Snapper (5 page)

“Well, thanks for the play-by-play,” said Deena. “But I better get going. I’ve got some shopping to do.”

Deena turned to go. Judd reached out and took her by the arm. He couldn’t let her escape.

“Please,” he said. “Won’t you join me for a cup of coffee over at Bond’s?”

Deena looked up at Judd. His fingers were wrapped around her forearm like a handcuff – or a bracelet. He was tall, fair-haired, blue-eyed. She was petite, raven-haired, olive skinned. A cup of coffee with him was the last thing she needed.

“All right,” she said. “Just a quick cup.”

*

“So,” said Deena, after the waitress took their order, “back there on the green – when you first saw me – you said, ‘It’s you!’ – like you already knew me.”

Judd was afraid this was going to come up. It had been a real blunder, but it had slipped out before he could catch himself. Now what could he tell her?

“Well,” said Judd. “I guess I could tell you I mistook you for somebody. Or...”

“Yes,” said Deena. “Or?”

“Or,” said Judd. “I could tell you the truth.”

“Why don’t we go with
‘b’
,” said Deena.

Judd knew it was a gamble. He took a deep breath. He’d tell her the truth – or at least part of it.

“It wasn’t the first time I saw you,” he said.

“Oh, really?” said Deena, her brown eyes widening. “When else have you seen me?”

Judd looked her straight in the eye. Their coffees had come, and Deena was drawing hers near, as if trying to protect a valuable chess piece. The game was on.

“I’ve seen you,” said Judd. “In the lake.”

“Really?” said Deena. “Then why haven’t I seen you?”

“I can see you from my house,” said Judd. “I live on the opposite shore.”

“You must have pretty eyes,” said Deena.

Judd smiled and blushed.

“Thank-you,” he said.

Deena could’ve kicked herself. What a Dodo brain! ‘You must have pretty eyes!’ Or was it simply a Freudian slip – the real truth rushing to the surface?

“I meant to say, you must have pretty
good
eyes,” said Deena. “The opposite side of the lake is pretty far away.”

Deena studied Judd closely. He did have beautiful eyes. But they were behind a pair of lenses set in Georgio Armani frames. How could a man who wore glasses possibly have made out who she was from the other side of the lake?

Judd took a sip of his coffee. He swallowed.
Here goes
, he thought.

“I use binoculars,” he said.

Deena continued to look into Judd’s eyes.

“Can you blame me?” asked Judd with a little smile and a tilt of his head.

Deena shook her head from side to side. She had to give him credit: at least he had told her the truth. How many guys ever did that?

And it was true – Judd had told the truth. At least he had told what had been the truth. For the truth had evolved. The binoculars, strong as they were, hadn’t brought the woman on the dock close enough. Judd had wanted to bring her even closer. So he had rummaged through his attic until he found a telescope he’d given to JJ as a birthday present years before. It was so the boy could observe the moon, the stars, and other heavenly bodies.

And as far as Judd was concerned, no body was more heavenly than Deena’s – especially as she lay flat on her back in a wet bathing suit on a hot deck bobbing on the surface of Turtleback Lake.

Chapter 5

TURTLEBACK LAKE SEPTEMBER 2006

Mayor Russ Meyer made the announcement at a special meeting of the Turtleback Lake Town council: The town would
not
be dredging the lake in the area of the public beach in order to search for Joanne Sully’s missing toe.

The council’s decision was based on a number of factors.

“I have been advised by medical experts,” said the mayor, “that reattachment surgery offers little hope in cases where the severed limb has been separated from a body for more than 48 hours.”

Mayor Meyer let this important piece of information sink in.

“The likelihood of finding such a small body part,” he continued, “in such a large body of water, within such a short period of time, is exceedingly low.”

The mayor paused before adding the clincher.

“Furthermore, the cost of dredging would have to be paid for with funds from a budget that is already strained. Dredging,” he concluded, “would be expensive, impractical, and ultimately useless.”

“What do you say, Chief?” called out Jack Sully, a non-council member in attendance.

Police Chief Rudolph turned to face Jack.

“I think that toe could be anywhere now,” he said. “It could be in the belly of whatever it was that bit your little girl. Or, if it’s not there, it might’ve been swallowed by some pike or pickerel or who knows what.”

“Oh, come on, Chief, we can’t just do nothing,” said Jack. “What if it were your kid?”

“It’d make no difference,” said Chief Rudolph. “The odds of finding that toe are higher for a fisherman than for any dredging company we could hire. I’m sorry, Jack.”

Meanwhile, Joanne Sully was miles away, in a bed at Northern Ramapo Hospital. The little girl might want to think twice about wearing open-toed shoes in the future, but other than that, she’d be just fine.

Certainly she wouldn’t be the first or only resident of Turtleback Lake to be missing part of an extremity.

* * * *

Two hundred over ninety.

And that was on a good day.

Bill Lupo’s blood pressure was elevated to start. But the constant aggravation of his chosen occupation only pushed it higher. Hardly an hour in his life passed without someone infuriating him with one thing or another.

Receivers who slanted in instead of out. Guards who forgot to pull. Linebackers who missed tackles. Running backs who didn’t seem to know the difference between the two hole and the four hole. Throw in school administrators, parents who complained about how much playing time their kids were getting, gym classes, and driver’s ed, and you had a man ready to blow like Vesuvius.

Bill would probably already have been laid out in Schlemm’s Funeral Home if it hadn’t been for Sunday mornings. While others settled into creaking pews, Bill sat peacefully in a rowboat, a congregation of one.

Out on the lake with nothing but a rod and reel, Bill became another man. Catching something was beside the point. Here there was no one to give him
agita.

And this Sunday morning was especially good. This Sunday morning Turtleback Lake had offered up its one true delicacy – a lovely, sixteen-inch lake trout. Trout were the only fish Bill kept. The rest – the large and small mouth basses, the perches and pickerels, the sunnies, blue gills, and pikes – all went back into the lake to catch again another day. But a trout like this one, silvery and speckled, with plump, delicate flesh, such a fish was meant to swim in a pan of melted, bubbling butter.

Bill knew that when he got back to shore, his daughter Mimi and his granddaughter Lulu would be waiting for him. They always came for Sunday morning brunch. But the rolls and cold cuts Bill had bought for their visit would have to wait. Today, they’d all be having fresh-caught lake trout.

For a moment, it actually felt good to be alive. Bill dipped his oars into the water. He couldn’t wait to get to shore and show his catch to his daughter.

Then the oar in Bill’s right hand jerked. Something was tugging at the end of it. The oar slipped out of his hand, swung wildly and struck Bill in the mouth, splitting his lip. He grabbed the oar again with two hands and pushed down hard. Using the gunwale as a fulcrum, he attempted to leverage up whatever was at the other end. The glare on the lake’s surface was too bright for him to see what was beneath.

“Damn!”
he muttered.

Whatever had hold of his oar was heavy.

Bill stood up to get better leverage.

Then he slipped and fell. The small wooden boat rocked violently. The back of Bill’s head slammed against the side. Now he’d have an egg-size lump to go with his fat lip. Bill was sprawled across the bottom of the boat when he noticed the end of the oar suspended in the air. The wood was splintered, as if it had been thrust into a wood chipper. For a brief moment, Bill’s mind flashed back to a night almost forty years earlier – the night he and his friend Oscar had tried paddling out to Turtleback Rock.

Bill peered into the water. A large dark form seemed to pass beneath the boat, but he couldn’t be sure. It could’ve been the shadow of a cloud passing in front of the sun. All he knew for sure was that the oar in his hands was now useless.

Rowing back to shore with one good oar would be no piece of cake.

*

“Honey – I’ve fished that lake for fifty years and I’ve never seen anything like it.”

Bill had just walked into the kitchen carrying the mangled oar.

“Whatever did this has gotta be one helluva of a snapper,” he said, showing the oar’s ravaged edge to his daughter.

Mimi Lupo wasn’t particularly interested in the oar or her father’s musings. She had her own story to tell. Little Lulu’s tumble off the turtle in front of Druckers’ was big news in her life. In a private corner of her mind she was secretly pondering the possibility of a lawsuit. Now she was being pre-empted by a broken oar and a trout.

“Clean this, will you, baby doll,” her dad asked, slapping the trout onto the kitchen counter.

Mimi Lupo certainly didn’t have the smarts to be a doctor. High school had been the end of the line for her, but still, she could clean a fish with the efficiency of a surgeon.

While little Lulu watched a DVD in the living room, and Bill sat puzzling over his oar, Mimi slit the ventral side of the trout from cloaca to gullet. The contents of its alimentary canal spilled out onto the cutting board.

Through the translucent membrane of the trout’s distended belly, Mimi glimpsed something that looked vaguely human. She leaned in closer for a better look.

“Oh my God, Daddy!”

“What is it, baby?” said Bill, putting down the splintered oar and rising from his chair.

Bill walked over to the kitchen counter. There – inside the belly of his beautiful trout – was Joanne Sully’s toe. The nail was painted pink.

* * * *

The Snappers were the pride of Turtleback Lake. Over the years, the team had won sixteen conference championships, and the display case in the high school’s front hall provided the gold-plated proof.

But beneath the surface, under the varsity jackets and thick letter sweaters, a darker truth lurked. Members of the team were given special license. They got away with stuff. They made underclassmen take back their trays in the cafeteria. They made smart kids do their homework. And they did other things that were even worse. But everyone looked the other way. You didn’t mess with success. And for decades, The Snappers had been a powerhouse.

For freshman players, the first few weeks of September were a rude awakening. Even those whose had gone to Snapper games all their lives weren’t prepared for what was to come. Towns had secrets – and the residents of Turtleback Lake kept theirs. There were things that no one knew about until it was their time to know.

The posted hours of Ted Tanner’s Pet and Turtle Shop were 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. Now it was 8:30 p.m. and the sign hanging in the shop’s darkened door said –

SORRY, CLOSED. PLEASE CALL AGAIN
.

The streetlamp in front of the store barely illuminated the side alleyway where a group of teenage boys moved through the shadows, making their way to the back of Ted Tanner’s store.

There was no light in back, and when Barry Calabrese bumped into a garbage can, its lid fell to the pavement and clattered like a cymbal.

“Willya watch where you’re goin’, ya putz!” hissed Savarese.

Savarese rapped on the back door. A minute later, the door cracked open an inch. A single eye peered out.

Ted Tanner scrutinized the faces of the boys gathered at his backdoor. He’d known most of them since they were toddlers. He’d sold them their first gold fish, their first pet turtles, their first aquariums. Now he would serve them in a different capacity.

“C’mon in, boys,” he whispered.

The boys, eager to comply, all tried to squeeze through the doorway at once.

“Quit being such
stunods!
” snarled Savarese, shoving them forward from the rear.

They were in a narrow hallway at the back of the store. The only light came from a single light bulb screwed into the ceiling of a tiny bathroom. Through its half-closed door, the boys could hear the
drip, drip, drip
of a spigot. It had been dripping for twenty years.

“Watch your step, boys, we’re going down,” said Ted, “to the basement.”

Descending the darkened stairs, JJ heard something besides the boys’ clunking boots. It was a scraping, scuffling kind of noise, like wooden blocks being brushed and tapped together. There was also a foul smell, like animal waste mixed with dampness. But JJ couldn’t see a thing. The basement was pitch black.