John shook his head. “Is there anything worse than listening to a couple of wasted potheads thinking they’re being funny when you’re stone-cold sober?”
“And how would you know?” Phil asked. “You’re not stone-cold sober.”
Phil, far more of a free spirit than John, had gotten into more than one argument with him over the pros and cons of marijuana usage, and whether or not it was really more of a health and social menace than alcohol, and so on, and for a moment Gideon thought that this was going to be another one of them. But John was feeling too mellow to bite. Instead he sipped again and nodded gravely.
“This is true,” he allowed.
The wind changed slightly so that both the smoke and the noise drifted off in another direction, and the three men sat peaceably and companionably drinking their
“I know we’ve been through this a gazillion times, but when it comes down to it, I just can’t make any sense of what happened today.”
“I think we’re all in pretty good agreement about that,” John said.
“Yeah, but
“I’d like to put forward an alternative supposition,” Gideon said.
“Oh boy,” John said, “watch out. When he starts talking like that, it means things are gonna get complicated.”
“No, they’ll get simplified. Look, why are we so sure the lance was thrown from shore? Couldn’t somebody on the boat have done it?”
Like fans at a tennis match, their heads swiveled in his direction. “Somebody on the boat . . . ?” Phil repeated.
“Sure. Come on down, let me show you.”
John was inclined to stay where he was and let Gideon’s alternative supposition wait till morning, but the others prevailed upon him and got him, complaining affably, out of his chair. On the lower deck, Gideon stood them in front of the bar’s Dutch doors, just where Scofield had been when the lance smashed through the window.
“Now. John, you and I were sitting right over there, up against the railing on the other side, watching the dolphins, right?”
A nod from John.
“Vargas was behind us, also looking at them. And Scofield was standing right here, doing the same. All of us with our eyes focused on where the fish were jumping around—”
“Dolphins,” Phil stated, “are not fish.”
“Even I know that,” commented John.
“Pardon me,” Gideon said, “where the
“Where the shore happens to be,” John said, “only sixty or seventy feet away at the time.”
“True, but the starboard deck was right here, three feet away. My question is, why couldn’t someone have come up along the deck from the front of the ship—maybe coming out the side door of the dining room—flung the lance through the side window, and then run back
into the dining room and out of sight, then left later? If the door was open, he’d have been back through it in two seconds.”
“Because Scofield would have seen him,” Phil said. “All he had to do was turn his head.”
“Is that so? Go ahead, turn your head.”
Phil turned to his right. “Oh. I see what you mean. The corner of the dining room blocks the view forward.”
“Yeah,” John said, “I see how that could be, but how could he miss Scofield with that thing from two feet away? He’d have to be blind.”
“Ah,” said Gideon. “Maybe he didn’t miss, maybe he accomplished what he was trying to do.”
“Well, if what he was trying to do was scare the shit out of him, he accomplished it, all right.”
“But that’s exactly what I’m getting at. I think maybe somebody’s playing games with Scofield.”
Phil looked from Gideon to John and scratched at his scraggly chin. “I have to admit, that sounds a lot more plausible than some ticked-off Chayacuro warrior who’s been standing there with his spear for thirty years, waiting for him to come back.”
“And what about the spider?” Gideon said. “That fits too. Someone having a little fun at the big man’s expense, cutting him down to size.”
