The Kills

39

I hugged the leather seat cushion and tried to balance myself against it on my way to grab the cell phone. Hoyt had let go of the wheel for a few seconds. Steadier than I as the boat crossed its own wake, he stepped ahead, leaned over, and picked it up before I could get to it.

"Is there some change in-?" I tried to ask without broadcasting my alarm.

"We're going back to the Chelsea Piers. Just stay where you are. I'm going to bounce us around a bit." He was looking angry now, under way at excessive speed and rolling me across the stern of the sturdy Whaler.

He pressed a button on the phone and held it to his ear with one hand. He must have hit redial. If he heard Mercer's voice and not Sarah's, he'd know I'd been lying.

Mercer probably answered immediately, since we had been disconnected abruptly.

Hoyt turned to me and sneered, throwing the phone into the water and laughing as he spoke into the breeze, "Sorry, wrong number."

There were craft of all shapes and sizes zigzagging across the Hudson on this fall afternoon. I wasn't able to stand up without falling at the speed we were going, no one could hear me over the noise of the various engines if I were to call out for help across the water, and the only option left-waving my arms in the air-would look like a friendly greeting to most boaters out on a sunny afternoon.

"Don't even think about it, Alex. Just sit nice and still."

I was anything but still, tossing around on the seat cushion as Hoyt purposely steered the boat back and forth, almost hot-rodding it on the chop to keep me off-balance.

"Over here," he said, snarling at me. He pointed to a spot directly next to his feet.

I didn't move. Hoyt spun the wheel sharply to the left, hard enough to knock me across the length of the rear seat and send me crashing onto the floor.

"Damn it. I said I want you over here."

I crouched and started moving in his direction, looking everywhere for some kind of tool that I could use to defend myself.

We were below Forty-second Street now-I could track the West Side Highway ramp descending and the roadway curving-but Hoyt gave no sign of slowing down as we came into striking distance of Chelsea Piers.

"We're going to let the boy be for a while, Alex. You and I have things to talk about."

There wasn't going to be time for a long conversation before we passed the southern tip of Manhattan heading into Upper New York Bay and the ocean that stretched out forever beyond the Verrazano Bridge. The Atlantic was a massive graveyard that I didn't want to visit today.

"Your captain will be back-"

"I know, I know. And your buddies will be looking for you all the way from Chelsea to the Dover cliffs. But I just told my crew that the damn engine in this boat is acting up again. And my unreliable steering column-I meant to have it repaired in Nantucket. It would be a terrible thing if I lost control and it crashed up on the rocks," he said, pausing to glance down at me. "With one of us still aboard."

There had to be a knife or bottle opener or sharp-edged object in some compartment or other. Everything seemed to be stowed tightly in place, and I saw nothing loose that I could grasp for protection.

Hoyt went on. "I just told the captain that you insisted on seeing the Statue of Liberty up close. So this excursion will be, after all, your very own idea, Alex. That's the way he'll tell it."

I was sitting in a puddle now, and when Hoyt dipped the boat on its side to throw me off-guard from time to time, I shivered from my thighs to my shoulders as the cold water saturated my clothing.

With one hand, he unlatched a drawer beneath the windshield and reached in, removing a short length of rope and dangling it in front of my face.

Paige Vallis. What had Squeeks told me about her cause of death? She'd been strangled by some kind of ligature. Probably a thin rope.

Hoyt let go of the wheel for a few seconds while he made a sailor's knot, deftly, as if he'd done it hundreds of times before. Maybe even in the laundry room of Vallis's apartment building. Again he let it swing before my eyes.

"What was it that changed your mood, Alex? What did the detective tell you that seemed to frighten you so terribly?"

"Nothing scared me. I-uh, I was just worried about Mike. He was talking to me about Mike Chapman. Nobody's heard from him since he ran off after Andrew Tripping. Mercer's concerned, too."

Hoyt grabbed a handful of my hair in his left hand and smashed my head backward against the edge of the cockpit door.

"Lying never helps, Alex. You're smart enough to know that. I heard you say the name Fabian. Now why in the world would you be talking about him right now?"

I didn't answer. I had found the man who was the missing link between the two murders-McQueen Ransome and Paige Vallis.

"Something the friendly detective said shocked you. Why don't you slip this rope over your ankles while you think about telling me what it was exactly?"

He lowered the noose and I fumbled at putting my feet through the opening. Though I was a very strong swimmer, I couldn't do anything if I went into the water with a restraint around my legs.

"I thought about putting it over your neck instead, but then if one of us survives this little accident-and surely one of us will-I wouldn't want to have to explain those burn marks that would have been on your throat." Hoyt pulled up on the end of the rope and it tightened over the cuff of my pants, jerking me closer to him and lashing my head against the boat's floor.

My hands were free, and I thought about striking at his knees to bring him down with me. But the cord on my legs limited my mobility, and although he was shorter than I, he seemed to be strong-and determined.

"So you were saying to Mr. Wallace-something about a photograph and a boy-possibly Fabian Ransome?"

I couldn't speak. I didn't know what kind of answer Hoyt was looking for.

"Now's the time to talk," he said, lifting his leg to deliver a swift kick to my side. "Heard you're never at a loss for words in the courtroom."

I looked up at him, everything coming into focus. "So you're the one paying for Tiffany Gatts's lawyers. You're the one she's afraid will have her killed if she talks."

He was weaving between a ferry and some smaller boats, maneuvering through heavier traffic as we got down to Battery Park City and its busy marina, nearing the southern tip of Manhattan.

I could see the majestic statue of Lady Liberty straight ahead of us, green copper skin glinting in the sunlight, her torch raised high as she appeared to be striding forward. She loomed over the harbor, welcoming the tired, poor, and huddled masses, her "mild eyes," as Lazarus described them, blind to my dilemma.

I thought of the image of Liberty on the face of the Double Eagle. Was I going to die because of a useless twenty-dollar piece of gold?

Hoyt was clear of some of the traffic and ready to talk again.

"All this for what?" I asked. "You and Peter Robelon are both chasing after the same thing, aren't you?"

"Don't spend too much of your time thinking, Alex. You should be admiring the view."

"I can figure out Tiffany's role in this. Tiffany and Kevin Bessemer. Who's Spike Logan working for? Which of you sent that bastard after me?"

"Watch how you speak of the dead."

I looked up at Hoyt.

"The sea is a treacherous place, Alex. I told Spike I'd pick him up in the tender, from Stonewall Beach, the morning after the storm. He seemed to have lost his footing on the swim platform when he tried to get on board. I went to save him with the grappling hook, but-well, I missed the mark."

That must have been just shortly before I saw Hoyt on the Pirate yesterday, gassing up in Menemsha. "You killed him because he didn't bring back what you sent him for?" I was rolling the words slowly off my tongue, trying to understand what had been going on around me. "You killed him because his mission was to get from me whatever it is you think I have?"

"Paige set you up, Alex. Right before she died. I know you've got it."

I could see the seven points in Liberty's diadem, one for each of the world's seas and continents. "That's not true, Graham. She didn't send me anything. She-"

He kicked my side again with the bottom of his shoe. "It's ugly when you dissemble. Think about it. Paige didn't want to die, Alex. She really didn't. She pleaded with me, on her knees, on the cold cement of the basement floor. I gave her one chance, and she told me she sent it to you. Help me, Alex," Hoyt said, patting me on top of my head. "Help yourself."

"What is it, Graham?" I pleaded. "How the hell can I tell you when I don't know what you're looking for?"

We were almost in front of Bedloe's Island now, circling the star-shaped foundation of Fort Wood, on which the great lady stood. I could see the broken shackles at Liberty's feet, and envied her escape from tyranny, when all that held me was a length of rope.

I tried again. "The coin. Is it the Double Eagle you're looking for?"

"Not anymore, Alex."

I put my head in my hands and tried to shake the image that had appeared. I was thinking of the photograph of Queenie and the Tripping boy, taken just before her death. "You took Dulles with you when you killed McQueen Ransome? That's how you-"

Liberty was behind us now, and Hoyt was going full throttle into Upper New York Bay, with Staten Island straight ahead. If he veered left, under the Verrazano to the ocean, I would be running out of shoreline as fast as I was running out of ideas.

"Don't be stupid, Alex. You know how I feel about kids. He just came in for a bit of a tease, to warm the old lady up, remind her of her lost little boy. See if she'd part with her precious gold treasure, which was worthless to her anyway. That's what she'd promised me, as long as I'd bring the kid by every now and then to visit her. Pay some of her expenses. Find her a nicer place to live. Dulles performed like an angel. Then I sent him out to the car, and-"

"And Queenie changed her mind, didn't she?"

"Tough old bird. She struck a hard bargain, then tried to welsh on it. She knew something was up."

"So Kevin and Tiffany were just the fall guys. You sent them to break in later on, and if caught, they'd take the weight for what you had stolen-or who you had killed."

"Every plan needs a backup, Alex. I never intended to hurt Queenie. Why should I? She was playing into my hands. I made a big contribution to the Schomburg just to mount a permanent exhibit of her photographs."

Contributions to child refugee organizations, contributions to inner-city art museums. Hoyt was the desperate lawyer Justin Feldman had been telling me about as we talked on the plane on the way to the Vineyard. The guy so far in over his head that he was now killing people to support his lifestyle, to make the one big score that would save his own neck.

"So you have the Double Eagle," I said, "and the only thing you need is some way to make it legitimate, some way to make it worth seven or eight million dollars."

"Go to the head of the class."

"And you think that I have that? You're wrong, Graham. Paige never gave me-"

I was twisting, trying to roll onto my knees so I could wrestle with Hoyt for the steering wheel and turn the boat back toward the city.

Of course Paige had given me something, I realized, as I fell sideways and cracked my head against the handle of a fishing rod stowed under the gunwale of the boat. She never mailed me anything-didn't send it to me that last night of her life-which is what both Hoyt and Robelon were assuming. But she'd brought something to my office earlier that same day, something that was sitting in a drawer of my file cabinet. Maybe that concealed whatever it was that this man would kill to obtain.

I struggled back to my knees, trying to loosen the rope on my feet while Hoyt steered the boat. "I have an idea, Graham. Tell me what it is you're looking for and maybe I can figure out where it might be."

Hoyt looked down at me and laughed. A second later, he swerved the wheel to the right, turning and turning as furiously as he could, sending me lurching backward again.

"Why don't you start, Alex? Paige obviously gave you something-that's where you ended your last thought, midsentence. Hurry up, Alex. Tell me what she gave you. We're almost there."

I picked my head up, relieved to see that the turn had taken us away from the direction of the Verrazano. Instead of going to the ocean, he had steered to the right, to the body of water that separated Staten Island from New Jersey.

There was land on both sides of us rather than endless fathoms of water, and I was unrealistically euphoric at that thought. Then I made the mistake of asking where he was taking me.

"The Kills, Alex. Don't you know your geography? We're going to the Kills."