part0003

GEORGE WINTER FELT the Dead or Alive dip. A large or heavy man had stepped onto the stern deck. His pulse picked up, his mouth suddenly dry for no reason that he could explain. Except that there was something not quite right about the job, simple though it was.

He took a deep breath to calm his nerves, then slipped out from behind the galley table, went to welcome them aboard. He slid open the glass doors to the salon, stepped outside.

That’s when he got his first surprise.

There were three of them. Bormann and Hitch he’d been expecting. The third man he hadn’t, didn’t think anybody ever would. Unless they were a mortician.

Bormann, a grim-looking man with a taste for mindlessness, that rare ability to do almost anything to anybody for no good reason at all, was in the fighting chair. Leaning back, feet pushed hard into the footrest, an imaginary rod in one hand, winding furiously with the other.

‘Whoa! Think I’ve caught myself a whale.’

Spoken around a mouth full of gum as always, the irritating wet sucking sound as he chewed with his mouth open punctuating everything he said. Most of the time it made more sense than the words themselves.

Winter laughed dutifully.

Bormann’s partner Hitch was helping the third man into the boat. As you would a person who had to be over a hundred years old, more like a hundred and ten. He was so old, the warmth gone from his flesh so long ago, he wore a heavy overcoat despite the heat of the tropical Florida night. And a waistcoat under that, a strange-looking patchwork affair that Winter couldn’t quite make out.

An aura of having cheated death for far too long clung to him. Maybe that was why Winter felt his stomach clench, knew he didn’t want to look into the man’s cadaverous eyes. Fragments of stories shared with good friends here on this very deck came back to him, made him shiver.

Strong hands streaked with dirt and grime hauled the three grunts into the back of the slick by their pack straps. Behind them the rotor wash bent the elephant grass flat, blew the marker smoke every which way.

The moron Bormann jumped out of the fighting chair and the old man took his place. Except he didn’t grab an imaginary rod and reel. Just sat staring out over the dark ocean humming a song to himself.

Winter recognized the melody, couldn’t put his finger on it. It took him back to when he was a young man, to a time when he’d have laughed in the faces of men such as these. It would come to him.

He ushered Bormann and Hitch into the salon. Bormann slid in behind the galley table, made himself at home.

‘Nice boat. Got anything to drink?’

‘Light beer,’ Winter said.

Bormann gave him a look like he’d just offered to empty the chemical toilet into his mouth. He stuck his hand in his jacket pocket, came out with a pint of Johnny Walker.

‘Lucky I brought this along, eh?’

Winter shook his head, went to fetch a glass.

‘Not for me, thanks.’

Then he caught sight of Bormann’s face, saw that he’d offended the man. He might be a moron, but he was a big moron and not somebody you wanted to upset.

‘Maybe a small one. What about your friend outside?’

Jesus Christ! I’m not getting my ass shot to hell for that crazy son of a bitch.

Bormann shook his head, the light reflecting off the shiny bald dome. Winter had the sense to keep his thoughts and jokes to himself, knew that any crack about finding their master a pint of blood would not be well received.

He laid three glasses in a row on the table in front of Bormann, watched him carefully fill them. His more than the other two.

‘To a job well done,’ Bormann said and raised his glass, his eyebrow too.

‘Absolutely,’ Winter said, slopping some of his drink in his haste to pull the slip of paper from his pocket. He put it into Bormann’s outstretched hand.

‘Like a walk in the park.’

Bormann raised his glass again and Winter took a sip of the whisky, felt the burn all the way down his throat. It made him think of better times with better people, out on the deck under a perfect night sky. Like kids around a campfire, trying to scare each other with their ghost stories.

After two more reluctant shots Winter at last began to relax, a gentle mellowness creeping through his body. Then the door to the salon slid open and that all changed. There wasn’t a distillery in the world that could pump out sufficient booze to warm the chill that blew in with the old man.

He lashed out. A vicious open-handed slap across the mouth that grinned around its prize.

Winter dropped his eyes. Didn’t want to look into the man’s face. He knew he didn’t want to hear him speak either, a sound that would be like shovels in the dirt.

But he was being melodramatic. Blame it on the whisky. The old man was more human than he looked, even made a joke. He shivered as he came in, hunched the collar of his overcoat up around his ears. Some impertinent bird had deposited a dollop of birdshit on the shoulder of his coat. From the size of the mess it must have been a big one, a seagull or a crow.

‘Getting a bit chilly out there.’

Winter, to let out the nervous tension building strength inside him.

Hitch, because he was a sycophant.

Bormann, because he laughed when everybody else did.

Everything would have been okay if it had stopped there. But it didn’t. Because the old man laughed at his own joke.

And when Winter looked into the grinning mouth, he knew he’d gone to hell. Because where else would you meet a man with his teeth filed to points.

Like an animal that has returned to its natural habitat, the place where it can be what it truly is, do what it was brought into this world to do.