Boxing the Octopus, page 5
“As least I know he’s willing to have a conversation.”
“He’ll talk to anyone who will listen.” Vera looked at her watch. “I’m really sorry, I have to get back to the store.”
“Go ahead.” Cape stood. “I’ll get the check.”
“Thank you.” Vera forced a smile.
“Don’t thank me yet.”
She looked as if she might say something else, but then simply turned and walked to the exit. Cape waited until Vera was out of sight, then sat down and looked over the bay.
After a few minutes, the athletic woman on his left stood and walked over, then sat down facing him. She took off her baseball cap and pulled the elastic band from her ponytail. Her hair was black as onyx, her eyes green, features Asian with a splash of freckles across her nose.
“What do you think?” asked Cape.
“I think she’s in denial,” said Sally.
“Give it time,” said Cape. “We all lie to ourselves.”
“Not all of us.”
“You never lie?”
“Not to myself.”
“Are you a good liar?”
Sally’s jade eyes twinkled. “Very.”
“Then how would you know?
14
Eva never lied to herself but routinely kept secrets from her idiot brother.
She stared openly as he fidgeted on the front seat of the car, his right hand thrust in his jacket pocket. Eva sometimes wondered if he’d been left as a baby on their family’s doorstep by a vindictive oligarch.
Sergey was oblivious, eyes on the apartment building across the street. He fingered the ice pick in his pocket and thought about blow jobs.
The ice pick was very sharp. Sergey had punctured an expensive jacket and stabbed himself twice before he decided to cap the tip with a cork from a wine bottle. The spike was tempered steel, the handle a hardened plastic with a rubber grip which fit nicely in his palm, like his cock. It was almost eight inches long.
The ice pick, not his cock. That was considerably smaller.
“This is making me horny.”
Eva lurched as if the front seat was electrified. “Zadrota, what are you talking about?”
“This stakeout.” Sergey jerked his chin toward the windshield. “The last time I got laid was in this apartment building.”
Maybe this brother sitting next to her was an alien, switched with her real brother at birth. Some vile creature from the outer reaches of space, an agent from Planet Porno, a little-known celestial body located somewhere beyond Uranus.
“You’re serious?” Eva asked, leaning closer to the driver-side door to maximize the space between them. “What was her name?”
Sergey hesitated. “Marta…Martha…no, Margaret—”
“Ha!” Eva sneered. “Zasranees, her name was Margot. You introduced me. Did she give you a blow job?”
“Oh yes.”
“Opesdal.” Eva shook her head sadly.
“What?”
“Men never remember a girl’s name, but they never forget a good suck.”
“What do you know?” Sergey said defensively. “You’re only twenty-one.”
“Twenty-two.” Eva removed a raspberry Tootsie Pop from her jacket pocket. “But why should you remember my birthday?” She unwrapped the lollipop and popped it in her mouth. “Unless some girl went down on you the day I was born.”
“Sadly, no.” Sergey’s voice dropped to a whisper. “Look…we have company.”
He slouched in the seat, and Eva followed his gaze across the street.
A man approached the entrance to the apartment building. He had curly black hair which fell across the collar of a leather jacket. Eva couldn’t see his face, but his clothes and gait suggested a young man.
The night was cold, the temperature a good twenty degrees cooler than during the day. In this part of the Sunset District, fog was so constant that rents were cheaper than higher elevations in the city.
Brother and sister watched as the man opened the front door to the building. A minute later he reappeared on the open balcony of the second floor and made his way along the row of apartments.
He stopped at the second door from the left, then turned and looked in their direction. Sergey ducked beneath the dashboard, but Eva didn’t stir, trusting her stillness would keep her invisible. The man leaned into the weak light of the balcony and studied his open palm like a fortune teller.
“That’s the driver?” Eva’s brow furrowed in memory. “Or the other one?”
“It’s supposed to be the one named Lou.” Sergey narrowed his eyes as he peeked above the dash. “But it’s not.”
“So?” Eva watched the man turn away from the light toward the apartment door. “Must be his neighbor.”
Sergey frowned. “But it is his apartment.”
The man went inside and shut the door. The front window of the apartment remained dark.
“We wait?”
Sergey twisted in his seat and scanned the street. “If cops are watching, they’ll show themselves soon.”
“Unless they’re already inside the apartment.”
“We wait until he comes out.”
It didn’t take long. Less than ten minutes later, the man emerged onto the balcony. By the time he descended the stairs and exited the front door, Eva was waiting on the sidewalk, sucking on her lollipop.
The man stopped short but recovered smoothly, doing his best to look like a tenant leaving his apartment. He smiled and stepped aside to let Eva pass.
She moved laterally and blocked his way.
“Excuse me.” Eva slurped the lollipop loudly.
He smiled awkwardly and shifted his right leg to step around her.
Eva stepped into the gap and kicked him in the balls. The man dropped to his knees, gasping as Sergey appeared from the shadows.
That’s when things went horribly wrong.
Sergey’s plan was to thumb the cork off the ice pick, lean in close and press the tip against the man’s neck—all in one smooth motion. He might even whisper fiercely into the man’s ear, paralyzing him with fear.
Sergey tripped instead.
Sergey leaned forward, but the man kicked out his right leg, either in a vain instinct for self-defense or a spastic attempt to stand up. The move sent an electric shock through the man’s tender testicles, causing him to fall forward onto his face. His right leg shot backwards and caught Sergey’s right ankle like a trip wire.
Sergey tumbled forward, his right arm lunging to stop his fall. As gravity had its way with him, Sergey realized his fingers were still clenched around the ice pick. In sickening slow motion, his forward momentum became a death sentence for the man with the bruised balls.
The tip of the ice pick penetrated the soft spot behind the man’s right ear, sliding up through the base of his skull into the brain. He died on his knees without a prayer on his lips.
Eva stopped sucking her lollipop and stared in disbelief.
Sergey rolled onto his side and looked at his sister ruefully.
“Oops,” he said.
Eva blinked, then spat at him.
“Hey!” Sergey scuttled sideways to avoid the pool of blood that was spreading like an oil leak. “It was an accident.”
Eva glowered. “We were supposed to bring him to Nastya so she could ask him questions.”
Sergey got to his knees, stood, and walked to the end of the drive. He looked up and down the street, listened for a long minute, then popped the trunk on their car.
“Grab his legs.”
“Excuse me?” Eva clenched her hands into fists and set them firmly on her hips. It was a posture she’d used with her brother since she was five. “He’s dead, fucknut.”
“His legs.”
Eva sighed and lifted her end of the corpse. Sergey grunted as they shuffled sideways to the car.
“Raz, dva…” Sergey hissed through his teeth as they made the final swing. The body landed with a meaty thunk.
Sergey checked the street again and closed the trunk. From somewhere far to the south, a siren was heading toward them. Sergey climbed into the passenger seat.
Eva opened her door and slid behind the wheel, a sullen look on her face. “What are we doing?”
“Do not worry, sestra.” Sergey patted her knee. “Just because he is dead doesn’t mean he can’t tell us anything.”
15
“Dead men tell no tales.”
“Yeah, I heard that one before.” Lou watched the chum flow over the ship’s rail like champagne at a vampire’s banquet.
“The Devil’s Teeth, have you heard that one?”
Lou ignored the lunatic on his left and stared at the red water. It wasn’t long before a triangular dorsal fin broke the surface like a slice of pizza from Hell. An extra-large pizza. After a few minutes another lopsided triangle emerged, then a third and a fourth.
Lou fought the urge to be seasick but the rocking of the boat was getting worse. He gripped the rail and looked east, toward San Francisco and dry land.
All he could see was fog and whitecaps, and all he could smell was death.
“You’re lookin’ the wrong way. The Devil’s Teeth are portside.”
Lou felt the calloused hand on his shoulder. The captain of the boat squeezed once and released him. The physical contact brought his name back to Lou, who couldn’t stop thinking of him as Ahab, or Quint from Jaws. A hint of an accent, but Lou had no clue where this madman was from—for all he knew, the man was born and raised at sea.
The guy’s name was Cragg, a perfect moniker for a seafaring whack job. He was tall, with a craggy face like the name implied, a tangle of black hair going gray, and a Gregory Peck gleam in his eyes.
You’d have to be crazy, coming out here for a living.
“Say what?” Lou forced himself to let go of the rail and stand upright. Since the heist, he’d been moved around like a pawn in a game of chess. Now he was on this carrion cruiser for no reason except it was the last place on earth the cops might come looking. He spat into the ocean and ran the back of his hand across his mouth.
“These islands.” Cragg made a sweeping gesture. “Sailors call them The Devil’s Teeth.”
“Guess a dental plan isn’t one of the perks for being Prince of Darkness.” Lou looked toward the jagged rocks and had to admit the Farallon Islands were arguably the spookiest place he had ever been.
The day was pitched to him as a pleasant cruise—sail under the Golden Gate Bridge and leave trouble behind—get Lou out of town while they planned their next move. But instead of touring the headlands, they sailed twenty-seven nautical miles due west, until talons of rock broke the water like giant claws reaching for any passing boat. You could barely call them islands, the largest not much bigger than a soccer field. Volcanic shards thrust angrily into the air.
“You see how the island moves?” Cragg asked.
“What do you mean, it moves?” Lou squinted across the water. The biggest island held the only evidence of habitation, a lighthouse that had seen better days. A wan light pulsed from the tower, barely penetrating the fog.
Cragg wasn’t lying. The island seemed to pulse with each pass of the light, as if the rock were breathing. A leviathan flexing its muscles.
Lou started to pick out distinct shapes. Seals so black they looked like boulders in the surf. Dark brown sea lions jostling for space above them. The clouds dissipated enough for the sun to shred the fog, and Lou gasped. Higher still, encircling the lighthouse and cliffs beyond, thousands, no, tens of thousands of birds. Seagulls, puffins, and a hundred other species huddled together for warmth. Lou hadn’t seen so many varieties of bird since the drive-thru at KFC.
“Almost two hundred different species on one island,” said Cragg. “Some call them America’s Galapagos.”
“Devil’s Teeth has a better ring to it.”
“I agree.” Cragg smiled grimly.
Two sailors with the buckets dumped another bloody banquet overboard. Lou tried to not think about what was in those buckets. He knew his blood was just as red as the cocktail frothing the waves. A steel cable ran from a winch overhead and disappeared into the water below.
Cragg held the rail lightly, like a man admiring the view from his balcony. Lou studied the scars across the captain’s knuckles, like scrimshaw, skin pale and thick from a lifetime of abrasions and salt water. The fingers were unnaturally wide, flattened from years of clenching, tying, and tearing. Lou made a mental note to never thumb-wrestle this guy.
Cragg’s eyes had that unfocused, faraway look so characteristic of the stoned or the truly mad. “The first European here was Sir Francis Drake in 1579, to collect seal meat and eggs. He’s remembered as a famous explorer, but do you know what he really was?” The captain didn’t wait for an answer. “A pirate.”
“Like Johnny Depp.”
“Queen Elizabeth gave him a commission during the war with Spain,” said Cragg. “Keep all the loot you can carry, as long as you fuck with the Spanish navy.”
“Not bad.”
“He was knighted after the war. And rich.”
Lou asked what seemed like a logical question. “If he was already rich, why the fuck would he come here?”
“He was an explorer!” Cragg spat over the railing. “Circumnavigated the globe, stumbled upon these rocks, and the rest is history.”
“I usually fell asleep in history.”
“Died of dysentery while trying to invade Puerto Rico.”
“Should have gone to the Bahamas,” said Lou. “Gambling is legal and the beaches are nicer.”
“An ignoble death for a great man,” muttered Cragg. “Any other time, Drake would have been branded a criminal—he was in the eyes of Spain. If captured, he would have swung from the gallows.”
“Is it true you get a hard-on when they hang you?”
“I think you’re missin’ the point.”
“What is the point?”
“Was he pirate or patriot? A great man or villain?” Cragg nodded at some inner voice. “All depends on whose side you’re on.”
“If you say so.”
Cragg’s gaze hardened. “So tell me, Lou, whose side are you on?”
Lou’s answer was cut short as the ship shuddered from a sudden impact below the waterline. Something had slammed against the hull. Even the captain almost lost his footing.
Lou dared himself to look over the railing. Dorsal fins slipped in and out of sight.
“You’ve tried this before?”
Cragg nodded. “These islands have the biggest concentration of great whites in the world. That’s why cage diving is so popular, despite the cold. You almost always see a big one.”
“How big?”
Cragg studied the fins. “These are probably males. Females get as big as an SUV, but these are probably no larger than a compact car.”
“We talking a MINI Cooper or a Corolla?”
Cragg shrugged. “Maybe a Prius.”
“You’re insane.”
Cragg’s eyes went flat as another thud rattled the gunwale.
The water roiled as Lou traced the cable into the water, trying to visualize a cage suspended twenty feet below. The cable groaned, followed by a shudder across the deck and a piercing electronic whine from the cabin.
“What the hell?” Lou felt the blood drain from his face. “Are we fucking sinking?”
“Calm yourself,” said Cragg. “That’s a signal, not an alarm.”
Lou felt his sense of humor fall overboard and drown.
“You actually—?”
“Yep.” Cragg removed his hands from the railing and rubbed them together, then gestured at the sailors handling the winch. “I think we have a new pet.”
Lou gripped the rail until his knuckles hurt. The cable screamed as the winch hoisted the cage out of the water. He wished Scotty could beam him off this ship of insanity, but instead of Captain Kirk at his side, there stood Cragg. Lou turned toward San Francisco, but it was still an ocean away.
Lou had risked everything to get his hands on a pile of cash, but right now he’d give it all away for a chance to walk on dry land.
16
Cape knew he was walking on dry land but felt like a drunken sailor as he strode across the uneven planks of the pier. An ebbing tide of tourists made it impossible to walk in a straight line.
The first thing Cape noticed upon reaching the store was that the front door was hinged on the left. The handle was bronze and shaped like an extended left hand, which Cape gripped firmly and pulled.
He stepped inside. As his eyes adjusted to the shade, the man behind the counter looked at him expectantly. “May I help you?”
“You Harkness?” asked Cape.
“Indeed, I am.” Harkness was tall and wiry, with olive skin and black hair that couldn’t decide which way to fall. He wore faded jeans and a T-shirt that proclaimed Lefties do it Right.
Papers were splayed across the counter. A calculator sat near his left hand, a pen with a gnawed end clutched in his right. Cape looked from the hand holding the pen to the eyes of the man behind the counter.
“You’re right-handed.”
Harkness dropped the pen as if it were a spider. “Maybe I’m ambidextrous.”
“Are you?”
“Actually, no.” Harkness looked around to see if there were any other customers, but they were alone in the store. “Why should you care?”
“I don’t.”
“I’m providing a service to an underserved minority.” Harkness had a defiant edge to his voice. “Emancipating my left-handed brothers.”
“Okay.”
“Just like the southern whites who led the civil rights movement.”
