Crude Carrier (18 page)

XXIV

Julie pressed in the code to play the office recorder. Maybe something had come in from her dad during the last few hours. Maybe he had called that number instead of her mobile phone. The mechanical voice in Denver said there were three messages and she tapped the pen on the paper pad, waiting for the slow announcements of day and hour and length of message. But the only results were a reminder of the next meeting of the Professional Private Investigators Association, an inquiry about rates for uncovering an ex-spouse's assets, and a recorded sales pitch trying to talk the office recorder into a free trip to Las Vegas.

She stared through the large window at Russell Square and its trees slowly turning black with night. In Denver, autumn would be coming down from the mountains as cold rain. It wouldn't be long before it turned to snow. Here, dusk was made deeper by the glare of headlights in the streets and, among the square's trees, the soft glow of lamps.

Plugging in her laptop, she switched it on and typed the Internet access code and office security number. Opening the mailbox she read the dark print of new messages. Then, scarcely breathing, she printed a hard copy. While the printer hummed, she quickly placed a call to Mack.

XXV

Raiford had chased his man down the ringing steel ladders into the bowels of the ship. But the cramped space of the engine room, its tight corners and snagging pipes, valves, and handles worked against the larger man. The other—smaller, quicker—knew the ship better than Raiford, knew shortcuts through narrow gaps, knew the hatches that led from one compartment to another, knew the quickest way to ferret his way into shadows and hollows made even darker by the leaking steam.

Finally, gasping, soaked with sweat and steam, Raiford gave up. His prey, desperate to keep Raiford's broad hands off his neck, had flitted into shadows at a juncture of catwalks, and Raiford had no idea which way the man went. It wasn't Alfred. Raiford had seen that man's face wide-eyed with sudden fear as he struggled voicelessly to reach across space while he plunged down the ship's side into the boiling ocean.

Raiford climbed the ladders with a weariness that was not of flesh alone. Alfred might be going under for the last time about now. Unless he had been sucked into the ship's screw when he hit the water. That would be better, Raiford told himself. Get it over fast. Maybe mercifully numb from the shock of the fall. Or, better, unconscious. It would be worse to fight back to the surface only to watch the ship's red and green running lights disappear over the narrow horizon, and then to grow aware of the awful isolation of an empty sea at night. To know that this far outside the shipping lanes you would not be saved. To know that the ship would not slow for you. That no matter how hard you struggled to stay afloat, nor how long you managed, it would not be enough. No matter how many times you searched the black sea and pitiless stars for help, you would sink from this living world surrounded by an isolation as awful as death itself.

He stood beside an open door on the Level One deck and stared down the luminous wake to where the man might be still struggling. Just as Rossi had struggled. It could have been Raiford instead of Alfred. Was supposed to be. Raiford had seen enough decent people slain by the hands of the indecent that the loss of Alfred shouldn't bother him. What he should feel was satisfaction that the bastard who tried to kill him received what he intended to give. But there was no satisfaction. Not even a feeling of relief at having escaped. Just a black weariness at the thought of having flung the man into the sea. Maybe because of the way the man could be dying this very second. Maybe Alfred, alone, growing cold and numb, floated on his back and stared at a sky whose blackness would soon thin in the east. Soon Alfred might see the red and yellow streaks of an empty and final dawn. Maybe he was hanging on for that: to die in the light instead of in the dark.

The ship's bell chimed faintly: four strokes of the second watch. The galley crew would begin to turn out and the day's routine would start. They would include Woody who, like all stewards, stood galley duty before turning to the officers' quarters and then moving on to the ship's work. A twelve-, sometimes fourteen-hour day, and—when the ship's operations demanded—a twenty-four-hour day. All for bed, beans, and thirty a month. A man working that hard for that little could be tempted, and Raiford wondered how much Alfred or even Pressler might have paid the steward to lure him into the trap.

Through the portholes of the galley came the clattering sounds of metal pans and glassware. A few men wearing cotton drawers and thong shower sandals, towels and soap in their hands, straggled into and out of the common bathroom. Raiford nodded to one sleepy face that squinted up at him with sleepy surprise.

“Woody's cabin? You know Woody?”

“Ah—” He pointed down the walkway behind him and held up three fingers.

“Three doors down?”

A nod.

He passed the open entry to the crew's bath and toilets with its sounds of running water and occasional echoing Chinese. At the door, he knocked.

Motionless drapes sealed the cabin window. It took four tries, each louder than the last, before the latch rattled and the door opened a crack to show Woody's face. The man's eyes bulged as he gazed up at Raiford.

“Good to see you, too, Woody. I can't tell you how good it is.”

“Mr. Raifah—” He stood like a man staring at a dangerous and threatening animal.

Raiford pushed into the room. The small cubicle was filled with a single bunk mounted above a bureau, a tiny metal sink in one corner, a leaf table and chair on the facing wall. “Why, Woody? Who told you to?”

“Mr. Raifah—”

“I heard you the first time.” He placed the chair in front of the closed door and settled into it, smiling at the slender man who stood flatfooted in his baggy drawers. “Why did you send me to the fantail?”

“Mr.—”

“Yeah, I know. Mr. Raifah. Why, Woody? Who told you to send me there?”

“Chief Steward tells me, sah! Mr. Johnny. He says tell Mr. Raifah to meet Sam on the fantail at two bells of first watch.” The man's bony chest rose and fell with a deep sigh. “Very glad to see you, Mr. Raifah—very happy!” He wagged his head. “Very much afraid.”

“Alfred and somebody else tried to kill me, Woody. Do you know who it was? The man with Alfred?”

The wag turned into emphatic shaking. “No! Chief Steward only tells me to tell you. That's all! Nothing about Alfred—nothing about trying to … to kill you, sah!”

“You didn't know they would try to kill me?”

“No, sah! No, no!”

“But you were afraid.”

Another deep sigh that made his ribs rise like fingers beneath the taut skin. “Yes, sah. Maybe hurt you, sah. First Mate is your enemy, sah. You're a good man—you saved Charley, you helped Sam. But Chief Steward is boss. … Is officers' business, not mine. Chief Steward is boss.”

“Who helps Alfred, Woody? Who does Alfred hang around with?”

“Maybe Yun Hyon—Korean man who works the donkey engine. Maybe Sung Ching. Shandong Province. Sung Ching's not from Taiwan. You find Alfred, yes? Make him tell you.”

“Alfred's dead. Went over the side.”

“Ai.”

“And now you're going to run and tell the chief steward that I'm alive and you know where I am, is that right?”

The man's black eyes showed they understood Raiford's words and what they implied. His mouth, protuberant with crooked and tobacco-stained teeth, tightened. “No!” His narrow shoulders grew wider. “Not tell Chief Steward. Not tell nobody. It's officers' business, not mine!” The black eyes grew wet. “You're a good man, sah. Not go tell on you!”

“It may be officers' business, Woody, but I need help.” Raiford studied the clenched face. “I need the camera that's in my bureau drawer and I need a place to hide until the helicopter comes. Pressler's looking for me right now. He'll have a pistol and he'll sure as hell use it.”

The man nodded. “It's true.”

“The camera and a place to hide. You understand?”

“I understand. You stay here—my cabin. I'll go get the camera.” He began pulling on his coveralls. “You're safe here.”

Raiford shook his head. “Pressler will search every cabin. Where else?”

A blink of eyes as he thought. “The fan room. Many machineries to hide behind. Easy to see Mr. Pressler come.”

The steward led him half running down the companionway to a ladder. They dropped belowdecks and Woody headed aft toward a crowded section of the ship that Raiford had not seen before. Opening a small hatch, Woody went down ill-lit ladders into the tighter confines of the converging plates of the ship's stern. There he opened an even smaller hatch.

Sweating, his breath growing shallow as they descended, Raiford could feel the steel close around him as their heels thudded down the metal stairs from one dimly lit grate to the next. Down and down again, and still farther down into the steam that filled the noisy and cramped belly of the ship.

The glow of Raiford's watch told him it was almost noon when he heard the squeal of a watertight door being opened. The beam of a flashlight swung through the thin steam and dim light of the few bulbs serving the compartment. The fuzzy circle played along the tangle of steel shapes as Raiford tucked himself into the darker shadow of a ship's strut. Then the light swung away as the searcher climbed back up and the rusty hinges squealed shut. Then a long time passed—long enough that he lost track of day or night and only Woody's hasty visits with smuggled food oriented him to time. He slept and waked, dozed again, dropping off into sounder sleep and waked at something—a minor shift in the rpm of the giant propeller shaft that whirred and hummed not two arms' length away in the steam.

When Woody brought the next meal, lunch, he spoke quickly. “They still look for you, Mr. Raifah.” His voice scarcely carried over the deep reverberation of the spinning shaft in its massive sealed bearings. “But you're okay here.”

“Yeah.” Raiford wasn't. The damp bulkheads had crept in on him until it felt as if he either had to break through the stifling walls or run screaming toward the light and openness of the main deck. But he didn't. He willed his mind away from the contracting walls. Sweating in the steam, he reviewed his camera's digital photographs of the
Stormy Petrol
, forced himself to study the
Aurora
's wires and conduits that coursed around the grimy bulkheads and overhead, sought patterns in the patches of rust and mold that disfigured plates and beams. And tried to stay alert, even in sleep, for any sound of feet coming down a ladder.

The next meal—supper—came in another cardboard box, this one labeled Winslow's Frozen Meat. “Cook ask me where I go. I tell him the engineering officer wants food—is working on a boiler and can't come to the saloon. Wants food brought. Cook says okay, but he maybe finds out different soon.”

“The helicopter's due this afternoon, right?”

Woody shrugged. “Nobody says. Must quick go now, Mr. Raifah. I'll come back at noontime.”

Squatting against the ship's trembling skin, Raiford's shoes pushed up a ridge of rust and oily grime from the steel deck. The fan room was never cleaned; there were too many other jobs for the small crew, and this corner of the vessel was left to its decades-old rust and its cockroaches.

By now, Raiford had a half-dozen boxes mashed flat and hidden far under the grated metal housing that covered one of the loudly whirring ventilation fans. Shiny, dark spots fed on the oil and scraps that clung to the cardboard. As he watched the cluster of cockroaches, the distant squeak of an opening hatch cut through the throbbing noise to catch his ear. This time, the flashlight beam did not stop on the landing above but moved steadily down, closer, the shadowy figure behind the glare cautious and pausing to probe the cone of light into the steam. Raiford pulled deeper into the recess between a beam and the curve of hull.

The light kept coming. At the foot of the ladder it searched carefully into angles and shadows. Raiford's only chance was to crawl beneath the glistening, humming shaft of the propeller, to move across the narrow angle of the ship's stern into the dimness of the other side. It would be a tight fit. The steel shaft spun like a roller to snag his clothes and twist his body into a broken pulp.

But the flashlight came closer.

He lay on his back in the greasy dirt and rust and sucked his chest and belly as flat as he could. Pressing under the spinning steel, he felt its warmth and wind against his ear and cheek, felt the top of his head push against the wriggling life drawn by the food-tainted boxes. Inch at a time, forcing out his breath, he pulled with his elbows and shoved with his heels through the grit. Grime dredged into his collar and waist, and he felt spiky, prickly legs begin to feel their way hungrily past his ear and down his neck.

Over the bulge that was his knee, he saw the flashlight probe the corner where he had slept, and he wriggled faster. Hot, oily water dripped from the shaft that whirled just beyond his nose. The beam swung into the starboard recess and played along the bright gleam of the spinning steel. Yanking himself from under the shaft, Raiford lifted himself high off the deck by bracing his arms between a fan housing and the bulkhead. A spray of light swept under the shaft and across the grime of his passage to show the rusty weld of the port side of the ship below his braced and trembling legs. Hanging in the dimness, he watched it quickly swing left and right, then pull back. The gleam moved away. Gingerly, quietly, arms and legs quivering from effort, he lowered himself to the deck and waited, fingers gouging for the scurrying, horny feet that scratched at his chest and armpits.

The flashlight swung along the haze-dimmed catwalk to the port ladder and up and out of sight. A faintly clanging squeal of rusty metal told him that the access door in the bulkhead had been dogged down again. His watch said three forty-five.

Woody waited nervously for the plate and silverware while Raiford ate. He gulped the cold eggs and porridge and washed it down with coffee that, mercifully, was still hot in its Thermos pitcher. He left little for the roaches—let them work for their food like everyone else. “It's four bells of the third watch, right? Nine in the morning?”

“Yes, sah—sorry I come so late—cook keeps his eye on me and I have to come when I can.”

“No problem, Woody. You're doing fine. What's happening topside?”

“Crew's very worried. Cannot find you. Cannot find Alfred. Officers alla time go around with wrinkled faces. Crew's very afraid you die. Think maybe you and Alfred go over the side together. I want to tell them but I do not.”

“Good. Keep it quiet. I have to get up there, Woody. When the helicopter brings Mr. Pierce, I want to make a run for it. Can you get me up to the main deck without being seen?”

The Chinese man thought for a long moment, then smiled. “You come to my quarters, wait there, yes? Then you go on deck through the stack housing when the chopper comes.”

“What if they search the crew's quarters?”