Nantucket Grand (30 page)

The
Grand
was pulling away, churning whitewater from the big twin engines. There was no one visible on deck, no way to stop the ship. I had to jump for it. I slammed through the gate as I made the decision, clattering across the gangway in my heavy shoes. So much for tiptoeing around the deck in your sock-feet. I had the feeling that by the end of the day, scuff marks were going to be the least of Pell's problems, or mine.

I landed the last step and hurled myself over the gap. A horrible moment of suspension caught over the water, and then my chest hit the chrome guard rail and smacked the breath out of my lungs. I flipped over the metal tubing and landed flat on my back on the deck.

Welcome aboard.

I took a second to catch my breath, then scrambled to my feet and eased myself over beside the big sliding glass doors. The wharf slipped farther and farther behind us. I could feel the big engines vibrating smoothly under my feet, a giant cat purring.

I risked a glance inside the doors.

Sue Ann had a gun at Daisy's head, Pell had a girl I'd never seen before in the same position, using her as a shield against Liam, who was pointing a FNP Tactical autoloader in their direction. The detective, Berman, stood off to the side in front of an upright Steinway piano. Liam's hand was shaking. This situation could explode at any second. No more time for skulking around.

I slid open the doors, pulled Haden's gun out of my pants, and stepped inside.

Maybe I'd seen too many movies, but I had the surreal sensation of stepping into the overheated last reel of a Tarantino film. This crazy Mexican standoff was real, and it was my job to defuse it.

“All right everyone,” I said. “Put the guns down.”

“I don't think so, Chief,” Pell said. The girl squirmed under his arm, the gun jabbed up under her chin. “Or I should say…not everyone. Just you and my chief engineer. Take their guns, Mr. Berman.”

“Yeah, sure. What the hell.” He stepped toward me, extended his hand.

Pell said, “Let me clarify the situation, Kennis. You two are armed but neither one of you is willing to kill another human being in cold blood. Your weapons are a bluff, and I'm calling it. You know I'll kill this girl. I was planning to fire her anyway. She can't even do proper hospital corners when she makes a bed. Think of the money I'll save in unemployment payments.”

I gave Berman my gun. I had to keep the situation fluid. My opportunity would come. When he took Phelan's weapon, I turned to Sue Ann.

“Why?”

“He's my boss. It's my job.”

“And you like it.”

She grinned. “Are you kidding? I love it.”

“Especially when Doug Blount takes the fall for everything you do.” I looked back at Pell. “How does that work, anyway?”

Pell shrugged. “Doug owes me everything. I made sure he got the life insurance payout after his wife died. I'm putting his boy through school—Hotchkiss—at the moment. Some Ivy League school later. I'll make sure of it. I'm the boy's new father now. Just as well, Doug was never really happy out of jail. Did you see the way he lived at the LoGran cottage? He managed to turn it into monk's cell…or a lifer's. Doug is my creature, leave it at that.”

Daisy looked terrified. Phelan was unreadable. I expected to see fear and despair on his face. I saw nothing but tension and resolve.

“Here's what's going to happen,” Pell continued. “Daisy here is going to have an unfortunate accident…a bit too much to drink, bad habits reasserting themselves, and then she's going to fall overboard, the old Natalie Wood trick. Tragic. Even worse, the heroic police chief is going to die trying to save her. On the off-chance that your bodies might turn up we're going to waterboard you before we throw you overboard. Well, perhaps that's somewhat inaccurate. Waterboarding only simulates drowning. But you get the idea. And don't worry, we use only good clean Atlantic brine. We wouldn't want a coroner to find fresh water in your lungs! As for Phelan here—alas, he went postal…or should I say ‘aquatic'? Too many lonely weeks at sea. He always was unstable. Then his daughter's death pushed him over the edge. Terrible business. Very traumatic. But I'll recover, don't worry. I'm quite resilient. And I have a mission to pursue. I have a dream.”

“And what is that?” I said. “What was worth killing Oscar Graham and Andrew Thayer and Todd Macy for?”

“And you two. Don't forget you two! You're as good as dead already.”

“So why? It can't only be about scoring some big real estate deal.”

“The biggest real estate deal, Kennis. But no, you're right. It's a vision, my vision. It started with this ship. The
Nantucket Grand
. That's where the epiphany struck me. Nantucket is a ship, too. A giant ship, permanently anchored, thirty miles out at sea. Do you understand?”

I stared at him. “No.”

“Of course not. You're nothing but a pedestrian little bureaucrat.”

“So enlighten me.”

“We're taking back this island, Kennis.”

“Taking it back? To what?”

“Not to what. From who.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Blue Heron is just the beginning. This island is going to become what it was always meant to be—a haven for the leaders, the job creators, the true royalty of the capitalist world.”

“The one percent.”

“The one-tenth of one percent. The people who make this world function. The drivers, the makers, the masters.”

“The Pharaohs.”

“But the Pharaohs were parasites.”

“Exactly.”

“I'm not going to argue political science and macro-economics with a local cop. I suppose you think it's the eight-fifty-an-hour worker bees who make the world go round.”

“At least they pay their taxes. Unlike General Electric. And LoGran Corporation.”

“America achieved its greatness in the era before income tax. And not just in business. Have you ever taken a trip to the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boson? Lovely place. The art in that extraordinary building constitutes
her private collection
. She could never have accumulated such a spectacular array of art in the age of income tax.”

I didn't want to get sucked into his laissez-faire philosophy. “None of this matters,” I said. “Your plan is impossible. It could never work.”

“It's already working! We're well underway. That's the real work we're doing at ProACKtive.”

“What about your slogan? ‘New People, New Money, New Spirit'?”

“You have quite a memory.”

“Well?”

“That's just for the rubes, Chief. ‘This way to the egress,' as P.T. Barnum would say.”

“There's a sucker born every minute.”

“Exactly. They thought they were going to see the eagle and they wound up outside the tent.”

“And that's where you want everyone else. Outside the tent.”

“Well put. The governor's commission has put together the necessary eminent domain takings, and a majority of your Selectmen are ready to sign off on them. We'll be clearing out every ugly patch of commerce and squalor—the ‘mid-island' merchants, the developments at Friendship Lane and Essex Road, the hideous public housing off Miacomet Avenue. In ten years they'll be moorlands again. We're coordinating that with sweeps by the INS—comprehensive raids that will clear every non-documented worker off the island. We'll rake them up and bag them like autumn leaves.”

“And who'll do all the work in your Capitalist utopia?”

“Every homeowner will handle his own staffing needs.”

So that was what Franny had been talking about. This stuff was coming from the highest levels of government. Pell must have extraordinary connections. But why wouldn't he? They all knew each other. The world of real power was a small one, much smaller than Nantucket. He didn't have to “buy” the politicians. They were all members of the same tiny community, all dining together at the Yacht Club, dividing up the world over drinks and raw oysters.

“What about the regular homeowners?” I said. “Middle-class people, upper-middle-class people? How are you going to get rid of them?”

“We're buying them out, Kennis. Most of them are dying to cash in on their property here, anyway. They've been fleeing in droves for years, taking their big house sale money and buying land in North Carolina and Vermont. Half the native Vermonters come from Nantucket by now!”

“And the ones who don't want to sell?”

“We can exert pressure on them.”

“Like the pressure you exerted on Andrew Thayer?”

“Well, not quite so extreme, I would hope. Most people get the message.”

“Then what happens to all those empty houses?”

“That's the best part! We buy them at market value, but once phase one of the Blue Heron project is complete, we resell those homes at an unimaginable profit to the richest individuals in the world. This island will become, over the next decade the most exclusive, elite, desirable community on the planet. Some will buy just to shelter their money. Others will come for the unparalleled privacy and the company of their equals. Price no object.”

“And you'll make hundreds of millions of dollars.”

“I refuse to audit the value of paradise, Chief Kennis. But, yes, Blue Heron stands to make a substantial sum of money in the next few years. A very substantial sum of money.”

I allowed myself a disgusted grunt. “And the hilarious part is—when you build this gigantic gated subdivision—call it what it is, Pell—when you build it and create your perfect Utopian community, you'll be ruining the island! The beauty of this place is your best selling point, those moors are the heart of Nantucket, and you're going to destroy them, like a little kid smashing his favorite toy. Because smashing things is the real fun for people like you.”

“Bravo, Chief Kennis. Bravo. But I have no intention of ‘destroying' this island, as you put it. The acres in question are nothing but bogs and shrubs and scrub pine.”

“They're moorland! They're thistle and heather and high bush blueberries and wild grapes—those moors are unique. They're a bird habitat and—”

“They're a tick habitat, Chief. Another nuisance we will be eliminating. Along with the poison ivy.”

“Good luck with that. And what happens when someone blows a fuse or their toilet backs up?”

“We've considered those eventualities. Some of the tradespeople will stay on—the crew, as it were. Every ship needs a crackerjack crew. Isn't that right, Mr. Phelan?”

“Fuck you.”

“I'll take that as a yes. The electricians and plumbers will have their own separate little community, Chief—their own quarters. Everyone else we'll fly in, as necessary. The school will become a private academy for those who wish to live here year round and raise their children on-island. The hospital expansion plans will be scrapped, of course. The current facility is sufficient for a small, elite population. We'll upgrade all the equipment, naturally. Only the best, Kennis, only the best. The finest stores and restaurants will remain, we'll make sure the staff housing is luxurious but…inconspicuous. The rest of the business clutter? We'll turn it into…museums, reading rooms. We'll tear some of the uglier buildings down for vest-pocket parks, Bocce courts, croquet lawns. It's a long-term project. But the goal is nothing less than Arcadia.”

I thought back to the ProACKtive fundraiser, the night we found Oscar Graham's body in the salt marsh, the innocent boy this creature had killed for convenience. I had been so impressed with Pell's charisma! Well, this was the flip side of it—a raging narcissism that had sucked him to the edge of madness.

“You're insane.”

“Am I?”

“You'll never get any of this past Town Meeting.”

“Town Meeting? Really? That's your answer? First of all, hardly anyone even bothers to attend Town Meeting anymore. What did Oscar Wilde say about democracy? It will never survive—it takes up too many evenings.”

“You'll get a quorum on this one, believe me.”

“It doesn't matter. Eminent domain is not adjudicated by Town Meeting. The voters have nothing to say about it. And individual home sales are a private matter. Everything is poised to begin, Kennis. Blue Heron is fully subscribed, and when the last deed is registered, phase two will begin: the next round of sales, the INS action, the eminent domain takings. All we have to do is sign our deal with the Land Bank. And that happens…let me see…twenty hours from now. Set your watch.”

I studied him, smug and comfortable with a gun pushing into a young girl's jaw. “You're like some absurd James Bond villain, planning to take over the world. All you need is a Siamese cat in your lap.”

“You misunderstand me, Chief. I have no interest in taking over the world. Just my little corner of it.”

“But it's not yours.”

“Not yet.”

“And if someone gets in the way, they die.”

“Preston Lomax used to say I was reckless. A liability because of my…impulsive nature. I remember once he yelled at me—‘Do you plan an accident? Do you? Do you plan an accident?' I took his words to heart, Kennis. I've been planning my accidents ever since.”

“Here's one you missed,” Phelan said quietly. Then he shouted, “Now!”

Chapter Thirty-four

Fifteen Fathoms

A torrent of events—the bo'sun who had ushered me onto the boat last time leapt out of the shadows that led to the galley and wrenched Pell's gun hand away from the girl's jaw. The gun went off with a deafening bang and punched a hole in the ceiling. At the same moment, Daisy reared her head back and hammered Sue Ann's nose with her skull. The compact little assassin reeled backward as the bo'sun punched awkwardly at Pell's face, hitting his neck and shoulders. Pell tried a counter punch but the movement opened him up and the bo'sun landed a solid blow to his solar plexus.

Pell went down to his knees, the girl fled into the depths of the ship and Daisy hurled herself at her stepfather.

It all happened in less than five seconds.

I grabbed Daisy before she could pounce, and when I looked up, the situation was upside down. Phelan had his gun digging into Sue Ann's neck, the mirror image of a moment before.

Pell shouted to Berman, “Louis, you've got the cop's gun! And your Beretta! You have the angle on Phelan. Take him out!”

Berman shrugged. “I don't think so. This ain't my fight. And I haven't been paid in three weeks. For the record.”

“Typical,” I muttered, struggling to keep Daisy under control.

Gasping for breath, Pell still managed to croak out a laugh. “That's profiling on Nantucket,” he said. “Rich guys are all cheap bastards.”

“You want to buy your loyalty—without paying for it,” Phelan said. “That was your first mistake, you worthless slab of shite. You thought your crew was on your side. Wrong. They hate you! They wanted to break out the Perrier Jouet when they heard the plan.”

“The plan?” Pell looked nervous for the first time. “What plan?”

Phelan turned to me, shifting Sue Ann as his human shield. “Here's the thing, Chief—step back! I'll kill her and you know I will. Then I'd bring her back to life if I could, just to fucking kill her again! So listen…LoGran isn't doing so well these days. Lots of bad investments, lots of gambles that didn't pay off.”

David Trezize was right again, I thought.

Liam kept talking. “The only way they could raise the money for the big Land Bank deal was leveraging this ship. You're standing in the collateral, Chief. Without it, they can't buy the Land Bank property, and without the Land Bank property, Blue Heron can't close with its subscribers. Without that core group to secure the deal going forward, there's no eminent domain action, no INS raids, no ancillary house sales. It's just one deluded sociopath's wet-dream. It's nothing.”

“Don't do this, Phelan,” Pell croaked. “You do this, your life is over.”

He ignored his boss, still talking to me. “My life is over already. I had a dream ten years ago, when Jilly was six—most vivid dream of my life. She was playing near an open elevator door, and I knew she was in danger and I tried to call out but I couldn't make a sound. She was dancing around, closer and closer to the edge. I started running, but it was like wading against a cross rip. I was almost close enough to reach when she fell. Do you know what I did then?”

A chill washed over me. I'd had this same dream, or close enough. Maybe all fathers had. “You jumped in after her.”

“That's right, Chief. I figured I could get below her and cushion her fall. I might die but if she died I didn't want to go on living anyway. Of course I woke up before we landed. But then it really happened. Jilly's dead and the dream came true. Only I couldn't even jump.”

He faced Pell again. “So don't think for a second I give a shite for the consequences of my actions at this moment, Mr. Jonathan Pell.”

We could all feel the engines strike a deeper note.

“Where are we going?” Pell shouted. “Where are you taking us?”

“Just under five nautical miles from shore, off Tom Nevers Head. A little north of Old Man Shoal. A lot of ships have run aground there over the years, but that's not going to happen to the
Nantucket Grand
. You can salvage a boat that's run aground. Now, a little ways north of the shoal it's a whole different story. The water is fifteen fathoms deep there—that's ninety feet, for you landlubbers. This vessel is going all the way to the bottom. And your precious deal is going down with it.”

“No!”

Pell lunged up and the bo'sun clobbered him, knocking him flat on his face on the polished ash wood deck.

I stared at Phelan. “You're going to sink this boat? Is that even possible?”

“Don't make me laugh, Chief Kennis. It's easy.” He addressed the bo'sun: “Get Daniels to launch the tenders, get the crew aboard. Hand luggage only.” He pointed at Pete. “If this rat moves, knock him out. He's going down with the ship.”

The bo'sun nodded. “Got it.”

Phelan glanced over at me. “Come with me. Bring the girl.”

The rage and even the energy had drained out of Daisy. Phelan held her responsible for his daughter's death, and she knew it. She had recruited Jill in the first place. She must have assumed Phelan was going to kill both her and Sue Ann, and the posture of resigned, exhausted dread telegraphed that she thought she deserved it. She was finished, no matter what happened. She didn't have a chance and she'd never had a chance, lost from the moment her mother met Pell and checked out his Tom Ford suit and his Franck Muller wristwatch and started planning a brighter future.

This was where that future ended up.

Phelan led us out to the stern deck, into the sharp salty wind, and down the metal stairs to the engine room doors. The south shore of Nantucket had shrunk to a low green ridge on the horizon, off the starboard side. The big ship moved steadily through calm seas. I saw a couple of sailboats, the speck of a kite surfer, a brief raucous swarm of sea gulls, but no other big ships—no Coast Guard cutter.

“I killed all the electronics, Chief,” Phelan said, reading my mind—or noticing my desperate scan of the water around us. “We're dark. No one can track the ship now.”

I had to give Phelan credit—he had thought this one through: picked and manipulated a plausible accomplice at the police station, organized his crew, mapped out his destination. He clutched Sue Ann in a brutal half nelson. She grunted in pain with every step, but said nothing. I could see her mind moving, turning over the elements of the situation, recalibrating her options, looking for an opening.

Phelan led us into the heat and buzz of the engine room, past the bank of blacked-out electronics, and between the two giant engines, the pistons of some immense machine lying side by side. Thick white pipes, maybe two feet in diameter, rose from the deck beside each engine, capped with clamped metal lids and smaller pipes connected to the turbines.

Phelan walked Sue Ann to the far end of the cramped little chamber and stood between the engines. “See these, Chief? The engines are cooled with sea water, and these are the filters—there's a lot of particulate junk in the cleanest sea water—algae, plankton, kelp, you name it. We have to shut the engines down to clean the filters. If we opened these seals while the engines were running…all that water would flood the engine room and then the rest of the lower deck compartments at a rate of a hundred gallons a minute. That would be catastrophic.”

He released Sue Ann and pushed her at us. She stumbled across the floor, lurching into Daisy. The impact woke Daisy up and Phelan laughed. “You can keep those two wildcats off of each other. I have real work to do.”

“Liam—”

“Don't bother, Chief. This is my world. You're just a passenger.”

He opened the hatches one-handed, waving the gun at us. There was no way he couldn't get a shot off if any of us moved, and he was right—I had my arms full keeping Daisy off her nemesis. In a few seconds we had more important things to worry about—the sudden geyser and then the churn of water from the two pipes, and sloshing and swirling over the floor, sluicing into our shoes, dense and icy. The shock of cold ocean at our ankles brought every other action to a halt.

“You'd best find your way out of here,” Phelan said. “This end of the ship goes down first. And don't even think about closing these hatches. Ten people couldn't do it. There's no going back now.”

The water surged around my knees. It was survival time and we all knew it. We started wading back toward the door. Phelan was right behind us. And somewhere above us, Pell lay unconscious on the main cabin. I pulled myself out of the engine room and up the exterior stairs. The ship was tilting to vertical already, poised above that ninety-foot gulf of water beside Old Man Shoal. I could hear things sliding inside—chairs and lamps, a crash as the upright piano hit the cabin wall.

My job now was to save Pell. Whatever Liam's plan, the man was going to stand trial for what he'd done. Whatever his crimes, that was a fundamental right as a citizen of this country. It wasn't Liam's job or my job or Daisy's job to determine his guilt or innocence. That was up to a jury of his peers, after a fair hearing in a court of law. But he would never get there unless I could drag him off this boat. As for Daisy and Sue Ann, I had to hope that the immediate need to get away from the
Nantucket Grand
and the suction field it created as it sank would trump their schemes and grudges. If they didn't drown, the law would determine their futures. Pell was my job now.

I hauled myself into the main cabin, past a coffee table that had shattered the glass door. Pell was groggy but conscious. A couch scraped past me and I heard another impact. In a few seconds I'd be slipping backward, too. I clambered up to Pell on all fours, sat him up and dug my shoulder into his stomach. He groaned but didn't struggle as I wrestled him into modified fireman's carry. Could we exit by the canopied deck on the bow? The glass doors behind us were hopelessly blocked by a jumble of furniture.

The end tables were bolted into the floor. I used them as handholds to reach the far doors as the ship continued to tip. The opening had become a hatch, bombarded by redwood deck chairs that shattered the glass and tumbled through the opening to land with the rest of the furniture at the stern. The attached tables probably saved both our lives. I swung from the support leg of one table to the next.

As I reached up to grab the edge of the table, Pell regained full consciousness. After a second of disorientation and panic he grasped the situation. I could feel my shoulder start to separate as he scrambled over my head and used my shoulders for a foothold to stand upright, teetering on the blade of the table edge, reaching for the metal door frame, pulling himself up and out.

I followed him, managed to stand on the same thin ridge of mahogany and jump for the metal frame. I caught it and dangled for a few seconds thirty feet over the rear wall of the cabin, with its jagged clutter of smashed furniture. I wrestled myself up and onto the intact sheet of glass beside me. Pell had already reached the end of the window wall. He jumped the gap to the railing, spun around it in a grotesque pole dance, and vanished over the side.

I was on my feet as he made the leap, and I could feel the heavy tinted glass of the window wall shivering ominously under my feet. If it broke I was a dead man. But it held my weight and I plunged after Pell, grabbing the slick wet rail and pivoting myself around it to fall beside the massive white hulk of the sinking ship.

The frigid ocean closed around me and paralyzed my lungs for a second; my shirt, pants, and shoes turned into ballast, weighing me down, tangling me up. The thought of pulling my shirt over my head hit me with a vivid stab of physical memory, the claustrophobic panic I had felt during lifesaving practice when my shirt got stuck halfway off, the fabric blocking my nose and mouth, pressing down on my head. Forget it—pull some oxygen into your lungs! I thrashed my way to the surface and took a deep gulp of fresh air.

I looked around. Pell was five feet away, choking and flailing, going under. Was it possible he didn't know how to swim? Maybe he was too disoriented to function properly. I could feel the tug of the subsiding boat, a vertical riptide pulling me under. We had to get clear and we had to do it fast. I stroked over to him, weighed down by my clothes, and got my arm around his chest.

After a brief struggle, Pell gave up and I sidestroked him away from the surreal overwhelming vision of the vertical mega-yacht, still more than a hundred feet of it above water, a blinding white fiberglass slab the height of the Unitarian Church from the sidewalk to the steeple, slipping into the roiling maw of frothing water that was swallowing it whole.

The ocean's throat was deep but not deep enough to wholly submerge the
Nantucket Grand
. It shuddered as it struck the bottom, then gradually, majestically, tipped over and fell in slow motion, slapping the surface with a dull thunder, shoving out a bulge of water with the impact.

The slap of the wave tumbled us under for a second or two, but I got us to the surface again in time to see the whole opulent length of the giant ship slowly sinking into the water until there was nothing visible but the radar towers. Finally they were gone, too. There was nothing to show the ship had ever been there but the field of churning foam that marked its descent.

I thought of a telephone pole struck by lightning when I was a kid. It happened on a road in rural Vermont, a flash summer downpour. The pole had tipped over the same way, with the same eerie sense of deliberation, and crashed across the black strip of asphalt, pulling the wires with it in a tangle of sparks and disconnection—severed links and broken conversations, tarred wood across the blacktop, phone lines coiling like snakes in the flood. I remember staring at the new chaos, awestruck even at ten years old by the fragility of the complex modern world I had taken for granted.

The
Nantucket Grand
had pulled down much more than itself. Pell's grand scheme, his distorted, disassociated vision of Nantucket's future, the very survival of his teetering company, had all of it capsized with his grandiose yacht. And floating there in the frigid ocean I felt a pulse of animal ecstasy, a rude angry joy to see this man so utterly defeated. I jacked a fist into the air with a shout of triumph.