We Are Pirates: A Novel (29 page)

“My wife has been having problems with her. I thought she’d just stormed off. I was on a plane. It’s stupid now, I know.”

“Oh, Dr. Donner,” Marina said.

“David.”

“David.”

“The Donners live,” Jarris said, “on Octavia Street.”

“Oh my God!” Marina wailed.

Now Phil Needle remembered that
Octavia
was the girl the man had said, on Memorial Day, when Gwen was stealing and Phil Needle had gotten the call. Octavia, she had called herself. He snapped his fingers.

“The drugstore,” he said to his wife.

“What?” Marina said. “What are you talking about, the drugstore?”

“Dr. Donner here doesn’t think your daughter was friends with Amber,” Jarris said, “but we wanted to check with you. Three teens missing.”

“Wait,” Nathan said woozily. Everyone waited while he wiped his forehead with his hand. “Amber Donner? With the hair like, sort of, I don’t know? She goes to Hill Academy? Yeah, they’re friends.”

“You’re sure?”

“Yeah, I see them all the time. Hanging at that bakery, and all the time in my neighborhood for something.”

“My daughter?” Marina said.

“And mine?” asked Donner.

Nathan nodded and grinned as if to agree:
Who would think I’d be useful?
Phil Needle nodded, too, to do something.

“We can move on this,” Snelgrave said. “Come with us, everybody.”

Phil Needle started to walk. His wife was patting Deedee’s face, although he was pretty sure they didn’t know each other. The appearance of the Glassermans, he realized tardily, was something of a triumph: Cody Glasserman
was
involved somehow. Also, this meant Gwen was probably okay. She was somewhere with Cody Glasserman, who looked harmless as hell. She had taken her clothes off—no, they weren’t her clothes—and was in his skimpy arms, rolling around in a dental chair.

The hallway appeared to have changed while they were in the room, or maybe they were going a different way, because it opened up into a wide area with very low ceilings. Phil Needle ducked instinctively. People were talking on telephones, and a television was propped up in a corner with the sound loud but muffled. A reporter was talking into a microphone, and then the picture cut to an old woodcut image of a pirate ship. It was hard not to watch any television that was turned on, as it always was during this era.

“Are they going to talk about Gwen on the news?” Marina asked.

“When it comes on, yes,” Officer Jarris said. “This is just a special bulletin they’re doing about the boat. Everyone’s into the boat.”

“The news will do a report about your children,” Snelgrave said, his nod swiveling to encompass them all. “It’ll be the top story. We finally got them to knock down the boat. It will include their pictures and a number to call. We’ll be charting any sightings on this map.”

“Let’s take a look at the map,” Jarvis said, co-hosting. There was, as promised, a map, the whole of San Francisco plain on paper on the wall. He stepped closer and saw that the city was spotted with tiny holes, as if a hive of bees had long ago stung every block. A lone, long pin, its tip red like a bead of blood, leaned somewhere near the Bay Bridge.

“Every time we get a tip, we put a pin in this map. If you’re really sure those were not Gwen’s clothes, we’ll take that pin out.”

(The clothes found at the Embarcadero belonged to a girl of fifteen, whose parents had a strict dress code. Shivering behind the garbage can with her best friend keeping giggly watch, she had put on a short, sheer dress and some glittering sandals, removing her underwear so it would leave no wake on the dress when the boys looked at it. She ditched her old clothes, and they ran off unsupervised into Saturday night to hit a club called Dark Skyes, and it is like this everywhere in the world. For years she would think, shivery and curious, about who in the world could have stolen her stash, and how much trouble it put her in when the night was over.)

“They’re not her clothes.”

The officer removed the pin. Phil Needle swept the map with his eyes, from his condo down Market Street, sidetracked to the park, out, out, out to the Sunset and his old home. That place had been affordable. He had afforded it. Where could she be, how many places could there be, in this city so expensive, to hide a person? San Francisco had gentrified its empty warehouses and abandoned shacks, all the child-killer haunts with their shadows and meat hooks. There is no escape in San Francisco. Everyone is everywhere. And
Cody Glasserman
, of all people? “What if she’s not on the map?”

“Then we get a bigger map, Mr. Needle. And a bigger one, and a bigger one. There’s always the globe, if it comes to that. She’s still on earth, after all.”

“It’s a global world,” Jarris said thoughtfully.

“And her body?” Phil Needle asked.

“What?”

“If she’s not okay—”

“I’m sure she is. We have reason to think they are together. Everyone’s phones are off, which would indicate cahoots.”

“Cahoots?”

“Runaways are different from abductions, Mr. Needle. They end better.”

“
Usually
,” said Steve Glasserman.

“Usually, yes.”

“But if she’s not,” Phil Needle said, “how do you find her body?”

“Don’t think like that.”

“But how?”

Snelgrave sighed. “Her body would also be on a map.”

“But the map is all?” Phil Needle said. “It’s the whole thing? That’s the scheme? Surely you have special satellites you could use to look?”

The Glassermans looked hopefully at him. They hadn’t thought of satellites.

“I’m not sure I follow, Mr. Needle.”

Phil Needle tried to picture the satellites, although he did not know a thing about them, not really. They brought him phone calls and television and roamed around in circles, out of view even in the night sky. Now Marina touched his shoulder.

“What if you run out of pins?” he said helplessly. “Where is she?”

“Please, Mr. Needle. Can I get you some coffee?”

“
Where is she
?
”

“Mr. Needle, I need you to calm down.”

“There’s only one thing that’ll calm me down.”

“Help yourself.”

“No, it’s not coffee,” Phil Needle said. “It’s my daughter, my daughter on the map.”

“Mr. Needle,” Snelgrave said, very, very sternly. “I believe your daughter is on this map. Your son, too, Mr. Glasserman, and, Dr. Donner, Amber. Mrs. Glasserman. Mrs. Needle. Nathan.” He would not stop saying names.

“Then put a pin in it,” Phil Needle said. Everyone in the room was suddenly taller than he was, although he found the courage to admit that this might be so because he was, now, on his knees.

It was Jarvis who helped him up. “You’ve done all you can here. I’m going to give you my cell number so you can always find me. They’re going to air the report and we’re going to get calls, and the next few hours will bring us better news.”

“The photograph,” Marina remembered.

“We’ll send it to the network.”

“But I left it in the room,” said very sad Phil Needle.

“No, Mr. Needle,” the black man said. “I have it.” He held up the bag and drew out the square frame, and then everyone frowned. It was in a way understandable, although perhaps only if you had visited the condo, as it was the first thing you’d notice, the largest face on top of the piano. It was not a photograph of Phil Needle’s daughter. It was a photograph of Phil Needle. The photograph of Gwen, right next to it at home, had not been grabbed in his haste. His own face stared at him instead, smiling confidently, and behind him, outside the frame, a bunch of Glassermans, their similar features almost like the same face—thick nose, curly hair, tired and cautious eyes—pasted in different poses near the map.
You want it when?
Phil Needle wanted all this not to be happening.

Where else can an innocent voyage lead? To an uncharted isle and back again. Treasure Island wasn’t unknown, but it was often ignored, and late that bad afternoon the pirates, soaked and filthy, were taking turns dozing and spacing out in a grim, flat lot. The storm would soon wreck other people elsewhere, but here the rain was still sheeting straight down, bothering them as if on purpose. They were sheltering in the curve of some muddy greenery, big, flat leaves exhausted from their lives. They weren’t keeping dry, and they were too wet to care.

“Are you awake?” Amber said to Gwen.

“Are
we
?” Gwen said. “My head’s still all buzzy.”

“Like dreaming,” Amber agreed. There was a quick snore from Cody. Gwen had never had a dream like this. She could not say where they were, really. It was a bad place. It turned out Treasure Island was really two lands, one high above them, lush and shaded with secrets, and then this place where they’d landed, which either wasn’t something yet or had stopped being whatever it was some time ago. Here was flat, very flat, with a chain-link fence all bent out of shape about something. There were several signs posted, but their panels were worn away and missing, and in the middle of the place was a flagpole flying nothing, the wind slapping the ropes and pulleys around in skeleton dance steps. Over the rain was the sound of the sea, or more likely cars going by on the bridge, away and above in a wide stripe cutting across the sky. Yes, Gwen thought, it sounded like bad automobiles going slow. Some huge building loomed closed and rummy, with UNITED STATES NAVY faded on a few walls. And yet, just a short hike away, straight up through underbrush and a steep, spiraling road, was the Treasure Island they had dreamed of, a mass of greenery where anything might be happening. This was what Gwen wanted to look at. She could even see a place where they might keep watch, a bump on the hill shaped like something staring at her. It wasn’t a crow’s nest, exactly, although crows might live there. It was a spot where they could see where to go.

Their boat wasn’t going anywhere, though. The
Corsair
was too run aground to go to sea again, just another piece of nothing amidst all the junk on shore. Its front was a smashed, broken nose. The parrot had fled the coop, the broken cage ribs in the water. They had managed to rescue most of the treasure, sheltered under the overturned rescue boat. It would be a while before it would become necessary, as it had in
The Darkest Wind
, to boil their clothing, so that any spilt edibles could be coaxed into a thin broth, but at this point in history, to think they would be cooking steaks seemed a faraway dream. The sea had stolen all it wanted and left behind whatever was shabby and useless, like props from a canceled show.

“We must go on,” Gwen said out loud. “We have to ride it out.”

“Verily?”

“Totally verily.” It was true. This happened in every pirate history—
any old port in a storm, Cap’n
—but Gwen had not thought it would happen so quickly. These were different times. “When the sun goes down, half of us will scout up there and see where we might hole up. This flat part, whatever it is—”

“Not for us.”

“Verily again. But I bet there’s a place up there, the hotel or something. Somewhere dry and away. Safe.”

“You think? We can still do it? Repair the boat?”

“No, I think steal another one.”

“From—?”

“Somebody must come here. We’ll hide out in the trees for a couple days, maybe, and then pounce.”

Amber looked out at the rainy water. “Sick.”

“Yeah.”

“Hammocks, maybe.”

“We could make those,” Gwen said.

“Verily.”

“And training exercises,” Gwen said, “to keep sharp.”

Amber bit her lip. “Gwen, Errol?”

“I know.” Gwen looked over at him. His hat was over his face.

“Is there, was there something he took at the place? Like a medicine? You know, that he’s not taking now?”

Gwen had not thought of this. Surely there was nothing useful at the Jean Bonnet Living Center. Surely this was a better place.

“I’m just asking because—”

“I know, Amber.”

“He’s not doing well.”

Talk of mutiny, this was also inevitable in such a narrative. Omitted in this narration are Errol’s many failings once the
Corsair
was run aground. His walk had become particularly shuffly, and whilst crazy-talking he had dropped two boxes into the water. Gone.

“We’ll see,” Gwen said. “Now he’s sleeping.”

“We hope.”

“Yes.”

“You know I love him too.”

“Yes,” Gwen said again, and wriggled even closer to Amber.

“And you, wench.”

“Me too.”

“I don’t miss my parents
at all.
”

Gwen smiled. “No.”

“Tortuga, though.”

Gwen reached under her shirt and drew out the
Corsair
’s radio. “Maybe we can find him.”