Sleep with the Fishes (9 page)

“How much
this tub set you back, Smonig?” Sid admired all Russ’s gadgets—the sonar, rod holders, can holders, aerated baitwell—as they motored upriver toward the Eddy. “Yeah, ’cause I can’t stay with that rowboat, gotta think about tradin’ up.”

“Ten or twelve thousand to replace it.”

Two kingfishers zigged across the river, chattering and laughing.

“Twelve, huh? I may have to make a little investment. So where we goin’?”

“Just above the Eddy there’s some rapids. Above the rapids is a stretch of water five feet deep bank to bank, water that really moves, and a field of small boulders. We anchor, fish, lift anchor, move up, drop anchor, fish, and so on. The larger bass hang right at the edge of the fastest, deepest water.” Russ throttled back the motor as they arched into the Eddy. Rapids came into view. A washing-machine effect was at work through the center of the rapids.

“Whoa.” Sid came to attention. “How’re you gonna get through all that? Looks pretty rough.”

“Up the right side. It’s a little tricky. I used to go ashore and pull the boat up in the shallows. One day I felt lucky and motored up. I got away with it.” In the distance, Russ noted a nice trout rising where Pink Creek trickled into the Eddy and saved the information for later.

“That feelin’ is great.” A grin broke up the side of Sid’s face. “Gettin’ away with somethin’ like that, I mean.”

“I guess you’d know a lot about that.”

“I guess I would.” Sid’s grin broke into a smile. “But make no mistake, Russ. The only thing I wanna get away with now is bass, walleye, trout, muskellunge, those watchamacallits—the rocket-fish.”

“Rocket-fish?”

“Yeah.” Sid snapped a finger at Russ. “Shad.”

“Shad. Well, you’ve come at a good time for them. Looked like the one you brought over the other night gave you quite a fight.”

“Very amusing, Smonig. So how come I never heard of these here shad before I came here?”

“Sid, let me ask you something. I mean, I saw you casting, and you seem to have done a lot of it. You have a lot of tackle, and of the right kinds. You seem to know a lot about fish, but…is this the first time you’ve ever actually fished?”

“Smonig, to quote a certain deputy warden I once knew, the only fish in prison is on a bun with tartar sauce.”

The bow swung to the right and over a burst of current and waves. The motor complained, and the blade whined and growled as it popped free of the water.

“You don’t mean to tell me you learned to fish in prison?” He tilted back his fedora.

“I had a special program, got all the magazines, catalogs. The Warden, he’s an outdoorsman. Gave me some pointers.”

Scraping the bow briefly off a rock to the port side, Russ cut the boat through a swell that sent about ten gallons over the gunnels. But that was the end of the rapids. The boat moved into the slick headwater. They didn’t go far before Russ pushed a toggle and the anchor motor fed cable. Soon they were stuck fast to the bottom. He flicked another switch, and a bilge pump started returning the ten gallons to the Delaware.

Russ produced a plastic compartmentalized tray full of squiggly-tailed rubber grubs, hooks, and attachments. “Take your pick of color, but with sun on the water I like the dark ones with sparkles.”

Sid picked one, and while he was tying it on, Russ made his first cast. He was retrieving the cast in sharp jerks when—bang!—his rod was bent and pumping. A golden brown fish roughly the dimensions of a large baking potato arched out of the water and bore under the boat.

Sid cast, his grub plopping upriver in the folds of current.

“Whoa!” Sid hauled back, rod bent, vibrating, pumping. “Whoa, I got a friggin’ fish!”

Sid looked briefly away from his battle. Russ was raising his rod again, the foot-long bass gasping. The jaws broke the surface. Russ’s thumb and forefinger clamped onto the lower lip. He lofted the red-eyed fish by its lower jaw, the fins slowly fanning the air.

Sid held his rod high as his fish raced upstream. The bass’s bronze sides flashed in the water. It bolted to sunlight and the surface, breaking free of the river. The fish pirouetted and spat Sid’s grub at the boat. Splash and flicker: the bass was gone.

“Aw, crap.” Sid stood motionless. “What was that? I had him. What was that?” He waved a hand toward where the fish went, arguing with it.

Russ unhooked his fish and placed it in the water. It thrashed from his grip, vanishing.

“That often happens when a fish jumps.”

“What’d I do wrong?”

“When you feel them shoot for the surface, reel up and put your rod tip down. That discourages them from jumping. It also helps to keep a taut line if they do jump. Once the line is slack, they can shake the hook loose. But by the same token, you don’t want to pull when they jump either.”

“Huh.” Sid smiled to himself. “So what you’re sayin’ is I gotta finesse the fish, that right?”

“Well, yeah, I guess you could say that.” Russ hadn’t thought of it until then, but Sid seemed to be full of finesse. “I’m sure you’ll finesse the next one.”

It was
only as Trooper Price lay on the ground bleeding that he’d suddenly remembered: Martha hadn’t been wearing a bra. Hell, that’s why he’d gone ape over her to begin with.

To say the least, his relief had been mixed. He’d only dodged one bullet. The other was in his chest.

X-rays and a little probing had shown that after the slug had passed through Price’s citation folder, it entered his chest, cracked, and deflected off a rib. What remained of the hollow-point slug was tucked up under the next rib. He had been lucky. Very lucky.

He had a dime-sized hole two and a half inches below his nipple and a bruised area surrounding that. After plucking out the lead, the doctor stitched it up, slapped a Band-Aid on it, and gave him some antibiotics. He was sent home.

Price felt gypped.

If a cop gets shot in the chest and survives, he can usually expect a month off at the least. And who knows? Maybe he can get a sweet disability deal. A trooper Price knew slammed a cruiser door on his hand and suffered “permanent damage” to his trigger/pen finger. The digit in question had a fractured knuckle and had lost sixty percent of its mobility. So this guy gets an early retirement—way early—with eighty percent of his pay. Price had seen the guy recently, and his finger apparently had regained ninety-nine percent mobility. He was bowling with it. The ex-trooper was sitting pretty.

But Price didn’t slam a door on his finger, he got shot in the chest. And what happens? Nothing. His injury was termed a “flesh wound,” which meant he wasn’t eligible for any of the bennies.

Now it was Sunday afternoon, and Price was planted in front of the TV. He was off duty, so he’d put the small diamond stud earring in his right ear. It was a vestige of something cool he and the guys in high school all did, and made him feel virile. His wife, Debbie—after setting him up with a beer, the channel changer, and a kiss—had run off to her sister’s to gab. Even Debbie was acting like getting shot in the chest was no big deal.

So he sat there in his den, surrounded by all his high school football trophies, sipping beer, watching
The Sons of Katie Elder
, and wishing he’d gotten shot in the right index finger. That’s when he decided that maybe he should pop in a tape. He didn’t much feel in the mood for any of his Super Bowl tapes, much less any of the blooper tapes, much less
North Dallas Forty
or
The Longest Yard
.

Next to the VCR was a bag from the video store with the movies Debbie had picked up on her way home from shopping. One tape was some romantic comedy featuring that ugly French guy with greasy hair. Price loathed that stuff at any time. The other tape was
The Elvis Conspiracy
. Well, that’s what the box said, but what was inside didn’t look like a commercial tape. Probably a bootleg. It wasn’t even rewound.

Price fed the tape into the machine.

Val chewed out Little Bob but good when she found him still asleep at noon. Godless wastrel that he was, Bob knew there would be no peace until he atoned. Some arduous yard work, followed by a visit to his mother-in-law’s to clean the dog poop off her lawn, usually bought the Lord’s forgiveness.

So it was after cleaning the gutters, shutters, and car, after weed-whacking the fence line, after scraping the BBQ grill and heading over to Mother’s for tea and dog poo that Val took up her knitting and left Bob in peace late that Sunday afternoon. And as Val took a dim view of feasting on “God’s Day,” dinner was a cold sup of the individual’s choosing, eaten apart. Bob had the whole rest of the day to himself. And, as was his way, he fell upon his camcorder.

It wasn’t until he did so that he had a chance to really mull over the previous night’s doings, which he’d reflected on from time to time throughout his chores. His general reaction was more awe over a character like Sid Bifulco than concern over the manslaughter cover-up.

Mechanically, Bob fumbled with the clutter of tapes, putting them back in their respective boxes. He recalled how well the whole evening had come out on tape, including all that stuff by the headlights with all that radiator steam. Especially since at the time he hadn’t been aware the thing was taping. Those blank SUPER*PROCAM tapes he’d gotten at Wal-Mart held up well in low light. He’d watched the whole thing when he’d reached home the night before and had only fallen asleep sometime during Sid’s “getting away with murder” speech.

Holding the last empty SUPER*PROCAM tape box in one hand and the last boxless tape,
The Elvis Conspiracy
, in the other, Bob suddenly realized something was amiss.

It took another fifteen minutes or so for him to realize the possible ramifications.

“Just walk him around the boat! Like a dog on a short leash!” Net poised for action, Russ jockeyed behind Sid.

“If this thing’s a dog, it’s a Doberman, Smonig—whoa!” Rod doubling, Sid lurched forward to keep the line from breaking.

“He’s hiding under the boat. Just let him stay there a second. Keep the pressure on!”

“You said to let him sit there! So I’m lettin’ him sit there!”

“O.K., sorry, just making sure you don’t give any slack line.” Russ backed off and took a deep breath. “When he comes out take him for another walk around the boat, then we’ll see if we can bring him up for the net. Now, Sid, we don’t want to net him at the front of the boat. There’s not room for both of us there. And in back, there’s a chance we’ll foul the line in the propeller. Just pick a side, and you tell me when he’s ready, O.K.?”

“How the hell will I know when he’s ready? You think maybe I should ask the Doberman to roll over an’ play dead? Oh crap, here he goes—here he goes….” The tip of the rod made two deep dips. The line buzzed off the reel. Russ stepped forward.

“I think this is it—his last run to the deep water. Reel up. You’ll feel his head turn as he starts to come up.”

“Hey—here he comes!”

“It’s O.K.”

“Here he comes….”

“Steady now, steady…”

“Ooh, there he is! Nab him, Smonig!”

“Not yet. Wait till he turns on his side. He may have one bolt left—a short one—be ready.”

“Now, Smonig!”

“Wait—there he goes!”

“Whoa!”

More line buzzed off the reel. A tail splashed river water in their faces.

“O.K., Sid, bring him back, fast and headfirst and into the net.” Russ plunged the green mesh hoop into the river.

“He’s comin’!”

“Got him.” Russ heaved the net aboard and stumbled backward—the boat tipped—Sid took an abrupt step backward and the seat cut his calves out from under him.

Man overboard.

Man down rapids.

Before he even clambered aboard, Sid was posing the usual question.

“How big?” He was dog-paddling smack in the middle of Hellbender Eddy like he spent every afternoon splashing about in the river. Well, truth be told, he had.

“Big. Maybe twenty-five. Maybe more.” Russ held out a hand and Sid waved it off, draping one arm, then the other, then a leg over the gunnel. Sid went splat on the boat’s wet carpet.

“Twenty-five pounds! Shit, that’s gotta be some kinda record!” He ran his hands over his wet hair and pulled a grin up one side of his face.

“You may be right. On six-pound test line, I’d say you may have a line-test record for the state of Pennsylvania.” Russ produced a towel and a flask of whisky from a compartment under his seat. It wasn’t the first time a sport had taken a plunge.

“Pennsylvania? Hell, the whole goddamn country! The world! I never seen a record of a smallmouth bass that big! What’s the face for, Smonig?”

Russ hauled the subdued fish from the livewell and laid it between them. The girthsome copper fish gasped and his eyes goggled; he looked like a mondo goldfish.

“Don’t tell me that’s not the biggest goddamn smallmouth you ever saw, Smonig!” Sid shook his towel at the big bronze monster. It was the kind of whopper whose size was truly indicated by extended arms and the phrase “He was this big!”

“Sid, this is not a smallmouth. It’s a carp.”

“A carp?”

“That’s right. A carp, a very big carp.” Russ was trying his best to sound upbeat. Fair or not, “game fish” is a label less likely to be associated with carp than “trash fish” or, as in this case, “booby prize.”

“So why the sour puss, Smonig? You look like you just lost a filling.”

Russ started the motor and turned the boat downriver.

“I guess I was hoping it was a muskellunge, that’s all.” Russ shrugged.

Sid took a pull from the flask and shook his head.

“Don’t rush me, Smonig. Look, I been at this three days. I got one rocket-fish, fifteen smallmouth, and one carp that’s big enough to bury in a coffin. What do you want from me?”

“You’re right—I’m sorry. And just as soon as we get in, we’ll rush this thing—I mean this carp—over to the grocer, weigh it, sign an affidavit, take a photo, then release it.”

“Smonig, is this a trophy fish or what? It’s a record, am I right?” They stared at each other a moment, the boat had navigated the rapids and was buzzing around the bend below the Eddy, the sun just dipping behind Little Hound Mountain.

“Taxidermist?” Russ ventured.

“Ab-so-lutely,” Sid agreed.

Amber sunlight drew long shadows from the trees, and the purple sky cleared of all clouds. Buds along the stream bank, while barely noticeable that morning, were now bursting like popcorn. Two kingfishers brattled and swooped toward their New York bank, and the trout sipped tiny gray mayflies at Pink Creek. A blue heron stalked the shallows for tadpoles. Considering the way the day had started—at night, in the steam and glare on the driveway—things seemed to have improved dramatically. And even as Russ had tried throughout the day to touch on the frightening implications of all that had happened, he seemed unable to focus on it, as though it were a fading dream he soon wouldn’t remember at all.

Where was the body? Would anybody find it? Would Russ go to jail for manslaughter? Hit-and-run driving? Either he was incapable or his mind was unwilling to bear down on these issues. After all, he was fishing, and as much as it was his profession, he did enjoy it. Especially on a sunny day in which the bass hit all day long. And Russ was, after all, a pushover for the triumphant neophyte, having been one himself. Awash in denial and distraction, Russ bounced the boat around a bend and toward his landing.

“Hey, Smonig, who is that Trout Lady anyhow? She live around here?”

Russ smiled at the moniker.

“The Trout Lady’s name is Jenny Baker. She lives north of the Eddy with her brother Matt in a trailer. Why, you thinking of…”

“Yeah, I thought I might. She seems about my speed.”

“That she is, Sid, that she is.” Russ’s smile vanished when he spied Big and Little Bob standing at the landing.

Little Bob was pacing, and he didn’t have his camcorder with him. Russ sensed trouble.

Sid registered Russ’s mood swing and looked to shore.

“Hey, whadda these guys want now? Jeez. Hey, Russ. Russ!” Sid waved a hand, and Russ lapsed into his tired look. “Hey, relax, everything’s O.K. Trust me, things’ll be fine.”

“You filmed what? A video store? C’mere…no, right here, and tell me that again.” Sid was waving Little Bob over to where he stood, but the latter kept pacing and staring at the ground.

“It was an accident! I didn’t know the camera was on, then my wife put the SUPER*PROCAM tape in
The Elvis Conspiracy
box and returned it to the video store and now I’m afraid to try an’ get it back ’cause they might recognize me if they watched the tape. And the police! The police might be there right now, waiting, staking out the video store. I’m so sorry! It’s like so impossible, I dunno how it coulda happened…it’s just impossible!”

“Yo, Big Guy, grab the Little Guy and bring him over here.”

Big Bob knitted a brow and stood his ground.

“Hey look, Big Guy, I ain’t gonna hurt him. He’s hysterical, and one thing we gotta do is keep our heads. Am I right?”

Big Bob conceded the point with a shrug. He clamped Little Bob’s shoulders between two hands, lifted him, and placed him in front of Sid.

“What’s his name?” Sid snapped his fingers at Big Bob.

“Bob Cropsey, but most people call him Little Bob.”

“Sure. O.K. Yo, Bobby, look at me. Look at me, Bobby, everything’s O.K. Now just tell me: where is this video store?”

“Down the road.” Little Bob’s lip was atremble, and he sniffed back tears.

“Do you know how to get there?”

“I guess, yeah.”

“Good.” Sid clapped his hands. “Our problems are solved.”

“How do you figure, Sid?” Russ’s voice was eerily monotone, his face blanched. “None of us can go in there. Like he said, we’re all on the tape. If they’ve seen it, we’ll be recognized. I dunno about you guys, but I think we should tell the police exactly—”

“Tell them exactly what, Smonig? That you killed somebody while driving around in the bag?”

Russ’s face went from white to red.

“Yes.”

“O.K., so who did you kill, tell me that?”

Big Bob spoke up.

“You said it was some guy named—”