“How much?” Tank asked.
And there was that same grin they’d seen before. “Part of the deal.”
The ship did have leg irons bolted to the mainmast where the recalcitrant could be bound in the sight of all, but a man so shackled would be unfit for swabbing the deck and so, free of chains and mop in hand, I labored under watchful eyes. Rock, perched on the forecastle and holding a crude leather flail, supervised. Norwig the Bean hauled up buckets of seawater to rinse.
“Move along, old man!” Rock hollered. “And work as fit as the young or feel the lash!”
I worked with “youthful” vigor while Norwig kept the deck awash before my mop. We were getting results—until the little raisin Spikenose came up from the galley with a pail of kitchen waste and faked a stumble, spilling the sour contents where I had just cleaned.
“Oops,” he said, then turned and left.
“Ya scum!” Rock hollered at me. “Is that what you call a clean deck?” He hopped down, scooped up a sizable handful of fats and fruit peelings, and hurled them at me. I could have ducked, I suppose, but that wasn’t the object, was it? They were out to humiliate me, and I thought it best to let them.
“What’s that slop on the front of you?” asked Norwig as he promptly doused me with a bucket of seawater.
They laughed. Of course.
Temper, McKinney, I thought as I felt my face burn. Master your temper!
“Behold the man of great words!” Rock shouted, then looked at me with disdain. “But you can’t talk the dirt off this deck, now can you? On this ship it’s not words but work, and a man holds his own if he’s a man.”
“Aye, sir!” I replied, and with a bit of show I mopped the foul residue from the deck as Norwig splashed it along the bulwark and over the side.
Rock nodded, the mollified taskmaster. “So what were you back home, old man?”
He asked me in past tense, and so I answered from the past. “A priest.”
His eyes grew wide—mockingly.
Before I saw it coming, a blow from his flail landed on the side of my face. I don’t remember hitting the deck I’d just cleaned; I was too stunned to feel it.
I do remember him standing over me, flail in hand, delighted at the wretch he’d made of me. “So let’s see you turn the other cheek!”
I was fearful for Andi, as she was for me, but we’d set our strategy with eye contact, expressions, planted phrases: we must cooperate, try to please, get things “human,” and hopefully draw any information we could from our captors.
So, while I was up on deck getting humiliated and clobbered, she was in the cabin she’d seen earlier, desperate to recall anything the captain might find useful, trying to be of value. He was, after all, alone with her down there, and as he’d said, there was no truth or shame, no God aboard this ship to draw the line.
“This is Ben’s cabin, isn’t it?” she asked.
“That it is,” said the captain. “Or, was.”
She nodded. “My—his things are gone. He used to have a big case right there in that corner with all his documentation.”
He placed his hand under her chin and turned her face toward him. “Ben. What were your plans?”
“By the powers, Cap—” She shook away the lingo that kept cropping up in her head and spoke for herself. “I, he, had to get off this ship. He had to get free and on his own before anything happened.”
“What . . . anything?”
The words—and the terror—popped into her mind. “Ere we all get killed, and it be no wives’ tale. As sure as I know m’name, they’ll cut us and gut us and call it a pleasure!”
CHAPTER
10
Two Dead Men
Dr. Eli Torres was a general practitioner on St. Clemens, but it was his side job as St. Clemens’ medical examiner that brought a powerful athlete, an urban female, and a ten-year-old child to the waiting room of his small practice. “A . . . drowning victim?”
“That’s right, sir,” said Tank. “We went by the pirate show, but they’re closed because a member of the cast died in a drowning accident. We figured you’d know something about that.”
Dr. Torres eyed the motley trio on the other side of the counter and wagged his head. “I really can’t talk about it.”
“Well,” said Brenda, “could you just answer us this: Did the victim have a goatee and a curly mustache? Was his left earlobe torn from an earring being torn out? Was he missing the third finger of his right hand, and was he beat up before he drowned?”
With a furtive look around the waiting room—it was empty at the moment so no one else saw them—Dr. Torres asked his receptionist, “What’s our next appointment?”
She checked. “Well, it’s—”
“Cancel it.”
The doctor swung the clinic door open and urged them through. He led them into his office and closed the door. “Now. Start from the beginning.”
“Pirates!” said Daniel, still wearing the pirate hat.
Dr. Torres looked at Brenda and Tank for confirmation.
Tank just said it. “Our two friends were kidnapped on St. Jacob, and we think it was by pirates, and so . . . we’re looking for pirates.”
Brenda jumped in. “Especially the one I described to you . . . I think.” She was exasperated. “This is going to take a lot of explaining—”
Torres raised a hand. “Have you been to the police?”
“Yeah,” said Tank. “On St. Jacob.”
“And here, too,” said Brenda.
Torres smiled. “And that’s why you’ve come to me on your own.”
“The cops are kinda slow,” Tank admitted.
“We were hoping they’d jump all over this,” said Brenda.
“No, this they’re not jumping on,” said Torres. “I suppose they told you one was an accident and the other was a suicide?”
“No,” said Brenda. “They didn’t tell us much of anything, they just—uh . . . what? The other?”
“Two drownings, back to back. I’ve got them both in the cooler right now, in there with some frozen fruit and a marlin. The first one’s the victim you described. The other one’s a shopkeeper who drowned soon after.”
“A shopkeeper?” said Tank. “You mean, a guy who runs a little tourist store?”
“Like along the waterfront near the cruise ships?” Brenda asked.
“Like the Catch as Catch Can Emporium?” Torres filled in. Their wide-eyed reaction must have confirmed something for him. “So you know something about that, too.” He took a moment, leaning back in his chair. “All right. Time out. Take a breath.”
They took a breath. Several deep breaths.
Dr. Torres lowered his voice. “I like living here. I like my job. I like getting up in the morning knowing I’ll live through the day and my family will be safe. If . . . some family members . . . want to help identify the victims, that’s fine, that’s part of my job, but whatever it is you know, and whatever you figure out from this moment onward, it’s your business, not mine, and I don’t know anything about it. You never came to see me and after today, I never want to see you again, and I sure don’t want to be seen with you anywhere, any time. Are we clear on that?”
They nodded.
He sighed. “Maybe this will buy me a little favor with God.” He went to the door. “I have them in the freezer in the back. The police didn’t want them in the morgue; there’d be too many questions.”
Brenda had Daniel sit in the waiting room with a child’s book of animal adventures. She wasn’t sure she’d be able to handle this herself.
When Dr. Torres rolled out the first victim and lifted away the sheet, she actually let out a cry, her hand over her mouth.
Tank said nothing. He just turned white and grabbed the edge of the table to steady himself.
“Ben Cardiff,” said Dr. Torres. “He was a character in the pirate show. His captain came in and identified him the day after he drowned.”
The dead man’s face and bod
y were pale and waxy-looking. The eyelids were only half closed, the eyeballs beneath dead and dry.
He had a tight little goatee and a mustache with curls on the end. His right earlobe was torn as if someone had yanked off an earring. The third finger of his right hand was missing.
“So . . .” Tank asked, voice weak. “How did he die really?”
“Really?” said Dr. Torres. “By drowning, yes, but as you can see from the bruises and cuts, he was severely beaten first. Beaten, then he either fell or was thrown off a pier. It was no accident—but I didn’t tell you that.”
Brenda drew near Tank because she just needed to. She didn’t have to say anything; she knew he was having the same dreadful experience of seeing a face Andi had mimicked yesterday at breakfast. “And when did he drown?”
“Last Sunday night. And . . .” The second body was standing, wrapped like a mummy next to the marlin. Dr. Torres wheeled it out with a hand truck and uncovered the face. “Neville Moore, proprietor of the Catch as Catch Can Emporium.”
Brenda and Tank cringed. Being drowned, left in the water a while, and then frozen had degraded Moore’s appearance from the cheerful fellow they’d met on Sunday morning, right before they left St. Clemens for St. Jacob. Nevertheless, they could identify him.
“Yeah,” said Tank. “We were in his store Sunday morning. He sold Andi that—”
“I don’t want to know,” said Torres. “I’m only letting you know.”
“When did he die?” Brenda asked.
“Monday morning. The police told me it was a suicide—which is my job to determine, but they let me know what my findings were to be.” He put Moore’s body back in the cooler, then Ben Cardiff’s. “You’ll be interested to know that Neville Moore was stabbed through the heart with surgical precision and already dead before he was thrown in the water. Which, I hope, gives you fair warning that you do not have friends here on St. Clemens. Some other parties with tremendous influence got here first.” He met their eyes. “You follow?”
CHAPTER
11
The Rule of Force
Having swabbed the whole deck from stem to stern, my next assignment was as kitchen boy under the authority of Spikenose. Though I expected far worse, the galley was clean, modern, well appointed, and Spikenose, when separate from the others, was easy enough to work with.
“The captain wants his afternoon tea,” he said, setting out a tray with a silver tea service, quite nice for a pirate ship. I noticed it was tea for two. “Take this up to him. One quiet knock on the door, then enter, set the tray on the map table, cream and sugar on the captain’s right.”
I took hold of the tray handles, but having noticed the modern timbre of his speech, queried him with my eyes.
He caught my look, and as he dried a pan with a towel, replied in Pirate, “Aye, it’s who’s where on the ratlines, and Cap, he’s the one at the top. I be the one slung near the bottom, and you, you’re a barnacle on the keel.” He smiled as if sharing a secret and spoke like a man from my century, “Sorry about the mess up there. Orders from Rock. It’s how we test a man, how he finds his place. Keep it in mind, and be ready. There’s no virtue on this ship, only muscle.” He pointed to the tray. “Now away with ya, lad, or I’ll add your nose to m’puddin’!”
I knocked once, quietly, then stole into the Captain’s Quarters. Andi was there, seated across the table from the captain. Their conversation ceased abruptly upon my entrance. Thatch glowered at me. I delivered the tray according to Spikenose’s instructions, noting in the process the cabinet from which Rock had produced the three-cornered hat the captain had made Andi wear. The cabinet door was open, and visible on shelves and hooks was a large and varied collection of hats, scarves, and earrings. Pirate accessories, one would think, but by now I knew they were more than that.
A theory confirmed, I believe, as the captain picked up his conversation with Andi, perhaps in defiance of my being there. “Ben, did you know you’re dead?”
Andi was perplexed, being very much alive.
The captain poured her a cup of tea, but his tone was not cordial. “I saw you stiff and cold, you know. Went to the doc’s office and there you were, like a side of meat. And someone tore the earring right out of your ear.” He set the cup of tea before her and glowered at me again, my cue to back away respectfully and get out. “You remember that earring, don’t you?”
Her hand went to her mouth. Something was coming back.
Thatch leaned over the table. “That earring belonged to me!”
Even as I was backing through the door, the memory struck her violently. She put her hand over her ear and let out a yelp of pain and terror.
“An earring?” the young shop assistant at Catch as Catch Can Emporium asked Tank and Brenda through the barely cracked front door.
“Yeah,” said Tank. He indicated about a three-inch diameter with his thumb and index. “About that big around.”
“You remember us?” asked Brenda. “We were in here Sunday morning. There was a red-haired girl with us and a stodgy old man, remember them?”
“Uh, well, sure, I guess,” the girl said.
“And Andi—that’s the red-haired girl—bought the earring, remember?” asked Tank.
“No. No, I’m sorry, I don’t remember anything about that. Look, we’re closed.”
Brenda shot a glance at the store hours: nine to nine. It was five twenty. “Very sorry for your loss, of course.”
“You have to leave.”
“Well, may we leave you a phone number?” Brenda dug in her pocket for a scrap of paper and scribbled down her cell number and Tank’s. She passed it through the narrow opening. “Excuse the doodles on the back. But these are our numbers if you want to talk at all.”
The girl took the crinkled paper. “Okay.”
“Let’s eat,” said Daniel.
Brenda asked casually, “Know of a good place to eat around here?”
“The Conch,” she replied. “Great seafood.” She stuck her hand out through the door just far enough to point the direction.
Brenda, Tank, and Daniel walked away, mingling with the tourists and island folk who crammed the narrow street.
“She’s scared,” said Brenda.
Spikenose’s warning about the Rock’s test was none too soon.
Preparations for the evening meal produced the usual food scraps, and the mousy little chef piled them into the same bucket he’d spilled earlier, handing it to me to dump over the side. I never made it to the railing. The moment I emerged from the companion and onto the deck, a hairy leg jutted out to trip me. I stumbled and reeled along the deck even as a boot planted a blow to the bucket to knock it from my hands.
By some miracle, I recovered, neither falling nor letting go of the bucket, though some of the contents escaped and splattered on the boards.
Rock, Scalarag, and Norwig the Bean had been lying in wait just outside the companion, and now were having a good-ol’-laugh at my expense. Scalarag came at me, his eyes on the bucket, and . . .
What happened next would haunt me. Was it that leering face? The desperation of a prisoner with no alternatives? Within me, something animal overpowered reason and, with reckless power, I swung the bucket in a violent arc and struck the huge man in the face. The kitchen scraps splashed on him, on the deck, on everything; he reeled, hand to his face, and fell back against the capstan, blood trickling from his nose.
Rock and Norwig became stunned onlookers, suspended in time. Scalarag was quickly recovering, planting his feet, powering up his muscles, preparing for murder.
As for me, I considered myself as good as dead, and upon that conclusion, saw no point in timidity. I held the bucket out as if it were a weapon and said, “A word!”
Rock and Norwig looked at each other, amused.
“A word, says he!” said Rock.
“Aye,” said Norwig, “more words. Be still me tremblin’ ’art!”
And then I amazed—or rather, dismayed—myself.
“If it be flesh yer hungerin’ or blood yer thirstin’, then step in, the lot o’ ya, and be measured against me dyin’ carcass, but you can lay to this: for every piece of me you take, be it nose or ear, I’ll take for meself a piece a’ you, so count it up and decide!”
There. Me dyin’ words. Or so I thought.
Rock was the first to start laughing. Norwig came next and then, wiping the blood from his face with the back of his arm, Scalarag smiled and laughed with delight.
“So there be a man before us!” said Rock, exchanging a gleeful look with the others.
“Ask me,” said Scalarag, regarding the blood smeared on his arm.
“Give the man his badge,” said Rock.
Scalarag took the red scarf from his head and approached me.
I tensed. What was this, a trick? A ruse? Hidden gadgetry?
Scalarag smiled, and the smile looked friendly. “Heave to, my man. It’s only a scarf.”
He stepped around behind me, and tied the scarf about my head as Rock and Norwig raised their fists in the air and cheered.
Scalarag came around and clapped me on the shoulders. “You’re one of us now!”
I returned to the galley with emptied bucket in hand and a pirate’s scarf upon my head. Spikenose noticed the scarf, of course, but only raised a knowledgeable eyebrow and went about his work.
I went back to peeling potatoes, my head a thicket of quandaries.
I was alive, and the muscular monster Scalarag was the only one injured. Astounding.
Nevertheless . . .
I had fallen to the level of an animal, yielded to temper, lashed out, abandoned reason for violence.
Nevertheless . . .
There could only be advantage in being “one of them.” Perhaps safety. Perhaps information.
Nevertheless . . .
I, a savage? A barbarian? Even though I could not argue against the ship’s philosophy—No truth, no shame, no God to draw the line—I was ashamed.
CHAPTER
12
A Narrow Escape
The Mind Pirates Page 4
