Dark Waters (The Jeff Resnick Mysteries) (20 page)

Da-Marr nodded vigorously.

“He lied. I met his son. His name is Harry — he’s nice guy. This jerk is a psychotic opportunist. He shot Jack Morrow execution style. And you know what? He won’t hesitate to do the same to us.”

Da-Marr looked confused and hurt. “But he said — ”

I actually felt sorry for the poor schmuck. Da-Marr had thought of me as an asshole worth dismissing, but he was, after all, just a kid without a lot of experience. He was just figuring out that he’d been lied to — taken advantage of — and that he might actually go to jail for the acts of vandalism he’d performed at Bobby’s behest.

“It’s a tough world, kid. You can’t just take people at face value.”

Da-Marr said nothing, but looked shaken, and for a moment I thought he might actually burst into tears. Then he straightened, finding some inner resolve. “We got to do something. We can’t let him kill us.”

“Hey, I’m not advocating murder, but the truth is — it’s us, or him. We’ve got to subdue him — tie him up — something. And then we’ve got to contact someone — cops, sheriff’s office, somebody — to come and intercept this boat before we go over the falls. You said you can’t swim, and though I barely can, the current gets faster and faster the farther north we go. If we go into the water — there’s no way we can survive.”

Da-Marr pivoted and, frustrated, slammed his fist into the fiberglass wall. It didn’t budge, and he shook his hand, wincing.

“We have to decide — right now — how we’re going to approach this.” Da-Marr’s expression was filled with indecision. “I know we aren’t related by blood, but we are family,” I said, hoping to God he would buy my next line of bullshit. “Your father’s brother married Evelyn. Brenda is Evelyn’s sister. She’s married to my brother. That’s a family line. We have to stick together. Are you with me?” I held out my fist.

After a long moment of indecision, Da-Marr clenched his own fist and bumped mine. “Family,” he said, and nodded gravely, but still looked scared shitless.

“Okay,” I said, trying to fill my voice with a confidence I didn’t actually feel. “You’ve got to make Bobby believe you still have me intimidated.” And, man, that wasn’t going to be a hard act for me to perform. “But if any opportunity presents itself, we’ve got to act. We’ve got to get his cell phone, because if we don’t — we’re all going to die.”

Again, Da-Marr nodded. He took a deep breath, schooled his features, and straightened. “You go down the steps first and show him you’re a goddamn wimp. If we can get him inside the salon, the two of us can smack that sucker down and get his phone.”

I hoped.

“We have to do it in the next couple of minutes, or there’s no way the authorities can get a boat out to intercept us. Once we go past the Grand Island Bridge, we’re dead.

Da-Marr was so scared he nodded like a bobble head.

The choppy water seemed to get rougher the farther north the current took us and with a bum knee, it was hard to get down the steps. Both sides of the shore were dotted with houses and businesses. I had no idea how far we’d gone up the river or how long we had before we got closer to the end of the island.

I looked into the salon, but didn’t see Bobby. Da-Marr pushed past me and entered the boat’s interior. I hobbled over to look toward the bow and saw Bobby trying to access the anchor locker. Fat lot of good that would do us — the river’s current ran about one-and-a-half miles an hour and it was about twelve miles from the marina to Buckhorn Island State Park. That gave us a little time. But I’d lost track of when we’d left the dock and how far Da-Marr had taken the boat before we’d run out of fuel. But the more time we had, the better. If we could keep Bobby searching for the diamonds and dropping trash into the water, we’d have a better chance of being intercepted by a police patrol boat.

Bobby hauled the anchor out of its locker and tossed it overboard, the momentum nearly sending him into the river, but he grabbed onto the chrome rail that ran along the bow and I watched in disappointment as he pulled himself back onboard.

“What the hell are you looking at?” he shouted at me.

I backed off and dug the chalk out of my pocket once more, rubbing it like a lucky rabbit’s foot, only, it wasn’t luck I was looking for, but insight.

I already knew what this joker was capable of doing, and I didn’t want him doing it to me.

The first thing Richard did when he got out of the water was try to find a phone, since his own had been ruined by its dip in the Niagara River.

“Mr. Alpert, what happened?” Frank, the marina manager, asked, springing up from behind his desk as a dripping Richard entered his office.

“No time to explain. Can I borrow your phone and maybe a towel?”

“Sure.”

“I could use a phone book, too.”

After coming up with the white pages, the marina manager left Richard in privacy. But, instead of calling the police to report a stolen boat, Richard called the
Buffalo News
, hoping to find Sam Nielsen at his desk. He answered on the second ring.

“Sam, it’s Richard Alpert — Jeff’s brother. What the hell are you two up to? Why are you looking for diamonds?”

“Did Jeff find some?” he asked eagerly.

“I don’t know. But someone has just stolen my boat and I was wondering if the two were related.”

“Holy shit.” Sam was silent for a moment. “I asked a friend of mine to look up the registration on the boat. Let me put you on hold to see if he ever came up with the info.”

The line went silent.

Frank returned with a couple of faded beach towels and a dry jacket. Richard toweled off his hair and then peeled off his wet jacket and shirt, drying off before he put on the borrowed jacket, which was a little snug, but its warmth was welcome.

Sam came back on the line. “Damn, I could kick myself for not following through with this when Jeff first mentioned it. The boat, it’s called Easy Breezin’, right?”

“That’s right.”

“It was registered in Jack Morrow’s company name. You know who he was, right?”

“I know,” Richard said grimly.

“Man, if I’d known this we could have saved a lot of time. And you say Jeff’s found diamonds?”

“No. But someone must think there’s diamonds on board. The boat’s been stolen, with Jeff on it.”

“Damn. Have you tried calling his cell phone?”

“No.”

“Hang on.” The line went silent once more. It was at least thirty seconds of standing in squashy shoes before Sam came back. “I get a message that the call can’t be completed. Is the marina manager around?”

“I’m calling from his office.”

“Better get him to call the cops — they’re more likely to listen to him than you. What marina are you at?”

“Sundowners.”

“I know the place. My boat’s parked just down the way. I’ll get there as soon as I can.”

He hung up; Richard did likewise. He looked up to see Frank waiting for an explanation.

“Are you sure the boat’s been stolen? The young black man who’s been with you on several occasions was on it earlier today. He said he had your permission to be there.”

Richard let out a long breath. “He neglected to ask me.”

“Are you sure they didn’t just leave without you?”

“I had the life jackets. And neither of them know what they’re doing when it comes to boats — and I should know, because I have no idea, either.”

The two men looked at each other for a long moment before Richard spoke again. “My friend seems to think the police would pay greater attention if the call to report the theft came from you. The young man driving the boat did not have my permission to take it, and I’m afraid he may have obtained the keys by assaulting my brother.”

Frank’s expression darkened. “I’d be glad to talk to the police — but I think it should be you who reports it.”

“Whose jurisdiction is it?”

“Call 911 and I’m sure they’ll figure it out.”

Richard nodded, picked up the receiver, and punched in 911. He listened to the dispatcher for a moment and then said, “I’d like to report a stolen boat.”

I’m sure if I’d tossed out even a tenth of the trash from my car that we tossed over the side of Easy Breezin’ that I’d have been arrested in a heartbeat, but nobody seemed to notice as we jettisoned more and more of the debris that had once been the interior of Richard’s beautiful boat. All that infrastructure gone, and still we hadn’t come across the diamonds Bobby sought.

Da-Marr had been stationed at the helm, trying to keep the boat heading in a forward position in the middle of the river, but it swerved with the waves, rolling and turning, and I was sure I wasn’t the only one who felt vaguely nauseous.

We’d dumped all the detritus from the salon and the staterooms without finding anything that resembled hidden treasure and Bobby’s temper was growing shorter by the minute.

“Do you even know what uncut diamonds look like?” I asked him.

“Uncut? What does that mean?”

Holy crap. The kid was clueless. Then again, I’d been just as uneducated on the subject only a few hours before.

“I haven’t actually seen any, but I was told they don’t look like the rocks in a ring. They can look like pebbles — from clear, to yellow, to gray lumps of stone.”

“Are you shitting me?” he asked angrily.

“No.”

Bobby’s expression darkened with anger. “My God, did we toss anything away that looked like that?”

“I don’t know what you guys tossed overboard before this afternoon. Do you even remember?”

“Shit! That fuckhead Da-Marr might have thrown them away in the marina’s Dumpster or over the side. We were looking for sparkling stones.”

“Google can be your best friend.”

“And how the hell was I supposed to know Jack might have uncut stones?” Bobby demanded angrily.

“You made assumptions. You
both
made assumptions without any basis in fact. Not smart. Not smart at all.”

Bobby’s lip curled. “Do you want me to kill you where you stand?”

Sophie’s warning came back to me. Well, she’d said it would seem that the innocent was dangerous. Yeah, approaching the boat had seemed innocent, so I guess she’d been right about that. But she’d been so vague about everything else. One thing was for sure, being inside the boat was too dangerous. I needed to get back out on the back of the boat in the open air if things were to tip in my favor. Oddly enough, Bobby hadn’t seemed too interested in searching the engine room, but if I was going to hide something, it might be there, where it was hard to maneuver and with lots of potential hiding places. Had I gotten that feeling from touching Jack Morrow’s stuff, or from what was left of him on the boat?

The thing was, Morrow had probably spent the most time either in the master stateroom’s bed, or holding the boat’s steering wheel, which I’d never had a chance to touch. Bobby had no idea that I could connect with the living — and the dead — via that sense, and I wasn’t about to tell him, either. And I was pretty sure that if I was going to find those diamonds, I would have to get to the bridge deck and wrap my fingers around the steering wheel.

“We should look up top,” I said, keeping my voice even. “If Jack had to make a fast escape, he’d have hidden the stones where they’d be easily accessible.”

Bobby eyed me coldly. “Why are you cooperating?”

“Because I don’t want you to kill me.”

He laughed. “I thought we already settled that.”

I swallowed.

Bobby’s lip curled. “Da-Marr’s right. You are a pussy.”

I said nothing.

He nodded toward the salon. “Get outside.”

I hobbled onto the outside deck feeling Bobby’s gaze burning my back as I went.

It had started to rain — big, cold wet drops that immediately soaked into my denim jacket. The waves were bigger now, too. I looked around at both shores, but didn’t have a clue how far we’d gone along the east side of the island — or how much farther it would be until the point of no return.

It was a struggle to get up the stairs to the bridge deck. What kind of damage had Bobby inflicted on my knee? A torn tendon or ligament? Crushed cartilage? If I wasn’t going to get off this boat alive, did it even matter?

Da-Marr still sat in the driver’s seat and looked up from the controls. “This bitch is hard to drive without the engines.”

“Pussy here thinks the diamonds might be up here. Have you had a chance to look?” Bobby asked.

“I’ve been trying to steer this sucker while you guys have been diddling around downstairs. And if you’re up here, it means you ain’t found jack shit.”

Bobby glared at me. “Well, what are you waiting for? Start looking.”

I turned to the left and opened the small fridge. Of course, there was nothing in it. It had been switched off, so there was no ice in the icemaker, either, which would have been a perfect place to hide cut diamonds — but I was pretty sure we were looking for them in their natural state.

“The stones might be hidden in back. Take it out of there,” Bobby ordered.

I tried to pry the fridge from its cabinet, but it was wedged in tight. I yanked and yanked, and it finally budged, flying forward, sending me crashing onto the deck. Bobby laughed at me and it took all my self-control not to punch him in the knee. Of course there was nothing hidden in the gaping hole in the cabinet.

There wasn’t enough room for the three of us and the fridge. “It’s getting tight in here,” I said.

Bobby grabbed the fridge and wrestled it to the top of the stairs, then gave it a shove that sent it toppling end over end, making one hell of a racket. He looked over at me. “Get down there and throw it over the side.”

“I don’t think I can lift it — not with this bum knee.”

“Da-Marr, go toss it overboard.”

“You toss it,” Da-Marr challenged.

“Hey, I gave you an order.”

“I ain’t gonna get ruptured throwing that hunk a metal around. I got my manhood to protect.”

“Give me a break,” Bobby groused.

I scooted over to open the cabinet under the wet bar and found a sponge, some liquid hand soap, and nothing else. I closed the doors. “Why don’t you help Bobby toss that fridge in the drink?” I said to Da-Marr.

“I don’t take orders from you,” he said, and I wasn’t sure if he was bluffing.

“Why do you want him to go? Is it because you know where the diamonds are and you think you can get them for yourself?” Bobby asked.

I let out a breath, unwilling to answer.

Bobby eyed the boat’s controls. “We should take this whole console apart.”

Da-Marr turned on him. “Are you crazy? I’m having a hard enough time keeping us goin’ straight. We let the river take this baby and she’ll be spinning or floating backwards, and ain’t that gonna attract a lot of attention?”

“Well what you do you suggest?” Bobby challenged Da-Marr.

Da-Marr glanced over at me. “Maybe he’s right. Maybe I ought to help you toss the fridge in the river. I already looked around the bridge. There ain’t no secret hiding places. Everything’s made of molded plastic.”

“Fiberglass,” Bobby corrected him.

Da-Marr’s eyes blazed. “I’m gettin’ sick of you insinuating I ain’t got no education.”

“Talking like that, you’ve proved it.”

“I’m going to college in January,” Da-Marr said, his voice almost a growl.

“Wanna bet?” Bobby said and laughed.

“Say somethin’ else,” Da-Marr threatened and straightened to his full six-foot plus height.

Bobby seemed to realize that he might have pushed his partner in crime too far. He backed down. “Come on; help me toss that fridge over the side.”

Da-Marr glared at him, and Bobby turned for the stairs, hurrying down them. “Try to keep the boat going straight,” Da-Marr told me without rancor.

I nodded, and moved to stand behind the steering wheel as Da-Marr went down the steps.

Rain spattered the windshield that overlooked the bow and the river before us. I wrapped my fingers around the wheel. Da-Marr had been right; without power to the rudder — or whatever it was that steered the forty-six foot boat, it was damned hard to keep it going in a straight line. But I had something else to do besides steer the boat. I closed my eyes and tightened my grip, concentrating, straining to sense Jack Morrow, to absorb the secret he’d died to protect.

A lot of people had stood in my place — more than Da-Marr, more than Richard. How many people had climbed all over the boat before the auction? How many cops and feds had searched it, albeit not with the destructive intensity Bobby and Da-Marr had given the job. Mostly men, but a few women, had held onto the steering wheel, wondering what it would feel like to cruise along the river at twenty knots on a gorgeous sunny day, the wind buffeting them while the diesel engines thrummed down below.

I had to get past all that crap. Somehow, I had to wade through others’ excitement, trepidation, and discouragement.

I thought about the Rolex.

I thought about the Lexus’s steering wheel, and the sensations I’d felt.

I opened my eyes. It wasn’t working.

Maybe I was going about this the wrong way.

I concentrated on what I’d seen — or thought I’d seen — while in Morrow’s office. The sparkling flashes of light. It didn’t make sense. Somehow, I knew the diamonds he’d hidden were uncut, so why had I seen the glint from polished cuts?

I pondered that thought for a long moment.

Morrow had bought the stones for cash. He’d seen them as an investment. Was the flash of light what he anticipated the stones would look like when cut and sold on the open market? Would he have known how to get the work done and how to unload the stones without drawing attention to himself?

Then again, why not draw attention to himself? He’d been a successful businessman before his downfall. Why shouldn’t he have planned to sell the stones at a great profit — that’s what he’d been famous for; turning a little money into a lot. Of course, it had all been a sham, but perhaps at one point even he believed his own hype.

It wasn’t an image that filled me — more a feeling of what I’d already surmised. The stones were in the engine room somewhere. Yeah,
somewhere
.

“What the fuck?” Da-Marr yelled from below, his angry voice shattering my deliberation.

I abandoned the wheel to look out through the zip-up plastic cover that enclosed the back end of the bridge deck to see Da-Marr and Bobby wrestling on the deck below. Cursing, I hurried to reach the steps, slick with rain, and nearly tumbled down to the deck below.

“You’re crazy!” Da-Marr shouted.