“What did they find on the boat?” Susannah asked.
“Dead bodies,” said Claudette.
Susannah nearly said, I’m glad to hear it. She wanted the people who had hurt this animal to suffer.
Laser lifted his head and pricked up his healthy ear, the wounded ear remaining partly folded over. She had bandaged it, and the bandage had weight.
He whined. This was not a whine of curiosity, or lonesomeness, or any other minor emotion Susannah could recognize in a dog’s whimper.
The dog heard something that aroused his fear.
Continuingly alert to this sound, the dog was no longer the incapable, badly stricken patient. He growled. Wobbly but fierce, the animal climbed to his feet, and his hackles rose, a ridge of fur down his spine. He bared his teeth, and even in his weakened condition the dog looked ferocious.
Susannah was very puzzled and deeply disturbed. She went to the cabin door and opened it.
Far off, almost too faint for human ears, she could barely make out the drone of an airplane as the dog snarled a warning.
“LEONARD, WAKE UP,” Susannah said as Claudette gave her husband a gentle shake.
“I am awake,” he replied, but he held himself on top of the blankets like a man caught by a photograph in midair, his knees crooked, his arms at an angle, unmoving. He did not look relaxed.
And he did not open his eyes. Everything about the man communicated pain, and also indicated the faith that if he did not move, not so much as a single eyelid, he would be able to control the worst of his suffering.
Susannah realized how much her father meant to her. And she also realized that getting rid of the boat, and maybe doing without a wife and a daughter, might simplify his life and bring his energetic, exacerbated soul a new experience.
Her parents had been sleeping in separate bunks, Leonard the lower shelf, and Susannah could see the differences between the two of them. Leonard was all sprawl, lying next to a classical Greek dictionary flowering with blue Post-its, and Jane’s Fighting Ships, stuck with bookmarks.
Her mother was tidy—even the Kleenex had a covering, a magenta plastic box with a timid leaf of facial tissue barely protruding. Her mother liked true crime, books about dingoes that ate children, and serial killers.
The victims were always women, the killers always men. A paperback called Serpentine had escaped and lay in a corner, and her mother knelt now and picked it up and put it back where it belonged.
Claudette bent down over her husband. “Leonard,” she said, “we found some money.”
Susannah wanted to correct her mother. Martin found the money, and Axel found it with him. But she saw the need in her mother’s eye, the glow and the anxiety that that newfound wealth gave her. Claudette was thrilled but she was uneasy. Now she had something else in addition to an injured husband and an expensive yacht that she could lose.
Her mother’s life could be simplified, too. Claudette was always on the verge of happiness—rarely purely, brilliantly happy. Even now, waiting for Leonard to respond, she could not wait, and she leaned down over her husband and said, “A lot of money.”
Leonard parted his lips. He was preparing his body for pain, and for conversation. Sometimes, thought Susannah, almost the same thing. Especially, she thought, around me.
He opened one eye.
“Money?” he croaked.
“That’s what I said,” Claudette responded, impatient but in control of her emotions.
He opened the other eye. He blinked. “How much?”
“We don’t know yet. It’s a lot.”
He gave a surprised laugh, his mouth wide open.
“But it is not quite that simple,” said Claudette.
“What is simple?” he asked. “In the whole world, name me one thing that is absolutely straightforward.”
Claudette described the forsaken vessel, giving Leonard the facts, and Susannah respected the shorthand verve with which she spoke: dead bodies, an apparent falling-out between thieves.
“And now,” she concluded, like she was sharing entirely good news, “we have the cash.”
“Dead!” said Leonard. In Susannah’s experience, he always responded emotionally to bad news, disaster or death on TV. “That’s terrible!”
“We have the cash, Leonard,” Claudette repeated, to emphasize her main point. “American money, legal tender.”
“OK,” he said. “Salvage rights are ours.”
“Are you sure?” said Claudette.
“The vessel was abandoned, right?” he asked.
“In effect,” said Claudette.
“What does that mean, in effect?” he responded. “We found the money on a vessel abandoned on the high seas. The vessel and everything on it are claimable.”
“But not beyond dispute,” said Claudette.
“Is there a problem?”
Now she mentioned the aircraft.
“Oh.” Leonard considered this. His oh was weighted with feeling. He needed to think.
He looked at Susannah, and he looked back at his wife. Susannah could imagine his thoughts, the need to protect wife and daughter from the kind of felons Claudette liked to read about.
“Well, yes,” he said at last, sounding thoughtful, “I can see the difficulty.”
“I’ve watched it off and on all day,” said Claudette. “The plane is searching.”
“Searching for what, though?” he asked.
Claudette asked, “Where is the key to the overhead cabinet?”
He offered a feeble laugh. “Trapped in my hip pocket.”
Claudette said, “We need the shotgun.”
“What you need,” said Leonard, “is me.”
Claudette folded her arms, needing her husband, and liking him, too, but nonetheless there was the unresolved problem between them.
Susannah wondered if her mother wanted with all her heart to get her hands on all the money, every last piece of currency, and talk divorce from a position of strength.
“NO, WE DON’T NEED YOU,” said Claudette. “We need the shotgun and the ammunition.”
“Do you realize,” said Leonard, “how worse than useless the shotgun is?”
“Useless how?” asked Claudette, shifting the weight off her weak leg.
“If these people are showing up to claim their money,” said Leonard, “and they ask for it, and know we have it—we should give it back.”
“We aren’t giving back this money, Leonard.”
“And if these are armed men, ready to take what they want, then we should give it back to protect ourselves.”
“We’ll keep the money,” said Claudette.
“If these are professional criminals with the ability to hunt the money with an airplane,” continued Leonard, “we’d be better off ditching the cash, throwing it overboard. We don’t want to kill people, Claudette.”
“You always said you wanted to find a fortune,” Susannah told him, “floating on the waves.”
“I was hoping for hatch covers, cordage. Maybe a mast, or planking, some nice spruce wood. But this money is dangerous.”
“Maybe Mother would feel better,” suggested Susannah, “if she had the gun in her hands.” She used the word mother deliberately, acting as a levelheaded but cunning referee between her parents.
“That’s right, Leonard,” said Claudette.
“Oh, Claudette.” Leonard was surrendering—Susannah could hear it in his voice. But she could also hear stark apprehension. “This is such a bad idea.”
“The keys, Leonard,” Claudette persisted.
He altered his position, gasping.
Susannah found the keys in his back pocket, two yellow keys on a California Golden Bears key ring, warm from contact with her father’s body.
* * *
Father and daughter could hear the overhead compartments in the center cabin opening and closing, and the sound of the gun being taken down was audible, too, the thud of the stock on the floor.
Claudette carried t
he gun, zippered up in a gun case, back into the sleeping quarters. She also carried four green and gold boxes, and she set the gun and ammunition on the floor. She unzipped the shotgun and tore open a box.
“I thought you bought buckshot,” she said.
“Why do you think I keep the guns locked up?” asked Leonard. “Those slugs could bring down a grizzly.”
“Five rounds per box. I’ve got twenty slugs.”
Susannah noted the I’ve got. But taking possession of the gun with its glowing walnut stock made Claudette somber. She sank to the floor, loading the gun, taking her time.
“It’s not that much fun,” said Leonard, “when you actually lay hands on the gun, is it?”
“All of this scares me, too,” said Claudette. “I have to ask if I really want to shoot someone.”
“Yeah, well, that’s a very good question, Claudette,” said Leonard. “I’m glad to hear that you still have enough sense to speculate.”
Claudette gave him a smile, knowing and gently teasing. “I thought you liked that about me, Leonard,” she said. “That I’m full of surprises.”
“I do,” said Leonard.
Something passed between the two of them. They were not easy on each other, Susannah could see, but the prospect of having an adventure, getting involved in a conspiracy on the high seas, was beginning to tantalize Leonard.
“When you set eyes on the money, Leonard,” said Claudette, “you’ll want to keep it, too.”
“YOU DIDN’T HAVE an affair with Michelle, did you, Leonard?” Susannah asked when Claudette had left them alone.
She knew how it must shock her father to hear the question put so bluntly. But Susannah did not mind shocking anyone, not even Leonard.
He ignored her question. “Susannah, I need you to give me a shot of morphine,” he said.
Susannah felt stricken. She protested, “I can’t give you a shot.”
“I need you to do this,” he said. “I can’t let you go confront a menace without me, and I am just about paralyzed by the pain. Susannah, just do what I tell you.”
“But, Leonard, I can’t stick a needle—” into you, she could not bring herself to say.
“Pretend I’m a dog,” said Leonard with a wan smile. “I know you can help me, Susannah. I believe in you.”
“Did you have an affair with Michelle?” she asked again.
“No, I did not,” said Leonard.
She had one other question, but at that moment she was afraid to ask.
* * *
The first aid kit was no longer kept in the lazarette—Susannah brought it down from the shelf across from Leonard’s bunk. Dr. Tang had written a prescription for Cipro, and a series of morphine ampoules lay beside huge rolls of gauze, the container of codeine, and a packet of smelling salts.
The syringe was a slender, plastic missile—elegant, the sort of neatly proportioned arrow that could sink a ship, glittering and surprisingly lightweight.
Leonard talked her through the filling of the hypodermic with the amber-colored drug, the tapping of the side of the syringe to make sure there were no air bubbles trapped in the needle. He swabbed his own arm with disinfectant, wincing with the effort as he lay there, and then he held out his arm and said, “Pretend you’re mad at me, Susannah. It’s not too hard.”
“Did you have an affair with anyone else?” asked Susannah.
He did not answer at once, and this, she knew, meant he had.
His arm was more muscular than she had realized, and she felt a shudder go through his body as she stuck him with more vigor than either of them had expected. She depressed the plunger, all of it taking place in a moment that did not seem attached to anything she had ever done in her life. She knew that she could shoot someone with the same air of practical urgency, the decision to get something done and done quickly.
She withdrew the needle and put the entire hypodermic back into the box like an unclean object she never wanted to see again.
Leonard did not meet her eyes.
“I love your mother,” he said after a silence.
“But you were unfaithful to her,” she said. She did not know why she was suddenly weeping.
“You don’t know that,” he said.
“You don’t have to say so,” she replied.
His voice was low, almost a whisper.
“Ask Martin to come here,” he said, “so he can help me out on deck.”
No, she would not, thought Susannah. She would not do anything more to aid a philandering husband, and she had no desire to help his stilted, self-serving wife, either. What she wanted to do was sink the yacht and every living being on it. Well, almost every living creature. Not the dog, and not Martin.
And not necessarily herself, either. She would think of something, she resolved. Some harm she could do to her father, and some way she could strike at her mother, too.
She bumped her head on a kerosene lamp swinging from above. Leonard had bought these from a maritime boutique in Carmel, expensive and cute, but fully functional. The kerosene sloshed, liquid within the brass interior of the lamp.
She had an idea.
This was more than an idea—a brilliant, one-person conspiracy.
She got an empty orange juice bottle from the galley, and a book of matches, Ajanta Restaurant, Berkeley, California, one of her favorite places for vegetarian vindaloo, a fiery curry. Being careful not to spill any of the kerosene, she filled the bottle with the flammable liquid, slightly put off by the very faint industrial odor.
She knelt by Laser. He was still sleeping comfortably, like they said on the news when someone was resting comfortably after a trauma. But that was probably almost always a lie. The injured patients were probably nearly always gaping wrecks. In this case it was true—the animal was peacefully sleeping.
And another thing that was true was: she was going to soak the money in kerosene and set it alight.
LEONARD WAS PROPPED on the deck, his back against the side of the vessel, while Axel and Martin counted the cash.
The potency of Leonard’s recent medication allowed him to assume his usual humor, in a slightly vague way, and he joked that he was “morphine-ized back into the starting lineup.”
But he nonetheless held his body as though something even more essential might rupture at any moment. Martin was grateful that his uncle had returned to help, but he knew that this current, reduced version of Leonard was vulnerable and that his pain would soon return.
Claudette held the pump-action gun, keeping it across her body. Susannah joined her, carrying a container of Minute Maid orange juice. Martin gave her a friendly smile, and she gave him a strange smile in return, deepening dimples in her cheeks but not actually showing companionship.
Axel murmured in the preoccupied way Martin associated with calculations, moving his lips in virtual silence. Martin counted silently himself.
They counted all the money twice, returning the full amount to the gym bag. They left the bag unzipped, the money clearly visible.
“We have eighty bundles of hundred-dollar bills,” announced Martin, “one hundred bills in each bundle. Eight hundred thousand dollars.”
Leonard acknowledged the amount with a nod. His face gave no hint what he was feeling, only that the money had his full attention. He ran his tongue around the inside of his mouth. Martin wondered if perhaps the morphine slowed him down too much, or made him mentally fuzzy.
“That’s a nice little sum,” his uncle said.
“Why,” Claudette asked, “were they carrying that much?”
“That’s a good question,” said Leonard. Martin knew that his uncle liked to acknowledge a remark, good point, good question, without agreeing with it. He looked at Martin. “There are problems with this money.”
“What problems?” asked Axel. “I don’t see any problem with the money at all, Skipper.”
Claudette went over to Axel’s side and stood beside him, as though supporting what Axel was about to argue. She had the
gun in the crook of her arm, and her expression was somber.
“No law-abiding boat owners carry a pile of currency like this,” said Leonard. He looked around, like a lecturer enjoying his audience. But he was a weary lecturer, and his voice was thin. “Isn’t that right, Martin?” he asked.
“Probably not,” allowed Martin.
Susannah held the container of orange juice up into the daylight, examining the contents. The orange juice bottle, Martin realized, was empty. But not exactly empty—the jar held a clear, slightly oleaginous fluid.
“Of course we all know what has to be the case,” said Leonard with a washed-out smile. “This is swag, dirty money, ill-gotten gains.”
“We already know these people were criminals,” said Axel. “They shot each other, and then they died.”
“This is the kind of money that will get someone else killed, too,” said Leonard. “Killed as in cut to pieces and fed to our friendly shark.”
Martin knew what Leonard was doing. Leonard was a lot like his brother that way, clear-minded, independent, and contrary. Despite what Leonard was saying, he was going to end up keeping the money.
“This stuff is dangerous,” Leonard said, reaching out and trying to snag the bag. He got his hand on it, and began pulling on the bag with a silent gasp. The bag stayed where it was, not easy to budge.
“We won’t give it back, Skipper,” said Axel.
Susannah set the bottle on the deck and selected a match from a booklet in her hands. Martin watched her very carefully.
She lit the match, but in the softest of winds, the flame went out at once, with a softly drifting, feathery puff.
Martin saw what she was about to do, as clearly as if it was spelled out on the Fox news crawl, Susannah Burgess burns near-million in act of family terrorism.
Martin went over to her, leaned into her, and said, right into her ear, “Don’t do it.”
A near whisper.
“I should,” she whispered in return, no one else able to hear what they were saying.
“Please,” he said. “Susannah, please don’t.”
“Susannah,” Leonard was asking, his voice lifted in concern, “please tell me I’m wrong about what is in that bottle.”
Seize the Storm Page 10