Buzz Cut

by James W. Hall

  "I know the feeling."

  "Look, Thorn, I don't want my father to know I'm here. He'd just try to pick up where he left off. He was spying on me when I was in college. He found out I was planning to marry this guy I was seeing at the time, David Cruz, so he swooped down, hired him, made him an employee. That's the kind of man he is. He buys people. Finds their weakness, pushes their buttons."

  "David Cruz?"

  "Yeah," she said. "When this is over, I want to go somewhere, disappear. Get it right this time."

  "David Cruz is dead," Thorn said. "He was attacked in his cabin last night. Sliced up very badly."

  Monica drew a sharp breath. "Here? On the Eclipse? David Cruz?"

  "He was security chief, working with Sugarman, trying to catch Butler Jack."

  "Last night? This happened last night?"

  "Apparently. Though he wasn't found till this afternoon."

  She dropped down on the edge of the bed, slumped over, eyes turning muddy. "Jesus God."

  Thorn put a hand on her shoulder, massaged her lightly. She pulled away for a moment, then relented. He could feel the strain ease beneath his hands.

  "This is my fucking fault. All of it."

  "Don't be stupid."

  She swung around, glared at him. Held the sap stiffly in her lap as if she meant to test it against his temple. He took his hand away from her shoulder.

  "Butler asked me if I'd been faithful to him, if I'd waited for him. Something I scribbled in a note to him when I was twelve years old. He was still holding on to it. And when he realized I hadn't been loyal, he blew up, stalked off in a rage. He blurted out David Cruz's name. But I had no idea David still worked for the cruise lines, that he was on board. It had to be Butler. He walked off full of all that anger. Because of me."

  She dropped the sap on the bed, stood up, paced over to the bathroom, went in and slammed the door.

  He could hear her in there, quiet at first, then a couple of quiet whimpers escalating gradually until she was sobbing like a desperate child. Great waves of hurt rolling up from the place where they'd been stored long ago. Thorn lay on the bed and listened and felt a grumble resonating inside him, his own matching wail trying to take shape. The howl of one dog setting off the others. But he resisted as he usually did, breathing his way past. Determined not to take any more voyages to the outer banks of gloom and self-pity.

  In a few minutes she quieted. The water ran. She blew her nose. A wonderful, healthy honk. A moment or two more passed before she stepped out. Her face glowing, eyes set.

  She came over to the side of the bed and looked down at him. She sniffed, backhanded her nose. "I'm sorry about coming on to you like that. My stupid fucking striptease. That's not me. I'm not some slut."

  "I can see that," he said. "But I wouldn't have missed it for anything."

  "You won't tell him I'm here. My father?"

  "I'm not a Morton Sampson fan."

  She shook her head, rubbed a hand across her buzz cut. Looked off at another spray of lightning, a cobweb of bright blue.

  Thorn said, "It must have been hard for you to stay hidden for so many years. Even in the Keys."

  "How do you mean?"

  "Well, you're so . . ."

  She swung her head around, stared at him.

  "I'm so what?" Her face was clenched. "What were you going to say?"

  Out the cabin window Thorn caught a glimpse of more lightning, the flashes smothered by a bank of distant clouds.

  "You're so noticeable."

  She chewed the word for a moment, then her mouth softened, her lips tinged by a smile. He'd passed some test with her, but he wasn't sure what it was.

  "Okay," she said. "What do we do now?"

  Thorn picked up the list again. He flicked the edge of the page with a finger, lay it aside. "We need to show Sugarman this."

  "Then what?"

  "Then the captain. We should be able to persuade him to do the right thing."

  "Do you know what the right thing is?"

  "I'm working on it."

  "And then?"

  "Then we need to find a dictionary."

  She shook her head uncertainly. "What? There's a word on that list you don't know?"

  "No, something else. An idea."

  Sugarman's howl sounded as if it were coming from the bottom of some moldy pit. Hollow and forlorn. All hope abandoned. Thorn scrambled off the bed. He flung open the connecting door and rushed to Sugar's bed.

  Sugarman was sitting up, breathing hard.

  "What is it, man? You all right?"

  Eyes glazed, Sugarman looked at Thorn for a moment then lunged forward and seized him by the throat and, with startling strength, he slung Thorn sideways against the wall. Before he could roll to his feet, Sugarman was out of the bed, the leather sap rising into the air above him and smashing against Thorn's temple, once, twice. A twisted branch of light filled his head. Thorn yelled, clinging to a thread of consciousness as he raised his arms to ward off Sugar's attack.

  Monica must have waked Sugarman from his savage trance. All Thorn knew for sure was that the clubbing stopped. He rolled onto his belly, reached up to feel the damp swelling. The side of his head was numb and aching at once. He heard voices behind him, then felt a cool washrag press against his skull. Felt her turn him over, cradling his head in her lap. Felt her fingertips.

  Thorn opened his eyes and the throb was already beginning. His short furlough from pain was finished.

  Sugarman sat on the side of his bed, bare-chested, his striped pajama bottoms drooping down. The stripes wavering in Thorn's vision. Sugar's skin glimmered, lathered with sweat. He was gasping, wide chest rising and falling, greedy for air.

  "I thought it was him," he said. "Butler Jack. Man, I looked at you and I thought you were him. Oh, sweet Jesus."

  "Too bad it wasn't him," Thorn said. "You would've killed the fucker and we could've had ourselves a nice boat ride through the Caribbean."

  CHAPTER 25

  Monica lay on the left half of the queen-size bed, purring in her sleep, barely moving. Thorn watched her for a while, her face lit intermittently by the distant bursts of lightning. The flashes coming as steadily as heartbeats, Monica's face suffused with light as though her flesh were pulsing from within.

  Lying on the other side of the bed, he closed his eyes and listened to the soggy rumble of the ship. He fingered the tender lump on his temple and found his mind reconstructing the image of Monica's body. Hearing again their brief conversation.

  A woman of the next generation. For years he'd watched her kind frolicking on the beach at Vacation Island, flaunting their iridescent thongs, their taut tans. Pounding across the choppy Atlantic on Jet Skis while they screamed with airy abandon. He'd never managed a successful conversation with one of them before and had not surrendered to the delights one or two had offered.

  Thorn had been Monica's age once. About a week ago. Remembering it as a time when fish mattered far more than people. An extended case of cobia phobia. Every night as he fell asleep, planning his fishing strategy, how he would stalk that tarpon, this permit, that grouper. It had been his own version of running away.

  Before they'd turned off the lights, Monica described in a sleepy voice her last three years working as a maid. The hardscrabble lessons of menial labor. Scouring tubs and showers, cleaning up the cigarette butts, body hair, collecting the abandoned shampoo bottles, unfinished booze and dirty magazines of countless tourists, drifters and deadbeats. Sketching it with modest affection. Her long slow empty days at Sugarloaf. Then drifting to the end of her stay there, describing Butler Jack's arrival, the shock of being recognized.

  When she was done, she asked him about himself. Thorn giving the quickest outline he could. Tied fishing flies for a living. Been trying unsuccessfully for the last few years to stay clear of trouble.

  "So you're not a security guard."

  "Not even close."

  "Well, shit," she said. "I guess you'll just have to
do."

  "You're not the first to say it."

  Finally they wished each other good night, switched off the lights, moved to the opposite edges of the big mattress, leaving an empty expanse of sheets. She was asleep almost immediately, which Thorn took to be a measure of her trust in him—a fact that pleased him less than it should have.

  He plumped his pillow, resettled his head, and found himself replaying Rochelle's strained voice on the ship-to-shore an hour ago, Rover's bark, her new man's hardass snarl. As Thorn lay awake, he felt the cavity inside his ribs burn like perilous hunger, days without food or drink. A phantom pain. An ache for what was not there and might never be again.

  He turned on his side, put his back to Monica. He tried to clear away the clutter of images, the jangling colors and clamor of the last twenty-four hours. He knew he needed sleep, to let his body do its small repairs, wake refreshed.

  But he had made the mistake of wandering the ship today trying to get his bearings. And now he was paying for it, as his mind bubbled. Still processing the Eclipse's glittery facades, its cheap golds and silvers, the shiny foils and mirrors, the endless neon, the garish furniture, the noisy shades of carpet and walls. Visual heartburn.

  Every corner of the ship seemed to vibrate with false allure, wild geometric shapes, chintzy whirligigs, stained glass, lighted floors, lighted ceilings, lighted walls. Incessant music coming from overhead, always something to jar the eye, the chrome and glass, the clashing reds, oranges, and purples, a great empty razzmatazz. A blaring carnival of bad taste. Not an earth tone to be seen. No fragment of wood, not a single living plant.

  It seemed to him that the ship had been designed to rattle the mind. To keep the pace frantic, give you an itch you couldn't satisfy. To jiggle and twitch and startle your heart. A buzz in the walls. A ceaseless flurry rising up through every deck. Fidgety false gaiety that seemed to emanate from the casino, seep through the entire vessel, the raucous bells and whoops and empty electronic celebrations of the slot machines, the whirling fruits, the clatter of quarters filling the metal dishes.

  Yes, it was true, Thorn didn't get out much. And this was why.

  He twisted his pillow into another awkward shape and saw again the faces of the dead. Dorfman, small and handsome, in his early thirties. His only sin was holding Butler Jack responsible for his foul-up. Dale Jenkins. David Cruz. Their bodies cooling now. Two in the portable morgue. Jenkins stashed in one of the meat lockers in the kitchen. While the Eclipse sailed merrily into the Caribbean, the slot machines jingling, the party rolling on.

  ***

  "You said there'd be no violence."

  "I lied."

  "It's got to stop." Voice muffled as if afraid of being overheard by someone sleeping nearby. Or perhaps it was just the bad reception in Butler's headset. A voice full of static.

  "I can't guarantee there won't be any more violence," Butler said. "In fact, I expect there will be. I predict at least two more deaths."

  He squirmed around for a more comfortable perch. He was nested in the ceiling crawlspace above the chapel. His hideaway. Complete with phone and cushioned mat, pillow, water jug, paper and pen. His duffel full of equipment. He could swivel right and left, squat and waddle ten feet along the ceiling brace, down to the bulkhead, and slide aside the acoustic tiles and jump down behind the pulpit. Be out the door and onto the quarterdeck in two minutes.

  A perfect staging spot. Phone cables, two heavy power lines that terminated in the hydraulics room, the controls for the bow thrusters, the stabilizers, the rudder and variable pitch propellers. Best of all, running just overhead was the red bundle of cables that stretched from the signal tower through the bridge to the radio room. Radar, TV dish, ship to shore. Splice into the right cable and you could intercept radio messages, make phone calls to downlinks all across the world. Splice into another one, you could interrupt the steady flow of data going to the bridge. Cut off their contact with the global positioning satellites, the Loran. Force them to get out their sextants, their charts, if they wanted to find out where the hell they were.

  It was a cramped space, and Butler's balls ached from being pressed so tight between his legs. But he loved this spot, his command central. His golden place, which had taken almost a year of careful study to locate. For months he had scrutinized the blueprints, overlaid them with the electrical plans and navigational schematics. Narrowing, narrowing, until he'd discovered the one precise location where every cable and wire crucial to his scheme intersected.

  Once he'd located his golden spot, it had taken him seven months to colonize it. Finding a few moments on every voyage to steal into the chapel, smuggling several small sheets of plywood for flooring, his rubber mat, then his phone headset, his cables and tools. Little by little, week by week building his camp. And now it was perfect. In the last five months since he'd been using his cubbyhole, not once had he come upon anyone praying in the chapel.

  "You've got to promise me, Butler. No more violence."

  "I don't have to promise you anything."

  "Listen to me. This has to stop."

  "Did you know," said Butler, "cruise is from the Dutch kruisen. Which derives from the Middle Dutch word cruce, and farther back from Latin crux, cruc."

  "Butler, listen to me, please."

  "Crux is cross. The place they hung Christ. Interesting, isn't it? Cruise, cross, Christ."

  Butler let a moment's silence pass, then severed the connection. It was a perfect telephone. You could call out, but no one could call in. Never a ring, never an interruption.

  At five A.M. someone hammered on the door of Thorn's cabin. Three hours of restless tossing. Maybe a half hour's sleep shuffled in there somewhere, five minutes here, five there.

  Thorn peered through the peephole, swung the door open. McDaniels looked past him, at Monica sitting up in bed, then at Thorn, a raunchy remark passing through his mind, then he let it go.

  "The hell happened to you?"

  "Ambushed," McDaniels said. He stepped into the cabin. His right cheek was swollen, eye almost shut. "Fucking creep snuck his hand around the corner of the infirmary door, got me with the zapper. I fell on my face. I guess I'm lucky to be alive."

  "And Murphy?"

  "He's okay. He's back at work. Doing his shift in the control room. Hatching some new way to catch the guy."

  Monica was sitting up in bed, smoothing a palm across her forehead. Thorn walked back over to the bed, taking a look out the balcony window. The sky clear now, a faint rim of purple light at the horizon.

  "He could've killed me easy. Me or Murphy. I can't figure it."

  "Fucker's toying with us," said Thorn.

  McDaniels nodded. "Hell, it wouldn't be as much fun with two less people chasing after him. Guy's got testicles for a brain. Wants to show us what a big bad hombre he is. Put on a show."

  "I don't know. I can't figure it."

  "How 'bout it, Monica, that how he thinks? A performance?"

  "I told you, I was around him exactly twenty-four hours. I'm no specialist on Butler Jack." She hauled herself out of bed. Stood for a moment, blinking, letting the blood find its normal level. "But yeah, all right, I guess he strikes me that way. He's been planning this a long time. It's not just about money."

  "It's you he's trying to impress. Show you what he can do."

  "Me, his mother. Maybe the captain too. I don't know. He's hungry for love. Starving."

  "Aren't we all."

  In her chino shorts and V-neck jersey, Monica sat down on a corner of the bed.

  "What I want to know," she said. "He's out there walking around. He goes anywhere he wants. Don't you guys know what he looks like?"

  "Oh, we know what he looks like."

  "It's a big ship," McDaniels said. "Lots of hidey holes." Looking at Monica, a small smile. "So how's Sugarman doing?"

  "I'm fine and dandy." Sugarman pushed open the adjoining door open. "Fit as a fiddle and ready to roar."

  McDaniels drew his drinking s
traw out of his shirt pocket, bent it in half, inserted it, began to munch. Taking a second or two to give Monica the full inspection.

  Sugarman, wearing only his droopy striped pajama bottoms, moved over to Thorn, touched a gentle finger to the knot on his temple. Thorn winced and swung away.

  "Sorry."

  "Hey," Thorn said. "Don't worry about it. I'm glad you're back in form."

  Moving on by, sitting down heavily beside Monica, Sugarman flexed his fingers, stretched his arms up, yawning. Thorn moved around the cabin turning on lights.

  "I was lying there, I couldn't sleep," said Thorn. "I had an idea. A way to go on the offensive. Flush this guy."

  "We're listening." Sugarman continued to work his fingers, squishing an invisible tennis ball.

  Monica groaned. "Why do I think I'm not going to like this?" Sitting beside Sugarman, she looked rumpled but rested. Her eyes coming up to meet his.

  "You want to use me as bait," she said. "Hook me up, troll me from bow to stern. See who tries to take a bite. That's it, isn't it?"

  "You're bait already," Thorn said. "You're number eleven."

  Sugarman asked him what the hell he was talking about. And Thorn got the paper from the bedside table and handed it to him. Sugarman rubbed his eyes and read. A moment later he looked up at Thorn, at Monica. A different look for each. Then he read the list again and handed it to McDaniels.

  "What the hell's the Juggernaut?"

  Thorn said, "An oil tanker. But don't worry, we're not going to let it get that far."

  "An oil tanker?"

  Monica nodded.

  "Oh, shit," Sugar said. "Here we go."

  "So what's the plan?" McDaniels said.

  "Give me a minute," Thorn said. "I'm thinking."

  Sugar stood up, paced the length of the cabin and returned. "Tell me something. Any of you know what a covalent bond is?"

  "A what?" Thorn stared at him.

  McDaniels shook his head.

  "Something from chemistry," Monica said. "I don't remember what though."