The Prince Of Deadly Weapons

by Boston Teran

  Waves of mist coming in from the coast almost completely obscured Preston Point and it was here Mr. Carter ruddered that day cruiser north and Nathan now knew they were powering toward an isolated stretch of Grizzly Bay. For the first time in his life Nathan questioned the General.

  The weather had worsened quickly forcing the boat to slow and it was only moments later that Dane first saw them off the port beam. There at the edges of a deepening fog, their steel monolithic bows looked to be something more of legend or dream.

  Stark and faceless they were, one, then another, and another, and another. There could well have been hundreds moored there.

  The day cruiser had to pass along and beneath these freighter hulls which rose up and disappeared into dead gray clouds. They were like some marvelous and terrible giants from the origins of time. Watching, waiting. The sound emanating from those silent and empty hulls one could imagine coming from the heart of the world.

  * * *

  CARUSO WAS flying at just over a thousand feet following the Sacramento into the Delta. He tried to close out all the engine noise as he listened on that headset, looking down between the mist, threading his way back and forth over the river, when through a tunnel of sparks he heard Dane's voice. "What… all…'ose… moored… fri…"

  Static killed it. He pressed the squelch button on the keypad. There was someone else talking but it was just voice gravel. He banked the plane hoping to clear a little reception.

  Dane again. Still through a tunnel of sparks. Slightly clearer, but just. Paul pressed the headset against his ear. "Th're… must… be…'undreds… of… freight… moored… here…"

  The mothball fleet at Benecia. It had to be, it better be. They were at the entrance to Grizzly Bay. Caruso scowled in panic. He had guessed wrong.

  Chapter Sixty-Nine

  IVY HAD JUST opened her car door when she saw Essie's Falcon speeding toward the driveway. She waved and then realized the Falcon wasn't stopping. Ivy jumped backwards and the Falcon hit the door head-on tearing it from the chassis.

  Ivy had managed to get around the front end of her car in time. Her face turned away, her eyes closed, her mouth shunted upwards as Essie's Falcon braked and she came staggering out right for Ivy. Ivy had no idea until—

  "You helped kill Taylor, didn't you!"

  Essie was panting for breath.

  " 'Cause he found out you were a fucking money launderer!!"

  Essie shouted at the top of her voice. Before Ivy could react Essie hit her across the face. Ivy lost her balance trying to keep from being hit again and fell back against the garage door.

  "We know everything," Essie screamed as she kicked and hit and hit and kicked at Ivy. "We know about you… and Charles… and Nathan… and the Fenns…"

  A neighbor of Ivy's and his college-age son who lived in the next town house came running across the lawn after hearing the accident and screaming.

  "We know about Damon Romero… and Merrit Merton…"

  The neighbors grabbed Essie who fought violently and Ivy got loose and ran back up the walkway to her front door.

  "We know you helped kill Taylor…" Essie shouted loud enough for the people in the complex to hear her…"We know you're a money launderer… Listen to me… Everyone!"

  The men were trying to control Essie but she broke away and Ivy shut the front door behind her. She could hear Essie screaming. Ivy's eyesight warped and her body panicked and she couldn't find a breath anywhere.

  Essie turned to the men who were spreading their arms like riot-control cops to keep her from Ivy's door. But Essie ran back to her car instead shouting, "You're protecting a murderer… and a money launderer… and who knows what else—"

  The men raced after her, but Essie managed to get into her car and lock the door, and as they grabbed at the handle and tried to get in the half-open driver's door window Essie gassed the Falcon out of the driveway swerving across the lawn, her hand pressed to the car horn and still shouting, "She helped to murder someone… The police will be coming! Do you hear me… the police will be coming for you!"

  * * *

  WHEN THEY passed Garrett Point at the northwest tip of Ryer Island Mr. Carter said, "I'm gonna radio we're coming."

  As he stretched toward the radio Dane said, "Don't do that."

  Mr. Carter turned around in the helmsman's seat. Dane had slipped the transceiver back into his coat pocket and was stepping into the cabin, his hair and shoulders wet with night mist.

  "It's no big deal," said Mr. Carter. As his hand flattened across the console Dane smashed the back of Mr. Carter's fingers with the butt of his gun.

  Mr. Carter cupped his hand against his chest. "What is going on here?" Nervously he looked to Nathan for an answer but Nathan was staring at the gun in Dane's hand, caught even more off guard than Mr. Carter.

  "Let the boat idle," said Dane.

  "She'll drift," said Mr. Carter.

  "Put it in idle and hold on."

  Carter did as he was told. Dane stepped back. The boat had begun to rock slightly and Dane grabbed the open cabin door-frame for balance. "Ask Mr. Carter if he also uses the name Merton, Merrit Merton?" Nathan's look shifted to Mr. Carter. "Ask him if he knows Damon Romero, the witness at the berm the night your son was killed." The lines down Nathan's face deepened. "Ask him if he and Tommy Fenn didn't fly to Mexico to find us and kill us." Nathan's eyes became like black flues. "Ask him if tonight is what he said it is."

  Nathan did not have to ask, the answer was Mr. Carter's shocked and ashen expression. Nathan rose up, squeezing from the tiny dinette seat. He stood over Mr. Carter, holding onto the back of the helmsman's chair for balance. Mr. Carter recoiled slightly, unsure of what Nathan was going to do.

  "Take off your clothes," said Nathan. "Stand up and take them all off."

  "The boat will drift," said Mr. Carter in a low and frightened voice.

  "Then let it fuckin' drift."

  Mr. Carter stood. While he removed his hat and windbreaker Nathan walked up to Dane. Mr. Carter removed his shoes, one took a sock with it. Nathan had hold of the opposite cabin door-frame to keep his balance. "How did you find out all this?" he asked Dane.

  Both men swayed with the slight pitching of the boat. Each man a mind unto itself, a force unto itself. Nathan screamed, "Fuckin' answer me," and his voice echoed out from the boat and across the damp and sourceless dark.

  Mr. Carter stood with his pants open and half down his hips trembling, watching.

  "I wasn't afraid when you had a gun," said Dane. "So what makes you think I'd be afraid now?"

  Nathan stepped out of the cabin. He looked back at Mr. Carter who was holding his open pants up by the belt. "Get undressed."

  Nathan walked to the stern and sat. The wind swept the current against the topsides. From far, far down the channel came the throated cry of a foghorn. Why have I allowed this to be done to me, thought Nathan. How have I done this?

  Mr. Carter waited now in his underwear and one sock. "The rest," Nathan said.

  Mr. Carter removed the sock. His skin was the color of raw milk and pimpled with cold and then like some ashamed Adam he slid off his shorts. He dropped them on the cabin floor.

  Dane stood silently in the doorway between both men.

  "We come into this world naked," said Nathan. "And we go out—"

  "Please," Mr. Carter begged, "how can I fix this?"

  * * *

  FLESH WAS in her kitchen morosely staring at a health conscious nuked something, a two-day-old half of a tuna sandwich and a glass of chardonnay, otherwise known as the overworked single's excuse for a dinner, when headlights washed over the living room wall.

  On reaching the living room Flesh saw Essie scurry from the porch after having rung the bell. Flesh chased after the Falcon as it backed out of the driveway burning gravel and taking a part of the ill-watered lawn with it.

  As the car back spun into the empty street Essie pointed to the house and yelled, "On your porch," then sped away and
Flesh was left standing at the sidewalk's edge in a sweatshirt and men's pajama bottoms, completely baffled.

  It wasn't until she'd stepped back up on the porch that she noticed a manila envelope sticking out of the mail slot.

  She pushed her meal aside and spilled the envelope's contents out on the kitchen table. There was a note from Essie with a list of names that looked to be written in the clumsy script of someone driving. There was a folded section of discoloring newspaper, and when her long burgundy fingernails peeled apart the aluminum foil, there were the diamonds.

  * * *

  HOW LONG do you think you'd last in that water tonight?"

  Mr. Carter did not need to look far to know. "I wouldn't," he said.

  Nathan scooped up the clothes around that naked man's feet.

  He left the cabin and flung them overboard, then he returned.

  He pushed Mr. Carter down into the helmsman's seat. His flesh folded like putty around the waist. "Keep this boat from drifting. Now, what's to happen out there?"

  "At the houseboat Damon Romero will tie off. You'll go over to talk. I'll stay here. The Fenns are waiting."

  "I'm to be killed on that houseboat."

  "Not there I think."

  "And all this is Charles?"

  "From Charles… There's more." Mr. Carter was shivering miserably, pathetically. He could barely hold the wheel. "That prosecutor, the one with polio. He was taken tonight."

  Nathan's face covered the mouth of his dusky movie theater face. "Why?" he asked.

  Dane thought Mr. Carter must not have heard because he kept watching ahead, working the wheel. Nathan kicked him in the hip. Mr. Carter's whole body locked up under the blow.

  "Why?" Nathan demanded.

  "Charles had set the meeting." Mr. Carter was breathing like a man on the verge of a heart attack. "He waited where there would be witnesses." His dyed moustache puffed on each exhalation mimicking the gills of a fish. "Charles will make a show of how the prosecutor never—"

  Dane watched from the cabin door as Nathan kicked Mr. Carter again. The fat around the man's ribs and stomach shook violently.

  "What was the meeting about?" Dane asked.

  "About him." Mr. Carter's eyes went to Nathan.

  Nathan squeezed back down in the dinette seat.

  "The General must have lied to you," Dane said.

  The moment, if true, was devastating in its completeness. Nathan had served the old man like a son and to think he'd been destroyed like… a son.

  "And Ivy lied to you. She knows this man. I'm sure of it."

  Nathan looked at Mr. Carter. "Do you know her?" he asked.

  Mr. Carter nodded imperceptibly.

  "Does she know of this?"

  Mr. Carter shrugged.

  The depth to which Nathan's choices were being made for him was a mirror of true despair and tragedy. He knew to go back and leave this undone he could well be undone by it. To go on, to see it done, meant more had to be done after that, and more after that, and more again. He saw now with an awful clarity that he was no better than the fool king who had to push the rock up that hill every day only to have it slip back down against his will, leaving him to fail at a futile task over and over and over until the universe itself had become forgotten. He asked Dane, "Why didn't you tell me this before we got on the boat?"

  "Because I wanted you to get on the boat."

  Nathan slammed his fist down on the dinette table.

  "Do you know how to use a gun?"

  "Do you mean will I use a gun?" said Dane.

  Nathan again slammed his fist down on the dinette table thinking himself manhandled and manipulated.

  "Am I safe with you… is what I want to know."

  Dane's look was distant as the stars. "I'm all there is. Don't you understand that yet? I'm all there is."

  Chapter Seventy

  CARUSO WAS CHASING static and it unsettled him. He had the Cessna flying west over Contra Costa till he reached the toll bridge that crossed the straights from Martinez to Benecia. He knew they could not have traveled this far, this fast by boat. If they were still on a boat. So, he began the backtrack.

  He was maxed to any sound coming through the headset. He had been flying at only eighteen hundred feet. The lights along the river, and the buildings and roads that spread into the landscape, were touched with the illusory and to spot a boat, to make it out especially if it were running down the center of the channel, would be negligible, if not impossible. So he dropped down till he was flying dangerously low.

  He saw his face in the dull cockpit glass with its darkened angles of concern. He was only minutes from the mothball fleet and that isolated inlet known as Grizzly Bay but there wasn't even voice gravel he could cling to for hope.

  * * *

  NATHAN SHUT off the cabin light and in the darkness leaned down and told Mr. Carter very quietly to "Radio them."

  Mr. Carter was shivering so badly it was left to Dane to reach for the radio mike and hand it to him.

  Nathan's eyes never left Mr. Carter. "We're here."

  Moments later Damon Romero answered, "I heard the motor. I can't see your cabin lights."

  "They went out," whispered Nathan. "Tell him."

  "They glitched," said Mr. Carter.

  Dane watched through the cabin window with Nathan just behind his shoulder. There were no night sounds but those inboard cats turning their way through water that looked like blue black ice. They watched the gloom as it smoked and seeped its way across the water. Sometimes the wind would open tunnels of darkness and as it did one time Dane saw the boat and pointed. It was there for brief seconds, then gone.

  It was maybe seventy yards away. It sat darkened in that empty bay save for a single square of burning light from a small curtained window in the salon. The houseboat looked to be a ninety-footer with radar arches fore and aft on the upper sundeck, which was partly covered with a canvas roof.

  Dane turned to Nathan. "What are you going to do when you tie off?"

  Nathan asked Mr. Carter, "Do you have any weapons on board?"

  "None." Mr. Carter saw that Nathan didn't believe him. "Look for yourself."

  That short fat body was shaking with cold so bad it could hardly keep at the helm.

  "Cold, isn't it?" said Nathan, as he went and squeezed down into the dinette seat. It would be only minutes now. Nathan stared at the back of his bruised and swollen hands. When he looked up Dane stood across the dinette table watching him. Without a word Dane took his gun, set it on the table then slid it toward Nathan. Nathan's hand clamped down on it.

  "What do you have to protect yourself?"

  "Just a good set of eyes," said Dane.

  The statement went through Nathan like an acid. "Fuck you right to hell," he said.

  * * *

  ESSIE SPED across the tarmac. The planes and hangars were draped in silence. She was driving so fast Sancho Maria saw the Falcon hit the curb outside The Burrow. As Essie was running to the bar, she saw a flashlight beam moving across its darkened interior to meet her.

  At the door, out of breath, frantic, Essie begged of Maria, "Where's Paul?"

  Sancho Maria pointed that flashlight beam to the sky.

  * * *

  AS THEY drew closer the houseboat materialized out of a breached mist. It was a ninety-footer, all white. The canvas sundeck roof and railing covers were deep, deep burgundy. There was a satellite dish on the forward radar arch, plastic chairs and potted plants decorated the double-plated bow deck. There were fore and aft stairwells and the art graphics painted on the hull between them in burgundy and deep blue read: FOREVER BOATS. It was perfectly suited for the awaiting deception.

  Mr. Carter had eased back on the throttle and reversed the propellers. The day cruiser began to slow. Nathan was just outside the cabin door. Dane was inside the cabin squatting almost to one knee so he could watch out the portside windows and beat any possibility at being seen.

  The curtain covering that small squa
re of light on the houseboat pulled aside. A man's silhouette watching shook its hand in the slightest gesture of a wave.

  "Is that Romero?" asked Nathan.

  "Yes," said Mr. Carter.

  Nathan waved back to let Romero know he saw, nodded to let him know he was coming aboard.

  * * *

  FLESH WAS in the bedroom tugging on a boot and talking into her cellular, urgent and rudely fast. "Go fuckin' knock on Roy's door right now. Get dressed." Her cordless phone rang. "He could be getting the best blow job in the world, but he answers when I beep. Now do it!"

  She grabbed at the cordless on the bed stand. Her tone edged back to an urgent politeness. "Hello, Sergeant." She tried to stomp her foot down into that unwilling boot. "Thanks for calling back so fast." She hurried to the kitchen, hobbling with a half-on boot. "You handled the Taylor Greene investigation last summer."

  She grabbed her car keys off the table where her dinner sat uneaten. "Well I've just received some very disturbing information from a trustworthy source about the case. Very disturbing and I believe it demands immediate action. Yes… do you have a fax?"

  She put the car keys in her mouth. Her hand swept across the kitchen counter looking for something to write with and whatever was in its path ended up on the floor. When she was done, when she got that god damn boot on, she ran to the front door cursing, "Fuck you, Roy… I was right."

  * * *

  THE DAYCRUISER and the houseboat were practically parallel. Damon Romero had come out on the bow deck. Nathan had gone forward to throw him a spring line so they could tie off. Few words were spoken. Dane heard Romero say something like "Thank you for coming" and "I know this isn't easy."

  Dane had kept low in the cabin only shifting his position back so he was right behind Mr. Carter. He put his hand on Mr. Carter's spine at the base of his skull. The man's flesh was like ice, but even shivering as it was, the muscles completely jammed when they felt Dane's hand.

  "I have a weapon," Dane whispered.

  "What do I need to do not to be hurt?"

  "Could you make the shore here by swimming?"