Buzz Cut (15 page)

"Don't count on it," the man said.

The man kept looking up into the shower of sparks. "What job you on today?"

"Little soldering is all," said Butler. "How 'bout you?"

"Backing up the kid. He scrapes a knuckle, they send me into the game."

The man rubbed his palm across the gray bristle on his cheek. Then looked back up into the bright rain coming from the welder's torch. "When that kid finishes the one spot weld on the shaft shield, they're dropping this piece of shit back in the water. You got some work to do onboard, you better quit your gawking, shake a fucking leg."

Butler went up the gangway, flashed his badge at the Chinese man up there who was playing security guard, and blew on past. All the regular seamen were probably down on the Block trying to find some hooker to take their money. Butler worked his way to the bridge, no bigger than the closet in a cheap hotel room.

He was ten minutes into swapping out the units when the security guard walked onto the bridge.

"You not on list. I look, not see name."

"Look again," Butler said.

He set the old circuit board aside and slid the new one into the narrow slot, had to tap it into its notch with the butt of a screwdriver.

The Chinese man moved behind him. "You follow me down the stair, we wait in crew cabin. Talk chief later."

"Go suck on a won ton, Charlie Chan."

Butler set the clamps on the ends of the board, blew some lint away from the contact points. Goddamn ship was a disaster. Dirt and grime everywhere you looked. A wonder it made it back and forth the few hundred miles it had to travel every week.

The Chinese guard got his bony arm under Butler's chin and popped him up straight. He switched into Chinese, laying into Butler with a string of weird warbles as he dragged him backward.

Butler twisted his head to the side just enough to see an inch or two of naked flesh exposed at the guy's cuff. He reached up and pressed the prongs to the skin and triggered the voltage and the man was flung sideways against the chart box. Took a bad gash on the forehead.

Butler turned back to the console, spent another ten minutes wrapping up his work. Even with the interruption he'd be on and off, back at the cab in less than half an hour.

He took the inside stairway, dragging the Chinaman down fourteen flights to the bottom deck. It took him a couple of minutes to locate the water treatment plant just forward of the engine room. Like the rest of the
Juggernaut's
equipment, this was ten years out of date. Evaporative filtration system working off the heat from the turbines. Butler had read about the units but this was the first one he'd seen.

He tried three hatches before he found the one he wanted. A reservoir bin that probably held a thousand gallons of freshly filtered water. Butler took hold of the Chinaman's ears, straightened him up, and slammed his skull backward against the bulkhead. Once, twice, three times, another time till there was a bloody print. Butler wiped the bulkhead clean with the sleeve of his jumpsuit, then heaved the guard onto his shoulder and crammed him through the hatch door.

He leaned in, watched him float. Reached out, turned him facedown. Then Butler shut the reservoir door. Cranked it tight. Nobody would check on the reservoir bin, not in a hundred years. At least not until they got a whiff of something rotten trickling out their faucets. By then it'd be a week too late.

At the bottom of the gangway, back on the docks, he pulled the
Juggernaut's
old circuit board out of his gym bag, dumped it into a trash bin, then nodded to the welder in the leather jacket as he passed by. The welder looked away, staring up into the shadowy underbelly of that gigantic ship, into that cold fire raining down.

When he got back to the cab, Monica was staring out at the dreary day. The cabbie was still sleeping.

He opened the back door and sat down beside her. "You could've run."

"I know."

"Why didn't you?"

"Should I have? You planning to zap me with that thing?"

"Not if you're good."

He smiled at her and she gave him one right back.

God Almighty, it was turning out better than he'd ever imagined. That was the way it always went. Imagination was never as good as the real thing. In your head the imagined thing was always fuzzy and vague, but the real thing, when it came along, it was always full of gristle and bone and the stench of fact.

"Well?" she said. "I believe you mentioned something about a cruise."

Butler held her eyes for a moment more, then lifted his right hand, held his fingers in a V and let the current flash.

***

Monica was riding this out. In the cab with Butler Jack driving. Back to the Baltimore airport, the unconscious cabbie slumping against the passenger door.

They stopped at lights. A half-dozen times she could've thrown open a door, run. Exits everywhere. But she was there. She was riding this. Doing something, causing it to happen. Thinking of her father. Of the fish he gutted while her mother watched. The blood on the deck of the rental boat. Her mother's blood. The ice turkey, the silver dollars dropping.

Going to sting him, make the bastard squirm. If the opportunity presented itself, she might even let him know it was his daughter doing it, give him a glimpse. All she wanted was her four hundred eighty-seven dollars back, her nest egg; the rest of it could go to Lucy and her starving sisters.

After it was done, head west. See what was beyond the horizon. Start over, get it right. Santa Fe, El Paso. Whatever looked good from the bus window. Find a motel that needed its sheets changed. Maybe get out her pen, draw some cacti, some iguanas. See what she could do with sand.

***

They were back in Miami by seven that Saturday evening. Butler drove the short hop over the Dolphin Expressway downtown, parked the Winnebago at the Bayside Market, and handed Monica a roll of fifties, told her to have fun, shop till she dropped. He said he had a couple of last-minute things to do, he'd meet her at Sammy's later, then ducked away, a hip hop in his step. A man in overdrive.

Monica wandered into the flashy mall. For a half hour she window-shopped, feeling disoriented, a mild whirl behind her eyes. Finally, she pushed open the door of a shop and stepped inside. She began to shop.

"Can I help you?" they said.

"Can I help you find anything?"

"Anything I can do, let me know."

In her years as Irma Slater, Monica had forgotten the hollow thrill of shopping. She stood before three-way mirrors for the first time in three years, the clerks assuring her she was utterly gorgeous in that green silk sheath, the turtleneck tunic, that long cotton sweater with a soft, jacquard texture, she felt lost. A three-year time warp. Even if she'd wanted to stay up with changing styles, living in the Keys prevented it. People seemed to leave behind on the mainland whatever fashion sense they had. Keys chic was little more than grunge in the sun.

Finally, two hours into it, so weary of the exercise, so out of shape as a consumer, Monica wound up snatching this and that, plunking it all down on the counter, a handful of bras, a half-dozen panties, three pairs of shorts, some deck shoes, trying nothing on. An orgy of impulse shopping.

She carried her bags to Sammy's, a neon and chrome hamburger joint on the top floor of the marketplace. They gave her a table by the front window, a view of the Intracoastal. Something loud and Cuban on the jukebox. She ordered a fish sandwich, a draft beer, double order of fries. Sat and waited for Butler.

From her seat she could see the top decks of the cruise ships. The sleek white monsters glowing in the distance. She dipped her fries in ketchup, wolfed them down. Drank her beer.

She felt good. She felt fine. It was time to be gone from Sugarloaf, from the slow, unvarying weather of the Keys. The lazy clocks, the mellow, coconut breezes. It was time to test herself against the jangle of the city, the quick-draw pace. She still found it hard to believe she was here, just a few minutes away from boarding one of her father's ships. It was nuts. She felt foolish and dizzy and wildly dislocated. But she was going to do it. It gave her a delicious thrill. Steal from her father, give the money away to charity. Wow.

She believed she was ready for the challenge. Irma Slater had toughened her, taught her everything she knew. Now, by God, it was up to Monica.

"I'm perfectly satisfied you can do the job, Mr. Sugarman. I won't accept your resignation."

"How do you do that, not accept a resignation?"

"It's easy." Sampson smiling.

"Look, Mr. Sampson, what you need is a couple of dozen professionals and a complete overhaul of your security system. If you want to catch this guy, that's the only way."

They were midship on the Verandah Deck of the M.S.
Eclipse,
standing near the flickering light of one of the three swimming pools. Sugarman in a pair of khaki camp shorts and a navy polo shirt. Deck shoes. As close to yachting clothes as he had. Jeannie would take one look and probably shake her head, his shoes clashing with his shorts, shorts with his shirt. She could tell when things clashed. One of her major skills.

He was taking occasional peeks over the railing at the dock ten stories below. Nearly ten o'clock Saturday night, and still the supplies were arriving. An endless stream of food and liquor rolling up the gangway. A week's groceries, fourteen thousand pounds of beef, seven hundred fifty pounds of veal, nine thousand of vegetables, nine hundred gallons of milk, seven hundred pounds of coffee. He'd gotten to know one of the chefs, heard the litany a dozen times now. Ten thousand pounds of fresh fruit. A thousand bags of tea.

No possible way for Sugarman to know which of the hundreds of people streaming on and off the ship were legal. Stop every one, check them for wigs or disguises, verify their IDs, run background checks, the ship would never get loaded. So it was hey, if you got a dolly full of tomatoes or Chivas Regal, come right on aboard. Hang around, shoot the shit, have a look around if you like. Hide in a closet, pop out later if you're so inclined. Stick a knife in someone's belly, steal their shirt if it strikes your fancy. Hell, he knew what the guy looked like, he knew where he was going to be, and he still couldn't catch him.

A mile to the south the sleek Miami skyline was a rainbow of flashy colors. One building neon blue, the one beside it green with flecks of red, one a banana yellow, another vivid orange. Along the docks the other half-dozen cruise ships looked like they'd been drizzled with luminescent frosting. Long strings of Christmas lights twinkling on each of them. All six would be at sea by happy hour tomorrow. Fifteen thousand lucky souls with nothing to do for a week but drink and eat and stare at the moon. But none so lucky as those on the
Eclipse.
They would do their drinking and eating and staring with the incomparable Lola Sampson as their shipmate.

Sugarman gazed down at the brightly lit dock, watched another stretch limo drop off more of Morton Sampson's friends. Getting a jump on the festivities. A couple of rising rock stars, news anchors, business moguls. You name it, if they had ten million in the bank, they were invited to the party. Celebrate Morton Sampson's unceasing success. Meet the lovely Lola.

"All I'm saying is, Mr. Sampson, things have uglied up. This guy we're dealing with, he's raised the ante. Killing a guy for his shirt. It's impossible to predict what somebody like this is going to do next. And on our side, what do we have? We got a couple of security people, average age fifty-nine. David Cruz, he's fine. A good kid. But his staff, people he's got working for him, hey, between the bunch of them, we got a grand total of three years' law enforcement experience. I mean, come on, the best these folks can do is break up a fistfight between a couple of cardiac patients. I think we better face it. It's time to bring in the big people."

"And you expect to accomplish this before we get under way?"

"I think we have to delay the cruise till we can bring security up to strength. That's the only way you're going to be able to ensure the safety of the two thousand passengers."

"Who do you have in mind exactly, these big people?"

Sugarman glanced over at a couple of Filipinos mopping the teak deck nearby. Cutting looks at Mr. Sampson. The head boss, husband to the gorgeous Lola, staring like the man was God the father himself. And Sampson looked the part, all right. White ducks, bright new boat shoes, crisp guayabera with epaulets. Bald on top but with thick white sweeps of hair on the sides. Face nicely tanned. Great teeth. Showed them a lot. Proud as hell of his super teeth.

"Look, if you're a hundred percent serious about catching this guy," Sugar said, "you're talking FBI. Major leaguers. They have the training, the computers, the manpower. They can do in ten seconds what it would take me a year."

"We're sailing in international waters, Mr. Sugarman. The FBI has no jurisdiction. We're on our own out there. I don't believe the Coast Guard has an investigative branch."

"Okay, so I don't know anything about jurisdiction, but I know you need professionals. And a bunch of them."

"Is this how you conduct your business? Things get a little difficult, you walk off the job, leave your clients in the lurch?" Sugarman shook his head helplessly.

"Mr. Sugarman. I want to impress something on you. This is the most important cruise in the company's twenty-five-year history. We've been promoting this cruise for months. A week of
Lola Live
broadcast from onboard the ship. And you expect me to delay departure? Risk a public relations nightmare? No. No. That's simply impossible."

"I'm just telling you what I think. It's time to bring in the heavy hitters. I'm not getting the job done. We got a guy who's targeted this ship. He knows what he's doing. He's a slick bastard and he's dangerous. He's beating us. He'll keep on beating us unless we do some serious reevaluation, top to bottom."