Sarah looked at me with a vacant stare. Like she didn’t know what to think about me now. I filled in the beautiful, empty canvas with my own deepest fear. God, had I lost her already?
Martin hadn’t shared my love for Garbo. She didn’t make his nipples hard, he’d said. Nor did he worship women in general. Where I thought I had to cure cancer to bed a woman, Martin caused cancer and didn’t think twice about bumping nasties with the first young, unwitting victim to stray his way. Shit, what movies had his mother taken him to as a child? Apparently, she hadn’t realized what a horse’s ass he’d turn into as an adult. Otherwise, she would have surely smothered him in his crib and saved me all this trouble.
Martin was a shark in the Hollywood cesspool of self-proclaimed players. He preyed on unsuspecting young women who’d stepped off the bus fresh from Paducah. Martin would invite them to industry parties. Then when they were a little drunk and blinded by stars in their eyes, he’d circle and bump his prey to gauge their resistance. More aspiring actresses had bruises from Martin hitting on them at parties than ever taking their lumps on the stage or screen. Few gave into the mouth breather, but those who did usually left for home the next day, thoroughly disgusted with Tinseltown.
In his own reprehensible way, Martin saved many women from wasting their lives in Los Angeles, pursuing dreams of stardom that would never happen. I imagined they led happy, normal lives somewhere off the Hollywood radar. If Martin hadn’t permanently scarred them with a sexually transmitted disease, that is.
Martin had said he made an exception when he met me. For what I lacked in tits and ass, I made up for in brains. The fact that I’d been flattered by that statement should’ve indicated otherwise. But the stars in my own eyes had been so blinding, I couldn’t see the bill of goods he’d sold me. Five years of indentured servitude later, I was scared I might not have a happily-ever-after of my own. Afraid I’d labored under the false assumption that Martin, my mentor, wouldn’t fuck me, too. Fuck me over, that is. Only for it to come true in Norfolk, Connecticut.
Now all I had to do was go into the room marked Three and say, “Martin, fuck off.” In theory it seemed so simple. Something I had dreamed about doing for years. And now I had my chance. But I suddenly felt sick to my stomach. My body’s way of telling me it wasn’t going to be as easy as all that. Thankfully, the wave of nausea passed as quickly as it had come.
A large hospital security officer was visiting Martin when I arrived outside his door, the one Sarah had unleashed on Martin’s ass after her first exposure to him. I wanted to hear what they were saying. I quietly stepped into the room behind the officer while he lectured my asshole ex-boss.
“We take our staff’s personal safety seriously here, Mr. Hinkle,” the officer said. “If it happens again, I’ll have to call in the local authorities.”
“I understand, Officer,” Martin responded in a sweet, honey-dripped voice. “My bad. It’ll never happen again. I promise.”
Of course, this was Martin-code for “go fuck yourself, you hick.” But it satisfied the rent-a-cop. The officer turned, saw me, stared into my eyes for a second then left the room.
Then Martin looked up at me, seeming relieved to see a familiar face. But then he must have remembered who led him here in the first place, and a veil of faux-indifference descended over him. Martin turned away from me.
“Martin,” I said.
The neutral tone in my voice was intended to stop a verbal firestorm before it got started. But I could see by the look on Martin’s face, he already had match in hand ready to strike.
“Well,” he said, “if it isn’t a prodigal son darkening my doorstep.”
“I was here before you,” I said. “You drove off and left me, remember?”
Ah, Martin. I could always depend on him to get everything ass-backward. It was a particular skill that he possessed. He got things wrong like other people painted or sculpted masterpieces. The Maestro of Mistakes was at the top of his game.
“Oh, sure,” he said. “Blame everything on me. If you haven’t noticed, I’m in a fucking hospital bed.”
Mouth open and speechless, I stood in my hospital gown, hand grasped around the handle of a hospital cane to keep me steady. I turned to go, my ass crack exposed to the asshole in the bed. I made it as far as the threshold. Pierced the imaginary plane into the hallway with the cane before Martin spoke.
“James,” he called from behind. “Wait.”
I could have kept going. Never turned around again. Left Martin for dead like he had me. But I wanted something. Part of me wanted him dead for disrespecting Sarah. Wanted him on his knees, begging for his life. That was the part of me that turned around. The part of me that wanted to draw blood.
“Make it quick. Whatever you have to say, say it quick.”
“I made a mistake,” he said, then quickly looked down at his feet. Contemplated his frostbitten toes, covered in white gauze at the foot of the bed.
“Go on,” I said.
Martin looked up again. I knew it was near impossible for so arrogant a man as Martin to admit he’d been wrong to someone he considered beneath him. Remorse was not part of the man’s DNA. On the other hand, he needed me and wasn’t above groveling when he needed something. I’d make him confess his sins, full well knowing it was killing him inside.
“I should never have left you behind,” he said in a little-boy voice, looking in self-pity back to his toes.
Fascinating. My attention was riveted. I couldn’t wait to see what a guy with no genuine emotions other than fear and hate was about to say next.
“And?” I nudged him ever so slightly toward the cliff edge of total humiliation.
“Aaaannnnddd,” he said. “I. Feel. Badly.”
Ah, now we were getting somewhere. Sure, the grammar was all fucked up. Martin had incorrectly applied the adverb to describe what he felt. Instead, he had quite aptly described how his dysfunctional emotional self operated. He was not good at feeling. Martin felt emotions badly. It was the biggest truth he had ever laid on me. And he never even realized it.
“What about the nurse?”
Martin looked up, genuinely surprised. Eyebrows arched back as if ready to sling arrows. He hadn’t seen this one coming.
“What nurse?”
“The nurse you groped,” I said. “I heard what you said to the security officer, but you didn’t mean it, did you?”
Martin glared at me. Confession time was over. As much as he knew he needed me, he loathed having to answer to me. Martin looked at his toes again. He wouldn’t stand for it. I imagined he weighed how many of his little piggies he’d be willing to sacrifice to keep his pride. But knowing Martin the way I did, it was a stall tactic to front a new mode of attack.
“You like her,” he said, then looked up at me with open, bottomless contempt. “That’s what this is all about to you? Some girl’s honor?”
“Not all,” I said. “But it’s good for starters.”
“Name your price,” he said, trying to contain an ever-growing rage from entering his voice.
“Apologize,” I instructed.
“I’m sorry,” he mouthed.
“Not to me,” I said. “To her.”
Barely in control, Martin tried to burn a hole through my head with his eyes. This wasn’t a wild guess on my part. I knew how the man thought. He was that immature.
“What’s in it for me?” he said, self-restraint all but exhausted.
“Redemption.” I was innocent as a choir boy.
He was good and steamed now. Almost ready to jump out of the bed and throttle me. Almost ready to lose any chance he had at controlling the situation and me ever again.
“Fuck redemption,” he said, his voice cold.
I had him. As long as I stayed calm and made no sudden movements, I had the fuck dead to rights. And it felt good. But I had to be careful. Martin was more dangerous than an injured animal. I could never turn my back on him. Never let him smell my fear for a second. Al
l would be lost.
“You think you’ve got the balls to play with the big boys, huh?” he said. “You better be sure.”
“You left the party early,” I said.
Martin cocked his head like a dog trying to figure out what the hell it was looking at. In redirecting him, I now had his full and undivided attention.
“The old man,” I said, “he gave up the ghost.”
Martin’s eyes widened. Our little game relied upon knowledge and perception. I had introduced a new element that he hadn’t figured on. I’d shown him the river card and immediately anted up.
“The old man,” he said. “He’s still alive?”
“Just down the hall.” I indicated with a nod of my head. “We’re sharing the same room.”
I’d never realized what leverage I had over Martin until now. Until I realized why I had come to Norfolk, Connecticut, with Martin in the first place. I smiled and let his brain catch up. Martin had an important decision to make. Hold ‘em or fold ‘em.
“In the same room, huh? That’s excellent work, James.”
Martin gave me a creepy little smile. He actually thought I’d orchestrated my own head injury in order to bunk down with the old man? Good. Let him. There was no reason to disabuse him of the notion. Not when we were engaged in mortal combat.
“The Garbo story,” he asked, “is it juicy?”
“Better,” I said. “It’s a solid.”
Martin smile turned into a shit-eating grin. I smiled back while I felt bile rise in my throat.
“I see it now,” he said. “You and me, Jimmy. We’re whores of a different color.”
“You mean birds of a feather,” I said. “And it’s horse of a different color, not whores.”
“Whatever,” he said and dismissed the malapropisms with a flick of a gauzed hand. “And to think all these years I thought you were a schmuck.”
I stared at Martin as he congratulated himself on my apparent duplicity. I knew it was all a ruse on his part as much as mine. The difference was his sleight of hand was showing. Mine I’d keep close to the vest because I knew the second I let him, Martin would try to fuck me. He’d take the project and credit for everything and leave me out in the cold. Again.
“Louie,” he said as if he could ever be Bogart. “I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.”
Friendship? The only thing Martin and I had in common was neither one of us had any friends. I’d learned from him long ago not to trust anyone and had kept everyone at arms length since. We were about as friendly as a Mexican standoff.
“I’ll take a co-producer credit this time,” I said, calling his bluff. I had Martin at my mercy, for the moment. But now I had to commit to seeing things through. Failure was no longer an option. I needed to make the most of the leverage I had over him. Stall for enough time to rope-a-dope him like Seth had.
“Sure, kid,” he said. “What are friends for?”
Martin forced his lips into a quivering smile. I stood by his bed and bared my teeth right back at him. We were skull to skull, locked in battle, and in my mind’s eye, the cane I held turned into a scythe. We were whores of a different color. And mine, I imagined, was pale.
19. FAIL TO PLAN, PLAN TO FLAIL SETH
Since I’d been aboard the Athenia, I’d been beaten, manhandled, molested and held at gunpoint. I’d also made love to the greatest beauty of our time. Of any time. My time with Garbo may have been brief, but her star had become my true north. Her memory my guiding light, even in the darkest hours of my captivity.
Nick and I had made our way to the top of the stairs and faced a small corridor not twenty paces in length. A door on the other end shone with a bright, chest-high yellow-white disk. I guessed the sun had been up for a while because its energy pulsed through the door’s porthole which acted as a lens, focusing and concentrating the light.
We were halfway down the hallway when Nick stopped and tugged my sleeve. “What’s your plan?” he whispered.
I turned back to give him a reassuring grin. “It’s simple. I find Garbo and find out what she’s up to.”
“But … how will you … what if—?”
For someone who’d just made me pledge fealty to him, Nick was sure acting all hibbity-jibbity. I wondered what was on the other side of that door at the end of the hall. Whatever it was, I needed little Nicky on my side and I needed him to go at my pace while I worked the angles. Angles? Who the hell was I kidding? Now that the world was at war, any angles I tried to work and any battles I tried to wage were most likely doomed to failure. Much larger forces were at work now and likely had been way before this voyage began. Whatever I did now wouldn’t matter a whit in the larger scheme of things. But I wasn’t going to tell Nick that.
I glanced back at the sun-catcher porthole, and said, “Hey, I’ve got an idea. Why don’t we switch clothes?”
I was at least half a foot taller than Nick. He stood in my shadow as my back blocked the intense light from reaching his beady eyes. His pupils grew large in the shadows. I could tell by the expression on his darkened puss my proposition wasn’t to his liking. Not one bit.
“Why?” he said.
“I’m a tad conspicuous in these duds.” I looked down at the jumpsuit I’d somehow acquired, courtesy of the gracious Captain Cook and his merchant marines.
I was fairly certain I wouldn’t last long among the paying customers dressed like a … well, dressed like a fugitive. Or a poor slob who’d wandered away from the engine room. Either way, I’d accrued a rogue’s gallery of enemies and parading around in clothes that announced I wasn’t supposed to be parading around at all just wouldn’t do.
“Give me your duds, or our bet is off.”
“Okay,” he huffed. “No need to get hot under the collar.”
Nick and I emerged onto the Promenade Deck not long after, me dressed in burglar black and him in fugitive blue. The sun’s glare off the high shine of wooden deck temporarily blinded me, and I moved gingerly along the metal outer wall until my eyes adjusted. Nick followed close behind.
Everyone aboard had taken cover. Like there was anywhere to hide on a sitting duck. I felt like the guy without a country from the Edward Everett Hale tale. Except now I looked more like the new sheriff in town—or the new bad guy. Meanwhile, my deputy raised a hand and pointed toward the horizon.
“Look.” I raised a hand to my eyes to cut the glare and looked off into the watery distance. And there it was, a long, black shadow growing beneath the rising sun. An inky blot darkening the horizon and spreading larger as it made its way toward us. Some kind of military ship. Black as the depths of the sea.
“What is it?” Nick said.
“It’s not the good ship Lollipop.”
I had to find Garbo. Before it was too late. Find Garbo and find out what she was up to. And whatever it was, I’d make it my business and no one else’s. I wasn’t going to let anything come between us anymore. I’d fry first. I’d fry as sure as the inkblot on the horizon was a Nazi pocket battleship. The kind I’d seen pictures of in my own paper, The Journal. State-of-the-art Nazi warcraft not a mile off the Athenia’s port bow and closing in fast.
But I couldn’t go straight for Garbo. Not yet. That would be like playing Marco Polo in a shark tank. I had had the right idea but the wrong execution. No, if my instincts proved out, Garbo was being watched. My money, if I’d had any, was on locating sweet, deadly Ingrid. Her, I would find. Her, I’d put questions to in such a way I’d finally get some fucking answers. Yeah, good ol’ British Ingrid would be square with me for a change.
Nick and I made our way onto A-Deck, the First-Class Passengers Suites just off the Promenade Deck. I was wondering what I was going to do with my newfound sidekick, right about the time I spied Lars, the porter who had snitched on me. Or rather, he spied me.
Lars was pushing an empty service cart in our direction down the hallway. I imagined, room service had become a premium since war had been declared, and the kid was pr
obably getting the best tips of his short life now that hostilities had officially begun. Then he caught sight of me, and from his expression I could tell I had officially ruined his day.
“Lars,” I said, “long time no see.”
The kid tried to backtrack, but I was on him before he could even think of running. Nick followed my lead and pushed Lars’s cart to the side of the hallway. Lars started a healthy scream, cut short by my hand over his mouth. No time to get caught and thrown in the brig again. This time we’d play things my way.
“Now, now,” I said. “No need to upset the passengers.”
I turned to Nick. Whispered into his ear the part Lars had played in my incarceration. Nick loved every minute of our little intrigue. He nodded and seemed to know intuitively what I was asking of him before I asked it. Nick was immune to the implied danger of being my accomplice. He probably assumed, quite rightly, nobody gave a fuck what we did now. Of course, unless we got caught.
“I need you to stay low with Lars,” I said. “You think you can do that?”
“No problem,” he said. “We’ll wait for you in A-Deck men’s room. Won’t we, Lars?”
I turned back to Lars, whose mouth I still covered with my hand. He stared back at the two of us, wide-eyed. We must have looked half-insane to the kid. Nick didn’t know it, but A-Deck men’s room had special meaning for Lars and me. It was where this little merry-go-round had begun for the two of us. Lars nodded.
“Good boy,” I said and handed him over to Nick. We were all in this together now, along for the ride until someone told us we could jump off. I turned from the boys and ran.
I beat it through the silent ship’s empty corridors, Nick’s size tens pounding a metallic drum roll to Ingrid’s doorstep. I stopped and caught my breath. Then stuck out my chin, set my jaw a la James Cagney in Public Enemy and rapped my knuckles hard on her door.
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