North of Boston (27 page)

Hall sighs. He asks if I would like to tell him exactly how much the Navy knows about Bob Jaeger and Ocean Catch.

I can't speak. Won't. Silence is all I'm capable of now.

Hall asks his minions to find something with which to wipe the blood from my face. This creates some confusion. They're patting their pockets, shaking their heads. Brock offers to take off his T-shirt, but you can tell he'd rather not. Finally, the smarter one volunteers to get a towel out of the bathroom. It's ironic. I put the towels there myself this morning. At least I know they're clean. There is utter silence in the room until he returns.

“I brought two,” he says, demonstrating thoroughness.

“Thank you, Dennis,” Hall replies.

Hall gives the order, and Dennis, frowning in concentration, begins to dab my face. He has coarse black eyebrows and bad breath. Every time he touches my face it hurts.

“Get around her eyes,” Hall says.

Dennis smears the towel back and forth across my left eye, then my right. He leans back to assess his progress. It must not be great because he starts in with the towel again. Hall tells him that's enough.

“I have something to show you, Ms. Kasparov,” Hall says. “I want to be sure you see it clearly. It has many implications, which I'm sure you'll grasp. A woman as bright as you doesn't need things to be spelled out.”

He motions to Troy, who brings the laptop over and opens it on the desk with the screen facing me. Troy clicks to an archived video.

Sunlight is glimmering through branches of elm and oak. Thomasina and Noah are walking to school. Noah has his backpack on; Thomasina's hair is loose and shiny, freshly washed. They're on a sidewalk; the street's not busy. It's one of the well-kept residential neighborhoods near Thomasina's apartment. The camera is following from a distance of about thirty feet.

The scene shifts. Noah is standing on a busy corner outside the school in a group of children, all wearing backpacks. It's afternoon. He looks tired. There's noise from children and cars. A crossing guard stops the traffic and directs the children to cross. Most of them proceed blithely. Noah hesitates, checks left, then right, then left. In case the crossing guard got it wrong and a renegade driver is bearing down. Noah knows better than to rely completely on the judgment of adults.

In the next scene he's walking alone through the same residential neighborhood. The camera is following closely, too closely. Noah doesn't even turn around. I'm stricken with panic. I take a few deep breaths.

“Do you want to talk now?” Hall asks.

“I don't know. You've given me a lot to think about.”

“It is a lot, isn't it?”

“I need to know that he's safely at home with his mother. I won't talk until you prove that to me.”

“That the child is safe for now is something you will have to take on faith.”

“I'd be a fool to take anything you say on faith. I need some kind of proof and a guarantee that he won't be hurt. Then I'll tell you everything. And if I find out you lied to me, or if a hair on his head is ever touched by you or anyone you know, I'll hunt you down and kill you in cold blood. I promise you that.”

Hall stands up, a thin post of bone and sagging muscle. “You don't make the deals here, Ms. Kasparov. You'll either talk to me now or later tonight, after you've had some time to think about it. Your choice.”

I stare at him, closemouthed.

“So be it. I'm going to leave you with Troy for the rest of the evening. Say, five or six hours. We'll be back later tonight to see how you're doing.”

I snap my wrists against the cuffs. “Take these off.”

Hall smiles. “I'm way ahead of you on that.”

My cuffs are quickly undone by Brock, but before I have time to shake some feeling back into my newly freed wrists, my hands are cuffed to opposite legs of the table. My arms are stretched so much that my right cheek is pressed into the tabletop. I can't even turn my head. Then my ankles are cuffed to the same table legs. I'm spread out, flattened like the Road Runner when he runs into a wall. It hurts like a bastard. If they kick the chair away, my body weight will dislocate my shoulder and hip joints.

Luckily, they don't do that. I hear the key clatter onto the table about six inches from my head. The door opens, filling the room with the din of engines, and closes with a quiet click.

There's no point in trying to scream through the engine noise, and no one who would help me anyway. I gingerly try to adjust one of my shoulders to see if I can make it more comfortable in its socket, and immediately pain shoots up my neck and down my arm. My face flushes, and I start to sweat.

The smell of tobacco reaches me, then a sour body odor. I hear a person slide down the wall to sit on the floor. The crinkle of cellophane, the click of a lighter. Wafting smoke.

“Hey, Troy. Are you there?”

“Yeah. What do you want?”

“Can you take these off?”

“No way.”

“Please.”

“No.”

I take this as progress—his denial shortened from two words to one. He's not loyal to Hall: he's not loyal to anyone. It's written in his body language. Every gesture speaks self-absorbed alienation. It's possible he's never cared about anyone but himself.

“What are they going to do to me, Troy?”

“They're gonna kill you. What do you think?”

“Is there any way I can get out of it?”

“Nope.” He puts a little pop on the final consonant.

“Not even if I tell them what they want to hear?”

“Nope.” He likes this word. “Don't make no difference if you talk or not; don't make no difference what you say. This is your last day on earth.”

He smokes. I try to stay calm. I know the key is lying on the table, and I know Troy is corruptible. There's got to be a way to make those two facts work together.

“Great. The last day of my life. Do I really have to spend it like this? It hurts, Troy. It really fucking hurts. Why should you care if I'm cuffed? I'm a hundred and fifteen pounds. They beat the shit out of me. My fucking ribs are broken. I probably can't walk, and I'm gonna die anyway. So have a shred of mercy, will you? I can't spend five or six hours like this. Even prisoners on death row get a last meal, don't they? I wouldn't mind having a cigarette. Just one lousy smoke. You can hook me up again before they get back. Let me sit down and bum a cigarette from you, Troy. It's my last fucking day on earth.”

Silence greets my proposal. A denial shortened from one word to none.

“Troy, what are you doing here anyway? You're no fisherman. This isn't your kind of gig. It's obvious they're using you. I know you're the one who was following me. I saw you at the Bank of America Pavilion. And you were in the tan car, weren't you? That day on Beacon Street. How many boring hours have you spent watching me? How much did they pay you? Minimum wage? Or did they just promise you something, like a big payoff at the end? Which, if you think about it honestly, you're never going to get. They think you're shit, Troy. They're not gonna give you anything. Not a dime. Smell the coffee. You're smarter than they are. Take the cuffs off. Please.”

He moves, smokes. “You're rich, aren't you? You drive an old car, but you got a house on Beacon Hill.”

“It's my father's house.”

“Yeah, I know. How much you think he'd pay to see you again?”

“How much do you want?”

“A million dollars.”

“He can do that, Troy. Cash. No questions. I just have to ask.”

“How fast can you get it?”

“Faster than fast food. Get me a phone, and tell me where you want him to leave it. Brown paper bag, whatever. We'll do exactly what you want.”

Silence. The cigarette smoke is tickling my nose.

“Take the cuffs off, Troy. We've got to get out of here.”

“If anything happens, I'll kill the kid.”

“Let's leave him out of it. Nobody needs to die. You're doing me a big favor. You'll be my hero after this. We'll both get what we want.”

I hear him pick the keys off the table. In a few seconds, I'm released.

I carefully reassemble my scattered limbs, put them in the correct relation to their respective joints. It makes me so happy, I could cry.

Troy slides back down to the floor, sucks a drag of tobacco, and stubs the butt out on the bottom of his shoe. His knee thumps, and his hand is shaking. He's red around the eyes, jumpy as a hyperactive kid. Scared shitless, probably. It's a big risk he's taking, reckless as hell. It makes me sort of like him. He's sitting between me and the door.

“When it gets dark in a few hours, you and I will take off,” he says. “There are a bunch of dinghies tied up at the stern for people going back and forth to shore. We'll get in one, row to town, disappear, head back to the States. When we get to Boston, we'll call Daddy. No calls till then. He doesn't need to know his baby's in trouble until we're right there on his door. You can talk to him, tell him what to do, and if he doesn't have the money in an hour like you said, I'll kill you. Until then, we're gonna stay real close. I'm gonna keep these”—he dangles the cuffs—“and I've got a gun.” He pulls aside his jacket to reveal a handgun in a shoulder holster. “In case you're wondering, this is what I was going to kill you with.”

My blood runs cold. “Why were they going to make you do it?”

“I do all the shit work around here.” He closes his jacket.

“What will happen when they find out we're gone?”

“Nothing. They won't do shit. They have to stay with the ship. Can't afford to tip off Jaeger that something's wrong. If he ever got wind that we had a Navy spy on board, things would get ugly for Hall real fast. Hall's scared shitless of Jaeger. He'll keep quiet to save his own ass, and get Oyster Man to deal with us. He's the one to worry about. He'll be after us right away, but he's more interested in you than me. My guess is, he'll stay in Boston, knowing you'll show up there eventually. I'll disappear for good as soon as I get the money. Someplace warmer than this.”

Troy rubs the side of his nose with a vengeance, scratches his neck. His bent leg is thumping the floor. He's not just jumpy; he's about to blow apart from stress. Then I get it. The teeth like burnt timbers. The yellow, blotchy skin. He's a meth addict. Yeah, it fits. All that petty crime Lou Diggens told me about was going to support a habit. Now, thanks to his stepdad's less-than-illustrious connections in the fishing world, it's forced detoxification on board a supposedly drug-free yacht. Troy's not with the program, never has been. He can't wait to jump this ship. Getting back to his dealer with a fat wad of cash in his hand is his only true and heartfelt dream.

“You'll get your money, Troy. You can leave Johnny to me.” I sit on the floor next to him and hug my legs together, wrap my aching arms around them.

He nods heavily, like he's relieved.

We sit in silence, waiting for dark. I'm crazy with stress, thinking that Hall and his serfs will return early. Troy keeps consulting his watch.

“How much longer?”

“A couple of hours.”

“No way. I can't wait that long.”

“Who asked you?” He must take some pity on me, though, because he produces his pack of Winstons and slides one out.

When I refuse, he looks offended. “You said you wanted a cigarette.”

“I actually don't smoke.”

He rolls his eyes.

“Troy, I'm curious. If you guys—Johnny, you, Hall, and the others—were onto me this whole time, why did you take me on this voyage at all? Why didn't you question me a week ago, and kill me then?”

“How? That was the question. How would we kill you? The old lady, you can run her over, and nobody suspects a thing. You, it's harder. Healthy, prime of life. Hall and Johnny—they didn't want violence or anything that could be traced.” He picks a piece of food out of a gap in his teeth. “On a boat, everything's easier. People fall overboard, disappear. International laws, or maritime law, I guess—I don't know what it's called. Basically, no one's watching too closely, and no one really gives a shit.”

“But why wait till now?”

“So they can tell the guests that you quit in a huff, and headed back to the States the first chance you got. Everyone knows you're crazy as shit. Throwing drinks in people's faces and getting into arguments. So no one will think twice about not seeing you around. And if the question ever comes up, everybody'll be telling the same story—last seen in an Inuit settlement in Labrador, Canada. No forwarding address.”

He stretches out one skinny leg. He's relaxing a little, telling his cozy story.

“We were going to keep your body hidden until we were out in the Labrador Sea again, then dump you overboard. With enough weight on you, you'd sink to the bottom and stay there forever. No body, no murder. It was a pretty good plan.”

“Who was the mastermind?” But I already know.

“Oyster Man. Who else?” Troy smiles with something like affection for the legendary one.

Johnny knew all this in the lounge that night. That's why he didn't want to go to bed with me. He already thought of me as dead. I guess he still has a shred of humanity—draws the line at screwing a woman whose murder he has planned. He joked it up pretty good, though. A better liar than I was. Milosa's in the background of my thoughts, not even laughing anymore, just shaking his weary head.

“Come on. Let's get out of here,” I say.

“No, someone will see us. We gotta wait until it's dark.”

I can't believe how insane this is. “Listen, Troy. You just described my impending death in loving detail. If you don't get me out of here right now, you won't get your million dollars and feel that sweet, sweet drug in your veins.”