Blackwater Sound

by James W. Hall

  “Well, it works ninety percent.”

  Alex said, “Now what?”

  “We give them a good ram.”

  “What?”

  “Hit them broadside, knock them senseless.”

  “What’s that accomplish, Sugar?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe it’s all Thorn will need to change the balance of power in there. Shake things up; in the chaos, we come aboard, take over.”

  “Damn risky,” she said. “A lot of unknowns.”

  “At this point, what isn’t risky? Safe thing is to call for help on the radio, sit out here all night till somebody comes. But I don’t know how safe that is for Lawton and Thorn.”

  “Can this old barge take the hit?”

  “Thorn spent the last couple of months replanking the hull. All new wood, like iron.”

  She looked out at the dark. Shaking her head.

  “Okay, okay,” she said. “Ram ’em. Ram the hell out of them.”

  “Aye, aye.”

  Sugar eased the throttle forward, got the engine revving, five knots, ten, the pleasant acceleration, fifteen, rising up to plane, the sweet night air, lush and tropical and freshened by its long trip across the open ocean, twenty knots now, and then a little more, twenty-two, twenty-three, nice cruising speed, that big engine not straining at all, the rush of water off the bow, the white foam behind them glowing in the moonlight.

  He aimed at the yacht’s bow, going to give them a glancing blow. Despite his words to Alexandra, and though he trusted Thorn’s workmanship, Sugar knew when their wood hull bashed against the Braswells’ reinforced fiberglass at this speed, chances were good they’d crack something structural, almost certainly start taking on water. Then it was just a matter of how big the leak was versus the efficiency of Thorn’s bilge pump.

  Alexandra leaned close, spoke through the bluster.

  “You sure about this, Sugar? You’re sure?”

  He nodded. Though he wasn’t sure, not at all.

  “Hold on,” he said. “This isn’t going to be pretty.”

  They were a hundred yards out, no sign of movement on the boat. Not even a flashlight, just a couple of lights burning up on the flybridge and the top deck. Could be a ghost ship for all he knew. Everyone dead or dying. Could be anything. He didn’t let himself consider it. Just kept his eye on the dark profile of the hull, closing faster now, fifty yards, forty. The moonlight giving the water a ghostly look, golden white glaze, like some eerie frost.

  Thirty yards out, he picked his spot, three feet back of the point of the bow.

  “Hold on.”

  Twenty yards, then ten, that’s when he heard the outboard motor roar and saw the stern lights moving off behind the bow, heading north. He had to blink to make sure it was real. A dinghy bouncing across the dark sea. And he jerked the wheel hard to starboard, hard, hard, but still not quick enough. He watched the big black shape looming now, bigger than it seemed before, enormous. A goddamn freighter. What was he thinking, ramming a boat like that?

  They clipped the edge of the hull, Sugar cringing at the scream and crunch of the surfaces colliding, a piece breaking off the Heart Pounder, a chunk of chrome flying off into the night. The jolt sent Alex toppling into him, knocking him away from the wheel, the old Chris-Craft heeling over, still going full speed, but now listing hard. Crashes in the galley, broken glass, pots, skillets. A fishing rod tumbled across the cockpit deck. Sugarman had one hand on the wheel and was pulling himself upright, with an arm looped around Alex to keep her from going overboard. Noticing in that second how rawboned strong she was, feeling that strength as she pushed away, grabbed hold of a chrome handle and hauled herself up.

  “I guess we didn’t fry everything,” he said.

  “I guess not.”

  Off-balance, wedged sideways against the cockpit wall, Sugar corrected the wheel. Doing it slowly, pulling back on the throttle at the same time, drawing them out of their tilt. When the boat was under control, he pushed himself erect, flattened the throttle, giving chase.

  For half a mile he trailed the zigzagging dinghy across the black sea, long enough to know it was useless. It was skipping along at fifty knots, a third again as fast as their top end. As it pulled away, Sugar fixed Thorn’s handheld spotlight on the boat, managed to still its shudder long enough to see only one person aboard. Dark hair fluttering in the moonlight.

  Sugar swung around in a wide arc and headed back toward the yacht, using the spotlight to locate it in the shadows. They came alongside, Sugarman cutting the engines, idling up, putting their starboard hull against the port of the ByteMe. Alex went up on the bow and got the lines ready. Sugarman inching closer, squinting at the dark boat, feeling suddenly exposed.

  The familiar voice came from the shadowy cockpit.

  “That you?”

  “Yeah, it’s me, Thorn. It’s me. You okay?”

  Thorn said he was fine. Everything was fine, except they lost Farley Boissont.

  “And Dad?” Alexandra’s voice was stony, bracing herself for the worst.

  “A couple of nicks, nothing serious.”

  Something splashed out in the dark water, then it splashed again. Overhead the sky was immense, more stars than Sugar had ever seen.

  Alexandra tossed the lines across to Thorn and he leaned his weight against them and hauled the boats close. He hung a couple of white bumpers overboard and the boats snugged tight against them. He made the lines fast, then came back to the cockpit and put out a hand, and Alexandra gave him hers and stepped up to the taller gunwale.

  “Thorn killed a guy.” Lawton stood beside the fighting chair. “He killed Johnny Braswell. I watched the whole mess. But it was self-defense all the way. Johnny had a twelve-gauge, Thorn had a nail file.”

  Sugarman chuckled.

  “Even odds for Thorn.”

  Lawton stood beside the chair waiting for Alexandra, waiting with his arms slack at his side in the moonlight, watching as she hopped down from the gunwale and took two steps and pulled him into an embrace and hugged him hard. Then after a minute or two, she stepped back and held him at arms’ length, wiped her eyes and peered into his face.

  “Your ear,” she said.

  “Punk cut off my earlobe,” Lawton said. “Wouldn’t you know. There goes my earring.”

  Sugarman stepped aboard.

  “And the father?”

  Thorn said he was lying down in his stateroom. Doing okay but not saying much.

  “Man’s in shock,” Lawton said. “Just found out what a piss-poor job he’d done raising those kids.”

  Alexandra put her arm around Lawton’s back.

  “Speaking of piss-poor,” Thorn said. “That was some kind of thump you gave us, Sugar. You didn’t dent my boat, did you?”

  “Little ding. Nothing you can’t fix, Thorn. Doesn’t seem to be taking on any water.”

  “We should get back,” Thorn said. “Notify people. Stop Morgan from getting off the island. Turn Braswell over to the cops.”

  “I don’t think you need to worry about Morgan,” Sugar said. “The HERF was on board your boat the whole time. That’s how we turned off your lights.”

  “What if there’s another one?” Thorn said.

  “It’s not our problem,” Sugar said. “We’re done.”

  Sugarman took a seat on the transom.

  “Banks,” said Lawton. “That’s what I’d do. I’d turn off their alarms and help myself. Go down the street, one by one, load up my sack. Buy me a big boat, sail around the world.”

  “It’s not our problem,” Alex said. “This is FBI, CIA, anti-terrorist people. It’s what those boys live for. This is way out of our league.”

  “We’ll need to give statements,” Sugar said. “But beyond that, I think we’re free and clear.”

  “Well, good,” Lawton said. “Then we can stay over here in the islands, do a little marlin fishing.”

  Everyone was silent, looking around in the glow from the Heart Pounder’s lights.
>
  “Damn right,” Thorn said. “We’re here in marlin paradise. Let’s put some meat on the deck.”

  Twenty-Eight

  Saturday morning, April twenty-ninth, Thorn woke before dawn and went out on the porch with his coffee. The pink buffalo was staring at Blackwater Sound, watching it brighten, then begin to turn silver. The buffalo seemed fascinated by the way the light seeped through the bay, spreading below the surface like a thousand underground rivers of molten lava. Thorn watched along with the pink buffalo as the silver turned to tin and then quickly dulled to a series of increasingly darker greens. Not that transparent blue of the Bahamas, but beautiful in its own way.

  Thorn sipped his coffee and listened to her move around inside the house. She was clinking in the cupboard, rejecting the mug Thorn laid out for her, choosing her own, stirring in the half-and-half.

  Down on the Heart Pounder he could see Lawton stretching his arms. Father and daughter on the same circadian cycle, sharing that biological connection. And lots of others, too, that he’d noticed. Similar handwriting, little tics and gestures, the cadence of their talk. He wondered if they noticed it. Wondered if that’s how it was with every parent and child. Nobody as free as they liked to believe, just a helpless bundle of inherited traits. Even Thorn, an adopted kid who never knew his parents. Still, doing things he couldn’t control, destined to repeat the behaviors of people he’d never met. Which, when he considered it, was a lucky thing. His one way of getting to know them, by being himself, doing what their genes whispered in his ear.

  He stared out at the bay and watched the green turn deeper, richer. Listened to the toilet flush, the scuff of her leather sandals on the wood floor. He could smell her coming, the quiet scent of late-blooming jasmine, a subtle change in the force field. Feeling that lift in his pulse that he’d forgotten, that he’d thought he was too old for, or too jaded. He’d been afraid that one too many women in his past had dulled his longing.

  Then the screen door yawned as she came outside, and the slap of it behind her. He wanted to swing around and see her standing there. He wanted to sweep her up and carry her back to the mattress where they’d fit together so naturally, so instantly. Without a lot of talk, even in the afterglow, both of them panting, sweaty, even then, when talk was okay, even expected, they hadn’t felt the need. Just lay there in the silence, barely touching, but closer than he’d been to anyone in years.

  But Thorn held still. Didn’t want to scare her with his intensity. She sat down beside him on the picnic bench. She sipped her coffee. Cream, no sugar. She lay her hand on top of his hand, scratched the skin lightly with a nail. The pink buffalo kept her vigil, guardian of whimsy, god of all large, unfathomable beasts, as if she were gazing out across the vast pasturelands searching for her mate, the other pink buffalo who would some day come thundering across the whitecaps of the bay and in a cloud of dust would halt beside her and nuzzle her and begin to recount his adventures.

  “Is he up?”

  “For a few minutes. Same as you.”

  She cleared her throat. Cut a glance his way, then returned to the bay.

  “You feeling anxious?”

  “About what?” he said, trying for nonchalance, but hearing the edge in his voice.

  She thumped an admonishing finger against the back of his hand.

  “No, I’m not worried,” Thorn said. “I’ve never seen so many federal agents swarming in one place.”

  “They should shut down the airport.”

  “They can’t do that.”

  “Yeah, yeah. The panic. Worried the press will find out. Still it seems like the prudent thing to me. What I would do if I were in charge.”

  “Thank God you’re not.”

  “Why?”

  “You wouldn’t be here, you’d be up in Miami.”

  She patted Thorn’s hand again.

  “They’ll catch her,” he said. “She’s out of control. It’ll be over by lunch.”

  “I turned my cell phone off. I don’t want to know. I just want to be here, be with you and Dad. I can read about it in the paper next week.”

  “Maybe we’ll take the boat somewhere, go over to the ten thousand islands, poke around the oyster beds. Stay overnight, count the constellations.”

  “The three of us.”

  “Of course.”

  “He likes you. He never liked Stan, my husband. He hasn’t liked any of the men in my life until you.”

  “It’s the boyish grin.”

  “You take him fishing,” she said. “None of the men in my life knew the first thing about it.”

  They looked out at the bay some more. A boat passed. It was going slow, a Mako with a family of four and a dog. Everybody was talking at once.

  “There’s a gun in your bedside table, Thorn. Did you know that?”

  “You were snooping.”

  “I’m a cop. I can’t help it.”

  “Sugar let me borrow it. Just until Morgan’s caught.”

  She looked at him for a moment, then nodded.

  “Maybe I should call Dan Romano, check in, see how things are going.”

  He looked out at the cloudy sky, at the sun spearing through the chinks.

  “If that’s what you want.”

  Lawton was walking down the dock, headed for the house. He had on his favorite outfit. Blue sleeveless T-shirt and yellow Bermuda shorts. He stopped and studied the pink buffalo. He bent down and got eye to eye with her and said something to the beast, then he straightened up and came up the lawn and up the stairs. Everyone exchanged good-mornings.

  “Got any eggs?” Lawton said. “I was thinking about a cheese omelette. Or pancakes would work, too. Even better, how about both together? And bacon, I love bacon. I know it’s no good for you, but at my age, what the hell?”

  “I’ve got a full larder, Lawton. You name it, we’ll whip it up.”

  Thorn got up and followed him into the house. Lawton went over to the refrigerator and started hauling things out. At the kitchen window, Thorn looked out at Alexandra. She was standing in a corner of the porch, her cell phone to her ear, her head bowed, shoulders hunched over as if she were trying to duck a bullet that she saw streaking out of the sky.

  Morgan spent the week in a motel on Biscayne Boulevard near downtown Miami, watching the hookers come and go. Hearing the johns through the thin walls, their groans, their baby talk. She got her hair colored. Now she was blond. She bought bright new clothes in a Cuban department store, pink horn-rimmed sunglasses. She used the last of her cash and charged nothing on plastic because they’d trace her instantly. She knew they were looking, knew the whole thing was exposed, even though there was nothing on TV or in the papers. They had to know. She could feel it, the weird barometric pressure shifting in her gut. And she knew who was to blame. The same one who killed Johnny. The asshole who’d wormed his way into their lives and corrupted everything.

  With the last of her money she bought a pistol. A pawn shop on Biscayne sold her a .38 Colt with a box of shells, no questions, no wait. She stayed in her room at the Sinbad Motel and aimed the pistol at herself in the tarnished mirror. Her hand was steady, never wavered. She emptied the cylinder, aimed at the mirror, and squeezed the trigger and didn’t flinch when the hammer hit. Aiming at herself. Killing the weird blond girl in the mirror, over and over.

  On Saturday morning before dawn, she drove up to Palm Beach, parked five blocks from the house and took a route through the neighbors’ backyards. She didn’t think they’d have her father staked out. But she was careful anyway. Coming down an alley that connected her street with the two adjacent ones.

  There was an FPL van parked a block away from her house, but nobody working on the lines. And she saw a man in an upstairs window across the street. He was looking through a narrow part in the curtain, smoking a cigarette. Not Mrs. Schaffer, the old lady who lived there. And she doubted the cigarette man was a visiting relation.

  She moved down the alley, bush to bush, and ducked into an e
nclosure of wood lattice that shielded a neighbor’s garbage cans. The Waste Management truck came at seven-fifteen. In twenty years the truck was hardly ever late. When the skinny black man jumped down off the back and started for the cans across the alley, Morgan slipped around the front of the truck and cut through the hedge and entered the Braswells’ yard.

  All views were cut off from both directions. If the cigarette man was watching, he saw only the rear of the garbage truck. If the FPL crew had their binoculars out, they saw only its side. She used her key and was inside the house in seconds.

  Her father was in his study. He was wearing striped pajamas. He sat at his desk staring into the computer screen. He’d logged onto the site that relayed his satellite information and he was staring at the screen, a nautical chart that showed a sprinkle of islands. Looked to Morgan like the Virgins. A blue ping was pulsing below the largest island. Big Mother was making good time, headed somewhere fast.

  She stood behind him for several minutes and watched him staring at his screen. Finally he sighed, sensing her presence, and he swiveled around and looked at her. He looked at the gun in her hand, then back at her eyes.

  He held her eyes for a long time before bowing his head.

  “I deserve this,” he said. “It’s all been my fault.”

  “You’re right, Dad. You’re absolutely right.”

  He looked back up.

  “I shut down after it happened. After losing them, I simply shut down.”

  “You did, yes. You shut down.”

  “And you had to figure out everything on your own. Without a father, a mother. You had to struggle with it all by yourself. No guidance.”

  “I did okay,” she said.

  He shook his head.

  “Johnny’s dead.”

  “I know he is.” She raised the gun but didn’t point it at him. The garbage truck would come down the alley on the other side of the house in a minute and it would use its crusher, very loud, fifteen to twenty seconds. She’d heard it from her bedroom window every Saturday morning since she was a girl. Waking her up as it compacted the garbage from their street.