Buzz Cut (29 page)

Blaine Murphy sat down behind the central control panel. Took an expansive breath. "I don't care what Lola says, Butler Jack isn't so smart. Weird, yeah. Fucked up, I'll agree with that. But smart, no, nuh-uh. You heard what he did with the hydraulics, that screw-up at the docks with the
Transcendence.
That's Butler. That's who he is. That was a simple operation. Shut off the water pressure. A monkey on a leash could've done that. But Butler is a screw-up, plain and simple. Now that I'm involved, I promise you, Mr. Sugarman, we'll nail his ass in no time."

Sugarman looked at McDaniels. Behind Murphy's back the old marine made a jackoff motion with his right fist.

"I hope you're right, Murphy. I hope you're right."

***

Thorn ordered the salmon, baked potato, asparagus. Black forest cake for dessert. He talked to the honeymooning couple from Manchester, England, who sat across from him. Thorn wasn't absolutely sure, but he strongly suspected that the young brunette had her hand inside her new husband's fly most of the way through dinner. The way she kept twisting toward him, the guy's eyes going loose several times during the main course.

To Thorn's left was a tall dignified woman in her seventies who kept looking at her wristwatch. She told Thorn she was Garvia Hazelton and she was waiting for the eight o'clock casino opening. Between glimpses at her watch she informed them all that this was her forty-first cruise and at the moment she was six hundred and seventy-seven dollars in the black. Started out fifteen years ago a few months after her husband died. She'd permitted herself to gamble forty dollars in quarters that she'd taken from her husband's nightstand jar. On that cruise, just a few quarters left before her forty ran out, she won an eight-hundred-and-fifty-dollar jackpot. She took that as a sign, a message from her husband. Pulling strings on her behalf from up above. So she put that cash away in an envelope and had been using that seed money for the last fifteen years. Still the same envelope too. For luck. She showed it to Thorn, from a Red Lion Inn in Missoula, Montana. It still looked very fresh.

"He's up there rooting for me," she said. "Don't you think?"

"Absolutely," Thorn said. "No doubt about it."

On his other side was a family of four from Miami. The father was a lawyer. Maybe Thorn had seen his ads on TV. No, he hadn't. Really? How was that possible? He was on five times every day, before the evening news, before
Hard Copy.
He was the guy who sat on the edge of his desk, nice blue blazer with gold buttons. Not one of those others with their rolled-up shirt sleeves and phoney-baloney suspenders. Now did he remember? Thorn told the man he didn't own a TV, that might explain it. The kids leaned forward to take a gander at this guy without a TV. The mother was also a lawyer. She did real estate closings, specialized in condos. She asked Thorn where he lived and he told her and she said Key Largo had several fine condo opportunities. She gave Thorn her card.

Their kids had the worst table manners Thorn had ever seen. Twelve, thirteen years old, a boy and a girl. Both had mops of green hair, shaved bare on the sides. Both kept their faces about two inches from their plates all evening, ate with their hands, breaking off pieces of fish, shoveling them in, using their fingers to scoop up their mashed potatoes, first two fingers like they were taking the boy scout pledge. Sucking the potatoes off, digging up another wad. Their parents frowned, tried to get them to use silverware, but the kids ignored them, giggling, making a show of their little trick. The mother tried to negotiate. If you use your silverware, you can stay in the game room till eleven tonight. But the kids had decided they were going to stay in the game room till eleven anyway, permission or not. The parents shook their heads. They probably had better success with juries.

He found himself wishing Butler Jack would show up with an assault rifle. Thorn could take cover behind the lawyer family, scream insults at the guy.

He was finishing up his black forest cake when someone at the head table switched on the microphone, tapped it a couple of times. Flashbulbs began to pop from all around the dining room. A small group in the back of the room started to chant: Lola, Lola. But it died out quickly. She acknowledged them with a discreet wave. Lola had changed into a cocktail dress that was tight and sparkled so brightly it was as if she'd oiled her flesh and rolled in crushed chandeliers. Her hair was down, brushing her shoulders. She had exchanged her black necklace for a slender string of diamonds. Sugar's mom, twinkling inside a cloud of fairy dust.

Morton Sampson moved behind the glass podium. He'd selected a pale yellow jacket over a pink shirt, white pants. A burgundy ascot at his throat. He had reset his smile for public consumption. It was at full bloom, splitting his cheeks as he began to introduce their illustrious traveling companions. Sampson started with Brandy Wong, the network anchor. Brandy rose and waved. Her black hair was in a pixie cut, and she wore an emerald cocktail dress. After a round of applause and more flashbulbs, Sampson had a short, obviously scripted conversation with her. He asked Brandy if she knew where in the world Dale Jenkins was hiding out. Dale was the anchor with the rival network and he hadn't shown up tonight for the inaugural banquet. Sampson suggested that maybe Brandy had nudged Dale overboard. Which earned him a polite titter.

"Oh, you know Dale," Brandy Wong said, projecting her small voice to fill the banquet hall. "He's probably in his cabin watching the evening news, rooting for his vacation replacement to screw up." It got a laugh and a few dozen flashbulbs.

When Sampson was through with her, he apologized for the afternoon's rough ride.

"I'm afraid the captain on the M.S.
Holiday
wasn't paying sufficient attention to his course heading. Fortunately our own good Captain Gavini reacted in a split second. Because of Gavini's excellent navigational skills, the
Eclipse
got through the mishap with a minimum of difficulty. However, Lola has asked me to make amends for any discomfort caused by this incident by announcing tonight that for the remainder of the cruise all alcoholic beverages will be provided free of charge, courtesy of Fiesta Cruise Lines. Drinks on Lola."

An enthusiastic murmur circled the dining room. A few shrill whistles.

Thorn hung around for the two platinum album lady and her three backups. They were all about fifteen years old, very skinny with metallic red hair, and all four of them seemed bored or seasick. Apparently the lawyer's kids were fans of the group because they started singing one of their songs in croaky, adenoidal voices. Thorn took that as his cue to leave.

Sampson was speaking again, Thorn moving into the hallway when Butler Jack's voice broke in. Thorn halted, circled back into the Starlight Room. For half a minute Sampson tried to talk over Butler Roger Jack. Gripping the edge of the podium, bumbling about, smiling still, struggling to continue his roll call of prestigious guests, but the puny amplifier he was using was no match for the PA system's volume. Finally he gave up and just stood there listening with the rest of them. Somehow he managed to hold on to a ghastly smile, his mouth open, showing lots of teeth, as if he were all set to gnaw on a particularly juicy chicken bone.

As her son spoke, Lola rose from her chair, took hold of Morton by his shoulders, and guided him back to his seat.

Thorn hustled down the ten flights to the control room, while Butler's beguiling voice filled every corner of the ship. Tonight his riff was on the word Roger. Butler Jack's middle name. Continuing, he said, his etymological autobiography.

Roger
was from Old English
hrothgar
or something like that, Thorn huffing too hard to hear clearly. It was composed of elements meaning fame and spear. In other words, an acclaimed warrior. And as every boy knows, the pirate flag with its skull and crossbones was named Jolly Roger. A term rising in part from the mid-seventeenth-century usage of Roger as a coarse expression for penis. And Jolly as a variant of sexual intercourse, "to make jolly with." The pirate's flag named in memory of those ruffians' fondness for rape.

Roger also formed the basis of the word
rogue.
Rogue as in scoundrel or rascal, one who is playfully mischievous. Or a wandering beggar, or vagrant. Like Christ or Buddha or St. Paul, the roving pauper saints. Or rogue as in a solitary animal, especially an elephant that has been driven away from its herd and which in its isolation develops vicious and destructive tendencies.

Thorn stopped for a moment to catch his breath. He'd always had a fondness for words, liked to play with them now and again, an aimless pun. And he felt himself drawn uneasily into Butler's quirky sport, his compulsive whirl of language. Not exactly warming to the guy, but his interest tweaked. He probably needed to race down to the pharmacy, pick up that pair of earplugs.

Butler Jack was going on with it.

Rogue
as in an organism that shows an undesirable variation from the standard. That is, an organism which marched to its own strange drummer. Or rogue wave, that unpredictable marvel caused by volcanic eruptions on the ocean floor. A rogue wave. Rolling along like a fifty-foot wall. Separated from its brother waves. A nameless tidal surge that wanders like a holy beggar, appearing out of nowhere like a pirate ship or a rogue elephant, to dash against unsuspecting travelers.

Thorn had halted on the landing of the Crew Deck. As he was getting back in motion, Butler Jack's voice flickered off the air for a second, two seconds, then resumed midphrase. Thorn drew a quick breath and broke into a sprint down the last stairway.

Overhead Butler Jack bade good night to the passengers and distinguished guests. Now they had a wee bit more information about the man they were dealing with. This rogue, this pirate, this wandering, unstoppable warrior rising up from beneath the sea. He would speak to them again soon. He wouldn't say when, but it would be momentarily. For now, Roger, over and out.

***

"Verandah Deck," Blaine Murphy said. "Sector B."

"Shut the fire doors," Sugarman said.

"Done. He's trapped."

"Where is that? What's there on Verandah, sector B? Passenger cabins?"

"VIP suites," McDaniels said. "The fucking hotshots."

***

Sugarman wasn't about to tell anybody, but his heart was doing something funny. Speeding up, slowing down, a pulse line like the stock market during uncertain times. The beat of a spastic drummer. With his finger against his throat artery, he listened in. Three quick, two slow, five fast, then one and a pause. Fluttery. Feeling the weakness in his legs, no blood down there, no oxygen. Not thinking straight either, having to work to concentrate. Feeling his shirt tight against his chest, running a finger around his collar to loosen it, but finding it was already loose.

Probably wasn't anything medical. Probably came from being in hot pursuit of his own brother. That together with being in such close proximity to his mother. And learning that he'd been hired so he would be meek and mild when he captured her favored son. The woman willing to risk losing one son to save the other.

Sugarman's heart doing a skip and a flutter and three quick beats, a jazzy bongo playing in his chest. A slap-happy metronome making him light-headed. Making him want to sit down, put his giddy head between his giddy knees.

Thorn showed up as they were boarding the elevator. Thorn out of breath. Standing next to him now, giving him a look as they rode upstairs in the elevator. His buddy Thorn, staring, as if he saw in Sugar's face that something was wrong in his heart. Making his diagnosis without benefit of blood pressure cuffs, any of that. Just Thorn looking at him, reading his pulse. That jizz thing again. The jizz of his jazz.

Sugar felt himself sinking way inside his head, getting a little weird. His thoughts turning to mush, to garble. Maybe it was a contact buzz from listening too long to Butler Jack. Butler Roger Jack. The guy's voice echoing in his head. Ricocheting around, shredding his normal thought processes.

Murphy and McDaniels stared at the overhead lighted numbers, the elevator car moving slowly, stopping once or twice to take on passengers but McDaniels waving them off.

All that knowledge Butler Jack had poured into his brain. Fact after fact, shoveling it in because his mother had urged him to. Butler Jack's mother. Sugar's mother. Improve your word power and you'll succeed. Good advice, well meant, sound, even if the kid was using it in a fucked-up way. Advice Sugar wished she'd given him. He hadn't gotten much either way. The spinster sisters who'd raised him were dedicated to clichés. Do unto others. That was about the extent of their moral direction. Sometimes they'd say only that much of it, do unto others, and it sounded like encouragement to bully.

"You okay?" Thorn asked him.

Sugarman nodded. But he could feel the collar on his gray tennis shirt tightening like a noose. He could feel the hot sap rising inside him. One flutter, two flutter. His heart tap-dancing to some jive-ass crazy tune. Black man, white man. One with rhythm, one without. Which was he? Both and neither. One, flutter, two three four flutter. Feeling his knees unlock, legs go limber, feeling the oxygen spew from the balloon. Butler Jack's voice an echo. The distant other half to his own.

But he stayed on his feet, swayed out the door, followed behind Murphy, the pug-nosed little white kid. The kid without rhythm. White boy, black boy. One flutter, two flutter. Which was he?

"You sure, Sugar? You don't look good. You're sweating."

"You're not sweating, Thorn? You're a cucumber, are you?"

Following Murphy till they reached the dark steel door that blocked off the corridor, and Murphy ducked into a nearby fire room, diddled the switch, and the door slid aside.

"We're going in, Murphy. You close it behind us. Stay here till we call out for you to open it again."