Fishermen's Court

by Andrew Wolfendon

  An urgent thought stabs at me immediately, one that might make the difference between life and death. These guys are most certainly going to body-search me. I’m surprised they haven’t done so already. When they do, they will find my knife and my burner phone. I must not allow that to happen. Those items might be Jeannie’s and my only hope of getting out of here alive. These wankers are well aware of my regular phone—they’ve been using it to spy on me for days—but I must think of a way to hang onto the burner. And the knife.

  I survey the room and once again call on my gamer mind. Another puzzle to be solved, Game Boy, so solve it. Fast. Put the brain in overdrive.

  The room is bare, so there are few props for me to employ.

  Shifting my ass, I notice the bench padding slides a bit on the wood surface. It is not glued down to the bench but is attached in sections by ties.

  A rough idea hatches in my skull, and a plan begins to assemble itself. Well, “plan” is too generous a word for it—call it the early rudiments of a plan-like thing. Three steps must occur in sequence, I realize: One, I must remove my knife and burner phone from my body and hide them. Two, Troop and company must search me. Three, I must return the hidden items to my body after I’ve been searched.

  If I can pull those steps off, I will gain a potentially critical edge.

  Easier thought than done.

  There is only one possible hiding spot for my knife and phone. I’ll need Jeannie’s help. Working in our favor is the fact that Jeannie and I can communicate complex messages with the subtlest of eye movements. I meet her gaze and, with a nano-shift of my irises, signal her to get up and walk to the nearest porthole. Amazingly, she picks up on my cue. Without hesitation, she stretches, stands up, and strolls toward the window. The three captors’ heads turn and goggle at her; clearly, she’s not supposed to be wandering around freestyle like this.

  I seize the momentary distraction to slip the knife out of its shin-strap and slide it under the seat cushion of the bench, below my rear.

  Mrs. Bean clears her throat at Jeannie, who turns with a Who, me? look.

  “You didn’t tie us up,” says Jeannie, “so I assumed we were free to move about the cabin.”

  “You assumed incorrectly.” Mrs. B. tosses her head toward the bench.

  Jeannie returns to her seat, but her brief exchange with Mrs. B. has bought me enough time to slip the burner phone, too, from my pocket and under the seat cushion. Both items are pretty thin; I hope they won’t make a telltale lump in the cushion when and if I have to stand.

  Phase One complete. Easy sneezy.

  Now for Phase Two. I want them to search me. I want them to find my main phone, find the Velcro strap on my shin, and come to the conclusion that I am carrying nothing of threat or consequence. Once they’ve searched me, I see no reason why they’ll want to do so a second time. That is my hope.

  The Beans seem to be in no hurry to do anything at the moment. Mr. B. is checking his phone for messages. Mrs. B. is sitting eerily still and blank-faced. Leah (or whatever her real name is) is working on a laptop. My sense is they’re awaiting word from someone.

  I need to engage them, get them talking. Try to make something happen.

  I address Mrs. Bean first. “So, did you bring your lopper along today or will you be resorting to the fine selection of nautical torture devices available to today’s enterprising and psychologically disturbed hit-person?”

  Does she crack a tiny smile? “I guess that’s for us to know and you to find out, Mr. Carroll,” she replies in a not-unfriendly tone.

  “I hear three-hooked fishing lures can be used in a number of inventive ways.”

  “Is that right?”

  She seems to have let her guard down a bit. Maybe because she is holding all the cards, and I’m holding a giant heap of fuck-all. Good. I’ll press on.

  “I hate to admit it,” I say, “but I bought that you were a dude. The beard worked. Was it super-realistic or was I just too dense to notice it came from Halloween City?”

  “The mind believes what it is cued and predisposed to believe. Gender stereotypes tend to work in my favor.”

  “Yeah, most chicks wouldn’t lay into the lopper work the way you do.” I’m deliberately being a dick, just to throw some sparks. “Anyway, the beard sure fooled me.”

  “It wasn’t designed to fool you, Mr. Carroll. It was a simple precautionary measure necessitated by the risks of my trade.”

  “Which is what, exactly?”

  I receive no answer. “So let me guess the pecking order here,” I say to Mrs. Bean. “You’re the crew foreman and chief enforcer.” I then project my voice toward Mr. Bean. “You’re the muscle and mop-up guy, right? Do you get paid for the hours you spend doing power curls? If not, I can speak to the union steward.”

  I glance at Jeannie and she shoots me a warning look like, why are you antagonizing these people?

  “Which one of you is the computer hacker-slash-‘literary forger’?” I go on. Trotting out the term Enzo used doesn’t trigger any noticeable reaction. “That must be you, Leah, or whatever your name is. I’m guessing you were the person working at my computer while I was tragically attempting to end my life in my parents’ kitchen. Kudos on that suicide note. That was some top-notch writing work. Natural talent alone or did you have some software help?”

  At this, “Leah” does look a bit surprised. “You’re not quite as dumb as you let on.”

  “Close but not quaahhht,” I reply in a dumbass hillbilly voice. “But I thaink I done figgered out what all y’all been up to since the day you like-to kilt me.” I drop the shtick, disappointing no one. “Once you realized you’d fucked up and I was in the hospital, not the morgue, you came back to my house. You deleted the suicide note from my computer, tidied up the mess. Things were more complicated now, though. You didn’t know whether I’d seen the note or talked to anyone about it. So you couldn’t just try to kill me again. You needed to find out what I knew, who I might be talking to, what I was planning to do.”

  Trooper Danielle raises her brow in a show of amused tolerance. I go on. I’m piecing this together as I go, but it feels right. “You went to work on my phone. You planted a file called ASAN20 and a microchip on it.” Both women’s eyes flash surprise at this. “I know you’ve been tracking my location since I left my house in Wentworth, listening to my conversations, reading my texts and emails, watching my online activity, deleting files, blocking phone calls. You obviously sent those fake texts from Jeannie.”

  They’re letting me ramble; they must want to know how much I’ve figured out. For my part, though, there’s method to my madness. I hope I’m not getting too cute for my own good when I say, “Here’s the thing, though. You don’t know how long I’ve been aware my phone was hijacked. You don’t know how long I’ve just been feeding you what I want you to hear, while conducting my real business—like talking to the police—on a burner phone.”

  Trooper Danielle sighs through her teeth. It’s an annoyed sigh that says, You’re bluffing but, fine, you’ve forced my hand. She catches Choke’s eye and head-nods toward me.

  Choke approaches me. “You, up,” he orders.

  I obey. He starts the pat-down I’ve been angling for. He finds my regular phone immediately and tosses it to Leah, who starts examining it. “Oh, and here’s hers,” he says, taking Jeannie’s phone from his pocket and lobbing it, too, to Leah. “I went back to the bar and got it.”

  The accent: Brooklyn definitely, not Boston.

  Continuing his body-search of me, Choke finds my wallet and the small black rock Danny gave me. He grunts and for, no explainable reason, plunks the rock into my hand, letting me keep it. Must be Danny’s mojo at wor
k. Patting down my leg, Choke finds the Velcro strap around my shin. “What’s this?” he demands.

  “I had a knife. ...Past tense.”

  He removes the strap from my leg.

  “Or maybe,” I tease, “that was where I hid my burner.”

  “Okay, asshole, you asked for it.” He commences another pat-down of my body, only this time it’s more of a smack-down. Each rough slap is designed to inflict pain. He takes particular relish in slamming my gonads with the heel of his hand.

  “Easy,” warns Mrs. B—a reminder that, for some reason, I’m not to be treated too roughly.

  He shoves me into my seat and pulls my shoes off, searching them as well.

  Good. This is precisely the kind of body search I was hoping for. Minus the gonad-slamming thing. I want them to be satisfied that I’m cleaner than a Mormon sit-com. I don’t want them to have any reason to check me again.

  Search complete. Phase Two down.

  Now, for Phase Three. Can I somehow sneak the items back into my clothing?

  A text message comes through on Mrs. Bean’s phone. “All right, time to move you two joy-birds upstairs,” she says.

  Fuck.

  Chapter 40

  Troop and company rise and gather their things. They look expectantly at Jeannie and me, waiting for us to stand and accompany them out of the room. It appears I have no choice but to leave the knife and burner phone behind.

  Jeannie seems to intuit my predicament. She stares at Troop, wide-eyed, and says, “Are you going to kill us now?”

  Choke gestures impatiently, come on, stand up, let’s go.

  Jeannie repeats, “Are you going to kill us? ...That’s what’s happening, isn’t it? You’re taking us somewhere to kill us! WHY? What have I done? Why am I even here?”

  “Enough of the theatrics, Ms. Gallagher,” says Madam Troop. “Let’s move it along.”

  “No!” Jeannie shouts, a quaver of panic in her voice. “I don’t want to die!” I think she’s creating a distraction for my benefit, but I’m not absolutely sure she isn’t freaking out for real. Maybe it’s some of both. “Please, no! I’m not ready to die! I have a daughter. She needs me! Please!”

  Choke grabs her by the shirtsleeve, yanks her to her feet. “Come on, lady, let’s go.”

  Jeannie jerks her arm from him with a sharp “NO!” She starts backing toward the far end of the room, away from the stairs. The three captors close in on her as she shrieks, “NO! NO! NO!” over and over in authentic-sounding existential terror.

  I take advantage of the distraction. I grab the phone from under the cushion and slip it into my left pants pocket, lightning fast, then grab the knife. Choke has my leg strap, so the knife will have to go into my right pocket. It’s hard to angle it into my pants while sitting down, but I don’t dare stand up and draw anyone’s gaze. I slide it in as best I can, blade first. Shit. It doesn’t fit. The handle sticks out of the pocket.

  Jeannie is kneeling on the floor now, wailing, “I don’t want to die!” like John Turturro in that haunting woodland murder scene in Miller’s Crossing. It is a terrifying spectacle.

  I try to force the point of the knife through the bottom of my pocket, but for some reason it snags. Won’t poke through. What are these pants made of, woven titanium?

  Jeannie shouts, “NO! NO! NO!”

  “SHUT UP!” Choke orders, standing over her. He produces a black oblong object from his pocket. “Do you know what this is, lady?” I do; it’s a stun gun. “Do you want me to use it?”

  “I don’t want to die!” screams Jeannie in reply.

  “Do you want me to use it?” he repeats, moving the weapon closer to her.

  Jeannie “comes to her senses,” shouts, “No!” and thrusts her hands up in surrender. She lets Choke jerk her to her feet. He turns her body toward the stairs.

  The knife, the knife. Why won’t it poke through?

  I give it a hard shove and the blade finally pops through the fabric with an audible fup. I feel it slice my skin as it shoots down the inside of my pant leg and stops at the handle. Shit. That did some damage. Well, at least the knife is hidden, for the moment.

  Troop and company surround Jeannie and march her toward a doorway to the right of the steps. Choke gestures for me to follow.

  I comply. I don’t know how badly I’ve cut myself. It’s not the injury I’m worried about; I’ll live. It’s the blood. If a red stain starts blossoming on my pants, I’m in deep guano.

  I place my palms on my thighs as if I’m doing the docile, hands-down walk, but I’m really trying to hold the wound closed and hide any blood that might appear. The positioning of my hands looks slightly awkward, but Troop and company are giving most of their attention to Jeannie, who resists every step as if she’s in mortal terror. Which she probably is.

  We are led down a corridor with windows revealing a pair of staterooms that look like five-star hotel rooms. We come to a T-junction. Chokehold ushers me down a short corridor to the left; the two women escort Jeannie to the right. Choke points to a doorway. I step through it.

  It’s a bathroom, probably the most aggressively elegant one I have ever set foot in. The floor, tub, toilet, bidet, shower chamber (“stall” doesn’t do it justice), and sink are dark green marble—you’d swear they were cut from a single piece. The fixtures are polished brass, the cabinetry cherry wood buffed to a gemstone finish.

  “Get out of those filthy fucking clothes and take a shower,” orders Choke. “Then get dressed.” He points to the cherry wardrobe wherein clean clothes presumably reside.

  This is not what I foresaw happening next, I must say. I guess it’s thoughtful that they want me tidied up for my own execution, but really, they shouldn’t have.

  Chokehold stands near the door, hands on hips. He’s waiting for me to disrobe, maybe even to hand him my clothes. No, no, no. That mustn’t happen.

  “I have a thing about undressing in front of other dudes,” I say, still shielding my wounded thigh from view. “Traumatic gym class experience.”

  Choke doesn’t seem to appreciate my humor. “Boo fuckin’ hoo,” he replies. But he doesn’t fight me on it. He points to a tasseled gold rope dangling from a brass eye in the wall and says, “Ring when you’re done,” then leaves the room. Yup, you can actually ring for service on the S.S. Ostentatious. With a gold fucking rope, no less.

  Hoping there are no hidden cameras in here, I take the knife and phone out of my pockets and hide them in a cabinet. Danny’s rock too. I strip off my clothes—there is indeed a bloodstain on the pants—and toss them into the trash. I don’t want anyone seeing them.

  I examine the knife-cut on my leg. It’s two or three inches long; can’t tell how deep. Steady stream of blood, though.

  After I shower in the outrageously soft water, the cut is still bleeding. I press several layers of toilet paper onto it, hoping that will stanch the blood-flow for now.

  I open the cherry-wood wardrobe. It’s empty. Very funny, fellas. Guess I’ll be promenading al fresco this evening. Eventually I notice some inset drawers, with no hardware on them, on the left side of the wardrobe. Within them I find some new men’s underwear, a folded pair of chino-style pants, and a blue Oxford shirt. In a bottom cubby area is a pair of boat moccasins, which I guess I am supposed to wear sans socks, as is custom for the island-hopping set.

  I don the clothes. Luckily, the chinos are pretty loose-fitting. Recovering my stashed items from the cabinet, I stab the knife-blade through the bottom of the right pocket, hiding the knife pretty well. Now seems to be the right time to turn the burner phone on. Its battery power is at about sixty percent or so. I don’t know how fast this particular m
odel eats up the voltage, but I’ll just have to hope its power lasts long enough.

  Long enough for what, I have no bloody clue.

  I silence all the phone’s sounds, then scroll through the contacts list and select a name. I send a text: Call coming from me. Not a butt dial. Don’t speak. Leave phone on. Might be long. I then push Call and wait for the phone to be answered on the other end.

  Before I can confirm that the call has gone through, there’s a rap at the door. Darn, I didn’t even get to pull the gold rope and ring for Lurch.

  I slide the phone into my left pocket, mike facing outward, and hope for the best.

  “Come in,” I say.

  . . . . .

  I didn’t think my brain had any room left for surprise, but evidently I was in error. It’s not Lurch—i.e., Chokehold—who enters the bathroom. Nope, it’s a waiter in a short tuxedo jacket and bow tie. A slim Korean-American man, he says, “The pleasure of your company is requested for dinner. Would you please follow me?”

  Sure, why the fuck not?

  I follow the waiter down a corridor with a glass wall showing a stunning vista of the rocky northern side of Musqasset, then up a set of stairs. We pass a private dining room with a table made up for dinner and enter a small side room off the dining room. It features a couple of tables and a little bar. A cocktail lounge. Quaint. The waiter seats me there.

  “May I start you with a refreshment? Mr. Fischer will be joining you for dinner shortly.”

  Mr. Fischer. The name comes as a blow, but then again, not really. Simon Fischer. Who else’s boat could this be, after all? The Abelsen theory dries up and blows away like dander.

  “Water will be fine,” I reply to the waiter. I sit in silence on my brocaded chair as he fetches a glass and fills it with ice water.

  He scampers off. A few minutes later he returns, ushering Jeannie into the room. She’s wearing a simple black tennis-dress-type thing, presumably provided for her by “management.” Her eyes bug with terror.