The Harder They Come (6 page)

“Me too.” He stared down at the floor, his feelings too complicated to put into words. They’d been lucky, he knew that. And she must have known it too. “But I’m not going to be around forever,” he said, lifting his eyes to hers. “You’ve got to learn to watch out for yourself.”

“No more nature walks, is that what you’re saying?”

“It’s no joke, because it’s not just money they’re after, you know that, don’t you? Anything can happen. Bad stuff, real bad stuff.”

She didn’t answer. She looked beyond him, out the open door to the bay and the sepia blur of the city that was like some fungus sprung up around a band of pale eroded beach and hacked green palm. He pushed his plate away. What he wanted was a cigarette, and he’d actually reached for his shirt pocket before he caught himself—he hadn’t smoked in ten years now. It was times like this he missed it most. Smoking had given him something to do with his hands, the whole ritual of it, from sliding the cigarette from the pack to tamping it on the nearest hard surface, to cupping the match and drawing in the first sweet sustaining puff. The thing was, his hands had become too busy, manipulating up to two packs a day, his fingertips stained yellow with nicotine
and his lungs as black as the bricks of the fireplace back at home. That was all behind him now. Now he was healthy. Now he rode a stationary bike and got out in the woods two or three days a week, keeping his hand in with part-time work for the lumber company, looking out for trespassers, squatters, marijuana growers—patrolling, if that was what you wanted to call it. The way he saw it, he was getting paid to go hiking, simple as that, best deal in the world.

Carolee set down her fork and laid her napkin across the plate, where it instantly began to color with the juices gathered there—blood, that is, and why should that bother him? A basket of bread stood beside her plate, untouched. A carafe of water. The grated Parmesan the waiter had left for him, yellowing in its stainless-steel bowl. Flies were at it now, Costa Rican flies, wafted in through the open door to the veranda. She reached for her martini glass, which bore a smear of lipstick on the rim, a transparency of red wax and the faintly striated impress of her lips, and it touched him somehow, this trace of her there, DNA, a code to outlive us all. There was a dead man in the morgue, but she was alive and he was alive too, alive together, come what may. He watched her lift the glass and finish what was left of her drink. “I needed that,” she said, her voice flat and deliberate. She looked tired. “It’s been a day, hasn’t it?”

“It’s not over yet.” He wanted to add, “Some vacation, huh?,” but restrained himself. Rising from the chair, he felt something click in his right hip, a tendon there, one more thing he’d managed to aggravate. He threw back his head to drain his own glass, best painkiller in the world, then patted down his pockets to be sure he had everything he was going to need, or potentially need: cellphone, wallet, passport, card key. At some point in the progression, he realized he was still holding the glass and that the glass was empty, useless, one more irritation, and without giving it even the flicker of a thought, he swiveled round and flung it high out over their private veranda and into the bright glittering
sky beyond. Carolee just looked at him as if he’d gone mad till he snatched her glass up off the table and tossed it out the window too, and then he turned his back on her, rotating his wrist to consult his watch. And yes, he was angry, furious all of a sudden, as if he were back out there grabbing hold of that jerk with the gun, the dead man, the man he’d killed with his bare hands, and why couldn’t the fool have picked some other group, another bus, another day?

He was squinting at his watch—half an hour, was half an hour up?—but he couldn’t seem to make out the position of the hands, his eyes going on him now too, along with everything else.
Jesus. Jesus Fucking Christ
. If they offered him a drink he was going to refuse it, no matter how badly he wanted it—and he wasn’t going to volunteer anything, just the facts. He smoothed down his shirt, took hold of the doorknob and shot a look over his shoulder to where Carolee still sat lingering at the table as if they had all night, as if they could have another round and order up dessert and coffee like normal people on vacation. “Come on,” he said, flinging open the door on the corridor, “let’s get this over with.”

I
T MIGHT HAVE BEEN
his imagination, but as they walked down the corridor to the elevator he couldn’t help feeling people were making way for him, eyes meeting his and dropping to the floor, conversations suddenly hushed, men unconsciously hugging their wives closer as if he were some sort of feral beast, and what was that all about? Had the captain made an announcement? If not, he was going to have to at some point, the cruise delayed here in port for another day, at least a day, and of course everybody had cellphones, BlackBerries, iPads, all rumor consolidated into news and all news instantaneous. They knew. The whole ship knew.

Potamiamos and the two cops were waiting for them in the scoop-backed lounge chairs in a corner of the Martini Bar, the fun director off somewhere else now, her duties in the present circumstance having extended no further than applying her knuckles to the door of cabin 7007 and making the introductions. All three were sitting stiff-backed in the chairs, glasses of iced tea sweating on the table before them. They rose when he and Carolee crossed the room, even as a pair of waiters materialized from the shadows to pull out chairs for them. “And what will you have, ma’am?” one of them asked, bending over Carolee. Sten tried to warn her off with his eyes, but she was looking to the waiter. She emitted a little laugh, self-conscious all at once and maybe a little tipsy too, and said, “When in Rome . . .” And then, catching herself: “Just water, thanks.”

“Sir?”

“Water. Out of a bottle. No ice.”

The waiters withdrew and a moment of silence descended
on the table before the Senior Second Officer turned to the cop on his left, who for some reason was now wearing a pair of sunglasses, though they were indoors and the lighting was in no way intrusive. “Lieutenant Salas, perhaps you’d like to begin?”

“Yes, certainly,” Salas said, his voice a creeping baritone, heavily accented. He shifted his gaze to Sten, or seemed to—you couldn’t really tell what he was looking at, which, of course, would have been the point of the dark glasses. “Why don’t you, sir, begin by giving us an account of events, what did you see, what did you do, et cetera.”

Sten told him. He had nothing to hide. He’d done what anybody would have done, anybody who wasn’t a natural-born victim, anyway. There was no need to go into detail about the trip itself, the state of the roads or the recklessness of the driver—not yet—so he began with the bus pulling into the lot and how everybody had descended into the sun, guidebooks, binoculars and birding lists in tow, and how he’d gone across the lot to the fat woman’s
palapa
.

“And why was that?” Salas had produced a pack of Marlboros, shaking one out for himself and offering the pack to Sten, as if this were the interrogation scene in a police procedural, and that struck him as funny, so he laughed. “This is amusing?” Salas said. “The recollection? There is something amusing about the death of a man in my jurisdiction?”

“No,” Sten said, waving away the pack as Carolee sat there tight-lipped beside him and Salas struck a match and touched it to the tip of his own cigarette. “No, not at all. I was thinking of something else, that’s all.”

The moment hung there. Potamiamos, handsome as a cutout from the cruise line brochure, tried to look stern—or worried, maybe he was worried. The thought caught Sten up and he felt the smallest tick of apprehension.

“You went to the
palapa
. And why was that?” the lieutenant repeated on a long exhalation of smoke.

“I was thirsty. It was a long ride. I dry out easily.” He smiled, but it was a smile that gave no ground, lips only. Lips and teeth. “I’m old. Or didn’t you notice?”

Salas nodded. “And then you went behind the stall, did you not? Into the jungle there?”

“Right. I had to piss. You know, pressure on the bladder?”

There was a moment of silence. Salas, his face unreadable, turned to the cop beside him. “
¿Qué dijo?
”

The second cop flicked his eyes at Carolee, then leaned forward, cupping one hand to his mouth. “
Para orinar,
” he said.

“Ah, I see,” Salas said. “It all comes clear now—you were urinating.”

The Senior Second Officer rediscovered his smile and now they were all smiling, smiles all around,
urinating,
the most human thing in the world, and what had they thought—that he was an accomplice? That he’d been hiding? That he’d worked all his life and paid his taxes and retired to come down here to this tropical paradise and mug tourists? “Yeah,” he said, smiling still, but there was an edge to his voice, “I pissed on a tree back there. Any law against that?”

Apparently not. No one said a word, but the smiles slowly died all the way around. He wanted to go on, wanted to get things out in the open, wanted to throw it in their faces:
All right then, charge me, you sons of bitches, go ahead, but I’ll make you regret it, all of you!
The words were on his lips when Carolee raised her water glass, ice cubes clicking, and took a quick birdlike sip. They seemed to have arrived at some sort of impasse. The room expanded, then shrank down again till it fit just exactly right. Finally, the lieutenant ducked his head to remove the dark glasses, revealing eyes that were darker still, eyes that were almost black, heavy-lidded and set too close together. “We are not here to accuse you,” he said. “We are here to assist. And to clear up any difficult feelings or dissatisfactions you or your wife
may have. We are gravely sorry for what has transpired and we extend our sincerest apologies.”

Someone at the bar behind them let out a laugh and the lines hardened in Salas’ face, lines that traced his jaw muscles and pulled tight round his mouth. He wasn’t much older than his own son, Sten realized, thirty maybe, thirty tops, but his job—poking at the underbelly of things, interviewing gringos, sweeping the dirt under the carpet—bore down on him, you could see that at a glance. Sten had an impulse to reach out to him, to thank him, but he couldn’t relax, not yet, not till the boat weighed anchor and they saw the last of this place.

“The man you”—a pause—“
encountered,
was a criminal, well known to us. Let me tell you, his death is no loss to the world.” His lips parted and here came the smile again. “In fact, from a certain perspective, you could almost say that you’ve done us a favor.”

The other cop nodded in assent. “One less problem. Or headache, is that how you say it? One less headache?”

“Yes,” Salas agreed, “that’s exactly it. Now,” swinging round to face Carolee, “we will require a statement from you, señora—and my colleague here, Sergeant Araya, will assist you in that.” He squared his shoulders, as if coming to attention, though he was still seated and his iced tea stood untouched before him and the cigarette burned unnoticed in his hand. “And you, sir, Mr. Stensen, I would ask you please to accompany me and the Senior Second Officer”—a nod for Potamiamos—“to another portion of this ship, a cabin we have secured for this purpose, in order for you to make identification of a man we have reason to believe was an accomplice in this business.” He made a motion toward the door, sweeping an arm in invitation.

Sten remained seated. He looked to Carolee, who’d sat there wordlessly to this point. “It’s okay,” he said, “no worries. I’ll be right back.”

Potamiamos rose. He and the lieutenant exchanged a glance. The party seemed to be breaking up.

“All right,” Sten said, “I’ll take a look at him. But I’m not leaving this ship.”

“Oh, no, no.” Potamiamos very nearly clucked his tongue. “No, there’s no question of that.”

They walked down the corridor to the elevator, Potamiamos to his left, Salas to his right, and everybody, every reveler aboard, stared at him as if he were being led off to a detention cell somewhere, and he supposed there must have been a secure room down there in the depths of the ship to accommodate the occasional passenger or crewmember who drank too much or went floridly berserk. They had a sick bay, didn’t they? And a pharmacy. And just about anything else you could imagine. They were a small city afloat and all contingencies had to be anticipated and prepared for.

He was a head taller than either of his—what would you call them?—
escorts
, but still he couldn’t help feeling a sense of unease, no matter how many times he told himself he was in control, because he wasn’t, he wasn’t at all, and he half expected some sort of trick, a roomful of cops, handcuffs, the cloth bag jerked over his head and a quick hustle down the gangplank and into some festering hole like the one in
Midnight Express
. The tendon clicked in his knee again, once, twice, and then they were standing before the elevator and the doors were opening on a scrum of passengers in tennis togs, terrycloth robes, shorts and T-shirts, dinner jackets and cocktail dresses. The Senior Second Officer greeted them with a blooming smile and a cheery “Good evening, folks, enjoying yourselves?” while Salas held the door and shepherded Sten in amongst them. Most of the others were going up and Sten and his escorts made way for them as the elevator stopped at various decks, even as a fresh crew of tennis players, high rollers and shuffleboarders crowded in, and then they were going down, stopping at each floor, until they were belowdecks, in the crew’s quarters, where passengers were not allowed.

Sten had been arrested only once in his life, for a DUI after a wedding for which he’d stood as best man. John Jarvis’ wedding. J.J. They’d been in the Corps together, had seen some hairy and not-so-hairy shit, buddies over there and back here, and when they got home—the very week—J.J. had married his high school heartthrob in some wedding palace down in Carmel. Drinking preceded the ceremony, floated through it on fumes and quick nips from one flask or another, rose in a delirious clamor while the cake was cut and distributed and went on unabated long after the newlyweds had ducked away to do what they were going to do as man and wife in their room at the big hotel in the middle of town. He’d felt a bit hazy as he’d climbed into his VW Bug and started back up the coast, alone and missing Carolee, who was away in London for her semester abroad, but he had the radio—“Radar Love,” cranked high, he remembered that, and “Magic Carpet Ride” too—and he had the window rolled down though he was freezing, making it all the way up 101 and Nineteenth Avenue through the city and Golden Gate Park and back onto the freeway and across the bridge, feeling clearer and soberer by the mile.

That was when the flashing lights appeared in his rearview, a cop rushing up on him so fast he thought at first the problem must have been up ahead of him somewhere, the cop after somebody else in that streaming river of taillights that made the night so cozy and inviting. He was wrong. The cruiser rode up on his tail, but he told himself that didn’t mean anything, not necessarily, because maybe the cop was going to get off at the exit coming up on the right, an emergency there somewhere, an accident, a dog loose on the highway, a motorcyclist down, debris in the passing lane . . . but then the cruiser swung out alongside him and it began to dawn on him that he was in trouble.

What he remembered of that night, aside from the wheezing and muttering of his fellow drunks and the reek of vomit that was so pervasive it seemed to arise from the walls themselves, was the helplessness he’d felt behind bars, locked up, incarcerated, in the
can, no place to turn or even sit, except the floor—not in control, definitely not in control. He’d told the arresting officer he’d been to a wedding, the wedding of one of his service buddies—“You know,” he said, “the Marine Corps? Like I served my country. Like I saw some bad shit and I know I had a couple drinks, just this once, because it was a wedding, okay?”—but it didn’t do any good. He had a flashlight, the cop, and it was right there like a supernova bursting in Sten’s face, in his eyes, hot and probing. Cars hissed by. It was the strangest thing, but for a moment, just that moment, he didn’t seem to know where he was or where the light had come from or why it was punishing him like this. “You know you’re in no condition to drive, don’t you?” the cop said.

Sten just blinked at him. And then, very slowly, he began to nod his head in agreement.

But now he was in a corridor, deep in the underbelly of the ship, one man on his left, the other on his right. They walked along amiably enough, down to the end of the corridor, and then they swung into another corridor and another after that till he had no idea where he was or how to find his way back. He followed their lead, moving along blindly till Salas put a hand on his arm to guide him and they entered a room that smelled of food—of hamburgers, a mountain of hamburgers, fries, onion rings, beer—and he saw the light there, bright as the cop’s flashlight, and the man it illuminated till it seemed as if he were the only three-dimensional thing in the room. Everything else was flattened as if on a screen, tables, chairs, the counter where they must have served up meals to the crew. But the man—a Tico in an oversized T-shirt sitting at one of the Formica tables, his hands cuffed behind his back and his eyes cast down—seemed to leap out at him. He wore a goatee. He was skinny, puny, barely there. He might once have held a knife in his hand.

“Is this the man that attacked you?” Salas indicated the prisoner with a jerk of his head, his voice in official mode now, ripe with accusation and contempt. “Or one of the men?”

Sten saw now that there was another policeman in the room, a guard with a holstered gun leaning against the back wall in the shadow—or relative shadow—of the lamp. He saw too that the lamp, one of those shop lights with a clamp at the base of it, was fixed to the table directly across from the prisoner and arranged so that there was no way for him to escape the glare of it, and if he went outside of himself again to think of the movies, this scene he’d witnessed a hundred times on screens big and small, it was because the movies were his only reference point for what was happening to him. It was as if he’d entered some dream, some fantasyland where there was no sun, no sky, no mud lot or bus or ship, only this. Finally—and he was on his guard now, on his guard all over again—he noticed the square of white cloth smoothed out at the far end of the table. It was a linen napkin, one of the service items on pristine display at each of the ship’s restaurants and lounges, one of countless thousands that must have been washed, dried, folded and set out afresh each day. But this one was different. This one held—presented—three exhibits: a .357 Magnum revolver and two knives, switchblades with mother-of-pearl handles.