Backflash. Part 11

"And you have a beautiful statehouse," the captain a.s.sured him, nodding his narrow beak at it.

They all turned to look, even Wycza, who usually ignored polite c.r.a.p like that, and it was still there all right, slowly receding. It was now quarter past eight, and though the sun hadn't yet set it was behind the Albany hills, putting the eastern slopes of the city in shade, so that the statehouse looked more than ever like simply a huge pile of rocks.

Sternberg said, "It's all right, I suppose. It's always been a little too much like a castle for me. I'm too instinctive a small 'd' democrat for that."

"The schloss, yes," the captain agreed. "I quite understand. That may be why I like it. There was nothing in Biloxi like that."

"No, there wouldn't be."

"I understand," the captain said, "your a.s.sociates here carry weapons. As you know, on the ship-"

"That was all taken care of," Sternberg broke in, and Wycza thought, now what.

"I'm sorry, Mister a.s.semblyman," the captain said, with the faint smile of someone whose decisions are never argued with, "but the company has strict-"

"This was dealt with," Sternberg insisted, showing a little more impatience, almost a touch of anger, "when the arrangements were made."

"If you were told-" the captain began, but then Parker, standing next to Wycza here in the background, interrupted him, saying, "Captain, Trooper Helsing and I apologize, but we have no choice. We are not permitted to be disarmed while on duty. It's regulations. You could phone our barracks in Albany, speak to the major-"

Holy s.h.i.t, Parker, Wycza thought, what if he does? What if he even asks for the phone number? Jesus, this was supposed to be solved, the f.u.c.king guns are the reason we're playing this dumb game. What are we supposed to do now, shoot our way off the ship? Or hand over the G.o.ddam guns and play-act the whole evening and never get to do the caper. Walk into the money room and out again, say thank you very much, and go off somewhere and shoot ourselves in the head.

But before Parker could finish his offer, and before they could know whether or not the captain would have taken him up on it, Sternberg burst in, furious, and now furious at Parker: "Renfield, what's the matter with you? One phone call to the barracks about me being on this ship, and why, and all of our security is destroyed. The press is there, Renfield! The press is always in those offices."

"Oh." Wycza had never seen Parker look abashed, and wouldn't have guessed he knew how to do it, but he did. "Sorry, Mr. Kotkind," he said, with that abashed face. "I didn't think."

Sternberg turned a glowering eye on Susan Cahill: "Ms. Cahill, my office made these arrangements with-"

"Yes, yes, you did," she said, and Wycza felt almost sorry for her. She was between a rock and a hard place, and she hadn't known this was going to happen. She said, 'Just give me a minute, Mister a.s.semblyman," and turned away, to say, quiet but intense, "Captain Andersen, could we talk for just a minute?"

"Susan," the captain said, "you know-"

"Yes, yes, but if we could just-"

"There's a perfectly adequate safe in that corner right there, no risk could-"

"Captain."

And finally, not merely holding his arm but stroking the upper arm from elbow to shoulder, up and down, up and down, she managed to turn the captain away as though he were the ship itself and she the small but powerful tugboat, and she walked him away into the forward room, the one with the oval wall of windows.

Once they were out of sight, Sternberg turned on Parker and hissed, "You know there's to be no publicity about this! You understood that!"

Playing it out, Wycza knew, for the benefit of the other crew members in the room, all of whom were pretending to be busy at other things but were clearly listening with all their ears. Still, as Wycza guessed, Parker could play at this game only so far. He'd gone back to his usual stone face, and all he said was, "Yes, sir. I think Ms. Cahill will straighten it out." Enough is enough, in other words.

Sternberg understood the message, and contented himself with a few harrumphs and a couple of glowers in the general direction of the receding city, until a much more cheerful Susan Cahill came back into the room, trailed by a discontented Captain Andersen holding fast to his dignity. "All settled," she announced. "But you see now, Mister a.s.semblyman, just how careful we are on this ship." Immediately spinning the scene from confrontation to a positive message.

"And I'm glad you are," Sternberg told her, gallantly accepting the spin. "I'm sorry, Captain," he said, "if the special circ.u.mstances of this tour mean we have to bend a rule or two. I think you'll agree it's in a good cause."

The captain unbent himself, not without difficulty. "I'm sure it is a good cause, a.s.semblyman Kotkind," he said, with a small bow. "We are newly arrived in your part of the world, we hope to become good neighbors and to be accepted by all our new friends, as time goes on. For that to be true, I realize, we will have to learn something of your ways. But for now, do follow Susan, let her show you this quite lovely ship, and although you are here for serious business, please do take pleasure in the scenery as we pa.s.s by."

"I will," Sternberg promised. "Delighted to meet you, Captain."

"And you, Mister a.s.semblyman. I understand we'll be dining together. I look forward to it."

"As do I. We won't keep you, Captain, I know you're busy."

As they were leaving, the captain even found a smile to show Parker and Wycza. "I certainly hope, gentlemen," he said, "we shall not be seeing those weapons of yours."

Wycza grinned at him. He knew how to handle a soft lob like that. "If you see my weapon on this ship, Captain," he said, "I'm not doing my job."

4.

Ray Becker sat in an old wooden Adirondack chair on the screened porch at the back of the cabin, the bottle of Gatorade at his side, and watched the sunset over the river. It's a new day, he thought. I'm starting over, and this time I'm gonna get it right.

He was a f.u.c.kup, and he knew it. He'd been a f.u.c.kup all his life, third of five sons of a hardware store owner who was never any problem for any of his boys so long as they worked their a.s.s off. Being in the middle, Ray had never been big enough or strong enough to compete with his meaner older brothers, and never been cute enough or sly enough to compete with his guileful younger brothers, so he was just the f.u.c.kup in the middle, and grew up knowing that about himself, and had never done anything in his life to make him change his opinion of himself.

G.o.d knows he tried. He liked the Army, for instance. Go in there and do your job and don't sweat about promotion, and the Army was never any problem for anybody, so long as they worked their a.s.s off. But drink and bad companions have taken down many a better man than Ray Becker, and he did wind up with a bunch of clowns that had it in mind to rob the base PX, and of course they got caught, and of course Ray was the first to crack, so of course he was the one who wound up with the deal and testified against everybody else, and they went to Leavenworth while he didn't even have a bad mark on his record; a general discharge under honorable conditions. Only the Army wouldn't ever want him back.

Policing turned out to be like the Army, only with different-colored uniforms. But the concept was the same; a strict set of rules, easy to understand. Stay within them, you'll be all right. And in police work, particularly small-town police work, you didn't even have to work your a.s.s off.

But the other little glitch was money. The old man had been as cheap a son of a b.i.t.c.h as it was possible to find, and still was, no doubt; Ray had had no contact at all with the family for more than ten years. What would be in it for him? Work for the old man, and get nothing out of it. The only reason the old man would know Ray wasn't there was if he had to get somebody else to do the heavy lifting.

Thirty-seven years old. A born f.u.c.kup who didn't really want much in life, but who simply couldn't keep himself from conniving. Show him a rule, and he'll say, "Oh, thank G.o.d, there's rules," and absolutely mean it, and at the same time scheme from the get-go for some sneaky way to get around the rule, subvert it, defy it and ignore it. Maybe that was an inheritance from the old man, too.

Well, Ray Becker's f.u.c.kup days were done. This last one was the lesson, for good and all. Four million dollars in commercial paper being trucked north to Chicago out of some bank that went bust down south. A big tractor-trailer full of valuable paper and a handful of armed guards. Two unmarked cars, one ahead and one behind, with more armed guards, and here it all came, st.i.tching up the center of the country, heading for the big stone banks of Chicago, America's Switzerland.

Who knew about this movement of so much valuable paper? Hundreds of people, all of them supposed to be trustworthy. Bank people, the security service that provided the guards, various federal agencies, and police forces along the way, that had to be told what was happening in their territory, as a courtesy and for practical reasons, too.

Ray had no idea who set up the job, but one of the gang was an old pal of his from Army days', one of the boys he'd sent to Leavenworth, who was out now and had joined up with a much more serious bunch of heist artists. Old pal Phil had found his way to Ray Becker to tell him he was prepared to forgive and forget the old Army days because old pal Ray was going to feed old pal Phil the information on how the truck full of valuable paper was coming through; what time of what day on what road with what additional escort. And just to show there were no hard feelings, Ray's share was going to be two hundred thousand dollars. A nice little nest egg. And just to show this was all in earnest, old pal Phil was handing old pal Ray a thousand dollars, ten new one-hundred-dollar bills, on account.

On account of that was all he was going to get.

The final f.u.c.kup. Make a four-million-dollar robbery possible, get one measly miserable thousand dollars out of it, and be the only one who gets caught and goes to jail for it.

Not this time. This time luck had been with him, for once. This time, he thought he'd been given the hundred forty thousand dollars that would help him clear out and start over under another ident.i.ty somewhere else, but instead he'd been given Marshall Howell, and then Hilliard Cathman, and then Parker and the others, and then the gambling boat.

Spirit of the Hudson. Luck is with me at long last, Ray Becker thought. So maybe I'll take a little of tonight's money, some time soon, take a ride on that gambling boat, see what happens. Not all of it, for G.o.d's sake, not even a lot of it, not to f.u.c.k up all over again. Take a couple thousand, that's all, see if my luck holds. Win some money, meet some nice blonde woman in a long dress with her t.i.ts hanging out at the top, drink a gla.s.s of champagne. Buy a necktie before I go.

Across the way, the sun had ratcheted down out of sight. The sky over there was deep red above the jagged black ma.s.ses of the Catskills, with blackness below, pierced by a few pinholes of yellow light. And here came the boat, the very boat itself, gliding down the river, just exuding light. Spreading a pale halo out over the water and the air, a misty milky glow that made it look like a ship from some other universe, a mirage, floating into our plain dark world. Faintly, he could hear music, he could see people move around on the ship, the beautiful white boat surrounded by its veil of light.

And you're coming for me, he thought, whether you know it or not. He smiled at the ship. In his mind, the blonde woman leaned toward him, and she smiled, too.

5.

For Greg Manchester, it was almost like being a spy. Here he was, on the Spirit of the Hudson, anonymous with his tiny pocket Minolta camera and his even smaller palm-of-the-hand audio ca.s.sette recorder, snapping pictures here and there around the ship, murmuring observations and data into the recorder, and n.o.body at all had the first idea he was a reporter.

And the funny thing was, he didn't even intend a negative story. It was just that the management of this ship, Avenue Resorts, based in Houston, Texas, was so antsy about the controversial nature of casino gambling that they demanded total control over every facet of any news story involving them, or they would withhold all cooperation.

It was easy for the management to enforce that policy with television newspeople, of course, because television newspeople necessarily travel with so much gear, cameras and recording equipment and lights and all the rest of it, that they need cooperation everywhere they go. But Greg Manchester worked in the world of print, a reporter with the Poughkeepsie Journal, a daily paper in the town that just happened to be the Spirit of the Hudson's southern terminus, and Greg Manchester was determined to get a story that was not made dull and bland and predictable by an excess of cooperation with Avenue Resorts.

His editor had been skeptical at first, since the Spirit of the Hudson was already an important advertiser, but Greg had said, 'Jim, I'm not doing an expose. What's to expose? They're a clean operation. This will just be fun for the readers, to be a fly on the wall for one cruise of the glamorous ship."

"No controversy," Jim said.

"No controversy," Greg promised.

Well, it was an easy promise to keep. With the Spirit of the Hudson, with so much official oversight and political grandstanding all around it, everything was absolutely squeaky clean, from the place settings to the morals of the crew. So what Greg was doing was essentially human interest, which quite naturally led him to the girl in the wheelchair.

Poor G.o.ddam thing, he wanted to hug her or something. She looked to be in her late twenties, the same as him, but so frail, so vulnerable, and yet so brave. If he wasn't careful, she'd take over the piece, and he didn't want that. She'd be in it, of course, a part of it, but the story still had to be about the ship.

So he limited himself in the early hours of the cruise to one brief conversation with the girl in the wheelchair and the rather tough-looking man in a chauffeur's uniform who wheeled her around. They were out on the promenade deck at that time, watching the sh.o.r.eline go by, and he went over just to make a little small talk lucky in the weather, beautiful scenery, that kind of thing, just to establish a connection and they were both gracious, but she was obviously very weak and not up to too much talk, so soon he moved on, looked at other things, took pictures here and there (a few of the wheelchair girl, too, of course, and he'd have to learn her name before the cruise was over), and made his observations into the recorder.

There was somebody else of interest aboard, too, a VIP of some sort, an ill-tempered kind of guy with a couple of bruisers who looked like they must be bodyguards, all being escorted around by Susan Cahill. He remembered Susan Cahill, though she'd have no reason to remember him, from the press conferences when the ship first arrived, when he'd just been a part of the herd of reporters all being schmoozed at once. Susan Cahill was s.e.xy and smart and tough as nails, and Greg could see she was treating this short fat sour-looking man with the softest of kid gloves. Somebody important, at least to the Spirit of the Hudson.

He took pictures in the better dining room, on the port side of the ship, but actually ate in the sandwich joint on the other side, since he didn't have an expense account for this little jaunt. He visited the casino but didn't play, and noticed that the c.r.a.ps tables were the most popular (and the loudest) and the two roulette wheels the least. Six blackjack tables were open, three with a ten-dollar minimum and three with a twenty-five dollar minimum, and all did well. The rows of slot machines were almost all occupied almost all of the time, but the video poker games didn't draw as big a crowd.

The ship arrived at Poughkeepsie a little before eleven, and would stay at the dock for ten minutes. Now Greg was sorry he hadn't taken the train up to Albany; if he had, he could get off now, because he had just about everything he needed for his story, except the name of the girl in the wheelchair and the ident.i.ty of the VIP, which would take no time at all. But he'd driven up this afternoon, so his car was up there, so he had to do the round-trip. But that was okay, there could still be more to learn.

A little after eleven, the ship steamed out away from Poughkeepsie, made a long curving arc out to the middle of the river, then slowly pivoted on its own axis there, while the customers who could tear themselves away from the gaming tables crowded along the rails to stare, until the prow was finally pointed upstream, white foam now giving it an Edwardian collar as the ship's engines deepened their hum and they started up against the current.

Well, he might as well get his two "who" questions answered, so as the lights of Poughkeepsie faded in the night darkness behind them Greg went looking for the girl in the wheelchair and his VIP.

He found the VIP first, in the casino, with his bodyguards and Susan Cahill, glowering in disapproval at the roulette wheels. The floor manager, a neat young guy in the royal blue and gold uniform of the ship, stood at parade rest just inside the casino door, and Greg approached him, saying, "Excuse me. That must be somebody important, I guess."

"He thinks so," the floor manager said. He had some sort of southern accent.

Greg laughed. "Who does he think he is?"

"New York State a.s.semblyman," the floor manager said. "Not that big a deal, I wouldn't think. Name's Kotkind, he's from Brooklyn."

Greg blinked, and stared at the VIP and his entourage across the way. "Are you sure?"

"Absolutely," the floor manager said, and took a business card out of his shirt pocket. "Gave me his card, you see? Handing them out to anybody in the crew he talks to. I told him I don't vote in his district, and he said that's okay, when he runs for statewide office I can vote for him then. Pretty pleased with himself, huh?"

Greg looked at the card, and it was a.s.semblyman Morton Kotkind's card, sure enough; he'd seen it before. "Well, I'll be d.a.m.ned," he said. "Thanks." And he left there, to try to think this out. What the heck was going on here?

Coming out of the casino, he was just in time to see the nearby elevator door close, with the girl in the wheelchair and her chauffeur companion inside. Going up. He's the one I'll talk to, Greg thought. He felt confused, and didn't want to blow his cover or make a stupid mistake, so he felt he needed somebody to discuss the thing with, and that chauffeur had struck him right away as a competent no-nonsense kind of guy.

Up the stairs he went, and saw the chauffeur just pushing the wheelchair out onto the gla.s.s-enclosed promenade. Greg followed, and found very few people up here now, there being so little to see at night, except the few lights of little river towns. The chauffeur pushed the wheelchair slowly along, in no hurry, apparently just to keep in motion. Greg hurried to catch up.

6.

Mike Carlow was glad this was the last night. He'd been pushing this d.a.m.n wheelchair around for over a week, carrying Noelle's slops into the men's room, doing his strong silent (but caring) number, and he was bored with it.

Also, just pushing the wheelchair got to be a drag. But he'd learned early the first night out that he had to keep the wheelchair moving. Stop somewhere, and the sympathetic people started hovering around, asking questions, being pains in the a.s.s. Noelle could pitch a faint every once in a while to make them lay off, but that was work, too. It was simpler to just keep moving.

Of course, even then you still got the pushy ones, of all types, old and young, male and female. Of them, Carlow thought he probably disliked the young males the worst, the ones who came on all sympathetic and concerned but you could see in their eyes that what they really wanted was to f.u.c.k Noelle's brains out.

Not that Carlow wanted Noelle for himself. He was meeting her for the first time on this job, he liked her, he thought she was stand-up and could be counted on, but she wasn't the kind of woman who appealed to him in that other way. For that, he liked a heftier woman, someone out of his own world, the kind you'd meet in the auto race circuit, who could change a tire and whose favorite food was pancakes.

For Mike Carlow, everything related back to the track and the fast cars. He'd driven his first race when he was fourteen, won for the first time when he was sixteen, and had never much cared about anything else. For instance, he'd figured it out early that the amount of gasoline in the gas tank affected the car's center of gravity, constantly shifting the center of gravity as the fuel was used up, so while still in high school he'd designed a car that wouldn't have that problem because there wasn't any gas tank; the car was built around a frame of hollow aluminum tubing, and the tubing held the gas. When someone told him it was crazy to want to drive a car where he'd be completely surrounded by gasoline, he'd said, "So what?" He still couldn't see what was wrong with the idea, and didn't understand why no official at any track in America would permit such a design into a race.

Still, there were other cars and other designs that they would accept, so Carlow was reasonably happy. Every year or so he took a job like this one, to raise the money to build more race cars, and every year, one way or another, he survived both his obsession with race cars and the heists he went on to support that obsession.

"Excuse me."

Carlow looked around and it was one of the young studs, in fact one that had hit on them earlier in the evening until Noelle had gone all faint on him. Not wanting to have to deal with the same guy twice in one outing, and also feeling some of the impatience that comes when you know the job is almost finished, and feeling ill-used because he'd come up here to the promenade because it wasn't full of annoying people after dark, Carlow gave him a pretty icy look and said, "Yes?"

"Do you mind?" The guy was young and eager like before, but now he also seemed troubled. "I need to talk to somebody," he said, "and I was going to come see you two, anyway. I'm just not sure what to do."

The promenade had benches along the inner wall, but the rest was clear. Down ahead toward the stern, a few people strolled along, moving away. Back toward the prow, an exhausted older couple sat on a bench barely awake. Carlow took all this in because he had a sense for this kind of problem when he was on a job, a sense that told him when there was a rip in the fabric, and he just had the feeling there was a rip in the fabric coming right now. The question was, what had gone wrong, and what could they do about it? "Sure," he said. "Why don't you sit on the bench here so Jane Ann can be part of the conversation."

"All right."

The guy sat, looking disturbed, confused about something, and Carlow arranged the wheelchair and himself so the guy was hard to see from either direction along the promenade. "Tell us about it," he suggested.

"Well, the thing is," the guy said, "I'm here sort of secretly, and I'm not sure if I should blow my cover."

Carlow said, "You mean, you're not an ordinary pa.s.senger, you're not what you seem to be, you're something else." A cop? Not a chance.

"That's right. My name's Greg Manchester, and I'm a reporter, and I'm doing a-"

Noelle snapped, with more sharpness than her frail condition would allow, "A reporter?"

Manchester was too involved in his own problems to notice Noelle's slip. He said, "The cruise line company won't permit unescorted reporters, so I just want to do a fly on the wall kind of thing. Not negative, just fun."

Carlow said, "So you're going around looking at things, making notes..."

"And taking pictures, too," Manchester said. "When n.o.body's looking." To Noelle he said, "That's why I was coming to you anyway, to get your name."

Noelle said, "You have pictures of me? Oh, I wouldn't like that, the way I look-"