Buzz Cut (31 page)

It was one-thirty in the morning and Thorn was readying an apology for waking her when the phone snapped up on the first ring.

A man's voice saying yeah, okay, talk. A dog barked steadily in the background. Thorn thought for a second he'd gotten the wrong number, but then he recognized Rover. The dog yapping like he'd treed a squirrel. Thorn asked for Rochelle.

"This another old boyfriend?"

"Not exactly."

Rover continued to bark. The same furious yelp over and over. Something new. Thorn gone for only a couple of days and a new Ice Age had started.

"She doesn't want to speak to any more of you assholes. Okay. That's what she's decided."

"Tell her it's Thorn."

The guy took the phone from his ear and snarled out Thorn's name like a dare. Rochelle's voice sounded in the background. The phone fumbled around, fell on the floor, and was picked up. Rover continued to bark.

Thorn settled his head against the pillow, pulled the blackjack out of his waistband, laid it on the mattress beside him.

Rochelle said hello.

"I called to check on you."

"To check on me."

"That's right."

"I'm busy," she said. "Call me some other time."

But she didn't hang up. Thorn listened to her breathe into the receiver. She sounded winded. A crying jag, rough sex. Maybe both. Abruptly Rover stopped barking. Another noise, a yelp, a whimper.

"Are you all right? That guy . . . Everything's okay?"

"Wonderful," she said. Voice husky, frayed. "Absolutely wonderful. I'm back in the saddle again. Don't worry about me. So glad you found a moment free to call."

"Rochelle . . . wait."

The connection clicked off.

Thorn set the phone aside. With his head against the pillow he stared up into the darkness for a few seconds and felt his eyes drifting closed.

"Trouble at home?"

Thorn jerked upright, snapped up the blackjack, and whirled toward the voice.

"Hey, hey! Don't hit me."

The young woman, Monica Sampson, was crouched beside his bed, shielding her head with both arms.

"What the . . ."

"A steward let me in," she said, lowering her arms. "Told him you were my husband, I'd lost my key. They're very trusting around this ship."

She stood up, eased to her left into the slat of light. She held his eye for a moment then raised her hands and began to slowly tug her jersey out of her shorts.

"I snuck in here," she said. "I looked all around, through your drawers, your closet. You travel pretty light."

She moved out to the foot of the bed. Undid the button on her shorts. Pinched the zipper and started to inch it down.

"Was that the little wife?"

"I'm not married," he said. "Not even close."

"Good," she said. "I don't do married men. It's a rule. My only one."

She tugged the shorts down over the swell of her hips. Stepped out of them.

"What were you looking for in my drawers?"

She let the shorts fall and stepped out of them.

"What men always keep in their drawers." She smiled. "A gun."

In one motion she whisked the jersey over her head. No bra. White bikini panties. Amazing shape. Gravity had not yet discovered her.

"Why did you think I'd have a gun?"

She lay down on the bed beside him, took the sap from his hand, gave it a look, a suggestive caress, then laid it between them.

"Because you're with them," she said. "You're part of the ship's security."

Thorn was looking at her face, keeping his eyes there. Tempted, but fighting it. "Why do you think that?"

"This afternoon. You went off with them. Morton and Lola and the security guy. I've been asking around. The black guy, his name is Sugarman, the head security guy."

"Sugarman, yes. He's a friend."

"So you're security too."

"Not exactly."

"But you carry a weapon," she said. She lifted the leather sap and let it flop back on the bed.

"What're you doing here, Monica?"

"I need security," she said. "A lot of it."

"Doesn't everyone."

She cocked an arm, rested her head on her hand, reaching out to him with the other.

"I'd settle for a weapon," she said. She touched his cheek with a finger. It was cool and seemed to be trembling, or maybe that was him. "A gun would be good. Would you do that, let a close friend of yours borrow your gun for a while? Personal protection, just until we get to Nassau."

"There aren't any guns."

She traced the stubbly line of his jaw, came to his chin, drew a tingling line down to his Adam's apple. He reached out, took hold of her arm, and laid it firmly on the bed between them.

"Sure there are. There are always guns."

"Not on this boat. No guns. These are all we have. Meat cleavers, truncheons."

She took her hand away. "You're kidding me. No guns?" Thorn shook his head.

She blew out a breath that she seemed to have been holding for hours. She eased away and lay on her back and one arm snaked up slowly to cover her breasts, as if the drug she'd been on had suddenly worn off and now she was aware of her nakedness.

Saying quietly "Did you tell anybody you saw me? Does my father know?"

"I told Sugarman, but it wasn't a high priority. That's as far as it went."

She stared up into the darkness.

"You thought you had to seduce me to get me to help?"

"You're a man, aren't you?"

She drew a breath, dragged the edge of the bedspread up and drew it over her. He could hear her swallow.

"I know what's going on," she said quietly. Her voice changing, losing the last of its moxie. "I know why he's doing what he's doing. I know what he's planning to do next."

"Who're we talking about?"

"Butler Jack," she said. "The rogue elephant. Who else?"

"How do you know that?"

"It's all written down. I've got the paper."

***

He wasn't crazy. He wasn't a psychopath. Not mad. Not nuts or loony or irrational. None of those things. He was sane. He had a damn good logical reason for doing everything he was doing. He had a plan, he had values and codes and beliefs and doctrines. He believed in God. He believed in Jesus Christ. He believed in driving sober, in the value of team sports. He was a good citizen. He supported the poor and underprivileged. He believed in Gandhi and Mother Teresa. The President of the United States. The Constitution, the Gettysburg Address. We hold these truths to be self-evident, and all that.

There had been blood, yes. There had been murder and violence and the ugliness of death. Yes, it was true. These things were true. But that didn't mean he was insane or psychopathic or had lost touch with the difference between right and wrong, good and evil. He knew exactly what he was doing. You could be bad and not be psychopathic. You could be a villain without being nuts. That was hooey. That was bullshit. Result of too many temporary insanity defenses. These days no one could commit a crime without some lawyer calling them insane.

But Butler Roger Jack was not nuts. Not schizo, not a maniac. He knew what he had to do, and he was doing it. Pure and simple. He'd gladly sit down and take whatever tests anybody wanted to throw at him, the cubes, the multiple choice, say a word, tell them the first thing that comes into his mind, the ink spatter. Yeah, he'd do any of those.

Sure, there'd been extreme moments in the last twenty-four hours, losing Monica, his uranium, the pressure in his brain like a crashing jet, when maybe for a few minutes he'd been off in some La-La place. The synapses shorting. But that was over. And name someone who hadn't been insane like that for a few minutes sometime in their life. Losing their faith, cutting loose from the thing that had guided them all their life. Show him someone who hadn't known that. If that was insane, everyone was insane.

But the killing wasn't insane. It was ugly. It was vile. It was evil bubbling up through the ground like toxic waste. No question. But evil wasn't insane. Evil wasn't nuts or crazy. Evil was necessary. It was what kept good from growing too powerful. Saving the world from turning white and pure and sterile. Evil stirred the pot, kept it percolating. Without it there was no change, no movement, no growth, nothing. Pain, violence, blood, those were the twin sisters of change. Hard change, rapid change. Revolution.

Look at Jesus. There was a time when people had called him evil. Throwing the moneychangers out of the temple, hanging with whores, making the lame walk, preaching revolution. They said he was evil and they hung his hide up to dry. In the world he walked through they were right. He committed violence on their safe and happy arrangements. He brought down empires and shook the foundations of business as usual. They fought him, killed him, fed his followers to the lions. They didn't think of themselves as evil.

Now it was the other way. All new arrangements. A different status quo. One century's evil was another century's good. They called themselves Christians, but look at the world. Look at how people lived. Who got thrown to the lions now? One car at the front of the train with velvet wallpaper, stocked with china plates, silver dinnerware, dishwashers, microwaves, the wine flowing, the steaks, the lobster, while the rest of the world rode in the cattle cars. Straw and dung. Lucy, Ben Aram. Look at them.

Butler Jack wasn't insane. That was what they'd like to believe. Like there was a disease at the root of all he'd accomplished. Like he was just some aberration that could be cured with drugs or extensive counseling. As if to say that all his hard work, his years of focus didn't count.

Standing at the bottom of the stairs, Crew Deck, ten feet from the door to the infirmary where they'd put Murphy and Sugarman. Trying to resurrect them.

He stood there a minute thinking. The hallway was still.

He had killed. He had brought on death. He had raised the stakes, more than just money now. He was risking his own death. Wondering about that. He knew a lot, but he didn't know this. How it felt to die. Probably it wasn't special. Like most things. A big buildup, then nothing. Like dropping a stone down a well. You stand there waiting for the plunk, but nothing happens. No noise, nothing. You wait and wait. But there's no water in the well. Because nothing happens. Everybody saying how extraordinary this was, or that was. But it always turned out the same way. All the great secrets and mysteries, they were never anything special. Not love and probably not death. Nothing special. No plunk.

Butler Jack squared his shoulders, drew a long breath and blew it out. He walked down the hallway. His balls hurt, but his blood was glowing.

When he turned into the infirmary door, the first thing he saw was the meat cleaver.

Sugarman knew his brother was coming to kill him. He saw a little movie of it in his head. With sound and everything. The clatter in the waiting room. The grunt, the moan, McDaniels' heavy body falling to the floor. The squeak of rubber soles headed toward the ward. Sugarman lying there, waiting for his killer to arrive. Seeing him enter the room, come over to the bed, the glitter of his knife. The knife flashing down.

Then the quick little movie would replay. No intermission, no coming attractions, just that loop, over and again. Only problem was, Sugarman wasn't sure if the story was set in the future or the past. Either some telepathic message warning him to get ready, or just a dying brain cell screaming out its final image.

The loop repeated. A man coming into his room, standing over his bed, looking down. The knife rising into the air. Sugarman watching him. Looking up at the man, seeing the shine of a knife blade. His heart hammering, Sugarman unable to move. A blip of Thorn in there. Thorn out of sequence, Sugarman's arm slung over Thorn's shoulder. A battlefield scene, fallen comrade helped from the field. Then back to the footsteps squeaking, rubber soles against the high polish of the infirmary floor.

Butler Jack on his way. And the dream told him what to do. Gave him a chance to rehearse. Roll out of bed, slide underneath the bedsprings. The dream warned him. Which was impossible, of course, because dreams were just your own brain doing its little jig of nonsense, a wacky movie that meant nothing half the time and the rest of the time meant something you'd never figure out.

But this dream felt like it was coming from somewhere else, piped into his head from an outside source. A whisper across the dark universe. Though that too was something Sugarman didn't swallow. Whispers from above. Sugarman's universe was too practical for that. What you saw was what you got. No ghosts, no goblins, no guardian angels. Fun to watch in movies, but not real. Not in Sugarworld.

On the other hand, Sugarman had never had a heart attack before. Never paid a call on heaven like he'd done yesterday, so he didn't know what new gifts he might have acquired, the holy winds of Heaven blowing through his soul. The fact was, the dream told him exactly what to do. Showed him without words. Put it into the easy sign language of a movie dream. Coaching him. Giving him an idea he never would have had on his own. Get under the bed, roll onto his back, reach out, grab Butler Jack's ankles, yank. Lever his shins against the bed frame, send him sprawling. The movie showing him the physics of it. Like the universe had chosen sides, decided for reasons of its own to save his ass. Save his worthless, sorry ass.

The clatter in the waiting room. The grunt, the groan, the clumsy sound of McDaniels' body slumping to the floor. The squealing footsteps headed toward the ward where he lay. A whisper across the dark universe.

***

Butler raised the meat cleaver above his head and chunked it into the corner of the front desk, left it there, stepped over the security guard, and went down the hallway toward the small ward to visit the sick and dying. He had the dagger and he had his zapper. He felt himself straighten as he walked down the short hallway. Feeling confident, secure, carrying his head erect. His balls still ached. They ached every second. They ached in the seconds between the seconds. But Butler Jack was at peace with the pain. He was at peace with his loss of Monica. At peace with his destiny. However bad it might be.