T. Boyle - The Harder They Come

“They’re going to want to question me too, aren’t they?” she said, tucking away the last pink morsel on the tines of an inverted fork, a faint sheen of grease on her lips. She’d changed into a pair of jeans and a silk blouse — blue, with a scoop neck that showed off the topaz necklace she wouldn’t dare wear ashore. Matching earrings. A touch of makeup. She’d combed out her hair, which was darker when it was wet, but blond still and mostly natural, though the woman at the beauty parlor back at home touched it up every month or so.

“Yeah,” he said.

“What do I tell them?”

The question irritated him. “What do you mean what do you tell them? Tell them what happened. Three shitheads attacked us and we defended ourselves.”

She was chewing, the napkin suspended in one hand. A shadow flickered across the veranda, and it might have been a gull. Or no: more likely a vulture. Vultures were everywhere here, settling like collapsed umbrellas on top of every roof and telephone pole in town. “You think I’m dressed okay?”

He shrugged. He was in a pair of shorts and a Hawaiian shirt, exactly what he would have worn if he were going to the bar for a cocktail and a little recreation, as he’d done every night since the boat left San Diego. “You’re fine,” he said. “You’re not on trial. And I’m not either. Everything’s fine, believe me.”

Her voice went soft. “I’m glad you were there.”

“Me too.” He stared down at the floor, his feelings too complicated to put into words. They’d been lucky, he knew that. And she must have known it too. “But I’m not going to be around forever,” he said, lifting his eyes to hers. “You’ve got to learn to watch out for yourself.”

“No more nature walks, is that what you’re saying?”

“It’s no joke, because it’s not just money they’re after, you know that, don’t you? Anything can happen. Bad stuff, real bad stuff.”

She didn’t answer. She looked beyond him, out the open door to the bay and the sepia blur of the city that was like some fungus sprung up around a band of pale eroded beach and hacked green palm. He pushed his plate away. What he wanted was a cigarette, and he’d actually reached for his shirt pocket before he caught himself — he hadn’t smoked in ten years now. It was times like this he missed it most. Smoking had given him something to do with his hands, the whole ritual of it, from sliding the cigarette from the pack to tamping it on the nearest hard surface, to cupping the match and drawing in the first sweet sustaining puff. The thing was, his hands had become too busy, manipulating up to two packs a day, his fingertips stained yellow with nicotine and his lungs as black as the bricks of the fireplace back at home. That was all behind him now. Now he was healthy. Now he rode a stationary bike and got out in the woods two or three days a week, keeping his hand in with part-time work for the lumber company, looking out for trespassers, squatters, marijuana growers — patrolling, if that was what you wanted to call it. The way he saw it, he was getting paid to go hiking, simple as that, best deal in the world.

Carolee set down her fork and laid her napkin across the plate, where it instantly began to color with the juices gathered there — blood, that is, and why should that bother him? A basket of bread stood beside her plate, untouched. A carafe of water. The grated Parmesan the waiter had left for him, yellowing in its stainless-steel bowl. Flies were at it now, Costa Rican flies, wafted in through the open door to the veranda. She reached for her martini glass, which bore a smear of lipstick on the rim, a transparency of red wax and the faintly striated impress of her lips, and it touched him somehow, this trace of her there, DNA, a code to outlive us all. There was a dead man in the morgue, but she was alive and he was alive too, alive together, come what may. He watched her lift the glass and finish what was left of her drink. “I needed that,” she said, her voice flat and deliberate. She looked tired. “It’s been a day, hasn’t it?”

“It’s not over yet.” He wanted to add, “Some vacation, huh?” but restrained himself. Rising from the chair, he felt something click in his right hip, a tendon there, one more thing he’d managed to aggravate. He threw back his head to drain his own glass, best painkiller in the world, then patted down his pockets to be sure he had everything he was going to need, or potentially need: cellphone, wallet, passport, card key. At some point in the progression, he realized he was still holding the glass and that the glass was empty, useless, one more irritation, and without giving it even the flicker of a thought, he swiveled round and flung it high out over their private veranda and into the bright glittering sky beyond. Carolee just looked at him as if he’d gone mad till he snatched her glass up off the table and tossed it out the window too, and then he turned his back on her, rotating his wrist to consult his watch. And yes, he was angry, furious all of a sudden, as if he were back out there grabbing hold of that jerk with the gun, the dead man, the man he’d killed with his bare hands, and why couldn’t the fool have picked some other group, another bus, another day?

He was squinting at his watch — half an hour, was half an hour up? — but he couldn’t seem to make out the position of the hands, his eyes going on him now too, along with everything else. Jesus. Jesus Fucking Christ . If they offered him a drink he was going to refuse it, no matter how badly he wanted it — and he wasn’t going to volunteer anything, just the facts. He smoothed down his shirt, took hold of the doorknob and shot a look over his shoulder to where Carolee still sat lingering at the table as if they had all night, as if they could have another round and order up dessert and coffee like normal people on vacation. “Come on,” he said, flinging open the door on the corridor, “let’s get this over with.”

IT MIGHT HAVE BEEN his imagination, but as they walked down the corridor to the elevator he couldn’t help feeling people were making way for him, eyes meeting his and dropping to the floor, conversations suddenly hushed, men unconsciously hugging their wives closer as if he were some sort of feral beast, and what was that all about? Had the captain made an announcement? If not, he was going to have to at some point, the cruise delayed here in port for another day, at least a day, and of course everybody had cellphones, BlackBerries, iPads, all rumor consolidated into news and all news instantaneous. They knew. The whole ship knew.

Potamiamos and the two cops were waiting for them in the scoop-backed lounge chairs in a corner of the Martini Bar, the fun director off somewhere else now, her duties in the present circumstance having extended no further than applying her knuckles to the door of cabin 7007 and making the introductions. All three were sitting stiff-backed in the chairs, glasses of iced tea sweating on the table before them. They rose when he and Carolee crossed the room, even as a pair of waiters materialized from the shadows to pull out chairs for them. “And what will you have, ma’am?” one of them asked, bending over Carolee. Sten tried to warn her off with his eyes, but she was looking to the waiter. She emitted a little laugh, self-conscious all at once and maybe a little tipsy too, and said, “When in Rome. .” And then, catching herself: “Just water, thanks.”

“Sir?”

“Water. Out of a bottle. No ice.”

The waiters withdrew and a moment of silence descended on the table before the Senior Second Officer turned to the cop on his left, who for some reason was now wearing a pair of sunglasses, though they were indoors and the lighting was in no way intrusive. “Lieutenant Salas, perhaps you’d like to begin?”