Dark Light

“Grandy’s dead, so you can’t go tattling to him. I’m God, as far as you’re concerned.”

Grandy—Augie’s great-grandfather, Bern’s grandfather. Augie had been the old man’s favorite.

“I don’t know what I was thinking. It’ll never happen again.”

His uncle had nodded toward the boat’s controls as he lowered Augie to the floor. “Maybe there’s something you can tell me. Yesterday, I put some numbers in that GPS, just messing around. Today, you and stuttering what’s his face used the boat. Now I can’t find those numbers. Someone erased them from the memory.”

Augie had shrugged, afraid to speak.

“Did you or your butt-buddy, Oswald, screw with the machine while you were fishing?”

Augie shook his head. “No. Just Jeth.”

“When you stopped to fish, did he say anything about the GPS? That the spot was already marked…was he surprised?”

“Well, the first time we found the wreck, we did slow down kind of sudden-like. He mentioned something about a ‘waypoint,’ then we started going back and forth, back and forth, like plowing a field. He was watching the fish-finder, looking for something.”

“You didn’t find it right away?”

“No.”

Bern had begun to smile, feeling better about things, more like his old self. That explained why someone had erased the coordinates Bern had punched in three nights ago—the numbers he’d copied from the old man’s map. Turned out Stuttering Jeth wasn’t such an idiot after all.

Bern had thought: I know where the wreck is.

B ut first, he had to create a way to control Moe.

By ten that night, with Bern supervising, Moe had finished loading scuba gear onto the Viking, including the old nautical map with the latitude/longitude coordinates in his grandfather’s writing. Then it was time to carry out his plan.

He said, “Let’s go for a walk. We have important stuff to discuss.”

Bern practically had to shove the man to get him moving. That’s how suspicious Moe was.

Now it was 10:35 P.M., the two of them walking toward the canal that was cement seawall on one side, mangroves on the other. The rubble of the boat barn was to their right, the fuel docks brightly lit ahead, as Bern said, “I’ve been discussing your progress with some of the people in the organization.”

Moe said, “Your family back in Wisconsin?”

It was irritating, the way he said it, but Bern remained pleasant. “The company employs hundreds of people, not just relatives. Don’t ever think that some of us get ahead just because we’re related. Hard work, that’s all that counts. And talent. Just like in the NFL.”

Moe nodded. His boss had played two seasons of professional football, and liked to drop it in whenever possible.

“Anyway, we’ve been talking. We like your initiative, your organizational skills. We’ve been thinking maybe it’s time for the next step. Like maybe it’s time you were director of a place like this.”

Moe kept his lips pursed, sometimes nodding, as if he somehow had a brain that analyzed information.

“As director of a resort community,” Moe asked, speaking thoughtfully, “are you saying I’d be doing, existentially, what your job is now?”

Existentially. Did the idiot mean essentially?

Bern put his hand on Moe’s shoulder, moving him along. “Exactly right. I’ll keep my condo here, of course. But we’d find something just as nice for you.”

“Housing, too?”

“One of the perks of being an executive. Expense account, too. You’ve got to make nice with people, after all. It’s what we do.”

“Dealing with the public,” Moe said, relaxing enough to make a chuckling sound, “I do it every day.”

Moe had been so jumpy when he’d arrived that, if Bern moved a hand to swat a mosquito, or to wipe his bald head, the man had flinched. He was calmer now as they walked along the seawall beneath the sodium lights that made the boats and fuel pumps look yellow, the water black.

“Funny thing is, Bern, I thought you were mad at me because of this afternoon.” That laugh of his, it was as disgusting as his tattoos, both arms looking like he’d dipped them in Easter egg dye.

“Mad because you told the cops the truth? No, no, it was a tough situation. You and me, we didn’t have time to discuss what you found on the boat, to agree on a story. If it wasn’t for you, we wouldn’t have had the stuff back in the first place.”

They were almost there.

They had crossed the parking lot, all the empty boats making it seem quieter, and were nearly to the bay where there was more seawall and a boat ramp. Security lights were bright along the water, showing docks, and the gravel area where Bern had parked the bulldozer.

Nearby, spaced along the seawall, were a dozen fifty-gallon drums in various colors. They stored dirty oil from boat engines in black drums. The yellow drums held insecticides. The green drums were for fertilizers, used mostly on the golf course.

When Moe noticed the barrels, he said, “What are those doing there?”

Bern said, “I mentioned that someone from the EPA was coming, right? I requested an inspection so they could test our water quality, take soil samples, that sort of thing.”

Which was craziness, but Moe listened. Listened to Bern tell him that, when the state had declared the marina a hazardous area, it was only good for a month. The month was up in a few days, which meant that boat owners would be allowed to come onto the property. Bern said they needed more time to move the boats to a secure area where they could be auctioned before the owners knew if their vessels had been damaged or not.

A few more weeks, they’d be ready.

“I told the EPA we were missing drums of oil, poisons, and stuff because of the hurricane. The feds could close this place for another month if our water’s so polluted it’s dangerous.” Bern used his smile. “They pay for cleanup, plus reimburse us for lost business—and the public won’t be allowed within a mile of the place.”

“FEMA, because it’s a disaster area. Right?”

Bern gave Moe a nudge toward the bulldozer. “You’ve got a brain. That’s what we like about you.”

For the next ten minutes, Bern used a digital camera to film what Moe was doing under the security lights. He was intentionally dumping petroleum products and pesticides into the bay, which also happened to be a federal wildlife preserve.

Lots of close-ups of the face: Moe beneath his cowboy hat, oblivious at the controls.

The only time Bern got nervous about Moe using the bulldozer was when the retard made a beeline toward a mound of fill dirt on the far edge of the property. Nobody was supposed to disturb that, Bern had told everybody.

Moe remembered in time, and swung the bulldozer around.

Enough. Moe’s ass was his anytime he wanted it. Bern switched off the camera and headed back to the condo.

His thoughts swung back to that dork, Ford. Just let him get the man alone…

9

I was in my laboratory, leaning over a shallow tray of sodium hydroxide that I’d just prepared by mixing distilled water with laboratory grade NaOH pellets. A weak solution, into which I’d placed the silver death’s-head, with its diamond eyes and swastika. The bronze eagle, too.

I’d done a clumsy job of butterflying my split cheek but it felt okay, and my headache, which had become chronic, had eased. Work can be an enjoyable distraction. I was enjoying this.

I’d separated a couple more interesting objects from the cluster Jeth had found, and they were also in the tray: a cigarette lighter, barely recognizable, and two silver coins. Both coins were German five-mark pieces, eagles and swastikas on the back, a man’s bust on the front indistinguishable because of ridges of calcium carbonate.

One coin was dated 1938, the other 1943.