Off the Chart (17 page)

Zashie stroked his sap like an outfielder keeping his glove warm.

“We have strong evidence that there's an individual now attempting to do something very similar: bring together dozens of loosely affiliated groups scattered through the Far East and South America and the Caribbean into a confederation of pirates.

“Our intelligence suggests this individual has managed to arrange for a sit-down where these men are to devise a master plan, divide up territory. They are apparently in the process of creating an alliance of seafaring criminals that would surpass anything we've ever seen. And let's say those armaments that I mentioned earlier were indeed stolen for their own use; that would mean that there would be only a few navies on earth that would be as well equipped. In short, what this looks like to some of us, Thorn, is that we're on the verge of a new golden age of piracy.”

Thorn glanced at the screen, then back at Jimmy Lee Webster. The pompous shrimp had perched his butt on the edge of the long chest of drawers. His black leather shoes dangling inches above the floor. A Napoléon in blue jeans and white button-down. America's secret admiral. A man who had learned to swagger before most kids could crawl. If the future of the free world depended on the likes of Jimmy Lee Webster, then freedom had a short half-life.

“The individual who is organizing these groups of pirates may or may not be Daniel Salbone. We don't know that he's alive, but this project has all his earmarks. We know Salbone to be highly intelligent and ambitious. He's a charismatic young man and can be quite persuasive. There aren't many people who could bring together such
disparate bands of outlaws, warring factions in some cases, but Daniel Salbone is one of the few who could manage it. And this theory would certainly explain why Salbone felt he had to resort to killing his own crew. It was done so he might convince his new associates he'd outwitted his pursuers and therefore they might be more willing to join with him in this new enterprise.”

“Count me out,” Thorn said. “Unless I hear how any of this gets Janey back, the whole goddamn world could fill up with pirates for all I care.”

Webster grimaced and shook his head like some dismayed math teacher whose student has made the most basic error in addition.

“But you see, you
are
going to do it, Thorn. You have no choice.”

“Look, Jimmy Lee, even if I agreed, Anne Joy has no interest in me. When we parted, it was final. She left no doubt about that.”

“You'll simply employ your much-vaunted magnetism.”

“Why not use one of your agents? Some tall dashing type like Zashie here. He can hit on Anne Joy just as easily as I can. You don't need me.”

“Daniel Salbone has already taken a special interest in you, Thorn. He knows your name. He knows you have an intimate history with Anne.”

“Forget it, Webster. It isn't happening.”

“All you have to do is make an effort, Thorn. Make it appear things are heating up between you and Anne. I'm not saying you have to take this woman to bed and give her the mother of all orgasms. You simply have to create the illusion of intimacy. If it works, fine. If we're wrong about Salbone being alive and Marty's reason for being back in Key Largo, then we've lost nothing from our attempt.”

“Except the life of a little girl.”

“I told you, Thorn, she's safe. She's under our protection.”

“So I'm supposed to bring Anne flowers and bonbons, write her poems. That's going to fool Marty?”

“All right, look,” Webster said. “For reasons that elude me, Vic Joy wants your parcel of land. Apparently the man believed he needed to do something extreme to motivate you into selling it to him, so he's holding your friend's daughter hostage. While the plan might seem idiotic and doomed to failure, when I became aware of it I
realized how effectively it might dovetail with our own needs. Because by then I'd discovered what apparently Vic Joy had already realized: that you, Thorn, would require an extra motivational boost.

“Think about it, my friend. If you had been even a little less hard-headed and determined to ridicule me at every turn, if you'd been even close to a normal patriotic American, then less persuasive measures would have been fine. If you'd shown any willingness to help, then when Vic began to execute his outrageous plan with Sugarman's daughter we would have stepped in, plucked the girl from Vic's grasp, and gone ahead with our scheme to use you to lure Salbone out of hiding. But you're not that person, Thorn. You're a defiant asshole. And that's why your friend's daughter is suffering. As repugnant as the idea is to all of us, you've forced us, Thorn, to piggyback our plan onto Vic Joy's.”

“What the fuck are you talking about?”

“Here's how it's going to be, Thorn. When I get what I want, then and only then do you get what you want. You go through the motions with Anne Bonny Joy, and in no time little Janey is back in her father's arms. All is well.”

Thorn watched Webster trace a fingertip down the neat edge of his beard.

“And one more thing,” the little man said. “Just so we're perfectly clear. You'll find no assistance in securing the girl's release from any law enforcement body in the United States, not here in the Florida Keys, not in Miami, nowhere. I may not be Secretary of the Navy any longer, but even those who were once my fiercest critics now realize I was right all along. Oceans cover three-quarters of the Earth's surface, and unless we quash these thugs and do it quick, they're going to gain control of the biggest piece of real estate there is. And that's not good for business, any business. We're not talking about a threat to civilization as we know it, or anything like that. These guys have been a nuisance for a long time and a certain number of them are going to be out there no matter what we do. But there's a place, a certain tipping point, when things go from shit-you-can-put-up-with to something else entirely. And we're at that point, Thorn.”

Thorn looked down at the Velcro bands holding his arms to the
chair. All those nylon eyelets and hooks clutching at each other—somebody's clever invention. Hooks and eyelets, opposites gripping tight.

“All right, goddamn it,” he said. “But only because of Janey.”

Webster shot a smirk at Zashie as if he'd won their private bet, gotten Thorn to cave in without even spilling blood. With a sour look, Zashie tucked the blackjack into his back pocket.

“How're we going to communicate?” Thorn said. “If I need to talk to you, tell you something. Ask for help.”

“When you leave this room tonight,” Webster said, “we won't be in contact anymore until this is concluded.”

The projector continued to flash images of death onto the screen. A war going on that Thorn had never heard about. Hundreds and hundreds of perfect, sunny days at sea turning ghastly.

“And how am I supposed to know when that is, when I'm done?”

Webster's lips snapped apart in a wan smile.

“Oh, you'll know, Thorn. Believe me, we'll make sure you know.”

 

Outside, Thorn found himself in the parking lot of the Holiday Inn, in the center of the quiet downtown of Key Largo. A little dizzy and lost after that worldwide tour of the brutal and unforgiving oceans. Across the lot he saw Sugarman marching out to the highway, and trotted over.

“You okay, Sugar?”

“Oh, sure. I'm great, Thorn. Fantastic. Never better.”

Sugar wouldn't meet Thorn's gaze. He stalked out to the bike path that ran along the edge of the highway.

“What's going on with you, man? What'd I do?”

Sugarman halted and swung around to face him. Eyes stewing with rage.

“What did you do? Nothing. You didn't do anything. You're a saint, Thorn. A perfect saint.”

“What did they tell you? Some kind of bullshit to turn you against me?”

“Didn't sound like bullshit to me. Sounded like you, Thorn. Fit you to a T.”

“What?”

Behind them a white Cadillac squealed into the Holiday Inn parking lot. Windows dark. It roared down the motel wing and swung into a space near the room where Thorn had been held. Two large men got out. Long hair, dark clothing. The two walked to the motel room and pounded on the door.

“Something's happening,” Thorn said. “We should go back.”

Webster's door opened and the two men went inside.

Sugarman shook his head sadly, looking at Thorn.

“Janey's kidnapped,” he said. “My daughter's gone. And you're playing games, Thorn.”

Thorn swung back to him.

“Hey, Sugar, what'd they tell you?”

“They didn't have to tell me anything, Thorn. I've seen it too many times already. You got a black cloud over your head, Thorn. Sooner or later, anybody hangs around you gets struck down by lightning. It's been this way forever, Thorn. And I've had enough.”

Sugar's eyes were avoiding Thorn's.

“What'd I do, Sugar?”

“It's what you didn't do, Thorn. You had a chance to help this guy catch the goddamn pirate, all you had to do was tell him something about Anne Joy, take five minutes of your precious time, but no, you gave him the heave-ho.”

“Yeah, that's true. But, Sugar, that's not what started this thing.”

“At this point I don't care what your goddamn rationalization is, Thorn. I've heard it before. And before that. I'm just sick of this shit. It's one thing after another with you. It never ever stops. And now it's Janey. I'm sick of it, Thorn. Sick sick sick.”

Sugarman had turned and was heading north on the bike path.

Thorn caught up with him, matched his stride, but Sugar wouldn't look his way.

“Listen, man, we can work together on this. We'll get Janey back. We can do it, I know we can.”

Sugar was striding fast, not even looking at Thorn.

“This guy, Webster, he's got to be a rogue agent. That's not how these guys operate. Christ, they don't get involved with kidnapping children. They're straight arrows, they have rules, oversight. It's out
rageous. Impossible. We'll call the FBI field office in Miami, talk to that guy you know, Sheffield, whatever the hell his name is.”

Sugarman kept walking, shooting Thorn a quick look and shaking his head.

“Yeah, Thorn, whatever you say. A rogue agent. Like all of a sudden you're an expert on international intrigue. What'd you do, read a spy novel, now you're an authority? Like the feebs are going to come to attention for you and me? No way, Thorn, we're out in the cold, man. We're out in the goddamn Arctic Circle.”

“Look, we need to stick together on this, Sugar.”

“Leave me alone, goddamn it. Janey's gone. I don't need your help and I don't want your help. You'd just suck us deeper into this bullshit. This is my daughter. I'll handle it my own way.”

“Why'd they take us in separate rooms, Sugar? Show you one thing, me another? Because they want to break us up, isolate me, control me better. Convince you I caused this whole thing.”

“So long, Thorn,” Sugarman called back. “Good luck.”

Thorn tagged along for a half-mile, then stopped and watched Sugarman plowing ahead at a furious clip. He stood there as his friend disappeared into the darkness up ahead.

Backing off the throttle to a near stall, Vic circled once over his Islamorada property, tipped the Mallard's wings, and caught a quick glimpse of Anne lying on a chaise lounge next to the pool, one of the servants in her white uniform standing at attention near the pool house.

“Feature films are the logical next step, Marty. These days, you want to tell a story, you got to do it on the silver screen.”

Marty looked out of the windscreen and didn't reply. Still queasy from the trip. After all those hours in the plane, any normal person would be over it by now. But Marty still looked like he was about to dump his breakfast on the instrument panel. Or maybe it was all the blood from Thursday night still floating around in his head. He'd puked then, too, over the side of Markham's boat. Disappointing Vic, tarnishing the luster of the night's work.

“You've seen one or two movies, right, Marty?”

Marty nodded.

“Well, the minute I'm finished with this land deal, what I'm doing
next is, I'm going to put together a Hollywood film. I know people on the Coast, thrown some business their way over the years. Soon as we get a story line together, I'll make the calls. Mom would love that, a movie all her own. Hell, I could even dedicate the fucker to her, get her name on the screen, first words you see when the lights go down, even before the actors or the title.
‘In loving memory of Antoinette Joy, the greatest mom a boy could have.'
She'd fucking love it. A pirate movie that got it right for once.”

Vic came down easy and set the Mallard on the flat blue water, a buttery landing, though Marty tightened his harness and tightened it again as they were touching down, never relaxing his grip on the overhead handle till Vic slowed to an idle and headed for the ramp.

Back on land, he and Marty walking up the easy slope toward the pool, Vic said, “You know what that airplane cost me, Marty?”

Marty swallowed and said, no, no, he had no idea.

“A million five for the turboprop. I could've gone with the recip engine, but hell, I wanted the extra muscle. That's something I got from my daddy: love of horsepower.”

Marty followed him over to the pool, Vic stretching his arms, taking off his yellow baseball cap, tossing it on the patio, then stretching out in the chaise next to Anne. She was wearing khaki shorts and a sleeveless flowered shirt, both of which looked new. A shopping bag from Island Silver and Spice lay on the umbrella table. Anne was reading the
Miami Herald,
no hello, nothing, didn't even look up. So Vic made like she wasn't there, either. Motioning at Jewel, the Jamaican on duty. Pointing at Anne's glass of OJ and holding up two fingers. Jewel turned and disappeared into the pool house.

Marty kept stretching his neck, opening and closing his hands. Sore from clenching so long. All those hours in the air, never relaxed his fists for a second.

“Okay, here's how I see our story line,” Vic said. “Right from the get-go, no farting around, little boat sneaking up on a big one. A yacht like Markham's. Two people or three on the fancy boat. Crank up the suspense, lots of close-ups of the people's throats and bare flesh. Creepy music. The audience squirming because they know what's coming, these badass bloody pirates closing in.”

“Truth is, I don't watch movies, Vic. I got no experience in this area.”

Vic watched his dock guys cranking the Mallard up the ramp. Twin radial engines on a high-mounted wing with underwing floats, retractable undercarriage, and an upswept tail unit. He loved that damn airplane. Wished his mom could've known he was a pilot now. A pilot among about a hundred other amazing damn things. He'd transcended the hell out of his roots. But somehow it didn't mean as much, his mom not there to see it happen. Vic had thought maybe Anne Bonny would change that. Give him some strokes, a compliment or two on his rise to power and glory. But no, his sister, his only living flesh and blood, was just sitting there, newspaper spread open in front of her, no appreciation for the lavish layout or the view or anything.

Jewel brought the two OJs. Put one on Marty's table, one on Vic's, asked if there'd be anything else.

“Not for me,” Vic said. “You, Marty? Eggs, bacon, pancakes. Blow job, maybe.” Smiling up at Jewel, who didn't smile back.

The big man shook his head and Jewel slipped back to her post in the shade by the pool house. Anne turned the page, shook the paper out straight, doing a first-class job of ignoring the two of them.

“Okay, so you're inexperienced with the film world. That can be a plus, Marty. Give you a fresh perspective. Anyway, we're just brainstorming, coming up with some ideas. I throw in a few, then you throw in a few from your vast experience.”

“I only did it for a month,” Marty said. “It's not like I'm some expert. Far as I could see, it wasn't anything special. Like knocking over a fucking warehouse, that's all, except it's out on the water. Most times the sailors, they drop down on their faces, give up without a fight. It's not very exciting.”

“Yeah, except that last time when they were waiting for you.”

Marty nodded. “Yeah, that time was different. Real different.”

Vic could tell Anne was listening. Paper still in front of her face, but eyes not moving anymore.

“But look, Marty, you're missing the point about movies. There's a long tradition here. An illustrious history of swashbuckling cinema.
A wider frame of reference we have to pay homage to. So how I see it is, the first few seconds of our movie, like when the credits are rolling, we show the audience what they're in for. Make it pop from the first frame, snap and crackle. Pirates boiling out of their little boat, crawling over the side of the big ship,
bippity-bop, bippity-boom.
Don't hold a fucking thing back. All our cards on the table. Then later on, five, ten minutes into it, we find a way to top that scene, explosions, lasers, nukes, whatever. That's creativity: You start with everything you got, then you dig down and you find more and after that you find more, and more after that.”

Vic Joy gave Marty Messina a quick look to see if he was absorbing this.

“Snap, crackle, and pop,” Marty said. “Like the cereal.”

Vic smiled, but he could feel a spurt of bile stinging the back of his throat. He wasn't a fan of sarcasm, irony, whatever the fuck you called it. Words were for saying things straight out. You put your words up against the other guy's to see which ones were stronger. No tricks. You didn't say one thing, then mock what you'd said with a grin or your tone of voice.

“Okay, Marty. So then the other thing to remember is, we can't shy away from something that's already been done. I don't know how you guys did it, but as you already witnessed firsthand, when I storm a yacht, I like a knife in my mouth like the pirates of old. Blackbeard, Captain Blood. Gripping it between the teeth, blade out. That's an important detail. Blade out.”

Vic slugged down his OJ in one swallow, wiped his mouth, and said, “It's time I took some of this shit I been doing and put it up on the silver screen. Hell, my run-of-the-mill ordinary day is ten times as exciting as most of the shit people buy tickets to see.”

“These last couple of days,” Marty said, “I'd rather not see them again.”

“What's wrong, Butch? What happened to our prison-tough hombre?”

Marty sipped his juice and flexed his free hand, working the blood back.

“You know, maybe I made a mistake with you, Marty. Hell, I already let you see more of my operation than I've ever shown anyone.
That's something new for me. I'm not the kind to delegate anything. Shit, I don't even let the right lawyer know what the left lawyer's doing.”

Marty looked at him, his big moon face showing a trace of worry.

“Maybe it was a moment of weakness, bringing you aboard. I thought you had more piss in your blood than you've shown me so far.”

Marty sipped his juice. In his black jeans and dark socks and ankle-high white tennis shoes. His yellow T-shirt was from Snook's Bayside, one of the two or three good local waterfront restaurants Vic didn't own. But give him time, he'd be adding Snook's to the list.

“Look, Marty. You got an opportunity here, kind of chance doesn't come around that often. Hell, look at me and Anne, we didn't have two turds to rub together when we started out. A couple of kids with a drug runner's car and a couple hundred dollars. All I had going for me was some hick-from-the-sticks anger stewing in my veins, a crazy spunk. Now look around you, boy. Take a minute and absorb the scene. Whatta you think a place like this costs anyway?”

Marty said, “I'm grateful, Vic. I am.”

“Eleven million and change, that's what. After I built the main house, I had that brick house carted down here from Harlan. That's our childhood home, Marty; ask Anne Bonny. Same furniture, rugs, even the damn washing machine. You think that wasn't expensive to do, think again. And where'd all that money come from, boy? Did I inherit any from my old man? Shit, no. I worked my bony ass off for this place and all the other goodies I got. I took chances; I went so far out on the limb there wasn't any limb left. Then I went a little farther. I used the old creative right brain and I used it again. I out-smarted the boys in the suits with their Harvard MBAs and their bullshit lawyers.”

Vic got up and stripped off his clothes and left them in a pile by his chaise, and buck naked he dived into his own goddamn blue-water swimming pool. Most expensive water in the world, piped down all the way from the well fields in Miami. He did a couple laps, up and back again, and one more time to clean off the kerosene stink of the jet fuel and the sweat and grime and blood from the night before. And climbed out. He stood on the apron and shook the water off his
arms and gave his penis a little whip jiggle for everybody's amusement. But no one was watching. Marty looking off at the ocean, Anne staring into her newspaper, Jewel, the maid, shielding her view with the white terry-cloth robe she was holding open for him.

Vic put it on, didn't belt it, and walked back to the chaise with everything hanging out and lay down, exposing himself to the elements, getting a little midmorning sun on his tan lines.

“Cover yourself, Vic.” Saying it like his mother used to give commands. A schoolteacher's voice. “No one wants to see your cock.”

“Hey, we're all family here,” Vic said. “You and me, we used to take our baths together.”

“Cover yourself,” she said. And again he heard that echo of his mother's voice. Pissed off, barely under control,
don't make me swat you, boy.

He closed his robe and belted it.

Anne folded her newspaper and set it on the ground and cranked her chaise lower to catch the midmorning rays on her face. His little sister. What was left of the family back together again. Vic felt a flush of satisfaction for accomplishing that. Another thing his mother would love to see. What was left of the Joy clan, together in paradise.

“Anybody want to hear a joke?” Vic said.

Marty looked over at him but didn't reply.

“Ever hear the one about the two pirates?”

Anne kept her eyes closed, but he could see she was listening.

“Okay, so one pirate says to the other, ‘Hey, matey, how'd you get that wooden leg?' And the second pirate says, ‘Arrr, it done got bit off by a goddamn shark.' The first pirate is impressed: ‘Aye, you're one tough son of a bitch. And how'd ya get that metal hook?' The other one says, ‘Well, I lost her in a sword fight. Bastard cut off me bloody hand.' ‘Aw, shit, that must've hurt like hell,' says the first pirate. ‘And so how'd you get that patch on your eye?' ‘Well now,' says the second pirate. ‘I was up in the crow's nest, and I looked up just as a seagull flew over the mast, and the damn thing shit right in me eye.'

“The second pirate, he's staring at the first one. ‘And how the hell did seagull shit make you blind?' The first pirate gets a funny look and says, ‘Arrr, it was the first day I had me hook.'”

Vic laughed, kept on laughing for half a minute. He wiped the tears from his eyes when he was done.

Marty cleared his throat, took a deliberate breath, and said, “You okay, Vic?”

“Okay? What the fuck are you talking about
okay
?”

“I mean, this joke, all right, it's kind of funny, yeah. But I'm sitting here, I'm wondering, Who the hell is this guy? This big joker or the guy out on the boat, the shit you pulled out there, which guy is it I'm working for?”

Vic turned his head carefully and looked at Marty.

“You want to know who I am?” Vic said.

Marty shrugged, like he wasn't so sure anymore, hearing Vic's voice bubble with acid.

Marty said, “I'm talking about the knife-in-the-teeth thing and all that movie talk. I just want to know if I'm on solid ground here, throwing in with you like I'm doing.”

“You mean, am I crazy?”

“I never said
crazy.
”

Vic looked over at Anne. She was still soaking up the beneficial rays of the sun, eyes closed like she might be asleep. Though Vic could see her listening.

“Fuck yes, I'm crazy. Name me anybody worth a shit that isn't crazy. Go on, Marty, name me one person in the whole fucking history of mankind that made a major mark on the world that wasn't an over-the-top lunatic one way or the other. It's the nature of genius to be crazy. Napoléon, Julius Caesar, Marco Polo, Christopher fucking Columbus. You think any of those guys were sane? Sailing off into the blue, without a goddamn map. Is that sane? Where would the world be without those guys, the crazy fucks that took risks, made things happen?”

“Marco Polo?”

“Hey, Marty. Listen to me. You want to work for some sane fucking boss, go sell life insurance. Flip burgers.”

Marty nodded like he was trying to buy Vic's argument but not quite there yet.