TURTLE DOVE (Alton Rhode Mysteries Book 7) (6 page)

CHAPTER 8 - TEN-POUND HEADS

The
She Got the House
was a good-sized boat. I went into the cabin to look around while Vole took her out of the marina. There was a metal table next to a bench on one wall. Opposite was a counter where a small knife with a sharp blade stuck vertically out of a block of well-worn wood. From the spools of line on a shelf next to the knife I assumed that Vole used it to rig his lures.

I went back on deck. I liked to fish. Have since childhood. I preferred fresh-water angling with spinning rods and fondly recalled trying to match wits with largemouth bass in upstate New York ponds. The fact that they have a brain the size of a pea and usually outwitted me did not decrease the fun. More recently, I have been going out bluefishing with Porgie Carmichael, a one-time inept criminal who now, thanks to my soft heart and appreciation — he took a beating rather than follow an order to kill me — now runs the Great Kills Marina for the Rahm family on Staten Island. Arman Rahm insisted that the marina is one of the family’s legitimate operations, but I still made him promise that Porgie would never be asked to conduct a burial at sea.

From the size of the stout rod in the holder in Vole’s fishing chair, I did not think we were going after bluefish. It was rigged for bigger game. The lure attached to the wire leader at the end of the line was huge, almost a foot long. I'd caught bass smaller than that monstrosity, which had three sets of treble hooks, the last of which was attached to one of the rod guides.

It took us about a half hour to get where Vole wanted to start fishing. He idled the engine and came down out of the cockpit to set up the rod. Vole was wearing a cutoff t-shirt and shorts. Up close, he was an even more impressive specimen, with deeply-tanned muscular legs and arms. On his right bicep was tattooed the distinctive Navy SEAL insignia of a golden eagle clutching an anchor, trident, and flintlock style pistol. I always wondered about that flintlock. I doubted that SEALS ever used them. Vole threw the lure into the water and let line out.

“We’ll troll a while. Get in the chair.”

“What are we after? Moby Dick?”

“Small lure, small fish,” Vole said. “Big lure, big fish. We ain’t after fuckin’ guppies.”

He went back to the wheel and the boat surged ahead, but slowly. We had gone perhaps a quarter of a mile when the rod bent in its holder and the reel’s drag began clacking as line was pulled out. I knew right away it wasn’t a guppy.

“Fish on!” Vole shouted. He again idled the engines. “Set the hook! Give it a good yank. Then start reeling and let’s see what we’ve got.”

I did as told. The fish continued to take out line.

“Tighten the drag!”

The reel was unfamiliar to me. When I hesitated, he clambered down from the cockpit and showed me how to do it by turning a knob on the side of the reel. Soon, I was gaining ground, or water, on the fish.

“Cobia,” Vole said.

“How can you tell?”

“They don’t jump. Take long runs. Like to head to bottom.”

It took me 15 minutes to tire the fish out and bring it close enough for Vole to gaff it. There was a small hinged platform that could be lowered from the stern and Vole maneuvered the fish onto it before heaving it to the deck. It thrashed about wildly. Vole picked up a wooden truncheon, what cops call a billy club, and whacked the fish on its head. Porgie Carmichael used the same type on recalcitrant bluefish. Vole knew what he was doing. My fish stopped moving.

“I told you it was a cobia,” Vole said, lifting the fish up by its gills. “Nice one, too. Might be 50 pounds.”

It may have been 50 pounds, but Vole held it out for me to admire with about as much effort as if it was a five-pound pickerel. I didn’t know a cobia from a cobra, but I took Vole’s word for it. It was a handsome dark-brown fish with a spindle-shaped body and broad, flattened head with large and sharp-looking dorsal spines.

“They don’t have swim bladders,” Vole explained, “which is why they can dive so deep.”

“I guess it’s not catch-and-release,” I said, looking at the dead fish.

“Cobias are great eating. I’ll carve you some steaks. After this, just let me know what you want to throw back alive. I can sell the ones we keep to the restaurants.”

He threw the cobia in the cooler and then set my rod up again. Twenty minutes later I hooked my first tuna. It was a small one and I had no trouble landing it.

“Throw it back,” Vole said. “Where there’s one, there’s others, and bigger.”

He was right. I almost immediately hooked a much bigger fish. I had to work the drag several times to get it right. I was winning my battle when then things started to go crazy. All of a sudden, the rod gave a sharp jolt and then the reeling became a lot easier. At first I thought the fish had broken off, but I could still feel something on the line. I brought it in and lifted the head of what had once been a very large tuna out of the water. Everything behind its gills was missing. Those gills were dripping blood and opening and shutting reflexively. The tuna’s big glassy eyes looked startled, but I supposed they always looked that way.

“Fucking shark got it,” Vole said.

Maybe the tuna was startled, after all.

Vole yanked the lure from the tuna’s severed head and threw it back out. We trolled some more and I got another hit. But it was the same story. The tuna put up a hell of a fight until a shark hit it. I pulled in another 10-pound head. After the third time I began to feel like the man running the guillotine during the French Revolution.     

“It’s shark city out here,” Vole said, disgustedly. “Look at them all.”

The boat, which suddenly felt a lot smaller, was surrounded by sharks, some quite large.

“I hate the sons of bitches. They’ve ruined a lot of my charters.” Vole held up my latest shortened fish. “You ever catch a shark?”

“No. But it’s starting to look like it may be the other way around.”

“Don’t worry. We’re not going swimming.”

“What kind are they?”

“Black tips. Don’t fight like the spinners, which come right out of the water, but they’ll give you a good tussle.”

The sharks circling the boat did indeed have dorsal fins tipped black. Vole ripped the lure out of the tuna’s mouth and dipped into his tackle box. He came out with a huge hook, which he rammed right through the fish head behind its gills. Then he threw it overboard and let out some line. It did not take long before one of the sharks gobbled it up. Vole waited until he was sure the bait was lodged in the shark’s maw and then reared back on the rod and set the hook. He put the rod in the holder.

“It’s a big one,” he said.

I grabbed the rod as the line started screaming out.

“Tighten the drag!”

I did.

“Not that much! You want him to take line, but also want him to work for it. Got to tire the bastard out.”

I soon found the right equilibrium. I’d reel the shark in until it decided on another run. Then, I let it. A couple of times the big fish sounded and headed under the boat, but Vole, back in the cockpit, anticipated its every move and steered the
She Got the House
away. It was late afternoon and cool on the water, but I was sweating. My arms ached, and I could feel a knot in my back between my shoulder blades. But, by God, I was loving it. Occasionally the shark came to the surface. As its black tipped dorsal fin cut the water about 100 feet out I could see how big it was. Even Vole was impressed.

“Must be near 200 pounds,” he said. “Most around here run half that. Record is only 270.”

A half-hour later, Vole gaffed the shark. It took both of us to lift it into the boat. It started thrashing around on a deck that now seemed too cramped for the three of us. The shark whipped its tail and knocked me down. I suspected that this wasn’t going to be catch-and release, and Vole soon proved me right. He grabbed his billy club and started bashing the shark in the head. This was no one-shot cobia. Vole must have clubbed it 10 times before it finally stopped moving. And then he kept on hitting it, with all his might, until the shark’s head turned into a bloody pulp. Vole was like a man possessed. I finally grabbed his arm.

“I think it’s dead, Vole. Pretty soon you’re going to have shark soup.”

He turned to me, eyes blazing. His shirt and face were splotched with shark blood, as was most of the deck. He looked slightly mad.

“I hate the fuckers,” he rasped.

“I guess this one isn’t going back, either,” I said, trying to lighten the mood.

He flung the club away.

“Never was. Black tips are good eating. I can sell this one to Mojo’s for a good price. They have a shark special.” He looked at me. “Unless you want it.”

“Be my guest.”

He looked at the sky.

“It’s getting late. I think we should head back in. Look at all them sharks.”

There must have been 10 of them circling the boat.

I didn’t argue. It was obvious we weren’t going to catch anything else but sharks. Besides, I’d gotten my money’s worth. I had seen nature at its most murderous.

Both inside and outside the boat.   

On the way back in, we had a chance to talk. Or, rather, I had a chance. Vole was a man of few words. But I wanted to find out more about him.

“How long have you worked for Ashleigh Harper?”

“A little while.”

“She seems like a nice lady. What else do you do for her?”

“Odd jobs. Shopping. Things like that.”

“You like it?”

“It’s a job.”

I was about to ask him about his SEAL tattoo when he said, “You ask a lot of questions, chum. You come out here to fish, or get my life story.”

“Sorry. It’s a habit. I do it for a living.”

“What? You a reporter or something?”

“Private Investigator.”

Vole looked at me sharply.

“Don’t worry,” I said. “I’m off duty. On vacation. I was just curious. I’ll shut up.”

“Suits me.”

Back at the dock, Vole quickly and efficiently cleaned and filleted my cobia. It was obvious there would be too much for me and Alice, so I took only two large steaks and told him to keep the rest. He grunted what I assumed was thanks. I got another grunt when I paid him. He flung the battered shark onto the dock, no mean feat with a fish weighing 200 pounds. When I left, he was swabbing its blood from his boat.

When I got back to the condo, Alice, who was sipping a white wine on the terrace, greeted me warmly.

“You smell like a fish. Go take a shower.”

I handed her the packages of my fish.

“See if you can find a good recipe on the Internet for cobia. It’s supposed to be delicious.” I saw the look on her face. “Don’t worry, I’ll do the cooking.”

An hour later we finished the last of what turned out to be an excellent meal. Simply pan-grilled with lemon, mustard, capers and white wine, the cobia was delicious, with a firm white flesh. For a side we had a simple arugula salad and finished the meal off with Anna’s apple pie.

“I had a nice day,” I said.

“How was Captain Vole?”

“Crazy as a loon, but a good fisherman.”

I told Alice about the shark.

“Maybe he had a bad experience with a shark once.”

“He’s too young to have been on the
Indianapolis.
”

“The what?”

“I’m being facetious. It was a World War II cruiser that took the A-bomb to Tinian before we dropped it on Japan. It was torpedoed on the way home and about 1,000 sailors went into the water. It was a secret mission so nobody knew they were missing for days. Except the sharks, who got most of them.”

“How horrible.”

“Hell, maybe he has his own shark story. He was a SEAL, after all. But I think he has deeper problems. I’m surprised Ashleigh Harper employs him. Seems out of character.”

“Well, he’ll keep her safe from sharks.”

“More wine?” I said, laughing.

“No, I think I want dessert.”

“We just had dessert.”

Alice gave me a look that I knew well. It was a look that I suppose all women have. Her face went soft, a small smile creased her lips, and her eyes seemed to slant slightly. She got up without a word and put out her hand.

***

“This has been a wonderful vacation,” Alice said languidly.

We were in bed. She was sprawled naked across my body, which like hers, glistened with sweat. Making love with Alice is not unlike cardio-tennis. There are few breaks.

“Yes, it was.”

She pushed herself up on her arms and wiggled her shoulders.

“Do you like my breasts?”

They were swaying inches from my face. I licked a nipple, which was still engorged.

“They are nine and ten on my list, which only goes up to ten.”

“Nine and ten?”

“I alternate, depending on which one I’m fondling.”

Alice giggled.

“Are my tatas nicer than Anna’s?”