Jaws Part 8

"Hardly, Martin. Now calm down. Let's discuss this rationally."

"I'm rational. I'm not sure about you, though." (40) There was a moment of silence, and then Vaughan said, "What would you say to opening the beaches, just for the Fourth of July weekend?"

"Not a chance. Not a f.u.c.king chance."

"Now listen..."

"No, you listen, Larry. The last time I listened to you, we had two people killed. If we catch that fish, if we kill the sonofab.i.t.c.h, then we'll open the beaches. Until then, forget it."

"What about nets?"

"What about them?"

"Why couldn't we put steel nets out to protect the beaches? Someone told me that's what they do in Australia."

He must be drunk, Brody thought. "Larry, this is a straight coastline. Are you going to put nets out along two and a half miles of beaches? Fine. You get the money. I'd say about a million dollars, for openers."

"What about patrols? We could hire people to patrol up and down the beaches in boats."

"That's not good enough, Larry. What is it with you, anyway? Are your partners on your a.s.s again?"

"That's none of your d.a.m.n business, Martin. For G.o.d's sake, man, this town is dying!"

"I know it, Larry," Brody said softly. "And as far as I know, there's not a d.a.m.n thing we can do about it. Good night." He hung up the phone. Meadows and Hooper rose to leave. Brody walked them to the front door of the station house, As they started out the door, Brody said to Meadows, "Hey, Harry, you left your lighter inside." Meadows started to say something, but Brody stepped on his words.

"Come on back inside and I'll give it to you. If you leave it around here overnight, it's likely to disappear." He waved to Hooper. "See you." When they were back in Brody's office, Meadows took his lighter from his pocket and said, "I trust you had something to say to me." Brody shut the door to his office. "You think you can find out something about Larry's partners?"

"I guess so. Why?"

"Ever since this thing began, Larry has been on my a.s.s to keep the beaches open. And now, after all that's just happened, he says he wants them open for the Fourth. The other day he said he was under pressure from his partners. I told you about it."

"And?"

"I think we should know who it is who has enough clout to drive Larry bulls.h.i.t. I wouldn't care if he wasn't the mayor of this town. But if there are people telling him what to do, I think we ought to know who they are."

Meadows sighed. "Okay, Martin. I'll do what I can. But digging around in Larry Vaughan's affairs isn't my idea of fun."

"There's not a whole h.e.l.l of a lot that is fun these days, is there?" Brody walked Meadows to the door, then went back to his desk and sat down. Vaughan had been right about one thing, he thought: Amity was showing all the signs of imminent death. It wasn't just the real estate market, though its sickness was as contagious as smallpox. Evelyn Bixby, the wife of one of Brody's officers, had lost her job as a real estate agent and was working as a waitress in a hash house on Route 27. Two new boutiques that were scheduled to open the next day had put off their debuts until July 3, and the proprietors of both made a point of calling on Brody to tell him that if the beaches weren't open by then, they wouldn't open their stores at all. One of them was already looking at a site for rent in East Hampton. The sporting goods store had posted signs announcing a clearance sale --a sale that normally took place over the Labor Day weekend. The only good thing about the Amity economy, as far as Brody was concerned, was that Saxon's was doing so badly that it laid off Henry Kimble. Now that he didn't have his bartending job, he slept during the day and could occasionally survive through a shift of police work without a nap.

Beginning on Monday morning --the first day the beaches were closed --Brody (41) had posted two officers on the beaches. Together, they had had seventeen confrontations with people who insisted on swimming. One was with a man named Robert Dexter, who claimed a const.i.tutional right to swim off his own beach and who allowed his dog to terrorize the officer on duty, until the cop pulled his pistol and threatened to shoot the dog. Another dustup took place on the public beach, when a New York lawyer started reading the United States Const.i.tution to a policeman and a mult.i.tude of cheering youths.

Still, Brody was convinced that --so far, at least --no one had gone swimming. On Wednesday, two kids had rented a skiff and rowed about three hundred yards offsh.o.r.e, where they spent an hour ladling blood, chicken guts, and duck heads overboard. A pa.s.sing fishing boat spotted them and called Brody via the marine operator. Brody called Hooper, and together they went in Flicka and towed the boys to sh.o.r.e. In the skiff the boys had a flying gaff attached to two hundred yards of clothesline, secured to the prow by a square knot. They said they planned to hook the shark with the gaff and go for a "Nantucket sleigh ride." Brody told them that if they ever tried the stunt again, he'd arrest them for attempted suicide.

There had been four reports of shark sightings. One had turned out to be a floating log. Two, according to the fisherman who followed up the reports, were schools of jumping bait fish. And one, as far as anyone could tell, was a flat nothing. On Tuesday evening, just at dusk, Brody had received an anonymous phone call telling him that a man was dumping shark bait into the water off the public beach. It turned out to be not a man, but a woman dressed in a man's raincoat --Jessie Parker, one of the clerks at Walden's Stationery Store. At first she denied throwing anything into the water, but then she admitted that she had tossed a paper bag into the surf. It contained three empty vermouth bottles.

"Why didn't you throw them in the garbage?" Brody had asked.

"I didn't want the garbage man to think I'm a heavy drinker."

"Then why didn't you throw them in someone else's garbage?"

"That wouldn't be nice," she said. "Garbage is... sort of private, don't you think?"

Brody told her that from now on, she should take her empty bottles, put them in a plastic bag, put that bag in a brown paper bag, then smash the bottles with a hammer until they were ground up. n.o.body would ever know they had been bottles. Brody looked at his watch. It was after nine, too late to pay a visit to Sally Gardner. He hoped she was asleep. Maybe Grace Finley had given her a pill or a gla.s.s of whiskey to help her rest. Before he left the office, he called the Coast Guard station at Montauk and told the duty officer about Ben Gardner. The officer said he would dispatch a patrol boat at first light to search for the body.

"Thanks," said Brody. "I hope you find it before it washes up." Brody was suddenly appalled at himself. "It" was Ben Gardner, a friend. What would Sally say if she heard Brody refer to her husband as "it"? Fifteen years of friendship wiped out, forgotten.

There was no more Ben Gardner. There was only an "it" that should be found before it became a gory nuisance.

"We'll try," said the officer. "Boy, I feel for you guys. You must be having a h.e.l.l of a summer."

"I only hope it isn't our last," said Brody. He hung up, turned out the light in his office, and walked out to his car.

As he turned into his driveway, Brody saw the familiar blue-gray light shining from the living room windows. The boys were watching television. He walked through the front door, flipped off the outside light, and poked his head into the dark living room.

The oldest boy, Billy, lay on the couch, leaning on an elbow. Martin, the middle son, age (42) twelve, lounged in an easy chair, his shoeless feet propped up on the coffee table. Eightyear-old Sean sat on the floor, his back against the couch, stroking a cat in his lap.

"How goes it?" said Brody.

"Good, Dad," said Bill, without shifting his gaze from the television.

"Where's your mom?"

"Upstairs. She said to tell you your dinner's in the kitchen."

"Okay. Not too late, Sean, huh? It's almost nine-thirty."

"Okay, Dad," said Sean.

Brody went into the kitchen, opened the refrigerator, and took out a beer. The remains of the pot roast sat on the kitchen table in a roasting pan, surrounded by a sc.u.m of congealed gravy. The meat was brownish-gray and stringy. "Dinner?" said Brody to himself. He checked the icebox for sandwich makings. There was some hamburger, a package of chicken legs, a dozen eggs, a jar of pickles, and twelve cans of soda pop. He found a piece of American cheese, dried and curled with age, and he folded it and popped it into his mouth. He debated heating up the pot roast, then said aloud, "The h.e.l.l with it."

He found two pieces of bread, spread mustard on them, took a carving knife from a magnetic board on the wall, and sliced a thick slab of roast. He dropped the meat on one of the pieces of bread, scattered a few pickles on top of it, covered it with the other piece of bread, and mashed the sandwich down with the heel of his hand. He put it on a plate, picked up his beer, and climbed the stairs to his bedroom.

Ellen was sitting up in bed, reading Cosmopolitan. "h.e.l.lo," she said. "A tough day? You didn't say anything on the phone."

"A tough day. That's about all we're having these days. You heard about Ben Gardner? I wasn't really positive when I talked to you." He put the plate and the beer on the dresser and sat on the edge of the bed to remove his shoes.

"Yes. I got a call from Grace Finley asking if I knew where Dr. Craig was. His service wouldn't say, and Grace wanted to give Sally a sedative."

"Did you find him?"

"No. But I had one of the boys take some Seconal over to her."

"What's Seconal?"

"Sleeping pills."

"I didn't know you were taking sleeping pills."

"I don't, often. Just every now and then."

"Where did you get them?"

"From Dr. Craig, when I went to him last time about my nerves. I told you."

"Oh." Brody tossed his shoes into a corner, stood up, and took off his trousers, which he folded neatly over the back of a chair. He took off his shirt, put it on a hanger, and hung it in the closet. In T-shirt and undershorts he sat down on the bed and began to eat his sandwich. The meat was dry and flaky. All he could taste was mustard.

"Didn't you find the roast?" said Ellen.

Brody's mouth was full, so he nodded.

"What's that you're eating, then?"

He swallowed. "The roast."

"Did you heat it up?"

"No. I don't mind it like this."

Ellen made a face and said, "Yech."

Brody ate in silence, as Ellen aimlessly turned the pages of her magazine. After a few moments, she closed the magazine, put it in her lap, and said, "Oh, dear."

"What's the matter?"

"I was just thinking about Ben Gardner. It's so horrible. What do you think Sally will do?"

"I don't know," said Brody. "I worry about her. Have you ever talked money with her?"

"Never. But there can't be much. I don't think her children have had new clothes in a year, and she's always saying that she'd give anything to be able to afford meat (43) more than once a week, instead of having to eat the fish Ben catches. Will she get social security?"

"I'd think so, but it won't amount to much. There's welfare."

"Oh, she couldn't," said Ellen.

"You wait. Pride is something she won't be able to afford. Now there won't even be fish any more."

"Is there anything we can do?"

"Personally? I don't see how. We're not exactly in fat city ourselves. But there may be something the town can do. I'll talk to Vaughan about it."

"Have you made any progress?"

"You mean about catching that d.a.m.n thing? No. Meadows called that oceanographer friend of his down from Woods Hole, so he's here. Not that I see what good he's going to do."

"What's he like?"

"He's all right, I guess. He's young, a decent-looking guy. He's a bit of a know-itall, but that's not surprising. He seems to know the area pretty well."

"Oh? How so?"

"He said he was a summer kid in Southampton. Spent all his summers there."

"Working?"

"I don't know, living with the parents probably. He looks to be the type."

"What type?"

"Rich. Good family. The Southampton summer type. You ought to know it, for G.o.d's sake."

"Don't get angry. I was just asking."

"I'm not angry. I just said you ought to know the type, that's all. I mean, you're the type yourself."

Ellen smiled. "I used to be. But now I'm just an old lady."

"That's a crock," Brody said. "Nine out of ten of the summer broads in this town can't do what you can for a bathing suit." He was happy to see her fishing for compliments, and happy to give them to her. This was one of their ritual preludes to s.e.x, and the sight of Ellen in bed made Brody yearn for s.e.x. Her hair hung down to her shoulders on both sides of her head, then tucked inward in a curl. Her nightgown was cut so deeply in front that both her b.r.e.a.s.t.s were visible, all but the nipples, and was so diaphanous that Brody was sure he could actually see the dark flesh of the nipples. "I'm going to brush my teeth," he said. "I'll be right back." When he returned from the bathroom, he was tumescent. He walked to the dresser to turn out the light.

"You know," Ellen said, "I think we should give the boys tennis lessons."

"What for? Have they said they want to play tennis?"

"No. Not in so many words. But it's a good sport for them to know. It will help them when they're gown-up. It's an entree."

"To what?"

"To the people they should know. If you play tennis well you can walk into a club anywhere and get to know people. Now's the time they should be learning."

"Where are they going to get lessons?"

"I was thinking of the Field Club."

"As far as I know, we're not members of the Field Club."

"I think we could get in. I still know a few people who are members. If I asked them, I'll bet they'd propose us."

"Forget it."

"Why?"

"Number one, we can't afford it. I bet it costs a thousand bucks to join, and then it's at least a few hundred a year. We haven't got that kind of money."

"We have savings."

"Not for tennis lessons, for Christ sake! Come on, let's drop it." He reached for the light.

(44)