Arse-over-tits a couple times and you think you're Jacques Cousteau?"
"Hey, c'mon. I've dived the Little Bahama Bank. Maybe I'm a little rusty, but so's your grandfather's chariot."
Fowles laughed and nodded toward a cooler. "Beer if you want it."
Steve declined. He hated burping into the regulator.
"So, mate, why'd you really come see me today?"
"I told you. I thought there was something else you wanted to tell me. Something about you and Griffin. Maybe having a falling-out."
"Maybe you're not as good at judging people as you think."
"You were mad as hell about Oceania. I'm betting you did something about it."
"I made no secret how I felt. I told Mr. G that Oceania was a mistake."
"But you couldn't convince him not to do it."
Fowles checked the compass, turned a bit more northwest, and gave the throttles a little more juice. "Like I told you before, the boss heard me out. I asked him to consider scuttling the hotel and casino. Maybe just do a tour business. Glass-bottomed boats and catamaran trips to the reef. Mr. G said I was talking about a rowboat while he was building the Queen Mary."
"That had to piss you off."
"The man's been good to me." Fowles ran his hand across the polished teak wheel. "A custom forty-twofooter titled in my name. Everything state-of-the-art. I take Delia's coral kissers out to the reef for cleanups and census-taking. I got no complaints."
"Ever think Griffin was paying you off just to go with the flow?"
The boat passed through a channel between two small islands. "A man makes certain compromises."
"What'd Delia say when you told her about the new boat?" Steve asked.
"She told me to turn it down. We had a bit of an argy-bargy about it."
Not surprising. Delia Bustamante would no more take a bribe than cook her plantains in margarine.
Steve decided to cast a line in the water. "You violated your principles. Then you felt guilty, so you tried to stop Oceania."
"What in bloody hell are you talking about?"
They were in open water, the boat riding on plane, smoothly hopping the three-foot seas. Steve was amidships the Tirpitz with nowhere to go. "At the dock that day, after everybody got off the Force Majeure, I think you took the chariot out. I think you were picked up by someone in a fast boat, and you led them to that little island near Black Turtle Key where you knew Griffin would stop."
"What for? To kill Stubbs?"
"If you thought that would stop Oceania, maybe. Chances are, the next guy wouldn't be so easy to bribe. And with all the scrutiny he'd be getting, Griffin probably couldn't even try."
"You been in the sun too long, Solomon."
"Okay, how's this? Maybe you didn't shoot Stubbs. Maybe the guy who picked you up was the shooter."
"Setting up my defense for me? Going to be my barrister?"
"C'mon Fowles. You want to tell me. Who'd you take out there? Who did the shooting?"
"You're cracked, mate." He slowed the boat as they neared a stretch of shallow water that shimmered red from coral underneath. "Maybe the reef will mellow you out."
Fowles cut the engines, opened a compartment, and began hauling out wet suits, masks, and fins. "The tanks are below. You gotta carry your own. I'm not your valet."
They slipped into the gear in silence. Fowles' demeanor had changed, Steve realized. Not so surprising. He'd just accused the man of being an accessory to murder, if not the murderer himself.
They were untying the chariot from the dive platform when Steve said: "No last-minute words of advice?"
"Watch out for sharks," Clive Fowles said.
SOLOMON'S LAWS
11. If you're afraid of taking a big lead, you'll never get picked off. . but you'll never steal a base, either.
Forty-five
Steve somersaulted backward off the dive platform and spent a few moments flutter-kicking along the surface, orange seaweed tangling in his fins. He hit a valve on the buoyancy compensator, deflated his vest, and let the weight belt take him under. Water trickled into his mask, tickling his nose. He exhaled through his nostrils, and the water drained through the purge valve.
Hey, I remember how to do this.
He listened to the sound of his own breathing, felt the bubbles rising around him, let himself relax. He descended to thirty feet, luxuriating in the water, warmed by his own body heat, encapsulated in the wet suit. And there it was, spread out in front of him, what Fowles wanted him to see.
Steve knew all the cliches. Coral reefs were stone castles. Cities beneath the sea. Underwater rain forests. Living animals, millions of them, growing on top of the limestone skeletons of animals that had come before, this reef perhaps twenty thousand years old.
He'd snorkeled the state park in Key Largo. He'd scuba-dived in the Bahamas and off the coast of Grand
Cayman. Could he have forgotten the infinite beauty, or was this reef simply more spectacular than those?
He was mesmerized by the kaleidoscope of colors. Yellow sea fans waved in the current. Angelfish, pulsating with neon blues and greens, darted around mounds of grayish brain coral. Rising from the sand, stately cathedral coral resembled the pillars of an ancient temple in a miniature Atlantis. The tentacles of purple gorgonian whips moved with the current.
Fish everywhere. Hundreds. . no, thousands. Tenants of the coral condos. Sleek parrotfish with the yellows, reds, and greens of a bird's feathers. A school of silvery jacks, staring at him with huge eyes. Smallmouth yellow-striped grunts that are supposed to make a grunt-grunt sound, but Steve couldn't hear anything over his own breathing and bubbles. A moray eel poked its head out of a crevice, didn't like what it saw, then vanished inside.
A large shadow passed over him. The biggest, fattest grouper he'd ever seen. The one called the jewfish, to Steve's consternation. A jewfish bigger than Ariel Sharon and Harvey Weinstein put together. Maybe seven feet long, at least six hundred pounds, with that underslung jaw. It passed, then turned, its tail scattering a dozen smaller fish. Then headed straight for Steve. Not that it was dangerous. More like a fat lawyer, waddling down the courthouse corridor. Taking up his allotted space, and yours, too. Steve didn't know if the fish would swat him with its powerful tail or serve him with a writ, so he moved to one side.
Steve swam deeper along the slope, the water growing cooler, the surroundings darker. He was at sixty feet when it occurred to him.
Fowles. Where the hell was Fowles?
Looking up, he couldn't see the boat. Would he have heard the engines if it had moved?
What if Fowles left me here?
Steve's breathing became louder, heavier. How long had he been down here? How much air did he have left? He checked the gauge. More than two thousand pounds. Plenty of time, unless his heart started racing.
Okay, calm down. Fowles is a good man, remember? You said it yourself. Yes, and you also said he's possibly a murderer.
Nearby, a steel-gray barracuda swept by and looped back, circling him. Steve swam over a stand of staghorn coral that resembled the antlers of a deer. The barracuda followed like a P.I. on surveillance.
Suddenly, Fowles brought the chariot alongside, motioning Steve to hop aboard. Battery-powered, the chariot had approached stealthily. Unheard by German U-boats in the North Sea, unheard by Steve above the reef. Two seats were sunk into its cigar-shaped body, one in front of the other, like the cockpit of an old biplane. Steve climbed into the second seat, his back resting on the ballast tank near the stern.