The wicked redhead, p.5
The Wicked Redhead, page 5
So I forgive him for the indelicacy of his question. I feel his torment like an ache in my own breast. I take one step toward him and lift his right hand with my left hand, the one that isn’t near to broken by one of Duke’s various methods of torture.
“Do not,” I say, “for God’s sake, do not give that man the power to haunt you still. You just forget every word Duke Kelly said in that springhouse, do you hear me? Every word. It was the devil that spoke through his mouth that terrible morning, and the devil never did speak a word of truth to mortal men.”
He curls his fingers tight around mine and stares out across the boat’s bow. “Speak plain, Ginger. Just tell me. I know it’s a private matter, it’s your own business, but I’ll go nuts if—”
“I’m not carrying any man’s child, Anson. Not Billy’s and not yours.”
The faint, high scream of a steam whistle carries across the water. I take another step to stand but a breath away from his shoulder, and it seems to me that the tension in that coil of muscle is fixing to burst right through his shirt and his ill-fitting Florida jacket.
“You’re certain?” he says.
“As certain as a woman can possibly be.”
He just turns his head, that’s all, turns his head and lets his forehead fall against mine, and the tension in his big shoulder sort of dissolves in our blood. And that’s when I realize I’ve been feeling it all this time, down along the road from Maryland, thinking this wound-up tautness was just his ordinary pitch, his shoulder was just built that way, and it turns out his shoulder is more like a cushion than a rock, more like a cradle than a coil of tarred rope, and it fits the curve of my head like they were made for each other.
9
NOW I wasn’t lying when I told Mrs. Fitzwilliam that I don’t relish this business of messing about in boats. I wasn’t bred up to it, for one thing, and for another I can’t help but think of what happened last time I took ship with Oliver Anson Marshall. You know what I mean. The rough chop of that speedboat across the water, and the rat-a-tat-a-tat of a Thompson submachine gun searching out your flesh. The whisht-thud of a bullet whisking past you in the night air to find purchase in some nearby object, and the sickness of death that clung to you like the smell of blood.
So I try to close my eyes, but that only brings on nausea and the usual visions of broken necks and brass knuckles and blood creeping across a black-and-white floor, so I stand up instead and share the journey with my beloved. The water changes color from deep, tranquil green to an eager blue, and the shore thins out into sand. We don’t say much, just trade observations on the scenery. I wonder if he’s thinking the same things I am, if he’s thinking about all the death and hurt we have left in our wake, but that’s not a question you can ask a man like Anson in the golden light of a Florida afternoon. You ask him in bed, in the dark, when your skin lies against his skin, and he tells you the truth. Here and now, you ask him about the ships that lie ahead. Those smugglers’ warehouses floating atop the skin of the Atlantic, three miles out to sea. Why three miles? Because three miles marks the limit of United States territorial waters, that’s why. The sum total of the Coast Guard’s jurisdiction.
“I don’t know what you think you’re going to learn,” I tell him, just exactly as if I know his business as well as he does. “Surely the Florida racket’s got nothing to do with the northern rackets.”
“But they both have the Bureau and the Coast Guard to deal with. Any kind of news spreads fast, believe me.” He pauses. “I used to be assigned down here, remember? They sent me down to help break up one of the big family gangs. That’s how I met Fitzwilliam.”
“Aren’t you afraid they’re going to recognize you?”
He shrugs. “It’s a chance, I guess. I’ll just tell them I’ve left the Bureau. Out on the water with my girl, looking for a little refreshment.”
“Oh, they’ll believe that, will they? Mister Law and Order’s gone all wet suddenly?”
“Nothing corrupts a fellow like falling in with the wrong kind of dame.”
“You mean some kind of wicked red-haired floozy who drinks her own weight in gin and falls into bed with any old meathead Prohibition agent who strikes her fancy? That kind of dame?”
“She sounds just about perfect to me.”
“I see. And how are you going to explain our busted appearance? Don’t you think it might make a smuggler nervous, all these bruises and slings?”
“Don’t you remember? There was a fight at the Palm last night. I was defending your honor, as I often do, and you pitched in to help, as you often do.”
“Oliver Anson Marshall. You disgraceful liar.”
He smiles a little.
“Why, you’re enjoying all this, aren’t you? You relish a little adventure.”
“It’s what I do, that’s all.”
“What you used to do, you mean.”
“Yes. What I used to do.”
I guess I ought to ask him the obvious question. Ought to ask him why we’re out here on this boat, heading into a little adventure, when he’s no longer employed by anybody to do such things, when he’s found himself a nice place of refuge with a floozy who adores him. But what’s the point? When a man’s trying to get back his honor, prove to the world and the Prohibition bureau that he’s nothing but an honest, straightforward fellow caught up in some scoundrel’s game, he’ll keep hunting and hunting until he dies, won’t he? He’s not going to stop trying to find the man who has cast him into purgatory.
So instead of wasting everybody’s time, I just ask, “And me? You don’t mind dragging your dame into this nest of smugglers?”
“Ginger, these Rum Row skippers, they aren’t the kind of fellows you need to be afraid of. They’re just businessmen. Sometimes not even that, sometimes just fellows trying to make a few dollars, who wouldn’t put their necks at risk.”
“Then exactly whom should we be afraid of?”
“Pirates, for one.”
“Pirates! You don’t say. You mean like Bluebeard? Wooden legs and eyepatches? Chests full of gold doubloons?”
“Chests full of Scotch whiskey is more like it. They don’t usually attack the big storage ships on Rum Row. But they’ll stop the boats ferrying liquor to shore, or else the schooners out of Nassau or Havana hauling in more stock. Not small potatoes like us—we’re not worth the trouble—and mostly at night, when the rackets from shore are doing their dirty work.”
“And the men running the rackets? What about them?”
“Pretty ruthless fellows, by and large. You’ll want to give them a wide berth.”
“Thanks for the tip.”
“Why, you’re not anxious, are you, Ginger?”
“Of course I’m not anxious. The idea.”
“Because if you’re anxious, I’ll turn this boat around and take you back to shore. Can’t have a nervy partner out there. They’ll smell it on you.”
“Thought you said they weren’t dangerous.”
“They’re not exactly sissies, either.”
By now we have cleared the inlet entirely, and there’s nothing but blue sea ahead and yellow sand behind. The Atlantic wind drenches us clean. I savor the word partner on the back of my tongue. Glance across at Anson’s thick neck, pinkened by all that wind and excitement, and his eyes narrowed gleefully at the encounter ahead.
“Why, then, Mr. Marshall,” I say, folding my arms across my chest, “if that’s the case, I guess you’re going to need my help.”
10
THEY LIE anchored in a line from north to south, at intervals so regular it’s practically unnerving, if you’re that breed of person who misplaces his nerves from time to time. From three miles out you can still see the shore, verdant and kind of mysterious, but it might as well be another universe for all the good it does you. The boat bobs nervously under your feet, the ship looms large and black-sided, sails folded neat against masts and spars. I turn toward Anson and open my mouth to tell him about my dream, about the schooner that looked exactly like this one, only packed to the hatches with dead men. But he’s concentrating on bringing the motor launch alongside, on some exchange of hails with the sailors on deck.
I take his arm. “Are you sure about this? You know what you’re doing?”
He gives me this amazed look. “Why, what’s wrong?”
“I just got a feeling, that’s all. Chill down my spine.”
Anson examines my eyelashes, slings his arm about my neck, and pulls me in for the kind of long, soft kiss that draws forth a chorus of whooping from above. I am surely too shocked to resist. When he’s done, he touches his forehead to mine and whispers, “You’re safe. Trust me.”
I want to scream back that it’s not my safety giving me the chills, it’s his, but somebody’s calling down words of some kind—afraid I’m still too discombobulated by the kissing to hear them properly—and then a rope ladder falls at our feet, and the time for turning back has long past. Tick tock. Just swallow back your terror and climb that rope, I guess, doing your best to hold on with your one good hand.
11
TURNS OUT they know each other, Anson and this captain of his, I haven’t yet caught his name. He thinks it’s a great joke that Special Agent Marshall is no longer agent of anything to speak of. Pours him a bumper of Scotch whiskey to celebrate, and to my amazement Anson slings it right back. Yes, he does! Slings it right back, sets the glass on the table, and delivers me a slow wink that sets my insides to bubbling.
“For you, madam?” asks the captain.
“I’ll have what he’s having.”
I sip my whiskey with considerably more reserve than Anson does. I figure one of us should remain sober. The captain—turns out his name is Logan or something—pours out another for Anson and another for himself, and Anson asks Logan how’s business since he’s been away.
“Business is booming, Marshall. Business is booming. I can’t keep my vintage champagne in stock. Fellows come all the way from Palm Beach for champagne.”
“Can’t they get champagne in Miami?”
Logan makes a noise of disgust. “These boys out of Nassau, they got plenty of British liquor but they don’t get no French ships no more. So I have a fellow from up north who supplies me.”
“From where? Saint Pierre?”
“That’s the place. Ever been there?”
“Haven’t had the pleasure.”
Logan laughs and tops everybody off from a bottle of what claims to be a fifteen-year-old single malt from Ayrshire, though I have my doubts. In case you’re wondering, we’re sitting in the captain’s own cabin, which isn’t so grand as it sounds. Cramped, damp, dark, smells of fish and piss and wood soaked in brine, all of it baked together like some kind of stew in the oven of a Florida afternoon. There’s a bunk built into the wall, a green sofa—on which I’m presently sitting next to Anson—and an armchair for Logan the color of mustard, everything built of sticks and horsehair cushions and scraps of old upholstery. You’d think they were smuggling milk instead of a commodity so lucrative as rum.
“Neither have I,” Logan says, setting down the bottle, “but I heard it ain’t much. Just some wet rock off the coast of Newfoundland with a port that don’t ice over in winter.”
“I guess that’s useful, in your line of work,” I say.
“Oh, it’s useful, all right. But the real kicker is it’s French.”
“French? But doesn’t Newfoundland belong to Canada?”
“Thrown around between the two of them for centuries. England and France, I mean. The point is, Saint Pierre ended up French, which makes it a gift from God direct to champagne vineyards and Scotch distilleries. And the Canadians, too, by God. Especially the Canadians.”
Possibly my face betrays some confusion. I take in a little more Scotch whiskey and watch Logan as he pulls out a cigarette and lights it with a match kept in this special jar with a lid. I guess sailors worry about such things. Anyway, he watches me watching him and offers me a cigarette, which I accept because a low-down wicked dame like me ought to take a cigarette when it’s stuck in her direction, oughtn’t she? The better to corrupt her menfolk with. And I pick up a little courage with the familiar smell of burning tobacco, so I say, “Why does that make any difference? Being French?”
“Why, because of taxes, Miss Kelly.”
Anson lays his arm across my shoulders and speaks in this low, gravelly voice. “In the first place, Saint Pierre’s import duties amount to maybe a tenth of what they charge in Nassau, which is pure profit for suppliers.”
“And the French don’t even pay that,” says Logan, “so they don’t send no more bottles by way of Nassau. Why should they? You could about bathe in champagne, on the island of Saint Pierre.”
Anson smiles. “And second, the Canadian distillers don’t have to pay duty on export bottles, so the government refunds the tax once the company provides proof it’s been imported into another country. That’s where the good men of Saint Pierre oblige. Unload the liquor, hand the captain a stack of stamped import certificates. Distiller gets his tax bond back from the Canadian government and sells the cargo to whatever racket’s waiting there in the harbor for some merchandise.”
“Or else ships it direct to the Row,” Logan says.
“Now every man, woman, child, and dog in Saint Pierre keeps busy from dawn to dusk in the liquor trade.”
“I bet they never had it so good.” I wave my cigarette to indicate the ship around us. “The liquor trade beats the fishing trade, any day. In price and in general atmosphere, if you know what I mean.”
Logan leans forward. “Listen to this, Miss Kelly. Listen good. I spent seventeen years fishing the coast around here, and I never cleared more than a thousand dollars in a single year. Just enough to get by. Keep my wife and my three kids. Now? I clear more than that in a month. Sometimes a week. I make so much dough, I got a wife and a girl down in Port Saint Lucie.” He roars his joy and slaps Anson’s knee. “Now that’s what I call prosperity!”
“I guess your wife’s over the moon,” I say.
“Aw, she don’t care. Why, she’s sitting in her nice new house right now, wearing a nice new dress.” He inspects the uninspired neck of my own serge frock. “You could use some more dough yourself, Marshall, now that you’re out of the enforcement business. You need to set this doll of yours up like she deserves.”
I suck on my cigarette and say I couldn’t agree more.
“You see, Marshall? A beauty like this, she likes a fellow with a little bread in his pocket. If she don’t get it from you, she’ll be looking elsewhere fast.”
Anson shrugs his big shoulders. Fingers draw a circle or two on my upper arm, through the thick material of the dress. “I might have a plan or two up my sleeve. You never know.”
“Well, you better not wait too long, brother. You better not. I hear there’s some talk of a new treaty. Move the line out another ten miles or more.”
“Is that so?”
“You mean the boundary for United States waters?” I ask.
“That’s what I mean.” Logan points out the nearby porthole. “You can just about see the shore from here, when the haze don’t set in too bad. From ten or twenty miles out, you might as well be in the middle of the ocean, for all you can catch glimpse of the United States. And some fellow carrying a few bottles from ship to shore, why, he’s got a lot of water to cover. Lot of salt water for the Coast Guard to catch him in.”
From the gathering tension in the muscles of Anson’s arm along my shoulders, I figure this piece of information interests him. But his fingers continue that delicious circling at exactly the same pace. His voice continues in the same gravelly drawl. He reaches out the other long arm and gathers up his glass of whiskey, and I guess I’m the only one who feels him wince. Those poor abused ribs of his. “Lot of water,” he agrees.
“Sitting ducks,” says Logan. “Sitting fucking ducks. Forgive my language, Miss Kelly, but it ain’t going to be pretty, if such a thing comes to pass.”
“Stinking Coast Guard,” I say.
“It ain’t the law I’m thinking of, Miss Kelly. The law plays fair, most days, and they got a job to do, I understand that, and if you want to break that law you might get arrested and your booze took away. But the pirates.” He shakes his head. Waves away the gathering smoke. “Pirates just as soon kill you. And when a fellow’s taking a few bottles from ship to shore, and he’s got ten or twenty miles of lonely ocean to cover, who do you think is going to find him? Coast Guard with a few little boats and a stingy Congress behind ’em, or a fellow with no conscience and a nice profit dangling in front of his nose? Why, already they’re getting greedier.” He turns to Anson. “That gang you was taking down the year before last, the Wilson boys. They was killed in ambush a few months ago, and what do you think happened? Do you think the trade went away? Got any softer?”
“I’ll guess it didn’t,” says Anson.
“No, it did not. Got worse. You can’t cough out here at night without some pirate hears you and flies on in with his machine guns. Sometimes mounted right there on his boat, like the Coast Guard itself. And he ain’t there to arrest you. Oh no. He ain’t worried about your constitutional rights. Why, we brought in a crate full of guns just last week, armed every man on board. Had no choice. Some ship got boarded a few miles south, and they killed everybody, everybody, dumped the crew over the rail, and left behind nothing but the captain’s head. Just his head, Marshall, just his head sitting there on the deck by the wheel. Now what kind of fellow does that?”
