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Excerpt from: DOWN TO A SUNLESS SEA

Published by: St. Martin's Press, New York

PROLOGUE

    Half a mile into the icy dark, the diver scraped to a stop. He tried an experimental kick and wriggle, then dug his fingers into gritty rock and hauled. He didn't move.
     Held there, ribs and shoulders squeezed tight by the cave's walls, he realized he was caught.
     Instead of struggling he relaxed. Stop, think, evaluate the situation. He turned his light back on, and by its sudden brilliance pondered the pale pitted stone, dotted with the fossils of ancient scallops and sea biscuits, that glowed inches from his eyes. Tasted the sulfurous seep around his mouthpiece. Purged a spoonful of murky water from his mask. Then brought his wrist up, focusing his eyes and attention on instruments and gauges.
     The luminescent numbers told him he could breathe for fifty-two more minutes at this depth. The twin steel tanks on his back were cross-connected, with dual regulators in case one free-flowed or jammed. He had another regulator and stage tank clipped to a D-ring on his harness. He'd already breathed it down, but that still left it two-thirds full. A fourth, smaller tank held pure oxygen, for decompression on the way up after the traverse.
     Calmed by the knowledge he had plenty to breathe, he concentrated again on the constriction. But no matter how much air he dumped from his buoyancy compensator, or how tightly he ground his groin into the smooth stone, he couldn't free his tanks from the ceiling-niche into which they'd snapped like a rifle-bolt.
     He was caught, wedged tight as a mouse in a blacksnake's jaws. Trapped under the solid rock, alone, deep in the black labyrinth.
     He began hyperventilating, sucking in great gusts of dry metallic-tasting air. His heart raced. The Beast in his belly was waking. It wanted to tear off the mask and hood, yank the mouthpiece out and claw its way up to the light.
     But his mind knew there was no light above him, and no air. Just thirty million years' worth of Oligocene limestone and above that the muddy leafstrewn bed of a river. If he panicked, he was dead. It was that simple.
     But you don't panic, he told himself. He'd mapped systems in the Yucatan ten times longer than this one. In fifteen years of cave work he'd blown regulators, lost masks, lost guidelines, burned out lights, snapped off valves, lost primary gas, had gauges implode and computers fail, even driven his Tekna into a rock wall at full speed once. And survived, every time.
     Staring into the dark, he pulled out a memory he kept for times like this. A fall afternoon, many years before. The smell of burning leaves. His granddad's voice, telling him how much he looked like his dad, when his dad was little. The old house. He went inside and there was the mud room, then the living room. The moose head. The big record player, and on it his father's tarnishing tennis trophies . . . .
     Gradually his heart dropped back into a normal rhythm. His hands stopped twitching. He groped at his chest, found the squeeze tube, and took three quick gulps of Gatorade and honey. He thrust his mouthpiece back in, the rubber tasting mud-gritty and foul after the sweet liquid, cleared the regulator, and reconsidered his position.
     He'd obviously gotten through here before; there was his guideline leading off into the dark. He must have eaten better than he thought over the winter. Amazing what an extra couple of pounds around the middle could do. Well, there was always slack somewhere, as Houdini used to say.
     He took his primary regulator out again and shifted to the secondary, on the seven-foot hose. Then, wriggling backward as it came forward, he began working his tank harness up over his shoulders. His joints felt like they were dislocating, but at last he was rewarded by a hollow clank. The manifold unlocked from the ceiling with a shower of mud and stone fragments. He grabbed for the guideline before it vanished in the murk.
     He shoved the harness and gear through ahead of him, the tanks scraping and clanging like muffled bells. Then grabbed an outcrop and pulled himself after them, belly pressing loving-tight into the rock. He wriggled twenty feet, the jagged fossils ripping at his hands and suit, before the constriction opened out. Beyond it his light probed blackness, tracing an oval passage walled with dark stone.
     He breathed easier, and the Beast sank back. He checked his valves and slipped the tanks back on, then rested for a minute. He adjusted his buoyancy, centering himself in the six-foot-wide passage, and listened.
     To the silence. To the incredible peace. No matter how quiet it was at the surface, if you listened you always heard something. The rumble of traffic, the distant thunder of an airliner, the hum and buzz of refrigerators and air conditioners and telephones. But here no sound existed but the click and hiss as he inhaled, then the muffled roar of bubbles. And as he hovered motionless the black silence swelled, grew enormous around his feeble heartbeat, the feeble transient spark of his light. As if this hollow in the earth lived and thought and breathed in its own way, throbbing with the slow pulse of water.
     Then he moved on. Finning forward again, reaching out occasionally with the tips of his fingers to guide himself around a turn.
     He bored on steadily for the next few hundred yards, as the passage branched into fingerlike extensions angling off into darkness. He didn't remember this section, but there was his line, taut, reassuring. There were his own white plastic line arrows clipped to it. The water gradually turned murky brown, laden with solids. His light showed him a rough, bubbly, reddish-brown goethite through which he tunnelled like a worm in a swiss cheese. He checked his depth: passing a hundred feet.
     A wide low-ceilinged room, floor littered with rock; then another fork. He followed the line into the right-hand passage. He swam slowly, deliberately, head down and feet up, stubby fins pumping in a cautious shuffle-kick so as not to stir up the silt. Still going down.
     Fifty yards on he stopped again, overcome by a sudden sense of danger. He drifted to a halt in the middle of a tunnel just wide enough for his outstretched hands to brush opposite walls. He floated midway between left wall and right, floor and ceiling. His wrist-mounted light played over a pile of breakdown. The tumbled rubble loomed up, partially blocking the way. The spot of yellow light flicked back and found the guideline. The white braided nylon led on ahead, over the rocky pile. The spot flicked upward, probing into a vertical slot or crack in the ceiling.
He pressed his light against his chest, cutting off the beam. Blackness flooded in all around him, the absolute, icy black of the caves.
     He was lost.
     But he couldn't be lost.
     When he uncovered his main light again it was noticeably dimmer. He shook it angrily and it went out altogether. He clipped it to his harness, groping for a backup as the darkness closed around him like a suffocating fist.
     Light burst out again, reassuring, but not as bright as the bigger unit. Behind the mask his eyes narrowed. There was his guideline, still leading on. But he hadn't recognized anything for the last fifteen minutes. Was he losing his memory? Getting narked? But he wasn't that deep. He felt focused, intent with the controlled paranoia of the trained diver. Had he screwed up somehow, gotten turned around? He couldn't think how.
     When he checked his computer again he saw the decision was already made. He'd used more air than he thought back there in the bottleneck. Under stress, a diver doubled or tripled his consumption. He couldn't go back. He had to go forward, and trust that air and light lay ahead.
Bubbles roared in his ears. The Beast shuddered, stirred, and again he breathed deep and slow. He was sure now he'd never seen this part of the cave before. Maybe this wasn't his line. It looked like his, but maybe other divers had been in here. Somehow he'd fouled up in the murky water, taken the wrong turn -- there were lots of side branches -- and gotten off his line and onto theirs. Wherever it went, now he was committed to it. More and more with each second that passed as he hung here, trying to make the right decision.
     All in all not a good situation. But he'd been in tight spots before. Even if this wasn't his line, it must lead to an exit. Wherever the other divers had come in. Some obscure sinkhole back in the hammocks. The river, maybe, or a chimney up, a shaft or lift tube or syphon.
     He glanced at his gauges again, and hoped he found it soon. The passage had led gradually downward, and the deeper he went the more air he used. He had fourteen minutes left in his main tanks. When they went dry he'd use the stage bottle. After that the oxygen. Breathing it would be swiftly fatal this deep, but he was running out of alternatives . . . Don't fixate on that. Just keep going. Stay calm. Above all, he had to stay calm.
     But he couldn't help thinking of the bodies.
     He'd pulled out his share over the years. Openwater divers who came to Florida and decided caves couldn't be that tough. So beautiful, so innocent-looking, bubbling with millions of gallons of spring water clear and clean as liquid light. They'd just take a look . . . and the dark welcomed them, tempted them on. Then struck, silent and sudden. They turned back to find the way out blotted black by kicked-up silt. They lost their bearings, or their lights, or sometimes just their nerve. You found them wedged into the overhead, masks off, some with air still in their tanks. They'd panicked, sometimes just a few feet from escape.
     But it wouldn't happen to him. He wasn't going to die. In the next hundred yards, or the hundred after that, he'd find a way back.
     Breathing as slowly as he could, holding his spare light out at arm's length, he followed its golden fading beam down and down and down, into the black, still, reverberating heart of the earth.

CHAPTER ONE

     Galloway had felt savage all morning. Not just hung over, but close to desperate. He owed too much and there was no money coming in. With the general slowdown, the doldrums that had hovered over the Outer Banks for the last year, he felt like somebody was burying him alive, a teaspoon at a time.
     The weather didn't help. Ninety-five in the shade, and so humid a mist squatted above the muddy chop of Roanoke Sound. The hot air stank of salt marsh and fish guts, diesel exhaust and welding. But mostly it smelled of the low-priced bottom paint he was slowly and with abundant cursing rolling onto the battered hull-planks of the 42-footer that loomed over him.
     A drop of paint left the raised roller and fell straight into his eye. He muttered "shit," and tried to blink it out. It didn't blink out, it burned, and suddenly he couldn't take it anymore. The narrow space he lay in upside-down beneath Miss Anna's teak hull was suddenly untenable, threatening, as if the massive suspended weight above him had shifted imperceptibly in the moment before it came crashing down.
     He pushed himself out from between the battered keelblocks and threw the roller into the drum of Sea Guard. On the far side his partner was humming Hatteras High fight songs as he hammered caulking into a gaping seam. Across the boatyard a 50-ton Travelift whined as it extracted a trawler from the water like a rotten tooth from brown gums. Galloway dabbed at his eye with a handful of grimy T-shirt. Then his gaze lifted, tracing the soar of a herring gull, its cry coming down disappearing faint above the manmade clamors of Mill Landing Marina, Roanoke Island, North Carolina.
     "Hey, you ready for a beer?" he yelled.
     "Still workin', Till."
     He considered, balancing the need to get the job done against the growing suspicion it was futile. Finally he hauled himself upright and rooted a Bud from the cooler. Leaning against a ladder, he stared up.
     The once-beautiful 1954-vintage Chris Craft had spent four months on the bottom of the Pamlico after being blown apart by an alcohol bomb. They'd raised her with oildrums and compressed air, and towed the hulk here.
     Then they'd run out of money. While they'd gone to Louisiana for more, diving on the oil rigs offshore, the boat had waited patiently on blocks. Baked in the sun, soaked in the rain, as her planks warped and rust and rot crept into her heart. His own heart sank as he surveyed her now. The pilothouse was charred, windows blasted to blank stares. Crumbling caulking. Shattered glass. And inside her, wiring corroded to green powder, cracked timbers, frozen valves, split hoses.
     "You okay, man?"
     When he turned, Shadrach Aydlett was wiping his face with a fluorescent orange bandanna. His thick, scarred, muscular arms glittered with sweat, veins knitted like rope fancywork over smooth mahogany. He caught the beer Galloway tossed and tilted it back. When he surfaced he said, "What's eatin' you today? You been awful quiet over there."
     "Just thinking."
     "Hey, I tell you 'bout Abe? He got some bee in his shorts about that land we use to own down on the beach, that they took for taxes. Got himself a lawyer and everything."
     "Your dad always said he was the smartest one of you three."
     "Uh huh, right. Hey, don't look so down. Get this hull tight, we can drop her in the water. Tow her down to Buxton and finish up at the dock."
     "I know. But then we got the engine work to do, the electrical, all the interior -- "
     "What you gettin' at?"
     "I don't know if it's worth working on her any more, Shad."
     Aydlett said softly, "How much we got left?"
     Galloway swallowed the last of the beer. He looked at the hammered lead sheet of the Sound, darkening under a bank of cloud. Studied the distant arch of the Oregon Inlet Bridge, a curve of bleached bone beyond the sandhills and spoil islands that barred their way to the sea. Examined the black-and-white horizontally-striped shaft of the Bodie Island Lighthouse.
     "Everything we brought back from Bayou City?" his partner said quietly.
     He nodded. "And we still owe Dacor, and Seaquest, and the hospital."
     Shad said tentatively, "We could ask your brother for a loan."
     Tiller didn't answer.
     "Anyway. Hey, at least Nuñez is off our backs. In jail outside Medellín, the paper said."
     He nodded. Yeah, that was good, that they didn't have to worry about geeks with guns. But right now he felt boxed in, nailed down, and stamped for shipping. He'd figured once they had a boat under them, they could make a living. Shad had suggested setting up a ferry service over to Portsmouth Island. They could take summer sightseers over from Hatteras, charge them twenty-five a head for an afternoon in a ghost town.
     Once they had a boat under them. . . .
     "How you boys doing this morning?"
     The flat Massachusetts voice belonged to "Davy" Jones, the marina manager. Galloway shaded his eyes, held up the beer questioningly.
     The thin man with the red-and-gray beard shook his head. "This is business. Till, I got to have something on your lay bill."
     "Next week, Davy."
     "You said that last month. And you're into the marina store for five hundred bucks."
     Shad said, "You can trust us, Mister Jones. May be slow, but we always pay."
     Jones took his hands out of his pockets. "Look, we been through all this before. I gave you the winter rate, gave it to you all last summer too. I got to have a payment."
     Tiller put his beer down, cleared his throat. "Well, fact is, we ain't got it right now, Davy."
     "Then I'll have to take her. Take her and sell her at auction."
     "Sell her?" Shad laughed. "Who's gonna buy her, shape she's in? Let us get her in the water, to where we can turn a dollar -- "
     "Then I'll break her up and sell the fittings. Won't be the first time I've had to do it. This isn't a charity operation. If you can't pay, get out."
     Galloway stood in the sun, sweat making rivers through the paint chips and grit on his chest. He felt something huge and angry growing in his gut.
     He said, "You don't take a Hatteras man's boat."
     Shad said softly, "Tiller."
     Without answering, he went over to the ladder that led up to the main deck. He looked at Jones, but the manager didn't blink.
     He went on up, hand over hand.
     The blistered paint of the afterdeck crackled under his Docksiders. They kept their tools and supplies up here.
     "Tiller," said Aydlett from below, louder.
     Clear fluid splashed and then disappeared, sucked in by thirsty old wood. He threw the empty five-gallon can of thinner into the cockpit. He rounded the foredeck, kicking the cans of enamel and hardener and varnish down into the open hatch. Coming back along the port side, he looked down for a moment into the engine compartment. At his feet was a can of acetone. They used it to clean fiberglass resin off their hands. He uncapped it and took a lighter out of his pocket.
     "Tiller! What're you doin' up there?"
     "Stand back, Shad. You too, Jones."
     He flicked the lighter. Held the pale wavering flame for a moment, looking the old boat over from stern to bow. Then he tossed it down into the hatchway.
     Aydlett pushed his head over the gunwale to be met by a six-foot dragon-tongue of fire licking up out of the engineroom hatch. He muttered, "Aw, shit," and dropped back out of sight.
     When Galloway was halfway down the ladder he heard the whump as the flammables in the forward cabin ignited. The boat groaned, as if sensing her impending end. He stepped off to see Jones sprinting for the marina office.
     A puff of smoke, the crease and waver of heated air showed above Miss Anna's pilothouse, hovered over her flying bridge, then drifted off to seaward. Looking up, he recalled making love to Bernice there one summer night. Better to remember the old boat as she'd been then, not as the gutted, hopeless wreck he'd been slaving over long past any real hope.
     Jones came running back with three other guys on his heels. Two had fire extinguishers. Jones and the fourth were dragging a heavy canvas firehose.
     Like a sleepwalker waking, Galloway suddenly realized that Miss Anna wasn't the only boat that might burn. On one side of her was Al Foreman's Crystal Dawn, laid up for a shaft replacement. On the other was a brand-new fifty-five-foot Davis, and beyond that trawlers and sportfishermen and a huge Beneteau with a yacht broker's sale sign. Already sparks were shooting up from the old Chris-Craft. They hovered like fiery angels above the immobile boats, the baking decks, bone-dry or fresh-painted.
     "You son of a bitch!" Jones yelled. "You burn down my marina, you're never gonna see the outside of a jail again! That's arson, mister!"
     He hesitated, looking up at the climbing smoke, the falling sparks. Then he ran for Shad's truck.
     The pickup snarled to life. He backed it violently, then straightened. The row of boats loomed through the windshield. Then he gunned it.
     The truck mowed down the first set of boat stands along Miss Anna's side. He kept the pedal down and the second set went flying with a rattling thud. Sparks bounced off the windshield, danced on the hood.
     Then he was past and braking as the big Davis towered like a gleaming curved white wall. He twisted in the seat to see Miss Anna sag, hesitate, then give way, heeling to a last, invisible sea.
     She toppled over onto the paintstained ground, rebounded, scattering a fiery spray, and slid a few feet down the concrete ramp toward the water, as if struggling in her last agony toward the cooling sea. But her weakened strakes buckled and split. Fire spilled through the hull, then curled back to attack from outside too. But now the gaping hatches, the torn-up deckboards lay open to the firefighters. They moved in, the lavender plumes of the extinguishers probing into the flames.
     Jones was coughing as Galloway caught up to him. He wrestled the hose out of the manager's hands and pulled back the bail. The stream blasted out so hard he almost lost it. He got a better grip and swept the roaring cone of water back and forth along the Davis's side, till it ran a gleaming waterfall. Then swept it around.
     Bending over, he crab-walked into the roaring heart of the flames.

# # #

     They worked together side by side for the next few minutes, Tiller, Shad, Jones and his men, others who came running from Coastal Engine and the boatbuilders' and the seafood packers. By the time the Wanchese Fire Department's white engine pulled in the other boats stood dripping-safe, while Miss Anna had subsided into a steaming hissing pile of charred teak, glowing metal, and two oblong black masses that had been Chrysler 318s. Fortunately her fuel tanks had been empty. He crouched beside it, hands on his knees, coughing out the smoke. The still-radiating heat warmed his face, but his heart felt cold.
     Aydlett came up, eyes dark with soot and anger. "You okay?"
     "Uh huh."
     "That was about the God-damn stupidest thing I ever seen in my life. What the hell was that supposed to do for us?"
     "He was gonna take her."
     "He took her, least then we wouldn't have owed him nothing. Now we got to pay all our other bills and that too. Plus, you purely pissed the man off." Aydlett looked off across the tarmac, jaw set. "You're explaining this one yourself, my man. I don't want no part of it."
     The green and white sedan eased through the gate and coasted to Jones's lifted arm. A pause, then it turned, tires squealing, and rolled toward where they stood. The window hummed down. A whitehaired man with weatherbeaten skin crooked a finger. Galloway straightened and sauntered over.
     "Hello, Bert," he said to the sheriff.
     "You really do that, Till? Torch your own boat?"
     "Our boat," said Aydlett. "And he done it, all right. The stupid shit."
     "I'm talkin' to Tiller here, Shad. Till?"
     "I did it, Bert."
     "Uh huh. Any special reason?"
     He shrugged. The sheriff studied him a moment longer, then asked Aydlett, "He sober?"
     "Sober as he gets."
     "Uh huh. Well, Jones wants you boys out of here. Now."
     "Can I get my truck?" said Aydlett.
     "Get him in it and take him out of here," said Austin. His slitted eyes followed them as they walked away.
     "And don't come back," Jones yelled as they drove by him.
     "God damn," Aydlett said. "You know, pretty soon we ain't going to be allowed in a bar or a marina anyplace in the Banks."
     "Lay off, Shad."
     "Yeah, lay off . . . that wasn't purely your boat, man. That was half mine, what you burned."
     "It was worthless. It was an albatross. We're better off without it, stop kidding ourselves."
     "It was half my goddamn albatross. Least you could have asked me 'fore you torched it."
     "It just got to me all of a sudden."
     "'It just got to you all of a sudden.' What a sorry-ass . . . " Aydlett slammed a palm suddenly on the wheel. "I don't know, man. Latricia says, she don't see why I hang with you. And then you pull senseless shit like this. Sometimes, I swear, I don't think you got both oars in the water. When you gonna learn to think about somebody other than yourself? When you gonna grow up, take some damn responsibility?" He scowled through the windshield. "And look at my hood. Maybe it's time we developed us some other friends."
     Galloway didn't answer. He looked out as they rolled through the chain-link fence. A small group had gathered there, locals from Moon Tillet's and Etheridge's and tourists diverted from the Fisherman's Wharf by the column of smoke and the wail of sirens. His eyes scanned the faces. Then locked on one of them.
     "Stop the truck," he said. "Shad! Stop the goddamn truck."

# # #

     The boy was thin and lanky with a scraggly Jefferson Davis beard and hostile pale blue eyes. He had studs in both ears and a black T-shirt silkscreened with copulating skeletons. Dirty torn jeans and new black combat-style boots and a nylon rucksack on his back. He came slowly over to the pickup.
     "Tad?" said Galloway after a couple of seconds.
     "Yeah -- Dad."
     "Who's this?" said Aydlett, staring down.
     "You remember Tad."
     "Oh -- oh, yeah. Theodore! You grown up, last time I looked."
     "Where's your mom?" He looked around for Ellie.
     "She's not here. I come alone."   The boy put his hand on the door. "I got in some trouble. Told her I didn't want to live there anymore. And then I took off down here."
     Tiller didn't know what to say. He'd hardly recognized his son. It had been that long. At last he jerked a thumb over his shoulder. "Well, get in. We gotta travel."
     Clambering in, Tad said, "I saw you torch the boat."
     "Oh, you saw that?" said Aydlett.
     "Yeah. Why'd you do that?"
     "It seemed like the right thing at the time."
     "Man, it was killer."
     Tiller asked him, "What kind of trouble?"
     "What?" The boy flinched, blinked.
     "You said you got in trouble. What kind?"
     Tad fished a clipping out of his jacket. It was creased, as if it had been carried around and folded and unfolded, as if he'd been showing it off.

YOUTH HELD IN PROPERTY DESTRUCTION

    A 15-year-old Prentis Park resident was held as a juvenile yesterday after going on a rampage Sunday, damaging his mother's vehicle and escaping after being placed under restraint, according to a report filed by police.
     At 10 AM Sunday, Officer Neil Curran was dispatched to Des Moines Avenue in response to a disturbance. Upon his arrival Curran drove around to the back of a mobile home at that address, where he observed a young man striking a new pickup truck with a piece of angle iron approximately three feet in length. When the officer approached the juvenile and instructed him to drop the bar, he stated that his mother's truck meant more to her than he did, so he wanted to see how much it meant to her now.
     The officer was standing approximately eight feet from the juvenile when he advised him two more times to drop the bar. Holding the bar like a baseball bat, the youth took one step toward the officer at which time the officer removed his chemical agents canister from its holster.
The juvenile then dropped the bar and was placed under restraint. Officer Curran placed him in back of the patrol car and then entered the home to take the complaint.
     After speaking with the mother, the officer came back out of the residence to find that despite being handcuffed the juvenile had managed to slide open the window on the cage between him and the front seat, crawl through it, and steal a .44 Magnum handgun that the officer kept in the patrol car. At 10:51 a.m. the officer requested assistance from the juvenile correctional authorities and the K-9 tracking unit.
     The juvenile was reapprehended at 1:20 p.m. one mile from the scene by another patrol team. At the time of his apprehension the handgun was no longer in his possession.
     The juvenile broke out the front and rear windshields of his mother's vehicle, destroyed the front grille, broke the headlights, the radio antenna, and dented the hood. Total damages were estimated at over $6000. He is now in custody and awaiting an appearance in juvenile court.

     He coughed into his fist. Glanced up, to see Tad waiting for his reaction. "This is you?"
     "Uh huh."
     "What was all this for?"
     "It seemed like a good idea at the time."
     Beside him Aydlett made a choking noise. Tiller ignored him. He asked Tad, "So why aren't you locked up in some juvenile facility?"
     "I was. But they let me go. Mom's still mad at me for screwing up her stuff. So I decided to come down here and see you."
     "Where is she?"
     "Who?"
     "Your mom."
     "Back home. I told you."
     "Then how'd you get down here?"
     "I stole a car."
     Aydlett started whistling, looking out at the passing woods and homes as they neared the causeway to the beach. Tiller gave him a glare, turned back to Tad. "You stole a car."
     "Uh huh."
     "Where is it?"
     "Back at the marina. Where we were."
     "Turn around, Shad." Aydlett gave him a sideways glance and pulled over. They waited for the traffic and made a U-turn, slid in behind an Olds with New Jersey plates. The bumper read BE A HERO, SAVE A WHALE. SAVE A BABY, GO TO JAIL.
     Tiller looked back at his son's sullen face, his folded arms. He remembered the boy having a birthmark, but it was bigger and darker than he remembered it. The red print stretched over the right side of his face from nose to ear up onto his forehead, like half of a Hallowe'en mask. He tried to imagine how he'd have felt at fifteen, something like that on his face. Probably not very good.
     "So, what are you going to do to me?" said the boy, after half a mile of creeping stop-and-go traffic.
     "I'm thinking. Tell me again why you came down here."
     "Where else would I come when Mom don't want me around? To be with my dear old Daddy. Besides, I never got to tell you what I thought of you. All about how bad you treated us and how worthless you are."
     He pounded his head slowly with his fist. He didn't need this. Not today. "Talk to me like that again, I'm going to slap the shit out of you."
     "Just like when I was a little kid, huh?"
     Galloway turned suddenly, grabbed the boy's collar and pulled him close. He hissed, "Yeah. Just like that."
     Tad dropped back against the upholstery and looked at Shad. Aydlett shook his head warningly.
     "Okay, here we are. Where's the car? Which one?"
     The boy pointed sullenly. Aydlett coasted past it, a sporty red Dodge coupe. Just what a fifteen-year-old would steal, Galloway thought. He cased the fence.
     "There's the sheriff. Gonna turn me in?"
     "Shut up."
     "So what are we gonna do?"
     "Drive it out of here. Where's the keys?"
     They came flying over the seat. Tiller caught them, muttered to Shad "Coquina Beach. The parking lot." He rolled out of the passenger side, trying to look casual, and strolled toward the Dodge.

# # #

     "We'll leave it here," he said, slamming the door after wiping down the wheel and the interior with his shirt. It left red smears of bottom paint on the black upholstery. Aydlett stood a few yards off, ostentatiously scanning the wedge of grayblue Atlantic beyond the dunes. The wreckage of a wooden schooner, time-eaten timbers and ribs and bolts scabbed with salt-rust, lay like a dinosaur skeleton half-buried by sand. "The Park Service'll find it here tonight, call in the plates . . . Do I have to tell you how stupid that was? Stealing a car?"
     Tad didn't answer. He slumped with his eyes half closed, as if all this was too boring for words. Galloway reached in and jerked him upright so hard his head snapped back. "I said, do I have to tell you -- "
     "I heard you. I'm stupid."
     "You got a bag? Clothes?" The boy pointed wordlessly to the pack.
     "Till, I got to get going. Latricia -- "
     "Yeah. Thanks, Shad. Just drop us at Sam and Omie's, okay?"

# # #

     The boy ordered a soft crab sandwich and fries and Coke. Tiller didn't feel hungry, but he ordered a beer. He sat and watched his son wolf his food, trying to get a grip on the situation. Everything the kid said was a sharpened stick probing for his vitals.
     But at the same time, he felt guilty.
     He'd left Ellie and the boy years ago, when he was so drunk or stoned whenever he wasn't actually diving he didn't know or care about anything else. Pay was good in the Patch in those days, but it melted like snow in summer when you had to feed the monkey. He'd lived on the crew boat for a while, then moved in with Nicolette, graduating from buying to selling as the company didn't seem to need him as much anymore. Then they'd caught him with the duffel of grass out on the rig, and fired him. The easy money was gone, and not long after so was Nicolette. He'd gone from selling to smuggling, first with Steinberg and then Christian and Nuñez. And somewhere in there he'd sort of lost track of his family.
     "You'd better stay with me tonight."
     Tad grunted, mouth full. Tiller managed to keep his voice neutral. "They keep cots for when the blues are running. I'll get them to put one in the room."
     "Where?"
     "Across the street. There."
     The boy peered. "You live in a motel? Mom said you had a Jewish girlfriend."
     "That's been over for a long time." He put ten on the table, seeing only a couple more bills behind it in his wallet. "Come on. Let's go."
     Gray's was the last of the little fisherman's motels that used to line the Nags Head shore like washed-up seaweed between Route 13 and the surfline. Most were fast-fading memories now, obliterated by block after block of timeshares and condos with rope-bordered signs and nautical names. The sandworn planks of the long porch creaked under his weight. Two fishermen were arguing over the open hood of a rusty F-150 next to Galloway's CJ6. That's next, he thought gloomily. Hang a FOR SALE sign on the Jeep.
     He was bent over in front of Number 15, searching his pockets for the key when Tad said,     "You got mail."
     "What?"
     "There's something stuck under the door."
     It was a note. Important you call your brother, it said. Message for you.

# # #

     His brother Otinus's office was in Kill Devil Hills. It was a mock-quaint replica of a Lifesaving Service lookout station, set back from the sea side of Route 158 behind a carefully landscaped arrangement of raked gravel, palmettos, and dwarf cacti. Beneath crossed oars and a life-ring the sign read FIND YOUR PLACE IN THE SUN WITH O. R. GALLOWAY REALTY. SELLING THE BANKS FOR OVER FORTY YEARS.
     He stood at the door trying to see if his brother was in the front office. But the glass was blank, reflective, impenetrable unless you were on the inside. He sucked a breath and pushed it open.
     Icy air, potted palms, a big colorful Leroy Neiman framed on the wall, a blonde receptionist with teeth any orthodontist would have been proud to take credit for. "Good morning, welcome to Galloway Realty. How may I help you, sir?"
     "I'm Lyle."
     "Nice to meet you, Mr. Lyle. How may I -- "
     "No. I'm Lyle Galloway, Otinus's brother. I got a message down at Gray's, something about a call for me."
     Her smile stayed fixed but her eyes widened. "Oh, Mr. Galloway. You must be the one who . . . I mean, yes, of course, I've heard you lived in the area. About the message. Just a moment, let me check."
     She got up and went into the back. He caught her murmur, then his brother's voice in reply. He hunched his shoulders, leaning over the polished waist-high barrier between him and the white corridor with the spotless fawn carpet. Looking at the pictures that lined the walls.
The officer in the white cap, white uniform: Admiral Lyle Galloway II, U.S. Coast Guard. A man of honor, a man of pride. He'd locked himself in his office the day the verdict came down condemning his son, the drug smuggler. And picked up a gun.
     And just visible farther down, the engraving from the 1879 Harper's Weekly of Otinus Randall Galloway at the oars of a pulling boat, putting out from Kinnekeet Station into the worst northeaster in Banks memory. And in the offing, dwarfed by a fifty-foot surf, the dismasted wreck of the doomed Floridian.
     Closer to the lobby, the wall was hung with framed photographs and certificates. Pictures of his brother at Chamber functions, certificates of appreciation, shots of him shaking hands with Andy Griffith and Jesse Helms and Newt Gingrich.
     The blonde came back without her smile. "You didn't need to see Mr. Galloway . . . your brother, did you?"
     "Not unless he wants to see me."
     "Well, here's the message. Tammy took it this morning. It took us a while to find where you were living. I'm sorry if it's bad news," she said in a rush, watching him read it.
     "Uh huh. Use your phone?"
     "I'm sorry, our policy doesn't allow that. There's a pay phone over at -- "
     He slammed the door on the way out so hard his reflection shivered in the mirrored glass.

# # #

     He found a booth at the Exxon near Seagate North. The message said to call collect, so he did. "Tiller Galloway," he said to the electronic operator. The line went dead as it checked his acceptability, then came back on.
     A woman's voice. "Hello?"
     "Mrs. Kusczk?" He swallowed. "This is Tiller Galloway. You left me a message. About Bud?"
     The voice on the far end of the line was extraordinarily precise, as if not far from losing control. "Yes, thank you. Thank you for calling back. I'm Monica Kusczk. You don't know me, but I understand you and Joel were good friends. I'm sorry to disturb you."
     "That's all right. What happened?"
     "They found him three weeks ago last Tuesday. It was a diving accident."
     "An accident? Bud was the most careful guy I ever knew. Not that he wouldn't take a risk, but he always figured all the angles first."
     "I know. But in the springs . . . something must have gone wrong. He knew he was going to die. They found a few words on his slate. When they brought him up."
     He felt unreal, felt as if he was being scissored in two by the cutting-planes of his past. A face was taking shape, reflected dimly in the dirty glass of the booth. A young face, cowlick so pale-brown it was almost silver. The heavy Slavic cheekbones and jaw were masked by green camo paint. For some reason it was looking back over its shoulder at him. As if Bud had taken point again . . . He dragged sweat off his forehead and pressed the phone to his ear as a tractor-trailer rumbled past toward Belk's. "Like last words, you mean?"
     The voice took an audible breath. "I'll read it. Here it is . . . MON: SORRY I SCREWED UP. CALL KILLER G FOR HELP. ALWAYS LOVED YOU ABOVE ALL. BUD."
     "That was it?" he said when the line hummed empty.
     "That's all. It wasn't a big slate. At first I didn't know what he meant by 'Killer G.' It sounded so . . . but then I remembered him talking once about somebody nicknamed that, from when he was in the Navy. I found your name on the back of an old picture. But I didn't know how to find you. Then today I was looking through his desk and I found a postcard you sent him years ago from someplace called Hatteras. You were running a dive shop. So I called the North Carolina operator and they didn't have a listing for you, but they found a Galloway real estate office. Is that what you do now?"
     "No. That's my brother's. But they gave me your message. Look, uh, Monica, I'm really shocked to hear this."
     "I know. I don't know how close the two of you were -- "
     He didn't say anything; she went on. "But he thought of you, there at the end. Do you have any idea why?"
     "Well -- no."
     "Are you still running the shop down there? The dive shop?"
     "Not anymore. No."
     The voice took on resolve. "Well, I'm going to ask you a big favor, Mr. Galloway. You don't have to say yes. But apparently he thought you might."
     "What's that?"
     "He has -- we had -- Well, he left me a business here in North Florida. Specializing in cave diving. Now that he's gone I can't run it by myself. I dive, but . . . anyway, would it be possible for you to come down for a couple of weeks and help me, help keep things running, help me sell it? I'll pay you, and pay for the plane ticket, and give you a place to stay."
     He stood sweating in the booth, the clammy heat, too much like the Delta. He was having trouble visualizing Joel Kusczk dead. Bud had been ultra careful, ultra smart, ultra cool. The squad had always figured him for the one who'd die in bed. But apparently he'd slipped up somehow, deep in a Florida cave.
     And now his widow needed help. Well, what else did he have to do? There didn't seem to be much left around the Banks for him. No boat, no job, even his partnership with Shad seemed to be fraying. But what about Tad?
     "If you give me your address, I'll overnight you the ticket," said Mrs. Kusczk. And Galloway, clearing his throat, said, "How about if you send two?"

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