Crackdown (15 page)

“No.”

“Just awesome, Nick. Really! I mean, what a blast! Wow!” He ran on ahead, shouting at his sister. “He’s a killer, Robbie! Really! He was a marine! Just awesome!”

Robin-Anne Crowninshield shyly offered me her hand. Like her brother she was painfully thin, but otherwise they seemed utterly unlike, despite being twins. Robin-Anne had her mother’s fair hair, so fair that it looked bleached, and she had her mother’s delicate good looks etched on to a face so pale that it seemed as though her skin must burn if it was exposed to anything more powerful than a light bulb. Her hand lay in mine as lightly as a bird’s wing. “It’s very hot,” she said.

“It’ll be cooler at sea,” I reassured her, then I looked at her companion who was a very crisp and handsome black woman. “My name’s Breakspear,” I introduced myself.

“Denise Harriman,” she responded. “I’m one of Senator Crowninshield’s aides.”

“She’s from Washington,” the manic Rickie explained, in a tone of voice which suggested I should be impressed. “She had to deliver us here, but she ain’t coming with us because she gets seasick. Ain’t that right, Denise? You barf in boats?” Rickie began mimicking an attack of vomiting.

“I don’t just barf on boats.” Denise Harriman shot Rickie a look of pure venom.

The sarcasm went airily past Rickie who had suddenly stiffened, and whose face now showed a look of the most terrible anxiety. I dreaded to discover just what symptom of drug dependency I was witnessing, and wondered if I should shout for the big Jackson Chatterton to come and rescue me, but then Rickie turned his terrified gaze on to me. “Jesus!” He punched one hand into the other. “My dad promised to ask you a question, but he forgot, and Mom couldn’t remember. Shit!” He was clearly so fearful of the answer to his father’s unasked question that he scarcely dared pose it himself, but then summoned up the courage. “Does this boat have a sound system, Nick?”

I nodded. “Sure. We’ve got a tape deck and a CD player.”

His relief was palpable. “Really? A CD? Oh God, that’s awesome! Come on, Robbie!” His good spirits thus restored, Rickie seized his sister’s hand and dragged her excitedly towards the boat. Robin-Anne, who had been looking very apprehensive, seemed to go aboard
Wavebreaker
rather unwillingly.

Denise Harriman, the senator’s aide, uttered a barely audible sigh which I translated as an expression of relief that her responsibility for the twins was ending. She took a thick manila envelope from her attaché case. “That envelope contains the twins’ documentation, Mr Breakspear: their passports, emergency air tickets and medical records. There’s also a full list of the senator’s telephone numbers.” She handed me that envelope, then took another from the briefcase. “And these are the papers concerning your own boat.” She opened the envelope and handed me the forms which would be needed if the senator undertook the repairs to
Masquerade.
For the moment my boat was staying on Straker’s Cay, and she would only pass into the senator’s care if I agreed to extend the trial two weeks’ cruise-cure into a full summer’s excursion.

I spread the forms on the saddle of Mclllvanney’s Kawasaki. If I did take the twins away all summer then
Masquerade
would be taken to a boatyard in Florida, so I now signed the necessary customs forms and the insurance waiver and the dozen other pieces of paper that would be needed to keep the United States government and the delivery company happy. I signed the last sheet, hoped to God that the US Customs service did not discover the huge Webley pistol deep in its box in
Masquerade’s
bilges, and handed Denise Harriman back her pen. She put the signed papers in her attaché case, then shot a poisonous glance towards Rickie who was rummaging though his pile of luggage on
Wavebreaker’s
deck.
“Bon voyage,”
she called aloud to him, and it was possible to discern a dance of relieved joy in her step as she walked back to the limousine.

Bellybutton, painting his delicate silver star, laughed up at the twins with his discoloured teeth, while McIllvanney leered at them from his office window. The last of their luggage was brought from the limousine and, as Thessy and I prepared to cast off, Rickie tested our sound system with a cacophonous cassette of rock music. Robin-Anne searched for a silent dark hole in which to hide, Jackson Chatterton scowled at us, Ellen looked exasperated and Thessy appeared just plain scared. I started
Wavebreaker’s
engines, used the bow thruster to drive her stem away from the quay and, with an apparent cargo of misery and mania, went to sea.

PART TWO

W
e beat southwards all that first day, slicing through a glittering sea, and propelled by an apparently changeless south-easterly trade wind. We hardly saw the Crowninshield twins. They briefly appeared on deck for lunch; a meal which Rickie hardly touched, while Robin-Anne, despite her apparent frailty, attacked the sandwiches and salad with the savagery of a starving bear. Afterwards, incongruously dressed in a raincoat, she went to the bows and stared briefly down at the mesmerising onrush of sea where it split and foamed at
Wavebreaker’s
cutwater. She did not stay there long, but retreated from the fierce sun to the stern-cabin that she would be sharing with Ellen. The contrast between the two American girls was almost painful; Ellen was so healthy and strong, while the waiflike Robin-Anne was pathetically wan and listless. “What do you think of her?” I asked Ellen that afternoon.

Ellen gave me an amused glance. “Little Orphan Annie? It’s hard to believe she’s about to be worth six million dollars. Still, she’s got precious little else going for her.”

I smiled at the severity of Ellen’s judgment. “Is she that bad?”

“She has a distressingly simple mind, with only room for a single idea at any one time. Presently that idea is cocaine, and nothing but cocaine. She has an obsession with the drug that verges on monomania. She tells me she needs to understand it if she’s going to defeat it.”

“Don’t you approve of that?”

“I think she’d do better to understand herself,” Ellen said tartly. “She allowed a man to persuade her into taking the drug, so she can only blame herself for her predicament. She’d find it more useful to understand her own character shortcomings than to take an elementary course in drug chemistry.”

“What do you make of Rickie?” I asked.

“He’s precisely what anyone would expect of a drop-out Phys Ed basketball-playing retard,” Ellen said scornfully, “by which I mean that he’s a jock with the brains of a dung beetle. He reminds me of your Neanderthal friend, the Maggot, except Rickie is a great deal more handsome.”

“Is he?”

She laughed at the suspicion of jealousy in my voice. “Yes, Nicholas, he is. But he’s not cute.”

At supper, as at lunch, Robin-Anne ate with the appetite of a horse, though her brother hardly touched his chicken and pasta salad. “Don’t you like pasta?” Ellen, who was perversely proud of her skills in the salad department, asked Rickie with just a touch of asperity.

“It’s great. Really awesome.” Rickie lit a cigarette. “I just guess I’m not hungry.”

Robin-Anne reached over and tipped her brother’s food on to her own plate. “Kind of starving,” she justified her theft, then poured herself some diet soda. For once we were carrying neither wine nor spirits on
Wavebreaker,
for Jackson Chatterton’s drug clinic had utterly forbidden us to offer the twins any alcohol, saying that any mood-altering drug could hamper the success of a detoxification programme. We were thus officially a dry boat, though I had hidden some Irish whiskey in the engine room, and I was sure that Ellen would have similarly salted away some vodka.

It seemed that Ellen and I were not the only ones to take such a precaution, for late that night Jackson Chatterton lumbered on deck with a bottle in one huge hand. “Bourbon,” he explained laconically. “Want some?”

“I thought you’d never ask.”

He chuckled, produced two cardboard cups, and poured me a generous slug of the whiskey. We were alone on deck, though not the only ones awake for I could hear Rickie and Ellen’s voices coming from the open skylight of the main saloon. I hoped Thessy was fast asleep for he would be taking the morning watch.

“Cheers,” I said.

Chatterton raised his cardboard cup in silent acknowledgement, then stared ahead to where a great beam swept around the sky. “A lighthouse?” he asked in a voice which suggested that a prudent man avoided such things.

I nodded. “It’s called the Hole in the Wall. Once we’re past it we can turn out to the open ocean. Things will be a bit livelier then.”

“Livelier?”

“We’ll have a bit more sea, kick up some spray.”

I had spoken enthusiastically, but Jackson Chatterton seemed unmoved by the prospect. “What are your plans?” he asked me.

I had nothing particular planned, merely an idea that it might be interesting to thrash our way out into the open ocean, though, mindful of the danger of tropical storms, I had no intention of going too far from the safe shelter of a Bahamian hurricane hole. But I fancied feeling the long hard pressure of ocean waves against our hull and, though we were short-handed, I reckoned that a few days out of sight of land would shake us all down quickly. I explained all that to Chatterton, but stressed that we would run for cover at the first sign of trouble.

He must have assumed that I meant trouble from the twins, for he suddenly became surprisingly loquacious. “They won’t give you any grief in the next few days,” he said. “Now that they can’t get hold of cocaine they’ll just crash out.”

I grimaced. “Does that mean they’ll be seeing green monkeys and blue snakes up the rigging?”

Chatterton poured himself more bourbon, then put the bottle within my reach on the binnacle shelf. “Coming off cocaine isn’t like that. At first they’ll just want to do nothing but eat and sleep. It’s the opposite of a cocaine high, you see.” He paused. “The difficult bit starts two or three days later. That’s when the real hell begins.”

“For all of us?”

“It won’t be easy,” he said grimly, and I was suddenly rather glad to have the taciturn Chatterton aboard. The big man had obviously come on deck to warn me what to expect from the twins, and for that I was grateful.

“I noticed that Rickie wasn’t eating today,” I said, “but Robin-Anne was?”

Chatterton nodded. “Rickie may have stopped his cocaine a day or two ago, which means he’s probably already over the crash period. I promise you one thing; he’s brought none of it on board. I searched him and his luggage, and he was clean.” The big man thought for a few seconds, then laughed. “He’d better be clean! That turkey has got one chance of avoiding jail, just one, and that chance is by proving to the judge that he’s cleaned up his act. And if he doesn’t do that, then the man will send Rickie’s plump young ass down to the gang-rape squad in the county jail.” Chatterton did not sound unduly worried at that prospect.

“Can we be sure Robin-Anne didn’t bring any of the drug aboard?” I asked.

“She won’t have done that,” Chatterton said with conviction. “That girl is serious about giving it up, real serious, heavy serious! That girl is really trying! She studies the drug, you know? Like it was her enemy.” Chatterton had spoken with genuine admiration.

I glanced up at the sails, down at the compass, then ahead to where the lighthouse loom arced powerfully through the night. “So what are the twins’ chances?”

“Depends on their will power, ‘cause nothing else will do it for them. There ain’t no pill to get you off the powder, Mr Breakspear, only will power. And let me tell you, coming off coke is the hardest damn thing in the world, and you’re real lucky if you have a rich daddy who pays for people to hold your hand while you go through the hell of it. The twins’ daddy has paid for you and me, Mr Break-spear, and for everyone else on board this boat, but even with all that money and all this boat, we still might not succeed with them.”

“It’s that hard?”

“It is that hard,” he said ominously, and I thought of John Maggovertski’s sadness for a pretty girl who had whored herself to pay for the white powder. “And it’s even harder,” Jackson Chatterton’s voice was suddenly sinister, “for a poor person who has no one to help them.”

I stared at Jackson Chatterton, and at last sensed the drama that lay behind his big calm presence. “Why did you leave the army, Mr Chatterton?” I asked after a long pause.

“I guess you can guess,” he said.

I guessed, but did not make him confirm my guess. Instead I asked whether the American army had helped him to kick his drug habit.

“Sure they tried, they tried real hard, but back then I didn’t want to be helped.”

“But you still got off cocaine? On your own?”

“Eventually.” The light inside the binnacle glossed his black face with a sheen of red, sparking his eyes like fire. He was not looking at me, but staring doggedly ahead into the turning white light of the Hole in the Wall. “And I had to lose a good, good woman before I came to my senses. But I did kick the drug, Mr Breakspear, and it was probably the hardest damned thing I ever did in all my life. But once I’d done it, I swore I’d help others do it.”

“Even the very rich?” I asked provocatively.

“The rich trash pay the bills, Mr Breakspear, which lets me give my spare time away to the poor trash.”

I looked at the tough, impressive face. “Are the twins trash?”

He paused before replying, then gave the smallest shake of his head. “She’s OK, but him?” This time the pause was almost eloquent, then he gave a richly contagious laugh. “I’d have liked to have had Rickie Crowninshield in my platoon for just five minutes.”

I laughed too. “Good to have you aboard.”

“It ain’t bad being aboard,” he said, and held out his hand and, not before time, we shook.

By midnight I was alone on deck, and happy to be alone. I like sailing alone at night. I like to watch the phosphorescence curling away from the hull and I like to watch the brilliant specks of light fade in the black deep water far in the ship’s wake. I like to be alone under the careless profusion of the stars, and alone on a moon-glossed sea.