Dave suspected that Al’s reaction was mostly based on fear. Being at the bottom of a forty-foot screw lock as it filled up with millions of gallons of water felt very claustrophobic. He had set a north by north-west course for Cancun on Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula, a distance of some 900 miles. From there he intended to sail north by north-east across the northern coast of Cuba. It was a course he hoped would keep them close to land in the event that they encountered anything worse than the roughish sea that, according to the weather station on the radio, now lay ahead of them. The boat was fitted with Gyrogale Quadrafin stabilizers but, in an effort to make time, and because he also wanted to punish Al for what had happened to Pepe, Dave avoided using them altogether. He himself was an excellent sailor. Al, he had already surmised, was not; and by the time the coast of Honduras was behind them, Al was looking as green as a wet dollar bill.
Watching him throw up over the side for the third time in eighteen hours, Dave grinned sadistically. ‘Seems like you’ve thrown up just about everywhere in Central America. You’re one hell of a tourist, I’ll say that much for you, Al. Kind of like a tiger, the way it marks out its territory with piss. Only you seem to prefer to use vomit.’ He glanced back at some seagulls now making a meal of what Al had just thrown up. ‘The gulls seem to like you anyway. At least they like what you had for breakfast.’
‘That smart mouth of yours again.’ Al collapsed on the flybridge sofa and closed his eyes biliously.
‘Smart?’ Dave smacked his lips experimentally. ‘You mean, as in not covered with flecks of vomit? Yeah, I guess it is at that.’ He glanced down at one of the screens in front of him as the auto pilot made a small course correction and simultaneously stored the information in the computer’s dead-reckoning log. Then, taking a deep, ostentatiously euphoric breath, Dave stood up, stretched and said, ‘Hey, Al. Doesn’t this sea air give you an appetite? Reckon I’ll go below and fix myself a big lunch. Right now I could really murder a big plate of rock oysters.’
Al swallowed loudly and said, ‘I’m gonna murder you if you don’t shut the fuck up.’
‘Not hungry, huh?’
‘How long,’ groaned Al, ‘before we get to Florida?’
Dave checked the bottom of the screen where real time displays of position, course, track and ETA were updated every second.
‘Well, according to Hal here, be another forty hours or so before you see the historic city of Miami again. That is if we don’t hit any really bad weather. Which could slow us up some. But I can’t see it changing very much from what it is now. It looks like you and your internal affairs had better get used to this kind of sea.’
Al smiled grimly. ‘And you, motherfucker, had better get used to having me around. Maybe I haven’t yet told you. But I’m your chaperon for the Atlantic caper.’
Dave laughed scornfully. ‘You? I’ve seen poisoned camels that would make better sailors than you.’
Al shook his head as if too ill to think of some insult to hurl back in the younger man’s tanned and healthy-looking face. Exasperated he said, ‘The fuck d’you want all that money for, anyway?’
‘That’s an odd question for you to ask. Like one hooker accusing another of promiscuity.’
Al stood up abruptly and, with one hand clamped over his ballooning mouth, went outside the bridge and leaned over the side. During the minutes he was gone Dave did a little philosophical thinking. He thought about the heist and he thought about the money, but mostly he just thought about where he was: on the high seas, with nothing in front of him except the prow of the boat, and not a bad boat at that — it was just about worth the effort of going all the way down to Costa Rica to fetch it back home. Maybe it wasn’t worth the lives of two people, but he could hardly have anticipated anything like what had happened in San José. He was enjoying the voyage, an enjoyment made all the sweeter by the knowledge of how much Al was hating it.
Al stepped uncertainly through the flybridge doorway, wiping his mouth on the sleeve of his football shirt. He sat down at the chart table and drank some whiskey in an attempt to settle his stomach.
Dave said, ‘Been thinking about your question, Al.’
‘What fuckin’ question?’
‘Why I want all that money.’
‘You were right. It was a dumb fucking question.’
‘You ever read books, Al?’
‘Books?’ Al finished the whiskey in his glass and poured another. He was considering the possibility that being drunk he might not notice being seasick. ‘I only ever read three books in my whole life. Three that I remember, anyway. One was Hoyle on Gambling. The second was the Jaguar Owner’s Handbook. I gotta Jaguar. Supercharged XJR. Beautiful fuckin’ car. And the third book I read was about the Roman Caesars. On the whole if I want to read a book I generally wait for the movie.’
‘You should read more, Al. Most of the travel I’ve done in the last five years has been in the pages of books. So, in answer to your earlier question, I want to buy myself a yacht and see some of those places for myself, y’know?’
‘Madonna wants to go to Europe. But I like Vegas.’
‘One book I read was Seven Pillars of Wisdom, by Lawrence of Arabia.’
‘Good movie.’
‘It was all about how he fell in love with the empty space of the desert, right? That’s what I want to do. Fall in love with some empty spaces.’
‘I could introduce you to a cousin of mine. Best lookin’ empty space I ever saw. The lights are on, ’cept nobody’s home. But built like a fuckin’ palace.’
‘The desert. Or maybe the wilderness. The Australian outback. The Yukon. And of course the sea. The sea, I love.’
Al shook his head and grimaced. He said, ‘I hate the fuckin’ sea.’
‘The kind of yacht I want to buy, it’s nothing like this, man. I want a proper boat, with sails. Can’t be too big, or else I have to have a large crew. Two people, including myself d be about right. Gotta picture of the kinda boat I’m gonna buy right here. Want to see it?’ Dave took a piece of paper out of his pocket, unfolded a picture he had torn from an old copy of Showboats International and showed it to Al. He said, ‘Now that’s what I call a boat. Seventy-five foot ketch, clipper bow, wineglass stern, transom windows, Scheel layout. Boat like that costs a lot more than two hundred grand anyway. Kind of boat to see the world in.’
Al looked at the picture and then floated it back to Dave. ‘All those sails? Looks like hard work.’
‘That’s the point, Al. It’s you and the sea.’
‘The sea’s a bitch. And a bitch who’s really out of your league. The kind of bitch who, even when you take her on, you know she’s gonna fuck ya around, and that you’re gonna live to regret it. But still you go ahead anyway and persuade yourself that maybe it won’t turn out that way. But it does turn out that way. If anything she behaves worse than you ever imagined was possible. She’s cold, she’s hard, she’s cruel and she doesn’t give a flying fuck what happens to you. A real ball breaker. That’s the fuckin’ sea, man.’
Dave looked at Al appreciatively. He smiled and said, ‘Well what do you know? Hey, Al, you’re a romantic too.’
Chapter Eleven
Kent Bowen parked his Jimmy and walked up a long slope toward the hotel entrance. The Hyatt Regency occupied a prime site in Fort Lauderdale, on the west side of the Seventeenth Street Causeway Bridge. From its revolving Pier Top cocktail bar you could see for miles around and Bowen had good reason to remember the place with special affection. It was in the Pier Top, last St Valentine’s Day, while drinking delicious Margaritas, that he had asked Zola to marry him. On her accepting his proposal they had adjourned to a beach motel on Bayside Drive where they had taken a room for the night to consummate their love. A Scot by descent, and thus, by his own estimation a thrifty, hard-headed man, Bowen had never been the kind to throw money around. But that ranked as one of the most perfect evenings of his life.