Blackwater Sound (17 page)

Morgan sat back against the cushions.

“Are you saying something to me, Roy? Is that bullshit coming out of your mouth supposed to be a threat of some sort?”

“No, missy, ain't no threat. No threat at all. But see, you got to understand the people you're in business with. We get a little idea in
our heads, an idea like maybe you're playing games with us, not being totally straight, well, we get all flummoxed. We don't know how to react like normal folks, ball up our fist and punch a hole in a wall, something civilized like that. No, sir, folks like us, we're used to doing our responding with gunpowder and dynamite. It's sad but true.

“And what we think is, we're being conned. We've given you a satchel of money, half a million dollars upfront, the other half when you deliver our brand-new shiny toy. But the second half doesn't happen. Planes crash, yeah, but not the way they're supposed to. The weapon's not up to snuff, that's how it seems. And then we hear this other thing, about some old man running off with the device, so now you don't even have the goldarned thing you promised us in the first place. And then we find out you're down here big-game fishing like nothing's going on. Like maybe you're just spending our half mil without any intention of delivering our goods.

“Well, that just damn near pushes us over the edge. So some of my associates, they're pulling out their Zippos and they're flicking them and flicking them again, and they're getting out their fuses and their dynamite sticks and they're talking all squeaky and strange and wanting to come down here to this pretty little island and make a statement. That's what I'm telling you, missy. You're dealing with some high-octane kooks here. World-class ding-a-lings. Pawing the ground, snorting and hissing.”

Morgan closed her eyes and listened to the blood thump in her ears.

“But now, I expect if I came back and told my boys I'd actually laid my eyes on the device, that just might be sufficient to satisfy them. Anything less than that, I don't know, missy, you might be in for a volatile situation.”

Morgan looked over at Johnny, then back at the Texan.

“It's not here,” she said. “Finishing touches are being put on it. We're bringing it up to full power this time. But it's not here, Roy.”

“That's too bad.”

“You think I carry something like that around on the boat?”

“My people ain't going to like this,” he said. “Not even a little bit.”

Johnny stepped forward, tried to make his voice sound hard.

“Who the hell are your people anyway?”

Roy eyed him with a hint of a smile.

“We're American citizens, is who. Land of the free, home of the brave.”

“Who're you against?”

Morgan shook her head sadly.

“Johnny, shut the fuck up, okay? Stay out of this.”

“No, I want to know. I'm curious. Come on, Roy, tell us. Who is it you hate? Who're you going to destroy?”

Roy smiled at him, probably the same cornpone, shit-kicking grin he used on his wife just before he started smacking her around.

“You just wait,” Roy said quietly. “Once we get what we ordered you'll know who it is soon enough.”

“Well, whoever it is,” Morgan said, “it gives me a warm feeling, Roy, knowing you're going to make the world a better place.”

“Damn right we will. Damn right. You just stand back and watch.”

“ ‘Hating is always the same,' ” Johnny said. “ ‘One day it kills Irish Catholics, the next day Jews, the next day Protestants, the next day Quakers. It's hard to stop. It can end up killing men who wear striped neckties.' ”

Roy stared at him.

“Robert Young said that in
Crossfire
, 1947.”

“Johnny's a movie buff,” said Morgan.

“I see that.”

“Okay, listen to me, Roy,” she said. “You go back and tell your brethren they'll get what I promised, and when they get it, they'll be the most dangerous people that ever walked this dirtball planet. There's never been anything like this. It isn't some stupid, fucking, overgrown firecracker that knocks down buildings. This thing is the ultimate kill switch. It flips every switch to off. Wherever you point
it, lights out. Meltdown. Blink, it's gone. It's over. Stand outside a bank, blow out their security, their computers, every fucking electrical circuit in the building. Walk right in, fill your pockets. That's what we're talking about, Roy. Not some truck full of fertilizer, a cast-iron pipe crammed with gunpowder and rusty nails. Roy, this is a fucking miracle weapon. When this turns off the lights, they don't come on again. You tell them that, Roy. A week from today, I'll show them what it can do.”

Roy kept looking at her a few seconds, face empty. Then a smile curled across his lips and he shook his head.

“I don't know, missy. You make a deadline, break it. Give us your word, then change your mind. You said that little plane in Palm Beach would prove it. Then you said a passenger jet out of Miami would prove it. But they were busts. Now it's ‘wait till next Saturday.' You're holding a half a million of our nice fresh dollar bills, and we haven't seen shit in return.”

Roy looked around the salon, at the tan furniture, the shiny walls, the bar with all the sparkling glasses and bottles, then he looked at the two of them sitting there, Johnny and Morgan. All the light gone from his eyes now.

“I'll do what I can,” he said. “But I'll tell you one thing. We don't like to be taken lightly. We don't like that at all.”

On Thorn's nautical chart, Marsh Harbor bore an eerie likeness to a marlin's head. Its bill was the long spike of land pointing east into the perfect blue of the Atlantic. That narrow rapier was where the public docks were located. The outline of its sleekly tapering head was formed by Old House Point and Pond Bay. The marlin's neat circular eye was a perfectly round, perfectly placed lagoon a few degrees inland from the harbor itself. Even the marlin's flaring dorsal fin was in the anatomically correct position, a roughly triangular jut of land known as Pelican Beach.

Or maybe Thorn was just loopy from lack of sleep, those hours of constant pounding across the Gulf Stream rollers. But damn it, what was it, if it wasn't a marlin there on the nautical charts, staring at him right in the eyes as he motored in off the twilight waters.

There were two places to dock in Marsh Harbor. Two that Thorn
knew about. Marsh Harbor Marina was tucked inside a protective horseshoe cove, a small port consisting of three long floating docks with maybe sixty boats. Trawlers and live-aboard sailboats, boaters on limited budgets. The Jib Room was there, perched on the steep hill overlooking the marina, a yellow-and-white bar and restaurant where Thorn had spent a few memorable evenings back in his twenties.

Around the point from there on the Atlantic side was Boat Harbour, which acted as the private marina for the Abaco Beach Resort. Boat Harbour was the home port for a fleet of million-dollar yachts, row after row of gleaming sixty-footers, the marlin fishing fleet with young, sun-darkened crews. And then there were the big ocean cruisers owned by oilmen and computer men and movie stars, boats that cost more money to operate every week than Thorn had made in his entire life. The bar at the Abaco Beach Resort was far fancier than the Jib Room. You could sit on concrete stools half-submerged in the pool and guzzle Rum Runners all afternoon in the sun. Or you could hang out in the tiki bar and sip Mango Fizzes serenaded by a reggae band that jingled and jangled, binged and bonged in the shade of gracefully arching coconut palms.

Blue-collar Jib Room, or silk-collar Abaco Beach Resort.

If Thorn were there for a holiday, there'd be no contest. It would be the pit barbecue and the Bilge Burners of the Jib Room, the maudlin stories of burned-out Americans who'd sailed down to the Bahamas twenty years ago and never found their way home. But this wasn't a holiday. He would have to find an open slip among the sleek, full-race marlin boats, try to mingle his way into the world of the Braswells. In the empty hours crossing the Gulf Stream he had developed an idea about how to manage that, but it depended on locating an old friend from two decades back. An iffy proposition in this rootless age.

After two hundred thirty miles of dark ocean, dodging freighters and cruise ships, thirteen hours of bumpy seas, including one passing squall that severely tested both Thorn's navigational skills and the
Heart Pounder
's new hull planking, Thorn was ready for a good long nap. But as he rounded Outer Point Cay and headed into the harbor in the gathering darkness of that Saturday evening, he had a sneaking suspicion that rest would be a long time coming.

 

Miracle of miracles, Thorn found an open slip in the far western edge of the marina for a mere two hundred a night that included water hookup and all the electricity he cared to consume. On either side of his slip were marlin boats dressed out in full regalia of glittery outriggers and dozens of matched custom rods mounted in rocket launchers along the rim of the flybridge, each heavy rod with its five-thousand-dollar gold reel. All the decks were scrubbed spotless, the chrome freshly polished, new varnish shined the teak, everything buffed to perfection. The big Davis on his left was running its air-conditioning full bore, and rock and roll music thumped inside its lustrous hull. Below decks on the sixty-foot Davis to his right, peals of girlish laughter broke out every few seconds followed by deep male guffaws. Another night in consumer paradise. Men who had played their cards right, then played them right again and again. Proving themselves all day against the ultimate gamefish and all night against what sounded like even tougher odds.

At the dockmaster's shack, Thorn counted out the correct number of fives and tens and rumpled ones for his first night's stay and handed them to the assistant dockmaster, a tall, smiley Bahamian named Bailey James who spoke his personal brand of English with such musical relish it seemed he was just a hair-breadth away from song.

“You be staying for the season then?”

“A few days,” Thorn told him. “Depends on the fishing.”

“Plenty of fishes out there, yes sir, that much is for certain. Depends on you finding them, is what it depends on.”

Thorn peeled off another ten from his roll and held it out to the young man. Bailey skimmed it from Thorn's palm with well-oiled
dexterity. A couple of sunburned men in khaki shorts and white T-shirts with boat names printed on them passed by and nodded their helloes. Bailey James came to mock attention and threw them a spiffy salute.

“So they catching any blues?” Thorn asked when the men had passed.

Bailey gave him a studied wink.

“Oh, yes, fishing is good. Marlin fish out there in great abundance. You just got to be knowing where you must look. And which bait they be hitting.”

“And I bet you know both.”

“I know a few things, yes sir. You live on this island your whole life long, you learn one or two things about those fish, yes, you do. Whether you spend a single day on a boat, or all your lifetime right here on land, you get to know about them wayward creatures, where they go and what they do. Yes, sir, you get an education growing up in this place, you certainly do.”

Bailey James looked down at the wad of sweaty bills in his hand and fingered them with a certain wariness as if he wasn't used to anything but the freshly minted green of the ultra-rich.

“While I'm here, I wanted to look up a couple of folks. Marlin people.”

“If they anchored here, I know them.”

“A. J. Braswell,” Thorn said.

Bailey's squint tightened.

“They here, all right. Yes, sir, the entire Braswell family. Their Hatteras yacht is down there on A dock, last slip. They just come back in a while ago.”

“They doing any good?”

Bailey James looked out at an overpowered dinghy skimming across his harbor.

“Thought you knew Mr. Braswell.”

“Why do you say that?”

“You ask if they're doing any good, but that phrase don't truly apply to those folks, I don't believe.”

“I don't know them that well, but I thought they were marlin people.”

“They marlin people, all right. They big marlin people. But they don't go fishing like you and me go fishing.”

“More intense, huh?”

“You could say that. You could say more intense, I expect.”

Thorn looked off at the collection of white yachts, the end-of-day rituals. Crews hosing everything down, cocktails served on the aft decks, tanned women in long flowered dresses, marlin widows, showing off their lean bodies for the crew and the other marlin widows. Thorn tried to keep his voice neutral. Just shooting the shit, that's all.

“Sounds to me like there's something else about the Braswells you're not telling me.”

Thorn looked back at Bailey. The man had cocked his head, sharpened his squint. Thorn's attempt at casualness hadn't worked.

“You picking my brains, mister?”

Thorn smiled.

“How's a guy supposed to learn anything?”

Bailey James looked pointedly down at the sheaf of bills in his hand, Thorn's meager contribution to his retirement fund. Then looked at Thorn with an expectant lift of an eyebrow. But Thorn just shook his head. Ten dollars was all the gratuity he could manage. Around a place like that, it might take his remaining four hundred dollars to buy a cheeseburger. If he wasn't careful, he'd be starving by tomorrow night.

Bailey shrugged and closed his hand tightly around Thorn's cash.

“There's only one blue marlin those people want. All the other fishes of the seven seas could jump right onto their deck and those people wouldn't be one bit impressed, no sir, they wouldn't. Not one bit.”

“One fish?”

“Yes, sir, there's one fish they looking for and only one fish in the whole wide ocean blue that'll make those folks happy. The fish that killed their boy. That's what I hear. That's the story gets told about them. The fish that dragged their beautiful boy overboard and swam off with him, they're after that fish and that fish alone.”

Thorn looked out at the last pink tatters of daylight lying on the horizon back toward America. A throng of gulls followed a trawler into the harbor, a child on its deck tossing scraps of the catch up to the screaming horde.

“The Braswells hang out with anyone around the marina?”

“No, sir, those people stay tight to themselves. Unless there's something they might want from you, you just better stay back and keep your distance. They bring along their own security. Those big fellows in blue you see walking around with the radios and fancy pistols in their pants. They go where the Braswells go. If your name ain't on their clipboard, you don't get past. Far as I can tell, ain't nobody's name on that clipboard.”

“I see,” Thorn said.

“I bet it's the girl you're wanting to meet up with.”

“The girl,” Thorn repeated. “You mean Morgan.”

“Oh, my, yes.” Bailey James smiled dreamily. “I see a lot of women coming and going around here, wearing their teensy bikinis, showing off their fannies and their big store-bought bosoms. But there isn't but one Morgan Braswell. That woman's a double handful, yes, she most certainly is.”

Bailey disappeared inside his reverie, then a second or two later his eyes resurfaced and when he saw Thorn standing before him, he grimaced as if it were Thorn who had dragged him back.

“No offense, sir,” Bailey James said. “But just looking at you and your raggedy boat and all, I'd have to say you're not exactly Miss Morgan's type. She tilts toward the more well-groomed gentlemen.”

“Yeah, it's true. My grooming's not my best feature.”

“And the other thing is,” said Bailey James, touching the roll of bills, “don't look to me like you got a single thing those people might want.”

“You're right, I don't,” he said. “But I'm working on it.”

 

Thorn rented a bicycle from the hotel office, put it on the tab for his slip, and he pedaled down the resort's long boulevard, waved at the uniformed officers in the guardhouse, and headed on out to the narrow public highway. It was less than a mile to the center of town, a straggling row of shops, a drugstore, a market, and some tourist stores that sold the usual T-shirts and island geegaws. He turned down Stede Bonnett Road and pedaled around the gaping potholes past some block houses with chickens and diapered two-year-olds lurching about in their dirt yards, squawking and screaming with terror and delight. One step up from a shanty town, this section was filled with flat-roofed, cement block houses painted in gaudy Kool-Aid shades. As if they'd splashed their concrete walls with paint as whimsical as they could afford to ease some of the dreary weight of their lives.

Though it had been twenty years, he imagined he would have no trouble recognizing the house, so vivid was it in his memory. But after winding aimlessly up and down the same set of streets for twenty minutes without success, he halted in front of an orange house with purple shutters, the only place he'd found that looked even remotely familiar. An old woman in a faded blue dress sat on the porch. From her cramped aluminum chair she'd watched Thorn pedal by her house several times, following his passages with candid curiosity.

In the yard next door, a half dozen kids were playing a screaming game of tag. They ignored Thorn as he climbed off his bike and rolled it into the woman's yard. She was a big lady with gray in her hair and she eyed him with a hint of droll disbelief. He gave her his best hello and apologized for disturbing her on such a fine night, and asked if she might happen to know the whereabouts of one Jelly Boissont.

Inside the house there came the heavy chime of steel against steel. Thorn recognized the sound from his high school days, all those tedious hours in the weight room. The unmistakable clang of twenty-pound plates sliding on and off the heavy bar.

The old woman took a breath, then another one. Studying Thorn, then surveying her yard and the surrounding darkness. As amused by this blond-haired white man who'd appeared in her front yard as she might have been by a talking pig. She fingered the handle of the aluminum cane that lay across her lap.

“I thought he lived nearby, though it's been a long time since I was last here. Maybe I'm lost.”

“Maybe you are,” she said. “Maybe you aren't.”

“Is that name familiar, Jelly Boissont?”

“What if it is?”

“I have a proposition for Jelly. I was hoping he could help me with something.”

She gripped the cane and raised it into the air as if she meant to challenge him to a duel. Then she swung it to the side and pounded it against the frame of the screen door.

“Farley, get out here. They's a white boy here says he's got business with Jelly.”

“Are you Mrs. Boissont?” Thorn said, edging closer.

“Not anymore I ain't,” she said.

A young man came to the doorway and filled it with his shoulders. He was shirtless and wore red-and-black striped bikini briefs that were cut so low a couple of inches of pubic hair spilled over the brim. Otherwise, his body was hairless and slick with sweat. His wide, solid chest tapered to an almost girlish waistline with ridged muscles in his arms and stomach that churned like oily snakes just below the surface of his gleaming skin even as he stood at rest. He wore his hair in Rastafarian dreadlocks that were tinted a brick red. He examined Thorn for several moments with wide-set, sulky eyes, all the while chewing on a wad of something large and leathery.