LaShon finished drying her hands and left first. I walked out no more than ten seconds after her, but the upper deck was empty. I needed to think without all the noise and smoke from the casino below, but I didn’t really want to be standing out there when Anna exited the head so that she could quiz me about what I was doing in there with LaShon. I headed down the stairs.
Two decks down, Mike was still at the craps table. The crowd around the table was three people deep in most places. There was no way I was going to have a quiet conversation with him about my meeting with Thompson. I wandered the casino floor for a while, checking out all the people sitting mesmerized in front of their machines. I watched one guy feed a hundred-dollar bill into a dollar slot machine, and he played it away in a matter of minutes by betting on seven lines at a time. Then he stood up and headed for the cage to get more money.
Similar scenes were being repeated all over the place. For every one person I saw getting a payout, there were a half dozen reaching into their wallets for more money to feed the machines. It did not matter whether they played the nickel machines or the five-dollar machines, the slots ate the money and gave the player a certain number of credits. When people won, the machines played happy music and dinged as credits were added to the readout. Only when someone decided to cash out on a machine did one hear the familiar sound of coins dropping into the pan.
No wonder Nick and Kagan had been fighting over ownership of this casino gambling boat business. It must make millions. And, as with other offshore businesses, there was little if any government regulation or oversight.
Several of the machines up against the wall were dark, broken down. No flashing lights or catchy tunes. I sat on a stool in front of one of the broken slots and looked it over. Buttons and a video screen, just like Thompson said. The thing was a computer. I noticed that the base had a locked access door. That must be for maintenance, to get at its brain.
As I wandered around some more, I noticed one guy playing a quarter machine and he was really up. His credits numbered over six thousand, which by my rough calculation meant he had more than fifteen hundred dollars coming his way. And he was still winning. I sat next to him and watched for a while. After several minutes he turned to look at me.
“Whatcha’ lookin’ at?” he asked.
I shrugged. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to bother you. I’d say good luck, but it looks like you’ve already got plenty.” I hiked my bag up on my shoulder, stood, and moved toward the crowd. I felt him looking at me as I walked away, and I shook my head. The gambling thing was supposed to be entertainment, but people seemed to be uptight both about winning and losing. Where was the fun in that?
When I wandered aft, I saw that LaShon was back at her blackjack table, and there was an open seat. She didn’t move her head, but her eyes flicked from me to the seat. I sat down, pulled out a twenty-dollar bill for her to change, and unzipped my sweatshirt. It had been so cool out on the upper deck, but down here it was too hot. And stuffy. I wondered if there was something symbolic there, and I smiled. A couple of the men at the other end of the table smiled back at me. Oh boy. This was going to get ugly. I didn’t know how to do all the cute little hand signals or what the right lingo was. Everyone at the table would soon know this was my first time.
LaShon was doing something fancy with a stack of chips, counting them by stacking and restacking them, then she slid them across the felt to me. I picked up the stack to look at them and felt something stuck to the bottom of the last chip. I set the chips back down on the table, well aware of the cameras in the ceiling, and began to play, taking the chips off the top of the stack. With help from LaShon and the others at the table, I actually won a couple of hands, but after fifteen minutes, when I was down to my last five chips, I pushed back my chair and said, “I guess I’m not much of a gambler. I’d better cash in or I won’t have any lunch money tomorrow.” I slid the chips into my sweatshirt pocket and headed over to the craps table.
Mike was throwing the dice. The crowd was thick as ever, and each time Mike threw, they broke out in a chorus of oohs and aahs and, sometimes, boos. The superheated air was thick with cigarette smoke, and I decided to head back up to the top deck. One added benefit of being up there was the scarcity of surveillance cameras.
Once on the upper deck, I walked to the stern and pulled out the tiny circle of paper that had been taped to the bottom of the last chip LaShon had given me. It read “11a.m.—under 17th bridge east.” She must have felt nervous about talking to me on the ship. Going any further tonight would probably put her job in jeopardy. I wondered what it was she wanted to tell me.
The wind had picked up since we had first left harbor. I zipped my sweatshirt tight under my chin and pulled the hood up, both to keep my ears warm and to keep those pesky wisps of hair from whipping around my eyes and mouth. There still weren’t any swells big enough to rock the little ship, but from where I stood at the corner of the stern, I could look forward along the windward side and there was chop breaking against the hull. We were probably making only two to three knots through the water, headed due south, taking the southeasterly winds on our forward quarter. My guess was that the captain just steamed south for a while, barely making headway into the Gulf Stream, and then when it was nearly time to head in, he would turn around and steam north, making it back in a quarter of the time it had taken us to head out. We must be nearing the time to turn around.
I glanced at my watch and saw that we had been out at sea only three hours. It seemed like years. The lights of the buildings along the coast were lovely, but the view was entertaining for only so long. I never would have thought that I could be bored on any boat, but here, if you didn’t enjoy the gambling bit, there was nothing else to do. The food was lousy, and I didn’t feel like drinking anymore. It was too cold and windy out here and too hot and smoky down below.
I heard a crewman come up the crew only stairs from the lower deck, and he headed over to the side of the bar, where he helped himself to a cup of coffee from a machine along the side deck. When he had disappeared back below, I walked over to investigate. A warm beverage sounded pretty good about now.
The port side deck was sectioned off with a rope that held another little crew only sign. I unsnapped the rope and draped it over the steel bulwark as I’d seen the crewman do. A stack of cardboard coffee cups was wedged in next to the machine, and I helped myself to a paper cup and then to some of the hot black liquid.
The coffee was weak, but the taste mattered less than the heat. There wasn’t any sign of cream or sugar, but I didn’t care. I stepped to the bulwark and leaned my elbows on the rail. That side of the ship was taking the brunt of the growing southeasterly winds, and I pulled my sleeves down over my hands so that only my fingers poked out and wrapped around the cup.
Far out on the horizon, a white light appeared and then disappeared as a far-off freighter made its way north in the Gulf Stream. The seas were probably higher out there, but I noticed that our ship was beginning to roll more in the swells as well. I wondered how long it would be before some of the gamblers below started feeling the effects and rushing to the bathrooms. Although I almost never got seasick, I imagined it could happen to me down there with all that noise and the smells of smoke and liquor.
I stretched my neck out a little to see if I could see into the windows of the casino below, but the side decks where the crew worked were too wide, and the casino windows were set too far back from the lower deck’s railings. While I was extended out there, I heard the sound of footsteps below. Someone was in a hurry, running from somewhere forward and headed aft. Whoever was running was not close enough to the rail for me to see, but when he passed nearly beneath me, I heard a whoosh as though he had got the air knocked out of him, and then I heard a voice say, “What the hell?’’ I tried to balance on my tiptoes and lean way out over the railing. Another voice, lower and older-sounding, made a shushing noise and then began whispering in sharp, urgent tones. I couldn’t make out the whi
spered words, but I could see a blue-clad arm occasionally gesture outward, and I heard the static crackle of the walkie-talkie.
I set my coffee cup down on the deck, braced my hands on the top of the gunwale, and leaned out as far as I could, trying to see who the security chief was talking to. Though I couldn’t recognize the voice from those whispers, it had to be him. I wondered why he had punched the runner. After hearing nothing for several seconds, I wasn’t even sure they were still there. They weren’t speaking anymore. I held onto the crew only rope for balance and lifted one foot in an awkward arabesque, stretching out, trying to see what the hell was going on down below.
One minute I had a grin on my face, thinking how foolish I would look if anyone came onto the upper deck and saw me like that, and the next minute the one foot that was on the ground was lifted up and somebody pitched my body over the side.
I didn’t have time to react. I remember thinking that it was going to hurt, like when I used to try to do forward flips into the pool, and I would hit my head or shoulders on the concrete coping around the edge. My head was too close to the ship’s metal deck that extended out beneath the bulwark, and it was going to crack on that metal, for sure. But it was when my body did that forward flip over the side, when the weight of it hit the end of that rope, that I must have dislocated my shoulder. That was what hurt. Somehow, some survival mechanism in my brain made my left hand hold onto that rope with a death grip. Had I fallen overboard straight down the hull into the sea, I probably would have been sucked into the ship’s props and been made into bite-sized fish food. I knew that whoever had tipped me over the side had had that in mind. Lucky for me, he didn’t stick around to make sure I splashed down.
And now the ship was rolling. The captain must have been making his turn to head back toward the port. I hung with my back against the ship, trying not to look down at the churning black water beneath me. The ship was beam on to the swells, and I found myself alternately dangling out over the sea, and then slamming my back into the ship as she rolled in the other direction. I tried to reach up with my right hand to get another hand on the rope, but the movement made something grind in my shoulder, and I cried out in pain.
My head was at deck level on the upper deck while my feet dangled in the opening over the lower bulwarks on the next deck down. I didn’t know if the men whose voices I’d heard were still down there, astonished at the sight of the dangling legs that had just appeared, or if they had gone before I’d been attacked. Maybe someone from inside the casino would see my legs and call for help. There were windows that I’d looked out from inside the casino down there, but I’d had to part the blinds that stretched across the glass. Besides, it was brightly lit in there and dark out here—and the slots zombies never looked out the windows.
The pain in my shoulder was so intense I was whimpering. Although the ship had turned so that I was no longer on the windward side, she had picked up speed, and I could feel the wind blow the tears back from my eyes across the tight skin of my cheeks.
I was going to fall. I couldn’t hold on much longer. Maybe, just maybe, if I timed it right and let go when the ship was rolling to starboard, maybe I would slide inside the bulwark and fall to the deck. I knew I couldn’t risk it. Most of my body was too high up, on the outside of the ship. If only I could get lower so that I could get my feet and legs inside the bulwark. And I wasn’t sure how long that silly rope was going to hold out supporting all my weight.
The next time the ship rolled, I used my free arm to shift my position, turning me around so that my body faced the ship. The sides of the upper deck had a big pipe welded along the outside, and the large round edge was impossible to grip. I reached out for something to grab onto aft. There was nothing. Not on the bulwark or the deck, nothing small enough for me to get a good grip on, nothing that I could use to pull myself up. Then I noticed about three feet aft a long rectangle of steel plate sticking out about eight inches from the underside of the top deck. The plate was a half inch thick, and in the end was a hole with a shackle attached. I remembered it was what they had used as a derrick back at the dock when they had attached a block and tackle to it to hoist the gangway off the ship. If I could get my right hand on that, it was lower than the rope, and I could probably ease myself down onto the next deck below. I reached my right arm out and the beam was at least a foot from the end of my fingers.
Damn.
I felt the rope slip a fraction of an inch through my fist. I tried to tighten my grip, but the pain from the shoulder was making me wonder if that arm and hand were even attached to my body. It felt as though I no longer had control of my left arm, and since it was the only thing that was keeping me out of the ship’s wake, the thought sent a wave of nausea through my gut.
Great, I thought. Never been seasick in my life, and now I’m feeling queasy.
The ship rolled again and my body banged against the side, my chest and face now swinging into the steel deck and bulwarks. The half round of the pipe welded onto the edge of the deck hit my sternum. Now that I was facing the ship, I could use my free arm to try to slow my body as it swung against the topsides. But I was quickly tiring that arm and using up what little strength I had left.
I looked back at the piece of steel plate protruding just below the deck, a little over three feet aft of where I was hanging. I might be able to reach it if I could swing, get up some momentum, then let go of the rope and hope that my good right arm could grab hold of that piece of steel. With each roll of the boat, I wasted more energy just trying not to get hurt. If I was going to go, it better be now.
I swung my legs to the left, then threw them back to the right, and my body started to swing. The rope slipped through my hand another inch, and I could feel the cold steel of the snatch hook against my palm. I thought, I’m at the end of my rope. Then: Right, Sullivan, great comedic timing.
I grunted with effort as, once more, I swung my legs up toward the bow and then back toward the stern. Momentum started to build, and the zipper on the front of my sweatshirt screeched as my chest scraped across the metal pipe. When the ship rolled and my torso swung free over the water the arc of my swing increased, free of the resistance of the ship.
The time to go for it was when the ship was starting to roll back to starboard, when my body was dangling free of the ship, but the momentum of the ship’s roll was carrying me back toward the ship, not throwing me free. I heard my own voice making an animal-like sound, and as the ship rolled again and I threw my legs into the aft swing, I let go of the rope.
My fingers hit the metal post, and I felt the cold round bar of the shackle, the hard curves of the welded corners, and the slick wet surface of the metal as my fingers slipped across the steel plate, unable to get a grip. I was falling.
XVII
My mother was slapping my face. Not hard, mind you, she was just trying to bring me around, out of the near-unconscious state I was in after my belly flop into the New River. I was seven years old, and my mother had taken Molly and me upriver from our Shady Banks neighborhood to a spot she remembered from her own childhood. My mother went first, jumping out of the tree and swinging out from the bank of the river, clutching the knotted brown rope, screeching with joyous laughter, and I wanted to show her that I, too, could be that brave and beautiful. My fear made me hold onto the rope too long. My legs swung out until my body was parallel to the water, and I fell flat. The wind whooshed out of me and I inhaled water and sank like the skinny seven-year-old I was. The next thing I knew I was in the dinghy coughing up water and my mother was gently slapping my cheeks on either side, saying, “Honey, you’re okay. Just breathe.”
I shook my head to try to get her to stop slapping at my cheeks like that.
“Seychelle, wake up, darlin’,” said a voice that definitely wasn’t my mother’s.
With effort, I pulled my eyelids apart and saw Mike’s face leaning over me. My head exploded with bright white pain, and I closed my eyes again. At least he’d stopped patt
ing my cheeks.
“Shit.” I felt my forehead and my fingers came away sticky with blood. “What happened?”
“That’s what I’m asking you. I was on a hell of a winning streak in there when I heard a thud, looked out through the blinds, and saw you crumpled in a heap on the deck out here.”
One of my legs was bent under me, and I tried to straighten it out so I could sit up. The movement fired up a wave of pain down the right side of my body. I slid my T-shirt up and saw the makings of a whopper bruise on my side, just below my ribs. That explained where I hit the bulwark.
I remembered my hand on that iron post, how I had tried with all my strength to get a grip, to hold on, and how it had stopped my fall long enough for my legs to swing inboard. But as my fingers slid free, I fell and must have caught the upper rail right at my waist. The cut on my head was a mystery to me. I didn’t remember anything past the moment where I knew my legs were inboard and I wasn’t going over. I must have cracked my head a good one on the bulwarks or a stanchion. Under the cut, a nice lump was rising.
“You don’t remember anything, Sey?”
“No. I mean, yeah, I do, but I don’t know much.”
“Well, spit it out, girl.”
“There’s not much to tell.” I readjusted my legs, feeling the length of them with my hands and wiggling my toes, making sure nothing was broken. It was when I tried to lift my left arm that the pain in my shoulder tripled, causing me to cry out.
Mike seemed to care more about the story than my health. “Let me decide that. Talk.”
“I was on the deck up there,” I said, pointing with my good arm overhead, “and I heard someone running down here on this deck. Then I heard an argument. I think it was that guy in the blue shirt, the security guy with the walkie-talkie. I remember leaning over the rail, trying to hear what was going on, and the next thing I knew I was being pushed ass over teakettle.”
Bitter End (Seychelle Sullivan #3) Page 17