wake a skeleton.
I opted for the smaller tourist cruisers. These harked back to the time that the town council started taking green issues seriously and encouraged boat rental businesses to bring in boats with electric motors rather than the old internal combustion engines. They weren’t fast, but they were whisper quiet. I knew the batteries would be charged because Peter Gerletz and his daughters used them as fishing boats. I even borrowed one every now and again to collect driftwood where it beached on a sandbar a hundred yards off-shore.
Taking careful steps, I moved down the jetty, hearing the mousy squeak of timbers shifting under my feet.
“That you, Gerletz? It’s OK, I’m not stealing your precious boats.” It was the voice of the old police chief coming from the shadows. I stepped forward to see him sitting on the jetty boards with his back to a mooring post. He looked relaxed. No wonder; I saw a bottle of whiskey on the boards beside him. Well, a third of a bottle, to be more precise. A shot glass sat neatly beside the bottle.
“Gerletz, don’t worry. Go back to sleep. I’m guarding your damn boats tonight.”
“It’s not Peter Gerletz,” I said.
“Who then? Not one of my ghosts come to haunt me?” I heard a soft laugh as he poured a splash of whiskey into the shot glass.
“It’s Greg Valdiva.”
“Oh, the outsider?” He swallowed the shot in one. “But it’s not fair to call you an outsider now, is it? You’ve been here… what? Six months?”
“Eight.”
“Eight? As long as that?”
He groaned a bone-weary groan as he made himself more comfortable against the post. “So, what brings you down here? A midnight swim?”
“No.” I could hardly say I intended to break one of the Caucus’s shiny-new laws. Instead I shrugged. “Couldn’t sleep.”
“Ah, Valdiva, you’re one of the guard, aren’t you?”
“Yes.”
“So you saw that sorry spectacle today?”
I nodded.
“You know, that really works against my grain, Valdiva. I swore to uphold law and order and protect the innocent. I’ve still got my badge and I still clean it with complete and sincere pride.”
“We had no choice. We had to refuse them entry.”
“Especially after last week. When that blue-eyed American boy.. .” He merely gestured with the glass instead of finishing the sentence. “It seems that damn bug can get into our blood, too. No one’s immune, isn’t that so?”
“I guess.”
“You guess right, my friend. But even so. What happened today just didn’t seem right. That pregnant lady? She needed our help. But we just told them to shove off. That sticks in my craw. I say if we’re going to go down with a case of Jumpy we might as well get it over with, because we’re only postponing the inevitable by hiding away here.”
“You’re going to tell the Caucus that?”
He looked up as if seeing me properly for the first time. “Valdiva. You speak your mind, don’t you? As well as being our town executioner… Pardon me, you didn’t need reminding of that. Jack Daniel’s always did loosen my tongue past the point where my diplomatic side becomes a mere speck on the horizon…” He seemed to lose the thread for a while. He charged his glass again, then downed it in one. “Here I am like some old wino. I busted plenty of those when I first joined the force. Hell, the smell of their pee followed you home. It got so Mary made me change out of my uniform in the garage. We even had a shower installed in the utility room there. ‘Get out of those clothes,’ she’d say, ‘you’ve been hauling in drunks again. I can smell the pee on your jacket.’ ” He chuckled. “That’s why I refuse to drink this whiskey out of the bottle like a bum. I’m drinking it out of a glass like an officer and a gentleman.” He poured another shot. “The answer to your question, Valdiva, is no. I won’t be telling the Caucus that Sullivan here is a hopeless case… a terminal patient waiting for the inevitable. That we’re all going to contract that damn disease one day. We are, but I won’t tell them that. I have what you might call such a strong sense of duty it’s pathological. So I’ll do my hardest to do the right thing for our community. Even if I sometimes think- privately, mind-it stinks… stinks of something brown and wet. Now, sir, can I interest you in a glass of this?”
“No thanks. I just needed some air. I’m going to turn in.”
“Good night, Valdiva. I hope you sleep better than I will.”
“Good night, Mr. Finch.”
I’d started walking back along the jetty when he called out again. “Valdiva, do yourself a favor.” I looked back at him sitting there, pouring himself another whiskey. “Get away from here. It’s useless advice, I know. But this town is going to start getting unhealthy. And I’m not talking about any disease here. I don’t know what it is, that’s the funny thing. But when I walk ’round and look in my neighbors’ faces I start getting a bad taste in my mouth.”
“What do you think might be wrong?”
“I don’t know. Something just isn’t right. So if I were you, I’d get right away from here… as far as you can. Call it cop instinct.” He picked up the bottle as if to read the label. “Aw, what do I know?” He smiled and seemed to step up the amiable old drunk act, as if he’d suddenly had second thoughts and didn’t want me to take what he’d said at all seriously. “Forget it, Valdiva. It’s just the whiskey talking. You get yourself a good night’s sleep. There’s nothing to worry about.”
There’s nothing to worry about. I tended to believe everything the old cop told me. But I didn’t believe that last comment. There’s nothing to worry about.
With the man’s lie echoing inside my skull I walked home.
Ten
The smell of bacon woke me. Lynne had slipped in early to cook breakfast. She did this every week or so. When I pictured her husband making breakfast for their two children at the same time I pulled the sheet higher over my head.
As I heard her singing lightly to herself I imagined her moving ’round the kitchen to pour orange juice, or spoon coffee into cups. That lovely swaying walk of hers that made me think of Hawaiian dancers in grass skirts. After cutting bread she’d push her long hair back away from her face, or maybe move it with a flick of her head.
I knew if I called down to her to forget breakfast she’d come upstairs, peeling off her T-shirt as she came, exposing those firm, perfectly shaped breasts. She’d slip down the tiny skirt she wore. I’d admire those long golden legs, then pull back the sheet so she could slide into bed beside me.
That ache of longing twisted me up inside. All I had to do was take a breath, then say her name out loud. Lynne.
Instead I lay there not moving as the ritual continued. It was one of those sweeteners. Hot tasty breakfast for the town executioner. An idea cooked up by the Caucus months ago. Of course, they’d suggested it would be Lynne’s civic duty to provide anything else that I might want along with bacon, scrambled eggs and golden pancakes.
Just had to click my fingers. She’d be there naked in the doorway. Smiling sexily, she’d ask, “How do you want me? It’s your choice, Greg-anything. Just command it.”
A couple of hours later she’d walk up the hill to town, maybe a little on the sore side, so she’d discreetly carry her panties in a bag.
As I warred with my own conflicting emotions-part of me craving to call her upstairs, the other part ready to order her back to her husband-I suddenly realized that things might be set for change. Now that the town had slapped a prohibition on strangers entering the island, where did that leave me? Before they let me screen
