The Protégé (22 page)

“How’s Christian Gillette doing?” Celino asked, picking up a cheese-and-salami cracker from a platter in the middle of the table.

“He’s going to Vegas next week.” Al Scarpa was Celino’s only direct report. Scarpa took care of all the details so Celino rarely had to leave the house. He was even smaller than Celino, and he carried a forty-four.

“Is he going to play?”

“I think so,” Scarpa said, picking at something under one of his fingernails. “Quentin Stiles talked to our consulting friend out there yesterday. Gillette’s going to meet with him next week. And one other,” Scarpa added.

“He better pick the right one.”

“He will.”

“Has Stiles completely recovered?” Celino asked, chewing on the cracker.

“About ninety percent.”

“Even at ninety percent he’s dangerous. We’ve known that for a long time. The Philadelphia people warned us about him.”

Scarpa nodded. “I agree, but don’t worry about it, boss. I got everything taken care of.”

Celino’s eyes narrowed. There was no reason to ask any more questions when Scarpa said he had something taken care of. Scarpa had been his underboss for eight years, and Celino trusted the man completely. As much as a Mob boss could trust anyone. “Are we keeping up with things as agreed?”

“Yes.”

“You have our top people on this, right? I can’t have anything going wrong here, you understand? It’s critical that we hold up our end of the bargain. Critical to many of our operations, to the advantage we have over our friends.”

“I know, boss, believe me.” Scarpa moved his chair to the right a few inches, to stay beneath the shade of the umbrella. “You know, I’ve always admired how you keep things so low-key, Joseph.”

“What do you mean?”

“You’re worth so much money, but your house . . . well . . . I don’t want to insult you. I mean, it’s a very nice house. But you could afford so much more. I know you do this so you don’t bring attention to the family, but it must be frustrating sometimes when you see the Wall Street guys spreading money around on houses like its manure.”

Celino waved. “Doesn’t bother me at all. They work hard, just like I do. Whatever a man wants to do with his money is his business, as long as it doesn’t affect me.” He gazed out over the harbor again. “Now, how is Allison Wallace fitting in at Everest?”

Scarpa smiled. “Very well, boss. Very well.”

GILLETTE AND PEGGY WRIGHT
stood alone on the aft deck of the
Everest,
sipping drinks—Peggy her third martini, Gillette another Pepsi. They were thirty miles offshore, out of sight of land. Gillette liked seeing nothing but water. It made him feel as though he were truly unreachable, safe from the stress of business, if only temporarily.

“Thank you for promoting David.” Peggy was a petite brunette with a pretty smile. “He was so happy.”

“He deserved it.”

“He works hard.”

“Yes, he does,” Gillette agreed. “And I depend on him.”

Peggy looked around, making sure David wasn’t anywhere in sight. “My husband thinks you walk on water, Christian. He’s always saying, ‘Well, Christian would look at it this way,’ or, ‘Christian would do it that way.’ He’s always thinking about Everest. Always thinking about how he can find deals or raise more money.”

“That’s why I promoted him. I know how dedicated he is.” Gillette swirled the ice cubes in his cup. “Where are you from, Peggy?”

She’d been looking out to sea, watching a flock of seagulls diving at something dead on the surface. “Columbus, Ohio. Why?”

“We’re involved in a deal on the Eastern Shore of Maryland, and David said he had relatives there. I was pretty sure his family was from Connecticut, so I thought maybe he meant the connection to Maryland was on your side.”

Peggy shook her head slowly, a perplexed expression crossing her face. “I don’t have any relatives in Maryland, and David’s never mentioned anyone on his side who lives there.” She swallowed hard when she saw the intense expression on Gillette’s face. “Did I say something wrong?”

Gillette shook his head calmly. “You know what? It’s my mistake. I was thinking of someone else. Sorry.”

BILLY HURRIED
into the yacht’s large dining room and leaned down close to Gillette so the others at the table couldn’t hear him. “We have a problem,” he said quietly. “Come with me.”

Gillette excused himself and followed Billy into the next room. “What’s wrong?”

“There’s a line of thunderstorms coming straight at us that’s really bad. It’s a freak thing. They popped up out of nowhere with all this heat and humidity.”

“Jesus.” Gillette moved through a sliding door onto a side deck and glanced up into the black sky. There’d been stars out an hour ago; now they were gone. “How long until we get hit?”

“About forty minutes.”

“We can’t make it to a harbor?”

“No way, not enough time.”

“How the hell can a storm this bad form so fast?” Gillette asked.

“It doesn’t happen very often, but when it does, it can be deadly. You remember what happened in Baltimore a couple of years ago? Freak storm hit the harbor,
right downtown.
Bunch of people drowned in a ferry.” He checked the sky nervously. “Look, the Coast Guard’s on the radio telling everybody who can’t make port to batten down hatches and point their crafts due east, into the storm. They’re saying we could get fifteen-foot seas, maybe higher, with sustained winds up to forty miles an hour and gusts up to a hundred. It ain’t gonna last long, but it’s gonna be hell while it’s on us.”

Gillette looked up and down the deck. He could feel the yacht beginning to pitch. “What do you want me to do?”

“Tell your guests things are gonna get real rough. Get them to put on life jackets right away.”

“Where should we go? Does it matter?”

“Yeah, go to the enclosed aft quarters. I hate to say this, but I don’t want you below if this thing turns over.”

“Turns over?”

“I don’t know how stable we’ll be if we have fifteen-foot waves. I want people to be able to get clear of the boat quick if I give the order. They’ll be better off in the water with a life jacket on if the thing isn’t gonna last long. I know how that sounds, but I been doing this a long time, and I want to be ready.”

“Do you really think it’s going to be that—”

Billy held up his hands and shook his head. “I don’t know, Christian, but the CG’s making it sound
really
bad.” He glanced over his shoulder. “I gotta get back to the bridge.”

“All right, I’ll get everyone ready,” Gillette called, and headed back into the dining room.

People looked at him expectantly as he came back in, anticipating a problem because the boat had started to roll noticeably. “We’ve got a situation, folks,” he said, standing behind his chair at the table. “Mother Nature’s decided to throw a fireball at us. There’s a nasty line of thunderstorms heading right for us, and we need to get ready. We need to put life jackets on.” He pointed at the young boy asleep on a couch, a puppy curled up in his arms. “Especially Danny.”

THE
EVEREST
was being pounded by the storm. Wave crests reached twenty feet, gusts hit a hundred and ten miles an hour, and the rain and spray flew so fiercely that visibility was reduced to almost nothing. The yacht rose and fell violently as Billy fought to keep the bow pointed straight into the storm. The passengers, wrapped in bright orange life jackets, clung to anything they could as the boat plowed ahead and the engines roared belowdecks.

A massive surge of water rose off the starboard side of the bow, lifting the yacht high and then rolling it left. As the boat rolled, a wooden chair careened into the sliding glass door at the back of the room, smashing through it. At the same time, Wright, Peggy, Stiles, his girlfriend, Danny, and the puppy he was holding were tossed across the floor at the others, who were huddled against the opposite wall. As he tumbled, Danny lost his grip on the dog.

Wind and rain whipped into the room, and the terrified puppy yelped and tumbled through the smashed door onto the deck. Danny scrambled to his feet and raced after it, disappearing around the corner. His mother screamed and pointed, and Stiles was on his feet instantly, sprinting after the little boy, shielding his face against the driving rain, struggling to keep his balance.

“Quentin!” Gillette yelled, jumping to his feet just as another huge wave crashed into the boat. This time it was on the port side, and it tossed him and the others across the room. He landed heavily on the floor, then crashed into the far wall, and a searing shot of pain raced up his left arm through his shoulder. As he struggled to make it to his hands and knees, another shot of pain knifed through his left shoulder. Wincing, he glanced ahead as a wicked flash of lightning streaked the night sky. Stiles, Danny, and the dog were nowhere in sight.

“Oh God, oh God!” Stiles’s girlfriend screamed. She’d seen the same thing.

Gillette crawled quickly across the wet carpet toward the smashed door, wind and driving rain in his face. He was trying to catch any sign of Stiles or Danny as the lightning continued to flash almost unceasingly. He pulled himself to his feet when he felt broken glass beneath his palms and edged toward the door, trying to keep his balance against the constant rocking, the din from outside like the sound of a freight train bearing down on him.

“What are you doing?” yelled Faraday. “You can’t go out there.”

Gillette burst onto the open aft deck, then dropped quickly to his hands and knees again. Staying on his feet would be impossible. He crawled around the side, the way Danny and Stiles had gone, as the yacht pitched left and knocked him toward the deck wall. He tried to protect his left arm, holding it tight to his side with his other arm as he crashed into the wall. Again he made it back onto his hands and knees. In the crackle of a lightning flash, he spotted Stiles up ahead and started to crawl forward.

The boat was rocked by another pounding swell. Gillette lunged for the bottom step of a stairway leading to an upper deck and clung to it desperately despite the pain in his arm and shoulder. When the wave had washed past, he looked up, still clinging to the stairs, his eyes stinging from the salt. Stiles was grasping the railing with one hand, Danny with the other. A burst of spray hit Gillette, and he ducked behind the stairs again. When he looked up, Stiles was heading toward him with Danny, half crawling, half sliding down the deck.

Just as Stiles reached Gillette, the boat pitched violently to starboard, then up. Gillette grabbed Danny as Stiles slid into the stairs, then past and down the deck thirty feet. As Danny wrapped both arms tightly around Gillette’s neck, Gillette looked back, searching through the blinding spray for Stiles. For a moment, he saw the outline of Stiles’s figure—he’d caught a rope and was struggling to his feet, grasping for the side of the boat.

Then, just as he was raising up, Gillette saw him go down again, falling forward and losing his grasp on the side. He crumpled to the deck as another wave crashed over the side, this the biggest one yet, and Gillette had to hold on to the stairs with one arm and Danny with the other, trying mightily to keep from being swept to the back of the yacht. For almost ten seconds, the water rushed past. When it finally eased, Gillette glanced back. Stiles was gone.

For ten minutes, Gillette held on to the bottom stair with one arm and Danny with the other, clenching his teeth against the pain slicing through his left shoulder as wave after wave continued to pound the
Everest.
The young boy shrieked every time the boat rolled, grabbing Gillette around the neck as tight as he could, screaming directly into his ear when another monster crashed over the side. Every time lightning flashed, Gillette glanced back over his shoulder, hoping he’d see Stiles through the storm. But nothing.

Finally, the storm began to subside. The wind and rain eased as quickly as they’d hit. As Gillette started to crawl back toward the aft deck, Faraday and Wright appeared around the corner, hunched over as they moved onto the deck.

“Christian!” Faraday yelled. He and Wright got to Gillette quickly and helped him back inside.

“Danny!” his mother cried, hurrying to Gillette and scooping Danny out of his arms. “Thank you so much,” she sobbed, kissing Danny’s face over and over. “Thank you, Christian.”

“I’m sorry for all this,” Gillette said softly. He turned to Faraday as Allison trotted up to him and put her arms around him. “Any sign of Quentin?”

Faraday shook his head. “No.”

Gillette wheeled around and headed back out onto the deck, shaking off Allison and moving around the corner. He made his way farther aft, to the spot where Stiles had gone down, yelling Stiles’s name over and over and peering into the waves, hoping to spot an orange life vest. Then he headed across the deck to the other side of the boat, then ahead all the way to the bow. But there was no sign of Stiles.

He scrambled up a stairway toward the bridge and burst through the door. “Billy!”

Billy glanced over his shoulder, then back ahead, both hands still glued to the wheel. “Everyone all right back there?”

“No.”

Billy’s eyes shot to Gillette’s.

“Stiles is gone.”

“What?”

Gillette quickly explained how he and Stiles had ended up on the deck. “I followed Stiles out and we got the kid, but then he washed past me. I saw him behind me on the starboard-side deck for a second, then he went down. It was weird, he just went down. Then a wave came over the side, and I lost sight of him.”

“How ’bout the kid?”

“I got him. He’s fine.”

Billy’s shoulders sagged. “Good. Look, Stiles is probably—”

“No,” Gillette cut in, anticipating what Billy was going to say. “I’ve been all around the side decks. He’s gone. We’ve got to turn around and look for him. We’ve got to call the Coast Guard right away.”

“You check below?”

“No,” Gillette admitted.

“I’ll turn around, but I’m not calling the Coast Guard until we’re sure he’s not on board. They got their share of emergencies tonight, and I want to make sure we really got one before we call them out here.”