Cruise Control

by A. J. Stewart

  “Crew elevator,” said Porter.

  From our angle, the bartender appeared to step into the wall and was gone. Then Porter switched to another camera. I knew this one. People strode busily along it in both directions. It was the main crew corridor. I-95, named after the freeway that runs from the Canadian border with Maine all the way down the East Coast to Miami. We saw the bartender come out of an elevator and slip into the traffic on I-95. He fit in, just another crew member going about his work on a busy night. He walked toward the stern of the ship and then took a set of fire stairs behind another plain white door.

  The next shot Porter brought up reminded me of the corridor to our original cabin. Maybe we had been in crew quarters. If so, I pitied the crew. The bartender came into shot and stopped at a cabin door. He looked around to see if he was alone, and then opened the door and stepped inside.

  I looked at Danielle, who nodded. Then we waited. There were no cameras in the cabins. It didn’t take long, though. After all, the rooms were tiny and there were only so many places a person could hide something.

  The door opened again and then bartender returned the corridor, carrying a blue travel bag with the cruise line logo. He looked around once more, and then pulled the door shut and strode away.

  Army said, “Let’s go.”

  Chapter Thirty-One

  We beat the bartender to the galley behind the sporting bar. Army stood tall like he was readying himself for battle. I had a good idea of what was going through his mind and suspected he was taking the whole thing personally. This was his team, his people. Although he wasn’t responsible for the service staff, and he didn’t hire them and they didn’t report to him, he still saw them as part of the unit that he oversaw. He wasn’t the captain of the ship. He knew that. It was worse for him. He was the captain’s minder. He made sure nothing bad happened on the captain’s ship. But bad things were happening. And now that Army knew who was behind it, he looked none too happy.

  When Martin Perkins stepped into the galley carrying the blue bag, his life flashed before his eyes. Of course, I couldn't say that for sure, but the way his eyes went wide, he certainly knew the jig was up.

  “Do you know who I am?” said Army.

  Perkins stumbled for the power of speech. “No,” he said.

  It was a big ship. There were thousands of passengers and almost as many crew. Not everyone knew everyone. So maybe Perkins didn’t know who Army was. But he knew what he was. The uniform and the square jaw and the don’t mess with me tone got the message across just fine.

  “I am Chief Mahoney. Head of shipboard security.”

  Perkins gulped. I hadn’t been sure before, but now I knew. My plan was going to work. To get to the big dog you had to break the chain. Some chains were hard to break. Some chains were made of strong links like Francis Martelli. He wasn’t giving anything away. But as I watched Perkins gulp, I knew he was no kind of hero. And unlike Martelli, he had been chosen to do a job because he was a weak link. Now that was going to come back and bite the big dog on the backside.

  “You’ve been a bad boy,” Army said. “You’ve been smuggling things off the ship.”

  The word smuggling hung in the air, dripping with its multitude of meanings.

  Perkins shook his head. “No,” he said. “No, it’s a mistake.”

  Army looked at me and I took the baton.

  “Let me tell you what we know,” I said.

  Perkins frowned and looked me up and down. In my palm tree print shirt and khaki shorts I wasn’t quite as imposing as Army in his whites.

  “Who are you?” asked Perkins.

  “Miami Jones. I’m an investigator.” That didn’t seem to put the fear in him that I had hoped, so I nodded toward Danielle.

  “And this is Special Agent Castle from the Florida Department of Law Enforcement.”

  That was a little better. He gulped again.

  “So let me start again,” I said. “We know you impersonated a passenger to make it look like he got back on board when he didn’t.”

  Perkins shook his head but said nothing.

  “And the person you impersonated is being held for attempted murder.”

  Now his face dropped.

  “Special Agent Castle, would that be considered accessory to attempted homicide?”

  “I think the state attorney could make a case that he committed the actual crime itself. He dressed up like the perp we have on video.”

  “No, no, no,” said Perkins. “I don’t know anything about that.”

  Army stepped forward. “At the very least it’s a dismissible offense,” he said.

  He certainly could deliver that drill sergeant voice, but I didn’t see how being dismissed from his job was adding to the pain of being accused of attempted murder.

  I nodded at the bag in Perkins’s hand.

  “What’s in your bag there?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Why would you carry a bag with nothing in it? And why would you go and retrieve an empty bag in the middle of a shift?”

  “No reason.”

  “No reason? Can I see inside?”

  “No.”

  “No? You want to do it the hard way?”

  “You need a warrant.”

  I smiled. “Martin—it is Martin, right? Let me explain where we are right now. You’re in a world of hurt. You’ve done some dumb things. You know what they are, and so do we. You don’t want to do any more. Because right now, you’re not in US waters. We don’t need a warrant. We can throw you to the ground and rip the bag from your hands. Right, Chief?”

  “We’re a Bahamian-registered vessel. US law doesn’t apply. And even if we were in US waters, we’d just call the coast guard. They can search any boat they like, for any reason. There are no Fourth Amendment protections against search and seizure while on a boat.”

  I looked at Army. “Is that true? The Fourth doesn’t apply at sea?”

  “Doesn’t apply to any boat in the US. At sea or tied up to a dock behind your house in Fort Lauderdale. Coast guard has wide powers to board any vessel for safety inspection or any other reason.”

  “I gotta remember that.” I looked back at Perkins. “Either way, Martin, you’re done.”

  “I didn’t do anything. Well, nothing major.”

  “Martin.”

  “Look, I just thought it was some spirits or something that he shouldn’t have had on board.”

  “You’re not that stupid.”

  “I swear. I was just supposed to take the bag and leave it at the tiki bar. But the guy must’ve took the wrong bag.”

  “That so?”

  “I don’t know.” He glanced at the bag in his hand. “The bag I took back on board wasn’t so heavy. I don’t get it.”

  He didn’t get it because the bag in his hand wasn’t the bag he had brought back on board. It was a bag full of rings. Danielle and Porter had switched the two bags in the bartender’s cabin earlier. Now, even I knew that in a court that would be considered planting evidence. But that was only if we planned on prosecuting Perkins. Which I certainly didn’t. Army certainly had a long list of reasons to dismiss the guy from employment, but I just wanted him as bait.

  “So you just received the bag, and then took it onto the island.”

  He nodded.

  “And who arranged this?”

  “The guy at the tiki bar.”

  Army pulled out a sheet of paper with Francis Martelli’s passenger photo on it.

  “This guy?” I asked.

  “Yeah, that’s him.”

  “And he was at the tiki bar?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you pretended to be him getting back onto the ship?”

  “Hey, he said he was just playing a prank on his wife.”

  “Sure. That’s sounds like a hoot. You got his ID?”

  Perkins pulled a ship pass from his pocket and handed it to Army.

  Army took it and said, “Why?”

  I watched t
he guy for a moment. He was young and impressionable. He was at that age where young men think they are immortal. That was a good feeling. I no longer felt it, but I still remembered it. It had served me well at times, and not so well at others. It hadn’t served Perkins well. It made him susceptible to doing dumb things. It made a lot of young men susceptible to doing dumb things. If they made it through, they often wised up with the passing of the years. Often, but not always.

  “You know how much I make?” asked Perkins, rhetorically. “I’d do better at Walmart.”

  “They won’t hire you,” said Army. “Not if they call me for a reference.”

  “There’s a way out, Martin,” I said.

  He frowned. “What way?”

  “I need you to do something for me.”

  “I’m not doing nothing with that guy,” he said, nodding at the picture of Francis Martelli.

  “No, not that guy.”

  “And then I’m good? I keep my job?”

  “No, Martin. I’m pretty sure you’re done on the Canaveral Star. But you do this thing and maybe you won’t go to jail.”

  He frowned again. I waited. He was either going to try and negotiate, or his brain was going to collapse like a black hole under the weight of all the thinking going on in his head. He might realize that offering no jail time wasn’t my offer to make. I was neither the cruise line nor law enforcement. But I did know that the cruise line would want to see the back of Martin Perkins and they would want to sweep the whole sorry thing under the rug. And as for law enforcement, there really was no telling whose job it was to give a damn. We were on a Bahamian registered ship in Bahamian waters, dealing with a US citizen who would be back in the US before anyone called any kind of cop. It was going to fall into the too hard basket. I was confident of that.

  “No jail?” Perkins asked.

  “No.”

  “And what do I have to do?”

  “One very simple thing. I want to you pick up that travel bag, and I want you to give it back to the person who gave it to you.”

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Perkins took the deal. He didn’t have a lot of options, not that he could see. He picked up the bag and he wandered into the bar. At the end of the counter there was a section where the bar could be folded over itself to let people through. He didn’t fold it over. He just ducked under. And then he shrugged his shoulders like he was readying himself for battle, and he started across the lounge.

  We watched from the galley doorway. A waiter wanted through, so I slipped out behind the bar. I kept my eyes on Anastasia Connors. She wasn’t going to see me. She was looking straight ahead, into a space between spaces, another dimension, maybe another time. Maybe she was looking at old photographs in her mind.

  Frederick Connors was still looking around the room. His eyes would stop at a painting of a group of men on horseback, hunting dogs at their feet, horn at one man’s lips, declaring the hunt was on. There were no foxes in that painting. They were running for their lives off-canvas. I didn’t see the point of it all. The activity or the art. Did anyone even eat fox? They seemed all sinew and bone to me. Surely there was more utility in raising a herd of sheep. And as a piece of art it really didn’t give me the sense of wonder that great art was supposed to. I just wondered about the poor fox, and he wasn’t even in the picture.

  Maybe Frederick had similar thoughts. I wasn’t sure. We were both men, and that was where the similarities ended. But he tossed some thoughts around and then moved his eyes to the next thing in the room, maybe another cluster of chairs. Maybe he was looking at the people sitting in them, wondering who they were, what they did for a living, the way folks do when they are people watching. Maybe he was wondering what they were talking about and why he couldn’t think of a single thing to say to his own wife.

  Or maybe his mind was blank. I really had no idea. Anastasia sipped her drink. Her movement prompted Frederick to do the same. As he put his drink down he saw the bartender coming toward him. It gave him something to look at, something to do. Watch the approaching person. Then out of her peripheral vision, Anastasia must have caught the movement because she dropped back into the time and space the rest of us occupied and she looked at Perkins and frowned.

  Perkins walked slowly. I figured he was uncertain. He stepped up to the couple, who both looked up at him the way people do in a bar, with that look that says, I didn’t order anything, did you order something?

  For a moment Perkins stood before them. Anastasia’s wonderment about a potential order changed to her more normal frown, as if this idiot of a bar boy was harshing her mellow by interrupting her daydreaming. I had been on the end of that face. Then Perkins handed over the bag.

  To Frederick Connors.

  Frederick took it like it was his dinner and Perkins had warned him the plate was hot. Two hands, at the bottom. He looked surprised. I knew the look. I was pretty sure I was wearing it. I didn’t know what Perkins was up to.

  I heard Perkins say, “We found your bag, sir.”

  Frederick said nothing.

  Anastasia said, “His bag? Where did you find his bag?”

  “On Paradise Cay,” said Perkins, then he offered a small nod and retreated. He walked away much quicker than he had approached. Anastasia turned her frown on her husband. I got the feeling he knew that look better than I did.

  “How did your bag get on the island?”

  Frederick just pulled the bag into his lap, nice and tight. Then he glanced inside and recoiled like it contained a human head. Anastasia looked at the bag, and then at Frederick. And then at the bag again.

  “I don’t know what is going on with you,” she said. “Carrying that bag everywhere you go.”

  He wasn’t alone. Lots of people were carrying that exact bag around. For a moment I wondered if Frederick had indeed lost his bag. Then I wondered how he might have lost it on the island when he never got off the boat. Then I realized my entire line of thought was wrong.

  Anastasia took a long pull on her champagne and then turned her eye back to Frederick.

  “Are you quite all right?” she asked.

  Perkins stepped back under the bar, and I edged past him and slipped under and out into the lounge.

  Anastasia said, “Frederick, I asked if you are all right?” She turned up her lip. “You’re sweating.”

  He was. As I moved closer I could see the hair on his temples glistening. Rivulets had begun running down the side of his head, around his ears and along his chin. He looked like he had been feasting on a spicy vindaloo. He didn’t say anything to Anastasia. He looked hard at the men on the horses and the excited dogs at their feet.

  Then he looked at me. He wasn’t a confident guy. He dressed well and presented just fine, but I got the feeling that a lifetime of not quite measuring up to his wife’s expectations had worn him down. It had taken some effort to come to my office to hire me, but it wasn’t an effort born of confidence. Yet he had looked polished doing it. The nice clothes and the pocket squares and the well-tended beard. It was all a mask, hiding the tumult below.

  Now that the mask had fallen, he no longer looked polished. He looked like a guy who didn’t know what the hell was going on around him. He wore the eyes of a quarterback about to be sacked, crushed by a three-hundred-pound lineman. A dash of fear and a good dose of how did this happen?

  I ambled toward him. I wasn’t completely sure what the hell was going on, either. But I wanted to find out why the rings were sitting in Frederick’s lap.

  Then the look on his face changed. Like the quarterback had just seen an out, a way to avoid the sack. Maybe. If he moved fast. Frederick jumped up. He didn’t look at his wife. He didn’t look at me. He didn’t look around. He already had. His bored face had perused every inch of the room. So he knew just where he wanted to go.

  He ran.

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  I didn’t chase him. Not at first. It took longer than was necessary for me to figure out what he was doing.
Running? He was on a ship, in the middle of the ocean. And we had well and truly established the fact that he couldn’t swim. There was nowhere to go.

  I still didn’t move. I was paralyzed by the action. Like when a runner at base forgets to run because he’s watching a humdinger of a hit go over the fence. He still has to complete the run around the bases, but he’s too busy watching this amazing thing. And it was amazing. Frederick Connors running was a sight to behold. Just not in a good way. He was slightly on the tubby side, for sure, but he wasn’t massively overweight. But he held the travel bag against his belly and it put his center of gravity all off. His legs were thick but they stumbled like a baby giraffe’s.

  All my life I have been in sports. I had thrown balled-up socks to my dad before I was old enough to remember. I once saw the old photographs. I didn’t have them anymore, but I did see them. We tossed a football on the field at Yale when I was in elementary school. I played soccer and then Pop Warner and then baseball in New Haven. I ran track in high school and I got football and baseball scholarships to college. I played pro-baseball for six years and since then I have run along City Beach with Danielle on a regular basis. I wouldn’t say that sports were my life but they have certainly been a big part of it.

  So it took me a moment to comprehend what I was looking at. It was something I couldn’t recall ever having seen before. I was watching a man who had never learned to run. As if he literally had missed every single PE class for thirteen years of school. A man who had never taken up a bat or kicked a ball or even rushed to catch a bus.

  Some people aren’t sporty. I get that. I can’t program a computer or write a sonnet. Don’t ask me how cold air and hot air get produced from the same air-conditioning unit. But most people have done at least some athletics. They once slogged their way around a high school field in baggy shorts wishing they were anywhere else. They curled up like roly-polies to defend themselves in dodgeball. They whacked a ball against a wall or did a run-up to leap inside a double-dutch jump rope. Plenty of people still have nightmares about their sports escapades. But they have been there and done that.