taken him up on it, Sternberg burst in, furious, and now furious at Parker: “Renfield, what’s the matter with you? One phone call to the barracks about me being on this ship, and why,and allof our security is destroyed. The pressis there, Renfield! The press is always in those offices.”
“Oh.” Wycza had never seen Parker look abashed, and wouldn’t have guessed he knew how to do it, but he did. “Sorry, Mr. Kotkind,” he said, with that abashed face. “I didn’t think.”
Sternberg turned a glowering eye on Susan Cahill: “Ms. Cahill, my office made these arrangements with”
“Yes, yes, you did,” she said, and Wycza felt almost sorry for her. She was between a rock and a hard place, and she hadn’t known this was going to happen. She said, ‘Just give me a minute, Mister Assemblyman,” and turned away, to say, quiet but intense, “Captain Andersen, could we talk for just a minute?”
“Susan,” the captain said, “you know”
“Yes, yes, but if we could just”
“There’s a perfectly adequate safe in that corner right there, no risk could”
“Captain.”
And finally, not merely holding his arm but stroking the upper arm from elbow to shoulder, up and down, up and down, she managed to turn the captain away as though he were the ship itself and she the small but powerful tugboat, and she walked him away into the forward room, the one with the oval wall of windows.
Once they were out of sight, Sternberg turned on Parker and hissed, “You knowthere’s to be no publicity about this! You understoodthat!”
Playing it out, Wycza knew, for the benefit of the other crew members in the room, all of whom were pretending to be busy at other things but were clearly listening with all their ears. Still, as Wycza guessed, Parker could play at this game only so far. He’d gone back to his usual stone face, and all he said was, “Yes, sir. I think Ms. Cahill will straighten it out.” Enough is enough, in other words.
Sternberg understood the message, and contented himself with a few harrumphs and a couple of glowers in the general direction of the receding city, until a much more cheerful Susan Cahill came back into the room, trailed by a discontented Captain Andersen holding fast to his dignity. “All settled,” she announced. “But you see now, Mister Assemblyman, just how careful we are on this ship.” Immediately spinning the scene from confrontation to a positive message.
“And I’m glad you are,” Sternberg told her, gallantly accepting the spin. “I’m sorry, Captain,” he said, “if the special circumstances of this tour mean we have to bend a rule or two. I think you’ll agree it’s in a good cause.”
The captain unbent himself, not without difficulty. “I’m sure it is a good cause, Assemblyman Kotkind,” he said, with a small bow. “We are newly arrived in your part of the world, we hope to become good neighbors and to be accepted by all our new friends, as time goes on. For that to be true, I realize, we will have to learn something of your ways. But for now, do follow Susan, let her show you this quite lovely ship, and although you are here for serious business, please do take pleasure in the scenery as we pass by.”
“I will,” Sternberg promised. “Delighted to meet you, Captain.”
“And you, Mister Assemblyman. I understand we’ll be dining together. I look forward to it.”
“As do I. We won’t keep you, Captain, I know you’re busy.”
As they were leaving, the captain even found a smile to show Parker and Wycza. “I certainly hope, gentlemen,” he said, “we shall not be seeingthose weapons of yours.”
Wycza grinned at him. He knew how to handle a soft lob like that. “If you see my weapon on this ship, Captain,” he said, “I’m not doing my job.”
4
Ray Becker sat in an old wooden Adirondack chair on the screened porch at the back of the cabin, the bottle of Gatorade at his side, and watched the sunset over the river. It’s a new day, he thought. I’m starting over, and this time I’m gonna get it right.
He was a fuckup, and he knew it. He’d been a fuckup all his life, third of five sons of a hardware store owner who was never any problem for any of his boys so long as they worked their ass off. Being in the middle, Ray had never been big enough or strong enough to compete with his meaner older brothers, and never been cute enough or sly enough to compete with his guileful younger brothers, so he was just the fuckup in the middle, and grew up knowing that about himself, and had never done anything in his life to make him change his opinion of himself.
God knows he tried. He liked the Army, for instance. Go in there and do your job and don’t sweat about promotion, and the Army was never any problem for anybody, so long as they worked their ass off. But drink and bad companions have taken down many a better man than Ray Becker, and he did wind up with a bunch of clowns that had it in mind to rob the base PX, and of course they got caught, and of course Ray was the first to crack, so of course he was the one who wound up with the deal and testified against everybody else, and they went to Leavenworth while he didn’t even have a bad mark on his record; a general discharge under honorable conditions. Only the Army wouldn’t ever want him back.
Policing turned out to be like the Army, only with different-colored uniforms. But the concept was the same; a strict set of rules, easy to understand. Stay within them, you’ll be all right. And in police work, particularly small- town police work, you didn’t even have to work your ass off.
But the other little glitch was money. The old man had been as cheap a son of a bitch as it was possible to find, and still was, no doubt; Ray had had no contact at all with the family for more than ten years. What would be in it for him? Work for the old man, and get nothing out of it. The only reason the old man would know Ray wasn’t there was if he had to get somebody else to do the heavy lifting.
Thirty-seven years old. A born fuckup who didn’t really want much in life, but who simply couldn’t keep himself from conniving. Show him a rule, and he’ll say, “Oh, thank God, there’s rules,” and absolutely mean it, and at the same time scheme from the get-go for some sneaky way to get around the rule, subvert it, defy it and ignore it. Maybe that was an inheritance from the old man, too.
Well, Ray Becker’s fuckup days were done. This last one was the lesson, for good and all. Four million dollars in commercial paper being trucked north to Chicago out of some bank that went bust down south. A big tractor-trailer full of valuable paper and a handful of armed guards. Two unmarked cars, one ahead and one behind, with more armed guards, and here it all came, stitching up the center of the country, heading for the big stone banks of
