I took it out of my pocket, checked, and saw that the caller I.D. was blocked.
Dewey?
I couldn’t seem to press the Talk button and answer fast enough.
I didn’t reduce speed; was still flying across Tampa Bay at 45 mph or so. Even so, because I was wearing the little headphone, I heard Dewey’s voice just fine when she said, “Am I catching you at a bad time? I guess you were too busy to talk before.”
I said, “Dew, are you O.K.? Is everything all right?”
“I’m doing better and better since I dumped a certain nerdy biologist. Why the hell did you hang up on me earlier?”
Had I? I thought I’d waited until it quit ringing, and then switched it off.
I said, “Sweetie, there’s no person in the world I’d rather talk to. I can’t wait to see you, and be together again. But there’s a lot happening right now. Listen -I think I know where my son is. I’m in my boat. I’m in Tampa Bay. I’m going after him right now.”
I explained the situation as briefly as I could, then listened to her say in a different tone, very concerned and serious now, “Oh my God, Doc, please be careful. Bring him home safe. And call me the instant you can, because I’m not going to sleep a wink tonight until I hear from you.”
It was awkward having to remind her: “I don’t have your number, Dew. You always block it. You don’t want me to know where you are, remember?”
I felt a delicious surge of relief when she replied, “Hang up right now. I’ll call back with the block off, then you can save my number. That way, you’ll have it in your phone. Don’t answer-concentrate on what you’re doing. And stay safe, you big moron!”
I stared at the phone when the I.D. plate began to flash.
Where was area code 563?
THIRTY-THREE
After what seemed like an eternity spent pacing, her mind checking and rechecking the information she had, Dr. Santos felt the boat slow, then something loud bang against the steel hull. After just a couple of minutes, though, the banging stopped, and the ship gained speed again.
That was around 10:30 P.M.
About an hour later, maybe 11:20, she heard slow, heavy footsteps outside, and the metal door clanked again, then swung open.
The surgeon expected to see the terrifying fat woman. Instead, it was the man who’d abducted her, face still wrapped in bandages.
From inside holes in the bandage, his, wild, wide eyes stared out at her. He seemed to be grinning, too. Showing big, bony teeth as he shook a bottle of capsules, and said, “Guess who just got his drugs delivered? So, if I start taking this anticonvulsion stuff, how long before my trig-eee-minal neural-gia says bye-bye?”
The woman was terrified, but she forced herself to sound calm; take her time, as if in control. “It depends on your own body chemistry, to a degree. It could be a day or a few days. It could be a couple of weeks. Do you want to discuss your dosage?”
She was thinking: If I can make him dependent on me in some small way, he won’t be able to rationalize hurting me.
The man was wearing baggy pants and a nylon-looking Hawaiian shirt. She watched him slide the medicine bottle into his pocket. Now he had his hands at his face, unwrapping the bandage as he walked toward her.
He looked even more gigantic than she remembered.
“No, Dr. Valerie, we can talk about pills later. Once you get done, I might not even need the fuckin’ stuff.”
She said, “You mean… because of your face transplant? Is that what you’re talking about? I can do that for you. I really can-if you need it. But not here. Not like this. Take me back to my office, and I’ll give you my full attention. I’ll make you a personal project. You have my word.”
Dr. Valerie could see patches of curly blond hair now as he unwrapped the bandage. The top of his head looked like a human skull over which melted wax had been globbed onto bleached skin, and there was dense scar tissue on his forehead.
He replied, almost as if flirting with her, “Come on now, famous lady. Never try to con a con man. We’re not gonna talk about pills, and we’re sure as hell not returning to the States. I’ll send you back, though, all safe and sound. But only if you cooperate.”
She could now see scar tissue on a crinkled ear, and then one wide, wild blue eye that, because it was lidless, looked as isolated from the rest of his face as a small blue planet.
She stared as he continued, “Nope. What I want you to do, is come see the little operating room I got fixed up. Then get ready to go to work. Tonight. Because our donor’s about ready. And like you said in your e-mail, human skin goes bad real quick down here in the tropics.”
THIRTY-FOUR
It was ten-twenty when Harris swung aboard my skiff and I told him that I knew the name of the freighter we were after-Repatriate.
I backed away, turning toward the Gulf of Mexico. As I did, he took a piece of paper from his pocket on which he’d made some notes, and replied, “Good for you. You played it smart, keeping it to yourself for as long as you did. But now we need to get the Coast Guard involved. You’ve got an edge. If you can make it work, a little edge is all you’ll need.”
I said, “Fair enough.” Then I added, “What happened to Merlin Starkey? Did you talk to him?”
Harris smiled. “Mostly, I just listened. He’s a good cop, though. He says he looks forward to talking to you. But, man, he hates your uncle for some reason.”
I said, “I’ll tell you the story one day. It’s kinda funny.”
Harris was now holding the paper up to the stern light, reading. “O.K.-only four vessels were scheduled to transit, and I’m pretty sure I remember Repatriate ’s destination…” He paused. “Yeah, here it is. Our dispatcher, Terri, said they’re headed home to Bluefields, Nicaragua. That’s an easy heading to calculate. They have to stay in international waters off the west of Cuba, the Yucatan Channel. So where’s your GPS, and I’ll figure out an intercept course.”
I told him I didn’t have a GPS. Only a compass.
“Suddenly,” he said, “I don’t think you’re quite as smart anymore. So we’ll have to guesstimate it. Figure it out in our heads. But we’ll find ’em. Let me have the wheel-there are some tricky shoals in here. That’ll gain us some time while we talk it out.”
Then he said, “What about a VHF radio? Or is that too modern for you, too?”
“A radio, I’ve got.”
“Good. Do you want to call the Coast Guard? Or should I?”
I stood beside Harris as he shot us expertly through channels and beneath bridges, past Pine Key, Passe-a-Grille Beach, and Mullet Key, into a black-domed star basin that was the open Gulf of Mexico.
Beneath us, the flat water of the bay began to undulate in long, slow swells as if something huge lay below, breathing. Harris found the rhythm of the swells quickly and ran at maximum speed.
I’d told him I’d crossed Repatriate ’s stern at around 7:15 P.M. near the channel’s intersection off Gibsonton. He broke the probabilities down for me. Told me how the process worked. He said an average freighter takes about two and a half hours to travel from the Gibsonton docks to the Skyway Bridge-with a Tampa pilot always in charge of the helm, of course.
He said, “Where you saw them, they were only forty minutes or so away. That would put them beneath the bridge around eight P.M. Right at sunset.”
I could picture it. Ironically-or maybe not-Prax Lourdes had probably watched Repatriate steam past. Because I was certain that’s how he had to work it. He’d been right there on the water in a smaller, faster boat, barking orders to Kong on the cell phone, working his extortion scheme, arranging the money drop. Probably chose that spot because he could visually confirm that his freighter was outward bound.