Buzz Cut (19 page)

Thorn was angry by the time he reached the spa. Angry and frazzled and ready to chew flesh. Somewhere in a back room of his consciousness he'd decided that when he finally tracked down Sugarman's murderer, he would take him back to Key Largo and make it his life's work to torture the son of a bitch, keep him just above the waterline for the rest of his days.

The New Horizon Spa was a few feet away from the railing of a seven-story atrium, a hollow core in the center of the ship that glowed with golden neon. You could perch at the railing on any of seven floors, spy on your fellow passengers above, below, across from you. On the other side of the canyon, a glass elevator rode up its tracks, empty.

There was no one at the front desk of the spa. Thorn hammered the bell, called out several hellos but nobody answered. He went behind the desk and pushed through a mirrored door into what appeared to be the spa's business office. The room was lit but unoccupied.

He went back outside and headed down the darkened hallway toward the men's locker room. Showers, dressing rooms, saunas. A coed weight room at the end of the hall. He looked in every room and found no one. Then swung open a door marked MASSAGE. Four rooms in a row down a short hallway. Thorn threw the first door open, switched on the light. A padded massage table, a small desk with oils and fluids. A mirror and a clothes rack. No one there.

In the third massage room, he flipped on the light, drew in a breath, and stepped back into the hallway. Sugarman's body lay on the massage table. He was wrapped from his feet to his chin in silver foil. His face gray, eyes shut tight.

"Nice view," Butler said.

Monica stepped into the cabin, Butler across the room, holding the heavy curtains aside so she could admire the Miami skyline bristling with light.

After they returned from Baltimore, Butler changed clothes, putting on white slacks, a blue Hawaiian shirt, and a Panama with a jazzy colored band. Ready to reggae. Their passports said they were married. Mr. and Mrs. Oliver Jackson. Canadian. She'd asked him where the hell he'd gotten the head shot of her, and he'd smiled mischievously and refused to answer. Clearly a photo taken while she was at Sugarloaf. Then she remembered an old couple with a camera a couple months back, their weird request to take her picture. It spooked her, every detail of his scheme so carefully worked out. On the other hand, it gave her some perverse comfort. They were going to pull this off, not get caught.

"Will there be anything else, sir?"

The Filipino valet stood in the doorway. It was almost one in the morning. They'd had a difficult time finding anyone to help them with their bags. Butler with a heavy Nike athletic duffel, four suitcases. Monica carrying the five shopping bags filled with new clothes. The two sullen cops at the gangway had tried to ignore them until Butler got nasty, showed them his first-class tickets, told the cops he was a Hollywood director, Monica the star of his latest hit. The younger cop believed he recognized her, wound up asking for an autograph. Monica batting her eyes, signed an index card. Finally the older one motivated himself to locate a valet, call him down. Chop, chop, the red-faced man said into the phone. Get down here chop, chop.

The Filipino handed Monica the door keys.

Butler Jack didn't turn from the window, saying "Aren't you going to show us the room, point out all the amenities? I believe that's customary."

Monica told the valet they were fine, he could be on his way. She found a five in her new purse and with a final darting look at Butler Jack, the valet shut the door.

"Look at that," Butler said. "Squandering all that money on electric lights when there's a billion people on this planet who'd kill for a pot of rice. Five percent of the earth's population gobbling up seventy-five percent of its resources."

Monica set down the shopping bags and surveyed the room. Gray tile on the floor, the curtains and bed done in a matching flowered print of rich greens and golds. The overstuffed blue tweed sofa was stacked with burgundy pillows. Walnut covered three walls and trimmed the sliding glass doors that led out to a spacious balcony. In the bathroom white marble topped the teak vanity. Three vases of fresh gladioluses were stationed around the room.

"Know how much all this luxury is setting us back?"

"I don't care," she said. "We're here."

"Six thousand dollars apiece. Twelve thousand total for a measly six days at sea. Do you know how many Lucys could eat for a year on twelve thousand dollars?" He turned from the window and stared at her.

"I still haven't heard the plan, Butler. I want to know what the hell we're doing before we get any farther along."

"Tomorrow," he said. "Don't worry, it's all written down. My list. I'll go over it with you before things get hot and heavy."

A smile reshaped his face. "It's romantic, isn't it. Being on a ship."

"We're still tied up at the dock. It doesn't start being romantic until we're under way. Or so I've heard."

She sat down on the edge of the bed and watched Butler's lips sneak into another smile.

"Know how Florida got its name?"

"Spare me, Butler."

"Ponce de León discovered the peninsula in 1513 around Easter time, the time of year when Spanish churches are filled with flowers.
Pascua florida
means the flowering season, or Easter. So there you go again, God, religion. Florida was named for the season of rebirth. Death and resurrection. A holy state, a state of second chances. All those retirees getting their second chance. Just like you and me. We're getting ours too."

Talking to Butler Jack was like trying to have a conversation with a used car salesman. It didn't matter what topic you started with, he'd find a way to circle back to the sales pitch.

"It's incredible, when you think about it. That we're here like this, together again after all these years, overcoming so much. Your mother, my mother, interfering like they did the first time. They didn't understand. But look at us now."

He did a little bounce and smiled at her.

Holding her eyes for several moments, another mood seemed to seep into him. The smile drifting away, Butler steepling his hands at his chest. His eyes flickering.

"I waited for you," he said quietly. Coming across the room to sit beside her on the edge of the bed. "I waited."

Monica was silent. Butler snuck a hand onto her thigh. She looked down at it.

"And you?"

"I'm here," she said, "aren't I?"

"But you
waited
for me, didn't you?"

"Waited."

"You said you would. Remember? You wrote it down. I still have the letter. It's in my bag. 'I will wait for you always, forever, till the end of time.' "

Monica swallowed. She needed a beer. Something stronger. Two or three. A fleeting memory of her nights at Sugarloaf, the fish sandwiches, the mindless routine.

"Did you, Monica? Did you wait like you said?" A rising strain in his voice. Butler stood, stepped away from her. Monica looking up at him.

"You mean sex? Am I virgin? Is that what you're asking?"

"I waited for you," Butler said. "I gave you my pledge, and I kept it."

"I'm tired, Butler. I need to sleep."

"Did you? Yes or no."

Staring at him, Monica tried to hold her face in a neutral mask. She managed it for a while, but then she felt it slip, a tic in her lips that must have revealed it all. She saw it register in Butler Jack's eyes, saw the sparkle crumple, a shadowy fog rise.

"It was him, wasn't it? That cop."

"Cop?"

"You know who I mean. David Cruz."

She stood up, felt the air burn her throat. "What the hell do you know about David?"

"It was him, wasn't it? That bastard spoiled you. He took it from you. Your innocence."

"I don't know who the fuck you think you are, but I've had enough of this shit. Is that clear? You and I, we don't have a relationship. We were kids. We were fantasizing. Playing a game. That's all that was. If you thought it was more . . . well, I'm sorry for you. But anything I said then, any promises I might have made, they were childish babble. Do you understand me? We were twelve years old. Children. You'd have to be crazy to hold on to something like that. Believe it meant anything."

"Is that what you think? I'm insane? A psychopath?"

"Look, I came along with you. I'm here. But I'm not some virginal twelve-year-old. Is that clear?"

"You said you'd wait. You wrote the words."

"Well, I didn't wait, goddamn it. I didn't wait."

Monica suffered his fierce glare as long as she could, then gave him a firm good-night and walked to the bathroom. Shut the door and locked it. Five minutes, ten, she stood before the mirror. Hearing nothing out in the cabin.

Staring at herself, the goddamn eyes, the perfect fucking nose, the flawless skin. That face that had inspired Butler Jack, pushed him over some impossible edge. That face, that fucking face. Look on her and die. Look on her and grow stupid, infantile. Medusa. A Gorgon, snakes for hair.

When she opened the door, Butler was gone. She stepped into the cabin, went directly to her purse. Grabbed it up. To hell with this. She would get off this ship right now, get far away and regroup. Hide. Start over. She'd been crazy to go along with him. Crazy to get involved.

But she'd been so disoriented. Irma Slater evaporated, a vacuum left behind. And the photographs, those starving kids, his campaign against Morton Sampson had stirred her, given her a wicked thrill. The idea of hurting her father. Striking back. A little justice for her mother's sake. But that seemed like temporary insanity now. Sheer craziness.

She searched the room for anything she might take along, one of her new outfits. But there was nothing she wanted. She hurried to the door, wrenched the handle. Yanked. Yanked again. But he'd done something to the lock. The door was frozen.

***

David Cruz was doing push-ups. It was how he handled stress. Lately he'd been doing a lot of them, up over a hundred at a time. Dipping to his chest each time, head tilted up, marine style. Naked, of course, that was the best way. Felt sexy, his member flopping against the rug each time. Like fucking, only more pure, nothing but that piston grind, up and down, up and down, so later, during sex, when he couldn't count, when he couldn't do anything but feel the feel, he could go for an hour, up and down, a pile driver, one of them called him, a derrick, said another. Up and down.

He was proud of his body. Proud that everything was still as firm as a teenager. Firmer than most. Look around him, he could find guys his age, lots of them with the sagging bellies and flabby muscles of old men. Not David Cruz. Something drove him. The sexiness factor was one thing of course but there was something else. Something he didn't like to consider. But it was true. The class factor. He had a blue-collar body. Coal miner, day laborer. Those guys weren't hard by choice. It was their job, their grind.

Even though David Cruz had escaped that world, riding high as head of security for a major corporation, making over a hundred thousand a year, he was still a blue-collar guy. A day laborer by his codes. Did the push-ups so he wouldn't lose touch, wouldn't turn away from his roots. Seventy-five, eighty, ninety, a hundred pushups. Going over a hundred, seeing how high he could reach, feeling the joy of it tonight, the compulsion to break higher, the stress of his job, this goddamn thief who was targeting one of his ships, making David look bad, forcing Morton to bring in an outsider, David feeling threatened, feeling the pressure in his gut, the knotting. A hundred and twenty, up and up, breaking every record he'd ever set. Going to break two hundred tonight. He had enough stress lately for that. Enough stress to break a thousand. Smacking his chest to the rug, feeling his member swing, feeling it firm up slightly.

Sometimes push-ups were better than sex. Cleaner, neater, took him higher most of the time. Better than sex with everyone but her. The one whose name he would not say. The one he'd failed, the one he couldn't protect. Sex with her had been something different. Something interplanetary. Long and complicated. Beautiful and hard and sweaty. Athletic and soft. Everything. The one he couldn't name taking everything he had to offer, showing him things she knew, then the two of them stumbling into new territory, discovering a few things neither of them had suspected. Weird. Sex with her was better than push-ups, better than going over two hundred. Better than a hundred thousand dollars a year. Better than his leased Lexus, better than any single thing or group of things he'd ever known, imagined, dreamed of, hoped for.

He had lost count, in the two hundreds somewhere, moving up and down, a pile driver, a maniac, a madman, an incredible machine locked in the On position. When someone hammered on his door.

***

Butler Jack was plummeting in a crashing plane. Strapped in, no escape. The pressure immense, skull-cracking pressure. The scream of air, the shriek of blood trying to move through his shrunken veins, a terrible darkness rising up all round him like chemical smoke, the eerie sway of the world, gravity sucking him down, the earth's core magnetized, G-force tripled as Butler Jack sliced through the air, down and down.

He had finally summoned the nerve to ask her the question. To verify that she was indeed still his soulmate. The uranium. So sure of the answer, so certain.

But she hadn't waited. She'd broken her promise, the words on paper, her handwriting. "Forever, till the end of time." Those were her words. On paper. And Butler Jack had glowed when he read them, glowed ever after. The glow of her inside him lighting his way. Moving him through the shadowy world. For years. Through the hard years. Always her smile, the sprinkle of golden hairs on her arm, the heat of her body drawing him forward. Giving him the power, the wattage. Always her. Now as he walked down the narrow hallway, the glow was sputtering, shadows rising all around him, closing in on all sides. And the pressure, the incredible plummeting pressure.