Little Tiny Teeth

night.”

Duayne nodded. “Yes, that’s probably so. Yesterday morning, I was up there early to see the sunrise, and he was still in his deck chair, sound asleep.”

Tim was shaking his head, back and forth, back and forth. “No...no...”

“Well, why would you think he’s dead?” Maggie said irritably, perhaps vexed at being yet again shoved from center stage by Scofield.

“Because—”

“No, hold it,” John said. “Before we go there, let’s just see if he is upstairs.”

“I’ll go and check,” Phil said, getting up.

But Tim continued to shake his head, looking sicker by the second. “I’m telling you. You won’t find him.”

189

***

PHILsoon returned, shaking his head. “Not there.”

A search of the nonpassenger section of the ship by one of Vargas’s crew produced the same result.

Arden Scofield was no longer aboard the Adelita.

“Okay, Tim,” John said. “Let’s hear it. What’s going on here?”

Tim hadjoinedthematthe tablebynow,and Vargas hadhad the galley scare up some hot, predawn picarones and honey for them, which all but Tim were attacking as if they’d had nothing to eat for a week.

“I should have told you before,” Tim said miserably. “I almost did, really—but I never thought—I mean the idea that he would— Jesus Christ, I still can’t believe it! I mean—” And his face was in his hands.

“Goddamn it, Tim—!” John began, but Gideon stopped him with a hand on his arm. He made up a cup of heavily sugared coffee for Tim and put it in front of him. “Tim,” he said gently, “take a couple of sips. That’s right, good. Okay? Now. Take your time. Who are you talking about? Who is ‘he’?”

Tim lifted a haggard face. “Cisco. Cisco killed him.”

In the general burst of exclamations that followed this, a thought flitted briefly across Gideon’s mind: it seemed as if an awful lot was being blamed on someone who wasn’t there to speak for himself.

“He threw him overboard,” Tim continued.

“You know that?” Gideon asked.

“No, I don’t know it; how could I know it? But it’s obvious. That was the scuffling that Maggie—Dr. Gray—heard, don’t you see?”

190

“Well, why would Cisco—” Mel began.

With a wave of his hand John quieted him and retook command. “Captain, don’t you think you’d better run up to the wheelhouse and turn the boat around and go back and see if you can spot Professor Scofield? You might have a look for Cisco as well.”

Vargas, at his usual station overseeing the buffet table, jumped to comply. “Meneo, you come too,” he said in Spanish. “I want you and Chato up front searching for them. Take the other lamp.”

“Okay, Tim,” John said, “go ahead. Why would Cisco want to kill Dr. Scofield?”

“He hated him, that’s why. That stupid spider in his bag? That was Cisco. That thing with the spear and the shrunken head? That was Cisco too. He just wanted to, to scare him, to humiliate him.”

Gideon permitted himself a small, internal a-ha of satisfaction, and from across the table Phil doffed an imaginary hat in his direction.

“You knew about that—about the spider and the shrunken head— and you didn’t tell anyone?” John asked, seeming to swell as he grew more stern.

“I . . .” Tim’s expression had become more shamefaced than anything else. “I didn’t know about it at the time, no. He told me later, up on the roof that night.”

“But you kept it to yourself. You didn’t tell anyone.”

“I . . . no. I’ll tell you the truth, I thought it was funny—well, I did.” He paused to drink more coffee. “I thought he had it coming.”

“And did he tell you he was going to kill him too?”

A sudden twitch of his fingers jammed the cup onto its saucer, slopping coffee over the side. “No! It’s just that it makes sense now, after what happened to Maggie and everything. He threw Dr. Scofield

191

overboard too. How hard would it have been to dump him over the

side if he was all doped up from that tea?”

“That’s a pretty big leap, Tim,” Gideon said.