Andrew Vachss - Dead and Gone

“An hour?”

“Exposed to the elements?”

“Hell , yes. Probably get blasted with salt water all the time.”

“The miniaturization is very simple. But given your limited options for a propellant, and the need for accuracy, both devices would have to be the same external configuration.”

“I guess so.”

“My man can do it,” Michelle said, confidence radiating off her gorgeous face.

The Mole blushed. But he didn’t deny it.

“I’ll need at least three of each of them,” I told him.

“Okay,” I said to everyone, “here’s how we’ve got to work it.

Flacco and Gordo will be handling the ship. Levi will ride along with us. With me, Gem, and Max, that’s six.”

“Plus the two props,” Gem added.

“I’m not so crazy about that part,” I told her.

“You said yourself, they would be perfect cover for your persona,” she replied.

“But I’m only going to need the cover for—”

“An extra tenth?” she said, lassoing me with my own words about raglan sleeves.

“Okay. That part’s true. But there’s no guarantee that—”

“There is a risk. They all know that; the children, too. But for what you are paying, you will be changing their lives— giving them a life, and their families as well.”

Gem wasn’t wrong about the payments. This whole crazy thing was emptying my stash so deep I’d be into my case money by the time it was over.

“Right,” I told her, surrendering. “That’s a pretty good load for that boat, I think. Michelle, you stay here and keep the old man calm. Mole, you know what to do if he gets twitchy. Prof, you and Clarence and Randy stay here, too. Everybody hangs until you get the word. Things work out like we plan, Randy motors the old man back to Key West, where he can try out his recovered virility. If it doesn’t, cut your losses.”

The Prof nodded agreement. The others may not have caught what I meant, but our years together Inside had given us a different level of communication. If they had to get out of there fast, the old man wouldn’t be coming along on the ride.

“This thing looks like a prop for a sci-fi movie,” Levi said a few days later, the Mole’s creation cradled in his arms. “What’s this little canister thing?” he asked, touching what would be the clip if the thing were a real firearm.

“A pressure regulator,” the Mole told him. “This is a modified air rifle.”

“Okay, I get it. Hell, they use these things in the Olympics now. Supposed to be unreal for accuracy.”

“It should deliver the … projectile between five and seven hundred yards perfectly,” the Mole assured him.

“That’s no distance,” Levi said. “What am I supposed to hit with it?”

“We don’t know yet,” I told him.

Whatever the Mole cooked up for me worked better than I’d even hoped for. The boat made me a little sick—okay, maybe a lot sick—but I got over it pretty quick. There wasn’t any harm in me going on deck—the old man they’d be watching for wouldn’t do that, but I didn’t look anything like him. Still, I stayed below all through the Canal just in case.

One day Gem came into the stateroom where I spent most of my time. “I am going to give you a manicure,” she announced.

“What the hell for?”

“Because a rich old man would not have hands like yours. I cannot do much about the …”

She let her voice trail away. My hands are like my life: some of the breaks hadn’t healed straight. And the scars spoke for themselves, if you knew how to read them.

“It doesn’t matter,” I told her. “Once he—”

“It is part of your role,” she said, solemnly. “Another tenth. Besides, you know how much I love your thumb in my mouth. It would be nicer if it was manicured, perhaps?”

“Sure,” I said, letting it go.

“If you wish, I can easily teach one of the children to do it, too. That would be right in character.”

“No!”

“Burke, what is so wrong? It would just be part of the—”

“I said no. That’s the fucking end of it.”

Gem got to her feet, a thoughtful look on her face. Then she turned away from me, sticking her thumbs in the waistband of her shorts. She pulled them down and bent over in one smooth movement.

I smacked her bottom half-heartedly. “More,” she said. I did it again, a couple of times, the cracks loud in the closed space.

She straightened up, adjusted her shorts. Turned around and knelt next to me as she had been before. “I have been punished now, yes?”

“Sure.”

“It is not enough?”

“It’s plenty, Gem. It’s not your fault. There’s some things I just can’t—”

“It was my fault. I know you. I never should have suggested what I did. I apologize. Do you accept?”

“Yes, baby girl. Just forget it, okay?”

“I have been punished, so my debt is paid. I will forget it. But … now may I give you that manicure, please?”

The next evening, Levi sat down next to me. “It’ll work,” he said, confidently. “I wasn’t sure at first. But I’ve been practicing. Every time there’s no other ship in sight, I toss one of the flotation devices overboard, wait till we’ve got some distance. If I can hit something that small at a hundred yards, what you’re talking about, I can handle it three, four times that distance, no problem.”

“And you can’t beat it for silence.”

“That’s for sure. Even over water, you can’t hear a thing.”

“We’ll probably never get to use it, you understand?”

“I understand. But if I have to go with the other option, you could double that distance and it’d be no big deal.”

We made even better time than Flacco had estimated. When he pulled in for the last refueling, I called the Chancellor.

“Please write this down very carefully,” he said, his voice more cocksure and commanding than it had been when he thought the old man was a long distance away. “Starting from the mouth of the Chetco River, from Red Buoy No. 2, proceed on a course of 238.5 true. This will take you out to 124 degrees, 31 minutes west; 41 degrees, 51 minutes north. Repeat: course is 238.5 true, heading to 124 degrees, 31 minutes west; 41 degrees, 51 minutes north. Please note, that point is slightly more than twelve-point-five nautical miles from the United States coast. If you would please read that back to me …”

I did that, except for the twelve-mile-limit part.

“Precisely,” he said. “Please tell your pilot that Red Buoy No. 2 has a flashing red light with a four-second interval. It also has a bell.”

“I’ve got it.”

“And the last buoy out, ‘CR,’ which marks the start of the Chetco Channel, is red-and-white-striped. This one flashes white in morse code the letter ‘A.’ And it is equipped with a whistle, not a bell. Are you still with me?”

“Yes,” I told him. And repeated what I’d written down, word for word, to prove it.

“Tomorrow morning at oh-seven-hundred.”

“I’ll be there.”

“If fog proves a problem, we will radio—”

“Fine.”

“Very well, sir. I look forward to meeting you.”

“What’s he mean, ‘pilot’?” I asked Flacco. “Guys who drive ships’re captains, right?”

“Right. When you drive, you’re the captain. But the guys who take the boats—the big ones, I mean, like the liners—the guy who brings it in or out of port, they call him the pilot. That was me, through the Canal. Got to have a pilot’s license to work those locks.”

“And you understand what all this stuff means?” I asked, showing him the directions I’d written down.

“Sure,” he said. “Just means he wants us to stay with the gyro compass. See where he says true north? That’s different from magnetic north. Could be ten, maybe even twenty-five degrees of difference.”