“That’s what I told Captain Putin. So I ask you, does that order seem clear enough?”
“Sounds clear enough to me,” Tom Barlow said.
“Maybe you should have added, ‘under any circumstances,’” Castillo said. “That would have cleared up any possible misunderstanding.”
“Maybe I could have, but I didn’t,” Pevsner said. “I thought I was making myself perfectly clear.”
“I gather Captain Putin didn’t obey your order,” Barlow said.
“Let me tell you what that sonofabitch did,” Pevsner said. “He sailed from Miami on schedule. The Czarina of the Gulf had the AEA Single Women’s Sabbatical Educational Tour aboard. Sixteen hundred and six of them. It should have been a pleasant voyage for him and his officers, and a really profitable voyage for Imperial Cruise Lines, Incorporated.”
“And who are they?”
“Schoolteachers from Alabama. Single women schoolteachers, either ones who never got married or are divorced. When school is out, they get a vacation — that’s what ‘sabbatical’ means — paid for by the taxpayers. It’s supposed to broaden their horizons. Anyway, since they do this every year, we know how to handle them. They get on the Czarina of the Gulf in Miami. There’s a captain’s dinner with free champagne to get things started, and they start either romancing the ship’s officers — those schoolteachers really go for those blue uniforms with all the gold braid — or they head for the slot machines or the blackjack tables.
“The next day, when they wake up about noon, they’re in the middle of the Gulf of Mexico. There’s a captain’s luncheon, with more free champagne and more romancing of the officers, presuming the officers have any strength left. Some of the schoolteachers, especially some of the divorcées, are surprisingly… how do I say this?…”
“Frisky?” Castillo proposed.
“I was going to say ‘insatiable,’ but okay, ‘frisky.’ And then back to the casino as the Czarina of the Gulf makes for Tampico. They dock there and spend the night. Some of the teachers actually get off the ship to mail postcards home, things like that, but most of them stay aboard sucking up the free champagne and fooling around with the officers.
“In the morning, the Czarina of the Gulf heads here to Cozumel. Another captain’s brunch, more free champagne… getting the picture?”
“Getting it,” Castillo and Barlow chorused.
“And they finally dock here in Cozumel. They disembark, get on the buses waiting for them, drive to Cozumel International, get on the planes waiting for them, and two hours later they’re back in Mobile, Alabama, wearing smiles.”
“So what went wrong?” Barlow asked.
“When the Czarina of the Gulf docked at Tampico, Captain Putin went to bed in his cabin. He says alone, but I’m not sure I believe that. It doesn’t matter. He went to bed, and in the morning, when he didn’t answer a knock at his cabin door, the Czarina of the Gulf’s first mate took her to sea.”
“What’s wrong with that?” Castillo asked.
“While they were tied up, and while Captain Putin was asleep, supplies were taken aboard. The officer who was supposed to be watching wasn’t. He was tied up with an English teacher from Decatur. Or maybe the English teacher had him tied up.
“Anyway, he wasn’t where he was supposed to be, doing what he was supposed to be doing, so Mexican water was taken aboard. Some went into the ship’s tanks, some went to the boilers, and there were five hundred cases of Mexican water, in twelve-ounce bottles, twenty-four bottles to the case. They call it ‘Aqua Mexicana,’ whatever the hell that means. It’s got a picture of a cactus on the label.”
“So what happened?” Barlow asked.
“About four hours out of Tampico, in other words about ten a.m., the air-conditioning went out. Now, I’m willing to accept some small responsibility for that—”
“You got here last night, right?” Barlow interrupted.
“Correct.”
“Which means before that, you were in Argentina, right?”
“Correct.”
“So how could you be responsible for an air-conditioning system failing in the middle of the Gulf of Mexico?”
“Because, when I was in Korea having them build the Czarina of the Gulf I naively believed a Korean swindler when he told me his Korean Karrier air conditioners were just as good as American Carrier air conditioners and he could let me have them for half of what Carrier was asking. Okay? Curiosity satisfied?”
“You say the air conditioners went out?” Castillo asked. “So what?”
“So it gets pretty warm in the middle of the Gulf of Mexico on a sunny day.”
“So you open the portholes,” Charley said. “And let the cool sea air breezes in.”
“Unfortunately, that is not possible on the Czarina of the Gulf,” Pevsner said.
“You can’t open the portholes on the Czarina of the Gulf?”
“The way that miserable Korean con man sold me his Korean Karrier air conditioners was to tell me that since I would have air-conditioning I wouldn’t have to open any portholes; that I could save all the money it would have cost me to install all those fancy and expensive brass porthole hinges and locks. And that the money I was going to save by not installing openable portholes was going to just about pay for his Korean Karrier air-conditioning. At the time, I considered it a cogent argument. So there you are.”
“Well, what happened when the air-conditioning went out in the middle of the Gulf of Mexico?” Barlow asked.
“Well, the Alabama schoolteachers, most of whom were a little hungover anyway, naturally got pretty thirsty and started drinking that goddamned bottled Aqua Mexicana. And thirty minutes after they did — whammo!”
“Montezuma’s revenge,” Castillo said sympathetically.
“In spades,” Pevsner said. “In spades!”
“What does that mean?” Barlow asked.
“Try to picture this, Dmitri,” Pevsner said. “Try to imagine sixteen hundred and six hungover schoolteachers afflicted with Montezuma’s revenge—”
“What’s Montezuma’s revenge?” Barlow asked.
“Think urgent needs, Tom,” Castillo explained.
“Oh!”
“… all trying to get into the Czarina of the Gulf’s four hundred ladies’ restrooms at the same time. That averages out to four schoolteachers per restroom. It was chaos, absolute chaos, and that’s an understatement if there ever was one.”
“What finally happened?” Barlow asked.
“Well, and I’ll admit that at this point Captain Putin had no choice, he managed to get most of the crew into the engine room.”
“Why did he do that?” Barlow asked.
“Unless he had there would have been a massacre. The schoolteachers were roaming the ship with fire axes they were going to use to behead — or maybe castrate — the crew. Captain Putin had to use fire hoses to restrain them. And when he finally got everybody he could into the engine room — the Karrier a/c shorted out the engines — he battened the hatches and sent out an SOS. And the rest is history.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“The Mexican Coast Guard sent a tugboat out to the Czarina of the Gulf and towed her here. Where the world’s press was waiting. The whole world saw Captain Putin being taken off in chains to face charges of crimes against humanity. The Mexicans had a hard time protecting him from the schoolteachers and their union representatives.”