Several Deaths Later

by Ed Gorman

  "I'm afraid that's classified."

  "'Classified' information on a cruise ship?"

  Hackett smiled and not unpleasantly. "A holdover from my navy days, I suppose."

  Tobin stood up. "You know she didn't do it and I know she didn't do it, and I'd like you to stop spreading those rumors just to cover your own ass."

  "Your reputation seems to be true."

  "Which reputation? There are several of them."

  "That you're something of a hothead, Mr. Tobin."

  "I just don't want to see her suffer anymore, Captain. Believe it or not, having somebody stabbed to death in your cabin is a very unnerving experience. She'll never forget it. Her whole life will be divided very neatly in two because of it." He was angry and he jabbed at the air with a small sharp finger. He wasn't tough but he was capable of rage and many times that was far more imposing than being tough. "She's a nice kid and she doesn't deserve to be used as a tranquilizer for the rest of the ship. You understand?"

  "I don't like being threatened, Mr. Tobin."

  "Right now, I don't give a damn what you like, Captain." He jabbed out the cigar he'd been smoking. "Right now, I don't give a damn at all.”

  15

  7:34 P.M.

  What he wanted was a burger and fries (hell, a cheeseburger and fries) and not the McDonald's kind, either. He wanted the kind you used to go into neighborhood burger joints for, where the guy made them on a grill right in front of you, and maybe even cut an edge out of the patty and said, "That done enough for you," and then you got a bottle of Heinz ketchup and some big chunky sweet dill slices and some wide silver slices of onion and a few dollops of mustard for taste and, man, when you tasted it, you wanted to cry it was so good. So frigging good.

  Instead, spread before him tonight under lights more appropriate to lighting a Vegas star, was a vast table filled with stuff called Scallop Brochettes with Lime Butter and Costolette di Agnello and Spinach, Fennel, and Pink Grapefruit Salad. And lots of other dishes equally fancy and equally not burger and french fries.

  He ended up conning the waiter into bringing him a tunafish sandwich and some potato chips.

  "You're not taking advantage of it," Cindy McBain said. She wore a baby blue sweater and dark blue skirt. The simple pearl necklace reminded him of high school and her chignon gave her an elegance he hadn't noticed before. She still looked tired but she also managed to look dazzled by the spread of exotic food and the carnival atmosphere provided by the third-rate lounge act presently on the stage.

  "You sure you don't want a bite of my…" Cindy couldn't pronounce what she was eating. "Stuff."

  "No, thanks."

  "A bite wouldn't kill you."

  "This crap, you can't be too sure."

  "What's wrong with this… crap?"

  "Maybe it's just my mood."

  "Well, why don't you take just a teensy bite?"

  She was like a six-year-old. Gentle but persistent. He was damn well going to have a bite. He was damn well going to be festive.

  He pushed his face forward to her, in the wavering candlelight, and put out his tongue.

  "You look like you're going to receive communion." Cindy giggled.

  "Lay it on me, Father."

  Cindy giggled again and started feeding him. He felt like an infant. It wasn't a completely terrible feeling, either. Sometimes being an infant didn't seem to be the worst fate in the world. People fussing over you all the time and playing giggy-goo-goo and wiping your butt for you and suffocating you with love and animal crackers. There were a hell of a lot worse gigs in the world than that one.

  He was taking a bite of something that tasted remarkably like Kraft Cheeze-Whiz when, peripherally, he saw the man who'd been listening outside the party room door last night before the captain had told the "Celebrity Circle" about Ken Norris's death.

  Tonight he wore another western-style suit, a gray one without frills, and the Stetson, which he took off and set on the table with a certain air of ceremony.

  Abruptly, like a man used to being obeyed, he raised his hand and snapped his finger and a waiter, wary at being summoned this way, moved quickly to him. The man gave every impression of being competent, knowing, and more than likely dangerous. Tobin wondered more than ever who he was, and why he'd been listening at the door last night.

  "He's interesting, isn't he?" Cindy said.

  "Ummm."

  "Ken didn't like him."

  Tobin brought his attention back to her. "What?"

  "Ken didn't like him."

  "How do you know?"

  "Because we saw him on the veranda, coming back to my cabin."

  "And?"

  "Ken got very tense."

  "You sure?"

  "He'd been holding my arm and he really gave it a squeeze. It hurt."

  "But he didn't say anything about him?"

  "No."

  "And you didn't see the man again?"

  "Huh-uh. Not till just now." Then she inclined her head back to where the man in the western suit sat. "Hey, look."

  Tobin turned just in time to see the red-haired woman who'd been wrestling with Alicia Farris sit down at the man's table.

  "The Odd Couple," Cindy said.

  "Really."

  "But it doesn't seem like romance."

  "It doesn't?"

  "Look at the body language."

  "I've never really been a student of body language."

  "The way she's leaning back."

  "Ah."

  "And the way she's keeping her arms folded across her chest."

  "Ummm."

  "Definitely not a romance."

  "I wish you were as good at mind reading as you are at interpreting body language."

  "Why?"

  "Then we'd know what they're doing together. And who they are."

  "I guess that would kind of help."

  Tobin shrugged and went back to his scotch and soda. The redhead and the older man had started talking quietly and there wasn't much reason to watch them any longer.

  "Hey!" shouted the lounge singer in the gold lame dinner jacket. "It's time for another tribute!"

  "Time for another tribute?" Tobin said. "The bastard just finished one two minutes ago."

  "Joey Dee and the Starlighters!" cried the singer as he assumed immediately the Twist position.

  ***

  The name of the tabloid the redhead, Iris Graves, worked for was Snoop. Presently it sold a little more than three million copies a week and it enhanced its considerable newsstand revenues with advertising for hemorrhoid products and truss products and products for people who wet their pants and products for people who couldn't see so well and products for people who couldn't hear a damn word if you stood right next to them and screamed and products for people who wanted even a few more mementos of Elvis and products for people who enjoyed American flag coasters and American flag clocks and American flag socks. The biggest issue they'd ever done was estimating the number of "major Hollywood stars" who were rumored to have AIDS. (One office pundit saying, "If we could just tie UFOs into this somehow, we'd have a 99 percent sell-through.")

  All of which made it virtually impossible for Iris to convince anybody that she was a bona-fide journalist. The thirty-seven-year-old beauty (and beauty she was and never forgot it) was a reporter for Snoop, but she was also holder of an M.A. in journalism from Harvard, former feature writer for the Chicago Tribune, and decliner of at least three hundred pitches to go into TV news-despite the fact that the camera would have gone sappy over her Hepburnish cheekbones and chills-down-the-spine smile. She wanted to have fun being a journalist and sitting behind an anchor desk was hardly her idea of that. So when Snoop's president, the surprisingly earnest J. H. Hoolihan, a shanty Irish muckraker who now got to put his fat white ass on the surface of a gold inlaid bathtub the size of a garage floor, offered her a job, she'd been, in equal parts, offended and intrigued. Her newspaper friends all ridiculed the idea, of course, and even her father
seemed troubled by her impending decision ("Would you really want to see the Graves name on a paper like that, honey?"). But in the end, far more fascinated than she should have been, she took the job. And began learning about a new way of perceiving reality.

  While most of what Snoop reported was not true in the absolute sense, almost everything it reported was true in some sense. If so-and-so was not having an affair with so-and-so, there was a good chance that they had spent some idle time together. If the latest cancer findings were not exactly a breakthrough, then at least they offered some new hope. And if the cop in New Jersey did not see a UFO exactly, he saw some goddamn thing. And so it went. Not the truth exactly but not a lie exactly either. And it sure beat covering city council meetings and fashion shows and Pet News. For instance, the story-scandal, really-she was working on now…

  "You're tense tonight, darlin'."

  "I've told you, Sanderson. Don't call me darlin'. I hate that."

  "You're really one of them, aren't you?"

  "One of whom?"

  "Libbers."

  "Oh, Christ."

  "You deny it?"

  "No, I don't deny it." She laughed. "I don't appreciate being mocked, little girl."

  "I just didn't know anybody actually said that anymore."

  "Said what?"

  "'Libbers.' And especially in that tone. Sort of like 'Communist.'"

  She'd made him angry and she knew it and she didn't give the slightest damn. When you were born beautiful and your father had oodles and you maintained a 3.8 all the way through grad school, there was very little you did give the slightest damn about.

  He leaned forward, all cheap aftershave and cigarette smoke, and made his face mean. "You seem to forget I could have you arrested for what you did to me."

  "You'd have to prove it."

  "Oh, I could prove it, darlin'. I could prove it."

  She felt sad suddenly. She liked sitting here in the shadows of the stage, most of the people in evening clothes, a band providing lots of festive noise. She just wished she were with a man she enjoyed. Sanderson was too old for her, too stupid, too crude. The only reason she sat with him now was because he'd seen her the other night when, dressed in snap-brim fedora and trench coat, she left the cabin of Cindy McBain, where the dead Ken Norris lay on the floor.

  He'd insisted on her coming back to his cabin. She'd been prepared to give into him, of course, and assumed she knew without asking what he wanted-sex. If she didn't give in he'd go to the captain-and would the captain actually believe her story that she'd dressed up this way only so she could follow Ken Norris in pursuit of her story? And then sneaked into the room only after somebody had knocked her out while she hid on deck, watching the cabin? The only reason she'd sneaked in was because she sensed that something was terribly wrong and she'd been right. Then the bathroom door had opened and Cindy had come out and Iris had panicked and pushed past her and gone out into the night and…

  But Sanderson hadn't wanted sex. He'd said, in fact, "Been married to the same woman for forty-one years. Never slept with another one. Had a chance to once, Louisiana-it was right after the Korean War-but I turned her down. Man gives his word it should stay gived."

  Then Sanderson had said, "I don't believe you killed that man but I want to know what you were doing in that cabin."

  She'd told him she was a reporter. She'd told him for whom. She'd told him she was working on a story. What she didn't tell him was what the story was all about, or whom it involved.

  And that's what he was still trying to find out.

  Now Sanderson said, "You got two hours left."

  "I'm aware of that."

  "Two hours and either you give me the name of the person you're following or I go to the captain."

  "Who are you, Sanderson? What's your interest in this?"

  "Darlin', you're in no position to be askin' me any questions."

  "You can only push it so far, Sanderson."

  He smiled. He had been handsome once but now there was too much age and malice in his gaze for that. "And just how far would that be, darlin'?"

  "Which one is it?" she asked.

  "Which one?"

  "It's one of them on 'Celebrity Circle,' isn't it?"

  He intentionally made his voice naive. "Now, darlin', what would I want with one of them celebrities?"

  "You've got something on one of them, don't you? That's why you're on this ship."

  "Now why would you think that?"

  "Because I followed you yesterday afternoon."

  For the first time, his face showed real interest in what she was saying. A sense of caution tightened his voice. "Followed me?"

  "Yes."

  "In the afternoon?"

  "Yes."

  "And what was I doin', darlin'?"

  "You were sliding a number ten white envelope under the door of each celebrity-with the exception of Tobin."

  "And why do you suppose I wouldn't include Tobin?"

  "Because he isn't one of them. They've been together a long time and he's just a guest."

  "You're a very intelligent woman, darlin'. But I imagine you're a mighty frustrated one too."

  She expected a sexual remark. He surprised her. "Because you know deep down that I'm not goin' to tell you bird squat about what I'm doin' on this ship." Then he laughed. It was a merry laugh.

  "And you're not going to find out what I'm doing on this ship, either."

  Then he startled her.

  She sat there with her Harvard degree and her beauty and her daddy's wealth thinking what a crude clod Sanderson was, and then he startled her completely.

  He told her exactly what she was doing on this ship. Exactly.

  And then he started laughing again. Merrily.

  "You bastard," she said. "How did you find out?"

  "I've got a lot of surprises in me, darlin'," he said, hoisting his wineglass. "A lot of them.”

  ***

  Around 9:00 the entertainment got much better. Marty Gerber, the comic, took the large semicircular stage with a baby blue spot and a painting of Eden in the background. He had rarely been this good, his timing flawless, and his material confessional without being self-indulgent (the difference between Robert Klein and Richard Lewis), and the diners responded accordingly.

  By now, Tobin and Cindy were bombed, though Cindy kept denying it. "God, Tobin, can't I even have a few drinks and relax?"

  "I wasn't criticizing. I merely mentioned that when you got up to go to the bathroom the last time, you sort of wobbled."

  "Wobbled? I wobbled? I don't wobble, Tobin. I really don't. I don't weigh enough to wobble, for one thing."

  "Now I know you're drunk."

  "How?"

  "Because wobbling doesn't have anything to do with weight."

  "Then what does it have to do with?"

  "I'm not sure but it's definitely not weight."

  "You're the one who's drunk."

  "I am, true enough. But at least I admit it."

  "Well, when I get drunk, Tobin, I'll admit it too." At which point she knocked over her drink. "Don't say anything, Tobin."

  He didn't, and instead turned his attention back to Marty Gerber. As he watched, he got into one of his generous moods-certain nights riding high he felt positively Old Testament patriarchal, sort of like Pa in a biblical version of "Bonanza"-and started concocting all sorts of plans about how he'd write this column about this great young comedian and how, within twenty-four hours of the column appearing, Marty would be signing for his own HBO special.

  Then his good mood waned because he happened to see, far back in the shadows of the restaurant, the makeup girl, Joanna Howard. She sat alone at a tiny table and stared as much at the wall as at the stage. She ate her food quickly, as if she couldn't wait to jump up and leave. She wore a pretty, very formal long-sleeved white blouse and what appeared to be a rather gaudy pink skirt. Her hair was pulled into a severe bun and she wore glasses.

  He said, "You mind if
I go say hi to somebody?"

  "Who?"

  "God."

  "What?"

  "That was just supposed to be a rhetorical question."

  "Huh?" She really was plastered. Kansas City was bombed out of her mind.

  "I was supposed to say, 'Do you mind if I go see somebody?' and you were supposed to say 'No, of course not.'"

  "I don't want you to leave me alone."

  "You'll be fine."

  "They'll all start looking at me again."

  "It's because you're so beautiful."

  "I'm not beautiful. I'm volup-" She couldn't say it. "You know what I mean."

  "Well, you are voluptuous, but you've also got a great face."

  "That isn't why they'll look at me. They'll look at me because the captain keeps telling everybody that I killed Ken Norris."

  "You'll be fine. I'll only be gone for a minute."

  "I'll count to sixty and you'd better be back."

  He rose, kissed her on the forehead, and then made his way through the tables.

  A few people gave him the "celebrity stare," one invariably tainted with disappointment. When you first meet someone who's on TV, that person assumes a stature he can't possibly have in reality. Tobin was this five-five guy with red hair-TV hid that fact, or at least made it more interesting than it was.

  When he reached her table and she looked up, she seemed almost frightened. He thought of Cindy and her body language theories. It did not take a Ph.D. in the subject to realize that the way Joanna Howard tried to shrink down meant that she did not want visitors.

  "Hi."

  "Hi," she said.

  "I just wondered if you'd like to join us." He waved in the general vicinity of Cindy. "Oh, no. That's all right."

  He was drunk enough to say it straight out. "You look so lonely."

  "I am lonely." She smiled. "But I don't think sitting at your table is going to help me." She paused. "I'm not trying to be rude."

  "Everybody's having so much fun."

  She shook her head. "Everybody's having so much fun-and Ken Norris is dead less than twenty-four hours." She stared at him in her unscrubbed, earnest way and he felt moved by her gaze at that moment, almost jarred by it. "We don't give a damn about each other. We really don't."