Blackwater Sound (22 page)

“MicroDyne,” Sugarman said. “I heard a little about it.”

“A. J. Braswell's company,” she said. “He was the founder. They have a plant out near the turnpike, west of town. They process computer parts. Coat microprocessors and chips and things like that with a special material A. J.'s son invented. It's a complicated process called spark plasma sintering. But A. J. doesn't run the company anymore. His daughter runs it now. Morgan Braswell. She's an evil bitch.”

She looked at him straight on.

“An evil, evil bitch,” Angela said.

She lifted her head a little as if overcome with pride for getting the awful truth out into the open.

“There's a man you should talk to. He's A. J.'s partner. His name is Jeb Shine.”

“What's he going to tell me?”

She took a breath. Sent her gaze out into the galaxies.

A shirtless man with a bald head and long fringe hair stepped out from behind the door. He had a long, pale face and brown eyes and a mournful mouth. He was wearing blue-and-white seersucker shorts and red tennis shoes with the laces undone. His chest was shapeless and his belly swelled over the waistband of his shorts. Angela looped an arm around his and tugged him out onto the porch.

“Jeb's been eavesdropping, haven't you, sweet pea?”

Jeb gave a curt nod.

“Jeb and I are engaged, Mr. Sugarman. We met at a party a year ago and started talking and found out we had a lot in common. Isn't that right, Jeb?”

Jeb nodded again, his eyes on Sugarman's. Sugar feeling a sag of
disappointment; this woman, a complete stranger, lifting his spirits with her flirty looks, then out walks the slob boyfriend.

“You have something you want to tell me, Jeb?”

“Angela's doing a pretty good job. If she needs me to fill in any blanks, okay, I'm ready to do that.”

Angela Peretti blushed and lowered her eyes and peered out into the dark neighborhood, searching for eavesdroppers.

“What is it, Angela? If you have something to say, now's the time.”

She made several quick nods as if she'd consulted with the heavens and they'd given their approval.

“Jeb and I think they're doing things they shouldn't be doing.”

“What things?”

She inhaled through her nose and shook her head.

“Maybe I should come inside,” Sugar said.

“I called the Miami Police Department but they weren't interested. They said they'd send someone out to talk to me, but no one ever came.”

“Weren't interested in what?”

“The blueprints, schematic drawings. There's a whole box of stuff I found in Dad's apartment.”

“Blueprints of the ray gun?”

“Calling it a ray gun,” Angela said, “that makes it sound like something from a cartoon show. But it's not. It's very real. Isn't it, Jeb?”

He nodded.

“And these blueprints, where did your father get them? From the Braswells?”

“That's right.”

“How'd he manage that? Something so valuable.”

“He had free passage on and off their boat. That's where he found them, on their fishing yacht.”

“What's the connection between your father and these people? Was he A. J.'s bookie or something? A fishing buddy?”

“The connection between my father and A. J. is blood.”

“I don't follow.”

Jeb shifted beside her. A housefly was tracking up his cheek but he didn't seem to mind.

“Blood,” she said. “As in family.”

“You're related to the Braswells?”

“I'm not,” she said. “But my older sister Darlene was married to A. J. Braswell.”

She fixed her eyes on a neatly pruned hibiscus bush.

“You and your sister, are you close?”

“Darlene's dead, Mr. Sugarman. Ten years ago she hung herself in the attic of her house. She was one of them for seventeen years. That's what killed her. Being a Braswell.”

Sugarman looked at the same hibiscus bush that Angela was so absorbed in. It was a well-pruned bush. Healthy, with lots of double-wide blooms. A bush worth studying.

“Lawton described one of the guys on the boat,” said Sugar. “He said he was a blond kid with a sombrero. Is that anyone you're familiar with?”

Jeb muttered something under his breath.

“That's Johnny,” Angela said. “Johnny Braswell, the baby of the family. All the Braswell IQ was siphoned off by the time Johnny was born.”

“Lawton said it was this Johnny character who cut Arnold's hand.”

She shut her eyes hard and bowed her head.

“Nice family,” Sugarman said. “Kid slashes his own granddaddy.”

She wet her lips and looked directly at Sugarman.

“Know what's even more screwed up?”

“What?”

She let him have a long look at her eyes. Pretty and wide-set, long lashes and a sassy twinkle in there.

“My father,” she said, “Mr. Arnold Peretti, big-time underworld figure, bookie for the stars, he was also a doting grandfather. You should've seen him down on the floor at the Braswells' house, every
Christmas, every birthday. Little Andy, and Morgan, and Johnny. He loved those kids. He loved them so much he could never see how totally fucked up they were. The most fucked-up little brats that ever slithered out from under a rock. That's who my father squandered his love on. Little shits like that.”

 

Thorn waited till Alex had settled in her bunk, pulled the blanket to her chin, said good night. He waited a little longer, staring up into the dark, listening to her breathing deepen, the first throaty flutters of sleep. Then he rose and tiptoed out onto the deck. It was well after midnight and the bar was closed, just a few late-night diners in their flowered clothes and deep tans stumbling back from the local restaurants.

He went for a walk across the grounds. A strong wind was whistling around the buildings and bending the palms. Fronds rattled and the smaller boats jostled in their slips.

He had noticed the dinghy earlier in the evening. It was a white rowboat, used to ferry hotel guests across the harbor to the isolated beach. It was knotted to a cleat near the dockmaster's shed. The shed was dark now, the dock empty. Throughout the marina men were dreaming of blue marlin rising to their lures.

Thorn stepped down into the dinghy and unlashed the line and pushed off. He banged the oars a little as he learned the right rhythm. By the time he was at the far end of the marina he was moving along nicely, a good even stroke, as stealthy as a dark wind.

He kept just beyond the halo of the marina lights, rowing out into the harbor, the black water glistening with gold. When he was past the final slip, he put the oars in the oarlocks and drifted thirty yards beyond the Braswells' yacht. He had an unobstructed view of it, sleek and white with a ghostly glow.

Lights burned in the narrow skylights of the two starboard cabins. He saw no one out on deck, no one moving behind the salon curtains.
The current sloshed against the boulders on the far side of the harbor. Charcoal smoke was drifting in from one of the boats anchored beyond the mouth of the harbor. Someone having a late-night barbecue.

He was unarmed and undermanned. No way he could stage a successful raid on their boat. And not much chance he could sneak aboard unnoticed. There was a pistol-packing guard parked in the shadows. Though Thorn couldn't see him from his dinghy, he knew he was there. There was no way to tell what weapons the Braswells might have aboard.

It was foolish. It was absurd and risky to all involved. There were a hundred rational reasons why he should go back to the
Heart Pounder
and concentrate on Alexandra Collins's breathing, fall into the rhythms of her sleep. But he kept thinking of that airplane passenger in the track suit who'd had a seizure on the deck of the skiff. And the large woman who'd scooped him up and held him while he died, giving him some last comfort, some final moments of human contact. All of them had been safe and comfortable in their padded seats one minute, and tumbling from the sky the next. He kept seeing Lawton Collins, his wry, off-center smile.

Thorn lifted the oars, fit his hands to the grips, and rowed in from the dark, sliding toward the Braswells' yacht. Halyards tinkled and the water sighed around the pilings. He eased to within twenty yards, choosing his spot along the starboard cockpit. Step over to the dive platform and scale the transom, slip inside the salon, and pick his way through the dark, cabin by cabin, till he found the old man. If he was discovered, he'd use his fists if he couldn't find a heavy object along the way. It wasn't much of a plan, but it had rushed up from his gut and had taken such clear shape that it pushed away all doubt.

He coasted the last ten feet, slid the oars into the locks, and watched the big white hull come into reach. Another few seconds and he leaned out and touched her lustrous side, nudged his rowboat around her stern, cushioning the inevitable bump of wood against fiberglass.

He was easing up from his bench seat, in a half crouch, when a voice came from the dock nearby. Thorn went rigid. Holding the dinghy in place as it shifted and wobbled against the push of the tide.

It was Maurice, the Braswells' guard, who earlier in the evening had found Thorn less than amusing. He barked a warning. “Halt.”

Thorn peered up into the dark expecting to see Maurice's humorless eyes, the dark barrel of his pistol. But there was no one there. And then another voice, out on the dock just a few feet away.

“It's just me, Maurice.”

And a mumbled response.

“Is everyone asleep?”

Maurice's reply was taken by the wind.

Thorn felt the shift of the boat as someone stepped aboard. Five feet away, the man crossed the cockpit and opened the salon door and closed it behind him. Thorn held himself in place. Maurice cleared his throat. He hawked up a wad of phlegm, and spat out into the water. A yard from Thorn's bow there was a small splash. Thorn watched the golden concentric ripples spread toward him.

Maurice dragged his chair across the wooden planks of the dock and sat down and lit a cigarette.

“Is everyone asleep?” the man had asked.

In that same detached voice Thorn had heard just the day before.

At dawn Thorn got two take-out coffees from the resort's large, airy restaurant, charged them to his slip, and was on his way back to the
Heart Pounder
, taking quick slurps of the dark, earthy stuff, when someone whistled from the pool deck.

“One of those for me?”

Sugarman sat at one of the stone picnic tables near the diving board. In a yellow polo shirt and blue jeans, sunglasses cocked up on his head.

Thorn came over, handed him a cup, and sat down across the table.

“They got flights this early?”

“If you know the right people.”

They sipped the coffee, Thorn looking out at the marina, the sun starting to shimmer on all that chrome and gold plate.

“You're hanging with some fancy-assed folks, Thorn.”

“But I'm trying hard to stay connected to my humble roots.”

“I'm sure these folks all worked diligently and earned each and every shiny doodad we see displayed before us. Pulled themselves up by their bootstraps, every one. The American way.”

“I suppose a few might have. Mostly it looks like a lot of lucky sperm.”

Thorn watched one of the smaller yachts edge forward from its slip. A deckhand smearing a rag over the tinted windows.

“What brings you all this way? Looking to catch a marlin?”

“Call me chickenshit but I prefer fish that are smaller than my boat.”

A sandpiper landed on the grassy fringe of the pool and poked its beak at a cocktail napkin.

“Did some digging last night,” Sugar said. “Discovered some intriguing details about your buddies, the Braswells.”

“Yeah?”

“I spoke with a young man named Shine who's Braswell's partner in MicroDyne. He's decided he wants to blow the whistle on these nice folks.”

A group of ladies in pink-and-green golf clothes walked past, headed for the restaurant.

“From that stuff you read, you know the Braswells do military contract work. They got patent rights on a process they use to coat some exotic gizmos. Memory chips. Flashy high-tech doohickeys used in fighter jets and weapons systems. U.S. Air Force is their number-one client. They use MicroDyne-treated chips in their fighters, missile guidance, all kinds of applications.”

“Coating? What kind of coating?”

“It's a metallurgical process the Braswell kid came up with when he was still in high school. Spark plasma sintering.”

“The one that died?”

“That one, yeah. Andy Braswell. It was his creation.”

“Must've been a brainy kid.”

“From what this guy Shine says, that's all the company has to offer, the kid's ideas. His notebooks. The sister is a business type, knows how to make the deals, market the product, but it was the brother who had the ideas.”

“What's it do, this plasma thing?”

“
Hardened
is the word they use. Hardened against nuclear blasts and the electromagnetic pulses that come after. The stuff Cappy told us about. They got the franchise on it. It's like a glaze that buffers the chips. Anybody wants a computer or a missile guidance system to stand up to a dose of electromagnetic energy, they need their chips coated with this shit. And they can only buy it from the Braswells.”

Thorn sipped his coffee. He watched the sandpiper moving through the grass, foraging among the cigarette butts and plastic cups.

“Hardened chips,” Thorn said. “Getting ready for the Third World War.”

“The boy came up with the idea, showed it to his dad, but the old man didn't see much value in it. MicroDyne is making some kind of microprocessor at the time, doing okay. Not making a fortune or anything, but getting by. After the boy dies, the company starts floundering. Mother's hung herself, father's grieving, not paying attention to business. They're laying people off. Silicon Valley is kicking it up a notch and stealing all MicroDyne's contracts.”

Thorn watched a shirtless young man climb down into a white rowboat and push off from the pier.

“I read that part,” Thorn said. “That's when Morgan comes home from college, looks around, finds a new direction for the company, pulls it out of the tailspin.”

Sugar nodded.

“Apparently what she found was her brother's notebooks,” Sugarman said. “She comes up with this sintering idea, sells her dad on it, gets the plant converted, makes a couple of government deals, and away they go.”

Thorn watched a frigate bird hanging high over the harbor entrance.

“You with me so far?”

“So MicroDyne is coating all these doohickeys so they'll be safe against radiation pulses. Which means they have to test their product somehow, make sure they're doing it right.”

“Bingo,” Sugar said. “They need some kind of a HERF gun.”

“So MicroDyne builds it?”

“No, no. Defense Department provides them with a little ray gun to simulate a nuclear pulse in a laboratory setting. It's just for testing, lots of safeguards. No way to steal the thing. Tamper with it, or even look at it funny, and the thing shuts down, alarms go off in the Pentagon.”

“But it's sitting there,” Thorn said. “Inside their plant, so someone might be able to study the thing. Clone it maybe, offer it up for sale on the side.”

“There you go.”

“What about the battery problem? How do they make it portable?”

“Jeb Shine said Morgan's had them working on some new process, a few thousand times stronger than conventional batteries. That's what got him suspicious. MicroDyne doesn't do fuel-cell technology. They're like a hundred percent invested in this coating process.”

“Why?”

“Why what?”

“Why do it? Why risk your entire business like that, fooling around with something like this?”

“They're going broke,” Sugar said. “End of the Cold War, budget cutbacks. The demand for this coating is dropping fast. They've got this one product, that's all. Somebody upstream from them closes up shop, stops building missile guidance systems, next week MicroDyne feels the pinch. Jeb's been seeing it coming for a while. People standing around, the work's just not there to keep the plant going.”

A tall black man behind the shrubs cranked up a gasoline engine.
Thorn watched him sling the contraption on his back and start blowing leaves off the sidewalk. They waited till he'd worked his way out of range.

“Sounds crazy to me, Sugar. What're they going to do? Set up an assembly line, start manufacturing ray guns? It's pretty hard to believe.”

“Yeah, same thing I was thinking. No way they can get away with something like that.”

Thorn swallowed the last of the coffee and watched the sandpiper rooting in the shaggy grass near a hedge. The sun was nearly up, a shaft of pink light cut through the bloom of golden red clouds that hung along the horizon like the ghostly remnants of exploded warheads.

“Peretti had blueprints of the HERF in his apartment,” Sugar said. “Maybe they're selling the blueprints, let the terrorists take the risks of building the damn thing.”

Thorn watched as the frigate bird adjusted its wings slightly, caught a wind current, and swung a half mile to the east.

“No,” Thorn said. “What if the idea is just to build one or two of these things, sell them along with the plans, just get a couple into circulation.”

“What? Like they're anarchists or something?”

“No, your company's losing money. You don't have enough cash coming in to keep your nice Palm Beach mansion up. You're looking for customers for the one product you've got. The military's cutting back. MicroDyne's got the peacetime blues. So what they do, they plant a seed. They get this HERF thing out into the world. All they need is one big event, unleash a little chaos. Then what's going to happen?”

Sugarman nodded.

“You got an evil mind, Thorn.”

Out in the marina, a man laughed and a woman screamed with pleasure.

“Everybody gets a good case of paranoia. The military, the police, everyone suddenly needs this plasma sintering bullshit. Plus, you'd have a lot of decent, law-abiding citizens clamoring for it. They don't want some drive-by terrorist to wipe out their hard drive, shut down their TV. If somebody had the market cornered, they'd pretty much be king of the hill. The next multibillionaires.”

“Set loose the virus with one hand, sell the vaccine with the other.”

“Root of all evil,” Thorn said. “Like the preacher man says.”

“And that's what Lawton stumbled into.”

Thorn nodded.

“And crashing the planes?”

“To sell a new product, you got to show your buyer what it does. Right? That's what they were doing in the Everglades. That guy in the cowboy hat. He was probably their buyer. They were showing off their merchandise. In fact, I bet that's what they had in the fish box they were bringing ashore. A HERF gun.”

Thorn looked over at the
ByteMe
, back at Sugarman.

“Jesus,” Sugar said. “Killing hundreds of people as a goddamn sales pitch.”

“I've got to go, Sugar. Got to get Lawton off that damn boat.”

“Oh, yeah,” Sugar said. “Cappy dug up something on that knife you pulled out of Lawton. Teensy company makes about ten a year. Some soldier of fortune mail-order business distributes them. Only one customer in Florida last year. Never guess who it is.”

“Johnny Braswell.”

Sugarman nodded solemnly.

“Bought all ten, eighteen hundred dollars apiece. Boy loves his blades.”

“Nothing we didn't surmise already.”

“One more thing,” Sugar said. “Peretti's daughter, Darlene, married A. J. Braswell. Somehow Johnny, the youngest, he gets it into his head that because his granddaddy is a small-time bookie, that means the whole family is Mafia. So he sits around, watches all these gang
ster flicks, learns how he's supposed to act, all that bullshit slang, getting into knives 'cause he needs a signature or specialty. So there's Johnny, slicing off his own granddaddy's finger, tossing him overboard.”

“Just your ordinary all-American family.”

“Nest of vipers, Thorn. That's who you're mixed up with here. Nest of vipers.”

“Well, we can add another viper to the list.”

Thorn could hear his heart drumming in his ears.

“Yeah? Which viper is that?”

“Our friendly airline crash inspector. He snuck aboard the Braswells' boat last night. Seemed real familiar with the yachting set.”

“Aw shit,” Sugar said. He looked out at the marina, shaking his head. “You should take a step back from this, Thorn. Call in the big people.”

“I can't, Sugar.”

“Christ, they got your name on the list. You went snooping around their factory, you stepped on some kind of trip wire. You've lost the element of surprise, Thorn. They're looking for you.”

“Yeah,” he said. “And they're just about to find me.”

 

Jamie Wingo sat on the edge of Morgan's bed while she filed her nails. His hair was damp from the shower, a white towel knotted around his waist. Copper skin gleaming. Morgan was still in her shorty pajamas. The sheets and bedspread covered her lap. When he'd come in late last night, he'd slid under the covers beside her and touched her breast and kissed her ear. But she pushed him gently away, pleading a headache.

He didn't know it yet, but the sex part was finished. For months now Morgan had gritted her teeth and measured out the exact erotic portion required to keep him hooked. But that was done.

Now he was looking at her gravely. There were fine white lines
showing around his eyes. Dark veins branched at his temples. His skin was soft and sleek. His brown eyes had dark lights lurking in them. The kind of exotic good looks a lot of women might find alluring.

“I'm clean now,” he said. “All freshened up.”

“I see that.”

He cocked his head and squinted at her.

“Morgan, what's going on? You call me, tell me to get over here, it's urgent. I drop everything, make excuses and come running. And then you push me away. What's bothering you, sweetheart?”

She looked up from her nails.

“I killed those two,” she said. “Charlie Harrison and the girl. I shot them in my car.”

“I know, I know,” he said. “Yes, that had to be hard.”

She could feel the boat taut on its mooring lines, rocking gently against the wake of the early fishing boats heading out into the dawn. The cabin was full of the mild blond light of early spring.

“But you needn't worry. Miami police don't have a clue. I've talked to Romano several times in the last few days. They're totally in the dark.”

“And Roy showed up. He was all huffy, threatening me, saying I'm not taking him seriously.”

He patted her knee through the bedspread.

“So you're stressed. Sure, this has been very difficult on you. Well, it just so happens I know an excellent stress reliever.”

She smoothed a ragged edge on her thumbnail.

“It's easy to be cavalier, Jamie, when you've managed to keep your own hands so clean.”

He eyed her for a moment, then reached out to touch her cheek with a finger.

“I'm in as deep as you are, Morgan.”

“Are you?”

“Very deep.”

“But you still haven't done your part, Jamie. You haven't convinced anyone about the HERF.”

“It's not as easy as I'd thought. No one wants to believe it. It's too radical. Too scary. They're looking for chafed wiring, nicks in the circuitry, all the usual suspects. The safety board is a very conservative bunch.”

“But that's your responsibility, Jamie. To make them believe. You haven't been doing a very good job of it.”

“Look, Morgan, next week they won't be able to keep their heads in the sand any longer. When we bring down the next one, I've decided I'm going to step up to the podium, look right in the camera, and I'll tell the world about the HERF, that it's out there. Oh, they'll try to discredit me. I'll be ridiculed. But no one will be able to ignore it anymore. It'll be huge, Morgan. A terrorist group with a frightening new weapon that no one can protect against. You can sell MicroDyne for a hundred times its value and walk away. It'll all be over and we'll be free.”