Buzz Cut (27 page)

Sugarman shook his head, speechless. The same glaze on his eyes Thorn had seen on the Everglades docks, as if he could not look at this square on, his brother's depravity.

"A grudge," Thorn said. "What kind of grudge?"

"Butler Jack and Dorfman were working together when their ship rammed the
Transcendence
." Murphy bobbed his head at the Captain. "Butler tried to put the blame off on Dorfman. But Dorfman told the truth, that Butler Jack fucked up. I mean, screwed up. Sorry."

Sugarman sighed then closed his eyes and gathered a few breaths. Opened them and gave Sampson a long look.

"Let me get this clear," he said. "You and Lola, the two of you knew all this when you hired me. You damn well knew Butler was pulling these robberies, giving his money to the poor. You knew who I was looking for, but you somehow forgot to tell me?"

Lola looked across at Sugar. Her eyes blank. "We wanted someone who could frighten him a little but somebody we could count on to be gentle. I can see this was a mistake. One more in a long series."

Gavini was gripping the end of the table as if he meant to rip off a hunk of mahogany and march around the table, bash everyone senseless. There was a long moment of strained silence, looks passing around the table. Finally Sugar lay his palms flat on the tabletop.

"All right, here's what we have to do," he said.

"Good, good," Sampson said. "A proposal. Let's hear it."

"Captain Gavini shuts down the engines. Pulls the plug, whatever it takes. Go to batteries. Give Butler absolutely nothing to play with. Then we gather the passengers and crew in one location. I suppose that would have to be in the Starlight Room. Required attendance. Explain to them what's taking place, say anything you like, but give them the general outline of the situation. We're going to need everyone's help to apprehend this guy. And while you're talking to them, Thorn and McDaniels and I will go room to room. The whole ship, however long it takes. We'll root him out, find any accomplices he may have. And we'll hold them in the brig until we get back to Miami."

Sampson gave a hearty laugh.

"Good try," he said. "But I think not."

"I disagree, Morton," Lola said. "It's a good plan."

"My vote as well. A sound strategy." Gavini came to his feet. "Hold the passengers in one place. Search the ship."

"Now, now. Captain, relax. Please, sit." Sampson beamed at the captain until he sat back down.

"All right, I agree, Mr. Sugarman's idea has its virtues. It's simple and straightforward but I'm afraid it simply isn't possible. Don't forget who we have on board. Two top network anchors for starters. Dale Jenkins and Brandy Wong. Both major stars of the American media. We've got Rad Tracy, one of the hottest young actors in Hollywood, his parents and agent, and there's Beverly Mitchell and Her Three Ho's, who I don't need to remind you have two platinum albums. Not to mention Sally Ann Meadows, Billy Dee. The complete cast of
The Happy Bunch.

"All of them on
Lola Live,
starting tomorrow morning. Live broadcasts from the Sun Deck. Everything's set. Satellite time, everything. We've been running national ads for the show for the last two months. There's just no way in hell we can turn the ship around, head back in. It would be an embarrassment of disastrous proportions."

"Two murders isn't an embarrassment?" Thorn said. "Hey, what kind of idiot are you!"

Sampson snapped his eyes Thorn's way, a twisted smile coming and going. "As things stand at the moment, I can speak to our guests, do some damage control, give them an explanation that will soothe things. But if we go public, make a show of it, I guarantee you, Brandy Wong or Dale Jenkins will be on the phone ten seconds later, and there'll be network helicopters hovering over us within an hour. Spotlights, an escort of Coast Guard cutters, the entire world media circus would descend on the
Eclipse
."

"Good. Let's do it." Thorn pushed his chair back.

"No, absolutely not. As satisfying as it sounds to go from cabin to cabin and flush him out, it's simply not possible. We will handle this internally. And we will handle it discreetly. There will be no departure from our scheduled activities."

Murphy raised his hand again.

Sampson leaned forward, his joviality running on fumes.

"Sir, if I may say so, I think that's a terrific plan. I'd only like to add one thing. I can help you capture Butler Jack. He's not nearly as smart as he thinks he is. If he comes on the PA system again, I can track him down. I'll toggle through the circuits, cut them off sector by sector. I could shut his voice off and on real quick, so we can find the exact spot where he's broadcasting from and we can nab him."

Sampson gave the boy a long and careful look.

"You can do that?" Sugarman said.

"Sure I can. I know this ship better than that jerkoff any day of the week." He looked around the table. Even a social dimwit like Murphy could read the strained silence. "Sorry," he said. "But it's true. If Butler makes another peep, I can tell you where he is. A minute, two minutes, that's all I'll need."

"All right, good," Sampson said. "Then it's settled."

He clapped his hands together, gave them a good dry rub. Once again brimming with pigheaded optimism.

Gavini rose.

"Mr. Sampson," he said. "I do not approve of this in any manner whatsoever. This is my ship, my command. My decision is final in all matters. We have had two homicides, sir, we must turn back immediately. There is no compromise on this issue."

"It's your ship, Gavini, but it's my navy. Next month look whose signature is on the bottom of your check."

The captain held Sampson's eyes for a few moments, then muttered something in Italian and looked away. "I cannot agree to this, sir."

"Oh, now, don't be a bad sport, Captain."

Gavini stalked toward the door.

"Wait a minute, Gavini."

The captain stopped and did a neat little about-face.

"What about a compromise?"

"And what would that be?"

"You continue to pilot the ship till we reach Nassau tomorrow. Once we're there, we'll put the passengers ashore and then do as Mr. Sugarman suggests, go room to room."

"We should turn back now," Gavini said.

"A compromise, Captain, that's all I'm asking." Sampson cranked up a collegial smile. One potentate to another.

"All right, then," the captain said. "We will sail to Nassau. But we will not leave port again under my command until this assassin is found."

"Agreed."

The captain gave Sampson and Lola a stiff bow then left.

Lola lifted her chin, aimed it across the table at Sugarman. The two of them locking eyes, communing like long-ago lovers.

Thorn said, "And by the way, what the hell's this vocabulary business about? He trying to be some kind of comedian?"

"My fault again," Lola said, shifting her gaze from her son, looking at Thorn, some of the leftover heat still in her eyes. "When he was young I urged him to look up words he didn't know in the dictionary. I told him it was the path to success, a good vocabulary. So he memorized it. He sat down and memorized the entire dictionary. Took him a year to do it, but he learned everything in
Webster's Third Collegiate.
Every word, every pronunciation, everything."

"Very literal guy."

"Very smart," she said. "IQ close to two hundred."

Murphy made a throat noise and rolled his eyes.

"You should've given him a goddamn Bible," Sugarman said. "Maybe we wouldn't be here today."

"I did," said Lola. "He memorized that too."

"In the beginning was the word," Thorn said, "and the word was Jack."

Lola nodded.

"When he was fifteen," she said, "Butler refused to attend school any longer. He would sit in his room and pore over the dictionary and the Bible. He stopped speaking to me, wouldn't talk to anyone. Totally withdrawn. I became alarmed. Morton was kind enough to recommend a psychiatrist in New York City."

Sampson cleared his throat. "Lola, please. I don't see how this . . ."

She cut him off with the slightest tilt of her head and something she did with her eyes that only Sampson could see. The big man rocked back in his chair with his lips clenched in an excruciating grin. It was clear that the balance of power between these two had a public face and a private one. What Thorn had glimpsed was a half second of the private, and in Lola's nearly invisible gesture there was more clout than in all of Sampson's bullying charm.

Lola shifted in her seat and glanced around at the gathering. A tendril of blond hair had broken loose from her intricate French braid and hung along her neck.

"I took Butler to Manhattan to meet Dr. Weiner," she said. "A dour man in a pinstripe banker's suit. We had a two-hour appointment, but near the end of the session Dr. Weiner came out to the reception area and said he had canceled the rest of his schedule for the day. Devote it to Butler.

"Later, I could hear the two of them laughing. Long hilarious guffaws. I got up, went over to the secretary, and asked her if this was normal. And she told me that wasn't a word they used around there.

"I went for a walk, had lunch, took another walk while the doctor and Butler talked. By six that evening I was wrung out, a nervous wreck. His secretary left. I couldn't hear anything behind the office door anymore, so I knocked. But the doctor called out that they were not finished. So I waited. I sat out there till ten-thirty. Then all at once I began to have an overpowering premonition that something was wrong.

"I got up, went to the doctor's door. Knocked. But there was no answer. I knocked again, then I swung the door open. The room was completely dark. I stepped inside and I heard only the bubbling of Dr. Weiner's aquarium.

"I fumbled around for a light switch but couldn't find it. I called out the doctor's name. By then my eyes were adjusting to the darkness and I could make out something in the corner of the room where the aquarium stood. The shape of a man. He seemed to be moving very strangely, writhing from side to side. Nearly in a panic, I patted the wall for the light switch. And finally I found it.

"I flipped it on and I swung around and there was Dr. Weiner. The dour man in his pinstripe banker's suit had his hands around my son's throat and he was holding Butler's head beneath the surface of his aquarium. Butler's eyes were wide, looking across at me, bubbles from his mouth."

Thorn looked over at Sampson. The man was gazing up at the acoustic tile ceiling. His grin hardened into a death mask.

"I ran over, grabbed something heavy from the doctor's desk, a glass bookend, and I hit him with it. I hit him several times before he finally let Butler go and fell to the floor."

"Should've sued the bastard," Sampson hissed. "Wrung out his last dime."

Lola looked around at them.

"That's it?" Thorn said. "End of the story?"

"Yes," she said. "He was trying to kill my child."

"Do we know why?" said Thorn.

"Is there a good reason for trying to kill a child?"

Thorn shrugged. He could think of a couple.

"No," Lola said quietly, not meeting his eyes. "The doctor refused to discuss it. Butler and I returned to Miami the next morning."

"I'm still missing something," Thorn said. "I mean it's a colorful tale, but what's the point? Butler was assaulted by a shrink, so that's supposed to explain why he's killing people? Some kind of emotional scarring or brain damage or something. This makes it all okay?"

Lola frowned and said, "I'm relaying this to let you know that my son is exceptional. He has something. Charisma, a gift, an intensity. People react to him strongly. He can push people very hard. Over the edge."

"Great," Thorn said. "So we'll carry earplugs. Have our mirrors ready so we don't have to look him in the eye."

Sugarman was on his feet, his breath ragged. When Thorn saw his twisted scowl he realized Sugar had heard a different message in Lola's yarn. A mother willing to claw and scratch, do whatever it took to rescue her son. One of her sons anyway.

"Come on, Thorn, McDaniels." He steered his eyes away from Lola. "You too, Murphy. Let's get busy."

Thorn followed McDaniels out the door. He had to trot to catch up to Sugarman. "That was my first committee meeting."

"What?"

"My first meeting. People around a conference table hashing things out. I'd heard about them, but that was the first one I'd seen."

"Consider yourself lucky."

"I was expecting pie charts, graphs, overhead projectors. I thought at least I'd get assigned to a subcommittee."

Sugar turned into a stairwell, moved limber-legged down the stairs. Murphy and McDaniels falling behind.

"And hey, guess who I saw?"

Sugar gave him a quick look as they rounded another landing. "The girl in the posters," Thorn said. "Monica Sampson. She's on the ship. I saw her this afternoon. She was leaning on the rail."

Sugarman stopped abruptly. Gave Thorn his full concentration. "You're shitting me. Monica?"

"It was her all right. I spoke to her. She even flirted with me. Very nice looking woman."

"Oh, man, oh man. What the hell do we have here?"

Sugarman shook himself and started back down the stairs. They swung around the next landing and Thorn nearly leveled a cabin boy with a stack of sheets. For a guy who'd just had a heart attack, Sugarman was moving.

"That's some brother you have. Two hundred IQ."

"Lucky me, I get the dumb father."

"Do we know who Butler's father is?"

"I know Lola lived with a guy for a while a few years after she split up with the illustrious Mr. Sugarman. Some white guy. Real estate developer or something, that's all I found out. Two years or three they were together, never married. He pulled a fraud scheme, ran off with a pot of money, a lot of debts. Nine months later Lola's got a new baby boy."