“Don’t get your hopes up,” the girl said. “There’s nobody chasing us yet.”
“Neatest trick of the week,” I said. “Three shots and two dead bodies and nobody cares?”
She laughed shortly. “That little gun of yours didn’t make hardly any more noise than a back-firing motorcycle; and they’ve got lots of motorcycles in Nassau. There wasn’t much blood in the parking lot and we mopped it up a bit; in the taxi, too. And we had a couple of funerals at sea while you were out. Nobody’ll ever see those corpus-delictuses again, not with fifty-pound pigs of lead wired to the ankles. The Northeast Providence Channel goes down a thousand fathoms around here.” She frowned, watching me. “Now you tell me, what’s that black girl of yours going to do?”
“What black girl? . . . Oh.” I shrugged. “She’ll call Washington and do what she’s told.”
“And Washington? What will they do?”
I shrugged. “Who the hell knows what they’ll do, ever?” I grimaced. “It was a simple bodyguard assignment, they didn’t want the Brand woman embarrassing us by getting herself killed right now, but then she got difficult and the way things are, maybe they’ll just write her off and me, too.”
“What about the Shitfuzz?” Serena Lorca asked. “Do you think they’ll be notified?”
“The what?”
She grimaced. “You know. The Kapok Kops. The Pot Pigs. They used to spend their time worrying about life preservers and drugs, but now it’s our crappers that are a matter of life and death. You’d think a Service that claims a lot of proud traditions would draw the line at investigating a bunch of stinking boat toilets, but I expect pretty soon they’ll have us all taking down our pants when they come aboard so they can inspect where it comes out of as well as where it goes into. . . ."
I grinned. It never fails these days, when you’re with yachtsmen of any kind. Just the thought of the idiot EPA regulations for seagoing plumbing will set them off. It made the girl seem more human and sympathetic, despite everything I knew about her.
“You don’t have to worry about the Coast Guard,” I said. “This is a very discreet operation, no uniforms invited.”
She frowned suspiciously. “Meaning that the helicopters are already airborne and you want to keep us feeling safe and happy until they get here.”
I shook my head. “There are very good reasons why the Coast Guard won’t be called, or the Navy or the Marines, either.”
“What reasons?”
I hesitated. “Tell me something first. Peterson rattled off a crazy story about the way that ship sank, the Fairfax Constellation. I know it was just something you fed him to pass along to me; you wanted him to have a plausible story to tell me so I’d think they really had interviewed Einar Kettleman, and so I wouldn’t suspect he was leading me into a trap to save Miss Brand. But how much truth was there in that yam, anyway?”
She studied me for a moment unblinkingly. “How much do you think?”
I said, “Well, I don’t believe Kettleman was blown off any ship’s bridge; his officer, Hinkampf, described the explosion quite differently. And I don’t believe Kettleman saw a lot of stuff while he was floating around on a hatch cover—I’m not much of a nautical expert, but floating wooden hatch covers went out with Captain Horatio Hornblower, didn’t they? They’re heavy steel nowadays and it takes a big steam winch to pick one up. In fact, I don’t believe in Einar Kettleman at all; I think he’s just a bunch of nice white bones on the ocean floor picked clean by the fish. Otherwise it was a very interesting and convincing yam.”
She hesitated. “What has all this to do with whether or not the Crap Cops are coming?”
“Everything,” I said. “Because you just think you sank that ship. . . .was you, wasn’t it? I figure the big shiny black thing that was picked up after the explosion by the mysterious motorboat without lights—I suppose this boat right here—wasn’t a man in a wet suit after all. It was a woman in a wet suit. You.”
Serena Lorca said, “Well, if you went to the address I told you, and saw those grubby kids, you know they never sank anything but themselves, in a sea of hash. The Sacred Earth Protective Force, for Christ’s sake! Just another bunch of parasites trying to cash in on . . . on somebody else’s work.”
“Oh, no,” I said. “Oh, no indeed, lady. That’s where you’re so wrong. You don’t realize that that great law-enforcement agency, the Office of Federal Security, in a brilliant display of investigative genius, has just triumphantly tracked the terrorist evildoers to their sinister lair and recovered the extorted loot after a desperate gun battle in which one heroic agent died and the vicious political activists all met the violent ends they so richly deserved.”
Serena Lorca was staring at me, aghast and incredulous. “Oh, Jesus! You’ve got to be kidding, Helm!”
I said, “Hell, I was almost elected to be the heroic agent who got heroically killed. In fact I was elected but I refused to serve; I got another guy to volunteer for the honor. Well, he didn’t know he was volunteering, but it amounted to the same thing.” I rubbed my bullet-nicked arm reminiscently.
She licked her lips. “But goddamn it, that bunch of freaked-out space cadets would have peed in their crummy jeans at the sight of a gun. Not that it would have made much difference to the way they smelled.” She looked at me. “You mean, that smooth government bastard at the head of that outfit—what’s his name, Bennett?—sent a bunch of his guys to deliberately massacre . . ."
I said, “He couldn’t afford to take them alive, could he? Not alive and telling everybody how they’d played him for a sucker with a terrorist fairy tale, a million dollars’ worth.” Serena Lorca drew a long breath and said, “Well, I didn’t really mean to set them up for a hit. Three hits.” Her voice hardened. “Not that it matters. Nobody asked them to butt in, the greedy little creeps.”
“It was the oldest one who did all the thinking; the other two just went along for the ride.” I glanced at her curiously. “How did you find them?”
She shrugged. “They used pot, didn’t they? They used other stuff; they had to get it somewhere, didn’t they? One of them even made a couple of runs for us. The organization keeps track of people like that, and notices when they start acting funny, it could mean trouble. All I had to do was ask a few questions around, when I heard somebody was trying to hold up the shipping companies for a lot of money. . ."
“Heard how?”
“Who’s asking the questions around here, anyway?” she demanded with sudden anger. Then she shrugged. “Naturally we’ve got connections along the waterfront; we hear what’s going on.” She frowned. “And I still don’t see what the hell all this has to do with whether or not your people are going to alert the Shit-and-Piss Police.”
I said, “Concentrate and it will become clear to you. The case is solved, solved, solved. Get it? You don’t think Bennett is going to ask the Coast Guard to sail out and unsolve it for him, do you? And leave him standing there with egg on his face and four dead bodies to explain? Right now the last thing in the world he wants is to find out, or have other people find out, what’s really been happening out here on the ocean. He’s just sweating it out, hoping that nobody ever does find out; and particularly that the Mad Ship-Sinker never strikes again. Or Mr. Bennett’s name will be Mister Mud.” I shook my head. “Oh, no. No matter what he knows about you by this time, he’s not going to send anybody after you or let anybody be sent if he can help it. Not even if it means sacrificing an unimportant operative from another agency and an insignificant girl journalist. Hell, if he sent somebody, they might catch you and then where would he be?”
“But you don’t work for this Bennett guy, really.”
I shrugged. “What difference does that make? You know the OFS; they’re the takeover boys in spades. When you work with them, you do it their way or else. My chief hasn’t held his job all these years by bucking a big agency like that.” Please excuse me, sir, I said silently.
Serena Lorca frowned at me. “But
you don’t really think much of this Bennett character, right?”
“Now what would give you .that idea?” I asked. She was driving at something, and I didn’t know what it was; I just hoped this was the attitude she wanted from me. “I mean, all the guy ever did was set me up for murder and then let me be kidnaped without doing a damned thing about it, if that’s the way he’s handling it, and I’ll bet on it. So why wouldn’t I love him like a brother?”
She smiled faintly. It had been the right answer, although I had no idea why. But it would presumably become clear eventually, if I lived that long. She studied me carefully for several seconds; then she turned away from me and picked up a large red canvas purse from the opposite settee, and groped inside. She brought out a small photograph, apparently a color Polaroid shot, which she gently slipped out of its protective plastic sleeve and held out to me.
“This is what it’s all about,” she said in an odd voice. “Do you know who she is?”
I took the picture. For all its small size it was a very good portrait of a very beautiful young girl with blond hair that was so wonderfully pale and silky you could hardly believe it. It was worn quite long. The girl had delicate features and large blue eyes. I got the impression that there hadn’t been a great deal behind those big eyes, but that was a lot to read from a photograph.
I dredged up a name Brent had mentioned. “Ann Bergerson?”
“Yes,” Serena Lorca said. “Ann. My Ann. She was so young, so lovely, you can see how lovely she was, and they smashed her down and threw her into the cold ocean and drowned her. That great ship crashing through the dark without anybody looking. I turned on the strobe, I even fired a flare, but they kept right on coming; and Tumbleweed just wouldn’t go to windward fast enough against that chop, even with the motor running. And afterward, the hull all broken and sinking and the mast down, and her blood on the deck where it had hit her, but she wasn’t there. I looked and looked, all that night I looked, all the next day, rowing search patterns in that damned rubber dinghy, but I never found her. Now do you understand why I have to hunt them down and kill them as they killed her?” She didn’t wait for my answer, but snatched the picture back and said to the man with the gun, “Put him with the other one. Stay where you can see the door. Arturo will watch the foredeck hatch from the bridge; he’s got a gun up there.” She started to make her way out into the cockpit, and stopped. “Helm.”
“Yes?”
She stared at me for a moment. I was beginning to realize that this was a girl who stared at everything, in the weird, intent way some nuts have. It doesn’t necessarily mean they’re studying what they’re looking at harder than other people; in fact they may not be seeing it at all.
But her voice was quite sensible when she spoke, “I’m not going to kill you or the girl; that’s not the plan. Not unless you make me. Believe it. So don’t do anything hasty, please.”
Then she slipped outside and turned to mount the ladder to the flying bridge. The goon poked me with his gun, which was a hopeful sign. The gun-pokers are generally pretty easy; but it was too early yet. I had to think about Serena Lorca’s promise; I didn’t know for sure how many were on board; and I didn’t know the situation forward. I let myself be nudged and goosed down into the main cabin, all well-oiled teak except for the stainless stuff in the galley where a wiry, gray-haired man was cooking something. Number four.
I let myself be urged past the galley and up to a closed teak door in the bow. Another nudge with the gun muzzle indicated that I was supposed to open it. When I did, a hard shove sent me forward to stumble over a plastic bucket that was wedged into the small floor space between two bunks that met in a vee. The door slammed shut behind me.
There was a small girl huddled face down on the starboard vee-berth. I recognized the short-sleeved navy sweater and the white linen slacks and the high-heeled blue sandals. I’d been seriously worried about her ever since Serena Lorca had felt obliged to revise, slightly and maliciously, her report on the swell condition of the prisoner up forward; but the stench in the little wedge-shaped cabin was reassuring. If it was only that, it was nothing to worry about.
“Elly,” I said, touching her shoulder.
She shrugged my hand away miserably. “Go away!” she moaned. “Oh, God, I’m sick as a dog. Go away, damn you! Oh, Jesus, if there’s any way of being uglier and crummier and more revolting, little Elly will find it every time. . . . Oh, Christ, here I go again!”
I moved aside hastily to allow her access to the bucket. It wasn’t very nice of me, the girl was suffering, but I found myself grinning anyway. Miss Eleanor Brand was at it again, tearing herself down as usual. It was kind of like coming home.
Chapter 28
I was proudly told as a boy that the family had descended, on one side at least, from seafaring Viking rovers who weren’t, subsequent research informed me, very nice guys. Well, I know a wealthy lady out West who’s very proud of an ancestral horse-thief she wouldn’t dream of letting in the house if he were to appear in the bewhiskered, tobacco-chewing flesh. I can’t say I’ve inherited any great nautical capabilities from those ancient Norse pirates; but they do seem to have bequeathed me a fairly rugged digestion, which stood me in good stead now. As the big sportfisherman pounded along toward an unknown destination, the motion in the cramped bow stateroom was violent and the vomit-stink was unpleasant; but I found myself unaffected except for a slight queasiness, perhaps because I’d had no chance to partake of nourishment since the day before.
Well, the first job, obviously, was to clean up the joint. When Eleanor indicated that she was through regurgitating for the moment, I picked up the bucket, knocked on the door, waited a bit, and opened it cautiously. Our jailer was braced in the narrow passageway outside, gun ready.
“What the hell do you want?” he demanded suspiciously.
“What’s your name?” I asked.
He started to tell me it was none of my damned business, but shrugged instead. “Giulio,” he said.
It’s always easier to establish a useful relationship of mutual respect and confidence if you know and Use the name. “Okay, Giulio,” I said, “where do I dump this?”
“Use the head. No, the door to port. And be damned careful, Government Man.”
“I’m always careful, Giulio.”
It was a small, gleaming cubicle and it seemed a shame to defile it, but I got the bucket emptied and washed out, getting water from the shower, since the bucket wouldn’t fit into the diminutive washbasin. Then I couldn’t figure out how to work the nautical potty. I’d been shipmates with the kind you pump with a lever, but this was a much more elegant and complicated apparatus, presumably electrical in nature. I stuck my head out cautiously.
“How do I flush this cottonpicking thing?”
Giulio grimaced. “You’ve got to turn on the fancy electronic shit-eater, first. The macerator-chlorinator button, MC to you. When you get the green light, hit the flush button, F, and you’re in business. And when the bastard goes on strike, or leaks crap all over the boat, or runs the batteries down, you call the EPA and they come running to fix it for you. Haha. Funny story.”
“What’s the other button for, with the red light?” I asked.
“That tells you you’re out of shit-eating gunk and you’ve got to give it another dose before it will work. Hit R for refill to set it up, but you won’t need to. It was recharged before we shoved off. Mr. Lorca likes us to keep his boat ready to go.” His eyes narrowed. “Quit stalling and get it done, if you’re going to do it.”
I set up the right combination on the master computer and the smelly stuff was sucked smoothly out of the bowl, to be purified and sterilized to government specifications before being pumped overboard. Fascinating. It made me feel all warm inside to know that this part of the world’s oceans was safe from our pollution; you never know how much harm one small girl’s puke is going to do. Pretty soon, we’ll have diapers on all the whales and porpoises and be in great shape.
I washed my hands, got a clean towel, and a washcloth and dampened that, and went back in there and rolled her, protesting weakly, over on her back so I could work on her, washing her face and cleaning off her sweater where she’d messed it a little. She lay there exhausted by her convulsive illness, eyes closed; and I found that her pale little monkey-face did funny things to me. I’d been worried about her, badly worried. I was very happy to have caught up with her before anything more serious than seasickness had happened to her; and I wasn’t about to try to figure out how I reconciled my feeling for this girl with my feeling for Martha Devine. Or, for that matter, my feeling for Harriet Robinson, who’d died. But, obviously, what I needed was a burnoose, a camel, a sheikhdom, and a harem. Maybe two camels. Eleanor’s eyes opened.
“Hi,” she whispered.
“Dumb,” I said. “What did you want to go running off for, anyway? Like a little girl pouting because the big boys wouldn’t let her play football with them. Dumb.”
“How . . . how did you get here?”
I said, “You first. How did they catch you?”
She shrugged. “We took a taxi from the airport and told him to take us to the hospital. I didn’t expect to get in to see Kettleman at that hour, but at least I could find out if he was really there. Only, after we’d driven for a little, the cab driver simply slammed on the brakes very hard, so hard that we both wound up on the floor of the back seat. Before we could pick ourselves up there were guns at both rear windows. The girl was there. She’s kind of a weirdo, isn’t she? A man, she called him Giulio, got in the front seat with a gun and we drove along some more and there was a car crash behind us; and pretty soon they brought your man Fred and put him in with us. He’d been following us but they’d laid for him and run him off the road. They took us to the boat, this boat, and wanted Fred to call in—there was a phone connection to the dock—but he wouldn’t give them the number.”
The Revengers Page 26
