Bright Orange for the Shroud (30 page)

He brought Chookie back into the lounge. “Sure can’t turn much knots in this tub. But she’s fueled up and got a good range. I figured the heading to the Marquesas Keys, McGee.”

“Congratulations.”

“How it’s going to work, we’re going to cut between Key West and the Marquesas, then make like we were heading along the keys to come on up to Miami. But what we’re going to do, we’re going to cut it real real wide outside the keys, and come dark tomorrow night, we douse all running lights and run for Cuba as fast as this here bucket will go. Time them Cuban patrol boats intercept us, the only folks aboard will be a poor simple ol’ backwoodsy guide, and his real quiet lovin girlfriend, both runnin from the capitalists. If you both behave nice, I’m going to set you loose in that little dinghy halfway to Cuba. If you make me one piece of trouble, you get to go swimming with an anchor. Clear?”

“Yes sir, Mr. Waxwell sir.”

“Now if I was half smart, like you claim, McGee, I’d just run this sweet thing back into that big bed and settle my nerves down a little. But she feels poorly and it would play pure hell if somebody run up to check us over. So once we pass a check, there’s time to wahr you on up again, hoe this beard down, rench off the swamp water in that fancy shower and bed this pretty thang down.”

I could turn my head and look up at them. Boone turned her, snipped the scrap of nylon line from her wrists with a flick of the knife blade, scabbarded the blade and snapped the false buckle into place. He turned her around and he took the revolver
from the waistband of his pants where it had been snugged against a softness of belly.

“Now you gone be a sweet pussycat. You see this here? You gone go hot up some food for ol’ Boo. He’s gone loose these boys for a time, and you play any games, he goes eeny meeney miney and whichever one it comes out, ol’ Boo blows his kneebones to pebbles.”

She gave no sign of hearing or understanding. His right hand flickered, cracked her cheek so hard it took her a quarter turn around, making her take a long step to catch her balance. He pulled her back by the arm and said, “I getten through to you, gal?”

“Please, please,” she said in a wan little voice.

“Sure hope you got more life in you on your back, pussycat, than you got on your feet.” He fondled her roughly and casually, breast and belly, flank and hip while she stood flatfooted, enduring it like a mare at an auction. He pushed her toward the galley. She took two jolting steps to catch her balance, and then walked on slowly, not looking back. She could have been, I thought, in a sleep-walking concussive state, or it could be her own game of possum. If the former, it might deaden things for her. If she was being clever, I had to be alert for the opening she wanted to give me.

When Boone bent over Arthur with the cutting pliers, I tried a little idea of my own. “Better do me first, Boo.”

“Why?”

“I’ve got the reserve batteries on charge, and there’s no regulator on that bank. It’s past time to change back. I go by an estimate of time. It could burn them out. So if you set me lose first, then you can take me forward so I can switch them over.”

“Now why you fret about batteries that ain’t hardly yours any more?”

“It’s rigged so that lights feed off the bank being charged, Boo, and if the lights went out all of a sudden, you might get nervous with that gun.”

“That’s being right bright there, buster boy.”

He released me and, when we went forward, gathered up Chook from the galley and brought her along to prevent her going to the lounge and releasing Arthur. He wasn’t going to make any obvious mistakes. As I went forward, ahead of the gun, I was trying desperately to figure out a problem in compass compensation. The compass that controlled the automatic pilot was set well forward, away from any chance bulk of metal which could put it off, cased in a wooden box in a sort of flat shelf area forward of the forward bilge hatch. I wanted to change the automatic pilot direction from southwest to southeast. Okay, so I had to move magnetic north … to left. And with north behind us that meant I had to put my hunk of metal … this side of the compass box and to the left. And it had to be a guess. If I pulled it off too radically, Waxwell would feel the change when we corrected onto the new course. And too small a change would do us no good. And there was nothing down in that hatch that had anything to do with batteries. But I kept a big wrench down there, in a side rack, one too big for the tool box. And there was a switch down there, obsolete but never removed. It had run a separate forward bilge pump before I had put the three of them on the same control. I had to move fast, and in the dark. I yanked the hatch up, told him to hold it, and dropped down. I got the wrench on the first grab and slid it onto the shelf, behind and to the
left of the compass box. I reached and found the purposeless switch and changed the blade from up to down. I waited a few moments, pushed the wrench closer to the compass. “Climb on up out of there, McGee!”

“All done,” I said cheerfully. I jumped up and sat on the edge of the hatch, feet dangling, casually examined my knuckle as if I had barked it.

“Come on!” he said impatiently. As I turned to climb out, I found the wrench handle with the side of my foot and pushed it further toward the compass box. I sensed the course change then, stumbled on the edge of the hatch, fell clumsily to create a diversion. He moved cat-quick out of reach, letting the hatch slam, keeping the gun on me.

“Foot’s asleep from that wire, Boo,” I said apologetically.

“Get on back to your chair, boy.”

Back in the lounge, as if in answer to a prayer, I heard a beginning patter of light rain on the deck above. I doubted Waxwell had the training to use the navigation aids aboard to figure a position, but I knew damned well that he could take one glance at the stars and know the heading was way off.

Arthur and I sat on the straight chairs. Waxwell instructed us in how to act if we were intercepted by launch or float plane. He would be below, with the girl tied and a knife at her throat. And if we were boarded, he estimated he had a good chance of taking them.

“Was that the gun you had the silencer on?” I asked him.

“Damn mail order thang,” he said. “Too loud. Tried it one more time once I got home that night and it pure blew all to hell.”

Chook came shuffling listlessly in with sandwiches and coffee for him. He took the tray on his lap, sat her at his left, held
the knife in his left hand close to her ribs, put the gun on the couch at his right, kept his eyes on us as he wolfed the sandwiches. I tried to get some clue or signal from Chook. She sat dull-faced, hands slack in her lap, staring at the floor. The diesels were roaring at high cruise, setting up little sympathetic vibrations, rattlings and jinglings. The Gulf was as flat calm as I’ve ever seen it, and the gentle rain continued. I knew that sooner or later he would go up top and check the control panel and the compass direction. I knew I had altered it, but I had no way of telling how much. I wanted to delay him. I looked at my watch and saw to my surprise it was nearly ten o’clock.

As he put his empty coffee mug down I said, “Want to hear on the radio how they’re about to catch you?”

“Let’s have a good laugh, sure thing.”

I went over and spun the dial on AM, brought in Key West, and was pleased to hear them give national news first, ten minutes of it. Boo sent Chook to bring him more hot coffee.

“And on the local scene, the big hunt for Everglades killer Boone Waxwell has shifted abruptly to a new area tonight. Just as authorities were beginning to fear that Waxwell had slipped out of the net in the Clark River area, two small boys, skiff fishing in the islands west of Chokoloskee Bay returned home to Everglades City at dusk to report seeing a suspicious-acting man in a boat that tallies with the description of Waxwell’s boat in which he made his escape from the Caxambas area.”

“Swore them little bastards din spot me,” Boo said.

“Based on the boys’ account of details not released previously, authorities are convinced they saw the fugitive, and all efforts are now being concentrated on sealing the area and conducting a massive search beginning at dawn.”

“Well, I just
did
get out of there in time now,” Waxwell said.

“But they’ll have our name and description from the Rod and Gun,” I told him, “and I’ll bet you they’re trying to raise us on all bands right now. They’ll start an air search for us at dawn, Boo baby.”

With furrowed brow he held his hand out for the coffee. Chook came slowly toward him, dragging her feet, the mug steaming. She reached as though to put it in his hand, then hurled the contents at his face. He could have seen it only out of the corner of his eye, but quick as she was, he was quicker, reminding me of the way he had almost gotten to me to stomp me before I rolled under his boat. He got his face and eyes out of the way, but a dollop of the boiling brew hit him across the throat and shoulder. With bullroar, he was up off that couch, knife in the left hand, pistol in the right. By then I was in midair, launched at his knees. As he spun away from me, he took a flashing slice at Chook, and she evaded it only by the speed of a dancer’s reflexes, jumping back, curving her body, sucking her belly away from the very end of the blade. I rolled up onto my heels, squatting. Arthur was trying to edge around behind him, a heavy pottery ashtray poised.

Boo backed away, put the gun on Chook. “In the belly,” he said tightly. “That’s where the bitch gets it. Lay that down gentle, Arthur boy. Back away, McGee.”

I knew from his eyes we were not going to have another chance. Not now.

And then there was a funny hollow thump from up forward, and then a horrible smashing, thudding, grinding, tipping noise, with the bow going up, canting, slowing so abruptly we were all staggered. She is not a fast old lady,
but she had thirty-eight tons of momentum. To a boat owner, a noise like that is like hearing the heart torn out of you, and it froze me in place. And Arthur, still staggering, hurled the ashtray at Boone Waxwell. Sensing something coming, Boone whirled to fire. Arthur confessed later he had hoped to hit Boone in the head. The broad dimension of the ashtray hit the hand and the pistol as Boone was swinging it around. The heavy pottery broke into a dozen fragments and the pistol went spinning toward Chook’s feet. She pounced on it and came up with it, holding it in both hands straight out in front of her, eyes squinched, head turned slightly away from the expected explosion. It made one hell of a bam in the enclosed space. Boone tried to run to get behind Arthur, but ran right into the chair I threw at him. Another wild bam from the pistol in the hands of the very earnest brunette convinced him, and he ran out onto the after deck. The poor old diesels were still laboring, trying to shove the
Flush
all the way up onto the island. He scurried to the port side and swarmed up the ladderway to the sun deck. I started after him and Chook yelled to me to look out. She braced herself on the tilt of deck and fired up at him. Maybe Waxwell thought to go forward and jump off onto the mangrove island. But the determined girl apparently convinced him he should take to the water. The forward twenty feet of the
Flush
was wedged up into the mangrove tangle. When he ran across the sun deck, I ran across the after deck, nearly knocking Arthur overboard.

I got around the corner in time to see him make his leap into the black water, a dozen feet short of the mangrove roots. He jumped high and wide to clear the narrow side deck, jumped feet first like a kid going off a high board. He hit just
where the bright galley lights shone out the port, silvering the water. You expect a great splash. He stopped with a horrid abruptness, the waterline still a few inches below his belt. He remained right there, oddly erect, silent, head thrown back, cords standing out in his neck. I thought he had wedged himself into a shallow mud bottom. But then I saw he seemed to be moving back and forth, a strange sway like a man on a tree-top. He reached down to himself, putting his hands under the water, and he made a ghastly sound, like someone trying to yell in a whisper. He turned his head slowly and looked toward the three of us. He held his right hand out toward us, opened his mouth wide and made the same eerie sound once more. Then he bowed slowly to us, laid over gently, face down. Something seemed to nudge at him from below, nudge him and shove him free, and as he floated toward darkness, slowly there reappeared, with a slowness that told of the length of it that went down through black water to the dead root system, just an inch or so showing above water, the dark rotted end of the stub, four or five inches thick, upon which he had burst himself and impaled himself.

Chook was clinging to Arthur and crying as though her heart was broken.

Her arms went around his neck, and the gun slipped from her slack fingers, put a little dent in my rail before plopping into the sea. I sent them inside, got a light and the longest boathook, went to the starboard deck, hooked him most gingerly by the back of his shirt collar, towed him forward and hung him against the small dark shoots of the new mangrove sprouting at the waterline. Only then did I remember my laboring engines and run to turn them off before they burned out. Arthur sat in the lounge in the big chair, Chook in his lap,
all arms wrapped tightly and all eyes closed, making no sound and no movement. I crawled the bilge with the big flashlight, looking for some little hole the size of a motorcycle sidecar. Probably some seams were sprung, but she looked sound. Surprisingly sound.

When I went back through, Arthur asked me if he could help. I took him aft and we sounded all around the stern area with boat hooks and found there was plenty of water back there. I sent him forward in the bilge with a light and a little emergency horn on a compressed air can to give me a blast if broken mangrove trunks started to come in.

I tried to back it straight off. I got about a yard with full throttle, thought things over, then tried one forward and one in reverse to swing the stern. It swung, with an unpleasant crackling sound from up forward. I had noticed that the compass put us on a dead easterly heading at the time we hit. It’d gotten more change than I’d hoped for. Figuring time, we couldn’t be very far south of Pavilion Key, maybe halfway down to the Chatham River. I backed, gained a little more, swung it the other way, backed again. After the fourth swing, she suddenly came all the way off, making very ugly noises.