Suicide Squeeze

10

Neither Conner nor Jenny was eager for the Japanese guy to wake up and resume his whirlwind frenzy of karate death. Jenny’s suggestion to dump the guy over the side was surprisingly cold-blooded. Then again, the guy had been trying to beat Conner’s brains out.

Still, it just wasn’t Conner’s style.

They put him in the canoe and set him adrift. Without the paddle.

Conner would make up some lie for the canoe rental place. You could blame rowdy teenagers for almost anything nowadays.

Conner took the helm, kept the boat slow ahead and in the middle of the river. Without the running lights, they could run up on a sandbar or plow into a cluster of downed trees if he hugged the shoreline too closely. As soon as Conner had the wheel in his hands, Jenny disappeared belowdecks. Within ten seconds he heard cabinet doors slamming, the sounds of an angry woman rummaging for loot.

Conner gripped the wheel so tight his knuckles turned white. He eased up, took deep gulps of night air into his lungs, held them, and then exhaled raggedly. He had been shot at. Actually, it wasn’t the first time, but somehow this was different. Scary.

The adrenaline rush melted away, and the pain seeped in, face and limbs sore and raw from the pasting the little Japanese guy had given him. Conner’s ear throbbed hot, the corner of his mouth was sticky with dried blood. He didn’t even want to think about the pounding his ribs had taken.

Conner replayed the scene in Folger’s kitchen. Folger was in deep shit with more than just his wife. Seemed like he was pissing off people on an international level. Maybe that would work to Conner’s advantage. Folger had bigger worries than a missing sailboat.

Still, Conner didn’t want to get taken by surprise. He did a little math in his head. This caused a dull ache behind his eyes. He switched from math to half-assed guesses. It would take somebody driving fast at least thirty minutes to get from Folger’s bungalow to the swing-out bridge. The road didn’t run alongside the river, so no chance he could be spotted that way. And there wasn’t anyplace to rent a boat at this hour, so nobody could follow him on the water. As long as he found a branch or an inlet and stashed the Jenny before sunup, Conner figured he was in the clear.

The boat glided over the dark water, and with the danger behind them, Conner indulged a brief fantasy. The helm felt good in his hands. He could go places with a vessel like this, maybe follow Florida’s Gulf curve down to the Keys. Tyranny. He could take her, leave everything behind, the repossession gig, Tyranny’s husband. It was all new and possible over the distant sea-green horizon.

Could he convince her to leave Professor Dan? She was too used to nice things, and her husband had been hot shit in the art community in the late eighties. A big Dutch corporation had paid him a two-million-dollar commission for a steel and glass sculpture that decorated the lobby of the corporate headquarters. The sculpture had put him into the international spotlight and three more quick commissions followed, all in the seven-figure range. Now in the cool autumn of his career, he coasted on his past reputation and lived easy in his big house by the bay, a cushy professorship supplying him with coeds.

Until Tyranny. He’d married her. Conner might have been able to stomach a quick affair. For some reason women like Tyranny always had to dabble with older men. What was it? Some kind of Freudian father thing? Just kicks? But it wasn’t a quick fling. It was a wedding.

Conner shouldn’t have been surprised. Professor Dan could give her what she wanted. He was plugged into the art scene. He knew the chic, important people in New York or LA or Mars or wherever. He could talk the talk and walk the walk of the cultured and educated. Conner knew a good place to get oysters. On a good day, he could hit a curveball. It wasn’t the same.

What would Conner do for money, to be somebody important, to have whatever he wanted at his fingertips? Conner felt a fleeting kinship with Teddy Folger.

The cabin hatch slid open and white light blinded him.

“Jesus,” barked Conner. “Put that lamp out!”

“Sorry.” Jenny switched off the lamp, and everything went back to dark.

Conner had lost his night vision, blinked until the spots were gone from his eyes. Soon the moon and stars came back into focus. “What were you doing down there?”

“Looking.”

“Find anything?”

“No.” Fatigue in her voice, or maybe just a pout.

“You’re going to have to go forward with the flashlight,” Conner said. “I think there might be a place up here we can put her out of sight, but it’s too dark. Don’t turn on the light until I tell you.”

“Right.” She took the flashlight, felt her way the length of the boat until she was leaning over the bow.

Conner throttled the Electric Jenny back just short of stalling as he approached the riverbank. Several likely places turned out to be too narrow or obscured by low-hanging branches. Jenny snapped the flashlight on or off whenever Conner signaled. On one attempt, they tangled badly in low-hanging cypress branches. It took both Conner and Jenny to shove free, but the effort was painful. Conner felt something pull along his bruised ribs.

Finally, they passed a narrow gap in the trees. They’d already motored halfway past when Conner caught a glimpse of moonlight on water. He reversed the boat, told Jenny to scan the water with a flashlight. He hadn’t come this far only to hang the boat up on a submerged log.

“It’s clear,” Jenny said.

“Hold on,” Conner said. “This’ll be tight.”

The screech of tree branches on fiberglass launched a shriek of flapping swamp birds. Once through the branches, the passage opened up a little and doglegged left. Conner eased the boat in as far as he could. It was well hidden but not completely. Somebody sailing within twenty feet might catch a glimpse of the stern, but the vessel was more or less out of sight.

Once Conner had snugged the boat in as tight as possible, he and Jenny tied it off. They went below, made sure all the ports were covered, curtains drawn before switching on the galley lights over the sink.

Conner had to look twice at Jenny. In the unforgiving wash of fluorescent light, she looked haggard, dark circles under the eyes, hair limp and matted. It had been a long night. She’d been through the wringer. They both had.

Conner went into the cramped head, squinted at his reflection in the small mirror over the toilet. He looked worse than Jenny. Swollen lip, a shiner under his left eye. The weight of the world sank into his bones. He leaned against the sink, splashed cold water on his face. His heart sank at the sudden knowledge they had no way to get back to the little riverfront motel. They’d set the canoe adrift with the Japanese guy. He started laughing uncontrollably. It was so ridiculous. The whole night. What was he doing here?

He thought about Teddy Folger tied to a kitchen chair and stopped laughing.

Back in the main cabin, he found a mess. Contents spilled from cabinets. Drawers left open, clothes tossed and scattered. He heard Jenny in the master sleeping cabin, presumably searching in the same haphazard manner. Conner didn’t know how to feel about her, didn’t have the energy to care. As soon as he found a way back to his Plymouth Fury, he’d take something from the boat back to Derrick James, prove he’d successfully made the repossession. Maybe he could find the Jenny’s registration.

He opened the galley’s little refrigerator and was delighted to find a six-pack of Tecate. But the fridge was off, the beer warm. Instead, Conner found a new bottle of Maker’s Mark. He broke the seal and swallowed; it burned a hot trail down his throat and set his gut on fire. The egg salad sandwich seemed like a long, long time ago. He heard broken glass and cursing from the forward cabin. He shook his head, took another hit of whiskey. How did Jenny still have the energy?

He cast about the cabin, took in the interior of the boat. She was a good craft, sloppy now from Jenny’s search, but a good vessel, new, nice upholstery. The framed print over the dining table stood out for being so ugly. Seabirds gliding over a beach landscape. It looked like something from the lobby of a cheap beachfront motel. Conner supposed having lots of money didn’t automatically confer good taste. Conner was no kind of art expert, but he knew ugly when he saw it. Tyranny would have been able to articulate why the painting sucked in highbrow art-class jargon.

Conner thought about Tyranny again, frowned, decided he was unhappy, and took two big gulps of the Maker’s Mark.

Jenny returned, slid into one of the bench seats at the dining table. She put her elbows on the table, rested her chin in her hands. “There’s nothing,” she said. “He must have all his money stashed in the bungalow. Damn. I wanted to clean him out sooooo badly. I wanted him to fucking squirm.”

Jenny’s petty revenge didn’t interest Conner. “We don’t have the canoe anymore.”

“So what?” She reached across the table, took the bottle out of Conner’s hands. She tipped it back, swallowed. She sputtered, coughed, wiped her chin.

“How are we supposed to get back?”

Her eyes widened, mouth lolling open. “Oh, shit.”

“Yeah.”

She snapped her fingers, face brightening. “There’s an inflatable dinghy in the forward storage area.”

“If you tell me I have to blow it up, I’ll cry.”

When Jenny fetched the box with the canvas hanging over the sides, Conner was relieved to see it came with a foot pump. There was also a two-stroke outboard motor with a pull-cord starter. It was small, resembled an overgrown blender with a tiny propeller at the end of a long, rusty shaft. No amount of coaxing could make the thing turn over. Conner shook his head over the worthless chunk of machinery. “Can’t catch a break.”

They pumped up the dinghy and lowered it over the side. It was a tight fit for the two of them and precarious. They settled in and began paddling, arms moving in numb routine. Keep stroking, Conner told himself. Just keep going. Breathe in, breathe out. Get back and you can go home and collapse into bed.

“Only thing I don’t get,” Jenny said. “Who the heck were those Jap guys? Teddy has a lot of goofy friends but nobody like that.”

And Conner realized she didn’t know. Why should she? She hadn’t seen into Teddy’s kitchen, didn’t know what kind of hot water he was in. What would her reaction be? Conner didn’t say anything, not a word. He dipped the paddle into the water, put his back into it, pointed the little boat toward home, and kept his mouth shut.