Eve's Men (29 page)

“Nice up here, huh?” Beaver said.

Charley nodded. “It’s
great
up here.”

Flying in over Seattle, he had been surprised to see that the city was essentially an isthmus lying between Puget Sound and the twenty-mile-long Lake Washington. At the city’s waist, a ship canal ran from the lake to the Sound, on the way passing through the smaller Lake Union and finally the Ballard Locks, which dropped the
Seagal
almost twenty feet to sea level.

Before they got that far, though, Beaver had put on a smart white windbreaker and a captain’s cap, neither of which did much to alter his appearance as an aging hippy. For a while he chattered amiably, making small talk about the points of interest they were moving slowly past. Eventually, though, Charley was able to steer the conversation to more pressing matters.

“Brian says he’s going to turn himself in when we get back.”

Beaver nodded, but said nothing.

“Which is a little puzzling,” Charley went on. “I mean, why bother? Why take the chance? If you had boat trouble and the Coast Guard found him aboard, it could get kind of dicey, couldn’t it? Harboring a fugitive and all that.”

Beaver shrugged. “I’m not worried. The
Seagal’s
running just fine. And Brian keeps a pretty low profile. Right now he looks like a cowboy, don’t you think?”

“Or a beachboy. But tell me, do you think he’s really going to turn himself in?”

“Who knows? It’s up to him.” Beaver got out a cigarette and lit it. “You gotta remember, Charley,” he said, “me and Brian go way back. Whatever he wants is okay with me, ’cause he’s pulled my fat out of the fire plenty of times.”

Charley smiled ruefully. “I wish I could say the same.”

“Well, you two kinda went separate ways, right?”

“You could say that.”

“And anyway,” Beaver said, “this whole thing, it just ain’t right, big movie companies thinking they can twist the truth around any way they want and call it history. I go along with what Brian’s doing. I say he’s got a right.”

“Well, I just thought I’d mention it,” Charley said. “You’re really sticking your neck out for him, and I wanted to be sure you knew the risk.”

“Don’t worry—I wasn’t born yesterday. But you want to know something? This is the first time in years I’m having fun. That’s the great thing about Brian. When he comes around, things tend to get lively.”

“That’s for sure.” Getting up, Charley gave Beaver a friendly clap on the shoulder. “Anyway, I think Brian’s lucky to have a friend like you. And for that matter, I think you’re pretty damn lucky to own a boat like this.”

Beaver gave a dry, mirthless laugh. “Well, at least part of it anyway. A few nuts and bolts at least.”

Since he didn’t elaborate, Charley assumed that the man was merely saying that the boat was not yet paid for.

They were just then emerging from the ship canal into the Sound, and for a few moments Charley continued to stand there on the bridge, holding onto a seatback as he took in the scene around him: the shining city off to one side and the dazzling expanse of water stretching to the deep green of the Olympic peninsula with its high, jagged mountains running snow-capped across the sky. Closer, a pair of large, modern ferries were speeding across the Sound in opposite directions.

As Charley turned, about to take the ladder down to the stern deck, he saw that Brian was already on it, halfway up, only his head and naked torso visible. He was smiling, not very pleasantly.

“Well, our guest is finally up and around, Charley,” he said. “Are you ready for this?”

“Ready for what?”

In response, Brian swung backwards, extending his arm out like a circus ringmaster. “Ta da!” he sang. “May I present none other than Mr. Chester Einhorn in the flesh!”

And so it was. The little cowboy was standing down on the stern deck, blinking in the bright sunshine, trying to look up at Charley on the bridge. And for a moment, Charley almost panicked, ready to fall to the floor or jump behind something to protect himself, thinking his brother had lost his mind over Eve and somehow had found Chester and enlisted him to carry out his revenge. But then Charley saw that the cowboy was unarmed, was just standing there in his boot socks, with his wiry little arms hanging loose at his sides. He was wearing just what he’d had on the last time Charley saw him, the same blue-checked shirt and stovepipe jeans, ripped now at the knees and seams, and not as a fashion statement either. Then there was his expression, his look of utter lostness, like a monkey in a spaceship.

Charley then saw Eve on the catwalk, peering around the corner of the cabin and looking every bit as alarmed as Charley had felt a moment before. But catching her eye now, he gave her a look, a shrug, of reassurance. Then he turned to Brian again.

“Well, if you’ll get off the goddamn ladder, I’ll come down,” he said.

Brian did so in a single move, jumping off. Charley quickly followed, not wanting to give the little cowboy his back any longer than he had to. As he turned to the two of them, Brian laughed out loud.

“Hey, man, you should see your face. You look like you’re about to shake hands with a rattlesnake.”

Exactly, Charley almost said. Only he wasn’t about to shake the man’s hand. Instead, he just stood there absently looking down at Chester while Brian explained how the little cowboy happened to be there, how two days before, he and Beaver had noticed “this little bum” loitering around the gate.

“Well, we go to investigate, and who do I find but Chester Einhorn in the flesh! Been hitchin’ and hikin’ all the way from Colorado, lookin’ for the
Seagull
, thanks to your advice. And by God if he didn’t find us, and in short order, I might add. Figured we just didn’t know how to spell
seagull
, right, Chester?”

“Yessir, that’s about it,” Chester said. In his stocking feet, he looked smaller than ever, yet somehow just as menacing. And his lipless grin did nothing to add to his appeal. “Well, old Charley!” he said, forcing a laugh. “You really did me, din’tcha? I shore didn’t know you was that stout, no siree. Picked me up like some kinda mutt and sent me scootin’. Like to kill me, you shore did.”

“You didn’t give me much choice,” Charley said.

Chester wagged his head. “Man, I thought I wasn’t never gonna reach bottom. That was some mountain, lemme tell ya. Like I told Brian, I went skiin’ is what I done, only without no skis. And without no snow.” Again he laughed and shook his head, as if he really admired the way Charley had almost taken his life.

Meanwhile Eve had come out from behind the cabin. Moving cautiously, she came up behind Charley and laced her fingers through his.

“Well, it’s all in the past now,” Brian said. “No reason you two can’t be friends, same as me and Chester.”

The cowboy nodded agreement. “That’s a fack. Charley was jest doin’ what he had to do, and I was doin’ what I had to do. No reason we cain’t bury the hatchet.”

“For now, you mean,” Charley said.

“Naa, fer good. Hell, Brian ’splained it all to me, how what happened to Belinda was her own damn fault much as anybody’s. And then trickin’ me the way he done, he never figgered I’d shoot the bastid, didja, Brian? So it’s all over and done. Right now all’s I care about is helpin’ him git his own back.”

Brian laughed. “Whoa there now, Chester! You don’t want these nice people to get the wrong idea, do you? I’ve already ’got my own’ back, remember?”

Charley looked at his brother. “You better have. Otherwise, we’re jumping ship.”

Brian’s grin was doleful and wry, as if it were an old cross he bore, dealing with unbelievers. “Don’t worry about it,” he said.

Earlier, after the
Seagal
had gotten underway, with Charley and C.J. up on the bridge, Brian had taken Eve by the arm—not very gently—and ushered her into the main cabin, closing the glass door behind them. He took off his sunglasses and cowboy hat, sailing the latter across the room.

“Okay now,” he said, “let’s get down to business.
What the fuck is going on?
”

Eve was steeling herself, telling herself that for once she wasn’t going to let him get to her, wasn’t going to let him intimidate her or seduce her.

“I think you know,” she said.

“And just what is that supposed to mean?”

She felt vulnerable standing there with him directly in front of her, half-naked, so goddamn powerful-looking. She edged onto a bar stool and lit a cigarette. “Well, after you took off with your teenage sidekick, I didn’t know what to do or where to go.”

“So you called Charley.”

“No, that’s not how it happened. He’d got Stephanie’s address from one of your old friends. And he showed up just after you’d left for Greenwalt’s place.”

“And since then?”

“Well, he thought I should go to the FBI. Turn myself in. He would have gone in with me. I knew it made sense, but I just couldn’t do it. And I still can’t.”

“So you tell him about Aunt Maureen’s, and he takes you there.”

“Well, she’s in Europe. I couldn’t think of any other place. God knows where you’d gone, you and little Terry. And after the Greenwalt thing, I figured I probably wouldn’t see you again until you were in custody—which didn’t seem to bother you all that much—I mean, carrying out your vendetta with no thought as to what it meant for us.”

Brian put his fingers to his temples, as if he’d been presented with a daunting intellectual challenge. “Just what is this I’m hearing? Let me think. You know, it sounds oddly like some kind of rationalization, don’t you think? Like someone did something wrong, and knows it, but is trying real hard to make it sound okay. What could it be, I wonder.”

“You ought to know,” she said, “you being such an expert at it yourself.”

“Well, maybe I’m just thick this morning. Why not just tell me? Just spit it out.”

“I think you already know.”

Brian sat down in an easy chair, throwing out his arms and legs like a teenager. “Well, let’s see. I know you and Charley were together in Santa Barbara for three or four days, right? And I found out from the desk clerk at the Olympic that you were staying in the same suite, registered as Mr. and Mrs. Charles Poole, I think he said.”

“So?”

Brian jumped up then, coming over and taking her jaw in his hand and turning her face so she had to look at him. “So what’s going on, baby? Just what the fuck is going on?”

Eve forced herself to continue looking straight at him. “We’re in love, Brian. Charley and I are in love.”

Brian let go of her face then and stepped back, just standing there for a few moments, looking at her and frowning, as if he couldn’t believe what he was seeing. “
In love!
What the devil are you talking about? The last I knew, it was me you loved. That last night at Stephanie’s, isn’t that what you told me while we were fucking? Isn’t that what you said for the ten thousandth time?”

Eve did not answer.

“And then there’s dear old Charley. I seem to recall he has a wife and kid—he bother to tell you that? When he’s putting the wood to you, I take it he don’t talk much about old Donna, huh? Or his asshole kid Jason? Huh, babe? Come on, I can’t hear you. What about them, huh?”

Eve managed to nod. “Yes, I know about them. And I’m sorry about them. But that doesn’t seem to change anything.”

“Why, Christ no! Why would it? A primo dish like you up against that cold bitch Donna? Old Charley must think he’s died and gone to heaven, right?”

“You’ll have to ask him.”

“So that’s it, huh? I’m on the run from the feds, and you get itchy, so I’m history. Is that it?”

Eve was grateful for the phrase. Brian loved to sound hip, whereas Charley would rather have taken a beating than use those same words, so
I’m history
.

“I didn’t say that,” she told him. “All I know is that Charley and I are in love. And while I still love you too, Brian, it’s not the same anymore.”

“Oh, I see. Now that Charley’s in the picture, you love me the same way he does, like a brother. Is that it?”

“I didn’t say that.”

He went back to the chair again and sat down, this time dropping into it, as if he were exhausted. “Jesus, Eve, I can’t believe how much this hurts. I know I’m a flake and that I’ve put you through an awful lot, but I always just accepted it that you’d be there for me, that you loved me no matter what. And now…” He shook his head in despair. “Jesus, I feel like someone cut out my heart.”

By then Eve’s eyes were streaming. She got off the stool and went over to him, getting down on her knees, the only way she could put her arms around him and hold him. “Brian, I’m so sorry. We never meant to hurt you. It just happened, you know?”

He didn’t respond to her embrace. “Don’t bother,” he said. “You’re Charley’s now. And I don’t cheat on my brother.”

As soon as Charley was able to get Eve alone, he asked her how things had gone with Brian.

She shook her head. “Not so hot. I wish he’d gotten mad and called me names, or even slugged me. Instead he was nice about it, in the end anyway. Nice and brokenhearted.”