The Devil Went Down to Austin (Tres Navarre #4)

The Devil Went Down to Austin (Tres Navarre #4) Page 10

He looked surprised by my proffered hand, reached for it, then almost immediately pulled back. "Navarre?"

"As in Garrett Navarre of Techsan Software," Maia said. "That's right."

Maia had slipped into her professional tone, the one she used for reluctant witnesses—putting them at ease, reassuring them, letting them know she was a friend.

Her tone didn't seem to work too well on Dwight.

"Not again," he moaned. "You're here about—"

"About Jimmy Doebler's murder," Maia supplied. "Yes."

"Then Matthew did call you."

"No. I'm afraid Mr. Pena will need different representation this time. How's he been treating you, Dwight?"

Hayes looked miserable. He unzipped his wet suit to the waist, peeled his arms out of the sleeves. The warm neoprene let off its unmistakable smell.

If car tires had armpits, they would smell like that.

"I couldn't—" He faltered. He made a claw over his nose and mouth, pantomiming an oxygen mask. "I have no control down there. I panic. He asks me to clear my mask, twenty feet down, and the water rushes into my nose—I forget how to breathe."

I could tell Maia was fighting to keep the professional demeanour intact, trying not to betray her own phobia.

"It takes a few tries," she sympathized.

Hayes shook his head dejectedly. "You don't get it. This is the third time. He makes me keep trying—embarrassing myself in front of clients. Matthew enjoys seeing me panic.

He enjoys it."

"Sounds like the conversations we had in San Francisco, Dwight. Do you remember?"

He blushed. "Maia, I shouldn't even talk to you. I could get fired."

"Then maybe we should talk to Pena directly," I suggested.

Hayes gave me the apprehensive poodle eyes, then he pointed over the edge of the cliff, down toward the water. "Blue flag."

The lake was calm—no speedboats in the channel. A hundred feet out, buoys marked off the diving area. Bubbles of submerged divers made glassy scars on the water.

About twenty feet from the shore, three bubble marks were stationary, right next to a blue donutshaped marker.

"How long have they been down there?" I asked.

"Not long," Hayes said. "I panicked right away on this dive. They'll be down another forty minutes, at least."

"Tres ..." Maia started. Her fair warning tone.

"We're about the same size," I told Dwight. "Mind if I borrow your gear?"

"No, Tres," Maia said. "We can wait."

"I'll pay the rental for it. You'll recoup your losses. Think how glad Matthew will be to see me."

Dwight looked stunned. Then he surprised me, maybe surprised himself, with a faint, queasy smile. His eyes glimmered with a kind of mischief he probably didn't get to practice much. "I'm going to regret this. Take the stuff."

"You are not going into the water," Maia insisted.

I checked the pressure gauge on Dwight Hayes' tank, found that it was just below max at 3,000 psi. "You want to come, Maia? By all means. We're a team, right?"

Her face turned livid. "You haven't become less of a bastard the last two years, Tres Navarre."

She turned and stormed off, realized she was heading toward a deadend cliff, strode the other way, down the road.

It isn't often I get to discombobulate her so thoroughly. I had to smile.

"Oh, Christ," Dwight said. "I shouldn't have—"

"Don't worry," I told him. "She just hates it when I get to have all the fun."

Then I stripped to my Texasflag jockey shorts right there in front of God and everybody.

Five minutes and thirty pounds later, I was suited up. Dwight's buoyancy compensator—the inflatable vest divers call the BC—was a little tight on me, but everything else fit tolerably well. The lead weights on the belt thudded against my hipbone on the way down the ladder.

It was a relief to hit the water and go weightless, feel the coolness work its way under the wet suit. I floated away from the ladder, the BC inflated to keep me up, and struggled to get the fins on over the neoprene booties. The water smelled of soil and fish spawn and oily slicks of the baby shampoo divers use to defog their masks.

From the top of the cliff, Dwight Hayes watched me as I kicked toward the blue floating marker.

I put in the regulator mouthpiece, sucked in a first dry, cold breath, then raised the deflator hose of the BC and let out the air.

I had a moment of disorientation as the world flickered white, melted in a soup of green bubbles. Then I was underwater, sinking slowly.

Sound became a physical force—an insect doing circles around my head, making kamikaze runs into my ears. Every exhale set off a minor earthquake of bubbles. I heard pings and clicks and whines and had no idea where any of them were coming from.

I pinched the nose pocket of my mask to equalize pressure. I remembered to breathe, to swallow the powdery coldness of the regulator air out of my throat. The skills came back to me—but Dwight

Hayes was right. It was unsettling. My breakfast had been mercifully light, but even the yogurt and fruit was threatening to retreat up my throat.

I sank through green and yellow light, following the frayed nylon rope of the marker into the murk below. There was about five feet of visibility.

I saw bubble streams below me first, then the figures from which they came. Three streaks of oil resolved into human forms. A silver sheen became a floating underwater platform—a railed grid of metal maybe fifteen feet square. Two divers were on their knees on the platform, feeding hot dogs to a frenzy of Guadalupe river bass and catfish. The third diver was floating effortlessly above them, observing. The water around them was cloudy with fish poop, and pieces of hot dog that would soon be converted to fish poop.

I turned horizontal, aimed my fins, and kicked toward the floating guy. Anybody who could float must be the instructor.

He was dressed in a Farmer John style wet suit—sleeveless, Uneck. The highlight stripes on the suit were blue, as was his mask frame and the middle of each fin. Even his tank was blue. His arms and neck were smoothly muscled, the rest of his body lean, athletic. His hair was a short black cloud that moved in the water the way smoke boils over a petroleum fire. His hands were clasped lightly over his weight belt and his legs pigeoned, scissoring gently whenever he needed to correct buoyancy.

When he noticed me he raised his hand—either as a greeting or a sign to stop, I couldn't tell which.

I looked at the blue man's two companions, gave them the okay sign. Each returned it.

I pointed at them, then at the platform, telling them to stay put.

I looked at the blue man.

Behind the mouthpiece of his regulator, I could see he had a moustache and goatee.

His skin looked extraordinarily sallow, but that may have been a trick of the water. His eyes were preternaturally clear in the mask's pocket of air—milkwhite corneas, pupils the colour of burnt wood, calm to the point of being scary.

He pointed at my chest, then pointed away.

I gestured for the message slate hanging on his belt.

After a moment's hesitation, he handed it over. I put the black grease pen to the white surface and wrote, Maia sez hello.

He took the board, read it, then hesitated, the tip of the pen over it, as if he was considering his next move in tictactoe. He crossed out my sentence, wrote, handed it back.

CLASS —GO away!

My knee bounced lightly against the platform. I tilted off balance like a Ferris wheel basket. I groped for the inflate button on the BC hose, sent a burst of air from the tank into the vest until I neutralized. Matthew Pena just floated there, analyzing me.

I regained enough control to use the message board, then wrote, 5 minutes—Jimmy D insists.

Matthew Pena read, wiped the board clean, clipped it back in his belt. He pointed at his two students, tapped his pressure gauge console. Both checked their own gauges.

Each made finger numbers to indicate they had about 2,000 psi left. Pena gestured, Okay. Wait here.

Then he pointed to me and pointed over his shoulder.

He kicked off into the green murk.

I followed.

Distance was hard to measure, but we sank down to about thirty feet, headed what I judged to be north, along the shore. I had to equalize my ears again. A catfish the size of my forearm flicked by. Giant boulders made a wall to our right. The bottom was furry with tan sediment—nature's shag carpeting.

After about twelve kick cycles, a new shape resolved on the lake bottom—a welded metal sculpture of a diver, canted down at forty five degrees. His limbs and body were sixinch pipes, his mask and fins 2D sheets of steel. Apparently he was a major attraction at Windy Point. He'd been decorated with three different sets of sexy lingerie. A lacy purple bra floated off one of his fins.

It was as good a place as any for a conference with Matthew Pena. Then I looked over and realized I didn't know where Matthew Pena was. He'd disappeared—a ridiculously easy task underwater, where peripheral vision is nil.

I turned my head the other way, then heard a squeaksqueak squeak that seemed to come from inside my skull. It wasn't until my next inhale proved hard to pull that I realized Matthew Pena had come up behind me and turned off my air.

I rotated faceup. Sure enough, Pena was floating above me. His burnt eyes weren't gloating, weren't smiling. They were just

observing, the way a fish observes—impartially looking for something smaller to devour.

My next inhale was a wall—nothing came into my lungs.

Matthew Pena tapped his fingers to his palm in a little byebye wave.

The first rule of diving: Don't panic. I knew that. But rules take on a new dimension when you're thirty feet under with no air. A more experienced diver might've gambled on getting to the valve of his tank without panicking, without getting tangled in his own equipment. I knew I needed a simpler alternative.

I kept exhaling—kept the little trail of bubbles coming out of my mouth, even though I knew there was nothing to replace them with.

Then I reached over, grabbed Matthew Pena's mask and ripped it off his face. The snorkel came with it.

Pena protested with an explosion of white bubbles, grabbed after the mask.

I left him blinking in the green, his vision reduced to smudges. Then I kicked for the surface, holding the BC hose up and keeping my other hand on the weight belt, one finger still hooked on Pena's mask and snorkel.

I tried to avoid kicking up too fast, even though my lungs told me I was dying. The pain was unbearable when the water turned silver and the top shimmered like sun on aluminium foil, but I still wasn't to the surface. A thousand decades later, I broke through and gasped, then found my head underwater again. I used my exhale to manually inflate the BC, kicked to the surface again, got another gasp, went under, repeated the inflation process until I was buoyant.

I floated on the surface, breathing hard.

No problem. Just a little thirtyfootunder chat with a suspect. A little neardeath experience.

Great plan, Navarre.

I put my snorkel in, went down headfirst, and started fumbling around behind me for the Kvalve. I soon realized I'd have to free up both hands to accomplish the task. I pitched Matthew Pena's mask and snorkel out toward the boating channel, then put my face back underwater, found the Kvalve, turned on the air.