'Carrying out my commerce on the sea, Oreza. What's your excuse? Over.'
'Looking out for feather merchants like you to rescue, getting some training done, what do you think? Over.'
'Glad to hear that, Coast Guard. You push those lever-things towards the front of the boat - that's the pointy part, usually - and she goes faster. And the pointy part goes the same way you turn the wheel - you know, left to go left, right to go right. Over.'
Kelly could hear the laughter over the FM circuit. 'Roger, copy that, Springer, I will pass that along to my crew. Thank you, sir, for the advice. Over.'
The crew on the forty-one-foot boat was howling after a long eight hours of patrol, and doing very little. Oreza was letting a young seaman handle the wheel, leaning on the wheelhouse bulkhead and sipping his own coffee as he played with the radio mike.
'You know, Springer, I don't take that sort of guff off many guys. Over.'
'A good sailor respects his betters, Coast Guard. Hey, is it true your boats have wheels on the bottom? Over.'
'Ooooooo,' observed a new apprentice.
'Ah, that's a negative, Springer. We take the training wheels off after the Navy pukes leave the shipyard. We don't like it when you ladies get seasick just from looking at them. Over!'
Kelly chuckled and altered course to port to stay well clear of the small cutter. 'Nice to know that our country's waterways are in such capable hands, Coast Guard, 'specially with a weekend coming up.'
'Careful, Springer, or I'll hit you for a safety inspection!'
'My federal tax money at work?'
'I hate to see it wasted.'
'Well, Coast Guard, just wanted to make sure y'all were awake.'
'Roger and thank you very much, sir. We were dozing a little. Nice to know we have real pros like you out here to keep us on our toes.'
'Fair winds, Portagee.'
'And to you, Kelly. Out.' The radio frequency returned to the usual static.
And that took care of that, Kelly thought. It wouldn't do to have him come alongside for a chat. Not just now. Kelly secured the radio and went below. The eastern horizon was pink-orange now, another ten minutes or so until the sun made its appearance.
'What was that all about?' Billy asked.
Kelly poured himself another cup of coffee and checked the autopilot. It was warm enough now that he removed his shirt. The scars on his back from the shotgun blast could hardly have been more clear, even in the dim light of a breaking dawn. There was a remarkable long silence, punctuated by a deep intake of breath.
'You're...'
This time Kelly turned, looking down at the naked man chained to the deck. 'That's right.'
'I killed you,' Billy objected. He'd never gotten the word. Henry hadn't passed it along, deeming it to be irrelevant to his operation.
'Think so?' Kelly asked, looking forward again. One of the diesels was running a little warmer than the other, and he made a note to check the cooling system after his other business was done. Otherwise the boat was behaving as docilely as ever, rocking gently on the almost invisible swells, moving along at a steady twenty knots, the bow pitched up at about fifteen degrees on an efficient planing angle. On the step, as Kelly called it. He stretched again, flexing muscles, letting Billy see the scars and what lay under them.
'So that's what it's about... she told us all about you before we snuffed her.'
Kelly scanned the instrument panel, then checked the chart as he approached the Bay Bridge. Soon he'd cross over to the eastern side of the channel. He was now checking the boat's clock - he thought of it as a chronometer - at least once a minute.
'Pam was a great little fuck. Right up to the end,' Billy said, taunting his captor, filling the silence with his own malignant words, finding a sort of courage there. 'Not real smart, though. Not real smart.'
Just past the Bay Bridge, Kelly disengaged the autopilot and turned the wheel ten degrees to port. There was no morning traffic to speak of, but he looked carefully anyway before initiating the maneuver. A pair of running lights just on the horizon announced the approach of a merchant ship, probably twelve thousand yards off. Kelly could have flipped on the radar to check, but in these weather conditions it just would have been a waste of electricity.
'Did she tell you about the passion marks?' Billy sneered. He didn't see Kelly's hands tighten on the wheel.
The marks about the breasts appear to have been made with an ordinary set of pliers, the pathology report had said. Kelly had it all memorized, every single word of the dry medical phraseology, as though engraved with a diamond stylus on a plate of steel. He wondered if the medics had felt the same way he did. Probably so. Their anger had probably manifested itself in the increased detachment of their dictated notes. Professionals were like that.
'She talked, you know, she told us everything. How you picked her up, how you partied. We taught her that, mister. You owe us for that! Before she ran, I bet she didn't tell you, she nicked us all, three, four times each. I guess she thought that was pretty smart, eh? I guess she never figured that we'd all get to fuck her some more.'
O+, O- , AB-, Kelly thought. Blood type O was by far the most common of all, and so that meant there could well have been more than three of them. And what blood type are you, Billy?
'Just a whore. A pretty one, but just a fucking little whore. That's how she died, did you know? She died while she was fucking a guy. We strangled her, and her cute little ass was pumping hard, right up till the time her face turned purple. Funny to watch,' Billy assured him with a leer that Kelly didn't have to see. 'I had my fun with her - three times, man! I hurt her, I hurt her bad, you hear me?'
Kelly opened his mouth wide, breathing slowly and regularly, not allowing his muscles to tense up now. The morning wind had picked up some, letting the boat rock perhaps five degrees left and right of the vertical, and he allowed his body to ride with the rolls, commanding himself to accept the soothing motion of the sea.
'I don't know what the big deal is, I mean, she's just a dead whore. We should be able to cut a deal, like. You know how dumb you are? There was seventy grand back in the house, you dumb son of a bitch. Seventy grand!' Billy stopped, seeing it wasn't working. Still, an angry man made mistakes, and he'd rattled the guy before. He was sure of that, and so he continued.
'You know, the real shame, I guess, is she needed drugs. You know, if she just knew another place to score, we never woulda seen y'all. Then you fucked up, too, remember.'
Yes, I remember.
'I mean, you really were dumb. Didn't you know about phones? Jesus, man. After our car got stuck, we called Burt and got his car, and just went cruisin', like, and there you were, easy as hell to spot in that jeep. You must've really been under her spell, man.'
Phones? It was something that simple that had killed Pam? Kelly thought. His muscles went taut. Youfucking idiot, Kelly. Then his shoulders went slack, just for a second, with the realization of how thoroughly he had failed her, and part of him recognized the emptiness of his efforts at revenge. But empty or not, it was something he would have. He sat up straighter in the control chair.
'I mean, shit, car easy to spot like that, how fuckin' dumb can a guy be?' Billy asked, having just seen real feedback from his taunts. Now perhaps he could start real negotiations. 'I'm kinda surprised you're alive - hey, I mean, it wasn't anything personal. Maybe you didn't know the work she did for us. We couldn't let her loose with what she knew, right? I can make it up to you. Let's make a deal, okay?'
Kelly checked the autopilot and the surface. Springer was moving on a safe and steady course, and nothing in sight was on a converging path. He rose from his chair and moved to another, a few feet from Billy.
'She told you that we were in town to score some drugs? She told you that?' Kelly asked, his eyes level with Billy's.
'Yeah, that's right.' Billy was relaxing. He was puzzled when Kelly started weeping in front of him. Perhaps here was a chance to get out of his predicament. 'Geez, I'm sorry, man,' Billy said in the wrong sort of voice. 'I mean, it's just bad luck for you.'
Bad luck for me? He closed his eyes, just a few inches from Billy's face. Dear God, she was protecting me. Even
