The Girl at the Deep End of the Lake Read online

  The Girl At the Deep End of the Lake

  SAM LEE JACKSON

  Copyright © 2016 SAM LEE JACKSON.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored, or transmitted by any means—whether auditory, graphic, mechanical, or electronic—without written permission of both publisher and author, except in the case of brief excerpts used in critical articles and reviews. Unauthorized reproduction of any part of this work is illegal and is punishable by law. For permission requests, write to the publisher, addressed “Attention: Permissions Coordinator,” at the address below.

  Piping Rock Publications

  3608 E Taro Lane, Phoenix AZ 85050

  www.samleejackson.com

  Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I would be remiss if I didn’t thank John D. MacDonald, Elmore Leonard and Robert B. Parker for their inspiration in setting me on this journey. My profound thanks to my editor Ann Hedrick of UC Davis And, to the amazing Mariah Sinclair for the outstanding cover design.

  DEDICATION

  For Carol, my better angel and the brightest light in my sky, who knows why.

  Table of Contents

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

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  1

  “Should I shoot her in the head?”

  “Hell, no,” the other voice said. “Somebody will hear it.”

  It was the middle of the night and the voices were coming from below me on the end of the pier. I was trying to sleep on top of the old houseboat I was living on, Pier C, Slip 32 at Pleasant Harbor Marina on Lake Pleasant, north of Phoenix. It was warm inside and I didn’t want to spend the money on the gasoline it would take to run the air. I had slept in a lot worse places. Uncomfortable, sandy, dirty, buggy places in faraway lands while waiting for the target to show.

  Instinctively I reached for my prosthetic foot when the second voice said, “Just throw the bitch in, she’ll sink like a rock.”

  I could hear the rustle of plastic sheeting as I rolled over. I had my foot in my hand when I looked over the edge. The end of the pier was dimly lit, but I could make out the two of them. One was a big Mexican looking guy, the other was smaller with a wife-beater tee shirt and tats all up and down his arms and across his neck. They had hoisted what looked like a long wrapped package to their shoulders, then slid it silently off the end. For a second it floated and they watched until it began to sink, then they turned and trotted back down the pier. The package was just under the surface when I saw it move and I went over the side.

  The Lowrance HDS-5 depth finder mounted in the cockpit had told me that the water was eighty feet deep at my mooring, so I kicked hard when I hit the water, knowing that if the package was weighted it could get away from me. My fingertips brushed it, but now it was straight up and down and sinking fast. I felt the panic of failure rising in my throat and I kicked with all I had, stretching my hands out into the darkness and there it was and I touched it, then it was gone. Then there it was again, and I got a finger hooked into a fold of plastic, and this gave me a handhold, and I brought it to my chest. It was definitely a someone, but they weren’t moving now. I kicked for the surface. It seemed to take a year.

  We finally broke the surface and I struggled to hold the head end of the package up out of the water as I kicked for the end of the pier. I grabbed a slimy algae-covered support rod and pulled us up against the flotation barrels. Now what? There were no ladders and the water-heavy package was hard enough to keep up out of the water, let alone lift it up on the deck. While I considered this, a backlit head drifted over the edge and looked down on me. With a start I thought it was one of the two guys. I was gathering myself to pull the package under the pier when a woman’s voice floated down.

  “Are you all right, Mr. Jackson?”

  “Can you get a hold, and hold on till I can get up?”

  An arm came down and the woman grabbed a handful of plastic.

  “Got it?”

  “It’s heavy,” she said.

  “Hold on,” I said and released the package. I grasped the top of the deck and pulled myself up, pushing with my good foot. I scrabbled up on the deck and the woman said, “Hurry, I can’t hold it much longer.”

  I knelt down beside her on my knees and grabbed the package with both hands. With a shoulder-popping effort, I pulled it up out of the water. The water poured out of it, and with each gallon it got lighter. I laid the body out on the deck and began ripping the plastic away from the face. As I pulled the plastic away, the woman gasped. “My God, she’s just a child.”

  I stripped the plastic off and pushed it aside. It was indeed a girl child. She looked to be about twelve years old and she wasn’t breathing. She wore the tiniest of cutoff jean shorts and a halter top. She had red high-heeled shoes. I rolled her onto her stomach, then lifted her so she bent in the middle. I tried to jostle the water from her lungs. Now she was light as a feather compared with the waterlogged package in the lake. I felt for a pulse and didn’t find one. I placed her onto her back and began chest compressions. My old training kicked in. The same rhythm as the Bee Gee’s Staying Alive. Compress, compress, compress, compress, stayin’ alive, stayin’ alive, stayin’ alive, stayin’ alive. Careful not to crack the sternum. If necessary then maybe, but try not to.

  A gallon of lake water erupted from the depths of her stomach and lungs and she began to cough so hard she couldn’t catch her breath. The woman reached across and wiped the wet hair from her face. I lifted her arm and jerked on her, and she took a long gurgling breath. She began to pant and groan and her eyes were half closed and unfocused. I looked at her arm and saw fresh needle tracks.

  “She’s stoned,” I said.

  The woman said, “Bring her down to my place,” and I looked at her for the first time. Nice looking woman.

  “You know my name,” I said.

  “The marina people told me who you were.”

  “Where’s your place?”

  “I’m on the Moneypenny, the 80-foot Stardust just down there,” she said pointing.

  I stood up. “Hold on while I go up and get my foot.”

  She looked at my stump and said, “I’m sorry. I didn’t even notice.”

  “The marina people didn’t tell yo
u?”

  “You weren’t the only full-time resident they named for me and I’m really not that nosy.”

  “Be right back,” I said.

  I monkeyed up the aft ladder and found my foot and put it on. Back on the deck, the girl was still unconscious but breathing with a ragged regularity. I scooped her up and followed the woman back down the pier. Her houseboat was about ten down and a serious upgrade from mine. She stepped on board ahead of me and opened the sliding glass door. The lights were on, but subdued in the lounge.

  “Bring her back,” she said, leading me past the galley and down a narrowed hallway. She opened the door to the first stateroom and said, “We can put her in here.”

  The stateroom was small, just large enough to hold a queen sized bed and a small dresser. I gently laid the girl on the bed. “She’s going to soil your bedspread.”

  “It will wash.”

  I started to loosen the girl’s shoes when the woman laid her hand on my forearm. “I can take it from here. There are towels in the bath under the sink.”

  I found the towels and brought two back after using one on myself. She took them without looking at me and began rubbing the girl down. “There’s a bar beside the couch. Fix yourself a drink.”

  The bar was beside a long leather couch that faced a large screen television. The TV was on, the sound on mute. Images of an old black and white movie danced across the screen. There was an empty cocktail glass on the coffee table. A maroon afghan was puddled on the floor as if it had been hastily discarded. Also on the coffee table were some magazines, all addressed to Mrs. Romy Bavaro or Mr. and Mrs. Frank Bavaro.

  The bar held several decanters. I lifted the top of one and sniffed it. Smelled like scotch. I poured some in a glass. The ice bucket was empty. I took a small sip and smiled. It was a good scotch. I knew a girl in Rangoon that kept all her booze in decanters so she could buy the cheap stuff and no one knew what brand it was. Swirling the liquid in the glass, I stepped out on the bow and looked down the pier toward the light over the supposedly secure gate that was hanging open. No one in sight, no one out of their boats wondering what the commotion was about. No two bad guys. Nothing but the gentle creak of a boat pulling at its mooring, the soothing lap of small waves and a kiss of a breeze. Not a bad night for dying, I thought. Not for old empty, tired men or even some burned-out younger men with little to live for. Young men with insomnia, night sweats and demons. But not for the girl. Just too young. Druggy or no, she didn’t deserve to be somebody’s throwaway. I wanted a cigarette. I hadn’t smoked in years.

  When I stepped back in, the woman was backing out of the stateroom and taking great care to quietly shut the door. I moved to one of the swivel chairs that bracketed the television. I draped the towel on it to keep it dry. She picked up the used glass from the coffee table and moved into the galley. She put the glass in the sink. She got a new glass and came back in. She moved to the bar and took the lid from the ice bucket.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I can get you some ice.” She started to move to the galley.

  “Don’t bother,” I said. “Neat’s fine.”

  “I’m going to get me some,” she said.

  “I’m okay.”

  She rattled around in the top of her oversized refrigerator, then came back to the bar and poured what looked like vodka over the ice. She took a seat on the couch, setting the glass down without taking a drink. She smoothed her hair back and leaned back with a sigh. She crossed her legs and I enjoyed that. I took another drink and watched her. Slim and fit looking, her hair done professionally. Early thirties, no rings. Her eyes moved around the room, then finally lit on me.

  “Why would those men do that?”

  I shrugged, “There are a thousand reasons why one human will kill another.”

  She picked up her drink and looked at it, but still didn’t drink. “You sound very jaded.”

  I shrugged again, the king of articulation.

  Again, she looked everywhere but at me. She finally took the tiniest of sips from her glass. I waited.

  “The poor little thing. She seems to be sleeping okay.” She set her drink down again. “I think she should stay here tonight. Let her sleep.” She nodded to herself, “Better off here than putting her through a trip to the emergency room where they’ll just want her to sleep.”

  Finally, after the silence had gone a while, I asked, “Do you know the girl?”

  She stared at me, “God, no. Why would you say something like that?”

  “What haven’t you done?”

  “What haven’t I done? What do you mean, what haven’t I done?”

  “You haven’t called the police, Mrs. Bavaro,” I said, draining my glass.

  2

  “Romy Grandberry,” she said, draining her drink. “Mr. Bavaro and I are no longer together.”

  “Of the New England Grandberrys,” I said.

  Her eyes were surprised. “How did you know that?”

  I laughed. “I didn’t. I was joking. Just sounds like a name in an old Katherine Hepburn movie about old money.”

  “My father was Angus Grandberry,” she said.

  “The industrialist?”

  “And when I was very small he was the son of one of the largest bootleggers on the east coast and when Daddy was older he became the ambassador to France.” Her smile was wan. I couldn’t tell if it was poor little rich girl or the fact it was three in the morning.

  “My father was a car mechanic,” I said.

  I watched her struggle with what she would have to tell me. “But he was a very good car mechanic,” I continued.

  “I’m sure he was.” Finally she looked directly at me. “You don’t know who Frank Bavaro is?”

  “I don’t get out much.”

  “You don’t watch the news?”

  “The news makes me tired. I like music and I read a lot. I also slay the top water bass and grill a mean steak. Oh, and I can shake a near perfect martini, do a one handed pushup and hold my breath for almost four minutes.”

  She smiled and finished her drink. “That sounds very impressive. Frank is a very successful man. An attorney, with very powerful clients, two of whom are brothers. Pedro and Luis Flores. They head the largest cartel in the Americas. Of course that can’t be traced to him, but every FBI agent in the U.S. knows who Frank Bavaro is. I guess I was his socialite trophy wife. Arm candy to impress all of those he called snobs but wanted very much to be like. If I did call the police and they found out who owned this boat, that little girl in there would stand no chance of coming out of this. Not without her picture being smashed all over the newspapers.”

  “Why did you get involved?”

  “I couldn’t sleep and I was standing on the bow getting the night air when the two men ran by. I was in the shadows so they didn’t see me. Then I heard you go into the water and I just felt something was wrong.”

  “I’m glad you did.”

  “Well, now I’m not so sure.”

  “I can move her to my place.”

  She shook her head, “No, let her sleep.” We sat in silence a long moment. Then we looked at each other. I had lots of questions, but they were for the girl.

  “Okay,” I said, standing. “We’ll look at it in the morning and see where we are. She okay now? Breathing okay?”

  “She’s fine now.”

  “Thanks for the drink. And thanks for the help. I would have had to drag her to the back of my boat and get her up the ladder. I don’t know that she would have survived.”

  She stood. “My Dad always said that we were put here for a purpose,” she said, placing her glass on the coffee table. “It’s just that we may not know what that purpose will be. Maybe this was mine. Goodnight…”

  “Just Jackson.”

  “Jackson.”

  I walked back down the pier to my boat knowing she was watching. I worked hard at a natural gait. No limp.

  3

  For the previous ten years my body had been tau
ght to exist on minimal sleep, so when the sunrise crept around the blackout curtains in the master stateroom I came awake. I was getting older. There was a time that as soon as my eyes opened I could leap into action. Now I had to clear the fuzz out.

  By the time I had come back aboard and stripped out of my wet shorts and tee shirt, the temperature had dropped enough so that I just unfastened my utility foot, placed it beside the bed and stretched out. I had pushed everything from my mind and had fallen asleep immediately.

  I ate a bowl of Greek yogurt and granola and drank a large glass of orange juice. By then, the coffee had percolated and I poured some in my big mug. I added Sweet and Low and Half n’ Half and stirred it with the same spoon I had rinsed off and laid aside yesterday morning. I took the mug out onto the stern and sat in one of the webbed chairs and looked at the morning. It was late October and the weather was just becoming why someone would choose to live in Phoenix. Between June and October the weather forecaster here had the easiest of jobs. Show up in front of the camera, still with sleep hair and in pajamas, proclaim the day would be hot and sunny, then go back to bed.

  The water was still and glassy. If I were a water skier this is when I would be out. Occasionally a small ring would appear on the surface as a fish came and kissed the top. A hundred yards out a big one ripped up out of the water, turned and made a huge splash. The underbelly flashed yellow and I knew it for one of the large carp that camped near the marina. I thought of the little girl, wrapped in plastic, slowly gliding toward the bottom. There to rest until the bluegill and turtles worked their way through the plastic wrapping to feast on the rotting flesh inside. And finally the body would be free of the weights that held it and the gasses would slowly float whatever was left to be washed up on the shore months later as food for the crawfish.

  An early morning fisherman went ripping by in the distance, and once again I marveled at the fact that fishermen with their slim sparkly boats and huge motors always felt the fish were somewhere down the lake instead of where they put the boat in. I took the cup back in and rinsed it out and padded down the hallway to the master stateroom. I put on a pair of swimming trunks and a swimming foot and slowly lowered myself down the aft ladder. The water felt cold against my skin, but I knew that in a few minutes the water would feel warmer than the air. I struck out with long even strokes toward the buoy marker that was a hundred and fifty yards away. I had a small twinge in my shoulder from lifting the dead weight of girl up out of the water. After my first lap it was loose and barely noticeable. I usually swam three laps at dawn before the traffic in the marina would make it impossible. At the end of the third lap, I was hanging onto the aft ladder waiting for my heart to normalize. The gold leaf lettering was fading and peeling. It announced to any passing craft that this old tired scow was called the Tiger Lily. A realtor had suggested I purchase it after she had suppressed a smile when I told her how much I had to spend on a permanent place. It was forty years old and fifty-two feet with a fourteen foot beam. The master stateroom was roomy enough for a king-sized bed and a closet. It had an oversized shower in the head, a small guest stateroom, a galley and enough room in the lounge to be decorated in rummage sale chic. I could hook into the electric on the pier and paid a small rental for the mooring. Once a month, or whenever I took her out, I would visit the bilge pumping station known as the honey pot and empty her out. I had been here for a while now and she was all I needed.