Mark Mills - Amagansett

‘Okay.’

‘May I have my breast back now?’

He removed his hand and she rolled on to her side. He snuggled up behind her and kissed the nape of her neck, inhaling her scent.

‘I’m sorry,’ he whispered.

‘Just tell me one thing. Is it important?’

‘Yes.’

‘Then you’re forgiven.’

Twenty-One

They arrived at the Montauk Yacht Club at seven o’clock sharp, two chauffeur-driven cars pulling up near the clubhouse and disgorging their occupants.

Conrad made his way along the dock to greet them.

He recognized her father, brother and Justin Penrose from photos she’d once shown him at the house. Her sister, Gayle, was talking to a small woman with long dark hair tied back off her face. Her appearance fitted what Lillian had told him of the maid, Rosa. This was confirmed when Conrad drew closer to the group.

‘Help Rosa unload the food, will you,’ said George Wallace to one of the drivers.

Gayle effected the introductions and Conrad shook hands with father and son. George Wallace thanked him for recovering Lillian’s body from the ocean, and for arranging the charter boat. It didn’t seem to occur to him that there was anything odd about juxtaposing the two events in the same sentence, but at least he got them in the right order of priority.

Conrad made a point of gripping Manfred Wallace’s hand a little more firmly than was necessary, and of staring deep into his blue, almost aquamarine, eyes. He was rewarded with a satisfying flicker of unease.

Another man introduced himself as Richard Wakeley. They had spoken on the phone when Conrad first called Gayle to say he’d found a boat for them. Steering Conrad a little to one side, Wakeley peeled off the sum they’d agreed on from a wad of bills.

Conrad tucked the cash into his hip pocket. ‘Not coming with us?’ he asked, taking in Wakeley’s neatly pressed slacks and leather shoes.

‘I can’t stand the ocean.’

‘She’s a cruel mistress, old Mother Atlantic. As Lillian learned to her cost.’

The overfamiliar use of her Christian name was intentional.

‘Indeed,’ said Wakeley.

In all, there were seven in the party—the Wallaces, Justin Penrose and his father, another man, and an attractive brunette a little younger than Gayle, with dark pools for eyes.

They all seemed pleased with the boat, the Zephyr —a lowsided, beamy forty-four-footer. There was plenty of room around the two fighting chairs bolted to the aft deck, as well as a shaded eating area in the large open pilothouse, which had been vacated by the skipper for the running bridge above.

Conrad knew that Captain Whitman B. Chase wouldn’t disappoint, and he didn’t. His grizzled face was shaded beneath the long bill of his swordfisherman’s cap; and his gruff, almost dismissive, greeting of his customers as they clambered aboard was no less than they’d expected, or hoped for.

‘Stow your gear down below. There’s ice in the fish hold,’ he growled. ‘And shake a leg, else we’ll miss the ebb tide.’

They exchanged amused glances, delighted at being taken in hand by this grumpy old sea-dog.

As Conrad helped load the platters of food, the boxes of drink, crockery and cutlery, he sensed an unease in Rosa. She seemed to be doing her very best to avoid his gaze.

Taking a large dish of devilled chicken from her, he said pointedly, ‘Thanks, Rosa.’

There was no mistaking the alarm in her eyes.

She knew. Lillian had told her about them.

Turning away, he tried to assess the impact of this revelation, feeding the information into the equation. There was no way of knowing how it would affect his plan, if at all.

She certainly hadn’t told her employers, that much was clear from the way they were treating him. And if she hadn’t told them by now, then she was unlikely ever to do so. Lillian had probably sworn her to secrecy, and there was no reason for Rosa to break that trust, even now. Just to be sure, though, he kept a close watch on her until they were ready to leave.

Chase fired the engines and a great cloud of fumes billowed out of the stern.

‘Cast off,’ he called.

Rollo freed the lines, leaping aboard the Zephyr as she slid away from the dock and out into the basin of Montauk Lake.

‘Good luck,’ shouted Wakeley, waving them off.

Rosa stood beside him. She wasn’t waving.

They steamed out of the channel then ran east. The sea was glassy calm with a gentle ground swell running, and they bowled along at a steady clip, driven by the throaty GM diesel.

Rollo worked his way to the end of the narrow swordfish pulpit that extended some twenty feet clear of the stem. He stood there, his hands on the rail, facing into the rising sun, the wind whipping his hair, and Conrad wished for a moment that he had a camera with him.

‘Do you want some coffee?’

He turned to see that Gayle had joined him on the foredeck. She hadn’t found her sea legs yet, and probably never would, certainly not in those heels.

‘Thanks.’

He glanced up at the flying bridge where Chase was rolling a plug of tobacco around his mouth.

‘Hey, Cap, coffee?’

‘Makes me shit liquid.’

‘I think that’s a no,’ said Conrad. He nodded at Rollo riding the wind beyond the bow wave. ‘He’ll have some when he’s finished.’

‘What is that thing?’

‘A pulpit, for harpooning swordfish.’

‘Oh.’

Gayle started making her way around the pilothouse.

‘Best take those off.’ He nodded at her shoes. ‘One big swell and you’ll be swimming.’

She reached for him to steady herself, her fingers pale against his forearm. She was flirting with him, just as she had the other day when she showed up at his place. This time, though, he didn’t resent her quite so much for it. From what Hendrik had told him, it seemed unlikely she was involved.

‘Thanks,’ she said when she was done.

‘No problem,’ he replied, tearing his eyes away from her feet.

They could just as well have been Lillian’s.

The only experienced fisherman among the party was the gentleman who proved to be the father of the brunette. The older men called him Marshal; Manfred Wallace and Justin Penrose addressed him as ‘Senator’; to his daughter he was just plain ‘Pappy’.

The Senator had come armed with his own rod, its reel as big as a dinner plate, and he had every intention of telling the others how things were done. Depositing himself in one of the fighting chairs, his instructions were clearly secondary to the real purpose of the exercise: that of discussing his past exploits. For him, ‘the one that got away’ was a six-hundred-pound bluefin he’d hooked off the Outer Banks of North Carolina, an excellent winter tuna fishery known to few, he claimed.

‘I was in the chair for an hour before the first mate took over. When he folded, I put in another half-hour. That monster never tired, not once, kept running back and forth beneath the boat. We could have been there till nightfall and still not brought it to gaff. Yes, she earned her freedom, that one,’ he conceded magnanimously, through gritted teeth.

As the stories ran on, the others hanging on his every word, it was becoming increasingly clear that the trip had been organized primarily for the Senator’s benefit.

And that, thought Conrad, presented an opportunity for a bit of sport.

They were five miles south of Block Island when the order came down from the flying bridge to start trolling. Rollo took a couple of menhaden from the live well. They hooked the fish up to the lines and trailed them over the teakwood transom into the wake.

Chase slowed the Zephyr to six or seven knots. At this speed, the tuna would take the live baits for the real thing. Not that getting bluefin to strike was the problem. What you did with them once they had was the name of the game.