Odd Hours (17 page)

THIRTY-FOUR

ON THE FARTHER SIDE OF THE ENGINE ROOM, which was nearer than I would have liked, Utgard Rolf said, “Listen, Joey, once we have the packages aboard, we won’t return to the harbor.”

“What? Why not?”

“There’s a guy, he’s onto the operation.”

“What guy?” Joey asked.

“A government sonofabitch.”

“Oh, man.”

“Don’t freak.”

“But we kept this so
tight
.”

“We’re gonna find him. He’s as good as dead.”

With sharp anxiety, Joey said, “He’s here in Magic Beach?”

“What do you think, I fell down some stairs in Washington?”

“This guy was the stairs?”

“Don’t worry about it.”

“How big
is
the guy, he could do this to you?”

“He looks worse than I do.”

I resisted the urge to stand up and disprove that boast.

“If we don’t go back to the harbor,” Joey wondered, “where we gonna go?”

“You know the abandoned boatyard south of Rooster Point?”

“That’ll work,” Joey said.

“Damn right it will. The facilities there, the privacy, it’ll be an easier off-load than we’d have in the harbor.”

“The trucks know the new meet?”

“They know. But here’s the thing.”

“I see what’s comin’,” Joey said.

“We need five of us to take delivery at sea, but the way things are at the boatyard, three can handle the off-load.”

When boarding the tug, I’d had two main concerns, one of which was how I would be able to determine the number of crewmen I might be up against. Now I knew: five.

Joey said, “We were gonna drop those two, anyway. So we drop them sooner than later.”

Perhaps a falling-out among thieves had not occurred, as I had thought when I’d found Sam Whittle drilled five times in his bathtub. The initial entrepreneurs who set up this operation might always have intended, toward the closing of the business, to issue pink slips to those lesser partners whom they considered mere employees. A few bullets were a prudent alternative to generous severance payments.

“After the transfer,” Utgard said, “Buddy will pop Jackie. I’ll drop Hassan.”

The name Hassan was something of a surprise and a disappointment to me. Thus far Jackie, Joey, and Buddy had led me to believe that Utgard’s crew might be composed of retired Las Vegas comedians and that the final member could be named Shecky.

On the other hand, I was somewhat relieved that my second main concern had been partly addressed. I had wondered how I would be able to deal with the entire crew; now I would be required to deal with only sixty percent of it.

Joey said, “But don’t cut their throats.”

“What?”

“It’s too up-close. Dangerous. Shoot them in the head.”

“Of course,” Utgard agreed. “Pop them, drop them. That’s what I said.”

“Well, first you said you had to cut some throats.”

“That was just a way of saying it.”

“You said it, I thought you meant it.”

“We’ll shoot them in the head,” Utgard said.

“The
back
of the head.”

“How else? What the hell, Joey.”

“It’s the only smart way.”

“We’re on the same page now.”

“So they don’t see it comin’.”

“I understand,” Utgard said impatiently.

I have only a few times been in a position to overhear bad men conspiring to commit evil deeds, and on every occasion, they had been pretty much like Joey and Utgard. Those who choose to live criminal lives are not the brightest among us.

This truth inspires a question: If evil geniuses are so rare, why do so many bad people get away with so many crimes against their fellow citizens and, when they become leaders of nations, against humanity?

Edmund Burke provided the answer in 1795:
The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.

I would only add this: It is also essential that good men and women not be educated and propagandized into believing that real evil is a myth and that all malevolent behavior is merely the result of a broken family’s or a failed society’s shortcomings, amenable to cure by counseling and by the application of new economic theory.

Beyond my sight but not beyond my hearing, Utgard said, “From when we leave the dock till we’re to Rooster Point, you man the radio room.”

“Like we planned.”

“You got to piss, get it done now.”

“I’ll be at the radio.”

“We can’t pull the transponder, that’ll just make the Coast Guard sit up and take notice.”

“I know what to say to them.”

“They get a GPS report we’re at sea this time of night, they’ll want to know why.”

Joey’s turn for impatience had come: “I know. Don’t I know?”

“Just don’t get cute with them. Play it like we planned.”

Joey recited the story to prove himself: “A guest aboard
Junie’s Moonbeam
ate some shellfish, had a real bad allergic reaction, needs a hospital urgent. The yacht’s too big, a hundred eighty feet, draws too deep for the bay. So they called us, and so we’re just bringin’ the sick bitch ashore.”

“What’re you doing?” Utgard demanded.

“Relax. I’m not gonna call her a sick bitch to the Coast Guard,” Joey assured him.

“Sometimes I wonder about you.”

“Sick bitch? Would I do that? Man, I’m just havin’ some fun with you.”

“I’m not in the mood for fun.”

“I guess fallin’ down a bunch of stairs will do that to you.”

“Don’t try to dress up the story,” Utgard advised. “Keep it simple.”

“Okay, okay. But what kind of name is
Junie’s Moonbeam
for a major yacht, anyway?”

“What do I know? Why do you care? None of our business.”

Joey said, “
Junie’s Moonbeam
sounds like some half-assed put-put kind of boat.”

So it is these days that men plotting the nuclear devastation of major cities and the murder of millions of innocents can be no more interesting than those most vapid of your relatives whom you wish you did not have to invite to this year’s Thanksgiving dinner.

“Just park yourself at the radio,” Utgard said.

“All right.”

“We’re out of here in three minutes.”

“Aye, aye, Captain.”

The door opened but didn’t close.

I heard Utgard stomping along the passageway.

Joey waited. Then he switched off the light.

The door closed.

Apparently, unlike Utgard, Joey did not have a body mass equal to that of Big Foot, and I could not hear him walking away.

Because life has taught me to be suspicious, I waited motionless in the dark, not convinced that I was alone.

THIRTY-FIVE

WHEN THE ENGINES TURNED OVER AND MY COZY compartment filled with the drumming of the four-stroke diesels, with the throb of the pumps, with the rotational rata-plan of driveshafts, and with myriad other rhythms, and when we began to move, the boat yawing slightly as it had not done in its berth, I knew that I was alone, because Joey had committed to being in the radio room when we got under way.

Though I breathed more easily, I didn’t relax. I knew that what was coming would be terrible, that even if I were not shot or cut, I would come through this night with wounds that would never heal.

I bear similar wounds from other such encounters. To protect the innocent, to avoid being one of Burke’s good men who do nothing, you have to accept permanent scars that cincture the heart and traumas of the mind that occasionally reopen to weep again.

To
do
something, to do what you feel sure is right and in the aid of justice, you sometimes have to do things that, when recalled on lonely nights, make you wonder if in fact you are the good man that you like to believe you are.

Such doubts are high cards in the devil’s hand, and he knows how to play them well, in hope of bringing you to despair and ennui, if not to self-destruction.

Ozzie Boone, my novelist friend and mentor in Pico Mundo, had instructed me, on the writing of the first of these accounts, that I keep the tone light. He says that only the emotionally immature and the intellectually depraved enjoy stories that are unrelentingly grim and nihilistic.

As I have said and as I hope that you have seen, I am inclined to a love of life and to a sunny disposition even in the face of bleak skies and persistent storms. I can find a laugh or two in a split lip and even greater hilarity in the threats and posturings of a sadistic chief of police.

Fair warning requires the acknowledgment that some events resist the touch of a humorist, and what jokes may arise from certain acts can call forth only a less hearty kind of laughter. We are coming now to dark shoals in rough waters, to straits so narrow that virtue and wickedness voyage close together and may be at times more difficult than usual to differentiate from each other.

Across the bay and into open sea, I waited without light in the belly of the boat. In spite of noise that hammered effectively at concentration, I used the time to mull over what I had learned since coming aboard.

Junie’s Moonbeam
must have been only a few miles offshore, for the engines cut back sooner than I had expected and, after a thus far straight course, the big oceangoing tugboat began to maneuver. They were aligning the vessels to effect the transfer of the nukes.

The Pacific seemed to be nearly as calm here above the deeps as it had been all day nearer shore. With smooth water, their work would go faster.

I rose to my feet and eased through the pitch-black chamber, aware that surfaces previously safe to touch might be scalding hot. I kept an image of the compartment door in my mind, relying on psychic magnetism to lead me to it through the lightless maze.

Instinct told me to reach for a lever handle, and I found it after a minimum of fumbling.

When I cracked the door, I saw a deserted passageway. With the transfer of the shipment begun, Joey would be at his radio, while Utgard and the other three would have to be above, all hands needed to ensure a successful delivery.

I stepped to the first starboard compartment, tried the door, found it unlocked, and went inside fast, shouldering it open, the pistol in a two-hand grip.

The room was dark, but light played on the porthole. Certain that no sleeper lay here to be awakened, I felt my way to the bright circle of glass.

Alongside the tugboat lay
Junie’s Moonbeam,
its port side to our starboard, at a distance of perhaps ten or twelve feet. A white yacht in fog, it would have been a stealth vessel but for the hotel’s worth of lighted portholes and windows that made it appear as festive as a luxury cruise ship.

From the main deck, the yacht’s crew had slung down inflatable black-rubber bladders that would serve as protective bumpers when the boats drew close enough to knock hulls in a set of rogue waves.

Retreating to the passageway, I quietly pulled shut the door and crossed to the first portside compartment. I prepared to go in fast, as before, but the door opened on darkness.

Soft lamplight filled the aftmost port compartment. When I went inside, Joey looked up in disbelief from a photo spread in a copy of
Maxim
magazine.

Letting the door swing itself shut behind me, I took two steps and shoved the pistol in his face before the magazine fell out of his hands and slithered shut upon the deck.

THIRTY-SIX

JOEY, THE CRITIC OF YACHT NAMES, SAT AT THE shortwave radio. For a moment, staring into the muzzle of the gun, he looked as though he might make a toilet of his chair.

When I saw that he regained control almost at once and that he began to calculate how to come after me, I lowered the pistol to his throat, the better to see his face and every nuance of expression.

“Get me the Coast Guard,” I said. “Call them up.”

“Me and them, we already had our chat.”

“Call them or I’ll put a bullet in your leg.”

“What’s the matter—you can’t use a shortwave?”

The moment I took the gun off him, he would come for me.

My mouth had flooded with saliva triggered by nausea, so I made use of it. I spat in his face.

As he flinched, his eyes were briefly shut, which gave me a chance to whip him across the face with the pistol. The forward sight scored his cheek, and a thin line of blood sprang up.

He put a hand to the hot laceration.

Although the anger in his eyes had with unsettling swiftness distilled to bitter hatred, he had gained a new respect for me and might not be so quick to make a move.

“Call them,” I repeated.

“No.”

He meant it. He would not be persuaded. The prospect of life in prison might have been worse than death to him.

Glancing at the door and then quickly at me, Joey hoped to imply that someone had entered behind me, but I knew that he was scamming, hoping I would glance back.

“Anyway,” he said, when I didn’t take the bait, “their nearest cutter is fifty nautical miles from here. We’re home free.”

The idling engines of the nearby yacht sent vibrations through the hull of the tugboat, and all the other noises of the pending transfer left me with no concern that a shot would be heard above the racket. I put one round in his left foot.

He cried out, I told him to be quiet, and I whipped him with the gun again to silence him.

Inside myself, I had opened a door to ruthlessness that I wanted to close again as soon as possible. But the fate of a nation and the lives of millions were at stake, and whatever must be done, I must do it without hesitation.

Pain had changed him. He was crying.

“I believe you about the cutter, fifty miles. So here are your options, Joey. You tell me some things about this operation, then I kill you quick and painless.”

He said a twelve-letter word that I won’t repeat, although I challenged him to repeat it.

When he didn’t take up the challenge, I said, “If you don’t tell me what I want to know, I’ll wound you in ways so painful you can’t conceive of your suffering. Wounds that leave you dying slow, unable to move or speak. You’ll be hours here on the deck, in agony, more tears than all the babies you would have killed in those cities, so many tears you’ll die of dehydration before you bleed to death.”

He wanted to sit on the deck and hold his wounded foot to damp the pain, but I would not allow it.

“Where do the bombs come from?”

I didn’t think he was ready to answer, but then in a voice shaken by pain and fear, he named a Middle Eastern country.

“How did they get on the yacht?”

“From a freighter.”

“Transshipped? Where?”

“Three hundred miles out.”

“At sea?”

“Yeah. Where the Coast Guard can’t monitor.” He inhaled with a hiss between clenched teeth. “This foot is killin’ me.”

“It won’t be the foot. How many nukes?”

“Four.”

“How many?”

“Four. I said. Four.”

“You better not be lying. What cities?”

“I don’t know.”

“What cities?”
I demanded.

“I don’t know. I don’t. I didn’t need to know.”

“Who owns the yacht?”

“Some billionaire. I don’t know his name.”

“American?”

“Shit, yeah.”

“Why would an American want to do this?”

“If he can, why not?”

I hit him with the gun. An eyebrow ripped.

“Why?”

Pressing shut the torn skin with his fingers, his voice thin and higher pitched, as if time were running backward to his childhood, he said, “Hey, all right, hey, it’s like this—okay? truth? okay?—just before the bombs go off—okay?—there’ll be assassinations.”

“What assassinations?”

“President, vice president, lots of them.”

“And then the bombs. And after that?”

“They got a plan.”

“They who? What plan?”

“I don’t know. Really. See? Even this much, it’s more than I should know—okay?—stuff I found out they don’t know I know. Okay? There’s no more. I swear to God. There’s no more.”

I believed him, but even if I had not taken his protestations as the truth, I would have had no opportunity to question him further.

The knife must have been up the right sleeve of his shirt, in a sheath on his arm. How he released it, I don’t know, but it came under his cuff and into his hand. The blade flicked from the handle.

I saw the wink of light along the razor-sharp edge, but he thrust before I shot him in the throat.

The crack of the gun was not loud in the small cabin. The tug’s engines, the boom and clatter from the work on the afterdeck, and the squeal of one boat’s bumpers rubbing those of the other would have masked it easily.

Joey slid out of the chair and folded onto the floor, as if he had been a scarecrow with flesh of straw that couldn’t fully support the clothes that now draped baggily around him.

The switchblade was so sharp that it had sliced open the thick fabric of my sweatshirt as though it had been silk.

I reached through the tear to feel my right side where it stung, above the lowest rib. He had cut me.