The wafer between his thumb and index fingers, Martin bent to put it in his mouth… and that was when everything inside him stalled.
He stood there, rigid, his hand inches from the dying man’s mouth.
Those ulcers on his tongue. Open. Weeping fluids.
Martin was unable to budge.
Unable to touch him.
What was it Alvarez had said to him in the anteroom?
The priest felt a cutting shame. His resolute dismissal of the doctor’s admonition came back to him now as self-mockery.
His forehead beaded with sweat, he averted his eyes from Colon long enough to place the wafer on his tongue. But he could not keep his hand from shaking or drawing quickly back, and as he gave utterance to his prayers of viaticum, they seemed to fall away from him, or he from them. The disconnection was like nothing Martin had experienced before. It was as if he were slipping into a dark hole, some forsaken inner recess where all words of faith dissolved into empty silence.
And though he would spend much time trying to convince himself otherwise, right then, betrayed by his fear, praying in secret anguish, Martin knew for a dreadful certainty that his fall had only begun.
THREE
Rollie Thibodeau felt his tackle jerk hard as the giant sea bass erupted from the bay, its spiny dorsal fin raised like a mainsail, foam spraying off its mottled flanks.
He braced himself, his feet planted apart, knowing he couldn’t afford to give the fish any slack. His heavy line stretched taut. The stand-up rod bent in his hands, and its butt pressed into his abdomen. He tightened his grip, his harness straps digging into his shoulders, the muscles of his arms straining against the drag of the line.
Then something gave out inside him. It was less a sensation of pain than a sudden buckling weakness between his stomach and groin. His feet slipped forward over the
Vibrating like a bowstring across its entire length, the line snapped just behind the wire leader.
The bass flailed backward, away from the stern of the motor yacht, Thibodeau’s hook still buried in its gaping jaw. For a charged moment it was completely airborne. Its scales seemed to darken and lighten in patches as its great body undulated in the sunlight. Thibodeau guessed it was between five and six feet long.
He was shouting imprecations at the creature as it smacked down into the water, rolled over, and dove beneath the surface, its tail churning up a small spiraling wake before it torpedoed from sight.
Winded, his face red with exertion above his short, brown beard, Thibodeau tossed his rod disgustedly to the planks and leaned over the rail.
“Damn,” he grunted. And kicked the gunwale. “God
Megan Breen stared at his back for a few seconds, then shifted her eyes to Pete Nimec over to her left. Both had raced up behind Thibodeau to cheer him on when the fish struck.
Nimec mimed a basketball handoff.
She looked at him another moment in the crisp, offshore breeze, a thumb hooked into the hip pocket of her Levi’s, her thick auburn hair blowing over the shoulders of a tailored leather blouse.
Then she shrugged and stepped closer to Thibodeau.
“It happens, Rollie,” she said. “Everybody has a story to tell about the one that got away.”
He turned abruptly from the rail.
“Seemed to me that it was full of fight.”
“You don’ know!” he said. His cheeks and forehead went a darker shade of red. “Doesn’t matter if that thing was twistin’ like a demon in holy water. It was tired out,
Her eyes sharpened.
“Cool down, Rollie,” she said. “They call what you were doing
He shook his head again, took a deep breath, then released it.
She regarded him steadily.
“No,” she said. “No trouble.”
“Then I think I’ll go below, pack away the damn rod, an’ enjoy the boss’s luxury accommodations.”
She nodded.
Thibodeau bent to pick up the angling rod and then strode off across the hundred-footer’s deck, passing Nimec without a hint of acknowledgment.
Nimec came to stand beside Megan.
“I’ve never seen him act like that before,” he said. “You?”
“No,” she said, watching Thibodeau climb down into the stairwell under the vessel’s flying bridge. “And we’ve been friends a lot of years.”
“You think it was his tug-of-war with the fish that got to him, or the one with Ricci at the meeting?”
“Maybe both. I’m not sure.” She sighed, her gaze drifting toward the vessel’s prow. “Speaking of our other global field supervisor, he appears to be in a mood of his own.”
Nimec turned to look. His serious face visible in profile, Tom Ricci stood gazing out over the water.
“I have to wonder if the cooperative arrangement we worked out for those two wasn’t good chemistry,” he said.
“Almost seven months down the road seems kind of late for us to second-guess our decision. We have to
Nimec let her aim him toward Ricci and shove him off.
Tall, lean, and dark-haired, his angular features several sharp cuts of the chisel from handsome, Ricci kept staring across the water through his sunglasses as Nimec approached.
“The ragin’ Cajun get over losing the big one?” he said, moving not at all.
Pete stood next to him, his arms crossed over the rail.
“Didn’t think you were paying attention,” he said.
Ricci remained still.
“Old cop habits,” he said. “I pay attention to everything.”
They were quiet. Some yards aft, Megan had settled into a deck chair, reclining it to bathe in the afternoon sun, her long legs stretched out in front of her. Ricci tilted his head slightly in her direction without seeming to take his eyes off the water.
“Those Levi’s, for example,” he said. “They say snug jeans are out, baggies are in. Convinces me they haven’t seen snug on Megan Breen.”
Nimec smiled a little.
“Got you,” he said.
They stood viewing the calm blue iridescence of the bay in silence.
“There’s been a ban on landing giant bass since the eighties,” Ricci said after a couple of minutes. “Thibodeau would’ve had to let it swim, anyway.”
