A Billion Ways to Die

by Chris Knopf

  She paced around the little room with her fists clenched to her side. I saw her as a child throwing a temper tantrum.

  “I have other funds,” I started to say, but she cut me off.

  “Billion,” she hissed at me. “With a B. That’s the only thing I want to discuss with you.” I shook my head and tried to convey my heartfelt confusion as I watched her leave the room, slamming the door behind her.

  I was down a bucket, but I’d gained a folding chair, though before I could figure out what to do with it, the door opened and the original interrogator and three other men crammed into the room, shoving me back onto the bench. Two of the men pinned me against the wall and the third gripped my throat. The interrogator took a syringe out from behind his back, and without rolling up my sleeve, stuck it in my arm.

  “Buenas noches,” said one of the men holding me, and before I could muster a response, my mouth filled with cotton, the little room lost all substance and I fell backward into the dark.

  CHAPTER 3

  A man in a short-sleeved shirt, shorts and sandals shook my leg. I looked at him through mist-filled eyes, wondering where he’d come from. As he shook my leg I heard him asking me questions. He was an island guy, speaking to me in accent-inflected tourist English.

  “Talk to me, captain. Tell me you’re okay,” he said.

  “I don’t know.”

  My voice sounded distant and hollow, as if I were talking into a barrel. My eyes felt too big for my head, and my head too big for the rest of me. As I focused on the man, I saw his other hand shaking someone else’s leg.

  Natsumi.

  I rolled over and looked at her sleeping face. I touched her cheek and she twitched, as if warding off a fly. I sat up, dragging my head along with me. The world wobbled for a moment, then settled back on its axis. The man was smiling at me.

  “You had some kind of fun last night, eh captain?”

  I recognized him. Clive Higgins, from the marina on Virgin Gorda, where we often put in for provisioning and a night or two at a sturdy dock.

  “Hi, Clive. Where are we?”

  He told me, naming a coral-lined cove on the northwest side of the island. The sun was high above the horizon, heating up the sand where we lay. Detour floated at anchor just outside the reef. I bent over Natsumi and brushed her hair back.

  “Hello in there. Can you hear me? You okay?”

  She opened her eyes in a squint, then shut them again. She rolled over on her back and put her forearm across her face.

  “I might throw up,” she said.

  “That’s okay,” said Clive. “Good for the recovery.”

  She looked up at him.

  “Easy for you to say.”

  Clive helped me to my feet and down to the sea where I scooped up some water and slapped it on my face and through my hair. I almost never drank alcohol and my only hangover was a distant teenhood memory, so I had no standing in claiming this to be the worst hangover in history, though it felt like it.

  When we got back to Natsumi she was wiping her mouth with the bottom of her T-shirt. She told us to stay away from the other side of a nearby palm tree. I sat on the sand while Clive took her down to the water’s edge. When they got back, she joined me on the beach.

  “Did that just happen?” she asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Good. I mean, good I wasn’t on LSD.”

  “Too much rum make you think you are, ma’am,” said Clive. “Though I never do those things myself.”

  “How did you know we were here?” I asked.

  He pointed at Detour.

  “Saw your boat. Got on board and nobody’s home. Dinghy tied to the stern. Thought you might be dead bodies washed up on the reef. These things happen when parties get started.”

  “Some party,” said Natsumi.

  “That’s unauthorized anchorin’,” said Clive. “You’re lucky the officials don’t already tow you back to Road Town.”

  “So let’s get the heck out of here,” I said.

  His open fishing boat had an aqua-colored freeboard and a pair of eyes painted on the forward hull. He maneuvered through the reef with the confidence of long experience, then sprinted out to Detour as if British Virgin Islands maritime law enforcement was about to swarm the cove.

  He wouldn’t accept a tip.

  “Just get somebody home some night who wouldn’t be gettin’ there himself and the bill’s clear,” he said. “And no more drunk swimmin’. Your luck there is all used up.”

  As we watched him glide away, Natsumi held on to me for a moment, then told me she needed a shower and some aspirin and then we could talk. When she went below, I raised the anchor and set a bearing for Saint Thomas, US Virgin Islands, where we’d left Omni the mutt at our home marina.

  There was plenty of time to make plans and change course if that’s what we decided. At that moment, I just wanted to move.

  It had been nearly a year since we’d flown down from the States and joined the lazy flow of expats, idealists and escape artists that circulated continuously up and down the Caribbean Islands. After a short run of hotels and flats-by-the-week, we bought Detour from an iron miner who’d sailed her up from Australia and decided something more than a thirty-six-foot sloop made better sense for the trip back.

  It was a year of recovery. Many months before, my wife, Florencia, and I had both been shot through the head. She died, I didn’t, though the world was made to think I had. Crippled and brain damaged though I was, I’d used my status as a dead man to some effect, leading to an accounting with Florencia’s killers.

  But then there was the matter of Florencia’s ill-gotten millions, which led to more months of deadly madness that proved the wages of obsessive frenzy and unrelenting fear were dearly paid.

  Natsumi had been with me nearly throughout, through no fault of her own. I never required her to stay, though now the thought of her apart from me was beyond bearable.

  So when she proposed that our next project involve a boat and a dog, the decision was easy.

  I was still officially a dead man, though several unofficial versions of myself had racked up criminal records sufficient to put the corporeal me away for a very long time. We hadn’t done Natsumi’s legal standing any favors, either, so living as international fugitives had by necessity become our permanent status.

  Fortunately, we were good at it. At least I thought we were, before the events of the last few days and nights.

  “What happened?” Natsumi asked, after returning to the cockpit with a head full of wet black hair and two large mugs of coffee.

  “We got caught.”

  “How?”

  “I don’t know. Best guess is the passports we used to clear customs on Jost Van Dyke are buggered,” I said. “One or both. Had to happen some day.”

  “Those people weren’t Brits,” she said.

  “I know. Americans. Though Alberta had a slight accent.”

  “So who were they?”

  I gave her the same theory I’d given the first interrogator. Intelligence operatives or criminals. Assuming the difference mattered.

  “Why’d they let us go?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You really don’t,” she said.

  “I really don’t.”

  “I’d prefer it if you knew everything all the time.”

  “Sorry, darling.”

  “I was very frightened,” she said.

  “Me, too.”

  “Should I be now?”

  “I don’t know.”

  In the months we’d spent on the boat, concentrating on thick books, hearty food and obsessive exercise, our bodies had become lean and fit, our minds fresh and bright and our anxieties thoroughly repressed. Though not obliterated, at least not for me. Somewhere locked in a bitter chamber of existential fear, part of me was waiting for a reckoning. Maybe not the final test, but proof that idylls were the stuff of other people’s dreams.

  So when those nightmare mercs descend
ed on our blissful refuge, I was aghast, but not surprised.

  “Where are we going?” Natsumi asked.

  “Back to Saint Thomas, but I want to discuss.”

  “We need to get Omni.”

  “And bring her where?”

  “Wherever we go next.”

  “What if it’s London? Put her on a jet in cargo? Then quarantined?”

  She was quiet for a moment.

  “You’re saying she’s safe and secure with Ellsworth on Saint Thomas,” she said. “Leave her there till we sort this out.”

  “We have to assume everything on Detour is compromised. The computers, smartphones, nav equipment, documents, the works. And since they know Detour, they know the marina in Red Hook. That’s two identities blown.”

  “If they let us go, why do we care?”

  I knew she already had her own theories, and the question was mostly rhetorical.

  “Did they really let us go?” I said. “I don’t know.”

  “But here we are. Back on our boat.”

  “I know. Doesn’t make sense.”

  “So we shouldn’t go back to Red Hook.”

  “No. Saint John. Right next door.”

  We had just enough time before nightfall to reach the mooring field off Caneel Bay, a short dinghy ride from Cruz Bay on Saint John’s west coast, about five miles by water from Red Hook. Since we’d checked out of customs in the United States before entering BVI waters, we were supposed to check back in. Instead, we pulled together all the cash we could find—about eight hundred dollars—got in the dinghy and motored into town, leaving everything else on board, including the ID we’d used in the BVI.

  At the first tourist joint, I gave the bartender twenty bucks to let me use the house phone to call Ellsworth Brinks, the owner of our home marina in Red Hook, Saint Thomas.

  “Hey, folks, how’s the cruisin’?” he asked.

  “Truncated. How’s the pup?”

  “Enthusiastic. What’s up?”

  “We need to get back home in a hurry. We’ve got a lift to the airport. Can you come get the boat and hold on to Omni for a bit more?”

  “Sure, man. Hope it’s not trouble.”

  “No trouble. Just a thing we have to do.”

  “You’re paid six months out, so no trouble for me.”

  I told him where to find Detour. He’d send one of his men over in the morning. We traded the types of banalities sailors usually trade, then I got off the phone. From there we went into the shopping district and bought all new clothes and soft bags in which to carry them.

  We threw the old clothes in a dumpster behind the store and moved on to a very different kind of joint, a bit out of town and set like a bird’s nest on a pile of rocks thrust into a neighboring bay. The light was crepuscular, the music declarative and the drinks dispensed and consumed with abandon. The patrons were uniformly weather-beaten and wiry, regardless of age, with swaggers in various states of compromise.

  A wooden mast, complete with boom and a doused sail wrapped in its rigging, ran the length of the bar. Model sailboats on individual shelves covered the parts of the walls not laden with nets, portholes, framed charts, wooden ship wheels, barometers and other nautical totems.

  Most importantly for us, on a wall between the men’s and women’s rooms was a white board where you could list the name of your vessel, its length, beam and sail plan, departure date, destination and the type of crew you hoped to recruit. Likewise, loose crew could post their credentials and preferred commissions, though most checked the box “Will consider anything.”

  There were two boats offering viable postings. I memorized the names and we moved off toward the next phase in the process: hanging around the bar, nursing drinks and asking if anyone knew our target cruisers.

  It wasn’t long before a bearded guy with thin, curly hair, and his wife, who looked identical from behind, latched on to us. They’d launched their trip two years before from Seattle and had traveled to the islands via the Panama Canal. The guy’s name was Ed and he was joyfully drunk—for the first time, he claimed, since Catalina Island. His wife was reasonably sober, but didn’t contradict him.

  “We’d just come off a summer squall,” she said. “Forty knot blow. Ten footers. Confused seas. Heaved to and just rode it out. Ed had the helm for thirty straight hours. I thought I’d have to cut his fingers off the wheel.”

  “You’ll be cuttin’ my fingers offa this,” he said, holding up a beer mug filled with something far more colorful than beer.

  “We prefer our storms at anchor,” said Natsumi.

  “Smart woman,” said Ed. He looked at me conspiratorially. “You get her in Bali Bali?”

  “I got him, at a brothel in Kuala Lumpur,” said Natsumi.

  Ed’s wife grinned.

  “Give me the address,” she said. “I might have a trade-in.”

  Ed felt that deserved a toast.

  “We just need to get to Puerto Rico,” I said. I asked them if they knew any boats headed that way.

  “No, but That’s A Moray goes back and forth all the time,” said Ed. “You know Jersey and Dizzy?”

  “Jersey and Desiree Mitchell,” said his wife. “I saw them here earlier. Jersey’s big,” she held her hand about a foot over her head. “Frizzy hair like Ed’s, what’s left of it. I love him, he’s a nut.”

  “She prefers frizzy haired nuts,” said Ed.

  “They own a furniture store on the island,” said Ed’s wife. “Do their own shipping and handling. How’s your back?” she asked me.

  Ed grabbed my shirtsleeve and started pulling me into the crowd. I let him, not knowing what else to do. Natsumi followed. A few minutes and some awkward tousling later, he deposited me in front of a tall woman with long, dirty blonde hair, a limp tank top, white shorts and a huge shell-festooned necklace.

  “This is Dizzy,” Ed said to me. “You gotta take it from here.”

  “Take it where?” asked Desiree.

  “Puerto Rico, I hope,” I said, introducing myself as Jonathan Cornwall, and Natsumi, when she came closer, as my wife, Natalia.

  “Desiree,” she said. “You looking to crew?”

  “Absolutely,” I said. “Whatever you need.”

  “Do you cook?” she asked.

  That stumped me. I sure as hell didn’t. Natsumi came to the rescue.

  “I do,” she said.

  “Good. We need a cook for two passengers paying tourist fare. And a helmsman. You can do that can’t you?” she asked me.

  “You bet. How long’s the boat?”

  “Forty-eight feet. Custom cutter-rigged sloop.”

  She ran through all the crew requirements and I was fine with everything, even if I’d never wrangled two foresails, a cutter’s distinctive feature.

  We agreed to report at sunrise the day after next and be ready for anything from scrambling eggs to piloting the boat out of Cruz Bay and into the rolling Caribbean Sea. The pay was short, but so was the trip, and most importantly for us, it provided entry into Puerto Rico without the inconvenience of clearing customs.

  We were about to drift back into the crowd when Jersey showed up. As stated, he was a big man, his collarless shirt unbuttoned to his navel, revealing some fleshiness around the middle. His hair was a kinky grey ball partially constrained by a woman’s hair clip. A glaze of sweat reflected the bar light off skin baked a perpetual island brown. My hand felt like a child’s when it disappeared into his grip.

  “Most entirely excellent,” he said, when Desiree introduced us as the week’s crew. “It’s the ultimate milk run. We only need crew because we’ll have friends aboard. Their authentic Caribbean experience includes full-time attention from the captain. And first mate. Not that we mind. We’re people people.”

  “Speak for yourself, Sammy Davis,” said Desiree. “I was voted Miss Anthrope in high school. What about you?” she asked Natsumi. “What were you voted?”

  “Most Likely to Attract Ethnic Insult.”

 
“Oh,” said Desiree.

  Jersey grinned a crooked grin and nodded over the top of his beer.

  “Ed tells me you have a furniture store,” I said, trying to pull the attention back to me.

  The two of them described running a custom design shop out of a loft in Soho through the eighties and nineties, burning out, getting drawn into the tropical haze, selling the loft for obscene money, moving down permanently and never looking back. They traded the story back and forth as they went, as if rehearsed, which it clearly was through hundreds of tellings. I couldn’t decide if they completely bought their own myth, or so enjoyed how it sounded they may as well have. We honored them either way by lavishing envy.

  “Maybe someday,” I said, “maybe someday.”

  “Work kills,” Jersey said. “I was in line for type two diabetes, coronary thrombosis, maybe a cerebral hemorrhage. All stress-related.”

  “He was dead man walking,” said Desiree.

  “Retail isn’t exactly a cake walk,” I said.

  “The furniture gig was mine,” said Desiree. “Jersey had a bigger issue.”

  “Government job,” he said.

  “Like having your soul sucked out through your nose,” she said.

  “Like getting pecked to death by ducks,” said Jersey.

  “What did you do?” asked Natsumi.

  “FBI supporting the Assistant US Attorney,” said Jersey. “New York Southern District. Rudy Giuliani’s playground.”

  “Can’t blame it on Rudy,” said Desiree.

  “I was a workaholic. Busting bad guys gets in your blood.”

  He gave a theatrical growl, which Desiree answered in kind. It felt like they’d done this before as well.

  “Jersey liked the investigative part,” said Desiree. “I used to call him Donnie Brasco.”

  He liked that, but said, “Never had the pleasure of doing undercover,” he said. “Anyway, those guys keep a low profile. How would I do that?” he added, sweeping his hands up and down his oversized physique.

  “Pretend you’re a bear,” said Desiree.

  “But you gave it up,” I said.

  Jersey gave a long slow shrug, “Yeah, the bad guys aren’t the problem. It’s the bureaucracy that’ll kill you.”