carmichael, off in a corner playing a piano or waiting on a bar. You be Bogart if you want to.”

“Come off it, Alley.”

“Hooker, I got to ask it. I just got to.”

“So ask.”

“Federal?”

“Of a sort.”

“Oh hell, I did have to ask, didn’t I?”

“Don’t matter, pal. Like you said, we’re all retired.”

“In the pig’s tail you’re retired.” For a long moment Alley studied him and his face was troubled. “You’re here to kill somebody, ain’t you?”

Hooker put his stein down and looked at the bartender. Alley was tall and skinny, a guy in his late fifties who had never had a home except a hook-and-ladder station in lower Manhattan. Somehow, life had passed him by, but now he was in his own dream world and was trying to sop up all the details of a world he had left behind.

“I don’t want to kill anybody,” Hooker said.

“You came at a funny time.”

“What makes you say that?”

“Twenty-four years with the fire department. Head of the arson squad. Lots of time in bars and scenes with the cops. All one big family so you get to know how to tell our people from the civilians.” He glanced up at the door. “Suddenly the feds are crawling up on us.”

“What the hell are you talking about, Alley?”

The bartender pulled another beer, set it in front of Hooker and said, “Look what Berger just brought in.”

Hooker didn’t turn around. He simply let his eyes slide up to the dirty old back bar mirror and he saw Chana at the same time she saw him and their eyes met and for a second he wished he had been packing his .45 and the piece was in his hand with the hammer back so he could turn and shoot her guts right out of her beautiful belly and it would finally be all over with for all time.

She came up to him and said, “Hello, Mako.”

He put the beer down and stood up. He knew how she hated to have to look up at him, but now it was his turn to lay it on. “Hello, doll,” he said. “This is a real surprise.”

“Like hell it is.” She was smiling at him and said it quietly. “I didn’t think the Company was that sharp.”

Hooker put his hand under her chin and tilted her head up. “They’re not, kid. No way. They ever put you with me after the last time, I would stretch your hide out from here to there. Even when you’re on my side, you only shoot me once and get away with it.”

“I wasn’t briefed,” she said.

“You didn’t think, you stupid broad,” he said.

She felt the muscles tighten in her back and she was almost ready to move before she remembered there was no way she could take him the way she could almost anybody else. “I’d sure like to do it again,” she told him.

“I’d sure like to see you try,” he said.

“The next time I won’t try. I’ll do it.”

“Kid, you’re a loser. Don’t go after the men that way or your tail will burn. Right now I’d love to rap you right in the chops, but that wouldn’t be the American way, would it?” He gave her a small grin, his teeth flashing in the light. “How about a beer?”

“Drop dead.”

“After the beer.” He held his hand up and signaled Alley over. When the steins were there in front of them Hooker said, “The next time you talk to me like that I’m going to knock you right on your beautiful tukhes.” He grinned again, bigger than the last time. “Understand?”

She picked up the stein, wondering if she could swing it fast enough to lay his head open, then decided she couldn’t and sipped the foam off it. “Sure,” she said.

“Just like old times now,” he told her.

“Not quite,” Chana reminded him. “I heard you were retired.”

Hooker hoisted his stein and drained most of it before he put it down. “You heard right.”

She turned her head slowly and stared at him with an expression that said he was a damned liar and an idiot for even trying to con her. Five years with the Company made you a veteran and she had had twelve of them. Maybe the Company wasn’t much now, but the political ax had only lopped off the heads that didn’t count; the heavy hands were right where they always were and the codes hadn’t changed a bit.

“Good for you,” she said. “I understand you’re living on Peolle.”

“Berger’s a smart little fat boy. I didn’t think he knew me.”

“He had memory training.”

Hooker nodded slowly. “I must be slipping. I forgot the Company keeps those outpost types in all the potential hot spots.”

“Yes,” she said meaningfully, “they do that.”

He got her intent and shrugged. He couldn’t give a damn what she thought anymore. Once, maybe, but not now. “How long you going to be around?” he asked her.

“Who knows? It’s only a minimum assignment anyway, and if I’m lucky I’ll get a week in the sun.”

“Try swimming off the side of your boat. There are some fish out there who would like to meet you.”

Chana finished her beer and put the stein down gently. She smiled up at Hooker and said softly, “Slob,” then turned and went back to Colbert and Berger looking as though she had just had a charming conversation, and sat down at their table.

Alley came up, his eyes going between Hooker and the table. “Who’s she?”

“Old friend.”

“Ho ho ho.”

He finished the beer off and handed the stein out for a refill. “I knew her back in the old days.”

“Like knew her how?”

“Quit being so nosy.”

“What else I got to do? Nothin’ goes on fire around here and if it does they piss it out. I can’t even use my expertise, like they say. So I’m nosy.” He handed a beer to Hooker and waited.

Finally Hooker said, “We had some business together.”

“Beddin’ down a broad is some business.” Alley grinned.

The look Hooker gave him turned the grin right off. “I don’t think they taught you much in the firehouse, pal, but if I was bedding her, as you say, I wouldn’t talk about it. But I will tell you this: one of those marks on my frame you find so fascinating, she put there.”

“Damn. Sorry, buddy.”

“Don’t sweat it.”

“What’re you gonna do with her?”

“Let her be, Alley. I just let her do her thing, whatever it is, and watch her sail away into the sunset. Maybe my luck will hold and she’ll get ‘et’ by that thing out there, though I doubt she could stay down in anything’s stomach.”

A small frown puckered Alley’s forehead. “You don’t believe that crap, do you?”

Hooker shrugged. “They made a movie once about a spider that ate Pittsburgh, didn’t they? Of course it’s crap.”

Alley snapped his fingers. “Hey... maybe that’s what they’re gonna do here?’

“Who?”

“That movie bunch that’s coming in and...” He stopped and squinted again, annoyed at himself.

“What are you talking about?”

Alley put Hooker between the table and himself, leaned forward on the bar and said, “Keep this quiet, but old fat boy got a call in here today and he took it on the wall phone at the end of the bar. What he didn’t know was that I was in the can. What I could hear on his end was something about a movie company coming in who was out taking pictures of the Arico Queen wreck.”

“Why would he care?”

“Hell, man, maybe he needs to stock up some trade goods in that general store of his. I don’t suppose a movie company hides what they do. Anyway, we could use some off-season money around here.”

Hooker shook his head. “Pal, you’re a one-man news broadcast.”

“Trying to be helpful. Not much to talk about these days.”

“And frankly, kiddo, I don’t give a hoot. That’s what I’m here for. Like they say, no news is good news.” He put his empty stein down and threw some change on the bar.

“Want another?”

“Nope.”

“Maybe you ought to send one back to the broad.”

“Order some.” He burped, slid his hand over his hair, picked up his cap and left.

When he was outside he walked up the walkway, turned left and followed it down to the dock. It had started off to be a good day, but it turned lousy real fast.

He let his mind drift back over the easy weeks of not knowing and not caring what was happening, then all of a sudden everything got spicy with boats gettin’ hit by something strange, then Chana Sterling turns up on the beach right next to his own personal island.

Silently, he cursed. The easy days were gone and he knew he was right back in the mess again whether he wanted it or not. Something was happening and the Company was in the game with their top personnel, and there he was, supposedly out of everything but knowing he was in up to his ears.

He said, “Sheeeit.”

“Man who talk to himself say much, sar.”

Hooker almost jerked around, feeling his hand go for a gun that wasn’t there anymore. “Damn, Billy, you are a sneaky Pete.”

“You say I have sand in my foots, sar.”

“I thought you were going to call me by my front name.”

“Yes, I think on it vary hard, but something tell me Mr. Shark out there want me only to know him by that name. That okay, sar?”

“Sure, Billy, but you don’t think a fish cares what you call him, do you?”

“Them fish, he think. Oh, he sure think, all right. He think how he chop off the one you catch right behind the head. He think how he sees a foot dangle in the water and how he pinch him right off by the ankle.”

“He think about you, Billy?”

The big Carib grinned. The only way Hooker knew was because his teeth showed in the darkness. “All the time we think about each other, sar. I wait, he wait.”

“What for?”

“For when one of us does not think, sar.”

“Great,” Hooker said. He nodded toward the shadow at the dock. “You know that ship, Billy?”

“She named Tellig. Come here five, six times before you come. She U.S. ship.”

“How do you know?”

“We know.”

“What do they do?”

For a moment Billy Bright said nothing, then, with an invisible shrug that ended the discussion he said, “Funny things.”

Later he would ask him again. Later, he would get an answer. Hooker felt a twitch of irritation touch his shoulders. Too often the governments and bureaucracies got wrapped up in their own superiority. Because you lived in a state of seminudity and had a hooch on a sandy beach, you didn’t exist and could be totally ignored. Stupid. These islanders had their own ways, their own thoughts and could get their own answers.

“You ready to go home, Billy?”

“Yes, for sure, sar. This night has been very good to me.”

Hooker gave him a little meaningful grin.

“She still love you?”

His teeth flashed again. “Oh, yes.”

“How about you?”

“I love that girl hard and long, sar.”

“Is that a double entendre?”

“A what, sar?”

“Forget it.”