Shadow Watch

“And they don’t. ”

Well, Dex thought, maybe the urchins didn’t have brains bigger than tiny specks of sand in their heads, didn’t even have heads that Dex could see, but he had smarts enough to do some figurin’ of his own. Not that God had made him a genius; if that was the case he wouldn’t have to be tendin’ boat every winter season, when the bitter mornin’ cold was like to shrivel your balls up into your stomach an’ turn the drip from your nose to icicles. But he knew for sure that Ricci would be thinkin’ about what happened with Cobbs an’ Phipps, and gettin’ to wonder about him bein’ in on the shake-down too. Was maybe even holdin’ onto some suspicions about that already, to guess from how he’d been quieter than usual this mornin’-not that he was any kind of chatterbox in what you might call his sunniest moods.

Still, Dex couldn’t afford to wait for Ricci to go the distance from bein’ suspicious of him to reachin’ any right conclusions, short a hop as that was. Maybe he didn’t run off at the mouth about himself like so many flatlanders did, telling you everythin’ about their lives from A through Z within five minutes of makin’ your acquaintance, but once in a while Ricci would mention something about when he was a police detective down in Beantown, an’ furthermore, Dex’s buddy Hugh Temple, whose girlfriend’s sister Alice worked at the real estate office in town, said she’d heard from her boy-friend worked at the Key Bank that Ricci used to be in some hotshit military outfit like the Rangers or Navy SEALs or maybe the Boy Commandos — whatever the fuck — before his cops-and-robbers days. That particular bit a’ scuttlebutt hadn’t surprised Dex, ’cause there was times when all you had to do was look in his eyes to see that he could be one dangerous son of a bitch to anybody who got on his wrong side.

Dex shook a cigarette from the pack in the breast pocket of his mackinaw, shoved it between his lips, and cupped a hand over its tip as he fired up his Bic lighter. He stood there smoking at the gunwale, his eyes following Ricci’s stream of bubbles. Truth was, he’d got on okay with Ricci, who always gave him an even shake as far as business went, and never treated anybody as if he was their better, the way a lot of folks from out of town did as a matter of course, especially the summer people with their kayaks, canoes, an’ mountain bikes on the roof racks of their whale-sized, showroom-new 4 x 4 wagons.

Those people, they’d stand around the middle of town in bunches of five, six, an’ more, wearin’ white shorts an’ sneakers that matched their perfect white teeth, never movin’ aside to let you pass, talkin’ so loud you’d think every one of ’em was deaf as a board. Cloggin’ the sidewalk as if they owned it, an’ couldn’t damn well see themselves sharin’ the street with anybody, like they was on some kinda movie set that was laid out just for them on Memorial Day, an’ got packed away into storage after they headed south come September, gatherin’ dust an’ cobwebs until the next summer of fun rolled round.

No, Dex hadn’t held any ill feelings for Ricci, not the other day when he’d taken off on him with that bullshit story about havin’ to mind the kids, not even now, after havin’ done his bit of tinkerin’ with Ricci’s air gauge last night, an’ preparin’ to leave him for a goner. But what choice did he have? Way he felt, it was kinda like goin’ to war an’ bein’ forced to shoot somebody you bore no personal grudge against, somebody you might even think was an okay fella if you got to know him over a frosty glass of suds, all because of circumstances that you could no more control than the turnin’ of the world. Havin’ been a soldier, Ricci would prob’ly understand that.

What Ricci could never understand, though, comin’ from away, was the kind of pressure he, Dex, had been under to cut a separate deal with Cobbs. How could he have refused that prick without jammin’ himself up big-time? Cobbs was in so tight with the sheriff an’ town managers, he’d see to it that Dex got cited for some kinda safety violation whenever he turned on the heat in his double-wide, an’ was pulled over, breathalyzed, an’ tossed in the drunk tank every time he drove his pickup home after havin’ put down one or two at the bar.

Ricci, on the other hand, didn’t have any such worries. He’d arrived in town with money enough to buy that nice house on the water, an’ likely had himself a hefty pension from the police force, not to mention military benefits that covered his meds an’ checkups at the V.A. hospital in Togas, plus Lord knows what other cookies the government might’ve tossed him. Ricci was a loner with no wife or kids, an’ it was a sure thing that sooner or later he’d be on his way to greener pastures.

Dex frowned, his brow creased in thought. What the fuck was he supposed to do? He had to make a livin’ here, year in, year out, or see his family starve from hunger. Had to be able to walk down the street without lookin’ over his shoulder for Phipps or some other asshole deputy followin’ behind in a sheriff-mobile, ready to bust balls for any lame excuse could be concocted on the spur of the moment.

He took a drag of his cigarette and puffed a swirl of smoke and steam from his breath into the brisk salt air, his comments to Ricci as they’d left the wharf once again recurring to him.

“Regular as you are ’bout where an’ when you dive, buggers ought to have you figured….”

An’ regular as clockwork he was. Lining his gear up on the deck the same exact way every mornin’ they went out, puttin’ it all on in the same order every time, an’ then divin’ to his normal spots, takin’ no longer’n half an hour to fill his first couple totes with what he found on the underwater ledges at the head of the cove. Soon as their markers came to the surface, Dex would haul the bags aboard, knowin’ Ricci was on his way down into the thickest part of the eelgrass forest, where he’d drift with the current ‘stead of against it like divers usually did, so they’d be swept back toward the boat rather than away from it if they lost their bearin’s. Drift divin’, as it was called, was risky business, but by lettin’ the current carry him along, Ricci could cover the most amount a’ bottom area in the least amount a’ time — and it was at the bottom where he’d find the best, plumpest urchins.

Dex, meanwhile, was supposed to lift anchor, throw the outboard into reverse, an’ keep his eyes peeled for Ricci’s bubbles while backin’ up slow an’ easy to tag along behind him. Some divers clipped a float line to themselves so the tender could stay on the lookout for the bright-colored marker rather’n have to keep his eyes peeled for bubbles, which were a helluva lot harder to spot. But in these waters there was so damn much eelgrass that the line would just get tangled up in it.

Dex glanced at his wristwatch. Just a few minutes to go ’fore Ricci was down maybe five, six fathoms. Too far to make it back up without air, an’ right when his air supply would run out. Dex would wait a little while longer, then throttle up the engine in forward, haulin’ ass away from there as fast as he could, knowin’ his partner was drownin’ to death somewhere below, his lungs swellin’ in his chest till they burst like balloons got stuck with a pin.

Yeah, Dex thought, he’d sold Ricci out, no puttin’ it any different. Sold him out, and now good as killed him. But what was there to say?

He’d had no choice, he thought. No choice at all.

Things were as they were, an’ there was really nothin’ more to say about it than that.

* * *

Ricci had been at his bottom depth for nearly half an hour when he hit the jackpot.

Having filled two of his three totes with smallish urchins from the upper levels of the slope, he’d sent their floatlines to the surface, left them for Dex to recover, and then descended below the eelgrass canopy. The going proved rough much of the way down. As he had noticed leaving the harbor channel, the changeable winds had produced fairly strong turbidity currents, forcing him to waste a lot of energy fighting the drag, and stirring up so much sand and detritus that he’d been unable to see further than five or six feet in any direction at some points during the dive. Although conditions improved once he neared the floor of the cove and began to go with the drift, his outer field of vision had remained limited to about a dozen yards, making him wonder if he’d have to cut his dive short without bagging any first-rate specimens.

Then the recess had revealed itself to him through pure chance. Hidden from above by a wide ledge of rock, its entrance sheeted over with eelgrass, it would have gone unnoticed had the current not disturbed the fronds just as he’d been swimming past.

He glided closer to investigate, sweeping the area with his flashlight, using his free hand to part the long, serpentine strands of kelp ribboning up to the surface. Schools of silvery herring and other tiny fish Ricci couldn’t name bulleted in and out of the light as he shone it into the opening.

The penetrating high-intensity beam revealed the hollow to be quite small, cutting no more than twelve or fifteen feet into the slope of the ridge, its entrance barely wide enough to admit Ricci in his scuba outfit and tank — a tight squeeze. Still, he felt a surge of excitement over his find. The interior of the cavity was filled with mature, whoppingly big urchins. Urchins galore, clinging three and four deep to every vertical and horizontal surface. The incredible concentration would allow him to stuff his goodie bag to the top just by gathering those nearest the