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“No one knows,” Desmond said.
“It makes me feel sad,” Sean said.
“That’s because you’re a sensitive man,” Desmond said. “Come outside. I have some soft drinks in the cooler. I’d offer you more, but I guess y’all don’t drink alcohol on the job.”
“That’s us,” Sean said. “Damn shooting, it is.”
Desmond smiled with his eyes and slid open the glass door and stepped out onto the deck, into the wind and the warmth of the evening. A telescope was mounted on the deck rail. But that was not what caught my attention. A barefoot and virtually naked man, his genitals and buttocks roped with a knotted white towel, was performing a slow-motion martial arts exercise, silhouetted against the sunset, his slender physique sunbrowned and shiny with baby oil, his iron-gray hair combed back in a sweaty tangle.
“This is my good friend Antoine Butterworth,” Desmond said.
“Ciao,” Butterworth said. His eyes lingered on Sean.
“We can’t stay,” I said to Desmond. “We found a lime-green tennis shoe with blue stripes up the beach. Does that bring anyone to mind?”
“Afraid not,” Desmond said.
“Are we looking for a body, something of that sort?” Butterworth asked. The accent was faintly British, smelling of pretense and self-satisfaction.
“We’re not sure,” I said. “You know a woman who wears green tennis shoes?”
“Can’t say as I do.”
“Hear a woman scream early this morning?” I said.
“I wasn’t here early this morning, so I’m afraid I’m of no help,” Butterworth said.
“From the UK, are you?” I said.
“No,” he replied cutely, his mouth screwed into a button.
I waited. He didn’t continue, as though I had violated his privacy.
“You do mixed martial arts?” Sean asked.
“Oh, I do everything,” Butterworth replied.
“You an actor?” Sean said, not catching the coarse overtone.
“Nothing so grand,” Butterworth said.
Sean nodded in his innocent way.
I heard Desmond pop two soda cans. “Take a look through my telescope,” he said.
I leaned down and gazed through the eyepiece. The magnification was extraordinary. I could see Marsh Island in detail and the opening into Southwest Pass, which fed into the Gulf of Mexico. In the fall of 1942, from almost this same spot, I saw the red glow on the horizon of the oil tankers that had been torpedoed by German submarines. I also saw the bodies of the burned and drowned American seamen who had been dredged up in shrimp nets and dumped on the sand like giant carp.
“The sharks will be coming soon,” Desmond said.
“Sure about that?” I said.
“Big fellows. Hammerheads, maybe.”
I straightened up from the telescope. “They usually don’t come into the bay. It’s too shallow, and there’s not enough food.”
“You’re probably right,” he said.
That was Desmond, always the gentleman, never one to argue.
