Cool Blue Tomb (Soc Series) Read online

  COOL BLUE TOMB

  By PAUL KEMPRECOS

  SUSPENSE PUBLISHING

  COOL BLUE TOMB

  by

  Paul Kemprecos

  DIGITAL EDITION

  * * * * *

  PUBLISHED BY:

  Suspense Publishing

  Cool Blue Tomb

  Copyright © 1991 by Paul Kemprecos

  PUBLISHING HISTORY:

  Crimeline, Paperback, April 1991

  Suspense Publishing, Digital Edition, March 2012

  Suspense Publishing, Paperback, May 2013

  Cover Design: Shannon Raab

  Cover Photographer: iStockphoto.com/BobHemphill

  ISBN-13: 978-0615819532

  ISBN-10: 0615819532

  All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of various products referenced in this work of fiction, which have been used without permission. The publication/use of these trademarks is not authorized, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark owners.

  To my wife Christi, who still makes the sun shine.

  “Evil deeds never prosper.”

  Homer, The Odyssey

  Cool Blue Tomb

  Aristotle “Soc” Socarides Series: Book 1

  PAUL KEMPRECOS

  CHAPTER 1

  The day had been a scorcher from first light. Hot and muggy, mercury in the nineties, sticky-shirt weather, when the skin prickles between the shoulder blades, underwear clings like a damp dishcloth to every body crease, and tempers go on hair trigger. The sun had awakened with a grudge against the world and no one was sorry to see it go. As the molten disk disappeared, finally, behind the western horizon, a collective sigh of relief arose, from the Cape Cod Canal to Provincetown, like a family watching the departure of a bad-tempered rich uncle.

  Out at Race Point, the sunset watchers held their breath, half expecting the sun to sizzle as it plunged into the sea. But there was no steam, only a silent, gilt-edged explosion of red and orange, and a violet darkness. Then came a chorus of honking horns, applause rippled over the sand dunes like opening night at a Broadway spectacular, and the watchers headed out in the dusk, crossing the quiet desert hills of the Province Lands to the bright lights and noise of Commercial Street.

  The narrow lane skirting Provincetown Harbor was mobbed. From the art association building to the Coast Guard station, a single line of cars crept bumper to bumper through the milling foot traffic. Tourists shuffled lethargically along in the lingering tropical heat, faces glistening with perspiration, searching for a cool breeze, but willing to settle for the diversions offered by the eclectic variety of bars, cafés, and shops. Long queues formed outside the soft-ice-cream stands. The hot-oven pizza joints were as lively as morgues. And the patrons in the sidewalk cafés didn’t mind paying three-fifty for a dollar beer, as long as the glass was cold.

  From his window seat in a smoky East End bistro, the blond man stared at the passing street parade. His expression fluctuated. Boredom. Then annoyance. And boredom again. In between, he glanced impatiently at his wristwatch. A half-dozen empty bottles of Black Horse Ale stood on his table and he was working on another, chasing down each quick gulp with an angry puff on a Marlboro cigarette.

  He checked his watch again. Then he frowned, mashed the cigarette into an ashtray overflowing with half-smoked butts, and got up, bumping into a young woman at the next table. She was drinking a Cape Codder-cranberry juice and vodka. The icy red mixture sloshed from her glass onto her lap and she yelped angrily. The blond man ignored her and staggered off.

  He was in his midthirties and his well-tanned face had a boyishness that fooled people until they got close enough to see the hardness around the thin lips and green-flecked gray eyes. His hair was platinum, near white, and shoulder length like a 1960’s flower child. He wore faded blue jeans, cut off at the thigh in a ragged fringe, and a purple T-shirt. The shirt was decorated in silver with swaying palms and the words Life’s a Beach. His tattooed arms were thick and muscular. His narrow waist came up in a “V” to shoulders almost too broad for his medium height, like the physique Charles Atlas used to peddle to ninety-five-pound weaklings from the back cover of Superman comic books.

  The dim room was jammed with sweaty college kids smelling of sunscreen, unshaven Portuguese fishermen wearing black shin-high boots, and gay couples and threesomes of both sexes. Foamy pitchers of beer swirled over the sea of heads like flotsam caught in a current. A couple of air conditioners with persistent death rattles spat drops of water and battled futilely against the BTU level produced by the press of bodies.

  The jukebox pounded out a Rolling Stones number, “Sympathy for the Devil.”

  Mick Jagger’s satanic guttural voice cutting through the din and the Stones chanting like a chorus of deranged owls.

  The blond man shoved a path through the crowd to the rest rooms marked “Buoys” and “Gulls.” The men’s room door was locked. He swore to himself, then pushed his way to the tear of the long bar. He stepped outside and descended a short stairway to the beach. Walking unsteadily in the soft sand, he picked his way around the rotting hulk of an old wooden fishing boat, stopped in the shadow of an abandoned pier, and relieved himself at the water’s edge. He zipped up his fly and tarried, savoring the coolness of a light breath of air that whispered off the bay. Across the harbor, fishing draggers sidled alongside the fish pier to disgorge the slim contents of their holds.

  The breeze died after a moment and the blond man turned to go. Before he had taken a step, the cement truck hit him. That’s what it felt like. Something big and heavy smashing into his spine, hurling him forward like a missile thrown from a catapult.

  He sprawled face down, hearing his rasping breath, someone moving behind him, the fishing-boat engines mumbling like old men, the jukebox blasting.

  Planting his arms in the ankle-deep water, he struggled to push himself to a kneeling position.

  A boot slammed into his right elbow. Hot pain shot through his arm and it crumpled like cellophane. He flopped back into the water. The boot crashed into the side of his head. Then again. The harbor lights blinked out.

  And a voice from the jukebox shouted: Oh yeah!

  Buffeted by green waves of nausea, the blond man groped for a handhold at the slippery edge of consciousness. After several unsuccessful tries, he held on, and the world slowly came into glassy focus. His head and arm throbbed with a dull ache. He laid belly-down, his face turned to the left on a flat hard surface that shivered with the low-end vibration of a powerful engine. There was a damp fishy smell in the air and the shush-shush of a bow cutting water,

  He was on a boat, that was clear. How the hell? He remembered leaving the bar to take a leak. Then nothing. He tried to move, but his legs were bound securely. His left arm was pinioned to his thigh. His right hand curled uncomfortably up by his ear. A weight pressed down on his back. He shuddered as the faint light of comprehension glimmered in a corner of his mind.

  Jesus! He was wearing diving gear! br />
  The weight on his back was an air tank. He was looking through the window of a face mask. The second skin clinging to his body was a dive suit.

  Panic clawed at his innards.

  Why in God’s name was he fitted out for a dive?

  He fought against the icy fear, taking deep and measured breaths to stilt the frantic jackhammering of his heart. Be cool, man. Don’t struggle. Don’t lose your head. You’ve been in tough spots before. Black water with minutes of air. Your regulator hose snagged on a jagged hull. Be cool. Think.

  He rocked back and forth, gaining momentum with each motion, and finally managed to roll onto his right side. There was a hollow gong as the air tank banged into the deck. He tried to free an arm. It was impossible. He was wrapped as tightly as a mummy. He squirmed helplessly, like a beached eel, but the bindings holding him were incredibly strong. After a few minutes of desperate effort, he lay on his side, panting and exhausted. Sweat stung his eyes. His nausea had returned.

  The engine pitch changed from a rumble to a murmur. The boat lost headway and settled into the seas like a ballerina. Footsteps approached and stopped inches from his head. Rubber boots gleamed wetly in the faint yellow wash of deck lights. Hands reached down and grabbed him under the armpits. He was dragged a short distance and released. The slap of waves against the hull was louder. The hands reached down again and pulled his legs so the fins dangled over the side of the deck.

  “No!” he shouted.

  A boot thudded against his shoulder. He teetered for a long, terrifying instant. The boot battered him again. He rolled off into space and splashed headfirst into the chill sea. A hoarse scream escaped from his throat, but his words were lost in a gargled burst of bubbles.

  He began to sink into blackness.

  The immense weight of the sea closed in, welcoming him with an inexorable killing embrace that crushed his useless lungs. Daggers of pain stabbed his ear canals. He continued to sink, ever deeper. The contractions of his dying body had come to a fitful halt by the time he landed on the soft muddy bottom. The impact stirred up a cloud of silt and sent several crabs scuttling for safety. The body settled into the thick grassy carpet of vegetation. In time, the cloud subsided, the crabs returned, and the body rested quietly in its cradle, becoming one with its surroundings. Then, brushed by a gentle current, the long pale strands of hair began to rise and fall, rise and fall, moving in rhythmic concert with the undulating fingers of seaweed.

  CHAPTER 2

  Be content with your lot, Aesop says; you can’t be first in everything. Old Aesop was a fantastic teller of fables, no doubt about it, and generally his advice isn’t half bad. Slow and steady wins the race or don’t count your chickens before they’re hatched still makes good sense after 2,500 years. But contentment was eluding me on this stormy day, the third in a row.

  I lazed on a moldy green sofa and nursed my next-to-last can of Bud. The beer had gone flat, but I didn’t care. Slurping another tepid mouthful, I reached over and picked up a comics-section page from last Sunday’s Globe, read the Doonesbury strip, and didn’t think it was funny, crumbled the page in a ball, then tossed it at a Boston Celtics wastebasket, imagining I was Larry Bird. Three seconds left in the game, tie score. Bird steals the ball. The crowd is on its feet. Johnny Most is yelping with excitement in the announcer’s booth. Bird drives down the parquet floor. He shoots. The ball arcs prettily toward the basket. Ponk. It bounced off the metal edge and joined the pile of wrinkled newspaper littering the floor. Rimshot. Phooey.

  Absentmindedly scratching the dark stubble that made an emery board of my chin, I read, for at least the hundredth time, the embroidered motto that mocked me from the opposite wall. HOME SWEET HOME. My gorge rose. If I weren’t a civilized person, if I hadn’t paid fifteen cents for the framed sampler at a yard sale, if it weren’t covering a hole in the plaster, I would have ripped it from the wall and stomped the words to shreds. Instead, I dolefully surveyed my surroundings and sighed.

  The boat house smelled as if it had floated ashore at high tide. The incessant sound of raindrops like machinegun bullets against the windowpanes echoed in my skull. I looked fearfully toward the heavens every time the timbers shivered from the battering force of a southeast gust, half expecting the roof to fly off. The dank air was wet enough for a fish to swim in. A viscous slime coated the linoleum floors like some alien space blob out of a fifties horror movie. I glanced at the shaggy overweight black cat attached to my thigh. He was mildewing around the whiskers and tail, but he purred happily in his sleep. At least one of us had found contentment.

  I was mind weary and bored. Even worse, I was broke. The dirty weather was more than just a nuisance. It meant no fishing and no paycheck.

  I pried the cat from my leg without disturbing his noisy snooze, stood up, and walked over to the deck doors. On clear days, there’s a panoramic view of the bay, the low-lying dunes of the outer beach and the liquid immensity of the Atlantic Ocean stretching to world’s end. Today, sheets of rain slanted down from slag gray skies and cut visibility to a few yards. I closed my eyes and concentrated, willing the rain and wind to stop and the sun to break through the clouds.

  The phone rang. I guess that was something.

  I opened my eyes and picked it up.

  “How you doin’, Soc?” A voice as crisp as dry leaves. Sam, my fishing partner.

  “Lousy, Sam. How about you?”

  “Yeah. Know what you mean. Still looks a little sloppy, don’t it?”

  Sam’s lyrical description of the tempest raging outside was in character. His gift for Yankee understatement had surfaced the first winter we fished together. We were coming into harbor, loaded to the gills with cod, when his line trawler lost speed and sunk into a trough between two big waves. A following sea taller than the radio antennae slammed into Sam’s boat like a locomotive. We could have pitchpoled end over end and landed in the breakers wearing a couple of thousand pounds of codfish for hats, but the Atlantic Ocean was merely reminding us it was boss, and we escaped that day with only a cold shower. Minutes later, soaked to the skin, we entered more placid waters. Sam was at the wheel. He looked up with a puckish expression of unconcern on his ruddy features. “Lost a little headway back there,” he observed casually, ignoring the water that dripped off the tip of his nose.

  Now he was quoting the Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration weather report. It was good news for a change. Rain would end, wind would drop and come around to the southwest. We could fish tomorrow.

  “That’s great, Sam,” I said. “I’ll see you down at the pier, bright and early.”

  Sam answered with the fisherman’s catchall word for everything good and wonderful. “Finestkind,” he said.

  Life had taken on new meaning. This called for a celebration. I hung up and liberated my last can of Bud from the refrigerator. I was in midswallow when the phone rang again. Probably Sam calling to tell me how his old crewman once lost his false teeth overboard and found them in a goosefish. I hadn’t heard the story more than a dozen times.

  It wasn’t Sam. I put the beer down, quickly. “Hi, Ma,” I said.

  “Hello, Aristotle. Have you been away?”

  “No, I’ve been home more than a week.”

  “Have you been sick?”

  “No, Ma. Why did you ask?”

  “You haven’t called. You haven’t come home to visit. So, you must be sick.”

  The Socratic method at work. Asking a series of easily answered questions leading the answerer to a logical conclusion foreseen by the questioner.

  Oh hell. “No, I’ve been fine. I’m sorry. I’ve been pretty busy lately. You know how it is.”

  “Yes, of course, Aristotle. I understand. Maybe sometime when you are not busy, your father and I will see you.”

  The years have scarcely touched my mother’s voice.
It has just enough trace of an accent to be charming and is nearly as rich and melodious as I remember as a kid. Yet it carries an unmistakable message of command. Not a Patton. More subtle. My childhood buddies worried about being spanked. I would have welcomed a swat on the behind as relatively painless. My misdeeds, however trivial, were considered stains on family honor. A raised eyebrow would cut me down to size. A pause after a sentence would have me squirming. It still did.

  “You know,” I said hastily, “it’s an amazing coincidence having you call. There’s no fishing because of the weather, so I was just thinking of coming up to see you and Pop today.”

  “Kalà, Aristotle. Good. That will make Papa and me very happy. Drive safely,” she added, and hung up.

  I put the phone down and finished my beer, not really enjoying it, then went into the bathroom to shower my gamy body and scrape the weeds off my face. I exchanged my denim cutoffs for a wrinkled but clean pair of tan chinos, my T-shirt for a blue oxford cloth button-down, and my flip-flops for a pair of Top-Siders, worn over bare feet. It was still raining so I pulled on a slicker and a Boston Red Sox baseball cap. I walked outside and swung behind the wheel of a faded green GMC half-ton pickup truck in the advanced stages of body rot. The engine turned over a few times reluctantly and coughed to a sputtering start. I put the truck into gear and followed a half-mile-long dirt road to the macadam, splashing through puddles as big as Lake Superior.