“Fine, but if we’re going to do it, we’re gonna make this interesting,” she said, putting 5 shots on a tray and sliding them over in front of me. “Every time you’re wrong, you have to drink a shot.”
“This is a really bad idea,” Q warned one final time.
“Okay,” I said, the alcohol starting to work its magic. “Let’s start with your friends.”
“You,” I said nodding at the dark haired gal, “are a hairdresser. You still do it part-time, probably how you hide your sideline income. Your accent is phony; you think it makes you sound more mysterious. Your roommate has a cat that likes you better than them. It got mad when you left one night and peed in your shoes...but not the pair you’re wearing tonight.”
“Amazing!” She admitted. Heather and the other two broke out laughing. “So far so good,” Heather encouraged.
“Your mom was Hispanic, not Italian, and your dad….pure white bread...probably German,” I continued. “I’m going to take a wild guess and say….Argentina.”
“That’s amazing,” she said, briefly forgetting about the accent and hiding her discomfort with a giggle.
“You worry about getting busted,” I continued. “That’s why you only take jobs from people you know, like Fred. But you don’t worry about what you’re going to do after you’re done with this, you’ll just go back to cutting hair. Unlike you,” I said, turning my attention to her Asian friend.
“You started out as a stripper,” I was in the zone now. “That’s why you got the fake boobs. Your mom was Asian, probably Japanese and your dad was an American soldier, I’m going to guess he was mulatto...half-black.”
Her eyebrows went up. “You’re right,” she said with an uncomfortable laugh.
“You lost your job as a stripper when you got busted for turning tricks on the side and you’re scared about what you’re going to do when you get to old for this gig,” I continued. “You’ve been in rehab at least twice and, unlike all three of your friends, you have nothing to fall back on.”
“You,” I turned to the redhead but she cut me off.
“No thanks,” she said quickly. “Please.”
I nodded and turned back to Heather. “And you, pretty green eyes, grew up in a house that was pretty well off.”
“As you mentioned before,” she reminded.
“Right, your parents fought all the time, usually about money. Your mom and dad got divorced, you ended up with your dad because your mom could never stay sober long enough to be a parent. There was a parade of bimbos with fake boobs and finally one that was smart enough to carve out a place for herself. She had her own kid, probably a daughter. Maybe you got in trouble a couple times on your own, maybe you got framed by the mom and you got displaced by the evil step-sister.”
Nobody was laughing now, a tick in Heather’s lower lip was all the confirmation I needed that I was landing punches.
“So, instead of getting mad, you got even by sleeping with your dad’s friends. For free at first and later for money, especially after they found out you were a minor. Then they gave you lots of money to keep quiet. Probably started when you were 16 --lied about your age, naughty girl. Sex got you the attention and money you didn’t get from daddy and the day you turned 18, you skipped out for the sunny beaches of south Florida with enough cash to cover the rent and tuition for nursing school. You didn’t start school right away, you took a year off and spent it on the beach, you learned to surf, maybe even had sex for fun instead of money. Like your dark haired friend and the redhead--”
“Yvonne,” the redhead interrupted.
“Like Yvonne, you only take jobs through people you know, like Fred, and you were probably the one who tried to check us out on the internet earlier today.”
I could have gone on, but it was starting to put a damper on things. “Am I right or do I need a shot?”
“Pretty smart guy,” Heather admitted. She was probably smart enough to know there was a lot I was leaving out. “Why don’t we see how you like having the mirror turned back on you?” she challenged.
I slid the tray of shots over to her. “Knock yourself out, kid.”
“Let’s start with your friends,” she said, mocking my earlier comment. “Fred’s supposed to be some big time head of a salvage company but every other guy in that line of work has stories about every fucking thing they’ve ever pulled out of the ocean. But not Fred, not a peep, even about that ship full of coins that was in the paper. So, that means his business --your business,” she crooked a long fingernail in my direction, “is something else. The kind of business you don’t talk about.”
“Your friend there,” pointing at Q, “well he’s all G.I. Joe ex-military. Crooked fingers, scarred knuckles, a nose that’s been broken more times than he can remember. He’s a lion, like those Special Forces guys but not Navy. The uh…Navy...” she struggled with the name.
“Seals,” I filled in for her.
“Right, Seals. They’re all alpha male swagger but your friend’s not like that,” she observed. “Like them but more analytical...Army?”
“Ha! Delightful!” I was enjoying this, Q not so much.
“You lost someone important to you and your job now makes relationships complicated, so you bury the memory but can’t quite hide the pain.”
Pain and anger flashed across Q’s face. I held up a hand. “It’s just a game,” I reminded him. “Careful,” I said to Heather.
“And that brings us to you,” she said, turning her green eyes on me. “You were military, but not like him. Scarred knuckles but soft hands for a man...almost delicate, precise...like a doctor.”
“A bad one,” Q chimed in, thankful for an excuse to break the tension. “If he offers to take out your appendix, run like hell.”
“Everybody’s a critic,” I countered.
“Careful with that,” Fred nodded at the joint Yvonne had just passed to me. “It’s pretty bad ass.”
I took a hit and just managed not to choke. I let the thin smoke out slowly and even that first toke did hit like a hammer. Fred always had the best weed and you could feel it in this batch. Heather went on.
“You call yourself the Fat Man and you have a few extra pounds but you’re not fat. That probably means you were hungry once, the kind of hungry a person remembers, the kind that stays with them.”
“Clever girl,” I admired. I was starting to like Heather, or whatever her name was.
“These two work for you, but they’re not like employees,” she went on. “Especially him,” nodding at Q. “You two have been through some shit.”
“That we have,” I admitted.
“You had someone too, a long time ago,” she said, softening just a touch. “but it doesn’t bother you as much.”
“Enough of this psycho-babble bullshit,” Q injected. “It was bad enough when it was just him.”
“I’d offer you some,” I said, passing the joint past Heather, “but you get drug tested as a nursing student.”
“Ha!” she laughed. “You really do sound like a doctor now. How’d I do?”
“You got one wrong,” I told her. “Fred really is the CEO of a deep sea salvage company.”
“That’s true,” Fred said with a smile. “Recovery and Marine Salvage, In-corporated.”
Heather plucked a shot glass of Patron off the table and tossed it back in one gulp. “Well, doctor,” she began, regaining her composure, “there’s one medically relevant fact you should know about me.”
“What’s that?’
“I have no gag reflex,” she said with a tiger smile.
The rest of the group busted out laughing and Fred hit the remote control for the entertainment system. For a salvage vessel The Star had a surprisingly good sound system. That was, no doubt, Fred’s doing. The Teddybears Cobrastyle filled the salon. It was, officially, a party.
Fred cut up some neat lines of white powder on a mirror, took a small spoonful up one nostril and twitched when it hit him. “God-damn!” he blu
rted. “Been a long time!”
It had for all of us. Since we’d gone corporate we had to trim the payroll quite a lot which meant more work falling on fewer people. This kind of break was all too rare. Fred passed the mirror to the Asian girl who vacuumed up one of the longer lines. Obviously she had more practice than any of the rest of us. She blinked and rubbed her nose, her eyelids flickered and her eyes rolled back in her head momentarily.
“Fuck,” she said out loud, falling back into the couch cushion. That got a laugh from the rest of us. Fred slid the mirror over my way. I only managed half a line.
“Lightweight,” the dark haired gal joked.
“Hey!” Heather said, calling me back to the here and now. She had to talk louder to be heard over the music. “It’s three.”
“Huh? Three what?” I was feeling really good.
“Car dealerships,” she said over the music, leaning over the others couldn’t hear. “My dad owns three car dealerships.”
Then it was my turn to laugh. Heather handed me another shot and raised a toast.
“To fucking Korean cars,” she said brightly.
“To fucking Korean cars,” I echoed.
The girls started shedding clothes and Fred called for a table dance. Somebody passed me another joint and I looked over to see the redhead already grinding on Q. Heather wiggled out of her dress to reveal a marvelous body sparsely contained in a lace black bra and panties. She hopped up on the table and pulled the Asian gal up with her and they did a partners dance they’d obviously rehearsed.
That was the last complete memory I had of that night. The rest was a blur of drugs, booze, music, laughter and fucking.
5
THE STATEROOM SWAM back into view like coming up from the bottom of a deep well. My eyes opened but it took me a second to figure out what I was looking at. Sunlight rippled on the ceiling after being reflected off the water and through the partially shaded portal. I had to pee.
Sitting up made my head spin and I thought I was going to puke; my body’s way of telling me that I was getting too old for this shit. With great effort I found my pants and made my halting way to the head, glad at that particular moment that this was one of the few rooms on the Star with its own bathroom. My mouth was dry and I had a headache the size of Nebraska.
“Fuck this shit,” I said to the haggard man in the mirror, who looked, and felt, much older this morning.
I made my way to the salon, which still smelled like a combination of machine oil, stale booze and pussy. It was always a surprise that a place that was so much fun when you were high could be so nauseating the next morning. Three of the girls were making their own painful way back to the land of the living, gathering their clothes, sorting out shoes. The girls didn’t look nearly as appetizing in the cold light of morning as they did last night. The stairs seemed steeper this morning and the Star felt like it was rocking more than it actually was, my stomach reminded me that being sick was still a possibility.
Fred wisely had ordered breakfast service and set up a table in the shady section of the broad rear deck. Fred and Q were already there, each with a big mug of coffee, both wearing sunglasses. I poured myself a cup of coffee, picked something sweet and doughy from food trays and joined them.
“I don’t think we could put a whole person together between the three of us,” I observed.
“My face is numb,” Fred moaned.
“That’ll wear off,” I said heavily, taking a big slurp of hot coffee. It tasted wonderful; this wasn’t cheap galley coffee but a heavy, earthy dark roast.
At that moment the three girls, minus Heather, made their way sleepily into the light of day and gratefully helped themselves to coffee in a tall paper cup. The redhead gave me a look from behind her fat designer sunglasses; I lifted my cup and nodded in acknowledgement. Without a word the three of them made their unsteady way on to the dock and off toward the house carrying their coffee and shoes.
“What was that nod and how come she didn’t want to play the psychic freak show game last night?” Q asked.
“Oh, her? She’s a vet,” I answered, the coffee finally starting to drive back the fog.
“You mean like a veterinarian?” Fred asked.
“Is there another kind?” I wondered out loud. “She probably has a new small animal clinic somewhere and needs the cash until she can build up her practice. She didn’t want that coming out in front of the other girls because they’d blackmail her for drugs.”
“A goddamn dog doctor,” Fred marveled.
“She won’t be taking anymore sideline jobs,” I informed him. “That scared her last night. If she gets busted she’ll lose her license.”
“Heather asked if she could take a shower,” Fred said heavily.
“Amber,” I corrected.
“What?”
“Her real name’s Amber.”
Q and Fred both looked at me. “She told you her real name?” Q asked suspiciously.
“I might...have...offered her a job,” I said dismissively.
“Heather?!” Fred exclaimed.
“Amber,” I reminded him.
“Jesus fuck,” Fred swore, sinking back in his chair.
“We’re hiring hookers now?” Q asked dryly.
“Former hooker,” I corrected. “One of the conditions of her employment is giving up her sideline business and that includes coworkers. I just thought we should have someone else on staff with a medical license.”
“What are we going to do with our new coworker?” Fred asked. “Oh, you’re not sticking her with me,” he added when I didn’t say anything.
“’Fraid so, buddy. Just put her through the standard training and see how she does.”
Our standard training was pretty tough. It included martial arts, weapons training at an academy in Arizona, driving school in Virginia, one on one tradecraft with the same people who train our nation’s spooks and salvage dive training. Since we couldn’t find dive schools that taught the exact skill set we were looking for, Fred taught ours.
Amber bounded up the stairs at that moment and, unlike the other girls, she carried a change of clothes in her in her giant hooker purse. This morning she had on gray yoga pants, a white t-shirt tied in the middle, and tennis shoes. She had her hair pulled back into a ponytail and, freshly showered, looked positively effervescent.
“Good morning,” she said brightly, surveying the glum faces. “I see they took the news about like you expected.”
“They’ll come around,” I assured her while Q and Fred stared into their coffee cups.
“Well, alrighty then,” she quipped, helping herself to a tall cup of coffee and stuffing a small Danish in her mouth. Amber gave me a kiss on the cheek on her way by, leaving Danish crumbs behind.
“See you Monday, Fred,” she said skipping up the ladder and heading off down the dock for clinicals.
“Too fucking happy,” Fred grumbled.
“Dammit, boss,” Q added.
“What’s with you two?” I scolded. “We can pay her out of the offshore accounts, it’s not like her salary is coming out of your pocket. As far as the rest goes she either makes it or she doesn’t.” We, in fact, had a very high washout rate; about 40 percent wouldn’t make it through training.
“She was one of my best girls,” Fred complained.
“Ah, she was done with that business either way,” I assured him. “There’s no way she’d risk getting busted, she’d never get her nursing license. She wasn’t booking work through anyone else, Fred. Why do you think she was always available when you needed her?”
“I never even thought about it,” he admitted. “Guess that makes sense.”
“I hired you two, didn’t I?” I gave them each a long look. “Give me some credit for being able to spot talent.”
“Sorry,” Q relented. “Just with the timing and all it seemed like you were talking with your dick.”
“At my age it’s a miracle my dick can still do anything,” I reminded him
with a laugh. “So I don’t need you two breaking my balls.”
That got a smile from Q. “So, what are we doing today?”
“I don’t know about you, but I’m going to see Mrs. Meadows and Detective Johansen.”
“You don’t want company?” Q asked.
“Not today. My team is supposed to be out scouring the dark corners for Mr. Meadows. It might look suspicious if she got the idea no one was actually out looking.“
“Good point,” Q conceded.
“You should borrow someone’s dog and go look for your vet friend,” I suggested. “She likes you.”
“Ah, I don’t know,” Q blushed.
“What? Fred’s got a cat at the house,” I reminded him.
“The cat died,” Fred informed.
“Oh, sorry,” I apologized. “Okay, then maybe Deek.”
“You want me to take Deek to the vet?”
“He’d love that,” I chuckled. “Maybe just see how he’s doing, then go see if V needs anything and tell her we’re going to need her sniper rifle in a couple days. Or you can get a dog and go look for the vet. Up to you.”
“She’s a hooker,” Q concluded. “I’ll go check on Deek.”
“Former hooker,” I reminded him. “And even if Deek grew a vagina that would be some pretty nasty shit.”
They both laughed at that. The coffee was finally chasing away the gloomy hangover.
“What about me?” Fred asked.
“You gotta find a new cat,” I reminded him. “It’s bad luck not to have a cat on board. Or maybe you can make that Amber’s first assignment,” I suggested. “Just stay in town in case we need The Star.”
Once our stomachs settled we had a decent breakfast and I headed out for my errands. I looked at the odd car key in my hand, which wasn’t much like a key at all. You didn’t even have to put it in the ignition, just have it in your pocket. All that technology and we still didn’t have self-driving cars. That suddenly annoyed me...I hated driving.
I put my earpiece in when I got to the car.
“You’re driving yourself?” V observed through the video cameras at the house. “I’ll keep an ambulance on standby.”
The Rogue Horse Recovery: Book One of the Recovery and Marine Salvage Inc Series (Recovery and Marine Salvage, Inc.) Page 6