Salvage by Stephen Maher Page A

and watched her through a porthole as she marched toward the boat, with her purse over her shoulder and a bottle of vodka in her hand.
    She stood on the dock in her miniskirt and banged the bottle against the deck of his boat.
    â€œPhillip, you cocksucker,” she said. “I want some fucking answers. Come out here, you bastard. I want some fucking answers.”
    He opened the hatch into the cockpit and called out to her in a whisper. “Angela, shh,” he said. “You’ll wake Annabelle.”
    It took her a minute to spy him in the darkness under the boom.
    She staggered back and fixed him with her bleary eyes and burst into tears. “Oh, Phillip, they killed Jimmy,” she said. “And you’re mixed up in it. Tell me you didn’t kill him.”
    Scarnum stepped onto the dock, took her in his arms, and told her that of course he had nothing to do with it. He brought her into the cabin and sat her down and got her a bottle of water, which she ignored. She took a drink of vodka from the bottle.
    Scarnum went into the forward cabin and pulled on a T-shirt and jeans.
    When he came back, Angela was leaning forward, shaking her head from side to side vigorously, and crying. “They killed him. They killed him.”
    Scarnum sat next to her and put his arm around her. Very slowly, repeating himself often, he told her how he had come across the boat on the rocks. He told her he didn’t know that Jimmy was on the boat until the cops told him he’d been killed. He told her the police had arrested him, thinking he had some cocaine, but that it was really baking soda in a pillbox.
    She pushed him away when he was finished and held him at arm’s length.
    â€œTell me honestly,” she said, and suddenly she seemed almost sober. “You didn’t have anything to do with killing him. You’re not mixed up with those Mexicans.”
    He looked straight back at her. “Honestly,” he said, letting her look into his eyes, “on the soul of my dead mother, I had nothing to do with killing him. I have nothing to do with any Mexicans.”
    She didn’t let go. “And you didn’t kill him so that you could be with me,” she said. “Tell me that. You didn’t kill him so you could have me.”
    â€œAngela,” he said. “No. No. No. You know me. I don’t want a woman, not even you. If I’d a wanted to take you away from him, the first thing I’d a done is asked you.”
    She hugged him then and held him tight for a long time, crying. He stroked her tangled brown hair and told her she’d be all right.
    When she finished crying, she reached for her purse and pulled out a little Baggie full of cocaine.
    Scarnum watched her load up a finger full and snort it.
    Her eyes suddenly got wide and she looked at him as if for the first time that night. “Phillip,” she said. “I need you to fuck me now.”
    Before he could say anything she was taking off her top, then her skirt, so that she stood in front of him in her black bra and panties.
    He stuttered and tried to tell her she was too drunk.
    â€œShut the fuck up,” she said and pulled off her bra. “I don’t want your fucking opinion. I want your cock,” and she grabbed him through his jeans.
    She picked up the cocaine and poured a pinch on her left nipple. She stood, careful not to spill, and put it under his nose.
    Scarnum snorted it, and when he was finished he sucked on her nipple. The coke made his head sing, and he felt the blood in his eyes throbbing in time with his heart. She pulled his head up and kissed him, and she took off his shirt. He snorted coke off her other nipple, then she undressed him, and did a line off his hard penis. Then she sucked it.
    She closed her eyes while he moved in her — stretched back naked below him on the settee, with her legs spread wide, her knees pulled up to her chest, and her arm covering her face. It