Duma Key

"Water!" Wireman bellowed. "Gimme the water, one of em got in my mouth, I could feel it crawling on my fucking tongue!"

"No water," I said, rummaging in the considerably depleted bag. Now on my knees, I could smell the air rising through the ragged hole in the cap far better than I wanted to. It was like air from a newly breached tomb. Which, of course, it was. "Pepsi."

"Cheeseburger, cheeseburger, Pepsi," Jack said. "No Coke." He laughed dazedly.

I handed Wireman a can of soda. He stared at it unbelievingly for a moment, then raked back the pull tab. He took a mouthful, spat it out in a brown and foamy spray, took another, then spat that one out. The rest of the can he drank in four long swallows.

"Ay, caramba," he said. "You're a hard man, Van Gogh."

I was looking at Jack. "What do you think? Can we shift it?"

Jack studied it, then fell on his knees and began to tear away the vines clinging to the sides. "Yeah," he said. "But we gotta get rid of this shit."

"We should have brought a crowbar," Wireman said. He was still spitting. I didn't blame him.

"Wouldn't have helped, I don't think," Jack said. "The wood's too rotted. Help me, Wireman." And when I fell on my knees beside him: "Don't bother, boss. This is a job for guys with two arms."

I felt another flash of anger at that - the old anger was very close now - and quelled it as best I could. I watched them work their way around the circular cap, tearing away the vines and the weeds as the light faded from the sky. A single bird cruised by with its wings folded. It was upside-down. You saw something like that and felt like checking into the nearest nuthouse. Preferably for a long stay.

The two of them were working opposite each other, and as Wireman neared the place where Jack had begun and Jack neared the place where Wireman had begun, I said: "Is that speargun loaded, Jack?"

He looked up. "Yes. Why?"

"Because this is going to be a photo finish after all."

vii

Jack and Wireman knelt on one side of the cap. I knelt on the other. Above us, the sky had deepened to an indigo that would soon be violet. "My count," Wireman said. "Uno... dos... TRES!" They pulled and I pushed as well as I could with my remaining arm. That was pretty well, because my remaining arm had grown strong during my months on Duma Key. For a moment the cap resisted. Then it slid toward Wireman and Jack, revealing a crescent of darkness - a black and welcoming smile. This thickened to a half-moon, then a full circle.

Jack stood up. So did Wireman. He was checking his hands for more bugs. "I know how you feel," I said, "but I don't think we have time for you to do a full delousing."

"Point taken, but unless you've chewed on one of those maricones, you don't know how I feel."

"Tell us what to do, boss," Jack said. He was looking uneasily into the pit, from which that sallow stench was still issuing.

"Wireman, you have fired the speargun - right?"

"Yes, at targets. With Miss Eastlake. Didn't I say I was the marksman of the group?"

"Then you're on guard. Jack, shine that light."

I could see by his face that he didn't want to, but there was no choice - until this was done, there'd be no going back. And if it wasn't done, there'd never be any going back.

Not by the land route, at least.

He picked up the long-barreled flashlight, clicked it on, and shone the powerful beam down into the hole. "Ah, God," he whispered.

It was indeed a cistern lined with coral rock, but at some point during the last eighty years the ground had shifted, a fissure had opened - probably at the very bottom - and the water inside had leaked out. What we saw in the flashlight's beam was a damp, moss-lined gullet eight or ten feet deep and about five feet in diameter. Lying at the bottom, entwined in an embrace that had lasted eighty years, were two skeletons dressed in rotten rags. Beetles crawled busily around them. Whitish toads - small boys - hopped on the bones. A harpoon lay beside one skeleton. The tip of the second harpoon was still buried in Nan Melda's yellowing spine.

The light began to sway. Because the young man holding it was swaying.

"Don't you faint on us, Jack!" I said sharply. "That's an order!"

"I'm okay, boss." But his eyes were huge, glassy, and behind the flashlight - still not quite steady in his hand - his face was parchment white. "Really."

"Good. Shine it down there again. No, left. A little more... there."

It was one of the Table Whiskey kegs, now little more than a hump under a heavy shag of moss. One of those white toads was crouched on it. It looked up at me, lids nictitating malevolently.

Wireman glanced at his watch. "We have... I'm thinking maybe fifteen minutes before sundown. Could be a little more, could be less. So...?"

"So Jack puts the ladder into the hole, and down I go."

"Edgar... mi amigo... you have just one arm."

"She took my daughter. She murdered Ilse. You know this is my job."

"All right." Wireman looked at Jack. "Which leaves the watertight container question."