Buzz Cut

by James W. Hall

  Sampson gave the boy a long and careful look.

  "You can do that?" Sugarman said.

  "Sure I can. I know this ship better than that jerkoff any day of the week." He looked around the table. Even a social dimwit like Murphy could read the strained silence. "Sorry," he said. "But it's true. If Butler makes another peep, I can tell you where he is. A minute, two minutes, that's all I'll need."

  "All right, good," Sampson said. "Then it's settled."

  He clapped his hands together, gave them a good dry rub. Once again brimming with pigheaded optimism.

  Gavini rose.

  "Mr. Sampson," he said. "I do not approve of this in any manner whatsoever. This is my ship, my command. My decision is final in all matters. We have had two homicides, sir, we must turn back immediately. There is no compromise on this issue."

  "It's your ship, Gavini, but it's my navy. Next month look whose signature is on the bottom of your check."

  The captain held Sampson's eyes for a few moments, then muttered something in Italian and looked away. "I cannot agree to this, sir."

  "Oh, now, don't be a bad sport, Captain."

  Gavini stalked toward the door.

  "Wait a minute, Gavini."

  The captain stopped and did a neat little about-face.

  "What about a compromise?"

  "And what would that be?"

  "You continue to pilot the ship till we reach Nassau tomorrow. Once we're there, we'll put the passengers ashore and then do as Mr. Sugarman suggests, go room to room."

  "We should turn back now," Gavini said.

  "A compromise, Captain, that's all I'm asking." Sampson cranked up a collegial smile. One potentate to another.

  "All right, then," the captain said. "We will sail to Nassau. But we will not leave port again under my command until this assassin is found."

  "Agreed."

  The captain gave Sampson and Lola a stiff bow then left.

  Lola lifted her chin, aimed it across the table at Sugarman. The two of them locking eyes, communing like long-ago lovers.

  Thorn said, "And by the way, what the hell's this vocabulary business about? He trying to be some kind of comedian?"

  "My fault again," Lola said, shifting her gaze from her son, looking at Thorn, some of the leftover heat still in her eyes. "When he was young I urged him to look up words he didn't know in the dictionary. I told him it was the path to success, a good vocabulary. So he memorized it. He sat down and memorized the entire dictionary. Took him a year to do it, but he learned everything in Webster's Third Collegiate. Every word, every pronunciation, everything."

  "Very literal guy."

  "Very smart," she said. "IQ close to two hundred."

  Murphy made a throat noise and rolled his eyes.

  "You should've given him a goddamn Bible," Sugarman said. "Maybe we wouldn't be here today."

  "I did," said Lola. "He memorized that too."

  "In the beginning was the word," Thorn said, "and the word was Jack."

  Lola nodded.

  "When he was fifteen," she said, "Butler refused to attend school any longer. He would sit in his room and pore over the dictionary and the Bible. He stopped speaking to me, wouldn't talk to anyone. Totally withdrawn. I became alarmed. Morton was kind enough to recommend a psychiatrist in New York City."

  Sampson cleared his throat. "Lola, please. I don't see how this . . ."

  She cut him off with the slightest tilt of her head and something she did with her eyes that only Sampson could see. The big man rocked back in his chair with his lips clenched in an excruciating grin. It was clear that the balance of power between these two had a public face and a private one. What Thorn had glimpsed was a half second of the private, and in Lola's nearly invisible gesture there was more clout than in all of Sampson's bullying charm.

  Lola shifted in her seat and glanced around at the gathering. A tendril of blond hair had broken loose from her intricate French braid and hung along her neck.

  "I took Butler to Manhattan to meet Dr. Weiner," she said. "A dour man in a pinstripe banker's suit. We had a two-hour appointment, but near the end of the session Dr. Weiner came out to the reception area and said he had canceled the rest of his schedule for the day. Devote it to Butler.

  "Later, I could hear the two of them laughing. Long hilarious guffaws. I got up, went over to the secretary, and asked her if this was normal. And she told me that wasn't a word they used around there.

  "I went for a walk, had lunch, took another walk while the doctor and Butler talked. By six that evening I was wrung out, a nervous wreck. His secretary left. I couldn't hear anything behind the office door anymore, so I knocked. But the doctor called out that they were not finished. So I waited. I sat out there till ten-thirty. Then all at once I began to have an overpowering premonition that something was wrong.

  "I got up, went to the doctor's door. Knocked. But there was no answer. I knocked again, then I swung the door open. The room was completely dark. I stepped inside and I heard only the bubbling of Dr. Weiner's aquarium.

  "I fumbled around for a light switch but couldn't find it. I called out the doctor's name. By then my eyes were adjusting to the darkness and I could make out something in the corner of the room where the aquarium stood. The shape of a man. He seemed to be moving very strangely, writhing from side to side. Nearly in a panic, I patted the wall for the light switch. And finally I found it.

  "I flipped it on and I swung around and there was Dr. Weiner. The dour man in his pinstripe banker's suit had his hands around my son's throat and he was holding Butler's head beneath the surface of his aquarium. Butler's eyes were wide, looking across at me, bubbles from his mouth."

  Thorn looked over at Sampson. The man was gazing up at the acoustic tile ceiling. His grin hardened into a death mask.

  "I ran over, grabbed something heavy from the doctor's desk, a glass bookend, and I hit him with it. I hit him several times before he finally let Butler go and fell to the floor."

  "Should've sued the bastard," Sampson hissed. "Wrung out his last dime."

  Lola looked around at them.

  "That's it?" Thorn said. "End of the story?"

  "Yes," she said. "He was trying to kill my child."

  "Do we know why?" said Thorn.

  "Is there a good reason for trying to kill a child?"

  Thorn shrugged. He could think of a couple.

  "No," Lola said quietly, not meeting his eyes. "The doctor refused to discuss it. Butler and I returned to Miami the next morning."

  "I'm still missing something," Thorn said. "I mean it's a colorful tale, but what's the point? Butler was assaulted by a shrink, so that's supposed to explain why he's killing people? Some kind of emotional scarring or brain damage or something. This makes it all okay?"

  Lola frowned and said, "I'm relaying this to let you know that my son is exceptional. He has something. Charisma, a gift, an intensity. People react to him strongly. He can push people very hard. Over the edge."

  "Great," Thorn said. "So we'll carry earplugs. Have our mirrors ready so we don't have to look him in the eye."

  Sugarman was on his feet, his breath ragged. When Thorn saw his twisted scowl he realized Sugar had heard a different message in Lola's yarn. A mother willing to claw and scratch, do whatever it took to rescue her son. One of her sons anyway.

  "Come on, Thorn, McDaniels." He steered his eyes away from Lola. "You too, Murphy. Let's get busy."

  Thorn followed McDaniels out the door. He had to trot to catch up to Sugarman. "That was my first committee meeting."

  "What?"

  "My first meeting. People around a conference table hashing things out. I'd heard about them, but that was the first one I'd seen."

  "Consider yourself lucky."

  "I was expecting pie charts, graphs, overhead projectors. I thought at least I'd get assigned to a subcommittee."

  Sugar turned into a stairwell, moved limber-legged down the stairs. Murphy and McDaniels falling behind. />
  "And hey, guess who I saw?"

  Sugar gave him a quick look as they rounded another landing. "The girl in the posters," Thorn said. "Monica Sampson. She's on the ship. I saw her this afternoon. She was leaning on the rail."

  Sugarman stopped abruptly. Gave Thorn his full concentration. "You're shitting me. Monica?"

  "It was her all right. I spoke to her. She even flirted with me. Very nice looking woman."

  "Oh, man, oh man. What the hell do we have here?"

  Sugarman shook himself and started back down the stairs. They swung around the next landing and Thorn nearly leveled a cabin boy with a stack of sheets. For a guy who'd just had a heart attack, Sugarman was moving.

  "That's some brother you have. Two hundred IQ."

  "Lucky me, I get the dumb father."

  "Do we know who Butler's father is?"

  "I know Lola lived with a guy for a while a few years after she split up with the illustrious Mr. Sugarman. Some white guy. Real estate developer or something, that's all I found out. Two years or three they were together, never married. He pulled a fraud scheme, ran off with a pot of money, a lot of debts. Nine months later Lola's got a new baby boy."

  "A pattern with her. The men in her life running off."

  "Running off or driven off."

  "So what's the plan? Where're we going in such a hurry?"

  "You're going down with us, see where the control room is, get oriented, then you're heading back up to the Starlight Room. Sit at your assigned table. Eat supper, keep your eyes open. I wouldn't put it past this guy to show up, try something right out in the open. Make a big splash. I'll stay with Murphy, see what he's got in mind about catching the guy."

  "Supper? You want me to eat supper at a time like this?"

  "Yeah. And keep an eye out for the girl. Monica. You see her again, take her into custody."

  "Custody?"

  "You know what I mean. Detain her. Don't let her sneak off. Okay? We need to talk to her. Showing up at a time like this, it's weird. Gotta be connected."

  "When do I get my gun?"

  "There aren't any firearms. We're naked."

  "You're joking. No guns on the ship?"

  "Sampson doesn't like guns. He's forbidden them."

  "Even his security staff?"

  "That's right. No guns."

  "Maybe we can dig up a harpoon somewhere."

  "Just eat supper, be normal. If he shows up, don't try anything unless somebody's in danger. Follow him if you can. But stay clear, no confrontations unless it's unavoidable. I'll try to meet you back at your cabin at eight, eight-thirty. We'll see where we stand then."

  "How about two-ways? Hand radios. Some way to stay in touch."

  "It'd be better if you just tried to blend in, Thorn. Be a passenger. Nothing to give you away. You'll be more useful that way than walking around with a radio squawking on your belt."

  Blue ear protectors hung on a rack outside the engine room. They put them on and Sugar led Thorn on a quick inspection tour down the greasy grates between the huge turbines. Even with the ear guards on, the room was painfully loud. Thorn could feel the vibration of the enormous engines like small fists pummeling his flesh.

  Sugarman pointed up at a length of cord knotted to a steel overhead beam. It was yellow nylon and it hung beside a video camera mounted on the wall. The cord had been sawed off a foot below the knot. Sugar made a choking sign with one hand. Where Dorfman was hanged.

  Small Asian men in blue overalls and yellow hardhats cruised up and down the ramps carrying tools and buckets and dragging hoses behind them. The endless maintenance of engines that never rested.

  Outside they hung the mufflers back on the rack and Sugarman led Thorn to the rudder room. The walls and stationary equipment had been painted a serene sky blue. It was a small space with oversized levers and pumps and oil pressure tanks that ran the two giant rudders.

  "The steering system is operated by oil hydraulics," Sugarman said. "Oil-filled lines under pressure."

  "And that?"

  Thorn motioned at a large wheel mounted on the wall above the hydraulic valves. It was twice as large as a car's steering wheel and was backed by a sprocket that was looped with the largest bicycle chain Thorn had ever seen. Links the size of golf balls. The second sprocket was hidden below the floor.

  "Manual steering," Sugarman said. "A throwback to the old tramp steamers. Sampson wanted it installed. It's the nautical equivalent to lake pipes on a hotrod, more show than function. Something only another seafaring buff would appreciate. Apparently Sampson's a nut on nautical lore."

  "You know this ship pretty damn well," Thorn said.

  "I've been spending a lot of time here, yeah."

  After a quick tour of the sterile control room, Sugarman led Thorn back to the stairwell and told him to go on to supper. To keep his eyes open. If Thorn needed him, this is where he'd be.

  "Sugar," Thorn said quietly. "He's killed three people we know about, so tell me you're over your goddamn case of self-restraint. If you have to go one-on-one with him, you're not holding back, right?"

  "He's my brother," Sugar said. "That hasn't changed."

  In profile, Sugarman's face was unbearably worn, beaten down, a man who had haggled with death, struck a bargain and been released. But also a man whose resurrection was only partially successful.

  "Well, fuck it," Thorn said. "He's not my brother."

  CHAPTER 21

  Monica eased inside her cabin. She shut the door soundlessly and stood for a moment, fighting off a shiver of dread. Across the room the heavy curtains were drawn, the cabin dark.

  She stepped forward, listening for any sign of him. But the music playing on the PA in the corridor was filtering into the room. A Jimmy Buffett jingle extolling the boozy life. She held her ground, waited for her eyes to catch up to the dim room.

  Then another step. And to her right she saw the slim line of light showing at the bathroom door.

  What she wanted to do was walk over to the bed and collapse. She was weary beyond belief. Going the whole day without seeing Butler Jack. Then the goddamn public address comes on, Butler into his hustle, playing his word game. She'd barely digested this when the guy Thorn comes out of nowhere, he's in her face making jokes, knows her name. She's hurrying away and the other cruise ship almost collided with them. Butler behind it somehow. She was sure of that.

  She looked down at her hands. They were jittering so badly that if she tried to take a swipe at Butler, she'd probably whiff. She edged to the closet, rolled the doors aside, then moved to the bathroom door. Holding still for a moment, she tried to peer through the crack but could see nothing. The room was quiet. To the left just out of view a light burned.

  She nudged open the door and stepped back. There was some kind of movement, the flicker of a shadow passing before the light, or maybe just her own reflection. She drew a deep breath. Felt the prickle of hairs erect on her arms.

  Monica didn't know if she was brave or not. All her life she'd found a way to dodge even minor squabbles. As Irma Slater she'd been ballsy when she had to be, blown off a few cowboys who'd hit on her. And in her daydreams she'd screamed out brutal curses at her father, even slammed a fist into his nose more than once. But those were fantasies. So she didn't know. Facing danger, she might be valiant, or she might curl up like some worm and sob.

  In a crouch, Monica stepped into the bathroom.

  It was empty. She swung around and swept the shower curtain aside. Water dotting the tile. She stooped, leaned to the left to let the light shine on the shower floor. A smear of blood on the silver drain.

  She forced herself to draw a breath. Felt a cold ribbon of sweat trickle down her ribs. She went back into the cabin, walked across to the heavy green curtains, reached out slowly, brushed them aside. No one. She stepped through them to the balcony.

  It was after seven, the ocean empty and dark except for a faint ripple of iridescent purple light at the western horizon. The moon was swoll
en almost full as it drifted up from the black sea. A half-dozen tattered clouds flew past it. The brightest stars were already showing, the weaker ones kindling into view. The air was silky, touched with something sweet, a wisp of jasmine or someone's subtle perfume from the deck below. A night to bask in.

  She turned and went back inside the cabin and made one more careful circuit, checked beneath the bed this time, but the mattress was perched on a solid support. The closet, the drawers, opening them one by one but finding nothing. She drew the spread back, stood looking at the clean, flat sheets as if he had some kind of black magic and could turn into smoke, glide about, flatten himself between the bedsheets.

  Monica was losing it. She knew that. Losing it, toes curled over the edge of the cliff. Taking a long look down. Picking her spot.

  She went into the bathroom, relieved herself, rinsed her face with cold water, and went back into the cabin. She walked over to Butler's bags, kneeled and snapped them open. The four Samsonite hardsides Butler had brought aboard were almost empty. A couple of changes of clothes, shorts, sandals, tennis shirts, a shaving kit, that was it. Clearly intending to leave the ship with more than he'd come with.

  She moved to the duffel and unzipped it.

  The main compartment was filled with gauges, fuses, batteries of every size, bundles of multicolored wire, several small circuit boards wrapped in plastic baggies, pliers and the soldering gun she'd seen before, some other tools, several coils of coaxial cable, and a plastic box with a dozen slide-out trays. The trays contained springs and tiny bulbs that might have been transistors, another tray of what looked like microchips, and round flat batteries like Martian coins. A host of other arcane hardware as if Butler had harvested the goodies off dozens of computers. There were also three thick manuals with light blue covers. M.S. Eclipse printed in large block letters on each of them. She fanned through them, saw dozens of schematic drawings. Diagrams, lines connecting with other lines, the intricate electric pathways, the plumbing, the fire alarm system, steering mechanisms. She laid the manuals aside.