Past Due

Chapter 71

IT SMELLED OF oiled metal, stale air, must, ammonia, rot, carpet glue and bird dung, old triumphs, faded hopes, dust and ruin; it smelled, in short, of the past.

Straczynski and I climbed slowly up the old wide stairway rising through the bow of the great ship. We moved as quietly as we could. It was as black as Tommy Greeley’s heart inside that old boat and so the flashlight was our only guide, the beam intermittently catching glimpses of the companionway’s railings, the raw perforated aluminum of the ceiling, the bare metal bulkheads yellow with primer, the long deserted passageways leading off to the various decks. The ship had been stripped of everything not integral to its structure, not a stick of furniture or piece of plaster remained, the cabin walls were now mere outlines of aluminum. We were climbing through a skeleton.

At each step I waved the beam to be sure it was clear and every now and then we stopped and listened for a sound, any sound. A few flights up we could see a faint glow of light slipping out from Tommy Greeley’s hideaway. And at the bottom of the companionway, Skink was waiting, listening to us climb, listening to see if something went wrong, if someone stopped us, if disaster struck. So far disaster had patiently bided its time as we rose through the ship.

I halted; Straczynski stopped behind me. I could hear his breath, hear my heart. I put down the suitcase, bent low, concentrated the beam on something that had caught a razor’s edge of light. It was a line, fishing line. I followed it with the beam, from where it was attached at one end of the stairway, across the entire step, to where it fell down into the well. What was it attached to? An explosive? A firearm?

Old strips of sheet metal.

A crude but effective alarm system. I turned to the justice and whispered, “Do you have a handkerchief?”

He reached into his inside jacket pocket, pulled one out. As carefully as I could, I tied the white cotton around the fishing line so that Skink would find it on his climb, and then carefully stepped over the line. Straczynski did the same and we moved on.

It was another flight and a half to the deck from where the soft light leaked into the stairwell. We climbed more slowly, more carefully than before. There was another line a little farther up and this time I had the justice give me his tie to wrap around it.

“Why don’t you use your tie?” he whispered.

“Yours is silk,” I said. “One drip of gravy and it’s gone anyway. But polyester lasts forever.”

We stopped at the landing with the soft leaking light. I turned off the flashlight, put down the suitcase. The suitcase had grown heavier as I climbed. I moved my arm back and forth to ease the strain. We were at a dimly lit hallway. A muffled voice could be heard, a bright light came through an open doorway about forty yards off.

I turned to Straczynski, raised an eyebrow. He nodded. I picked up the suitcase, started down the hallway, stepped as softly as I could. The voice grew louder, grew more distinct, snatches of words came clear.

“…wouldn’t fancy getting caught in between… quick stop in Freeport maybe… after George Town we could… a mate told me about this here Ambergis…”

I recognized Colfax’s arrogant Cockney drawl, and I could tell what he was doing just by the gaps in the sound, the slowness of his voice. He was looking at a map, most likely tracing the possible routes with his finger, tossing out suggestions of where to go, where to hide. And I recognized the route too, a water route, which told me all I needed to know about their planned escape from the city. Kimberly had said she was going to buy a boat for her boss. Something comfortable, no doubt, maybe a sailboat or a small fishing vessel to take them down the coast, around Cuba, down to George Town, not the Georgetown in Washington, D.C., but the George Town in the Cayman Islands, where money travels when it wants to disappear.

We kept walking down the hall, closer and closer to the door with the light.

“What about Negril?” came a different voice, a woman’s voice. “I’ve heard wonderful things about Negril.”

A sharp breath from behind me, Justice Straczynski recognizing his wife’s voice as she plotted her escape from him.

“Yes, maybe, why not?” said a third voice, with a sharp Brockton accent. “Why not Negril?”

Something grabbed my arm. I almost jumped up and shouted, but I didn’t. I gained control, turned around, saw Straczynski with his eyes glistening. “That’s Tommy,” he said.

I nodded, looked down at my arm until he let go.

“Are you ready?” I said softly.

He waited for a moment, peered past me down the hallway as if he was peering into both his painful past and his uncertain future, and then nodded.

Slowly, silently we walked toward the open door. We had to be careful. I had wanted to surprise them, to catch them off guard, to learn what I could before they were aware of our presence and to give Skink the time he needed, but I didn’t want to surprise them so much that Colfax started shooting before he realized who we were. So it wouldn’t do to just appear at the doorway, no that wouldn’t do. I would be polite, I would knock.

I rapped once, twice.

“Hello,” I called out. “Anyone home? Victor Carl here, and I have a delivery.”