Дональд Уэстлейк - Forever and a Death

She could tell immediately that this was a very flimsy plan. “Where will you be?”

“Keeping out of their way, or trying to.”

Very flimsy. But maybe it was the best they could do. “All right,” she said.

“I have jeans and a sweater here for you,” he said, holding them up for her to see. The jeans were faded, with bumpy knees, and the sweater was a dark green acrylic. “They’re clean,” he promised her, “and they should fit you.”

“Thank you.”

“I’m afraid these are the only shoes we could find,” he said, and held them up.

She couldn’t help it; she smiled at the shoes. She’d seen people wear shoes like this, when Planetwatch III docked sometimes, but had never guessed she’d one day wear them herself. The bottoms were roughly sawed out of the sidewall of an old tire, with a loose piece of canvas stapled across the top, and no heel. One size fits none.

“Can I help you sit up?”

“Yes,” she said, lifting an arm for him. “Thank you. I’ll be all right after that.”

But she wasn’t, not really. He had to help her put the sweater on, pulling it down over the elastic bandage that held her together. Then he put her feet into the legs of the jeans, helped her to stand, and pulled the jeans up to her waist.

“I’ve never been dressed by a man before,” she said, feeling awkward as she zipped the fly shut and fastened the canvas belt.

Manville didn’t say anything to that. His concentration was on the shoes, as he held her elbow and said, “Just step into them. There you go.”

Actually, they were better than she’d expected, the rubber firm but not too hard, the canvas stretching to hold her foot. “I’m ready,” she said.

When she started to walk, she realized how weak and dizzy she still was, and she was grateful for his hand holding tight to her upper arm. They left the cabin and started down the corridor, and he said, “Only the captain knows about this, so we have to be quiet.”

She was looking at her surroundings. How plush it all was, in comparison with Planetwatch III . Real wood floor, cream-painted walls, and actual carpeting on those stairs out ahead of her.

Why couldn’t Richard Curtis be content with all he had? Why did he have to ruin the planet to get just a little more?

Manville said, “I’ll carry you up the stairs. It’s just up one deck.”

“Can’t I walk?”

He shook his head. “I don’t think so, Kim.”

It was stupid to be so weak, to have to be carried around like an invalid. But she knew he was right; those stairs looked a mile high, and already she could feel what little strength she had draining away. “All right,” she said, and stood obediently still, and he picked her up, one arm under her back, the other under her knees, and she put an arm over his shoulders, for balance.

He carried her slowly up the stairs. At the head of the stairs, he let her stand again, but kept that supporting hand on her arm as they went down a corridor past open doors showing much larger and more elaborate cabins, with large windows rather than portholes to show the black night outside.

At the end of the corridor he guided her through a wide teak door with two diamond-shaped windows in it, and then they were on deck, and immediately she could feel the movement of the ship more distinctly than when she’d been inside. Or was that just from seeing the dim whitecaps passing below?

The captain stood in darkness off to the right, forward, where one of the launches hung in its divots, just beyond the rail. When they walked toward him, Kim saw that a part of the rail was hinged to open inward as a gate, next to the entry steps to the launch.

“Good evening, Miss Baldur,” he whispered, and nodded a greeting. He looked and sounded very worried.

“Good evening. Thank you for helping me.”

“I wish it were not needed,” he whispered. “But since it is, I am happy that this is what I can do.”

To oppose Richard Curtis, she understood him to mean, instead of to give him what he wants, even though the captain worked for him.

Manville stepped onto the launch first, then took her arm to guide her aboard, the captain holding her other arm to steady her. “You’ll stay in the cabin,” Manville told her.

Most of the launch was open, with plank seating along both sides, but the front quarter was roofed in gleaming wood, with a low door next to the steering wheel. Manville opened the door, then steadied Kim as she bent down to step in, finding it so low in here she couldn’t even kneel upright. There were two bunks side by side using most of the space, both neatly made with drum-tight woolen blankets, plus many storage bins and cabinets.

“What you should do,” Manville said, leaning into the small space, “is lie on one of the bunks and cover yourself with the blanket from the other one. Cover yourself completely, if you hear anybody moving outside.”

“I will.”

He gave her leg an encouraging pat, and backed out of the doorway, then closed the door, leaving her alone in the dark.

Not total darkness; it wasn’t completely black inside the cabin. Two narrow slit windows were in the forward end of the prow on both sides, just under the roof; some light from the ship leaked in through the window on the right. In its illumination, Kim pulled the blanket off the right-hand bunk, lay back on the other, and pulled the blanket over herself. And by then she was exhausted.

But not sleepy, not the way she’d been before. Now she was too tense to be sleepy, too worried, too frightened. People coming here to this ship to kill her? It was unbelievable, and yet she had to believe it.

Would she hear them arrive? Would they find her?

Would Manville and the captain be able to help?

She couldn’t sleep, not at all. She lay there in the darkness, eyes open, looking at nothing, and nearly two hours later she heard the distant thump.

Morgan Pallifer once had his own ship, but that was years ago, in a completely different ocean. He had the ship because he and the Colombians were useful to one another, and then he lost the ship because the situation changed.

Oh, he was still useful to the Colombians; it’s just that he was useful in a different way. He became useful to the Colombians as a bargaining chip in their sub rosa dealings with the American authorities. They would permit Pallifer and his lovely sloop, the Pally , to be caught by agents of the Drug Enforcement Administration when he made landfall at South Carolina with the cabin of the sloop full of duffel bags full of white plastic bags full of cocaine. The Pally was impounded, having been used in the drug trade, and Morgan Pallifer spent seven hard years in a Federal maximum-security prison, and now, gracious me, Morgan Pallifer can’t vote in American elections anymore. Hah!

Oh, he understood how it worked, he wasn’t bitter. The Pally had been in his name, but the Colombians had actually bought it for him, so it was really theirs, so they could take it away from him and give it to the DEA if it suited their needs. And he’d had four terrific years sailing the Colombians’ ship and spending the Colombians’ money, so it wasn’t a bad deal to pay for it with seven years cowering like a cur in that Federal kennel. The American authorities were enabled to rack up yet another wonderful public success in their war on drugs — success after success, and yet nothing changes — and they got to do it by putting away some scruffy unimportant American citizen without harming their vitally important geopolitical interests with the Colombians.

Morgan Pallifer wasn’t bitter, but he wasn’t stupid, either. He did his seven years hard, he worked in a marina in Newport Beach, California for the three years of his parole, and the instant he was a completely free man he applied for and got a new passport and got the fuck out of that country. He’d been a citizen of the Pacific Rim ever since, nearly thirty years now, working when he had to, stealing when he could, living on the sea as much as possible, working other men’s boats but never his own.