The Probing: Leviathan, The Mind Pirates, Hybrids, The Village Page 11

  The waitress.

  “Lacey!” said Daniel.

  “Honey, that’s not Lacey!” said Brenda as if seeing an omen.

  “No,” Daniel insisted, pointing toward a side alley, “Lacey!”

  Tank and Brenda followed Daniel’s pointing finger down a side alley, and there, running frantically their direction, was Lacey—not on a cell phone. She caught sight of them through the window and gestured with flailing arms, screaming something.

  “It looks like . . . get down, giddy up . . .” said Tank.

  Suddenly a lady burst into the kitchen shouting, “Get out! Everybody out NOW!”

  Daniel started tugging at them. “Get out!”

  Tank got the concept. “Get out!” he yelled.

  Brenda, Tank, Daniel, the kitchen staff, the lady, all ran, scattering, finding cover. Daniel tugged Brenda and Tank into the alley, around and behind a big dumpster. Lacey, huffing and puffing, piled in with them, shielding her head with her arms.

  The explosion was deafening. They could feel it in the ground, in their guts. Bits of glass, wood, and masonry pinged and pummeled the alley walls. There were screams and shouts from up and down the street as debris rained down and after that, bedlam.

  Scalarag ducked through the door to my small compartment with the evening meal on a tin plate. Though I’d been assigned to help prepare it, I was condemned to eat it in my quarters, my ankles in irons. The big man handed me the plate. I sat on my cot while he took the only chair. It seemed as if he might stay a while.

  “Bless me, Father, for I have sinned.”

  What? This brute, now penitent? Our altercation must have made a deeper impression than I thought. Even so, having disgraced myself once through violence, I wasn’t about to lie as well. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I was a priest, but that was a long time ago.”

  “But you can still do the confession thing, can’t you?”

  He wasn’t kidding. I told him, “Confession is always good for the soul, my son. I’m sure we can work something out.”

  He clasped his hands as if praying and looked mostly at the wall. “It has been . . . oh, ten, fifteen years since my last confession.” Then he started confessing. It burst out of him. “My name isn’t Scalarag, it’s Tommy Bryce. I’m from Dubuque, Iowa, and I was a heavy equipment operator until I got in a fight and got fired and someone told me I ought to try out for the pirate show and so I ended up here. It started out being fun, all the pretending, the tourist show, the pirate ship. But you know, there’s something about being a pirate. I mean, you start believing it, and then . . . there’s just this wicked thing that happens.”

  “Like, for instance, an innocent tourist being locked in a cabin for reasons he doesn’t know?”

  Tommy nodded fervently. “Yeah, and ripping off the rich tourists. It’s gotten out of hand, and now there could even be a murder.”

  There is a God, I thought—in jest, of course. “Ben?”

  “Ben Cardiff. Seemed like a nice guy. He and the captain were like that”—he held up crossed fingers—“but they still didn’t trust each other. Cap could run the old satellite system, but then Ben did an upgrade to all the wireless Internet stuff so he was the only one who knew how to run everything, all the Readers and Writers—but I guess I shouldn’t say too much about that.”

  Oh, please do. “As you wish.”

  “But Ben had money problems and probably ended up being a traitor, trying to sell us out. He lit out Sunday night after our show, took all his stuff with him, and then . . . hey, if he made a deal with somebody, it went south. They say Ben drowned, but the cap saw Ben in the doc’s freezer and he said somebody beat him to a pulp and tore the Reader out of his ear.” He wagged his head. “It was bound to happen, that’s what I’m saying. On this ship, the spoils go to the crafty, and every man makes up his own rules. And it’s a tough bunch. Rock used to be a drug dealer. Norwig got busted for armed robbery.”

  “So how does the captain keep them all loyal?”

  “As long as the takings are sweet they play along, but they’re all looking for a better offer. Ben was, that’s what we think.” He leaned toward me. “Not that you and Cap are friends, but I wouldn’t stand too close to him. You never know what might be coming his way.”

  “Good advice, my son,” I said, laying my hand upon his head.

  He waited, then finally asked, “You gonna give me some penance or something?”

  “Just tell God you’re sorry. And do what’s right.”

  CHAPTER

  13

  Lacey and Delilah

  Tank looked up and down the street. Folks were shaken, coated with dust, helping each other to their feet. A few were bleeding, but not seriously.

  Lacey tugged his arm. “You’ve got to get out of here!”

  “But people are hurt!”

  “They’ll live. You won’t—not if you stay here!”

  “But—”

  “Let’s go!”

  She tugged and urged Brenda, Tank, and Daniel until they ran headlong down the alley and didn’t stop running until they’d regrouped in the living room of a comfortable bungalow a few blocks inland. Lacey drew the shades, then cracked one aside to double-check the street.

  “What . . . what just happened?” Brenda asked, settling into a soft chair, holding Daniel close.

  “Somebody tried to kill you by planting a bomb in my mom’s restaurant,” said Lacey, finally sitting in another chair. “In the kitchen. It was set to go off at 6:01, and it did.”

  Tank figured the bamboo-looking sofa would hold his weight and sat, speechless.

  Brenda shuddered. “But . . . how did you . . . ?”

  “You ought to know,” said Lacey.

  The back door opened.

  “We’re in here, Mom,” said Lacey.

  In came the lady from the restaurant, the one who burst into the kitchen and told everyone to get out. She was bedraggled and dusty, carrying a shopping bag.

  “You okay?” asked Lacey.

  “I’m all right,” the lady answered, brushing a lock of hair from her face. “Everyone’s okay. The insurance rep will be by tomorrow.”

  “So what caused it?”

  The lady gave her head a cynical tilt. “They say it was a gas explosion.”

  “Oh, I’m sure!”

  “Purely accidental, just a leaky gas line and then a spark somewhere set it off. In a kitchen with flames and cooking going on everywhere, a spark set it off?” She collapsed on the other end of the sofa and looked Brenda, Tank, and Daniel up and down. “So just who are you people, anyway?”

  “Mom, this is Brenda, Daniel, and Tank. Brenda, Daniel, and Tank, this is my mom, Delilah.”

  “Pleased to meet you,” said Tank.

  Delilah still stared, borderline glared, at them. “So what was that movie line? ‘Of all the restaurants in all the towns in all the world, you had to come into mine’?”

  “Mom . . .”

  “And into your store,” she said to her daughter. “So first it was your boss, and now it’s my restaurant. Why’d you send them to my place?”

  Lacey was mortified. “I didn’t think—”

  “No, you didn’t.” Delilah reached into her shopping bag and pulled out a half-melted wall clock, its glass face shattered. The hands indicated 6:01. “So how’d you know there was a bomb set to go off at exactly 6:01?”

  Lacey pulled a scrap of paper from her shirt pocket—the paper on which Brenda had scribbled her and Tank’s cell numbers. She turned it over to show Brenda’s sketch on the reverse side: the very same half-melted wall clock with the glass shattered and the hands indicating 6:01.

  Even Brenda was amazed. “I thought I was just playing around with a Salvador Dali kind of thing.”

  “I grew up looking at that wall clock in the kitchen,” said Lacey. “And when I saw this I thought of what happened to Mr. Moore after you and your friends came into the store, and I called Mom. I was going to call you next, but time got re
ally tight.”

  “So that waitress who said we had a call?” Tank asked.

  “Never seen her before,” said Delilah. “I was about to ask her what she was doing in my restaurant—and in my kitchen—but she ducked out, then Lacey called, then I put it together, and anyway . . . you saved my life and the lives of my staff—well, after putting us all in danger by walking into the restaurant in the first place.”

  “Mom . . .”

  “So one more time, just who are you people? And who is it that wants to kill you and the rest of us over a stupid earring?”

  Lacey explained to Brenda and Tank, “I didn’t sell your friend the earring, but I saw Mr. Moore sell it to her, and then, Monday morning, after the pirate guy drowned, two men came into the store asking Mr. Moore about it: if he’d picked it up off the beach and if he still had it—”

  Delilah broke in. “Neville used to go out with a metal detector and find things on the beach in front of the resorts: jewelry, money, anything valuable. Then he’d take it back to his shop and turn right around and sell it. Everyone knew he did that, so those two men could have found out real easy.”

  “Anyway,” Lacey continued, “that’s where the earring came from. Mr. Moore found it on the beach under a tree and brought it back to the shop and ended up selling it to your redheaded friend.”

  “What did the men look like?” Brenda asked.

  “One was an older man, blond hair, dressed casual like a tourist. The other guy . . .” She cringed. “Big Asian guy. Looked real dangerous. They asked Mr. Moore to show them where he found it, so he went with them to show them, and the next thing we knew, Mr. Moore had drowned . . . just like the pirate.”

  “Ben Cardiff,” said Tank.

  Delilah nodded. “Which means you’re in deep you-know-what.”

  Lacey explained, “Whoever those two men were, Mr. Moore told them about your friend—Andi, was it?—and where she and the rest of you were going. They know about you; they’ve probably been following you.”

  “You were lucky this time,” said Delilah, “and I get a whole new kitchen if the insurance company pays up.”

  “But you don’t know who they are?” asked Brenda.

  Lacey exchanged a look with her mother and said, “Ever heard of The Gate?”

  Delilah cautioned, “Shhh!”

  Brenda and Tank could not conceal their shock. “We’ve . . . we’ve heard the name, yes,” said Brenda, quite the understatement.

  “It’s the whisper around town,” Delilah said guardedly. “With all the offshore banking that goes on here, a lot of money goes through this island, and a lot of dirty money, too, and a lot of shadowy people. But we don’t talk about it, do we, Lacey? We mind our own business and make our living and stay out of the way.”

  “Well, we tried to,” Lacey admitted.

  “Until you people stumbled in and stirred everything up. Guess it had to happen, though. Nobody here’s got the guts to stand up to the . . .”—her voice dropped to a whisper—“The Gate.” Then she added at a cautious volume, “Whoever they are. Everybody’s either bought or scared.”

  “But that’s why maybe we should tell you—” Lacey hesitated.

  “Say it, daughter.” She nodded toward Brenda, Tank, and Daniel. “You never know, they might be here for a reason. Maybe they’re the only ones who can break this thing open. Maybe God sent them.”

  “Wow,” said Tank. “Cool!” Then Brenda gave him a corrective stare. “Sort of.”

  Lacey leaned forward. “A strange little man came into the shop with his wife about a month ago. He looked at jewelry, he looked at watches, he looked at scarves. He just looked at everything, and he liked some of it, he didn’t like some of it, he talked about the colors and the styles of things. But the funny thing was, he was blind.”

  “He did the same thing at the Conch,” said Delilah. “He saw the menu, looked at the choices, could read right off it without looking at it.”

  “Turns out his wife was doing all the looking and reading, and somehow he could see everything she was seeing. She’d look at a scarf and he’d comment on the size and the color. She’d look at a watch and he’d talk about the features he liked as if he could see it. It was like he was seeing through her eyes.”

  “So . . . how did they do it?” Tank asked.

  “Don’t know, but here’s the connection: They were both wearing a big gold earring.”

  Brenda was fully alert now, spine straight. “Please say you have this guy’s name, his number . . . something.”

  “He bought a watch and a scarf . . .”

  “. . . and a lobster and steak,” Delilah added.

  “. . . and we saved the receipts.”

  CHAPTER

  14

  Zedekiah Snow

  Wednesday morning, decked out in seaman’s blouse and with a pirate scarf upon my head, I joined the crew, lending a hand and no small amount of muscle to hauling on the sheets and trimming the sails as the helmsman brought us about. While I had no intention of stooping to their level of savagery, it seemed my nearly breaking Scalarag’s nose had at least broken the ice, and the crew was beginning to accept me, talking freely in my presence. The talk was we were heading back for St. Clemens to do a show the next day. What Thatch intended to do with Andi and me once we got there—or before we got there—was the foremost question of my day.

  While I blended and sweated with the crew, Andi and Captain Thatch stood on the quarterdeck, still digging for treasure in her memory.

  “It was a money deal,” she recalled, wide-eyed at the recollection. “I . . . I mean, Ben . . . met with some people.”

  “Who?”

  “Two guys, and they offered him a . . . Wow! A million up front, another million after delivery, all transferred into a secret bank account.”

  “HA! I can see it plain, the traitor!”

  “Ben was trying to get out. They told him something like, ‘It’s all going to go down and you’re going to go down with it unless you get out now. Get out, take the money, and disappear.’”

  “Get out? Of what?”

  Andi cringed as she shared it. “Whatever you pirates are doing.”

  “Two men? Who were they? Who were they working for?”

  She shook her head. “I don’t know.”

  The captain snapped his fingers. “Faces. Would you know their faces if you saw them?”

  She closed her eyes. “I might. I remember an older guy, and some big tough guy like a hit man. I think he was Asian. . . .”

  “Names?”

  She shook her head. “Maybe they never told me . . . or Ben. But there was something else . . .” She winced, trying to remember.

  “What, lass?”

  “Something to do with a banana peel.”

  The receipts bore the name and signature of a certain Filbert Figg. A few discreet conversations among the St. Clemens merchants led Brenda and Tank to a shop owner who’d shipped some wind chimes to the same Mr. Figg. The shipping address was in Key West, Florida, the closely packed, miles-of-merchants tourist town that was once the haunt of Papa Hemingway. They caught a flight that morning and, after a cab ride through the busy streets and desultory throngs, found themselves at a row of houses crammed along the waterfront. The particular model of wind chimes hanging near the front door confirmed they’d found the right place.

  Brenda and Tank suspected the name Filbert Figg was an alias, and they were right. The name they’d cross-referenced to this address was actually Zedekiah Snow, and it was his wife, Audrey, who answered the door. She listened patiently to their story, and when they described Andi’s mysterious golden earring, she swung the door wide open. “Please come in. He’ll want to hear this.”

  Zedekiah Snow was a small-framed, white-haired man in a baseball cap, his eyes crazily disoriented, his visage scarred from an old injury. He appeared to be in the middle of a strange Eastern exercise in the center of the living room, leaning this way, then that, hands holding an invisi
ble bar of some kind, shifting his weight as if negotiating fierce rapids.

  “Zed . . .” said Audrey.

  “Not now!”

  “You have visitors.”

  “Tell them to go away!”

  Audrey looked out the front windows. Brenda, Tank, and Daniel followed her gaze and spotted a sailboarder tacking across the wind and jumping the waves. Then they noticed how the sailboarder and Zedekiah Snow were making the very same moves at the very same time.

  “Their friend just purchased one of Ben Cardiff’s earrings,” said Audrey. “And now she’s been kidnapped.”

  As one, the old man and the sailboarder lost their balance and fell, the sailboarder into the waves, the old man onto the floor. As the sailboarder paddled about in the waves, the old man paddled on the floor, going nowhere. “How can that—? Oh, hold on!” He groped, then grabbed the bill of his hat, yanking it from his head and tossing it aside.

  Now moving on his own, the sailboarder gathered up his board and started paddling for shore. Zedekiah Snow quit swimming and felt his way to a chair. He sat down and reached for a pair of dark glasses on the side table.

  As he put them on, Audrey donned a pair of glasses from the kitchen counter and turned her gaze upon Brenda, Tank, and Daniel.

  “Oh . . .” said Zedekiah, as if he were now seeing something through the glasses. “Looks like a family!”

  Audrey introduced them as just friends.

  “You’re not from the government, are you?”

  “No, sir,” said Tank. “We’re just—”

  “I won’t talk to the government. And I thought I was hiding. How’d you find me?”

  “Ummm . . .” Tank began.

  “Nevermind,” he said. “Kidnapped? By whom?”

  Tank and Brenda looked at each other. Daniel answered, “Pirates!”

  Audrey looked down at Daniel. Zedekiah reacted. “Cute kid. Pirates? Yes, that would be Ben, all right. Large gold earring, was it?”

  Brenda and Tank brightened. “Yeah,” said Brenda.

  “How’d she get it?”

  “She bought it from a store on St. Clemens. The owner of the store was a scavenger and got it off the beach somewhere.”