Dead Wood - By Dani Amore Page 0,23

to ask you a few questions about Jesse Barre.”

He got to his feet smoothly, and I quickly saw that he was bigger than I’d imagined. At least 6’4”. His shoulders seemed bigger, too. Fuck, he was just plain big.

I pictured the man who had attacked me at Jesse Barre’s apartment. I suddenly had doubts that it could have been Nevada Hornsby. The guy in front of me was too damn big. If he’d wanted to saw my hand in two, he could have done it. Easily.

“Who you workin’ for?” he said. He still had the knife in one hand, the apple in the other.

I sort of scrolled through my typical responses, the ones I’ve spouted maybe a few hundred times in my career. That’s confidential. An interested party, etc. They suddenly seemed like they would sound hollow and flimsy in this man’s presence. So I went with the truth.

“Clarence Barre.”

His face registered nothing, but he did give a slight nod. He worked the knife through the apple and popped a chunk into his mouth.

“I’m leaving in thirty seconds,” he finally said. “You can talk to me when I get back.”

“How long are you staying out?”

“Eighteen hours.”

“Are you sure you don’t have a minute to talk?”

He shook his head no and stared at me.

“Randy called in sick,” he said. “More work for me and Rollie.”

“What if I came along?” I said. Thinking eighteen hours was a motherfuck of a long time, but if I had to do it, I would.

Hornsby nodded as if he’d known all along that was going to be my response. “If you stay, you work,” he said.

I didn’t like the sound of that. I had a feeling the lumber recovery profession was a pretty dangerous job, probably second only to road construction workers in Cairo.

Of course, Hornsby could stay out for a lot longer than eighteen hours; days, even weeks, or just motor up to some other harbor in some other town and I’d never see him again. Or at least, not for a long time.

“Ten seconds,” he said. He flipped a few switches and looked back at me.

“Aren’t we going to talk about my hourly rate?”

“Zero dollars an hour. Anything else?” He revved the engines for emphasis.

“Do you have a 401(k)?” I said.

His response this time was to jam the throttle down. I stumbled backwards, knocking his Styrofoam coffee cup off the low shelf next to the table.

“You better have workman’s comp!” I yelled over the screaming engines.

I struggled to my feet to say something to him, but he was gone. My eyes were drawn to a picture on the wall that he had been blocking.

It was old, and hung in a cheap frame, but there was no mistaking the woman caught on film.

It was Jesse Barre.

Fifteen

“There she is,” Hornsby said, his voice a dull growl, not quite as deep as the sound of the ship’s engines.

I looked out through the streaked windshield and saw the second ugliest water vessel known to man.

This beast looked like a giant concrete block with an angled front and square back. Its surface was virtually empty save for the roughly fifteen foot crane standing in the middle. It sat on top of the dark greenish brown water, rocking gently in the three foot waves, the sky a solid sheet of gray overhead. Not exactly a Norman Rockwell scene.

Looking back, I couldn’t see any signs of land. We were a long way out.

It had been nearly an hour since Hornsby’s sudden burst of acceleration had thrown me off my feet. He’d said little more than to tell me we were going out to a barge he used to retrieve sunken lumber. The rest of the ride he’d ignored my questions.

Now, Hornsby and his worker, Rollie, lashed the boat up against the barge. A few minutes later, Rollie emerged in a wet suit. I watched him spit out his giant ball of chewing tobacco. It landed in a little metal pail. He set it against the side of the cabin. Ooh, leftovers.

Rollie then went over the side into the water while Hornsby jumped between the two vessels and immediately began hauling a chain and rigging harness to the side of the barge. When Rollie reemerged from the water, Hornsby fed him the chain.

“Is there anything I can do to help?” I said. After all, he’d given me the big lecture about working.

“Yeah, keep out of the way,” Hornsby said.

Right. I could do that.

So I watched, waiting for the right moment to begin