Buzz Cut (37 page)

***

The LOLA LIVE jacket fit a little tight. Thorn's shoulders a couple inches wider than Rafael's. Rafael was having a couple of snorts in the Ritz Bar. A creme de menthe frappe no doubt. Thorn heading toward the stage, the leather sap tucked in his waistband. A beautiful Caribbean morning with just a tingle of subtropical autumn in the breeze. The chopper had lifted up and was directly overhead, rising so high it was almost out of hearing.

The video was finished, the monitors all blank. Commercials must've been playing back in the U.S., floor wax, dishwashing powder, whatever the ad men had figured out Lola's viewers were most susceptible to.

They had no idea which way Butler would come. The stage was backed up against the windows of one of the restaurants. The window glass was covered by a light blue curtain. So they were exposed on three sides. He supposed it was possible he could climb up on the roof of the restaurant, get up next to the radio tower, try to jump down onto the stage. A twenty-foot drop, not likely. It was more probable he'd come from the left or right. There were doors on both sides leading to stairways that went down to the Verandah Deck. From those hatches, it was a ten-foot sprint, two, three seconds from the time he appeared till he could leap onto the stage.

After speaking to the show's young engineer, Sugar had taken a position off to the starboard side of the audience, leaning nonchalantly on the rail. McDaniels sat in the front row. A neon pink Hawaiian shirt with hula girls and speedboats, black shorts, black sandals, and yellow socks. The man's legs were so white they looked like they'd sunburn at midnight. Thorn's eyes ticked across McDaniels as he mounted the stage. McDaniels twiddled his drinking straw in reply. Howdy.

When Thorn drew up one of the other director's chairs, sat on the other side of Lola, she looked at him coolly but her eyes were full of grim recognition. The gaze of an embattled queen standing in her dressing room, her maidservants gathered around her to plump her hair one last time while out in the courtyard of the castle the flaming arrows were landing, and just beyond the moat the catapults were loaded with boulders while the hordes gathered for their final assault. Her kingdom about to collapse, but still holding to her last shreds of power. Dignity, dignity.

"Good morning," Thorn said.

Lola acknowledged him with the slightest of nods, then swept her eyes across her ardent audience.

Hurriedly, a red-haired sound man tucked a wire under Thorn's shirt front and clipped the tiny mike to the heavily starched material and stepped off the stage.

The director moved up to the edge of the stage. Pinpoints of sweat covering her forehead. "We're live in thirty seconds. You okay, Lola? Are we going with this?"

Lola Sampson glanced briefly at Monica, then nodded at the director.

"Fine," she said. "I'm fine. Let's do it."

***

Clostridium perfringens, Salmonella, Enterococcus faecalis, Escherichia coli, Campylobacter jejuni, Listeria, Shigella, Yersinia.
The words so beautiful to his ear. Though, of course, English was not his first language, so David Chan didn't know if anyone else would share his view.

He had studied the diseases, the full range of bacterial infections. He remembered their names though it had been ten years since he'd dropped out of the University of Singapore medical program. Since childhood David Chan wanted to be a doctor, but he had become instead a sailor. Working for his uncle's oil company, forced into this job by bad luck and excessive fornication.

He was the father of six girls and two boys. Two girls arriving before he began medical school, two more coming during his brief stay there. He had no choice but to abandon his dream and go to work. So he left medical school and took his uncle's job and now he sailed with the
Juggernaut
for nine months and for the other three he was daddy to his eight children and husband to his unhappy wife.

For some reason David Chan recalled
Clostridium tetani
with particular clarity. Remembering that it could not survive if exposed to oxygen. So the wily bacterium encased itself in cystlike pustules, small capsules of dark energy hidden inside the rotting carcasses of animals, especially swine.

Pork had been served for lunch on Saturday, which could explain the outbreak of bloody diarrhea aboard the
Juggernaut.
But he wasn't sure. So far, David Chan and Luc Don Way were the only crew members unaffected. David had pulled out one of the medical books he still carried along and consulted it, but had not yet arrived at a diagnosis. Pork was a possibility, but he was not certain.

In an emergency, the ship could be safely operated by three men. Two in the engine room, one on the bridge. Most of the operations were automated. But now they were down to only David and Luc Don. Luc was seven decks below monitoring the big turbines, while David stood alone on the bridge, maneuvering the giant ship away from the docks in Freeport and out into the Caribbean.

The
Juggernaut
had been in dry dock in Baltimore for three days, costing his uncle's company several million dollars in lost revenues. Another delay in their schedule could prove disastrous to ChanCo Enterprises and all involved. So David Chan pressed forward, moving out of the harbor, a ship full of crude oil and very sick men.

Sometimes the cures for bacterial infections were simple. Lots of water for the effects of dehydration. Bed rest. Let the immune system do its work. But the crew members were very weak. They could hold nothing down. Their diarrhea was watery and full of dark blood, and David Chan was sure there were also numerous polymorphonuclear neutrophils in the stool as well, though he had none of the laboratory equipment to make such a diagnosis.

Bad pork or poor sanitation in the galley. Or possibly a failure in the water treatment plant. He would have to check that if there was time. Run a test on the water. He had the equipment for that. Later, when they were beyond the shipping lanes, the way was clear, he would switch on the autopilot, go down, draw a sample of water, use the colored paper slips to see if that was the source of the contamination. This would make some logical sense, for unlike the other crew members, David Chan drank only bottled water. In a few moments, when things were less tense, he would radio down to the engine room, speak to Luc Don and see if perhaps he had been using bottled water as well. That might tell them something.

In the meantime, he had to get the tanker out to deeper water. Then while the autopilot took charge, he would check on the men. Usually so hardy, the straits Chinese crew were never sick. Hardly ever missed a day of work. Like David Chan, all of them had large families. They could not afford to neglect their labors for anything but the most serious reasons.

Shigella, Campylobacter, Yersinia.
Such mellifluous words to his ears. But English was not his first language. Maybe the words sounded perfectly normal to an Englishman or American. He wondered.

It was a little after nine in the morning. Today and tomorrow they would sail around the tip of Florida and be in Galveston by late Wednesday. If there was no improvement in the crew by then, he would have to seek medical help. Fax his uncle, describe the dire situation, request permission to use the local hospital emergency room. Red diarrhea should not be taken lightly.

David Chan steered the great ship out of the harbor. He did not want to admit it to himself, but somewhere in a shadowy back corridor of his mind he knew the
Juggernaut
was in serious peril, for he was starting to feel queasy.

From where Thorn sat, it felt like a few thousand cross-haired telescopic sights were trained on him, countless faces in his face, a crowd of strangers pressing close, stealing the air. Never been in front of an audience before. Three, four people maybe, telling a joke in a bar, and even then he usually choked, messed up the timing, couldn't get the punchline right. He was more of a one-liner guy. Stand on the edge of things, insert himself when there was a lull. Nothing like Lola, sitting indifferently with her legs crossed, a thousand people watching her every twitch. Her face flat calm, waiting for the show to begin, so composed it was as if she were severely nearsighted, unable to see beyond the edge of the stage, thought she was sitting there with just these two other people, Thorn and Monica. Not even much aware of them.

It struck Thorn, this must be part of the job description. Stage presence depended on making yourself nearsighted, going into a trance like a boxer, or a high-wire guy. Focused on the two-foot range, keeping it there, not a flick of the eye beyond that or you slip, go down hard. Watching Lola, the way she sucked the focus in, made that little cocoon around herself, it was scary. The rest of the world didn't count, like a kid making the sun disappear, a hand over his eyes. Extinguishing the whole awful world with that little trick.

Thorn wasn't sure which it was. Either the actress part of her spilled over into her personal life and gave her that aloof, impersonal air, or maybe it was the other way, her bland temperament making her the ideal TV star. Either way, Lola was as placid as a wax replica of herself. The buffeting wind from the chopper hadn't even ruffled her hair. Sitting there in front of a thousand people, she didn't seem to give a shit. Not about them, not about anything. Might just as well be zoned out in her living room.

Thorn couldn't manage it. With the all those people staring, he could feel his breath clog his throat, feel the flush rise, a cloud of steam closing in around him. He watched in the monitors as the wide-angle overhead shot from the helicopters slowly zoomed in on them, closer and closer until he could see the freckles on Lola's cleavage. And the director raised her hand high, brought it down, counting for Lola, one, two, three. Go.

Lola Sampson waited for the last of the applause to die and the helicopter to bank away and drag its racket with it. She let a second or two more pass for dramatic effect, then some dormant part of her fired up and she smiled avidly into the cameras, becoming vivacious, almost flirty, bouncing in her chair as she welcomed America along on their seagoing fiesta. They had an absolutely great show planned for today. Bev Mitchell and her gals would be along later to sing a few of their hottest new tunes, Brandy Wong was there to share some clips from her upcoming celebrity interview special on ABC, and later on in this morning's show, she and Morton would narrate video postcards of their first full day at sea.

But before they got to that, Lola wanted to chat with a couple of the intriguing passengers who'd come along for the weeklong fiesta. She swiveled immediately to Thorn, placed a cool hand on his knee, and introduced him as a man who'd always harbored a secret wish to sit in Rafael's chair and today was having his dream fulfilled. Lola focused her unbearable smile on Thorn. One second, two seconds, three, the silence mounting, but Thorn was still trapped in the airless haze of his stage fright.

"Well," Lola said, "I see at the moment our friend is speechless with excitement. So maybe we'll give him a minute or two to catch his breath and get back to him then. How about that?"

Thorn nodded stiffly and a titter ran through the audience.

Lola swung the other way and beamed at Monica, introducing her as another passenger, and asking if she would mind starting things off, describe her impressions so far of the twenty-fifth anniversary cruise. This cruise that was so important to Morton and her, so don't say anything too bad.

"Screw that," Monica said. "I'm not here to promote your business."

As the crowd murmured, Monica scowled across at Thorn, giving a little jerk of the head to prompt him into action. But Thorn was preoccupied with trying to swallow the thick knot of muscle bunched in his throat.

"Come now," Lola said. "Haven't you had any fun at all?"

Monica's mouth was clamped. She stared at Lola for a moment, then swung around to face the camera.

"I'm Monica Sampson," she said. "Morton Sampson's daughter. The girl who disappeared three years ago. Everyone thought I'd been kidnapped, but I wasn't. I ran away. There was a lot of fuss at the time. Maybe you remember."

The crowd took a few seconds to register, then a hoarse babble rose and churned from the front row to the back and to the front again, a rebounding wave of noise. Almost half a minute went by before it was quiet enough on the Sun Deck for Lola to speak again.

"Apparently they do remember," Lola said. Her voice rigid, her vivaciousness evaporating quickly. "So tell us, Monica, where have you been for the last three years? And pray tell, why did you choose today to make your reappearance?"

"I've been hiding," she said. "Hiding out." She glanced sternly at Thorn. "But I'm finished with that. I'm ready, by God, to face him."

"And who would that be, dear?"

"Him. Your husband."

She shot a hand out toward her father who was slouching near the forward life raft station. He drew a hard breath, lifted his head, conjured a sickly smile, and padded toward them, into the view of the cameras, waving gamely at the sprinkling of uncertain applause. The director's arms hung at her sides. She seemed ready to drop her clipboard to the deck.

When Sampson was settled in the chair, the red-haired stagehand rushed forward, clipped a mike to his dark blue shirt, and ducked away. Sampson studied his daughter for a moment, reached out a hand for her, but she shrank back. He closed his eyes.

And Monica started in. It sounded like something she'd rehearsed for years, maybe even written down, crossed out words, chosen better ones, memorizing it, perfecting it. An eloquent speech about her father. The man who'd controlled her, tried to break her spirit just as he'd broken her mother's.

Monica's mother, Irene, had taken to her bedroom when Monica was five or six. Woozy or boozy, Monica wasn't sure. But what she was sure of, it was Morton Sampson who'd driven her to it. Morton Sampson who'd slammed her mother's bedroom door, nailed it shut. Allowed her out only for occasional command performances as hostess for one of his gatherings.