One bad thing, p.5
One Bad Thing, page 5
He raised the binoculars to his eyes.
It was about a mile away.
Cain came out of the cabin and said, “What’s up?”
McKenna just stared at him.
Cain saw the cutter and his face went carefully blank.
That’s all McKenna needed to see.
“Looks like we’re going to be boarded,” McKenna said.
Cain’s eyes flickered at him and about the boat. He looked up at the mast and back at the fast-approaching cutter.
McKenna got it then. He said, “You son of a bitch.”
“What’s your problem?” Cain said.
McKenna stepped around him and headed below.
Cain continued to stare at the cutter for a moment longer, and then yelled after McKenna, “What are you doing?”
McKenna ignored him. He went directly into Cain’s little cabin, shut the door just as Cain jumped down the main stairwell. McKenna threw the bolt.
Cain hit the door. “Open it, McKenna!”
McKenna knelt down and quickly pulled back the panel to gain access to the through-hull valves for the head. He reached above them, feeling around until he found the little bundle. He pulled it out.
Cain hit the door again. Most likely, with his shoulder this time. The door held.
McKenna opened the bag, his hands shaking. It was hot in the little cabin and the sweat was just pouring off him. He reached inside the bag. He felt plastic, something smooth and hard. He pulled it out. An aspirin bottle. A big “extra-value” size.
“Rob!” Cain’s voice eased. “Hey, Rob, what’s this about?”
McKenna fiddled with the cap for a second and then got it open. He snatched the cotton out and rattled the pills. He held the open mouth of the bottle up to the sunlight streaming in from the porthole. Something sparkled. Just a quick flash and it was gone.
Cain voice was a harsh whisper now. “You stupid bastard, you don’t know what you’re getting into!”
Abruptly, McKenna dumped the aspirin bottle upside down on Cain’s blue sleeping bag.
And then the sunlight streaming in from the porthole refracted around the small cabin.
Diamonds.
Diamonds. More than a big handful. All of them cut, polished stones.
“Jesus,” McKenna said. They were breathtaking.
McKenna certainly wasn’t an expert on diamonds. And with Cain trying to break through the door, and the Coast Guard about a quarter mile away, McKenna was hardly in a position to even hazard a guess as to their value. But the rage Cain was displaying—
“You son of a bitch, open the fucking door …”
—was enough for McKenna to form some quick assumptions.
One, that these pretty stones were real.
Two, they were easily worth at least a small fortune and maybe much more.
And, three, they were most likely stolen.
* * *
McKenna turned and flicked aside the bolt.
Cain tried to push his way in. But McKenna surprised the younger man by grabbing his shirt to pull him off balance, and then immediately shoved him back across the cabin. Cain bounced back immediately—and then stopped when McKenna turned to scoop the stones into his right hand.
McKenna said, “Don’t jostle me, now. I spill these, you’ll never get them back before we’re boarded.”
Cain hesitated. He looked out the porthole toward the cutter. He rubbed his mouth. Clearly, he was thinking fast, assessing his situation. “Look, just give them to me. I’ve made it through worse spots.”
McKenna looked closely at the aspirin bottle. There was the residue of tape on it. “The top of the spreader?” McKenna said. “You taped these up there and damaged the block so you’d have an excuse later to go back up the mast once we were past customs. We could’ve lost the boat.”
“Fuck the boat.” Cain shook his head in frustration. “You could buy fifty of your precious boats with what’s in there.”
Cain raked his hair back and tried to continue in a conciliatory tone. “Look, I didn’t know the block would fail so soon,” he said. “Who expected that kind of wind one day out of the BVI?”
“Anybody. Anybody who really knew what they were doing.” McKenna opened the porthole inside the head. It was on the opposite side of the oncoming cutter. He should be able to throw the diamonds overboard without the Coast Guard crew seeing him. “If you’ve got some bill of sale you want to show me on these, then we’ll keep them and I’ll let you explain to them why you didn’t notify customs. Otherwise …”
Cain was incredulous. “You think you’re going to dump them?”
“What do you suggest?”
“That’s a fortune, you asshole,” Cain snapped. “There’s five million worth of diamonds right there.” Cain visibly tried to regain himself. “Look,” he said, “We really don’t have time for this. Look at your hand. Look at those diamonds. With those, you’ve got a future. Without them, the best you can expect is to go home and get your divorce. Lose your boat. Far as I can tell, it’s about all you care about. With these, you can go anywhere, do anything you want.”
McKenna couldn’t help himself. Some of the diamonds in his hand were as big as his thumbnail.
Just then they heard the sound of a megaphone over the roar of the cutter’s engines. “Sailing vessel, Wanderer. Sailing vessel, Wanderer. Please furl your sails and prepare to be boarded.”
McKenna sighed and dumped the diamonds back into the bottle.
Cain pleaded. “Do this one bad thing and you’ve got a life. But if you go up on that deck and be a Boy Scout, they’ll impound the boat, and by the time I’m done, you’ll be the one sitting in prison. Your prints are all over that bottle and those stones. I guarantee you, I’ve already wiped mine.”
McKenna felt a jolt, but then let it go. “So I dump them.”
The amplified voice came across the water again. “Skipper of the Wanderer. This is the Coast Guard. Please come on deck immediately.”
McKenna gestured to the boat outside. “They’re here, they’re coming on board.” He reached out the window with the bottle.
“Use your head,” Cain hissed. “For Christ’s sake, use your brains! You’ll be a rich man.”
McKenna stopped.
It was clear to McKenna that he had just one option. He couldn’t really throw the diamonds overboard. They must belong to someone. He couldn’t just throw five million dollars away.
He just couldn’t.
What he had to do was simple: go up to the cockpit, and call the Coast Guard over. Point the finger. Let the pros hustle Cain onto their boat in chains. Maybe even suffer the indignity of being hauled away in chains himself. Cain was a wonderful liar.
Either way, the Coast Guard would tow in the Wanderer. Put her into drydock as evidence, and McKenna would have to scramble to prove his own innocence, go through all the bureaucracy and the lies that Cain would throw out. Lawyers, time, money.
“Ah, for God’s sake,” McKenna breathed. This could go far beyond inconvenience. This could mean months, maybe years of trouble.
“Don’t be stupid,” Cain whispered, looking over his shoulder. “You have a chance, this is a once-in-a-lifetime deal. Right in front of you. How often is this going to come along, you—”
“Shut up,” McKenna brushed past him, heading toward the companionway.
Cain said in a hoarse whisper. “You can go anywhere you want, any kind of boat. All the women you want. You’ve got this kind of money, you can have anything. Think!”
Can I have Sam back? McKenna asked himself.
But he hesitated at the foot of the companionway. McKenna knew the way he was brought up, his Uncle Sean. He knew how he and Caroline had brought up Samantha.
And what had any of it gotten McKenna?
The thought rushed through his head, capering and whispering like a living thing. Whispered in his father’s voice. “What’d it ever get you, Rob? Doing the right thing? For Christ’s sake, tear something off for yourself.”
Those diamonds.
Those bright bits of fire. They could bring happiness to some people.
To McKenna, they couldn’t offer that, but they could possibly offer the means to continue sailing. Suspended animation at best; purgatory at worst. But at least he could get off this course that he was now on—that of a divorced man, living in some condo he could barely afford. Working some job, most likely buying and selling real estate. Trying to connect with people and act like he cared about the things they cared about. Back on land, where you could work, and love, and hold on to your child, and she could still be gone with one misjudgment, one mistake.
Those diamonds.
They could give him a chance to keep breathing.
The megaphoned voice spoke again; definitely suspicious now.
“What’re you going to do?” Cain said. “Tell me how you’re going to play it. Give me that, at least.”
McKenna looked back at Cain before stepping out into the sunlight.
“Skipper of the Wanderer …”
McKenna said, “I’ll stall them. You close off the through-hull valve for the waste hose from the head. Grab a screwdriver and unscrew the clamp. That aspirin bottle will fit in the hose. Jam it back on the fitting, and leave some water in the toilet bowl. Nobody’s going to want to put their hand down there.”
Cain looked at him closely and laughed, shortly. “Goddamn. Sixty-forty. I get the sixty.”
“Fifty-fifty,” McKenna said. “Take it or they take you.” His voice was flat.
Cain took it.
McKenna went up on deck. It’s that easy, he thought.
He felt scared, alert, and crackling with energy.
Alive.
The captain of the cutter stood far above him on the bridge of the vessel. He had close-cropped short hair and a neat black mustache. He looked about forty-years-old.
He put the mike to his face and the amplified voice said, “We catch you napping, Skipper?”
McKenna cupped his hands to yell over the cutter’s engines. “Need to sleep sometime.”
“Where are you out of, Skipper?”
McKenna told him the BVI.
With the wind was blowing just under twenty knots, the seas were running just high enough that the two boats rose and fell so that at times McKenna was almost level with the captain; at others the big cutter seemed a mile above.
The officer nodded to a crew of three and a junior officer who were standing by the lower railing. They were all wearing bright orange vests and were armed.
“Prepare to be boarded,” the captain said. “Furl your sails and motor alongside.”
McKenna yelled. “I’ve got a problem with the engine.” He told him about the damaged prop.
“All right,” the captain said. “We’ll take you in tow.”
He turned and spoke to the helmsman. The cutter surged ahead.
The Wanderer lifted and fell in the wash, spilling wind for a moment.
“I’m going to need you up here,” McKenna said to Cain. “They’ll wonder why my crew didn’t help out.”
“I’ll be there,” Cain called back quietly. “Just botch it when you sail up to them. Make them reposition themselves.”
McKenna nodded. It was actually easy enough to do. The cutter was a bit high on the wind anyhow. When he saw the crewman on the stern ready to throw back a towline, McKenna headed the boat up just a little too soon. The sails shivered, and the forward motion quickly stalled. He ran forward as if to catch the line. The seaman shook his head, but threw the line anyhow. It fell short by a few feet.
McKenna raised his hands as if frustrated, and then hurried back to the stern. By then the Wanderer was in irons, and it took him a few minutes to get her backed down, and get her head over enough so that he could make way again. This time, the cutter moved just directly before him. “I’ve got to do it this time,” McKenna said.
Cain appeared at the bottom of the stairway.
He had a fifth of scotch in his hand. “Listen to me,” he whispered. “I’m taking a couple hits off this and you do the same. We’re a couple of lushes. They already don’t like us, so we give them a reason—we’re drunks. You got it?”
McKenna bent down. He knocked back a mouthful of the whiskey. Some of it dribbled on his shirt, but he didn’t suppose that would hurt. He coughed, and said, “You put the diamonds where I told you?”
“Don’t worry where I put them,” Cain snapped. “Just act like it’s hard work for you not to be a belligerent SOB.”
Cain went on deck.
McKenna sailed the boat closer to the cutter. A part of him recognized Cain’s acting skills. He wasn’t overdoing the drunk bit. Not stumbling around. Instead, he walked a little more slowly, handing himself along the safety lines more carefully than one would expect of an experienced sailor.
McKenna saw the seaman on the stern of the cutter look over his shoulder and say something to the junior officer behind him.
Again, McKenna brought the Wanderer up under the cutter’s stern and headed up into the wind. Cain reached out for the towline and the seaman cast it to him. Cain passed the line through the bow chocks and almost lost it before regaining it to cleat the line.
He covered his head against the heavily luffing jenny and started back.
McKenna yelled at him to get the jenny down, goddamn it.
Now there were several seamen on the stern and they were shaking their heads and laughing among themselves.
Cain kept his back to the seaman. Suddenly he made a face, his tongue out, eyes rolling … exaggerating the drunk bit for McKenna’s benefit.
McKenna wanted to laugh. He had to turn his face away.
Maybe it was just the combination of whiskey and adrenaline. Maybe it was because he was doing something he would never have considered before—something that was totally alien to who he was—and finding that he had some talent for it.
God save him, he was having fun.
By the time they got the sails down and the junior officer and the three burly seamen were on board, McKenna had lost his sense of humor. The cutter towed them along at a steady five knots, fast for a tow. The Wanderer rose and fell in the cutter’s wake, the bowline bar tight.
It made clear in a way that nothing else had that he was in someone else’s control; that freedom could just as easily end as start from here.
“Captain,” the officer said. “Have you been drinking?”
McKenna said, sullenly. “Long ways from drunk.” He let his voice slur.
“That so?” said the young officer. He had a friendly smile and light blue eyes that watched McKenna carefully. “I like to give people a choice. Be straight with me from the beginning and avoid a lot of hassle. Or go for the works. I don’t care either way, but the first would be easier on you and your boat in the long run. If you or your crew member have something on board—maybe a little weed, some coke, heroin, you tell me now and we’ll work it out.”
McKenna snorted. He gestured at Cain. “Goddamn mate, if he had anything like that I’d kill him. If he had anything like that, he wouldn’t be hitting my scotch.”
“Uh-huh,” the officer said. He raised his voice to the seaman. “Let’s take a look, gentlemen.”
They went to work.
“Go through the basic systems, guys. Let’s see if everything’s working.” The officer winked at McKenna. “We’ll even see what’s jammed that prop of yours.”
The seamen made the customs search at the BVI look like an Easter-egg hunt. The cutter stopped the tow while one of the men pulled on a wetsuit and went over the side to look at the prop. Another went through every drawer, every bag, every inch of storage space. And the third went through the systems. He was a wiry young man with dark hair and grease stains embedded in his hands. He spent a good forty minutes on the engine, carefully probing inside the water cooler, closing and then pulling off through-valve fittings. McKenna’s heart started pounding.
Then he moved to the galley. The officer watched McKenna carefully as the seaman started the propane oven. Apparently, looking for a telltale reaction.
McKenna stared back at him.
“Check it anyhow,” the officer said.
The wiry man sighed, knelt down, and looked throughout the stove. From there, he went to the sink, checking the drain, the drain hose, all the connections under the sink.
Then he went to the head.
McKenna felt his face growing tight and he almost stood up, trying to distract the man. But he felt a tap on his foot. When he looked over, Cain was apparently watching the sailors curiously. But he made a small, horizontal gesture with his right hand. Just a flicker, but McKenna felt relief surge through him.
Cain had hidden the diamonds someplace else.
After a half hour, the wiry man came back to his officer and said, “Anything else, sir?”
The officer looked first and McKenna and then Cain. “Do I?”
“Can we move on?” McKenna said. He didn’t have to fake the tiredness in his voice. The tension was draining him, particularly now that the shot of scotch had faded to leave nothing but a nasty taste in his mouth, and a sinking awareness of what he’d done.
The wiry seaman began to wash his hands in the galley. He hit the soap-bottle nozzle a couple of times and turned the fresh water on high.
McKenna looked over, suddenly resenting that the man was using their drinking water instead of the seawater foot pump. “You think you can do that on your own boat?” he said, irritably.
The junior officer cocked his head at the wiry seaman. “Check the water tanks, Stevens.”
The seaman smiled. “Yes, sir.”
Cain rolled his eyes and stood. The seaman pulled aside the bedding and unscrewed the big cap to the starboard water tank. He used a flashlight to look inside, and then held a small mirror like a dentist might use to look through the half full tank. He had McKenna move, and he did the same thing on the port tank.
He made a face. “Sorry, Lieutenant. I’m not seeing anything.”
The young officer shrugged. He stepped closer to McKenna. “So maybe me and the captain were wrong.” Those blue eyes searching, somehow seeing the guilt in McKenna.
