Under Cover of Daylight (7 page)

While he coughed, waving his pistol, she grabbed one of the yellowtail rods, gripped it like a baseball bat, and lunged it at the big one’s face. The tip found his eye. Bent him over. She whipped the rod around and slashed at the little one, the boss, caught him on his upraised forearm, threw the whole thing at him, and scrambled to the cabin. Her .38 was in the first-aid drawer.

She got it open, heard the yelling behind her.

She ducked behind the swivel seat and fired at the door. The goddamn gun bucked so, she wasn’t sure where the shot went, didn’t know how to correct for the next one. She heard the big guy moaning about his eye.

She reached up for the microphone to the shortwave, nothing shielding her from the cockpit door but that swivel bucket seat. There wasn’t much of a chance she’d come out of this. She’d made her peace, all that, years before, when the doctor died. But this wasn’t just dying. This was something else.

She squeezed off another round, this one at his hand waving around the edge of the door. She heard him go, “Whoowee.” A kid taunting. Then ducking his smiley face around the corner of the door, and she jerked another round at that. Again too late.

Kate squeezed to her left, just to change the angle, make it harder on him. Maybe she could stay out here all night, three shots left, a standoff. Hope the echo of her shots had made it ashore.

But he was there again, standing fully exposed in the door. She fired twice, but he’d already jumped aside. Still mocking her, her sluggish reflexes. She had that one shell. But with two of them, she knew it was finished.

He was mumbling now. Something he meant to sound like Japanese. Something to raise her hackles, to haunt her, spook one more shot from her. Out there in the dark, his sidekick whimpered, as he did this phony Oriental gibberish.

Kate duck walked back to the swivel chair. She wanted a straight-on shot this time. Her knees ached, the squeak of her boat soles on that scrubbed deck.

His mirror glasses came around the corner, hovered, staring at her. She aimed carefully this time, cradling the .38 with her left hand, and exploded one of the shiny disks. The guy whooped, dropped the glasses. Another trick.

The click on six. Then the skinny one looked around the edge of the cabin door, smiling at her. In the movies they always threw the gun when it emptied. But they always missed. She did it anyway, aimed it at that smile in the moonlight, slung it like a throwing knife. It clattered across the deck.

The only thing left was the flare gun. She’d chance the fire, chance anything at this point. It was in with all the Coast Guard things and charts, the plastic whistle, a compass that had been the doctor’s as a boy. She scrabbled among the junk, knowing it was taking too long, but not stopping at this point, going on through with it, the action completed, the statement made. It was there at last, the fat cartridge inside it, the gun broken open. She snapped it closed. An old lady, suddenly feeling fifteen, ready for this smiley bastard.

As she turned, he disarmed her. That quick. He smiled at her and pinched her cheek. He went back to the cabin door and pitched the flare gun out over the starboard side. This time she waited for him to return. She held the wheel with one hand, still captain of her vessel.

A breeze stirred through the cabin, ran cool across her damp shirt. She could hear the slap of the tide against the hull, feel the strain of the anchor line. The fishing would have been good. The silt from the grounded freighter seemed to have settled. Repairs well under way, everything settling back into place. The ocean, the reef, the fish, the powdery bottom.

Captain Kate Truman looked into his face. His painful smile.

“Lady, you ready to see this thing I got to show you? I know you’re going to love it. The girls are just crazy about it.”

Irv pressed the barrel of the .44 to her right shoulder joint, jammed it deep into the dry meat there. She didn’t try to squirm away, and she kept her eyes on his, not daring him to shoot, but watching him, almost curious.

Milburn started the engines from the upper deck, and as they got under way, Irv kept her pressed against the control panel with the automatic. He didn’t like those eyes. But he gave her back a look, trying to make it as hard as she was giving him.

When they were up on plane, the wind cooling things off, Milburn skimming them toward where they’d anchored their own boat, Irv fired a round into that shoulder joint. He didn’t want her dead yet. He did it more to close those eyes than anything. He wanted her alive when he screwed her. He might be a little hard on women, but he wasn’t any goddamn necrophiliac.

The gunshot surprised him, how loud it was, and he took some powder burns on his hand that scalded like shit. But her head fell back, and when he drew the barrel back and let her go, she slid down the panel to the floor.

When he’d finished with her, he stood up and cinched his pants. Her eyes were still closed, but he could see her staring wide-awake back of those lids. He let his singed hand dangle down with the .44, aiming it vaguely at her deflated old chest.

Irv was feeling sleepy. All that ocean air, all the excitement. His face was heavy, felt like Robert Mitchum’s must feel, full of bags.

He looked down at Kate. He’d decided not to dump her body after all. Milburn would freak, but Irv’d decided to let her relatives and friends find out just how weak she’d turned out to be. Coming on like some old Conch charter boat captain, but look at her. Barely breathing, the gristle all gone. And leaving her body behind would give the cops one more complication, a little extra twist on the ball.

What were they going to do anyway, match up his dick prints? Run a make on his jism?

Irv had made her a happy lady, driven her a little crazy there at the end. He watched those closed lids, knew her eyes were flicking around behind them. He curled his finger against the trigger and sent her off to the land of dead old ladies.

I
RVING
M
C
M
ANN BUILT HIMSELF
another vodka gimlet, to the brim of the squat glass. He carried it across to the sliding glass doors, sipping it down as he walked. The curtains were open. He gazed out across the third fairway. On the other side of the fairway was a narrow fringe of rough running along the seawall. Beyond that the channel out to the Atlantic. An early-morning squall in the distance out over the water.

Just a big water hazard was all the Atlantic Ocean was to most of the people at Coral Reef Club. Even the ones with yachts, what did they know about the ocean, about navigating? All the rich owners with their Vietnam vet captains, young guys who kept their boats going hot, straight, and normal while they were below wanking off or getting shit-faced. Irving’s old man was one of those, so Irv knew what went on below while the captain stayed up on the tower listening to rock and roll, keeping his superior distance. Irving hated those guys, know-it-alls, with the “yes, sir, no, sir,” military bearing. He hated them, and he hated the old red-faced farts like his old man who’d bought into chicken franchises at forty and now had the money machine pumping in high gear.

He hated them ’cause they were doing nothing with their lives, nothing of any creative purpose, but they gave him all kinds of shit about how he seemed to be fucking off all the time. Especially the goddamn captains, the guys his age. It was nothing specific they said; they wouldn’t come out and insult Irv. They played their same ass-licking game with him they used on his father, always yes, sir, no, sir. But with Irv they had a hint of a smirk. He’d called them on it, caught them doing it to him. Even pointed it out to his old man. But his old man was always so fucking stoned, so grateful to have anybody around who could park his damned yacht without knocking down the dock that he just let it all go. Fucking burned Irving up. One of these days.

Irving gulped the gimlet. It was his third in the last hour. It was what, only nine o’clock? As usual neither of them could sleep after a job. They’d gotten back ashore about twelve last night, just been smoking dope, drinking, watching TV ever since.

It was That’s No Way to Treat a Lady Week on Channel 8, so the two of them sat through
The Boston Strangler
with Tony Curtis and a middle-aged Henry Fonda. Curtis kills all these women, and nobody has a clue about him; but he blows it by doing a robbery. Irving talked the whole way through it, saw it as a lesson to the two of them. Specialization was the only way these days. You get good at something, you stick to it, you learn it inside and out, refine the technique, become the fucking Nobel prizewinner at it. Milburn, moaning about his bloody eye the whole time, missing the point, hardly even bothered to watch it. And there it was, like a message from the gods, right to them.

Irving still smelled the fish stink on him, tasted the fucking minnow chum that she’d thrown at them. Rotting fish at every breath. What a scene. The gimlet hadn’t covered it up. Listerine, Lavoris. He’d splashed Giorgio cologne all over himself, showered again, and more Giorgio. But the smell was still there. Like some kind of voodoo curse. You can kill me, but you’ll smell like this forever.

And with Milburn whining and complaining all night, Irv was growing himself a category five headache.

“Let’s go on down to Largo.”

“The fucking doctor doesn’t open till ten. What do you want, man? Sit out in the parking lot, let everybody have a good look at you with your goddamn bandage?”

Irv tossed back the rest of the gimlet, feeling the acid rise in his stomach as he swallowed. All in all, though, acid stomach and a headache were better than a slug in the chest, which it could’ve been if she’d been any kind of shooter. It sent him back to the wet bar just thinking about it. He’d cut it kind of close, maybe hammed it up a little too much at the end. No reason for it really, just felt like doing a scene.

“Don’t yell at me, man,” Milburn said, trying to muster a threatening tone. “You’re the one should be down on his knees asking forgiveness. I’m going to lose this fucking eye for sure. Half blind, and for what? So you could play some movie scene, man, milk it for some kind of ego thing.”

Irving drew back his gimlet glass for a fastball down the gut, but Milburn flinched and looked so pathetic covering himself up on that checkered couch, there in his pink polo shirt and white pants, so much like a big, ugly girl in his stringy hair and bland white face that Irving didn’t have the heart for it. Though the shit deserved it, if for nothing else, for that whine, whine, whine.

“You know you dig it, Milburn. You do. You’re going in there and going to ask the doctor if you can wear a black eye patch. Tough guy, pirate eye patch. You’re whining, but you love it. It’s the first real thing that’s happened in your measly life since I beat the shit out of you in prep school.”

“Look,” Milburn said. “It was a simple operation. We go out there, splat the old lady, dump the carcass, and get the fuck out of there. We sit down, figure it all out, agree on everything. We practically have it in writing, it’s all so definite. And we get out there and you fucking flip out and start some other goddamn scene. I mean, what’s the point?

“I’m standing there not believing what I’m hearing, thinking maybe you’ve had a nervous breakdown or some shit. I mean, it’s Jack Nicholson out there, flipping out like in that movie, going after his wife and kid in that hotel.”

“The Shining.”

“Yeah, that’s it. It’s like that. I think for a second I should shoot you, kill that fucking devil that’s taken over inside of you. Man, like you were possessed.”

Irving took a hard look at Milburn over that.

“Who are you talking about shooting, you fucking moron?”

“I’m just saying ...” Milburn shifted on the couch. “I wouldn’t do anything like that for real. Hell, no. But it’s like you weren’t normal.”

“You’re goddamn right I’m not normal. If I was normal, I’d blow you away right now for saying what you just said.”

“It’s like you become somebody else. It’s like—I don’t know. It’s scary. You can’t stay with the fucking plan.”

“The fucking plan, the fucking plan.” Irving reached around and drew the curtains shut. Dramatic effect. Scare the big shit. “What it is is a play.” He wasn’t so much angry anymore. Even a little relieved that Milburn had revealed his murder fantasy. Made it easier someday when he had to turn the gun on him, fill a slab with a slob.

“Some play,” Milburn said. “You shoot the fucking audience in the last act. I mean, who you doing this for? ’Cause if it’s for me, this big production, forget it. I’m not applauding. You see me applauding? It doesn’t win any Oscars from me. Do it the fuck like we talked about it. That’s creative enough for me, believe it.”

Talking himself in deeper and deeper. Irving was enjoying this. He liked talking about it. The postmortems. And he liked Milburn talking himself into a deep pit of shit. Make it real easy someday. Very little regret.

“I don’t give a shit about you. I want to make you applaud, I’ll slide a barrel up your butt.”

“Who then? Who’s it for? The hit? You doing it for the hit? She was real impressed, let me tell you. You scored big with that old lady, man. I mean it, she just loved the hell out of that routine.”

“You’re out of control.”

“Listen to Mr. Mental Health.”

“I’m an artist,” said Irving, not giving a rat’s ass anymore if Milburn laughed or not. He was up to here with Milburn anyway. “An artist looks at the script and goes it one better. The idea is to create, for its own sake. You play to the audience and you’re dead. That just shows how stupid you are. An artist, it just rolls up out of him, like that, like you’re just the channel, the conduit for the art. I don’t plan this or that. It’s spontaneous, but it’s disciplined spontaneity. Premeditated spontaneity. Very Zen.”

“Like I said, possessed.”

“That’s the reason you flunked out of college.”

“The fuck it is.” Milburn got off the couch, grimacing at the effort, rubbing at the edge of the bandage on his eye. “I flunked out ’cause of all the dope we were doing. Same as you.”