Eve's Men

by Newton Thornburg

  Chester for some reason had put his cowboy boots and hat back on. Despite the darkness and the motion of the boat, he kept walking about the salon, whipping off his hat and lashing the furniture with it, crowing about the firebombing and pestering Brian about television. When could he turn it on? When would the news coverage begin?

  For a while Brian tried to ignore him. But when that proved impossible, he went out onto the deck, only to have Chester follow him there. And though Charley couldn’t hear their voices over the roar of the engines, he could see in Chester’s reaction that the exchange had not been a friendly one. Coming back in, the little man did his best to shatter the sliding glass door, throwing it closed so hard it bounced back open.

  “What in hell’s eatin’ him anyways?” he complained. “Din’t we jest do a job of work together, huh, didn’t we? Who’s he think I am anyways, some kinda candy-ass he kin jest chew on every time he gits the notion? Does he think that, huh, does he? Cuz if he does, then by God he’s got another think comin’!”

  When no one answered, Chester kicked an ottoman and began to whip the bartop with his hat. Looking uneasily over at him, Beaver suddenly slowed the boat and flipped a switch, which made the lights come on, inside and out. Chester asked if this meant he could watch television, and Beaver smiled his tight little smile.

  “Why not?” he said.

  The little cowboy immediately turned the set on and pulled the kicked ottoman over to it, sitting down in front of it like a caveman huddled over a fire. He kept turning from one channel to another, as if he wouldn’t know for sure what he and Brian had done until he saw it confirmed on television. But there was no report of the incident, not until the regular eleven o’clock news broadcasts, and then most of the stations only reported that a large yacht had exploded and burned at the exclusive Romano Resort on Orcas Island. The Bellingham channel, though, added that arson was suspected and that the state police were looking for a suspect.

  None of this satisfied Chester. He wanted to see the explosion, he said. And what about all the fires they had started, on the other boats and up in the trees? And what about Stekko himself? Chester wanted to see the man. He wanted to hear him piss and moan.

  “Them candy-ass reporters,” he groused. “They jest ain’t doin’ their job. Why, they ain’t even got enough smarts to connect it all with Brian. Shit, we prob’ly got to do it ourself—phone in nominously and tell ’em.”

  Brian, watching from the doorway, said there would be no phoning in, not until they reached Seattle.

  “Why not?”

  At the helm, Beaver gave a weary sigh. “If we phone from the boat, they’ll know who we are. We have to wait till we can use a pay phone, and not an island one either.”

  Chester again whipped the TV with his hat. “Well, shit, that means we jest gotta sit here and stew. I don’t like it.”

  “You don’t have to,” Brian told him.

  A few minutes later, Beaver throttled down and headed the Seagal into a cove where several other boats were already anchored for the night. As usual, he seemed to know just what he was doing, maneuvering the yacht around into the wind before dropping anchor, then reversing a short distance, making sure the thing dug into the cove’s bottom. He then killed the engines and jumped up from the pilot seat, announcing that it was time for champagne and food.

  “I’m so hungry I could eat dirt,” he said. “Terry, why don’t you get the stuff out of the fridge while I break out the bubbly.”

  Charley didn’t want to have anything to do with any of them, Beaver the same as Chester and Brian. But at the moment he was too hungry to stand on principle. Eve, though, wondered if he should have anything to eat at all, considering that he might have suffered a concussion.

  “Don’t they recommend no food for twelve hours or something like that?” she asked.

  “I feel fine,” he told her.

  “The devil you do.” She took him by the hand and led him forward. “Come on, I want to look at that head again. And your ribs.”

  On the way, Charley asked Terry to bring their food and drinks to the bow cabin. “And you stay with us tonight,” he added, not wanting to leave her to the vagrant impulses of a drunken Chester. The girl nodded eagerly.

  Charley followed Eve into the head, where she had left the boat’s first-aid kit. Sitting on the toilet, he leaned sideways over the sink as she cleaned the cut with soap and water. After drying it, she daubed on antibiotic ointment, complaining that his hair was too thick for her to see the cut properly.

  “Sorry about that,” he said.

  “Well, you should be.”

  She had him stand and hold up his shirt and jacket while she delicately fingered his swollen ribs.

  “What d’ya think, Doc?” he asked.

  “That your brother’s a maniac, that’s what I think.”

  “So does he, I gather.”

  “It’s a little late. Tell me, does it hurt when you breathe deep?”

  “Hell, yes.”

  She looked worried. “That could mean a punctured lung, couldn’t it?”

  Letting his shirt and jacket fall back into place, he put his arms around her. “I’m not coughing blood. I’m not wheezing. And probably haven’t even got a cracked rib, just bruised ribs, like quarterbacks get, every Sunday afternoon. So stop worrying, all right? I’ll be fine.”

  She looked at him through sudden tears. “You bastard, Charley. Why would you take a chance like that over a boat?”

  “At the time it seemed easier than doing nothing.”

  “But to go up against all of them!”

  “It was stupid.”

  “It was insane.”

  He shrugged. “Yeah, but it worked, didn’t it?”

  “How can you joke about it?”

  “I don’t know. I guess I’m still pretty numb. I can’t believe he actually did it.”

  Eve sagged against him. “God, when I think of trying to tell it all to the police—explain it, you know?—why we’re here, with him again. They’ll think we’re either crazy or lying. It’s just too much.”

  Holding her close, Charley began to kiss her lightly, working from her forehead down to her lips. “It’ll come out all right for us,” he said. “We’ll get a couple of decent lawyers and tell them the whole story, that we were stupid and incompetent but never participants, never co-conspirators. And they’ll make a deal for us, probably get us suspended sentences if we turn state’s evidence against Brian and the others. Something like that. It’s done all the time.”

  “Could you do it? Testify against your own brother?”

  “I don’t see why not. After all, he spray paints his name at the scene of the crime. In fact, the more I think about it, the more it seems all this isn’t about Miss Colorado anymore, or his reputation. If he didn’t make his point in Colorado, then he sure as hell did in Bel Air. So I think blowing the Nomad was simply a matter of fun and fame. He’s already had his fifteen minutes, and now he wants a full hour at least.”

  Eve sighed. “I hate to say it, but you’re probably right. About testifying, though, what about Terry? In L.A., she was a participant.”

  “Yeah, but she’s only eighteen. And I gather her mother can afford Johnny Cochran. She’ll come out okay.”

  “I hope you’re right.”

  “Me too.”

  Just about the last thing Charley wanted to do that night was spend time with his brother, the mad bomber. But ever since Brian had come back from the Nomad, Charley had sensed in him a certain unraveling of the spirit.

  “He’s out on the deck again,” Terry had said. “Sitting alone. He didn’t want anything to eat.”

  So Charley eventually picked up the bottle of brandy Eve had gotten for him earlier and went back through the salon, where Beaver sat trying to watch television in spite of Chester, who was still camped about a foot away from the screen, flipping from one channel to another. Charley closed the glass door behind him and drew another deck chair over to wher
e Brian was sitting, with his feet up on the railing. After taking a pull on the bottle, he held it out to him.

  “Here, something to warm your tootsies.”

  Brian declined the offer. “Who needs it? I can live with me, even if no one else can.”

  “Well, good. Leaves more for me.” Charley took another pull. “Communing with nature, are we?”

  “Not that I’m aware of.”

  “Too bad. There’s a bunch of it out there.”

  The cove itself was about two hundred yards across at the mouth, a horseshoe of rock walls topped by a palisade of fir trees that looked hauntingly beautiful against the moonlit cloud cover. On the strand of beach below, a wood fire flickered at the base of a column of blue smoke, and the sound of voices came softly across the water, including the peal of a child’s laughter. Two cruisers, smaller than the Seagal, were anchored together—rafted, according to Beaver—and like the fire, their lights reflected off the cove’s dark surface, forming lanes of coruscating copper and silver that ran straight to Charley. An owl’s hoot only added to the peacefulness of the scene, putting it even further at odds with the reality aboard the Seagal.

  “I guess you and Eve both think I’m crazy now,” Brian said.

  “You really give a damn?”

  “Well, I know I don’t feel so hot about what happened to you. Christ, I can barely remember the last time I swung on you. It must’ve been in grade school, in self-defense.”

  Charley set the brandy down on the deck. “It’s been even longer since anyone pistol-whipped me.”

  Brian laughed despairingly. “Goddamn Chester. I still don’t know how he got there so fast.”

  “I guess he figured he owed me one.”

  “Yeah, but he would’ve done it anyway—you know that. He probably would’ve whacked you ten more times if I’d let him.”

  “I’m indebted to you.”

  Brian wearily shook his head. “Look, you don’t have to bother, Charley, I know how you feel. I’m a total asshole and what I’ve done is ridiculous and pathetic. Right?”

  “Not pathetic. I wouldn’t say that.”

  “That’s decent of you.”

  “Just one question, Brian. Why in God’s name did you have to drag me and Eve into this thing? You didn’t need us. In fact, we made it a lot more difficult for you. I keep thinking about it, but I never come up with an answer.”

  For a time, Brian made no response. He just sat there with his arms folded and his feet propped up, his eyes focused off in the mist somewhere. “I can’t say for sure,” he said finally. “Could be, when I called Santa Barbara and found out you two were together, maybe I just wanted to get back at you. Involve you. Hurt you both. But I’m not sure. Maybe I knew this would be my last strike, and since you were the two people I cared most about, maybe I just wanted you to be there and see it. Maybe I just wanted to have you around these last hours before I take off again, for good.”

  “That’s what you’re going to do?”

  “Why not? I’m already a fugitive. If they nab me now or in five years, the punishment will probably be pretty much the same.”

  “Not if you went in voluntarily.”

  “Maybe not, Charley. But I ain’t going gentle into the slammer, or whatever they call it now.” He picked up the brandy bottle and took a short drink, then another, before giving it back to Charley. “Hey, brother, I almost forgot,” he said, getting to his feet.

  Under the gunwale there was a row of built-in storage cabinets, one of which he opened now. He got out a package wrapped in plastic and gave it to Charley.

  “The money, just like I promised,” he said. “And I wish it was all there. But I had to spend some of it, and C.J. took ten for his contribution and the use of the boat. Incidentally, he’s broke. Finally went through his entire inheritance, even the boat. Once we’re back, he’s got to turn it over to the bank and live like the rest of us, maybe even go to work.”

  “Poor fellow.”

  Sitting again, Brian shrugged. “Well, he’s been a friend a long time. And he helped a lot with this thing tonight.”

  “So he told us.”

  “I can imagine.”

  Though Charley wondered just how much was in the package, he decided not to ask, figuring that whatever figure Brian gave him probably wouldn’t prove out anyway.

  “The ten thousand you gave C.J.,” he said. “You realize I’m gonna have to go after it.”

  “Good luck.”

  “While we’re on the subject, just what the hell does the C.J. stand for?”

  Brian smiled. “The J I forget. But the C stands for Christian. Christian Beaver.”

  Charley laughed. “That’s great. Christian Beaver, huh? From now on, I call him Chris.”

  For a time, the two brothers continued to sit there in silence. The people on shore had put out their fire, and Charley could hear them as they rowed toward their yachts. One voice, a man’s, came so clearly across the water he could have been sitting on the other side of Brian.

  “I ain’t ever going back,” the voice said.

  A woman laughed. “Not until tomorrow anyway.”

  Charley got up then, about to go back into the cabin. But he paused long enough to lay his hand on Brian’s shoulder. “For what it’s worth,” he said, “you still got a big brudder.”

  Though Brian said nothing, he reached up and covered Charley’s hand with his own.

  As Charley stepped into the cabin, a television bulletin cut into a late-night movie review program. A clean-cut young newsman excitedly announced that there were two new developments in the yacht explosion story at the Romano Resort in the San Juan Islands. Knowing that Brian would want to hear the bulletin, Charley called out that he was on the tube again. Then, leaving the glass door open, Charley moved out of the draft and sat down. Eve and Terry evidently had heard too, for they came hurrying up from the bow cabin as the newsman’s voice read on, over stock footage of the resort by day and helicopter shots filmed soon after the blast, not much but darkness and electric lights and a few scattered fires on the hillsides.

  “Earlier tonight the luxurious eighty-foot yacht of communications tycoon Rupert Stekko was blown up in the exclusive resort’s harbor. Authorities at first thought the explosion was accidental and involved no loss of life, but a few minutes ago San Juan County Sheriff Keith Butler reported recovering the body of the yacht’s cabin boy, a teenage Filipino. No name was given.”

  By then Charley was barely breathing. Though he wanted to turn and see if Brian had heard the terrible news, he did not. He just sat there and watched as the newsman, on camera again, announced that there was increasing speculation that the notorious fugitive Brian Poole was in the area and might have been responsible for the firebombing.

  “We go now to Harry Shaw on Orcas Island. Harry?”

  The picture cut to two men standing in the floodlit darkness, with the channel’s white helicopter parked directly behind them. The reporter, a balding young man in a flight jacket, was holding a mike, moving it between himself and a tall, slim man in an elegant tux, with the jacket unbuttoned. The man had long iron-gray hair, dark, close-set eyes, a large nose, and wide mouth: the face of a wolf.

  “John, I’m standing here with Rupert Stekko, owner of the firebombed yacht,” the reporter said. “Sir, I understand that you have reason to believe that this terrible act may have been the work of Brian Poole, who’s already committed a number of terrorist acts against your movie company, Wide World Studios.”

  Stekko smiled thinly. “Well, I make it a point not to deal in reckless speculation. All I can tell you is that Kevin Greenwalt—”

  “The man whose great art collection was destroyed by Poole last week,” the reporter interrupted.

  Stekko nodded. “Yes, the man who runs Wide World—”

  “Which is just one part of your empire.”

  The tycoon looked at the reporter as if he’d just belched loudly, then casually reached over and took the mike from
him. “Which I own a controlling interest in, yes. Anyway, Mr. Greenwalt phoned me two days ago with the news that the car Poole used in his escape from Bel Air—an old nine-eleven Porsche with California plates—had been briefly spotted by the Seattle police. That’s all I know. I will add this, though, that if Mr. Poole is responsible for destroying the Nomad and killing this very fine young man, he will have to pay for his crimes. And I’ll do everything in my power to see that he does.”

  Finished, Stekko handed the mike back to the reporter, who was stammering. “Well, I g-g-guess that’s it from here, John. As yet, no real proof yet, who’s responsible for the bonfiring …” Catching himself, the reporter whinnied and shook his head. “The firebombing, that is. Back to you, John.”

  Having come all the way into the cabin, Brian now reached down and turned off the TV. Then, without saying a word, he went out onto the deck again. Chester was the only one who followed him.

  “Hey, Brian, come on!” he said. “It wasn’t none of our fault, man! No way! You went inside and checked, din’tcha? And nobody answered, did they? So it’s this gook’s own goddamn fault—not ours.”

  Brian had climbed up onto the bridge by then, and when Chester tried to follow him there too, Brian shoved him off the ladder. And Charley heard him speak then, his voice sounding oddly weak and strangled.

  “Keep the hell away from me,” he said. “All of you.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  Charley was finding it almost too much to deal with, not just thinking about the youth who had died and wondering what effect his death would have on their own lives, but also knowing that Brian was alone up on the bridge, lying out in the cold and the damp right above their heads, trying somehow to deal with the knowledge that he had killed.

  Crying openly, Terry had gone back to the bow cabin and crawled into her bunk as if she might never leave it. Eve was sitting next to Charley on the built-in couch, snuggled tightly against him, her tears wetting his neck and shirt.