Suicide Squeeze

31

“Mister! Hey, mister.” The voice was young, female. “Are you dead? You need some help?”

Conner opened one eye. Early morning, but the sun was already searing and rippling orange on the water.

He lifted his head, which throbbed angry above his left eye, touched the wound, sticky with blood. He lay on the deck at an odd angle. He wasn’t at an odd angle. It was the deck.

He’d hit a sandbar in the middle of the river. The prow pointed up at an angle, the stern dipping nearly below the waterline. The engine was still running, blades spinning, churning in the water and propelling him nowhere fast.

“Mister?”

He focused on the voice. A teenage girl in a blue bikini. A speedboat. Five teenagers in all, boys and girls on the river for a good time. Blue Bikini Girl kept looking at him, waiting for a sign.

Conner waved. “It’s okay. Not dead.”

They waved. The dude behind the wheel throttled forward and the speedboat shot down the river like a bullet.

Last night’s memories congealed, lined up for inspection as Conner half slid down the deck into the cockpit. He remembered Tyranny and his car in the drink and shooting the Webley at what might have been an intruder. He hadn’t been sure. Then he remembered the trashed cabin. Somebody had searched the boat. There had definitely been an intruder. Whoever had been there had probably not found the DiMaggio card, or else why had they stuck around waiting for Conner?

The Japanese? Maybe they wanted to question him the same way they’d questioned Folger. Tied to a chair.

Conner killed the engine. He checked the gas gauge. Only a few gallons of fuel left. He checked his watch and tried to estimate how long the Jenny had chugged uselessly against the sandbar, but his head throbbed, his mind cluttered with other worries.

He went below and forward to check the bilge, see if there’d been a hull breach. No leaks. No problems.

The main cabin was a mess, dishes and bottles scattered, items jarred loose on impact. Even the ugly seagull painting had been knocked off the wall. The glass in the frame had shattered. Conner would need to wear shoes until he could sweep up.

He picked up the seagull painting. The wooden frame had cracked too, and it almost came apart in his hands. He sighed, let it drop. Fucking mess is going to take forever to clean up.

Again, Conner had fallen into thinking of the Jenny as his boat. Somebody had violated his property, invaded his space. He kicked the seagull painting where it leaned against the bulkhead. The frame splintered the rest of the way, broke apart. The painting pulled away, folded over, and slid out of the broken frame.

Behind it a stunning blonde with a gleaming smile held her white dress down as the hem blew up around her. Red letters above her head: THE SEVEN YEAR ITCH.

Conner frowned, focused on the film poster. It took him a minute to understand what he was looking at, the letter and the DiMaggio card encased in hard, transparent plastic.

Through the fog of his disbelief and pounding head, Conner almost thought he saw Marilyn wink at him. Took you long enough, big boy.