North of Boston (28 page)

He looks worried, slides the Winstons into his pocket. “OK, OK. How 'bout a quickie first?”

“A what?”

“A quick fuck for the road.”

“Oh, God. Tell me I didn't hear that. You want to get paid, or don't you?”

“Yeah, OK. Maybe later, huh?”

“Never.”

He nods as if he's been denied a donut. “OK. Let's go.”

D
usk is brief in autumn in the north. The sun drops to the horizon fast after a short, understated slide across the sky. The
Galaxy
's
main deck is empty. The running lights gleam dimly across the polished teak, the service bar, the chaise longues and the potted plants. The guests have not yet returned from shore leave. A dinner was planned for them at the Tungortok Inn, which the crew will join, too. That's where Hall was headed with Brock and Dennis, Troy says.

Troy glances up at the windows on the second and third levels that have a clear view of the main deck. Even if Hall and the boys have left already, someone will still be on board. He repeats that we should have waited until dark, but I'm too afraid to care. All I know is that the handcuffs are behind me, and the salt air filling my lungs is making me feel human again.

There's a flimsy ladder down the side of the yacht to a dinghy tied there, bobbing gently on the black water of Makkovik Bay. I go first. Troy uncleats the painter and begins to descend after me. I imagine yanking the line out of his hand and heading across the bay on my own. But in the next moment he's stepping carefully into the dinghy, and the opportunity's gone. Hunched over to keep his center of gravity low, he moves to the back where the engine is, while I, seated on the center bench, scoot over to let him pass. I could push him overboard while he's next to me, unbalanced, but again the moment passes too quickly.

My mind is racing to figure out how to get away. I have no intention of returning to Boston with Troy while the
Galaxy
continues its journey north. He can return to Boston by himself and wait for his money until I arrive. I'll work around Milosa's likely vengeful reaction and make sure that Troy gets paid. I'll do it for Noah's safety mostly, but also because a deal's a deal. The next problem, how to deal with Johnny, is going to take some thought.

The whine of the motor spreads across the quiet bay. A violet fog blurs the outlines of the two or three low, flat buildings on the shore ahead. Glancing back, I see that darkness has gathered over the Labrador Sea. The superyacht rises from its black surface like a luminous glacier—tall, massive, gleaming white. I watch it fade like a bad dream.

Troy cuts the motor as we approach Makkovik. Next to a makeshift pier there's a paved roll-on, roll-off ramp for freight boats. The shore is rocky. There's no other place to land. Several dinghies are already tied there. We tie up, too, and disembark, splashing through the shallow water.

One main road, unpaved, leads inland past a few more squat buildings, painted pink and blue. The terrain on either side is a moonscape of smooth black bedrock, outcrops of shale, sparse scrub, tufts of grass, impassable bogs. Low hills rise to the north and south, gently mounded by harsh winds, treeless but for a singular, anomalous copse of spruce on the northern slope.

The town is quiet; it seems uninhabited. Then I dimly hear the unmistakable, urgent guitar chords of Clapton begging Leila, coming from a row of small identical houses built back from the road. A rising
slap, slap, slap
causes me to whirl around. It's a little girl with a lime-green jump rope windmilling her way toward us, wearing a lovely frown. She sails by, uninterested in visiting strangers. We follow her, walking in plain view on the road because there's nowhere to take shelter. I recall that Makkovik is at the tip of a narrow peninsula.

Up ahead the wooden sign for the Tungortok Inn hangs from the low roof of a lopsided porch. A Buick and a couple of motorcycles are parked haphazardly on the front lawn, and there's a Range Rover in the narrow driveway. Apparently, the Tungortok has more customers tonight than just the
Galaxy
's guests and crew. The inn itself is painted bright blue, two stories, long like a shoe box, without shutters or adornment of any kind. There's warm rosy light inside and festive voices coming through two front windows that open onto the porch.

I have no idea how far away the highway is. It could be fifty miles, or ten, or two hundred. In nothing but my bloodstained
Galaxy
T-shirt, jeans, and wet sneakers, I'm shivering. I'm also hungry and very tired. I need to get to the community center, which is nowhere in sight, and by now probably closed, to get a message to Parnell. If he can bring some video cameras and meet me up here in Labrador somewhere, we can make our way together to the Cumberland Peninsula and take it from there. But before that, Troy and I have to get past the Tungortok Inn without being seen, and find somewhere to lie low until morning.

I feel Troy tense, quicken his step. “Do you see that?”

“What?”

“There.” He points. There's a key in the ignition of an old silver-bellied Honda.

“Wait,” I say warily.

He doesn't wait. He sprints ahead, swings his leg over the bike. “Come on. Let's go!” He stomps the accelerator pedal, and the engine roars to life, loud and sudden as a detonating bomb in the still air. He steers the bike onto the road—headlight on, muffler spitting exhaust—and idles there, waiting for me. “Hurry up!” he yells over his shoulder.

I take several steps forward as the front door of the inn opens and two men come out. They look like native Inuit. “Hey, what're you doing?” one of them calls out in a not-unfriendly tone. Troy revs the engine. I slip back, behind the Range Rover. Troy's in a fix now. He'll never be able to explain what he's doing here, stealing a motorcycle, and once Hall finds out I'm missing, Troy won't ever be safe again. I scoot down the driveway along the side of the inn. There's yelling and commotion as more people come onto the porch, then a scream of acceleration as Troy races away. Within seconds, other engines ignite—what sounds like both remaining motorcycles and a car—and set off in pursuit. The whine of the vehicles grows progressively quieter until arctic silence is restored.

What now? I'm in the middle of nowhere, on foot, without a dime. I don't dare return to the road, and if I head out across the uneven, rocky terrain without a flashlight, I'll end up with a sprained ankle or broken leg. Not to mention lost. The back entrance of the Tungortok Inn is just ahead, up a few unpainted steps, illuminated by a bare orangeish bulb above the door. Most everyone seems to be at the front of the inn, talking loudly about the theft.

The door's unlocked. I enter a dark mudroom where a couple of bulging trash bags emit the putrid odors of decaying fish and garbage, quickly pass a brightly lit kitchen on my left, and come onto a gloomy hallway covered in frayed red carpeting. There's a pay phone on the wall, an old cigarette machine, and two doors bearing dandyish stenciled signs for Gents and Dames. I'm ready to slip into the Dames' room when I see a narrow stairway farther along. I sprint up it, and emerge in another hallway, hushed and seedy. Thin blue carpeting, peeling wallpaper of gold medallions on blue, several closed doors with round brass knobs. An overhead light at the front end illuminates a wider staircase that descends to the front of the inn. I'm terrified someone will step out of a room and see me, so I try the closest door, which opens with a quiet creak. The room is small, square, low-ceilinged. Light from the hall throws out shadows from a double bed with no headboard, a pine dresser, a straight-back chair. I see no luggage, no signs that the room's being used. But it's the trapped damp and mustiness that suggest I might be safe. The single window in this room hasn't been opened for weeks.

I shut the door behind me, wincing at the creak. It locks with a simple button that a bobby pin on the other side could pop out. Right there and then, I collapse on the floor in the darkness, curl into a fetal position. I lie that way for a while, trembling all over, riding out the day's accumulated terror, too overwhelmed by it to think. One floor down, at the distant front end of the inn, the guests and crew of the
Galaxy
are enjoying a well-cooked meal of local delicacies. Some people have all the luck.

I finally pick myself off the floor and go to the window. Millions of stars swirl in milky bands across the jet-black sky. It crosses my mind that Van Gogh was not so demented after all. But enough about art. I have to find a bathroom. There's none in the room, so I peek out the door, then skip across the hallway into a common bathroom, large and clean and windowless, and lock myself inside. I pee hot urine and peel off my bloodstained clothes. When I look in the mirror, I see a small, squashed, pulpy person with a multicolored face, delicate white breasts, pretty pink nipples, and bruises everywhere else. I start to laugh uncontrollably at the thought that my woman parts were cordially omitted from punishment.

I shut up and freeze. There are people coming up the stairs, a man and a woman bubbling with playful conversation. As their voices become more distinct, I recognize the clear lilt of Jorn Ekborg's smug tenor voice. Then, if I'm not mistaken, I hear Margot, breathless with self-importance and tipsy seduction. They enter a room farther up the hall and close the door.

I want to take a shower, but I don't dare with people so close by. I grab one of the guest towels, wet it, and sponge off the blood that Dennis didn't get. My face looks a little better now, though a few of the bruises are beginning to swell. I could probably pass for someone who was in a car accident or fell into a hornet's nest or had a severe allergic reaction to shellfish and walked into a door.

The distant rumble of motorcycle engines grows increasingly loud, until the inn's wood frame is reverberating with the din. The door of Ekborg and Margot's room is flung open, and a man's heavy footsteps descend the stairs. It seems that the lovely Margot holds less appeal for the handsome Swede than a hunted-down thief does. I wonder if she's surprised.

Confiding in Margot poses an obvious risk. I have no idea how she'll react or who she'll squeal to. She could march straight to Jaeger himself. But I'm willing to take that chance. Because for the last few nights she's been lingering on a bar stool in the small salon after everyone else leaves, pouring out her secrets to me, her sympathetic bartender, her tongue loosened by generously flowing champagne. Why do people always assume that bartenders are discreet? In any case, Ekborg is just the latest dalliance, one anyone could guess. The other male on the ship who regularly receives her favors, Captain Lou Diggens, is a more surprising choice. Bob Jaeger, for one, would be shocked to know of it.

I bundle up my clothes and sneakers, wrap a towel around me, slip out of the bathroom, and enter her room. A small blue lamp on the night table is on. She is lying across the bed in an unbuttoned shirt and a raised-to-the-waist long white skirt with adorable tulle fringe, a freckled forearm flung across her eyes. “Oh, Jorn. I can't. I'm so dizzy—everything's spinning. And Bob will kill me if he finds out.”

“Margot. It's me, Pirio.”

She picks up her heads, squints. “Pirio? Why are you wearing a towel?” She rises to one elbow. “What happened to your face?”

“I need your help.”

“What?”

I explain that I'm a friend of an Ocean Catch fisherman, that I found out about the hunting and came on board to film it, that I was found out and beaten up by Brock, with Hall and Dennis looking on. That I might have been killed had young Troy not set me free. He stole a motorcycle outside and was followed, while I escaped into the inn.

“Oh, my God! You poor thing!”

“You can't tell anyone you saw me.”

“No! Of course not.”

“I need help to get away.”

“Oh, my God! Where will you go?”

“I'm not sure. But I need clothes and money.”

“I don't have any clothes but this”—she flounces the skirt—“and a cover-up. I spent all my money this afternoon at the craft fair at the Moravian church.”

“What did you buy?”

“A hand-knit sweater. Beautiful gray and blue with, like, little seals or something walking across the top.”

“Can I have it?”

“Really?” She gives a wounded grimace, then apparently thinks it through. “Of course you can. But what are you going to do about your face?”

“Money, Margot. What about money?”

“I have a few dollars left, that's all.”

“What about Jaeger?”

“Bob's always got money.”

I give her a meaningful look.

“You want me to . . . ?”

“Would you?”

She sits up on the side of the bed, smooths her skirt, begins buttoning her blouse. “I guess I could. You really need it. I don't see why not. I mean, it's not like he needs it.”

“Thank you, Margot.”

She gives me a wobbly, embarrassed smile. “Jorn's a self-absorbed narcissist, don't you think?”

“You got that right.”

“I could feel his dick through his pants. It's tiny.”

“Not surprised.”

She stands, sweeps her gorgeous mane of red hair off her neck, lets it fall heavily down her back, and shakes it out. “I can't wait until we get back to civilization. I get so sick on these voyages, and all I can eat is bread. But Bob doesn't care about anyone but himself. He has a tiny dick, too.”