by Jack Lively
I tried combinations. Like, Jane Abrams Ultra High Net Worth Individual. Nothing came back. There was an entire world of people named Jane Abrams, but none of them were the woman I had spoken to at the airport.
On the other hand, George Abrams was real, according to the internet. I searched for George Abrams, Physics. Got back a half-dozen results. First up was his student profile at MIT. Abrams was a doctoral candidate. He had a PhD supervisor and was listed in a couple different research groups. His MIT profile had the same picture Jane Abrams had shown me.
Next up were the external engagements. George Abrams was listed as a speaker on the web pages of several academic conferences. All but one of them in the United States, the other in Estonia. He was a credited collaborator on two research papers. I was able to see the abstracts, not that I would have the patience to read the papers. To me they looked identical to the gobbledygook I had seen on his desk.
I eased back from the desk and stood. Sitting like that had made me get all hunched. I stretched and cracked my joints. The shoulders, the back, the knuckles. What I needed just then was a cup of strong black coffee. I emerged from the office and poked around. There was a common kitchen. On the counter sat a lonely looking coffee machine with a blinking green eye. Beside it was a bowl full of sealed capsules. Not a chance. Far as I’m concerned that stuff doesn’t count as coffee.
Out of the office, down the hall. I nodded to Dave and rapped my knuckles on his desk as I passed. He was buried in his book. Out again to the corridor, down past the North Pacific Travel Industry Risk Assessment office. They were opening now. As I came through the hallway, a trim guy in a shirt and tie was pulling up the shutters. Behind him, I glimpsed a reception area. Sofas, coffee table, brochures stacked up and fanned out for the taking.
In the center of the town hall green, a bearded skinny guy with large hoop earrings had parked his coffee cart. The guy made excellent coffee. Cost more than a couple of bucks but it hit the spot. I put a small one down right there and then, short and bitter. Then I asked him for another. There were no customers competing for his attention, so the guy got right to it. He pulled the levers, machinery hissing and puffing as the pressure valves adjusted. After a small eternity, the pungent brown liquid emerged from the chrome spouts, collected by a fresh little paper cup.
The cup was hot, precious and fragrant in my hand as I came back up to Ellie’s office. It was also precarious, filled to the brim and ready to spill right out. I carried the coffee carefully up the stairs, then down the corridor. I paused in front of the North Pacific Travel Industry Risk Assessment office. Someone had set out a brochure rack, right next to the door. The brochures were neatly stacked in purpose-built plastic cubbies. They stood upright, five or ten deep. Behind the cubbies, a sign read Emerald Allure: Legendary Memories. Behind the text was a photograph of the ocean, blue and green and perfect. Beyond that, a glacier and a white-capped mountain range. In the foreground, the white cruise ship. Like a floating mobile city, serene and geometrically refined. The photograph had been taken at a perfect three-quarter angle from high up, probably by a remotely controlled drone. The boat was supposed to look noble and refined.
I picked up a brochure and brought it into the Tribal Authority offices.
Ellie wasn’t back yet. I put my feet up on her desk and flipped through the brochure while I nursed the coffee. I looked at the pictures, which were plentiful. Photos of bears catching salmon in rushing, sweet water swells. Well dressed older people with white teeth photographing whales. Dolphins playfully leaping in the Emerald Allure’s wake. Fancy dimly lit restaurants with well dressed waiters. A roulette wheel surrounded by tuxedoed geriatrics holding fruity drinks with umbrellas and orange peels.
Then there were hero pictures of the Emerald Allure herself, overlaid with info-graphics, and data visualizations. The photos burst with statistics. The boat could house 3,329 passengers and 1,446 crew. It had seven restaurants and eight bars, including several karaoke salons. There were multiple spas, and various sporting facilities. A full-sized swimming pool, and five gyms. They had a helicopter landing pad just in case, which doubled as a dance floor when the weather was good.
Toward the back of the brochure was a two-page spread: Meet the Crew. A grid of photos with titles and names on the side. The captain came first. A grim-looking middle-aged woman, smiling desperately in an ill-fitting captain’s hat and jacket with gold braiding on her shoulders. Then there were the department heads and their deputies. All of the important positions plus their backup, like Head of Entertainment, and the Head Chef. The Head of Customer Satisfaction was further down, alongside the Head of Excursions and her deputy. Competent-looking people in early middle age with a slightly younger second in command.
At the bottom of the spread was a photo of Deckart. He looked different. As if someone had taken his picture, put it into a computer, and worked hard on it, trying to make him respectable, strong, and kindly at the same time. Tough job, but they had done good work. Deckart was smiling broadly. He looked tough and confident, wearing a white crew hat and a white crew uniform with some gold braiding laced into it.
The bio read: Deputy Head of Security, Walter M. Deckart.
By the time I finished the espresso, I had already decided that the Emerald Allure deserved a visit. It wasn’t far, and Ellie had not returned. Her police badge was gathering dust underneath her computer screen. I picked it up. Heavy and reassuring in the hand. Like a special object.
Twenty-Two
I came down the hill to the dock. The Emerald Allure was about a hundred yards away, towering over the adjacent buildings. The boat had two gangways. One closer to me, the other toward the stern. A fancy German mini-bus was parked up near the bow side gangway. It was the same one I had seen back at the airport. Green with the white logo that read, ‘Green Gremlin Tours’, with a smiling gremlin sitting on top of the word ‘Green’.
A special lift delivered two wheelchair-bound passengers from the bus to the pavement. As I came up to the ship, the hydraulic platform was returning from the road back up to the door. More wheelchairs on their way down. The first set of chairs was already being pushed up the gangway by attendants, past a white-uniformed security guy at a podium with a clipboard.
I walked straight up and showed Ellie’s badge. I had it clipped to my jeans, lifted my shirt just like I’d seen her do up at the fire tower. Flashing the badge gave me a little taste of cop power. The guard’s attitude flipped instantly when he saw it.
I said, “I need to talk to the head of security.”
“Give me a sec.” The guy spoke into a handheld radio. “Gretchen?” Gretchen was a crackle and a hiss. A human voice was hidden in there somewhere, riding the middle frequencies. I pictured Gretchen as a woman in a room surrounded by security camera monitors. On duty. Whatever she had said, the guy understood it. He said, “Need you to send someone down.” Gretchen hissed and crackled again. The guy said, “Okay thanks.” He turned back to me. “Someone will be down to get you in a minute.”
I pushed past him. “Thanks. I’ll meet them on the boat.”
The guy said something, which I didn’t catch, because I was already moving up the gangway. Which was a passenger tunnel, like those coming off an airplane. Airless, but thankfully short. The gangway thumped under my feet. I dodged one of the wheelchairs. It contained a man. At first glance, an old person. But closer in I saw that he wasn’t old so much as sickly, paper-white skin and sunglasses. He was breathing through a gummy mouth, making quite an effort. The windows were Perspex and badly scratched. I looked up and over at the breadth of the boat. Going to the window and peering down below I could make out the short stretch of blue water between the dock and the ship.
Then I stepped into an entrance area. Like a fancy hotel lobby, but on a boat.
One side was taken up by a concierge desk. The colors were muted beige. A reassuring tone the shade of coffee with too much milk in it. Recessed lighting was built into contoured wall panel
ing. There were four or five stations manned by slickly outfitted men and women, busy with problems. Pecking into computer screens and speaking softly into phones. The passengers milled around waiting, heavy with logistical annoyances and preference issues. Off that was a space designed to impress. A vast hall that rose up almost as high as the Emerald Allure herself. The centerpiece was a gigantic chandelier, which looked less like a chandelier as I knew it, more like a projectile vomit of mirrored squares.
I pushed through and entered what looked like the sports area. There were two tennis courts on my left, and an indoor swimming pool on my right. The pool was generous. The windows were steamed up some, so I didn’t have a clear view. But I could make out figures cavorting in the turquoise waters. And it didn’t look like they were elderly people, or middle-aged mothers of adolescent children. Looked more like a half-dozen swimsuit models taking turns doing flips off the diving board.
The ceiling of the pool area was all glass panels. Sun loungers were lined up either side of the blue rectangle. At the back was a smoothie juice bar that took up the width of the space. A pale blonde woman stepped up and executed a perfect back double twist. Through the steamed glass she was a dead ringer for Amber Chapman. Tall, and slim, a body that I recognized. I froze at the window. The figure emerged from the water like someone born to it. The woman did five strokes freestyle, then smoothly bobbed under again.
There was no entrance door from the corridor where I stood, just the wall of foggy windows looking in. The entrance was on the other side. I kept my eye on the blonde as I walked around, trying to find a way in. She came out of the water, lifting smoothly off the tiles with toned arms. Definitely moved like Chapman. I came around as she was drying herself off, chatting with a slim dark-haired woman. The other three or four were gathering close, wrapping towels around themselves. I saw the entrance, tucked behind the bar at the far end. I would have to go all the way around.
There was no direct route into the swimming pool.
First there was a concierge to bypass. I flashed Ellie’s badge and he let me through. Next I had to negotiate a maze of dressing rooms and foot-rinsing basins and body-rinsing showers. They wanted me to take my boots off. By the time I found the way into the pool, I was holding my boots and my socks in one hand and there were no more cavorting swimsuit models. Only a clutch of silver-haired and bald men belly-deep in the shallow end.
The entrance to the women’s showers and changing room was through a tropical forest of potted palms. I put my shoes on and started moving through the fronds, when a hand gripped my elbow. I turned to face a small woman, maybe thirty years old. Maybe Filipina. She was in uniform with a badge. She said, “The arboretum on board contains half a football field of tropical plants and trees. It’s called Paradise Valley and people find it very romantic.”
The badge at her breast read, ‘Hospitality Princess.’
I said, “I saw someone I knew, she went through there.”
“I’m afraid that is the women’s changing rooms and showers, sir, men are not allowed. You are the policeman?” I grunted, affirmative. She said, “Would you like to come with me, sir?”
The Hospitality Princess walked me back to the big area with the chandelier, and over to a bank of glass elevators. She pressed the button and stood patiently. Her hair was shiny, black, and straight, sculpted into a wave over her head. I said, “Where are we going?”
She glanced at me politely, eyes diverted to my chin. “I’m taking you down to the hospitality offices sir.”
“I want to speak to the head of security.”
“I’m afraid the chief officers have not yet boarded, sir. We pick them up in Juneau, the day after tomorrow, with the main body of passengers. You know that Juneau is the capital of Alaska, sir.”
“You’re running the boat without officers?”
She chuckled. “Of course not. We have approximately 1,300 personnel on board. A quarter of those are officers. Believe me, sir, there is plenty of expertise aboard the Emerald Allure.” Then she whispered conspiratorially. “We could actually do just fine without the chief officers, but people like to see them. The boats are mostly computerized these days.”
I said, “The deputy chief will do just fine.”
She hesitated for a moment, looking at my shoes. Then she said, “I will see if he is available.” The elevator was descending from up high. A glass-sided barrel with gold trim. “We will take the elevator in any case.”
The doors opened and we stepped aside to make room for an elderly couple. The guy was pushing a walking frame. His wife shifted patiently behind him. He looked pissed off. Once we got into the elevator and were moving, I turned back to the woman. “So what’s the point of the stop at Port Morris?”
She said, “It’s our home port. Some customers choose to board here. About a quarter of our guests. Port Morris is a popular destination for viewing the salmon creeks. We run excursions to see the humpback whales on the other side of Carolina Island.”
I said, “What’s special about the Emerald Allure?”
She smiled. “Where do I start? We have 3,000 miles of electrical cable. A 100 megawatt electrical grid, which is enough power for 100,000 homes. We consume around a million gallons of fresh water per day. We make most of that water ourselves, with both evaporators and reverse osmosis production. We have the largest hospital facilities of any cruise ship on the seven seas.”
“A lot of people get sick out here.”
“Guests find our hospital facilities reassuring. A sign of the times. We had the clinical deck refurbished last year.” She whispered. “It is possible that we will begin to offer elective procedures onboard, perhaps in a year or two.”
“Plastic surgery.”
“For example. But don’t limit your imagination, sir. We deal in dreams.”
The elevator stopped softly, no lurch. Only a purr from the brakes. The Hospitality Princess led me off the elevator and down an empty corridor. This time the interior cladding was oak or teak, lined with maritime brass trimmings. At the end of it was another lobby. The whole ship was some kind of a lobby. She indicated a sofa. “If you will just wait here for a moment, sir.”
I sat and waited. She disappeared into the offices beyond. The sofa was comfortable, fresh, maybe new. It felt good sitting there. Alongside me was another collection of potted palms, in varying heights and widths. A couple of minutes later the woman came back out. Behind the smiling Hospitality Princess was Walter M. Deckart, dressed in white with gold braiding at his shoulders. He looked uneasy. Smiling for the woman.
Deckart said, “I’ll take it from here, Emma. Thanks.”
Emma nodded curtly and grinned at me once more. “Thank you, sir. It was a pleasure speaking with you.”
Then she was gone and Deckart looked at me. He put a hand up to his mouth and coughed. Then he grumbled under his breath. “Where’d you steal the badge?”
Twenty-Three
I said nothing. We stood together on the soft carpet. The waiting area surrounding us like a soft shell.
Deckart said, “You lied to me. About working for Mister Lawrence.”
“I never said anything. It’s what you wanted to believe is all. Psychologists call that confirmation bias.”
He blinked slowly and passed fingers over his mustache. “Yeah. I wouldn’t know about any of that bullshit. Tell you what I do know, you got a beating coming for what happened yesterday. I was you, I’d leave town.”
I stepped into his personal space. I could see him resisting the urge to step back. I said, “Take me into your office, or whatever you’ve got. Or I could slap you around out here if you’d like that better.”
Deckart stood for a moment, weighing up his options. He turned and started walking back. I followed. We didn’t speak. I watched him walk. Deckart was a muscular man, stepping his bow legs wide to compensate for exaggerated quadriceps. Large airy offices were distributed either side of the corridor. Left side offices featured port holes punched
into the walls, letting in soft ocean light. The right side offices had walls and extra lighting built into recessed grooves at the ceiling. Deckart entered a room on the left. He had a big mahogany desk with flat screens lined up in a row on one side. He pointed to a chair. “Sit.”
I sank into the chair, which looked and felt expensive. The handcuffs I had taken from the Port Morris Correctional Facility were hard steel rings bulging in my front pocket. Deckart pointed at the ceiling. The opaque dome of a surveillance camera was fixed in a corner. He said, “Twelve hundred plus cameras on this ship. You ever act in something, like a school play?”
“I don’t remember school. I’m not sure that I attended.”
“Me either, to tell the truth. But I learned to act after school. I’m acting now, and so are you. Everything that happens on this boat is for the cameras. Thousands of actors on board.”
“Audio?”
“No. But they’d be able to lip read if it ever got to that point.”
“I see you’ve put some thought into this.”
“Sure. It’s my job.”
“Where does the video feed to?”
He patted one of the screens lined up on the side of his desk. “Right here, buddy. Right in my office.”
I said, “Those people you were following and intimidating. They got killed.”
Deckart leaned back in his executive chair, spread his fingers and interlocked them behind his head. He leveled his eyes at me. “So that’s who you’re working for, those losers. No disrespect to the dead intended. They sure hired the wrong protection.” He shook his head. “First off, I twisted the guy’s goddamned finger after he came at me, not before. And that is it. I heard there was a murder at Beaver Falls, and I figured it was them, cause how many other people get killed out at Beaver Falls? But I had nothing to do with that.”
