Robbie Forester and the Outlaws of Sherwood Street (24 page)

Sounds came from the deck: someone moving around, the thud of ropes, and then an inboard engine starting up; it throbbed through the deck. Seconds later we were under way. Another negative: There was no money on board, not that we could find. And a third: Ashanti and Silas hadn’t made it. Not a surprise—we were all kids, and it was very late.

S
 
hort Sail
glided slowly along the canal, the engine purring softly but with a kind of contained power. Through the little portholes, I caught glimpses of storage tanks, loading docks, rusted-out equipment I didn’t know the names for, all the sharp angles getting rounded by the snow. A seagull stood on a piling right at eye level and just feet away, back to the wind and wings folded over its chest. Tut-Tut was doing the same thing with his arms, like he was holding on to himself. I tried to look reassuring; didn’t dare utter a word, of course: I could hear a voice crackling over a radio, and then, right outside the cabin, Borg said, “Roger.”

Roger? People said Roger in real life? It meant they were in agreement, right? So what was Borg agreeing to? And where were we going? I didn’t think the canal was very long, nothing like the Erie Canal, for example, but its actual route was unclear in my mind. Did it go as far as—

All of a sudden, the engine roared and we surged forward, the bow rising up out of the water. Tut-Tut and I went flying. I hit the cabin door hard; whatever Tut-Tut hit made a lot of noise. We landed together on the floor.

The engine got throttled back abruptly and Borg said, “What was that?”

I motioned to Tut-Tut real quick. He rolled under one of the berths, and I scrambled under the next one, squeezed in next to a big duffel bag. The door burst open in a second. Borg, visible to me from the knees down, meaning mostly his thick black boots, came inside. He walked to the far end, returned. I heard him open some kind of compartment and slam it shut. He opened another one, moved some things around inside it. Then came a click as he closed it up. He paused. Was he thinking about rearranging more stuff, like maybe under the berths?

Power? Are you there?

No sign of the power, but Borg turned, both boots now pointed toward the stern. He walked out of the cabin and shut the door. A few seconds later, the engine roared and
Short Sail
surged forward again. I slid along the deck under the berth until I hit something fairly soft, possibly another duffel bag, making a thud that I hoped was dull. I glanced sideways and saw Tut-Tut clinging with both hands to the post that supported one corner of
his berth. We stayed just like that. After a while, Tut-Tut started to shake. It was cold in the cabin, icy water so close all around, but I knew there was more to Tut-Tut’s shaking than the cold.

The roar of the engine changed pitch, rising even higher, and now we started pounding up and down, like we’d hit big waves. Big waves in the canal? I stuck my head out from under the berth and tried to see through the nearest porthole, high above. All I could make out was the driven snow zooming past in streaks of dots and dashes. The bow rose high and came banging down, crashing me into the underside of the berth above. I may even have called out in pain, a call lost in all the roaring and pounding. Tut-Tut was crying silently, his silvery tear tracks the brightest things in the cabin. I mouthed the words “it’s all right” to him, but I didn’t think he saw. He was back in rough water again, probably his worst nightmare.

On and on we went. I lost track of time but would have guessed that lots had gone by. How far could
Short Sail
go without refueling? The notion that we were headed for Haiti hit me; absolutely crazy, but it made sense in a nasty way. I wondered whether Tut-Tut was thinking the same thing.

All at once the pounding lessened and so did our speed. The hull tilted a bit to the right and
Short Sail
seemed to veer in that direction, making a long curve and then coming to rest—if constant rising and falling, pitching and rolling could be called coming to rest—with the engine idling. Lights shone through the portholes and then vanished. I heard Borg moving around on deck, and then came voices, not far away.

“Just hold the thing steady,” Borg said. The engine shut off, and now I could really hear the storm outside.

Borg grunted once out on the deck, then again, and after that there was just the storm. Even though the engine was off, we seemed to be turning, and as we turned, the rising and falling diminished a little, as though we’d found a bit of shelter. Then we just bobbed up and down, almost gently. Music started up, not far away. I could hear the bass—
thump-de-dump-dah, thump-de-dump-dah.

Things went on like that for some time, and finally I just had to take a peek. I crawled out from under the berth, climbed on top of it, and peered out the porthole. Through the snow, blowing sideways now, I saw nothing but the stormy sea, stretching on and on into darkness. Way in the distance, the sky was all lit up and pinkish, typical New York nighttime sky.

I turned. Tut-Tut was also kneeling on a berth, but on the opposite side; the port side, actually: nautical lingo was a must on Uncle Joe’s boat. The view through Tut-Tut’s porthole was very different from mine—no
empty ocean, but instead a white wall, rising and rising with no top in sight. A white wall? Someplace way out in the ocean? I didn’t understand this at all, but then I noticed a single word written in gold on that white wall:
Boffo.
A memory came: Ashanti and I researching Sheldon Gunn and all the things he owned, including
Boffo,
second-biggest yacht in the world.

Without a word, Tut-Tut and I slipped down and moved silently to the cabin door. We stood and listened, heard no one out there, just the storm and the faint music. My hand, kind of on its own, went to the latch and raised it. I opened the door a few inches. We looked out, saw no one aboard
Short Sail
, snow falling on the deck and on the throttle and all the other instruments on the console.

Tut-Tut and I stepped outside and saw that
Short Sail
was tied to a fold-down platform attached to
Boffo
’s stern.
Boffo
was on the move, but slowly, and towing us behind. Craning my neck to look up, I saw the open ends of three or four decks high above; a rope ladder dangled from the lowest one, reaching all the way down to the platform. There was nobody in sight, and nothing to hear but the storm—quieted down in
Boffo
’s lee—and the music, a little louder now.
Thump-de-dump-dah, thump-de-dump-dah.

What were the choices? Looking back, I could make out the lit-up nighttime sky of the city but no buildings, not even the tallest towers: we were far from shore.
Could we steal
Short Sail,
somehow ride her all the way back? Yes, I’d been on Uncle Joe’s boat—but I’d spent most of my time soaking up rays, not doing any actual driving, didn’t even know how to start the engine. We could go back to hiding in the cabin and wait for whatever was going to happen to happen. Or…

We stepped over
Short Sail
’s gunwale and onto the platform. I got a grip on the rope ladder, stuck my foot on the first rung, and started up. Ms. Kleinberg had tossed in some rope climbing in one practice, hoping to strengthen our upper bodies. This was like that, only a bit easier because your feet could help out.

I reached the railing of the lowest deck, peered over. The first thing I saw was a gym, a huge one behind glass walls, full of rows and rows of equipment. No one was working out and the only light came from an enormous flat-screen TV on the far wall, showing a sports highlight show. One of those everyday bits of programming: it made me want to be at home, safe in bed.

I looked down the ladder, saw Tut-Tut climbing fast. I stepped over the rail and onto the deck; Tut-Tut vaulted over the railing and landed softly beside me. We started walking forward, the gym on our left. I thought of checking our footprints again, then realized there was no snow on the deck. I bent and touched it, a heated deck, it turned out, that melted the snow away.

We went past the gym, came to an Olympic-size
pool, also glassed-in, surrounded by umbrellas and palm trees; no one swimming or lounging. Tut-Tut and I kept going. The music was louder now, seemed to be floating down from somewhere above. After the swimming pool came a blank wall and then a staircase made of gleaming dark wood. We were standing at its base, unsure about what to do next, when a door opened just a few feet ahead of us and a waiter or steward or whatever you’d call them—he wore black pants and a short white jacket—stepped out with a bottle of champagne in a silver bucket. Had he shot the slightest glance toward the stern, he couldn’t have missed us, but instead he turned and walked quickly the other way. Tut-Tut and I went up the stairs.

It turned out to be a graceful curving staircase, with a railing that seemed to be made of crystal. We were almost at the top, meaning the next deck, when the silver heart fluttered for a split second and I heard a voice saying
Hey!
Then came a sound that was kind of like static. It all seemed to be happening in my head and not in the outside world. A moment later the sound went dead.

I turned back to Tut-Tut and whispered, “Did you hear anything?”

“Music,” he whispered back.

“Whoa. You’re talking?”

His eyes opened wide. “Hey! Th-th-th-th—” He went silent, looked confused. So was I.

We reached the next level, found ourselves in a broad hallway lined with art and flowers. Stormy weather outside, and we were on the cold Atlantic, miles and miles from shore, but it felt like being in some amazing mansion on dry land. We passed what might have been an empty disco, with a stage that was revolving, although no one was on it, and walls that seemed to be made of zebra skins all stitched together. After that we emerged on an open deck with some huge metal sculptures on one side and a row of windows, like portholes but much bigger, on the other. All the portholes were dark except two. I peeked in the first one and saw a cabin, but nothing like the cabin on
Short Sail;
this cabin was huge and luxurious, with antique furniture and a bar that shone with silver and glass. The second lit cabin looked much the same, except for one difference: this one was occupied.

Two men sat across from each other at a delicate-looking little table, gold-trimmed espresso cups between them. The nearest man had a goatee and wore a white robe with one of those Middle Eastern headdresses; the other man was Borg.

Borg said something I couldn’t make out: Tut-Tut and I were in the open again, somewhat sheltered from
the wind, but it was still blowing hard, driving streamers of snow high over our heads. The Middle Eastern man replied. Borg wrote on a piece of paper, handed it to the Middle Eastern man and left the room by a door on the far side.

The man rose, went to the wall, and took down a picture. There was a safe behind it. He touched a pad with the tip of his finger and the safe swung open. It was a big safe, with three shelves, each one crammed with cash, colorful money on the bottom two shelves and U.S. greenbacks on top. He checked the sheet of paper, then opened a closet beside the safe. Two large suitcases stood inside, fancy French ones—I recognized the logo because Nonna had the same kind. The man pulled the suitcases out of the closet and opened them both. They were each about half full of neatly folded clothes. He took all the clothes from one and transferred them to the other. Then he closed the full suitcase and stuck it back in the closet. After that, he drew the empty suitcase closer to the safe and began filling it with greenbacks, his lips moving like he was keeping silent count. In the end, the suitcase was so jam-packed he had to kneel on it to get it shut. He’d just finished that when a phone rang in the room; I heard it through the glass.

The man rose, crossed the room to a desk, answered the phone. He listened for a moment and hung up. Then
he went to the safe, picked up the suitcase and tried to wedge it inside. The safe wasn’t big enough. The man carried the suitcase through an archway and into what I could see was a bedroom. He walked out seconds later without the suitcase, closed the safe and left the room.