Bad Men (2003) (35 page)

“I didn’t want her to see us before we came,” Moloch said to Dexter. “I didn’t want her to know. I wanted to see the shock on the bitch’s face myself.”

“You’ll still see it. I reckon she has a lot of shock left in her.”

Moloch didn’t look so happy, Dexter thought. He had been sleeping badly. Dexter had heard him crying out. That happened to men who had been jailed, Dexter knew. Even after their release, part of them always remained incarcerated, and that was the part that intruded on their dreams.

Dexter, meanwhile, had his own worries.

“I don’t like this whole island deal,” he said. “Too many things can go wrong. I don’t like having just one escape route. I don’t like having to leave the same way I came in. And we don’t know shit about this Lubey guy.”

“We have a boat. One of us will stay with it the whole time. Like I told you, we can take her and be gone before anyone even knows we’ve been there. We just need to stay out of trouble. As for Lubey, he’s a driver, nothing more.”

“Do you trust the cop?”

“No, but I think he’s too frightened of the consequences to cross us. Plus, our friends in Boston have promised him a little gift for his cooperation. His fear and his lust should combine to keep him in line.”

“And the policeman out on the island?”

“When they get there, Braun and Leonie will kill him, if only for having the temerity to fuck my wife.”

“And Willard?”

Something like regret flashed across Moloch’s features.

“No pain,” he said. “I want him to feel no pain.”

In the shadows, Willard was looking at a small map of the bay held behind a protective Plexiglas screen. He had changed his clothes and was now wearing a tourist’s fleece with a lobster on the front. He had darkened his hair in a men’s room with a kit he had bought in a drugstore, and it was now a shimmering black. With the index finger of his right hand, he traced the route of the ferry, following each little dot as carefully as if he were tracing the route onto paper. His finger stopped on the island, then he jerked it back suddenly.

A spider was crawling across the map. Its body covered the island. Somehow, the spider had found its way inside the case and now it was trapped, vainly seeking a way out. Maybe it had been trying to shelter from the cold, but now the case would be its tomb. There would be no insects in there for it to feed on and eventually it would grow thin and die. Willard watched it crawl, its legs occasionally slipping on the surface of the map, causing the spider to drop an inch or two before its silk arrested its slide. At last it crawled back up to the top-right-hand corner of the case and huddled there, waiting for its end.

Willard’s mouth was dry. He looked up from the map and stared out to sea, trying to find light in the distance, but he could not. His stomach felt bad. He was concerned about Dexter and Shepherd, but he was worried too about the island. Willard had a survivor’s instincts, and now that little inner voice on which he had relied for so long was telling him to leave, to make his escape while he still could. But Willard wasn’t going to run. Deep inside, he still trusted Moloch. He
wanted
to trust him. He needed him. He lived for the light of Moloch’s approval. It was his weakness. Willard was crazy, crazier than even he himself knew, crazier even than Moloch suspected, but, deep down, he just wanted to be loved.

Powell was having trouble with the boat guy. He was fat and old and dumb, with grease stains on his shirt. He didn’t smell so good. Powell had to turn his face away anytime the guy spoke to him, his breath was so bad. Powell just hoped his boat didn’t stink as bad as he did. Powell wasn’t happy on the sea. He didn’t need any encouragement to puke on boats, but he suspected that the stench from this guy’s boat might be about to give him a little push in the right direction, just for good luck.

The boat was a fifteen-footer, with a small, enclosed wheelhouse barely big enough for two men. Powell knelt down close to it, took a sniff, and backed off. It reeked of rotting fish and the boat guy’s breath, as if it were so toxic that it had stuck to the hull and cabin like gum. Powell had read somewhere that all smells are particulate, which meant that tiny little molecules of the boat guy’s stench were now wending their way through his nasal passages. It made Powell even more irritated with the boat guy than he already was, and Powell had been pretty pissed at him before he even got within ten feet of his stinking boat. The guy wasn’t even supposed to be here, but he had started to worry about his boat being taken out in bad weather and had come down to the dock to express his concerns. Now Powell was left to clear up the mess before Moloch and the others arrived, because if they got here first, then the boat guy was dead. The way Powell saw it, the last thing this operation needed was more dead people. They already had enough corpses to form a conga line from here to Virginia. Scarfe had assured Powell that the boat guy would keep his mouth shut, just as he had done in the past. Powell hoped that, for his sake, the boat guy started shutting up pretty soon, because Powell was beginning to feel seriously nauseous.

“You got paid, right?” said Powell. “I know, ’cause Scarfe says he did it.”

“Yeah, I got paid. I got the money right here.”

“So?”

“That boat is worth more than you paid me.”

“We’re renting it,” said Powell, his patience wearing thin as paper. “We don’t have to pay you what the boat is worth. That’s why it’s called ‘renting’ and not ‘buying.’ ”

“But suppose something happens to it. Scarfe said—”

The fat guy looked over Powell’s shoulder to where Scarfe stood in the shadows. Scarfe looked away. The boat guy was on his own. Powell reached out and grabbed his shoulder in order to keep him focused, then instantly regretted touching him.

“I could give a rat’s ass what Scarfe said. With luck, you’ll have your boat back tonight. Four, five hours, tops. We’ve been more than generous. You got insurance, right?”

“Yeah, I got insurance, but insurance never pays like it should.”

“Why are you telling me? Go write your congressman. All I want is the boat.”

“It’s nothing illegal, is it?”

Powell looked hard at the guy. “Are you for fucking real? Where do you get off asking a question like that? You want me to tell you?”

The boat guy started to back off. “No, I don’t want to know.”

“Then take your money and get your fat, stinking ass out of my sight. This piece of shit is all fueled up, right?”

“Sure, it’s ready to go.”

“Okay, then. We have any problems with this, and we’re not going to be looking for a refund, you understand? We’re going to want a different level of compensation.”

“I understand. You’ll have no problems with her.”

For a moment, Powell looked confused.

“How do you know—” he began, then stopped. The boat, he was talking about the boat. Shit. Powell let out a deep breath.

“No problems with her,” he echoed. “Good. Now go buy yourself some Tic Tacs.”

Moloch, Dexter, and Willard arrived shortly after the boat guy had gone on his way, and Tell and Shepherd emerged from out of the shadows. They had wrapped up warm in preparation for the crossing, and had put on the waterproofs purchased in Kittery. The wind had picked up in the last half hour. The snow blew hard against their faces. Powell noted with some amusement that the snowflakes were settling neatly along the lines of Tell’s cornrows, contrasting nicely with his dark skin. Powell thought that it made the little man look kind of decorative, Dexter too come to think of it. He didn’t consider sharing this observation with them. He suspected that they wouldn’t find it funny.

“Storm coming in with a vengeance,” said Scarfe.

“Good,” said Moloch. “So are we.”

Powell, Shepherd, and Dexter clambered down into the boat after Moloch, Scarfe following, then Willard. Scarfe started the motor. He glanced behind him, watching the four men shrug themselves into life jackets, then take their seats on the plastic benches, Powell alone and holding on grimly to the side. Tell untied the boat, tossed the rope down to the deck, then clambered aboard.

Moloch stood beside Scarfe in the wheelhouse. Scarfe was looking at the sky and the thickening snow. The docks around them were already nearly lost to sight and the sea beyond was a vision in static. They were alone on the water.

“How long will it take us to get across?” asked Moloch.

“There’s a head wind, and visibility sucks. We’ll have to take it slow. We don’t hit anything and nothing hits us, then we’ll make it in under two hours.”

“She could have been there and gone by the time we get to her.”

Scarfe shook his head. “Uh-uh. She’s facing the same difficulties as we are, plus I reckon that there’s going to be no more traffic into and out of the island until morning. The ferry is bedded down for the night. Thorson is no Captain Crunch. He won’t take her out if there’s even a smell of danger. Unless she gets someone to take her off the island in a private boat, and I don’t think that’s going to happen, then she’s stuck there. Problem is, we may be stuck there too.”

Moloch raised his hand, gripped Scarfe’s chin, and turned the smaller man’s face to his.

“That’s not going to happen. You understand?”

Scarfe’s reply was muffled because Moloch’s grip was so tight, but it was clear that he knew where he stood. Moloch released his grip, and Scarfe pulled the boat away from the dock.

Already, Powell’s face was gray. Across from him, Dexter took a package from his pocket and unwrapped it, revealing a meatball sub. As the boat moved away, Powell’s cheeks bulged.

“Don’t puke on my shoes,” warned Dexter.

Powell didn’t.

He puked on his own shoes.

Braun and Leonie had some trouble convincing the water taxi to take them over to Sanctuary. The guy didn’t want to go, but Leonie, who had read up on the island during the hours at the Days Inn, gave him a sob story about being a cousin of Sylvie Lauter, and how she had come hundreds of miles to console Sylvie’s mother. Leonie’s tale would have broken a softer man, but the boatman looked like he was made of teak, with a mahogany heart. Braun stayed out of it, figuring that if they both began to work on the guy, they would intimidate themselves out of a ride.

Leonie gave him $150. The boatman relented. She watched him fold the bills and place them in a waterproof wallet that hung on a string around his neck, then tuck the wallet under his shirt. Satisfied, she turned away.

Leonie had none of the scruples of Powell and Braun. She did not like leaving loose ends.

She would get the money back from him when she killed him.

Marianne sat beneath the awning of her water taxi, her arms curled tightly around her, her chin buried beneath folds of coat and scarf. She was shaking uncontrollably. The boatman, thinking her cold, offered her coffee from his flask and she thanked him and wrapped her gloved fingers around the tin cup.

But still she shook.

She had tried calling her sister before the boat left, but the phone had only rung. She had called Karen Meyer, with the same result. She knew in her heart that both were dead, that she had cost them their lives. It was her fault, all her fault.

But if she died, then Danny would also die, and it would all have been in vain. There was still a chance for them, if she could get to Danny in time. Thorson had canceled his final sailing, and appealing to his better nature was not an option. She knew his reputation and doubted if he would make even one leg of the journey and risk being stranded in Portland. Even if he was willing to go to sea, Marianne feared that someone would be watching the ferry in case she tried to escape, certainly from the mainland and possibly from the island itself.

But there were others who might be prepared to take them off the island, if not as far as the mainland, then at least to one of the larger neighboring islands. Carl Lubey had a boat and sometimes made runs if someone was in enough trouble and was prepared to pay him handsomely for it. He was an option, although the idea of being at his mercy was unappealing. Her other option was Jack the painter. He also had a boat, and she knew that he cared for Danny. If he was sober, he was their best chance.

There were lights to her right and left: the houses on nearby islands, their windows hanging suspended in the darkness like fissures in the fabric of the night or the promise of new worlds. She fantasized about taking Danny and disappearing through one of them, sewing it closed behind her so that nobody could ever find them again. The lights disappeared as the snow thickened and the wind picked up. The little boat tossed on the waves and she held tightly to the ropes, spray drenching her face and chilling her hands. She wore the boatman’s spare oilskins, but water was still finding its way through. She thought of her son, and she thought too of Joe Dupree. She could turn to him, but the risks were too great. She would be forced to reveal the truth about herself and she couldn’t do that.

But there was another reason that she was unwilling to ask him for help. She had seen Willard, and knew that Moloch must be close by. There would be others too, perhaps not as bad as her husband and the pretty, dangerous boy-man, but bad enough.

Joe Dupree was not strong enough to stand against them.

If she turned to him for help, they would kill him.

They would kill them all.

Dupree stood at the station house door and watched the snow fall. Already, Island Avenue was empty. The stores had closed early and the Rudder and Good Eats would not be opening for business. The ferry would return to port any minute now and Thorson would kill the lights on the dock and hang out a “Sailing Canceled” sign. The snow was already sticking to the sidewalks, the shadows of the flakes made huge by the glow of the streetlights as they descended. No cars were moving anywhere on the island. The risks of ending up in a ditch or, worse, taking a tumble into the cold sea were too great.

He heard footsteps behind him. Macy was wrapped up warm. She had added an extra sweater to her uniform, and her hands were double wrapped in a pair of woolen gloves and a leather pair from the station locker.