The Hunger of Crows, page 12
“Like I said, you don’t have to get involved. I got this far, didn’t I?”
“Yeah, you’re doing great.”
Unable to sit still with everything she’s told him ricocheting around in his brain, Scott stands and walks to the door of the cabin. He instinctively checks the distance between the boat and the cliff face, the wind direction, the way the tide is running. The swim ladder is still hanging over the transom. He half expects to see a scuba-clad assassin coming over the rail, Uzi blazing. Too many movies, he tells himself. Does he want to get involved with Carla?
Yes, he’d like to do the right thing now. But is this some sick attraction to danger, a little excitement in his life? Or just simple horniness running amok? He’s not sure which explanation is more stupid.
The orange survival suit is lying on the deck in a heap. Again, the Polar Huntress disaster sparks to life in his mind. Donny Chesterson paralyzed with fear as the vessel listed and began to take on water. Scott grabbing the kid and practically stuffing him into the survival suit, shoving him over the rail as the boat rolled. The icy sea lunging at them. Scott wearing just his old float coat. Luckily the Coast Guard helicopter was already on the way. There have been times since that night when—high and dry and safe and warm—it has all felt like an adventure to remember with a kind of perverse fondness.
This is not one of those times.
CHAPTER
20
FITFUL RAINDROPS SMEAR the windshield as D’Angelo pulls into the End of the Road Hotel and Resort, an unremarkable two-story building with drab gray wood siding and a mossy shingled roof. It could be a midlevel hotel anywhere in the country. If not for the location. And what a location. Squatting at the tip of the spit, it’s flanked by the churning sea on three sides, surf pounding the beach pebbles. A panorama of mountains and glaciers across the bay glow blue-white beneath the nearly black sky. The one-of-a-kind setting is obviously a magnet for visitors. License plates from a half dozen states are on display in the parking lot. But with the late hour, the rain, and the raging windstorm discouraging beach walks, there’s no one around. The tourists are apparently tucked in for the night. D’Angelo presses his cap to his head and hurries through the sea-damp air.
The lobby is empty, silent. Behind the front desk, a tiny, dark-eyed, middle-aged woman looks up from a magazine. She glances at the clock on the wall and frowns like she’s not getting paid enough to have to check in guests at such an hour. She has a perfect helmet of inky black hair and laser-straight bangs above a serious, nearly paper-white face. She looks like she should be inspecting nuclear test sites in countries that aren’t supposed to have nuclear test sites.
The woman sighs theatrically and stands, glowering at him, lips welded. She’s much too stiff for him, but after the enervating drive from Anchorage to the end of the road and the less-than-fruitful conversation with George Volker, he could use a smile from any person of the opposite gender. This one looks like a tough sell. Still, it’s a rare day when Cosmo D’Angelo can’t get a woman to show her teeth—one way or another. He gives her a smile designed to defrost Siberia. It has no effect.
“Name?” she says. The room temperature plummets further.
“Cosmo D’Angelo. I called yesterday.”
“Yesterday?” Her brow furrows even more. “Yesterday. For a room, tonight?” She looks at the computer and scowls. “You’re lucky you got anything in town on such short notice.” She clearly resents even speaking to someone so cavalier about making reservations. There’s a trace of an accent. Eastern European. Russian, maybe. She glares at him. “It is summer, you know.”
“It was spur-of-the-moment. I suddenly realized I’ve never been to Homer, Alaska. Had to see it. Call it an emergency.” He turns the heat up on the smile. But the weather report for this gal is calling for record low temps. No pleasantries in the forecast. Zero percent chance of humor.
“Credit card and driver’s license.” She slides the room rental agreement across the counter.
D’Angelo reads the bottom line, stunned by the rack rate. He’s gotten better deals in London and Paris. She isn’t kidding about Alaskan summer exigencies. It’s going to take some creative accounting to expense this trip without anyone at Sidewinder asking what he was doing on the far edge of North America. He can deal with that once he’s eliminated the Carla Merino problem.
“Room two-oh-three. Left at the top of the stairs.” She holds out a card key, eyes gray as gravel. She says, “Welcome to the End of the Road” without a hint of welcome.
He shuts down his smile, stores it for another day, another less-challenging encounter. He takes the card key without further cleverness. There’s no point in trying to melt this particular glacier. He hopes he’s just tired from the long trip, not losing his touch completely. “I don’t suppose the restaurant is still serving food.”
She looks at the clock on the wall, rolls her eyes his way, arches one eyebrow. “Breakfast is at seven AM.”
“Well, thanks, then.” Pride more than a little wounded, he heads for the stairs. He hopes to hell the rest of the women in this town are a little warmer than this one. He’s seen friendlier border guards.
CHAPTER
21
SCOTT’S STILL AT the cabin door, enjoying the cool air and resisting the urge to pick up everything off the deck. The fly rod, the survival suit. Tidying up.
She didn’t ask for a prince. Listen to her. Drop her off at the marina and go fishing.
If the wind dies off, he might be able to get out around the corner of the peninsula later today. There are miles of ragged, glacier-carved coastline along the Gulf of Alaska. Deep bays and long, fjord-like coves. Dozens of uninhabited islands. Literally thousands of square miles of ocean to fish.
To the east he sees fast-moving sea ducks speed past, black specks against the silvery-pinkish light. That’s the idea. Keep moving, as fast as you can.
All he has to do is pick up the radio and make the call. He can keep Carla’s name out of it—except how’s he going to explain to the Coast Guard how he knows about Shire’s foundered skiff? And the urge to help her is no small matter.
Trina used to tease him by putting a jigsaw puzzle together on the dining room table and purposely leaving the last couple pieces lying on the tabletop where he could see them. A crossword puzzle with all but a few words filled in, the pencil tantalizingly lying on top of it. She found his inability to resist helping her finish them entertaining—until she found it unbearable.
She would shake her head and say, “Scottie, you’ve never met a damsel you haven’t tried to help, have you?”
Scott knows his inability to leave a puzzle unfinished has more to do with his OCD compulsions. But his rescuer tendencies are no small matter either.
“Scott, are you all right?” Carla says.
He turns. “Sure.” He’s not sure how long he’s been standing there.
“I meant what I said.”
He brushes that aside. “Your name is going to pop up on Sidewinder’s search system when somebody finds that skiff and Shire tells the Coast Guard about you. That’s sure as hell going to bring D’Angelo or one of those guys to town. But it’ll take some time for them to get here. We can talk about it some more in the morning.”
“It is morning,” she says.
He looks at his watch: three fifteen AM.
“Later this morning.” He walks to the table. “Come on. I’ll carry you back down to the bunk. Let’s think about getting a little sleep.”
She holds the sleeping bag against her collarbone as he lifts her in his arms. Her face inches from his. Her hair smelling like the sea.
“Why are you doing this, Scott? Why not just call the Coast Guard and be done with me?”
“I’m still trying to figure that out.”
He carries her down to the sleeping area and sets her on the bunk. “You want one of my T-shirts to sleep in?”
“Thanks.”
He hands her a huge, green T. As she pulls it on, he turns away and rolls out another sleeping bag on the opposite bunk.
“You sound like you know a lot about this spy stuff.”
“Not really.” He fusses with the bedroll. “I watch a lot of movies. But I agree that the key is for you to appear to be dead.”
“Sorry I can’t give them a body.”
“I’m not,” Scott blurts. Feels himself blush. He opens a cupboard over the bunk and yanks a pillow out. “You’re probably safe for a day or two. As long as you’ve been careful and they don’t already have any idea where you are.”
She doesn’t answer.
He turns back. She’s sitting up in the sleeping bag, holding her head in her hands.
He sits on the bunk opposite. “Carla? There’s no other way for D’Angelo to connect you to Homer, right?”
She looks stricken, face pale. “I thought it was safe. It’s been two months.”
“What? What did you do?”
“Shire’s brother Elrond gave me some sablefish, and I shipped some frozen to my mother in Scottsdale two days ago. FedEx.” She hurries to add, “But I paid cash and used a phony name!”
“Not good, Carla. They were surely expecting you to contact your mother. If they saw that FedEx delivery, they could hack into their tracking system and get the package’s point of origin. Does your mother know anybody else in Alaska?”
“I doubt it.”
Scott looks at his watch again. “FedEx overnights frozen seafood shipments. Say the package got to Phoenix yesterday afternoon, maybe twelve hours ago …” He raises his eyes to hers. “Hypothetically, if D’Angelo caught a flight to Anchorage last night, he could already be in Homer.”
Carla looks at him, teeth clenched. “Sorry.”
He shrugs, hoping it doesn’t reveal how bad this really is.
They sit, looking at each other for a second.
Her eyelids are drooping, but the deep-green shirt brightens the gold in her irises. They pull him in. He gets a grip and says, “You really want to use that photo against McKint? You’re sure?”
Carla nods. “I’ve waited and waited for two months while he’s on TV every day, whipping people into a frenzy of hatred. If I can convince D’Angelo and Sidewinder that I’m dead, this is my chance to use the photo against them.”
“How’s it supposed to suddenly show up if you’re dead?”
Carla chews her lower lip, thinking. “How long before the Coast Guard calls off the search for me?”
“I’m not sure. A few days, I guess. Why?”
“Okay, when everyone thinks I’m dead, I’ll go see Shire, give her my keys, and ask her to get the picture out of my truck. I’ll give her the number for my friend at the Times, Lisa Yi. Shire can say she found the picture in my things after I drowned. So they’ll think I’m dead.”
“The picture is in your truck?”
“Yeah, in the cloth on the ceiling of the cab.”
“The headliner?”
Carla shrugs. “I guess. If that’s what it’s called.”
“And where’s the truck?”
“Parked behind the Orca.”
“Shire?” Scott feels his heart tightening. “Carla, think about what you’re saying. What if D’Angelo is already on his way? You want to get Shire and her kids involved with that guy? You said yourself, he’s not a nice person.”
Carla looks sick. She swallows hard. “I don’t know. I mean, no, of course not. Fuck! Shit! Fuck!”
Scott shakes his head, almost laughing. “Nice language. Well, it’s solstice, nearly twenty-four hours of light in the sky, and the spit will be a tourist anthill for the next three months. D’Angelo can’t very well break into the truck in broad daylight and start taking it apart. And at night the marina is lit up like a ballpark. Plus, there’re security cameras all over the place. Still, we’re going to have to get to it before he figures out a way. I just don’t know how.”
Carla looks at him. “You’re talking like you’ve decided to help me.”
He tries to change the subject. “You were so gung ho about saving the world, you quit social work and became a waitress?”
She groans. “Yeah, how’s that for idealism?”
“I don’t know. These days, serving people alcohol sounds like a humanitarian act. And how does stopping McKint change the world? I mean, really, for how long?”
“You’re right. It won’t change the poverty. Maybe nothing will. But it could keep things from getting a lot worse.”
“Yeah.” Scott stands and looks down at her. “Maybe.”
“Scott. If I can stop McKint, I’ll help a lot of people down there, all at once.”
“I have to think about it.” He walks back up the stairs and through the cabin and out onto the aft deck. The wind above the cliff has gone silent. The swells are getting smaller. The cool air feels good. Somewhere in the gloom, a gull keens. Farther out on the bay, a ship’s horn moans. He wishes he were on it. Maybe not.
He could call the Coast Guard now and go back to being another divorced guy in a small town brimming with them, working the same job he’s been doing for years, and indulging himself in what passes for luxury in his world: fishing for salmon and halibut in the same bay he’s been fishing all his life. Or he can help Carla do something good, something important.
And put himself in Gordon McKint’s sights?
Fuck. Shit. Fuck. She summed that up about right.
He stows the fly rod and the landing net, stashes the swim ladder in the aft hold. The survival suit is a problem. It has Shire’s name and numbers on it. Is it better for the suit to show up empty, suggesting Carla wasn’t able to get into it? Or is it better if the thing is never found at all? He handled the suit when she came aboard and doesn’t know if anyone can identify him from DNA or some other modern science gimmick like the cops on TV always use. That’s almost certainly Hollywood nonsense. But if the thing disappears, forensics will be moot. Disappearing is easy enough on the ocean.
The fathometer says there’s ninety feet of water under the boat where he’s anchored. It’s not a good fishing spot, the bottom muddy and featureless. No reason for divers of any kind to visit. Boaters rarely use the area for anything other than hiding out from storms.
He stands for a moment, looking at the survival suit lying on the deck, pushing back the memories it evokes. Then he kneels and stuffs an eight-pound torpedo-shaped downrigger weight into each foot of the suit, zips the thing up, and drops it over the side. It plummets into the black depths like a cartoon Mafia victim in cement shoes, the orange neoprene arms flailing madly overhead. His own hands grip the rail so hard they ache. When he pulls them off, his fingers are trembling. How did he find the courage to save Donny Chesterson’s life that night? It’s amazing what you might do when you just don’t have time to be frightened.
He returns to the cabin and puts his bourbon glass in the galley sink with the soup bowls. He runs hot water and washes everything, sets the dishes in the drying rack. He tells himself he’s just keyed up about the whole Carla thing, but understands that he’ll never get to sleep with dirty dishes in the sink. Know thyself. Even the embarrassing parts. Especially the embarrassing parts.
He turns off the generator, and the boat plunges into absolute silence. Even the birds have called it a night.
Carla is already asleep when he gets back to the bunks. He stares at her face a moment. She looks older now than she seems when she’s awake, swearing and mouthing off. Older and somehow even more attractive.
He’s heard men complain about women coming into their lives dragging a load of personal baggage with them. Carla should have her own container barge.
Is she trouble? Oh, absolutely.
Does he care? Not much.
He climbs into the port bunk and lies there, not the least bit sleepy now. Waves softly slap against the hull. The anchor chain groans and clinks as the boat shifts on the tide. He does love sleeping on the boat. Alone. Having a lovely woman in the next bunk doesn’t take away from that at all.
One of his subcontractors, Frank Bass, an electrician, lifelong bachelor, and reliable smartass, recently said to him, “You’re getting divorced? Mazel tov, man. All the pussy in the world now!”
“Nice, Frank,” Scott said. “Very classy, my friend. Sophisticated.”
“Aw, come on, Scottie. Lighten up. ‘Happily married’ is an oxymoron. What’s not to love about divorce?”
Right. What’s not to love about defying the Coast Guard and having some combat-trained goon hunting him? All because of this woman whose problems Scott simply cannot let pass.
Having been raised Catholic, he honestly should’ve expected nothing less. Somewhere in heaven or hell, Sister Mary Claire is laughing her ass off.
CHAPTER
22
CARLA AWAKENS IN the bunk, disoriented. Sunlight streams through the porthole in the bulkhead above her. Sunshine? For the second morning in a row? Has to be some kind of record for this place, given the two months of almost-constant clouds and rain she’s endured since arriving. Once again, the clear bright light makes her feel exposed—even down here in the bow of Scott’s boat. She has to remind herself that only one person on earth has any idea where she is now, and he’s a friendly, harmless carpenter. Decent, smart, and nice looking too.
But there’s something else going on. In spite of the menacing sunshine, she’s feeling awfully upbeat for some reason. She lies there in Scott’s sleeping bag another moment, mystified, until she realizes it’s bacon. Bacon is going on. Scott is cooking bacon, and the thick, greasy aroma always evokes the same memory.
* * *
She was eleven, staggering not yet fully awake down the hallway into the kitchen of the big house in Scottsdale, coaxed along by a scent she’d never awakened to before—not in that house. Her mother would’ve eaten bacon right after she volunteered to donate a kidney to a complete stranger. Yet there was a skinny man wearing a T-shirt and baggy board shorts at the big five-burner stove, his legs like overtanned sticks extending to the unlaced Hush Puppies on his feet. He turned at the sound of Carla pulling out a chair at the kitchen table.
