“So, wow.” Jess’s head tipped back.
“What the hell is that?” No Hair asked.
“Something to knock a hole in the door with.” Fantasy picked up her antennas. “Move,” she said.
“Wait!” No Hair motioned Jess and me against the wall.
Fantasy aimed her Ming Dynasty art in the center of the circle, then put all her weight behind it and knocked a saucer-sized hole in the door. No Hair pushed her out of the way and immediately filled the hole with the business end of a semi-automatic pistol.
“Whoa! Whoa!” The voice on the other side of the door was a man’s. “Don’t shoot! I’m here about a pot roast! Don’t shoot!”
“Who are you?” No Hair asked, trying to angle the mirror with his free hand so he could see for himself.
“It’s Fredrick Blackwell, No Hair!” It had to be. I jumped to the other side of the hole in the door. “Mr. Blackwell.” I stayed away from the hole. Just in case. “Where’s my husband?”
“Is your husband on the Gulfstream?”
“Yes!” I had my hands on the babies waiting for news about their father. “Yes!”
“He’s on the way,” Blackwell said. “A little under two hours out.”
“Where’s he landing?”
“George Town Municipal.”
“Have you talked to him?”
“No, the onboard communication system has been disabled.”
Which meant we still didn’t know what was going on inside the Gulfstream. Nor did we know exactly who was or wasn’t on Bellissimo One.
“Where’s my mother?”
“Mrs. Way?”
“Yes!” I inched closer to the peephole.
“I’m not sure,” Fredrick Blackwell said. “There was an enormous amount of activity in the casino, and last time I saw her she was in the middle of it.”
“With Arlinda?” I asked.
“Arlinda is with my wife in our suite. She couldn’t get in this room.”
No. No, no, no. How did Mother and Arlinda get separated?
“How long has it been since you saw my mother?” I stuck my face in the peephole, and got my first look at Fredrick Blackwell. Who also got his first look at me. And it was a look I knew all too well.
“Oh, holy crap,” I said through the big peephole. “You’ve seen me.”
He took a step back, nodding.
“And I’m pregnant?”
“Very,” Fredrick Blackwell said.
“Oh, shit.” (Fantasy.)
“SO?”
“Bianca Sanders is here, Jess. On the ship.”
Fantasy didn’t have to explain it to Jess, but she did have to catch her on her way down.
* * *
We interrogated the poor man. Or maybe that was just me. In the end, I asked for one more favor: turn on our electricity.
He looked at his watch. He glanced up and down the passageway. He was on his way to the Jing Ping ferry boats to meet two Federal Aviation Administration supervisors from Fort Worth, Texas, at George Town Municipal Airport for Bellissimo One’s arrival. The FAA reps told Blackwell he could be there of his own free will or they were coming to get him.
He’d ruffled a few feathers.
Bellissimo One was coming in with military escorts.
This might get ugly.
“How am I supposed to turn on your electricity?” He scratched his neck; he looked up and down the passageway; he inched away.
“Mr. Blackwell, you turned an airplane around. Surely you can turn on our electricity.”
He sighed heavily.
“And just one more really small thing,” I said.
He rolled his eyes.
“Would you unlock your V2 and let us have it?”
“What do you mean unlock it?”
“Override the thumb swipe.”
“Or give us your thumb.” (Fantasy.)
Thirty minutes later, we had power. We had Fredrick Blackwell’s V2 so we could move around Probability, but still no way to get out of our own door.
“Fantasy,” No Hair said. “Go get me a miter blade.”
“What?”
“The silver Frisbee saw thing,” I said.
She took off.
No Hair, in a move I’d give anything to have on video so I could send it to MacGyver, heated a strip of metal teeth with a hiss of orange from the blowtorch, held the saw blade as close to the panel above the doorknob as he could, then tipped it up and tapped once against the sensors. He shot a jolt of heat through so quickly it temporarily short-circuited the keypad. The door popped open.
(Could we have done this two days ago? Seriously? Could we have?)
One thing we couldn’t do was wake up Jess, so we piled her on the tool cart and rolled her. It’s not like we could leave her in 704 for her outlaw husband to find, because there wasn’t a doubt in anyone’s mind he was looking for us. We closed the door behind us and heard the gears click into place.
We were now officially locked out of 704. Which felt so different than being locked in.
The first thing that happened was the elevator doors closed and caught a corner of Jess’s Probability robe. The elevator ate the robe, which left us pushing her around in her rhinestone anchor suit and six-inch silver heels.
* * *
Probability was all but deserted. Scattered staff in spots, but no passengers. The fifty zillionaires and their guests were either in their staterooms, at the garages on the Transportation Deck in line for a Jing Ping ferry, or on the ferries to George Town. We didn’t pass anyone who wasn’t talking about (Jess on a cart) the Knot on Your Life jackpots. The casino, we overheard, was closed until further notice.
I guess so.
First, we used Fredrick Blackwell’s V2 to call Arlinda.
“Davis, I’m sorry,” she said. “Have you tried to talk your mother into anything? She absolutely would not leave the casino with me. I had to go with Mr. Blackwell. I couldn’t be in two places at one time. I had to make a decision between your mother and your husband.”
Oh.
“The last time you saw Mother was in the casino?” I asked.
“With Mrs. Sanders,” she said.
“Do you have any idea where they went? Did Mother say anything?”
“SO!” Jess’s dark hair flew as she tried to figure out (a) where she was, and (b) who we were, and (c) what had happened to her Probability robe.
“She said something about the pot roast.”
Mother and Bianca Sanders were on their way to 704.
“Let’s go.” I twirled a finger through the air for No Hair and Fantasy to turn the cart around. “Mother and Bianca are in our room.”
“So, where’s my shoe?”
I aimed Fredrick Blackwell’s V2 at the elevator panel and asked it to take us back to 704.
“So, my shoe?”
“Since she’s awake shouldn’t we have taken the Zoom?” Fantasy asked.
“Who has my shoe?”
“Where’s DeLuna?” No Hair asked.
“Where’s anyone?” The mirrored elevator wall held me up. “Where’s everyone?”
No Hair put a big arm around me. I dove in. He smelled like rainbow Christmas church trees. “It’ll be okay,” he said. “We’re going to get through this.”
The elevator doors parted on Deck Seven. Fantasy pushed the tool cart out, Jess hobbled out, dark hair flying, looking here and there for her other silver shoe. No Hair and I silently brought up the rear, his arm still around my shoulders.
I spotted her from a mile away, standing at the door of 704. There was no missing Bianca Sanders, not even at midnight wearing solid black in the recesses of a cave. There was certainly no mistaking exceptiona
lly pregnant Bianca Sanders dressed in head-to-toe snow white at the end of a brightly lit passageway. She looked like a white teepee or a short white triangle, wearing a blizzard white flowing cape secured at her neck and blooming around her. Her blonde hair was stuffed in a white pill box hat. She was barefoot (and pregnant) holding her white heels with one hand and her other hand was working the doorbell. Before I could get her name out she stepped into 704. With everything I had, I hoped and prayed it wasn’t Max DeLuna opening the door.
My prayers were answered.
There’s no mistaking the pump of a bolt-action rifle.
“Well, hello, hello.”
Max DeLuna.
* * *
Instinct dictates a scream-and-run reaction to a gun at your back.
No Hair, Fantasy, and I knew better.
Jess didn’t know better; she was so far ahead of us she didn’t even hear it and if she had, we might have all died right then and there in the passageway on the seventh deck of Probability. She undoubtedly would have had a fit, charged him, and gotten us all killed.
Keep looking for your shoe, Cinderella.
“What do we have here?” DeLuna was smug, confident, and why wouldn’t he be. “Hands on your heads.”
What do you do when someone has a gun on you? Whatever they say.
Rule number one: Calm. Don’t scream, don’t run, don’t anything. Rule number two: Follow instructions. Rule number three: Don’t make any sudden movements. No Hair broke rule number three in the process of following rule number two. He picked me an inch off the floor and planted me down directly in front of him as he moved his arms to place his hands on his head. It was slick and swift and he made himself a human shield for my babies. Fantasy was directly in front of me, which put us in a straight line.
Jess was still wandering the hall in a zigzag path, now much farther ahead, looking for her shoe.
DeLuna had leveraged control over us by virtue of the fact he had a firearm on us, so we had to take psychological control. First, by making him look at us.
“Can we turn around?” No Hair wasn’t asking for permission; he was telling us to turn around. Which we did. Hands on heads. Now I was behind No Hair instead of in front of him.
DeLuna was still firmly in control, but now he was uncomfortable, because it’s a lot harder to shoot someone you’re looking at. Then, it occurred to him he couldn’t shoot three people at once. He assessed his situation, glancing at his gun, trading his cocky posture for defensive, probably realizing it would take a rocket launcher to shoot through us while we were lined up three deep. “Move where I can see you.”
Together, we took a step to the right.
“Move apart.”
We took a step to the left.
He rolled his eyes. “You, here. You, there.” Fantasy and I split. He used the barrel of the gun as a pointer. “You stay right where you are.” DeLuna tapped No Hair’s heart with the gun.
“Do you want to do this?”
No Hair kept his voice low, his tone nonthreatening, everything about him tranquil and soothing as he used his elbows to point out the light fixtures above our heads hiding surveillance cameras, drawing DeLuna’s attention to the fact he’d never get away with it.
DeLuna blinked. And with the blink, he reconsidered killing us.
Our next move was to show DeLuna ways out of the predicament he found himself in that, clearly, he hadn’t thought all the way through. We’d present him with alternatives to (our sudden deaths) violence, remind him this was about money, something we could possibly help him with, but we never got the chance. Jess finally realized we weren’t with her and turned around. I don’t know if she could see her husband, but it was obvious he saw her. And there went our dialogue with the gunman.
It happened so fast. DeLuna forgot all about us as he leveled the gun on his wife.
Rule number four: When all else fails, surprise the gunslinger. I yelled, “We have Poppy!”
In the split second DeLuna stopped to hear Poppy’s name, No Hair dropped into a barrel roll and took him down. I got myself and my babies out of the way as Fantasy rushed past with the cart and pinned him to the wall. No Hair disarmed DeLuna and turned the gun on him so fast it was nothing but a flash of cold steel.
We had him.
It was over.
We had DeLuna.
“Hey!”
No Hair didn’t take his eyes off DeLuna, but Fantasy and I turned to the sound of my mother’s voice, our eyes passing over a sleeping stack of Jessica on the floor.
“Get in here!” Mother yelled down the passageway. “Her water broke!”
TWENTY-FIVE
I’d been an officer on the Pine Apple Police Force (of two) for about ten (minutes) months when the phone rattled on the desk and woke me up from a great nap on a steaming hot Friday night in July. Without lifting my head, I batted for the receiver, thinking it would be my father telling me I could lock up and go home early. It wasn’t. It was Hanny Conklin, who lived in a trailer park off Freedom Farm Road with his wife Effie and their seven children. He called to say number eight was on the way with a bullet.
“What, Hanny? What?”
“Effie’s dropping the baby.”
Who has a bullet? Who dropped a baby?
I shook myself awake and we started over. Hanny was calling for police escort to the Women’s Health Clinic in Luverne, Alabama.
“Hanny.” It was almost midnight. “There are ten hospitals between here and Luverne. It’s on the other side of the interstate.”
“I know where it is, Davis. We go there ever nine months.”
You’d think, the Conklins being frequent flyers and all, that someone at the Women’s Health Clinic would sit them down for a family planning chat.
“She’s about to spit it out. We gotta go, Davis.”
“If she’s about to spit out a baby, Hanny, why are you still at home talking to me?”
“I’m not home. I’m at Bubba Phil’s using the phone.”
Oh, good grief. Bubba Phil Wilson lived twenty trailers away. Everyone in Shady Acres Mobile Home Estates had a television the size of a barn door and forty-inch tires on their trucks, but only one or two had phones. “Get her loaded, Hanny, head this way. I’ll be ready. But we’re not going to Luverne,” I said. “We’re going to Kizzy.”
“Oh, hell no. I’ll let Kizzy touch my wife when pigs fly.”
We had one doctor in Pine Apple. Three hundred and ninety-nine of four hundred residents wouldn’t go to Dr. Kizzy for a Band-Aid, much less procreation.
“Then we’re going to Stabler Memorial in Greenville,” I said. “They deliver babies all day, Hanny. We can get there in fifteen minutes.”
“We’re indignant care, Davis.” He was getting short with me. Very short. As if I was part of the indignant problem. “It’s Luverne or the side of the road.”
As it turned out, it was the side of the road. Effie delivered her fifth daughter in the back of my patrol car on the corner of West 3rd and Montgomery Highway, and I did the honors.
My mother knew this. And she ratted me out.
We stood outside Mother’s stateroom, Bianca inside, but we had to wait to discuss it until the howling on the other side of the door tapered off enough for us to hear each other.
“I am not going in there,” Fantasy whispered.
I whispered back, “You big chicken.”
“Hey.” Fantasy shook her finger at Mother’s door. “That’s your problem.”
“She’s not my problem,” I loud whispered. “She fired me.”
“I don’t work for her in the first place, Davis. I work for you.”
“Well, you’re fired if you don’t go in there with me.”
“Fine by me.” Fantasy crossed her arms. “B
urger King, here I come.”
Mother was between us. I wasn’t getting anywhere with Fantasy so I tried her. “What happened? She was standing in the casino an hour ago and now she’s having a baby?”
Mother shrugged. “Tale as old as time. Her water broke. She’s in labor.”
“What happened in between the casino and her water breaking?”
“She marched into that casino like she owned the place.”
Not the least bit surprising.
“Which was a good thing,” Mother said. “Because that craydirt man was gunning for me ’til he saw her.”
“Slow down, Mother. What happened? Is this when the slot machines hit?”
“Boy howdy, did they ever.” She had the jackpot look, a look I knew well, but never dreamed I’d see on Mother. “I did just what you told me. Popped that thing in there.” She demonstrated. “Those gambling machines, every one of them, had conniption fits. First a gold anchor showed up, and it went DING DING.” Mother did a little ding-ding dance. “Then another gold anchor, ding-ding, then another gold anchor, ding-ding, then BOOM!”
I rolled my hands, hurrying Mother along.
“Oh, Davis, everyone was so happy.” Mother clapped her hands. “Then here comes craybitch, poking through the crowd looking for me until he saw her.” Mother pointed at the door. “I grabbed her and said, ‘Come on, Stuck Up.’”
“You called her Stuck Up?” Fantasy asked.
“I couldn’t remember her name right off the bat,” Mother explained. “There was a lot going on with those anchors.” Mother did her jackpot dance. “Ding ding. And she is stuck up.”
“You did the right thing, Mother.”
“Well, except for I let the cat out of the bag.”
“What cat?” Fantasy checked our immediate area for Anderson Cooper.
“She asked about her suitcases and I told her most of them were gone.”
There’s another problem solved. We had DeLuna and the Louis Vuitton news had been broken to Bianca. Now, if I could find my husband and get off this damn ship, maybe I could live the rest of my life.
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