Night Moves (34 page)

Big moon, key lime yellow. Add rings, it could have been Saturn spinning out of orbit and about to collide with the Earth. I pinned the autopilot to the moon as if it were a target, switched the VHF to Weather Band III, then leaned back, checked the gauges, while a digitized voice reported: “. . . Cape Sable to Tarpon Springs, wind southeast ten to fifteen, decreasing by midday . . .”

Good.
Finally, a chance to let my mind drift freely . . . free, at least, to browse the universally limited list of male standbys: sex, unfinished projects, my children, sex, how would the Rays do this year? women, sex, surfing—did Tomlinson ever pay me for that damn paddle?—fishing, sex, women . . .

It was a path that soon fixed my attention on last night’s conversation with Hannah.

Friday evening, her mother’s bingo night a week away, I was taking the lady to dinner. An actual date. Not a typical catch-kill-and-grill at my place, either. We would travel by car, not boat—well, by truck actually—to a fine restaurant, a place with tablecloths, mojitos, and the best Yucatán shrimp on the islands. Later, maybe stop by the lab to have coffee beneath the stars—Hannah’s suggestion, not mine. Which still rattled me because, as I reminded myself yet again, to the Hannah Smiths of this world, a date is not just a date, and the bedroom—if
that
ever happened—meant a hell of a lot more than a recreational romp.

Spooky, indeed, yet I’d felt unexpected relief after our talk. Almost as if I’d been waiting to breathe for a short time and could suddenly heave my chest full and enjoy the next big breath to come. No explaining it—I barely knew the woman. Not really. But that good feeling was still with me while my mind returned to browsing:
oil pressure, water temp, all gauges good . . . nudge the rpms up to 4500 . . . next lab project . . . women, sex: Hannah naked, or even topless, my god!

That was something fun to visualize, and I did while I turned the boat southeast and typed in a digital heading of 147 degrees. Hit autopilot, a sip of tea, reduced radio volume, looked to port, starboard, spun around for a look aft, then my brain resumed scanning mode.

Weather radar:
Pod of squalls, red dots off the Tortugas . . . how the hell do you reduce range? Remote toggles? No . . . touch screen . . . Hannah’s a big girl, too, solid . . . so I walk in, no way of knowing, and there she is in my bed, blouse unbuttoned, one long leg canted just so—she pulls a stunt like that, what’s she expect me to do?

Open the Plexiglas shield, punch buttons but without much confidence, engage the radar system I did not need on this clear black morning, a rim of orange heat fast expanding in the east. My mind still streaming:

Too damn many electronics, screws my night vision . . . the dimmer button, where is it? Or . . . better yet, find Hannah waiting in panties and bra, nipples right there under a meshy sort of material and she knows it! . . . Pale nipples, or maybe darker, when the straps slide off her shoulders—unless some drunk knocks on the door . . . or if the dog . . .

I closed the cabinet and sat, unaware of what I’d done, as the flow of consciousness continued: . . .
or if the dog, humm, the dog—the owner, bet he’s gotten the forms by now. Damn it all, was getting rid of that dog a mistake? No . . . screw it, hair all over my sheets, with a woman lying in bed waiting, her bra on the floor, wearing nothing but . . . Humm?

Interesting diversion:
By definition, is a woman actually naked if there’s a ring on her finger? Argue all I wanted, Hannah would by god expect it!

The radar system booted, the screen sweeping pixelated circles around the Zodiac:
BLIP . . . BLIP . . . BLIP . . .
Then suddenly faster:
BLIP-BLIP-BLIP . . .

I studied the screen a moment, thinking:
That can’t be right.

The pulse increased, the sound of an accelerating heartbeat:
BLIP-BLIP-BLIP . . . BLIP-BLIP-BLIP . . .

Out loud, I said, “What the hell’s wrong with the radar?”

BLIP-BLIP-BLIP-BLIP-BLIP!
Then a chiming warble—a collision alarm.

“Jesus Christ, there’s nothing out here to hit!”

Four minicomputer screens aglow in video game colors: depth, navigation, Doppler weather, and the digital ping of radar. So why the alarm? Why two boat icons, one red, one yellow, on a collision course, not a hundred yards between them according to the grid?

I stood and raised my voice: “What the hell’s going on!”

At sea, or in a car, whenever unsure of what lies ahead, you slow down and continue slowing until your brain ferrets out the puzzle. So I did, backing throttles gradually, feeling the Zodiac teeter, stern-heavy, as the engines dropped into a trough of their own making. In a boat, when slowing, you also always,
always
look behind you to make sure some inattentive idiot isn’t about to climb your vessel like a ski ramp.

I did.

A lunar halo, a wafer of orange showing—that’s the only reason I saw the Stiletto. Thirty feet of boat that punched a black hole in the moon, a silhouette shaped like an axe blade, the sharpest edge rocketing toward me at a speed that exceeded my experience on the water—seventy, eighty knots. The shock of it froze me for an instant: a rodent awareness of a stooping falcon, no point in resisting or attempting to flee—something else I’d never experienced. The Stiletto’s Kevlar hull, only fifty yards from impact, cleaved air molecules so cleanly that the warning scream of engines didn’t slingshot ahead until too late.

Even so, I lunged and hammered the throttles forward, my swollen left hand spinning the wheel to port. The Zodiac reared itself, bow-high, like a breaching whale, the combined torque throwing me to starboard, which probably saved me from being flung overboard when the Stiletto, engines suddenly in reverse, dug its stern deep to avoid colliding. The abrupt stop ejected a ton of displaced water that hit my aft quarter as a towering wave. For one long, shaky microsecond, I thought my prototype, high-tech, bullet-resistant special ops craft was going to flip like a cheap bathtub toy. To stabilize, I pulled throttles into neutral, as I almost fell but caught myself. One knee on the deck, a hand on the pilot’s seat, I looked up.

Sunrise isolated waves with horizontal light, stars still glimmering in the west, the sea gray beyond the Stiletto, which appeared massive because its bow had swung directly above me. Close enough that the bowsprit banged the Zodiac’s T-top and caused me to duck. This time, though, when I came up I had the khaki gun bag in my hands, fighting with the damn zipper.

“Morning, Dr. Ford! Imagine running into you out here!”

Vargas Diemer’s voice above the rumble of engines while a cloud of scudding exhaust delayed his appearance. He was standing on the flybridge, wearing surgical gloves, I noticed, a familiar pistol in his hand: the .22 Mosquito, sound suppressor attached. Beside him was a sumo-shaped little man in a Nehru shirt of red and green, holding what looked like an Uzi machine pistol.

Kondo Ogbay.

30

JUST TALL ENOUGH TO PEER OVER THE RAILING, KONDO
showed me a party grin and said, “Mon, we just havin’ some fun wid you. Stay mellow, no one get hurt!”

Diemer, not smiling, backed him. “It’s not what you think. Shut down your engines—and stay away from
that
!”

The pistol case inside the gun bag, he meant, which held my 9mm Kahr. Or did he mean the VHF radio, the mic within arm’s reach?

Both. “Move away from the console, Ford.
Now.
” He used the pistol to motion me toward the bow, his voice flat, no accent at all, a man who’d been homogenized by travel.

I might have done it, but the Haitian was on his way down the ladder fireman style, moving fast for a fat guy, yelling, “Come out, come out, scarecrow man! Your good frien’ Kondo, I come say good morning to you!” The machine pistol was at his waist, ready to rock ’n’ roll when his feet hit the deck.

Diemer told him, “Don’t do anything stupid, Sylvester,” using the Haitian’s real name, which proved a connection, then warned me again, “Step away from the controls—and that goddamn bag!”

I killed my engines and pretended to comply by placing the gun case on the seat, the case unzipped but closed, while Kondo hollered, “Tomlinson! I know you there. Pissing me off again, mon, that dumb!” His weapon now aimed at the Zodiac’s storage console, the only place big enough for a man to hide.

I took half a step back from the pistol case, giving myself room to move, and became the indignant citizen. “Who in the hell are you talking to?”

“Who you think, dumbass! Tell yo no-’count surfer dude come out there ’fore I smoke his ass.”

“With the Coast Guard coming?” I leaned my head toward the VHF radio.

Diemer replied, “Strange—we had the scanner on, didn’t hear a thing.” Then attempted to calm Kondo: “Hey, man,
chill—
I’ll handle this,” sounding Chicano suddenly, because the Haitian, far from home, was getting fired up while he threatened me, “Shoot yo damn boat to pieces, how else that gonna happen without a gun?” but his attention was on the storage console, convinced Tomlinson was inside. Called, “Ain’t gonna hurt you, my brother! Not kill you, anyway. You insulted me, though, mon! My respect deserve somethin’! And we here to collect.”

The businessman in Kondo then explained to me, “He can pay me in product. Got him some nice sticky buds, that’s fine. Or he pay me, oh . . . ten thousand cash. See? I be reasonable. Kill a man, cops be on
all
our asses, understand what I’m sayin’?” Raised his voice, then, to inform Tomlinson, “Not gonna lie to you, though! Embarrass me ’front my ’sociates, you piece of shit! That serious, so you pay—else I cut my ’nitial on yo face, that okay wid me, too. A pretty letter
K
, but small, mon, like a tattoo—let folks know Kondo not to be fucked wid! But, hey, then afterward, you know, we friends again. Smoke herb. Tell stories ’bout this thing between us at parties, make the rich girls laugh!”

The indignant citizen, me, sounding nervous, told the Haitian, “Geezus, okay, look anywhere you want—there’s no need for violence!” but I was thinking,
Do it . . . please come aboard and I will try not to break your neck
. Then looked at Diemer and dropped the act, saying to him, “You can’t be this goddamn stupid.”

The Brazilian held his pistol at shoulder level, pointed at the sky, watching it play out. Clipped to his wire-rimmed glasses were tinted lenses, the flip-down variety I’d seen only in antique shops—the son of a locksmith, fastidious in his equipage. He answered by speaking to the Haitian, but in a guarded way that made me wonder if he was conveying a private message.

“I’ll check the storage area, get back up here. You’re paying me to do a job.”

Kondo looked up at Diemer. “The hell you doin’, givin’ me orders on my own damn ride, mon? You tell me you see the scarecrow board this rubber piece shit! Now we here, where the hell’s my boy?”

Diemer’s gaze swept past me—yes, a message attached—while also telling his client, “Didn’t it all happen just like I said? Kondo, lighten up.
Listen
to me. The guy, Tomlinson, he’s gotta be here, man—if he doesn’t come out, I’ll open that storage door and show you. But no killing—hey,
campesino
! It’s just biz, not worth fifteen to twenty fighting off new boyfriends.”

Kondo snapped, “Fuck dat, Pancho!” leveling the automatic at the storage console, then yelled another warning to Tomlinson, one green tennis shoe on the gunnel, ready to leap across to the Zodiac, but then changed his mind, this two-hundred-pound witch doctor, five feet tall, by blaming the Brazilian, “Shit, mon, tol’ you keep us close, now we drift back too far. I ain’t Batman! Get ta’ work up there!”

Diemer, glancing another message to me, said,
“Sorry,”
and flipped his antique shades down, getting ready for something, his eyes bronze-shielded behind wire-rimmed glasses while he placed his weapon near the helm.

The Haitian, impatient with Diemer, hollered commands: “Turn the damn wheel, Pancho! No . . . no! You in neutral, bro!” which gave me time to palm the little 9mm Kahr, my eyes tuned to the Brazilian who was adjusting his surgical gloves—a man who enjoyed sport, preparing to take the wheel of an Italian sports car. That was the impression. But not his intentions, and I thought,
Jesus Christ, what’s his next move?

What Diemer did was click the throttles into slow forward, calling over his shoulder, “Move your ass to the stern, man, stay low.
Kondo—
the dude’s dangerous, I mean it! Wait ’till we’re alongside,
then
you can board.”

Kondo, talking to me like old friends, but walking backward as he’d been ordered, said, “Fuckin’ Mexicans, mon, Brazil? Same thing. Spanish-speakin’ folks, shit, they doan know nothin’ ’bout no oceangoin’ vessels.” The man shrugged, made a humorous salute with the Uzi, his expression asking me, a fellow waterman,
What you gonna do?
Then shared the insult with the Germanic Brazilian, a wide white smile on his face, until he saw that Diemer had turned his back to the controls and was aiming a pistol at him.

The smile wilted. “Cut the shit, mon! We partners!”

Body squared, Diemer cradled the Sig Sauer Mosquito in two gloved hands, its sound suppressor appearing too long to miss at only twelve feet. His bronze glasses, sparking with sunlight, made a laser connection with the Haitian’s chest.

I had the Kahr 9 up now, shielded by the seat’s headrest, ready to take them both out, if necessary. Diemer first, because of his elevated position, but then decided, no,
Kondo first
, when Diemer asked the little man, “Where’s the money, Sylvester?”

The jet-set assassin was done speaking Chicano, finally playing the role he knew best—precisely why I had already discarded his visual messages as bullshit.

Confused, Kondo took a step back, the Uzi still in his right hand, finger edging toward the trigger, but the barrel pointed up, relaxing on his shoulder at parade position.