Choke (33 page)

“What happened yesterday?” Chuck asked.

Tommy explained it to him. “And she did a real good job, too.”

“I’m sorry to hear it,” Chuck said. “Would anybody like to join me in some breakfast?”

“Sold,” Daryl said.

“Meg, may we impose on you?” Chuck asked.

“I’m not scrambling any eggs or frying any bacon while we’re under way,” she replied. “But we’ve got some pastries.”

“Sold,” Chuck replied.

It was nearly mid afternoon now, and they were still keeping pace with the little cruiser. They had slowed down to fifteen knots.

“She’s changing course,” Chuck said. “This doesn’t make any sense at all. On her present heading she’ll fetch up in South America in about a week, if she doesn’t fetch up on the reef any minute.”

“Wait a minute, she’s changing course again,” Tommy said. “Chuck, hold your original course; I think the lady is making a U-turn.”

Daryl laughed. “She’s good at that.”

“She’s making an end run around the reef; it must lie deeper out here.”

They all watched as, slowly, the little boat came around to something like a reciprocal of her original course.

“Now she’ll pass off our left beam at about the distance we’ve been following her,” Chuck said.

“Hold your course,” Tommy said again. “She may be doing this to see if we follow.”

“Whatever you say,” Chuck replied. “Hey, she’s slowing down, too.”

“Hold your speed.” Tommy took the binoculars and focused on the little boat. “Still can’t see anybody, just the boat,” he said.

An hour later, the boat was no more than a speck on their quarter.

“Now,” Tommy said, “come around and run toward her, but keep this distance; let your speed match hers.”

“Aye aye, sir,” Chuck said.

Tommy squinted into the distance. “Chuck, if she keeps her present heading, where would she end up?”

“Daryl, will you take the wheel?” Chuck asked. When the young detective was comfortable, Chuck got out a chart. “Look,” he said to Tommy, pointing, “we’ve been running in a west by southwest direction all day. Now she’s come onto a course that’s east by southeast. On this heading the first land she’d see would be Key West way to her left, but if she kept on heading this way, she’d fetch up in the Turks and Caicos, and that’s not even on the chart.”

“Then what the hell is she doing?” Tommy asked.

“I don’t know, but we’ve got kind of an advantage now. The sun is at our backs, and if she looks aft, it’s unlikely she could pick us out.” He looked at his watch. “It’s going to start to get dark in an hour or so. Wherever we’re going, it looks as though we’re not going to get there in daylight.”

“Reef ahead!” Daryl shouted.

“Daryl,” Chuck yelled back, “slow down to two knots and watch my hand signals!” Chuck ran forward onto the foredeck and looked ahead. The reef wasn’t as far submerged as he thought, and the sun was getting low in the sky, so the visibility from above was not great. The little cruiser, no doubt, drew less water than
Choke,
too. “Right!” he yelled at Daryl, signaling frantically, and a big coral head nearly scraped the port side. “Come left to here,” he yelled, pointing. “Now this way.” He held his breath; if they ripped the bottom out of the boat way out here, with no radio, they stood little chance of a rescue anytime soon. Then, suddenly, they were through and the water was deepening. Chuck ran back to the cockpit, took the helm from Daryl, and pushed the throttles forward until they were making ten knots. “Good job,” he said to the young detective.

“How’s our fuel?” Tommy asked.

Chuck looked at the gauges. “We’ve still got more than half tanks, and at this speed we’re running very efficiently.” He turned back to the chart, and his eyes widened slightly. “Tommy …”

Tommy turned and looked at him. “What’s the matter, Chuck?”

“I think I know where Clare is going,” he said.

T
ommy looked at the chart. “Okay, I give up, where’s she going?”

“The wreck,” Chuck said. “The one where Harry died.” He circled a part of the chart with his finger. “It’s around there somewhere, outside the reef. Clare didn’t want to be seen turning west through the Sand Key cut, so she went way out to the west, then across the reef, and now she’s heading back.”

“If you don’t know exactly where the wreck is, how could Clare?” Tommy asked.

“GPS. Global Positioning System.” He pointed at the instrument above the steering wheel. “It’s giving us a constant readout of latitude and longitude, to the nearest tenth of a minute.”

“Satellite navigation?”

“Right. These days, you can buy a little box for a thousand dollars that would put you right on top of the wreck, give or take ten yards. If Clare has the coordinates it won’t take any talent to fetch up there.”

“But why would she go back to the wreck?”

Chuck shrugged. “Who knows? I guess it has the advantage of being an isolated point where she could meet somebody. I can’t think of any other reason.”

Tommy looked out over the water. “She’s gone,” he said.

Chuck grabbed the binoculars and swept the horizon. “Shit! And it’s going to be dark in half an hour.”

“Her running lights will make it easier to see her,” Daryl said.

“She won’t turn on any lights,” Tommy replied, “not if she’s smart, and she’s pretty goddamned smart.”

“We’ll just have to hold this heading and hope she doesn’t change hers,” Chuck said. “Chances are she won’t. The reef is unpassable now, with no light to speak of, so she can’t turn north, and if she turns south there’s only Cuba.”

“I’d give a lot right now to know what she’s doing,” Tommy said.

The sun dropped into the sea, and darkness came quickly.

“No lights,” Tommy said. “If we come up on her, I don’t want her to see us first.”

Meg made sandwiches and passed out soft drinks, and they ate quietly while the boat chugged on, now making only eight knots.

“Tommy,” Chuck said softly, “what are we going to do if we catch up to her? Arrest her?”

“I don’t have a charge,” Tommy said, “but I could take her in for questioning, I guess.”

“We’re well outside the twelve-mile limit; you don’t have jurisdiction, do you?”

“We’ll call it a hot pursuit,” Tommy replied.

Chuck pulled the engines back to idle and switched off the ignition.

“What?” Tommy asked.

Chuck pointed ahead at the light. “It just came on,” he said.

“How far?”

“Hard to judge distance at night, but the horizon’s only two, three miles away, so she’s closer than that; maybe only a mile, mile and a half.”

“Why did you cut your engines?”

“There’s no wind, and sound carries great distances over water.” Chuck put the binoculars to his eyes. “Can’t make out a shape, what with no moon. There’s just the light.”

“Listen,” Tommy said. “Do you hear it?”

Chuck stuck his head outside the windshield. “Music.”

“Latin,” Daryl said.

“Maybe they’re dancing,” Tommy replied. “Would a boat the size of Clare’s have music?”

“Sure,” Chuck said. “She could have a car radio and some speakers, that’s all you need.”

“What do we do now?” Daryl asked. “We’re dead in the water, and we can’t sneak up on them; they’ll hear the engines.”

Chuck looked up at the GPS, glowing in the dark. “We’re doing eight-tenths of a knot over the bottom,” he said. “We’ve got a little current under us, and we’re headed in the general direction of the light. If she’s anchored, and she appears to be, we’ll drift down on her.”

“How do we know it’s Clare?” Daryl asked.

“We don’t,” Tommy replied, “but right now, the light is all we’ve got. Let’s find out who it is.”

Slowly, inexorably,
Choke
drifted downstream toward the light. Chuck raised the binoculars every ten or fifteen seconds, trying to make out the shape of the vessel.

“Listen,” Tommy whispered. “They’re talking.”

Chuck listened, and he heard laughter. “Sounds like a woman and a man.”

“Keep your voices down,” Tommy whispered to everybody. “No unnecessary talking; if we can hear them, they can hear us.”

Chuck stood on the pilot’s seat, his head above the windshield, and pressed the binoculars to his eyes, then climbed down. “It’s bigger than Clare’s boat,” he said. “Certainly forty feet, maybe bigger.”

“Any sign of the little cruiser?” Tommy asked.

“No.”

“I think we’ve wasted a hell of a lot of time with all this drifting.”

“Maybe not,” Chuck said. “She’s lying across the current, beam on to us; the little boat could be tied up to her other side.”

Tommy climbed up on the seat and took the binoculars, then got down again. “I think there are at least two people in there—it’s hard to tell, because the windows are fogged up—and I think it’s bigger than forty feet.”

Chuck nodded. “Could be. What’s the plan, Tommy? We’re going to be on top of them in a few minutes.”

Tommy motioned everybody to gather around him, then he whispered, “All right, first of all, nobody makes any noise of any kind. It looks like we’re going to drift down on this other boat, and when we do, Daryl and I are going to board her, as quietly as we can. Chuck, I want you to stay here with Meg and be ready to start the engines at a moment’s notice. Who knows, we may have to get out of here in a hurry.”

Then they heard the sound of an engine.

“Have they started up?” Tommy asked.

“Sounds like a generator to me,” Chuck replied. “Not low enough for the main engines.”

“Good, that’ll help cover any noise we make.”

They were a hundred yards out from the big boat now, and Chuck tried to see through her windows, but they were misty. He could only see shapes moving inside and hear the music.

“Look,” Tommy said, “there’s a boarding ladder on her quarter, see it?”

“Yes,” Chuck replied. “We’re drifting sideways, so let’s all four man the port side and fend off, make sure we don’t make a big bump when we’re alongside. Then we can hand the boat in position for you and Daryl to use the ladder. Move very slowly, because a man’s weight can noticeably rock a boat even as big as this one.” He slapped his forehead. “I’ve got an idea.”

“What?”

Chuck went to an aft locker and retrieved a bucket with a thirty-foot line tied to the handle. “I’ll try and cushion the blow,” he said. He went to the starboard side of
Choke
and slowly lowered the bucket into the water, allowing it to fill, then played out the line. “Okay, we’ve got brakes of a sort now,” he whispered. “You three get ready to fend off.”

They were forty feet from the big motor yacht, then thirty. Chuck began to slowly haul in the bucket, which was now acting as a sea anchor. Just as he had his hand on the handle, three pairs of outstretched hands made contact with the white hull of the motor yacht, and
Choke
came to rest alongside her starboard bow without a sound. Chuck joined them, and gently they handed their boat along the bigger yacht’s topsides, making sure the two hulls did not touch. When
Choke’s
stern was next to the ladder they stopped.

The music was quite loud now, but there were no longer any voices to be heard. Tommy stepped lightly back into
Choke
’s cockpit, retrieved Chuck’s shotgun, and went back to the ladder. Silently he laid the shotgun on the deck of the larger yacht, put a foot on the bottom rung of the boarding ladder, and started up, followed by Daryl.

Tommy got a leg over the side and hauled himself into the cockpit. He could see two figures in the saloon through the misted glass doors. Daryl came on board and brought the shotgun into the cockpit with him. Tommy leaned close to him and whispered, “I don’t think you’ll need the shotgun; there are only two of them.”

Daryl quietly laid the shotgun on a cockpit cushion and drew his pistol.

Tommy drew his own pistol and motioned to Daryl to follow. He tiptoed to the sliding saloon doors, pushed them back, and stepped into the main saloon, his pistol out in front of him. A man and a woman stood in the middle of the cabin, locked in an embrace.

“Good evening,” Tommy said, and as the two turned to face him, his mouth dropped open. “Well, look at this, Daryl,” he said, “look who we got here.”

T
ommy was grinning from ear to ear. “Hello, Clare,” he said. “Hello, Victor.” The two let each other go.

“Well, I’ll be goddamned,” Daryl said. “Victor is the schmuck?”

“Victor’s the biggest schmuck you ever saw,” Tommy said. “Tell Chuck and Meg they can come aboard.”

Daryl stepped into the cockpit. “Chuck, Meg, come aboard! You’re not going to believe it!”

A moment later Chuck and Meg came into the saloon. “Jesus, Victor,” Chuck said, “what the hell are you doing here?”

Victor looked unhappy. “Just making my way in the world, pal.”

“So now all is revealed,” Tommy said. “In a blinding flash of light.”

“Wait a minute, Tommy,” Chuck said. “Will you please tell me what’s going on here?”

“What’s going on is that all along, Victor has been helping Clare do her dirty work. In fact, he’s probably been doing it for her.”

“Victor killed Harry?”

“That’s right, with more than a little assistance from Clare. He also knifed a man named Barry Carman—I don’t believe you knew him—up near Miami. And he killed poor old Merk.”

Chuck stared at Tommy. “Merk’s dead?”

“That’s right. Victor snuck off your boat a few nights ago, met Merk, slugged him, then drove him out to the reef and dumped him to drown. Nice guy, huh?”

Victor said nothing.

Chuck turned to face his new partner. “Victor, why?”

“For Clare,” Tommy explained. “He did it all for Clare—and Harry’s ill-gotten money, of course.”

Victor shrugged. “I’m getting old,” he said. “So are you, Chuck, for that matter, but unlike you, I didn’t want to end my days teaching tennis in the hot sun.”

“No,” Tommy said, “Victor had other ideas about how to spend his days in the sun. Daryl, you pat Victor down real good and sit him down on that sofa over there, and if he gets desperate, you put a couple of rounds in him, and don’t shoot to wound. Victor’s a big, strong guy, and the Marines taught him a lot.” There was no need to frisk Clare; she was wearing only one of her tiny bikinis.