It was a fairly tight squeeze in the elevator, but everybody managed to keep some distance between bodies, even the assemblyman. Riding up, Susan explained the nomenclature of the three decks: sundeck on top, open to the air; boat deck below that, the enclosed promenade with the lifeboats suspended outside; main deck below that, with the restaurants on the outside and the casino within.
At this point, they had the sundeck to themselves. The views up here were terrific, both up and down the river and westward toward Albany, the old and new buildings pressed to the steep slope upward, making a kind of elaborate necklace around the big old stone pile of the statehouse.
“Home sweet home,” Susan suggested, with a gesture toward that massive stone building.
“I’ve seen it before,” the assemblyman told her, being gruff again. “Tell me what’s happening now.”
“Come to the rail.”
She and the assemblyman stood at the rail, with the two state cops on the assemblyman’s other side. The ship was still tied up at the dock, and would remain there for another five or ten minutes. “First we have our safety drill, then the cruise begins,” she explained. “The Spirit of the Hudsonhas never sunk, and never will, but we want to be sure everybody’s prepared just in case the unthinkable ever does happen. You see the lifeboats directly below us.”
The assemblyman agreed, he did see them there.
“You see the crew opening the glass doors along the promenade. Every passenger’s ticket contains a code giving the location of the lifeboat that passenger should go to in case of emergency. The crew members down there are explaining lifeboat procedures now, and showing them the compartments on the inner wall containing life jackets. We don’t ask the passengers to try on the jackets, but crew members down there do demonstrate how it’s done.”
“If this unthinkable of yours does happen,” the assemblyman said, “and this unsinkable tub sinks, which is ourlifeboat?”
Well, she could see she was going to have to do a whole lot of tinkling laughter with this little bastard before the day was done. “Why, Assemblyman Kotkind,” she said, “naturally you andI would be on the captain’s launch.”
“Ah, naturally,” he said. “And speaking of the captain”
“He wants you to join him for dinner,” she said hastily, knowing that the last thing Captain Andersen wanted while setting sail was some bad-tempered politician underfoot. “You and your aides, of course,” she added.
“Of course,” the assemblyman said, while the “aides” continued to stand around looking blank-faced and correct. Poor guys, she thought, giving them some of her attention for the first time. If six hours with this gnome is going to be tough for me, what must it be like for them?
3
Dan Wycza thought this woman Susan Cahill would be therapeutic. She looked like somebody who liked sex without getting all bent out of shape over it, somebody who knew what it was for and all about its limitations. Look how she was giving Lou Sternberg those flashing eyes and teeth, those tiny bumps and grinds, not as a come-on but as a method of control, like the bullfighter’s red cape. Wycza knew Sternberg would be enjoying the show and at the same time he’d enjoy pretending to be taken in by the show. The bluffer bluffed.
Meanwhile, from the sidelines, Wycza could watch Susan Cahill strut her stuff and think to himself that she would certainly be therapeutic. A good healthy roll in the hay.
Health was extremely important to Dan Wycza. It was, as the man said, all we’ve got. His body was important to him the way Mike Carlow considered those race cars of his important. Take care of it, keep it finely tuned, and it will do the job for you. The way a car nut likes to tinker with the engine, the fuel mixture, the tire pressure, all those details, that’s the way Dan Wycza took care of himself. His diet was specific and controlled, his exercise lengthy and carefully planned. He traveled with so many pills, so many minerals and herbs and dietary supplements, that he seemed like either a hypochondriac or the healthiest-looking invalid in history, but it was all just to keep the machine well tuned.
And sex was a part of it. Simple uncomplicated sex was good for both the body and the mind. There was nothing like rolling around with a good willing woman to keep the blood flowing and the mental attitude perked up. A woman like this Susan Cahill, for instance.
Pity it wasn’t going to happen. This woman would never fuck anything but power, or at least her idea of power. At the moment, to her, Dan Wycza, aka Trooper Helsing, was just a spear carrier, part of the furniture, a nothing. Later, he’d be something, all right, but it wasn’t likely to be something she’d find a turn-on. Not likely.
For the moment, he and Parker were just doing their dumb-fuck thing, trailing along behind Lou Sternberg while the Cahill woman showed him a little of this and a little of that. Wycza remembered this ship from when he’d been a sucker aboard her, that one time, down in Biloxi. (The healthy woman he was with at the time liked to gamble.) It looked exactly the same, the carpets, the colors of the walls, the shapes of the doors, the edgings around the windows. The only difference was the uniform on the various crew members who worked in public; the pursers, dealers, hostesses, managers. When the ship was the Spirit of Biloxi,the uniforms were tan with dark red; sort of the colors of Mississippi dirt. Now that she was the Spirit of the Hudson,operating in the Empire State, the uniforms were royal blue with gold. But some of the people inside those uniforms were the same, he was sure of it.
Once the joke of a safety drill was done down on the boat deck, and the ship at last eased away from the dock to start its leisurely amble downstream, Cahill became a little less flirty and more matter-of-fact. “Of course I willbe taking you around for a complete tour of the ship,” she said, “but first I know Captain Andersen wants to greet you. He wasn’t able to before this, of course. Departure and arrival are his really busy times.”
“I’ll be happy to meet him,” Sternberg told her, and as she set off across the boat deck toward the bridge, the others following her, he asked, “Was he the captain before? When it was down South?”
“Oh, yes,” she said, sounding delighted by the fact that it was the same captain. “Captain Andersen’s been with the company for seven years. Longer than I have!” And she did that girlish laugh thing of hers again.
The bridge was amidships, up one steep metal stairway from the sun deck. Everything up here was metal, thickly painted white. The bridge itself was two long narrow rooms, the one in front featuring an oval wall of glass to give a full hundred-eighty-degree view of everything ahead of the ship and to both sides. The helm was here, and the computers and communications links that made the function of captain almost unnecessary these days. Tell the machine where you want to go, and get out of its way.
The rear room, also full of windows but without the oval, was a kind of office and rest area; two gray vinyl sofas sat among the desks and maps and computer screens. This is where the stairway led, and this is where Captain Andersen stood, splendid in his navy blue uniform with the gold stripes and his white officer’s hat with the black brim, as though he were about to lead this ship on a perilous journey around the world, pole to pole, instead of merely a pokey stroll to nowhere; Albany, New York, to Albany, New York, in six hours.
His back was to the open doorway, and he was conferring with three others, two dressed as officers, one as crew. He turned at their entrance, and he was a Scandinavian, or he wanted you to think he was. Tall and pale-haired, he had pale eyebrows and pale blue eyes and a large narrow pale nose. He wore the least possible beard; a narrow amber line down and forward from both ears to define his jaw, and no mustache. In his left hand he held a gnarled old dark-wood pipe.
Cahill did the honors: “Captain Lief Andersen, I’d like to introduce Assemblyman Morton Kotkind of the New York State legislature.”