Cradle (48 page)

He had purposely waited until all the rest of the actors had left the dressing room.
The package itself was inconspicuous, about the size of a large bar of soap, wrapped
in white paper with a dark red ribbon.
You don’t even know if it’s from her
, Winters thought as he pulled the bow on the ribbon. The commander was full of anticipation.
The show had been even better tonight. And in the bedroom scene he had felt, for just
a second, the touch of Tiffani’s tongue against his lips.
She didn’t have to do that
, Winters told himself, suspending for a moment all vestiges of guilt.

His hands trembled a little as he opened the package. It was a plain white box. Inside
was a silver cigarette lighter, simple but handsome, with the initials VW engraved
on the outside at the bottom. His heart raced.
So she does feel it too
. Commander Winters felt a powerful burst of lust in his groin. Now he was imagining
a scene no more than three or four hours in the future. He was taking Tiffani home
and they were kissing at her front door. ‘Would you like to come in,’ she would say….

‘I feel pretty… oh so pretty… I feel pretty and witty and gay…’ He heard her singing
as she came down the hall. She pushed open the door to his dressing room and twirled
around. Tiffani’s hair was stacked high on her head, showing the lines of her elegant
neck. The gold filigree along the top of the comb that the commander had given her
blended in perfectly with the rich red and brown of her hair. Her dress was white,
low cut, with her shoulders exposed except for tiny straps in the corners.

‘Well?’ she said with a big and eager smile. She turned around again. ‘What do you
think?’

‘You look beautiful, Tiffani,’ he replied. He stared at her with such intensity that
she blushed.

‘Oh, Vernon,’ she sighed, now changing her mood, ‘the combs are wonderful.’ She pulled
a cigarette from his pack on the dresser table and lit it herself with his new lighter.
She took a deep drag, her eyes fixed on his, and put the cigarette down in the ashtray.
‘I don’t know how to thank you,’ she murmured.

She walked over to him and put her hands in his. ‘It’s already been another wonderful
evening.’ She put her left hand behind his head and reached up to kiss him. His heart
was about to explode within his body. She could feel his arousal as her lips nestled
softly against his. She pulled his head down to meet hers and subtly increased the
pressure of her kiss. At length he put his arms around her and pressed her body against
his.

Commander Winters thought he was going to drown in the pleasure of that kiss. Never
had he felt such longing. He was certain he would gladly die in the morning if he
could just continue to kiss her all night first. For a moment, as he let himself experience
fully the rush of joy and love and lust, all his worries and despair were pushed aside.
He wanted to wrap himself around Tiffani, somehow zip her inside his skin, and close
out everything else in the universe.

Melvin and Marc had come to the dressing room to find the commander. They had not
approached with stealth and were not even being especially quiet, but neither Tiffani
nor Commander Winters heard them walk up. The two men could see the pair kissing through
the open dressing room door. They looked at each other and reached out instinctively
to touch hands for an instant. From their own experience they knew about the difficulty
of love affairs outside the accepted norm.

Tiffani and Winters finally broke the kiss and she put her head against his chest.
Her back was to the door. Winters opened his eyes and saw Melvin and Marc standing
there in front of him. He blanched, but the director made a gesture with his hands
that said, ‘It’s all right. It’s your business, not ours.’

Melvin and Marc considerately waited several seconds so that it would look as if they
had not arrived until after the kiss. The commander patted Tiffani on the shoulder
and turned her around in a fatherly manner. ‘Great show, Commander,’ Melvin said as
he walked into the room. ‘And another super performance from you too, young lady.’
He paused. Marc smiled his compliments and Tiffani unconsciously straightened out
her dress. ‘There’s a Lieutenant Todd waiting outside for you, Commander,’ Melvin
added. ‘He says it’s urgent. He asked me to tell you to hurry.’

Winters’s face was creased with wrinkles.
What in the world is he doing here?
he thought.
It’s after ten o’clock on a Saturday night
. ‘Thanks, Melvin,’ he answered. ‘Tell him I’ll be out in a few minutes.’

The director and his friend turned and left the dressing room. Tiffani reached over
for the lit cigarette, whose ash had grown so long it had nearly fallen out of the
ashtray. She inhaled and handed it to Winters. ‘Did they see us kissing?’ she asked
anxiously.

‘No,’ lied Winters. But already he was realizing how untenable his fantasy was.
Precious Tiffani
, he thought.
My teenage lover. We were lucky. But we cannot kid ourselves. We will be seen eventually
. He looked into her eyes and saw the flame of adolescent passion. Again he felt the
surge in his loins. He reached down and pulled her forcefully to him.
And if the wrong person sees us
, he thought as his lips tingled with her kiss,
there is no limit to my risk
.

Winters threw his cigarette down on the ground and stomped it out. He shook his head
in disbelief. ‘You are telling me that you have taken those three into custody? And
you’re holding them at the base?’

Lieutenant Todd was confused. ‘But sir, don’t you understand? We have an entire set
of photographs. In three of them you can clearly see the missile. And there are other
pictures that show the black guy in some kind of underwater structure down there in
the ocean. Just as I had guessed. What more could we possibly need? We also caught
them, redhanded no less, coming back from a dive with fifty pounds of gold bars in
their backpacks.
Fifty
pounds!’

Commander Winters turned around and went back into the theatre. ‘Go back to the base,
Lieutenant,’ he said disgustedly. ‘I’ll be there in five minutes.’

It was apparent that Melvin and Marc were just waiting for Tiffani and the commander
before they locked up the theatre and went to the party. ‘Can you take her over, Melvin?’
he asked. ‘There’s a big mess out at the base tonight and it looks as if I will have
to straighten it out.’ The conversation with Todd had been sobering for Winters on
at least two levels. First, it had reminded him that there was a real world out there,
outside the theatre, a world that would not look kindly on a forty-three-year-old
Navy commander having a sexual relationship with a seventeen-year-old high school
student. Secondly, Todd’s astonishing announcement that he had indeed detained three
civilians, one of whom was a well-known reporter, jolted the commander into realizing
that his preoccupation with Tiffani had affected his work.
I should never have let this thing get so far out of control
, he thought.
From here on out that Lieutenant makes no move that I don’t personally approve
.

‘I’m sorry, Tiffani,’ he said in a fatherly voice. He gave her an ambiguous hug and
a light kiss on the top of her head. ‘I’ll come to the party as soon as I can.’

‘Hurry or you’ll miss the champagne,’ Tiffani said with a smile. Melvin turned off
the lights in the theatre. The four of them walked out of the door.

Winters had parked down the street almost a block away. He waved to Tiffani as she
climbed into Melvin’s car.
I wonder if you will ever know, young lady
, he thought.
Know how close I came tonight to throwing everything away
. In his mind’s eye it was twenty-four years before, on a cold night outside of Philadelphia,
and he had just gone berserk and virtually raped Joanna Carr. Winters started his
Pontiac and eased into the street.
It would be so easy
, he thought.
Just one time to forget the rules and constraints. To dive into the water without
looking first
. He remembered his pact with God after he had spent the night with Joanna.
So
you
kept
your
part of the bargain, I guess. And I became an officer and a gentleman. And a killer
.

He winced. He turned the car past the swank Miyako Gardens and headed for the base.
With great effort he forced himself to stop thinking about Tiffani and Joanna and
sex.
It’s not enough that I have this trial with Tiffani. At the same time I am assigned
a redneck Lieutenant who runs roughshod over civilians in his attempt to prove some
cockamamie…
.

Commander Winters stopped at a signal. Slowly the full impact of what Todd had told
him began to sink in.
Jesus. I may be in trouble too. Unlawful entry. Wrongful detention. They’ll throw
the book at Todd
… He eased his car through the intersection. He mechanically put a cigarette in his
mouth and lit it.
So I should be apologetic. But shit. That Dawson woman is a reporter. Bad bad news
.

He had arrived at the base. He waved to the security guard and drove on to where Todd
had said they were keeping the trio. Winters stopped in front of a plain white building
situated on a small hill about fifteen feet above the street level. A nervous Lieutenant
Roberto Ramirez was waiting at the edge of the road. He was holding two large, thick
envelopes in his hands. Ramirez turned and called something toward the front door.
Todd came out in a moment. He locked the door carefully, came down the steps, and
walked toward the other two officers. Ramirez was already showing the photographs
to Commander Winters when Todd joined them. The three men had a short but animated
discussion.

‘So what happened after you received my message?’ Carol turned to the other two as
soon as Todd disappeared out the door. They had not had many chances to talk in private
since Todd and Ramirez had taken them into custody in the parking lot at the Pelican
Resort.

‘Troy was ready to split,’ Nick laughed. ‘But I thought your warning only referred
to the robot sentry. And since he had been quiet for several minutes, I figured we
were already safe. I was still really pissed off about the second bag of gold bars.
So I hurried back over to the gate.

‘I was concentrating so hard on finding a way to pull the bag through the opening
that I must have been oblivious of everything else. Suddenly I felt Troy jerk me backwards.
Maybe a second later two or three sharks, one definitely a mako, slammed hard into
the gate. I was certain the gate was going to fall into pieces.’

‘Those sharks were really nasty, angel,’ Troy interjected. ‘And stupid too. The big
one must have banged against the gate a dozen times before he gave up.’

‘The buoyancy bag with the gold bars was immediately ripped to shreds by the crazy
sharks. They may even have swallowed most of the bars themselves. It was not fun being
that close to them.’ Nick shuddered. ‘When I close my eyes I can still see that mako’s
teeth three feet away from me. I’ll probably have bad dreams for years.’

‘I pulled Nick toward the ocean. I didn’t want any part of those mean bastards and
I didn’t trust the gate to remain intact in case they launched another attack. We
made it out in record time. Of course, neither of us expected to be greeted by the
US Navy when we returned to the station wagon.’ Troy paused. ‘This Todd character,
what’s his problem anyway? He sure thinks he’s a badass. Is he just pissed because
the professor decked him last night?’

Carol smiled. She reached her left hand over and put it on Nick’s leg just above the
knee. Her hand remained there while she was talking. ‘Todd is one of the naval engineers
trying to find the lost missile. I’m certain that he and his men must have been responsible
for the break-ins at Nick’s apartment and my hotel room. Otherwise they wouldn’t have
detained us.’

‘What grounds do they have for holding us?’ Nick inquired. He dropped his hand down
and wrapped it around Carol’s. ‘It’s not against the law to have gold bars in a backpack.
Don’t we have rights as citizens that prevent this kind of thing?’

‘Probably,’ Carol replied. She squeezed Nick’s hand and then retracted her own. ‘But
as a reporter, I find this part of our adventure extremely interesting. You can tell
that Lieutenant Ramirez is very nervous. He wouldn’t let Todd even ask us any questions
until Commander Winters was contacted. And he has been very concerned about our comfort.’

As if on cue, the front door opened and the three naval officers walked in. Winters
was in the lead with the two lieutenants just behind. Nick and Carol and Troy were
sitting on grey metal auditorium chairs on the left of a partitioned area that served
as a waiting room for the larger offices in the rear of the building. Winters moved
into the area and half leaned against the large grey desk opposite them.

‘I’m Commander Vernon Winters,’ he said, his eyes meeting each of theirs in turn.
‘As Miss Dawson knows, I’m one of the senior officers on the base here. I am currently
in charge of a secret project, code named Broken Arrow.’ He smiled. ‘I’m sure you
are wondering why you have been brought to the base.’

Winters reached out with his left arm and Ramirez handed him the infrared blowups
that showed the missile in the most detail. He waved the photos at the three detainees.
‘One of the goals of project Broken Arrow is to find a Navy missile that has been
lost somewhere in the Gulf of Mexico. Lieutenant Todd here believes, based on these
photographs, that you know where that missile is. That is why he has acted to bring
you here for questioning.’ Winters’s voice rose in pitch and he began to wave his
arms. ‘Now I’m certain I don’t need to remind you that state-of-the-art weapons systems
are what keep our nation free and secure—’

‘Spare us the patriotic lecture and the histrionics, Commander Winters,’ interrupted
Carol. ‘We all know that you are searching for a lost missile and that you think we
may have found it. Sorry. We went out looking for it today but were unable to locate
it again.’ She stood up. ‘Now you listen to me a minute. Your zealous lieutenant there
and his men have broken more laws than I can count. In addition to kidnapping us,
they have looted and vandalized my hotel room and Mr. Williams’s apartment. They have
also stolen some photographs and valuable equipment.’ She fixed Winters with a hard
gaze. ‘You sure as hell better have good reason for dragging us down here or I swear
I’ll see to it that all three of you are court martialled.’