Buzz Cut (44 page)

There were two maids asleep in the crew quarters. They were curled up together in a narrow bed inside a darkened cabin just across from the ship's laundry. They spoke no English and seemed indifferent to his presence in their doorway.

In the large hot tub on the Sun Deck, two British men and a Scandinavian woman were giddily singing what sounded like soccer fight songs. As Thorn passed by, one of them hailed him and ordered another round of Mai Tais. He stopped and met their grins, and whatever was showing on his face extinguished their hilarity in an instant.

"We stayed on," one of them called out with boozy affability. "We bought our tickets, we're taking our bloody ride. To the bitter fucking end."

Thorn searched the kitchen, threw open all the oven doors, every food locker and storage bin, the giant refrigerators and freezers. Using a huge soup spoon for a crowbar, he jimmied the door to the chef's quarters, for it would not yield to his master key. The room was a shambles. A stack of color photos of naked Asian boys lay on his bedside table. No one home.

He worked systematically through the rest of the Crew Deck. Every bathroom, every closet. He toppled Coke machines to see behind them, he shouldered open the locked fiberboard door in the recreation room and started an avalanche of Ping Pong balls and paddles, boxes of Monopoly and Parcheesi. He stood there and watched the balls scatter across the linoleum.

He worked through the afternoon, going forward toward the seven-story atrium, entering each of the boutiques, the drugstore, the cigar shop and library and casino. He pulled back curtains, pried open storage lockers, he bloodied his fingers on the metal edges of mirrored doors. He was systematic, methodical, and crazed, working room by room, deck by deck, till he had tossed every cabin, peeked under every table, and plundered every storage bin on the ship.

She was not there. Monica was gone.

Thorn found it difficult to believe she would have joined the lifeboat exodus without at least dashing off a note. But he wasn't positive of that. He had spent an hour with her tangled in the sheets. They'd had an intimate conversation or two. He knew about as much about her as one can know from such time together, but not enough to know if Monica would leave behind a bread-crumb trail.

He circled back, retraced his steps, kicked open doors he hadn't noticed before. Found a couple of nooks, a few crannies he'd missed. He stood on chairs and dressers and tore down random ceiling tiles. He took another hour, another after that. Through the broad tinted windows he caught glimpses of the sun setting, a vast and gaudy display directly ahead of them. With his heart thrashing aimlessly in his chest, Thorn continued to search for her as the
Eclipse
sailed west into the darkening Atlantic, a ghost ship sailing through a ghostly sea.

"Monica's not on board," Thorn said.

"That your intuition talking? Jizz?"

"I searched. I couldn't find her. But, yeah, intuition's part of it. She's gone."

"And Butler? What's your Ouija board say about him?"

"I assume he's slithered into some other nook. He'll pop out when he's ready."

"I hope you're right."

Thorn peered into the empty dark. The sky was untroubled by stars. No moon. No ambient light haloing from the
Eclipse
as she barged across the flat sea. Sugarman had gone down to the kitchen, made a plate of turkey sandwiches. Flat slabs of breast meat, lettuce, mustard, hamburger dills. He'd plundered the Ritz Bar, filled a champagne bucket with Pilsner Urguell and several handfuls of crushed ice.

They'd pushed their deck chairs over to the rear edge of the jogging track so they were overlooking the Sun Deck. Below them the British guys and the Swedish lady were still yodeling with laughter in the hot tub. Thorn caught a whisper of marijuana floating up from their direction.

He'd finished one sandwich, was moving nicely through number two. It was seven, seven-thirty. He'd eaten nothing since that muffin at breakfast and was famished. A day of furious running from deck to deck and back again. Making love till he was lightheaded. Hauling bodies to the morgue, scouring a cruise ship for a woman who'd vanished. Another routine day for Thorn.

"Sampson made the call to Wally Bergson."

Thorn chewed the turkey, closed his eyes, savored the warm twenty-knot breeze.

"He had to, I suppose," Sugarman said. "If he wanted to save a half-billion-dollar ship, what choice did he have? At least with the
Eclipse
in service, he'll make back his fifty-eight million in a month or two. They'd been negotiating for some time, so apparently the paperwork was just sitting there, lawyers all ready to jump."

"Who's Wally Bergson?"

Sugarman chuckled. "I love you, Thorn. You don't have any idea who's in the White House either, do you? Attorney General, Secretary of State, none of it. You don't know what wars are being fought. Never heard of
Love Boat;
Christ, and you don't know Wally Bergson."

"Wally Bergson's Secretary of State?"

Sugarman chuckled again. He had a sip of the Urguell then set the bottle on the deck beside his chair. "He could be if he wanted the job. But Wally wouldn't waste his time on some pissant appointment like that. He'd rather run the shit that counts, sports teams and TV stations, grocery chains, trucking companies, liquor distributorships. Where the real money is. The real power."

"Richer than Sampson?"

"I'd say so. Twice, three times. And meaner."

"Sampson gets a new partner then."

"Like having a brain tumor for a partner. You don't get rid of Wally. And he doesn't leave much behind when he's finished with you."

"That's exactly why I don't read the newspaper. It's full of Wally Bergson."

"I was there when Sampson talked to him," Sugar said. "I couldn't follow how they structured the arrangement, but Sampson was holding the phone with one hand and his nuts with the other."

"Bad sign."

"These people are amazing. The numbers they talk in. Fifty-eight million dollars. Call up a guy, make a deal on the phone. What's he do, run down to the ATM machine, draw out the fifty-eight? Or is it sitting around in a cookie jar? I mean, I'm waiting till Busch beer is on sale at the Winn-Dixie, it's still hard to make the mortgage payment, and there's Wally Bergson and Morton Sampson and all his pals, they can put their hands on money like that in a few hours."

"You wouldn't want that kind of money."

"I wouldn't kick it out of bed."

"Any of these people strike you as particularly happy?"

"Yeah, yeah, sure. But I'd do a better job spending it than they do." Sugar leaned forward, massaged his temples.

"By the way," Thorn said. "Have I thanked you lately for that Orvis fly reel you gave me?"

Sugarman turned his head, looked at him. "Christ, that was a century ago."

"I was cleaning it the other day. It's a beauty, Sugar. The best thing I own. Thank you."

Sugar patted him on the knee.

They ate in silence for a while. Thorn finished his third beer. No buzz. Just a dreary melancholy growing drearier with each sip. Pouring the numbing fluid on an already numb brain.

"Butler Jack has it rigged so we're supposed to ram this other ship, the
Juggernaut.
That's what you think?"

Sugarman blew out a breath. "Appears that way. Which would explain his little demonstration Sunday, showing us what he could do."

"But our man Murphy's on the job," Thorn said. "And even if he doesn't find the autopilot in time, Sampson's going to pay the money, so I guess we should just relax, enjoy the rest of our goddamn cruise."

Thorn brought the beer to his lips but couldn't drink. He set the bottle down beside Sugar's. Sugarman looked over at him, patted his arm.

"It's okay, man. Don't worry. She's safe. She's probably in her hotel ordering shrimp cocktail from room service, charging it to Daddy."

"Yeah," Thom said. "Let's imagine that."

"You and Monica, I take it you got to know each other?"

Thorn sighed. Couldn't hide a fucking thing from Sugarman.

"I mean, come on. It's pretty obvious, Thorn. I can see that thing you get in your eye. A little twitch of light."

"Twitch of light!"

"You didn't have it with Rochelle."

"Oh, Christ. Here we go."

"I like Monica. She's your basic woman."

"Basic. You like her because she's basic."

"Basic is good. It's simple, earthy. No bullshit."

"Your vote is tabulated."

Sugar let go of a long breath. "What if you're wrong, Thorn, and the fuckhead's not on board? What if Butler left in the lifeboats with the others?"

"He's not here, why the hell does he want the money delivered to the Sun Deck?"

"I been thinking about that."

Thorn swiveled around to see Sugarman's shadowy silhouette. "I think it's Lola."

"What?"

"I think Lola's in on it. In cahoots with him. Or maybe even running the whole show."

Thorn's heart added a couple of extra beats. "Lola and Butler? No way. Can't see it."

"We know there's somebody else. There has to be."

"But Lola? That's your anger talking, old buddy."

Sugar turned and gave Thorn a steady look, then shook his head. "McDaniels would've been on his guard with Sampson, anybody else. But he had a soft spot for Lola. Everybody does. So what if she distracted him, maybe came on to him or something, batted her eyelids at him, then yanked his knife away, took a couple of swipes, and while he was down, she let Butler out of his cell and he finished McDaniels off? That could explain it, the wounds, all of it."

"Jesus, Sugar. I mean, yeah, she's an ice queen. But stabbing McDaniels? No, I'd vote for Sampson."

"Sampson has no motivation. Nobody goes into business with Wally Bergson willingly."

"And what's her motive?"

"Same as always. Money and power. She gets a big chunk of change, then a year from now she divorces Sampson, gets herself a nice alimony settlement to boot, or maybe once she has the money she just disappears."

"She's got all the fucking money she could ever want right now. TV star, wife of a millionaire. I don't see it."

"But she has to work for that money. She has to be on call. She has to smile, make small talk, chat with Rafael every morning at nine."

"Yeah, well, that would do it for me. I don't think I could manage chatting with Rafael more than once a year."

"Lola's spent more than half her life working for Morton Sampson. And here she is, she's still working for him. Sure, she's well paid, but she's an employee."

The hot tub woman gave a giddy shriek and water splashed. Goosey, goosey.

"She's got the money," Sugar said. "But not the power. She may have personal power over Sampson. You can see that, the way he knuckles under to her. But he's still the one who writes the checks. She's on his payroll. On a higher level than before, but still punching the clock. Everything she has is because of him. And I don't think that sits well. I think she wants to be lying on an island somewhere, Bali, Tahiti, look out at the ocean, sip rum drinks. Be waited on. I think she's always wanted that. Thought her good looks entitled her to it."

"You've thought about this. You've given it some serious study. Lola, how she thinks."

"Okay, yeah, I have. And I think when Lola Jack went after Sampson, she must have known how hard the man worked. But what she didn't realize was how hard she was going to have to work too. She got a promotion, that's all. A guy like Sampson doesn't vacation in Bali. He doesn't lounge around, sip drinks. He works and then he works some more. He slaves his butt off every hour of the day. And I think what happened, when Lola finally got inside that world, it turned out to be a lot less fun than she thought. Found out she had to sing for her supper. And I don't think that's what she had in mind when she set her sights on Morton Sampson."

"This is your mother you're talking about."

Sugarman tore off a hunk of his sandwich, chewed it defiantly. Set his plate aside and held his Pilsner Urguell to his lips and slugged down half the bottle. When he was done, he backhanded his lips and turned his face to Thorn.

"I don't have a mother. I didn't have one for the last forty years, and I still don't. She's just another hustler working her con as far as I'm concerned. I used up my year's supply of compassion and understanding on Butler Jack. And that just about killed me."

"So Butler's escaped, he's in Nassau, that's going to be our operating theory?"

Sugarman leaned forward in his chair, forearms against his knees. His shoulders sagged as though the freight he'd carried for years was finally showing its crippling effects. Thorn had never considered it till now. That photograph Sugarman kept on his desk. Lola at nineteen, cigarette smoke curling past her eyes, a can of Schlitz in her hand, sitting on that ratty couch while she laughed at someone's joke. Probably Sugarman's father. But those eyes were somewhere else. Thorn had always thought she was haunted by dreadful memories, but maybe that wasn't it at all. Maybe her eyes were straying beyond the borders of the frame, longing for Morton Sampson or one of his kind, to rescue her, take her off to his mansion, the glossy life she'd only glimpsed on magazine pages or Sunday drives through the glamorous neighborhoods of Miami. The sad and vacuous American Dream. Rising up beyond her class, beyond her birthright. There had to be a way. Some way to get off that ratty couch. That was in her eyes then and it was still there, a harder, colder version. Desperation. Her time ticking down.

Sugar said, "We have to watch our backs. We don't know for sure, Butler might still be aboard. But we have to keep one eye on Lola too. The money comes, Wally Bergson's money, it sits out there in plain view, and you watch, Lola's going to make something happen. Some kind of distraction, and we're going to take our eyes off of it for a half second, and that money's going to be gone."