shrouded hammer made it about perfect for a handbag. Attached to the holster's strap was an ID wallet containing an FBI badge and card identifying Kate, not as Kate Parmenter, but as Kate Furey, Special Agent. She looked younger in the photograph and her hair was different. But there was no mistaking that launch-a-thousand-ships face.
Dave nodded with bitter satisfaction. He didn't know whether to whoop or to wail.
'A Fed,' he mumbled. 'She's a goddamn lousy Fed.'
The only question was what she and Bowen and the other guy, who was probably a Fed too, were doing on the Duke. There was no way they could know about Dave's score. Unless it was the money they were onto.
'Fucking Feds.'
He dived back into the drawer in search of something that might tell him what this was all about, but found nothing. He shut the drawer and went into the head. His eyes noted the brand of her perfume for future reference, a small bottle of Murine eyedrops, some suntan lotion, and an impressive array of mouthwash, dental floss, toothpicks and plaque-disclosing tablets that helped explain Kate's Ford model smile. The drawers were empty, but in a closet under the basin he found a TEAC reel-to-reel tape machine. The kind of tape that wasn't meant to play Handel's Water Music when you were lying in the tub. Dave knew it was set up to record from some kind of listening device. But planted where? On whose boat?
Twisting a knob he rewound the tape for a couple of seconds. The least he could do in the time available was verify that the Feds weren't interested in him, or in the Russkie money.
The tape began to play.
He was listening to the voices of a man and a woman. The man was American but the woman sounded as if she was from Australia. The accent would help to narrow it down. Not that it really mattered. None of the Russian boats had any female supernumos. And these two weren't saying anything interesting. Just some shit about this and that. Dave switched the tape off and started to grin. The Feds were watching someone else's boat. Someone Dave didn't even know about. Everything was fine. His five year plan could go ahead more or less as scheduled. Submarine permitting. And seeing those FBI shields and ID cards had given him an idea.
For about ten minutes Kate was too shocked to notice Dave's prolonged absence. Her imagination was abruptly ordered somewhere else, as not the smallest aspect of human anatomy escaped the attention of the camera: every mucous tract, subcutaneous fold and sebaceous follicle. But what was most surprising to her was not the explicit intimacy of what was depicted, but that there should be any women who were still willing to have unprotected anal intercourse. Just where had these women been for the last ten virally preoccupied years? Did they imagine that just because they were doing it in a movie they would be protected by the special effects department?
Almost as fascinating to Kate as what was happening on the screen were the faces of the audience. Bowen grinning like an ape. Sam Brockman cleaning his glasses every few minutes and making a silent whistling noise from time to time. Rachel Dana watching Jellicoe and enjoying his thunderstruck demeanor. Two of the targets from the Britannia, Nicky Vallbona and Webb Garwood, laughing loudly and cracking the most tasteless jokes. Kate wondered if Bowen had even registered that they were there.
She'd heard men -- Howard was one such -- claim that porno was boring, but somehow she'd never quite believed it. Bowen looked anything but bored. Even in the half-darkness of the Jade's viewing theater, she could see a light sheen of sweat glistening on his upper lip which he wiped periodically with the back of his hand. But after a while she realized she really was bored. It wasn't so much the lack of story she found tedious as the monotonous serial continuity, as if what was being enacted was a precise ritual. The girl always sucked the man before he licked her; then, always, he penetrated her vagina as a prelude to sodomy, before finally he came all over her face as if by this final act of degradation the reality of what was happening was there revealed. To Kate this last act in the ritual pointed up the lie of porno: no man had ever come in her face, and if it ever did happen -- woe betide the guy who thought he could get away with that shit -- she would hardly have been disposed to treat his load as if it had been the choicest Beluga.
Dave sat down beside her and said, 'Aren't you grossed out yet?'
'Where have you been?' she demanded.
'I got detained. Did you know Calgary Stanford is on this ship?'
'The movie actor?'
'I've just been talking to him.'
'What's he like?'
'Kind of ordinary, really.'
Dave glanced around the little theater and caught sight of Al, and then one of the guys from the Baby Doc. Al's face was something by Goya; grotesque. Kate was shaking her head.
She said, 'People just do not behave like this. Even in movies. They don't go around fucking each other like rabbits. It's just not feasible.'
Dave looked sideways at her and said, 'Feasible? You sound like you've got the latest Nielsen figures on this one, Kate.' He looked back up at the screen and then grimaced. 'Anyway, these aren't movies. Not the ones I go to.'
'Hey, I'm the one who's supposed to say that. C'mon,' she said. 'Let's get out of here before the next money shot. While I've still got an appetite.'
Going downstairs, Dave said, 'Why don't you come back to my boat and let me make you a sandwich?'
'Sounds good. Besides, I need a little air. The breathing's getting kind of noticeable in there. Like a locker room in winter. Now I know what it's like to sit in a car with a hosepipe attached to the exhaust. I guess that's why it's called a blue movie.'
Kate watched Dave make the sandwiches. He did it carefully, and with a touch of panache, as if he enjoyed cooking and preparing food. In some ways he was quite the new man. In others he was reassuringly like all the old ones. She liked the way he wasn't always speaking, as if he was used to his own company and didn't mind it. Self- contained, she thought.
'You can be quiet if you want, Van,' she said. 'I don't mind. I like a bit of Dolby in my men. The thing that cuts down on noise, y'know? Like an electronic blue pencil. I bet you're the kind to let a girl talk herself into bed.'
'Could be.' Dave returned to the sofa with a plate of neatly cut sandwiches.
Kate waited until he had picked one up and was teeing up his first mouthful. She said, 'Take me to bed, Van. Right now. No more hard-boiled. From now on, I'm ziplipped.'
Dave looked at her and then back at his sandwich which stayed about an inch away from his mouth. He said, 'You mean right now?'
'Before I think about it some more and change my mind.'
Kate had no intention of changing her mind. Maybe she did have one or two reservations about what he had told her: her best guess was that he had fed her this story in order to find out if it was him or his money she was really interested in. She would probably have done the same thing herself. She understood about money, even if she was not much interested in it herself. For Howard, money had been the major motivation of nearly everything he did. He was driven by money, as if it turned up at the start of every day with a peaked cap and a mobile phone. For Kate it was merely the means to an end, and right now it had little or no relevance to what she wanted most, which was to go to bed with Dave. But she enjoyed making him choose between having a sandwich and having her. She leaned toward him and nuzzled his ear with the tip of her nose.
'Where I'm taking you now,' she said, 'the cooking's wonderful, painstakingly prepared, and the service is excellent. So don't even think about eating anything else. Not if you ever want to be welcome back to this restaurant.'
Dave put down his sandwich. He was hungry but there were some things better done on an empty stomach.
'Did you sleep OK?'
Dave stretched on his king-sized bed and rolled toward her.
'Weird,' he said. 'I dreamed I had Alzheimer's disease. Only trouble is I've forgotten what happened.'
Kate glanced at her watch.
'Still joking at six o'clock in the morning, I see.'
Dave grinned and rolled on top of her.
'Can you think of anything else to do?'
