Cruise Control

by A. J. Stewart

  I crouched down so I could see the guy better. His face was a mess.

  “I know you Browns fans like to hold a grudge, but don’t you think life would be a little more pleasant if you just let it go?”

  “Let it go? You think this is about football?” he said. “Look, I don’t like anything about Pittsburgh. But that guy’s a special kind of maggot, you know what I mean?”

  I knew.

  “Why?”

  The young guy looked at his buddies and then back at me. He moved slowly like his face was bothering him.

  “You ever been to eastern Ohio? Youngstown?”

  I shook my head. “No.”

  “It’s a border town. About halfway between Pittsburgh and Cleveland, but on the Ohio side.”

  “Okay.”

  “But half the damned town roots for Pittsburgh. Can you believe it? Ohioans rooting for a Pennsylvania team?”

  “It’s a crazy world.”

  “You bet it is. You should see our Thanksgiving dinners. It’s hell.”

  “I bet. Does BJ Baker enter this story anytime soon?”

  “Yeah, I’m getting to that. My grandad, he’s from Youngstown. My dad moved to Cleveland to find work. That’s where I grew up.”

  “I saw the shirt.”

  “Yeah, so grandad, he’s a Pittsburgh guy. Worked in a steel mill and everything back in the day. So guess who his favorite player is?”

  “I’ll take a stab. BJ Baker.”

  “Yeah, BJ Baker. So my grandad, he’s sick, right? He’s got this thing in his lungs. Mesoleafy-something.”

  “Mesothelioma,” I said.

  “Yeah, that’s the one.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Yeah, so you know what it is, right? He ain’t coming back from that. So they move him to Pittsburgh for tests or chemo or something. He’s going downhill. Then, just before Christmas, he hears that during the football halftime they’re going to do a cross to the hospital on the TV. And guess who’s going to be there for it?”

  “Still BJ Baker. Go on.”

  “So the nurses and doctors or whatever, they know my grandad’s this massive fan of BJ’s, right, so they choose him to be one of the patients that BJ visits with on TV. They always choose little kids and old people, don’t they?”

  “I guess. So what happened?”

  “They wheel my grandad out, prop him up so he can do this thing, meet his hero. And what does BJ do?”

  “I really have no idea at this point.”

  The kid shrugged. “He doesn’t show. At all. Like, ever. Just doesn’t turn up. So gramps waits out there in the lobby or wherever and BJ doesn’t bother to show up. Doesn’t call, doesn’t send a letter, or whatever those old people do. Nothing. So they wheel my grandad back into his little sick room and say sorry, pops, time to die.”

  “He died?”

  “Not yet. But he will. Soon.”

  “So let me get this straight. You boys came all this way to cause trouble for BJ Baker because he slighted your grandad?”

  “No, man. Dixie won this trip on the radio station. Didn’t ya, Dix?”

  A guy with brown hair and a very poor excuse for facial hair waved his hand at me.

  “So you’re not here because of BJ?”

  “Nah. I just saw him, you know? After what he did to my grandad, I just saw red.”

  “He does bring out the best in people. I’m sorry about your grandad. But keep your nose clean, pardon the pun. It doesn’t do him any good if you’re in a jail in the Bahamas.”

  The kid nodded and I stood and stretched my back out. Then I told them to enjoy their day, and kept walking along the promenade toward the ship.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Once again I didn’t do as Anastasia had ordered me and return to the ship. I walked down the promenade until I reached the dock, and then I cut into the hut renting out the beach toys. I rented another chair, which I went and pitched next to Ron’s. I gave Ron a bathroom break and he returned with two bottles of Kalik beer. He was a prince among men, of that I was certain.

  We kicked back for the rest of the afternoon. We didn’t see Guy X get off. We didn’t see Anastasia get back on. Ron got burgers and beers for a mid-afternoon lunch. They weren’t as good as Mick’s, but the view made up for it, as did the notion that we were literally eating cheeseburgers in paradise.

  We whiled away the hours watching a big ship do nothing. It was like staking out an apartment block, something we had done plenty of times before. But sitting on the beach with a beer and burger was a vast improvement.

  “You think whoever took the rings will bring them off onto the island?” asked Ron.

  “It seems like the best place. Back in Palm Beach the security will be much tighter.”

  “And Lucas is watching?”

  “In between reeling in wahoo.”

  Ron said, “You know what I think?”

  “No.”

  He didn’t say anything.

  “What do you think?” I asked him.

  Nothing.

  “Ron? What do you think?”

  He turned to me and smiled.

  “I think that’s Guy X.”

  He nodded at a man coming down the dock. He wasn’t tall, maybe five eight, with deep-set eyes and broad shoulders. He wore a ball cap with a flat peak and a garish yellow shirt that was supposed to look tropical but just came off as loud, and he was carrying the ubiquitous blue travel bag. It didn’t suit him at all. He looked like a mob guy playing a regular guy on vacation.

  “Ron, my man, your beer goggles really are superior. I’m going to follow him. Can you get up to the security there on the dock and find out who he is? He must have used his ID to get off the ship.”

  We waited until Guy X left the dock and hit the promenade, and then we went our separate ways. I ambled along the water line of the beach, staying just backward of where Guy X walked. Ron made a beeline for the dock. I looked around the beach for Anastasia but didn’t see her. She wasn’t the sand between your toes kind. She would likely be waiting somewhere up in the village, in a bar or on the promenade.

  Guy X didn’t go too far. He stopped at the tiki bar by the beach and took a stool at the end of the counter, facing away from the water. He dropped his bag and then removed his ball cap, revealing thick black hair. I saw him nod to the bartender, who brought him over a beer. I wanted to get closer but didn’t dare. I didn’t want to spook Anastasia.

  I dropped back to the water’s edge and pretended to be mooching around with nothing better to do. It wasn’t easy, because most people dipping their toes in the water tended to keep their eyes on said water, rather than up the beach at where Guy X sat. I pulled off my deck shoes and splashed my toes in the ocean. I watched a group of shirtless young guys with beers, standing in waist high water. Then I splashed and turned and glanced along the beach, and then around and up at the promenade. Guy X was enjoying his beer. Anastasia wasn’t there. I slowly turned back down the beach toward the ship and saw Ron striding along the water line to me.

  He was huffing when he reached me.

  “Don’t do yourself an injury,” I said.

  “Walking on sand,” he said. “It’s tougher than it looked on Baywatch.”

  “What do you know?”

  He handed me a piece of paper. I faced the water as I looked at it. Ron stood shoulder to shoulder with me, facing the other way. The paper was a printout of Guy X’s passenger record. I looked at his picture. I had seen him before. It was definitely the man who had pushed Frederick Connors overboard. But there was a problem. I knew it was him, but I couldn’t swear it in a court of law. Frederick had been pushed overboard at night, and what light there had been was shadowed by the decks above. My guts knew, but my eyes could not guarantee.

  Guy X’s eyes held a cool charm, like he could love you or kill you, it could go either way. With his dark features and black, combed-back hair, he looked more Atlantic City than Palm Beach. But I knew plenty of Atlantic Cit
y types who found their way down south to our little paradise. My friend Sal Mondavi was one of them. He knew most of the others. I wondered if he knew this guy.

  His name was Francis Martelli. I would have put hard-earned on the fact that he went by Frankie. Some guys were Francis and some guys were Frankie. This guy was all Frankie. Which gave me another problem. I couldn’t connect Anastasia with Frankie. With Francis, maybe. But Frankie, no way. I just didn’t see them together. The Russian aristocrat and the Atlantic City shylock. It didn’t fit.

  But then, it rarely did. A scruffy former ballplayer turned PI had no business being with an FDLE Special Agent. A bankrupted former insurance guy had no business being with a lady of the Palm Beach set. There was no logic to these things. Not that I could find. I turned slowly and handed the paper back to Ron. He turned toward the water.

  We did that dance for a half hour. One of us looking up at the bar, the other looking over the turquoise water. There was an unspoken understanding that it would have been better with beers in our hands. But we took our licks and did the thing that had to be done. We watched Guy X enjoy his beer. He took his time, like he had plenty of it. Like he was waiting on someone and was happy to wait.

  But no one showed. No Anastasia, no one otherwise. I wondered if she had spotted us and was staying away. It was possible. But then she had no reason to suspect I was watching her. And I couldn’t believe that if she saw me standing around on the beach she wouldn’t take the opportunity to come and yell at me once more.

  Eventually Guy X finished his beer. The sun was dropping toward the United States to the west of us, but no one looked in a hurry to leave the beach. Except Guy X. He finished his beer, nodded to the bartender, and then picked up his blue travel bag off the sand. He carried his cap in his hand and stepped up onto the promenade.

  “He’s leaving,” I said.

  Ron turned around.

  Guy X—Francis—walked toward the buildings behind the promenade. I began to move up the beach.

  “I’m going to follow,” I said. “You head to the dock, just in case I lose him and he heads back there.”

  I didn’t run but I wanted to. I got to the promenade and looked around. I saw Guy X near the restaurant with the balcony view, so I tapped my feet and slipped on my deck shoes and ambled toward him. As I approached, he slipped between the restaurant and the trinket store. There was nowhere to go in there. That was where the gate was.

  Then I started running. Because I knew the gate required a crew keycard to open. And I recalled the crew hatch that Guy X had used after throwing Frederick overboard. He had Angel Rodriguez’s crew keycard. I wondered if Army or Porter had voided it. On board they probably had. I wasn’t sure it was the same system as on the island.

  It wasn’t. When I got to the gate it was closed and locked, and no Guy X in sight. I ran around to the other side of the store and jumped over the small fence and onto the service track where Danielle and I had come out earlier.

  I saw the gaudy shirt disappear down the path that cut through the middle of the island. I ran along the track behind the stores and bars. I could hear the music and laughter. When I got to where the track cut into the island’s interior, I stopped. There was no motion, no sign of the shirt or wide shoulders or the slick hair or the blue travel bag. I ran again, into the island’s interior.

  When I reached the utility building, I could no longer hear the music and laughter, just the buzz of the generators. No footsteps. I moved forward toward the plantation houses Danielle and I had seen. There was nothing to see. I decided to take the walking track to the back beach.

  “Hey!” a voice called from behind.

  I spun around. A man stood back near the utility building. He was lean and wore a green shirt and matching trousers, like a gardener’s uniform.

  “You can’t be here,” he said, striding toward me.

  “I’m with security,” I said. I didn’t look like I was with security. I was in a palm tree print shirt and shorts.

  “I don’t think so,” he said as he came to me.

  “No, I mean I’m with Army—Chief Mahoney.”

  “I don’t know who that is, but you can’t be back here. It’s staff only.”

  I glanced back toward the track to the beach and then at the man. It wasn’t worth the effort. I had lost Guy X. But I now knew he existed. I had no idea what he had come this way for. Maybe he was meeting Anastasia in the plantation house while the staff were at work. Maybe he had cut back and was headed back to the boat.

  “Okay,” I said to the man. I took a step to leave, and he made to take my arm to escort me out.

  “I’m leaving, friend, but you really don’t want to put your hands on me.”

  I think my tone of voice sold him on the fact it was a bad idea, because he backed off and pointed in the direction of the main beach. I left him to his rhododendrons, or whatever the hell he was doing.

  By the time I got back to the promenade there were the beginnings of a change in tide. Not so much in the water as the people. More of them were moving back to the ship and none appeared to be getting off. I walked along the promenade, past the tiki bar where folks were still enjoying beverages, to the dock, where I found Ron. He put his palms out to ask what happened.

  “He went into the staff area,” I said. “I lost him. I take it he didn’t come back here yet?”

  Ron shook his head. “Nope.”

  “You see Danielle?”

  “Not yet.”

  We looked around. The line was forming as passengers checked back onto the ship. I recalled Army saying they check ID both off and on. They didn’t want to leave anyone behind.

  “He’s going to have to check back in, right?”

  Ron nodded.

  I took off down the dock with Ron in tow. I wandered around the line of passengers to where one of the security crew was checking people aboard.

  “Sir, you’ll just need to join the line.”

  “I need to know when a passenger gets on board.”

  “Sir, if you get in line you can go and find them.”

  “Call Chief Mahoney, he’ll tell you.”

  “Yes, sir. He’ll tell me to tell you to get in line. I won’t ask again.”

  He didn’t ask again. He turned and scanned the next person in line, a squat woman with a pinched face who gave me a look of distaste. As the security guy scanned her ship pass her photo came up on the screen of the laptop they had set up. Same pinched features, slightly less distaste.

  Ron was gone. I found him in line, people already behind him. I cut in and stood with him, people’s distaste be damned. We slowly ebbed our way to the security checkpoint. Ron held up his ship pass that was around his neck. The security guy scanned him in and glanced at the screen.

  “Sir,” he said.

  Then he looked at me. He showed no sign of recognition.

  “Sir, your ship pass.”

  “Look at me. I’m in line. Now I need you to put a flag on this passenger’s record.” I handed him the printout that Ron had procured.

  The guard looked at it and frowned. “Francis Martelli?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  I didn’t want to mention that a man had gone overboard. I’m sure the ship had slowed when we went over the previous night in order to launch the rescue tender, but I was also sure that most of the passengers had no idea it had happened. Ron stepped back to us.

  “Mr. Mob,” he said to the security guy. “The perp.”

  The guy looked at Ron and then at the paper. Then he tapped the laptop keyboard.

  “Mr. Mob?” I asked Ron.

  Ron whispered in my ear. “It’s ship code. MOB, as in man overboard.”

  I shrugged and took out the comms unit and held it up for the security guy. “Can you ping this when he gets back on board?”

  “No,” he said.

  “No? Why not?”

  “Because this says Mr. Martelli is already back on board.”

>   Chapter Twenty-Two

  Once we were checked in, we were in, and they weren’t letting us back out, so Ron and I wandered up the gangway and onto the ship. We took the elevator back to the suite deck. Ron went to check on Cassandra, and I told him I’d be at the pool bar waiting for Danielle. I stopped in our suite and left a note for her and then headed down.

  The pool area was busier than I’d thought it would be, given most people had spent the day at the beach and a good half of them were yet to get back on board. But it seemed plenty of people never even bothered to get off. I supposed in the end it was more of the same. Same beer, same buffet, same staff, same sunshine. Choose your water—salt or chlorine. One of the bars around the pool was closed, I figured because half the crew was staffing bars on the island, so the one bar that was open was busy.

  I went and sat at the closed bar. Although I wouldn’t have said no to a drink, I wasn’t desperate. I just wanted away from the crowds. The sun was dropping and the mood of the boat was changing. People were moving from laid-back and lazy mode into party mode. As the thought passed through my mind, the music playing across the deck changed from contemporary country to seventies disco.

  A throng of people caught my eye. They were a decent-sized group, maybe thirty people, but they all seemed to be hanging around the one person, like planets around a sun. It took me a moment to catch a glimpse of the person in the middle. I saw him from behind but that was all I needed. I knew the clean-cut head of hair and the square shoulders pushing at the seams of his blazer. It was BJ Baker doing what BJ Baker liked doing most. Holding court, and no doubt talking about his favorite subject: BJ Baker.

  I watched him for a while. He really was a charming so-and-so. The people in his orbit hung on his every word. I could tell them some stories. BJ talked for a while and then he looked at his massive watch and declared the court over, and then took another few minutes to untangle himself from the galaxy he had created.

  BJ smiled and waved and nodded his way around the pool. He kept away from the busiest area around the bar. Which took him right by me.

  I gave him a big old country smile. He took it in the spirit it was intended.