Hanging on to the biggest boulder he could find, he felt for the steps, gasping all the while — frenzied breaths, gulps of air, salt water in his mouth. The sound of his own breathing was like the harsh wheeze of desperate fear, and it terrified him further. The splash of the water was loutish, indifferent, brutal — rising, falling; and though his head was teeming, the water was like a muscle without a mind, pushing him, pulling him. He would be separated, he would float free of the island, to be dragged down to choke to death in the sea.
As he lifted his face to the bluff, seeing only darkness, something plopped against his forehead. It just missed his right eye, and he knew when it fell farther, dropping to his shoulder, that it was a pebble. Had it been loosened from the cliff wall? He ducked, afraid there might be more, then looked up again, and again was staring into darkness.
Another pebble hit him, striking the top of his ear, hard enough to sting. And before he could react, another. He snatched at that last one and pressed it in his fingers. A pebble sucked smooth as a bead by the rolling water.
“Hey!” he called out.
And like a reply, something blunt and deliberate, another pebble struck his sore ear.
7
THE WELL-AIMED PEBBLES proved that someone was watching him and gave him hope of being saved. Yet there was no answer to his cries except more pebbles. Pock! He was popped on the shoulder with another one as this thought occurred to him. So it seemed like a game, a child’s game, a wicked child’s game of torment — and he was hit again, he called out again. What heartless bastard would torment a helpless blind man struggling in a swirling shore break?
Yet he had felt safer as soon as he guessed that the thrown pebbles were deliberate. He hugged the slippery boulder, his legs dragging in the push of the sea, the waves strengthening on the flooding tide. He called out again with thinning breath, his throat narrow with fear, and turned his hopeful face to the cliff. There came another targeted and bigger pebble. It stung one of his dead eyes and he thought, I’m lost.
The pebbles that had reassured him now threatened him, convincing him that whoever was watching him struggle wanted him to suffer.
“Who are you?”
A heavier hostile stone hit him on the head. Steadman clawed his hair and panicked at the thought of more of them, of being stoned to death.
“That hurt!” he called out in a child’s pleading voice.
The force of that last stone told him that whoever was chucking the stones was not far away. But while the first one had struck him lightly, as if lobbed, this one punished him with a painful lump.
A demented person was doing this, someone enjoying the sight of his being shoved by the rising tide and bullied by the slap of waves.
“Why are you doing that?”
Another pebble struck him. Reacting to it, he twisted his head and got a mouthful of seawater from a reaching wave. He gagged, and as he spewed he was hit again. He was quick enough to drag it off his shoulder as it landed and fling it back. His throw was so awkward he thought he heard a mocking laugh, though the sound of mockery could also have been the sound of the rough water around him.
“Please help me,” he called out.
A mass of small jeering pebbles smashed against his wet head.
“Can you hear me? I don’t know how much longer I can hold on.”
A single pebble struck his cheek like an insult.
“If it’s you, I’m sorry I hit you,” he called, remembering the man he had thrashed on the stairs. “Mister!” There was no response. He called again, “Ava?”
This time there was laughter, a low cough, the mirthless vindictive laugh of a man unused to laughing. It came again, a dry bark of unimpressed surprise.
In saying Ava’s name Steadman knew he had given himself away. “You think your girlfriend hates you like this?”
He heard sink, he heard zis, and he said, “Manfred.”
The two pebbles that hit him after that were the equivalent of “Of course.”
“Help me,” Steadman said, glad again but scarcely audible, splashed by the rising slop of the surf as he spoke. He felt foolish, his whole head dripping as he tested the boulders beneath him. He attempted a firmer footing, bracing his heel.
“Stay in the place where you are.”
The truculent voice was nearer and it, too, suggested the wavering sound of a man dodging waves and trying to keep his balance.
“How did you find me?”
“I never lost you.”
“The car in the driveway?”
“I was ever following you.”
Steadman remembered: the car that had been tailgating them when Wolfbein took him out, and the person that the old man Cubbage had mentioned.
“Ever since New York!”
“Why?”
“So to see.”
Hearing him, having this conversation, Steadman was giddy. Manfred! Moments ago he had felt lost, and now he was sure he would live.
“What do you want? I’ll give it to you. Just help me.”
Manfred’s low cough was a laugh of defiance that seemed to say “Never.”
“What I want? Maybe I want to see you die.”
“Manfred, please.”
“You make me a jackass in Ecuador, on the river. And in Quito. After I helped you find that amazing datura, all those lies. And I lose my job and my credibility because of you. I try to talk to you and you smash my tape recorder. You try to punish me. So, maybe I punish you.”
“I’m sorry, I don’t know why.”
“I know why. Because you felt strong.”
“Maybe.” And as he spoke the water bellied under him and lifted him and almost tore his fingers from the rock. “Give me a hand. Where are the stairs?”
“You are not strong now. I could let you die. I could just watch you.” “I’ll give you whatever you want.”
“You are nothing now.” And nossing said it all.
“Please,” he said with a piteous catch in his voice.
“But I am sorry — yah — you are really blind.”
With a shriek that was so assertive it sounded like a boast, Steadman cried, “I can’t see a thing!”
“That is so incredible, yah.” Manfred was unmoved. “It spoils my story, my exposé, to get my job back. I want to unmask you.”
“I have no mask. I’m blind. Manfred, I can’t hang on.”
Steadman wanted to say more when another wave hit him hard and thrust him against the embankment. Before he could recover the water plucked him and dragged him down, rolling him underwater. He surfaced with pleading hands.
“Take this.”
A piece of cloth slapped Steadman’s arm. He grabbed it, the sleeve of a wet sweatshirt.
“Just hold it. Don’t touch me. I don’t trust people in the water. You keep one side of the shirt, I keep the other side. Do as I say or I let go and you drown.”
“Where are the stairs?”
“So incredible to see your desperateness. You are weak now.”
“Manfred, if you don’t help me I’ll drown.”
“A big scoop for me. Maybe I can find your body.”
“You wouldn’t do that. You’re joking.”
After a pause there came a growling chuckle. “Did you ever hear me make a joke?”
The wind had picked up, the sky went dark. Steadman felt the chill of the building clouds on his face. The cold salt spray soaked his head. Now he realized that because Manfred was implacable he had no hope. Manfred seemed glad to see him trapped. Steadman thought he might weep, dissolving in his darkness at this noisy edge of the ocean, pressed against the West Chop cliff, dying so near home.
“What is it you want from me?”