One bad thing, p.6
One Bad Thing, page 6
Or at least that’s what McKenna imagined. His heart was beating rapidly and he almost said something. Tried to take it back, explain.
But he didn’t.
The officer at last shrugged. “Maybe you’re just a couple of drunks. Better get into port, Skipper. Get that prop fixed.”
McKenna nodded.
The officer snapped his fingers and the other seamen joined him, then climbed back into their Zodiac. They clambered on board the cutter and the wiry seaman came back to the stern to give the towline enough slack so Cain could uncleat the Wanderer.
They were free.
CHAPTER 8
MCKENNA AND CAIN STAYED IN THE COCKPIT, SIPPING THE WHISKEY together quietly as the cutter faded from sight. McKenna felt as if he were outside himself, watching the bearded, dark-haired man pass the bottle back and forth with the younger man.
People from McKenna’s past assaulted him from each side. His former employees at the agency; his customers. People who had always regarded him as honest.
His family.
Uncle Sean was thin-lipped. Rigid with disapproval. Caroline was stunned, but trying to understand.
Sam was in tears.
“Daddy, you’re stealing?” she said. “You’re lying?”
It wasn’t the way he’d raised her or been raised himself.
But possibly, it was what he was born to be. McKenna felt his father looking at him, felt a certain smug reaction from the man. That time out in L.A. His father had invited him over to sit by the pool. Have drinks before they headed out to dinner. McKenna had told himself to be civil, if just for his own sake, to listen and understand who his father was.
And he had done that, but been appalled to listen to the man, and hear how he swept a lifetime of McKenna’s core loneliness aside, how he ascribed his own flight and McKenna’s mother’s death as “bad luck, worse timing.” Leaving the responsibility of raising Rob to Uncle Sean was a “… hard decision I had to make for the good of everyone.”
McKenna had intended to be civil throughout dinner. Just get to know the man. But instead, he’d told him what he had wanted to say for years. In a low, harsh voice, he told his father that he was a selfish arrogant bastard, and that he’d done more damage than he knew. “How did you think we were going to eat if Mom wasn’t out that night?”
Bobby McKenna had listened wearily. And when Rob was done, he had leaned forward and said, “Time will come, Rob, even if it hasn’t yet. When you just gotta take care of yourself. You’ll see then.” His father had knocked his drink back, gestured to his third wife doing her laps in the pool. “Maybe Lisa and I better go out on our own tonight. You always were a pious little shit. But I got faith in you yet.”
Like father like son. McKenna knew beyond a shadow of doubt that his father would’ve been proud of him for scamming the Coast Guard. Would’ve been laughing that Rob’s time had come.
And it doesn’t matter.
McKenna felt bad. But he’d felt worse before.
Much worse.
“Huh,” he said aloud. He reached out for the bottle, and Cain, his new best friend, handed it to him.
Later, McKenna asked. “So where did you put the diamonds?” Cain raised the whiskey bottle to himself. “My experience and your luck—together we make an unbeatable team.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning I knew they’d go for the head, the hoses, all that shit. It’s the way they think. I almost blew it, though, and you saved our ass.”
“I did?” McKenna cocked his head.
Cain mimicked McKenna, “Can’t you do that on your own boat?”
McKenna remembered. That’s what he’d said to the wiry guy, the one who was wasting the fresh water.
Cain said, “I hid the diamonds in the soap bottle. The one that sailor almost opened so he could wash his goddamn hands.”
After about an hour, McKenna set Mortimer back on, and the two of them went below. Not having a watch on deck bothered McKenna somewhat, but the whiskey had softened his judgment.
He opened the soap bottle and peered in. The diamonds weren’t visible. All he could see was the milky white of the soap. But the weight of the bottle was heavier, and the soap level higher. Something no one else would notice.
“Leave it there,” Cain said. “Like most things, simple is best. Even in smuggling.”
“You’re a pro?”
Cain nodded. “You name it, I’ve done it. Hell, I’ve done bike tours through Europe with shit stuffed down the seat tube.”
“Drugs?” McKenna’s voice was harsh.
What have I done? What the hell have I done?
“No. Well, just once. Sophomore year, broke my cherry spring break. Went down to Colombia. Brought back some coke. Scared the hell out of myself and didn’t like the method of transport.”
“Which was?”
Cain smiled sheepishly. “Condom up my ass, in my colon.”
McKenna lifted his eyebrows.
Cain laughed. “Don’t worry, you’re traveling in better company now. Way back then I figured out drugs were too messy and the people too whacked.”
“So now diamonds?”
“Among other things.”
“You’re just a courier?”
Cain shook his head. “Not anymore. These are mine.”
“How’d you pay for them?”
“You don’t need to know that,” Cain said. “It was payment for services rendered. They made out just fine, believe me.”
“And they are?”
Cain didn’t bother to answer that. Instead, he said, “We get to Boston, I’ll fence the stuff. You let me get rid of it, and we both get away clean.”
McKenna said, “Sure.”
Cain looked at him carefully. “And for that, I’m going to charge you. I’m going to take back a percentage for handling it. Work my way back to the sixty-forty I said before.”
“I said fifty-fifty,” McKenna snapped.
“You had me in a spot back then, and I said what I had to say.”
McKenna shook his head, stubbornly.
Cain said, “You go to pawn shops with this shit, not only will you get royally screwed on the price—you’ll get caught. You let me take this to the people I know, you’ll come out with about two million bucks, maybe more. Not bad for an hour’s work.”
McKenna hesitated. He could see that Cain was making sense. The diamonds without the contacts were useless.
But that’s not what made him pause.
What made him pause was Cain himself. His manner. He wasn’t as angry as he should be. He was putting it on somewhat, but in truth, he seemed too relaxed for a man who’d supposedly lost two million dollars over the course of the past few hours.
“Fine,” McKenna said abruptly.
Because it really didn’t matter. Fifty-fifty, sixty-forty, ninety-ten. The percentage points were all bull.
“It’s fair,” Cain said. “You see what I’m saying? They were my diamonds in the first place, and I’m going to take care of securing the cash. All you’ve got to do is get us to Boston and then sit back and take a hefty cut.”
“All right,” McKenna said. “Sixty-forty.”
The way he saw it, at best, Cain would try to take off with the diamonds once they got on land. At worst, Cain intended to kill him.
That night, McKenna took the first watch. And when it was Cain’s turn, McKenna lay awake for almost two hours, his hand resting near the razor-sharp buck knife that he always kept on his hip. The knife that he now had tucked between the cushion and the wall of the hull the blade locked open, the handle within easy reach.
Finally, he began to nod and his eyelids grew heavy. Just as he fell off, he told himself that it was a skill he could learn. A skill he must learn, as necessary as listening for a change in the wind, as necessary as listening for an undue strain in the rigging or the hull itself.
In his new life, he needed to listen even while he slept. Listen for quietly approaching footsteps, for the pause before the attack—for the in-drawn breath before someone tried to plunge their razor-sharp knife into his heart.
CHAPTER 9
MCKENNA DREAMED ABOUT MELANIE WALSH.
She didn’t come to him right away, though.
First came nightmarish scenes on the boat. He was on his knees in the bilge, searching for leaks that were springing up from bow to stern. Some that trickled, some that geysered a foot into the air. He pressed cloth, and wadded paper, and blocks of wood against the holes. Each of his patches simply floated away. He couldn’t understand why he thought such clumsy attempts would work. An amplified voice demanded his attention the entire time, but the words were unintelligible.
Then he settled down. And that’s when Melanie made her way into his thoughts.
Those few minutes in her apartment.
It was four years back. She had been about twenty-eight at the time. His best salesperson. Short black hair, elfin features. Lively green eyes. Very attractive, very smart. He had liked her enormously.
In his waking hours, McKenna thought of that day occasionally. And wondered if she’d even remember it.
He believed she would.
They were on their way back from seeing a customer and she asked him if they could stop by her apartment. She’d forgotten her appointment book that morning.
“Come in and I’ll make you a sandwich,” she said. “I’m starving, and we’re not going to have time for lunch otherwise.”
He had hesitated slightly. The basic caution of a married man. But then he’d gone in. She’d rented the sunny top floor above a candle shop in Market Square. He had told himself she was an employee and a friend, that surely he could go have lunch with her.
Yet, standing there in her apartment, seeing her photos, he’d realized how little he really knew about her. She was an avid traveler, and her photos reflected scenes from all over the world. Black-and-white studies, most of them. A young Hispanic boy sweeping through a semi-circle on his Rollerblades, his arms out wide. His grin cocky, yet shy. A white-haired woman scowling with mock ferocity at a pugnacious little girl who was surely her granddaughter. Moody scenics. Boston with a deep bank of fog swallowing the Longfellow Bridge and half of the city. The Hancock Building, reflecting sunlight above the clouds, slicing through the fog like a shining blade.
“These are great,” he said.
“Better than my cooking,” Melanie said, giving him a ham sandwich.
He took a bite and a blob of mayonnaise and mustard promptly fell onto his tie. He looked down in dismay.
“Oh, Jesus.” She hurried back to the kitchen for a cloth, and while she was soaking it in a stream of hot water, he saw her shoulders start to move.
She tried to hide her grin when she turned around.
“What?” he asked.
“Nothing.” She dabbed at his tie, smearing the mayonnaise even further. She bit at her lower lip, the laughter bubbling up inside her, and he put a hand on her shoulder. Suddenly he was aware of her proximity, the scent of her. He said, “This is your humor all the way, isn’t it?”
“Oh, yeah,” she said, looking up. Those green eyes under dark black lashes. She didn’t move away.
He felt himself growing aroused.
She said, “Pratfalls. Mud all over you, pies in the face.” She flipped the damp cloth over and made another attack on the tie. Water dripped down onto his pants, and that just did her in.
She backed away, laughing. “I’m sorry,” she said. “You’re a mess now. I’m afraid you’ve got to take your clothes off while I wash them. Just like in the movies.”
She looked at him directly for no more than a heartbeat.
Her smile subsided. He felt suddenly that it could happen. He could reach out, put his palm to the nape of her neck, and pull her close. He felt, he knew, she would come to him. Even though he truly loved Caroline, even though he’d never wanted to lose her, the temptation was there—not just to make love with Melanie, but to stay with her through the day, to sleep with her, to whisper and laugh with her in the night.
But he did nothing.
As the moment lengthened, she smiled brightly and said, “I think I’ve got another tie for you. Left by an old flame who knows better than to show his face around here.”
She went into her bedroom and came out a moment later. He went into the bathroom, and changed his tie. They stood at her breakfast nook and ate their sandwiches, and were on the road again within twenty minutes.
Not long after that, she’d quit the agency to give it a shot as a full-time photographer. McKenna had thrown what work he could her way, several estates where topflight photos would help attract the right buyers. But she’d quickly moved beyond that stage. McKenna and Caroline had attended Melanie’s first gallery opening, at the Firehouse Center, about a year after she’d quit the agency.
The last time he’d seen Melanie had been at Sam’s funeral. As Melanie hugged him briefly, his thoughts had drifted to their particular road not taken. In that instant, he had wished he had. Not for her, not for him. But just so the road would have been different, because maybe somehow it would have pulled Sam along, too.
In the year since his daughter’s death, he had thought a lot about that opportunity and other turns he had missed.
And he was thinking about them again when he awoke in the Wanderer with the knife in his hand.
There were other ways to live his life.
McKenna told Cain he had decided against making port in Charleston to fix the prop.
Surprisingly, Cain made no objection.
McKenna thought about that afterward, sitting up on deck while Mortimer sailed the boat. It wasn’t the safest decision—under normal conditions it would’ve been smarter to have use of the engine as the shipping lanes converged.
But these weren’t normal circumstances.
Two days later McKenna awoke to see that the barometer was dropping. They were at least a day’s sail from the mouth of Long Island Sound—if there had been wind.
McKenna went on deck and stretched, looking at the red morning sky. The seas were rolling, but oily looking. The sails slatted back and forth, useless. McKenna felt a vague uneasiness and the breath of excitement. He looked down at his arms and saw the gooseflesh on them. Gooseflesh at eighty degrees.
Cain was asleep on the cushions.
McKenna nudged him with his knee. “You’re supposed to be on watch.”
Cain groaned, and sat up. He rubbed his face, making his growing beard rasp. “For what?”
“Can’t you feel it?” McKenna went below and switched the radio on to listen to the weather service. The warning was delivered with flat urgency: “Gale-force winds predicted. A small-craft advisory in effect for coastal waters off of Long Island Sound, Buzzards Bay, and the islands …”
He went back on deck and said to Cain, “Now we’ll see if we really screwed up, not getting this prop fixed. We’ve got gale-force winds coming in, and there’s no way we can make for shore now, with no wind and the twisted shaft.”
Cain looked out at the water uneasily. “What’s the plan?”
McKenna shrugged. “We get ready for a ride.”
They brought the main down to the third reef and changed the jenny for the storm jib. Off to the south, McKenna could see a line of squalls coming up along the coast. He took the wheel as the wind began to build. Within twenty minutes, the temperature dropped ten degrees. Cain went below and carefully stowed the gear. He made a point of showing McKenna how he put the bottle of soap in a small backpack.
“Worse comes to worst,” Cain said. He nodded to the life raft.
“We’re not going to let it come to that,” said McKenna. “You’re going to have to follow my orders, clear?”
Cain looked out at the building seas. “You’re the boss.”
Within twenty minutes, the steep crests no longer seemed to have any relation to one another. The wind whipped the tops off the waves. McKenna ran the Wanderer ahead of the storm out to sea, sliding down the face of one wave to the next. The Wanderer surfed, hitting nine knots at times. McKenna rolled his shoulders and kept loose. He felt in tune with the boat, and relatively warm and dry inside his foul-weather gear. He sent Cain below to get some rest.
As the Wanderer rushed down each face, McKenna would head up before the bow buried into the next wave; she would rise and cut solidly through the top then start her slide again.
McKenna found himself grinning. Although he was glad Caroline was safely ashore, he also wished she could be along to share this ride.
The Wanderer continued for another hour with the wind blowing at about forty knots, when suddenly a gust overpowered her, and she rounded up into the wind.
The sails thundered.
McKenna backed the jib to push the bow down. Soon they were surfing along again. But it was clearly time to get the sails down.
“Get up here,” McKenna yelled to Cain.
Then an express train came through.
That’s what it felt like, anyway.
McKenna heard it before he saw it. He turned to find a great green wall rising up behind him. The Wanderer began to race down the trough, but the wave was coming even faster. It was curling over the stern itself, higher than anything he’d seen all day; higher than he had ever seen, period.
McKenna whipped his head around and yelled to Cain, “Hold on!”
And then the sea was upon them. The wave swept over McKenna pinning him against the wheel. Cain’s back had been to the waves; he was just sliding the last washboard to close off the cabin when solid green water filled the cockpit.
And Cain tried to climb out of the way of it.
“Stay down,” McKenna yelled.
But it was too late. The Wanderer wallowed briefly in the trough, and then the next wave crashed over the stern, catching Cain as he was half way up the cabin roof. He spun and tumbled into the lee scuppers and the wave carried him along. McKenna was again plastered to the helm, the weight of the water holding him fast. The Wanderer staggered, weighted by the water up to McKenna’s knees. Her sails filled and she began to heel sharply. McKenna spun the wheel round. She took another wave broadside before her bow came round into the wind.
