Beast (27 page)

St. John looked, and gasped.

“What?” Darling said.

“I think …” St. John said. “A tongue.”

Andy changed the angle of the camera in the submersible and focused on the porthole. Then they could see it, too: a tongue. It licked in circles, covering the glass with pink flesh. Then it withdrew and changed its shape into a cone and tapped at the glass. It made a sound like a hammer driving carpet tacks.

Then the tongue receded, and for a moment the porthole was blanketed in black. There was the sound of a deafening screech.

St. John grabbed a flashlight from a clip on the bulkhead and shined it on the porthole.

They could see only part of it, for it was bigger than the porthole, much bigger: a curved, scythelike beak, amber-colored, its sharply pointed end pressing on the glass.

Stephanie flattened herself against the opposite bulkhead, while St. John knelt mutely and held the flashlight pointed at the porthole. Eddie turned his face to the camera and said, “God damn!”

There was a cracking noise then, and in a fraction of a second, an explosion of water, a booming sound, and screams … and then silence, as the monitor went dead.

They all continued mutely to stare at the blank screen.

AS SOON AS Darling got into the taxi, he took off his tie and stuffed it into his jacket pocket. He felt as if he were suffocating. He rolled the window down and let the breeze wash over his face.

He hated funerals. Funerals and hospitals. It wasn’t only because they were associated with sickness and death; they also represented the ultimate loss of control. They were evidence of the flaw inherent in the precept that guided his life: that a smart and careful man could survive by calculating his risks and never overstepping the line. Hospitals and funerals were proof that the line sometimes moved.

Besides, he believed that funerals didn’t do a damn thing for the dead; they were for the living.

Mike had agreed with him. They had made a pact long ago that if one of them died, the other would bury him at sea with no ceremony whatsoever. Well, Mike had been buried at sea, all right, but not the way they had planned.

It had been a small funeral, just family and Darling, with a few words from a Portuguese preacher and a couple of songs. There had been no questions, no recriminations, no discussion of what had happened. On the contrary, in fact, Mike’s widow and her two brothers and two sisters had made a special effort to comfort Darling.

Which, of course, had made him feel even worse.

He hadn’t told them the truth about how Mike had died. He and Sharp were the only ones who knew the truth, and there was no way anyone would ever suspect different. They had seen no point in painting pictures for the family that would haunt their dreams for the rest of their lives. So Darling had said that Mike had fallen overboard and drowned; that he must have struck his head on the dive step as he fell and knocked himself out.

They had told that tale to the authorities, too, with no conscience about suppressing evidence. There was enough carnage visible on the videotapes to satisfy all the ghouls. One more victim wouldn’t make any difference.

When Darling had gotten no answer to his calls to the Privateer, he had been ready to chew Mike’s ass from here to Sunday for falling asleep on watch. He and Sharp had borrowed Hector’s Zodiac and sped across the half-mile of open water to the drifting boat. Sharp had been still in shock; he had ridden in the boat like a zombie. But when they had found Mike missing, he had quickly come around.

For the first fifteen or twenty minutes, they were convinced that Mike had fallen overboard. They had noted the run of the tide and the drift of the boat, and had used the quick, maneuverable little Zodiac to search a mile or more of ocean. But then they had decided that they needed the distance and perspective that the height of the Privateer’s flying bridge would give them, and they had returned to the boat. As they approached along the starboard side, they had seen scratch marks in the paint.

And then, when they had climbed aboard and run their hands along the bulwark, they had felt a telltale slime, and smelled a telltale odor.

Darling hadn’t been on the boat when the accident happened, and there probably was nothing he could have done even if he had been there. But he heaped blame on himself. Even though he knew it was mostly irrational, he also knew there was a kernel of justification to it. Mike had never been one to make decisions on his own; he had relied on Whip to tell him the right thing to do; he had never liked being alone on the boat, and Whip had known it.

Stop it, Darling told himself. There’s no point to this.

The taxi driver had the radio on, and the midafter-noon newscast began, with more gloomy news about the Bermuda economy. In the week since the submersible disaster, tourism had dropped almost fifty percent.

People were pressuring the government to do something to get rid of the beast, but nobody had any concrete suggestions, and the government continued to consult with scientists from California and Newfoundland, who couldn’t reach a consensus. Eventually, they all predicted hopefully, the giant squid would just go away.

Nobody wanted to tangle with the beast anymore— nobody, that is, except that Dr. Talley and Osborn Manning. They had written to Darling, tried to call, sent him wires, every damn thing. They had even tried to convince him that he had some sort of responsibility to help them kill the creature, that it was both a symbol and a symptom of the imbalance of nature, and that destroying it would somehow begin to put things right again. They had upped their ante to a point where, if Darling had a mind to take them out on his boat for up to ten days, he could clear $100,000. His response had been simple enough: What good is $100,000 to a dead man?

It hadn’t been difficult to refuse their bait, for as he saw it, each of them was, in his own way, the next thing to nuts. Manning was crazed by his personal vendetta, Talley by a need to prove that his life had been worth something. They didn’t have a full deck between them.

He understood that they had even approached the navy. According to Marcus, Manning had contacted a U.S. senator, who had contacted the Defense Department, which had asked for Captain Wallingford’s thoughts on how the beast might be caught and eliminated. The request had made Wallingford extremely anxious, partly because he regarded any questions from the Pentagon as criticism, and partly because he was a coward: He didn’t want to displease a senator who might someday have a say in whether or not he got to trade in his silver eagle for a silver star. And so Wallingford had taken out his anxiety on Marcus, whom he had tried somehow to blame for the entire fiasco.

But the investigation had cleared Sharp, and had laid official blame on the easiest of all targets, the dead: Liam St. John, who had concocted what, in retrospect, was now considered a reckless scheme, and Eddie, who had agreed to go along with it.

As the taxi turned onto Cambridge Road, the newscast ended, and Darling noted that the word “squid” hadn’t been mentioned once.

His own concern was to find an immediate way to make a living. He had decided that the time had come at last to sell his cherished Masonic bottle, and the dealer in Hamilton had told him there was some interest in it. If a couple of collectors could be encouraged to bid against each other, he might get a few thousand dollars for it. He knew that Charlotte had written to Sotheby’s some time ago, to inquire about including her coin collection, inherited from her father, in one of their auctions. He thought he might go through the artifacts in the house and see if there was anything else rare enough to be worth selling. He hated to do it, it was like selling pieces of his past, or of himself, but he had no choice.

He did have one practical hope, however: The aquarium had called, and they were interested in discussing a new retainer agreement. Now that St. John was gone, they could make decisions based on practicality instead of ego. That might pay for some fuel.

Still, he and Charlotte couldn’t eat fuel.

The chain was across the dirt road to Darling’s house, and he paid the driver, got out of the taxi, unhooked the chain and let it fall.

As he started toward the house, he saw Dana’s car in the driveway. What was she doing here this early in the day? Wasn’t she working? Somebody had to work in this family. He grimaced, and thought: Great, you’re one tiny step away from being a true parasite.

Then he heard a voice: “Captain Darling?”

He turned and saw Talley and Manning walking down the road toward him. Manning was in front, immaculate in a gray suit, a blue shirt and a striped tie, and carrying a briefcase; Talley followed, looking, Darling thought, nervous and uneasy.

“What do you want?” Darling said.

“We want to talk to you,” Manning said.

“I’ve got nothing to say.” Darling turned back toward the house.

“Talk to us now, Captain,” Manning said, “or you’ll talk to the law later.”

Darling stopped. “The law?” he said. “What law? You got nothing better to do than threaten people?”

“I didn’t threaten anybody, Captain. I stated a fact.”

“Okay. Say your piece and go along.”

“May we perhaps”—Manning gestured at the house—“go to the house and discuss this like—”

“I’m not a civilized person, Mr. Manning. I’m a pissed-oif fisherman who’s sick to death of having people tell me—”

“As you wish, Captain. Dr. Talley and I have already made you what we think is a generous offer for your help. In light of recent events, however, we are prepared to increase that offer.”

“Jesus Christ, man, do you still not have any idea what it is you want to go up against? Don’t you know—”

“Yes, Captain, we do. But the fact is, we believe we can kill the squid. Not the two of us, not you alone, but the three of us together.”

“Kill it? You might get to see it, but it’ll be the last thing you’ll ever see. Kill it? Not a chance. I don’t see how anyone’s gonna better that beast.”

“Captain,” Talley said, “let me—”

“Shut up, Herbert,” Manning snapped. “Words won’t convince him.” He turned back to Darling. “A final offer, Captain. If you will take us out to hunt for the giant squid, I will pay you two hundred thousand dollars. If we don’t find it, if it has gone away, if we fail to kill it, the money is yours to keep. Your only obligation is to make a good-faith effort.”

“You still think money can do it,” said Darling. “Well, it can’t. Go get drunk, if that’ll help you. Say some prayers for your children, give your money to a good cause in their name. At least that’s worth something.”

Manning looked at Talley, and Darling saw Talley close his eyes and expel a breath.

“That’s your last word?” Manning said.

“First, last … call it what you want.”

“I’m sorry, Captain, you leave me no choice. We need you. You’re the only person with the skill, the knowledge and the boat. So …” Manning hesitated, then continued. “Here it is: I must tell you that within ten days of close-of-business today, you are to deliver to me a certified check for twelve thousand dollars. If you fail to make the deadline, you will then have thirty days to move yourself and your belongings out of your house.”

Darling stared at Manning, and let the words rerun in his mind. Then he looked at Talley, who was staring at the ground.

“Wait a second,” Darling said. He couldn’t have heard right; there had to be a mistake. “Let me get this straight. I give you twelve thousand dollars for not taking you to sea, or you kick me out of my house.”

“Correct. You see, Captain, I own your house … or, to be precise, I will very soon.”

Darling laughed. “Right. Next, you’ll tell me you’re my great-great-grandfather and you built it for me back in 1770.” As he turned away he said, “You folks are smoking some powerful weed.”

“Captain …” Manning had taken a manila folder from his briefcase, and he held a piece of paper out to Darling. “Read this.”

The paper was in legalese, full of wherefores and party of the first parts, and the only elements Darling could parse were the name of the house, its location, an assignment of something or other to Osborn Manning, and some numbers. Maybe Charlotte could make sense of it. “I’ll have to get my specs,” he said.

“By all means. But why don’t I tell you the substance? Your wife has been borrowing money, using the house as collateral. She is nearly three months behind in the payments and has twice been notified that she is in danger of default. I bought the note from the lender. In ten days, I will foreclose on the note.”

“Bullshit,” Darling said, staring at the paper. The paper couldn’t say all that, because it couldn’t have happened. “Piece of paper doesn’t mean a thing. Charlie wouldn’t have done that. Not ever.”

“She did it, Captain.”

“Bullshit,” Darling said again, and he turned back toward the house, clutching the paper.

Charlotte and Dana were sitting together at the kitchen counter.

The screen door slammed behind Darling, and he marched in from the hallway. “You won’t believe what that …” He stopped when he saw their faces. They had both been crying, and now, seeing him, they began to weep again. “No,” he said. “No.” And then, “Why?”

“Because we had to live, William.”

“We were living. We had food, we had fuel.”

“We had food because Dana brought us food. How was I supposed to pay our electricity? How was I supposed to pay the house taxes? When the freezer broke and all your bait melted, how was I supposed to get that fixed? And the crack in the cistern … we would have had no water. Our insurance was about to be canceled. They were going to cut off our gas.” Charlotte wiped her eyes and looked at him. “What the hell do you think we’ve been living on all these months?”

“But … I mean … there were things we could sell. The coins …”

“I sold them. And the three-mold bottles, and the Bellarmine jug, and … all of it. There was nothing more.”

“I’ll go talk to the bank. For God’s sake, Derek can’t just—”

“It wasn’t the bank,” said Dana. “They wouldn’t give you a mortgage. You had no steady income. I offered to co-sign the note. They still wouldn’t do it.”