Sleep with the Fishes (18 page)

Herding back
over Little Hound Mountain, the day’s gaggle of clouds migrated to an orange sun. Stragglers, low dense puffs of mist, descended on the Delaware, flocks roosting for the evening, alighting on Hellbender Eddy. Cool air riding riffles streamed into the bay, swirling the diaphanous vapor. Twilight arcs penetrated from above. Wet bark, stone, and evergreen scents beckoned from the embankment.

Pink Creek steadily sirened a silky solo. Spring peepers piccoloed from a stand of buckbean, and black crickets celloed from the confines of a stump. A lone pickerel frog trumpeted from a submerged clump of leaves. Wraiths of mist waltzed slowly by.

Like a tiny red firefly, the ember of Phennel Rowe’s Virginia Slims glowed in the shadows. She sat on a boulder, one hand propped on the handle of her shovel. A bucket of writhing lampers was at her side. Though Reverend Jim had spent the late afternoon overseeing her excavations in Pink Creek, he had disappeared as soon as the sun dipped over the hill.

Phennel smoked only on occasion, and a good harvest of lampers was one such occasion. It had developed into a fine spring evening, and as she shared a quiet moment with the darkening woods and listened to night settle in, she spied something coming through the mist in the river.

Downy petticoats of vapor rolled to either side of Russ as he paddled his boat gently into the Eddy.

Dusk deepened, the warm shadow of the woods absorbing the twilight. Though images of the ghostly cotillion and Pink Creek’s ripple had lost definition, fading hues radiated in contrast, and the world in the Eddy was all-moving, a waterscape rendered in pixilated expressionist strokes.

There was no dimpling, tailing, or rising, and there was no reason that the trout would necessarily still be there, much less feeding. It had been years since Russ had fished Pink Creek. But when he awoke that afternoon from a deep sleep, he somehow knew a trout was waiting for him there. Russ watched in the flickering light as his fly line looped out behind. His wrist brought his forearm down, line and leader pulled the fly forward. Cartwheeling gently, the fly came upright and sat high on a riffle, right where it belonged, a dark speck on a distant mirror.

And just as though it had been rehearsed, the shiny speckled snout rose on cue. A delicate hushed rise took the fly. Tail and dorsal porpoised. The trout took its meal down.

The rod raised deliberately brought the line taut, and after a moment of realization, the trout drove toward the creek. Peepers and crickets ceased playing, and Pink Creek seemed to rush along to the drumbeats of blood in Russ’s ears.

Racing in circles, the fish ran up into the creek mouth, fly line chopping fog swirls in two.

Suddenly the fish stopped, and in that instant, full night descended.

Russ didn’t know what had happened at first. Maybe the trout wrapped the line around a log, or snagged it under a rock. But it started moving again and the action was different, a sleepy, side-to-side motion that came toward him from the creek. This was a different fish. The trout was gone, and Russ was attached to something heavy, something deep, something with a big head. It came right along toward the boat. Russ dropped the anchor with the flip of a switch. Nervous hands ransacked one of the boat’s cubbyholes for a flashlight that wasn’t there.

At first, as Russ coaxed the fish up and saw the silhouette, he thought it was a giant bullhead catfish. Driving the net into the water, he scooped, groping in the dark to get it all in the mesh pocket.

A tremendous splash divulged a gaping mouth from which his original trout sprang and slapped him in the jaw. Two feet kicked wildly in the air, and a long, flat tail reached out and smacked Russ in the forehead, knocking him back.

Lying on the wet carpet in the bottom of his boat, he wiped the water and slime from his face, eyed the empty net beside him. The trout flopped and shuddered somewhere at the other end of the boat. He realized that his trout had been swallowed up by a hellbender.

Russ barked a laugh of disbelief, hauled himself up to the gunnel, and stared at the growing ring of dark ripples where the hellbender had vanished. Yes, yes, there were two feet, and that unmistakable wrinkled tail that had slapped the side of his head. A hellbender. He’d really seen one. He couldn’t wait to tell…

Staring up at holes parting in the mists, at the stars above, Russ suddenly realized that the weight of his burden was gone. Was it that he’d killed the guy who killed his wife and that justice had been done? Was that what had really mattered all along anyway? Wasn’t most of the lingering pain associated with being the survivor of the accident, and not knowing why?

Sid said he’d felt sorry for him, but Russ doubted that motivation. Sid obviously had the sense to give Russ the only acceptable reason: compassion. Was it compassion that made Russ hold on to Sid’s shirtfront and not let go?

Russ couldn’t come up with a reason for saving Sid, so how could he expect Sid to have a reason for saving Russ? Perhaps, Russ thought, there was no percentage in trying to assign significance to everything that happens to you.

Russ stared down at the dark water where the huge salamander had vanished, seeing his rippled silhouette haloed in stars against the night sky.

He had dwelled all afternoon on his new understanding of Sandra’s predicament. Russ understood now that Sandra had witnessed a mob hit and had never told him, never told anyone—and yet was killed anyway. Why had she never told him? He guessed the same reason he wouldn’t have told her. To protect her.

And sort of in honor of that, or perhaps to share something with Sandra, he decided never to tell anyone about the hellbender.

He smiled, looked up at the stars, and considered what Phennel would say about all this.

“Hallelujah,” he said aloud.

“Amen,” echoed back from the woods.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

B
RIAN
M. W
IPRUD
is a New York City author and outdoor writer for fly-fishing magazines. He won the 2002 Lefty Award for Most Humorous Crime Novel, was a 2003 Barry Award Nominee for Best Paperback Original, had a 2004 Independent Mystery Booksellers Association Bestseller, and a 2005
Seattle Times
Bestseller. Information on his tours and appearances can be found at his website
www.wiprud.com.

Also by Brian M. Wiprud

PIPSQUEAK

STUFFED

CROOKED

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the newest crime caper from
“sublime comic genius”

BRIAN M. WIPRUD

Read on for an exclusive
sneak peek at
his next mystery

coming from Dell Books
in Summer 2007.

Pick up your copy at your favorite bookseller.

Driving into
Chicago at five o’clock on a Wednesday afternoon is like entering a circle in hell—possibly one sandwiched between the Pit of a Hundred Thousand Root Canals and the Fiery Baths of Microwaved Cheese. Yes, it was a crisp blue June day, and there the Lincoln and I were stuck in the Canyon of Interminable Cross Merges. New York is no treat at that time of day, either, but it’s merely a stroll through bunny-soft purgatory by comparison, believe you me.

I’d meant to slip in just before rush hour, but construction on the interstate in Gary, Indiana, had held me up on my way from visiting my mom in Ann Arbor. Well, at least I could be grateful I wasn’t in Gary anymore.

My course was set to see a bear. A Chicago Bear, to be precise. Sprunty G. Fulmore was a running back in the midst of a gazillion dollar contract with the venerable ursine NFL franchise. He could also afford to be a big-game trophy hunter in the off-season. It’s an expensive undertaking to bag Africa’s big five: lion, elephant, rhino, leopard, and hippo. It requires special permits, top guides at top lodges, prep and export fees, and a whole gamut of red tape that only the rich can untangle with a few snips from cash’s giant green scissors. But the expenses don’t stop there—it’s also none too cheap to have an elephant’s head mounted. And of course you have to have the kind of palatial abode with space enough to hang one of those suckers and not make it look like it’s crashing through the wall.

But the inventory of Mr. Fulmore’s trophies, which I carried in my briefcase, included a lot more than those five animals. He had an appallingly large collection of dead stuff—culled from five continents—for a man in his early thirties.

Yes, Garth Carson carrying a briefcase. My taxidermy rental days weren’t behind me, just to the side—I no longer spent my time working the angles to drum up business since it interfered with my new job appraising taxidermy collections for Wilberforce/ Peete, a specialty insurance company that caters to the rich and famous’ taste for collecting. How did I land this peachy gig? For once my brother Nicholas had brought sunshine to my life rather than forbidding black clouds. He’s an insurance investigator, and had given me some connections. Before the insurance work, I’d been more or less just holding my own, my nose pressed against the glass ceiling. I’d no idea insurance companies needed people with my expertise. Or how well they paid. Because of this surge in profits, Angie and I now owned our apartment. At forty-six, my midlife-crisis days were well behind me. Every time I looked at that briefcase, a big smile spread across my face.

My Danger Days were behind me too. There had been a period when I just couldn’t seem to stay out of trouble—with the criminal element or with the law. It had been two blissful years since the last episode, since anybody had tried to kill me. And by the looks of things, I was free and clear.

Okay, so maybe not so free and clear since I was now fighting my way across six lanes of the Indy 500 trying to make the Wacker Drive exit. But I’m a New Yorker. I simply bullied my way across the interstate, leaned on my horn and cut everybody off. Tires screeched and legions of irate Chicagoans flipped me the bird, their lips pantomiming expletives. The scariest part was that a disproportionate number of them actually looked like their patron saint, Mike Ditka.

I’d never been to Chicago before. Downtown seemed much like parts of Manhattan but with mostly named streets. It’s just that there was a river cutting through part of it, and I had a little trouble getting across it to where my hotel was. Soon enough, though, I was in the semicircular driveway of the glass monolith, a cadre of valet parking guys eyeing my car with the thinly disguised trepidation of cowpokes approaching a fiery bull. I was used to this. To these twenty-five-year-old kids, my black ’66 Lincoln convertible, with its giant steering wheel, knobs, and tranny hump was an alien, unpredictable thing. Other than some SUVs, cars haven’t been made this heavy or this long since way before these dudes were born.

As the bellhops unloaded my gear from the trunk, I eyed the oldest valet. “You ever drive a vintage ride like this?”

He paused, and did so too long.

The youngest of the bunch piped up.

“My gramps has a ’72 Eldorado. Drove it to Vegas last summer. She made wide turns, you know?”

“Circle gets the square.” I tossed him the keys.

“Dope!” He smiled. “Circle gets the what?”

“Forget it.” I tucked a twenty in his shirt pocket as he moved toward the driver’s seat. “Car’s got a new paint job so be nice to her.”

I followed the bellhops into the shiny building, did all that check-in stuff, and by 6:00 p.m. I was laying on the bed in my shiny room. Then the phone rang.

“This Carson?” a man’s voice asked.

“Who’s this?”

“Wilberforce/Peete, right?”

“Yes. Is this Mr. Fulmore?”

“Yeah, that’s me. Car’ll pick you up in an hour. Howzat?”

“Sounds fine.”

“That’s cool. I’ll leave the front door open. See you in a few.”

“Sure.”

I’ll be the first to admit that I have a prejudiced perspective on big game hunters because my work seems to bring me eyeball to eyeball with the worst of them. But a lot has changed since midcentury when trophy hunting was done without conscience or forethought. True sportsmen today are equal part conservationists, promoting sustainable-use programs and contributing to international efforts to keep the populations of game animals healthy enough so that they can continue to kill them. I know, it sounds counterproductive, but I guess it’s the Omelet Theory in action, and they’re breaking a few eggs. Argue that it would be better to hatch the eggs if you must, but there’s no denying that these big game hunters channel a lot of money, effort, and influence toward conservation efforts that otherwise wouldn’t be there. For example, the biggest, oldest, and most venerable award in trophy hunting used to be called the Oglevy Cup and was awarded to the hunter with the most spectacular kill. Today, that same award is called the Oglevy Conservation Award and is given to the hunter who has contributed the most toward improving the sport—i.e., keeping the animals around. Hats off to the nature lovers who do their bit, but the luminaries of big game hunting do their bit and then some.

For obvious reasons, most of the big game hunters I visited were eager to try to grease my wheels. They wanted the highest appraisal possible, if not for insurance reasons, then for bragging rights. If they ever got into a pissing contest with other hunters, even if they didn’t have a saber-toothed wombat or hoary tree kangaroo among their trophies, they could always pull the trump card by announcing how much their collection was worth. Sad, really. True collectors such as myself tend not to be competitive on that scale—we’re more apt to be kindred spirits, appreciating the sensibilities evidenced in someone else’s collection. Taxidermy is art. But with hunters, their “trophies” were exactly that: a show of prowess.

My motto? Don’t let other people make their problems yours. If these guys wanted to smoke cigars, drink sixty-year-old Scotch, and lock horns over whose dead animals were bigger, better, or worth more money, let them have at it. Besides, it benefited me. Whenever I visited these big game hunters, they wined and dined me, sent cars, and lavished me with Cuban cigars I didn’t smoke—it was only the gold watches and home entertainment systems that Wilberforce/Peete forbade me to accept. And of course, these erstwhile Hemingways, knowing I was exposed to some of the finest trophy collections, wanted me to be their magic mirror and tell them theirs was the finest in all the land.

An hour after Fulmore’s call, I was in a limo headed for an upper-crust Chicago suburb. And I couldn’t help but reflect, once again, how dramatically my life had changed in a year. Nothing highlights the notion that you’re no longer treading water than having the captain send out his launch for you. Pipe me aboard! I was liking this new life. A lot.

Once off the highway, we cruised through a Tudor-style retail strip and into a lane canopied by the thick branches of towering sycamores. Portico lights twinkled through the hedgerows.

It was obviously trash night in Upper Crust, Illinois. You know you’re in a schmancy neighborhood when all the houses have matching trash cans—the clean green PVC kind with rubber wheels, whisper-quiet hinged lids, and no house numbers spray painted on the sides. I’d bet the garbage trucks were electric and the sanitation workers wore matching white jumpsuits and sneakers so as not to wake anybody. Like the tooth fairy, the rubbish fairies fluttered in and out without so much as causing a head to lift from its pillow.

The chauffeur slowed as we approached a drive with a white lawn jockey next to it. For the uninitiated, a drive is distinguished from a driveway by the semicircular, dual entrance design that obviates having to use reverse gear. When you think about it, the less you have to use reverse gear the richer that means you are. Any place you would shop has valet parking where you just pull straight up to the entrance and somebody else parks and retrieves your car. You don’t have to park in the regular parking spaces at the Foodco because you no longer food shop—your staff does. If you have a garage, somebody brings the car “around for you.” And eventually, you just stop driving altogether—why even risk having to use reverse in an emergency? All that bothersome neck and head twisting. That’s what you pay a personal trainer for, after all.

Passing a sea of green stuff—it was way too neatly trimmed and uniform to be grass—the limo approached a Georgian façade: red brick, white pillared portico, ivy, dormers. I had to remind myself I wasn’t dropping in on a bank president, but a running back named Sprunty who probably favored wild pool parties awash in cheerleaders and controlled substances. I could only imagine the fuss his neighbors had made when he’d signed the deed to this mansion. But that was their problem. Not mine.

The limo rolled to a stop in front of the portico and the driver killed the engine. This wasn’t like calling a town car in New York. Here, a limo would wait, no matter how long. And instead of some surly Balkan malcontent sharing his highly original views on impromptu capital punishment to the accompaniment of a radio blaring balalaika disco, my driver hadn’t said a word the whole trip. If he was Bosnian or Croatian, I had no idea. He could even been Hutu or Tutsi. I didn’t notice.

My briefcase and I stepped out of the limo, and from the portico’s vantage I surveyed the sea of green. Fireflies looped and blinked their way through the vapor looking for their mates. Toads chirped. Crickets cheeped. As somnolent a June evening as ever there was.

I turned to the door, which was about six feet wide. When Sprunty had said on the phone that he’d leave the door open, I thought he meant unlocked. But it was open open.

“Mr. Fulmore?” My voice bounced up and around the soaring entryway like a Super Ball. An Escheresque staircase stood directly ahead, so long it should have been an escalator. “Hello?”

No butler or housekeeper in evidence. I stepped into the foyer. “Hello?”

On my right was a living room, all in white, with lots of plants and nothing on the walls. To my left was an open door that led to an oak-paneled library, the kind you’d think more appropriate for John Houseman than Fulmore. Ahead, to the right of the stairs, was a white door held partially open by a bear’s paw.

Bear’s paw?

“Mr. Fulmore?” I strode over to the paw, which was lying on the floor. It was nearly the size of a baseball mitt, with claws like golf tees. Had to be Kodiak. I pulled the door open—it was one of those spring-loaded jobs that swung both ways, and it led into a pantry. Attached to the paw was the bear’s forearm, and I picked it up with both hands. By the looks of the stump, it had been hastily cut from its mount. A few feet ahead was a large red puddle. I froze. Then I looked closer.

A woman’s slip. And beyond that? A large brassiere, also red. I’m no expert, but I’d guess it was a 38D. Okay, so what man at forty-six doesn’t have some knowledge of bras?

I didn’t like the looks of this. The trail led to a door on the far side of the pantry. Beyond? The red panties, no doubt. I grimly surmised Sprunty was in rut, and I didn’t want to be the one to turn the hose
au deux d’amor.

So the bear arm and I beat a retreat to the living room, where I sat upon a couch that looked like it had never been sat on, neatening up the contents of my briefcase: a calculator, some lined legal pads, twenty-five-cent pens, a date book, some bottled water, and a box of Milk Duds. Maybe not exactly the contents of Donald Trump’s attaché, but I’m told he does like the occasional Milk Dud.

Also contained within was a stack of papers Angie had handed me before I left. It was a dossier of dog breeds. I’d been avoiding reading through it all because I wasn’t sure I really wanted a dog—but Angie seemed dead set on acquiring a canine to share our digs. We already had Otto, our jack-of-all-trades, and he was like a dog, wasn’t he? Better still, I didn’t have to chase him down the street with a Baggie on my hand, picking up his warm, moist loafs from the pavement. On the other hand, I felt a wee bit guilty. Angie and I had opted not to have kids, and if she felt the urge at this late stage for a third party, how could I refuse her a fur bearin’ critter? One that wasn’t stuffed, that is. Sighing, I started flipping through the info on midsized to small terriers. Jack Russell, Wire Fox, Schnauzer…but it was hard to stay focused.