The Earless Man

Pointing the flashlight, Seabrook followed the bloody footprints at a trot. The old wooden planks of the dock creaked underfoot.

The prints had been made with medium-size bare feet. Definitely a second man. The dead man on the dock had sneakers on.

At the end of the dock, he ran into the sand-and-gravel backyard and followed the blood to his and Aja’s pink Bahamian house. A small, two-bedroom rental home with one bathroom. It was made of concrete to stand up to hurricane weather. A clothesline for drying laundry stretched across one side of the yard.

On Bimini they were isolated from the outside world. There was no telephone or TV inside the house. If a person wanted to make a telephone call from the island, they had to walk to the tiny phone station during normal business hours and hope the system was working that day. Also, the electricity sometimes went out, as the island’s power grid broke down frequently. Seabrook and Aja used a backup gas generator in such emergencies—Aja had two saltwater specimen tanks in the living room that needed continuous power for the pumps and halide lights. They also had a large freezer for frozen vegetables and meat. In part of the freezer they kept mackerel and bonito: shark bait for the long line.

The bloody prints led up the back steps to the sliding glass door to the living room. Blood also was smudged on the glass door.

He turned off his flashlight.

Sick fear and adrenaline made him jittery.

He leaned forward and peeked through the glass door.

Aja had the first-aid kit open on the table. She was crouched in front of a Latino man sitting in a chair, naked except for bloody underwear—skinny, with short black hair.

He looked like he’d escaped from hell. Desperate and in pain, shiny with sweat, and bleeding from gunshot wounds. Even without the blood, the man would’ve looked gruesome, because he had no ears—just two holes encircled with ugly scar tissue. Like he’d been tortured and had his ears cut off. It must have happened some time ago, because the wounds had completely healed. The Earless Man held a black pistol with a silencer, pointed across the room away from Aja. His clothes lay in a red pile on the floor.

She crouched in front of him like an angel ministering to a wounded monster, cleaning and bandaging his shoulder. He’d been shot twice. It looked like she’d already bandaged his leg. She was a certified EMT and knew what she was doing.

She wore her poker face and seemed to be talking in a friendly voice. The man nodded at what she said. She smiled a little.

Everything seemed calm. Like it would be okay—as long as nothing agitated the Earless Man with the gun.

Seabrook felt a pang of affection for her, and at the same time was crazy with fear at the danger she was in.

Aja was everything to him. A small, pretty woman with deep black eyes, she had been on the women’s swim team in college. She was also deadly accurate with a Hawaiian sling spear. He’d never met anyone like her. On her mother’s side she came from generations of incredible hunters and trappers of Arctic big game like walrus, seal, fish, reindeer, and whales. Her mother was a Yup’ik Eskimo who still lived in the traditional way on St. Lawrence Island in the Bering Sea off the coast of Alaska. Her father was Anglo.

On this night Aja was wearing red shorts, flip-flops, and a dark blue T-shirt with the nickname her biologist friends had given her on the back: “Blue Angel.” She was wearing no jewelry except the unimpressive engagement ring Seabrook had given her a month earlier; it had a tiny diamond, but it was the best he could do. Her black hair, tied in a French braid, came round her neck down her chest to a point above her heart. The tropical sun had given her a dark tan and pink cheerful cheeks and nose that made her look like she was on vacation.

But she had been misread and underestimated all her life. Although she had a sweet and gentle nature, she could also be hard as nails and cool in a crisis. She was scary smart and had scored one point higher on the GRE tests than Seabrook, hitting the ninety-ninth percentile. Her father was a cop in Nome, Alaska, so guns didn’t scare her, and she knew full well what horrors people could be.

To an outsider watching her conversation with the wounded man, Aja could have been casually talking with a friend. But Seabrook could see she was on full alert, waiting for an opportunity. A hint of steel around her eyes and the corners of her mouth.

The man continued talking, and she nodded.

Seabrook had to think. His mind raced, and he could hardly stand still. He wanted to go in and put himself between her and the man with the gun. But wouldn’t the man kill her if someone entered the room? Probably yes.

Getting the Bimini police was out of the question. It would take too long, and everyone knew they were a small-time, symbolic force more than anything.

The man kept his finger on the trigger of his gun. He glanced nervously at the doors every few seconds, probably terrified that whoever had nearly killed him would find him and finish the job.

The man suddenly started shaking, and Seabrook thought he was starting to die or have some kind of seizure: maybe from massive blood loss. The man closed his eyes. He began crying. Abruptly, he stood up and barked demands. He was only a few inches taller than Aja. Standing up, he looked even worse. There were old scars on his stomach and back—he’d been stabbed and shot before. The scars were thick and ugly. He had not received proper medical attention for his old wounds.

Seabrook could hear his rough voice, muffled through the glass. The man wanted clothes and water.

Aja made a sympathetic face; her eyes showed concern. She was calming him down again, quietly giving him advice. She stood up and went into the bedroom. In a moment she came back with a pair of her shorts and one of her pink T-shirts. Seabrook’s clothes would have been way too big.

The Earless Man put on the clothes without ever setting down the gun. Somehow he looked uglier in her clothes. Like if something putrid and evil wore a lovely white wedding dress.

Aja gave him one of the gallon jugs of fresh water they always kept in the refrigerator.

He drank for a full minute, and water dribbled down his chin. Then he seemed grateful, even apologetic. And he looked like he might start crying again.

She spoke to him in a polite tone and pointed in the direction of the backyard. It sounded like she was talking about Seabrook and asking the Earless Man for permission to do something.

The man nodded yes and started toward the glass door. He walked with a limp, flinching in pain with each step.

Seabrook stepped away and moved around the corner of the house. Then he heard the glass door slide open. Next Aja called him.

“Seabrook? Are you out there?” she said. “It’s okay. He’s leaving. Come out if you’re there.” Her voice sounded solid, confident.

She’d had the wherewithal to realize her fiancé might come back from tracking sharks, startle the man, and get shot. She was trying to save his life.

“I’m out here. Don’t shoot,” he said loudly. He stepped out into the open with his hands up.

The Earless Man said, “I’m not going to kill you—unless you make me.”

He pointed the gun at Seabrook and told Aja to get in front of him. She stepped next to Seabrook. Their hands touched and joined for an instant.

Seabrook saw the man’s finger was on the trigger.

They were about to die.

He glanced at Aja to say goodbye and could see that she had the same thought. They moved closer together.

“Go down the dock, hands up,” the wounded man said. He spoke between short breaths, his voice raspy with pain.

Seabrook and Aja walked slowly down the dock with their hands raised to shoulder height. He let Aja go in front to shield her from the man with the gun. The dock creaked, and the wind stirred the dried palm fronds overhead.

They went down to the dead man at the end.

“Pick him up and put him in the boat,” the man said as he limped behind them.

Seabrook grabbed the dead man by the back of his jeans with one hand and around the throat with his forearm. The dead man was small, maybe 150 pounds. He picked the corpse up like it was nothing. The body still felt warm. A wet sound gurgled from the corpse’s mouth, and its arms dangled limply.

Sticky blood smeared Seabrook’s shirt and bathing suit. He was disgusted and swung around. “Where do you want it?”

“On the boat,” the Earless Man said. He pointed to the cigarette boat. “Carry him there . . . but have respect. He was somebody to me.”

The cigarette boat looked like an evil rocket: the nose pointed and the hull long and skinny. Its black color made it seem sinister, like a nautical casket, but the highlights and name were in orange: Allecto.

Seabrook clambered onboard and tried not to let the dangling arms drag. He stood on the deck of Allecto. “Where?”

“In the cabin. Put him on the towels on the floor. Don’t touch anything. Come up with your hands up, or I shoot her.”

The cabin was dark, and Seabrook had to crouch to get inside. He could barely see. He noticed a square pile in the room. As he stepped closer, he saw that it was large bricks of white powder, stacked eight high, on the floor in the middle of the cabin. It had to be cocaine. It was too dark to count them properly, but there were at least five stacks, left to right, with rows behind. He couldn’t tell for sure, because he had no experience with narcotics, but the pile was at least four rows deep, maybe more. If each brick was a kilo, there were a hundred and sixty kilos of cocaine minimum. If it was pure, it was probably worth many millions of dollars—more money than he would ever make in his lifetime. He put the corpse down on the towels in the middle of the floor, right in front of the pile of cocaine.

A cabin door across the room suddenly opened halfway.

A threatening presence.

Silent and still, a woman stared at him.

Sharp eyes that flickered. She was roughly the same height as Aja, but heavier and much older. She wore a necklace and, in the dark, it appeared there were seashells on it. Her head was backlit, so he couldn’t see her features clearly, but her face seemed swollen. Middle-aged, maybe much older.

“Salvatore?” She had a Hispanic accent. “Salvatore!” She spoke like she was used to giving orders.

Then her demeanor changed. Her face was in shadow, but she seemed to break into a smile. She did not seem at all troubled by the dead man on the floor or the load of cocaine.

Her eyes continued to flicker. They were somehow familiar and frightening.

She pushed the door open and lurched forward, shambling closer, coming for him.

Yes, she was definitely smiling. Her hands moved quickly and racked the slide of a handgun. She pointed the barrel at him, raising it towards his face, handling the gun like a pro. She didn’t seem afraid or nervous at all. Quite the opposite.

Seabrook quickly stepped clear of the gun. As he ran up the steps, he heard her coughing—then realized she was actually laughing. Her voice sounded a thousand years old.

He came up on deck with his hands up and looked to see if she had followed him.

She had not. He heard a door shut below.

The Earless Man had climbed aboard. He was getting ready to start the engine. He told Aja to cast off his lines, then barked at Seabrook to get off.

“Listen to what I say now. It’s very important. Do you understand?”

Seabrook stepped off the boat and stood between Aja and the man with the gun.

“Yes,” Aja said.

“You’re good people. Say nothing to nobody. I was never here. Okay?” He seemed to think for a second, breathing heavily. Then he added, “You don’t want my life to come into your life.”

“Okay,” Seabrook said. “We’ll say nothing.”

“You better not.” The Earless Man stared at Seabrook a long moment. Then his voice got quiet. “She doesn’t know where we are. If you talk about us, she will find out where we are and come back to kill you and everything you love.”

He started the cigarette boat. The twin engines roared like a dozen Hells Angels had just rolled up on Harley-Davidson motorcycles. Smoke filled the air.

Seabrook and Aja covered their ears and watched the drug runner take off down the channel toward Alice Town. The speedboat cut a wake that soon lapped at the beach along the lagoon. The vessel disappeared into the night.

They could hear Allecto’s twin engines long after she was gone from sight.

Then the sound faded away, leaving only the murmurings of the rising tide and the wind stirring the treetops.

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