The Detonators (2 page)

“I’m sorry. It was pretty tactless of me, wasn’t it?” But her heart wasn’t in the apology; she had more important things to worry about than my sensitive feelings. She drew a long breath and glanced at her watch. “Well, judging by what I saw from the taxi that brought me from the airport, Miami traffic is pretty awful. If we’re going to get there during visiting hours, we’d better start driving, hadn’t we?” Her voice turned disapproving. “As soon as you’ve finished your drink, of course.”

I said, “Don’t worry, ma’am. I hold my liquor pretty good. But if I do feel a drunken stupor coming on, I promise to turn the wheel over to you.”

Driving the rental car across town with the girl beside me, I reviewed what I’d been told about the situation. I’d already known, of course, that Doug had long been a victim of the Slocum syndrome. Old Joshua Slocum was the first man to sail alone around the world. Men, and a few women, have been dreaming of following in the wake of his clumsy
Spray
for almost a century now, and even doing it. Well, there’s nothing like a good dream to sustain you during the long dull day stakeouts and night vigils involved in our profession. Some men make the time pass by dreaming of climbing high mountains, or catching big fish, or shooting deer or elk that have enormous antlers. Some dream of food or liquor or women, or various combinations of the above. I don’t suppose there’s anything wrong in dreaming about boats.

Retired for medical reasons—he was getting on toward that age anyway—Doug set about turning his dream into reality. He bought a husky thirty-two-foot fiberglass sailboat hull, double-ended. The ones that are sharp at both ends are supposed to be more seaworthy, according to some authorities. According to others, not. But Doug had been sold on the virtues of that pointy stern that would part the raging seas gently as he ran before the howling gales in the great Southern Ocean.

I knew, because I’d done a job with him during which we’d had time for some idle talk before things got very busy and he’d had to save my life a bit, that he’d originally planned to do the whole construction job himself. However, now that retirement was a reality, he had a number of old aches and twinges, and some new ones, to remind him that nobody lives forever. He decided that if he wanted to carry out his sailing plans, he didn’t have time to waste on building from scratch. So he acquired a ready-made hull—apparently they were available in all stages of completion—and finished and rigged it to his own specifications in a little less than two years.

He was a midwestern boy who’d never seen an ocean until World War II sent him overseas; but since the dream hit him he’d spent his free time—the little we get—in learning seamanship and navigation. Now he took a few more months to get acquainted with his new ship, with progressively longer cruises from his home in St. Petersburg, on the west coast of Florida. Feeling himself ready at last, with some knowledge of compass and sextant, and a little practical experience in handling his boat under a variety of conditions, he embarked upon his epic voyage, first heading south to Key West, at the tip of the Florida Keys.

From there he planned to head up the east coast of Florida to Miami, where he’d take care of any deficiencies in boat or supplies that had come to his attention. Later, as the seasons permitted, he’d proceed to Bermuda, the Azores, and the Mediterranean and make his way through the Suez Canal and the Red Sea and across the Indian Ocean to Australia. After that, the palmy islands of the South Seas beckoned.

Well, that was the master plan. Remember, this was no crazy kid with wild hair and a yen for publicity, but a sober and very tough and competent gent of mature years, who’d spent a lot of his life working out, in his spare time, the details of his voyage and accumulating the charts and other publications required. With no family responsibilities except for the daughter he’d never been allowed to know since her childhood, whose welfare he’d nevertheless provided for—there was money waiting in Washington if she should need it—he felt free to indulge his romantic vision. If other people thought him nuts, too bad about them. Let them buy retirement homes in Florida or Arizona if they chose. His choice was the boat.

However, when he reached Key West he wasn’t feeling very well. Ironically, considering his medical history, he wasn’t hit by a flare-up of one of his old injuries, but by a simple touch of stomach flu. He saw a doctor and got himself fixed up with antibiotics, but he was too impatient to get on with his voyage to rest a few days, as recommended. Instead he took along a young man he met on the dock to help him sail the boat as far as Miami, about a hundred and fifty miles. He figured that by the time they got there he’d be well enough to manage alone once more. But as they rode the Gulf Stream north along the Florida Straits, the kid slipped down into the cabin to smoke a cigarette that wasn’t tobacco.

There was an instant showdown when Doug, in the cockpit, got a whiff of the smoke drifting out the main hatch. He wasn’t about to jeopardize his boat and his dream by having on board any illicit substances, as they’re known in the jargon. There may even have been a bit of a struggle, which was a laugh. Although no longer young and not altogether well, a trained man like Doug would have had no trouble tying an untrained, spaced-out kid into fairly painful knots. He searched the shabby pack and threw overboard the illegal stuff he found there. After docking in the big marina in Miami, he tossed the punk ashore with his belongings and told him to get lost, fast.

The following day, as Doug was preparing to tackle the next leg of his long-planned voyage, feeling pretty good again, the Coast Guard descended on him, guided by an anonymous telephone tip. They found a small cache of marijuana hidden on the boat where they’d been told to look—apparently the punk hadn’t kept all his smoking materials in his pack. Although Doug identified himself politely and asked them to call Washington, they’d heard that I’m-an-important-guy-and-anyway-I-wuz-framed routine before. They impounded the boat and called the police to take Doug away and charge him, or whatever the legal procedure is in such cases. Mac wasn’t specific about the details.

Anyway, the cops got into the act somehow. When Doug protested, they apparently got a little rude and physical. Public servants ourselves in a sense, we don’t react at all well to being manhandled by our fellow workers in the governmental vineyard, city, state, or federal. We’ve had to take too much shit from the real enemy, whoever he may be at any given time. One thing led to another and somebody made the mistake of bouncing a nightstick off Doug’s head…

Well, that was the Doug Barnett story as I’d pieced it together from what I already knew and what I’d been told over the phone. Fortunately, one of the Coastguardsmen who remained intact had a sharp pocketknife and knew how to perform an emergency tracheotomy on a crushed larynx, so the baton-happy cop survived. The three fracture cases were hauled off to the nearest hospital for splints and casts. The walking wounded were patched up so they wouldn’t bleed all over everything while they waited for proper dressings to be applied in the emergency room.

Douglas Barnett, subdued at last, was dragged off to jail. Eventually he got to make the phone call to which he was legally entitled; and Mac passed the word to me, as well as, I had no doubt, to various influential personages at various levels of government. We take care of our own. Maybe Doug shouldn’t have blown his stack like that; but Mac knows perfectly well that the work he wants done would never get done by a bunch of docile characters who, falsely accused, would hold out their wrists for the handcuffs without argument. He also knows it’s money in the bank. I mean, the word gets around. Next time one of our people asks politely to be put through to Washington to clear up a misunderstanding, maybe he, or she, will be shown a phone instead of a bunch of overbearing cops.

“It’s all so stupid!” said the girl riding beside me in the rental car. “I mean, even if he was innocent, why did he have to fight them like that?”

I said, “When a man has spent his life fighting, he finds it pretty hard to stop, Miss Barnett. And you don’t really believe he was innocent, do you?”

“Well… well, they did find that horrible stuff on his boat, didn’t they? Drugs, ugh! How
could
he? And people always do say they were framed, don’t they?”

I said, “Maybe it’s just as well I’ve had very little contact with my own kids. This way I can keep my illusions. If they have so little faith in the veracity of the man from whom they’ve inherited half the genes they carry, I don’t want to know it.”

She glanced at me quickly and started to speak, then checked herself. When we reached it, we found the jail to be located in a massive building that looked reasonably modern and handsome on the outside. Inside, although the interior decoration was pretty sharp, if a little worn, it was basically just another king-sized cop-house. There’s something about a bunch of big men swaggering around in uniform with guns and clubs that arouses in me an atavistic hostility. I guess I just want to tell them I’m pretty tough myself, so don’t give me that hard cop look unless you’re ready to back it up, Buster. Childish.

We went through the usual visitors’ red tape and were put into a waiting room. I gestured toward a chair. “Rest your feet,” I said to the girl. “You said you wanted to see him alone and it’s all arranged; but I’ll see him first, if you don’t mind. Business. After that he’s all yours, lucky man.”

When an escort arrived for me, I left her sitting there primly, knees together, skirt modestly in place, underwear still a mystery even though I’d watched her entering and leaving a car, an operation that usually reveals everything revealable. But it was a mystery that no longer interested me greatly. I mean, the very proper and modest ones are usually a challenge—you like to see if you can’t at least win a relaxed and friendly smile from the inhibited lady—but the masculine curiosity Miss Barnett had aroused in me originally, because she was really a rather pretty girl, was fading fast. Her mother had done too good a job on her.

I was shown into a small visiting room and heard the door shut solidly behind me. It wasn’t too bad a room. It was clean and had a table and some reasonably comfortable-looking chairs. It also had illumination enough to shoot a movie by, even with fairly slow film; and they should have no trouble with the sound, I figured, since the place was undoubtedly already miked and wired. There were no windows. Doug Barnett was sitting in one of the chairs when I came in. He nodded at me but he didn’t get to his feet and hurry forward to shake my hand; we don’t go in much for effusive greetings. Or partings, for that matter. And maybe rising wasn’t all that easy for him at the moment. I started to sit down in the nearest chair, on his left.

“The other one, if you don’t mind, Matt,” he said, gesturing to the identical chair on the other side of him.

“Sure,” I said. When I was seated, I said, “I’m supposed to ask if you want us to cart this joint away brick by brick and sow the foundations with salt like the Romans did with Carthage so nothing would grow there again, ever. Or is it all right if we just blow it up and leave the debris where it falls?”

He didn’t answer that. He knew it was just a fancy way of telling him the old team was behind him. We’re not a buddy-buddy outfit, but there is a certain
esprit de corps
that surfaces at times like that. We spent a moment taking stock, since we hadn’t seen each other for a while. Although I was senior in the organization, having been in it practically from the start, Doug was considerably older. He’d come to us from some other nasty outfit, like maybe the old OSS after they’d sanded it smooth and painted it pretty and called it CIA and he couldn’t stand it any longer. He was a husky man with shoulders broad enough to make him look shorter than he really was. Actually he stood, when standing, only an inch or so under six feet. He looked better than I’d expected. I guess they’d cleaned him up fast when the pressure came on from Washington. He was neatly shaved and wearing a clean white shirt and clean dark trousers that looked a little too dressy for his well-worn brown moccasin-type boat shoes, the kind with the patent no-slip white soles.

He was watching me steadily with his head cocked a little to the side. His tanned, smooth face, which didn’t betray his age, was unmarked. He still had most of his hair. Where it wasn’t gray, it was considerably darker than his daughter’s; apparently her fairness had come from her mother’s side of the family. A spot had been shaved on Doug’s head to make room for a lump of white tape, presumably where the police club had split the scalp. That was the only visible injury; but they’re very good at demonstrating their disapproval of obstreperous prisoners without leaving marks that’ll show in court. I’m not criticizing, really. They have their methods, and we have ours.

“Tell Mac thanks,” Doug said. “I had no right to drag him into it:”

“To hell with that,” I replied. “Nobody really retires from this crazy outfit. You know that. It works both ways. If you’re ever needed again, really needed, you’ll be called.”

“Well, I thought a long time before I dialed that emergency number; but it looked as if they were going to bury me so deep nobody’d ever find me. And I…” He stopped and drew a long breath. “I’d heard the girl was looking for me. I wanted to see her again, Matt. My little girl. Just once before… Is she here?”

Well, people do get mushy about their kids, even fairly tough people. “She’s outside,” I said.

“So she came!”

I said quickly, “Don’t get your hopes up,
amigo
. She’s been brainwashed most of her life. You’re an evil, violent man. Brutally beating up half a dozen helpless little cops and coastguardsmen and smuggling nasty marijuana are exactly what she expects of you. She’s just surprised it wasn’t coke or heroin.”

He grinned at me crookedly. “You don’t pull any punches, do you?”

I shrugged. “You’ll see her in a minute. What would be the point in letting you entertain any fond expectations, even briefly? To be blunt, your daughter is a fairly impossible, stuffy, little female prick. But she did come.”