Hit Me

Thirty

The fish on the dinner menu that last night was marlin, lightly grilled and served with a brown butter sauce. The two women ordered it, as did Roy. Keller asked for the filet mignon, medium rare.

“Well, that’s a switch,” Roy said. “This must be the first time I’ve seen you have anything but fish. I was beginning to wonder if you shouldn’t be the one collecting fish stamps.”

When you ordered fish, the waiter took away your ordinary table knife and gave you an oddly shaped fish knife. No one ever seemed to use it, and Keller figured any piece of fish he couldn’t cut with the side of his fork was one he didn’t much want to eat.

When you ordered steak, they brought you a steak knife.

At one thirty, Keller scanned the Sun Deck. All was quiet, and he couldn’t see anyone around. At dinner they’d requested that all bags be placed out in the corridor by three a.m., so that crew members could collect them prior to departure, and the occupants of all four Sun Deck cabins had already complied.

Keller positioned himself in front of the door to stateroom 501. Several pieces of luggage were on the deck to his right. There was music playing within the cabin, barely audible through the heavy door, and the DO NOT DISTURB sign was suspended from the knob.

He had the key in his pocket, the one Julia had picked up for him, but he left it there and knocked. Carina opened it at once, wearing a pale yellow nightgown to which he supposed the word diaphanous might apply. He got a whiff of her perfume and a sense of her body heat as she reached to embrace him, then stopped herself when she realized that wasn’t in the script anymore.

Instead she made do with stating the obvious: “You’re here.”

He was, and so was Carmody, stretched out on the bed on his back, naked to the world but for a pair of boxer shorts and an arresting amount of body hair. The man’s mouth was hanging open and he was breathing slowly and heavily through it. The music Keller had heard through the door was still low in volume. Soft jazz, and Keller recognized the song but couldn’t put a name to it.

“I put the powder in his nightcap,” she said. “He drank it.”

No kidding, Keller thought.

“He wanted to fuck me,” she said, “but he passed out instead. You know where I can get some more of that powder?”

Keller had obtained it by crushing two capsules, collecting the powder in a folded-up slip of paper. As arranged, he’d met Carina that afternoon and passed it to her, along with instructions for its use. If he’d given it to her earlier she might have rushed things, and he hadn’t wanted that.

“Out like a light,” she said. “Look at him, hairy like an ape. You know what I almost did?”

“What?”

“Put a pillow over his face. I thought, what if he wakes up? But he wouldn’t wake up. He’s dead to the world, and a few minutes with a pillow over his face and he’d stay that way forever. Save you the trouble, huh?”

Satin Doll, Duke Ellington and his orchestra. That’s what was playing.

He said, “It’s good you restrained yourself.”

“Why? I would have paid you all the same. You’re the one gave me the magic powder.”

“You want it to look like death by natural causes.”

“So? He stops breathing, his heart stops beating, he’s dead. What’s more natural than that?”

“He’d have these pinpoint hemorrhages in his eyeballs.”

“So his eyes bleed, what do I care? What’s it gonna hurt him if he’s dead?”

“They’d see the hemorrhages,” he said patiently, “and they’d know immediately that he’d been smothered.”

“Oh, fuck,” she said. “Like CSI?”

“Something like that. And who do you think they just might suspect of smothering him?”

“Fuck. Good I didn’t do it.”

“I’d say.”

“So,” she said. “How you gonna make it look natural?”

He moved quickly to the side of the bed, drew the steak knife from his pocket, and sank it between two of Michael Carmody’s ribs and into his heart. The body shook with a brief tremor, the hands raised up an inch or so from the bed, and then all was still.

“Holy fuck!”

“Well,” Keller said.

“You just killed him. Just like that.”

“You’re a rich widow. That’s what you wanted, isn’t it?”

“But you stabbed him! The knife’s right there sticking out of him!”

“Good point,” Keller said, and removed the knife. There was hardly any blood on it.

“But won’t they see the wound? How’s that gonna look like natural causes?”

“Now, that’s a good question,” he said, and reached for her.