Lab Notes: a novel

by Nelson, Gerrie

  Vincent played with the adjustments for several seconds before he realized he was holding his breath. He straightened up, exhaled and scratched his chin through his beard. “This is like asking an elephant to tiptoe,” he told Huck.

  The phone stopped ringing.

  After what seemed like hours of incremental adjustments to the telescope, a psychedelic array of lights appeared before him. On the other side of his lens, human arms and heads bobbed in and out of view in a frenzied environment of flashing colors.

  Vincent pulled back his focus slightly to get the broader picture. Then he chuckled. “What do we have here?”

  A distant ringing began again.

  Vincent sharpened the focus. And before his amazed eyes appeared a lakefront two-story floating bar and dance floor called The Pelican Club—according to a red neon sign on the roof. The second-story writhed with hyper animated bodies. From Vincent’s vantage point, it appeared like a bacchanal of flexing Adonises and undulating Aphrodites moving to the rhythms of colored strobe lights. Vincent chuckled again. “You devil, Harry.” Obviously, Harry Lee had enjoyed observing terrestrial bodies as well as celestial ones.

  The ringing stopped.

  Vincent’s eyes watered and he realized he had forgotten to blink for some time. Stepping away from the telescope, he wiped his eyes and switched on the light.

  Again he checked the numbers on the wall. “Two hundred twenty-five degrees.” Vincent swiveled the telescope toward the opposite side of the lake, then switched off the light. “Let’s see what else caught your eye, Harry.”

  Almost immediately, Vincent observed a blue blur through the powerful optics. Slowly, slowly he brought the lights in closer, resisting the urge to make large corrections.

  Even before he achieved perfect focus, he recognized the glowing blue “H” on the Hilton Hotel at the far end of the lake. After further adjustment to the angle and focus, he was amazed to see a man knotting his tie in one of the hotel rooms. Obviously, the man didn’t feel the need to close his drapes on the seventh or eighth floor overlooking the water.

  “Looks like our friend Harry might have had some voyeuristic tendencies, Huck.”

  Keeping the telescope at two hundred twenty-five degrees, Vincent angled it closer to ground level and pulled back the focus slightly. He hoped to find something else on that heading to squelch his suspicion that Harry Lee was peeping at hotel guests.

  Suddenly, before his startled eyes, Diane’s face appeared. Transfixed, Vincent watched her brush back ringlets from her forehead and take a sip of champagne. Then she smiled.

  In his haste to discover the beneficiary of that smile, Vincent pulled the focus back too far and blurred his view. He breathed deeply. Then, with great restraint, he made slow corrections.

  The distant ringing began once again.

  Vincent’s hand trembled, making incremental adjustments almost impossible. But he persisted. And finally, “There!” Then, dumfounded, he said, “Where is she?”

  Even with the scene out of focus, he could make out two men. A tall, slender man was speaking to a thickset one who had his back to the telescope. Vincent sharpened the view. The men turned and sat down on the edge of an oblong planter.

  Vincent carefully focused on their faces. He was looking at Raymond Bellfort and Gabriel Carrera. For several seconds Vincent stood immobilized, watching, controlling his breathing lest they hear him. Then, with a guilty shiver, he jumped back from the scope.

  He paced and stroked his beard. Then curiosity defeated his conscience, and he went back to the eyepiece. The men were deep in conversation. How he wished he could read their lips.

  Then a thought crept across his mind: Could Harry Lee lip-read? His body quivered at the implication.

  Why was Harry Lee spying on Raymond Bellfort?

  The ringing in the background stopped.

  Abandoning hope of eavesdropping on the conversation, Vincent pulled back the focus just one nerve impulse to broaden his view.

  The two men sat on a wide terrace illuminated by soft lights that glowed from the bases of curved stucco railings. Behind them a boat lift held Bellfort’s 30-foot runabout. Raymond reached over and patted Gabriel on the upper arm as if congratulating him.

  Vincent recoiled, bitterly recalling the same glad-handed treatment he and Diane received on that very terrace. All the while, Bellfort was plotting to sell Peruvase out from under him.

  He watched the men through vengeful eyes while he planned his next move.

  Diane crawled into bed and slid close to her husband. She had missed him.

  Vincent had welcomed her home warmly. He apologized that he was so involved with the telescope he didn’t hear the telephone ringing.

  He was still edgy about BRI. Even so, Diane was glad to be home. She began drifting off to sleep when Vincent’s voice startled her.

  “Has anyone ever told you that Harry Lee was hard of hearing?”

  Diane’s heart sank. It seemed Vincent’s obsession with Dr. Lee had grown in her absence. “Was he?”

  “I don’t know.”

  The conversation was going nowhere. “What made you ask?”

  “The telescope… It’s a long story.” He yawned and turned away from her.

  Now Diane was wide awake. She rolled onto her back and stared into the darkness. When would the craziness end?

  Vincent’s voice interrupted her thoughts. “I took Woodwind offshore overnight for a shakedown cruise while you were gone. This morning I registered for the Vera Cruz race. I’m going to single-hand it.”

  μ CHAPTER THIRTEEN μ

  They were twenty-four in number—three generations of men wearing hunter’s khaki, riding straight-backed on their mounts, hands resting on the high pommel of their saddles, feet cradled easily in their estrebos.

  On a chain, inside their shirts, hung their coats-of-arms—concealed, not only to preserve their anonymity as they traveled to their clandestine meeting place, but also to symbolize the group’s belief that anything hidden close to the heart, like a secret or an unpublished vow, ignited the deepest of passions and evoked the strongest commitments.

  The horses wore no brand. They stepped along sure-footed, necks held in a regal arch as if they understood they had been bred for the noble task of bearing their masters, perpetually, to their destination—downward four hundred years to the valley floor.

  The men were of a singular mind. Their ancestors had stormed ashore from Spanish galleons, taken the land and its many riches and were rewarded handsomely by their king. Centuries later they fought beside Simon Bolivar to clear the land of royalists and gain their independence.

  Every third full moon, grandfathers, sons and grandsons, the educated power-elite of Colombia, rode together toward the stone lodge in the high valley to keep their date with a four-century-old tradition.

  They were the Knights of New Granada. Their motto: “Retribution and Justice, two edges of the same sword.” Their mission in recent centuries: To preserve the oldest democracy in South America. Undetected. Unrestrained.

  Sated from a banquet of roasted wild boar and platters of mountain-grown fruits and vegetables provided by the local Kogi women, the men somberly sipped coffee and smoked cigars on the large veranda.

  At midnight, they prayed together before heading to their beds and an uneasy sleep. In the morning they would address some of their most difficult quandaries in two centuries.

  At daybreak, the President for Life, Carabina, called the meeting to order. The tap of his gavel reverberated through the locked wine cellar. Following custom, Carabina appointed Espalda to take roll call.

  At these meetings, the men went by the nicknames acquired in the academies and on the playing fields of their youth. The roll was in order of the Knights’ initiation dates into the secret society.

  Espalda stood and called, “Granadero.” The name echoed around the cave-like arches. Granadero responded, “Aqui.” “Caballero.” “Aqui.” “Caballo.” The men of the inn
er circle smirked; Caballo had earned his nickname in adolescence because of the size of his genitals. With his customary scowl, Caballo answered “aqui.” “Novicio.”… The roll call went on until the presence or absence of every member had been duly noted.

  Carabina then asked Espalda to report, from memory, the minutes from the last quarterly meeting. In more than four centuries, none of the group’s business had ever been committed to paper. Espalda began his recitation.

  Today, the minutes reflected the Knights’ agenda: to bring an end to the cultivation, manufacture and exportation of mind-altering drugs that plagued their country, undermining their social structure and economy for the past few decades.

  Following Espalda’s report, Carabina opened the discussion to new business.

  Novicio reported that economists estimated revenue from illegal drug exportation had exceeded Colombia’s entire GDP. He noted that most of the country’s legitimate businesses were owned by the grandees present in that room.

  Worldwide mistrust of drug-exporting countries made for time-consuming, destructive searches of ships and planes in ports of call, negatively affecting their companies’ bottom lines. Their personal fortunes were at stake.

  Caballo, one of the hardliners, insisted it was time for drastic action. He outlined a plan whereby those shipping lines, known to turn a blind eye to smuggling activities, would be boarded and “chastened” at sea. Private vessels that were suspect would meet with similar fates. Some airliners would have to be sacrificed also as a loud warning that these illegal activities will not be tolerated. After a group discussion of the details, Carabina called for a show of hands. The plans were approved.

  Now, it fell to Granadero, the second in command, to address the heaviest issue of the day: narco-corruption at the middle and highest levels of government.

  With downcast eyes, he named people with close personal ties to almost everyone around the enormous table in the wine cellar. Motions were made, votes taken. And despite their personal allegiances, the majority sanctioned far-reaching courses of action.

  The symbolic Sword of Damocles was passed around the group until it reached Granadero who held it to his heart and pledged to issue the warnings.

  Carabina adjourned the meeting and abruptly left the cellar.

  The next morning the Knights of New Granada, with heavy hearts and solemn faces, rode out of the high valley, heading back to their private clubs, mansions and boardrooms. But their thoughts would never travel far from the wine cellar in the formidable Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta

  μ CHAPTER FOURTEEN μ

  At dawn, beginning his fourth day at sea, Vincent braced himself in the cockpit as Woodwind skied down the face of a mountainous wave, then miraculously lifted her proud bow and climbed toward the next peak. Nearing the crest, Vincent released his death-grip on the pedestal guard, wiped his binocular lenses and scanned the horizon. But his efforts at penetrating the low-lying storm clouds were futile; the source of the persistent blip on his radar screen remained hidden behind an inky squall line to the east.

  Woodwind began her plunge into the next murky trough. Instinctively, Vincent grabbed for a hand-hold to ride out the descent.

  Fortunately, Woodwind was built for heavy weather. In fact, the boat was faring much better than her skipper. The constant vigilance had exhausted Vincent’s body and eroded his spirit. He had fully expected this single-handed sailboat race from Galveston to Vera Cruz, Mexico to be an endurance test, but he had not anticipated almost total sleep deprivation along the way.

  His state-of-the-art autopilot and radar collision alarm, set at a six nautical-mile range, should have ensured hours of carefree slumber. But high winds, rough seas and the resulting roll and pitch of the boat limited him to cat naps, wrecking his plan for a two-hour-on, two-hour-off watch schedule. To make things worse—much worse—over the past twenty-four hours, the radar alarm had sounded every time he drifted off to sleep. Vincent had spent the night dodging waves that washed across the cockpit and agonizing over the possibility of a collision at sea. How had this race—his lifelong dream—turned into a nightmare of soaking-wet fatigue in so few days?

  The race had begun with a promising golden sunrise and a fifteen-knot breeze from the southeast that stirred up gentle four-foot swells in the Gulf of Mexico. Vincent had experienced a heightened sense of oneness with nature when he crossed the starting line under full sail. Inspired by shouts from Diane and other well-wishers from BRI, he had stood at the helm chanting a stanza from The Rime of the Ancient Mariner—his favorite poem—in a resonant, theatrical voice: “‘The sun came up upon the left/out of the sea came he! …’”

  But his euphoria was short-lived. An unstable low pressure system formed up in the Gulf of Mexico the afternoon of that first day, and weather conditions had continued to deteriorate ever since.

  Last night, after the collision alarm had sounded for the fifth or sixth time, Vincent checked the radar and found it to be in perfect working order, confirming his fear. The persistent alarm, along with the ever-present blip on the radar screen meant there was a boat within six miles of him—shrouded in the cloud bank to the east. The annoying vessel seemed to be sailing parallel with him as he diverged away from the Texas coastline.

  Vincent regretted his decision to sail west of the rhumb line, along the twelve-fathom curve. Maybe the going was easier out in deeper water. The weather could be better farther offshore. And he probably wouldn’t have worrisome traffic to contend with out there.

  He considered altering course to reduce the possibility of a collision. But the wind was blowing out of the south-southeast; he’d have to tack over to an easterly heading, thereby losing valuable time and distance to his race competitors. Maybe he should try communicating with the other boat once more before making any decisions.

  Vincent turned on his hand-held VHF radio, tuned to channel sixteen and adjusted the squelch button until the static cleared. He knew most commercial ships and pleasure craft in the Gulf of Mexico monitored that channel. “This is the sailing vessel, Woodwind, asking for a radio check. Come back please.” He hoped to raise a response from anyone within hearing distance, particularly from the boat out there in the mist.

  After several tries with no reply, Vincent clicked from channel to channel repeating his request. He became more and more irritated as each message went unanswered. Then, shouting a frustrated oath at the radio, he set it back on channel sixteen, and jammed it into a pocket in his yellow foul-weather suit.

  He took some deep breaths to calm himself. Anger wasn’t going to solve anything. The nearby boat might have a malfunctioning radio, he reasoned. And in all probability, it was one of the sixty-seven boats in his racing fleet. If only he could see the other boat to be sure.

  The radar alarm had been silent for about fifteen minutes now.

  He patted the teak cockpit combing. “What should we do next, Ol’ Girl?” he said aloud. Then he laughed. He had been talking to the boat for the past two days, but this was the first time he asked for advice.

  Vincent checked his watch and groaned. It was nearly nine a.m., time to go below and report in to the race committee. In these weather conditions, it would take all his strength to make those few steps.

  Vincent planned his move from the helm to the cabin carefully. Even though he had reduced his sail power to a storm jib and a double-reefed main two days earlier, Woodwind heeled over at a forty-degree angle as she charged up and down the angry waves. He knew the sea would exploit even a nanosecond of vulnerability.

  He checked the safety harness around his chest, then held on with both hands as he pulled himself forward to the companionway hatch. Stinging saltwater washed over the bow and lashed at his face. It burned his eyes, poured off his beard and found its way inside his rain gear. Though pleasantly warm at first, the sea water turned to cold, soggy discomfort in seconds.

  Vincent slid open the hatch, and only then did he unclip his harness from the lifeline that ran along the
deck. He clung to teak handrails as he eased himself down the tilting companionway stairs. The main cabin was in chaos. The pounding sea had dislodged equipment and provisions so diligently stowed. Settee cushions, guitar, pots, tea kettle, dishes, cans and books from the port side of the boat, were strewn along the starboard settee and floor. The slanted cabin reminded Vincent, ironically, of an amusement park fun house. He belched to relieve the beginnings of seasickness and forced himself to ignore the tightening sensations in his stomach. He looked at the drawer where the anti-nausea medication was stored, then stuck to his resolve not to use it unless absolutely necessary; the medicine would further compromise his alertness.

  He glanced at the radar screen and confirmed that the glowing green blip had moved farther east. Then he concentrated on the GPS mounted on the bulkhead above the chart table.

  Vincent punched some buttons and, in a minute, the receiver flashed Woodwind’s latitude and longitude on the screen. Vincent plotted the numbers on his chart.

  He now turned on the single-side-band radio and monitored the Vera Cruz Race frequency. Vincent listened as other sailboats reported their positions. None were in his area. It was his turn now. He pressed the microphone button.

  “This is Woodwind calling the Vera Cruz Race Committee. Come in please.”

  An irritatingly well-rested voice responded with, “Woodwind, this is Vera Cruz. What is your position and heading? Over.”

  Vincent reported his latitude, longitude and heading. “Do you copy? Over.”

  “That’s affirmative, Woodwind. That heavy weather you’re having out there should be moving on shore by this evening.”

  “Hallelujah!” Vincent shouted. “That’ll be a blessing. This is Woodwind signing off.” And none too soon. His seasickness was worsening. The bulkheads and furnishings lurched and swayed before his eyes. He had to get out of the cabin, and he had to eat something—immediately.

  Vincent grabbed a pre-made pimento-cheese sandwich and a ginger ale and headed topside. Just as he stepped into the cockpit, the radar alarm sounded and then went silent. Muttering an oath, he glanced down below at the radar screen. Sure enough, the blip indicated a boat about six miles away. “Damn.”