listening.
“You’re going use the one wrapped around her wrists,” she said. “It’s silk. Now, pay attention. I’m going to say ‘action’-”
“What?”
“Action,” she repeated. “I’m going to say the word ‘action,’ and when I do, you step into the shot-”
“What’s that mean, step into the shot?”
“You go over to her,” the woman said, “and you start cutting her clothes off.”
“With what?”
“With this.” The guy with the bags under his eyes handed him a knife. It was one of those commando things, sharp all the way down the front and halfway down the back.
“Last thing you do with it,” she said, “you cut through the cord and free her hands. Just cut one loop. Unwind the rest. When you’re done with the knife, drop it on the floor. Otto here”-she tilted her head toward the guy with the bags under his eyes-“will pick it up, so she doesn’t get her hands on it. Can you remember all of this?”
“Sure,” he said. “You think I’m stupid?”
She blinked her eyes at him and paused for a beat before she went on. “Once you free her hands, she’ll probably try to scratch you. Don’t worry about it. We cut her nails. Just make sure she doesn’t poke out an eye.”
“Okay.”
“When her hands are free, hold her wrists, or sit on her, while you spit out the key and unlock the handcuffs. Make sure she never gets off that bunk. If she does, we have to start all over again.”
“Can we do that?” he said.
“Of course we can, but try to get it right the first time. Once I turn those lights on, it’s going to get very hot. None of us are going to enjoy being in here any longer than we have to.”
“Okay. So once I get the handcuffs off her ankle, what’s next?”
“You do what we discussed. Any questions?”
“No.”
“Good. Otto, give me that camera.”
The camera wasn’t one of those little dinky things Delfin had seen the tourists use. It was almost as long as the woman’s arm and had a pad on the bottom so she could rest it on her shoulder.
“Otto,” she said, “lights.”
Delfin was looking at the largest of them when it came to life. He looked away, but a blue spot persisted in his vision. It started to fade, but it was there when Claudia’s European client came down the companionway and settled into the bunk opposite him. And it was still there when she said “action.”
Quartz halogen lamps are hot, and they seem hotter still when they’re switched on in a confined space. Twenty-two minutes into the recording, and despite the air-conditioning working flat out, the ambient temperature in the cabin was up to a hundred and eighteen degrees Fahrenheit, fully five degrees hotter than in the blazing sun.
The smells made their discomfort worse. The acrid smell of sweat. The steely smell of blood. The smells of excrement and urine.
Claudia held on long enough to get a shot of Delfin disemboweling Marta with the same knife he’d used to cut her clothes off-proof for any viewer that the girl was really dead-then she made a sudden dash for the deck.
She found a place in the shade under the awning, put the camera on one of the seats, and took a deep breath of the muggy air. It was heavy with the odor of rotting vegetation, but a damned sight more agreeable than the aromas down below.
The next person out of the cabin was Delfin, nude, one eye turning black, holding Marta’s panties against his ear to stanch the flow of blood.
“Bitch,” he said and sat down.
Claudia wrinkled her nose. She didn’t like having his sweating, filthy ass on her cushions. She made a mental note to have Otto scrub them clean after he’d flushed out the cabin.
Otto was already at it. Hans too. She could hear the splash of the hose, the trickle of water flowing into the bilge, the whir as the bilge pump kicked in. She leaned over the side and saw a pink stream gushing out of the hull.
Delfin was so dumb he still hadn’t tipped to the fact a European customer wouldn’t be down there in the cabin helping with the cleanup.
Hans came on deck, carrying Marta. He’d wrapped her corpse in a piece of black plastic sheeting.
“Still some pieces of her on the bunk,” he said. “I’ll have to shovel them into a bucket. Most are too big to wash into the bilge; they might clog the pump.”
Delfin blinked. It was the first time he’d heard the guy speak. Claudia envisioned wheels churning in his head as he tried to figure out how some Euro freak came to speak Portuguese with a Gaucho accent. He opened his mouth, maybe to ask, shut it, opened it again.
“Who woulda thought a little package like her could be so much trouble?” he finally said.
“You gonna just sit there and spout deep thoughts,” Hans said, all pretense gone, “or you gonna help me get her into the river?”
“Help? Hell, no. I already did my part.”
“Help him,” Claudia said. The coaming around the cockpit was solid mahogany, and she didn’t want bullet holes in it.
“Fuck,” Delfin said, “Look what the bitch did to my ear.”
He uncovered his ear and pointed to the place where Marta had mangled it with her teeth.
“It’s stopped bleeding,” Claudia said. “Just leave it alone.”
He tried to assess the damage with his fingers.
“Leave it alone, I said.”
“What are you, a fucking doctor?” he said, sarcastically.
“As a matter of fact,” she said, “I am.”
“Yeah, right.”
By then, Hans had laid his burden on the foredeck and was grasping a length of chain.
“Go help him,” she said again.
Delfin gave her an exasperated look and mumbled something, but he got up and moved forward.
Claudia watched the little drama play out on the foredeck: Hans telling Delfin to hold up her body so he could get the length of chain under it, Delfin doing it, Hans whipping out his pistol and putting two quick ones into Delfin’s head. Pam! Pam!
Down below, the sound of the cleanup continued unabated. Otto must have heard the shots, but he didn’t bother to stick his head out of the cabin.
Hans finished wrapping Marta and turned to Delfin. He’d already prepared a second length of chain, had it up there on the foredeck ready to use. He didn’t bother to wrap Delfin in plastic. The deck was fiberglass, easy to clean, and Otto would hose it down when he finished in the cabin.
Claudia rewound the tape, and started reviewing it in the viewfinder: no dropouts, a little jumpy in some places, a few lapses of focus, but all in all, a good job, different from all of the others because the girl fought like a wildcat. It lent a degree of piquancy to the work.
She hadn’t yet gotten to the point where Delfin was wrapping the silken cord around Marta’s neck when she heard a splash up near the bow. She stopped the playback and took the viewfinder away from her eye just in time to see Hans push Delfin’s body between two of the stanchions.
Another splash.
Hans came aft, toward the cockpit, discontent written on his face.
“I’m not gonna do this no more,” he said, “not unless we get to do her first. You’re a woman. You don’t know how it is, having to stand there, and watch it, and not get any. I woulda had her when she was still warm,” he said, “if you hadn’t told that fuck to open her belly.”
“Had to be done,” she said. “That’s what the customers want. Proof it isn’t faked.”
“Speaking of the fuck,” he said. “How about the money you gave him? The fuck locked it in the trunk of his car. You want to go back and get it?”
