Red Tide (19 page)

But it wasn’t on land. It was on the ocean. There were no roads, no paths, nothing to follow and nothing to run on.

And no way to get out there. No way to find the freighter even if I did get out there.

As my mind circled around the same thing for the thousandth time, I felt the silence in the car. I looked around. They were all looking at me.

Ray put an arm across the back of the seat. “Well,” he said weakly. “I guess I just fucked up.” He looked away, out over the water. “I’m sorry, Billy.”

“Not your fault,” The Deacon said. “Let’s get back.”

“Can you get a chopper?” I asked Deacon.

“Son, I know this is rough on you. But we have no actual proof that a crime has been committed—”

“You know damn well—”

“Now, hear me out, buddy. I’m talking proof in the legal sense, which you and I know’s got nothing to do with what really happened. But a chopper is going to cost the department thousands of dollars. And from a budgeting standpoint they’re going to need that kind of proof—not just that she’s out there, but enough proof to get a conviction, before they commit to that kind of money.”

“For God’s sake.” I felt like the world was unraveling.

“I will ask them. I will call in every favor I got laying around out there. But I don’t want you thinking this is gonna solve the problem, because smart money says it won’t.”

“She’s out there. You know she is.”

“Yes, I do know. But it’s not my chopper.”

Ray put the car in gear.

Instead of calling it in, Deacon thought he’d have a better chance asking for the helicopter face to face. But even at high speed it was twenty minutes before we got back to Deacon’s office. Figure a speed of around ten knots. Maybe a little less. The ship would be another three or four miles away.

Nicky and I sat in Deacon’s office while he ran up and down the hall trying to find the right string to pull. Nicky was unnaturally quiet. Maybe he was blaming himself. He’d opened the door and let Hell in. I guessed he was telling himself he hadn’t been strong enough, or quick enough, or man enough. I wished I could blame him, too. Anger would have been a lot better than the dead misery I was feeling.

Deacon was back in twenty minutes. Another three or four miles. I didn’t need to ask how it had gone. It was right there on his face.

“I’m sorry, buddy,” he said.

I stood up. “I need a boat,” I said.

“It’s going to be the same answer,” he told me. “They’re just not convinced down there. Say it’s too complicated, what with no clear and compelling evidence of a crime, international waters screwing up the jurisdiction—I’m sorry, buddy,” he said again. “But they’d rather let this one slip away than ruffle feathers in Tallahassee.”

“Get me out of here,” I told him, and I started for the door. “Take me back to my car.” I would find a boat. I didn’t know where, and I was sure it would be too late, but I’d do it.

Nicky followed me out the door, looking grim and indignant, and Deacon came behind.

As we drove back to my car I tried to think of all the options. It was pretty easy. There weren’t any. Rent a boat? Not the boat I needed, with the big fuel tanks and the kind of speed and equipment to catch the freighter. Steal a boat? And get caught, flung back in jail, seal Anna’s fate for sure?

I looked out the window. It was still Miami out there. Beautiful, angry, uncaring Miami. Paradise lost. There were no boats waiting on the street corners. I couldn’t go into that mall we were passing and put a boat on my credit card. And I couldn’t—

“Stop the car,” I said.

Deacon nosed into the curb and stepped on the brake, turning to me with a raised eyebrow.

“The mall,” I said. I closed my eyes and tried not to breathe too hard. For the first time in hours I could feel my heart turning over, the blood moving through me, into my hands, all the way down into my toes.

“I see it, buddy,” Deacon said patiently.

“Pearl’s,” I said. I closed my eyes. “Fast, Deacon. As fast as you can go. Get me to Star Island.”

There’s a guard gate on the bridge to Star Island, but if you flash a badge and ask the way to the Pearl’s house they don’t give you any trouble. They direct you to circle around to the right, look for a big place with a massive iron gate and a huge wrought-iron modern sculpture in front.

We found it quickly, easily. Deacon showed his badge again, to the guard on the Pearl’s front gate. He was a big guy with a crew cut and a dead face. He examined it carefully, asked us our business, and listened politely while Deacon said we just wanted to see Richard Pearl for a few minutes. Then he stepped back and spoke into a radio he had unclipped from his belt.

In less than two minutes we were waved through the gate, around the big circular driveway, and up to the house.

A stocky woman was waiting in the door. She had grey hair, a silk dress, and enough jewelry hanging off her to pay off the national debt.

“What’s he done this time,” she demanded.

“Is Richard Pearl here?” Deacon asked her politely as we climbed out of the car.

“I’m his step-mother. What did he do?”

Deacon glanced at me, then back at the woman. “As far as I know, ma’am, he hasn’t done a thing. We have an emergency we think he might be able to help out on.”

“An emergency.”

“That’s right, ma’am. Is he here?”

The crossed her arms and tapped her foot. She looked at Nicky, looked at me, then back at Nicky again, like she wasn’t sure she’d seen it right the first time. Then she looked at Deacon. He looked back at her.

“Wait here,” she said, and disappeared back into the house. The big dark wood door slammed shut with a very solid sound. Barbarians and commoners, stay out.

Waiting is always hard. Waiting when I knew that every six minutes took Anna another mile away was almost impossible. In about five minutes Mrs. Pearl was back. She opened the front door and glared out at us.

“I spoke to my husband’s attorney,” she said.

“Yes, ma’am,” Deacon said politely.

“He wants to know if you have a warrant.”

“Who’s your attorney, ma’am?”

“Steven Dade,” she said, as if everybody knew who that was. And I guess everybody did, in South Florida.

Deacon smiled. He reached into his pocket and handed her a business card. “Tell your attorney my name,” he said. “Tell him Richard is in no way implicated in any crime whatsoever. We simply want to ask for his expert opinion.”

She snorted. “Expert. Richie? Expert on tanning, maybe.”

“And boats,” I said.

She swung her head to me. “Oh,” she said. She blinked. She looked down at the business card. “Well. I suppose so.” She blinked again, then slammed the door.

She was back much quicker this time. She stepped shyly out into the sun, as if she was afraid it might melt her clothes.

“Are you really The Deacon?” she asked him.

“That’s what my friends call me,” he said cheerfully.

Mrs. Pearl licked her lips and put a hand behind her, feeling for the door. “He says you owe him a two-pound grouper filet.”

“Yes, ma’am, that I do. Can we see Richard?”

She hesitated for a second, but she couldn’t think of any other reason to stall us. “He’s out back,” she said. “On the dock.”

“Thank you, ma’am,” Deacon said, but I was already moving, circling off the front steps and around the side of the house. I ran across the acre of lawn toward the dock, which was attached to a boathouse. Savage roaring sounds came from the end of the dock. It pretty well matched the way I felt. I ran out the length of the dock to where a long black racing boat was tied up.

The engine hatch stood wide open. A pair of legs stuck out, splotched with grease. “Rick,” I called.

The engine roared, then fluttered to a throaty growl. I called again. “Hey, Rick.”

The legs kicked, flopped for a grip, and Rick pulled himself out of the engine. He blinked a couple of times, shading his eyes with a hand, and finally focused on me.

“Hey!” he said. “Billy! Whoa, great, what’s up?”

“You said if I ever needed a favor, just ask,” I said.

“Uh, well, yeah,” he said, climbing unsteadily to his feet. “What, uh, what do you need?”

“Your boat,” I said. “I need to borrow your boat.”

He stood blinking at me for a minute. Nicky came out the dock and stood beside me, then Deacon. Rick looked at the two of them, then at me.

“Uh,” he said. “Can you tell me about it?”

Rick’s boathouse had a large workbench in it, covered with metal filings, dried globs of fiberglass and paint, old oil, and small machine parts. A large fluorescent strip light hung over the table and a rack of power tools stood beside it.

A chest-high metal filing cabinet with eight thin drawers took up one corner and Rick slid open a drawer and took out a stack of charts. He spread them out on the table.

“Okay,” he said. “I made this run two, three years ago. You’re bucking current on the way down, and probably wind, if there is any. This time of year the weather can turn on you pretty quick, too. And if you don’t pick him up before dark, you’re kinda screwed.”

“You won’t pick him up by dark even if you got Joshua stopping the sun for you,” Deacon said, leaning in to look at the chart. “That’s a big ocean out there, buddy, and a mighty small boat.”

“I’ll find him,” I said.

“We know where he’s headed,” Nicky objected. “He’s going to Haiti. He’s on a straight line between here and Haiti.”

Deacon shook his head. “Even if he stays on it, that straight line can be ten, twenty miles wide. Visibility in any kind of sea is going to be a mile or two at best.” He raised his head and gave me a look that might have knocked me over if I wasn’t leaning on the table. “And there ain’t anyway 
any
kind of guarantee that he’s going to Haiti.”

“He’s going to Haiti.”

“He’s 
got
 to be,” Nicky insisted. “Where else?”

“Anywhere else,” Deacon said. “He’s grabbed the girl and he’s running. No reason he should run right where we can find him.”

“Plenty of reason,” I said. “He’s safe there, and anyway he’s not running.”

“I don’t care if you call it advancing to the rear,” Deacon said. “He’s running.”

“No, listen,” I said, and he paused and cocked an eyebrow at me. “Nobody’s done anything to try and stop him so far. He’s killed a couple of hundred people, and we know he’s watching his back trail, and we can guess that he’s got antennas out in a lot of directions. But everything tells him he’s safe, nobody’s after him.”

“Except us,” Nicky said.

“Except us. And so far we haven’t been very scary. So he’s watching but he’s not worried. And I think he wants me to catch up with him.”

Deacon spat at the large metal trashcan. “Spare me the psychological profile, buddy. The killer wants to be caught so he can be punished? That’s a load of bull and you know it. This guy don’t want to be caught.”

“That’s not what I’m saying.”

Deacon spread his arms wide. “Well then what are you saying? Because whatever it is, it don’t make sense so far, and we got a bad guy getting away.”

“I can find him.”

“Wishful thinking. You’re going to get out there in the Stream and run out of gas, or capsize, or get run down by a tanker, and we’ll lose you, too.”

“It’s Anna’s only chance.”

“You’re so sure he’s going to Haiti, why not fly there and be waiting on the dock?”

I shook my head. “He’ll be expecting that. He’ll be ready, or Anna will already be over the side. Anna’s best chance is if I get to him before he gets to Haiti. And my best chance is to board him at sea, when he’s not expecting it.”

“You’re not the U.S. damn Marines, Billy. You’re not Rambo.”

“Deacon,” I said. “I’m doing this.”

“It’s piracy. He can have you hung for piracy.”

“Who are you now, Deacon?” I said, meeting that icy stare.

“What does that mean?”

I leaned a knuckle on the workbench and moved my face a few inches from his. “It means I know you must have heard those words before. From your superiors, when they’re chewing you out for something you did when you knew it was right but it broke some rules. You ready to sit behind a desk and say that stuff to other guys now, Deacon? Turn in your white hat for a grey suit? Or are you still one of the good guys?”

He didn’t blink. He just kept looking at me. His expression didn’t change. It was like looking down the barrels of two big Colt Peacemakers. “All right,” he said at last. “All right.” He frowned at his knuckles. “Just jealous, I guess.”

Rick cleared his throat. We looked at him and he blushed again. “Uh,” he said. “I mean, as far as the 
how
 part goes. I got radar. But if there’s a good-sized sea it might not pick up anything unless you’re close enough to see it anyway. It’s mostly for weather. Can’t really see anything too low.”

I nodded and looked back at Deacon. “You better show me the boat.”

• • •

The Gulf Stream in late August can change quickly. It can be smooth and flat and flowing along at five knots and then suddenly, with no warning, the weather blows up and you’re fighting for your life. And just as suddenly the squall passes and you come out of a thick wall of water into moonlight, peace, and the calm, steady flow of the Stream again. Because it is always there, always moving at its unchanging pace.

I kept telling myself that last part. The Stream was calm out there, not too far away, just on the other side of this squall. But I had been in a cocoon of rain for the last fifteen minutes. The storm had swept across the flat empty water at me just as the sun went down. Just when I was almost out of hope and thinking things couldn’t be any worse. And of course, they could. They always could, especially lately. And now they were.

I had been scanning the horizon so hard my eyes hurt, glaring at the fuel gauge and trying to make it stop moving towards the big red E at the left side. And suddenly I was inside rain so thick I had to turn my head to the side to breathe. The sunset vanished. The ocean was gone. I was all alone. I might as well have been in a very wet closet.

As my world shrank to a couple of inches around me, I throttled back and started thinking. I pushed the ugly unwelcome thoughts away but they kept coming back.