Ocean Prey (A Prey Novel #31) - John Sandford Page 0,65

millions. It’s gone now, man. Long gone.”

“What’s a DPV?”

“Diver propulsion vehicle? Like a torpedo that you hold on to and steer?”

The chick said to the dude, “Whyn’t you get a ride on a boat, go look for it? If there are boats out looking for it, they’d take an extra diver if it don’t cost them anything. What’d they have to do, give you free air? We could use fifty K.”

“’Cause it’s not there,” the dude said. “That’s why. Because if you cut up fifty K ten ways, it’s five K for risking your neck, because that shit’ll be down deep. Then the IRS wants its taxes. And maybe the Mexicans would make an example out of you; I don’t need that kinda trouble.”

“I think it was Colombians,” Cattaneo said.

The dude shrugged. “Same thing.”

“If you say so,” Cattaneo said. “I don’t know anything about diving. You a pro?”

The dude shrugged again. “Yeah. I worked out in California for a few years. Cold water out there. Hot women, though. Thought I might find a spot down here.”

“He had to leave because he was screwing his Hollywood clients,” the woman said. “And I don’t mean out of money. He finally screwed the wrong housewife.”

Another shrug. Shrugging was apparently his lifestyle, Cattaneo decided, a guy who tended not to be concerned. The dude said, “It was sorta worth it.”

“Unless you need to go back to LA someday and you can’t,” the woman said.

Cattaneo smiled, showing yellowed fang teeth. “You piss off somebody?”

“A cop,” the blond said, head bobbing as he remembered. “He had like this primo old lady. Like a starlet.”

“A starlet whose time had expired. And not just a cop,” the woman said. “The head of LA vice.”

Cattaneo: “Whoops.”

“How was I supposed to know that?” the blond asked.

“He had to go back to Iowa,” the woman said to Cattaneo. Back to the dude: “That sure didn’t work out, huh?”

“You can always walk,” the blond told her.

“I would if I didn’t feel sorry for your hopeless ass,” the woman said. “I walk and you’re on the street. I wouldn’t forgive myself for . . . several hours.”

“Where you livin’ now?” Cattaneo asked.

“Got a place up in Hollywood,” the dude said.

“What are you doing way down here?”

“Seeing the sights,” the woman said, too quickly.

“Tell you what,” Cattaneo said. “Give me your name and address and phone number. I know a guy in the dive business, he might be able to throw something your way. He’s up in Broward, not too far from you.”

“Don’t have the gear anymore,” the dude said.

“Give the man your number,” the woman said. “We can figure out the equipment.”

Now the guy made an effort to look hard at Cattaneo, but it fizzled: “You the man? Because I had some trouble with the man.”

Cattaneo grinned and took a bite of his sandwich and chewed, while he looked from the blond to the woman and back to the poor henpecked sonofabitch. The woman leaned across the table to the blond, and said, heavy whiskey gravel in her voice, “In three weeks, we won’t have enough cash to fuckin’ eat. Give the man your fuckin’ phone number.”

* * *

The cantankerous pair finished before Cattaneo, and when they got up to leave, the woman leaned over the booth table to give him a shot right straight down to her belly button, and said, “Thank you very much, sir. If your friend needs somebody, Willy can work really hard. And we need the money.”

“See what I can do,” Cattaneo said, trying not to look sideways under the gap between her breasts and the jacket, and failing. “Maybe it’ll work out for everybody.”

* * *

He watched them out of the deli onto the sidewalk. The guy wanted to go south, but the woman wanted to go north. The blond finally gave in and trailed her along the sidewalk to the north and out of sight. Cattaneo went back to the remnants of his sandwich and thought about a slice of lemon cheesecake. He oughta watch his weight, but . . . cheesecake. It is, as a man once said, what it is.

And the diver . . . they badly needed a diver of the right type, and the dude had that look. Their previous diver had apparently been freaked out by the shooting on the Mako. They took their eyes off Jaquell for one minute and she disappeared into the Bahamas. Cattaneo and a couple of other guys went to look for her, but it was