Feeding Frenzy (Aristotle Soc Socarides) Page 2

  He rang up the engine room. There was no answer. Angrily, he cranked the phone. He heard a click on the other end. Someone had picked up the receiver. He could hear the sound of heavy breathing.

  He shouted hello. The labored panting continued for a few seconds, then became a harsh whisper.

  “I can’t talk. It’s watching me.”

  “What are you talking about?” the captain demanded. It sounded like the engineer’s voice, but he couldn’t be certain. “Who is watching?”

  “It . . . Ohmigod. Nooo.” There was a crashing noise. Metal on metal. Glass shattering. The phone went dead.

  Zervas felt the hairs on the back of his neck rise. The storm roared around the ship, but he heard only the silence on the other end of the line. He was a worldly man who had seen everything and had only been afraid a few times in his life. This was beyond his experience. What was happening to his ship?

  His thoughts were cut short by a terrified scream. Jésus had let go of the wheel. He was pointing through the window at the darkness outside the ship. Zervas rushed to the man’s side and squinted into the night. He saw only sheets of torrential rain slashing against the glass.

  Zervas grabbed the man’s shoulder. “What do you see?”

  Jésus pointed again. His eyes rolled insanely.

  “Noo,” the young man said. He began to gibber in Spanish. Then he turned and bolted. He ran to the doorway leading out onto the deck. The captain called after him, but he opened the door and stepped into the full fury of the storm.

  Zervas ran over and stuck his head outside. Bullets of rain stung his face. He caught a glimpse of the helmsman. Then a huge sea swept the deck and the man disappeared. The captain retreated into the bridge and secured the door. Even as he wiped the saltwater from his stinging eyes he was thinking of his next move. Manos would have to take the wheel. The captain glanced around.

  The first mate was gone, but Zervas was not alone.

  There was something in the cabin with him, standing in the semidarkness near the navigator’s table.

  Zervas opened his mouth. Nothing came out. He almost gagged with fear.

  It came closer.

  It reached out toward him. Zervas screamed. It screamed back, mocking him. His legs took over, and he turned and ran to the door. He pushed it open and launched his body into the teeth of the storm. He ran down the slippery deck. The raging force of the wind ripped at his uniform.

  The ship lurched. Zervas slipped and smashed his knee, but he was only dimly aware of the stabbing pain. He grabbed the rail and tried to pull himself up. A wave washed onto the deck, burying him in foam. Zervas gripped a stanchion. Another wave pounded the ship. His hand slipped. He was brushed off the ship like an insect.

  The freighter was on its own now, pummeled by the full Atlantic fury. Adrift without a hand on the helm, it yawed broadside to the waves. Wind and ocean tore at the rigging. Masts and cranes snapped as if they were made of balsa wood.

  A hairline crack appeared where the ship had been welded after the sub attack. Within seconds, the crack widened. Water poured into the engine room. The diesels stammered and died. More water coursed through the scuttles.

  Battered, capsized, and leaking, the freighter still had enough buoyancy to float. But a crewman had forgotten to secure the lids on some deck vents. Water found the openings, coursed in, and traveled down to the bilge. The ship’s natural list became more pronounced, every deck at a sharp angle. Parallel to the waves now, the Pandora broached, then went over on her side.

  The ship took on more water, still afloat, kept alive by air trapped in her hull compartments. Wind and waves savagely hammered at the freighter and pushed her closer to the mainland. Water continued to pour into her belly until the weight became too much for the hull to bear. Before long the weight of the water overcame the buoyancy.

  The Pandora buckled amidships, and with an agonizing groan that was almost human in its sad desperation, the wounded ship slid beneath the angry surface of the sea.

  CHAPTER 2

  It was one of those hot leaden mornings that we sometimes get on Cape Cod in the summer. The prevailing southwest wind of Nantucket Sound had sighed to a butterfly’s wingbeat. The air was heavy with the smell of schooling fish and ripe with rain squalls aborning. On days like this, the old dorymen who used to hang out at the fish pier would feel an aching of ancient memories in their bones. They’d squint ominously at the unclouded sky. “Weather breeder,” they’d mutter restlessly; keep your foul weather gear close by. Something is sure to happen, whether you want it or not.

  I guess the old salts were right. The day started with a black Ford Ranger pickup truck roaring into my clamshell driveway and skidding to a stop. Behind the wheel was Albert Nickerson, called Allie Nick to differentiate him from the legions of Nickersons who proliferate in these parts. He got out, strode to the boathouse, and banged on the front door. He didn’t see me crawling around the garden. I had been hunting the marauding tomato worm that was stripping the leaves off my Early Girls.

  I stood and brushed the dirt off my hands. “Hey, Allie, I’m over here.”

  Arms swinging like scythes and shoulders angled sharply forward, Allie marched over to the garden. He looked like a snapping turtle who didn’t have anyone to bite.

  “How’s it going?” I said.

  “Some son of a bitch stole my harpoons.”

  “Your tuna harpoons?”

  “Four of them. Brand new. Fishermen’s supply is out of stock, and there’s bluefin all over the place. What the hell am I supposed to do, Soc, stick them with dinner forks?”

  I calmed him down and got the story. The harpoons were tied to his boat’s pulpit, the framework that extends off the bowsprit. He discovered them missing halfway across the harbor and had to turn back. He was sputtering with rage. A single bluefin tuna can bring up to fifteen grand on the Japanese market. The tuna spotters were reporting bluefin everywhere, and it was driving him crazy.

  I told Allie I’d sniff around and meet him in an hour at Elsie’s restaurant. I got in my GMC pickup and poked in at a couple of town landings. At one were some cars with college parking stickers. I walked down to the beach and saw a bunch of hung-over young guys playing Moby Dick using an old barrel as the white whale.

  They weren’t bad kids. They apologized, and said they’d scoffed the harpoons while they were party cruising in a Boston Whaler the night before. I lectured them about hurting somebody’s way of making a living and left it at that. Allie saw me with his recaptured harpoons from Elsie’s coffee counter and came out smiling. He wanted to pay me. I refused, saying it was a personal favor, but he insisted on giving me a secondhand 9.5 horsepower Johnson outboard from his truck. I could keep it or sell it, he said, and dashed off, harpoons in hand, to catch some bluefin.

  I didn’t need an outboard, but my pickup truck sounded like a popcorn popper, and I’d been putting off repairs until I had some extra cash. Back at the boathouse I called the marine engine shop I deal with, described the motor, and said I’d give them a commission if they could find a buyer for it. The mechanic said somebody had been in the other day looking for a used motor, but he didn’t know who it was. He’d ask around.

  My fishing partner Sam had gone off to the Cape Cod Mall in Hyannis, fulfilling a promise to his wife Mildred that he’d made when Jimmy Carter was still president. I went back to the garden. Kojak the cat came over to see what I was doing. He sniffed a denuded plant that looked like a miniature saguaro cactus, then collapsed in a dusty black heap. Some worm hound!

  The telephone rang inside the boathouse. Gary Cozzi was on the line. The marine shop had just called him and said I had an outboard for his skiff. I told him he could look at the motor any time he wanted to.

  “Things are pretty busy here at the beach, so I won’t be able to come by un
til later,” he said. Gary is head lifeguard at Quanset Beach.

  “I’m not busy. I’ll bring it by and you check it out.”

  Gary said that would be fine. I scrubbed the dirt off my knees and elbows and was running cold water over my head when I remembered the Red Sox were playing the Yankees today. Quanset Beach would be a nice cool spot to sit and listen to the Yankees go down to defeat. I made a couple of tuna sandwiches on stale onion rolls after picking off the green mold spots and filled a Thermos with lemonade. I put the food in a rucksack with my Walkman and a bottle of Ban de Soleil number 15. Then I pulled on a bathing suit, a Talking Heads T-shirt, and a Red Sox ball cap, grabbed a folding plastic-and-aluminum beach chair, and headed out to the truck. Kojak was still sunning himself.

  “Keep a sharp eye on those tomato plants and attack anything that travels on six legs or more,” I told him. “There may be kitty treats in this for you.”

  Kojak yawned and twitched a couple of times before lapsing into a cat coma. I guess that was something.

  My pickup would be in the intensive care ward if it were human. But it started with no problem. After an imitation of a Chinese New Year’s celebration, the engine calmed down. I put the truck into gear and bumped along a rain-cratered sand track past a cranberry bog to the main road a quarter mile away.

  Ten minutes later I turned right at the Quanset Beach sign. A line of traffic jammed the narrow beach road. The radio DJ had just played “Hot Hot Hot” by Buster Poindexter, and now he was giving the weather report. “If you think that was hot, listen to this.” He reported gleefully that the mercury had hit eighty-seven degrees and was still climbing. He wasn’t telling me anything I didn’t know. The truck cab was like the inside of a sneaker. I punched the radio’s off button.

  A police cruiser passed, going in the opposite direction. Then the line of cars began to move.

  A long, gentle hill sloped down to the tollbooth and the parking lot beyond. I dangled my arm lazily out the window. Sequins of light sparkled on the blue-green Atlantic a quarter mile distant. Low, grass-capped sand dunes swept north and south in rolling ribbons of green and dull brown. The nearer I got to the water, the cooler it became. The salty-kelpy tang of deep ocean permeated the air.

  The college kid in the ticket booth checked my beach sticker and waved me into a parking lot as long as a football field. Even with room for nearly a thousand cars, the tarmac was filled solid. The parking attendants pointed me toward a short sand road that curled around the dunes into the overflow parking lot next to the beach buggy check-in shack.

  I humped my beach gear across the sun-baked tarmac, following the fragrance of fried clams. The nerve center for beach operations is the administrative building, a one-story wood frame structure that houses the main offices, first-aid room, staff locker rooms, showers, and bathrooms. Standing out front, dressed in khaki shorts, jersey, and yellow baseball cap was Charlie Nevers, the parking lot manager. He was talking into a hand-held radio. I asked how it was going. He wiped the sweat off his face.

  “Do you really want to know? All that rain we’ve had this summer has made people berserk. Now they’re taking their frustrations out on us poor overworked town employees. One of my attendants was almost killed by a lady who yells out, ‘I’m a resident and a taxpayer, and if you don’t get out of the way I’ll run you over.’ Then some jerk in a Jeep told one of the girls to fuck off. I threw his ass out of the parking lot. Bunch of high school clowns got into an argument over a parking space and they were going to have a rumble until we kicked their butts out, too. I’ve scraped three illegal stickers. People are complaining about the greenhead flies, as if we could do something about them. On top of that, MTV is supposed to be filming a video here this week, so every teenager on Cape Cod has been calling us to ask when the hell it is.” Charlie shook his head. “Just another quiet day at Quanset Beach.”

  Two slim young women in their twenties strolled by wearing bathing suits that looked as if they’d both been cut from the same hanky. We gave them a drugstore cowboy leer.

  “I know some guys who would kill for this job,” I said.

  His eyes appraised the women. “Yeah,” he said sadly, “but by the end of July I’ve seen so much skin I get jaded. The most beautiful babe in the world could walk by in a beach outfit out of Sports Illustrated and I’d be more interested in her car.”

  A Kim Bassinger look-alike in a cutaway bathing suit stopped to ask Charlie a question, then ambled off toward the showers.

  “I think that young lady was driving a Ford,” I said. “Catch you later. I’m going to see Gary.”

  “I talked to him on the radio a few minutes ago. Ask him about the fight.”

  “Is that why the cops were here?”

  “Yeah. Oops, waitasecond.” His radio crackled. A red Corvette had just blown past the tollbooth without paying. Nevers grinned evilly. “Here it comes. I love throwing these bastards out.”

  He trotted across the parking lot and flagged down the ’Vette. I headed between the administration building and the bustling snack bar and followed a narrow boardwalk mobbed with two-way traffic. The boardwalk widened after a hundred yards into a platform with two park benches on it. I sat down and stretched my legs.

  From where I sat, Quanset Beach looked like a huge Bedouin encampment, sans camels. Blankets and umbrellas in every range of color spilled down from the edge of the dunes to the water’s edge. Waves pounded the beach in a low muffled kettle drum thunder. Black-headed laughing gulls swooped overhead, cackling like lunatics over the blare of boom boxes, the pok-pok of paddle games and the shrill piping of children’s voices.

  Short-legged, droopy-drawered kids wearing T-shirts down to their knees were everywhere, attacking hopeless jobs with feverish energy. Dig a hole to China? No sweat. Empty the Atlantic Ocean in plastic buckets? Piece of cake.

  Older kids in their teens and twenties sprawled lifelessly on their blankets and lazily checked each other out in a laid-back mating ritual. Their burnished skin glistened like polished bronze. Quanset Beach had a better name recognition on northeast college campuses than the President. The energy overheated libidos generate in one week at Quanset would run New York City for a decade.

  A dragon kite danced fitfully against the milkweed strands in the clear blue sky. The warm sun toasted my face. After a minute, I got up and walked down the slope of the beach to the head lifeguard stand. The white wooden tower was around fifteen feet tall. The stand was roped off from the rest of the beach, as was a corridor to the water. Two paddle boards and other lifesaving paraphernalia lay in the sand.

  Gary and another lifeguard lounged above the beach like Assyrian kings surveying their kingdom. I know Gary from softball. We both played on the team sponsored by the bar the locals call the ’Hole, which was fitting, because that’s where we finished, in the hole.

  I waved. Gary saw me and climbed down. “Hey, Mo, I’m taking a break. Watch that guy swimming way out and give him a blast on the whistle if you have to.”

  He was pointing at a white face bobbing against the satiny dark ocean beyond the surf line. Nearby, a flock of seabirds swirled like snowflakes. Mo nodded languidly and put the binoculars to his eyes.

  “Conditions are right for a riptide,” Gary told me. “That guy could find himself halfway to Europe before he knows it.”

  “Charlie Nevers says you’ve had a wild morning,” I said.

  “Yeah, we had two beauts here. Would you believe these guys were shitfaced at ten A.M.? They splashed brew on a woman, so her husband asked, ‘Would you please be more careful of that beer?’ One drunk says, ‘Would you like your head buried in the sand?’ and goes after the husband. The wife attacked the drunk with a Padina paddle and we had to bring the cops in.” He laughed. “Hell, I’m not complaining. This is still the best job in the world.”

  “I hate to tear yo
u away from your work, but if you want to look at the outboard, it’s in my truck.”

  He chuckled and said, “I think I can spare . . .” He paused in midsentence.

  Gary is about six feet tall, slightly shorter than I am. He has thick brown hair, a mustache, and an easy grin. He’s the stereotype of the perpetual beach boy, but he’s a consummate pro when it comes to his job. Even as we talked, his trained eye kept flicking toward the ocean. Now he was staring over my shoulder. I turned and followed his gaze beyond the breakers. I saw nothing wrong. Only the head bobbed in the water and the birds dipping and wheeling nearby.

  Gary called up to the other lifeguard. “Hey, Mo, pitch those binocs down here.” He caught the binoculars and looked real hard through the lenses. After about fifteen seconds he muttered, “Shit.”

  He handed the binoculars to me and shouted up to Mo, pointing seaward.

  “That guy’s in trouble! I’ll take him.”

  Mo stood and blew a sharp blast on his whistle, then barked into a walkie talkie. “Headstand to north and south. We’ve got a rescue going. Get us some backup.”

  Gary scooped up one of the elongated rectangular red plastic floats that lay in a parallel row on the sand. A loop of nylon line was attached to one end of the two-foot float. More line trailed from the opposite end. He slipped his arm through the loop and sprinted toward the ocean through the roped-off corridor in front of the headstand.

  “Be right back, Soc,” he yelled over his shoulder.

  He waded into the swirling ebb of the surf. A big wave was coming in. Gary didn’t hesitate a second. Just before the wave curled and broke, he dove in and disappeared in an explosion of foam.