“Okay,” said Poe, when he and Mango were alone back in his office. “I have no more doubts. What do we do about it?”
“I’m going to set up a meeting for you,” she said. “With some prospective new partners who are gonna treat you a hell of lot nicer.”
Diandra did not come down from her hotel suite until after breakfast, sending a message to Matthias that she’d join him on the boat. She arrived late in the morning, wearing white slacks, a designer T-shirt, sunglasses, and a large hat.
“I don’t like to be in the sun too much,” she said as he helped her aboard. “Do you mind if I stay below for a while?”
“Diandra, it’s your boat,” Matthias said. “Please stay wherever you like. Your cabin is aft, the one to the left of the ladder. The other one’s mine.”
“The one on the left. Thank you very much.”
She turned from him as she might from a hotel desk clerk.
After getting under way, most of the crew went below as well, needing sleep. They had partied most of the night, including the young man he’d asked to check on the boat.
The sail across Green Bay was easy, with a steady following wind. Diandra didn’t come up on deck again until they were nearing Ephraim’s Eagle Harbor, marked on the horizon by a high church steeple rising above the town.
She sought what shade there was in the cockpit, pulling her hat down low, keeping her attention on the coastline stretching off to the south.
“It’s no fun sailing when you’re in that cabin,” she said.
“Are you sure you want to make the trip to Chicago? You can always get a plane in Sturgeon Bay.”
“I don’t know. It would look funny if I rushed back like that. Peter would think something had gone wrong. Something between us.”
“Has it? You seem unhappy.”
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
Cindy was sitting by the starboard winch. She got up and went forward.
It was well into the afternoon when they dropped anchor, sounding the boat horn three times to summon a tender from the dock. Poe’s chauffeur Krasowski was waiting with the ridiculously long red limousine. Matthias doubted the locals had ever seen a car that excessive in their town before.
The glass divider was up between the driver and the passenger compartment, but neither he nor Diandra spoke. It was a quick run up to Sister Bay. There was indeed a goat on the roof of the restaurant, quietly munching some of the thatch.
“Scandinavian custom,” Matthias said. “For the benefit of the tourists.”
She smiled, but that was all.
Krasowski stayed with the car. They took a table off in a corner of the main dining room. Diandra ordered wine and a salad. Matthias was hungry, and asked for Swedish meatballs. Feeling in considerable need, he also had a glass of wine.
“I’m sorry,” he said finally, as they began eating.
“Sorry?”
“About last night.”
“Why? Didn’t you enjoy yourself?” Her voice was laced with sarcasm.
“It wasn’t very wise, for either of us.”
“Because of Peter? Are you afraid of him?”
“I’m afraid for you. What would he do if he found out?”
She sighed. “Anything from killing us to being immensely pleased.”
“Pleased?”
“He likes you. He wants very much to have you keep working for him. He asked me to be nice to you.”
“Not that nice.”
“You never know with Peter. He’s not what you’d call a moral man, is he? He fools around himself. He has a lot of women I don’t know about, and some I do. He does whatever he wants. He thinks it’s his right. He’s Peter Poe, king of the world, top of the heap.”
“That doesn’t mean he’d be pleased.” The idea of Diandra making love to him just to carry out her husband’s wishes disturbed him deeply.
She looked at him darkly. “Don’t worry, Matthias. He’s not going to find out, and it’s not going to happen again.”
He looked down at his plate. She asked for another glass of wine.
“You seem very unhappy,” he said.
“I’m just troubled.”
“You just told me not to worry.”
“I’m troubled about you, Matthias Curland. I wonder if you’re a very moral person.”
He was startled.
“Your brother’s the kind of man who gives philandering a bad name,” she said. “I don’t like being in the same room with him. I’m just been wondering how much you might be like him.”
“I’m not like him.”
“Peter’s told me about you both. He knows a lot about you. Your wife left you because you were screwing around with that girl who was murdered. You have a woman in France, but you’re not back in Chicago two days and you take up with your old girlfriend. You ask her to marry you, and then you jump into bed with me.”
He searched for words, but before anything useful came to mind, she went on.
“I don’t know what you think of me,” she said, “but I don’t fool around. I’ve never cheated on Peter. It took a lot of courage and a lot of anger and not a little booze to leave that message for you, and to answer the door when you finally knocked. I did it because I wanted to, because I’m tired of never being able to do what I want to do. Because … I’m very attracted to you. I’ll be honest about that. I was the first night we met. I thought you were special, special in a good way as Peter is special in what most people would consider a bad way. You’re different from any man I ever met before. At least I thought you were. Now I’m not sure. I’m not sure at all, Matthias. When we were lying there, afterward, all I could think of is what woman you’d be sleeping with next. Probably that Cindy, judging by the way she keeps looking at you.”
The waitress had brought a carafe. Matthias poured himself another glass of wine.
“I’m not like my brother,” fearing he sounded like someone testifying in court. “He’s addicted to women, the way he is to alcohol. They’ve always thrown themselves at him. Sex has been a part of his life since he was fifteen. He learned how to use it, to get what he wants, what he needs, early on. It’s the only thing in his life that really works for him. I’m not like that. I don’t know why we’re talking about this. I’m quite embarrassed. But in all honesty, there have been very few women in my life. We just met at a complicated time.”
“Complicated? It’s very simple. You cheat.”
He wanted to tell her that he wasn’t cheating. He was searching—not for “the perfect woman,” but for the woman for him, a woman much like one in a painting he’d seen long ago, a woman, as it happened, who looked much like her. But he didn’t know how to say that without sounding idiotic.
He sipped his wine. She looked at him, her light-blue eyes troubled and sad.
“Leave that, please,” she said quietly. “I want to go.”
He put down money enough for the check. “Do you want to go back to the boat?”
“I want to drive around some more. I like this place, what I’ve seen so far.”
There went up the coast all the way to Gill’s Rock at the tip of the Door County peninsula, then across to Northport on Lake Michigan. The water was very blue up at Death’s Door Passage. Here it was a brilliant green.
Bidding him to stay with the car, she walked out to the end of Northport’s long concrete pier by herself. Matthias stood on shore and watched her, a solitary mysterious figure against the vastness of water and sky. It could have been a painting, though not one he could do, not with any success.
“It’s very nice,” she said, when she finally returned to him, brushing her windblown hair from her face. “I’d like to come up here again. I think I might like to have a place here someday.” She glanced toward the car. “Peter would never stand for it, though. A place of my own, where I could come and be alone.”
“I’ve sometimes thought of coming up here myself. One could make a living of sorts, painting beach pictures for
people’s summer homes.”
“Some living.”
“Do you want to go back to the boat? Or do you want to try to catch a plane from Sturgeon Bay?”
“I’ll go back with you,” she said matter-of-factly. “As I said, it would look funny, since I wanted to come so badly.”
“We’ll be on the water at least two nights.”
“My cabin has a lock.”
He said nothing more.
The crew was ready to hoist sail when he returned. Diandra let him take her arm as she got aboard.
“I don’t want to stay below,” she said. “In that cabin. It’s like my life, riding along in a box, not knowing where I’m going.”
“You can cover up. It’s only a few hours until sundown. It’ll cool off considerably once we get out in the lake.”
“Is there booze aboard?”
“Quite a lot. Your husband must have thought we needed the ballast.”
“Good.”
Matthias sailed north out of the harbor, then, passing a big bluff to starboard, changed course to a northeasterly heading, wanting to stay as close to the shoreline as possible to make time. He really wanted to be back in Chicago.
They’d been under way only a few minutes more when it happened. Matthias was looking aloft at the trim of the mainsail when he heard a loud thump forward. He thought at first they had run aground on some rock, but a roiling cloud of oily smoke erupted from the bow hatch, curling back toward them and over the starboard side. An instant later there were flames. He saw one crew member leap backward into the water off the rail. Cindy was groping back toward the cockpit, clutching at the handholds on the bulkhead. Her blouse was on fire.
The wheel wrenched his hand. The bow was going down, taking water. The boat began to heel to starboard. Matthias let the mainsheet fly, then took the wheel with both hands, grunting as he turned it, lurching the burning bow back toward shore. They were a hundred yards or more from shallow water.
“Cindy!” he shouted. “Jump!”
She looked at him dumbly. Her blouse was still burning. Crew members were bolting up from below, frantic. He had to move. Quick!
“Everyone overboard!” Matthias yelled. “Hurry up! Go!”
He leapt across the canting cockpit to Diandra. “Can you swim?”
“Yes!”
He thrust a seat cushion into her hands. “Go! Quick!”
Lifting her up onto the rail, watching to make sure she got clear into the water, Matthias then lunged forward toward Cindy. The change of course put the fire at the bow and its choking smoke before the wind, fanning the flames and fumes ahead of them, but the orange curls, feasting on the paint, were licking inexorably toward the stern as well. He could see them reaching almost to Cindy’s foot.
She was screaming.
Matthias pulled himself on. The boat was listing badly now to starboard and he was losing footing. Only his grip on the handholds kept him aboard. He felt the girl’s screams as he might flashes of pain.
Jill, dead on a sailboat, his boat. Now Cindy. Hurry. Keep on.
Another reach, another grip. The wind shifted and he caught a gasping mouthful of smoke. He ducked low, another lunge. Close to her now. The cabin roof was on fire. Through one of the windows, he could see flames ripping along the inside of the main salon.
Finally he reached Cindy’s outstretched hand. Pulling her to him with a wrenching effort, he caught his foot hard against a stanchion, then bent double to beat the flames out on her back, her flesh sticky against his skin, the palm and fingers of his left hand stinging, then numb.
Trying to pull her closer, he saw that her foot was caught. If he jumped to save himself, it would be the same as shooting her, except she’d die more slowly, more horribly, the most horrible way there was.
Another lunge. He flung himself on top of her, grasping at her thigh, then her shin. Reaching toward the nearing flames, he caught hold of her ankle and yanked it free of the rail line.
Somehow he was able to turn around. He put his arms around her chest. The boat was about to capsize. The steep list helped. Holding her tightly, he rolled. The lifeline scratched at his face, but they toppled clear. In an instant, they were in the cold, embracing water.
CHAPTER 12
Matthias got Cindy onto the rocky beach and held her wrapped in his arms, oblivious to all else except the extraordinary fact that they were alive. She had lost consciousness but was breathing. He could feel each breath, though not her heartbeat. When she was a little girl and he a teenager, he used to carry her on his shoulders. He put his uninjured right hand on her bare leg. It was icy cold. Her father, though an old family friend, would hate him forever for letting this happen to her, just as Jill Langley’s father seemed to hate him. Unlike Mr. Langley, he would have every right.
“Mr. Curland?”
Two of his crew were standing in front of him. “Is she all right, Mr. Curland?”
Matthias lifted his head slowly. The Lady P had foundered on the shallows, its stern sticking into the air at an angle, burning furiously. In a moment, the gasoline tanks in the bilge ignited in a huge, ugly ball of orange.
“Get a doctor. An ambulance,” he said. He barely recognized his own voice.
“The people in the house are doing that,” the youth said. “It’s a long way to the hospital, but the guy said there’s a doctor up the road. He’ll be here soon.”
“Did everyone make it?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Mrs. Poe?”
“Yes. She’s right here.”
Matthias looked around him. Diandra was off to the left, sitting on a rock, staring at him starkly, transfixed.
“Is Cindy going to make it?”
“She has some bad burns,” Matthias said.
“I don’t understand what happened, Mr. Curland.”
“Neither do I. But I’m damned well going to find out.”
The minutes passed with dreadful slowness. Matthias refused to let go of Cindy until the doctor arrived, an older man with a nice, friendly but worried face. He said he was a gynecologist, but knew what to do. Matthias relaxed his grip. The doctor, helped by the two crew members, gently took Cindy away from him.
“We have to get her up to the house,” the doctor said. “I need to treat her for shock. I brought blankets. We can rig a stretcher.”
Matthias tried to get up, but his legs were weak and wobbly. He made the effort again, finally getting to his feet.
“How bad are the burns?” he asked.
The doctor was kneeling over the girl. “Pretty bad, in spots,” he said. “It could have been a lot worse. I don’t know how any of you made it.”
They lifted her carefully onto a folded blanket, then the two crew members picked up the ends. Another ran up to assist them.
“I want to help,” Matthias said.
“Let them do it,” the doctor said. “They’re not injured.”
Matthias looked at his left hand. There were large gray blisters, ringed in red and black, on his palm and fingers. He turned the hand over. There was a blister there, too, and one on his forearm. He had ignored the throbbing pain. Looking at the ruined flesh, he could no longer. He clenched his teeth, waiting until he was master of himself again, then started after the others, up the wooden stairs from the beach to the house.
Diandra followed behind him. When they reached the top, finding themselves on a broad wooden deck, he stopped, catching his breath. A bald man in shorts, presumably the owner of the house, shoved a chair out of the way to make way for the stretcher bearers.
“Matthias.”
Diandra was standing beside him. Her voice was soft and clear again. “Your hand,” she said.
“I’ll be all right.”
“You should go to the hospital,” she said.
“I will. With Cindy. I’m going to stay with her. You go back to Chicago, the fastest way you can.”
She nodded. He could see tears in her eyes.
“Tell your husband
I’m going to hold him answerable for this.”
“God, Matt. It wasn’t his fault.”
“This wasn’t an accident. There was nothing on the boat that could have caused an explosion like that.”
Diandra shook her head. “I don’t understand.”
“It was a bomb.”
“Meant for Peter?”
“That’s a good bloody guess, isn’t it?”
She looked off out over the water. “If we hadn’t stopped over here today, we would have been miles out in Lake Michigan when it happened.”
“Yes.”
“We all would have drowned.”
“Possibly. Cindy sure wouldn’t have made it.”
“If it hadn’t been for you, she would have died.”
He stared at her grimly. “Call your husband, Diandra. Go on home.”
“When will you be back?”
“I don’t know. I want to go in now and see to Cindy.”
He wanted her to leave him. He had come aboard the boat that morning feeling, in a desperate, forlorn way, rather in love.
“All right. Call me when you can.”
He said nothing.
“Please,” she said.
“All right.”
She took a step, then stopped. “I just want to say something to you, Matt. I take back what I said. You are special. Very special.”
Poe hung up the phone, looking at it as if it were a contaminated thing. Then he set his elbows on the desk and buried his face in his hands.
“Is she all right?” Mango asked. There was concern in her voice, but he had no idea what answer she was hoping for.
“Yes. But it was goddamned close. Shit. The dirty fucking bastards.”
He lowered his hands, then swiveled his chair to look at her.
“They tried to kill me, Mango. The fuckers tried to kill me. Blow me up in my own boat.”
The Big Score Page 27