by J. A. Kerley
“Sandhill?” Ryder whispered.
“He’s on his own,” Nautilus said.
Chapter 56
Sandhill stood on the walkway outside the bridge as the blazing sun rose from a waking sea, the layered cirrus like contrails of fire. The breeze sang through the antennae atop the bridge. To the stern, the lights of Mobile had vanished beneath the horizon like expended candles.
A formally attired Mattoon appeared at Sandhill’s side. He set his suited elbows against the railing and leaned forward, as relaxed as a man on a 1930s Cunard liner. Far below, the green water churned and foamed.
“You’re looking well, Mr Sandhill.”
Sandhill held up his arm, the floppy cuffs reaching to his knuckles. “Guess I’m looking as well as can be expected. I take it there weren’t a lot of fashions to choose from?”
Atwan jabbed Sandhill with the gun. “Hands at side. Keep there.”
Sandhill flicked his head at his guard. “Is this guy going to wave that piece during the ceremony? I can’t think of a better way to scare my daughter.”
Mattoon turned to Atwan. “I see nothing wrong with keeping the weapon beneath your jacket, Tenzel. We don’t want my beloved to remember this occasion with anything but unblemished joy.”
Atwan grunted and reluctantly jammed the pistol into his waistband, pulling the dark blazer tight to cover it. A small brown man in a white uniform appeared as if summoned by telepathy. He bowed slightly.
“All is in readiness, Mr Mattoon.”
“Thank you, Mr Ghobali. Come inside, Mr Sandhill, Tenzel.”
Sandhill fell in behind Mattoon, entering the bridge. A garden of floral arrangements was set amidst gauges and instruments and electronic screens. Lilacs and carnations interlaced through conduits overhead. A brilliant white carpet ran from a closed door at the back of the bridge to the center of the room. Mattoon reached to a microphone on the wall, keyed it. Sandhill heard the words booming outside, the public-address system echoing across the ship.
“Good morning. This is Mr Mattoon addressing you from the bridge. A very special event is about to occur, a ceremony of joy. Crews currently at the stations will remain so. Those not working are invited to the mess for champagne and hors d’oeuvres, working crews may partake at shift’s end. Thank you, gentlemen. I ask your good wishes extend to my life’s new companion …” he paused, and his words gained the smallest inflection of command. “… as I know they will.” Mattoon hung up the mike and positioned himself at the carpet’s terminus, gesturing Sandhill beside him.
“Remember your vow,” he whispered. “Bless this union and you will leave life quietly and with dignity. Anything else, and your screams will make a Torquemada faint.”
Sandhill nodded, flexed his fingers, tapped them against his legs, and waited.
Sampanong entered the room from the side, dressed in full regalia and holding a bible. He positioned himself beside Mattoon.
The opening strains of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony began playing from the speakers in the overhead. Sandhill heard a moan seep from Mattoon as he stared at the closed door across the room.
“… seven, eight …”
I was scared. The man named Oh Golly had told me to wait for the music, count to ten, open the door and walk across a rug to the people at the other end.
“… nine, ten …”
I could feel my heart when I opened the door. I could feel something else, too. Something felt funny under my dress.
I stepped onto a rug as white as snow. The room was gray and metal, with windows. At the far end of the room was my daddy, the Gumbo King. Beside him was a man with pointy hair and a face that looked made of rocks. He had on a black suit with a white flower on it. The scary bald man was by the pointy haired man. The man named Oh Golly was there, and a man in captain hat.
I took some steps. It hurt to walk. The man with the pointy hair was staring at me. His teeth looked like a smile but different somehow. It made my feet stop.
My toes felt wet.
I looked at my daddy and he nodded, like I was to come closer. He was going to lift me in the air like giving me away. He told me don’t be scared when he did it.
I started to walk again. Someone whispered the word Blood. It was Oh Golly.
I kept walking.
Oh Golly ran over and looked down behind me. I looked and saw red dots on the rug. Then the pointy haired man ran over and looked down. He yanked up my dress to my knees and blood was running down from above.
The man screamed, “WHO DID THIS!”
The scary man ran over and bent down low to look. I saw my daddy move real fast and his foot kicked the scary man’s face. Blood flew in the air. He fell on the rug. My daddy grabbed the pointy haired man and pulled him back hard, so his head hit the metal wall and bounced like a ball.
“Knife, Jacy. Knife!”
Back in the metal box my daddy had taped a knife on the leg by my panties. He said to be real careful so the point didn’t stab me, but it poked me when I was stamping my foot to get the awful man from the bathroom so he wouldn’t see it.
“Knife, Jacy!” Daddy’s hand was grabbing by my face.
I pulled up my dress and peeled the knife off and gave to his hand. Oh Golly and the man in the captain hat looked real scared and ran out the door. When I looked back my daddy was grabbing the pointy haired man from behind and holding the knife at his neck. His face was purple and he grabbed at my daddy’s arm.
“All we want is off, Mattoon,” my daddy was saying. “You can be gone and free forever. Or you can die today.”
“Yes, of course,” the man was saying. “Don’t hurt me. Please don’t hurt me.”
“Have your crew lower motorized lifeboats, Mattoon. Order them to stay back, no weapons. You’re coming with us. When we get sufficient distance, we’ll put you in a boat, you can come back to this floating perversion. Do you understand me?”
The knife in my daddy’s hand was digging into the man neck. It was bleeding.
“Yes, of course. Please. You’re hurting me. Please.”
“All right, Mattoon, in a minute we’re gonna samba outside and you’ll start giving orders.”
“Yes. Whatever you say.”
“First we’re gonna sashay over to your buddy on the floor and get his gun. I need a decent weapon. Jacy!”
“What?”
“Stand over by the table until we get outside. I’ll call, you come out, right?”
“Yes sir.”
My daddy moved the man toward the scary bald man on the floor. They were almost there when something bad happened. The vase on the table by my head exploded. Pieces flew everywhere.
I looked and saw the scary man still on the floor but pointing a big black gun at me. I could look into its eye.
I heard my daddy whisper a bad word.
The scary man stood up and made his hand get tight on the gun. My daddy closed his eyes. I saw his arm get looser on the pointy haired man’s neck.
“Gutshoot Sandhill, Tenzel,” the man started yelling. “Gutshoot the bastard.”
The scary man moved the gun toward the Gumbo King. I saw the scary man smile and lick his tongue across his lips like a lizard.
I heard a strange sound.
Chapter 57
Rrrrrrrrraaaaaaaahhhhhhhhheeeeeeeee …
The sound was like a lion crossed with a siren, Sandhill thought, his face yanked to the door by the insane howl. Atwan turned to the door. Mattoon. Confusion in all eyes.
Rrrrrrrrhhhhhhhhhhhhrrrrrraaaaaaaaaaaaa …
Rose Desmond exploded into the room like a rabid bull. Atwan whipped his pistol toward Desmond, but it fired uselessly into the floor as Desmond’s shoulder hit Atwan like a cannonball, blasting him sideways into the bulkhead beside Sandhill. Desmond didn’t stop, but crashed through a chart table and into the side bulkhead.
Atwan stumbled upright, stunned, shaking his head to recover and moving the pistol up. Sandhill wheeled in front of the man, his hand jabbing the
knife high, slashing across Atwan’s eyes. He howled and fired a blind shot that exploded through a side porthole.
Sandhill swung the knife low. Slipped it through abdomenal fascia. Pulled hard upward as he stepped away.
Pink loops of intestine began to cascade from Atwan. The gun dropped to the floor. Atwan followed, kneeling in his innards before dropping face-first into the viscera and appearing to swim in them for several seconds before his engine shut down.
Sandhill scrabbled under the chart table for Atwan’s fallen gun as footsteps thundered up the metal stairs to the bridge. Sandhill yelled for Jacy to crawl beneath a desk. He crouched behind the table as two crewmen ran inside waving weapons like B-movie cowboys.
Sandhill lifted his badge, yelled “Police!” and two-tapped the lead attacker’s chest. The man dropped like a sack of wet flour. His companion screamed and fell, clawing his way back out the door. Sandhill let him escape, heard his footsteps scramble away. Sandhill grabbed the PA microphone.
“This is the FBI,” he said, his voice reverberating throughout the ship. “Everyone on deck with your hands high.” He paused, keyed the mike. “FBI operatives, hold your stations. US Navy at Pensacola reports helicopter strike force arriving in minutes.”
Sandhill covered the door with the gun. Was it enough to confuse the crew? He hoped the man who’d run was now telling others about a badge-clutching lawman at the helm. They’d also heard the potent “FBI” over the PA, hopefully suggesting the shields were in charge if not in sight.
Believing the atmospheric cavalry was on the way might ice the cake.
It was silent until Sandhill heard a roar from port. He saw an inflatable cutting the water, moving away, a dozen men bouncing within the craft. Thank God for cowardice, Sandhill thought, watching the craft shrink in the distance.
There was no dark-suited man aboard the inflatable.
Sandhill studied Rose Desmond, sprawled on the floor, eyes focused either inside or on something at a great distance. Spittle was dripping down his chin. His clothes and skin were a motley of crusted blood. His legs were as loose as a rag doll, blue sneakers splayed on the floor. Sandhill stripped the belt from the dead Atwan and bound Rose’s arms behind his back.
Sandhill slipped Jacy into a closet at the rear of the bridge. He bent and kissed her head. “I’ll be back.”
Mattoon’s neck wasn’t bleeding heavily, but enough to leave a trail. Sandhill tracked the drips to a suite of rooms on the level below the bridge. The trail led to a back bedroom. After five minutes of cautious searching, Sandhill found the ship owner’s hiding place.
“I figure we’re about forty miles from land, Mr Mattoon,” Sandhill estimated, prone on the floor, steadying the gun at the figure quivering beneath the canopy bed. “Why don’t you breast stroke out from under there. You’ll need the practice.”
Chapter 58
Sandhill walked from his bedroom buttoning the vest Marie had crafted for the day: Purple velvet embellished with gold brocade. He winked across the room at Ryder. “Setting up Nautilus as already digging the dirt on Ducky was genius. You guys broke him open and out squirted a psychopath.”
Ryder leaned back in the chair and pulled on a beer. “What about Clay’s sentence? Accessory in Squill’s death, you think?”
“Clay’ll cop a plea by singing, but still draw heavy time in the iron-bar Hilton. Where it gets strange is muscle-boy. Roosevelt Desmond seems to remember nothing. Can’t do much for the memory circuits to have a nine millimeter parked in your skull.”
“A skull hard as yours, I guess.”
Sandhill slipped on his crown, canted it to a rakish angle. “Wasn’t his skull that stopped the bullet. It was his arm. When Atwan fired, Rose instinctively threw his arms out. The bullet went in at his palm and popped out above the elbow. Whap. Smacked him right between the eyes. But after plowing through all that muscle, the bullet lacked the oomph to penetrate the cranium. It stuck halfway through.”
Ryder shook his head in disbelief. “Then he came around and headed for the Petite Angel. A man on a mission.”
“Climbed the stern rungs with one arm, Ryder. And a bullet in his noggin.”
“You really sat beside Rose in the crapper?”
Sandhill grabbed a beer from the refrigerator. “I saw his blue shoes under the divider and thought he was a crewman. I figure he hid out, wondering what to do until Mattoon’s announcement on the PA boomed through the ship. It pulled Rose to the bridge. He must have been right outside when Atwan shot the vase. It set Rose off and he came charging through the door.”
“Must have been a sight to see.”
“I’ll hear that sound in my nightmares, Ryder: Rose Desmond screaming through the door like a banshee on PCP. Bulldozed Atwan down and ran right into a wall. Bam! Just laid there like he’d spent everything he had.”
Ryder furrowed his brow. “He was trying to recapture Jacy, right? Or could someone like that actually …” Ryder let the words trail off.
“A rescue?” Sandhill shrugged. “I’m going to believe he’d had a change of heart. We’ll never know, but it costs nothing, and makes me feel good.”
The door below opened and Marie yelled up the stairs. “You boys joining the party or are you gonna stay up there and be heroes all day?”
Sandhill nodded toward the door. “Let’s go, Ryder. Not every day a man watches his daughter turn nine.”
They headed downstairs, Sandhill in the lead. He stopped midway and turned to Ryder. “I’m glad Nautilus came to the party. He’s staying on the force?”
“Nailing Duckworth gave him new wind.”
Sandhill started back down the steps. Ryder said, “Early on, Harry told me to watch you. I took it to mean you weren’t to be trusted.”
Sandhill paused. Frowned. “That so?”
“I misunderstood. What he meant was watch and learn.”
A sign on the door of the restaurant said Private Party, Open at 4 p.m. Chairs and tables had been pushed aside at the rear and a dozen children played Twister. Etta James poured from the sound system.
Ryder looked to a nearby table and saw Nike studying the children, Nautilus studying Nike, Marie studying Nautilus. Ryder winced and headed over to distract someone, not sure who.
The front door jingled open. Norma Philips entered warily, a brown-bagged bottle jutting from her purse.
“Is this a private party?”
Sandhill ambled over, took her hand. “I sent you an invite, remember?”
“I thought it might be a mistake, given your views on politicians.”
“I’m mellowing in my dotage. What’s in the sack?”
Philips produced a bottle of Taittinger champagne. Sandhill’s eyes widened. “What’re we celebrating?”
“I just talked to Bidwell. Desmond’s hidden computer drive led to Maya Ledbetter. She was hidden in the guest house of some millionaire pervert in Ohio.”
“Maya, alive in Ohio? My God. How was she? I mean …”
“There’s good news there, Mr Sandhill. The man hadn’t touched her, still salivating or whatever. Maya’s mother and aunt are flying to pick Maya up now. I made sure the city bought the flight. The poor girl’s going to need counseling, but …”
“But Maya’s alive, Mayor. That’s more than LaShelle, or Darla, who was—”
Philips closed her eyes. “I heard. Just tossed into the ocean, according to the captured crewmen.”
The two shared a long silence until Philips looked at the group of children laughing, contorting, falling, rising to play again.
“Look at the innocence, Mr Sandhill. Sometimes the world feels a bright and hopeful place. Then a rock moves aside and something like the Desmonds or Walter Mattoon crawls out.” She paused. “Bidwell also told me that Mattoon’s body washed ashore this morning. Guess he jumped overboard, right?”
Sandhill walked to the front window and studied the blue sky through the bright scrollwork of his new sign. “And the sea rejected the poison like vomit, p
urging itself on the white sands.”
Philips said, “Coleridge? Homer?”
He turned to her and winked. “Sandhill. So how’s the election coming now that Runion’s ties to the scummy dealings are front-page news?”
“I jumped a couple points in the polls,” Philips deadpanned.
“How many?”
“Around thirty-seven. Which reminds me, when I’m elected, I’ll be in a position to make some changes. I’d like them to include you.”
Sandhill watched Jacy skip across the floor in her new Marie-fashioned crown, a smaller and less battered version of Sandhill’s. Jacy snatched a cupcake from a table and shot a wink at Sandhill.
“I don’t know about tomorrow, Mayor. There’s too much yesterday to deal with yet.”
“I kind of figured that.” Philips reached into her pocket and produced a sheet of paper, shaking it open and slipping on her reading glasses. “But just in case, I’ve spoken with the brass and they’re prepared to offer you …”
The lady that just came in the door is the mayor. She’s talking to the Gumbo King. I bet the mayor is asking him how to do things the right way, the King way. He’ll probably say what I heard him tell Aunt Nike the other night: Sometimes it’s hard but you just keep believing in yourself.
I’m going to live with the Gumbo King. I’ll live with Aunt Nike, too. I can switch back and forth when I want.
I started out calling him Daddy, but something about it seemed weird. I think it seemed weird to him, too—when I called him by it, he frowned and crunched his teeth together. The way it came out is I call him King, he calls me Princess. That feels just right to both of us.
Like walking through a book that turned real.
Acknowledgments
To my son, John, whose Father’s Day gift of a homemade placemat sparked the book. To all of my family, who deal with my writing-generated preoccupations with grace and wit.