He turned the throttle, gunning the engine, but in his haste, he had forgotten to untie the stern line from the cleat. The sudden acceleration brought the boat up short. The bow rose almost vertically from the water, but the rope didn’t snap.
By now, I had reached the dock. “Police! Stop!”
As the boat swung around like a dog testing the length of its lead, Smith lifted the prop from the water. The screw continued to spin. The rope stretched in a straight line to the transom of the boat. Gas fumes boiled blue in the air.
“Police! Cut the engine!”
Panicked, Smith glanced around the boat in search of some edged tool to cut the line. In doing so, he let go of the outboard. The weight of the engine dropped the propeller back into the lake. The spinning screw threw up a rooster tail.
“Mr. Smith, I just want to talk!”
The last thing I expected was for him to pull a handgun. He must’ve had it hidden in the pocket of his robe. He pointed the barrel at me from a distance of five yards. I heard the shot just before I dove into the lake.
15
I am not sure how long I was underwater. Long enough to draw my Beretta from the holster inside my waistband.
I surfaced with the dock between Smith and myself, hearing the outboard revving and the dock creaking ominously as the nylon rope strained at the cleat. My mouth, full of lake water, tasted like I’d been sucking on a bullfrog.
What I thought was a second shot turned out to be the snap of the stern line as it finally gave way.
Treading water, I watched John Smith’s newly freed boat accelerate down the lake. I hadn’t been this pissed off in a long time. I tossed my handgun onto the wet planks and pulled myself up from the lake in one motion.
Because I had water in my ears, I had trouble hearing the old man calling to me. Finally, I saw him motioning from his own dock. A blue-and-white runabout rocked in the wake Smith had left behind.
“We can catch him!” he shouted.
Dripping, I stooped to grab my Beretta. When I straightened up, I saw that the tanned man was already idling toward me in his motorboat. His was a superior craft to Smith’s in every respect. It had a windscreen and a cockpit with two seats and a steering wheel. Most importantly, it had a muscular four-stroke Mercury engine.
As he swung alongside the dock, I leaped aboard. “What’s your name?”
“Max Glassman.”
“I’m Mike Bowditch. I’m a game warden.”
His shiny brown skin smelled strongly of coconut. “I figured you for a cop. The Mook’s criminal associates travel in packs. That’s what my partner and I call him.”
Smith was heading south at a good clip, but the aluminum boat’s squared-off bow slowed his speed. The boat bounced off every wave. Nor did its captain seem to realize he was being pursued.
“Thank you for helping me, Max.” I holstered my wet weapon. “Your neighbor is more dangerous than I’d realized.”
“I would say so!”
I glanced around the boat and located a personal flotation device. “Could you put this on for me, please?”
“You’re kidding!”
“I’ll hold the wheel.”
When he saw I wasn’t joking, he took the vest and pulled it over his wiry shoulders.
“What about you? Don’t you have to put one on, too?”
“I should,” I said, taking the opportunity to slow the engine to the faintest crawl. “You’re a good swimmer, Mr. Glassman. I can tell. If you weren’t, I wouldn’t do this to you.”
His eyes widened as the meaning of my words hit home. By then, it was too late. I had grabbed him firmly by the biceps and with a twist of my hips flipped him over the side. The vest kept his head from going under, but he managed to swallow some of the lake.
“I can’t have you in the boat if he’s shooting at me!” I shouted. “I’ll be back to get you as soon as I can.”
“You can’t just—”
“The state will reimburse you for any damage to your boat. You have my word on that.”
“Damage?”
He had floated far enough away that I felt safe to give the engine some gas. I turned the wheel to keep the prop from splashing him. Even above the roar of the outboard, I heard the native New York obscenities he lobbed after me.
By this time, Smith had realized he was being chased. He had opened up his two-stroke engine, heading for the narrows between the upper and lower lake. I was unfamiliar with this body of water beyond the vague memory of seeing it in a dog-eared atlas.
I gave a guilty glance back at Glassman and was relieved to see that he was already crawling toward the near shore, swimming with well-practiced strokes. Exigent circumstances had come to define my life.
The runabout was a pure pleasure to drive. If the engine wasn’t new, it had been perfectly maintained. I didn’t crash into the waves the way Smith did but skipped over them, feeling the bounce as ripples up my spinal column.
As I closed the distance, I began to worry that Smith was stupid enough to open fire again. I had no interest in engaging in an aquatic gunfight with this weirdo, especially when a Jet Ski might show up at any second. I had more than enough deaths on my conscience.
Fortunately, the ominous weather was keeping other boaters off the lake.
Off to my right, I saw the wetlands where the river entered the lake and, up ahead, more of the same emergent vegetation—arrowhead, pickerelweed, and cattails—hemming the narrows.
I plotted an intercept course. I gunned the engine and shot forward at forty miles an hour. My acceleration was so sudden I had to grab the windscreen to keep from sliding.
My burst of speed caught Smith off guard. He must have dropped the pistol, trying to draw a bead on me, because I saw him glancing desperately
