Sabotage and slick tricks. Bosses, his asshole sister’s friends who had dissed him, his teachers—especially his pompous eighth-grade science teacher—King had become expert at disrupting their plans, at screwing up their work, at inflicting small, sly wounds without them even knowing.
Common examples: Spitting in drinks, when no one was looking.
Robbing wallets, a few bucks at a time. Dragging his feet when someone was in a hurry or making excuses when an important job needed to be done.
Like now, pretending to help Ford.
It was best when the superior assholes suspected that he was doing it but couldn’t prove it. It gave King a tight, glowing feeling of victory in his belly. If they failed, the King won.
That feeling was in his belly now, as King held on to the inner tube, floating neck-deep in the chilly water, following the professor dude toward the orange buoy that the man claimed marked the wrecked airplane.
King wasn’t totally convinced there was a plane full of gold down there, but he sure as hell wanted it to be true. He was desperate to believe. Five counts of first-degree murder in a state that still strapped killers in the electric chair? Man, King needed all the help he could get.
That goddamn Perry and his goddamn knife!
Shit! Loading that shiny diesel truck with gold bars and coins was their only hope. If they actually got the stuff, if the asshole, Ford, wasn’t lying—man, what a break. First, they would fence enough to buy passage on a boat to Mexico. After that, they’d be in the clear, living rich, kicking back with enough wine and young girls and cash to finally tell the world, Screw you!
What had convinced King was the way Ford had rattled off his story, detail after detail, never once hesitating. No way he could have made up a tale like that. King was sure because he couldn’t have done it, and he had spent his life making up stories about himself.
No, Ford was the straight type. Just another dog chained to the wall—a tight-ass suit with boundaries—which only made the man easier to tease. It also made it more unlikely that the guy could invent some wild lie about a plane crashing, loaded with Cuban gold.
“Hurry up, come on! What’s your problem?”
Ford was yelling at him again. King looked over the inner tube, seeing the man’s dive mask tilted up on his forehead, seeing the man’s assholish superior expression of contempt as they swam the jet pump toward the orange buoy.
Truth was, Ford was doing all the work, pulling the heavy load, kicking with his fins. King was making it harder for him, mostly by just hanging on, but also by letting the fins he was wearing create drag. Sometimes King even backstroked to slow things down.
No way Ford could prove it, although the man knew. King let him read the truth in his innocent Who? Me? smile as he replied, “Take it easy, Jock-a-mo. We’re almost there.”
“No thanks to you. Look over there—see that?” Ford motioned to a yellow scuba tank that had just popped to the surface near the buoy. The tank was floating away.
“What about it? It belongs to your friends?”
The expression on Ford’s face said Dumb-ass.
“It’s my tank. I left it down there for them and it means we’re almost out of time. Quit fighting me. I’m not stupid, I know what you’re doing!”
No, Ford wasn’t stupid. But there wasn’t a goddamn thing in the world he could do to change the fact that King didn’t give a damn about the man’s two friends who were running out of air beneath them. Ford’s friends had screwed up. So what? It was their problem, not the King’s. Besides, why help save the assholes when it was easier to deal with only two people—Ford and the old man, who Perry would soon kill, anyway.
Perry had whispered that to him as King stripped down to his Fruit of the Looms.
“I’m thinking a knife in the throat is the only thing that will make the old bastard shut his mouth,” Perry had said. That was true, but it was more than that. Perry wanted to do it. He had a thing for knives now after using the switchblade on the brats and the Mexican girl back in Winter Haven.
Perry had said to him as they’d pedaled the bikes south, “You ought to try it—using a knife, I mean. It’s kinda cool the way they just lay there when they know it’s happening. Like, they want me to finish—you know? Get it over with, so they lay real still all of a sudden, wanting me to end it for them.”
His former cell mate wasn’t asking for permission to use the knife on the old man. Perry was asking to borrow King’s switchblade because he’d lost his during all the excitement—this was before he’d snagged the professor’s big stainless dive knife, of course.
Perry wasn’t like Ford. Perry had no boundaries. Not anymore. Perry hadn’t even realized he was no better than a dog on a chain until two nights ago at old man Hostetler’s house. But Perry had a taste for it now. King had seen the same sort of change in cons back in Statesville, two- or three-time losers who had discovered themselves when they finally tasted blood.
Not King, though. He’d never killed anyone, ever. Not even at the Hostetler place, although he had helped in certain ways. What choice had he had? Perry, who had been speed crazed and drunk, was nuts enough at the time to use the knife on King if he hadn’t pretended to join in the fun.
No doubt about it, Perry got off on killing people, and there was no going back. Perry had found himself.
Question now was, how would King deal with that? He would have to come up with a way, he knew it, and he would—later.
Ford was bitching at him again. “Okay . . . enough. Take off your damn fins and lay them on the inner tube beside the pump. I know what you’re doing and I don’t have time for your crap!”
King had been letting his fins drag, but now subtly began kicking in reverse, as he said, “I’m doing the best I can. If I take off my fins, I might drown. Then who’s gonna help you with this hose?”
The expression on Ford’s face, pure frustration—and King loved it.
“I thought you said you could swim. You never spent one day as a lifeguard. Have you ever told the truth about anything in your life?”
King used that smile again—Who? Me?—teasing the man with the truth. “You think I’m lying? Well . . . maybe you’re right. But don’t tell Perry, he’s just a kid. You wouldn’t want to disillusion a kid, would you?”
As he grinned at Ford, the King was thinking, Now who’s the dumb-ass?
The hell he couldn’t swim. Swimming was one of the few things King was pretty good at. He’d done a lot of it at the municipal pool, growing up. Of course, he had never actually been a lifeguard like he’d told Perry. But he could have been. Maybe. So what was the difference?
King was enjoying it, teasing the professor-looking guy because the guy was such a damn tight-assed nerd.
“Maybe my technique’s wrong,” King said. “Let me try something different. Don’t think you’re the only one worried about your pals trapped down there under all that rock.”
When Ford replied, “Sure you are,” King told him, “Seriously. I believed it when you said we need four men to salvage the stuff ’cause it’s so heavy. I’m looking at this as a business deal—you’re the one who got us into this, so don’t blame me!”
As Ford started to say something else, King floated his legs out behind him, then kicked hard with his fins. The sudden thrust caused the inner tube to shoot forward and almost run over the man.