Paul Levine - The Deep Blue Alibi

Just what Griffin said when he'd finally told the truth.

"They'd both been drinking all day and were bloody snockered. Mr. G demands to know who's the bidder, but the little bugger won't say. There's yelling back and forth. Mr. G must have pulled out the speargun, because Stubbs laughs and asks if maybe he forgot something. Then Mr. G laughs. The gun didn't have a spear. They both settle down and Stubbs says he'll turn down the other guy and take Mr. G's money with another hundred thou every year. That seemed to settle it. Mr. G goes back up to the bridge and heads toward Sunset Key."

Again, just what Griffin told them, Steve thought, looking toward the Fowles' Folly. The speedboat was alongside the dive boat. Maybe the guy at the wheel hadn't seen them yet, bobbing in the waves. "So when Griffin leaves, Stubbs is healthy and breathing," he said.

"But white as a ghost when he sees me coming up through the hatch. I ask Stubbs if he's forgotten he just took forty thousand dollars as a down payment from someone else."

"The money the police found in Stubbs' hotel room."

"Right. Now the fucknugget tells me he'll give it back. Thinks he can return a bribe like a pair of pants that don't fit." Fowles turned and watched the speedboat move away from the Fowles' Folly and head toward them. "I tell Stubbs I'm there to make sure he doesn't back out of his deal or to throw him overboard if he does."

"On whose instructions? Who were you working for?"

"Doesn't matter who. Those were my orders, but I was bluffing. I never would have killed the man."

The speedboat was five hundred yards away and moving straight at them.

"Now the little bugger goes bonkers," Fowles said. "Grabs the speargun, jams a spear in the barrel against the air pressure, but he must not have cocked it right. He's waving the gun around and I grab it. We tussle, and the damn thing fires. Puts the spear right into his chest. I panic. I get the hell out of there and jump overboard. Tread water till the Cigarette picks me up."

"If you didn't intend to shoot Stubbs, you might have a defense."

"Morally, I'm guilty. I killed Stubbs as surely as if I'd pulled the trigger."

They both looked toward the oncoming boat, down off its plane, puttering toward them at less than ten knots. A Cigarette Top Gun 38 with a sleek white hull decorated with orange and red flames. One man was visible standing in the cockpit, a rifle propped on top of the wheel.

"That's the guy who picked you up, right?" Steve said.

"That'd be him."

"Why's he got a rifle?"

"To kill me. You, too, probably."

"Jesus, Fowles! Do you have any weapons?"

"Not even a speargun," the Brit said with a sad smile.

The sound of rapid-fire gunshots crackled across the water.

Steve ducked lower into his seat. "What now?"

"How much air you have?"

"Maybe fifteen minutes. Less if I'm scared shitless, which I am."

Gunshots ricocheted off the steel hull of the chariot.

"Crew, prepare to dive!" Fowles ordered, sounding no doubt like his grandfather in a Norwegian fjord.

Steve pulled down his mask and readied his mouthpiece and regulator. "You still haven't told me. Who is that guy?"

"Name's Conchy Conklin."

Fowles bit down on his mouthpiece, opened the ballast tank, and pushed the joystick forward. The chariot took them under just as another gunshot ping ed off the rusty old craft.

Who the hell is Conchy Conklin? And why does he want to kill me?

Killing Fowles, Steve could understand. The Brit was a poached egg, ready to crack. When he did, he'd implicate Conklin and whoever hired them both. From everything Willis Rask had said, Conklin was a lowlife without the brains to pull off a sophisticated bribery scheme. His boss was the one who wanted Griffin convicted of murder and Oceania buried at sea. But who was his boss? Fowles never said.

As the chariot descended, bullets streaked through the water. Dying with a whoosh-whoosh above their heads. Steve felt his heart racing, and he had a case of cotton mouth from the tank air. Then another sound, the rumble of the Cigarette's props, plowing overhead.

They were at twenty feet and descending at a steep angle. Safe as long as their air held out. But no way to outrun the boat. Or to sneak away. Their bubbles could be followed as surely as Hansel's trail of bread crumbs.

When they reached the bottom, Fowles put the chariot down hard. The craft bounced twice in the sand, scattering some spiny lobsters. The sounds above them dimmed, the speedboat idling, Conklin waiting for their next move.

But there was no move. Nothing to be done. The chariot was their metal coffin. Wasn't your whole life supposed to flash before your eyes when you faced death? But no. Steve was thinking they should try something. Anything.

In the front seat, Fowles craned his neck, looking up. Steve tapped him on the shoulder, then gestured with both hands. He pointed toward the boat above, then touched Fowles' chest and pointed one direction, then touched his own chest and pointed another.

Send the chariot up toward the boat, and you and I swim off in different directions.

Fowles' eyes seemed to squint behind his mask. Then he shook his head.

Steve checked his air gauge. The needle was at the red line. Maybe five hundred pounds of air. God, had he been sprinting? Just a few minutes left.

Now, images did appear to Steve. Quick ones, flashing by. His mother, dead all these years from a vicious cancer. His father, young, handsome, and prosperous. Bobby the day Steve carried him out of the hellhole where Janice kept him caged. Herbert would have to take care of the boy now.

I can live with that. Or die with it. My old man's a better grandfather than he ever was a father.

Then Victoria's face floated by. He smiled and almost laughed, exhaling through his nostrils and momentarily fogging his mask.

She made me laugh. So upright and uptight. From that first day in the jail cells together, she made me laugh.

Realizing that he was thinking in past tense, that his life would soon be discussed by others, if at all, in past tense.

Fowles was banging something against the metal hull. Trying to get his attention.

The magnetic slate.

Okay, what?

Fowles wrote something on the slate, showed it to Steve.

"I killed Stubbs."

Yeah. Yeah. We've been through that, Steve thought. You sort-of killed Stubbs. You're morally responsible. What of it? Why now?

Steve shrugged and raised both hands, palms up, showing his confusion.

Fowles scrawled something else and held up the slate.

"Clive A. Fowles."

I get it now, buddy. A signed confession. To help Griffin. That's great. But only if someone is alive to haul it into court.

Fowles grabbed Steve by the shoulder and motioned for him to get out of the chariot. When Steve didn't move, Fowles grabbed his air hose and pulled.

Okay. Okay.

Steve unbuckled and floated out of the chariot. Fowles punched his fist toward the sandy bottom: "Stay here!" Then he thrust the slate at Steve and made one final gesture. Raising his right hand above his head, he flashed the V for Victory sign. A second later, he purged the ballast tank and pulled back on the joystick. The chariot flew upward at a sharp angle.

Maybe it was the fatigue or the fear or the oxygen-nitrogen mixture that fogged his brain. Whatever the reason, it took Steve several seconds to figure out exactly what Fowles was doing.

He was attacking Conklin the same way his grandfather had attacked the Tirpitz.

Gripping the slate, Steve swam after the chariot.