Dead Low Tide (23 page)

He’d known what was going to happen. That’s why he’d told me to stay here, why he’d dumped these things, too: the police would show up, and now they wouldn’t have anything of his, no ID, no cellphone, nothing but the book bag. And who knew if he’d even lay claim to that now? There was no ID in the bag either. As of right now, it was just something in the house when the cops had busted in.

And inside, when he’d walked in tonight, Unc had run into Five, and with him Tabitha. Two people who had nothing to do with anything. Two people who didn’t deserve to get busted along with the rest of the crowd, for whatever reason he’d decided to call in the cops on this, and now I saw Unc back at our house this afternoon, me asleep and him figuring Mom to be doing the same, her bedroom door closed.

I saw him in our house, and making a phone call to the Mount Pleasant Police Department, maybe three more after that, each to a news station to let them all know at 10:30 tonight an illegal evening of poker magic would be in full swing, and everyone involved—the
MtPPD and all three stations—could take home a full cast net of big fish.

Among them a Navy commander, I realized, whose career would be tarnished big-time—whose ass would be kicked in marvelous new ways—were he to be paraded before television cameras, if he were to have a mug shot taken, if he were to have to make one phone call to get someone to bail him out.

All of this, I understood finally, Unc’s middle-aged means of walking up Prendergast’s driveway with his hands in fists to stomp, in a more public way, the shit out of him. Payback, I saw, for the story of Mom.

So what, I could see Unc reasoning, if he got arrested along with the rest of them? What did he have to lose, but the fact he’d been playing poker for years with a bad man?

And what did all these other people have to lose, too, I could see Unc thinking, if in this one evening of a pile of misdemeanor charges he could make a Navy commander who’d raped girls he’d drugged—my mom one of them, my own mom—do a perp walk in order to get him busted down a few ranks or even booted out altogether?

I felt, in a very small way, myself begin to smile.

Five climbed out the open door anyway, said, “I’m gone. Back in a minute,” and before I could say anything else to try and keep him here, to make him stay put with me and with Tabitha, he closed the door.

Tabitha felt it close, and turned from the windshield to look behind her, then out her window at Five moving past, and toward the house.

She turned to me, raised her eyebrows and shoulders:
What is he doing?

“Going to try and get bail money out of the house. Maybe get his car.”

Her expression went from inquiry to utter puzzlement: her eyebrows
came together, shoulders squeezed high, her mouth open.
Huh?

“Go figure,” I said, and looked out the windshield.

Still the perp walk continued—there must have been thirty people escorted down the driveway by now—Five walking toward it all with his coat flared out for his hands in his pockets. He got to an officer standing perimeter, began talking to him, Five’s back to us.

Tabitha touched my arm, and I turned.

Unc told me
, she signed. She tilted her head, shook it just barely.
Inside. Took my hand, spelled fast POLICE COMING. HUGER OUTSIDE. GO
.

I looked at her, nodded. I pointed to Unc’s wallet and phone. “He told me to stay put,” I said. “He didn’t tell me, but I figured it out.”

She nodded, looked back at Five, still talking, then back at me.

Why call in?
she said.

“Forgot he knew how to spell,” I answered. No answer at all.

Because I didn’t want to go into it. There was too much involved with why he’d called it in, all of it stuff she didn’t need any part in knowing: a body in a marsh, a pair of goggles. My mom, and the story of her life.

“Forgot Unc learned how to spell so’s he could talk to you when you were a kid out to Hungry Neck,” I said, and made my eyes go to Five out there.

But she reached across to me, took my hand again, spelled out for me there so I wouldn’t have any choice but to know the question.

Why?

I looked at her. I took in a breath, swallowed. I felt the warmth of her hand yet one more time.

“To settle an old score,” I said, and looked out the windshield again.

Five still stood talking to the officer, who had his hands on his hips.

Tabitha took her hand from mine, and I glanced at her, saw her
looking out there too, and I reached to her, took her hand. She turned again to me.

Do you love him?
I spelled.

She tilted her head, blinked quick a couple of times, her eyebrows working again.

Unc?
she spelled back.
Of course
.

I smiled.
Five
.

She took her hand from mine, seemed almost to flinch, a kind of reproach on her face, if you could call it that. As if I’d asked a question too intrusive to answer. Or one too ugly to acknowledge. She looked out the windshield again, her own way of avoiding the question I was asking her now.

But then I saw her look down, at her hands. I saw her take in a deep breath, then let it out, and she turned to me.

He was my lab partner
, she signed.
A good brain, and he was using it
. She paused, looked down at her hands again, then up at me.
He’s funny. And he’s moving ahead with his life
.

The last part stung. I knew what she meant, and she did too. I blinked a couple times, then did the best I could: I shrugged. “You still haven’t answered my question,” I said.

One more time she looked down at her hands, held them out in front of her palm up, like she might be expecting something magical to happen, some answer to materialize that she didn’t yet know and that would surprise us both. Then she looked out the windshield, and slowly back to me.

He thinks it’s more serious between us than I do. But I have things to do. I have a life to make
.

“But Facebook,” I said. “Your status and his both.”

She looked at me, sneered almost. Slowly she shook her head as she signed
You believe Facebook?
She paused.
I just leave it so people don’t bother me. I see Five maybe twice a year
.

She let her hands drop, turned in her seat without looking at me, faced forward.

Maybe, I thought, I could take her hands again, her words just now, I hoped, a kind of permission. I could spell out what it was I should have said back in Palo Alto, what had never yet changed.

I love you
I could have told her.

But that was when she started tapping the dash again, and pointing, and I looked.

There now was Unc, hands behind him, moving out onto the driveway. Ball cap and windbreaker.

And Prendergast beside him, his hands behind him, too. He didn’t have on his uniform, wore instead his own silk shirt, dark from here, same as everyone else. But I knew it was him: even from here I could see his officer haircut, nearly shaved on the sides, thicker on top. Tall and thin and military.

They were walking side by side, between and behind them one of the policemen in black, holding the upper arms of both of them. It seemed odd, that here would be one man holding two when every player in the perp walk thus far had had his own escort. Maybe they thought Unc a low-enough flight risk not to need his own private cop, figured a blind man wasn’t going to run. Let’s just walk him next to this other dude out to the paddy wagon.

They were halfway down the drive now, and I could see two more perps a few feet behind them walking next to each other, too, one cop assigned between them, just like Unc and Prendergast.

These two were different, though. One was a woman, short and squat, the other a big guy taller even than Prendergast. I could see, too, that they both had on long-sleeve white shirts, black vests, and I recognized them: the chunky Filipino woman who worked the chip cage, that closet with a half door at one end of the room. And the other was the bartender, the big tanned guy with biceps the size of bowling balls. The same guy who’d been present at my initial humiliation at the hands of Five, when I’d ordered the same drink he was having.

I touched Tabitha’s arm, and she turned. “I’m glad Unc sent you out here,” I said. “Wouldn’t want you included in this.”

Five was about to figure it out
, she signed, her mouth in a kind of frown. She glanced down at the wallet, the cellphone, and back at me.

“If he gets ticked off,” I said, “we’ll let him know Unc got him out of there so he wouldn’t get arrested. If it’s any comfort.”

She nodded, and we both turned forward again.

Right as something started happening.

There stood Five at the edge of the property, his back still to us, talking to the policeman, who had his arms crossed now. Unc and Prendergast were almost even with them, almost hidden behind them as the one cop pushed them along the driveway. But right then they headed away from us, off the driveway and across the grass in front of the house, all three of them—Unc, Prendergast, and the cop—with their backs to us now. Headed somewhere other than the paddy wagon.

And I could see from here the letters across the back of the windbreaker the cop escorting them wore:
CBP
.

Everyone else—everyone—had on
MTPPD
windbreakers. Even Unc, I could see as he was led away. The same one he wore everywhere when it was cool like this.

And right then, as those three pulled off into the grass, the woman behind them, that squat chip-cage worker in the white shirt and black vest, tore from the grasp of the cop walking behind her, twisted herself free and bolted straight this way, across the neighbor’s grass and then driveway, right where Five and Tabitha and I had stood while I’d tried to get back my breath.

She bolted, and through the closed windows of the Range Rover I heard the short muffled word “Hey!” and again “Hey!” and saw the cop she’d wrested free of let go the bartender, and draw his sidearm.

And as if I’d planned it, as if I were a part of the whole thing but without thinking on it at all, I put my hand to the switch on the dome light, turned it off, and I leaned over to Tabitha, pulled her down from the window, out of the line of fire.

She took in a gasp, me leaning hard over her now, and I let myself look just above the dash.

Now the bartender had broken free, too, was running right behind her and toward us, and I saw past the two of them the cop with his gun out but pointed up, and starting after them.

Just to the left of this all stood Five, his hands in his pockets and half turned to the whole surprise, the cop he was talking to still with his arms crossed, the two of them watching all this happening just now, just now, too quick for anyone other than those involved to react.

The woman and the bartender, him just behind her and both with their hands cuffed, were across the second driveway now, onto the grass just ten yards or so off the hood of the Range Rover, and here was a sharp “Freeze!” from the cop behind them.

The bartender came even with the woman now, and bumped her hard with a shoulder, made her fall to the ground and slide a couple feet facedown in the grass. He dropped to his knees beside her, and in the blue pulse and shadowed jumble of the two of them collapsing, and of the cop coming up fast behind them, and now the cop Five had been talking to running for the whole thing, too, I saw the bartender lean in close to the woman’s face, and talk at her, words out of him stiff and sharp, though I heard nothing.

I was still leaned over Tabitha, her beneath me but holding still for what she couldn’t see or hear, while the bartender spoke fast at the woman, his head jerking toward her with his words, arms behind his back, him kneeling right beside her. She turned her face away from him just then, and I saw her shoulders heave there on the ground, her hands behind her, the twin tails of her plastic Zip Cuffs poking up in the air.

The cop made it to them and, his right hand holding the gun pointed up, straddled the bartender full speed, rode him down into the grass, the cop’s free hand on the bartender’s neck and pressing down hard, as though the bartender were the one trying to get away.

Which he wasn’t. He’d been the one to stop the woman. Easy as anything to see.

The other cop rushed up, and I heard them through the glass giving hurried words, saw Five jog up, too, stand off to one side as the cop with the gun out holstered it. He pulled the bartender up onto his knees, then stood him up altogether, while the other cop helped up the woman, her shoulders still heaving.

All of this just ten yards off the hood of the Range Rover, drenched in blue.

The cop holding on to the bartender pulled him in close, yanked him toward him, and said something in his ear. The bartender was taller than the cop, so that the cop had to incline his chin, and the bartender leaned over an inch or so, and listened.

It was strange, that moment, what bordered on a kind of intimacy between them in the midst of everything going on right here, right here.

Then the bartender stood up straight, that moment between them gone, replaced just as quick with the cop yanking his upper arm, giving it a shake to show who was in charge, and now that same blue pulse as ever shot across everything, and with the way the cop was turned, his profile to me, and that quick whip of brighter blue suddenly across everything in the world, I recognized him.

The cop: Stanhope.

The master-at-ahms out back of the Dupont place, his sidearm drawn on me when I’d stooped to hand them the book bag with the goggles in it last night, him and Harmon there in their blue and gray digital camo BDUs, placing Unc and me under arrest for an imaginary trespass.

I sat straight up, startled into place, my hands on the steering wheel.

It was him, right here, holding tight the arm of the bartender. Stanhope. His jaw was set, I’d seen in that brighter flash, his teeth clenched, his eyes sharp on the bartender.

It was him.

I took in a breath, felt the blood to my face in an instant, my hands tight on the steering wheel, tighter, because there was nothing other I knew to do, or could.