Cruise Control

by A. J. Stewart

We stood in silence for a while. A lot was going on in Army’s mind. He was retelling the story, looking for holes, not finding many.

  Then there was a knock at the door. An old man in a gray suit and blue tie stepped in.

  “I got a call?” he said.

  “Mr. Gold?” said Porter.

  “Yes. Is there a problem?”

  Porter looked at me. I looked at her. I had no idea what she wanted from me.

  “This is the jeweler,” she said, clearly holding back an eye roll. I resolved to work on my ESP capabilities.

  “Your name is Gold?”

  He nodded and smiled a resigned smirk like he had heard all the lines.

  “Yes,” he said.

  I could have had some fun with it but I had more important things to do. I pulled a ring from my pocket. I had removed it from the box of rings I had taken from Martelli. I didn’t need the jeweler to see them all. I just needed one. I handed it to him.

  “I need to know if this is real.”

  Gold frowned and took the ring. He looked it over, letting the light sparkle off and through the diamonds. Then he took a monocular out of his jacket pocket. Jewelers were like spies. They liked to carry the tools of their trade with them. You never knew when you were going to have to verify how many carats something had.

  He inspected the ring and then looked at me. The monocular on his head made him look like a cyborg on a fixed income.

  “You want to know if this is real?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  “No.”

  “No, it’s not real?”

  “That is correct.”

  “It’s a fake?”

  “I would call it a reproduction.”

  “How do you know it’s not real?” asked Army.

  “It’s a Super Bowl ring,” he said. “Not to my taste, but there you have it. If this ring was real, it would have been made by Jostens of Minneapolis. They would have put their mark on the ring, inside the band. There is no such mark, ergo it is not their work.”

  I realized my error. “Okay, it’s not original. It’s a reproduction.”

  “As I said.”

  “But is it a real reproduction?”

  “What would a real reproduction be?”

  “The diamonds. Are they real? Is the gold real?”

  “Oh, I see your meaning. Yes, sir. The diamonds are real. The gold? I don’t know. Do you have a magnet?”

  Army turned and pulled a magnet off a whiteboard on the wall. The jeweler held the base of the magnet against the ring. It didn’t stick.

  “I’d say the gold is real,” he said, and returned the magnet to Army.

  “Thanks, Mr. Gold,” I said. I took the ring back and Gold bid us a good evening. He didn’t ask any more questions about the ring. A real but not real Super Bowl ring. I would have had questions, but I suspected that discretion was a fine quality in a jeweler. Some people thought that about a PI.

  I returned the ring to its box and looked at Army. I wanted to know if he had finished his ruminating. He looked at me with a set jaw.

  “What do you need?”

  “From you, a favor.” Then I looked at Danielle.

  “And I’ll need one from you, too.”

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  I got in the elevator with Danielle and Porter. Porter carried a blue travel bag with the cruise line logo on it. I got off the elevator first, on the floor for our suite. As I got to our room, I wondered if other people spent as little time in their cabins as I had. I realized that not everyone was running around trying to catch an adulteress or a thief. But passengers did seem to be in the bars and restaurants and the casino and the pool and the spa and wherever else instead of their cabins. Which made me wonder why people sprang for such expensive digs when all they did was sleep there. Then I remembered why. Because they could.

  I walked past our suite and stopped two doors down. Then I knocked. I waited longer than was necessary. Then the door opened a crack, revealing the nose of a Russian princess.

  “Mr. Jones, what do you want?”

  “I caught him,” I said.

  “Caught who?”

  “The man who took your rings.”

  The door snapped open.

  “You found my rings?”

  “Would you like to talk about this in the hallway?”

  She thought about that more than I’d thought she would, then held the door open. I stepped into their suite. It was the same as ours. Exactly. Even the art. Frederick Connors was lounging on the sofa in a pair of khakis and a pressed blue button-up shirt. He dressed better for lounging than most people did for church. He sat opposite the television but it wasn’t turned on. Maybe they turned it off when someone knocked at the door. People did that on sitcoms. I never really understood why.

  “Mr. Connors,” I nodded.

  “Mr. Jones.”

  “So, you found my rings?” interjected Anastasia.

  “Unfortunately, no. Not yet.”

  “What’s this?” asked Frederick.

  Anastasia ignored him. “What do you mean not yet?”

  “We have the man responsible. He didn’t have rings on his person, just one of the cruise line’s travel bags. But we’re confident.”

  “How do you know it’s him?” she asked.

  “He confessed.”

  “He confessed?”

  She didn’t sound convinced. She clearly knew Martelli. He wasn’t the confessing kind.

  “Yes,” I lied. “I just wanted you to know that we’re working hard to recover your property.”

  “Not hard enough,” she said. “I’ll still miss the auction.”

  “Probably,” I said. “You didn’t go to the captain’s dinner?”

  She looked at her husband. “Frederick didn’t feel up to going out.”

  I glanced at Frederick. He looked better. Not good, but better. He frowned. It wasn’t a great look on him. I turned back and found his wife standing by the open door.

  “Goodbye, Mr. Jones.”

  I nodded and stepped out into the corridor. I turned to say goodnight or something equally witty but the door closed in my face. Polite people really know how to be rude.

  I took the crew elevator back up using a card Army had loaned me. I knocked and he let me into his office.

  “How we doing?” I asked.

  “Porter and Ms. Castle are doing their thing,” said Army. “You?”

  “I let the cat out. We’ll see how the pigeons react.”

  “You have a very interesting turn of phrase.”

  I shrugged. I didn’t think about it and I didn’t know what to say. I was no poet. I was a ballplayer. Once upon a time. Now I was just a guy. A guy whose internal dialogue included phrases like once upon a time. I wondered if that was what he meant.

  “What’s your story, Army?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You said you were in the army.”

  “Yes.”

  “Twenty-two years.”

  “You have a good memory, Mr. Jones.”

  “I memorized a lot of playbooks. You said how you ended up on a ship was a long story.”

  “I did.”

  “You got something better do to?”

  “I have a lot of better things to do, Mr. Jones.”

  I gave him my I’m not buying it face.

  He pushed back on his office chair and rolled out from his desk. Then he opened the drawer and pulled out two small glasses. He set them on his desk and then pulled out a bottle of single malt scotch and poured us each a couple of fingers, handing one to me.

  I smelled it. I do that. Wine people do it. I’ve been told it’s not really a scotch thing, but I don’t care. I like the smell. It’s clubby and peaty and it makes me think of large men in kilts.

  I sipped my drink. It was smooth and fierce all at the same time and I felt myself warm from the inside.

  Army sipped his and then looked at the glass like he was inspecting it for cracks or fingerpri
nts.

  “You were a ballplayer, I understand.”

  “I was. How did you know that?”

  “Porter looked you up online.”

  “I’m online?”

  “More than you know. So you understand something about career changes.”

  “As much as anyone, I guess. Is that what this is? A career change?”

  “Something like that.” He sipped his drink again. “Why did you become a private investigator?”

  “How do most people become something? A door opened and I went through it.”

  Army nodded softly.

  “I was at college in Miami. I met a guy. He became a kind of mentor. Maybe more. Like a father, if your father let you stay up late and took you out drinking. I went off to play ball after college and I didn’t think about what I would do after. But the universe brought us back together and I stayed.”

  “Was that Ron?”

  “No. Ron and I were both moons in the orbit of Lenny.”

  “You work with him, this Lenny?”

  I took some more scotch. “No. Lenny died.”

  Army nodded again. He didn’t say sorry or commiserate. I figured army folks knew more about death than most of us.

  “This isn’t your story, though,” I said.

  “No.” He swirled his drink around. “Twenty-two years I was in. Joined out of college. Gulf War, first time around. They were good years, apart from the war.”

  “Were you married?”

  He nodded. “Just before my first deployment in Iraq. It was hard on her. Hard on all of us. But I did my duty and she did hers. She moved a lot and raised two wonderful kids mostly by herself. So when the second—our daughter, Kaylie—went to college, I called time. Took my leave. My Meredith wanted to live the island life. She loved it down here. Kayaking the mangroves, visiting the manatees, watching that summer rain that could knock people off their feet.”

  He stopped and swirled his drink again. He looked at it like he wanted to drink it but knew if he did it would be gone and he wouldn’t be able to look at it anymore.

  “She got breast cancer, second year here. She fought, like she fought everything. But the enemy was relentless. Too much for her. We lost her, Thanksgiving four years ago.”

  I wanted to say how sorry I was but I took his lead and kept quiet.

  “I can’t tell you how much I wanted to go with her. I can’t tell you. But a father has to be strong for his kids. See them on their way.”

  I nodded but I didn’t know. I knew the other story. The loss of a wife and mother, and a father who wanted to go with her so bad he forgot about his son and took the path that Army had forgone.

  “If it wasn’t for them, I don’t know, Miami. Maybe I wouldn’t be here. But I didn’t want to go kayaking in the mangroves anymore. My son’s in Atlanta, so I thought about going there. But Meredith wanted this so bad, and I wanted it for her. Then a guy I knew at the veteran’s hall tells me the cruise line is looking for a chief security officer. I was an MP so it wasn’t completely out of my wheelhouse. It let me get away but not go away. So here I am.”

  “An army officer floating the high seas.”

  “Army, retired.”

  “Well, I’m glad they’ve got you.”

  “I’m not sure they’ll share your sentiment.”

  “Why?”

  “On my watch three million in jewels were stolen and moved off my boat past my security team. A passenger was pushed overboard. And you. You went overboard, twice.”

  “You can’t stop crime, Army. You can try, you can minimize it, but you can’t stop it. And as for the rings, a smart guy like you doesn’t sit around crying about his mistakes. He learns from them. Am I right? And as for me going over . . .” I shook my head. “I’m not planning on cruising again anytime soon.”

  “That’s a shame, Miami. These voyages are usually so boring.”

  I smiled. I was almost certain he did too.

  Then there was a knock at the door and Porter stepped in.

  “Chief, we got some action here.”

  Chapter Thirty

  We followed Porter back into the security control room, where Danielle was watching a screen.

  “How were Fred and Ana? They have plans for the evening?” she asked me.

  “Ana said they were staying in. Fred wasn’t himself,” I said.

  “Well, he must be feeling better because they both just left their suite.”

  I saw Anastasia and Frederick on the video feed, waiting for an elevator to arrive.

  “Where do you suppose they’re off to? Captain’s dinner?” Danielle asked.

  “The dinner’s nearly over,” said Porter. “I think they’re serving dessert.”

  “I know where they’re going,” I said.

  We watched them get off the elevator and walk down the corridor.

  “Not the captain’s dinner,” said Porter. “Wrong deck.”

  “No,” I said. “It’s the right deck.”

  They entered a bar. Porter changed the camera and we got an angle that looked across a clubby space with leather chairs and paintings of men in red jackets on horseback and dogs hunting foxes. At the opposite end of the space was a bar with leather-topped stools.

  “Is this the right place?” I asked.

  “The sporting lounge,” said Porter.

  “I’ve been in the sports bar. There were big screen televisions.”

  “That was the sports bar. This is the sporting lounge.”

  “It doesn’t look sporty.”

  “I think it’s about the sporting class of dogs, as in hunting,” said Porter.

  I looked at her. “Whose idea was it to have an English hunting motif on a tropical cruise ship?”

  Porter shrugged. “We cater to many tastes.”

  “Or none at all,” I said.

  “Either way, this doesn’t seem like Anastasia’s type of place,” said Danielle.

  She was right about that. I could see Anastasia in a clubby space. I was sure that plenty of her Palm Beach clientele spent time in such places. What I didn’t see was the hunting. Dogs baying for the blood of foxes was as aristocratic as rounded vowels, but it didn’t feel very Anastasia.

  But then, neither did palm trees and beaches, and she lived in South Florida. On the screen, Anastasia went over to the bar while Frederick searched for and found a table with wing-backed chairs.

  Anastasia was talking to the bartender. It was another move that I didn’t associate with her. She didn’t strike me as an order at the bar type of gal. She liked to be served. But she was at the bar, and I had good hunch why. The bartender opened a bottle of champagne and poured two flutes. That was a drink I associated with her. I liked champagne, but it wasn’t an everyday kind of drink for me. Beer filled that role. Not so much Anastasia Connors.

  Anastasia carried the glasses of bubbles across to the table. She placed the flutes down and then looked around the room. Perhaps she wanted to see if there were any faces she knew. Perhaps she wanted to make sure there were no faces that knew her. Maybe she just thought Frederick had chosen a poor table.

  Either way she eventually sat down. She sat ramrod straight in a club chair built for a decent slouch, and she and Frederick held their drinks up in some kind of toast. It wasn’t any kind of toast I knew. When I toasted I looked the other person in the eye as our glasses touched. Lenny had been big on that. He flat out didn’t trust a person who didn’t look you in the eye during a toast. Some things rubbed off.

  It was an interesting study watching the jeweler and her husband on camera. There was no audio so we had no idea what they were saying to each other, but that was no great loss since they barely spoke two words. They sipped their drinks and Frederick looked around the room. At one point I thought Anastasia might have dropped into a trance. They were just old enough to have avoided the addiction of staring at a phone screens in the company of others. I’ve always found that behavior mind-bogglingly rude, but if this was the other opti
on then maybe I was wrong.

  I was watching the couple but Porter was not. She was watching someone else. She reported that there was nothing out of the ordinary happening.

  “He’s not doing anything?” I asked.

  “Pouring drinks, cracking jokes.”

  After about fifteen minutes, Frederick stood. He brushed off his trousers like he had been sleeping in them and then collected the two flutes. He carried them over to the bar. The bartender came over with a towel across his shoulder. He nodded at Frederick and they spoke. I got the sense Frederick was ordering something complex, like a cocktail the bartender didn’t know, because he frowned. But he poured two more champagnes and watched Frederick carry them back to his table. I noted Anastasia. She watched him the whole way.

  They did their eyeless toast again and then resumed their positions doing nothing at all. I didn’t see the point. Why not stay in your room if all you were going to do was sit and stare at the walls? The art really wasn’t that good. I could forgive being on an outside deck, looking at the stars. Terrestrial bodies were tailor-made for contemplating one’s tiny existence in the greater scheme of things, and such contemplation was best done in silence. But bars were meant for drinks and friends and laughs. Even when they weren’t—those times they were for sitting alone and crying in your pretzels—those were solitary moments. If I was going to sit in silence with Danielle and stare at the walls, I’d do it at home where my beers costs pennies on the dollar.

  Porter pulled me from my meandering thoughts.

  “We got movement,” she said.

  It wasn’t on my screen, so I looked at hers. We all did.

  The bartender had thrown his towel down on the bar and slapped his colleague’s back in the time-honored way of telling someone you were taking a quick nature break. Perhaps he said he was getting some more bubbles from the cellar, or wherever the bubbles were kept on a ship. Whatever he said, he slipped out of shot and through a door behind the bar.

  “Where’s that go?” I asked.

  “It’s a galley,” said Porter. “A small one for the bar menu. Fried food, mainly.”

  Man can’t live on bread alone.

  “You got video?”

  “Not in the galley,” she said. “But . . .” Porter changed the view to a corridor. We saw a plain white door open and the bartender stepped out and walked away from us, and then stopped and stood at what seemed to be a wall.