Looking Through Water Page 4

  “No, Arnelle, thanks. I’m fine. Don’t worry about me.” Then he said, “I made a real ass of myself, didn’t I?”

  There was a pause on the phone before Arnelle replied. “Well, you livened up a rather boring event, but as we say at home, ‘you gave de devil his due.’ You should have seen Randall and Stacy trying to slink out of the room! I said good-bye to them and they ignored me. What a pair. I never liked either of them. They deserve each other.”

  “Maybe so,” William said, “but I feel like going into hiding.”

  “You hold your head high. You’re a good man, William,” Arnelle said, calling him by his first name for the first time. ”Are you sure you don’t want me to come over there?”

  “No, but thanks, Arnelle,” he said. “You just go home now. I’ll be fine.”

  The phone call ended. William poured himself a stiff drink of whiskey, took off his coat and shoes, and loosened his tie. Then he put Nat King Cole on his turntable: “Unforgettable.” As the music played, William sat down at his desk and mused on the events of the night. Unforgettable, he thought, yeah, that’s what I was tonight.

  Then things got kind of weird.

  William climbed up on his desk with the two fully cocked dueling pistols, one in each hand. He looked over at the largest shark in the aquarium, and the creature seemed to look back at him. He pointed one of the loaded pistols at the shark and as it circled, so did William, turning and turning, trying to end up with the pistol pointing at the shark as it passed closest to the glass.

  Suddenly, the record skipped. This distracted him. He felt dizzy, lost his balance, and fell off his desk, hitting the floor hard on his shoulder, causing one of the guns to go off. The lead ball grazed his forehead and lodged itself in the office ceiling.

  When he came to, ten minutes later, he could smell the gunpowder hanging in the air. He sat up on the office floor and looked around; the record was still skipping and his vision was blurred. Blood ran over his left eye and down his face and onto his shirt. His forehead hurt, and he touched it lightly. A flesh wound, most likely. He looked at his aquarium wall and again watched the sharks swimming in their familiar pattern as if nothing had happened.

  • • •

  Back on Loch Loon, Grandpa William paused, took two fishing rods from under the gunnel, and started baiting the hooks with worms. Then he looked up and smiled at his now wide-eyed, gaping grandson.

  “Holy crap,” the boy said. “Are you bullshitting me, Grandpa?”

  “Of course not, Kyle.”

  “Well, what happened then?”

  “What do you mean what happened then?” William said. “You asked for a man’s story, a story about how I got my scar. That’s the story.”

  “Yeah,” the young boy said, “but what happened next? I mean there you are sitting on the floor after just about blowing your own head off!”

  “Okay, son, if you need to know, hold on to this rod and I’ll tell you,” William said, leaning back on his flotation cushion seat.

  “So . . . my father called me.”

  “Wait a minute, Grandpa. My mom told me that you never talked to your father, that he abandoned you and your mother.”

  “You’re right, I didn’t. That’s the strange part.”

  CHAPTER 5

  THE CALL

  The phone on William’s desk started ringing. Holding a handkerchief against his forehead so he didn’t bleed all over his carpet, he turned off the record, grabbed the half-full bottle of Glenturret, and pressed the speakerphone button.

  A gravelly voice on the other end said, “William McKay?”

  “Yes,” he said. “Is this the police? Is this about what happened earlier?”

  The voice said, “No, for Christ’s sake. This is not the cops. It’s your father.”

  “My father? You’re sure about that?”

  “Of course I’m sure. What kind of stupid-ass question is that?”

  “Well, I’m sorry,” William said. “Should I have been expecting your call? It’s been almost eleven years—”

  His father’s voice cut him off. “Oh, cry me a river, kid. The phone works two ways. I wanted to congratulate you on winning that award.”

  “Not that it’s any of your business, but I refused to accept it.”

  “What happened, son?” his father said.

  “It’s a long story and it doesn’t concern you,” he said, trying to think of the last time his father had called him son.

  From the speakerphone Leo McKay’s voice said, “Listen, I’ve got this idea I want to run by you.”

  “This ought to be good,” William said.

  “How’d you like to compete in a father-and-son fishing tournament?”

  “Against each other?”

  “No,” he said, “as a team. You and me with my fishing guide against a bunch of other teams.”

  Through his haze, William couldn’t believe his own ears. His father calling after more than a decade of silence asking him to go fishing like nothing at all had happened. Maybe he was dreaming.

  “You hear me, kid? You still there?”

  “Yeah, I’m still here,” William said. This is too weird, he thought. Despite his surprise and anger, he was flattered that his father had called him, and despite himself, he felt his competitive McKay juices flowing in the face of a challenge.

  “I haven’t fished since I was fourteen—”

  “Doesn’t matter,” his father said. “The tournament starts at nine a.m.”

  “When?” William asked.

  “Tomorrow,” his father said, repeating, “nine a.m.”

  “Tomorrow? You must be joking. I just can’t . . .”

  His father interrupted him again and said, “What do you really have to do? C’mon, kid, you can let the world take a few turns without you. You’ve got people up there you can trust to do your bidding.”

  “I’m a little short on trust right now,” William said. “And I don’t even know where you are.”

  “I’m at home,” his father said.

  “Home?” William asked. “I don’t know where you live.”

  “Islamorada,” his father said, “down in the Conch Republic.”

  “The Conch Republic?”

  “The Florida Keys . . . Sport-Fishing Capital of the World. You can fly one of your fancy jets into Marathon. Islamorada is only thirty minutes from the airport. Be there at seven fifteen a.m. I’ll pick you up. Now, are you in or out?”

  William looked around his office at the sharks, the pistols on the floor, the snow falling outside, and heard his own voice saying, “All right, I’m in.”

  • • •

  “But why would you go there, Grandpa?” Kyle interrupted. “The man abandoned you and your mother. Why would you want anything to do with him?”

  “Well, Kyle, I thought about that, too, but you know what? He was my father, part of my family. While he hurt me badly, I still wanted to see him again . . . to find out what he was doing and what he was thinking . . . to find out why he left us . . . why he never wrote or called, even after my mother passed away.”

  “That doesn’t make sense, Grandpa,” Kyle said.

  “I know that, son, but families are families and they don’t always make sense. I also knew that the hatred I had inside was tearing me apart. I had to let it go. Perhaps this trip would help me do that. And to tell you the truth, I was embarrassed by what I’d done at the banquet and didn’t mind the opportunity to get out of Dodge for a while.”

  “So what’d you do next?”

  “Well, time was wasting. I called my chief pilot and told him to fuel up our jet.”

  • • •

  William didn’t even have time to stop at his place for a change of clothes. The only thing he took with him was the rosewood box and pistols. He wasn’t sure what he was thinking or if he was even thinking at all. Maybe if his father explained why he’d abandoned his mother and him and apologized, he’d give him the pistols as a house gift, and if he d
idn’t . . . well, maybe he’d challenge him to a duel and shoot him, he thought, as that sad smile came back to his face.

  Having released his limo driver for the night, William hailed a cab and clamored into the backseat. The wide-eyed look he got from the young bearded Middle Eastern driver reminded William that he was indeed quite a sight.

  The cab sailed over the George Washington Bridge and into New Jersey with no traffic, arriving at Teterboro Airport in no time. He’d given his captain and co-captain only an hour to get ready, and there they were, standing in front of the private aircraft terminal, looking sharp in their winter wear, navy-blue hooded parkas with the company’s logo embroidered on the front pocket.

  William saw that his cabdriver looked happy for the first time, probably on four counts—to arrive, to get paid, to see him out of his cab, and to get out of there.

  Captain Frank Harding said, “Good morning, sir, any luggage?”

  “No, Frank,” said William, “just me and this wooden box.” William knew that his chief pilot was too professional to ask why he was dressed in a bloody tuxedo with no luggage.

  “The snow has moved through and we have a beautiful, clear, full-moonlit night for our two-hour-and-forty-five-minute flight to Marathon, Florida, tonight, Mr. McKay,” Frank said as they walked to the plane, a twin-engine Gulfstream II corporate jet.

  “Thank you, Captain,” William said. He knew that Captain Harding wasn’t just being polite, but cleverly restating their destination to make sure he hadn’t made a mistake or hadn’t misheard him over the phone an hour ago.

  Before taking off, William asked Captain Harding if he had the experimental mobile phone on board, the one that the head of Motorola had given him to try. The captain said yes and William asked him if he would charge it up en route so he could use it in Florida. “Also,” he asked, “when we arrive in Marathon, would you call my office and give Arnelle the phone number so she can reach me if she needs to?”

  “Yes, sir,” Captain Harding said.

  William always loved boarding this plane. The interior had white-and-tan surfaces with comfortable brown leather seats, fold-out polished mahogany tables, and dark faux-mahogany trim. It was laid out with a small forward galley, four seats facing one another, a center dining/meeting table for four, and a three-piece sofa that converted into a bed next to another, somewhat private, removed seat as well as an aft head and rear luggage compartment.

  The lavish furnishings actually housed or covered the business equipment that he’d had built into the fuselage. The plane’s cabin was equipped with a ticker tape for receiving updated stock quotations, two satellite phones, a fax, and a printer.

  Tonight, however, instead of a flying office, it was a crash pad. The last thing William remembered was flopping down into one of the seats, doing up his seat belt, and falling instantly asleep, even before the plane taxied out for takeoff.

  CHAPTER 6

  THE KEYS

  The bright rays of the rising sun hit William square in the eyes, snapping him out of a sound sleep into a massive headache from ear to ear. He touched the wound on his forehead. Two of the gauges on the front bulkhead wall showed that they were flying 380 miles an hour at twelve thousand feet. William squinted to look out the window. Below he saw a desolate expanse of shallow water of intermittent shades of blue, green, and brown. It reminded him of an old sailor’s adage, “Brown—run aground; white—you might; green or blue—sail right through.” Small green mangrove islands, which appeared to be uninhabited, broke up the flat waterscape. What a welcome change, he thought, from New York. It appeared to be removed, so remote, so isolated. It looked like he felt; it drew him in. In all his travels, it was like no place he’d ever seen before—or at least ever noticed.

  He made his way up to the galley. Happily, the crew had brewed a pot of strong, black coffee, and he poured himself a steaming mugful and went back to his seat, just as the co-pilot turned on the seat belt sign indicating their approach to Marathon.

  They were heading south over the Everglades. As the captain banked the plane to the left and then left again for their final approach, the scenery changed. Now William was looking at the beautiful deep dark-blue waters of the Atlantic Ocean. From this height, he could see deserted beaches and small boats tied at the docks or bobbing on their moorings. Shorebirds, seagulls, herons, and pelicans began their daily search for food. The colors were brilliant. Now he could see why so many artists were drawn to the Florida Keys.

  Captain Harding greased a perfect landing, and after a short taxi they pulled up to a small building with a sign on the wall that said PARADISE AVIATION–MARATHON JET CENTER. Jet Center seemed to be a misnomer, as most of the aircraft there were small, single-engine planes probably used for sightseeing.

  William picked up his luggage, such as it was, and thanked the crew as the co-pilot opened the door, which unfolded into a staircase.

  “Don’t forget your mobile phone, Mr. McKay,” Captain Harding said, handing it to him along with a charger. The unwieldy device barely fit into William’s pants pocket. He squinted into the bright morning sun as he stepped out of the plane, wishing he had brought sunglasses. The warm air felt great.

  An old, dented Ford pickup truck pulled up beside the plane. The driver stepped out and all of a sudden William was standing face-to-face with his father. He looked so different to William now. He seemed shorter and smaller than he’d remembered. Gone was his rigid bearing. He now seemed stoop-shouldered and frail. His brown hair had turned snowy white, made even brighter against his darkly tanned skin. William felt the years of pent-up hatred and rage turning to pity.

  The two men faced each other in awkward silence. William didn’t offer his hand; nor did his father.

  Finally, William said, “Still driving Fords, I see.”

  The old man chuckled. “We Scottish have to protect our frugal image, you know.”

  William joined his father in the laugh.

  “God, you look awful, kid,” Leo said. “What the hell happened to you? And what’s with the getup?” Before William could answer, he said, “Never mind, jump in the truck. The tournament starts in an hour and we’ve got some driving to do. You can tell me later.”

  William walked around to the passenger side of the truck cab with his dueling pistol case only to find an old mutt in the passenger seat. As he opened the door, the dog glanced up at him, then put his head back down and started moaning. “That’s Dorado,” his father said, frowning. “He ain’t feelin’ too good. Maybe ate a snake or a scorpion or something. Do you mind riding back there?” He pointed to the bed of the pickup truck.

  “Sure,” William said, closing the door, storing his rosewood case, and vaulting over the side of the truck, if only to flaunt the fact to his father that he still had some of his youth and agility. “I love flyin’ down highways in the back of a dirty old pickup truck in my tuxedo.”

  Climbing behind the wheel, his father said, “I didn’t say you had to dress for the tournament, you know.”

  The drive north up the old divided highway was unremarkable, William thought. It could have been a road in any city or town in Florida, lined with fast-food chain restaurants, gas stations, hotels, and retail stores. The vehicles seemed to have an even mix of Florida and out-of-state plates. There were a lot of white or pastel-colored rental cars.

  Sitting with his back against the cab of the truck, he tried to get comfortable, but it was impossible. The suspension on this old junker was shot. Every time they hit the smallest bump, he shot straight up in the air and came crashing down hard on a different part of his backside.

  Suddenly, fifteen minutes from the Marathon Airport, the scenery changed dramatically for the better. The divided four-lane highway gave way to a paved two-lane road, like a long ribbon separating the shallow waters of the Florida Bay from the deep water of the Atlantic. The fast-food joints were replaced with signs for local joints with names like The Hog’s Breath Saloon, Rum Runners, and The Wreck and Galley
Grill.

  Even in the butt-battering back of the old pickup, William felt himself relaxing. He looked down to see what this ride was doing to what remained of his blood-spattered tailored tux. He shrugged. I don’t think I am going to be invited to any black-tie events anytime soon, he thought. As his father’s truck reached the top of the bridge crossing Channels Two and Five, fifty feet above sea level, his untied necktie blew off in the wind. For the first time he could remember, William felt totally free.

  CHAPTER 7

  DAY ONE—THE BONEFISH

  Soon they were passing a road sign that said, WELCOME TO ISLAMORADA—SPORT-FISHING CAPITAL OF THE WORLD. The tide was out. He saw flocks of white ibis searching the mud for food. On the other side of the road, workmen were putting the final touches to a traveling carnival in a park. Near a bridge called Indian Key, he saw a guy in a small skiff fighting what he would later find out was a large saltwater fish called a tarpon. And everywhere were palm trees gently swaying in the breeze off the ocean. This must be the capital of this Conch Republic, he thought.

  Passing through a small village, he saw signs for a restaurant named Papa Joe’s, The Green Turtle Inn, with an illuminated turtle with a blinking red eye waving his flippers over the name, an upscale resort called the Cheeca Lodge, a grocery store called The Trading Post, and several marinas.

  His father slowed his truck and made a left into the driveway of the Lorelei Tiki Bar and Restaurant. Out front was a twenty-foot-tall, thirty-foot-long signboard featuring a topless blond mermaid smiling in repose, a welcoming beacon to wayward sailors, fishermen, and other assorted reprobates. Across the mermaid’s fetching middle hung a big banner that said FATHER AND SON CHARITY GRAND SLAM.

  The parking lot was a hurricane of activity. Anglers, guides, and tournament officials were scurrying around, seeing to last-minute details. Leo parked, and William jumped down from the bed of the truck. A deeply tanned rough-and-tumble guy, maybe a few years younger than William, swaggered up to the truck to greet Leo.

  “Good morning, Leo. You barely made it on time.”