Off the Chart (28 page)

“Hey, wiseass. Got a light?”

Thorn looked down at the smallish man at the foot of the stairs. He was scratching the wheel of his lighter in small, ineffectual increments.

“Don't do it,” Thorn said.

“Yeah, and why not?”

Thorn made a half-turn so he was facing the man full on. Inching forward, curling his toes against the edge of the stairs, preparing to attempt his own swan dive.

“Told you I'd see you again, and sure as shit, here we are.”

Marty Messina limped into view behind the little man. A glint in his hand, the flash of chrome. Aiming the pistol up at Thorn. Vic groaned from a few yards away.

“Don't light him up,” Marty said. “Vic wants him along for the ride.”

“What the fuck for?” The short man, Marshall Marshall, scratched his flint again, but no spark showed.

“Vic's sister,” Marty said. “To get the code out of her.”

“What? We get to torture him?” Marshall grinned.

“He's mine,” Vic said, rising from the ground. “Don't touch him.”

“Come on, Thorn,” Marty said. “Time's a-wasting. We got to move.”

“What code?” Marshall looked back at Marty, scratching his lighter idly, and this time the flame sputtered and caught and the heavy fumes ignited in a blue-white
whoosh
, the air turning to a superheated solid that battered Thorn in the chest and pitched him up and over the rail. He backstroked through the blazing wind, tried to right himself but failed, and smacked on his rump a yard from Vic, then slumped back into the grass.

His hair was singed, head fogged, and eyes nearly sightless from the blast of light. A numb heat flowed up his spine. Flat on his back, he groaned and pried his head a few inches off the ground, and as
his hazy vision cleared he watched the green-and-orange flames crawl along the stairway and snap at the walls and then there was a secondary flash and rupture of fire along the pilings that supported the house.

All around him the air was sucked from the night. A howling vacuum that shot sparks into the sky, twisting upward on the powerful drafts, a stream of embers lifting off like spirits returning to the heavens, ten thousand specks of wood flickering and dancing, serving their last purpose on earth before they winked out against the stars.

“This is it,” Sugarman said. “Green-and-rufous kingfisher.”

Lawton bent to look at the shiny color plate, the little green kingfisher perched there amid rows of candy-bright exotics, the motmots and half-dozen different woodpeckers, toucans.

Sugarman squinted at the small print on the adjacent page.

“This is the bird she saw. I'm sure of it. ‘Dark metallic green. Rufous underparts.'”

“I knew a Rufus once,” Lawton said. “Rufus Slotsky. But I never saw his underparts.”

Sugarman looked up at the old man and felt a smile rise to his lips.

Alex was still out on the front porch, pacing back and forth in front of the screen door, the cell phone at her ear, using her free hand to swat at the moths and gnats swarming around her head. Earlier, when she began making her calls, Sugarman hadn't been able to hear her, but as the evening wore on she'd started talking louder, more emphatically, annoyance creeping in, flashes of anger. Same thing over and over, talking to someone she knew at Miami PD or Metro, get
ting the number for someone higher up, a referral to Washington, local FBI, then speaking to people she didn't know. Waking them from sleep, apologizing, saying it was an emergency. Over and over explaining the situation, a nine-year-old girl kidnapped off her soon-to-be-stepfather's yacht, five people murdered, yeah, yeah, that one, the one off the Florida Keys, big boat, the psychic guy. Yeah, yeah, but the point is, now the girl has contacted her father via satellite phone, and she's being held hostage in the jungle somewhere in Central America, trying to keep it simple and clean, four sentences, five. They needed a trace; how hard was that? Then listening to the response, sometimes two or three clipped questions from Alex, the pleading tone coming into her voice, or more exasperation, then hanging up and calling the next one. Everybody passing her on to somebody else. This was out of their area of specialty. Was a known terrorist holding the girl? Well, it required a subpoena, get in line, put your name on the list. Three hours of that, approaching four.

A while ago Sugar had gone out to the porch when she was between calls and told her she could stop. It was obvious no one was going to help, but Alex shook her head.

“So much for my clout,” she said. “How about the
Herald
? One of those pit bulls looking to make a name. That'd light a fire under my so-called friends in law enforcement.”

“Circus time,” Sugar said, shaking his head. “TV trucks would be camped on the front yard by morning. It'd all blow up. Vic would find out about it, know Janey's talking to me, and he'd pull the plug. Or worse.”

She looked out at the empty street, the quiet working-class neighborhood. Plumber, fishing guide, grocery store manager, druggist.

“That bird thing doesn't seem to be working, Sugar.”

“Oh, yeah, I think it is. I'm getting it narrowed down. We're almost there.”

“Almost? Looks to me like you're down to Honduras, Nicaragua, and Costa Rica, three fairly large countries last time I checked.”

“Closer than that.”

“Even if you had her exact location, then what? Charter a private jet, fly down there, guns blazing?”

Sugarman hadn't considered the “Then what?”

“Maybe I will,” he said.

Alexandra frowned at her phone.

“I'm going back to the phones,” she said, and she was still at it. Not once mentioning Thorn.

Green-and-rufous kingfishers preferred forest swamps, less often small forest streams, keeping to deep shade, which made them difficult to see. They plunged from low twigs or vines for small fishes, aquatic insects. Solitary or in pairs. A song of
week…
or
wick wick wick wick
with high, thin notes. But the part that mattered, the part that had his heart thumping hard, was its range: southeast Nicaragua to western Ecuador. A large area, but if he'd figured the longitude correctly, the only portion of that area that overlapped with eighty-four degrees west was a small section of the southern coast of Nicaragua and maybe a tiny slice of northern Costa Rica.

Not a dot yet, but a tiny crumb of that former pie.

It was nearly one o'clock and Lawton was prowling Sugarman's guest bedroom, snooping in drawers and under the bed. Some of his old homicide detective brain cells sputtering to life. Out on the highway a string of sirens raced past, sounded like a multiple-car pileup or a serious fire. Down the hallway and through the screen door, he could see Alexandra with her phone in her hand. She'd closed it up and was just standing there, the moths dancing over her head like some outlandish halo.

Sugarman was staring at the computer screen. It was still dark, but he thought he'd heard something. He used the touch pad to raise the volume bar to the very top.

“Janey?”

“Shhhh,” she said. “Shhhh.”

“What's wrong?”

Alexandra came into the room and stood behind Sugarman.

“There're people.”

“People?”

“Shhhh. Turn your lights off, you're glowing. They'll see.”

Sugarman motioned to Alexandra and she flicked off the overhead lights.

“Who is it, honey? Who's there?”

“Men,” she whispered. “Some women, too. Some of them naked.”

“What?”

“Naked?” Lawton said. “That any way to act around a child?”

Alexandra put her arm around Lawton's shoulder and held a finger to her lips.

“They're drunk and they're shooting guns.”

“Guns?”

Sugar leaned close to the screen to try to pick up her outline. But saw nothing except the black sizzle of electrons.

“Machine guns,” Janey said. “Listen.”

He could barely make it out. A string of pops answered by several short bursts.

“What's happening, Janey?”

“They're not shooting at each other. They're aiming at the sky. They're having a party, a big party, I think.” Her voice dropped to a near whisper again. “Three men came to my cabin and looked inside, but I was hiding down in the corner on the floor and they didn't see me. They tried to pull the boards off the window, but they got tired and left. They've started a big fire out by the lagoon.”

Sugarman heard more machine-gun fire in the background. And voices, screams, cheers, or cries of pleasure, it was hard to tell.

“The naked woman,” Janey said. “They're in a circle around her.”

“Oh, God,” Sugar said quietly.

“I saw the sign, Daddy.”

“The sign?”

“Out front, the sign.”

“You did?”

“Yeah, I was looking with my binoculars at two men fighting and one of them fell against it and knocked the sign crooked. So I can see it now.”

“What's it say, Janey? What's on the sign?”

“Shhhh. They're coming. Shhhh.”

Then the dark computer screen grew darker and the machine-gun fire abruptly ceased.

The gashes in his belly were aching again. Sitting in the tight airplane seat, Thorn felt the warm trickle of blood running beneath his belt. Reopened from the five or six body blows Vic had administered while Marty held Thorn from behind.

And the wallop Thorn had taken on his rump was starting to spread fiery tendrils around his tailbone, coiling upward like a vine strangling a sapling. His neck was stiff and his hands were swollen and the heavy vibration and grim roar of the airplane were drumming deep inside his joints. Plucked strings throbbed up the backs of his legs. Whatever limberness he'd felt earlier in the day was gone. His sack of skin had been emptied and refilled with dried-out cartilage and brittle tendons and bits of broken glass.

After rendezvousing with his seaplane out beyond Shell Key, Vic and Marty and Marshall Marshall dragged Thorn and Anne Bonny out of the boat and strapped them into a couple of rear seats. Vic cranked up the engines and took off toward the west, then when they were airborne, he swung the bulky floatplane back toward Key Largo
and took a heading south of Thorn's property, coming in just above the treetops.

As they passed overhead, Vic tipped the wing so they could view the flames consuming Thorn's house. He had been dead wrong about the fire-resistant nature of that wood. The blaze was vigorous as hell and looked to be spreading into the tangle of vines and trees on the south edge of the property.

A pump truck had arrived and several pickups from the volunteer force; men were scrambling about, but the only rush of water Thorn saw was aimed at the surrounding foliage. They were containing it. The house was a lost cause.

Once before his house had been destroyed by explosives, and another time the floor had been riddled by bullets fired by a cowardly killer who tried to murder Thorn without actually confronting him. Now his home was gone again.

All it contained of value was a few trinkets that had survived the previous destruction. Photographs of his adoptive parents, a handful of mementos, and the possessions he'd accumulated since. Only a few of those he truly valued. Mostly the tools of his trade, the custom vice grip, the fine, precise scissors, a couple of first-class fly rods, and an assortment of fur and feathers that seemed to have some supernatural power to lure fish.

Aside from some odds and ends he kept aboard the Chris-Craft, most of what he owned had been inside those four walls, but as the plane banked away into the dark heavens, his immediate sensation was a sense of release. No longer burdened by belongings. Truly now there was nothing he couldn't do. He was free to drift up the highway, leave Key Largo for good. A rucksack, a good pair of shoes. Start over somewhere else, build each night's nest in a tree, then move the next morning. A hobo, a drifter, an aimless vagabond. See the places he'd only heard about. Settle in a city, make peace with concrete, accustom himself to horns and late-night sirens and exhaust fumes instead of air. Maybe Vic Joy had done him an inadvertent favor, freeing him from that belief he'd been clinging to, that somehow he belonged to this island, belonged anywhere. Lately as it had become nearly unbearable for Thorn to watch the slow unraveling of the fabric of the Keys, the crystal waters filling with sludge, sea bottom
and reefs bleached to a sterile white, more and more it seemed time to go. Past time.

Maybe climb aboard the
Heart Pounder,
his old cabin cruiser, fill it with gas, and motor as far as the tank allowed, find a job, work for the next tankful. Small increments up the coast or across the Gulf Stream to the islands or over to Mexico. An expatriate with no identifying numbers, no destination, wandering from port to port. Why not? What did he have to keep him? Alexandra gone, the loyalty and frankness that bound them shattered by his childish deceit, his willingness to play Jimmy Lee Webster's fool.

Even Thorn's oldest friendship seemed to be finished. Sugarman was rightfully enraged that in some fashion Thorn had been the cause of Janey's abduction. There was no one left. No friends, no lovers, no reason to remain.

The swell of grief rose in his throat like a gluey bubble. The bitter tang of self-pity. Sugarman had been right. Everything Thorn loved eventually got torched. He had nothing, and nothing was all he deserved; hell, nothing was more than he could manage. The life of a vagabond might even be too great a challenge. For if he succeeded in leaving the island, surely wherever he went, he'd be towing along that same black thundercloud, daggers of lightning regularly striking down anyone in his proximity and destroying everything he cared for. “Beware, all ye who encounter Thorn. For grave consequences shall follow this sinner to every corner of the earth, and surely if you so much as touch this man, you shall perish and all that you once loved will turn to ash.”

“Don't you just love a good fire?” Marty grinned at him from across the narrow aisle. “Hell of a lot cheaper than a bulldozer. All finished in one night, right down to the dirt.”

“You're a riot, Marty.”

Marty rubbed at the lump Thorn had delivered to his temple.

“Vic's pissed, man. He's going to slice your balls off. And I'm going to be there, front row.”

Vic was at the controls and Marshall sat in the copilot seat. Charlie, the other biker from Vic's front gate, was tucked in the seat just behind Thorn, and Anne Bonny was wedged in beside him. All the men wore the same uniform: green camouflage fatigues and black T-shirts,
heavy black boots. A pirate special forces team. With their pistols in black webbed holsters on their hips.

Anne had been silent since they had abandoned the
Black Swan
and climbed aboard the floatplane. Stunned, lost, broken. The resurrection of her lover had been a cruel hoax, the pennant on Thorn's flagpole probably nothing more than Vic's ploy to keep Anne in one place waiting hopefully while he made his final preparations.

Thorn turned in his seat and peered back at her, and the collapse he saw in her eyes, the doomed acceptance of her fate, gave Thorn a harsh slap. She was even more forlorn than he. And seeing her hopeless eyes, recognizing the sagging surrender in her face, sent the blood flooding back into his veins.

Maybe he had no future, maybe he had lost everyone and everything he cherished. But he still had the one thing that had carried him through every struggle since his childhood. Thorn's personal curse. A blind pigheaded urge to push on, one step after another, and in this case, to do whatever he could to wreck the plans of these sadistic assholes. And if somehow at the end of this plane ride Janey Sugarman was still alive, he might even have a last shot to make that right as well.

He sat still for a moment reclaiming himself, letting the blood cleanse away the stink of defeat, until he felt himself rising out of the gloom. He drew a long breath and blew it out.

A moment later he leaned out into the narrow aisle, closer to Marty.

“So let me get this straight.”

“What's that, lover boy?”

“You sold out Salbone, gave him up to Vic?”

“One way to look at it.”

“There's another way?”

“Cut myself a better situation,” Marty said. “Traded up.”

“And now what? We're heading off to that pirate shindig I been hearing so much about?”

Marty gave Thorn a steady look. Maybe Thorn had been underestimating him. What he'd thought was stupidity was actually disdain, a simple contempt for anyone not willing to backstab those who blocked his path to greater fortune. A perfect sidekick for Vic Joy.

“What do you bring to this, Messina? Muscle, is that all?”

“What do you care, Thorn?”

“Hey, I'm dead meat, what difference does it make if you satisfy my curiosity?”

“Fuck you. I'm not telling you shit.”

“Because see, what I think is, Vic is using you like he's using his biker dudes. You're maybe a half a point smarter than Marshall and Charlie, but basically you're just a big boulder Vic can hide behind when the guns go off. That's what I see going on here.”

“I got something he wants, shit-for-brains. I got leverage.”

“Yeah? Maybe you did when you were Salbone's lackey. But I don't see you bringing anything to the table now but about ten pounds of body hair.”

“You're wrong, asshole, as usual.”

“Anne knows the code, but you don't know it. Salbone didn't share it with you.”

“Salbone was paranoid. He was the only one who knew all the pieces.”

“And what piece did you know? How to drive the boat?”

“The contacts,” Marty said. “I did the contacts.”

“Contacts?”

“See, you don't even know how the fuck it works.”

Thorn leaned back in his seat. Not interested anymore. Dozing off. It took almost a minute, but Marty couldn't leave it alone.

“Without the contacts, you got shit,” he said. “Who you going to call to unload five thousand Honda motorcycles or generators or ten thousand gallons of olive oil, for chrissakes? Well, I know who to call. That's what I did. I got the contacts. Names, numbers, all of it.”

“And Vic needs you for that.”

“Damn right he does,” Marty said. “Vic knows how to storm a fucking boat. He knows movie bullshit, and history. Sir Francis Fucking Drake and the
Golden Hind,
Harry Morgan, all those guys. But his connections are in real estate and marinas and business shit. Vic can steal all the product in the world, but he doesn't know squat about moving it. If you can't move it, you're fucked. Damn right he needs me. The man wants to expand to the big time, I'm indispensable.”

“Wow,” Thorn said. “Indispensable.”

“Fucking-A I am.”

“What's with these code bullshit?” Thorn said. Eyes closed, head resting against the seat, like he could give a damn. Marty off-balance now, determined to prove Thorn the useless know-nothing he was.

“The code gets you into the shipping Web site.”

“Sounds boring,” Thorn said. “I thought the pirate life was all thrills.”

“It's a business,” Marty said.

“Like I said, boring.”

“Hey, every fucking ship in the world of any size is on that site. You got the code, then you know where they are every minute of every day, where they're going, what they're carrying. You can get their maintenance records, names of the crew, any fucking thing you want. Without the code, you're out there blind, sailing around looking for whatever the fuck comes along by chance. Or trying to follow ships out of port, tag along without being noticed. Or you gotta have a spy onboard, using a cell phone to send the GPS coordinates. But all that's bullshit. There's a hundred different ways it can fuck up. Having the code changes everything. Makes it efficient, makes it work.”

Thorn opened his eyes and looked at the big man. That little curl of hair was holding firm across the front of his black flattop, glistening like it was held in place by a glop of lard. Marty scowled back at Thorn, eyes pinched, chin hard; one more little shove and the swinging would start.

Marty Messina would've probably turned out okay if he hadn't been busted so young. Probably still be sitting on his stool at Tarpon's, married, with kids in junior high. Drinking too much, shooting off his mouth, rubbing shoulders with tourists and business hotshots around Key Largo. He could've pulled that off. Had enough raw smarts to supervise dishwashers and waitresses and bartenders. Getting his macho kicks bullying suppliers, using a little muscle to wrangle better prices on yellowtail and grouper and shrimp and lobster. But Marty didn't strike him as a guy fated to be a killer. Just a poor slob who got unlucky in his formative years and went to jail and took the crash course in dog-eat-dog one-upmanship that was required inside. When he got out, he was just as dim-witted as before, but
now he was full of cocky swagger. Muscles pumped, brain dazed, whatever half-assed morals he'd had long gone. And then Salbone threw him a simple job. Essential to his operation, but no great challenge. Making phone deals, talking to guys around the globe who handled warehouses and trucks and drivers. Thorn didn't know for sure, but he suspected those guys were close relatives of guys he'd met who handled legitimate warehouses and trucks and drivers. Not talking neuroscience.

“So what's the pirate party about? Vic's coronation? He gets his crown, takes charge of the world?”

“You'll see soon enough.”

“And that's his entrée with these people, huh? The code.”

“Something like that.”

“Sounds like your run-of-the-mill hacker could figure that out. What's the big deal?”

“Don't be so sure,” Marty said. “Salbone's computer guy was a freaking genius.”

“Whiz kids are a dime a dozen, Marty, haven't you heard? These days every ten-year-old is hacking the Defense Department.”

“Maybe,” he said. “But nobody's thought of this. Salbone was the only one doing it. All those other disorganized fucks are out there cruising around without a clue, wasting fuel; half the time they hit a ship it's empty, deadheading back to port. They need the code and they damn well know it.”

“Any of these clowns actually met Vic? They know what they're getting into?”

“What's that supposed to mean?”

“The guy's a fuckup, Marty. You haven't noticed?”

Marty stared at him for a moment but said nothing. Then he busied himself with brushing lint off the chest of his black T-shirt and fixed his eyes on the seat back in front of him. Thinking about it, registering it, maybe for the first time—that he was going into battle with a full-fledged gonzo at the helm.

Thorn swiveled in his seat and peered back at Anne. She was hunched forward, eyes tight and wet, her body shaking, her sobs lost in the furious clamor of rushing wind and engine noise.

Thorn turned back to Marty, leaning into the aisle to be heard.

“Was it you who slit Jimmy Lee Webster's throat?”