Off the Chart. James Hall

he’d shied away from confessing it already was that he didn’t want to scare her off. It seemed so permanent, such a pivotal step. A room for Lawton. An unmistakable display of the growing bond he felt toward the old man and his beautiful daughter.

      At noon he’d finally finished the framing. To celebrate he decided to take Lawton on the skiff, go out past Crocodile Dragover to McCormick Creek, check some snook holes he knew. Do some damage to the fish population.

      So he showered, put on fresh shorts and a white T-shirt, and carried his spinning rods and tackle box down to the skiff. Out at the end of his dock, he heard the grinding roar, a noise he’d become all too familiar with lately. Two properties to the north a bulldozer was leveling the Island House. For fifty years the small motel with a half-dozen quaint bungalows had been at that location. He’d heard Doug and Debbie Johnson had sold out but assumed the new owner would keep it intact as all the previous owners had for half a century.

      Thorn stood at the end of his dock and watched the big machine uproot an old gumbo-limbo, then flatten a stand of wispy Australian pines, mowing down those shallow-rooted trees that took decades to reach those heights. That rocky shore and the rickety motel had been in his peripheral vision for so many hours and so many years that now, with the coastline so suddenly altered, he was feeling a whirl of vertigo.

      When the land clearing was done, Thorn’s neighborhood was probably going to be getting another of those ten-thousand-square-foot get-away-for-the-weekend mansions. A million-dollar party house owned by a Miami heart surgeon or a pitcher for the Florida Marlins – with a half-dozen Jet Skis and a flashy red speedboat at the dock. Progress.

      Back on the shoreline Lawton was standing in water to his ankles with fishing line tangled around both arms. In the stiff breeze, his casting practice had been going badly.

      In a couple of hours Alexandra would be home and they’d open a bottle of wine and hold hands while they watched the last trickle of the daylight drain from the sky. If she was in the mood, she’d tell him about one of her cases that day. Keeping it light but still managing to give him a glimpse of the brutalities that were commonplace in her daytime world. He’d recount his time with Lawton, things the old man had said or done. And she would listen without comment, her eyes on the distance. After these few months, their routine felt solid and reliable. Thorn, his lover, and his lover’s father, an odd little family but a family nonetheless. For someone who’d spent most of his life working hard to stay isolated, it was startling to discover how much satisfaction he found in the constant presence of that old man and his strong-willed, beautiful daughter.

      Thorn smiled at Lawton’s struggle with the fly line and headed over to give him a hand – glad to have some reason to pull away from the bulldozer’s dismal work. He was halfway down the dock when the car pulled off the Overseas Highway and began to inch down Thorn’s gravel drive. A dark blue Crown Victoria.

      The car parked in the shade near his house and the man who got out from behind the wheel was squat and square-faced, with a paunch stressing the buttons on his blue madras shirt. Despite his stumpy legs, the man advanced on Thorn with a cocky stride. His head was shaved and gleaming and his beard ran in a narrow, precise band along the outlines of his jaws and chin. He had on jeans and boat shoes, but both looked as if they’d been purchased an hour earlier and hadn’t yet been broken in. This seemed to be a man for whom casual dress did not come easy.

      ‘Thorn,’ he said as he came across the yard.

      Lawton was swiping at the wispy fishing line as if trying to pluck a spiderweb from his skin.

      ‘You okay, Lawton?’

      ‘Fine, fine,’ the old man said. ‘I’ve caught a monster this time. Me.’

      The stranger held out his hand, and after a moment’s reluctance Thorn shook it.

      ‘Do I know you?’

      ‘You should,’ the man said. ‘Mind if we stand in the shade?’

      Thorn followed the man over to the shadows of the tamarind tree.

      ‘Jimmy Lee Webster,’ the man said.

      ‘Listen,’ Thorn said. ‘I don’t mean to be impolite, but—’

      ‘Yeah, yeah,’ Webster said. ‘You’re busy tying flies, or whatever it is you do with your free time.’ He flashed Thorn a one-second smile, then said, ‘Which seems to be most of your day. And a lot of your night.’

      The man produced that miserable smile again, like something he’d acquired from a second-rate drama coach.

      ‘You might’ve seen me on TV,’ Webster said.

      ‘If I had one.’

      ‘Or in the newspaper.’

      Thorn shook his head.

      ‘Jimmy Lee Webster.’

      ‘I heard you the first time.’

      ‘Really? Not even the faint tinkle of a little bell?’

      ‘What’re you, a TV star?’

      ‘Secretary Webster.’

      ‘Oh, okay. You’re the guy that answers the phone, takes dictation.’

      ‘Yeah, I was warned,’ Webster said, ‘what a smart-ass you are.’

      ‘Fair enough,’ Thorn said. ‘But I still don’t know you, Webster.’

      ‘I was Secretary of the Navy, last administration.’

      Lawton had dropped down in the grass and was peeling the knotted strands of line off his legs and sandals. He noticed Thorn looking at him and showed him his palms. Didn’t need any help, doing just fine.

      ‘I know,’ Webster said. ‘Looking at me, it’s hard to believe. Don’t exactly have a military bearing. Not the tall, top-gun prototype. But fortunately, advancement in the armed services isn’t based on appearance.’

      ‘Well, congratulations,’ Thorn said. ‘Your parents must be very proud.’

      ‘Reason I was on TV is because I was controversial,’ Webster said. ‘I butted heads with the big boys, but I held my own. Damn well got some things accomplished in those four years.’

      A shift in the breeze sent Webster’s aftershave Thorn’s way. An abrasive blend of wood smoke and motor oil.

      ‘Look,’ Webster said. ‘You don’t know me, but I know a little about you. You’re a loner. You don’t like strangers wandering up to your house. Hey, who does? I can appreciate that. And the fact that I was Secretary of the Navy doesn’t cut any ice with you, okay, that’s fine, too.’

      Jimmy Lee Webster drew a white handkerchief from his jeans pocket and dabbed the sweat off his face, then did a quick swipe across his dome.

      ‘I don’t know how you folks put up with this heat.’

      ‘There’s not a lot to do about it.’

      ‘Okay, here it is,’ Webster said. He spread his legs apart and reset his feet as if he were about to snatch Thorn by the lapels and body-slam him. He produced his fake smile again and said, ‘My style is to go for the throat. That way we don’t waste any more of your valuable fly-tying time. So here’s what’s going on. Your name came up in an investigation I’m running. And I decided I should come have a chat.’

      ‘Whoa,’ Thorn said. ‘Stop right there.’

      ‘Look, I can explain the whole enchilada to you out here in the sun. Or we can go upstairs, have a beer, discuss it in detail in the air-conditioning.’

      ‘Only air-conditioning I have is what you feel right now.’

      Lawton had extricated himself from the fishing line, and it lay in a nasty tangle near the dock. He dusted off his hands as if he’d just knocked a bully flat, and marched over to join them in the shade of the tamarind.

      ‘Okay,