“Would you, Martin? I’d appreciate that. But … please … don’t tell him I called you. He’s never wanted me to meddle in his affairs.”

“I won’t. Don’t worry. Try to get some sleep.”

“Will he be all right in the chair?”

“Sure. Just take off his shoes and throw a blanket over him. He’ll be fine.”

Paul Loeffler stood behind the counter of his delicatessen and looked at his watch. “It’s quarter to nine,” he said to his wife, a plump, pretty woman named Rose, who was arranging boxes of butter in a refrigerator. “What do you say we cheat and close up fifteen minutes early?”

“After a day like today I agree,” said Rose. “Eighteen pounds of bologna! Since when have we ever moved eighteen pounds of bologna in one day?”

“And the Swiss cheese,” said Loeffler. “When did we ever run out of Swiss cheese before? A few more days like this I could use. Roast beef, liverwurst, everything. It’s like everybody from Brooklyn Heights to East Hampton stopped by for sandwiches.”

“Brooklyn Heights, my eye. Pennsylvania. One man said he had come all the way from Pennsylvania. Just to see a fish. They don’t have fish in Pennsylvania?”

“Who knows?” said Loeffler. “It’s getting to be like Coney Island.”

“The public beach must look like a dump.”

“It’s worth it. We deserve one or two good days.”

“I heard the beaches are closed again,” said Rose.

“Yeah. Like I always say, when it rains it pours.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I don’t know. Let’s close up.”

PART
THREE

11

The sea was as flat as gelatin. There was no whisper of wind to ripple the surface. The sun sucked shimmering waves of heat from the water. Now and then, a passing tern would plunge for food, and rise again, and the wavelets from its dive became circles that grew without cease.

The boat sat still in the water, drifting imperceptibly in the tide. Two fishing rods, in rod-holders at the stern, trailed wire line into the oily slick that spread westward behind the boat. Hooper sat at the stern, a twenty-gallon garbage pail at his side. Every few seconds, he dipped a ladle into the pail and spilled it overboard into the slick.

Forward, in two rows that peaked at the bow, lay ten wooden barrels the size of quarter kegs of beer. Each was wrapped in several thicknesses of three-quarter-inch hemp, which continued in a hundred-foot coil beside the barrel. Tied to the end of each rope was the steel head of a harpoon.

Brody sat in the swiveled fighting chair bolted to the deck, trying to stay awake. He was hot and sticky. There had been no breeze at all during the six hours they had been sitting and waiting. The back of his neck was already badly sunburned, and every time he moved his head the collar of his uniform shirt raked the tender skin. His body odor rose to his face and, blended with the stench of the fish guts and blood being ladled overboard, nauseated him. He felt poached.