Thai Horse

‘Actually I’m looking for an old friend of mine, Chris Hatcher. We were in the Army together.’

‘That a fact.’

‘He’s big on sailing. Thought perhaps he might have a boat down here.’

‘Well, this would be the place t, keep a boat.’

Fendig moved up the pier.

‘Name’s Chris Hatcher,’ Sloan called after him.

‘Wasn’t born here. Lived here all my life, nobody by that name was born on this island.’

‘No, he would have moved here about a year and a half ago.’

‘Oh.’

End of discussion.

Sloan changed his tack. He approached a kid working the gas pumps.

‘What time’s Chris Hatcher due back?’ he asked pleasantly.

‘Never know,’ the kid answered.

Bingo.

‘Does he live on the boat?’

‘I wouldn’t know,’ the kid answered and vanished into the small pumping station.

Sloan went back up to the marina, got a beer, and went back down to the pier and waited.

The sharp bleat of a boat’s horn snapped Hatcher back to reality.

‘Oh God,’ he groaned. He got up, arranging the bulge in his skimpy bathing suit as best he could and went topside; he peered cautiously over the bulkhead.

A shrimp boat called the Breeze-E was idling nearby, its engines muttering as it rocked gently in the calm sea. Its captain, a tall, leathery string-bean of a man with a neatly trimmed gray-white beard, was standing in the stern. He cupped his mouth with his hands and yelled, ‘This fella’s wandering all over the island asking after you. Been to Birdie’s, Po Stephens. Murphy’s. The marina. Even tried to pry information out of old Roland.’

‘What’d he want?’ Hatcher yelled back in the harsh voice that was part growl, part whisper.

‘Said he was an old friend of yours from the Army.’

Hatcher shook his head. ‘What’s he look like?’

‘Big guy, built like a lobster pot, real broad in the shoulder. Looks to be in his late forties. Real friendly sort.’

‘Talks real soft and smiles all the tune. Little scar on his cheek?’ He drew an imaginary line from his eye to the corner of his mouth.

‘That’s him. Friend of yours?’

‘I wouldn’t say that. What’d you tell him?’

‘Not a damn thing.’

‘Thanks, Bob.’

‘Anytime. Fishing?’

‘Kinda.’

‘See ya.’

Bob Hill waved, returned to the bridge and shoved the throttles, veering out towards the open sea. Hatcher heard a sound behind him and, turning, saw Ginia looking at him over the rail.

‘What was that all about?’ she asked.

‘Bob Hill. Says somebody’s asking about me in town. You know how islanders are, they get a little overly protective sometimes.’

‘I think that’s nice,’ she said, jumping over the rail from the Jacob’s ladder, grabbing a towel off a chair and wrapping it around her like a sarong. ‘It’s nice to know your friends care that much about you.’

‘Uh-huh. Let’s see that tang.’

She reached back over the railing, retrieved the tube and handed it to him. He held it up close, studying the fish.

‘Big guy,’ he said.

‘Just look at that tail. Do we keep him?’

‘Absolutely.’

He took the tube below to the main salon, where the six other fish they had caught that morning were still circling and exploring the hundred-gallon aquarium. He stood over the tank, turned a knob opening the valve in the tube, and the yellow fish swam out and immediately began staking out his territory amid the coral and sea grass in the floor of the tank.