Buzz Cut (45 page)

"But it'll still be on the ship. Where's it going to go?"

Sugarman picked up his beer and bubbled the last of it down. "Hell, I don't know. She drops it overboard. It's got a radio transmitter on it. Some other high-tech James Bond bullshit. Then Butler comes in a boat, plucks it out of the ocean. Something like that."

"But we won't be distracted. We won't fall for it. We'll sit up here on the balcony, she goes for the money, we nab her."

"Yeah," Sugarman said. "We're too smart for her. We'll nail her."

"So what's wrong? What's eating you?"

He cleared his throat, sat up straight, slicked his hands across his close-cropped hair. Then he gave his forehead a couple of thumps with the heel of his hand as if trying to jar the water from his ear. "I don't know. I feel like I'm missing something. Like there's another aspect to this, something obvious, and I'm missing it."

"Shit, I feel like that all the time."

Sugarman sighed. "You would, Thorn. You would."

***

Booby.
From the Spanish
bobo,
for idiot or moron. With some help from the Latin
balbus,
meaning stammering or stuttering. Also one of various sea birds related to the gannet. Booby hatch being the nautical term for a small companion or hatch cover. Something so small a bird could use it. Or booby prize, a reward given to the last-place finisher, something to mock the stupid loser. Or booby trap. A practical joke to catch the unwary. An apparently harmless, innocent device masking something quite dangerous. A trap that only a stupid person would fall for. Only a stuttering, stammering, bird brain of a person. Or boob, as in breast, that soft and succulent glob of fat that made men gurgle and stammer from the time they were babies till adulthood. Women. Booby prize. Pap, sap, booby trap.

Butler Jack sat in the lobby of the Hotel Sofitel on Paradise Island. He'd tucked his blond hair inside a wide-brimmed Panama. He had on narrow wraparounds, so dark he could barely see in the poor lighting of the lobby. He had changed into a pair of faded blue jeans and a black tennis shirt. About as nondescript as he could make himself.

He was off in a back corner of the lobby. The fronds of parlor palm shading him. Across the coffee table from him sat two Germans wearing
Eclipse
T-shirts. Man and woman in their fifties. They were badly sunburned and for the last half hour they'd been ordering rounds of drinks, charging it to their hotel room. They were smoking heavily and speaking German and seemed to be oblivious to him. Fine. That was fine, everything was fine. He was ashore. And he hadn't even had to make the evacuation call himself. Gavini had beat him to it. Fine. Good. It didn't matter who sent them scurrying, just so they did.

He was here now, nursing a Perrier, watching the passengers from the
Eclipse
trickling down from their rooms. Checked in, showered, maybe had a quick room service meal, now some of them were headed out to walk around the gardens, drink at the outdoor bar, watch the turtle races, join the limbo contest, exercise their luck in the casino. Fine. That was okay. Let them wander.

Butler closed his hand, looked down at his zapper. One of his replacement units. Holding his fingers out, he stared at the steel prongs inside the rubber tips. He could feel the tingle of power asleep in the batteries at his belt. A single touch. Four hundred thousand volts. A single devastating touch.

He was sitting on the leather couch with his sparkling water, feeling his balls throb and his nose too. Nose swollen, eyes growing dark circles. But even that was fine. Even that was no longer a problem. Everything was still on schedule, moving down the list. A little creative twist thrown in. His new number eleven. Sacrifice her. Yes, that was fine. Creative twists were fine. You couldn't expect to follow your schedule in lockstep. You had to remain flexible, be ready to adapt. And Butler had. Yes, indeed he had adapted. He was flexible. He should probably go out now, try the limbo contest. Flexible Butler, double-jointed Butler.

That's where he was now. Limbo. An intermediate state. The place where innocent souls waited their turn. From the Latin
lim-bits,
which was an ornamental border or fringe. That's where Butler was, on the fringe of the lobby, on the fringe of humankind, just on the border of heaven. That's where he was. Flexible Butler, in limboville.

Waiting for her to come down. Waiting for Monica to join her shipmates, wander the grounds, work off her nervous energy. Sitting in the lobby of the Hotel Sofitel. Thinking about booby traps, thinking about limbo, about number eleven. Sacrificing her. This woman who had betrayed him.

He would wait a little longer. He had time before his other appointments. It was nine o'clock. He had till ten-thirty to get out to the airport, then things would begin happening fast. Until then he would sit on the couch and feel his heart pound in his testicles, watch the Germans drink and smoke, watch them in their short pants and their heavy sandals with their bulging bellies. He would watch them until he could stand it no longer, then he would go up to room 416. Her room. Monica's. And be done with her. Sacrifice. A holy killing. An offering. As all of them had been.
Sacrificium.
A propitiation of sin. Cleansing her of David Cruz, returning her to innocence.

The Germans were staring at him oddly. Butler didn't know why but a lot of people did that. Always had. He looked back at them, but that didn't stop them. They just kept staring like he'd said out loud all the things racing through his brain.

He craned his head forward, gave them an even uglier look, but they kept staring. So he held his fingers up, V for victory. Something those bucketheads ought to understand. And he let the voltage crackle.

***

Was Monica running away again? She wasn't sure. Was she going to be a poster girl one more time? Definitely not that. This time she was damn certain Morton Sampson wouldn't have any posters printed. Wouldn't be offering any reward.

She showered again. She put on one of the new outfits she'd bought Saturday night. She didn't even remember picking it out. A red lightweight ravon crepe with button front and fitted bodice, thin shoulder straps. White stars printed in the red. Something bright, noticeable. A dress that could be spotted a few hundred yards away. In case Thorn was around, in case he'd come ashore in the last wave. In case he was looking for her.

She'd called down to the desk three times now, asked if a Mr. Thorn had registered yet. By the final time the operator recognized her voice, told her sadly, in an island patois, no, he was not yet arriving. I ring you the moment when he appears.

But the phone sat dead.

Like Monica. Only thing moving in the room was the floor. The rock of the ship buried in her muscles, her inner ear gyroscopes had been knocked cockeyed. She was getting seasick from being ashore. Sitting on the edge of the bed in front of the mirror watching herself sway, glancing over at the dead phone. She was feeling queasy.

Studying herself in the mirror to see if she could spot any changes. The assault she'd delivered to her father still echoed in her ears. The great disgorging of all that hurt. But now all she felt was vacant and ashamed. Frightened as well. Afraid that now she had nothing left inside her. A complete blank.

Perhaps Thorn was right. She'd made a religion of her discontent. She'd worshiped at the daily altar of her hate, made her tormenting memories into a mantra. She'd addicted herself to vexation and now there was not going to be an easy cure. A habit she had practiced and refined for twenty years was not going to be purged by a single morning's gushing. Even if it was in front of twenty million people.

Monica got up, made herself a vodka and tonic from the minibar. She went out on the balcony and drank the vodka solemnly and looked out at the blaze of red, green, and blue festival lights that were strung through the palms below. A group of people were cheering by the enormous swimming pool. There was reggae coming from a thatched bar down by the beach.

She should have left Thorn a note.

She should have said something cheerful and flirtatious. He was someone she could imagine spending another hour or two with. Hadn't even been tempted to spring the trapdoor beneath his feet. But she hadn't left him a note because when she left the ship she hadn't known if she was running away again or not. She still didn't. Maybe she never would. Maybe the difference between running away and staying put wasn't as great as it had always seemed. You could be running away even when you were staying in one place. Or you could keep running and running and never get a single step away from what you were fleeing. She would have to play with that, consider it. Talk to Irma Slater about it.

The vodka was giving the palm trees a hazy shimmer. It was making her thoughts fly too quickly to be trapped in words. She should go downstairs, join the party. Give herself to the celebration. After all, she was wearing a red dress. She could easily be mistaken for a woman looking for fun. The way she felt right now, she might just turn into whoever she was mistaken for.

She took the elevator to the lobby, headed out a side door toward the grounds, the reggae, the festival lights. The vodka on an empty stomach was putting a fine mist on things, the sidewalk shifting slightly beneath her, sea legs becoming land legs. She recognized some of the other passengers at a long picnic table drinking frothy pink concoctions. She nodded their way and a couple of them smiled back at her. She saw something in their eyes. A little click of recognition and then saw their gazes shift in unison to something a few yards behind her.

Monica Sampson hesitated briefly, didn't turn. She considered running, screaming, but her lungs wouldn't fill. Her legs were woozy beneath her. She increased her pace, a whir of impressions, the manicured gardens, the festival lights, the reggae, the laughter, some whoops of gaiety down on the beach. Not looking back, not having to because now she'd heard it, that unearthly noise she'd come to recognize, the sputter of current arcing like a terrible blue wire between his fingers.

Murphy had been finding notes. All of them on index cards, printed in ink. He was wedged into a cubbyhole above the massage rooms, shining his flashlight on the white rectangle, his third note.

"Beware of booby traps."

The first one had said, "Congratulations. You're headed the right way." The second one was taped to a bundle of wires ten feet downship of the bridge. "You sure you want to do this?"

Murphy was sweating hard. Working the flashlight in one hand, squirming into places that weren't meant to be squirmed into. Very hot, pissed off. Having second thoughts about being a hero, pleasing his dad, all that. Chewing on the possibility that maybe it wasn't worth it. All this just to get him to lower the newspaper, say how proud he was. What difference did it really make if the old man said anything or not? He was one cold bastard anyway. He'd just go back to being the way he was. Nothing would change, not really. Nothing ever did.

Murphy considered starting over at the rudder room, work from stern to bow instead of vice versa. Or maybe begin somewhere around midship, flip a coin, choose one direction or the other. Thinking Butler's notes might be reverse psychology, or reverse reverse psychology. No way to know. Anyway he couldn't start over. He'd begun at the bow and by God he'd just keep working his way back to the stern. That's who he was. Systematic or, like his father said, a grind. Once he started something, he always finished. He was dogged. Yeah, one of those pitbull brains, doesn't know how to back up, start over from a different angle. Yeah, he knew it was his weakness. But hell, it was his strength too.

He was crawling along a fairly open section next to the air-conditioning duct above the spa. A place he hadn't known existed before. Thinking maybe he'd come back here later when the ship was full of passengers again. From up there he could spy on the naked ladies. Make himself a peephole, watch the locker room, see into the massage cubicles. Spend his free time voyeuring. Or maybe just set up a videocam. But no, no. Blaine wasn't going to risk his career with Fiesta for a few naked bodies. No, he could keep getting by with
Playboy.

With his hands running along the rudder line, eyes focused a foot or so ahead the whole time, Blaine kept moving. Somewhere there was a circuit board, an autopilot unit spliced into that line. There had to be. It was steering the ship to some location Butler had programmed into it. It was just sitting there, the brains of the ship, taking control.

For most of Murphy's teenage years
Kon Tiki
had been his favorite book. Until he was eighteen and stumbled on Clancy, he'd been fascinated with the Polynesians, how they navigated their pontoons and big canoes across thousands of miles of unexplored ocean, absolutely certain there was land out there. Little dots of earth, atolls, coral islands. Because a thousand miles away a Polynesian could read the wave shapes, the anatomy of the water. Ripples, flutters, rollers, swells, eddies. They could tell which waves had sliced across a strip of land two weeks ago, the messages still printed in the structure of the water. Like weathermen read the anatomy of clouds. Tatters in the water, rips, small seams, like arrows pointing toward the distant safety of land.

Not like today. Everything numbered now. You hold up your portable GPS and see where you are, punch in your destination and an LED pointer steers you there, giving you corrections every step of the way. Each inch of earth had its own number. Every tiny quadrant of the globe was mapped and entered into the program, beamed down from satellites. No one needed to read waves anymore. Which was fine by Murphy. He'd graduated to the gadgets of Clancy. Became a techno-nerd like everybody else in this business. Blaine left the Polynesians behind in his boyhood. Another of those skills that was no longer necessary. You could buy a device, see your location on a screen. Simple, anyone could do it. You didn't need ancestors to pass on centuries of knowledge. You didn't need fathers teaching their sons about waves.