Off the Chart (29 page)

“Yeah, like I'm going to talk about that shit with you.”

“I see you as more of a small-arms kind of guy. Bullet in the back of the head when no one's looking. Like those sad old folks on Markham's yacht the other night. But throat slitting, I don't know, that's too in-your-face for Marty Messina. Sounds more like a Vic Joy specialty.”

Marty looked up the aisle at the cockpit, checking Vic, seeing if he was eavesdropping through all that motor noise and vibration. He wasn't. Then Marty turned back to Thorn with a sour smile.

“You're pretty smart for a fucking dead man.”

“And those cages,” Thorn said. “Got to hand it to you guys, that was a nice touch. A little historical flashback.”

“Marshall's a welder,” Marty said. “He goes into Vic's workshop; half hour later, he's whipped one of those together. That little shit can fly.”

“Webster told me that he and Vic made some kind of deal. Vic copped a plea or something. What was that about?”

Marty considered it for a moment.

“You didn't know about that, Marty? He leave you in the dark?”

“I'm a full partner, asshole. I know every phase of the operation.”

“Is that right? So you knew about Webster? Or maybe that was one phase he left you out of, one of Vic's side deals?”

“Vic conned him,” Marty said. “He was scamming him, that's all. Same as he does everybody. Webster was freelancing, trying to pick up some spare change. Hitting on Vic for payoffs, and Vic was leading him on.”

“Dirty? No way. Webster was a true believer.”

“Wouldn't call it dirty,” Marty said. “More like the guy had aspirations.”

“What? To be a pirate? To join in?”

“Him and Vic were birds of a feather. Talking all that pirate shit. You should've heard those two dumbshits go at it. Webster might've even known more than Vic. Buccaneers, privateers, brigands. Man, I get nosebleed listening to that crap. Like sitting in school.”

“He was Secretary of the Navy. He's not going to flip for Vic Joy.”

“Webster fucked up somehow,” Marty said. “A while back, I forget
when. He ordered some ship to be sunk but got the wrong one. People died. Some damn thing like that. It was a big deal in the newspapers. They dragged his ass in front of a Senate hearing. It pissed him off and he never got over it. He was going to get his reputation back by bringing down Salbone, but deep down I guess he was still pissed at the navy and government types, so Vic got to him. Found his soft spot: pirates and money.”

“Found his soft spot, then whacked him.”

“Hell, Vic didn't do that,” Marty said. “Him and me were off in the jungle when those guys got hit. Way I heard it, Webster and his friends kissed you good night and that was their last official act on earth. Old Marshall's pretty proud of himself. Him and Charlie taking down three big-time spies.”

Thorn remembered it then. The Cadillac pulling up to Webster's room, the two men getting out.

Marty said, “What really turned Vic against the guy was how Webster kept going on about Salbone. Salbone this. Salbone that. This great big ex–Mafia guy, like he's some kind of rock star. Vic hated that. Hated hearing it all the time. Vic's offed Salbone, wiped out his crew, taken over his business, and he has to hear from Webster how great the guy is, how all the pirate hunters in the whole world are after him. I mean that was part of Vic's plan, make the law think Danny was still out there roaming around somewhere. Make them spend time looking for him while Vic went about his business. But he just got tired hearing that shit. Salbone, Salbone, Salbone. Pissed him off in a major way.”

“No respect,” Thorn said. “Feeling slighted.”

“Vic's big on respect. Like guys I knew in the joint. Worst thing you could do was forget to salute when they came in the room.”

“If it was all a con, why'd Webster put on that big show for me? He had about a thousand slides, this big speech. Doesn't make sense.”

“You're not listening to me, man. Webster thought Salbone was still out there. He was working his ass off to nail him. Playing footsie with Vic on the side. That's all. It was just a matter of timing. He wound you up, sent you off, then he turned around and Marshall's there slitting his throat.”

“Well, it isn't going to work, Marty. Sooner or later, they'll put it
together, realize Salbone's dead, follow the bread crumbs back to Vic.”

“Whatever you say, hotshot.”

“The feds aren't stupid. They're going to put it together.”

“He's got that covered, too. Vic's thought it all out. That's what you're for, Thorn, to take over after they finally put two and two together.”

Marty looked away.

“What're you saying?”

Marty laughed to himself.

“You don't get it, do you? Smart guy like you, missed the whole thing.”

Thorn was silent, eyes open now.

“They're going to put it on you, asshole.”

“What?”

“Put it on you. Make you the fall guy. You're sniffing after Anne, hanging with Vic, then when it's over, you're holding the shitcan. Vic wants your land, wants to do that bit of business with you, but it's not his way to do just one thing at a time. He's got this two birds, one stone philosophy. He takes your land, then hands you the shitcan and walks away. You're still alive, or you're dead, it doesn't matter.”

“How the hell could I be a fall guy?”

“Cops love guys like you, Thorn. You got no standing. What're you going to tell them, ‘Hey, wait, don't put me in jail, this guy, the Secretary of the fucking Navy, deputized me'? Yeah? Who the fuck's going to believe that?”

“Stupid, Marty. Never work.”

“Whatever you say, Thorn. You're the smart guy. Except you haven't been acting real smart lately. You swallowed the whole thing, just like Vic said you would, came charging into his place, acting all cool. Mr. James Bond, secret agent, putting on a show for me. Man, it was all I could do to keep from laughing in your face. A fucking puppet on a string, Thorn. You and your buddy Sugarman, you guys were perfect, running around, making a big fuss. Getting the sheriff involved. Couldn't ask for more. So when Vic gives you up, everybody's all primed and ready to haul your ass off to the dungeon.”

“For what? I kidnapped my friend's daughter? I killed those people on the yacht? I killed Webster?”

“Could be,” Marty said. “You got any alibis?”

“What garbage. Where's my motivation? Why'd I do it?”

“Ask Vic, it's his story line. He's working out some movie idea. He's the star, and you're the sucker. I'm sure Vic's got a line of bullshit ready. Do you, Thorn? You got a story anybody's going to believe?”

“Fuck that,” Thorn said. “Nobody's going to believe I killed those guys, hung them up in cages in my own backyard.”

“Maybe, maybe not. I guess we'll have to see. Best story wins.”

“Sheriff may not be a fan of mine, but he won't buy that.”

“You heard Vic talk. Can you match that?” Marty chuckled. “And look at it from the cops' angle. Is it easier for them to pin something on a hothead with a long history for fucking up or against Vic Joy? Owns half the Keys, two hundred lawyers on twenty-four-hour standby. My money's on you, bud. You're going down. One way or the other.”

Thorn stared at the bulkhead. It sounded crazy. Implausible as hell. But as he ran back through the last couple of days, he could recall an uncomfortable list of moments that would be hard to explain. Things he'd done that could be misconstrued, twisted around, made to appear suspicious. Wrong place, wrong time, giving Taft a ration of shit; Fox, too. Even Alexandra had doubted him enough to leave. Sugarman had stormed off.

He turned back to Marty. The big man was smiling at him.

“You realize, Marty, you've got some other feds sniffing your trail, too? Guy named Fox talked to me this afternoon. He seemed to have a bead on you and Vic. Been watching your place. Wouldn't surprise me if they're tagging along right now. Out there in the clouds behind us somewhere.”

Marty sneered.

“We got that covered, too. A diversionary movement.”

“Yeah? Hoodwinked the CIA, huh? You sure about that?”

Marty said, “Three Cadillac limos go racing out of his place this afternoon. One right after another. Whole fleet of cars with the staff riding inside. Dark windows so nobody can tell what the fuck's going on. You're standing outside watching the front gate, what would you do?”

“Follow the Caddies,” Thorn said. “If I'm stupid.”

“They are,” Marty said. “Don't get your hopes up. The Caddies are still driving up I-95, headed to fucking Georgia with a convoy on their tail. Nobody's going to save your ass. You're done, you've made your last wisecrack, Lone Ranger.”

Thorn looked out his window for a few moments. Then turned slowly back to Marty.

“And what if Anne doesn't come across with the code? My bet is your new pirate friends are going to be a little disappointed. Might get messy.”

Marty worked up a grin.

“She'll come across.”

“You think she gives two shits what happens to me?”

“I saw the way you two were going at it; even if it was an act, you were turning each other on.”

Thorn watched a fly sail past Marty's head toward the small window next to him. It butted against the plastic, circled back, and butted again.

“Anne's in love with a dead man, Marty. A man you assholes killed. Why's she going to help you out?”

“'Cause she's like you, Thorn. Cut from the same cloth.”

“Which cloth is that?”

“Guys like you, man, I've seen it over and over. You fuckers can't help yourselves.”

“So, tell me. I need to know. How do guys like me work?”

“You got your Dudley Do-Right rule book stashed in your mattress. Every night you get it out, memorize how to act tomorrow.”

“I wish,” Thorn said.

“Stand up and salute, recite the pledge. That's who you are.”

“My mattress burned up back there, Marty. The rule book's in ashes.”

“You fuckers always got a cute answer. Well, this time you don't, Thorn. This time it's me and Vic with the cute answer.”

“Anne won't give you the code,” he said. “She doesn't care about me.”

“You better hope she cares.”

“Between you and me, Marty, I can't see her helping out with anything her brother wants to do. Ever again.”

“A couple more hours, I guess we'll see about that.”

“Yeah,” Thorn said. “I guess we will.”

“The sign, Daddy.”

“What? Huh?”

Sugarman had dozed off, head down on his folded arms lying atop the little antique desk. Alexandra waked him with a thump on the back. Janey was whispering again; in the background the machine-gun fire had ceased. Sugar rubbed the focus back into his eyes.

“The sign, I saw the sign.”

“You did? Good. Good.”

“Two men were fighting and they bumped into it and knocked it crooked and now I can see it. Part of it.”

“What's it say?”

“
G-r-a-y-g-h,
” she said, spelling it out. “That's all I could see. Two words. Gray something.”

“Okay, Janey, that's terrific. We can use that. It'll help, I'm sure it will.”

“I feel terrible, Daddy. I'm hot and I'm shivering and I've been throwing up. My stomach really hurts.”

“Have you been drinking the Cokes, sweetheart?”

“No.”

“Do it, darling. Drink a Coke. You need fluids.”

“They're Chinese, I think.” She was whispering again.

“Chinese?”

“The men outside. Some of them are Chinese. They killed an agouti, Daddy. They shot it and cut its fur off right outside my cabin. It was gross. And some other kind of people are out there, too, not just Chinese. Weird talking.”

“How many people have you seen?”

“I don't know.”

“More than ten?”

“Yeah, more than that.”

“Twenty?”

“I don't know, Daddy. A lot. A lot of people. Mostly men. But some women, too. And some of them have those things you used to use in the backyard to cut down the agave plant. A big blade.”

“Machete?”

“Yeah, a machete. Some of the men are waving those around.”

Sugarman sat straight in the chair. The air hardening in his lungs.

“Listen, Janey, listen to me, okay?”

“Okay.”

“We're coming to get you.”

“You are? When?”

“As soon as we can figure out this last thing. But soon.”

“Tonight?”

“Soon,” Sugarman said. “But we need to know where you are, which cabin. What the arrangement looks like.”

“Arrangement?”

“The way things are spread out. How many buildings there are? How they're spaced? Are you on one end of the area or the other?”

“I'm south, Daddy. I'm on the south. There's, I don't know, five or six buildings I can see. All of them look alike, except for one big one that has a screen porch. Mine is next to a little pond.”

“Okay, that's super. You're doing a fantastic job. Now, Janey, you need to go into the bathroom and shut the door and lock it.”

“The battery thing is blinking, Daddy. The computer is making a beep.”

“Okay, okay. Listen, go into the bathroom right now, Janey, and lock the door and stay there until—”

But his screen had gone flat again, the hiss of static silent.

“Oh, God. Jesus Christ.”

Alexandra laid a hand on his shoulder. Telling him in a soothing voice that it was going to be all right. They'd figure it out. They would.

“I don't know,” he said. “Jesus God, help me.”

“You have a dictionary, Sugar?”

He turned and looked up at her.

“Dictionary?”

She waited.

“On the shelf in the living room by the TV.”

She patted him on the shoulder, but Sugarman hardly registered it. He was staring at his crappy computer. His daughter's image vanished. He tried to picture it—the way that fragile beam of electrons had fired out of the Central American rain forest and launched into the atmosphere, where it bounced off some passing satellite, then ricocheted back to Earth and found its way through a thousand miles of cables to his machine, carrying her voice, her face. The magic of that. The horror of it. The aching emptiness he felt now that the machine was silent.

Sugarman's shoulders were draped with a lead shawl. His breath was dead in his lungs, chest cavity gutted.

He heard Lawton snoring on the daybed and Alexandra in the next room paging through the dictionary. The puppy had awakened and was chewing at a flea on his tail. More sirens screamed on the highway. But he wasn't there. He was locked in a small, foul-smelling bathroom. He was huddled on the floor gripping a pair of eleven-hundred-dollar binoculars to his chest. He was sipping on a Coke and shivering and trying not to cry. Hot and cold and aching in every joint. He was a thousand nautical miles away, surrounded by strange foreign men with automatic weapons and God only knew what else. He was alone. More alone than he'd ever been before. The screams of the jungle, the heat and stench and darkness.

Alexandra dragged a chair up beside him.

“I know,” she said. “This is hard. You're overcome.”

“That's not the half of it.”

She touched his cheek, took hold of his chin, and guided it around so he was facing her.

“But we need to shake this off. We have to go on-line for a few minutes.”

“What?”

“Gray
g-h,
” she said. “We need to do a search.”

He was groggy now. Sleepless for two days, hardly any food. Pulse falling from its frantic high to some bottomless place. A beat, then a pause while the globe spun a complete rotation before another beat came. He was finished. It was over.

“G-h.”
Alexandra flopped the dictionary open on the desk beside him. “There's only a few
g-h
words.
Ghastly, ghetto, ghibil, ghost, ghoul.
Only a few, and only one that really fits with
gray.
”

He wasn't following her. He was huddled in that bathroom. The men prowling outside. Men peeking in the window, pulling the boards loose. Drunk, crazed men.

“Sugarman? Are you listening to me?”

“Yeah,” he said. “Trying to.”

“Gray Ghost,” she said. “It's the only one that makes sense.”

“Bonefish,” Sugar said. “Gray ghost. That's its nickname.”

“Okay,” she said. “That's good. Now we need to go on-line. We've got to search this. We know it's a region on the Central American coast and we know something there is called Gray Ghost.”

“Yeah,” Sugarman said. But he was still riding that shaft of light, a laser that rose from the jungle floor and pierced the sky and came rocketing back to Earth with his daughter's voice riding along, Janey's face and her thrill over toucans and her fright and pain.

Alexandra swiveled the computer to the side and tapped the touch pad a few times, and he heard the modem's chirp and squall as it connected to the server. She tapped more keys and then a few moments later she spoke quietly: “Okay, okay, good.”

“What is it?” Sugarman said.

“Twenty-two hits,” she said. She swiveled the computer so he could
see, then scrolled down the list. “Most of it is John Mosby, a Civil War soldier. Also known as ‘the Gray Ghost.'”

“Civil War?” Sugar's mind was stuttering, two steps out of sync.

Alex worked down the list, brought up each Web page that seemed likely, scanned it, and quickly moved on. In three or four minutes she was done.

“We could try another search engine, but this is usually the best. Google.”

“How do you know this stuff?”

“It's very basic, Sugar, I use it at work. Now ‘Gray
Ghost, Central America
.' Is there another thing to try, another word?”

“Nicaragua,”
he said.

She tapped it in, got over sixteen hundred hits. They scanned the list together, Sugarman starting to come out of it, head clearing, feeling this had to work. The last resort.

“Too many,” he said. “Try
gray ghost, kingfisher
, and
Central America.
”

Alex killed the first search and tapped in the fresh parameters.

A few seconds later, she said, “Nothing, no documents.”

“All right, try
gray ghost
and
Costa Rica
.”

“I thought you said ‘Nicaragua.'”

Sugarman reached out and grabbed the pages of notes he'd made, pawed through them quickly, found the map he'd cut out of the encyclopedia.

“This longitude, eighty-four degrees west, it skims into the northeastern edge of Costa Rica. The kingfisher overlaps with that, too.”

She put it in.
Gray ghost
and
Costa Rica.
A half-second later the hits came up.

“Here,” she said. “Right there.” She touched a finger to the screen, the third item down. “Gray Ghost Lodge. A fishing camp. Ten cabins, on the coast of Costa Rica in the Barra de Colorado, Limón Province. Bingo.”

“Double bingo.”

He was fully awake now, staring at the computer as Alex brought up the Web page for the Gray Ghost Lodge. The page taking forever to load.

The three small pictures finally unspooled, showing a clearing in the jungle. Wood cabins, walkways, a marina, small airstrip. Five hundred dollars a day to fish for tarpon and bonefish or take guided ecotours into the rain forest. “A vast array of exotic wildlife,” the ad copy said. “Toucans, three-toed sloths. The lodge offers a rare combination of quality service, comfort, and unspoiled wilderness. The complete isolation provides an atmosphere of absolute relaxation.”

“You have any idea where this is, Sugar?”

“I don't,” he said. Feeling a flood of heat in his face and chest. “But we're about to find out.”

 

“It's four-thirty in the morning, for chrissakes,” Kirk Graham said on the phone. “I got a trip tomorrow, Rio and back with a one-day turnaround.”

Lawton was inside the house sleeping while Alex stood next to Sugar out on the front porch. He was using his cell to keep from waking the old man.

“Hey, Kirk, I'm desperate. You're my last chance.”

“Man, I got to fly tomorrow. Didn't you hear me?”

“It's about Janey, my daughter. She's been kidnapped and she's being held in the jungle in Costa Rica.”

“Christ, call the police.”

“Kirk, listen to me. I need an amphibian. A plane like the one we saw at Vic Joy's. Steal it, rent it, borrow it, whatever it takes. But we need it, and we need it now.”

Kirk laughed.

“You don't want much.”

“Can you do it, Kirk?”

“And I guess you want me to fly it, too, over to Costa Rica?”

“I guess I do, yeah.”

“Man, Sugar. Man, oh, man.”

“Do you know where we can get a plane like that?”

Kirk was silent for a moment. Alex was staring up at the stars, a clear night, the heavens peeled open to reveal all their secrets.

“There is this one guy I know,” Kirk said.

“Great,” Sugarman said.

“But I don't know about the range. It's a beauty of a plane, a big single-engine Cessna Caravan. But hell, a thousand nautical miles, I don't know, that might be a hundred or so beyond what this baby can do on a single tank.”

“So we'll stop somewhere and fill up again.”

“Out in the middle of the Gulf of Mexico? Right.”

“And there'll be two others along. Adults.”

“Two others? Jesus. That's cutting it damn close, Sugar.”

“They're coming, Kirk. No way I can leave them behind.”

“Well, we'll have to stay low, avoid the headwinds. That would offset some of it. Maybe clip Cuba a little.”

“Where do we meet you, Kirk? Give me a location.”

Alexandra brought her eyes down from the heavens. She smiled at Sugar and balled her hand into a fist and held it shoulder-high. Yeah!

 

With his blue duffel full of handguns sitting by the front door and Alex and Lawton waiting on the porch, Sugarman went back into the guest bedroom, sat down at the desk, and reconnected to Markham's server and clicked his way to the video chat room. The screen was blank. Outside his back window, the sun was beginning to waken the mockingbirds and blue jays. On a low branch a fat squirrel twitched its tail at a neighbor's cat and jeered.

He waited for a minute in the empty room.

Alexandra came to the bedroom door and stood there for a few seconds watching him.

“We'd better get going, Sugar. It's six, seven hours. We'll be lucky to get there by noon.”

“I know. I know.”

Alex dug into the pocket of her jeans and came out with a business card and held it up.

“I got to call this guy,” she said. “Before we go, I have to call him.”

“Who?” Sugarman stared at the empty screen.

“Agent Fox, the guy I told you about at Thorn's. You understand that, don't you? It's my duty.”

“I understand.”

Sugarman was still staring at the empty screen.

“I don't want to do it,” Alex said. “I know how those SWAT types can be. When he hears about this, he'll come with everything they've got. All those thugs gathered in one spot. I mean, I could try to wheedle a promise out of him. Rescuing Janey would be his top priority or I refuse to give him the details.”

“You can't do that,” Sugar said.

“It's what Thorn would do. He'd finagle something. He wouldn't play by their rules.”

“You're not Thorn. You've got obligations.”

“I don't know, Sugar. But with all those men in that camp, the place swarming with them, I just don't know. It's such a volatile situation, no way to know how it'll break if the feds hit them head-on.”

“We can't control their strategy,” Sugar said.

“You sure? It's your call.”

“It's the right thing to do,” he said. “They're the proper authorities.”

“Are you all right? You sound like you've given up.”

“No,” he said. “I'm all right. You'll call Fox, because it's what's right and proper. But just don't do it till the last second before we take off. That way the chances are we'll get there first. If the layout looks right, we take a shot, just you and me. We know where Janey is. We make a run at it before the cavalry arrives.”