Jack Rogan - The Ocean Dark

Josh pulled the ice from his arm, glanced at the burn, then pressed it down again. “You go ahead. I’ll be out in a minute.”

Tori left, both relieved and disappointed. It might have been all the cayenne pepper in the stew making her face flush with heat, but she didn’t think so.

Angie Tyree had scrubbed her hands with industrial cleanser — the slimy shit that could get off just about anything — then used gritty powdered soap with water. She went through the same process two or three times a day, but could never seem to get all of the grease and oil stains off her skin. As long as they were at sea, her caramel-brown skin would be streaked with black. It would take days away from the engine room, from the pipes and valves she spent every trip maintaining and repairing, before they would fade.

She didn’t really mind. As long as her hands were as clean as she could make them, she viewed the stains like a badge of honor. Angie had grown up poor in Honduras, in a neighborhood where only the men involved in the drug trade had any money. But her father had put food on the table at every meal. Sometimes they didn’t have much to eat, but they never went hungry. He had taught her the value of hard work, and of keeping your head down and knowing when to look the other way.

“I’m tellin’ you, Sal, I don’t know,” Dwyer said, pleasant as anything.

He sat next to Angie, their knees touching under the table. Most of the crew were Neanderthals, so whenever the company added someone new to the crew, Angie scoped them out. This time out, they had five new bodies on board. The cook, Josh, kept himself fit and the man was damn pretty, but Angie didn’t like them too pretty. On top of that, it had been obvious from the second Josh spotted Tori Austin that the two of them would hook up eventually. And aside from Josh, the pickings had been slim — except for the skinny Irish guy. But Dwyer had the benefit of youth and enthusiasm. His techno-geek qualities — apparently he had a magic touch with navigation and communications equipment — had gotten him the job as third mate, but it had been pure luck and a slanted grin that had landed him in Angie’s bed.

Now she playfully brushed his hand away.

Across from them, Sal Pucillo rolled his eyes. Also a new guy, Pucillo had to be in his early fifties, with a weathered face and gray hair, but he kept fit, and his body was lean and powerful. He had something about him that said ex-military, but when Angie had asked, it turned out he’d just been born with a stick up his ass. Once a dock foreman in Baltimore, he’d gotten divorced and decided on a change of scenery. That was all Angie knew about him. Pucillo didn’t care to say any more, and she sure as hell didn’t care enough to ask.

“Come on, Dwyer,” Pucillo said. “You’re on the bridge half the day. The captain and his brother have been acting squirrelly all morning. Something’s wrong, and we’ve got a right to know, don’t we?”

Angie kept her focus on her tray. Josh, the magician of the galley, had come up with a stew that was unlike anything she’d ever eaten, with chicken and Cajun spices and soft dumplings and tons of vegetables. Usually when she shipped out with the Rio brothers, the food was barely edible, so she spent most of her time working. As third assistant engineer, and the ship’s best mechanic, she spent a lot of time sweating in the belly of the Antoinette . But with Josh and Tori cooking, Angie thought she might actually gain weight this trip.

“Why do you think something’s wrong?” Dwyer asked, his Irish accent slipping through.

Pucillo sighed. “Are you even listening?”

Dwyer threw his hands up. He tried for exasperated, but with his red hair and freckles, he couldn’t quite pull it off. Angie thought he looked adorable when he was exasperated, and she knew what she wanted to do right after dinner.

“What are you asking me for, Sal?” Dwyer said. “You think something’s wrong, ask the captain or the chief mate. You don’t want to talk to them, ask Suarez. He never leaves the bloody bridge, does he? I don’t know that he ever takes a piss. But I don’t know shit, all right? Besides, what do you care if the boss gets upset? It doesn’t involve you.”

Pucillo laughed softly, his expression dark. They called him the cargo manager, but really he was still a dock foreman. While at sea, he was just another hand — though damned old to be considered an able-bodied seaman — but in port he oversaw the loading of the metal containers at one end, and the off-loading at the other. He had to have heard that there were some things that went on aboard Viscaya ships that the crew were better off not knowing, but Pucillo had a habit of asking questions he shouldn’t. Obviously he wasn’t comfortable with Viscaya’s secrets, but if he didn’t start minding his own business, he was going to be out of a job by the time they made port back in Miami.

Of course, Dwyer asked his share of questions, too, but Angie understood that. The kid had scored a nice gig, and if he wanted to keep it, he had to educate himself, so that he could make himself useful to the Rios if the time ever came when they needed help.

“If the captain’s got trouble, that could be trouble for all of us,” Pucillo said.

Dwyer started to reply, but Angie beat him to it. She dropped her spoon and looked up at Pucillo. “Sal, we’re trying to eat here. Maybe you should man up and say what you’ve got to say to the person you want to say it to.”

She picked up a piece of bread, tore off a chunk, and popped it in her mouth. Pucillo glared at her, trying to decide how to reply. If he took it seriously, he’d have to tell her off, and the ripples of such a conflict would affect the whole crew.

He looked at her hands, at the oil stains there, and she could see the revulsion on his face. Pucillo had a neat-freak thing going on. The guy was meticulous. He’d probably have starved before he would have eaten with dirty hands. Angie wanted to tell Pucillo that nobody had clean hands, that sometimes it just looked that way, but he wouldn’t have understood.

“You can make jokes all you want, but this affects us all,” he said. “And you’re not funny, Angie.”

She grinned through a mouthful of bread.

Pucillo sneered in disgust and got up, stalking away.

Dwyer slid a hand onto her thigh under the table and whispered into her ear, “You’re sexy when you’re a bitch.”

“So I’m sexy all the time.”

“Pretty much.”

They started nuzzling closer, about to kiss, but then Angie glanced past Dwyer and hesitated. She forced a smile.

“Save your energy for later,” she said.

Dwyer didn’t ask; he didn’t have to. On the Antoinette , there were only a handful of things that could’ve made her hold back from kissing her guy. The freighter wasn’t on fire, and there was no sign of a tidal wave about to swamp them. That just left Hank Boggs.

Maybe forty-three, the chief engineer stood six foot four and was built like a pro football player who’d started going to seed — still plenty of muscle but too much beer to go with it. He kept his head shaved down to about a quarter inch of stubble and only took a razor to his face when it grew longer than that. Sal Pucillo annoyed her, but she liked him all right, since he was pretty much harmless. But that wasn’t a word she’d apply to Hank Boggs.

As he walked to the counter where Josh and Tori had set out the stew, bread, salad, and the rest of the evening’s meal, Hank took several furtive glances at Angie. Whenever his gaze strayed toward Dwyer, the big man got a hateful glint in his eyes, a mixture of jealousy and confusion. The son of a bitch just couldn’t figure out why the skinny little Irishman got to share Angie’s bed, when she’d barely give him the time of day.