Red Tide

by G. M. Ford

  Jim Sexton’s fingers trembled as he turned the volume knob all the way down and put the phone back in his pocket.

  44

  Harris pulled the spraying wand from the clips on the side of his backpack. He pushed the brass lever and sent a thin spray of disinfectant arcing out into the air. Satisfied, he directed his attention to Wesley and Nathan.

  “We gonna do the rails all the way down this side,” he said. “Then we gonna come back and we gonna do the staterooms along this side all the way to the middle of the ship. Damn near two hundred rooms. Gonna take us all night long.” Nathan answered with a grunt. Wesley was staring out over the water, toward Bainbridge Island and the Olympic Mountains beyond. “You hear me?” Harris asked.

  Wesley brought his eyes around and nodded. Nathan pulled his mask into place.

  Harris ran the sprayer along the top of the rail, sending a narrow mist down onto the metal. “Just like this,” he said. “Not too much, not too little.” He released the lever. “You’ll get the hang of it. You ready?”

  Wesley nodded again but didn’t move.

  “Let’s go, man,” Harris prodded. “Put your mask on.”

  Wesley used his left hand to slide the mask down over his face, then reached for his wand. He fumbled and failed to remove it from the trio of metal clips holding it fast to the side of the canister. A disgusted noise escaped from beneath Harris’s mask.

  McGruder, who’d been using the bathroom, strode around the corner and crossed the rear deck to join them. He retrieved his backback from the deck and shouldered it on.

  Harris watched as Wesley made another feeble attempt and then pushed the mask back up on his forehead. “Come on, man,” he mumbled. “Come on, man, what’s the matter wid you, man? What you got in your hand there?”

  Wesley pulled the hand behind his back. Harris looked at McGruder, who likewise removed his mask for a better view. “You see what he’s got there?” Harris asked again.

  “Lemme see,” McGruder said.

  Wesley pushed the hand even further behind his back. He had begun to shake his head when McGruder reached out and grabbed him by the arm.

  Behind his mask, Nathan’s breath caught in his throat. Wesley’s eyes were taking on that steely sheen they always got before he went crazy. Nathan shouted an admonition into his mask, but no one heard.

  Wesley growled and jerked his arm free. The violent movement sent McGruder’s arm reeling into space, where it banged against the bulkhead before flopping back to his side. Harris pointed. “Fucker’s got him a knife there,” he said.

  McGruder stepped forward. “What the hell’s the matter with you, man? You got no call to be walking around here with a shank.” He stuck out his hand. “Gimme that damn thing,” he demanded. When Wesley failed to move, he reached for his arm again.

  The movement was swift and nearly gentle. Looked like Wesley tapped him on the chest as a way of telling him to stand back. Like he had magic powers or something, because the tap stopped McGruder in his tracks, left him standing there feeling around on his chest with a look of astonishment etched on his face. And then the flower came in season.

  A red gardenia bloomed on the front of McGruder’s coveralls, small and wet in the center, before the circle widened and color began to spread across his narrow chest. He reached for Wesley again; his eyes were wide and his hands were red, as he pawed the air. Wesley stepped to the side and tapped him twice more. And then a third time as McGruder began to sink to his knees.

  Harris was quicker than he looked. Before McGruder hit the deck, he lifted his wand and sprayed Wesley full in the face keeping his fingers clutched around the brass lever…keeping the flow coming…filling Wesley’s eyes…soaking his hair with pine-scented disinfectant. Wesley staggered backward, rubbing his eyes, slashing at the air with the knife. Harris began to scream. “Help,” he cried. “Somebody help me.”

  “So you bring this crew of anything but Arabs across the Canadian border,” Corso was saying. “Lord knows they got their share of East Indians in B.C. so nobody ought to bat an eye. You make ’em out to be grad students at the U. You put ’em up in one of those perpetual rentals in the U District. Someplace where the residents change with the semesters. Someplace where unless they’ve got two heads, nobody’s gonna notice their comings and goings. You bring Bohannon along because he knows the area and because he’s got his own ax to grind.” Charly Hart gave a grudging nod.

  “Problem is…no matter how slick you set it up, you’re still working with amateurs.” The detective started to say something, but Corso waved him off. “Let’s face it, Hart, the world is not chock-full of people who’re willing to strap their asses to five hundred pounds of dynamite and then push the button. You gotta find some nut who thinks he’s going directly to heaven after the explosion.” Corso waved a disgusted hand. “You know, up there in the clouds with the seventy virgins and all that crap.”

  “Didn’t know you could still find that many virgins,” Charly Hart groused.

  “So you get your people in place,” Corso continued. “You pick a weekend when all the germ doctors in the world are in town for their annual symposium…exactly the kind of people you could reasonably blame for the kind of thing that happened in Bhopal, except they’re not the target. You’ve got something else in mind ’cause you know they’re gonna have the germ doctors guarded like the mint and you figure that while they’re expending their resources in one area you can wreak havoc with a bunch of amateurs in another.”

  “Under the radar.”

  “Exactly.”

  “Except.”

  “Except Bohannon gets antsy and wants to create a little havoc of his own.” The radio began to squawk again. Charly Hart leaned into the car and listened. Corso watched his expression change from boredom to confusion to concern.

  “Got some kind of disturbance down on Pier Thirty. Some maniac with a knife,” Hart said.

  “What’s on Pier Thirty?”

  “Cruise ships.”

  Charly Hart propelled himself off the seat. Banged his head hard on the doorframe. He rubbed his head as he scanned the street, looking for a driver. Corso read his mind. “I’ll drive,” he said.

  Hart shook his head. “Against regulations.”

  “You got a better idea?”

  Charly Hart was still massaging the top of his head when he threw himself back into the passenger seat. “For god’s sake don’t hit anything.”

  “Hey, hey,” the guy yelled. “Where in hell do you think you’re going?” Samuel stopped and looked around. He pointed out to the deserted street.

  Guy shook his head. “That suit’s company property,” he said. “Ain’t no way you’re leaving with the damn thing.”

  Samuel began pulling wildly at the Velcro, trying to extricate himself from the coveralls. Before he was sufficiently unfastened to free his shoulders, Paul jogged up to his side and put his lips close to Samuel’s ear. “We’ll leave quietly,” he said. “We’ll get back to the border.” The words seemed to have a calming effect. Samuel’s motions became more deliberate, his fingers less frenzied as he pulled the suit from his body, lifting his feet one at a time to pull the coveralls over his shoes. The guy sauntered out of his kiosk. “We don’t pay no partials,” he said. “You don’t finish your shift, you don’t see a dime.”

  “That’s all right,” said Paul, holding his coveralls out at arm’s length.

  The guy shook his head. “What?” he sneered. “You think I’m gonna return those to supply for ya?” He emitted a dirty laugh. “You wanna take them back…you get your own asses over there, and I’m not gonna…”

  Paul opened his hand and dropped the coveralls on the ground. Samuel followed suit. Together they turned and walked out through the gate.

  “Hey,” the guy was yelling, “you get your asses back here and…” The rest of his words were lost in the sounds of their own breathing and the scuff of their heavy shoes on the street as they picked up the pace, trying to put a
s much distance between themselves and the voice as they could. Alaskan Way was a half-erased pencil drawing, the buildings ghostly apparitions, as an offshore flow had carried a light fog in over the city, leaving the rose-colored streetlights to shed lonely cones of light along the darkened street. They walked half a block before another set of lights bounced down onto the street. At the sight of a Seattle police cruiser, Samuel emitted a harsh croak. Paul reached out and touched his arm. “Just keep walking,” he said. “They have no business with us.” As if to argue, the cruiser’s engine roared as the driver cut directly across both lanes and jerked to a halt ten yards in front of them. In little more than a second, the cop was out of the car with his gun drawn, resting his arm along the roof of the car as he took aim.

  “Down,” he screamed. “Get down in the street.”

  Before Paul’s mind could process the situation, Samuel took off running. “Stop,” rolled through the silvery air, and then again, “Stop.” Paul stood open-mouthed as the cop stepped out from behind the car, dropped to one knee and again took aim. Paul opened his mouth to shout, but any sound he might have made was lost in the boom of the pistol. He turned. Samuel was still running in that awkward gait of his. The gun boomed again and Paul watched in horror as Samuel was thrown forward onto his face, finally sliding to a stop in the street with his limbs still twitching. Without willing it so, Paul began to run toward the cop, shaking his arms and shouting Samuel’s name. His real name. “Suprava.” He heard a shout. “Stop.” And then the pistol roared again, sending a bright white flame out into the night. The bullet entered just beneath Paul’s right eye, deflected off his sinus cavity and exited the skull slightly behind his left ear. He was dead before he hit the asphalt.

  45

  Corso pushed the accelerator to the floor. The SPD cruiser fishtailed slightly before gaining traction and rocketing down Alaskan Way. Charly Hart hung on to the overhead handle with his good hand and braced himself with his feet.

  Half a block down, the radio began to scratch out another message. Mostly streams of numbers. The only words Corso caught were “officer involved.” Then “Pier Fifty-Six.”

  “I thought it was Pier Thirty,” Corso said, horsing the wheel to the left.

  “This is something else,” Charly Hart said through clenched teeth. “Shots fired by an officer. Suspect down. Right up ahead here someplace.”

  Before they could exchange further words, they rounded a slight bend in the road and there it was, an SPD cruiser parked diagonally across the street, driver’s door open, radio spewing static into the quiet, light bar ablaze, red and blue bolts of light bouncing off the foggy air.

  Corso slid the car to a stop, half on, half off the sidewalk. Out where the two sets of headlights intersected, a uniformed officer knelt in the street, using his finger to check the pulse of somebody lying in the street. Ten yards closer another body lay facedown on the concrete, a crimson halo beginning to form around his dark head.

  Wasn’t until they were right on top of him that they recognized the cop. Same guy who brought them that Pete Carrol character. T. Masakawa.

  His mouth hung open. His eyes looked like he might start to cry. He looked up at Corso and Hart. “This one’s alive,” he said. As if on cue, an approaching siren could be heard. And then another…closer. “Roll him over,” Charly Hart said. “Keep the airway clear.”

  T. Masakawa did as he was told. Carefully, as if he were handling a child, he rolled the victim over on his back. The slug had plowed a trough through his shoulder. Contact with the street had broken off both front teeth and painted a seeping stripe down the center of his face. East Indian. Maybe twenty-five or so. His eyes were closed and his breathing was shallow but regular.

  T. Masakawa began to babble. “I…I mean they were…” He looked over his shoulder at the other man, still and silent in the street. “That one came at me,” he said. He looked down at the man cradled in his arms. “I told him to stop. Twice, I think.”

  Charly Hart reached down and put a hand on his shoulder. “You did the right thing, Officer,” he said. “The want was for double homicide. The description said armed and dangerous.”

  The cop blinked and shook his head. “I never wanted to…” he began. “I never…” He looked down at his side. “My gun…I never…” He began to cry.

  “It’s all right,” Charly Hart intoned. “You did what you had to do.”

  The whoop whoop of the siren was right on top of them now. Orange pulsing lights joined the red and the blue in a macabre dance. A guy in a white shirt had left the fenced-in parking lot two blocks up and was trotting their way. A red and white aid unit rolled around the corner behind them. Another police cruiser slid to a halt a block down.

  Charly Hart squeezed the officer’s shoulder and looked over at Corso. “I’m staying with the officer here,” he said.

  “I gotta see what’s going on at the boat,” Corso said.

  Hart kneaded the kid’s shoulder and nodded his understanding to Corso. “I’ll have to say you stole the car.”

  “Okay,” was all Corso said before sprinting back to the car and throwing himself into the driver’s seat. He jammed the lever into Drive and bounced down off the sidewalk with a squeal.

  Two blocks down, the silhouette of an enormous ocean liner etched itself on the sky. A floating hotel bigger than an office building. Corso ignored the red light at the corner.

  What had begun as fifty pounds strapped between his shoulder blades was feeling hollow and light now. As he sprayed a toilet in the first-class section, Bobby Darling mulled over what he was supposed to do when he ran out of virus. Find the foreman. Say he was out of disinfectant. Ask for another backpack. They’d said he’d probably need three or four before the night was over. Put the used ones in the orange bins marked RECYCLE. Get a new one from the white bins marked FULL. Simple as that. Keep working until the job was done. Then he and Holmes would walk off with the rest of them, collect their pay and disappear into the city. Bobby felt a glow of satisfaction as he dusted his gloves together and started toward the front of the ship. Considering how things had started, the plan had gone well. Only thing he was sorry about was that he didn’t have another load of virus to spread about the ship. Kill twice as many of the sons of bitches.

  “What have we got here?” Harry Dobson demanded.

  The officers looked among themselves for a volunteer. When none was forthcoming, a balding sergeant stepped forward, hat in hand.

  “Got a guy up on deck there with a knife,” he said. “Him and his buddy are part of the cleaning crew they bring on board between cruises. We’ve got one dead, one cut up pretty bad.” He pointed at the ship. “They ought to be bringing the vics down pretty soon here.”

  “Where are the perps now?” Dobson asked.

  “They got him and another guy locked in a walk-in freezer.”

  The chief’s face darkened. “What about this situation required my presence?”

  The sergeant ran a hand over his face. “There’s this window where you can look into the freezer.”

  “And?”

  “Well, every time somebody makes like they’re gonna open the door and take these guys into custody, one of these guys threatens us.”

  “With his knife? You called me over a—”

  “No sir, he keeps threatening to spray whoever opens the door. He’s got this canister strapped to his back. He keeps brandishing the sprayer thing.” The cop demonstrated by waving his hand around in a spraying motion. “Like he’s got something real dangerous in there or something.”

  “They’re East Indian,” another of the cops said.

  Harry stiffened like a metal rod had suddenly been driven through his core. The muscles along his jawline were in knots. Before he could muster a response, a metallic clatter pulled his attention toward the ship, where a pair of medical technicians were pushing an aluminum gurney across the uneven boards of the pier.

  “Guy that got cut up,” one of the cops said.r />
  Harry called for them to stop and walked in that direction. Halfway there, he stopped and looked back over his shoulder. He thought about asking for a gas mask. One of the units they all carried in the cars. Then changed his mind.

  “Can he talk?” Harry asked the nearest EMT.

  Guy nodded. “Says his name’s Harris.”

  The chief walked close enough to make eye contact. “Mr. Harris,” he began.

  The other EMT slipped both hands beneath the man’s shoulders and lifted him into a sitting position. He was a dissolute fifty-five or so. African American, his hair grown out like Don King’s; a nasty-looking cut ran the length of his right cheek. Looked like it might have gone all the way through into his oral cavity. The pink flaps of skin had been sprayed with a yellow antiseptic and were being held together by a trio of metal clips. Both of his hands were bandaged the size of boxing gloves. He fixed his eyes on Harry Dobson. “Fucker’s crazy,” he said. “Crazy as a goddamn loon.”

  Harry let him rant for a moment and then thanked him for the information. “What I need to know, Mr. Harris, is whether either of those men sprayed anything onto the ship.”

  “Didn’t get that damn far.”

  “This is very important, sir,” Harry said in his most serious voice. “If you’re not sure, just say so.”

  Harris’s voice rose an octave. “I’m tellin’ you, man, I was the crazy bastard’s partner. Neither of them India boys was out of my sight the whole time we was on the damn boat.” He started to wave a hand but thought better of it. “Next thing you know, that fucker shanks McGruder.”

  Harry spoke first to the EMTs. “Take Mr. Harris and put him inside your unit.” He pointed to the far end of the dock. “Park down there and do everything for him that you can. I’ll get you out of here as soon as I’m able.”

  The closest took a step forward. “Is there a situation here, sir?” he wanted to know. “Should we be…”