by Dane Hartman
He abandoned the kitchen, then the cabin because they refused to yield anything useful. He did, however, discover another passageway he hadn’t seen before. This led to what seemed to be a utility area. Here he also lacked more than a trickle of light and ended up stepping on something rubber. It was a dinghy with webbing for seats, with both hand and foot pumps to inflate the thing. What it was doing smack in the middle of the floor Harry couldn’t imagine. It seemed careless to have left it here. Then it came to him. When his foot had inadvertently pressed down on it, the dinghy hadn’t responded the way a hollow rubber object ordinarily would have. Too hard.
Snapping open his knife, he dug the tip of it into the dinghy. There was a slight hiss of air but nothing else. The knife was meeting resistence. It wasn’t air that the rubber tubing contained.
Applying greater pressure to the knife, he worked a fairly extensive hole into the dinghy, worrying it until he could get his hands into it. He caught hold of something, pulled it out. It wasn’t necessary to look for better lighting to determine what it was. Harry knew by the feel of it alone. It was a glassine envelope, presumably one of many thousands tucked within the dinghy. Nothing in it, however: no heroin.
It was possible, Harry considered, that elsewhere in the dinghy the heroin itself might be found. Or possibly it was hidden in another crevice of the yacht, awaiting unloading. Harry assumed though that it had been carted off before, maybe as early as the first night in port. But there was always the chance that the hijackers had not found their opportunity and that the drug was still on board. Harry could not resist the temptation to look farther.
No longer so scrupulous about perforating the dinghy he set about gouging great tears in it, but all he revealed were more glassine envelopes. He was about to give up on the dinghy and see what other peculiar treasures this utility area had to offer when he heard a noise behind him. Not much of a noise—an asthmatic’s muffled wheeze would have been more obtrusive. But still it alerted him. His gaze shifted to the side. His ears were cocked, acutely sensitive now. The noise was not repeated.
All at once Harry felt trapped, for there was no exit from the utility area except the way he’d come in. The air was too warm, too dense and stale. He rose, deciding to forgo further exploration for the time being. Sliding a glassine envelope into his pocket, he began down the passageway, his Magnum in hand.
The interior of the cabin was as quiet as before. In the poor light streaming through the passageway from the kitchen nothing unusual presented itself. Harry wasn’t comforted. He felt that he was no longer alone, that his movements were being watched. But there was no visual cue to corroborate this sensation.
Just as he started up the steps he heard another noise. This one was louder and more penetrating than the last. The noise coincided with a vast amount of pain that sprang up suddenly from the base of his neck and in an instant monopolized every nerve fiber his head possessed. Only before his consciousness vanished completely did he identify the noise. It was the sound of a club slamming against his skull.
C H A P T E R
S i x
Two men stood over him. One had just emerged from the garden Keepnews had built to remind him what green looked like while he plied the seas in search of tuna. The other was positioned on the steps, having come down just in time to see Harry collapse. He didn’t look comfortable, sprawled out there on the floor. But it didn’t particularly matter.
The man who’d clubbed him raised his eyes to his companion, watching him with indifference as he considered the range and cocked his Smith and Wesson, prepared to obliterate Harry’s head.
“Wouldn’t do that,” the first man said as though this was an afterthought, not an important issue but one worth thinking about for a couple of seconds.
“Oh, why not?” It was so tempting a target. The man with the Smith and Wesson liked seeing solid things turn to bloody pulp. Heads especially.
“He’s going to be dead any which way. Looks better if he drowned, banged his head against something and drowned. A bullet hole, you can’t say he drowned. Why leave behind a lead if you can help it?”
“Oh, you’re some kind of an Einstein, I can see that much, Milano.”
The man named Milano shrugged. “I been in this business longer than you. Put the gun away. We got to blow this mother. Fish are getting impatient.”
The fish needn’t have been too impatient. The good ship Hyacinth-turned-The Sojourner was about to take its last journey—straight down to the bottom of San Francisco Bay.
Small explosives were all that were necessary, nothing extravagant, and they were conveniently already in place, strategically implanted in the diesel motors, in the aft cockpit bulkhead, in the pulpit where the two anchors were cached in the Moorings’ case. The holes that the three simultaneous detonations would produce would ensure a hasty demise for the luxury yacht.
“I don’t see what fuckin’ difference it would make,” said the man, who with great reluctance consented to put his weapon away.
“It makes a difference,” Milano said. “Take my word for it, it makes a difference.”
The drug had been offloaded. There was no use left for the boat, especially now that its true purpose had been uncovered. The two men scrambled up the stairs and were soon over the side and running fast along the docks. As soon as they reached the perimeter of the marina area a radio transmitter activated the explosives. They could scarcely be heard, just muffled roars. Within a few moments pale gray smoke rose into the air, but there wasn’t much of it and it soon faded from view.
At first the yacht didn’t seem to want to do anything. It sat where it was, contentedly, but then it listed to the right, banging against the side of the dock. Gradually the waterline rose until it was flush with the edge of the deck. Another minute or so and it would disappear beneath the bay.
It was the water trickling along the rug that Harry felt first. Not a lot of water. A leaky faucet would have produced more. And in any case Harry didn’t feel much like responding, water or no water. He was not completely out. But he didn’t think he’d particularly object to a condition of unconsciousness—a painless welcoming darkness rather appealed to him. Lights, crazy colored lights, spun around in his mind, red, blue, yellow, the primary colors; and each color seemed to be accompanied by its own brand of pain—this one sharp, this one sharper still, this one throbbing.
It wasn’t a trickle any longer. The water was gathering quantity and force; there could be no doubt about it even in Harry’s dazed mind, it was coming in quicker, washing his legs, cresting about his torso and his arms, and even though his head was turned to the side, it was threatening his ability to breathe. Almost involuntarily, he twisted his head farther toward the ceiling, attempting to keep water from infiltrating his mouth and nasal cavities. But all such contortions did him no good. The water was accumulating too fast, and it would soon engulf him.
A part of Harry’s mind, the oldest part, full of instincts and primitive urgings, forced him to act. Groaning, he extended himself, picking his head up out of the gathering water, though the pain shot through his whole body in protest. Couldn’t worry about that now, he thought hazily, must do something about this goddamn water.
Only at this point did it reach him that what he was smelling was salt. It was seawater that was pouring into the cabin. Though he had no idea where it was all coming from, and not the slightest inclination to find out, he realized that this meant the boat was sinking. Hardly delighted at the prospect of going down with it, he summoned all the energy that was left to him and did something that vaguely resembled a pushup; this maneuver succeeded in getting him just above the water. From this position he extended one, then the other arm, hoping he would not slip and lose his balance—because he really didn’t know whether he could go through this painful process of getting up again.
Half-climbing, half-crawling, he managed to get to the top of the steps that ascended to the deck. The water was pursuing him, attacking the step
s and leaving only a foot and a half below the ceiling of the cabin that was not flooded. What made all this worse was that there was no light, just pitch darkness permeated by the pungent smell of salt water and the sound of the bay breaking through the fragile walls of the ill-fated Hyacinth.
Gasping for air, coughing with the water he’d already inhaled, Harry reached the handle of the door and pulled. Nothing happened. The door wasn’t budging. Could be the men who’d bludgeoned him had locked it just to ensure the certainty of his death. The water was nearly to shoulder level now, allowing him little room to maneuver and scarcely any purchase at all. He pulled again, struggling to maintain his hold on the handle which was growing increasingly slippery not only with the water but with his sweat. When it seemed that nothing was going to work he drove his body against it, hoping to batter it down.
Just then the whole boat tilted, sagging way over to the right. With this sudden jolting motion everything turned practically upsidedown. Harry was no longer ramming the door, he was falling on it. Water swirled around him, getting into his mouth and nose and eyes so that he couldn’t see at all, though with it so goddamn dark there wasn’t anything to see to begin with. He fought to get his head above water, which was not always possible.
Still, there were pockets of air here and there and when he found one he took full advantage of it. Responding to the pressure of Harry’s body and the massive weight of all the water that had collected on it, the door to the cabin yielded, and Harry found himself propelled right through the opening.
But he wasn’t free. Water only gave way to more water. The boat was almost completely sunk; only the roof of the pilot house and the tops of the masts remained visible. The rest of the Hyacinth was taking its last voyage and gaining speed with every additional foot it descended.
Harry wasn’t in a particular mood to go swimming, but that was the only choice available to him. But the problem now was that he had no idea where he was, whether on the deck or above it, the world was just wet and black, with a great many obstacles: all he could do was keep trying to head in an upward direction, though what was up and what was down was hard to distinguish.
He couldn’t breathe lest he take in more water, and he couldn’t not breathe because his lungs were demanding oxygen and with every passing second threatened to burst with the pain.
He thought he discerned a light but it was very far away and even as he made for it he had no idea whether he was hallucinating or not. It just was the only thing to aim for, this blurry luminous speck obscured by the murky green substance of water. By concentrating on the light, Harry managed to put a distance between himself and the pain he felt. Not much of a distance but enough for him to make some headway against the water.
Now there was a groan. It came from the complicated machinery that held the Hyacinth together; it was a dying chant. The boat was fully under. It might have been the way the current was moving, but whatever it was, the Hyacinth keeled sharply to the left, in the opposite direction from where it had been listing before. One of the masts came down on Harry. It didn’t hit him head-on, rather it grazed him, catching him on his left leg. Though the injury to his leg was slight, the blow slowed Harry’s momentum and forced him off course. He lost the light and had no sense of where to look for it again. Not that it mattered; he hadn’t the strength left to do anything about it even if the light should magically reappear. The pain in his body was so immense that it didn’t seem reasonable to fight it anymore. His straining lungs could not continue to endure the agony he was subjecting them to.
This is some fucking way to go, he thought, waiting in vain for his life to pass before his eyes, the way it was supposed to when you were drowning. But it didn’t happen. Neither his life nor anyone else’s showed up. Just my luck, he considered distantly, just my goddamn luck to be deprived of a last-minute show.
Then he let go and the darkness opened up.
C H A P T E R
S e v e n
It was just that the darkness didn’t want to keep him very long. When he opened his eyes Harry found himself stretched out on moist wooden planks. There were lights and a sky cluttered with stars, and there were people who seemed to be looming over him and so far as he knew these were not the sorts of things you associated with heaven or hell. Particularly not hell. They weren’t going to provide you with a glimpse of stars and sky in hell.
“Harry? Harry? You alive?”
The question seemed not at all irrelevant or gratuitous. Harry thought in fact that it was a highly crucial inquiry, and he wasn’t so sure he had the correct response down yet. There was so much pain at work in his abused body that the very notion of trying to say something defeated him. Couldn’t do it. Didn’t even care to keep his eyes open, could barely make out anything anyway.
“He’s alive,” someone else said. “He has a pulse, he just opened his eyes, that’s more than a lot of folks do.”
“Yeah, well, he might not stay alive if we don’t get him some medical attention soon.”
“You don’t know Harry. That son of a bitch doesn’t know how to die. No one ever taught him.”
Very hazily Harry’s mind registered what was going on around him. He just wasn’t interested in reacting to it. They were hoisting his body up off the dock and onto a stretcher, and they were doing this real gently, afraid maybe that some important part of his anatomy might drop out on them. Someone was busy giving his arm an injection, adding the pain of a needle prick to all the other pain he’d amassed in the last half hour or so.
Then his rescuers—he presumed they were his rescuers—proceeded with him down the length of the dock. They stopped suddenly.
“Who you got there?”
Harry recognized the voice but he couldn’t remember to whom it belonged.
“Friend of yours.”
“Oh yeah?” A pause while he took a look. “Oh shit. Harry again! What the fuck’s he doing here?”
“How should I know what he’s doing here? He washed up with the kelp. Seems he was on a boat. Boat went one way, he didn’t want to follow.”
“First he’s running around loose in Golden Gate Park, then he’s fucking with sinking yachts in a marina. What is it with this guy? Would you get him out of my sight?”
Had his lungs been up to it, Harry would have laughed in spite of the pain. He knew whose voice it was now. Sergeant Bob Togan’s.
When he came back to some semblance of life twenty-eight hours later, Harry discovered that his mind was more or less in place. The problem was he couldn’t hold it there. It had this tendency to stray, and he’d find himself staring blankly out into space, wondering where he was.
He was in a hospital room. A semi-private. The man who shared the room was hidden from Harry by an opaque curtain that divided the space in half. But Harry sensed from the strained wheezing noises the man was producing he couldn’t be in very good shape. He didn’t think he ever wanted to see who it was.
Fluids raced into him from one tube connected to a bottle above him and ran out of him from another connected to a bottle beyond his line of sight. The pain wasn’t so bad now, it had eased into something tolerable, and it was possible that one day not so far in the future it would all go away. Feeling his face with hands raw and scraped he found that he’d developed a harsh stubble. He imagined how he looked and decided he didn’t care to look into a mirror in the foreseeable future.
He tried not to think. When he thought, the pain came back to him. No memory was completely painless maybe, but this was ridiculous.
What puzzled him most were the flowers, bright, beautiful, exotic, springing up from a porcelain vase. Somebody had gone to a lot of trouble for him. He couldn’t imagine who it could be.
If there was a knock on the door, he didn’t hear it. Too preoccupied by the wheezing in the next bed. It was Bob Togan, holding a package in his hand.
“They told me you’re back among the living, Harry,” he said, pulling a seat up to the bed. He glanced around at t
he room. “Who sent you the flowers?”
“Don’t know. The note didn’t say.”
“Anonymous admirer. Everybody needs at least one of them.” He was not here on a friendly visit Harry knew. He wanted useful information. Harry was not certain how much of that he had to give him.
“What can I do for you, Bob?”
Togan shrugged. “How about telling me what you were doing out on that boat for a start?”
“I was doing some research for a friend. Private business.”
“Private?” Togan’s brow crinkled in perplexity.
“You forget I’m not on the force these days.”
“I didn’t forget.” He hesitated, he didn’t like grilling another cop, particularly one who held a rank higher than his—even though Harry was on suspension. “Are you going to make this hard for me?”
Harry had just lapsed, his mind was drifting. He had to ask Togan to repeat what he said. Togan didn’t. Instead he asked Harry if he was acquainted with the sunken yacht’s owner. Harry admitted he was.
“So Keepnews sent you?”
“You’ll have to live with the conclusions you jump to, Bob.”
“You see who the fuckers were that did that to you?” He indicated the bandage that was curled around the back of Harry’s head.
“They’re better than that. Didn’t see shit.”
“Figured as much.”
“And I expect you have no idea who they are.”
“None as to their identities. But we have some kind of clue given the nature of their business.”
“Ah yes, their business.”
“Too bad the smack didn’t go down with the ship, but with the haul they must have had on board, hey, that’ll buy a hundred yachts.”