I came up swimming hard toward the debris bobbing in the ruffled water. I had little hope of finding Rudy but I didn’t think about it. I tried to save as much strength as I could for the return trip, but I swam badly, hampered by my stiff sore arm. Every stroke made the arm ache fiercely. I didn’t look up until I brushed past a piece of the boat skin. Then I stopped swimming and treaded water, searching for some sign of Rudy. Twenty yards out I caught a glimpse of his head, then his back as he rolled to the surface, hung motionless for an instant in the swell. His lungs must have been almost full of air when he went into the water.
I struck out quickly, dived when I reached the approximate spot where I had seen him. Ten feet down in the murky water I caught an arm and hauled him up, my lungs weighted and burning. I didn’t pause to see what kind of shape he was in. I put a hand under his chin, towed the bloated leaden body. I couldn’t see well. Salt stung my eyes. I sighted the dock, swam toward it. I went very slowly. The fingers that gripped Rudy’s chin were sticky with something. I didn’t dare waste time and strength looking at him.
When I thought I was going to have to let him go to save myself, a head bobbed up in front of me, a muscular arm reached for Rudy. It was Taggart.
“I’ll take him,” he said. I released the burden of Rudy gratefully, went for the dock with slow slapping strokes, my arm muscles trembling. My breath came in little flutters. Hands reached down at the dock to help me from the water. I lay on my back on the rough flooring, chest heaving, muscles jumping in my legs. I was too exhausted to move a finger. Dimly I heard shouted orders. Somebody told the women to get away from there. Somebody else said in an awed voice, “Jesus, will you look at that?” There was a muffled series of tired curses. I rolled over on my stomach, still gasping.
They were pulling Rudy over the edge of the dock — what was left of him. His mangled, mashed body had washed clean of blood. One arm and part of his head were gone. I saw ribs gleam from a gaping tear in his side, the armless side. The blast had got him along the right side of his body. I looked away from it, sat up on the dock. I glanced down at my hand, the one that had towed Rudy. There were clots of red between the fingers. I washed the hand hurriedly in the bay, leaning over the edge of the dock.
It was oddly quiet now. There were six men on the dock. Nobody said anything. Taggart sat with his arms around his legs, his face against his knees. He breathed explosively. The wet T shirt clung to him, showed the tanned skin underneath. There were specks of red on his T shirt.
I stood up, hoping my legs would hold me, staggered a step to remain upright. I saw the women clustered on the patio, looking at us. One of them — it seemed to be Evelyn Rinke — held Aimee in her arms.
Macy stood near the ruined body of Rudy — the last one, the last of the old gang. His shoulders were bunched. His fingers flexed like snakes maneuvering to strike. He looked at Rudy for a long time, his face frozen. His head edged up and he looked out at the bay. Then he turned on stiff awkward legs. He looked at each of us with bleak angry eyes.
“I was supposed to be in that boat, wasn’t I?” he said. His voice was little more than a frightened hiss. “Me and Aimee.” A sudden breeze fluttered his hair. There was dead silence for a moment. Macy raised an arm suddenly, threateningly.
“Get out!” he screamed. His voice was a slow curling lash that probably could be heard on the patio. “I want everybody out of here. Quick! Get off this island! Pack and get out!” His whole body shook from the force of his rage. Charley Rinke shuffled his feet nervously. Maxine’s men looked at Stan questioningly. Stan nodded his head toward the house, his mouth grim. From a quick look at him I thought that Rudy’s sudden death had shaken him as much as anyone. They edged off the dock, plodded toward the house. Owen Barr followed, tottering in the sand.
Taggart got up from where he had been sitting. His face betrayed no shock. “What do we do with him?” he said, speaking of Rudy.
“Bury him,” Macy said. “You and Pete and Reavis. Bury him. Then you get out too.” Macy shoved by us and walked off the dock, his eyes watery from grief that may or may not have had something to do with Rudy.
He hurried up the beach and terrace with thick-bodied haste. The little group of men and women on the patio scattered to let him through. He gestured violently at them. From far away, almost as if it came from a place behind the sun, I heard Aimee’s high cat wail.
Chapter Twenty-five
Reavis brought an old tarpaulin and two shovels from the garage, dumped them on the dock. There was a faint tremor in his lips as he looked at Rudy. The body didn’t bother him. He had seen bodies before. But he had always left them for someone else to bury.
Taggart and I folded the tarp once, laid it flat beside the corpse, rolled him onto it. We carried Rudy in the sling, Taggart going first, staggering a little in the sand. Reavis followed with the shovels. Occasionally they clanked together. The sun was gone and the sky was graying.
In the cove where I had seen Diane and Taggart two nights before, we put the tarp down and began to dig a dozen feet above high-tide line, at the base of a rocky spine of land. There was some wind now and fronds shook in the trees with a dry rustle. Nobody said anything. The only other sound was the chuff of shovels as we dug into loose sandy ground.
When we had a rough rectangular hole about four feet deep we stopped. Any deeper and it might begin to fill with water. We turned to the lumpy tarp and swung it into the new grave. I made sure the covering was tucked around Rudy’s remains. It seemed a small courtesy. Taggart leaned on his shovel and watched with flinty narrowed eyes. Reavis ran a hand through his hair and seemed anxious to leave.
“It don’t make any difference to him whether he’s covered or not,” Taggart said. “Let’s shovel him under and get out of here.”
“Ain’t we goin’ to say anything?” Reavis said.
Taggart turned his head. “Like what?”
“I don’t know. You usually say something when you bury somebody. I don’t know what you say. I ain’t no preacher.”
Taggart’s lips crooked. “He ain’t no preacher,” he said to me in a dry humorless voice. “You got any words that might save his soul?”
“If he ever had one,” I said, “I suppose he used it as a down payment on a bottle of whisky a long time ago.”
Taggart looked again at Reavis. “You got anything to say, go ahead.”
“I ain’t got nothin’ to say,” Reavis mumbled, as if he were embarrassed for having brought it up.
Taggart straightened. “Well, I have,” he said. He took up a shovel of dirt, rained it onto the canvas with a turn of his wrist. “So long, Rudy. You must have known it would happen to you some day.” He turned and flipped the shovel at Reavis. “You help Mallory cover him up. I’m goin’ back to the house.”
“You leavin’ right away?” Reavis said.
“No. Not right away. I’ll hang around a while.”
“Soon’s I get packed I’m goin’,” Reavis said. “There’s plenty of cars.”
“Don’t take the blue one parked by the gatehouse,” Taggart said as he walked up the slight slope. “That’s mine.” I watched him stride through the trees and disappear over the rise toward the house.