Lord of the Deep (2 page)

CHAPTER
3

BILL AND MIKEY DROVE through the silent village that edged the bay. Ghostly gray fishing boats slept at their moorings out in the dark harbor. The ocean was calm, and no waves thumped up against the sea wall.

They parked on the pier and got out.

Bill took the small outboard off the backseat and stood waiting for Mikey with the 10-horse hanging from his fingers. He dipped his head toward the burlap bag. “Why don’t you start taking care of the ice from now on?”

Mikey nodded and took the ice out of the burlap. He tossed the bag back in the jeep and raised the ice to his shoulder on the palm of his hand, the way Bill always carried it, like a waiter with a tray.

“Let’s go,” Bill said.

Mikey followed him, walking in the slow fisherman way. It wasn’t far, maybe thirty or forty yards.

When they’d gotten about halfway to the skiff, his hand started feeling as if it were on fire. It froze so badly it burned. He switched hands, then ended up carrying the ice cradled in both arms, nestled against his chest, soaking his T-shirt.

Bill glanced back once, smiled, and kept on going.

Mikey juggled the ice from one side of his chest to the other, his whole upper body screaming with pain. He had to set it down on the hood of a truck—just for a second—while he jumped up and down with his hands buried in his armpits.

When he got to the skiff, he dropped the ice onto the floorboards and jammed his hands into the warm ocean and let them sting until he could move his fingers again.

Bill clamped the outboard onto the transom and fired up the 10-horse. He let it idle, smoky and loud.

Mikey fumbled, trying to untie the mooring line with stiff fingers. When he got the skiff untied he turned back and nodded to Bill.

“Look,” Bill said, holding out his hand. “Feel that.”

Mikey pressed his thumb into Bill’s palm. It was tough as a coconut husk.

“Another month and your hands will toughen up. Then you can carry it,” Bill said, trying to keep from grinning.

“Yeah, right,” Mikey said.

They headed away from the pier.

CHAPTER
1

THEY BUZZED OUT into the harbor in the skiff, slipping between the hulks of shadowy charter boats moored in the bay.

The ocean was dark and flat, with low swells that rolled in and undulated over the rocky shore. Three all-night yard lights at the hotel across the bay shot liquid golden spears over the glassy water, and Mikey could think of no other place on earth he’d rather be than here, heading out in the skiff with Bill to get the boat.

When they reached the mooring, Bill cut the engine and let the skiff bump against the stern of the boat. Crystal-C in black script swept across the transom, shadowed in gold.

Bill tilted the outboard up and locked it in place. “Take her forward,” he said, then grabbed the ice and climbed aboard the Crystal-C.

Mikey stood in the skiff and moved it hand over hand along the gunnel to the buoy. He tied it off with the knot Bill had shown him, the bowline. The rope was wet and salty and rough. He tied it quickly, having practiced the knot many times at home before trying it on the water.

Mikey pulled himself aboard the big boat.

Bill started up the Crystal-C and let her idle. The engines rumbled in the silent bay, bubbly exhaust gurgling off the stern.

Mikey watched him in the lighted cabin, moving around, taking the rods out of their ceiling mounts and setting them on the bunk, checking them over. Getting things ready.

Mikey knew every inch of this boat. He’d crabbed along her edges, even crawled down into the bowels where the dank odors in the bilge made him dizzy. She was forty feet of sleek white fiberglass, with two towering outriggers, a deck above the cabin that Bill called a flying bridge, and in the engine room twin Detroit 450-horse marine diesels. A big boat with big payments, Bill joked.

Bill stuck his head out the cabin window. “Let’s take her in.”

Mikey, still on the bow, untied the Crystal-C and tossed the mooring line down into the skiff.

He turned and nodded to Bill.

Bill throttled up and swung the boat around, standing at the wheel in the dim yellow cabin light. Lord of the deep. It was kind of a joke, but that’s what Mikey called him, because as far as he was concerned, Bill was the best deep-sea charter-fishing skipper there was.

Mikey took up the neatly coiled dock line and stood with it in his hands. Like springs, his knees rode the easy rise and fall as Bill walked the boat toward the pier.

Mikey breathed deeply, sucked in the salt air. For long moments he studied the fishing boats in the bay as the Crystal-C eased past. Marjorie-Ann. Iwalani,
Tiara, Magic, Lynell.
My boat will be moored here someday. Maybe I’ll drop a hunk of concrete out near Bill’s, hang my buoy there. Mikey wondered what he’d name his boat. So far he liked
Kaiolohia,
which meant calm sea, as in the early morning.

One light illuminated a circle of concrete, a single bulb under an aluminum reflector high on a post. Its yellow glow made Mikey imagine boats and oceans and faraway ports of call.

Back in Lahaina before Bill, his world was different. Near the sea, but not of it. There he had two good friends, Ricky and Elroy, and his mother and a black cat named Raisin. He had a grandmother, too, but she lived on Kauai, another island.

Then Bill came and everything changed. Mikey’d liked him right away, mostly because of two things.

The first was, when Bill came over to see his mom, he actually sat down with Mikey and talked to him—asked how he was doing in school, what his friends were like, did he like surfing, and, of course, was he a fisherman. The other guys that came around never did that.

And two, Bill took him out on the Crystal-C. Right after he met Mikey’s mom, Bill said to him, “Come. We go holoholo. Take out the new boat. Just us men. What do you say?”

Mikey smiled, remembering.

Just us men. He’d never forget that.

Bill edged the boat up to the pier on the starboard side, facing the ocean. Mikey jumped off with the bow line and secured it to a black cleat.

The Crystal-C had been chartered for three days straight by two brothers from Colorado, Cal and Ernie Flynn. Yesterday was the first day, and they’d caught nothing. Skunked. That happened to everyone, even the best. Fishing was like that. But these guys wanted action, and it worried Bill, because they were the kind who’d come back year after year to charter his boat—if the fishing was good.

They were big guys, in their late thirties, Mikey guessed. This was their first time in Hawaiian waters.

Mikey liked them well enough. Sort of. They were kind of weird. One of them drove you crazy with his really bad jokes. But they told stories about elk hunting in Utah, freshwater fishing in Alaska, river running in the Grand Canyon, and rattlesnake hunts in the Arizona desert. They stretched the truth by miles, Mikey had no doubt about that. But so what?

Today Cal, the older brother, would be bringing his daughter along. Mikey looked forward to having a little kid aboard. He could tell her stuff he’d learned from Bill.

Mikey went about readying the boat as Bill had taught him to do—wiped salt off the windows and morning dew off the seats and the fish-fighting chair with a clean towel, chopped up the ice for the drink cooler.

Bill studied his drawer of lures, setting some aside.

Mikey looked up when Eddy Shin and his garbage truck came grinding out onto the pier. The truck crashed and banged and mashed the contents of the pier Dumpster into its belly, then headed over toward the Crystal-C.

Eddy shut off the headlights and the engine and got out. His neck was as wide as his head, and his arms were so packed with muscle they stuck out to the side when he walked toward the boat.

He grinned, looking down on Mikey with his gloved hands on his hips. “Shee, how come one runt kid like you got a job on this fine boat, huh, you tell me that?”

“Because I’m good,” Mikey said.

Eddy laughed. “I believe it.” He grabbed the starboard outrigger and stepped down onto the boat. “Where’s the boss?”

“Down in the engine room.”

Eddy pulled off a glove and reached out to Mikey. “So how’s it going?”

Mikey shook Eddy’s huge, rough hand. “All right, I guess. Except the guys we’re taking out are kind of weird.”

“Like what?”

“I don’t know. Bossy. One of them tells really dumb jokes.”

Eddy shook his head. “That’s why I like my job, yeah? Don’t have to deal with guys like that. So what you been catching these days?”

Just then Bill came up the companionway. “Hey, Eddy. What’s new?”

“Well, seven fat papio, that’s new. Caught ‘em down Keauhou last night. Best fishing I had in a month.”

“Using what?”

“Black squid lure.”

Bill nodded.

Mikey wondered what the black squid lure looked like. And what it was like casting off the rocks at night. He’d seen guys out along the coast with torches.

Eddy said, “I hear you got some bozos on board today.”

“Yeah, but they chartered the boat for three days straight. They said next year maybe they’ll book us for five days.” Bill shook his head. “But we got skunked yesterday.”

“That happens, sure,” Eddy said.

“They want marlin.”

Eddy nodded. “That’s why they come, yeah?”

“Problem is, it’s quiet out there.”

“You should try live bait, what Black Bart used to do. Catch ’em all day long.”

“He was before my time. But I’ve heard of him.”

“I think he’s in Florida now. But man, the guy could bring in marlin like no one I ever saw in my life. Four, five, six hundred pounds. When every other boat was getting nothing, he still caught ’em. The guy was unreal. His first year he caught eighty-seven swordfish, eighty-seven! Chee. That’s what, six a month? Seven? Lucky if you get three a month.”

Wow, Mikey thought. You’d get anglers from all over the world with a record like that. You could make a fortune. And talk about building a rep. Jeez.

“Make sure the rods and reels are good and dry, would you, Mikey?” Bill tossed Mikey a fleece mitt.

Mikey slipped it on.

“So what you going do about these guyses’ big fish?” Eddy said.

“I still got today and tomorrow. If I get skunked three days in a row, I might as well sell the boat, huh? But we’ll see some action. I can feel it in my bones, something good.”

Eddy ruffled Mikey’s hair. “With a deckhand like this, how could you lose?”

“Can’t.”

“I heard you hired somebody, but I didn’t know it was Mikey.”

“I didn’t think he’d be ready for a while yet. But he’s proving me wrong.”

Eddy made a fist and Mikey tapped it.

“How’s little Billy?” Eddy said to Bill.

Bill looked down, then up. “He’s doing fine.”

“You making ends meet?”

“Yeah . . . thanks to Mikey. He’s working for tips.”

Eddy clapped a hand on Mikey’s shoulder. “You one lucky man, Bill Monks.”

“I got a whole family of luck, Eddy.”

Eddy nodded and looked across the water toward the lights on the other side. “Well,” he said. “Gotta go. Hey, Mikey. How’s about sometime I take you night fishing? Show you how for catch papio?”

Mikey grinned. “Yes sir, that’d be great!”

“Fine. I call you up.”

“But I don’t have a spinning rig,” Mikey said.

“I give you one. I got six.”

“Really?”

Eddy glanced up at Bill. “I think this boy going be one of us, yeah? Look his eye. See that light? One of us, all right.”

Eddy tapped Mikey’s shoulder, then lumbered off the boat. Mikey could have hugged him, garbage smell and all.