Colin Harrison - Afterburn

He liked to imagine his own death, oh yes he did-because it would never happen the way you imagined-and that is what he did now. The water was still warm enough to swim in, and he pressed toward the huge rocking red buoy and the three iron chains that held it fast, each hung with clusters of blue-black mussels and veils of seaweed. The sea pulled at his beard and rose against his lips; every few seconds he spat out salt water. Although he was thirty-seven, his torso remained thickly muscular from cutting firewood and working on the boat, so much so that his arms got heavy as he swam. If he were to have trouble, no one would hear his cries-for no one else knew where he was. It would be some time before his bloated, naked corpse was found bumping against the rocks. The gulls would have a time of it, Rick thought, not to mention the crabs. Hey, eat me up, you little fuckers. Eat my eyes out. Eat my balls. Chew off my tattoos. I won't feel a thing. A lobsterman pulling his pots near shore at high tide might spot him and that would be that. Rick Bocca, dead man.

On the map, Orient Point lay at the easternmost tip of Long Island's North Fork, a relatively unknown forty-mile stretch of flat, fertile soil that once supported hundreds of truck farms. Now people were planting vineyards, building vacation homes. But you could still see the green farm tractors rumble along the lanes pulling a load of cabbages or potatoes, you could still buy fish off the boat in the docks of Greenport, and the fork still sheltered forested tracts that hid abandoned and forgotten buildings where a man, if he wanted, could live out of sight of others. The place where Rick swam now was like that, off a rocky spit that tapered to a pebbled cove that rested below the small, wind-battered cottage that he rented for three hundred dollars a month. The red buoy clanged mournfully, and as he neared it, a gull flapped up and away. He avoided the huge dripping chains and grabbed the slimy metal edge. All you fucking sharks and garbage-fish can just leave me alone, he thought, don't bite my dick. A green skirt of plant growth floated out from the barnacle-encrusted can. The shoreline was lost in fog. His chest heaved, nipples stinging from the salt. It was sixteen minutes out and, carried by the waves, nine back. The buoy creaked against its chains, as if signaling displeasure with his presence. He took a breath deep into his lungs and then pushed off, stroking into the gloom.

Soon he waded out of the water, toes pressing the sandy bottom, eelgrass against his shins, and retrieved his eyeglasses from a slab of stone, making habitual adjustments to get the fit right, yet no longer really noticing that the lenses were scratched and speckled with paint, the broken frame taped at the bridge. He could see well enough with them, and after he climbed the high scaffold of wooden steps up the sea cliff, he could certainly see the blue-and-white police car parked next to his old shingled cottage, the car's windshield opaque with dust, a small maple branch caught under the wiper. He hunched in surprise, as if jabbed. A New York City police car, more than one hundred miles out of its jurisdiction. They never leave you alone, he thought, they never do. Everybody should have forgotten me by now.

He stood in the low bramble, naked and considering. The wind blew, and tiny airborne seeds caught in his beard and the long wet hair on his shoulders. Cornflower and milkweed. A yellow butterfly touched his penis, fluttered away. The cop would be on the other side of the cottage, perhaps peering in a window. Rick hurried along the edge of the cliff toward the deep shade of the woods. When he reached the trees, he looked again across the high grass. The police car, dented from minor collisions in the crowded streets of New York City, was streaked from the muddy ruts of the overgrown lane that led to the cottage and barn well off the main road. The unmarked drive was almost impossible to spot, which was the way Rick preferred it. Now some cop had decided to take a drive out from New York City. They got to fucking leave me alone, he thought, I didn't do anything lately.

He cut through the high grass, the sun warm now on his shoulders, his skin almost dry, and hurried toward the barn, a sagging, windowless structure set fifty yards back from the sea cliff that sheltered a sizable vegetable garden on the lee side. The shingled roof, damaged by ice the previous winter, needed work, and a climbing rose, perhaps once a small shrub planted by a farmer's wife next to the door, reached up over the barn, its main vine as thick as Rick's calf, roots feeding on an ancient manure pile and producing a geyser of pink blooms now attended by the dull hum of bees. He slipped inside, pulled on a pair of frayed cotton boxer shorts, and closed the barn's door, quietly locking it with a heavy iron hook.

Outside, a noise. Grass whisking against long pants. A hand pulled the handle of the door.

"Rick Bocca?"

He adjusted his glasses, waiting.

The hand yanked hard on the door, rattling the frame. "Rick!" the man called fiercely. Then, muttered with disgust: "Fucking bastard."

Rick waited. His hair dripped dark coins onto the bleached planks beneath him. A minute, and then a minute more. He discovered a piece of green kelp in his beard and raked it out with his fingers. If they find you, they'll pull you back. He'd worked too hard to let them do that to him. Maybe something had happened to-well, it could be a lot of people. The dried salt of the ocean was caught in the swirls of black hair on his chest and belly, the creases in his elbows, behind his ears. He told himself to wait longer. Count to one hundred. Finally, the only sound was the wind begging along the shingles outside. Still he waited-nothing. Fuck them all. When he emerged into the bright midday sun, so suddenly hot and dry that the begonias next to the cottage drooped, the police car was gone.

But not for long. Three hours later he was standing in the forward hold of the rust-eaten trawler he worked on, hip boots knee-deep in fish, some still alive, kissing at their death, when the blue-and-white cruiser nosed up, right out onto Greenport's municipal dock, tires drumming over the boards to a stop not two feet from the bow of the trawler. A trim man of about thirty eased out. He wore a jacket and an unknotted necktie thrown over one shoulder, which meant he was a detective.

"Hey," the man called.

"Yeah?"

"Rick Bocca?"

"Yes."

"You got a minute?"

Rick nodded and climbed up out of the fish onto the dock.

"I'm Detective Peck."

"Right."

The detective pulled a photo out of his breast pocket, flashed it at Rick-one of the old bodybuilding shots, local contests maybe six, seven years back. Weight two-sixty, body fat five percent. No beard, crew cut, tanned, buffed, shaved, contact lenses, toenails trimmed.

"Looks like you lost some of that weight."

"It got old, man. I got old."

"You don't remember me, do you?"

"No," Rick answered.

"I was the one put Christina Welles away. Undercover."

"Okay, yeah. You look different. You got the gold shield, I see."

"You should have gone down with her, Rick."

He'd spent a long time thinking about that, but he didn't wish to say so.

"Just want to make sure you know that somebody else knows," said Peck.

"Lot of people should have done a lot of things," answered Rick.

"Right, right." The detective nodded dismissively. "Of course, she never told us her system, which made it more serious for her."

Rick listened to the wind saw against the boat's rusted edges. A fish flopped a tail.

"I said she never told us her system."

Rick looked back at the detective. "It was too complicated for you to understand."