She was ramping up again, and he was afraid hysteria was about to replace her grief. Chills rippled through his body, and he felt a twisting in his stomach that was resonating down into his bowels. But he reached for her through the shadows anyway, over the gearshift, until his hand came to rest on her right thigh. When he spoke his tongue felt thick.
“Do you remember what you said to me that day on the fly?” Ben said. “We went there after school, just the two of us, and it was a beautiful day. I think it was January but it wasn’t too cold and the sky was clear and the river was so high we could practically put our feet in the water. And there was soccer practice going on behind us. Do you remember?”
She was silent, both hands planted on the steering wheel. The road went smooth beneath the tires suddenly and headlights flared over Nikki’s face. They were on open freeway now.
“You told me no matter who I turned out to be, you would always accept me. You would always love me. Do you remember that day?”
“Of course I remember,” she whispered. “And then I left you.”
“You left me with that day. That beautiful, perfect day. And you left me with your kindness and your respect. Those things didn’t leave me when you did. They never will. And I’m offering you the same things in return. Always. Always, Nick.”
She reached down and took his hand and hers, and brought them to her chest.
“But Nikki . . .”
“Yes?”
“We have to kill Marshall Ferriot.”
She brought his hand to her mouth, kissed his fingers gently, and for a few seconds, Ben thought this was the only response he was going to get out of her, then she said, “I know.”
28
NEW ORLEANS
It was like being atop a floating skyscraper. The borders between river and dry land were hard to discern because the lights of the container and chemical ships passing them on either side appeared briefly as dense as the lights on shore.
After two hours on the bridge, Marshall had managed to commit a map of his surroundings to memory. Exit doors on both sides led to wide exterior staircases that zigzagged several stories down to the main deck. A long bank of radar consoles, a map table and the wheel, which was currently being manned by a tiny Southeast Asian quartermaster, took up the center of the room. Every few minutes Anthem would call out a new direction—
Just behind the ship’s glowing, flickering nerve center, a pull curtain hid a messy navigation area that contained a battered gooseneck lamp and two computers that looked older than any of the three men currently on the bridge. Both computers were off, and a nicotine-stained dot-matrix printer was attached to each one. Right behind this cluttered area, the ship’s main interior staircase entered the bridge. Next to this entrance, the door to the small bathroom drifted and swayed with the giant ship’s almost imperceptible motions.
In front of the wheel, radar screens and empty pilot’s chair, there was enough walk-through space for Anthem Landry to stand and devour a plate of hamburger patties and sliced potatoes brought to him by the ship’s cook. His view of the river wasn’t perfect. Four giant cranes lined the ship’s hull, perpendicular to the bridge, and Marshall figured the long, swaying hooks and chains attached to each one were used to open the grain containers that filled the ship’s hull.
There was enough room at the long counter lining the windows for Marshall to sidle up to him, but he chose to stay back. No video cameras were visible; he didn’t even see any protrusion in the ceiling. But there was no telling where they might be hidden. Best to hang back and play as small a role as he could, just in case the whole thing ended up on film. “You okay?” Marshall said.
Anthem nodded. His eyes were saucer wide in the glow from the brightly lit cranes outside. But his mood seemed morose, distant. It was just the two of them on deck with the quartermaster now. The jovial Greek captain had disappeared after introducing himself when they first came aboard. The chief mate had poked his head in a few times, but it was clear they were all resting up before they took to the Gulf of Mexico on their own.
“You bored?” Anthem asked.
“Nah uh,” Marshall answered.
“Should be about another half hour before we reach the base of Canal Street. Then we’ll hand off to the next pilot at Chalmette. You sure you don’t want coffee or anything?”
“I’m good.”
“Thank you. For coming. I appreciate it.”
“It’s good. It’s all good.”
“It’s funny. When it’s light out, we’ve got pigeons all over the hull, eating at the grain. Dancing around like they’re all hopped up on crack.”
“What do you do? Chase ’em off with a broomstick?”
Without a smile, Anthem said, “You heard about Deepwater Horizon, right? I mean, you were probably still . . .”
“The big oil spill. Yeah. I read about it.”
“Friend of mine worked with the cleanup efforts out in the Gulf. He said they used these big booms to corral all the oil and then they’d light it up to burn it off. Most times they did it, they’d have birds and turtles and stuff caught in the oil. But they didn’t give a shit. They’d light ’em all up anyway. Sometimes I can’t get it out of my head, that’s all.”
“Can’t get what out of your head?”
“The thought of those birds trying to take to the sky, oil all over their wings, flames racing after them, taking ’em down just when they got airborne. Sometimes I close my eyes, and they’re all I see.”
“Never thought you’d turn out to be some animal rights guy, Landry.”
Anthem managed a weak smile, but his eyes were still locked on the hull below, like he was seeing the dancing, grain-drunk pigeons that typically flocked there when the sun was out.
“Sometimes I just wonder if there’s always gonna be a price for living here,” Anthem whispered. “That’s all.”
“There’s a price for living anywhere, isn’t there?”
“True. But it’s getting steeper here.”
Marshall said, “I’m gonna take a leak.”
“Don’t fall in.”
Once he was behind the pull curtain in the messy navigation area, Marshall removed the pistol he’d been carrying in the back of his jeans and tucked it in between one of the ancient computers and its accompanying printer. He made sure the barrel pointed toward the wall, and the handle was extending slightly out from the edge of the shelf, as poised and ready for action as a ripcord.
Everything had fallen into place and nothing else mattered. So what if Anthem’s soul burned more brightly than the others? Marshall knew he could get his hooks into the man—he’d already done it once that night—and now that all the pieces had fallen into place, that was all that mattered. Because if things kept going as well as they’d gone for the past few hours, he would only need to drive Anthem for a short time to bring about a perfect ending for a not-so-perfect hero.
“Hey, Ferriot? You seen my phone?”
29
