The Killing League

59.

Family Man

The 44 foot Bertram cruiser named “Guilty Pleasures” rocked in its mooring as its owner, the Honorable Circuit Court Judge Arthur Lyons made his way from the flying bridge to the stern.

He wasn’t going out today, but the vessel was just what its name proclaimed — a pleasure. One that relaxed him between high-profile murder trials.

Hell, half the time he came down to the marina, he didn’t even take the big girl out. He just checked the battery systems, cleaned out the cabin even though it was already immaculate by anyone’s standards, and “changed the air” as he liked to tell Davone, his wife of nearly thirty years. She knew what he was doing, that he needed some time to himself, some time to decompress and put his mind at ease.

Judge Lyons worked for another hour straight through, vacuuming, wiping surfaces down, and bringing everything back up to full charge. He restocked the bar, too, with bottles brought from home. You never, ever wanted to run out of vermouth when you were hours from land and a martini was in high demand.

When he was done, he sat down in one of the stern chairs, and looked out over the marina. It was a nice marina, not too big, not too small. His boat was not the biggest, by far. He fell somewhere in the ‘high-middle’ as he liked to think of it. Even now, he looked out and spotted the dozen or so boats bigger than his and almost laughed at himself. So competitive. A marina was like a giant swordfight on water. Guys, and a few girls, swinging their dicks around by buying the biggest boat they could afford. He happened to know that the owner of the biggest boat at this marina was a dermatologist who invented some kind of skin cream that he’d sold to a big company for a few bazillion dollars.

He smiled at the contradiction. The swashbuckling yachtsman owing all of his success to a skin cream-

He felt the paralyzing tightness around his throat and his first thought was that the heart attack he had feared for so long and had worked so hard to prevent, had finally come.

But when he was pulled from his chair, felt the knee press into his back, he realized that someone had thrown a garrote around his throat and was choking him to death.

He put his hands beneath his chest, pushing upward, his face smashed against the deck of the boat. He tried to get up, but couldn’t. His mind was exploding with darkness, little flashes of light. A horrific pain shot down his arm and his chest seized. He put his hands to his throat, trying to work them under the metal wire cutting into his skin. His hands felt wet and he knew it was blood.

The popping light slowed down, like the end of a fireworks show until one last light winked out.

He felt everything go, his bowels, the air from his lungs, his life.

His last thought was of the mess he was making on his freshly cleaned deck.