Love for Sail

by Charles Dougherty

So he's looked through the papers, she thought.

  "Well? Which is it?" he asked in a pleasant enough tone of voice.

  "Connie."

  "Good. I like Connie. It suits you. Constanza sounds like some old bat from a vampire movie."

  "What do you want?" she asked.

  "Now that's my kind of girl," he said softly, smiling. "Friendly and accommodating."

  They looked at one another in silence for a moment, and then he got to his feet and stepped across the cabin, invading her space as he bent down and put a hand on the cushion on either side of her, bracing himself against the motion of the boat.

  He screamed suddenly, "I want you naked, right now, bitch!"

  She felt the spray of his spittle on her face as she recoiled from his reeking breath. She saw a flash of blinding light and felt an excruciating pain on the right side of her head, realizing as she fought to hold onto consciousness that he had hit her. She tasted blood in her mouth; the inside of her cheek must have been cut by her teeth.

  He stepped back, jerking her to her feet. "Right now, bitch. Strip!"

  "No, please," she said, feeling a surge of panic. She thought of kneeing him in the groin, or kicking his knee out; that had worked well with Jimmy, but she was so shaky she didn't know if she could do it.

  As if reading her mind, he stepped back again. A straight razor appeared magically in his right hand.

  "Naked. Now!" he screamed, his eyes bugging as he brandished the razor.

  "Look, Connie," he said, his tone now conversational. "You're going to be naked in the next thirty seconds. You can strip, or I can cut away your clothes. Now, I've done it before, but I'm a little out of practice, so I might cut you. I'd recommend that you strip." He smiled pleasantly.

  "Now!" he screamed, lifting the razor over his head and starting to bring it down toward her chest.

  "Okay!" she said, thinking that maybe she could distract him and tangle the razor in her clothing as she removed it. She began unbuttoning her shirt as he smiled sweetly and nodded his encouragement.

  "Good," he said, in a soft tone.

  "Tony!" a man's voice bellowed from above deck.

  "Busy," he yelled in reply, winking at Connie.

  She'd been wondering about whether he was alone. Now she knew there was at least one other person aboard.

  "Quit screwing with her and come here for a second," the man on deck called.

  "We're not screwing ... yet," Tony yelled in reply, grinning at Connie as she took her shirt off. "I'll be up in a bit. Just head north and don't hit anything for now. I gotta finish what I started down here."

  He licked his lips theatrically as Connie unbuttoned the waistband of her shorts and let them drop to the floor. She pushed them aside with her foot and stood, hands at her sides.

  "Naked!" he screamed again, lifting the razor and stepping toward her. "You're not naked yet," he murmured. "You have to be naked for what happens next."

  She measured the distance to his near knee, keeping the razor in her peripheral vision. She knew it was intended to terrify rather than to inflict a mortal wound. She decided she'd risk a few razor cuts before she'd let him rape her. These bastards wanted the money, she was sure, so they wouldn't kill her. The longer she could drag this out, the more likely Paul would come looking for her. She realized that the adrenalin had cleared her head. She reached back and undid the hooks on her bra, sliding it from her shoulders as she watched his eyes. It worried her that they never once flickered toward her exposed breasts. The clock on the bulkhead chimed six times; it was three in the afternoon. Paul should be discovering that the boat was gone about now. She slipped her panties down over her hips and stepped out of them, dangling them on her right index finger as she locked eyes with Tony.

  "Happy?" she asked.

  "Not yet, but soon," he grinned.

  He tossed the razor from his right hand to his left, watching her eyes follow it. As he caught it, he brought his right fist up in a vicious punch that landed just below her left ear.

  ****

  Connie heard the clock chime as she felt her head throbbing again. She recovered consciousness much more quickly this time, aided by the pain that seemed to radiate through her body. She was face down on the saloon table. Her shoulders and hips ached, and she couldn't feel her fingers and toes.

  She tried to change her position, but her arms were extended over her head. She tugged on them a little bit and felt something cut into her wrists. She lifted her head enough to see her hands; there were cable ties around her wrists and a short length of quarter-inch nylon line secured them to the part of the mast that came down through the cabin.

  She couldn't see her feet, but she didn't need eyes to know that her ankles were cable-tied and probably roped to one of the fittings on the waist-high bulkhead that divided the galley from the saloon. Her bare skin stuck to the varnished surface of the table, so that any movement, even taking a deep breath, brought tiny needles of pain from her breasts as her skin stretched, the parts touching the varnish held firmly in place by her dried perspiration.

  The engine was silent. She held still for a moment, concentrating, and decided from the boat's motion that they were at anchor in reasonably calm water. She could hear the murmur of voices from the cockpit. She only identified two different ones, both male. She closed her eyes and concentrated on breathing evenly, feigning unconsciousness.

  She knew they would rouse her when it suited them, whether they thought she was conscious or not. In the interim, she might hear something useful if they thought she was out cold. One of them came below and lifted the top on the refrigerator

  "We should have grabbed the cop, too," the one below deck said.

  His was the other voice. She dubbed him 'Not Tony.' They knew about Paul, so they must have been watching them for some length of time. She searched her memory, but she couldn't recall having seen Tony before, nor could she remember seeing anyone suspicious since Paul arrived. "Not that I would have noticed," she thought, ruefully.

  "Yeah. We coulda worked on her and let him watch. He woulda talked for sure then."

  "You'll get it out of her. Shit, you scared the hell out of me with that lunatic screaming fit, and we're on the same side."

  "You like my evil twin, huh?"

  "I wouldn't go that far, but it's effective."

  "Trick I learned back when I was running women. Not much scares crack whores, but crazy is somethin' that seems to rattle 'em. 'Specially if you threaten to cut 'em up a little. Somethin' about a straight razor and a lunatic, I guess."

  "You teach that to Willie?"

  "Nah. He got his own shtick. He likes needle nose pliers."

  Connie heard the sound of a pop top opening from the galley. She wondered if Willie was Jimmy's friend, the pimp that he used to threaten Kirsten. Probably, she reasoned. She shuddered at the memory of the girl stabbing Jimmy in the back, remembering the look on her face. Connie knew she could kill; she'd been forced to, but it still bothered her. The look of pure insanity on that girl's face as she had ripped the knife through his kidneys was a stark contrast to the look on Tony's face when he was waving the razor around. Not that he was not scary, but he didn't project insanity -- not if you had first-hand experience with the real thing.

  "You want a beer while I'm down here?" Not Tony asked.

  "Yeah, sure. Might as well relax. Time's on our side, now."

  "How do you figure that?"

  She could tell he was going back up the companionway ladder from his voice.

  "The longer we leave her stretched out like that, the worse she's gonna hurt when we start messin' with her."

  "We don't have a lot of time. Giannetti wants his damn money."

  "We'll get it for him."

  "Did you put it to her yet?"

  "Nah. But she's expecting it. Anticipation, man. It's worse waitin' for it than it is havin' it happen. Once you do it, whatever it is you're threatenin', some of the scare goes out of it. It's the not knowin' whe
n it's gonna happen that scares 'em shitless."

  "I don't know about that. Remember, this woman's not one of your crack whores. She's got her shit together."

  "Had," Tony said.

  "What?"

  "She had her shit together, but not now, man. She's ours, now. You can mess with her all you want once she talks. I seen the way you look at her."

  "Well, she's an eyeful, Tony."

  "They're all the same after a while, Murano. All the same."

  Connie had a name for 'Not Tony," now. Murano. She heard the clock strike two bells. 5 p.m., she thought. They had come aboard not long after Paul left, and they had run the engine until sometime between three and four o'clock. They could have covered twenty or thirty miles in that time. She wondered where they were, and how Paul would find her. Surprised, she realized that she had no doubt he was coming for her, or that he would know how to find her. She didn't know why she was so sure, but it didn't matter. The important thing was to hang on as long as she could.

  * * *

  Chapter 25

  She could hear them talking in the cockpit as they drank their beer.

  "You think that quarter mil is on this tub somewhere?" Murano asked.

  "Nah. It filled a good-sized duffle bag; we woulda found it," Tony said.

  "How come the cops didn't find it in North Carolina, then?"

  "Good question. Maybe they did."

  "But you said your guy didn't know anything about it," Murano protested.

  "Yeah, but you know cops. Maybe they're runnin' some kinda game here. Leave the money on the boat, keep an eye on it, like."

  "That's paranoid, Tony. Why would they do that?"

  "Cops forever do shit that don't make sense. It's almost dark. You want another beer before we go to work on her?"

  "I guess. Why're you waiting until dark?"

  "Psychology, man. Dark is scary and hopeless. I'll get us this round."

  ****

  Connie's mind was racing. She figured Paul had to be on his way; maybe the conference call had run late. She needed to buy some time, but how? She rehashed everything she had learned from Jimmy and Kirsten, matching it against what Paul had told her about them. She did her best to mesh those facts with what she had picked up from listening to her captors. She also thought about what she had learned about the economics and logistics of the drug business from her encounters with Sam Alfano. She'd just have to wing it and hope she could fake these guys out long enough for help to arrive.

  Lost in thought, she jumped and squealed when she felt an icy touch on the side of her right breast, just beneath her armpit.

  "It's okay, babe," Tony said. "It's not the sharp edge of the razor; not just yet. I just wanted to kinda measure it out before I cut. I don't want to mar that beautiful skin, see. My friend, he's gonna make me something really nice from it after this is over."

  She steeled herself, but she still flinched and trembled as he drew the blunt corner of the straight razor down along her ribcage and up over her hips. She felt it stop and reverse direction at the cleft between her buttocks as he traced a line over her left hip and up her left side, pausing at the swell of her left breast and then dragging it across her shoulder blades to stop under her right armpit again.

  "Too bad about the tan lines," he said, "but maybe he can work around those. Like, put them in a seam, or something."

  He withdrew the razor and laid his hand on her hip, stroking gently. "They tell me that it don't really even hurt. One girl, she said it felt the same when I made the cuts as it did when I was tracing it out, like I did just now. She didn't even start screaming until I was through with the cuts. It was when I started to ..."

  "Shut the fuck up for a minute, you monkey-brained bastard," she hissed.

  "What did you call me?"

  "You're wasting time we don't have," she said.

  "Huh? We got ..."

  "You got shit, moron. Get Murano in here. I've got something to tell him."

  "Smart. You give up the money, things could go better for you."

  "You've got somewhere between a few minutes and a few hours to live if I don't save your sorry ass. Get me Murano, you miserable piece of shit."

  "Hey, Mark! She's askin' for you. Got something to tell you."

  "What is it?" Murano asked. "You want to tell me where the money is?"

  "That's not your biggest problem. Neither is Giannetti and whatever he threatened to do to you for being a dumb ass."

  "How do you know about Giannetti?"

  "Uh-uh," she said. "I think I may still be able to work something out to save you two shitheads, but I'm not talking any more until you cut me loose. Or are you scared I'll hurt you?"

  "Why would I cut you loose?"

  She grinned at him and shook her head, watching as he chewed nervously on his lower lip. His eyes oscillated between her and Tony. After a couple of seconds, he nodded at Tony. "Cut her loose."

  "But ...”

  "Don't make me tell you a second time."

  Her hands stung from the sudden rush of blood when he snipped the cable ties. She massaged her wrists and said, "Ankles, too."

  Tony clipped the cable ties around her ankles and stepped back.

  "Hand me my clothes, please," she ordered Murano as she tentatively put her feet on the floor and tested them with her weight.

  "What are you ..." Murano started to say.

  "The clothes. You're wasting time you don't have."

  "But ..." he said as he handed them to her in a wad.

  "But I'm going to the head and get dressed. You and your yard ape figure out whether you want to live to see morning while I freshen up."

  She took the clothes and walked gracefully into the aft cabin, smiling at their stunned looks as she closed the door. She filled the sink and splashed water on her face as she listened to their whispered argument. She couldn't tell what they were saying, but she knew Murano had taken the bait. Now she had to set the hook and play him until help arrived. She put on her clothes and ran a brush through her hair, grinning at her reflection in the mirror to get herself in the right frame of mind. When she put her hairbrush back in the drawer, she saw an old-fashioned steel nail file. She slipped it in her pocket before she opened the door, thinking she might use it as a weapon.

  "Okay," Murano said. "So start talking. Tony said you threatened us."

  She smiled. "Like I told your yard ape, you boys are in trouble. I might be able to save you, but no guarantees."

  "I don't ..."

  "I know you don't get it, but you will if you pay attention."

  "I say we just waste her. I'll make her tell us where the money is, and we'll ..."

  "Can you shut him up?"

  Murano backhanded Tony across the mouth, knocking him off his feet. He landed on the settee and fixed Connie with a malevolent glare.

  "Thank you. Just so it doesn't distract you any more, I'll tell you about the money; it's safely in a numbered account in the Cayman Islands. There's no way you're going to get your hands on it, no matter what you do to me."

  "How did ..."

  "Time is precious. You'd better pay attention."

  "Okay, but ..."

  "Why is time critical?" she finished his question, raising her eyebrows.

  "Yeah."

  "The short version is you and dumb-ass over there walked into a trap."

  "A trap?"

  "Yes. I'm the bait; the helpless female, all alone on a big boat, and you two stupid shits stepped right into it. Giannetti must like to hire the handicapped. You boys wouldn't last 30 seconds working for me."

  "Working for you?" Murano's mind was racing, remembering what Alfano had said.

  "Here's the rest. Giannetti has seriously pissed me and my associates off; he's shown a total lack of respect."

  "I'm lost."

  "I know, sweetie. Listen to Mama, now, okay?"

  He nodded and she continued.

  "He thought he could move product through our turf withou
t paying the tariff."

  "Your turf?"

  "Mine and my partners, yes. We control the Caribbean basin. Like I said, he stepped out of bounds."

  "So what happens now?"

  "Depends on whether we can come to an agreement before my partners show up."

  "What happens when they get here?"

  "Well, you know about Omaha Steaks?"

  Murano looked puzzled. "Yeah," he said in a tentative tone. "The frozen beef people?"

  "Right. My partner's planning to send Giannetti a delivery from Omaha Steaks."

  "I don't get it."

  "No, Giannetti gets it. You, handsome are it. Picture Giannetti opening that white styrofoam box with the dry ice fog coming out and looking down in there. Guess what he'll see?"

  "I don't know."

  "No imagination. Your handsome face looking back at him, with two sets of male genitals in your mouth."

  Murano blanched. "Two sets?" he squeaked.

  "Just so Giannetti knows that you both tried to earn your pay, you and dipshit over there."

  "But how ..."

  "They'll be here any time. If we don't have a deal when they get here, you're done."

  "Wait!" Tony interrupted. "This don't make sense. Why would you do a deal instead of just lettin' them kill us?"

  "He's smarter than I thought," Connie said, smiling at Murano.

  "Yeah. Well, it's a good question. You got an answer?"

  "Testosterone." She used the grin that she'd practiced in the mirror a few minutes ago, imagining that she was a shark about to sink her teeth into her prey.

  "Tes ... testosterone?" Murano asked.

  "Yes. I'm not hampered by it like you ball-bearing thugs are. This is business. I'm in it for the money; I don't need to show Giannetti that my dick's bigger than his."

  Murano swallowed hard, thinking. "You said something about a deal."

  "I can hold them off, unless you do something stupid when they get here."

  "And what do you want in exchange?"

  "I like round numbers. Let's say one."

  "One?"

  "Million."

  "One million dollars?"

  "See. That wasn't so hard, was it?"

  "Wait. You already took a quarter mil."

  "Oh, think of that as a fine; like a penalty for not paying taxes."