Tricky Business (35 page)

By then she was sobbing, and Wally put his arm around her and told her not to worry, she'd see Estelle again, they'd get out of this fine, the Coast Guard would come out looking. And Fay had reminded Wally that she
was
the Coast Guard, which had not exactly made her laugh again but at least stopped the crying. And Wally had asked her what was the deal with that, her being in the Coast Guard, and she said she was basically a kind of cop or detective in the Coast Guard, and she'd been doing well in her career until she'd married her dickwad ex-husband, Todd, who didn't like her working, and especially not working in a job that involved carrying a gun and dealing with criminals, and she had stupidly tried to please him, which was how she had Estelle, who was the best thing that ever happened to her, but who had also caused Fay to transfer, after her maternity leave, to a more clerical job, which she hated but which allowed her to be home at regular hours, which was important because she got no help with Estelle from her dickwad ex-husband, Todd, because, as Fay eventually determined, he was busy screwing every living thing that had a vagina, including probably some Labrador retrievers.

This had led to the divorce, and an even worse child-care situation, and money problems caused by her dickwad ex-husband's deep emotional need to file lawsuits. And so Fay, determined to get back on a better career track, had volunteered for the undercover assignment on the
Extravaganza,
which various federal and state law-enforcement agencies were pretty sure was being used for illegal activities. Everybody had thought it was pretty clever, putting a female CGIS agent who happened to be, in addition to smart and well-trained, a pretty hot babe, on the ship as a cocktail waitress. Nobody had considered the possibility that she might end up in a storm at night way out in the Gulf Stream sharing a single life preserver.

The worst of it, Fay told Wally, is that her mom, who was terrified of pretty much everything except certain brands of bottled water, had told her maybe three hundred times that she was crazy to take this assignment, that she could get killed out there, and now Fay would have to admit she was right, and if they ever got back, Fay would never hear the end of it.

If they ever got back.

Then it was quiet for a while, and then Wally, trying to keep things upbeat, pointed out that, hey, this was kind of like the end of
Titanic,
with him as Leonardo DiCaprio and Fay as whatshername. Then they had spent nearly fifteen minutes trying to remember what whatshername's name was, and they couldn't, but they made a pact that they would not drown until they did.

And then Wally said, speaking of Leonardo DiCaprio, he needed to explain what had been going on back there on the ship when he'd stopped her in the casino and started blithering about Leonardo DiCaprio. He told her he'd been rehearsing it so he'd have something witty to say to her. He told her he'd felt like the world's biggest moron. She told him, to be honest, she barely remembered it, because she was thinking about reaching her mom. But in truth she did remember it, and found herself being amazed that this man, floating out here with her now, was the same person as the guitar player back there on the ship.

Then she was quiet for a while, and Wally asked if she was OK, and she said she was feeling cold, and her head hurt. And Wally wanted more than anything to be able to do something for her, but he couldn't think of anything, so he asked if she'd like him to sing, and she said OK, and he said what did she want to hear, and she said did he know any show tunes, and he said as a matter of fact he did, and in fact in the eleventh grade he had played the part of Professor Harold Hill in the Bougainvillea High School production of
The Music Man.
And she said was he kidding, because that was her favorite musical, and he said no he wasn't kidding, and he began to sing it to her, song by song, because he knew them all. Sometimes she listened quietly; sometimes she sang softly along, taking the part of Marian the Librarian. They sang together when they got to the most beautiful love song ever written, “Goodnight My Someone.”

But mostly Wally did the singing, sang the whole thing, his mouth close to Fay's ear, so she could hear the words over the sound of the dark waves.

 

TED HAD THE ENGINES RUNNING, FINALLY. IT had taken him quite a while to figure out that, in addition to turning two keys, you had to press two buttons. But the engines were running, and now he was working on the controls. There were four levers, and he had figured out that two of them were throttles and two of them were like gearshifts, making the boat go forward or backward. He had decided forward was the way to go, but which direction? This brought him to the compass. He wanted to go back to Florida. That would be . . . OK, Florida was on the
East
Coast, so . . . no, wait a minute . . .

Johnny was having his own problems with the radio. Not turning it on: It was already on. His problem was deciding what channel to use. The Coast Guard cocktail waitress had told him to use a specific channel, but he couldn't remember which one, and neither could Ted. The radio had been on channel 24, so Johnny had spent a while on that, saying “Mayday! Mayday!! Coast Guard!” into the microphone, and then waiting, hearing only static. So after a few minutes, he'd turned to channel 25 and tried again. Static. He was up to channel 28 now.

That's what was happening on the bridge of Tark's boat—Ted looking at the compass; Johnny listening to static; Tina passing gas—when Jock's face appeared in the ladderway, smiling hugely.

“You find some clothes?” said Tina.

“A pair of shorts,” said Jock. “But I found something else.”

“What?” said Tina. Ted and Johnny were also watching now.

“You are not gonna believe this,” said Jock.

“What?” said Ted.

“OK,” said Jock. “The room down here, with the puke? Well, there's a room in front of it. And guess what I found in there?”

“WHAT?” said Tina, Ted, and Johnny simultaneously. By way of answer, Jock pulled up his right hand and plopped something on the bridge floor. He pulled his hand away, and there was a wad, a big wad, of fifty-dollar bills.

“Oh, man,” said Johnny.

“There's two bags of it downstairs,” said Jock.

“What?” said Ted.

“Two bags filled with money,” said Jock. “BIG bags.”

“Holy
shit,
” said Ted, who suddenly found himself thinking, once again, about his 1989 Mazda.

“And that ain't all,” said Jock.

The other three said nothing, only watched as Jock pulled up his left hand and plopped something else on the floor: a brick of what would prove, soon, to be very high-grade marijuana.

 

ABOARD THE
EXTRAVAGANZA OF THE SEAS,
THINGS were degenerating. The staff had figured out that there was some kind of trouble, especially when the cashier's cage shutter came down. But the staff knew that strange things sometimes happened on this ship, and that it was not wise to ask questions. So for quite a while the bartenders, barmaids, and croupiers tried to carry on as normal. And for quite a while most of the gamblers, who generally ignored everything except whatever game they were playing and whatever drink they were drinking, were oblivious.

Eventually, however, it became obvious that something was seriously wrong. By 11:30 P.M., the gambling was supposed to be stopped as the ship got inside the three-mile limit. But it was well past midnight now, and the casinos had not been ordered closed. In fact, Manny Arquero, who always issued that order, and most of the other orders, was nowhere to be seen.

What to do? Some of the croupiers decided to shut down their tables, but with the cashier's cage closed, they had nowhere to take their cash, their chips. Some of the passengers were loudly complaining that they wanted to cash in their winnings. Others were hungry. Many were getting tired, and wanted to go to bed. People were pulling out their cell phones to call Miami and see what was going on, but everybody saw the same message: NO SERVICE.

The passengers hounded the ship employees, but nobody knew anything except Mara Purvis and Joe Sarmino, and they had agreed it was better not to tell anybody about the men with the guns, for fear of starting a panic. One passenger, a nurse, was telling people an alarming story about being grabbed by two guys—she couldn't find them now—who claimed that the captain of the ship had been shot. A group of men decided to go up to the bridge, but they found their way blocked by a steel door with an electronic lock, and nobody knew the code. They pounded on the door, and there was no answer.

One reason there was no answer was that Arnie and Phil did not hear as well as they used to.

The other reason was that both of them had dozed off on their feet. Neither had let go of the wheel, but now, as the ship continued to surge forward in the night, the moans of the injured captain were mixed with the snores of the men at the helm.

“YOU OK?” SAID WALLY. “FAY?” HE NUDGED HER, then again, harder. She jerked her head up, startled.

“Sorry,” he said. “I just wanted to make sure you're not, I mean, you're . . .”

“I'm cold,” she said.

“Just keep talking,” he said. “Remember, it's Leonardo DiCaprio who freezes to death. That's me. You'll be fine. You're whatshername.”

He was hoping to get a smile, but Fay just said, “I'm cold,” and closed her eyes again.

“It'll be light soon,” said Wally. “They'll come find us, the Coast Guard. I mean, the rest of the Coast Guard. When it gets light, somebody will come.”

He looked at the sky, which was still pitch black, and in his mind he came as close as he had ever come to praying.

TARK'S BOAT WAS NOW HEADED DUE EAST, THE consensus of the brains on the bridge being that this was how to reach the East Coast. Of course, the brains on the bridge were not functioning normally. Even with the window open, the smell of cannabis mixed with flatulence hung heavy in the air.

Ted was at the wheel. Jock was sitting on the floor, staring at the pile of fifty-dollar bills. Tina was asleep with her head in his lap. Johnny was by the radio, currently tuned to channel 47, but he had given up on reaching anybody, and was concentrating now on making rhythmic clicks by pressing the microphone button.

After a full half-hour of silence, Ted turned to Johnny and said, “OK, I think I see your point.”

Johnny looked up from the microphone. “What point?” he said.

“About the Hawaiians,” said Ted.

Johnny looked at Ted for a full ten seconds.

“Well it's about damn time,” he said.

 

AS THE FIRST LIGHT OF DAWN REACHED PALM Beach, Wilfredo Hernandez, trimmers in hand, worked his way along a thick hedge, expertly snipping off the occasional protruding sprig, leaving a perfectly flat wall of green. This was his favorite time at the Breakers, the historic, elegant hotel where he worked as a groundskeeper. It was cool and still relatively quiet, as most of the guests were asleep.

Of course, today the sea was rough, with the big waves from Tropical Storm Hector crashing against the seawall about twenty yards away. But the sky was clearing fast, and it would be a nice day—sunny, but with enough wind to keep it from feeling too hot. Wilfredo paused and looked out to sea, admiring the sunrise, and . . .

Wilfredo dropped his trimmers, turned, and ran toward the hotel, frantically rehearsing the English words he would need to tell somebody what was coming.