Dead in the Water

  Dizzier now, and with good reason, damn it, Phil studied the crush of dancers. So many. You’d think the boat would sink under their weight. The thought made him queasy. Milling around in a slow-motion circle as everyone slid their feet along like ghosts dragging their chains. Step, slide, step, drag.

  Drag,

  down

  down

  down—

  He shook his head, bleary with alcohol. Stupid, stupid. But then he was pretty stupid, wasn’t he? Stupid with a danged ol’ capital S.

  Drag,

  down

  down

  down—

  Across the room, a woman swiveled her head and smiled in his direction. She was a brunette with a soft, sweet face, shell-pink lips, and eyes as big and gentle as a Thoroughbred’s. Kind of woman he should have married. When he didn’t look away, her smile grew and she lowered her eyes demurely.

  Blood rushed to his face and he put his glass to his lips. She looked up through her lashes, a bit flustered. Oh, darlin’. His face grew hot. What a lady.

  Someone walked past the panes of glass, casting the lady in shadow. Light flickered back over her features as the passer-by moved on.

  Phil blinked. For a second, for a moment there, she looked like she—

  That she was—

  Elise and the captain returned. She was cheery and horny; he knew the signs. He decided he’d seen an optical illusion—the woman’s face was there, and in perfect condition—and guzzled his fourth glass of port. Donna’s and John’s gazes ticked from Elise to him—damned gossips—and he feigned nonchalance as Elise sat beside him. He envied little Matt, oblivious and unconcerned, picking apart a cream puff and dipping his fingers into the filling like an islander eating poi.

  “Matt,” his father reproved, and the boy guiltily glanced up. Phil winced. Christ, he looked terrible. The bones in his face glowed through his skin. Suddenly Phil didn’t envy him quite as much. In fact, he was damned ashamed.

  “Captain Reade has invited us on a tour,” Elise announced to everyone, as if she had personally arranged the treat.

  The man bowed as if this was the ultimate sacrifice, but one he would make to please them. “Yes, if you’re amenable.” He cocked his head at Phil, raised his brow questioningly. Goddamn, he’d better not embarrass himself, Phil thought. Ease up on the moonshine. Don’t give that man a single reason to feel superior.

  “Yeah!” Matt cried.

  John Fielder tapped his mouth with his napkin and laid it beside his plate. “I don’t know. It’s been a long day.”

  Matt pouted. “I took a nap. And I don’t even have to anymore.”

  The captain laughed, deep and rich and assured. Romance-hero laughter. “Then you should be rewarded. Positive reinforcement and all that, eh, Dr. Fielder?” The lone green eye beamed at the doctor like a jewel in the forehead of an idol.

  John acquiesced. “Okay, okay. How can I win when he’s got the navy on his side?”

  Captain Reade held up a finger. “Just one ship, Dr. Fielder. Nothing so grand as an entire fleet.”

  Elise basked in his cleverness.

  Oh, fuck you, Phil thought sourly, standing up with his glass in his hand. Fuck you, both of you, you dang assholes.

  As they left, he avoided the captain altogether. And flamed at the mingled laughter of the man and his wife. Plotting their little murder, plotting their bullshit.

  Ballrooms, bars, a disco, a peek inside a glittering casino. John hid a smile as Donna’s eyes widened at the luxury and murmured, “Fu-uck,” in an awed voice. Elise’s spine went boing! ramrod-straight at the utterance of the horrid F-word, and then he did chuckle aloud, covering it with a cough.

  The ship was large; Reade recited figures about tonnage and length and weight, but the figure that most impressed John was that there were a thousand people, more or less, aboard the Pandora. It was a floating town.

  “As you see, we refer to the water myths of ancient Greece throughout the Pandora,” the captain explained as he led them through the Danaë deck. “Danaë was the mother of Perseus, as you may recall, whose father shut her in a bronze box and threw her in the sea.”

  “Trippy,” Matt said, and John shook his head at Donna, who, he saw, was looking uncomfortable. He began to watch her. Pontus, Nereus, Glaucus—each time the others nodded knowingly when the captain mentioned a name, she drew a blank, glanced around to see if the others could read her ignorance.

  “Ah, Glaucus, there’s an interesting story,” the captain said as he led them past a billiard room. A trio of teenage girls giggled over the balls and waved their cues as they hefted themselves over the table, trying impossible shots.

  “As you probably know, Miss Almond, he was a young fisherman who became a merman. And he fell in love with a maiden, Scylla, and begged Circe to make her love him.”

  Donna nodded, and John’s heart went out to her.

  “But Circe loved him, too, as you may recall. And she poured a potion into Scylla’s bath that turned her into a hideous sea monster.”

  “And what you’re leading up to is the beauty shop is called Scylla’s Place,” Donna shot back, and John realized how condescending he was being. This was one lady who didn’t need pitying, or protecting. Maybe she wasn’t book smart, but she was street smart. A pistol through and through.

  They saw the immense kitchens, where the bakers stayed up all night to make the breads, rolls, and pastries for the next day. A line of short Filipino men chopped vegetables with evil-looking knives. Their fingers were etched with scars. Could you tell how long the men had worked there, by counting the scars like the rings of an oak tree?

  Beyond the banks of ovens was a room of nothing but deep freezes, stocked with anything one could imagine, from filet mignons to buffalo steaks. Matt lit up and was about to beg for buffalo when John nudged him and he fell silent.

  They left the frigid room lined with its coffin-sized freezers. Anything one could imagine. John knew ships like this carried body bags, and he also knew they kept one or two freezers empty and waiting.

  A rush of panic flooded him and he took Matt’s hand, who made a face but didn’t say anything. It took a lot to kill a human body, he reminded himself, but the thought did nothing to soothe him. His stomach spread itself over a barbecue grill an inch above fresh, white-hot charcoal. He palmed his vial of Tagamet and popped one.

  Up and down staircases of marble and brass in the quasideco style; past an open door that revealed a charming room built like the interior of an old sailing ship, with weathered planks and chests and a half-rotted mast dead center.

  “What was that?” John asked the captain.

  “Oh, just a playroom,” Reade replied with a wave. But there was an odd look on his face. He was an odd bird, anyway, and he certainly had been enjoying taunting Phil, the poor asshole. John had watched Reade watching Phil, as if to gauge the man’s reactions as he moved in on his wife.

  “Where? Where?” Matt demanded, but they’d moved on.

  “Here’s the library,” Reade said, pausing before a door. He looked at Donna. Now he wore an even stranger expression, one of … elation? Surprise? Satisfaction? John couldn’t figure it out. “We have practically every maritime book ever written. Fiction and nonfiction.”

  She swung around the corner and studied the books while the others barely glanced into the room. “What’s it called?” she asked, scanning some of the titles. “The Merlin Room?”

  The captain smiled. “Just the library.”

  They walked on. Matt yawned widely, started, and ticked his gaze up at John, probably to see if he noticed. John played along, but his mind had begun to shut down. Too much, too frightening, too many hours. Kids must be more resilient than adults. Or did the others feel like stopping and screaming as memories of what had happened crowded in on them?

  “And here we are.” At the end of a long corridor, Reade halted in front of a milky white glass door marked “Museum.” A Closed sign hung from the doorknob. ?
??The treasury.”

  With a flourish, he unlocked the door and flicked on the lights.

  Slashes of fluorescents illuminated rows of glass cases. Overhead, dozens of ships in bottles rotated slowly as the captain stepped into the room, followed closely by Elise van Buren. Phil tottered in. He’d taken advantage of the two bars they’d passed, and now he was really soused. Elise was furious, and practically humping the captain in retaliation.

  The captain flicked on a second set of lights set deeper into the room. On the far wall, a stairway zagged to a second level, like a balcony, and a line of faces glared down at the newcomers, harsh and painted and …

  “Figureheads,” John said, startled. A crowd of Greek ocean gods and bare-breasted women, a knight, some Indians.

  Mostly babes with huge boobs, and Matt’s eyes were about to fall out of his head.

  “We have one of the largest collections,” Captain Reade replied. “Some of them are quite lifelike, don’t you think?”

  More than quite, John thought. They looked positively human.

  “They’re eerie,” Donna said behind John.

  “The boatswain’s mates hate to clean up in here at night.” The captain put his hand on his hip and admired the figures like a father pleased with his children. John tried to estimate what a collection like that must be worth, especially so well executed.

  Extremely well executed.

  Matt and Donna edged through the door. Elise and Phil hadn’t moved away from the threshold and were creating a jam. Elise realized it, walked to the first case on her right, and said, “Oh, Captain Reade! This is from the Titanic?”

  “Your favorite ship,” Reade said to Donna, who looked startled. She brushed past him and joined Elise at the case.

  John tapped Matt on the shoulder. “Now, don’t touch anything.”

  “Oh, please, Dr. Fielder. He may touch anything he wishes.” The captain hunkered down to Matt’s level. “You may treat the museum as your own.”

  Matt raised his chin and pointed at the hanging bottles.

  “Are there ships in those?”

  “Yes. Remember the model in my ready room?”

  “There was one on the Morris, too. Only it wasn’t real.”

  “Not real?” the captain echoed. “Well, all of mine are. They certainly are.” He crossed to the women. “We bought that from the French expedition that went down.”

  John joined the group. In the case, the head of a bisque doll stared sightlessly at them. His heart tugged; children had gone down on the Titanic. He’d known that, but it hadn’t really penetrated. Babies screaming in the dark, choking in the freezing ocean.

  His stomach wrenched and he shied away, only to collide with Donna, who muttered, “ ’Scuse me,” in a raspy, troubled voice. The head bothered her, too, and he wondered which of her horrific experiences as a police officer was running through her mind.

  “And in the next case, something a bit less … unusual.”

  It was an old captain’s uniform, a blue tailcoat and white breeches on a wire form, capped with a white curly wig and a tricorne. A pair of gloves hung from one of the pockets of the coat. Surely a re-creation; it was in far too good a shape to be authentic. His vision blurring, John scanned the typewritten card that gave information about it, but his mind failed to process it. Too tired, and his glasses were dirty. And the shock of their day was making him quiver with fear again. They could have died. In a million ways, they could have been lost forever. A shark attack, the lifeboat capsizing. Donna’s wounds growing infected …

  No. Not in one day, John.

  Yes. Yes, because no one can travel a thousand miles at sea. And yes, because death can come like a snap of the fingers. That was what had crushed his spirit as a practicing physician: the randomness of death. The specter fell across your path: you had sex with one wrong person; you breathed in too much CO2; you slipped in the bathtub, for God’s sake …

  You took the wrong ship …

  He rubbed his glasses on his shirt as the captain showed them more treasures. China plates with blue willow trees on them. A rusty sword.

  A pair of dog tags. A semidecomposed bathing cap that had belonged to the first woman to cross the English Channel.

  A tall case near the center of the room that contained a skeleton.

  “Of a mermaid,” Reade whispered to Matt, smiling.

  John blinked. From the pelvis up, a full skeleton twisted on a string like a hanging victim. But connected to the back of the pelvic girdle, a long, articulated spine dangled in the harsh blue light and coiled on the velvet-covered bottom of the case.

  “Wow,” Matt breathed. “Wow, that’s bodacious.”

  “Has to be What’s-His-Name,” Donna announced. “Glaucoma.”

  “You’re so amusing, Miss Almond,” the captain said, silently applauding. Elise sniffed.

  Reade winked at Matt. “And here’s my pride and joy.” He walked to a case in the center of the room and waited for the others to arrange themselves around it.

  The case was covered with a black velvet drop cloth. With a flourish, the captain whipped off the cloth and draped it over Matt’s shoulders like a magician’s cape.

  A green bottle gleamed on an ornate gold stand. It was made of glass, run through with veins of gold. Hefty chunks of red and green circled its neck, reminding John of running lights. A covering of waxy yellow, perhaps tallow, coated the end.

  Matt was clearly disappointed. John, too. The skeleton was far more interesting.

  “This is mine, actually, not the museum’s,” Reade said. He looked around the group, found Donna, and talked straight at her. To his own surprise and amusement, John felt a pang of jealousy.

  “It belonged to my great-great-great-great-grandfather, Thomas Allen Reade.” He tapped the case. “That bottle is hundreds of years old.”

  “Cool,” Matt said as he edged back toward the skeleton.

  “Were you named after him?” Elise asked, putting her hand on his arm. Jeez, she could be more discreet. John slid a sidelong glance at Phil, but he’d meandered to the back of the museum and was studying the figureheads.

  “In a manner of speaking.” He, too, watched Phil. “Many of his descendants have born bits and pieces of him. Of his name,” he added, grinning at Donna again, who dutifully focused her gaze on the bottle while she struggled to conceal a yawn.

  “I’m Thomas Alexander Reade, however. We’ve generally been a maritime family. Thomas Allen was on a ship, the Royal Grace, when this bottle came into his life.” He paused dramatically. “It’s quite a story.”

  Matt perked up. “That’s the ship in your room! I saw it! The sign said ‘Royal Grace.’ ”

  “You’re quite observant,” the captain said. “My father built that model.”

  “Tell us the story!” Matt demanded.

  “Matt,” John said automatically.

  The captain rubbed his hands together, palm to palm as if he were forming a ball out of clay. “Thomas Allen was put to sea in a boat, all alone, without food or water. Why, we have no idea. He never told. It’s been generally agreed among us Reades that he was accused of some crime. And that he was meant to die on the high sea. A wretched way to go. But he drifted for months. Caught rainfall with a leather cap, killed fish and seabirds.”

  His voice softened and he looked past them, to the row of figureheads. “The empty sea. The nights. The thirst. Imagine how he must have felt.”

  “And?” Elise urged. Donna, too, looked expectant.

  The captain shrugged. “Eventually he got back to England. The only thing he had with him when he returned was that bottle, and it was sealed up exactly as it is now. He wouldn’t allow it to be opened, claiming that some mystical properties about it had allowed him to survive. And to this day, no one has ever opened it …”

  Donna shot him a faint, mocking smile. Matty, on the other hand, was agog.

  “Aren’t you the least bit tempted?” Elise tilted her head as if offering her neck f
or a nibble.

  “We’ve been an enormously lucky family,” Reade said, patting the case. “I’d hate to be the one who broke the spell.”

  There was a silence. John cleared his throat. “Speaking of breaking spells, I think it’s time to hit the sack, matey.” He cupped Matt’s head.

  “Oh, Dad.” Matt’s shoulders rose and fell with exasperation. Mean Dad Fielder, the quintessential party-pooper.

  Donna stretched her arms above her head and yawned. Her boobs rose with the stiff bodice, and John stirred. Since Gretchen’s leave-taking, he had remained celibate. The pope would be so pleased.

  “I guess I’ll turn in, too,” Donna said. To John, “Walk me back?”

  Yes, yes, yes. “Sure,” he replied, croaking. Geesh, what a big kid.

  “Thanks so much for the tour,” Donna said to the captain. “And the stories.”

  He regarded her steadily with his one green eye. A current sizzled through the air between the two of them, and John was a bit dashed.

  “There’s a lot more to see. And hear.”

  Donna moved her head back slightly, a challenge. “Then we have something to look forward to.”

  Elise cleared her throat. “I’m really keyed up. I don’t think I’ll sleep for hours.”

  Reade regarded her. “The doctor can give you something, if you’d like.” He checked his watch. “I should get back to the bridge.”

  To watch for the other lifeboat. John shivered. Second night in the dark, on the water. At least they had their lanterns and flares. Flashlights.

  Knowing that didn’t cheer him up.

  Filling the silence, the captain said, “The boat was loaded with crewmen, who’ve been taught survival procedures.”

  “Yeah, well,” Donna muttered. “Some of those guys weren’t the sharpest tools in the shed.”

  The man chuckled. “You’re very forthright.”

  “So I’ve been told,” Donna replied. She glanced at John.

  “Well, we’d best go,” he said. “Thanks very much for showing us around. It was fascinating.”

  “Yeah, thanks,” Matt put in, without any prompting. “Um …?”