Dark Passage

FIFTEEN

‘Unlike police in a community setting, who are objective and are a disinterested party in their investigation, shipboard security personnel are compromised by the fact that they must investigate crimes on board a ship where their own employer may be complicit in, or party to the crime. Can these security personnel truly act in a disinterested, objective manner that places the interests of the victim above those of the organization from which they receive their paycheck and continued employment?’

Testimony of Ross A. Klein, PhD before the Senate

Committee on Commerce, Science, and

Transportation, March 1, 2012

‘It didn’t happen,’ Pia said. ‘You know that’s the answer I have to give.’

‘But young girls have been attacked before Julie!’ I pounded the flat of my hand on polished surface of the Oracle bar. ‘And it will happen again, and again, and again. Who knows how many others will be assaulted if we don’t unmask this pervert. We’ve got to stop him, now.’

‘I don’t understand what you want me to do.’

‘You’re a smart woman, Pia, and I think you’re starting to put it together, just like Charlotte did. Julie’s drink was spiked with drugs and she disappeared from the Tidal Wave’s bar. But she wasn’t the first girl that happened to in the Tidal Wave, was she? You haven’t told me the whole story, Pia. What are you hiding?’

Pia pasted on a smile. Her eyes darted nervously from one corner of the lobby to the other. ‘We can’t talk about that here.’

‘I completely understand, but where can we talk about it?’

Pia checked her watch. ‘I’m supposed to be meeting Tom at ten to practice with the new apparatus. He’s setting it up backstage at the Orpheus, and I know there are no surveillance cameras back there. Why don’t you meet me there?’

So, Pia didn’t want to be spotted talking to me on the surveillance cameras. I wondered why. ‘You’re frightened, aren’t you?’

‘Let’s just say that there are some people who don’t want to upset the status quo. Sometimes the safest thing is not to get involved.’ Her hand shot under the bar and came back holding a Coke. ‘Here, pretend you ordered it.’

I could understand Pia’s reticence. Charlotte had been her roommate, and when Charlotte decided to get involved, it had cost her her life. ‘I promise we’ll be careful.’

When I saw Pia again a few minutes later, she was backstage helping Tom secure the clamps on four Plexiglas cylinders, approximately the diameter of a human body, joining them to make one longer cylinder. ‘They have O-rings,’ Tom explained, ‘just like the sections of a rocket. Completely waterproof.’

I perched on one of the wooden crates that I assumed the cylinders had been shipped in. ‘I’ve read about Houdini’s water torture chamber. Is it like that?’

Tom swept a lock of silver hair out of his eyes and grinned. ‘Nothing like that. There’s going to be a ship’s propeller spinning around in the middle of it.’ He drew circles in the air with an index finger. ‘Pass a watermelon through there… wissshh, womp-womp-womp!’

I was getting the picture. ‘Then you send a person through? Ouch!’

Tom winked and his ice-blue eyes twinkled. ‘That would be telling.’

For the first time in several days, I saw Pia smile. ‘Note the nautical theme. Tom’s very pleased with himself.’

‘What will you call the illusion?’ I asked.

Tom grinned. ‘Haven’t decided yet. If you have any ideas, let me know.’

‘Have you ever performed the water torture trick?’ I asked the magician.

‘Back in the day,’ Channing replied, without looking up.

‘Tom started out as an escape artist,’ Pia chirped. ‘Handcuffs, locks, straitjackets, the whole nine yards.’

All of the props for Channing’s magic act were stored neatly around us, fitted together like a jigsaw puzzle, taking up as little space as possible in the otherwise spacious backstage area. I saw the Indian Sword Basket and the Zig-Zag Box, and another box painted in yellow, red and green like a circus wagon. ‘What’s that?’ I asked. ‘I didn’t see it in the show.’

Pia answered, ‘A Vanishing Cabinet. We alternate between that and the Zig-Zag Box. Can’t have the same show every night or the audience will get bored.’

Tom appeared to be completely absorbed with the adjustments he was making to one of the clamps on his illusion. I didn’t waste any time getting to the point. ‘Where were we, Pia?’

‘There have been a number of sexual assaults during the time I’ve been working for Phoenix Cruise Lines, Mrs Ives, but the girls weren’t as lucky as your niece. Most of them were raped.’

‘How many victims?’

‘I don’t know exactly, but there were rumors. Four or five, at least.’

I sucked air in through my teeth. ‘And they never caught who did it.’

‘No.’

‘What I don’t understand is why the parents of the victims didn’t come forward, make a fuss. How come it’s not all over Fox, CNN and the local six o’clock news?’

‘Security staff have been instructed to make the problem go away,’ Pia confided. ‘Sometimes they intimidate the parents – your daughter was drinking, she was acting flirtatious, dressing like a slut. They’d guilt-trip the parents, too, who were more than likely whooping it up in the casino while their daughter was being raped by some lowlife.’

‘Blame the victim.’

‘Exactly. I’ve heard of cases where Security lost the evidence, or never collected evidence in the first place. Security tapes that exonerate the cruise line? Feds are welcome to them, but if they happen to show the cruise line at fault? Ooops! Wonder what happened to that tape? Camera must have been broken, or we accidentally recorded over it.’

Pia paused to take a breath. ‘When I was on the Voyager, before Char went missing, a fifteen-year-old was kidnapped, raped and left for dead in a sex cabin on deck three. Did they secure the cabin? They did not. Housekeeping was instructed to clean it up. So there was absolutely nothing for the F.B.I. to investigate when they finally came on board in Los Angeles.’

I held up a hand. ‘Back up a minute. “Sex cabin?” Please tell me you’re joking.’

Pia smiled grimly. ‘It’s an empty cabin – could be anywhere on the ship. The crew knows where they are and they use them for sex, generally with each other.’

‘Pia, you’re telling me that Security has a vested interest in covering things up, but yesterday I got exactly the opposite impression from Ben Martin. He responded quickly, got his team organized, found Julie fairly quickly, and seemed really concerned about conducting a thorough investigation. I’m sure he wants to get the case off his desk – as he says, he’s not a policeman – and he’s assured us he’s planning to turn everything he’s got over to the Feds.’

‘That’s Ben. He’s seems to be a straight arrow. The security guy that came before him? Not so much. He’d actually offer the parents of the victims stateroom upgrades, fifty percent refunds, trip vouchers… and if they really made a fuss, he was authorized to pay them off in cash, if only they’d just shut up and go away.’

I couldn’t imagine Georgina settling for any amount of money as compensation for what had just happened to Julie. And I wouldn’t want to be within shooting range if anybody tried. ‘Despicable,’ I said.

‘But if you felt you had no recourse…’ Pia shrugged. ‘I guess getting some money out of it was better than nothing. Once you get off the ship? Forget about it. Phoenix lawyers up.’

I thought about Ben Martin’s call to Boca Raton and got a sudden chill.

‘Ouch! Dammit!’ Tom was sucking on his finger, scowling at his screwdriver.

‘Need help?’ Pia asked.

‘No, no. It’s under control. You girls go ahead, chat, have fun.’

‘Fun?’ Clearly the man hadn’t been listening.

‘Back there you asked me if I was frightened,’ Pia continued. ‘I’m freaking paranoid, Mrs Ives! As you know, Charlotte worked as one of the youth counselors, so she must have seen something. She’d figured it out, I’m pretty sure of that, and she was about to blow the whistle. That’s why she was murdered.’

‘You were her roommate. Did she tell you who she suspected?’

‘We shared a cabin, that’s all, Mrs Ives. Our schedules didn’t coincide. I’d be finished with the show by around nine, but she’d often be up until one or two in the morning, babysitting the little brats until their shit-faced parents showed up to claim them. By the time she came stumbling in, I’d usually be asleep. So, no, she never said. But she was upset about something; I couldn’t help but notice that.’

‘And we know from Charlotte’s father that she had a problem and needed his advice.’

‘Yes.’

‘Have you seen David lately, Pia?’

She shook her head. ‘Not since he tracked me down at the beginning of the voyage – you came over to speak to me just after that, remember? – and asked me some questions about Charlotte.’

‘Like?’

‘Like the questions you’ve just been asking me.’

‘You know what I think, Pia?’

Pia’s eyes narrowed cautiously.

‘With Charlotte out of the picture, there are three people who can solve this puzzle – you, me and David Warren. I think we should get together, lay all the pieces out on the table and see what we come up with. Are you willing to do that?’

Pia shifted uncomfortably on the crate, slid her hands under her thighs and rocked back and forth on them, considering. ‘OK, but we need to be careful. I don’t want to end up like Char.’

‘We’ll be very careful. And we may have an ally that Charlotte didn’t have. The security officer on this ship seems to be an honest man, but I really trust his assistant, Molly Fortune.’

I had a sudden thought. ‘They tell me Julie was found down near I-95 in the crew-only area. Do you know where that is?’

Pia nodded.

‘I’d like to see it. Can you take me there?’

‘You’re serious? No, wait a minute. I can see from the expression on your face that you are.’ She hopped off the crate. ‘Stand up, let me look at you.’

I did as I was told.

‘I think that outfit will do.’ She turned to the magician. ‘Tom, what did you do with that clipboard?’

Tom gestured vaguely with his screwdriver. ‘Over there, under the drape.’

Pia retreated into a dark backstage recess and returned holding a clipboard with a pen and several pieces of paper attached to it. She handed it to me. ‘As long as you have a clipboard, you can be in any place at any time.’

Patting myself on the back for being clever enough to dress in a uniform-like polo shirt, Bermuda shorts and running shoes that morning, I followed Pia out of the Orpheus Theater and around the corner to a crew-only elevator, tucked away in a corner. I’d passed it almost every day without noticing.

Pia flourished her staff ID. ‘Magic powers!’ She swiped it over the magnetic card reader next to the elevator and, when the doors slid open, we climbed aboard.

When we emerged from the elevator on one of the lower levels of the ship, Pia led me through narrow hallways that were marked off into zones; the stairways were also numbered. ‘This way,’ Pia said as she preceded me down a steeply pitched, uncarpeted stairway. Clutching the clipboard to my chest, I grabbed the iron railing with my free hand to steady myself as I practically stumbled down the steps after her. We passed a white wall phone and a water fountain in a crew assembly area where framed citations and extensive deck plans hung on the bulkheads. I didn’t see any security cameras, and there were no windows.

‘Here we are,’ Pia said at last.

Ahead of me, green and white linoleum stretched on forever down a wide corridor that must have run the entire length of the ship. To one side of the door hung an oversized, shield-shaped, red, white and blue Interstate road sign. ‘I thought Martin was kidding about I-95,’ I told Pia. ‘But there it is.’

‘All Phoenix ships have signs like that,’ she explained. ‘And don’t ask me why I-95 and not, say, Route 66.’

As we were talking, a man passed by wearing a white cook’s uniform and a red bandana tied loosely around his neck. He considered us curiously, but I simply waved my clipboard. ‘Have a great day,’ I said, smiling toothily. He touched fingers to his forehead in a casual salute and hurried on.

The recycling center was unbearably hot and reeked of wet, rotting vegetables. Ranging off to one side was a double row of large plastic garbage cans, exactly like the ones Paul and I put out on the curb at home. A couple of yellow handcarts sat to one side, next to a cube of folded cardboard boxes about four feet high that was stacked on a pallet.

‘This is horrible,’ I said, trying not to breathe as I gawped at another row of trash cans brimming with glass bottles – white, green, brown – all sorted by color. ‘This is where he brought her?’

Pia sighed. ‘I think this is where he dumped her.’

‘But Officer Martin told me that he’d roped off the place where Julie was found with crime scene tape or something. I don’t see that.’

‘Let’s explore.’ Pia skirted a small forklift, led me past an enormous steam pipe – about eight feet in diameter, wrapped with insulation – and around one of the pallets. There, in a corner, stretched between a pair of smaller steam pipes and wrapped around an electrical conduit, was a length of barrier tape. I expected it to be yellow, imprinted with the words ‘Crime Scene Do Not Cross.’ Instead, the tape was red and warned, ‘Danger Do Not Enter.’ For some reason I was disappointed, as if Officer Martin had let me down. But perhaps they didn’t have the right tape to hand, or had just run out of the yellow kind.

I crouched, stared at the scarred linoleum and thought of Julie lying alone and unconscious in that hot, dirty corner of the ship, so close to the throbbing engines that it was difficult to carry on a conversation without raising your voice. Whether it was that image, or the heat, or the stench of the garbage, I’ll never know, but it made my stomach churn. ‘Thanks for bringing me here, Pia.’

Pia didn’t answer. Perhaps she, too, was thinking about Julie, and about other girls who had suffered in the same way.

I pulled my iPhone out of my pocket and, as Pia watched silently, I took pictures of the area. When I’d finished, Pia squared her shoulders, faced me and said, ‘Tell you what: let’s go find David Warren.’

‘Can you get away?’ I said to Pia’s back as we climbed up the stairs and made our way back to the crew elevator.

It had been my observation that cruise ship crew works practically 24/7. The guy who serves you drinks in the piano bar at 11.30 p.m. might be the same guy who brought you your cheese omelet at 7.00 a.m. the following morning.

‘I think so,’ Pia said, punching the button for deck four. ‘This is my time to rehearse with Tom, but he’s pretty flexible, especially this late in the run. I’ll just check with him…’ She paused as the elevator glided to a halt and the doors slid open. ‘When you find David, will you let me know?’

‘Where shall I find you?’

‘Backstage,’ she said as the elevator doors slid closed.