Timothy Hallinan - The Queen of Patpong

Rose nods.

"Say it."

"Understand."

"She's learning," Howard says, as though there were a third person present. "She's actually learning." He sits on the deck beside the light, which is sending up ropes of steam where the rain hits the hot metal housing, and grabs the frame that surrounds it. He twists the light left and sweeps it back and forth. He says, "Damn, I'm good." Then he wiggles the light back and forth and says, "Take a look, sweetie."

Rose lets her eyes follow the beam through the darkness and the slanting rainfall until it bounces off something pale, not colorless but not a color that carries across distance, especially under these conditions. Tan, she thinks. Light brown. It's low and rounded, rising gradually out of the water, no more than a foot above it, and it's long, maybe eighty or a hundred paces in length. Smooth and featureless, as though it's been sanded down for thousands of years.

"That's the big one!" Howard shouts into the rain. "Over here is its little sister." He shifts the light to the right to reveal another stone, about half as long, and even lower, than the first, its sloping sides just peeking above the water.

"There's another one back behind the bigger one, but you can't see it. The Three Sisters. Also called the Bitches because they've ripped the bottom out of so many boats." He turns the light so it's facing front again and then scoots crablike back toward the cabin area. "At high tide," he says, "about six hours from now, they'll be underwater. Fucking everything's hit them for centuries and centuries. Chinese junks, Javanese pirate ships, the occasional fancy yacht. Great dive site, stuff all over the bottom."

He's back in the cabin, facing her. She hasn't moved from the bench. He looks down at her and then shakes his head. "You finally figured it out, didn't you?"

She responds, but her voice is almost a whisper. "Figured…" She closes her eyes, hearing Fon's voice: Clothes folded by the door, shoes on top, just scoop it all up as you go. She says, more loudly than she'd intended, "Oom."

"You're not as dumb as you seem," Howard says.

Rose says, "Why?"

"Because I can. Because God in his infinite wisdom has humored my little quirk by providing me with an endless supply of brainless whores to play with and cops who don't give a shit." He points a finger at her, eyebrows high, meaning, Don't move, and goes back to the wheel and does something that reverses the boat, pulling it back from the rocks. "Not a good idea to drift into them." He pulls the plastic bottle out from under again and drinks, then goes to the rear of the boat and picks up something heavy that's all points, on the end of a chain that's wrapped around a cylinder. He drops the object into the water and the cylinder spins as the chain unspools, the handle on one side whipping around so fast it's a blur.

"There," he says. "Finished with housekeeping." He takes a step toward her.

Rose fastens the snaps at the cuffs of her windbreaker. Maybe a layer of cloth will be enough to protect her skin. Not much she can do about her face.

"Still cold?" Howard takes another step and stops. He slips his right hand into the pocket of his jeans and comes out with a leather sheath that has a bone handle protruding from it. Rose hears the unsnapping of the little strap over the handle as loudly as she would a shot. Howard's looking at her as though she's transparent, as though he can see the bench beneath her, the edge of the boat behind her.

Shoes on top, Rose thinks.

With the same relaxed, unfocused gaze, Howard pulls out the knife.

Rose yanks her feet up, lifts them as high and as quickly as she can, pushes up with her hands against the bench, and rolls backward over the edge of the boat. Just before she hits, she sees, upside down, the golden glare of the squid boats in the far distance. Then she's in the water.

Her clothes grab at her, the jacket ballooning out, and she forces herself to remain under long enough to do the bottom two snaps. It's pink, it'll show if he shines a light down, but her long hair is black and it's billowing around her. The water feels very warm after the windy rain.

She forces herself down, pulling herself through the blackness until her shoulder touches the boat. She knows she's invisible here; the outward curvature of the hull makes it impossible for anyone on board to look down at the point at which the boat enters the water. She turns so the hull is against her back, trying to present the narrowest possible silhouette, and allows herself to float up until her head breaks free of the water. With her mouth wide open, she grabs some deep breaths while she listens to Howard banging around on the boat, throwing things and screaming either meaningless sounds or a marathon of swearwords she doesn't know. A moment later a beam hits the water two or three meters to her left and a good four or five meters away from the boat.

Not the spotlight. He's got a flashlight.

"Rose!" he calls. "Rose!" He plays the light over the water. "Come on. It's dangerous down there."

The light is moving slowly now, coming nearer, and again Howard says, drawing it out, "Rosieeeeee!" The light stops, and Rose's heart stops with it. Clearly silhouetted at her eye level, glistening in the beam, are the curved tops of several sea wasps. They're only a meter or two away. They hold the light, glowing as though from within.

"Look at those," Howard says in that same singsong voice. "You don't want to be in there. Lots of bad things down there. Underneath you, next to you, behind you. Not a place for a pretty girl." The boat rocks against her back as the light disappears. Now she can't see the sea wasps, and panic uncurls in her chest. She edges right, toward the front of the boat, then stops. For all she knows, there are a dozen of them right there. Frozen in place, she hears a splash from the other side of the boat.

Howard calls out, "That's the rope. Come on, get over here. You can pull yourself up. The rope's got knots in it. You can climb it like a ladder." The light stretches out over her head again, twitching left and right and left again over the water, pure, jittery impatience. "Come on, Rose. I'm sorry. You're right, I shouldn't have been drinking. Listen, I'm throwing the bottle overboard." Something flashes through the beam of light, and she hears a splash. It sends ripples toward her, probably bringing the sea wasps closer. "Please just get to the rope and come up. I'll help you." The light freezes at a point six or seven meters from the boat, and she can feel and hear Howard moving closer to the edge above her for a better look at whatever it is. After a moment he says, "Fuck," and the beam begins to move again.

For a minute or two, she tries to remain motionless as the sea lifts and lowers her. She peers into the darkness for the rounded shapes of the sea wasps. The boat rocks upward, which means Howard is back on the other side, probably playing the light in the direction of the rocks. He's swearing over and over in a low voice, like someone who doesn't know he's doing it out loud. Then she can hear his shoes on the deck, going past her toward the front of the boat-the wheel, she thinks-and for a moment everything is quiet. Then Howard says, "Hello?" There's a pause. "Yeah, got a problem here. How far away are you?" He waits. "How did that happen? Shit, you're no good to me. Okay, okay. See you when I see you. And leave your phone open, so I don't have to fuck around dialing you."

Rose knows she has to move. She can't stay where she is, but she can't think of anyplace safer. The water, which felt so warm when she entered it, now seems much cooler, seems to be leaching the heat from her body. And she's uncomfortably aware of the dark depths beneath her, and of the sea wasps, invisible for now, floating level with her face or just beneath the surface.