Buzz Cut (47 page)

With a sigh, Sampson dropped into the chair beside him. "Aren't you going to do anything?"

"About what?"

"Murphy. You heard me. He's dead."

"What, clean up the mess?"

"Don't you see what that means? Butler must still be on board. He's here on the ship somewhere."

"Good," Thorn said. "When you find him, tell him I'd like a word with him."

The two British men had passed out on the lounge chairs near the hot tub. Sugarman and the Swedish lady were having coffee at a table nearby. She'd brought Thorn a mug a while ago. She said her name was Marie. With a giggle, she showed Thorn her fingertips, deeply wrinkled from being in the water so long. She tried her English on him, but he wasn't feeling chatty.

"I'm Swedish," she said. "And those two are my meatballs."

It must've been one of the jokes her British boyfriends had roared at earlier, but Thorn gave her no response and the young lady humphed her disapproval and stalked away.

The night had passed without diversions of any kind. And now the ship had been steaming forward for over sixteen hours, guided by electronic impulses programmed by a madman. Thorn's sense of humor was gone. His inner landscape was as harsh and arid as the deserts of the moon. His skin prickled, his eyes burned. A jangle had begun to grow in his chest as if he'd been cruising above the stratosphere for weeks and now was plunging back to thicker air and heavier gravity.

He lifted his binoculars, swiveled around, turning his back to the footlocker for a moment, and sighted forward over the bow. Fighting off the angry jitter in his hands, he made out some vague sporadic lights miles away. Land ahoy. He lowered the glasses, swung back to the Sun Deck, and looked again at the footlocker still sitting inside its ring of lights.

He'd been staring at that goddamn box so long its image was probably etched onto his retina. This time next year he'd be able to shut his eyes, still see the damn thing.

"Where's he taking us?" Sampson said.

Thorn glanced at him. The man's voice was no longer coming from his diaphragm, full of bombast and overblown confidence. It was bleak now, and had an uncertain tremble, the sound of an anxious teenager's straining vocal cords.

"We're headed west. He's taking us back to Florida."

"You've got a compass?"

"Unless the asshole's tampered with the earth's orbit, I don't need one."

Thorn looked over at Sugarman. He was settled deep in his chair, sitting very still, hands folded in his laps, eyes half closed as if he might be lost in the depths of contemplation. But somehow Sugar registered the brush of Thorn's gaze and raised a hand and trilled his fingers, a toodle-doo.

"You know," Sampson said. "It was never about money for me. My motivation, it's always been more than that."

"Save it," Thorn said. "I'm no priest."

"The ships, that's what keeps me going. I love the boats, the ocean, all of it. I loved them as a boy, the great sailing vessels, and I still love them. All I ever wanted was to be around ships, sailing, the ocean. That's what it's all been about. The money, the business, that's just a way to be near what I love. To design the ships, build them. You didn't know that about me. You think I'm just a businessman, everything is about cash. But that's not me. I could be selling stocks and bonds and make more money than I do. It's about the ships."

"Fine," Thorn said. "It's about the ships. Fine."

"I watched my father sail away on a tramp steamer. I was five years old. He never came back, and I always thought it was because of me."

"It probably was," Thorn said.

"Jesus Christ," Sampson moaned. "Don't you ever forgive anyone?"

Thorn came around slowly and leaned close to the man. "You realize," Thorn said, "with Murphy dead, we have no fucking choice but to hope Butler will keep his word. I don't know about you, but I'm not overflowing with faith that he'll shut down the engines once he has his money."

"What do you propose?"

"Shut them off ourselves. The engines."

"The engine room's filled with C02 gas. I was down there ten minutes ago. There's no way we can get inside."

Thorn stared into the man's shallow eyes.

"Even if you held your breath, somehow managed to switch off the fuel valves, the turbines would continue to run," Sampson said. "Half an hour maybe. Slightly longer. They'll have to burn up whatever's left in the fuel lines."

"It's all we have now," Thorn said.

"Butler will shut them off," Sampson said. "He won't run us aground. He wouldn't do that."

"And why wouldn't he? You think his conscience will switch on suddenly? Bullshit. He's probably out there on the beach right now waiting, working on a big giggle."

Thorn slugged down the last of the cold coffee, got to his feet, and looked out across the water. The sky had almost finished refilling with light, a patch of faded denim blue to the east. He stretched his arms inside the shirt. When he'd put it on twenty hours ago it had felt like armor. Now it was as limp as a damp wash cloth.

"You going to show me the fuel valves, or do I have to fumble around for myself?"

Sampson conferred with the remains of his drink, then snapped a look up at Thorn. "I spent the last forty years creating this company. I'm not going to let it be destroyed in one night."

"All right then, come on."

Sampson was just struggling to his feet when the PA squealed and Butler cleared his throat and once again said hello.

Sampson dropped back in his seat and slumped forward as if he'd taken a blow to the back of his neck. On the deck below, Sugarman stood staring at one of the TV sets mounted above the outdoor bar.

"And now for one last vocabulary lesson," he said. "Tonight our word is one I'm sure we're all familiar with by now.
Murder.
Yes, yes, murder, coming to us from the Middle English
murther,
which in turn is from Old English
morthor.
Which I must say parenthetically sounds a great deal like mother, now doesn't it?"

One of the British men woke with a start. "Fuck me, if he isn't having another go at it."

The man held his head up a moment more then slumped back into unconsciousness.

Thorn hustled down the stairs and over to Sugar. On the TV screen Butler was standing against a harshly lit yellow backdrop. He wore a blue jumpsuit and his hair was loose across his shoulders. He smiled at the camera, pausing for a moment apparently to give his startled audience time to assemble. Then he brushed his hair from his face and went on.

"These English words are derived from much older words in the Latin,
mort
and
mord.
Is that perhaps where Morton comes from? The man of death. Anyway, the Latin derivatives meant simply death. Not unlawful or violent death as we use their ancestors today. But simply death. The reason is, back then deaths were almost always violent, so there was no reason for a separate distinction for murder. The idea that killing should be considered a crime, and need a word all its own, is a modern creation that's more a function of the English concern for lawful transference of property and inheritance laws than because of any high value placed on human life."

Cutting a quick look at the footlocker, Sugarman said, "You recognize that place where he's standing?"

Thorn said no. He stared at Butler smiling on the screen.

"Looks like the media room to me," Sugar said. "Though I might be wrong."

"Like so many things these days," Butler said, "the word
murder
is making a cyclical return to its former meaning. The reason is simple. When most people in a given society die violently or by the hands of others, then murder as a separate description of death is redundant. As in the American black ghetto, for instance, or in most of the impoverished third world where violent deaths are the norm. Interesting, isn't it? How murder can simply slip back to being the more generic
mort
and
mord
in cultures where violence is the norm. And as a result it frees up the word murder and kill for use in new contexts. As in 'that was a killer concert.' A designation of extreme, but no longer a pejorative term. Interesting, isn't it? 'This weather we've been having is real murder.' "

Thorn glanced over at the footlocker. Still there.

"So here's a killer of an idea," Butler said. "Why don't all of you clear the fuck off the Sun Deck right now. Because if you don't I'm going to
mort
my sweet mother, Lola. I'll give you exactly three minutes to get down to the control room and close the door behind you. Not a second more. If all of you aren't inside that control room by then, Lola Sampson is
mord.
Isn't that right, Mommy dearest?"

Butler Jack stepped out of view and the picture jostled briefly, dipped and rose. Then the camera focused on Lola Sampson in her bra and panties tied up in a wooden chair. The quick shot of the room gave Thorn no hint of where it might be. Lola was gagged with a red handkerchief, her face swollen with terror or rage. She twisted back and forth against the pressure of her bondage.

"Your three minutes starts now," Butler said. "So go on, get moving. And don't try to leave anybody behind to catch me because I'll be watching."

"Do it!" Sampson screamed. "Wake those morons up and haul them with you. Now! Do it! Let's go, hurry up."

"We gonna let this happen?" Thorn said.

Sugarman kept watching the television screen after it had turned dark. "I don't see the alternative."

"You Americans," the Swedish woman said. "You really know how to put on a show."

"Let the fucker have his way? Walk off with fifty-eight million dollars?"

"You got a better idea, let's hear it quick."

"Just stay here, call his bluff."

"We can't risk Lola," Sugarman said.

"But she's in on it. She's a willing participant. It's a trick."

"That's just speculation, Thorn. We can't gamble her life on a guess. I want to catch the asshole too. But he's got us this time."

"What're you waiting for!" Sampson cried from the hatchway. "Come on, come on."

Sugarman helped Marie lug her buddies to their feet, and under their drunken weight Sugar and Marie trudged toward the hatchway door.

Thorn lingered at the bar a moment more, staring into the empty TV. He'd seen something. He wasn't sure what. But something wasn't right about that image on the screen. He turned and was heading for the stairwell when it struck him. It wasn't something he'd seen. It was something he hadn't.

Thorn rushed to the stairs, called out for Sugar, but he and the others were already a deck or two farther down. Thorn swung around and looked at the footlocker. He'd had his eyes off of it no more than a second or two. It was still in its place inside the ring of lights.

What was wrong was Butler Jack's nose. Yesterday Sugar had cracked it hard, bent it several degrees to the left. At the very least his nose would be badly swollen this morning, and more than likely he would have two black eyes surfacing into view. But the Butler Jack on the TV screen was smiling and unblemished. The video was clearly made days before and now was probably playing on a VCR like the one they'd found in the chapel ceiling.

Thorn ducked behind the hatchway and waited. A moment or two passed before he chanced a look out on the deck, glimpsed the footlocker, and dodged his head back. He gripped the edge of the hatchway and began to count the seconds. He got to sixty, started again, got to sixty twice and then once more. Plenty enough time for their three-minute deadline to have elapsed.

But no one had shown. For good measure he counted to a hundred, taking regular peeks around the edge of the door. The Fiesta Cruise Lines flag snapped in the breeze just forward of the smokestacks. One of the electric lanterns lighting the footlocker blinked and gave out.

Thorn waited another minute, then he stepped out from behind the doorway. No one had shown and, if Thorn's suspicions were right, no one was going to show. No one had to.

He was pretty sure he understood why. He didn't know all the particulars yet, but he believed he'd divined the outline of the scheme. The revelation coming to him as such revelations always had. Staring at the camouflage so long, his eyes had grown weary, gone out of focus, then there it was, the shape that had been hidden so artfully was now standing out in full relief. It was the way he spotted bonefish through the bright sheen of sunlight on the surface of the water. His eyes becoming relaxed, easing past the glare.

He sucked down a breath and jogged over to the footlocker. He swung around and took a look from there. As he had known it would be, the deck was clear forward and aft. The hot tub bubbling mindlessly. In the sunlight beyond the rail the calm Atlantic was regaining its deepest shade of blue.

Thorn flipped open the clasps on the footlocker and swung back the lid. He squatted down and peered at the small green flowers printed on the inside walls. He breathed in the aroma of brass and rubber cement. The footlocker appeared to be brand new. And it was empty, as bare as the day it rolled off the assembly line in some Chinese prison factory.

He stood up, squinted out toward the west. He walked down the rail to the bow. Just above the distant horizon, he could make out several objects hovering in the sky. Ten miles ahead, maybe slightly more, the sea was thick with boats. He raised the binoculars, pressed them to his eyes and focused.

Through the glasses he could make out South Beach. The low hotels, the pastel shapes. A row of coconut palms. He counted four choppers hanging near the shore. A half-dozen boats with the oblique orange stripe of the Coast Guard. And in the center of the frenzy was an enormous black ship. The tanker was still too far away for Thorn to decipher the letters printed on her side, but it didn't matter because he knew her name. Butler was one step ahead of them. He'd scratched off number ten and, Thorn realized with a painful groan, Butler might already be moving on to number eleven.