Victor Gischler - Suicide Squeeze

He reluctantly took up the oar and paddled, cursed, and kept paddling. He was sweaty and nauseous from the exertion. His bruised ribs still ached in a vague way. All he wanted was to slip into the master cabin and fall long and hard into dreamless sleep.

The narrow inlet came into view, the boat’s white stern barely visible in the nearly complete black of night. Conner dipped the oar into the water, stroked long and smooth, drifted toward the Jenny, gliding in quietly. And then, just above the stern, he saw it. The floating, bright cherry pinpoint of a glowing cigarette.

Adrenaline pumped, and Conner stood up in the dinghy, not thinking what he was doing. The little boat rocked, threatened to dump him out. Beyond all luck, Conner didn’t tip over. He aimed the Webley at the Jenny, blazed away without really aiming.

Blam blam blam blam.

Ricochets. The tambourine tinkle of shattered glass, the sound of a porthole dying. The shots were deafening. They still echoed along the river as Conner settled back into the dinghy, paddled furiously for the Jenny . He pulled alongside the boat, grabbed the rope ladder, and hoisted himself up, the Webley stuck in his pants. He drew it when his feet hit the deck, swung it full circle looking for the intruder.

Nobody.

He went belowdecks, rushing around, the revolver leading the way. Only after he confirmed nobody was hiding anywhere did he really look around and see what had happened. The interior was trashed. Whoever had been here had been merciless in their search for… what?

The DiMaggio card.

Conner wondered if they’d found it. Did they really have to trash his boat? He realized he now thought of it as his boat.

He went back out on deck, held his breath, listened. What if it hadn’t been a cigarette? Maybe it had only been a firefly. Conner was pretty drunk. Even now, with the rush of danger subsiding, his vision was a bit blurry, the revolver heavy in his hand. Maybe it was just-

A big splash off to the right.

He swung the Webley, squeezed off the last two shots into the black swamp. “Cocksucker!”

He tossed the gun into the cockpit, circled the deck, casting off lines. How many were out there? Did they have a boat? Would they come after him? He leapt into the cockpit, cranked the Jenny ’s inboard. It chugged to life on the first try. He threw it into reverse, tree limbs screeching on fiberglass as he backed out.

When Conner had the boat in the middle of the channel, he gave it full throttle, headed downriver. He piloted the boat into implacable blackness. He reached for the running lights, but suddenly had the startling thought he was dragging the anchor. Had he pulled it up? His brain was addled. He started forward to check.

The boat shuddered violently. The sound of the world breaking. Conner flew forward. In midair, he realized the boat had collided with something in the dark. He landed, skidded headfirst across the deck. His skull smacked against something. The white noise. The long tunnel into cottony silence.

“Mister! Hey, mister.” The voice was young, female. “Are you dead? You need some help?”

Conner opened one eye. Early morning, but the sun was already searing and rippling orange on the water.

He lifted his head, which throbbed angry above his left eye, touched the wound, sticky with blood. He lay on the deck at an odd angle. He wasn’t at an odd angle. It was the deck.

He’d hit a sandbar in the middle of the river. The prow pointed up at an angle, the stern dipping nearly below the waterline. The engine was still running, blades spinning, churning in the water and propelling him nowhere fast.

“Mister?”

He focused on the voice. A teenage girl in a blue bikini. A speedboat. Five teenagers in all, boys and girls on the river for a good time. Blue Bikini Girl kept looking at him, waiting for a sign.

Conner waved. “It’s okay. Not dead.”

They waved. The dude behind the wheel throttled forward and the speedboat shot down the river like a bullet.

Last night’s memories congealed, lined up for inspection as Conner half slid down the deck into the cockpit. He remembered Tyranny and his car in the drink and shooting the Webley at what might have been an intruder. He hadn’t been sure. Then he remembered the trashed cabin. Somebody had searched the boat. There had definitely been an intruder. Whoever had been there had probably not found the DiMaggio card, or else why had they stuck around waiting for Conner?

The Japanese? Maybe they wanted to question him the same way they’d questioned Folger. Tied to a chair.

Conner killed the engine. He checked the gas gauge. Only a few gallons of fuel left. He checked his watch and tried to estimate how long the Jenny had chugged uselessly against the sandbar, but his head throbbed, his mind cluttered with other worries.

He went below and forward to check the bilge, see if there’d been a hull breach. No leaks. No problems.

The main cabin was a mess, dishes and bottles scattered, items jarred loose on impact. Even the ugly seagull painting had been knocked off the wall. The glass in the frame had shattered. Conner would need to wear shoes until he could sweep up.

He picked up the seagull painting. The wooden frame had cracked too, and it almost came apart in his hands. He sighed, let it drop. Fucking mess is going to take forever to clean up.

Again, Conner had fallen into thinking of the Jenny as his boat. Somebody had violated his property, invaded his space. He kicked the seagull painting where it leaned against the bulkhead. The frame splintered the rest of the way, broke apart. The painting pulled away, folded over, and slid out of the broken frame.

Behind it a stunning blonde with a gleaming smile held her white dress down as the hem blew up around her. Red letters above her head: THE SEVEN YEAR ITCH.

Conner frowned, focused on the film poster. It took him a minute to understand what he was looking at, the letter and the DiMaggio card encased in hard, transparent plastic.

Through the fog of his disbelief and pounding head, Conner almost thought he saw Marilyn wink at him. Took you long enough, big boy.

Itchi shivered in the morning light, welcomed the sun, which quickly baked him humid, his wet clothes heavy. Finally, the night was over. He’d been afraid to venture in the dark, the too-near sounds of furtive movement among the shrubs and cypress trees terrifying. He’d heard that Florida swamps teemed with alligators and venomous snakes and the occasional sodomizing redneck.

The thought he should call Toshi on his cell phone and ask for rescue tempted Itchi more than once. But he was much more afraid of Toshi than he was of alligators. Toshi tolerated failure poorly. Itchi had been careless, had let Samson sneak up on him. When Samson started shooting, Itchi’s reflexes had taken over. He’d leapt into the water, and when he’d tried to climb back aboard, Samson had opened fire again.

Itchi had bungled, been caught by surprise, had let Samson escape and cowered in the dark swamp wallowing in fear and indecision. No, Toshi wouldn’t be pleased. Toshi, it seemed, was nearly always displeased about something. Itchi was supposed to have broken into Derrick James’s office and slipped out again without anyone knowing, but had been forced to kill James when the man had walked in suddenly. Toshi had called Itchi a careless oaf.

As a young man Itchi had been told he would be feared and respected as a Yakuza. At the moment, he felt only wet and hungry.

He stood, stretched his legs, and looked about. No path, no obvious way through the swamp and back to civilization. He made his way down to the river’s edge, looked across. If there’d been a house or something, Itchi would swim the river and make his way back to the hotel. He scanned the far bank. Nothing.