Dana Stabenow - Dead in the Water

Kate was not exactly a virgin when it came to understanding the effects of rash and reckless youth combined with too much money, but this blatant display was something even beyond her ken. As she stood there, stunned, an amused voice drawled, "Like a toot, little lady?"

She turned to see a man with a grin like a hungry shark standing next to her, and she remained so astounded that he mistook her silence for interest. An expansive sweep of one arm took in the bar. "Go ahead, the party's on me." He looked her over with a predatory eye. What he saw must have pleased him, for he gave the bulging bag in front of him a possesive pat, grinned that shark's grin again and said, "Plenty more where this came from.

Maybe we can work out a little something in trade?"

A deep voice said, "I don't think so." Jack Morgan was tall, six feet two inches, and he was broad, well over two hundred pounds, but what gave the shark pause was the expression on his almost ugly face. It might have been the broad, unsmiling mouth, or the high-bridged nose already broken more than once, or the cold, clear, steady blue of his eyes, narrowed slightly against the cigarette smoke that swirled and eddied across the room like the Aleutian fog offshore.

He stood where he was, waiting, like a rock indifferent to the roughest surf, and he looked at the shark, calm, watchful and without a trace of apprehension.

The shark was clearly taken aback by all this sangfroid but he was game. "Why don't we let the little lady speak for herself?"

"Because she's already spoken for," Jack said, just as smoothly. He looked at Kate and quirked an eyebrow, daring her to react. Little pleased as she was by his high-handedness, still less did she want to start a fight.

Already noise was dying down around them as fishermen became aware of the confrontation and downed bottles and straws to watch avidly to see what happened next.

She caught a glimpse of Ned Nordhoff toward the back of the crowd and that decided her. She gave Jack a silent nod and stepped to his side. He rested a casual but unmistakably possessive hand on her shoulder, gave the shark an amiable smile and raised his voice.

"Barkeep!"

The bartender left off rewashing a perfectly clean glass and bustled down. "What'll you have?"

Jack jerked his head. "A room."

The bartender gave Kate a speculative look and Jack a lascivious grin. When no answering grin was forthcoming his own faded and he said nervously, "That'll be a hundred bucks. Cash. Up front."

"All right." Unperturbed, Jack produced a money clip and peeled off two fifties and handed them over. "When's checkout time?"

"Checkout time?"

Jack was patient. "What time in the morning do we have to be out?"

The bartender gaped. "You mean you're staying all night?"

For the first time Jack looked a little wary. "That was the idea. Is there a problem?"

"You want a whole room for one whole night?" Jack nodded. "What the hell you going to be doing up there that'll take all night?"

It was so obviously shock rather than prurient interest that prompted the question that Jack said only, "How about a key?"

The bartender woke from his self-induced trance. "The whole night'll cost you more than a hundred, I can tell you that, pardner."

Unmoved, Jack said, "How much more?"

Taken aback, the bartender glanced around for help.

"I don't know," he admitted, "no one's ever asked for a whole room for the whole night before."

Jack reached for his money clip and peeled another hundred off. "That do?" The bartender looked dazedly down at the bills in his outstretched hand, and Jack sighed and added another hundred. The bartender swallowed hard, the bills disappeared into a pocket and he said, "I'll get that key."

Conversation picked up as they followed him up the gangway bolted to the back wall. Kate's last sight of the bar was of Anatoly's enormous brown eyes, swimming with reproach, following her every step of the way.

The room wasn't much bigger than the stateroom Kate was sharing with Andy on the Avilda, and but for the bunkbeds looked very similar. The bulkheads were metal and cool to the touch, the bunk was narrow and built in to the wall with drawers beneath it and a porthole above, and the adjoining head was the size of an aspidistra planter. "Hold it," Kate said when the bartender would have left them. Pulling back the covers on the bed, she sniffed the sheets. They smelled fresh and they looked clean. So did the toilet, and when she pulled back the shower curtain the floor looked fungi-free. It was far more than she'd hoped for. She reentered the room and nodded at Jack, who repeated, "So, when do you want us out of here?"

The bartender scratched his head. "Hell, I don't know."

"When's your boat due out?" Jack asked Kate.

She shrugged. "We're waiting on a part they're flying in from Anchorage. Could be one day. Could be two."

"But it won't be tomorrow." She shook her head, and Jack looked back at the bartender, who threw up his hands. "The hell with it," he told them, "stay as long as you like. And don't even think about complaining about the noise. This ain't exactly the Holiday Inn, you know."

"We know," Jack said dryly, and the bartender stamped out.

"Did you see that line of coke?" Kate demanded as soon as the door slammed shut behind him. Jack nodded.

"God knows I'm no prude, Jack, but Jesus! There had to be thousands of dollars worth of hits on that bar!"

He unzipped his jacket and sat down to unlace his boots. "Hundreds of thousands."

"Enough for Amaknak Island to achieve lift-off," she said, her torn voice outraged. "I'd bet my last dime there wasn't a kid there over twenty-five, and every last one of them due to go back out into the Bering Sea as soon as their boats are refueled. You've got to do something."

"Look, Kate, I don't mean to sound unfeeling," he said, grunting a little as the first boot came off, "but could we concentrate for a minute on why you're here?"

"You've got to do something," she reiterated.

He set the second boot beside the first, lining the two up with meticulous precision. "Kate. I'm an investigator for the Anchorage D.A. I am not a police officer, and even if I were this isn't anywhere remotely near my jurisdiction."

She told him what he could do with his jurisdiction, and he said, "You want me to wade into that crowd of drunks, most of them just off their boats, thousands of dollars in their pockets, thousands of miles from home and family, roaring to have a good time, and tell them they can't?" He snorted. "There wouldn't be enough of me left to lick up off the floor."

"Then call the cops! Call the troopers! Call the DEAD!"

"You think they aren't already here?"

She glared at him, impotent.

He waved a hand in the general direction of the airstrip.

"Three different public air carriers fly into Dutch every day. Ma and Pa Kettle can fly in for the price of a ticket, seven hundred dollars round-trip if they buy in advance. So can Joe Fisherman. And so can Joe Blow, your friendly neighborhood pusher." He saw her expression and his own softened. "Kate. Some of these kids are pulling down five, ten grand a trip. It's cold work, it's boring, it's lonely, and for most of them it's the toughest job they'll ever have. Oh," he said, holding up a hand palm out when she would have spoken, "the cops and the troopers and the DEA'll do their best, like they always do, understaffed and underfunded and with the entire fishing community closing ranks against them. But it all comes down to the same thing in the end, escape for sale. Here, who can resist that kind of sales pitch?"

Her glare was damning and maybe even a little righteous.

"I can."

His grin was tired but appreciative. "That's why I love you, Katie, you tough little broad, you. Now what have you got for me?"