She hoped Frank wouldn't die. She hoped it for the doctor's sake, for the sake of his experiment, which he wanted so badly to succeed. And she hoped it because it would mean Tran van Hung would go back to the other side of the world, leaving his pot of money behind. And then everything good, everything she had been hoping for, could start to happen.
But if Frank did die looking at her, she knew she would enjoy it. It pleased her being the last thing a man saw, the face he remembered for eternity. Pepper's face, floating out there in the dark empty stretches of afterlife.
The doctor bent over the old soldier and Pepper lifted the iodine swab and dropped it into the waste can. The doctor felt for the pump embedded in the man's belly. He ran his fingers around the edges of the device until he located the small port where the rubber membrane was. Pepper could see the outline of the pump through Frank's flesh—like he'd swallowed a yo-yo.
She watched the doctor lower the needle and press it to the man's flesh, guiding it carefully into the membrane, and then she turned back to the naked man. He was staring into her eyes, drinking her in, longing for her.
The doctor withdrew the needle, set it aside, and picked up the black transmitter wand from the bedside table. A wire ran from the wand to his portable computer, which sat on the deck beside the bed. The doctor held the black wand a few inches over the man's belly and pressed the start button. Once the pump began working, the drug took thirty seconds to snake through the catheters around to the spinal cord.
No one spoke. There was only the moan of the gray wind.
The old soldier took a deep breath and his face relaxed and the doctor asked him if the pain in his legs had decreased at all. The naked soldier smiled at Pepper and his eyes glowed with blissful light. The doctor put his hand on Frank Hanes's shoulder and shook him lightly and asked again if the pain had decreased. But the man didn't seem to notice him. The soldier blew the air from his lungs and inhaled again. Sucking in air and more air and more until Pepper thought his chest would crack open.
The doctor's face had grown tense and dark, and he asked again what the man was feeling. Would he please try to describe the sensations. The man emptied his lungs in one loud rush like he was blowing out marijuana smoke. Then he smiled up at the doctor.
"Nothing," the soldier said. "Nothing at all."
"No pain?"
"None," said the soldier. "Zero. Nothing. Everything's gone. I feel like I used to feel. Before everything."
And the doctor nodded. Pleased but cautious. The doctor reached out to feel the soldier's pulse, looking at his own wristwatch to count the seconds.
And Pepper watched as that fine mist began to cloud Frank's eyes, the man still smiling at her but starting to drift deeper inside himself like he was sinking below the surface of a tub of dirty water. His face rippled with little expressions coming and going, spasms in the facial muscles, nerves misfiring.
Then suddenly Frank sat up.
He grinned at Pepper.
"I'm fine," he said. "Jim-dandy. Ready to rock and roll."
He pivoted on the bed and slung his feet over the edge. The doctor took hold of his arms, gripped him hard, and Pepper grabbed him around the waist, but Frank was all muscle and gristle and sudden fury. He was stronger than any man Pepper had ever touched. Stronger than her father, stronger than her football-playing high school boyfriends. She'd had years of experience wrestling with boys, trying to push them away, or drag them into her arms, but they were all weaklings compared with potbellied Frank.
Frank got his feet on the floor, jerking from Pepper's grasp, shoving the doctor aside, and he started walking toward Tran van Hung.
There were no muscles left in his legs, his spinal cord was severed and he was paralyzed from the middle of his chest down, but somehow he kept his balance and swung his arms high like a German soldier and made two miraculous steps toward the little Vietnamese man dressed in gold, Frank crying out the high-pitched hoot of a rodeo cowboy when the gate's thrown open. That old soldier filled with a million volts of energy, like the space aliens had finally gotten their beams inside him and were zapping him full of powers no other earthling had.
He raised his hands like he meant to strangle Tran van Hung, and the little Oriental man ducked and cried out in gibberish, then all at once Frank halted, tottered for a second, and crumpled to the deck.
The doctor and Pepper lifted him and carried him back to the bed and lay him down. He'd started to sing some low quiet song, a funeral hymn it sounded like, moaning it deep in his throat.
They got him on the pink sheets and the doctor shook the old soldier's shoulder again. Frank stared at Pepper, his eyes disappearing inside the fog, as his hymn got quieter and quieter and finally ceased.
The doctor cursed. He felt for Frank's pulse and cursed again.
There was no CPR, no shock paddles. They had used those before and found that nothing could revive the old soldiers once they were gone.
"Well, at least it worked for a minute or two," Pepper said. "That's an improvement."
The doctor looked at her, his blue eyes blank. Pepper took a breath. Like a big, dangerous dog watching you, he might be about to lick your face or tear your throat out. She could never tell, when the doctor's eyes collapsed like that.
White birds sliced through the ice-blue sky and Frank Hanes lay dead on the pink sheets. After another few moments the doctor dragged in a breath and came back into his body from wherever he'd been, his eyes deepening and letting Pepper into them once more.
"So what happened, Doctor?" Tran van Hung said. "What's your excuse this time?"
The doctor was staring at Frank's dead body. The invisible fumes of that old soldier's soul rising from his corpse.
"It's okay," Pepper said. "This is better than before. We're making progress. That's what counts."
The doctor looked at her. Studying her face like he was just that second noticing her, and for the first time considering that Pepper might be someone he could reach out for and touch and kiss and lie with and love and marry and have a brood of children with. Looking at her with those tormented eyes full of sad electricity. Her blond doctor.
But he didn't say anything. He just kept running his eyes over her face, then over her white blouse and burgundy skirt. Looking and looking at her while the dead man lay naked and cold on the bed between them, and the doctor stared at her without a word on his lips, eyes depthless again like that big, dangerous dog.
"Well," Pepper said. Hurrying now to get some words into the air, anything to move his eyes off her face, her clothes, her body. "I think we should all be happy and quit fussing. We're getting closer."
Finally, the doctor broke off his staring, and looked down at the dead soldier on the pink sheets. The man carrying Pepper's face off into eternity.
"We need more material, Pepper," the doctor said. "You can go tonight."
"Tonight?"
"Something more important on your schedule?"
She took a quick look at the doctor's eyes.
"No," she said. "I'm available. Sure, of course."
"Good," the doctor said. "I'm so very pleased."
***
Pepper Tremaine hated working with Yankees. They were so goddamn pushy, for one thing. Near as she could tell, everybody in Miami was a Yankee, always in a big hurry, everybody nervous, doing you a favor to say hello.
First words out of the guy's mouth when he picked her up at the Islamorada 7-Eleven was that he didn't want to know her name.
"My name's Pepper. Pepper Tremaine."
"I just said I didn't want to know your fucking name. What're you, retarded?"
"Well, now you know it, you're out of luck. You can't go back and not know it at this point."
The guy looked at her for a few seconds, then went back to smacking on his gum, weaving through the light traffic. Red baseball cap scrunched down tight, a pair of dark glasses, aviator style. Driving with them at night, he looked like some old blind piano player.
&nbs
p; Pepper was an inch under six feet. Her eyes were olive, but she could make them darker if she wanted, just by staring hard at someone. Tonight, for the assignment, she had on a pair of black leggings and a loose-fitting black blouse with flap pockets. She wore her auburn hair shoulder length, parted in the middle with a frosted strand running down each side of her face. Pepper had the same body as her daddy. Rawboned, with rangy, gristly arms and long legs. Like her daddy she was hard-muscled from years of deep-sea fishing. Only difference was she had breasts. Good ones, hard and high like grapefruits cut in half. And a good swell at her hips, shapely legs. She knew she was pretty because she'd been runner-up Homecoming Queen. And now, six years later, there were a dozen guys in Key West who'd marry her in a minute. But she had her sights set higher than local boys. Dumb conchs with the smell of fish guts on their hands. Pepper was headed a hell of a lot higher than that. All she needed was a little more womanly sophistication. Help with her makeup, her posture, maybe a hint or two about her wardrobe. None of it that hard to learn. All of it right there in the little how-to sections in the magazines she bought every week, Vogue, Elle, Cosmo, Mademoiselle. She'd had a deprived childhood, hadn't had a mother or older sister to help her master all the feminine tricks other girls picked up naturally. But that was coming. She was studying the magazines, getting advice from the cosmetics girl at Sears. She felt good. Within shooting distance of her goal. A doctor's wife.
Anyway, tonight this big guy in the baseball hat was Pepper Tremaine's partner. Acting like her boss, the way he talked, explained the job, what Pepper was supposed to do, taking her through it step-by-step. Real bully.
Within a half hour of being in the same car with the guy, Pepper was ready to pull out her #15 scalpel, press it to the guy's aorta, drain him down a few gallons, then kick his fat carcass out of the car, forget the whole assignment.
"I took care of this same job three times before already. I guess I know how it's done."
The big man looked over at her.
"You could've told me that at the beginning," he said, "saved me the fucking trouble explaining everything."
"I was being polite," Pepper said. "Letting you have your say."
The big man muttered something under his breath.
Pepper reached up and touched the scalpel through the cotton of her black blouse. The lead handle gave the knife the extra heft of a first-class tool. It was an expensive instrument, but like her daddy used to say, never scrimp when choosing tools. He was referring to rods and reels, of course, but it was just as true with scalpels. One quick swipe with that #15 and Pepper could forever change the way a man looked at the world.
It was two in the morning as they coasted over the noisy grating of a bridge and the headlights lit up the sign for Key Largo. The moon was in the west, cocked on its side like a sickle about to harvest a field of flimsy clouds.
They passed the goofy-golf places, bait shops, gaudy liquor stores, Pepper looking out at the trashiness. Give her Key West any day. Say what you would about the T-shirt shops and the ten thousand bars on Duval Street, she'd rather be down there where there was some kind of pulse, than in the upper Keys where everybody was always half-crocked on embalming fluid.
Ten more minutes. The big guy turned off US 1 at a shopping center, driving past a bank, couple of gas stations. Everything closed up on that weeknight. Real quiet out there, nobody walking around, hardly a car on the highway. All the old-timers drooling into their pillows by now.
The big guy wheeled the rental through a dark neighborhood and parked on the shoulder of the road and turned off the engine.
"Down there," he said. "Couple hundred yards."
"You're not coming with me? Don't want to get your feet wet?"
"Yeah, I'm going with you, make sure you don't fuck up. I been scoping this place out for the last few days."
"Know how I got my name? Pepper?"
"I don't know and I don't give a rat's butthole."
" 'Cause of these."
She pulled a smoked habanero out of her pocket, one of the miniature chili peppers she carried everywhere. Came out with the scalpel at the same time. Holding both of them in her right hand, Pepper capped the chili, flicked the stem away and popped the rest in her mouth. Imported from the Yucatan, it was fifty times hotter than a jalapeno. Rated at three hundred thousand Scoville units, which was off the charts on most people's tearjerker scale.
"Jesus, where'd the doc dig you up, state mental ward?"
"Wanna try one?"
The big guy just kept staring at her through those dark glasses.
"Well, hell, at least feel how hot it is."
Before the guy could jerk his arm away, Pepper reached over and dabbed a speck of habanero juice on his forearm, and it took only half a second.
"Jesus Mother of Shit!"
He rubbed at his arm, cocking his head back and staring up at the rental car ceiling.
"You eat one of these," Pepper said, "you damn well better keep your hand off your dick for eight hours. Unless you're one of those Marquis de Sade types."
Pepper got out, took the gym bag from the backseat, and waited till the big guy managed to open the door and stand up. Invisible steam rising off his back. She followed the big fellow down the road. Nobody had anything to say. Pepper was usually quite the talker, but this guy wasn't bringing out the best in her.
At the high fence, Pepper set the gym bag down, unzipped it, and took out a pair of heavy bolt cutters. She snipped the lock, dropped it on the ground, squeaked the door open. There were no lights on inside the nearby house, just a couple of noisy window air-conditioners churning away. You could probably set off a small nuclear device out there and no one inside that house would hear it. No lights anywhere along the street. Music was coming from somewhere, but with all that water nearby, it could be miles away.
Pepper stepped inside the gates and the big guy followed her, still in the sunglasses and baseball cap. While the guy slipped over to the water valves, Pepper took a minute to look down at the dolphins circling in the dark, making their clicks and whistles as they slushed through the water. The big guy hissed at her to get a move on.
After they cranked open all three valves, the two of them went over to the edge of the canal and watched the water pour out of a big pipe. The splashing was noisy but the breeze carried off most of the sound.
The man rubbed at the spot on his forearm and watched the water splash into the canal. After a minute he stooped down, dug through the athletic bag, and came out with two handguns, both with silencers. He handed one to Pepper and held his down by his side, just standing there chewing his gum like he was waiting for her to lift the barrel, give him a reason to shoot.
Just then, from down the street, a car horn honked, one single blast. The big guy swung around and stared down there, and Pepper took that opportunity to jam her silencer into the guy's kidneys.
"My name's Pepper Tremaine. Now I'd like to hear you say it back to me. Put it in a sentence. Say something nice. 'Hello, Miss Pepper, how you doing this fine evening?' Something like that. Go on, say it. Use my name in a sentence."
"Pepper Tremaine," the big guy said, "you're one fucked-up individual."
Pepper chuckled politely, then waited a second or two, waggling the barrel against the guy's kidneys, letting him sweat.
"Do it again. Something not so insulting this time. Use my name."
"I think we should begin doing our job now, Miss Pepper. How's that?"
Pepper watched the water coming out of the drainage pipe. Down to a trickle now. Behind them the dolphins were making different noises. Squeaks, little whimpers, flopping around on the concrete floor, lost all their agility. Pepper angled the man over to the edge of the pit, where they could see the big gray dolphins shiny in the moonlight. Looked like a bunch of blind grub worms you'd find under a rock, all of them squirmed and bumped into each other. Gasping and snorting.
"Okay, that's better. You and me, we didn't have the same upbringings
; our folks must've used different etiquette books. But that doesn't mean we can't still get along."
Pepper took the gun out of the big man's kidneys and stepped away.
"Through the tails now," Pepper said. "Be careful. We don't want them dying right away."
The guy turned and peered at Pepper for a minute or two like he was considering testing her reflexes, then he sighed real loud and raised his pistol out to the side, and aimed down at the dolphins and let go.
Professionally trained shooter like he was, it still took the big guy eight shots to hit five dolphins. Pepper went six for six. She guessed island girls were good at some damn things.
"Well, enough fun," she said. "We got work to do."
Pepper drew the heavy Deiner's knife from her gym bag and climbed down into the tanks to commence the surgery. She took one last good swallow of the cool night air and shook her head.
God help her, the shit she did for love.
CHAPTER 3
Thorn had decided they should celebrate Monica's dollar-an-hour raise at the newspaper by having lunch at Sundowners, and that's where they were when the news came on the overhead TV. It was the lead story on the Miami station. Eleven dolphins had been killed in Key Largo. Shot and butchered. All eleven had been decapitated and most had been disemboweled.
Thorn set his conch fritter down, stared at the screen. A young Hispanic woman stood beside the dolphin pool with her microphone and notepad and a queasy smile.
"I must warn you," she said. "The scene you are about to see is graphic."
As the camera panned over the carnage, Thorn felt the scar on his shoulder flare.
"Jesus," Monica said. "Christ Almighty."
Someone on the other side of the bar laughed.
Thorn cut his eyes to the man. A short guy with the bullish neck of a bodybuilding geek. His three friends were iron pumpers too, all of them wearing shorty T-shirts with the sleeves torn off. The guy caught Thorn's eye and held on, grinning.
When Thorn looked back at the screen, the reporter was interviewing Roy Everly.
Red Sky At Night (Thorn Series Book 6) Page 2
