Under Cover of Daylight Page 2

  Thorn watched her float on her back. Her breasts breaking through the calm surface. Her pubic hair sparkled. Maybe this was her game. Shake him awake with a little splish-splash, some serious treading of water.

  He shifted on the army blanket, dusted away a mosquito singing in his ear. The repellent was already wearing thin. He steered his eyes away from the glisten of Sarah Ryan, following that path of light across the mangrove-rimmed bay to where it veered west toward Mexico.

  Would she swim so easily there if she knew the blood that water was spiked with? Thorn had shuddered when Sarah first grazed her toe across it, but he’d said nothing. He had not been able to touch that water himself for twenty years.

  Twenty years he’d been coming out here on the fifth of July to sit beside the bay. Twenty years. It sounded like a jail term. Twenty to life. That was about the sentence he might’ve expected if he’d turned himself into the sheriff.

  Maybe he should’ve done that. Maybe that way the guilt would be gone, and Thorn, thirty-nine years old, could walk away from all of it, back into the world, debts paid. This way was turning into a life sentence. A sentence with no period at the end.

  Sarah was gliding out farther, on her back, the water bubbling quietly at her feet. It seemed that she was trying to let him have his time, his little meditation, get it over with. Or maybe she had caught the doleful vibrations of the place. The ghosts. The ghosts of Quentin and Elizabeth Thorn and one Dallas James. Fat, drunk, puke-scented Dallas James.

  Thorn watched Sarah Ryan. She was still on her back, the water bubbling up from her quiet, efficient flutter kick. It glittered like silvery foam. She swam farther out into that warm bay, making a lazy circle near the spot where it had happened.

  Thirty-nine years before, Quentin and Elizabeth had been driving home to Key Largo from the Homestead Hospital. Thorn was twenty hours out of the womb, still four hours left to get him back to the Keys so he’d be officially, by local custom, a Conch. To give the boy roots.

  Maybe roots was wrong. Suction was a better word. This island didn’t grant much purchase. Limestone and coral just under the couple of inches of sandy dirt. It was just a long, narrow strip of reef really. And with a little melting at the North Pole, one good force five hurricane, it would be reef again. But Conchs had suction. They could hold on to places where no roots could burrow in.

  The custom was important enough to Quentin and Elizabeth to steal away from that hospital after midnight against her surgeon’s warnings. She’d had a C section. Fat little Thorn, ten and a half pounds, stalled at the hatch.

  There were four hours left. No hurry. The drive back down to the Keys took only half an hour. It was July 5, 1947.

  Everything Thorn knew about that night had come from the Miami Herald article. Dr. Bill had saved it till Thorn had asked one too many questions about his real parents’ death. Dr. Bill had led Thorn into his study, where the newspapers were spread out on his desk. And Dr. Bill had gone outside to whack his machete at a rotted limb while Thorn, thirteen years old, read and reread. Nothing to soften it. The same clean surgical cool Dr. Bill had about everything. Read this. This is all that’s known. Outside chopping at punky wood while Thorn grappled with it.

  July 5, 1947, had been a clear night. Hot like any July. Light breezes from the southeast. Oh, Thorn read everything else before letting his eyes take hold of the headline about the Thorn family. The weather. The sports, the Reds Reject the Marshall Plan. Three-cent first-class stamps. Today’s Chuckle. A story about a young couple getting married. She says, “No,” not, “I do,” at altar. Changes to “Yes,” but then he says, “No.” Thorn read that.

  Finally, there was only one article left. Thorn, picturing it as he read, taking the gray neutral journalism and brightening it with detail, fixing it in his imagination forever. Whenever he recalled it after that afternoon, it came up like this. It was a clear night. Twenty miles of two-lane highway, along the bed of an old railway line. You could reach out either car window and touch mangroves, said the old-timers. Narrow and dark, an empty stretch of asphalt. Thorn was asleep in Elizabeth’s lap. Sleeping with the rhythm of her breathing and that old car humming along.

  Coming from the other direction, in his old man’s Studebaker, barreling home from Key West, was twenty-one-year-old Dallas James. A couple of his friends in the backseat. Everybody giddy from bourbon and Coke. A girl at Dallas James’s side. A nice girl from his university graduating class who didn’t know the ride was going to involve Key West and back to Miami in one day, and all that drinking and hooting. She was Doris Jean Parish. All of it was in the paper. She was the one blew the whistle. Next day she blurted it out to her daddy. Good Catholic girl, couldn’t survive overnight with all that guilt.

  That night Dallas had been telling a story, a long one, and he was looking back over his shoulder for reactions. Bourbon and Coke, a long joke, caring more about the laughs, impressing the two in the backseat and Doris Jean than about whose headlights he was straying into.

  Quentin Thorn swerved off the shoulder, over the low bank, and out into Lake Surprise. No choice. Into those headlights and the tons of steel behind them or into the moonlit water of Lake Surprise. Surprise, surprise. There’d been only four feet of water at that hour. Tide was out. But with heads flattening against that steel dashboard, a birdbath would’ve done fine.

  Thorn had bounced around in there, coming finally to lodge atop his mother’s suitcases in the backseat. And as the black, warm water of Lake Surprise seeped into the car, Thorn squawked probably, the water rising to cover his parents’ faces, peaking finally a few inches from where he squirmed.

  Dallas James stopped his car, got out, looked over the situation, gave his morals a quick workout, and got everybody back in the car and drove off.

  In the second clipping, from a few weeks later on, Dallas had had his moment in court. His story was that this other car was weaving, Dallas honked, veered to avoid it, and the new father, new mother, and their infant of their own free will sailed into that lake. The judge allowed as how there had been enough tragedy already and, seeing how Dallas was from a good family and all, was inclined to give him nothing more than a stern look.

  Not Thorn. It had simmered in him for six years, but he had finally done it. And now he was here, serving his indeterminate sentence, his hard time out among the innocent. Very cruel, very unusual. And this was visiting day at the penitentiary. Mr. Thorn to visit Mr. Thorn.

  Sarah was coming ashore. Thorn watched her wake arrive before her, stirring among the mangrove roots. As she waded up to the bank, the moon glazed her body.

  “You done?” she asked, the gold water falling from her, standing a couple of yards away.

  “I guess so,” Thorn said.

  “What were you thinking about just now?” She stooped and pulled her towel from her large straw bag, began patting herself dry.

  “Your hair.”

  “Before that?”

  “Your skin,” he said.

  “Oh, come on, you know what I mean.”

  “About this place,” Thorn said. “Lake Surprise, dark, serious things.”

  “But you’re not going to tell me about them.” She spread her towel out beside him and lowered herself onto it, leaned back, propped on her elbows. Moon tanning.

  “My voice is failing me at the moment.”

  She said, “Maybe I should get dressed, help you get it back.”

  A transfer truck rumbled from the highway, heading south with supplies. In the Keys everything had to be shipped in; even freshwater was piped down. The only natural resources were fish and balminess.

  “Maybe you should,” Thorn said.

  “Am I being sacrilegious, naked in the graveyard?” She smiled at him and moistened her upper lip.

  “Yeah,” Thorn said, “but I like it.”

  “We could swim,” Sarah said, the smartass gone from her voice now. A regretful tone that almost matched his mood. “It did me a world of good.”


  “No, thanks,” Thorn said.

  “I hear it’s good in the water, all that buoyancy.”

  “No,” he said. “I just want to stay a little longer. Like this. Nothing fancy.”

  “I’ll shut up.”

  “Yeah.” Thorn let himself look at her again. “And there’s nothing wrong with the buoyancy at my place, is there?”

  “No,” she said. “Nothing at all.”

  2

  IT WAS A TWO-FOOT SEA, overcast. Noon on Sunday. Time to start thinking about Monday, the week. Sarah was rocking easily with the light chop on the second level of the tuna tower, alongside Kate Truman. Sarah’s long black hair snapping, skin not feeling yet the sunburn she knew she’d gotten. It had something to do with the blue-eyed Irish in her, bred for gloomy skies, layers of clothes, a heavy gray mist on the moor.

  Sarah leaned forward toward Kate and half shouted into the wind, “I’m running out of company names.”

  “Wait a minute!” Kate unrolled the plastic windshield for the tower platform. The two of them snapped it in place. Now, with the breeze cut off, Sarah felt it, the prickle on her cheek, a puffiness beginning.

  “I’m running out of names,” she said. “I come up with one, it’s on the computer already. It’s a janitorial service or a shop sells popcorn. Crazy things.”

  “How about Wood Rat Enterprises?”

  “Not businesslike. It should sound like it’s for real.”

  “Well, you’ll think of something. What’s the big worry about corporate names anyway? You worry about the oddest things.”

  “I’m worried about all of it. But the only parts I can focus on, you know, are the small parts.”

  They were only a mile offshore, the fiber glass twenty-footers were all around them, Aquasports, Makos full of Miami snorkelers headed out to the reef, chopping up the quiet water.

  “I know,” said Kate. “I know what you’re going through.”

  “This Port Allamanda thing. It’s not like the others, all this cash. And you can bet Grayson is going to be damned curious to know who beat him out. I want to shield you better than I’ve been doing.”

  “Well, you’re the expert on that.”

  “Kate, I keep telling you. I’m no expert. On any of this.”

  “You’re doing a hell of a job. You worry too much. It’s going to give you something.”

  Captain Kate lined up on the wind sock rigged up on her dock, that and Carysfort light seven miles out. One hundred and twenty degrees took her into her own channel. Two degrees off either way and you’d be walking ashore across limestone beds and the backs of stingrays.

  Kate cut back to half throttle; their wake caught up with them and rocked the boat lightly. In the narrow homemade channel, a hundred yards offshore.

  “I’ll get the lines,” Sarah said, moving toward the ladder.

  “Whoa. Let the lines rest.” Kate backed off another notch, took off her dark fishing glasses, examined Sarah.

  Sarah tried a smile, said, “I’m just paranoid. It’s just a phase.” She gestured down at the cockpit. “It gets to me sometimes.”

  Most of the fifty bales of marijuana were stored inside the cabin below, but four were in ice chests out in the sunny cockpit.

  “Hell if it doesn’t get to me, too. It’d be damned strange if it didn’t. And my granddaddy smuggled rum most his life, and my daddy made his share of midnight runs. I keep telling myself it’s my heritage, but that doesn’t seem to help much.” Kate rubbed her eyes, pinched the bridge of her nose, smoothed her forehead upward.

  Kate said, “But we’ve gone over this. Again and again. Ends and means, the higher good. I can’t see anything new to talk about. If there’s something else, some way of doing something, change things around, anything you can think of that would take the pressure off, say the word and we’ll do it. Buy the land some other way. Sell melons along the road. I don’t care what, rob a Brink’s truck. You come up with something better, tell me.

  “No,” Sarah said, suddenly sleepy and sheening again with sweat now that the breeze had stopped. “I just feel guilty, getting you involved in this.”

  “Hey, now.” Kate smiled at her, leaned against the seat. “I got you involved. It may be your contact, but it’s my fight.”

  “Let’s don’t bullshit each other,” Sarah said. “I come to your meetings, like the stuff I hear, offer my legal services, and two months later I’m talking you into running dope.”

  Kate looked off at a passing dive boat headed for Grecian Rocks. “You didn’t hypnotize me, hon. I’m a big girl. You think I hadn’t thought of bringing in some bales before you showed up? Only reason I hadn’t tried it before was if I went in with anybody down here, the whole island would know the next morning. As it is now, the gossip is we’re a couple of sweethearts. Spending nights together on the boat.”

  Sarah laughed.

  “I swear to the Lord above,” Kate said. “Sweethearts, that’s the word going around.”

  Sarah shook her head, grinning her thanks.

  “We’ll make it,” Kate said. She winked at Sarah. “Two more fifty-bale trips. There’s the million. And that’s it. Walk away. Use the rest of our lives earning forgiveness.” She took hold of Sarah’s shoulders and straightened her up, looked up into her face. “But listen, this is my passion, my fight. You can drop this in a second and I’ll sure understand. Think about it.”

  A rumble came from the south, growing quickly thunderous.

  Kate pushed the throttle forward, making for the dock. Sarah scuttled down the ladder, cursing.

  “Too late,” Kate called to her as the roaring mosquito plane passed above them, twenty feet, clipping the mangrove tips, its contrail of blue diesel smoke and Malathion settling down, drifting into the mangrove shoots along the shoreline.

  Sarah fanned the fog from in front of her, holding on to the chrome railing as she worked her way forward. Kate reversed and cut the wheel hard so the starboard side nudged up to the dock.

  They set the spring lines. Sarah got her straw bag from the cabin, took her spinning rod from the rod holder behind the fighting chair, and jumped across.

  “He flew right over us.”

  “He’ll be back in about five minutes, fifty yards east. The bugs have been brutal lately. All this rain.”

  “Could he see anything?”

  “What? Ice chests? That’s Jerome Billings. I know his daddy. Known the boy all his life. He’s a friend of Thorn’s from high school. That boy must see more goings-on than God Himself. I never heard a peep of gossip out of him either. What’s he going to see?”

  The Sabrosa Seafood truck was parked under the gumbo-limbo beside Kate’s back porch. Sarah hated this part. Her Spanish wasn’t up to anything subtle, anything going wrong, the wrong amounts, a canceled deal. But it was Armando, good-looking in his orange tank top, who’d been the pickup the last two months. His English was better than Sarah’s Spanish.

  The mosquito plane was on its next pass, so Sarah waited under the thick tamarind tree until the poison had broken up. Armando joined her and nodded hello, both of them fanning for good air.

  “How you live here with poison gas?” Their first personal conversation. She didn’t want to prolong this, encourage anything more than just official exchanges. But she feared being abrupt.

  “I live in Miami, but this is awful, no?” Her Spanglish.

  “Oh,” he said, checking her out now, lingering at the open throat of her work shirt, a flash of cleavage perhaps.

  She said, “In Miami we put out enough poison at ground level.”

  “OK,” he said. “That’s OK.”

  “You listo a pesar?”

  “Sí.”

  “Well, vamanos.”

  Armando carried the first bale inside the Styrofoam cooler. He dumped it in the back of the seafood truck and waited around for a minute or two in the shade, making eyes at her. Then back to the boat with the empty cooler, loaded the next one, and brought it ashore. The process
was slow, but to any passing boat it would appear that someone was merely unloading a hefty catch.

  Sarah hated it. The exposure was so great. Down the hundred-foot dock, thirty yards up the terrace to the canopy of trees, Armando making the trip fifty times. She stood in the shade during the whole ordeal, her eyes panning the horizon, her hearing fine-tuned for any passing plane. Their only concealment was their brazenness.

  After showers she and Kate sat on the front porch, the Atlantic spread before them. Rum and Coke. Sarah’s face coated with a layer of aloe jelly, fresh from Kate’s yard. Just snap a leaf in half and smear it on. She rested her hands cautiously in her lap. Everything stung. Already the itch. Every time, no matter how thick the sunblock.

  “Going to see Thorn?”

  “Thought I would.”

  “This is his special weekend.”

  “Yeah, I know,” Sarah said. “He took me along Friday night.”

  “He did?” Kate took a sip of her drink, eyeing Sarah.

  “I asked him, and he said yes, and took me along.”

  “I’m amazed.” She set her glass on the wicker table. “So, tell me about it. The ceremony.”

  Sarah smiled. “That’s what I thought. But it wasn’t anything very special. Sit out beside Lake Surprise, swat mosquitoes, pee in the shrubs, rewire the central nervous system. Just a lot of quiet. Staring at the dark.”

  “Not very sympathetic.”

  “I hear sad songs all week. I guess I don’t have as much sympathy as I should.”

  Kate said, “Well, the boy’s gotten better about it. Was a time his going out there every year made me mad, like he just couldn’t let it go. Mournful, mopey.”

  “Losing parents like that. It couldn’t be easy.”

  Kate gave her a curious look and said, “He never knew them. Dr. Bill and I took him in, he was only two weeks old. Oh, I don’t know. I always thought he’d made it all into more than it should be. Let his grief steal him away. Like he was glorifying them too much.”

  “They weren’t worth glorifying?”

  “They were good people. Normal people.”

  “But they were his parents,” said Sarah. “It doesn’t matter if they were good or normal or what.”