The Devil Went Down to Austin (Tres Navarre #3)(20)

"As in Garrett Navarre of Techsan Software," Maia said. "That's right."

Maia had slipped into her professional tone, the one she used for reluctant witnesses—putting them at ease, reassuring them, letting them know she was a friend.

Her tone didn't seem to work too well on Dwight.

"Not again," he moaned. "You're here about—"

"About Jimmy Doebler's murder," Maia supplied. "Yes."

"Then Matthew did call you."

"No. I'm afraid Mr. Pena will need different representation this time. How's he been treating you, Dwight?"

Hayes looked miserable. He unzipped his wet suit to the waist, peeled his arms out of the sleeves. The warm neoprene let off its unmistakable smell.

If car tires had armpits, they would smell like that.

"I couldn't—" He faltered. He made a claw over his nose and mouth, pantomiming an oxygen mask. "I have no control down there. I panic. He asks me to clear my mask, twenty feet down, and the water rushes into my nose—I forget how to breathe."

I could tell Maia was fighting to keep the professional demeanour intact, trying not to betray her own phobia.

"It takes a few tries," she sympathized.

Hayes shook his head dejectedly. "You don't get it. This is the third time. He makes me keep trying—embarrassing myself in front of clients. Matthew enjoys seeing me panic.

He enjoys it."

"Sounds like the conversations we had in San Francisco, Dwight. Do you remember?"

He blushed. "Maia, I shouldn't even talk to you. I could get fired."

"Then maybe we should talk to Pena directly," I suggested.

Hayes gave me the apprehensive poodle eyes, then he pointed over the edge of the cliff, down toward the water. "Blue flag."

The lake was calm—no speedboats in the channel. A hundred feet out, buoys marked off the diving area. Bubbles of submerged divers made glassy scars on the water.

About twenty feet from the shore, three bubble marks were stationary, right next to a blue donutshaped marker.

"How long have they been down there?" I asked.

"Not long," Hayes said. "I panicked right away on this dive. They'll be down another forty minutes, at least."

"Tres ..." Maia started. Her fair warning tone.

"We're about the same size," I told Dwight. "Mind if I borrow your gear?"

"No, Tres," Maia said. "We can wait."

"I'll pay the rental for it. You'll recoup your losses. Think how glad Matthew will be to see me."

Dwight looked stunned. Then he surprised me, maybe surprised himself, with a faint, queasy smile. His eyes glimmered with a kind of mischief he probably didn't get to practice much. "I'm going to regret this. Take the stuff."

"You are not going into the water," Maia insisted.

I checked the pressure gauge on Dwight Hayes' tank, found that it was just below max at 3,000 psi. "You want to come, Maia? By all means. We're a team, right?"

Her face turned livid. "You haven't become less of a bastard the last two years, Tres Navarre."

She turned and stormed off, realized she was heading toward a deadend cliff, strode the other way, down the road.

It isn't often I get to discombobulate her so thoroughly. I had to smile.

"Oh, Christ," Dwight said. "I shouldn't have—"

"Don't worry," I told him. "She just hates it when I get to have all the fun."

Then I stripped to my Texasflag jockey shorts right there in front of God and everybody.

Five minutes and thirty pounds later, I was suited up. Dwight's buoyancy compensator—the inflatable vest divers call the BC—was a little tight on me, but everything else fit tolerably well. The lead weights on the belt thudded against my hipbone on the way down the ladder.

It was a relief to hit the water and go weightless, feel the coolness work its way under the wet suit. I floated away from the ladder, the BC inflated to keep me up, and struggled to get the fins on over the neoprene booties. The water smelled of soil and fish spawn and oily slicks of the baby shampoo divers use to defog their masks.

From the top of the cliff, Dwight Hayes watched me as I kicked toward the blue floating marker.

I put in the regulator mouthpiece, sucked in a first dry, cold breath, then raised the deflator hose of the BC and let out the air.

I had a moment of disorientation as the world flickered white, melted in a soup of green bubbles. Then I was underwater, sinking slowly.

Sound became a physical force—an insect doing circles around my head, making kamikaze runs into my ears. Every exhale set off a minor earthquake of bubbles. I heard pings and clicks and whines and had no idea where any of them were coming from.

I pinched the nose pocket of my mask to equalize pressure. I remembered to breathe, to swallow the powdery coldness of the regulator air out of my throat. The skills came back to me—but Dwight

Hayes was right. It was unsettling. My breakfast had been mercifully light, but even the yogurt and fruit was threatening to retreat up my throat.

I sank through green and yellow light, following the frayed nylon rope of the marker into the murk below. There was about five feet of visibility.

I saw bubble streams below me first, then the figures from which they came. Three streaks of oil resolved into human forms. A silver sheen became a floating underwater platform—a railed grid of metal maybe fifteen feet square. Two divers were on their knees on the platform, feeding hot dogs to a frenzy of Guadalupe river bass and catfish. The third diver was floating effortlessly above them, observing. The water around them was cloudy with fish poop, and pieces of hot dog that would soon be converted to fish poop.