Benchley, Peter by The Deep [txt]

aged muscle coursed along his arms and chest as visibly as a drawing in an anatomy text. His eyes were fixed in a permanent squint that had cut deep grooves in the dry brown skin on his cheeks and forehead. A shaggy mane of white hair hung down the back of his neck. He smiled at Treece, displaying abused gums spotted here and there with chipped and yellowed teeth. “It’s good to see you; been awhile.”
    “Aye, it has.” Treece enveloped Coffin’s bony fingers in his enormous fist and pumped once briskly up and down. “We stopped by to chat you up.” He introduced the Sanderses to Coffin.
    “Come in, then,” said Coffin, leading them into the dark house.
    The one-room house was divided by furniture into three sections. On the right there was a hammock, suspended catty-corner by two steel rings embedded in the stone wall. Behind a half-open curtain David saw a toilet and a sink. In the middle of the room was a single stuffed chair, facing a i95os-vintage television set. On the left were a sink, a hot plate, a refrigerator, a cabinet, and a card table, around which were two chairs and two stools.
    “Sit,” said Coffin. He opened the cabinet and waved at an array of bottles. “Have a charge? I’m on the tack myself. Old guts can’t take the fury of the juniper berries.”
    Confused, Sanders looked at Treece and saw that he was grinning at Coffin.
    “I’ll have a spot of rum,” Treece said. “How long’ve you been on the tack?”
    “A good while now,” Coffin said. “It’s not hard if you have a disciplined soul.” He looked at Sanders. “For you?”
    “A gin and tonic would be fine,” Sanders said.
    Gail nodded. “The same. Thank you.”
    “Comin’ up.” Coffin took four glasses from the cabinet, filled two of them with Bombay gin-no ice, no tonic-and passed them to David and Gail. The other two he filled with dark Barbados rum. He gave one to Treece, took a long swallow from the other, and sat down.
    “I thought you were on the tack,” Treece said.
    “I am. Haven’t had a drop of gin in months.
    Rum isn’t drinking; it’s survival. Without it, your blood doesn’t circulate proper. That’s a fact.”
    Sanders took a sip of the warm gin and suppressed a grimace as the harsh liquid burned his throat.
    “S. Tell an old man what brings you by.” Coffin smiled. “Or is this just your day to visit the elderly and infirm?”
    Treece reached in his pocket and, without a word, placed the two ampules on the table.
    Coffin did not touch them; he simply stared at them and
    said nothing. He looked up, first at Treece, then at the Sanderses. His face showed no emotion, but there was something different about his eyes, a shininess that Sanders could not diagnose-excitement, perhaps, or fear. Or both.
    Coffin jerked his head toward the Sanderses and said to Treece, “How much do they know?”
    “All still know. They found the pieces.” Then Treece told Coffin about Cloche’s proposal to the Sanderses.
    “Cheeky bastard,” Coffin said when Treece had finished. “He should have come to me with his million dollars. They’re mine.”
    “You’re supposed to be a fool, Adam. Keep it that way. It’s safer. Besides,
    Goliath
    isn’t registered to you any more. I checked.
    Now-truth. How many were there?”
    Coffin hesitated. “Truth is a pain in the ass,” he said, holding one of the ampules to the light. “I told the truth once, and damn near got killed for my trouble.”
    “Cloche may come and finish the job, Adam, if we don’t get the stuff up and out of there fast. How many were there?”
    Coffin finished his glass of rum, reached for the bottle, and refilled his glass. “They were in cigar boxes. Forty-eight to a box, separated by cardboard grids. The manifest said there were ten thousand boxes, and I believe it. I stacked every one of the bloody things by hand.”
    “Did the manifest say what was in the glass?”
    “No, but we knew. Morphine, mostly. Some raw opium, a bit of Adrenalin.