It was sunrise and he'd heard no flushing toilets yet, no water running through the noisy pipes. But that wouldn't last long. This was not a house of heavy sleepers. After struggling back into the chair, he rolled out into the hallway, stopped just beyond his door, and listened for signs of activity. When he heard nothing, he moved down to the small supply closet near the TV room. For the last couple of days he'd seen the nurses getting rolls of gauze and fresh linen there. Rubber gloves, ointments.
He opened the door, moved in close to the shelves. Mainly bandages and first-aid materials, a stack of towels and washcloths. He pawed through the boxes and bottles until he found something that might work. A roll of strapping tape, steel filaments running through the sheer plastic wrap.
As he closed the door, behind him the elevator clanked to life and began to rise toward Bean's third-floor apartment. Thorn rolled quickly back to his room and shut his door. He pulled out a length of strapping tape, and with his teeth he tried to rip the piece loose but got nowhere. In his shaving kit he found a pair of nail clippers and rolled back to his bed and began the tedious snipping, a quarter inch at a time till he'd bisected the tape.
As he was finishing, he felt the thud of the elevator settling to the ground floor and heard the clatter of its door opening. There was no time to cut loose a second piece of tape. One would have to hold it.
He snatched the Colt .38 from his gym bag, bent forward till his chest was hard against his thighs, and he pressed the pistol to the vinyl bottom of his wheelchair seat, and flattened the length of strapping tape across it, mashing the adhesive hard against the underside of his thighs.
Bean didn't knock.
He swung the door open and stood smiling in the doorway as Thorn was coming back up to a sitting position, feeling the blood hot in his face.
"All dressed and ready to roll, are we?"
Bean wore white linen trousers and a crisply pressed French blue sport shirt with a yellow pinstripe, those same heavy tennis shoes. A man about to pilot his yacht around the Bermuda coast, swill martinis in the luxurious shade.
"Sure," Thorn said. "Let's go meet Greta. See how she's holding up."
Bean chuckled dryly and stepped around behind him and guided the wheelchair into the hallway.
"Did we sleep well?"
Thorn played the words back, checked for irony, any hint that Bean had the room wired, maybe a video camera in the light fixture. But no, his tone had been neutral—probably only Thorn's paranoia heating up.
"I slept fine, Bean. Just fine."
"Just one quick stop before we head out. Got to stay with the program, you know."
He rolled Thorn into the small examining room, switched on the lights, and walked over to the medicine cabinet. He unlocked the door with a single key and swung it open. For a moment, as Bean poked the syringe needle through the rubber stopper and drew the solution from the vial, Thorn considered bolting. He might be able to make it out to the sidewalk before Bean caught up to him, scream for help, draw a crowd. But he didn't move. He watched Bean put away the vial, lock the cabinet, flick the side of the syringe.
Obliging, he pulled his shirt up and bent forward, giving Bean access to the catheter. Bean's hands were gentle and efficient, fingertips cool against Thorn's back. He slid the needle into the spout of the catheter and pressed it to the hilt, then he halted and stepped away.
"You finished?"
"No." Bean's voice strained.
"What's wrong?"
There s a kink or something. The needle's not going all the way in."
"Same thing the nurse yesterday said. Jankowski, or whatever her name is. A kink in the tube."
"She didn't tell me about it."
"Probably got bent from all the wrestling I've been doing. Or maybe that marathon I ran yesterday."
Bean hummed to himself, then stooped back to the catheter and finished the process.
"There now," he said as he retaped the spout. "Didn't feel a thing, did you?"
"That's the idea, isn't it?"
Bean stepped around and gave Thorn a puzzled smile.
"To feel nothing," Thorn said. "That's what you're after. Your career. Numbness. Deadening the flesh."
Bean's small smile grew to a grin.
"Are you trying to say something, Thorn? Is there a metaphysical point here? A critique of anesthesiology perhaps."
"Nothing so grand as that. Just a small, very personal observation. You've been dedicating your life to doing away with pain, but that's hardly the same thing as curing illness, is it? That's not your concern. That's for other kinds of doctors. Like your dad. What you are is the doper. You put them out, keep them out. Let the other guys worry about fixing what was wrong."
His smile melted away.
"It takes both kinds, Thorn. Those doctors can't do their work until I first do mine."
"Just like the war. You're in control. On your mountaintop. Everybody waiting for you to tell them when to go to work. You whine about it, but you love it, Bean, being the guy who calls the shots."
"How stimulating," he said. "And to think, without any formal education, any systematic study of psychology, you can come up with such penetrating insights into my personality. Someday, when you get a spare minute or two, Thorn, maybe you should try examining your own pattern of behavior. Withdrawing from the world like you've done, shrinking away into your infantile self-absorption. Isn't that your own version of anesthesia? Your way of numbing the pain? Come on, Thorn, face it. Being in the world hurts and you've made a career out of dodging that."
He glared at Thorn, all that hate dammed up, brimming into his eyes.
"Okay, Bean. You win. You crossed the finish line way out ahead. Education, money, prestige. Important social contributions to the world. No doubt about it. You're better in every way. The war's over. I surrender. I'm yours, do with me what you will."
"You bet your ass you're mine. You bet your ever-loving ass. You've been mine all along. You just didn't realize it until now."
He rolled Thorn outside and down the ramp. Thorn expected the red hearse, Pepper, Echeverria, hail, hail, the gang's all here. But there was no one on the sidewalk, no sign of the big red car.
Bean pushed him along the walk, rolling across the intersections at Elizabeth, then another block across Simonton and on to Duval. Thorn had to fight off the urge to lean forward, steal a hand below his seat, press the strapping tape tight again, afraid that all the jounces along the sidewalk had loosened it, that the heavy weapon was hanging by a last smudge of adhesive, that any second it would fall and clatter onto the sidewalk. But he held himself still, depending on the generosity of industrial giants, the dollop of stickiness they'd allotted to that single strip of plastic.
Bean whistled quietly to himself, a tuneless ditty in a minor key. Thorn kept his eyes forward, watching shadows knife across the empty street. The wind was fierce, gusting to twenty-five or thirty. A man in an apron was washing down last night's puke from the sidewalks in front of Sloppy Joe's. Ahead of him, at the end of Duval, heavy clouds gathered to the north, packing the horizon. Gorgeous pinks and peaches like the flocking on some extravagant Easter float. Two white-haired joggers shuffled up the center of Duval and some vagrants congregating on the steps of a fast-food shop cheered them, blowing streams of tobacco smoke as they hooted.
These didn't feel like final moments. There was nothing dark or desperate in the creamy light or the hard breeze. Everywhere he looked the signs said business would be very usual today. The customer would be right as always, the flow of cash and the reciprocating flow of beer and tequila would be at its usual Monday volume. The vagrants didn't call out any veiled warnings to Thorn, they barely noticed his passing. If treacherous omens were lurking out there anywhere, they were disguising themselves well.
But then, of course, it was possible that Thorn was simply projecting his inner calm. The aftermath of an exceptional night of sensuality and revelation. Perhaps that was why football coaches preached the
folklore of abstinence before the big game. You lost some of your enthusiasm for crippling your fellow man when your balls were drained, your ashes hauled, your snake tenderized.
But that was no problem for Thorn. He was calm all right, but his edge was still there, blade honed to a fierce glint. All he had to do was picture those slaughtered dolphins, Roy Everly, his mother, see Rover lying flat in the grass. The buttons were there and they were all hot. It would take a lot more than one extraordinary night of sexual discovery to unclench the muscles in his throat, to relax his veins. All he had to do was look down at his senseless legs and his blood was back at boil.
***
Brad Madison inched down Duval in the white Ford Fairlane. He watched Thorn and Bean Wilson rolling past a gang of hoboes and then past the Pier House parking lot. He slid the car into an open space and got out. He was still dressed from his travels. Gray pin-striped suit pants, white shirt, cordovans. He'd ditched the tie, the coat, but still he knew he was an eyesore. Even the bankers in Key West wore shorts and sandals to work.
He was skipping out on the annual meeting, all agents in charge assembled to give their reports, a gathering presided over by Madame Attorney General herself, the chair of the Senate Judicial Committee right beside her. Set to begin in an hour or so, Eastern Standard. With seventeen operations in Florida and the Bahamas whose progress he was supposed to update, whose increased funding he was supposed to campaign for, Brad was cutting an assembly no one was ever allowed to miss. Careers were permanently scarred for unexcused absences. And Brad Madison hadn't even filed a report, hadn't called in the feeblest alibi.
All weekend in the Georgetown Sheraton he'd phoned Echeverria's room in the Casa Marina. Nothing. He'd called the Miami office, checked his voice mail, talked to Darlene, his secretary, told her to call him the split second Echeverria checked in. Nothing. And nothing again, followed by more nothing.
He called and called and called and got nowhere until he knew something had come even more unwound than before. Echeverria dead. Echeverria held hostage. The whole island of Key West sinking into the sea. So he caught the Sunday red-eye to Miami, made the twenty-minute very bumpy hop to mile zero, roared over to the Eaton Street clinic first thing, ready to storm the house, gouge that two-bit doctor in the eyes, strangle the breath from him until he told the truth, just standing up into the street, about to shut the Fairlane door and there were the two of them, Bean and Thorn, half a block away in the shade of the big oak trees, rolling down the front ramp, not a word passing between them. Neither of them looking around; focused, intense, headed somewhere. Brad ducked back in the car, breathless. Then slid along behind. His career was over. There was no way to repair the damage. He wasn't acting as an agent of the Justice Department any longer. Now he was simply Brad Madison, private citizen, trying to rescue a young woman he himself had put in jeopardy. Now this was personal.
***
Monica rented a fifteen-foot Aquasport with a seventy-five Evinrude. The rental guy at Garrison Bight Marina didn't seem to care if she knew how to run a boat or not. She didn't. But with some help from a woman on a houseboat two slips away, she got the runabout started and immediately slammed into one of the pilings and nearly bounced overboard. When she finally got control, she motored out into the harbor, fighting the wind and current, and she started toward the markers out to open water.
At the first marker, clear of the land, she turned on the radio, switched it to their prearranged channel, 68, and fiddled with the squelch until she'd cleared the static. Wilson had his own hand-held VHF that he carried in his car. A Key Largo thing. She'd run into a lot of locals who liked to drive along the highway monitoring the salty banter just offshore. Wilder talk than the shock-jock radio guys.
"Red Rover, Red Rover, come in."
She guided the boat under the bridge and stayed far to the right as she navigated the markers out to the shallow bay north of the navy housing. The radio was silent. Gulls swooped low in the channel before her, screaming with greedy delight, plucking minnows that danced near the surface. Barracudas below, gulls above. Monica could relate.
"Red Rover, Red Rover," she said. "Come in, Red Rover."
"Red Rover here," Doc Wilson said. "I hear you, Monica."
"Can you talk, Doc?"
"I'm at Mallory Square," he said. "Where are you?"
"Still in the channel, just out of Garrison Bight. Everything took longer than I thought. The water's very rough. Whitecaps. I'm getting sprayed."
"It's ten minutes to get here," he said. "Over."
"If I don't get lost, you mean. Or capsize."
"The boat's tied up at the dock. Miss Begotten. Big Hatteras, mahogany cabin, white trim on its hull. Bean is rolling Thorn aboard at this very moment. You need to hurry, Monica." Drifting too close to one of the marker pilings, Monica had to jerk the wheel hard left, or port, or whatever the hell it was. Even idling along at fifteen hundred rpms, she couldn't control the goddamn thing—how the hell was she going to be able to do her part of this?
"I'm in a no-wake area," she said. "Manatee zone. Is there a shortcut or something?"
Doc Wilson started to speak, but another voice broke in, some Cuban fisherman out past the reef, cursing the bad fishing. Been out since dawn, hadn't caught shit. Sea getting plenty rough. Might have to come back in.
"Red Rover, repeat please. Repeat."
"They're pulling out, Monica. We're going to lose them. I think the manatees will understand. Flatten the throttle. Hurry, sweetheart. Hurry."
CHAPTER 30
Pepper Tremaine was standing at the top of the ramp when Thorn came aboard. She wore a cream sweatshirt and navy shorts and was munching on the wrinkled tip of a purplish and evil-looking chili pepper. In the hard wind, her hair snapped around her face, wispy strands snagging on her lips and nose. She made no effort to pull them free.
The wooden ramp was bumpy and Thorn could feel the strapping tape loosen, the pistol beginning to rattle against the backs of his thighs. As Bean muscled him up the last few feet, Pepper stepped away from the gunwale and climbed the ladder to the flybridge, sat down behind the control console and started up the big diesels.
The Hatteras was a few years older than Thorn, probably nearing her first half-century. A fifty-footer with the bulky, inefficient lines of an era of cheap gas and flagrant indulgence. Even with a quick glance he could see that no one had been keeping pace with the relentless attack of salt spray and sun. Rust circled the base of the outriggers and spreaders, reddish trails of it had leaked over the side and stained the white hull. The coaming padding was dried out and the vinyl was split, its stuffing beginning to poke through. Behind the bulkhead, the gin pole was bent and the winch was corroded solid. Bleached almost to white, the teak deck was spattered here and there with what looked like bloody chum.
Most of the wear appeared recent, three or four years old, as though the solemn old lady's husband had recently passed on, and for a few years after his death, his grieving widow had managed to keep herself together, but then little by little she grew dotty and absentminded, completely forgetting the purpose of combs and hairbrushes, soap and shower baths, until by now she was almost at the end of her transformation from dignified lady to derelict.
Those who should have cared for her, who should have been there to see her through these difficult years, bathe her, help her with her toiletries, take her for exercise across her familiar waters, were apparently too busy with their own concerns. And that was a shame, for on land, when people found themselves so completely abandoned, they went down fast, while at sea they went down many times faster.
Bean stationed Thorn near the transom, where an ancient chum grinder was fastened to the gunwale, a pungent musk hovering around it, specks of rotten meat caught in the gears, putrefying in the sun. Bean loosened the sternline and threw it down to the young dockhand, then inched forward and did the same with the line at the bow. In the harbor the water was a dreary gray and pitched with waves. One after
the other they rolled in toward shore and buffeted the big Hatteras and ground her starboard side hard against the rubber fenders on the dock.
"Where's Echeverria?" Bean called up to Pepper. "I told him eight o'clock sharp."
"He's not coming. He couldn't make it. Feeling kind of low." For a moment Pepper grinned into Bean's hard stare, then she turned back to the controls and set about angling them away from the dock, thrusting and counterthrusting until they were heading out into the wind, the broad-beamed lady wallowing across the slop. At the end of a ten-foot towrope, a full-size Zodiac inflatable bounced along in their wake.
Judging by the decay above deck and the ragged sound of her exhaust, those diesels were probably caked and clogged with years of sludge, their valves and cams and pistons mired in oil as thick and unhelpful as honey. In a perfect world overseen by a sparrow-watching God, those engines would be doomed to seize up a few yards offshore and the ship would founder and be thrown back against the seawall and its hull would crack and it would begin taking on water, and while saving all aboard, the authorities would find Greta Masterson and Thorn and the whole rotten plan would be exposed.
But that God was on holiday, had been for some time, as far as Thorn could tell. Sparrows everywhere were on their own. These days it seemed to be Job's God running the show. A guy with a taste for the grotesque, an appetite for torture. Prick them, poke them, wire their privates to electrical outlets, see how much they spasm, turn up the juice, see how long it takes them to call out his almighty name. You didn't pray to that God. You kept your head down, followed his instructions, and no matter what suffering he threw in your path, you stiffened your upper lip, and most important, you didn't take his name in vain. All of which was fine by Thorn. He preferred a God that didn't micro-manage. There was at least some slender hope that folks like Thorn could go unnoticed, free for a time to choose their own calamitous destiny.
Red Sky At Night (Thorn Series Book 6) Page 28
