82 Desire

by Smith, Julie

  “Shut up, asshole. She can’t hear you and neither can anyone else.”

  His head was killing him. He thought he could remember being hit, but he honestly wasn’t sure. Perhaps he just thought so because that had to be what happened.

  “Walk.”

  He did what they said because Dina was on the boat and there was no way to help her unless he could get to her. Or so he believed at the time. He thought later that another attempt at loud noise might have been a better idea.

  They gagged him, tied him up, and threw him in the berth beside Dina. She had already been trussed. They stared at each other, working their eyebrows as if they were mouths, letting each other know they understood the gravity of the pickle they were in, and that each was sorry the other was involved.

  Russell could smell garlic and olive oil and something salty and pungent—capers, maybe. She had been making pasta when they arrived.

  “Fuck, yeah, I know what to do,” said one of the men. “I used to drive a boat for the big guy.”

  “What big guy?” the other one said, but there was no answer Russell could hear.

  He could hear and see movement as the one who knew what to do cast off and started the engine. They must be going to drown us, he thought, cartoon images of talking rabbits walking the plank firing inanely in his brain.

  The boat chugged for a while, and then Manny came into the room. He was pointing his gun and wearing latex gloves, two extremely ominous signs. Russell broke out in a sweat again.

  “We need you to help us.”

  Manny untied him first, and then took the gag out.

  “Come on.”

  Russell didn’t speak. Silently, he helped them drop anchor, and then, amazingly, the driver, the one who wasn’t Manny—and who was also wearing gloves—said, “Hey, let’s get the girlfriend up. I’m hungry.”

  How did those two things fit together? Russell couldn’t make it work.

  They took Russell into the stateroom and had him untie her while they watched, holding the gun. It occurred to him that maybe they planned to rape her, but he didn’t protest. The two of them had a better chance if they were both free.

  While Dina was still rubbing her wrists, Manny said, “Russell, ya hungry?”

  Russell was too stunned to say a word.

  “Hey, uh—what’s your name, baby?”

  “Beulah.”

  Russell winced, remembering that he’d bellowed her name, but they didn’t seem to care. “Hey, Beulah, rustle us up some grub, will you?” Manny elbowed his companion. “Hey, ‘rustle.’ That’s a pun, get it? Under the circumstances.”

  Russell said, “Who are you guys?”

  “I’m Manny, and this is…”

  “Jack,” said the other one.

  “Yeah. Jack.”

  “That’s not what I meant.”

  They ignored him. “Beulah, what you makin’?”

  “I was making pasta puttanesca. For two.”

  “Great, great. Go to it. Russell, why don’t you whip us up a little salad?”

  Jack said, “Y’all want a drink? What can I make you?”

  What was this—a party? Puzzled, Russell shook his head.

  “Come on. Let me fix you something.”

  Dina said, “Gin and tonic.”

  Jack nodded like the perfect host. “Good choice.” He had on a white polo shirt with blue slacks. If it hadn’t been for the gold chain, he’d have been almost dapper. “Russell, you, too?”

  Russell didn’t answer. Instead, he found lettuce, cucumbers, things like that in one of the bags Dina had evidently brought over, and began making a salad. Jack tried to thrust a drink into his hand.

  “No, thank you.”

  “Ah, come on.”

  “I said no.” The last thing he needed was alcohol.

  Manny said, “Hey, Russell. You don’t talk to my buddy like that.” He grabbed Russell by the scruff of the neck and held the drink up to his lips. “Now drink.”

  Russell spat.

  “Oh, not nice. Not nice at all.”

  This time he grabbed Dina, throwing one hand across her breasts and squeezing, the other pulling her hair till tears came to her eyes. Over her shoulder, Manny stared at Russell. “Drink.”

  Russell shrugged. “Oh, well. Just to be sociable.” He took a sip and could have sworn Dina smiled at his feeble joke.

  “That’s more like it.”

  By the time he and Dina had finished making the pasta and the salad and heating some French bread, they had consumed their drinks.

  Manny and Jack watched them like nannies at a park. Manny said, “Beautiful, Beulah. My Italian mother couldn’ta done better.”

  Jack said, “Don’t let him kid you—he’s Cuban.”

  “Shut up, goddammit. Set the table, Beulah—that’s short for Beautiful, right? Russell, open us up some wine, why don’t you?”

  Dina had brought a nice Rioja, one of Russell’s favorites. Obediently, he opened it while Dina set the table. “For two or four?” she asked.

  “Just two.”

  He filled the glasses she set.

  Manny said, “Now y’all sit down and have yourselves a little feast.”

  Russell couldn’t believe what he was hearing. Despite the episode with the drinks, which he took for some macho show of power, he’d assumed they were cooking for Manny and Jack.

  “What?”

  “Go on, do it.”

  Manny gestured with the gun.

  The captives sat across from each other. Fear showed in Dina’s eyes, and Russell hoped it didn’t in his.

  “Drink a little toast, why don’t you?”

  Russell lifted his glass. “To you,” he said to Dina.

  She did the same. “To life. I liked it a lot.” And she began to cry.

  Manny roared, “Come on. Eat.”

  “Leave us alone, goddammit.” Russell tried to stand, but Manny pushed him back down and held him.

  Jack came up behind Dina, pried her mouth open, picked up a wad of noodles in his gloved hand, forced it between her teeth, and clamped her mouth shut. “Chew, goddammit.”

  Manny said, “Russell? You gonna eat? Or is Jack gonna do that again?”

  Somehow, both he and Dina forced down a few bites.

  Manny said, “Drink. Come on… have some wine.”

  Dina gave up and did it, and eventually Russell did, too.

  “Have another.” Manny poured, Dina drank. And then he dropped something into Russell’s wine and stirred it up. “Drink.”

  Unable to help himself, Russell stared at Dina, willing her to forgive him, but mostly not even trying to communicate, wanting only a glimpse of the person fully occupying his thoughts now, the woman whose life he would give anything to save; he wanted one last link with humanity as he remembered it, before the two animals had entered his life.

  Jack jerked her head back again, and held a knife underneath her eye, nudging the delicate tissue, nodding at Russell, who drained his glass without further prodding.

  The drug didn’t put him out. It only made him feel muzzy and relaxed, and silly, so that he giggled as they made Dina drink her wine, which also had something in it. And he gladly drank more of whatever they wanted, some single malt scotch, some brandy—it was all the same to him. He knew he was already dead.

  Twenty-five

  THE MORE SKIP talked, the more frustrated she became. Rudolfo’s superiors took the view that a person who had not committed a crime had a right to disappear in his own sailboat if he so desired. Therefore they declined to involve the Coast Guard.

  Since Russell wasn’t officially a suspect in Beau’s murder, they weren’t buying him as an unofficial suspect. Eleanor Holser told a vastly different story from the one Skip told—one in which Skip had completely misread a little fight with her boyfriend—and that didn’t help either. Skip felt Russell was in grave danger if not already dead—that there was no time to be lost. The Fort Lauderdale police, despite every argument she could
muster, simply could not be talked out of a wait-and-see view.

  It was nearly ten o’clock when Skip left in frustration. She stormed into the hotel room, ranting, gesturing, yelling out the story, so wrapped up in letting off steam that Steve finally resorted to the time-out sign to get her attention, which only made her madder.

  “You know I hate that.”

  “I’ve got an idea. It doesn’t happen every day.”

  She acknowledged him only with an impatient look, not about to be cheered up.

  “Let’s charter a boat,” he said.

  “What? It’s the middle of the night. Anyway, the On Y Va could be anywhere. And I can’t sail. And who can afford it?”

  “Well, let’s put it this way. I happen to be a successful film editor with quite a few bucks, which qualifies me to be eccentric. I have a yen to take my girlfriend on a midnight sail—scratch that—we have a friend who’s a little eccentric…”

  “Hold it. I’m getting the idea. You’re saying if we pay well enough, we can probably find a charter, no matter what kind of cockamamie story we tell.”

  Steve had already gone on to the next part of the problem. “We need someone who knows where to look—maybe someone with a little experience in the import business. And a fast power boat—one of those cigarette things.”

  “Oh, hell—we really need a helicopter.”

  “I went out for a drink a little earlier. As luck would have it, I found this bar on the ICW where people come in their boats. There was a whole pack of cigarettes there. A carton, maybe.”

  “So?”

  “So, you know the kind of guys who have those things? Macho, gold chains. I bet we could talk one of them into a midnight search.”

  “Oh, come on.”

  “I mean it. Why go through the Yellow Pages when it’s the middle of the night and there’ll be paperwork and deposits and God knows what, in the event we actually find someone sitting by their phone? Why don’t we just go find some half-drunk dickhead with a penis boat and offer him a grand?”

  “I beg your pardon? Who the hell’s got a grand?”

  “Me. And if we save Russell’s ass, no doubt he’ll reimburse us.”

  “Oh, sure.”

  She was sitting on the bed, staring out at the ocean. He sat next to her and covered her hand with his. “Skip. Let’s do it.”

  She looked up into his face, so sincere, so boyishly excited. He was like any man trying to give a gift to the woman he loved—only she was a police officer and the thing she wanted was to do her job. It was a little weird, yet she couldn’t help being touched.

  She thought the chances of finding the On Y Va were practically nonexistent without the Coast Guard, but Steve was giving her a chance to look. Gallant, but there was a lot working against it—it might be dangerous to him, and to the owner of the boat, and to the boat itself.

  Reluctantly, she said,”I can’t.”

  “Look. Let’s just go for a boat ride, okay? If we find the On Y Va, then we’ll figure out what to do. What’s the harm in a boat ride?”

  “What do we do—go back to that bar and ask around?”

  He looked so happy she wanted to hug him. She hadn’t really meant the remark as a “yes,” but what he said made sense—until they found the boat, there was no need to worry. And there wasn’t a snowball’s chance they would.

  “Sure,” he said. “Let’s just go find us a captain.”

  In fact, it wasn’t hard at all. Most of the cigarette pack—if that wasn’t an exaggeration—had left by the time they got there, but there were three long, sleek, nasty-looking boats moored at the bar, and inquiries promptly turned up three owners.

  Steve got straight to business. “We need to charter a boat for—oh, about three hours, four at the most—” He was making it up as he went along. “We can pay a thousand dollars.”

  One of the owners said, “What do we do? Flip for it?”

  Another said, “Count me out. I gotta work tomorrow.”

  The third said, “Is this legal or what?”

  “Wait a minute. We need a really fast boat. Whose boat’s fastest?”

  The third guy, the cautious one, said, “Keith, baby, this one’s yours.”

  They had a boat. Now how to explain what they wanted?

  Finally, Skip said, “Look, I’m an off-duty cop. This isn’t official, but we’re looking for a sailboat.”

  Keith shrugged. He had dirty-brown hair and wore a T-shirt with khaki shorts. His face was ferrety—triangular, no jaw to speak of—but he looked quite a bit more intelligent than someone Skip expected to find in a Florida bar in the middle of the night.

  “I need to know why,” he said.

  “I think the owner’s in danger.”

  “From someone chasing him or someone on the boat?”

  “I sure hope it’s from someone chasing him.”

  “Well, I do know some pretty good hiding places—where you could drop anchor and stay for a while.”

  Steve said, “Look. Why don’t we just cruise around awhile?”

  “Sure.” Keith gave them a sly smile, and in a few minutes Skip saw why. She’d really had no idea how fast these boats could go.

  They’d been out no more than half an hour when they saw two boats close together, a dinghy between them. Keith pointed. “Some kind of deal going down. We’ll just pretend we never saw a thing.”

  They whizzed by at a safe distance, Skip unable to resist watching with Keith’s binoculars. Two men got out of the dinghy and boarded the farther of the two boats, and it took off. She trained her binoculars on the second. “On Y Va! That’s it.”

  There it was. Right there, not far from shore at all; out in the open, not hidden—as if Russell wanted to be found.

  But the two guys leaving wasn’t a good sign.

  Steve said, “What now? “

  “I hate to say it, but I’ve got to try the damn police again.”

  “Thought you were the police,” said Keith.

  She hoped he wasn’t going to go paranoid on her. “I’m not local. Have you got a phone?”

  He shrugged. “Sure.”

  This time the police listened, evidently sobered by the tale of two men in a dinghy. Keith gave them his location, and they were assured the Coast Guard was on its way.

  Steve said, “Let’s get closer.”

  Skip said, “No.”

  Keith paid no attention. Through some mysterious process, the two guys had bonded and decided to defy her. He pulled the cigarette close to the sailboat, and they saw the lights were on.

  Keith said, “Let’s talk to them.” He picked up his radio, and Skip ardently wished she hadn’t involved civilians. Predictably, there was no response. So much, she thought, for the element of surprise.

  Keith said, “They could have the radio turned off.” He took a breath and hollered, “On Y va! Anyone aboard?”

  There was no answer.

  “Let’s go aboard.”

  “No! We wait for the Coast Guard.”

  The two guys looked at each other and shrugged. Keith said, “I’m going. You going?”

  Steve said, “I’m going.”

  There was no choice. Skip said, “Wait a minute! Hold it, I’m armed, I’m going first.”

  She clambered down the companionway, saw no one in the salon, and went through to the stateroom. A man and a woman were on the berth, fully dressed.

  “Hello!” she said, and got no response. “Russell. Russell Fortier!”

  Nothing. She went closer, noticing no movement of chests and feeling suddenly sleepy.

  A voice behind her said, “Shit! Carbon monoxide.” And Keith flung open a window. “Let’s get them out of here.”

  Behind her, Steve had started to open more windows. Skip gulped air and then grabbed the woman. She didn’t seem to be breathing at all.

  Keith helped her, while Steve got the man. They were starting CPR when the Coast Guard arrived.

  ***

  Beau Cavignac.
Dead. Ray couldn’t wrap his mind around it. Russell Fortier’s disappearance was one thing, but this!

  First Allred, now Beau. And Russell was gone—the murderer or the also-murdered?

  For the first time, it occurred to Ray to go to the police. These things had to be connected, and they had to be about the Skinners. Maybe he could bust the whole thing open that way. But what way would that be?

  Uh-uh. No, he thought. Cille and I have come this far by ourselves. We’ve got to keep going.

  What he wanted was proof that the Skinners existed and that United Oil had systematically defrauded him—something he could take to court. He didn’t trust the police to get it—and if they did get it, he didn’t trust them not to lose it.

  Anyway, their agenda was different. They were trying to solve a couple of murders, not personally avenge Ray Boudreaux. Only two people in the world had that goal, and thank God Cille was in it with him.

  The thing he needed was the Skinners’ disk, and, so far as he knew, Beau Cavignac was the only Skinner besides Russell Fortier—certainly the only one whose name he knew. So maybe Beau had it. Maybe he’d been killed for it.

  With infinite attention to detail, Ray read Beau’s obituary, carefully noting the time of the funeral. He’d always heard funerals were excellent times for break-ins.

  He cased the house ahead of time, finding, to his surprise, that it wasn’t the requisite Uptown double-gallery mansion. Instead, it was a brand-new replica of a gorgeous old house on the North Shore. Clear across Lake Pontchartrain, where Beau had probably fled to be safe from crime.

  Lots of people were coming and going, as you might expect after a death. Maybe I should send them some food, he thought, wondering if a delivery could get him into the house. But he couldn’t think of anything big and bulky enough to preclude whoever answered the door from simply taking it with a “thank-you.”

  Trays of things, maybe. Finger sandwiches or something. He and Cille together, balancing a bunch of trays.

  But he didn’t want to involve her in this—in fact, didn’t even want her to know about it.

  Ronnie? No. With luck, the boy’s life of crime was over.

  Maybe not trays. Liquor was good—a case of something heavy. That would have to be carried in. He wasn’t sure people sent liquor after a death, but then it was coming from an imaginary person—propriety hardly mattered.