A Darkness More Than Night

the bed he decided he should write a few notes about his thoughts on how Jaye Winston should run the play with Tafero. He reached down to the nightstand’s drawer, where he kept pens and scratch pads. When he opened it he found a folded newspaper crammed into the small drawer space. He pulled it out, unfolded it and found it was the previous week’s issue of New Times. The pages had been folded backward so that the rear advertising section was at the front. McCaleb was looking at a page full of matchbook-sized ads under a heading that said OUTCALL MASSAGE.
    McCaleb got up quickly and went to his windbreaker, which he had tossed onto a chair. He pulled the cell phone out of the pocket and went back to the bed with it. Though McCaleb had been carrying the phone with him in recent days, it usually stayed in its charger on the boat. It was paid for out of charter funds and was carried as a business expense. It was used by clients during charter trips and by Buddy Lockridge while confirming reservations and running credit card authorizations.
    The phone had a small digital screen with a menu he scrolled through. He opened the call log program and began scrolling through the last hundred numbers the phone had been used to call. Most of the numbers he quickly identified and eliminated. But every time he did not recognize a number he compared it to the phone numbers at the bottom of the ads on the massage page. The fourth unrecognized number he compared to the ads was a match. The number was for a woman who advertised herself as an “Exotic Japanese-Hawaiian Beauty” named Leilani. Her ad said she specialized in “full-service relaxation” and was not associated with any massage agency.
    McCaleb closed the phone and got off the bed again. He started pulling on a pair of sweatpants as he tried to recall exactly what had been said when he had accused Buddy Lockridge of leaking the case information to the New Times.
    By the time he was dressed, McCaleb realized he had never specifically accused Buddy of leaking information to the newspaper. He had only mentioned the New Times and Buddy had immediately begun to apologize. McCaleb now understood that Buddy’s apology and embarrassment could have been over his using The Following Sea the week before when it was in the marina as a rendezvous point with the full-service masseuse. It explained why he had asked if McCaleb was going to tell Graciela what he had done.
    McCaleb looked at his watch. It was ten after eleven. He grabbed the newspaper and went topside. He didn’t want to wait until the morning to confirm this. He guessed that Buddy had used The Following Sea to meet the woman because his own boat was so small and cramped and looked like a forbidding floating rat trap. There was no master cabin – just one open space that was as crowded with junk as the deck above. If Buddy had The Following Sea available to him, he would have used it.
    In the salon he didn’t bother turning on the lights. He leaned over the couch and looked out the window to the boat’s left. Buddy’s boat, the Double Down, was four slips away and he could see the cabin lights were still on. Buddy was still awake, unless he had passed out with the lights on.
    McCaleb went to the slider and was about to unlock it when he realized it was already open a half inch. He realized someone was on the boat, probably having entered while he had been in the shower and unable to hear the lock pop or feel the added weight on the boat. He quickly slid the door all the way open in an effort to escape. He was just stepping through when he was grabbed from behind. An arm came over his right shoulder and across the front of his neck. It bent at the elbow and his neck was shoved into the V it formed. His attacker’s other forearm closed the triangle behind his neck. The hold closed like a vise on both sides of his neck, compressing the carotid arteries that carried oxygenated blood to his brain. McCaleb had an almost clinical understanding of what was happening. He was caught in a textbook choke hold. He began to struggle. He brought his arms up and tried to dig his fingers under the forearm and biceps on either side of his neck but it was no use. He was already weakening.
    He was dragged back away from the door and into the darkness of the salon. He reached his left hand back to the point where his attacker’s right hand gripped his left forearm – the weak point of the triangle. But he had no leverage and was