Джон Сэндфорд - Ocean Prey [calibre]

Rae: “And you’ve got all these numbers, this GPS shit, figured out?”

“Down to a couple of yards,” Regio said. “The last thing we need is to have Willy pick up a million bucks’ worth of dope and then not be able to find him.”

Rae to Virgil: “You know how to read all this shit?”

“Sure. Can’t drive a boat without it,” Virgil said.

She shook her head. “I dunno. You can’t make change for a one.”

Virgil asked Regio, “Once I’m in the zone, how do I find the shit? If the Coast Guard couldn’t find it in six months . . .”

“We’ll explain that to you when we’re on the boat. You just figure out the watch.”

When Virgil and Rae were alone in the motel room, Rae put a finger to her lips and moved close to Virgil’s ear. “They rented the room. Might be listening.”

Virgil nodded and said, aloud, “Let’s get showers and change clothes and see if we can sneak away from those motherfuckers and get something to eat. I’ll break some goodies out of the car.”

“There’s that shrimp place . . . we could walk there in five minutes.”

“Let’s go.”

They put on cotton jackets and were out the door in twenty minutes, walking slow. Halfway to the shrimp restaurant, with no sign of either Regio or Lange, Virgil pulled Rae into the parking lot next to a plumber’s shop and fired up a joint and handed it to her. “This is our excuse for stopping, if anyone’s watching,” he whispered. He got on his phone and called Lucas. “We’re doing it tomorrow. Are you set?”

Lucas: “We’ve been ready for a week. I’m not getting cold feet, exactly, but they’re getting cool. Are you sure you’re up for this?”

“I am. The biggest problem would be if they decide to take what I find and kill me,” Virgil said. “When I surface, I’ll be more or less helpless. Rae will be on the boat, she made that clear, and she’ll have that little nine stuck inside the bottom of her leggings. If anything funny starts, we’ll have that.”

“If you want to back away, nobody would blame you,” Lucas said. “The people who know about it figure you for balls like watermelons. I know better, but I’m a little worried.”

“Hey. I’m good. Watch for a tail when we split up tomorrow.”

“We are. Haven’t seen anyone watching you other than Regio and Lange. We’ve seen Cattaneo on a sailboat in Hollywood, we think that might be where you’re going.”

“That sounds right. Sailboat will be moving slow, which is normal. In the dark, nobody would see me going over the side, or coming back on. So . . .”

“Easy does it,” Lucas said.

“Are you still in Hollywood? You personally? Right now?”

“No. We’re across the highway from you,” Lucas said. “Your two guys walked out three or four minutes before you. It looks like they’re headed for the same place you are. There’s not much else up there.”

“They might have been listening to us; they rented the room, there could be a bug, so . . . don’t call.”

Virgil handed the phone back to Rae, who turned it off and dropped it in her jacket pocket. Virgil took a joint from her and said, “Sweet authenticity.”

Virgil took a drag, blew the smoke into Rae’s hair and passed it. She took a drag, blew the smoke into Virgil’s hair. They did that one more time each, then dropped the joint and Virgil smashed it into the gravel.

Regio and Lange were sitting in a two-person booth when they arrived at the shrimp place. Virgil lifted a hand when he saw them, and drifted over. “Place is a little sketchy.”

Regio laughed and said, “So you fit right in.”

Lange sniffed: “You gotta go easy with the weed, man. You gotta be straight tomorrow.”

“I don’t touch it before a dive,” Virgil said. Rae had taken another booth. Virgil ambled away from the two men, sat down. They ate a couple of pounds of shrimp and drank four margaritas between them, and wandered out the door while Regio and Lange were still eating.

“If they didn’t buy that,” Virgil said, “we’re cooked. Because we shoulda gotten an Academy Award.”

Back at the motel room, Virgil looked at the king-sized bed and whispered, “I can take the floor if that would make you happier.”

“You’re going to need your sleep for tomorrow night,” Rae whispered back. “I don’t figure you’ll be coming on to me at this point and rape doesn’t seem to be your style.”

“You’re right and you’re right. Not that you don’t have a nice . . . mmm . . .”

Rae rolled her eyes. “We won’t be spooning, either.”

“Of course not,” Virgil said.

Which didn’t mean he wouldn’t wake up a few times with spontaneous erections; he’d been away from Frankie for two weeks and he could feel the heat coming off Rae’s body. The second time, he heard Rae quietly laugh, but then they both went back to sleep. They woke together in the morning and Rae stretched and said, “See? No harm, no foul.”

She was wearing black dancer’s leggings and a half top, which revealed much of her personal terrain.

Virgil grumbled, “Fuckin’ Bob must’ve been a fuckin’ saint, to be traveling around with you and nothing’s going on.”

“No, he wasn’t. We were like brother and sister, sorta.”

“Well, I’m not your brother. I’m committed. Got new twins. Got an old lady I’m in love with. But Jesus, Rae, you . . .”

“Hush up.”

They met Regio and Lange in the parking lot and Lange said, “We’ll come by your place this afternoon and pick you up. What time?”

“Depends on how far we have to drive to get to the boat, and how far the boat is from the drop spot. I’ll let you figure that out,” Virgil said. “We don’t want to go out too late—we need to get out there after dark, but not way dark, just dark enough that nobody will see me going over the side. It’d be good if there were still some boats on the water. Their screws will confuse Coast Guard sonar, if there is any sonar watching the dive zone.”

“Gets dark around six . . .”

“Sundown is a few minutes before six o’clock,” Virgil said. “I looked it up. Let’s say we want to be cruising past the drop-off spot between six-thirty and seven.”

Regio nodded: “We’ll pick you up at four o’clock. Be ready.”

“We’ll stop and refill my tanks on the way back to the apartment,” Virgil said. “I want to get a nap if I can, before we go out.”

“We’re on. For sure. The thing you gotta do, is figure how to rig up all that gear so you don’t get all tangled up in it. That was a problem . . . in the past.”

From the car, Virgil called Lucas and filled him in. “If we’re going past the drop-off at six-thirty, and they’re picking us up at four, that means the boat’s got to be close. You’ve still got the tracker on their Lexus?”

“We do. We’re watching them now.”

“If they find it, I could be fucked,” Virgil said.

“They won’t find it. I can guarantee that.”

“And what do you do if they show up with a different vehicle? One you can’t track?”

“We’re talking about that,” Lucas said.

On the way north, off the Keys and headed for the scuba center, Rae said, “I’m starting to pucker.”

“I didn’t think good-looking women had anything to pucker.”

“You’d be wrong about that,” Rae said. “The thing is, I sorta like the feeling.”

Virgil glanced at her, smiled: “So do I. So does Lucas.”

“So did Bob,” Rae said.

CHAPTER

NINETEEN

Michael Behan, Jack Cattaneo, Marc Regio, and Matt Lange met at Behan’s waterfront condo and Behan opened with, “This Willy guy—he can do it?”

“That’s what the diver chick said,” Lange said.