Buried At Sea (32 page)

"Standin' on the corner,

I didn't mean no harm. . . .

Jim jumped to catch him, but he got tangled in the nay station and before he could swing his legs out from under the desk, Will tumbled to the deck.

Jim knelt and turned him over. His cheek was cut and his nose was bleeding, but he was struggling to pull something from his pocket. "This is for you."

"Let me help—"

"No big deal. Just my bosun's knife."

"Hang on to it," Jim said. "You'll need—"

"Wear it always. Keep it sharp. It could save your life sometime. See this key?"

"Yes." The key Jim had stolen—borrowed—stolen--to open Will's private desk.

"It opens the desk in the bulkhead. A bunch of stuff there you can look at. Keep anything you want—I know you rifled the desk—but there's a secret panel underneath that you missed. It opens when you release a little spring under the drawer. False bottom. Something in there you might enjoy when you grow up."

"Let me help you into bed."

"No. I'm outta here. It's all yours, Jim. Have fun with it. Just make sure you get my head to Buenos Aires." He closed his eyes. "Watch this, Jim." He raised his arm. The heartrate monitor was recording a deadly thirty beats a minute. And as Jim watched in helpless fascination, the numbers spooled down to zero.

JIM PULLED THE knife out of the crack in the cabin floor and returned it to its rack. Then he picked up Will.

For the first time in his life he understood the phrase "a bag of bones." He carried Will into his cabin, laid him on his bunk, and pulled a sheet over him. Then he backed out of the cabin. The body barely indented the sheet.

Deer Shannon.

Will died et nine-twenty this morning at 33' 49' S. 40' 19' W. I feel so alone. I crossed two oceans with the man; already I miss his talking and talking and talking, teaching me stuff. telling me stuff, talk. talk. talk. constant talk, the sailing lessons. and tons of advice, most of which I didn't need or didn't want to hear. We sailed from Barbados to Nigeria and then back across the South Atlantic. Thousands of miles. I know he was a con man. I know he was a liar. And it looks like he was a thief, too. But he was fun to sail with and he was so full of hope. He made me want to be an optimist, like you. I'll write you more later. I have a ton of stuff I have to deal with, but I just had to tell you this first.

I love you. I wish you were here with me.

Jim

He entered Will's death in the log. He wrote the time he died, Hustle's position, and his opinion that Will had died from an infection resulting from a knife wound suffered in Nigeria.

He stood in the main cabin for a while, just standing and turning, not knowing what to do next. Air. He needed air. He hurried up the companionway. The sea was empty and the sky sharp, with several bold white clouds. The wind was chilly, invigorating, like the first cool day of autumn.

It is autumn, he thought. Almost. Down here winter is summer, and summer is over. And there's a dead man below, whose head I'm supposed to cut off and put in the freezer. Thank God they were out of the tropics. The cool weather bought him a day or two to make up his mind.

He should read the will. Will's will. But he didn't want to yet. So instead he went below and unlocked the teak desk and found the release for the false bottom, which pivoted open, revealing a square drawer. Folded inside was a canyon suit bag. He unzipped it, smelled cedar, and discovered a black tuxedo. The coat had satin lapels, the pants a satin stripe, and there were suspenders, a silk cummerbund, and a snowy white pleated shirt. Jim had worn a rented tux with a plaid cummerbund to his high school junior prom and a couple with colored jackets to friends' weddings. But Will's was midnight black. When you grow up. What was Will thinking? It would never fit him . . . though it might if he lost some more definition.

He put it back in the suit bag and closed the desk. Then he sat down at the nav station and opened the drawer. There was a business envelope with his name written on it in Will's fine, clear handwriting. The paper was heavy and textured, as was the single sheet folded inside. Jim took it up to the cockpit, sat on the windward side, and read. It began in the same clear hand:

I, William Spark, aka Billy Cole, aka Pendleton Rice, aka Randell Smythe, aka Mickey Creegan...

What a time Shannon would have tracking all those names on the Web. He'd bet it was Mickey Creegan who had moved up in the world by painting boat bottoms.

... being sound of mind and frail of body, write my last will and testament: If Jim Leighton, my good friend and loyal shipmate, delivers my body—or, failing that, my head—to Dr. Angela Heinman Ruiz in Buenos Aires, Argentina, I bequeath to him all my worldly possessions, including my yacht, Hustle, and royalty rights to all my patents. Maybe if he covered Will's body with a blanket and wrapped his head in a towel. . . . Am I losing my mind? he thought.

Will's handwriting deteriorated, with crossouts and confusions of words not finished. If Jim Leighton fails to hold up his end of this bargain, everything goes to Ms. Cordelia MacDonald, Borlum Farm, East Island, Falkland Islands, UK.

No surprise there. Perform, or you get nothing. Have I lost my way? Jim thought. But he wanted his piece of Sentinel.

Will had signed it "William Spark," and dated it, "Aboard the yacht Hustle, 32 degrees south, 40 west. (Voice copy on tape cassette and in voice mail of Dr. Angela Heinman Ruiz, Rio de Janeiro—just in case any of my ex-wives try to dispute this.)" Finally, Will had scribbled a note on the bottom of the page:

JIM: JUST HANG ON TO MY HEAD. JUST PROMISE ME THAT, PLEASE. Keep it in the freezer, even if you can't find Angela, maybe you can get in touch with my Frantic scribbles tumbled off the bottom of the page and landed on the back.

—cavemen. . . . Do me this one favor, shipmate. And even if you screw up, and everything goes to Cordi,

you can keep the boat. Cordi hates sailing—she gets even sicker at sea than you do, if that's possible—and she doesn't need the money. She's doing fine with a hydroponic farm. . . . Here, I'm signing it again to make this codicil legal. He had signed all five names again.

Jim said, "Thank you, Will. Thanks for the out."

Will had scribbled some more, in lighter ink, in a scrawl so chaotic it was almost impossible to read:

You're in a win-win situation, kid. Do the right thing. Or as you loved to say to me: "A deal's a deal."

Jim said, "Do the right thing? Oh, give me a break." Will was manipulating him to the end. Even after the end. The right thing was to bury Will at sea in his wonderful tuxedo and sail home an honest man. But Will had backed him into a box, a double trap of greed and need. I want it all and I want to take care of Shannon, if she'll let me. All I have to do is butcher my former shipmate.

LIKE THE OPERATION, this postmortem decapitation would be less messy on deck. What if someone sees? Who would, in the middle of nowhere? A spy satellite looking down? Forget it. What was the big deal? Will was already dead.

He was on his own and no one would ever know—except for Angela, when he handed her Will's head.

He wrapped Will in the sheet and carried him up to the cockpit. "You wanted this," he said out loud. "And you're not alive. So what the hell?" He got a towel and the serrated knife. The boat was heeling, leaning hard over as it beat into the wind, bound for Buenos Aires. He wrapped the towel around Will's head. Maybe there wouldn't be much blood, but who knew? He was feeling sick to his stomach. He eased the mainsheet and both jib sheets. The sloop stopped straining and stood a little taller. He picked up Will's body and laid it across the afterdeck where he had "operated" on Will's wound. Operation successful, patient dead. He picked up the knife, glanced automatically at the sails, looked around the empty ocean, and glanced at the compass, which showed them heading due north.

"North?"

He leaned closer. The card spun until it pointed due east. He stepped back and it spun west. He was holding the knife. The steel was affecting the compass, throwing it off, confusing it, making it false. He looked at the gleaming, finely scalloped edge. A beautiful tool, Will had called it. A thousand years of Japanese war technology tamed for the kitchen.

Jim threw the knife high in the air and watched it spinning, gleaming, blinking in the sun. I am not false, he thought. I know what's right and I know what's wrong. Maybe someone else could do this. But not me.

The knife sliced without a splash into the sea. The compass swung southwest and stayed there, as steady as a rock.

It seemed foolish to waste an anchor.

But Jim couldn't just drop Will's body over the side and let it drift. Birds and sharks would worry it to pieces. So he went below, pulled one of the spinning bikes out of the locker Will had had constructed in the former front cabin, and muscled it up the companionway. Then he tied Will's arms and legs to it. Muttering a rest-in-peace prayer that didn't mean much to him but couldn't hurt, Jim squatted down on the deck, gathered Will and the heavy bike in his arms, and lifted them over the stern rail. He had the strangest feeling that Will's fantasies were dying with him.

He opened his arms.

With a concussive splash, Will and the spinning bike cannonballed a hole in the water. The hull wave rolled over it. Jim leaned out, pressing his legs against the stem rail, trying to distinguish the spot. But it was fast falling in the wake, and already the sea was the same.

Feeling numb and very empty, Jim went down to the nav station and wrote in the log, " Will Spark, buried at sea." He noted the time, the date, and Hustle's position on the GPS

and signed his name.

Had Sentinel just gone overboard? Was it really in Will's head—or only in his imagination? Or was it still bits and

pieces of hardware and software in the hands of widely scattered "cavemen"? Will's stories were starting to run together in Jim's head, fading, dissolving. Sentinel, McVays, Nickels—a blur, a sea of words.

It struck him that he knew he was going to have to get used to life without Will's dreams. Maybe there was a way to keep the boat. . . . Or should he simply go back to being what he had been before they met?

The one thing Jim knew for sure was that the only way to get through the rest of this day was to concentrate on form. He surprised himself with his first bold move, writing in big block letters: COURSE CHANGE—HOME.

If Will's enemies wanted what was in his head they could keep on chasing him. Jim was going home. If the McVays asked him, he would tell them that Will hadn't really died but had faked his own death, and that the last time he saw Will Spark the old man had gone ashore in Uruguay. At home, if they hassled him, he could dial 911. The wind was still blowing from the west, the anemometer reading a steady fifteen knots. Donning his safety harness, Jim furled the small headsail and hanked on the big genoa jib.

"Start the engine first to hold the boat into the wind when you're changing sail alone," Will had cautioned.

"But I've seen you do it without the engine." To which Will would reply with elaborate patience, "When you've been sailing fifty years you can do it, too." Jim cranked the diesel, powered into the wind, and raised the genny. Then he let her fall off until the wind was pushing from her port side. She flew northeast on a broad reach. Ocean Passages of the World said that the best way home from latitude thirty-two degrees south, longitude forty-one degrees west was to head north to latitude 4°45' south, longitude 34° 35' west—a waypoint off Cabo Calcanar on the bulge of South America—

then steer 3,460 miles northwest to New York.

But Jimmy Cornell's World Cruising Routes recommended that northbound sailboats bear farther east until they picked up the trade winds, then cross the equator at longitude thirty west and on to New York, via Bermuda or the Caribbean.

Jim didn't even know if he had enough food and water left to sail straight home. Maybe he should stop at some American island in the Caribbean. Or why not just pull into Rio de Janeiro? He had an open airplane ticket.

No, he wanted to keep the boat. And if in the long term he couldn't keep it, he was at least determined to sail it home. Besides, Rio, Bermuda, and the Caribbean all presented the same obstacle: how to prove to foreign immigration or port customs that he owned the boat.

Where is this "Will Spark" listed on her documents, senor? a customs agent was sure to ask. He's dead. He gave me his boat. Here's his will. . . . How interesting. . . . Buried at sea, you say?

Then Jim started to get really paranoid. What if I arrive home alone—sail all the way to Connecticut and pull into the Larchmont Yacht Club—how do I prove I didn't throw him overboard to keep the boat? An autopsy would confirm how he died. But no body, no autopsy.

He had entered Will's death in the log, a legal document, and recorded that Will had died from an infection resulting from a knife wound suffered in Nigeria. Prove that! Then he had a brainstorm. He rushed below, printed the e-mails Will and Angela had exchanged, and slipped them into the log. They confirmed Will's infection.

With that score settled, Jim went up on deck.

He had no appetite, nor was he tired. He had only a desire to make the boat go faster, so he worked her through the rest of the afternoon and into the evening, tweaking the sails and learning new tricks with the helm. For the first time since he'd fled Africa on the gritty Harmattan wind, he saw the sun go down in spectacular color. Will had told him that would happen when they drew near enough to a continent for land dust to redden the gray-yellow midocean sunsets.

He knew that he should go below to inventory his supplies to see whether he could sail straight through. But he

hated to leave the cockpit. So he kept driving her, through the evening and into the night. Just at the point where he was blind-tired and thought he absolutely had to go below, he snapped on his harness and made one more round of the decks.

Moonlight suddenly broke through a heap of swift-moving cumulus clouds, which were splashed dark and light as they galloped across the moon, smothering it, uncovering it, and enveloping it again. Will used to call it a "Treasure Island sky." And then, when he least expected it, Jim's eyes grew warm and he began to cry.