After a while Dave went up on deck, and looked toward the Carrera. There were signs that someone had been sunbathing on the roof but Kate was nowhere in sight. Al was up on the side of the Duke, talking to the Jade’s captain and grinning wolfishly. Seeing Dave, he shouted down.
‘Hey boss, we just got ourselves invited to a cocktail party.’
‘That’s nice,’ said Dave, climbing up onto the wall alongside them. ‘Thanks a lot, Captain Dana.’
She said, ‘Eight o’clock. Everyone’s invited. And please, it’s Rachel. With so many captains around this ship is starting to look a little top heavy.’
Dave saw Al glance surreptitiously at Rachel’s tits. Al’s thoughts were an open book to Dave; certainly where they concerned the top-heavy Rachel Dana.
Dave said, ‘Dana. That’s a good name for the captain of an American boat. Any relation?’
‘As a matter of fact he was a distant ancestor of mine,’ confirmed Rachel.
Al bit his lip and said, ‘Who?’
‘A famous writer,’ Dave said, teasing him. ‘R.H. Dana.’
Al rolled his eyes and was about to make another disparaging comment about books when it suddenly dawned on him that Dave was supposed to be his boss, and this Dana guy was a writer who was related to Rachel.
‘He wrote one of the best books ever about the sea,’ said Dave. ‘Two Years before the Mast. But you wouldn’t be interested, Al. Not being much of a reader n’all.’
‘Says who?’
‘I have a copy in my cabin, if you’d like to borrow it,’ said Rachel.
‘I’d love to read it,’ insisted Al.
‘Maybe when you’ve finished reading it, you can tell Rachel what you think,’ said Dave. ‘Give her your literary critique.’
‘Yeah, sure. Why not?’
Rachel smiled pleasantly and ushering Al onto the Jade, said, ‘Well then let’s go and get it, shall we?’
Later that same day, Dave walked round to the port side of the ship to check on his three target vessels.
Up on the roof of Baby Doc, one of the crewmen, with more tattoos than a Maori Hell’s Angel, had the bell cover off the Tracvision antenna and was attaching a wire to the satellite dish.
‘Afternoon,’ said Dave.
‘So I was led to believe,’ said the guy, not even looking round.
‘You got a problem there? Maybe I can help.’
The guy looked around slowly with a who-the-fuck-are-you-to-be-offering-me-advice expression on his smug, tough face. After a moment or two, he finished chewing the inside of his lip and said, ‘We’re not getting a TV signal.’
Dave smiled to himself, marking the guy down as someone with little experience of boats. He said, ‘Too far away.’
‘From the satellite?’ The guy sounded incredulous.
‘Hell no,’ said Dave. ‘From the coast. That thing only works up to the 200-mile limit. After that it’s just white noise and space, the final frontier.’
‘No kidding?’
‘No kidding. Leastways until you get to Europe. But their TV’s shit so don’t hold your breath.’
‘Shit,’ said the guy. ‘What are we gonna do?’
‘Gotta VCR?’
‘Yeah, but no tapes.’
‘Not a problem.’ Dave pointed toward the bow of the Duke. ‘See that big boat up front? The 160-footer. That’s the Jade. She’s owned by Jade Films. They’ve got plenty of videos for loan. That is, if you like porno.’
‘Does Sinatra like spaghetti?’
‘Well then you’re in luck. They’ve got a video library like a Triple X on Times Square.’
Dave was only reporting what Al had said after collecting Rachel’s copy of Two Years before the Mast. His eyes had been out on stalks.
‘As a matter of fact they’re having a cocktail party tonight, at eight. Open invitation. Surprised you haven’t heard about it.’
‘Oh, we haven’t been very sociable so far. Some chick came around earlier but we were all still in bed. Had a few drinks ourselves last night.’ He grinned ruefully. ‘More than a few.’ The guy turned a little friendlier. ‘Hey, you wanna drink?’
‘Sure. Why not?’
‘Then step aboard, my friend. Step aboard the Baby Doc.’
This was better than Dave could have hoped for. He leaped onto the rooftop alongside the tattooed guy and followed him down to the deck. He said, ‘Baby Doc. What was this, the Duvalier family yacht or something?’
‘Nope. Guy who owns her runs some kind of fertility clinic in Geneva. Makes a shitload of money out of women who can’t have any babies. And other gynecological odds and ends. I don’t think he’d ever heard of the Duvalier family or the Tonton Macoutes. Fact is I don’t think he even knew that Haiti existed. Not until he started to sail it around the Caribbean.’ The guy laughed and handed Dave a cold Bud. ‘Found out soon enough then, of course. He’s planning to refurbish her in Europe. Gonna rename her at the same time, I think. If he’s got any sense. Dumb fucker.’
Dave grinned and looked around the shabby interior, wondering how much money might be concealed inside the worn leather furniture. Two big sofas and two matching easy chairs. The rest of the lounge looked suitably clinical. Like a rest room for the guys on E.R. They’d worked the story well enough and certainly picked the right boat. The guy, who told Dave his name was Keach, hadn’t exaggerated. A complete refurbishment was what the Baby Doc needed. And ripping out the interior furnishings would cause no great expense.
Dave took his beer and dropped onto the sofa, hoping he might witness some discomfort under his ass or on Reach’s face. The sofa felt firm enough. Maybe too firm at that. More like an office chair than a comfortable sofa. The stitching on the old leather looked a little too pristine. Like it was new. As if someone had stitched something up inside the leather. Money. Meanwhile Reach’s face, with its puffy eyes — like he’d maybe taken a few punches in his time — and lugubrious mouth stayed cool.
Dave recognized the look. It was the same long-range, armor-piercing, full-metal-jacket stare you developed when you were in the joint. The don’t-mess-with-my-shit-or-I’ll-fucking-kill-you kind of look. So Reach was an ex-con, just like himself. Dave wondered if the guy maybe got the same smell off him.
‘C’mon,’ Keach said coolly. ‘Let’s go outside. You can point out your own boat.’
Dave stayed on the Baby Doc for another fifteen minutes meeting one of the other crewmen, a heavy-set black guy wearing a buzz haircut in a Keith Haring design and the kind of granite face that looked like he’d had it custom-made on Easter Island. Catching sight of his own reflection in the two watchtower gun-barrels of the black’s sunglasses, Dave thought that he himself looked like a fairly regular guy. Hardly the kind of guy who had a gun for all seasons underneath his bed. He looked like just the kind of guy that Kate might take on.
Taking on these guys aboard the Baby Doc looked like a rather more difficult proposition.
On his way back to the Juarista, Dave found his progress along the narrow gangway impeded by a solitary figure staring out to sea. As Dave excused himself, squeezing past the guy, he realized that he knew the face.