He stage whispered to Slagget and Clynch. “Party time, boys.”
The two men fidgeted. The Jeep pulled up in front of the house. Only one car door slammed in the dark. A brief unladylike curse about the apparent power failure. A bright, narrow-beam LED flashlight flicked on outside. A key scratched at the lock then slid in. Nelly Vickers pushed the door open and stepped inside.
Chalk two-stepped his black leather brogans and khaki slacks into the circle of light her flashlight carved on the floor. He whispered, “Hola, chica.”
She yanked the light up, taking in Chalk, gasping with horror. She shifted her weight backward, but too late. His brass knuckles smashed hard into the side of her head. Nelly Vickers went down as if crushed beneath a plummeting Steinway concert grand. No problem. When the interview began, she’d be alert and oriented times four. And she’d know Chalk was dead serious.
CHAPTER 6
With the weather going to hell again, Ben and Knocker Ellis made decisions. First they swore secrecy. Word to anyone else could travel fast, and they needed time to get this situation under control.
They needed to behave the same tonight as they had at the end of a thousand other days. The rising swells would drive the fleet of homebound oyster boats too close to their current anchorage. The cases would have to stay hidden on the bottom. Wait until later to bring them up. No one in his right mind oystered after dark anyway, even in clear weather. That was regarded as taking unfair advantage in Smith Island’s hardscrabble culture. It was late in the season for pleasure boaters, but there was a slim chance a few shiver-me-timbers storm-chaser types might be out poking death with bowsprit and pulpit.
Ben went down to the bottom one last time. He pulled the corpse by the coat collar over to the wreck. He belayed it there by the ankle with the cargo strap.
Then they took the catch in to Crisfield on the Eastern Shore. Fortunately, the weather alone explained why all the watermen, including Ben, were shy of their usual numbers.
Ben dropped Knocker Ellis at the pier by his small place on Smith Island. Ellis had the dubious distinction of being the only black man living on the tiny archipelago. He had moved there from Crisfield on the main soon after Ben’s father disappeared. It made sense. It simplified their work. They agreed to meet again later that night. Ben pointed Miss Dotsy for home.
Tonight, with so much to think about, Ben was disturbed to see another boat moored at his own pier. Of all the damn luck. It was a Natural Resources Police boat. Ben knew it on sight. In crabbing season, it picketed the Maryland-Virginia state line to keep the Maryland watermen and the Virginians working in their own duly licensed fisheries. Tonight, it seemed the patrol boat’s pilot, Natural Resources Police Corporal Bryce, had business with Ben. Business that would not wait.
Ben moored Miss Dotsy and made a trudging, exhausted walk up to his front door through a yard that still glimmered with standing water from the last storm. He got none of his usual satisfaction from the collection of abstract wildlife sculptures he welded from found objects. Plenty of tourists had offered him money for his metal backyard menagerie. Money he always turned down despite being all but strapped.
A New York bond trader had bird-dogged Ben’s more realistic efforts at the Sunfest in Ocean City. He’d tried to commission a full size Canada goose in brass with all the detail Ben could put on it. The trader had even offered to secure a Soho gallery through friends for a show of his work. Ben had nodded politely. Listened with less than half an ear. Let the offer go untried much to the disgust of friends who thought him stupid to pass up such a chance. Didn’t his friends, themselves watermen, understand it was oyster season?
Ben’s front door was unlocked as always. He went inside. No one lay in ambush in the tar-dark parlor. He stashed the bar of gold under the cushion of his old couch. He tucked the key cards into a drawer of the small secretary. Ginger, his Chesapeake Bay Retriever, thumped her tail softly on the floor three times, then went back to sleep. Though she and her ancestors would eagerly haul in downed fowl until they nearly died of exhaustion in the water, she was a sweet, but useless watchdog where Corporal Bryce was concerned.
Ben lived in a saltbox, a tall narrow house with barely room to turn around upstairs or down. It was from upstairs that Ben heard the noise. Somewhere near his bedroom, like a burglar rustling. Like clothing pulled from his bureau and dropped on the floor. A ransacking in progress? Knowing he had to face the music before he could return to work, he quietly climbed the stairs to see what Officer Bryce was into. So far there was no evidence from the wreck lying around to get him in Dutch with the law. No way Bryce could know.
Ben stepped over the second stair tread, and then skipped the sixth as well. They both squeaked, as did the seventh tread if he put his foot down on the right side. Ben placed his foot down softly to the left. He had no idea why he bothered to play the game. Bryce had certainly heard Ben’s noisy deadrise come in. Had heard him entering through the front door. Corporal Bryce knew he was on his way.
Ben reached the top of the stairs. Moved across the small hallway toward the bedroom door. He was deadly silent, but blind in the dark. Ben heard a quick breeze of motion. Suddenly, Bryce slammed into him from behind, gripping Ben’s chest and shoulders, teeth digging into his neck. He was driven forward through the door and onto his bed. Ben gave a quick judo twist of his hips and shoulders, and suddenly he was on top of Bryce. Bryce let out a woof of breath as Ben came down hard with all his weight.
Bryce grunted, “Damn boy! You’re smelling kinda brackish, aren’t you?”
Ben could feel Corporal Bryce undulating stark naked beneath him. She tore at his work shirt. Buttons flew, click-clacking all over the floor. He was not embarrassed about not having showered. She loved the not-quite salty scent of the Chesapeake’s waters that he brought home on his skin. It worked magic on her. She would be the last to claim that a day patrolling on her boat left her daisy fresh. Ben tasted the salt on her neck. Inhaled the aroma of skin that had long been out in rough autumn weather. She was working on Ben’s clothes from below like a rank peeler, a female blue crab under the protection of her Jimmy, eager to double.
He had known this woman his entire life. LuAnna was a few grades behind him nearly all the way through school until he quit. He was held back one year and then another because earning money took precedence over the three Rs. After that, they were the only two students in their entire class. Families with children moved off island to the main even then. There was a prison opening up on the Eastern Shore. Many crabbers and their wives abandoned a life of doing without on the open bay to earn a more certain living behind razor wire. Some captained tugs in the port of Baltimore or as far away as the Great Lakes. The families promised to return to Smith once they were back on their feet, but they never did.
LuAnna worked Ben out of his Dickies, kissing him hungrily. He helped himself to her warm nakedness. She finally tore Ben’s clothing free. It had been more than a week since they had last held each other this way. They thrashed and grappled like it was Judgment Day and they were hell-bound without the least desire for mercy.