Stranahan heard the man running on the outside deck, following the apron around the house. Stranahan took aim through the walls. He imagined that the man was a rising quail, and he led accordingly. The first blast tore a softball-sized hole in the wall of the living room. The second punched out the shutter in the kitchen. The third and final shot was followed by a grunt and a splash outside.
“Christina!” Stranahan shouted. “Quick, help me up.”
But when she got there, biting back tears, crawling on bare knees, he had already passed out.
Chemo landed on his back in the water. He kicked his legs just to make sure he wasn’t paralyzed; other than a few splinters in his scalp, he seemed to be fine. He figured that the birdshot must have missed him, that the concussion so close to his head was what threw him off balance.
Instinctively he held the Ingram high out of the water with his right hand, and paddled furiously with his left. He knew he had to make it under cover of the house before Stranahan came out; otherwise he’d be a sitting duck. Chemo saw that the machine gun was dripping, so he figured it must have gotten dunked in the fall. Would it still fire? And how many rounds were left? He had lost count.
These were his concerns as he made for the pilings beneath the stilt house. Progress was maddeningly slow; by paddling with only one hand, Chemo tended to move himself in a frothy circle. In frustration he paddled more frenetically, a tactic that decreased the perimeter of his route but brought him no closer to safety. He expected at any second to see Stranahan burst onto the deck with the shotgun.
Beneath Chemo there appeared in the water a long gray-blue shadow, which hung there as if frozen in glass. It was Stranahan’s silent companion, Liza, awakened from its afternoon siesta by the wild commotion.
A barracuda this age is a creature of sublime instinct and flawless precision, an eating machine more calculating and efficient than any shark in the ocean. Over time the great barracuda had come to associate human activity with feeding; its impulses had been tuned by Stranahan’s evening pinfish ritual. As Chemo struggled in the shadows, the barracuda was on full alert, its cold eyes trained upward in anticipation. The blue-veined legs that kicked impotently at its head, the spastic thrashing—these posed no threat.
Something else had caught its attention: the familiar rhythmic glint of stunned prey on the water’s surface. The barracuda struck with primitive abandon, streaking up from the deep, slashing, then boring back toward the pilings.
There, beneath the house, the great fish flared its crimson gills in a darkening sulk. What it had mistaken for an easy meal of silver pinfish turned out to be no such thing, and the barracuda spit ignominiously through its fangs.
It was a testimony to sturdy Swiss craftsmanship that the Heuer diving watch was still ticking when it came to rest on the bottom. Its stainless silver and gold links glistened against Chemo’s pale severed hand, which reached up from the turtle grass like some lost piece of mannequin.
14
On Washington Avenue there was a small shop that sold artificial limbs. Dr. Rudy Graveline went there on his lunch hour and purchased four different models of prosthetic hands. He paid cash and made sure to get a receipt.
Later, back at Whispering Palms, he arranged the artificial hands in an attractive row on the top of his onyx desk.
“What about this one?” he asked Chemo.
“It’s a beaut,” Chemo said trenchantly, “except I’ve already got one on that arm.”
“Sorry.” Rudy Graveline picked up another. “Then look here—state-of-the-art technology. Four weeks of therapy, you can deal blackjack with this baby.”
“Wrong color,” Chemo remarked.
Rudy glanced at the artificial hand and thought: Of course it’s the wrong color, they’re all the wrong damn color. “It’s a tough match,” the doctor said.”I looked for the palest one they had.”
“I hate them all,” Chemo said. “Why does it have to be a hand, anyway?”
“You didn’t like the mechanical hooks,” Rudy Graveline reminded him. “Talk about advanced, you could load a gun, even type with those things. But you said no.”