Dead Silence df-16

by Randy Wayne White

  “This is a better way,” he called to me, speaking Spanish now as he returned his attention to Palmer. He released the drill’s trigger as he leaned over her but didn’t wait for the bit to stop before he touched its steel to the detective’s head.

  The woman’s scream extended into the gradual silence of the slowing drill. There was blood but just a trickle. Farfel had only pierced her skin.

  “A hole in the lady’s forehead,” he called to me. “Even a fish doctor knows the significance of the frontal lobe. Do what I tell you to do or I will begin my experiment. Later, I will make notes!” Because he was more articulate in Spanish, the man sounded even more desperate and insane.

  I did what I was told. I called Barbara Hayes-Sorrento. It was maddening how easy it was to convince her that I needed to see her. Barbara said she was in a van, driving from the airport to Siesta Key, only twenty miles north.

  I wanted her to be suspicious of my monotone sincerity, of my indifferent urging. She wasn’t, and I couldn’t risk making my lies more obvious.

  But, as I calmly gave her directions, she was curious about one oddity.

  “What’s that weird whining noise in the background?” she asked. “The phone I gave you is expensive. Did you get it wet or what?”

  33

  Maybe I’ve done it, Will Chaser thought. Some good luck, finally.

  He was hoping he had hammered his head against the coffin so hard, so relentlessly, that he was now unconscious and only dreaming. It struck him as a possibility because the water was up to his cheekbones now, but he no longer cared.

  Must be pouring down raining outside.

  No… He pictured Buffalo-head cracking the lid and remembered the winter-blue sky, the warm sunlight.

  Because he had overheard the Cubans talking, Will knew he was on an island, somewhere in Florida, so now he thought, Could be the ocean is leaking in.

  But that didn’t make sense either. He’d gotten a look at the hole dug by Buffalo-head. The hole was about four feet deep, with only a glaze of water at the bottom. Back home in Oklahoma, it took weeks of rain to raise the level of a lake.

  Unless… unless the leak has something to do with tides.

  All the boy knew about tides was that there were high tides and there were low tides. But it was his understanding that ocean tides changed only once a month, somehow related to the moon phase.

  Just my shitty luck, he thought. They bury me on the only day there’s a high tide.

  He lifted his mouth to the coffin lid and screamed, “Goddamn it!”

  Then he told himself, Relax, stay cool. Now it really can’t get any worse.

  That calmed him. His abrupt, overwhelming anger faded.

  Hours ago, the thought of suffocating had terrified Will. He had curled his body, positioning his mouth as close as he could to the PVC pipe that supposedly was providing him with air.

  Will had refused to allow his brain to explore how that would feel, running out of air. Gradually, though, he had given in to his fear, opening up his imagination to peek at the horror.

  Never again. Not after what he had experienced. The panic his imagination had created now frightened Will more than the reality of death.

  For the first time, Will had lost control. It had happened when Hump closed the lid for the second time and had filled the grave so solidly with dirt that the rhythmic whoosh of the man’s shovel became but a faint, distant whisper.

  The panic Will experienced had started at the base of his skull, then burned like a chemical moving through his veins. It had paralyzed his lungs until it was like those terrible nightmares where he wanted to scream, to shout out a warning, but he couldn’t.

  That had terrified him even more, so Will finally lost his grip on the careful emotional tethers he’d constructed. He had screamed and shrieked. He had gone so crazy with fear that he had broken his fingernails off, clawing at the lid, trying to get out. He had used his face to bang and hammer at the wood until he could taste the blood streaming down from his forehead.

  No… he didn’t want that feeling to return. Anything but that. It was better to drown calmly than to endure that horror again.

  Unconscious… he hoped he was.

  As the water rose around him, the boy settled comfortably. He imagined he was in a swimming pool, floating on his back. Bull Guttersen came into his mind, but there was no longer any comfort in the old man.

  Guttersen wasn’t his home, not really-probably never could be-because Otto Guttersen was who he was and Will was who he was, a nobody kid from the Rez who most likely would end up a sad, drunken Skin, just another roadside attraction playing dress-up for tourists, pretending to be an Indian warrior, something, Will was now convinced, that had never truly existed beyond the late-night cowboy fantasies of Hollywood.

  What was so bad about dying now? Dying in the dead, dead silence surrounding his own heartbeat and the privacy of his own Indian despair.

  Nothing. Not a damn thing wrong about it!

  Will chose to allow his mind to float, just as his body was now floating, which took some effort because the skull had wedged itself between his neck and the coffin’s air tube. The skull prodded at him as if demanding attention.

  After a while, though, Will’s imagination drifted free. Images of the Rez came into his brain, the scent of hay and lathered horses, the faces of girls and women he had lusted after, even though he had not experienced even a momentary sexual thought since the Cubans had kidnapped him. Had Will realized it, he would have been surprised, but he didn’t think of it.

  Fear was to blame for that, too.

  Every drifting image was familiar, rooted in some life experience, until Will’s consciousness slipped into what he knew must be a dream.

  He had never been in Florida yet he now envisioned the Everglades, which he had seen in National Geographic, but never, never anything like what flooded his brain now.

  Plains of gold came into his mind, dotted with mushroom domes of mist-blue, a sea of grass clear to the horizon that didn’t slow the wind. Wind spun designs in the grass, drifting streaks and swirls on fields as yellow as a pretty girl’s hair, then mussed and dust-deviled and spread its way toward cypress hammocks in the distance: domes of shade in so much sunlight that it hurt Will’s eyes.

  In the distance, Will imagined a man on horseback approaching. He hoped, as the rider neared, to discover it was himself aboard Blue Jacket. That would have been nice to feel, to see. But it was a man, a large man, a stranger, yet there was a familiar curvature to his jaw, the cheekbones, the black Seminole hair, tied back with a red wind band, that Will knew without thinking was not Seminole, because the man was not Seminole. He was a Skin, but from a tribe that was older than the Seminoles, or Cherokees, or Apaches. Much, much older.

  The name Chekika came into the boy’s mind.

  The horse was brown, at first, but faded to gray as it neared, paler than Cazzio, and it did not possess the expensive confirmation of Blue Jacket. Yet the horse had a sweet, quartering gait, bouncing along as if the earth were a trampoline yet smooth as a rocking chair, the way the large man sat the saddle.

  When the rider came to a fence-there had been no fence in the dream until now-the horse wanted to open the throttle, speed up and jump, which caused Will to smile, feeling Cazzio’s spirit alive again beneath him.

  For the first time, the man spoke, but to the horse, saying, “That ain’t no fake fence like the horse shows, Buster. You’re in the real world now.”

  The real world? Buster?

  An awful name for a horse, but Will accepted it because he now recognized the man, even though the two had never met, and Will had never seen a photograph. But Will’s mother had often spoken of the man-a huge, handsome Skin who the women loved.

  That sounds familiar.

  When a white bird descended and landed on the man’s shoulder, the man’s face zoomed closer, smiling at Will, allowing the bird to communicate a name.

  Egret. Joseph Egret.r />
  It was Will Chaser’s grandfather.

  The feeling that came into Will’s chest was so powerful that he chose to ignore the rising water that was now lifting him, floating him water light, pressuring his body upward against the coffin’s lid.

  Will chose to ignore it even when water began testing his lips and nose, finally leaking into his mouth when the boy could not hold his breath any longer.

  He gagged… tried to hold his breath again… then choked as he breathed water into his lungs. After a brief, panicked flurry, Will gave up, before returning his mind to the buoyant, ascending sensation in his chest.

  Will clung to that feeling, held peacefully to its warm power, as his lungs ceased struggling… as his heart slowed… the drumming heart muscles dimming, then losing their electric spark… yet Will felt easy, empty of fear, as a small, true voice within him whispered, You have endured enough…

  Will’s grandfather remained in focus behind the boy’s eyes, a man astride a good horse, a horse bred for business, the dissimilar images joining as a luminous, knowing energy that offered nothing-not pleasure, not even hope-but was real, as real as his grandfather’s fire-bright face, a face that became serious when Joseph extended his hand, inviting Will… somewhere.

  Somewhere, Will decided, was good enough.

  But as he reached to take the hand, Joseph was abruptly replaced by the fierce flat mask of a plains Indian, his body, wind-sculpted, sundried, with two cavernous, red-sparked skull eyes glowing with a scent that Will knew too well: rage.

  A mask-behind-the-mask appeared, an old male Skin who was thinking loud enough for Will to hear, even as the boy’s heart slowed, slowed, then ceased beating, in a silence that spoke: Come with me… Come with me now…

  In what Will did not believe were his final seconds, a windblown name formed. It vibrated drum notes through wood and earth, resonating long afterward in the living flesh of the boy, and the echo of a coffin that housed two skulls.

  Geronimo…

  34

  I was on the flybridge of the luxury yacht talking with Hump. I had just maneuvered him into sharing some surprising information when the lights of Barbara Hayes-Sorrento’s van swung through palm trees, then hunted for the turnoff to the dock.

  Hump was carrying a gun, which was unusual-Shelly Palmer’s gun. He touched the barrel to the back of my head and whispered, “The senator is here. Get down.”

  For the first time in many minutes, my attention shifted from what the rhino-sized Cuban was saying to what I was seeing.

  My hands were duct-taped behind me. Hump had looped a braided rope around my neck and knotted the end to the heavy aluminum sun canopy three feet overhead. Aside from concentrating on stretching the duct tape and working myself free, there wasn’t much else I could do but look and listen and follow Hump’s orders-for now anyway.

  I ducked below the flybridge fairing but could still watch the van as it parked and its doors opened. Barbara wasn’t alone as she had told me.

  On the passenger side was a man, a large man, shoulders twice as wide as his seat in the van. For a moment, I felt hopeful. But then I heard the hydraulic drone of a sidelift and knew it was a van for the handicapped, one of a special fleet maintained for tourists in wheelchairs.

  Because it had to be Otto Guttersen, I could guess what had happened.

  Barbara had met the man at Tampa International. Because it was the polite thing to do, she had probably invited him to ride with her. They had compromised by driving Guttersen’s rental van.

  “No problem,” she had answered over the phone when I had asked if she was alone. Only now did I realize it was a politician’s device. Again, she’d done the polite thing.

  And why not? I had already met Guttersen via telephone, so she’d meant it as a pleasant surprise.

  Now here she was, walking into a trap, accompanied by this fraud wrestler with his showtime name, Sheriff Bull-something. Will Chaser’s male guardian, newly arrived in Florida to find comfort in sunshine and being close to the U.S. intelligence group based at MacDill Air Force Base, Tampa.

  Damn it.

  I remembered Barbara telling me, “We’re flying the foster grandparents to Tampa. After what we’ve been through, it’ll be good for all of us.”

  Yes, that’s what had happened.

  I was thinking, Where’s the foster grandmother? Something about the flu? Wherever the woman was, I hoped she remained there. A volatile situation was now out of control. Farfel was desperate to get the senator on the boat, but Guttersen? The Cuban would view a cripple as a liability, as useless as empty baggage, and he would dispose of the man.

  Otto Guttersen was about to die.

  Up until that moment, I’d been mildly optimistic. Things had begun to go my way. It had required subtle countermoves and some risk to convince Farfel that if he killed Shelly Palmer, I wouldn’t help him.

  The man had agreed for a simple reason: He was afraid. The infamous interrogator, who specialized in using fear as a weapon, was now the hunted, not the hunter. He knew it and was tired of dealing with his mounting problems alone.

  So we had left Shelly Palmer, duct-taped and gagged, in one of the stalls. I hadn’t been able to say good-bye, but she and I had exchanged a look before Hump shoved me outside. I had attempted an apology by shaking my head, thin-lipped. Shelly stared back with a familiar quizzical sadness, asking once again Who are you?

  I hoped the woman was still alive an hour from now so I could answer at least part of that question. I was the man who planned to take Farfel and Hump safely into the Gulf of Mexico, then return without them.

  The odds had been shifting in my favor… until now.

  The Cubans had lost their edge. Another rough day for the kidnappers, I knew, because Hump had been telling me about it. We had been alone on the flybridge for about ten minutes before the van arrived, and I’d goaded and plucked information from him.

  Hump had run the ugly little cabin cruiser aground while attempting the channel between Tamarindo and the Gulf of Mexico. After Hump finally wrestled the boat free, Farfel took the wheel, then made the same amateur mistake minutes later, running the boat high and dry onto another oyster bar.

  Farfel had injured his back. His arms were a mess from the oysters. He had wrenched a knee trying to push the boat, and, as Hump had explained, the man wasn’t a hundred percent to begin with.

  “His hand was already bleeding,” Hump told me, and I felt a charge of admiration when he described the boy decoying Farfel close enough to bite him.

  Will Chaser: That’s who we had been discussing finally when the van appeared. It had required a different style of manipulation to convince Hump that he could trust me, that I really didn’t care if the boy lived or died, but that I was talkative just like him.

  There was something else he believed we had in common: I was afraid of Farfel. Which was true. Farfel was injured and in pain, so he was even more foul-tempered and more likely to use violence as an easy solution to minor irritants.

  “Don’t worry about me saying anything to Dr. Navarro,” I had reassured the huge man. “What we say here stays here. Maybe tomorrow when we’re in Havana we can go out and have a beer together. A man can’t have too many friends.”

  It was a less subtle lie. Truth was, I had come to despise Angel Yanquez almost as much as I despised Rene Navarro from the very beginning.

  Hump had enjoyed putting the rope leash around my neck, then leading me aboard the boat, pausing once to slap my face, then club me with the back of his hand. He claimed it was because I moved too slowly, but I knew the truth. Hump was enjoying this rare opportunity to act out as the alpha male.

  By the time we’d made it to the flybridge, my head was pounding, and my ribs ached because of the kicks he’d landed in the stable. Hump’s simpleton way of speaking, and the uneasy alliance I had forged with him to protect Shelly Palmer, made me impatient.

  I didn’t trust Farfel. He had returned to the stable alone as Hump l
ed me to the boat. He’d been gone for several minutes before returning to hide in a storage shed, anticipating the senator’s arrival. I hadn’t heard a gunshot, but that meant nothing due to the Cuban’s fondness for the drill.

  Had he used it on the detective?

  It made it tough to bide my time but I knew I had to wait. I had to wait until Farfel and Hump were together on the flybridge.

  It hadn’t happened yet-Farfel was shrewd that way. He had a jackal’s instincts when it came to self-preservation and a professional’s gift for tactical positioning.

  The man had always stayed just out of my reach, allowing Hump to do the dangerous work, and never getting close enough to his assistant to allow me a single, united target.

  But it would happen. Hopefully, my opportunity would come before we cast off, but even if Farfel didn’t join us until later I would continue waiting until we were together, then I would kill them both, at the very least leave them miles from shore.

  Farfel, with his jackal wariness, had ordered Hump to duct-tape my hands-a mistake. When I’d taped Nelson Myles’s hands, I had made sure his thumbs were exposed and that his fingers were not symmetrically interlaced. Myles hadn’t protested, and Hump didn’t care, because neither of them was aware of that basic escape-artist’s ploy.

  Hopefully, it was the last mistake the two Cubans would ever make.

  Since then, I had been steadily stretching the tape, working it off my hands so it now covered them like gloves. I had been polite and cooperative and acceptably submissive.

  I had remained submissive as I listened to Hump warn me, “You will learn to jump if I tell you. You have never dealt with a man such as me.”

  I had answered honestly, saying in Spanish, “You are very strong-stronger than me-you’ve proven that.”

  “Yes, it is true,” he had replied. “Many men have said so.”