Текст книги "Water from My Heart"

Автор книги: Charles Martin

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Текущая страница: 2 (всего у книги 23 страниц)

Chapter Two

I grew up with one single, overriding emotion. It drowned out all others. And it was this: that I was dirty. No matter what I did, how I tried to scrub it off, I was not clean and couldn’t get clean. My mom seldom paid the utility bill so hot water was a scarce commodity. That meant on the rare occasion I hugged my mom, her hair smelled of stale cigarettes and beer. My clothes were constantly sour and soiled, and I was embarrassed at school. Our kitchen was piled high in weeks-old dishes, and the house was infested with roaches that used to crawl out of the woodwork and fall on me at night. I didn’t have too many sleepovers as a kid. To mask my discomfort, I walked around in the shadows where the light didn’t shine and people didn’t pay too much attention. The last thing I wanted was attention. Doing so meant I got comfortable with the darkness.

And that’s probably why I got away with so much.

I grew up combing the beach in Jacksonville, Florida. A barefoot, blond-haired beach bum without a curfew and with a disdain for shouldering responsibility. I had a bit of a Huck Finn childhood, and while that had nothing to do with my last name, I used to claim the connection. My mom and I lived across the street from the oceanfront property that blocked our view, so I watched a thousand sunrises from our second-story crow’s nest.

I have no memory of my dad, a cabdriver, who died in an early-morning wreck when I was three. If Mom had a failing it was twofold: men and money. She knew this, so in a wise moment of self-awareness, she took Dad’s life insurance policy and paid off the house. At heart, she was a gambler and a risk taker, which, she later told me, explained her affection for my father because he was a high-risk proposition given his love of gin. Paying off the house meant no one could take it from her—or me—and though we might not always have had food, we had a roof, albeit a leaky one. When the bank sent the deed to the house, she lifted my chin and said, “Never risk what you can’t afford to lose.” For my eleventh birthday, I got a job down the street at a restaurant, working for cash tips to help her pay the utilities. I think paying off the house allowed Mom to justify her other decisions, like stopping off in the slots room at the dog track after work or playing the lottery every week to the tune of fifty bucks. It took me a long time to realize that while it looked irresponsible on the surface, and we sometimes went a day or two without food in the fridge, Mom was searching for a way to give us the one thing our life lacked. The one thing that had been taken. The one thing we were chronically short on.

Hope.

I wouldn’t say she succeeded, but she spent her life trying, and I loved her for that. With no dad and a mom who worked all the time, or was at least gone all the time, I was responsible for myself at an early age. While most kids’ lives revolved around the requirements of school, mine revolved around the tides, swells, and direction of the wind—all of which determined the size and frequency of incoming waves.

In eighth grade, for every day I spent at school, I spent four at the beach. I didn’t care. I hated school. Given my attendance, or lack thereof, the principal called my mother in for a conference and sat us down. He looked at a sheet of paper recounting my sins. “Ma’am, do you realize how many days of school your son has missed this year?” He chuckled. “It would be easier to tell you the number of days that he actually attended.”

Mom raised an eyebrow at me and asked for the sheet. “May I?” He passed it to her, and her foot started tapping while she read it. Finally, she brushed her hair back and said, “So?”

“What do you mean, ‘So?’” He looked at her like she’d lost her mind. “He’ll repeat the eighth grade.”

Mom dabbed the corners of her lips with a napkin. “Are we done?”

His face turned red. “‘Done?’ Lady, your son is behind. Aren’t you worried about his future?”

Mom stood and grabbed my hand, leading me to the door, which was strange ’cause I was almost as big as she was. Reaching the door, she turned. “Sir, we’re going to go eat a cheeseburger, and then I’m going to buy him a new surfboard because he evidently enjoys that a whole heckuva lot more than whatever you’re doing here.”

I smiled and waved at him.

He was dumbfounded. “And his future?”

She brushed the sun-bleached hair out of my face. “It’ll be waiting on him when he gets there.”

*  *  *

Mom died my junior year. I was sixteen. Heart disease aided by chain-smoking—a habit she adopted after Dad died. Alone and nauseated at the thought of answering to anyone else, I finished out high school working nights waiting tables, delivering pizza, and doing what I could. That “doing what I could” included selling as much marijuana as I could get my hands on to the surf junkies who were craving pizza. A convenient built-in audience.

Sam, my boss, used his pizza parlor as a front for his drug dealing and he dealt a lot. He brought it in on the shrimp boats out of Mayport and made me an independent contractor. He sold it to me at his cost, and I split all the profit with him. We made a good bit of money. I later learned that he knew the junkies and the amounts they were buying, so he knew exactly how much I was bringing home. When I presented him with exactly that amount, he learned he could trust me. I told him, “I’m not greedy. I just don’t want somebody to kick me out of my house or ship me off to a state-run place.” Every night when I handed him the money, he’d shake his head and mutter, “What is the world coming to? An honest drug runner.” In a world devoid of meaning, I took what identity I could get.

In between deliveries, Sam taught me to play poker and soon discovered I was good at it. It doesn’t take an education in Freud to understand this. I was attracted to risk and not attracted to anything resembling hard work that benefited someone other than me. If you were going to be dumb enough to risk your money in a card game, then I was going to be smart enough to take it from you. The same could have been said for me except that I won far more than I lost so—I argued—I was playing with other people’s money. This would come in handy in the years ahead.

Team sports were contrary to my independence. Signing up for team sports meant that I was willingly joining arms with another group of people and stating that not only could they depend on me, but also that I would depend on them. Statements like “I’ll show up for practice,” “I’ll be at the games,” “I’ll work hard” stood in stark contrast to my how’re-the-waves-looking disposition. That said, I was rather competitive and competition did not scare me. In fact, I rather liked it. Solo feats like wrestling and running. Activities where the outcome resulted from me depending on me. This does not mean that I hunkered down and for the first time in my life learned to apply myself under the whistle-and-clipboard instruction of some guy in shorts pulled up to his armpits. Not at all. I rarely practiced, which drove them nuts, but I hated losing and seldom lost, so my coaches kept me on the team—which was interesting because I didn’t really care whether they did or not.

Same was true for school. Homework seemed like a waste of time. My thinking was, You’ve told me what you want me to know, now give me the test and let me regurgitate it. I could remember most anything I saw or heard and scored well on tests so most of my progress reports read, “Charlie lacks work ethic but possesses great potential.” I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been called “exceedingly bright,” “lacking drive,” or my favorite, “bubbling with potential.”

Whether it was two state wrestling championships, a sub four-minute, thirty-second mile, the death of both my parents before I was seventeen, or the fact that I was three questions shy of acing the SAT and had a guidance counselor who seemed rather keen on my actually attending college, I ended high school with excellent grades, multiple scholarships, and several higher learning options.

My senior English teacher told me I should consider the Marine Corps. I chose Harvard.

My graduating high school class voted me “Most Likely to Be Elected the First President with a Felony Record.” My English teacher was big on knowing where you’re going, what you’re doing, “Have a plan!” Our final senior project was just that. Our plan A followed by plans B and C. I always thought he needed to let his hair down. Loosen his tie. Stop drinking so much prune juice. The paper was supposed to be eight to twelve pages with multiple supporting points. My paper consisted of one very short paragraph: “My plan A is to not have one. Which, by logical deduction, means there can be no possible plans B and C. My future will be there waiting on me when I get there.” I failed that essay and he was incredulous at my choice of college—no, he was downright angry, saying I didn’t deserve such an opportunity. He grew even angrier when he found out I’d be attending for free.

When I walked across the stage and he handed me my diploma, “With Superior Achievement,” he mumbled something under his breath. I shook his hand, smiled widely, and said, “Does that toupee itch as much as it looks like it does?” His eyes darted left and right, and he smoothed his hair with his right hand. “It looks itchy.”

My college decision process was simple. Harvard was expensive and an education there was “worth” a good bit. Again, if they were going to be stupid enough to give it to me, then I was going to be smart enough to take it. And I was smart enough to know that I’d never make it in the Marines with people blowing whistles in my face and screaming at me. Leavenworth did not appeal to me.

Besides, I’d never been to Boston.

*  *  *

I survived college in the same way I survived high school. I did just enough to get by without getting too caught up in any one thing. I’d always been good with numbers so when I declared a major, something in the world of finance sounded like a good idea.

By the middle of my sophomore year, I had grown tired of the track coach and his incessant need for me to train on his schedule, so following my four-minute, seven-second mile, I told him to take his clipboard and shove it in the same place I told him to put his stopwatch.

While my scholarship at Harvard paid for my tuition, room, and board, my stipend didn’t go very far. Add to that the fact that I had never really enjoyed studying, and it’s not too difficult to understand how many of my nights were taken up with poker.

I was a fair player, but I learned quickly that poker loves no man and good luck can turn to bad with no warning. Further, I detested losing. So I began looking for a way to tilt the odds in my favor. One obvious way was to cheat, which I wasn’t opposed to, but that style of play has a limited shelf life, as does your career once you get caught. Then one night I was invited to a game where I discovered what I soon dubbed the “silver spooners.” Trust fund kids who looked at poker as entertainment. They didn’t really care if they won or lost. They liked the reputation and action either way. Given their reckless behavior, I seized the opportunity and provided a service. By the end of my sophomore year, I had money in the bank and was making a name for myself.

As a player, I had two abilities that set me apart from most everyone else: First, risk didn’t bother me and never had. I valued nothing, including money, so losing it didn’t ding me like it did others. Second, I could read body language. Like Braille. Neither trait can be coached. You’re either born with them or you’re not. The higher stakes games were invite only and run by the son of a Silicon Valley tycoon. One night I cleaned up and ran the table. Took everyone’s money. And it was a good night. Several thousand. One of my sore loser competitors suggested I cheated and manufactured evidence to support his claim. The invites quickly stopped. As a rising junior with few options, I was in a bit of a bind until he—a fifth-year senior—started running his mouth, so I challenged him to a public winner-take-all. Given his trust fund, he’d spent considerable time in both Vegas and Atlantic City trying to make others think he knew what he was doing. He liked to tell people he was a “professional cardplayer,” but I had my doubts. Nobody as good as he said he was ran his mouth that much. Or if they did, they didn’t run it very long. Sooner or later, poker humbles every man. His would be sooner.

Winning at poker is easy provided you know which hands to bet on and which hands not. Simple, right? Wrong. Wanting to rattle his saber and set me on my heels, he went all in on the third hand, but his bluff was ill-timed. I matched him, doubled up, and called. When the dealer laid down the river and he realized that a full house always beats three of a kind, the color drained out of his face. The pot sat at $17,000. Half of it was his. The girl propped beneath his arm all of a sudden found an excuse to visit the ladies’ room. As his “friends” pulled away, not wanting to be associated with a loser, I saw the look in his eye and—so help me—I almost told him not to do it. But again, if he was going to be stupid enough…

He smiled around the room, trying to save face. “Double or nothing.”

I scraped the money across the table. “What have you got?”

He dropped the keys to his Audi on the table. The “oohs” and “aahs” rose around the table. His friends patted him on the back, and his girl returned from her potty break to slide in alongside him. I didn’t own a car and the thought of having one appealed to me. I nodded to the dealer, who dealt the cards, and the cards were not kind to him.

I walked out with not only his $8,500, but also the keys to his car and the beginnings of a storied reputation. Given that the car was his father’s, his father quietly called the following day and offered me a check for the value, which I accepted. Sixty-four thousand dollars. A good night. Then and now, it wasn’t about the money. It was about being told I couldn’t do what I wanted.

Word spread and I got invites from all over to play. Problem was, I was getting invited by guys who’d done what I’d done—preyed on somebody with money. I could hear it in their voices and read it across their bodies. I played a few games and won a good bit, but they were marinating me. Slow roasting to tenderize and fillet me so they could take my last penny. I knew they were working me into a lather, waiting for their moment to pounce, but I never gave them the satisfaction. To their abject surprise, on a high-stakes Thursday night, I ran the table, cleaned up, and made enough to live on for a year. Collecting my chips, I kept my mouth shut but when I glanced at their eyes, I knew two things: that I’d stung them and that it would never happen again. Babysitting hour was over. Next week would start the reckoning. Having read the writing on the wall, I did what they never suspected. To everyone’s disbelief, just when it was starting to get good and I was beginning to make a name for myself, I cashed in and walked away.

This did not make them happy, and as they had some pull in the city, they blackballed me in every game in and around not only Boston, but the Northeast. It didn’t matter. I’d tired of poker and I’d tired of Boston. My eyes had hit the horizon, and I was looking for a new game. And I found one.

In London.

Chapter Three

The water was waist-deep, gin-clear, and given no breeze, a sheet of glass. Deeper out, it faded from turquoise to midnight blue. Off to my right, the sun was falling en route to a beautiful setting. Twenty feet away, a lobster scurried to an underwater hide. A ray hovered just inches off the ocean floor. Two hundred meters out, a couple of boats were anchored. Kids in the water. Snorkels. Masks. Lobster bags. Laughter. Floating in circles around them, oil-soaked adults lay baking on rafts. The smell of salt, coconut oil, rum, and spent fuel suggested they’d been there the better part of the day.

Most every weekend, folks out of Miami motored out of Biscayne Bay, through Stiltsville, and across the forty-four miles between us, appearing early and packing this place with dozens of boats. At just over three miles long and a quarter mile wide—​little more than a white speck in the Atlantic—the Bahamian island of Bimini is a blue marlin and bonefish hot spot, an offshore oasis for the Miami jet set, a famed Hemingway hangout, and one of the last vestiges of Her Majesty’s empire. It’s also a convenient escape for the disillusioned and a pretty good place for a rather successful drug runner to live uninhibited. The beach behind me sat bleach white and relatively untouched. The sand lay dotted with hundreds of conch shells. The northern tip of the island, including this beach, had been privately owned for a couple generations, but it sold last year to a casino, which was rapidly carving the landscape. In its wake, quaint fishing village had given way to the worst a casino has to offer. Local legend held that the lost city of Atlantis sat out in front of me just beyond the anchored boats. The legend held merit given the inexplicable geometric rock formations just below the water’s surface. I guess you don’t need me to tell you the name of the casino. The entrepreneurial owners had already cashed in on the legend and were ferrying visitors out to the rocks in glass-bottom boats. Not surprisingly, the legend had grown considerably. Mermaids had been sighted.

I landed on this island much like Columbus. By mistake. Been here a decade. Jimmy Buffett said it best: “Summers and winters scattered like splinters…”

Still no sight of her on the beach. My left foot was tapping on its own. She’d be here any minute. Right? Right. The magistrate had first balked when I asked him to marry us on the beach at 7:00 p.m., but then I laid a wad of cash on the table and his entire countenance changed. Started talking about how he loved marrying folks on the beach at sunset. Still no sign of him, either, but he had a few moments to go yet.

In the moments following my not-so-romantic proposal, I’d asked Shelly where she’d like to get married. She pointed at her feet. “Right here.” Which explained my present location. She wanted the setting sun on her face. Breeze in her hair. My hand in hers. She believed that our marrying here, in this turquoise water, would wash off the memory and pain of her first. I’d never been married, but that does not suggest I didn’t have memory and pain. I stood there, ankle-deep, envisioning her, the wind tugging her hair across her eyes, her cheeks. Draping her cover-up across her bathing suit. Bare feet. Tanned. That smile. Wading out to meet me. Taking my hand.

Out of habit, I glanced at my wrist to check the time, but my watch still wasn’t there. Nothing but the tan line noting its absence. Shelly was going to ask, and I had to think up a story without lying to her face.

Colin said he was coming over for the weekend on the Bertram—a sixty-foot sportfishing yacht powered by two supercharged Cat diesels producing more than a thousand horsepower each. Given its tanks and capacities, the Bertram had a range of several thousand miles and was the perfect vessel for longer voyages down to the Keys or even Cuba and points south. With three staterooms, a kitchen and living area, not to mention expansive areas on both the bow and stern to stretch out and get away or sit in the fighting chair and wrestle a tuna or blue marlin, it allowed ample room for Marguerite, Zaul, and Maria.

While south Florida was beautiful in many respects, it suffered from one problem, which no politician could fix. In the event of storm or a natural disaster, there were only a few roads out. Which, when clogged with the millions who lived there, became a parking lot preventing a speedy exit. Colin had bought the Bertram more as a ferry for his family in the event that they needed to get out and could not. But, over the years, it had also become a great way to travel to the islands—which they did several times a month. Its forty-knot speed meant he could crank the engines, navigate out of the canals, skim across Stiltsville, and be in Bimini in less than an hour and twenty minutes.

Shelly had planned to make rounds this morning; she had a few surgeries up and through lunch, then she was going to run a few errands, shop for a few things, and meet Colin at the dock at 4:30 p.m.

I scanned the horizon for any sign of a boat, but still no Bertram.

I’d been there a while when a glistening speck crested the horizon, but it was not the Bertram. For Shelly not to show meant one of two things: She’d had second thoughts, which I rather doubted, or something at work—something she couldn’t pass off to one of her partners—demanded she miss her own wedding. Colin, on the other hand, had been giddy at the thought of my marrying. Other than a pressing family need, I could think of no reason that Colin wasn’t standing on this beach. The fact that he wasn’t dropping anchor right now suggested something serious, and sudden, had happened to his family. For both of them not to show meant that “something” involved both of them: i.e, boat trouble, which was possible though unlikely, or Colin had need of Shelly professionally. As in, he needed a doctor.

After standing in the water for what felt like an hour, I waded onto the beach and asked an older lady walking her dog down the beach, “You know the time?”

She eyed her watch. “Quarter past eight.”

Something was way bad wrong. I stood arms folded, lips pursed. I carried a cell phone, but I seldom dialed out on it and I hadn’t the foggiest idea how to tell someone how to call me. Using the same phone on a regular basis was an occupational hazard because law enforcement agencies could use it to triangulate my position. Given this, Colin gave me a new SIM card every week—sometimes several times a week—and a new phone at least once a month. When I first got in the game, I tried to memorize each change, but after twenty new numbers and four new phones in less than four months, I gave up. Colin was the only one who knew my number, and as a testimony to his genius and his photographic memory, he never wrote them down. He stored everything upstairs. This pattern had been a major reason we’d stayed in the game so long and with such success.

The sun had fallen, and the moon was chasing the sunlight off the beach when I heard the rotors of the helicopter. Colin hated traffic—despised inefficiencies—so he used it routinely to check on locations for his import business or to hop to the island for lunch. The helicopter circled, landed, and Shelly stepped out, walking slowly. The light from the helicopter lit her approach.

She wasn’t wearing her bathing suit.

Her medical scrubs looked like they’d been sprayed with tomato puree. She approached, arms crossed, and stood at a distance. She’d been crying. Still was. I reached for her and she stepped back, not making eye contact. When the helicopter had quieted, she glanced at me, looked away, then glanced again and held it.

I’d never seen such sadness.

The wind scraped the beach and blew the sand against my calves, stinging my ankles. After a minute, she brushed the hair out of her face and again crossed her arms. Holding herself tighter.

She retreated a step. The tears returned. She spoke without looking. “Last night, Life Flight brought in this little girl. A pit bull attacked her face. Lost most of her blood.” She looked at me. “She got caught in the middle between bad people doing bad stuff.” She stared at her hands, finally looking me in the eyes. “I spent eight hours trying to—” Shelly stopped. She was shaking. I tried to hold her, but she turned and slapped me as hard as she could across the face. Then again. She spoke through gritted teeth. “Get her smile back.” She shook her head. “I’m not sure she’ll—”

I waited. She shook her head and wiped her nose on her arm. She had finished with whatever she’d come to say.

Keeping her distance, she extended her other hand, palm down. Like she wanted to give me something. I responded, and she stared at her closed fist, which was shaking slightly. I touched her hand with mine, and she opened her fingers, dropping my watch in my hand. The watch was sticky and the face smeared. I couldn’t read the time. She spoke while looking at it. “Maria was wearing this when they brought her in. It—” She cracked, then recovered. “Just dwarfed her little wrist.”

Finally, it hit me. I pointed at my heart. My voice rose. “My Maria?”

Shelly swallowed but didn’t acknowledge me. I’d already lost her.

I pressed her. “Will she live?”

Shelly only shrugged, nodded. She took one step toward the helicopter, then stopped and spoke over her shoulder. “Colin—” She hesitated and looked at her hands, finally continuing, “Told me…everything. Starting with the day you two met.” She shook her head in disbelief. “I told him I did not know that man. Never met that man. That the man I loved would never lie to me. Never put me in danger.” Her voice turned acrid. “Never use me like that.” A pause. “When I left the hospital, three cops were sitting in their cars, typing reports. Tactical guys. Tattoos. Black clothing. They were with Maria when she came in. I asked them if they had any suspects. All they said was ‘Corazón Negro,’ and that they’d been chasing him off and on for a decade. Said he’s a ghost.” Eye contact again. A single shake. “You should have told me.” Shelly had been in Miami for a long time, and her Spanish was very good. Far better than mine. She didn’t offer a translation, and I didn’t ask.

I knew what it meant, and I knew that she knew what it meant.

A wave spilled across our feet. She knelt, reached into the water, and washed the blood from my watch off her hands. The helicopter pilot read her body language and the rotors began spinning. Winding up. When she stood, she palmed the tears from her eyes and turned to look at me. Her face was puffy, shrouded in darkness, and her eyes looked like smoldering embers. She said, “Charlie, have you ever considered that life is not a poker game and that we aren’t chips that you just toss about the table ’cause you feel like it?” A steeliness returned to her eyes and face. “There’s an evil in you. And…” She waved her hand across the splattered blood. “It stains everyone but you.” It was over. She stepped closer. “Don’t ever contact me again.” She turned, glancing out across the water. “Ever.”

Arms crossed, wind tugging at her scrubs and hair, she stepped into the helicopter; it lifted off the beach and disappeared west with the night. I cannot say I was brokenhearted at her leaving. I’m not sure I wanted to marry Shelly as much as I didn’t want to lose her. Marrying her said something about her. Losing her said something about me, and I was afraid to hear that indictment.

The truth of me had broken us.