Off the Chart

by James W. Hall

  Taft looked across at the open passenger door, then swung around to peer out the back window.

  “Where the hell did he go?”

  A moment later Sugarman came out the apartment door again but walked right past the cruiser and headed out to the highway.

  “What the fuck is he doing?”

  “Oh, he gets like this,” Thorn said. “Whenever one of his daughters is kidnapped.”

  Thorn hopped out of the back and trotted to catch up with Sugar. He was walking south down the shoulder of the highway. Not fast, not slow, just his usual methodical gait.

  “What is it, man? What’d you find?”

  “I pressed redial on his phone.”

  “And?”

  “Got the message machine for Paradise Funeral Home.”

  “Jesus Christ,” Thorn said.

  “Yeah,” said Sugar. “My thought exactly.”

  “Should’ve seen that coming. Marty and Vic. Match made in heaven.”

  “Vic Joy,” Sugar said. “Everybody’s favorite lawbreaker.”

  “Is that where we’re going? The funeral home, this time of night?”

  “That’s where I’m going.”

  “Mind if I tag along?”

  “Suit yourself.”

  “Nobody’ll be there, Sugar. It’s after midnight.”

  “Won’t know till we get there, will we?”

  “Vic lives down in Islamorada, oceanside, one of those estates on millionaire row. I’m not sure which.”

  “We’ll find out,” Sugarman said. “If he’s not at the funeral home, his address will be.”

  They found a break in the traffic and sprinted across the four-lane to the bay side of the highway. A moment later Taft pulled alongside them, his blue strobe going. He lowered the passenger window and leaned across the seat.

  “Where you boys headed?”

  “Cactus Jack’s,” Thorn said. “A couple shots before bed.”

  Taft looked dubious, idling along, keeping pace with them as the traffic hurtled by in the outside lane. Sugarman’s eyes were focused down the highway.

  “All right then,” Taft said. “But I’m going to be watching you two. You hear that? I don’t want any of your bullshit, Thorn. Taking the law into your hands. We got that loud and clear?”

  Sugarman halted and came over to the window of the car.

  He leaned down, gripped the door, and stared at Taft.

  “And we’re going to be watching you, too, Sheriff. Believe it.”

  They looked at each other for a few seconds. Then Sugar straightened up and Taft raised the window, stepped on the gas, and sped away into the night, his blue light still whirling.

  “Hey, listen,” Thorn said. “Maybe we should wait till morning, take a break, think this through.”

  Sugarman was walking again; Thorn had to work to stay even. He’d never seen Sugar eat up so much distance with such ease.

  “Think what through?” Sugar said.

  “What we’re going to do. Our approach. Even if he’s there this time of night, we can’t just go crashing into Vic Joy’s home, slam him up against the wall, and torture him till he tells us what’s going on.”

  “Why not?”

  “That’s not you, Sugar. You play by the book.”

  “And look where it’s gotten me.”

  “Just slow down. Let’s talk this over, come up with a plan of action.”

  “You’re saying that, Thorn? You of all people?”

  Sugar halted near the gate of Rowell’s Marina, a long, sloping, grassy meadow that ran down to the gleam of the bay. For a moment he looked out at the traffic that rushed by a couple of yards away. Even at that late hour the four-lane was busy. Bleary tourists heading north to Miami International for the red-eye home. Big trucks blasting south loaded down with supplies for Marathon and Big Pine, Sugarloaf and the outlandish and insatiable appetites of Key West.

  Buffeted by the tailwinds of the passing cars, Thorn had to reset his feet to hold his ground.

  “Don’t commit a crime to solve a crime, that’s always been your motto. Revenge poisons the avenger.”

  A stream of headlights blazed in his eyes, but Sugar didn’t flinch.

  Sugar turned his back on the traffic and looked out past Rowell’s at the dark water where the two of them had spent so many contented hours.

  “This is my daughter, Thorn.”

  “Yeah, it is.”

  “It’s only fair I should warn you,” Sugar said, “because I know you’ve been using me over the years as your safety line. You go berserk, get yourself knee-deep in shit, and count on me to drag you back to high ground. Well, this time you need to look for another safety line. Because there isn’t a goddamn thing under the sun I won’t do to get Janey back.”

  An eighteen-wheeler flew past and kicked up a tornado of road dust. When Thorn had rubbed his eyes clear, Sugar was already twenty yards down the shoulder. Thorn broke into a trot and caught up. He patted Sugar on the shoulder, then settled in and tried to match his stride.

  A few hundred yards south, they passed Thorn’s driveway. They could’ve ducked in there and gotten the VW, made it to the funeral home ten minutes quicker, but then again, he’d have to explain everything to Alexandra and get caught up in evasions or outright lies, hiding from her that he was doing exactly what he’d promised he wouldn’t.

  As they passed the drive, he felt a spasm of guilt, but the black heat rising off Sugarman was irresistible. For a quick moment Janey’s face floated into his vision and his flesh prickled. And damn it all, if he was honest about it, he had to admit that after months of domestication and quiet, the hot rush of emotions felt good, a virtuous fury sweeping through him, permission to surrender all prudence and good sense to these base animal instincts. He’d have to consider that later, how good it felt to be this angry. But for now, he was rolling with it, caught in Sugar’s wake, ready to go deep into the heart of the fire if that’s where this led.

  Twenty minutes later, huffing and damp with sweat, they stood outside the darkened building. Paradise Funeral Home. The front door was locked, no cars in the lot, no lights anywhere.

  “What’s your pleasure?” Thorn said. “Windows or doors?”

  Sugarman stood for a moment in silence, blinking at the shadowy structure, his face unsettled as though waking from some rabid nightmare and gradually coming to the terrible understanding that it had been no dream at all.

  “Maybe we should take a look around first,” Thorn said. “Place could be alarmed. We don’t want to get thrown in jail before we even get started.”

  A fleeting melancholy came to Sugar’s eyes and seemed to weigh down his shoulders. Then he shook himself hard, lifted his head, shrugged it away, and turned to the door, and with a suddenness that made Thorn stumble backward, Sugar broke into a three-step charge, heaved his shoulder against the double doors, bounced off the heavy wood, then drew back and slammed again. The doors were damn solid, but Sugar’s second blow seemed to loosen the hardware and an inch or two of play was appearing.

  Maybe it was the buzz in Thorn’s blood, a jangle in the synapses that had temporarily deafened him to the natural world, but Thorn didn’t hear it coming. Didn’t have even a tickle of warning.

  All he saw was a blur of something large and dark in his peripheral vision; then he felt a stunning thump on the back of his neck. His vision shrank to a pinhole, and a bitter reflux rose into his throat. He hovered in the dizzy twilight for a moment, feeling his legs give.

  Then as the white moonlit gravel spun upward toward him, Thorn caught a peep of Sugarman turning a half-second too late as a large man hurtled out of the darkness with uncanny speed, arm upraised, blackjack already falling against Sugar’s flesh.

  Thirteen

  “Pirates,” the man said. “What you’re looking at is the gruesome and heartless work of modern maritime pirates. A new breed of seafaring bandit. Men as bloodthirsty and wild as any criminal element the world has ever known.”
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br />   A wave of nausea rose from Thorn’s gut and swelled through his chest. The room was dark and he was sitting. That much he knew. On a screen in front of him was a color slide of half a dozen bodies littering a dark pebbled beach. The men were small and dark, wearing mostly white T-shirts and baggy shorts. Throats cut, stab wounds in their chests or stomachs. Thorn’s vision blurred. He might have slipped off into a doze for a few seconds.

  “These men are not Americans. But they have children and wives just like we do. They were young, hardworking. Indonesians, Filipinos, Straits Chinese. Other cultures, other ways of doing things, but by God, they’re humans. They count. That’s one of the problems we’re dealing with, lack of public outrage. These people live on the other side of the globe, so it’s not our problem. Plus, everybody is so focused on terrorists, nothing further down the food chain matters anymore.”

  The man was standing somewhere behind them, out of sight.

  “But here’s the facts, Mr. Thorn. In the last ten years, maritime pirates accounted for thousands of civilian casualties. But does anybody know that? And more important, does anybody care? No, because it happens out on the high seas. A few million dollars in lost cargo here and few million there, no one’s ringing it up. Newspapers won’t cover it. Same amount of cash gets stolen from a bank, or gold from a depository, it’s big news. ’Cause it happens on land, in somebody’s neighborhood. But you lose fifteen million dollars’ worth of motorcycles or electric generators or plumbing pipes, because it happens out at sea, it might as well be Mars.

  “If somebody hijacked the equivalent amount of cargo from eighteen-wheelers off our highways, our economy would shut down. We’d think we were under attack. And consider this: It’d take a few hundred transfer trucks to equal the value in freight of just one of these cargo ships. Happens out in the ocean, big deal. A bunch of Filipino crew members killed, how’s that our business? Well, it is our business. It damn well is. It’s costing the world economy billions. That’s with a b, Thorn. And it’s just about to get a whole hell of a lot worse.”

  On Thorn’s cheek, a strip of flesh began to itch. But when he tried to lift his arm to rub the spot, he found his wrists were bound to the arms of the chair. His ankles and calves were strapped tightly to the chair’s legs.

  “Private yachts, sailboats, even superstars like Sir Peter Greene, shot down on a trip up the Amazon where he was doing environmental research. Guy wins every sailboat race there is, the America’s Cup, all that, he’s an international celebrity. You can’t be any more high-profile. And he’s off doing good for the world and gets murdered for his Rolex and a couple of handguns he had onboard.”

  A tall, craggy red-haired man filled the screen. He gripped the wheel of a racing craft, his hair windblown and his yellow foul-weather gear glistening with rain. The next shot showed his naked body stretched out on what looked like a kitchen table. A sheet over his waist. A crude morgue set up in the jungle.

  After sucking down a breath, Thorn yanked all four limbs against the restraints, but the only result was a wrenching stab in his ribs. Must’ve bruised something in his fall, which would also explain the tenpenny nail that had been spiking into his liver every time he filled his lungs. He groaned and slumped back.

  “Where’s Sugarman? What’d you do with him?”

  Thorn lifted his head and turned to the right.

  “He’s next door,” the man said. “With my associate. This information is strictly for you, Thorn, not for Mr. Sugarman. He’s safe and sound, and when we’re done here you two will be reunited. Now pay attention. We don’t have a lot of time for banter.”

  Thorn recognized the voice but couldn’t place it. Something distasteful in the way he spoke. A smacking sound between his words as if his lips were gluey with excess spit. Then the vision trickled into focus, the face first, the gleaming bald head, that precise ribbon of beard running along his jawline. It took a few more seconds of poking around in Thorn’s stunned memory banks before he had the name.

  “Webster?” Thorn said. “Jimmy Lee.”

  “Well, I’m pleased you remember me.” Webster stood somewhere close behind them. “Now pay attention. You need to get up to speed before you’re going to do anyone any good.”

  “Where’s the girl?”

  “She’s fine,” Webster said. “Don’t sweat it.”

  Thorn thrashed against his bindings, got nowhere, then surged upward, tried to stand, break the chair with a straining grunt, but a man in black slacks and a black jersey slammed a hand on his shoulder and forced him down again.

  “What the hell have you done with her!”

  “We haven’t done anything with her,” Webster said. “Now, are you going to sit still and listen or will Zashie exhibit his rabbit punch again?”

  Webster flashed another slide. It appeared to be a publicity file photo of yet another tanker. Thorn wasn’t any expert on commercial ships, but this was one of the big ones. Supertanker, megatanker, whatever they called it.

  “The Global Mars,” Webster said. “Crew of twenty. Ship loaded with palm oil. Disappeared from the Strait of Malacca last autumn. Ship plus the cargo was worth close to forty million dollars. Twenty souls missing, presumed dead. The pirates take the ship, toss the crew overboard, sell the cargo, then repaint and reflag the ship and sail into port in southern China and sell the tanker itself. Chinese officials are in on it. They know it’s stolen. But is anybody putting pressure on them? Hell, no.

  “These people are taking a huge bite out of international commerce. In the realm of criminal activity, drugs are a solid number one, but maritime piracy is closing fast. And lately these bastards are getting more bold. Last month one group we’ve been tracking for years targeted a French freighter carrying military hardware. Did you hear that? We’re talking serious armaments. Missiles, shoulder-fired antiaircraft rocket launchers. Some bad explosive stuff. Hasn’t made the news because it’s in no one’s interest that it should, some serious information suppression going on, government to government, people covering their asses.

  “And what did our friends the pirates do with the arms? Well, we’re not sure. They may have diverted them to a country we’d rather not have those particular weapons. Or an even more disturbing possibility is they stole these weapons for their own use. Do I have your attention?”

  Webster fast-flicked through a dozen more slides. Ships plundered, crew slaughtered. A couple of flashy sailboats, the bodies of their handsome young crew members slung about the decks. Too fast for most of it to register.

  “These people have penetrated shipping companies, port authorities, national customs services. These aren’t our great-granddaddies’ pirates. Some of these are college grads, they’ve acquired high-end communications systems, they’re heavily armed, and they’re greedy as hell. They’ll sell anything to anyone, steal whatever they find floating on the seven seas, kill crews without a second thought. Private sailboats disappearing somewhere in the world at the rate of five a week, yachts, Christ, even fishing trawlers. If you’re out of sight of land, you’re a target. And they’re depending on public apathy. And every day these thugs are getting more audacious. We’ve been shifting massive resources away from conventional targets to terrorist concerns, and they know it. Nobody gave a shit about pirates before; now they’re even farther off the radar screen.”

  Thorn drew a breath and said, “But not off yours.”

  “It’s my calling,” he said. “I work the gray zone. International Maritime Bureau, which monitors criminal acts at sea, they cover some of my expenses and pass on a good deal of information from the shipping companies, but I’m still punching the clock at the Pentagon.”

  “You’re connected,” Thorn said. “And I’m not.”

  “The fact is,” Webster said, “you’re about as unconnected as any asshole I’ve ever run across.”

  Zashie snorted.

  Webster came around into the light and stood directly in the projected image of a dozen corpses strewn across
the deck of an oil tanker.

  “What does this have to do with Janey?”

  “Who’s Janey?”

  “Sugarman’s daughter,” Thorn said. “You idiot.”

  “Oh, it’s Janey, is it? I didn’t know her name. Well, you can rev down your engines. She’s fine. Like I said. We’re looking after her welfare.”

  “What does that mean? Where is she?”

  “In a safe location.”

  “Where, goddamn it?”

  Projected on Webster’s slick white forehead was a young man with a half-dozen bullet holes perforating his blue work shirt.

  “You’re going to stay calm, Mr. Thorn, or you won’t do her or yourself any good. And listen, I deeply regret having to use force with you and your friend. But the way you were acting, trying to batter down Vic Joy’s front door, it looked to me like we didn’t have any choice. I can release your restraints if you promise to be a gentleman.”

  Thorn rattled his chair again. Not having any of it.

  The runt paced back and forth in front of the screen a moment more. Then he went over to the far wall and flicked on a desk lamp. They were in a hotel room, generic furniture, a watercolor of sandpipers strutting along a beach. The beds pushed aside to make room for the screen.

  Webster’s henchman, Zashie, was a rawboned man with a long, horsy face. His head was shaved, but he’d let his sideburns grow in, strips of hair running from nowhere to nowhere. Some half-assed attempt at novelty. His eyes were dark and seemed permanently unimpressed with what passed before them, as if he’d long ago rid himself of the emotions that stirred other men. He studied Thorn with the indifference of an entomologist who is merely trying to detect the variation between this doomed insect and all the others.

  “Vincent Salbone, is that a name you’ve heard?”

  Thorn wrenched his arms again, but the Velcro didn’t give. A bullet of pain seared across his rib cage.

  The little man stepped beside Thorn and squatted down.