Jacques Cousteau Was Here
*Trigger Warning: Scenes of horror and gore*
I just have to keep calm and hope all the casino smoke over the years hasn’t worn down my lung capacity.
Who’d have thought Slattery would pin me as the fall guy for his money laundering? Not me, and it’s my little mom n’ pop card room which served as one of his many fronts. I knew he was skimming the top. I figured his shakedowns were worth what I was pulling in from the nickel slots and the blackjack tables. It was only a matter of time before Kansas City discovered a leak and when they put the screws to Slattery to finger someone, he made me the patsy.
It irks me I didn’t see it coming. Otherwise, those middle-aged doughboys who sucker punched me at my place and pitched me over the side wouldn’t have stood a chance.
At least they were sloppy about it. This jury-rigged sinker of chains and cinder blocks is held together by one measly Schlage padlock. Thanks to my side hustle as a locksmith, I could pick the sucker in five seconds flat under normal circumstances. Beneath 100 feet of Tahoe blue, attached to a set of concrete weights, things are a lot harder.
The waters are so crystal-clear toward the surface, I easily see the speedboat roaring away. I’m lucky it’s darker down here. If they changed their minds and pulled out an automatic to finish the job in a more expedient fashion, I’d already be singing with the angels.
Not that it’ll matter much, unless I can slog across this sunken muck over to that nearby corpse in time. My ears and sinuses are already feeling the intense pressure. Most people would have passed out by now, but I’ve got my Seal training to fall back on, antiquated as it is. It’s freezing at this depth, which makes moving all the more difficult. I’m a big guy. I should be able to manage. If only I can hold my breath long enough.
The bone bag draped in weighted bonds is less than ten feet away. What’s most interesting about him isn’t his unexpected presence here, but rather the pocket protector in his breast pocket. It still has three ballpoint pens nestled inside it. If their cap clips haven’t rusted through, I might have a chance.
Dragging the blocks through the mud this far underwater is no picnic. I burn a precious thirty seconds making my way over to him. He’s a grisly, morbid sight. His mouth is open, a drowned scream frozen in this icy abyss. Worse, the fish have got to him, though not in totality. He’s still got plenty of meat, most of it drifting in pale, fleshy tatters and shreds. One eyeball has been eaten outright. The other floats aimlessly, now a misshapen blob of blanched, shriveled gristle, its puckered optic ligament trailing back into a dark socket. I fumble for his case of pens and my chains get tangled up in his swollen, macerated arms. It’s as if he’s reanimating, trying to plunder my dwindling oxygen reserves. I tear off the poor guy’s arms in frustration, one after the other. They float away in a viscous cloud of mangled, soggy tissue.
The first two pen clips are corroded junk. The third is stainless steel. What a break. I rip it from its plastic mooring and carefully manipulate it between my thumb and forefinger, bending my left hand backward ever so gently to the padlock at my wrists. Working up a Houdini style, water torture escape wasn’t on my itinerary when I woke up this morning, but this is for all the marbles. I don’t have the luxury of gimmick locks and cuffs.
My lungs are afire. My head pounds. Yet even with all the distraction and blurry, watery distortion, the Schlage is, well, easy pickings. It unlatches with ease. I take another ten seconds to wriggle out of my leaden shroud. Then I remove my waterlogged boots. I want to ascend immediately, so badly do I want fresh air, but I know I’ve got to take it slow unless I want brain damage.
I take a brief look at the lower depths off the shallower lake bed where my nerdy partner and I happened to fortuitously settle upon. What I see defies imagination. I think of the local urban myth of Jacques Cousteau coming to Lake Tahoe in the seventies to explore its unplumbed deeps. After taking a submersible around the bowels of the lake, he returned and supposedly said to waiting reporters, “The world’s not ready for what’s down there.” I was never convinced he actually visited Tahoe, but if he did and happened to come upon this section of Tahoe’s trenches, then his claim was well founded.
Dozens of bodies litter the submerged expanse. Many are skeletons, but just as many are perfectly preserved in Tahoe’s frigid water. I see several men in raggedy, sixties-era pinstripe suits, and others in threadbare, Tommy Bahama silk shirts. This watery mass grave is a decades-old mob dumping ground. As I cautiously crawl to the surface, I look back behind me once. Ghoulish, sodden faces glare up at me, incensed at my audacity, envious to the bitterly cold end.
My air is gone. My lungs are collapsing. My eyes are dimming.
I make one final effort, knowing my arms won’t pull me any further.
Then I burst topside at last to sunlight and salvation.
I gasp and wheeze and cough, grateful I’ve avoided hypoxic blackout after my extended submersion. I lazily paddle to shore, taking my time, conserving energy, and when I reach the nearest beach, I walk barefooted back to my place, about an hour away.
I towel off, put on a dry set of clothes, and retrieve a long, lumber axe in my garage. I grab my backpack of tools in case I need to break in. Then I drive to Slattery’s posh estate up in the hills. I cut the engine and coast to a quiet stop on the road leading to his driveway. I shoulder my pack and grab the axe from the back seat. A quick recon from the woods around his joint reveals only three lackeys present. One stands in his living room with Slattery, two more are sitting on the porch outside, the same stooges who knocked me out and tossed me overboard.
I creep up to the stoop and take the first man out, swinging the axe two-handed, neatly decapitating him. A geyser of blood spurts upward from his severed neck, splattering every which way. His head falls to the patio, making a thudding sound not unlike a dropped bowling ball. Before the next man can cry out, I spin around and cleave him top to groin, his two halves falling apart like sides of beef in a slaughterhouse. A shower of blood sprays over me.
I turn the front doorknob. It’s unlocked. I enter with abandon, uncaring. Slattery’s eyes widen in disbelief as I toss the axe at his flunkey, whose head caves like a squashed grapefruit as the thick, blunted end of the blade sinks into his face. He collapses to the floor like a sack of potatoes.
“Jesus Christ!” Slattery howls.
“He ain’t here,” I growl.
Slattery scuttles away. I follow him slowly, taking a moment to wrench the embedded axe from the goon’s head. I still taste lake water and rotted flesh in my mouth. I reach Slattery’s main suite. There’s another chamber beyond it, near his closet. It’s a panic room. He manages to shut the door before I can stop him. Naturally a guy like Slattery has a safe room. He’s that kind of scheming weasel. There’s a video feed aside the entry door. He’s already yelling into it, terrified. He beckons me to speak to him. I push the intercom button.
“Okay, I know you’re pissed! It’s business, that’s all! You understand, you’re an industry man, we all take a little bit for ourselves! Let’s work something out. We can forget this ever happened! You and me, we’ve been laundering dough a long time. I made a terrible choice! Let’s work up a new arrangement, heavy on your end!”
Slick in henchman blood, I smile wickedly at him.
“Pass. In the lake, it was already heavy on my end.”
I cut the intercom and study the entrance. I was afraid I might have to use my electronic decryption equipment in determining a keypad code sequence, but this bad boy is old school, perhaps constructed in the same era in which those doomed, pinstripe-suited devils went under the waves.
The hatch is a simple antique vault door, a quaint San Francisco Tea Company jobbie. It's probably worth decent money in its mint condition, but it won’t be valuable for much longer.
I dig in my pack for my drill bits and get to work.