Off the Chart (18 page)

“Okay, then,” Marty said, “take this movie thing, for instance.”

“Making a movie is crazy, Marty?”

“What I think,” Marty said, “nobody's going to want to see that shit.”

Vic wiped his lips and craned in Marty's direction.

“Screw that,” Vic said. “Pirate movies have a long and celebrated history.”

“Okay, Vic. So tell me. Whose story is it?”

“What do you mean? It's my story.”

“I mean who's the audience supposed to root for?”

“Root for? What kind of crap is that?”

“I might be full of shit,” Marty said. “But what I think is, that's why people go to movies, Vic. To cheer when the good guy creams the bad guy. That's why they stand in line, spend their bread. That's what I think.”

“Well, they can root for the fucking pirate this time,” Vic said.

“Yeah, but why would they? I mean, you and me, okay, we'd root for him, 'cause we're the way we are. Fucked up. But a normal working Joe. Why would he give a rat's ass about a pirate? Think about it, Vic. A guy sneaks aboard somebody's boat and slits their throats and shoots old ladies in the head, kidnaps little girls. Why would anyone care about a shithead like that?”

“Hey, watch it.”

Anne propped herself up on her elbows and looked over and asked Marty what the hell he was talking about.

He shook his head and took another prissy sip of juice. Vic reached over and snatched the glass out of Marty's hand and slung it into the pool and watched it sink.

“You're wrong, Marty. People love pirates. Always have, always will.”

Marty was looking at the pool, the little ripples the glass made.

“All I'm saying, Vic, I can't see anybody paying to watch shit like that.”

“You kidnapped a little girl, Vic?”

“Don't worry about it,” he said. “I invited you along, but you didn't want to go. So that makes it officially none of your business.”

“This is about Thorn, isn't it?”

“Hey, you hear what I just said? It's none of your freaking business. Marty's just passing gas out his blowhole. Aren't you, kid?”

“Me and Anne and the others, we knocked over freighters,” Marty said. “We got away with millions in TV sets and dirt bikes and all kinds of shit and we never fired a shot. Not that whole time.”

“What little girl, Marty?” she said, looking past Vic at the big man.

Marty shook his head, not about to get into this brother-sister thing.

“Okay, okay,” Vic said. “You want to know so bad, it was Sugarman's daughter, that's who. Sugarman, you know, Thorn's asshole buddy.”

“I met that girl,” Anne said. “I served her lunch once. Little blond girl.”

“Served her lunch. Well, hell, then you're practically related.”

“Where is she? What'd you do with her?”

“What do you care?”

Darien, the pool boy, slid out of the shade and whisked over to the edge of the water with his long-poled scoop and started going after the orange juice glass. When he had it, he turned around and grabbed up the yellow baseball cap, too, and carried them both away. Best help money could buy. Always hire illegals, that was Vic's policy. Deportation hanging over their heads kept them focused.

“What'd you do with Sugarman's little girl, Vic?”

“She's safe and sound off in a secluded location. That's all you need to know and that's all I'm telling you.”

Vic looked over at his sister as Anne was standing up. She picked up her shopping bag and came over and stood at the foot of Vic's chaise lounge.

“Forget the FROM code, Vic, I'm out of here.”

“What? What'd I do?”

“The little girl.”

“Hell,” Marty said. “The little girl's the least of it.”

“Aw, shit, settle down, Anne Bonny. The girl's fine. Isn't she, Marty?”

“Last we saw.”

“Hell, she's got a ton of food, she's got shelter, a bathroom. I even let her take along binoculars she'd gotten for her freaking birthday. Little thing was whimpering about them so much. Isn't that right, Marty?”

“And her laptop,” he said.

“Yeah, the kid might get bored and want to play some video games. Shit, I was as nice as pie to the girl. I may be a pirate, but I got a heart of gold.”

Anne glared at Vic, then shifted her eyes to Marty.

“Is that true, Marty?”

“It is,” he said. “Computer, binoculars, food. She should be okay for a day or two.”

“See?” Vic said. “You're worried over nothing, Anne. The girl's going to be just fine. We didn't muss a hair on her pretty little noggin. What do you think, I'm some kind of monster?”

“You can't tell me, Thorn? Why can't you tell me?”

Thorn sat on a stool at the breakfast counter and blew on his coffee. Alexandra was on her fourth mug. Already wired, but cranking herself higher.

“I'm not going to lie to you, Alex.”

“I'm not asking you to lie, I'm asking where the hell you were all night and where you got those cuts and bruises. That seems like a reasonable request of the man I'm living with.”

Thorn got off the stool and came over to her, but Alexandra turned away. She'd sent Lawton outside, told him to wait for her on the lawn, and even the old man could hear the iron in her voice and for once didn't question instructions. She had on a pair of loose-fitting black shorts and a peasant blouse with a flowery trim. Her hair clenched back in a ponytail and her skin scrubbed clean of the workday makeup. Alex swallowed the rest of her coffee and angled past Thorn and set the mug in the sink.

“I owe you an explanation,” he said. “I don't blame you for being angry.”

“Okay then, where were you?”

“I can't talk about it right now, Alex. I'm sorry, I wish I could, but I can't.”

Tiny muscles flinched in her face. He could see in her eyes that he was now dangerously close to joining that whirling collection of asshole men who'd abandoned or deeply disappointed her in the past, shitheads who'd tried to suffocate her spirit, even one who'd tried to take her life. He was on the verge of becoming just one more in a string of appalling mistakes.

“I'm working on this thing with Janey,” Thorn blurted. “I was recruited to help. But I can't talk about it.”

“Recruited?”

Thorn reached out and took her hand, tried to draw off some of the heat of her anger with his touch, but after a second she jerked it from his grasp.

“That's all I can tell you. None of the details.”

“Top secret, huh? Agent Thorn called into battle to save the Earth.”

“I know,” he said. “It sounds absurd.”

“Thorn, I thought we were getting somewhere. I'd been feeling pretty solid lately about us, about the way Dad is holding his own. Then this. You're gone all night. I don't know what to do. Call the sheriff, go driving around, see if I can find you. I'm lying in there worrying. Dad's out in the living room mumbling to himself. Of course, he's picked up on it, the tension. He kicked the goddamn dog, Thorn.”

“What?”

“This morning. No reason. Just drew back and punted the little thing across the room.”

“That's not fair about the dog.”

“Okay,” she said. “But it's important you realize what you do has an impact. You stay out all night, don't explain where you were, it's not like we can just go sailing merrily along with that hanging there.”

“A few days,” he said. “Two or three at the most, it'll be over and I can explain the whole thing.”

“Is this about Anne Joy?”

“What?!”

“It is, isn't it? This is about Anne Joy.”

“What the hell makes you say that?”

“You lie like a little kid, Thorn. You get that squinty, dodgy thing in your eyes. You're really bad at it. At least that's something in your favor.”

He took a breath and went back to the stool and sat down, then got back up and came over and took her hand in his, and this time she left it there.

“I love you.”

“And that's supposed to stop me in my tracks?”

“It's true.”

“You know what you should do? You should get out a legal pad, a couple of pens, make a list, Thorn. It might be illuminating. All the women you've said that to.”

Thorn looked down at the floor. She was right, of course. He'd used those words a few times too often in just such cases. But still. He looked back at her.

“This is different, Alex. You and me, and Lawton. This is special. It's what I've been looking for. I can't lose this. I'll do whatever I can to keep you.”

“Except tell me the truth.”

Alexandra searched his face, tilting away from him an inch or two as if to bring him into better focus. Whatever she was looking for, she didn't find enough of it, for her weary eyes grew dim and distant and she looked away, drew an exhausted breath, then blew it out.

She went to the sink, busied herself with her coffee mug, rinsing it clean, then doing the same with his. Putting them upside down on the drain board.

With her back to him, she said, “You said you were
recruited.
That's what Webster was trying to do, right? That time when you left out Anne Joy's name as you were telling me about his visit. He was trying to recruit you. Did he try again?”

“Goddamn it.” Thorn turned and walked out to the porch and let the screen door slam. Down on the lawn, Lawton was playing fetch with the puppy. The dog sprinted after the stick and brought it part
way back, then hesitated a few feet away from the old man. Sitting in the grass with the stick in his mouth, watching Lawton warily. Everything different from the night before. That was how fast it could disappear. A line crossed, a word spoken or withheld. That quick, and the puppy shied away and no matter what happened later on, in some hidden realm of his being, he would be mistrustful forever after.

For five minutes Alexandra was inside the house, and when she came out her black duffel was slung over her shoulder.

“Don't,” he said.

“I need to check on my house,” she said. “Mail's piling up. Telephone messages. Vines and weeds are probably taking over. You can't just walk away from an old place like that.”

“Now who's lying, Alex?”

“You want to talk, you know my number.”

“Maybe I've lived alone too much. I don't know how it's done. The compromise thing.”

“Maybe you have.”

He didn't try to stop her. He watched as she went out into the yard and collected her father and scooped up the Lab. Lawton glanced up at him as they were walking to the car and shook his head.

In a voice ripe with regret, Lawton called up to Thorn.

“We're heading off to Ohio. Gonna dig up that damn time capsule once and for all. See ya, kid. And don't forget Seung Sahn's celebrated words: ‘If you don't enter the lion's den, you will never capture the lion.'”

Alex took him by the shoulder and steered him ahead toward the car. The puppy barked and wriggled in her grasp, but she quieted him with a touch beneath his throat. No backward look, no hesitation, as she got into her Honda, shut the door, and started the engine and backed out of her place and headed out the drive. No sign that she was leaving for good. No sign that she was ever coming back.

 

Thorn lowered himself to the bench of the picnic table and watched the birds flow from their roosts miles away out beyond the mangroves
that rimmed Blackwater Sound, heading across the island to the fishing grounds on the Atlantic side.

The throb in his ribs had eased. Nothing but a deep bruise—the spot would be tender for a week, make sneezing an unpleasant prospect, but nothing seemed to be broken. Though he couldn't say the same for his bond with Alexandra Collins. If there'd been a way to tell her the truth without having to explain the finer points of what he'd agreed to do, he would have done it. But as soon as Alex mentioned Anne Joy's name, it was clear that trying to describe the difference between a sham seduction and a real one might prove more destructive than remaining silent. Now he wasn't so sure. He could have tried at least. Looked for words that told her just enough. But Alex had been on such high alert about Anne Joy, so touchy, he'd simply backed away.

Over the years Thorn had lost so many friends and lovers and blood relations, he feared some crucial part of him had grown hard and impervious to that sort of grief. But this time, with Alexandra's departure, it came as some bitter relief to discover that even that part of him could still ache beyond all endurance.

And then there was Sugarman. Another ache. Different, but just as deep, just as final. And as Thorn looked out at the choppy bay, at the herons and gulls and egrets floating along the air currents with an ease that mocked all human enterprise, he wanted to believe his friendship with Sugarman had weathered worse than this, but as hard as he tried, he could remember nothing in their four decades that came even close to Janey's abduction and Thorn's guilty connection to the matter.

Webster had struck a nerve.

If Thorn had simply heard him out that day when he'd first appeared, none of this might have unfolded as it had. Something he revealed could have been the key to moving in on Salbone and thus prevented Janey's abduction. Or maybe not. Maybe that was all a ploy of Webster's, a recruiter's trick—hook him with guilt. It was impossible to know how complicit Thorn actually was. But Sugarman wasn't parsing those possibilities. All he needed to hear was that this woman who was on Thorn's list of recent sexual partners was also in
league with the people who'd taken his daughter. Blame stained them all.

And as Thorn watched the first guide boat of the day heading out to the remote fishing grounds, he began to recall the long-ago story Anne Bonny Joy had told him about the rickety pirate schooner draped with gaudy Christmas lights. Anne and Vic's early saturation training in pirate lore, their childhood abruptly ended by gunfire. At seventeen Vic Joy already an unrepentant murderer. And his sister, a willing accomplice. It was all of a piece. An inevitable series of spreading ripples that now washed ashore at Thorn's feet.

A moment later, he rose from the picnic table and went into the bedroom and pawed through his closet until he found a fresh blue shirt and a pair of clean shorts and laid them out on the bed, then he turned on the shower as hot as it would go and stripped off his rumpled clothes and threw them in the hamper. He stepped into the steaming spray and aimed the nozzle into his face and let it blast away what grime and exhaustion it could.

With a sliver of scented soap Alex left behind, he scrubbed his skin till it smoldered, then shut off the water, stepped out, and toweled off in front of the mirror. With a new blade in his ancient Schick he shaved carefully, and afterward he smoothed his hand across his cheeks and neck, tracking down the stray bristles he missed. Then, in the back corner of his medicine cabinet, he located an unopened bottle of cologne in a sleek black bottle. A gift from some lady whose name he could no longer recall. He sprinkled some into his hands, rubbed it into his palms, and slapped his cheeks until he radiated an odor something like a flaming gardenia bush extinguished with a vat of limeade.

He stalked back to the shower, climbed inside, and scrubbed away the stink as best he could. After he was done, he took Alexandra's remaining shard of scented soap and set it on the edge of the sink where her toothbrush had stood only an hour earlier. From the soap rose just a hint of her aroma. It wasn't much, but for now it would have to do.