1 Oct 90—HONOLULU
It followed a familiar script. Two policemen and an agent from the Drug Enforcement Administration were waiting at the dock as the Pequod rumbled slowly through the oily waters to harbor.
The white yacht had rust patches here and there. It was wide and high with a deep draft for ocean use. Peterson was alone, his face calm and eyes shining with liquor, as he stood on the pilot deck and nudged the boat cleanly to its place on the dock. He threw out lines to a couple of idlers on the dock and climbed down. He crossed to the rail. He threw the sailors two rolls of quarters that bounced on the deck.
The policeman asked to look at the rolls.
“Make sure they don’t steal from you lads. Count your quarters.” Peterson grinned. The smile was as crooked as everything else about him.
“We’re coming aboard,” the DEA man said. He held a piece of paper in his hand.
Peterson grinned. “Is that you, Keller? I’m sorry to keep you up so late, I know you like to be home in bed by ten o’clock. That’s G-man hours.”
Keller shoved a gangplank to the opening in the bow and walked across. His eyes were dead with vacant contempt. Peterson looked over the rail at the two policemen still on the dock. And then he saw the red-haired woman and the Oriental man, standing in the glare of a lamppost.
“Hey, honey, you. What are you?”
“I’m a reporter, I want—”
“Can it, Peterson, lead the way,” Keller said. One of the policemen followed the DEA man onto the boat and the second stood at the gangplank and glared at Rita Macklin and Ernie Funo.
Peterson smiled at the woman and then let the smile fade when he turned to Keller. They started below, the smuggler leading the way.
It took a half hour. They went through the decks and tore up sheets and the beds and pulled out all the drawers. And then they were back on deck again, Peterson glaring now because the boat was a mess.
“This is fucking harassment,” he was saying, “Every time I come in, you got a hard-on for me—”
“I got a hard-on for you,” Keller said. “And someday it’s gonna stick you.”
“I’ll get a court order.”
“Sure,” the federal man said. “You show me the order sometime because I’ll be back, Peterson.”
The cops climbed back into their cars and crept off the dock and the reporters moved forward to the gangplank still in place.
“Well, pretty lady, what can I do for you?”
Rita walked up the gangplank to the edge of the deck and stopped. She had pressed the button on her tape recorder.
“You could tell me what you’re smuggling. I don’t suppose you would.”
He grinned at her. Funo stood at the base of the plank.
“I know you, don’t I? You’re Ernie Funo. You’re another fucking reporter, aren’t you? You sic the cops on me this time, Ernie?”
“You sic them on yourself when you disappear at dawn all alone in your boat,” Funo said.
“Nobody’s got a right to interfere with nobody. Including journalists.”
“My name is Rita Macklin. I’m doing a story on smuggling in the islands.”
“Really? What would you want with me? You’ve probably been listening to Funo, he’s full of shit. He thinks he knows what’s going on but he don’t. Not any more than those clowns in uniform.”
“Tell me about smuggling,” she said.
“Who you work for?”
She told him.
“I canceled my subscription, but if you promise to spell my name right, I wouldn’t mind getting in your story. That kind of attention draws people. Fishermen with big wallets who like to go out with a real smuggler. The way you’ll make me out in your story.”
“You are a smuggler, aren’t you?” Rita smiled at him.
“Smuggling is an honorable trade but I don’t say I’m a smuggler, just that’s what you’ll say I am. You want to step aboard, lady, take a cup of sunshine with just a poor old broken-down sailor?”
Funo took a step on the gangplank and Peterson held up his hand.
“Invitation for one. For the pretty lady, Ernie Funo, not you.”
“Don’t go, Rita,” Funo said, and took another step. But Rita had already stepped on deck. “It’s all right, Ernie. Wait for me.”
The cabin was large. It had been neat until all the drawers were pulled out. Peterson swept a clear space on the table with the side of his arm. Rita took out her camera and snapped a picture while he pulled down a bottle of Early Times. He opened the bottle and poured some into two glasses. He looked around. “Look at this. They do it all the time, they do it on purpose. Keller likes to rummage the drawers and turn them upside down. That asshole wouldn’t be able to find a load of coke if you shoved it up his nose.”
“Is that what you smuggle, Mr. Peterson? Cocaine?”
“I was never convicted of anything except that one time. A long time ago and it was nothing.”
“What was nothing?”
“I don’t deal in cocaine, none of the white trade, honey.” He leered at her over the table and then bent and kissed her full on the lips. She shoved him hard and he stumbled back and was still smiling. “I bet you’re hot, I bet you can turn it on.”
“I want to know about smuggling,” she said. Hard.
He was still grinning but now he shrugged at her and took his glass. He tasted the whiskey and made a face and took another swallow.
“I know my way around, that’s true.” His face was raw with wind and sun. “Everyone knows their way around if they survive at all. The coke trade don’t need a ship. Coke is small and easy, you can fly it in easier than you can ship it in. It’s all just waterfront talk, every time a ship goes out, they gossip about her. Now take cannabis. There was money in that once for sailors because the stuff was so damned bulky but now it’s more work than it’s worth. They grow the stuff here, right on the islands, and you’d think Keller could find it. Shit. He probably smokes it himself.”
“You used to smuggle marijuana?”
“Did I say that? Did your tape recorder get me to say that? I don’t think so, pretty lady. I said I know the waterfront.”
“What did you get from the Northern Lights today?” she said.
Silence, sudden and dark. He stared at her green eyes and saw they were cold and knowing. He finished his glass of whiskey and poured another.
His hand was not as steady now.
“Turn off that fucking tape recorder,” he said.
She clicked it off.
“What kind of a story are you writing?”
“About the thing you smuggled from the Northern Lights. And from the Fujitsu. That was murder, not smuggling cocaine, Mr. Peterson. Men died on the Fujitsu.”
“What Fujitsu are you talking about?”
“The ship that went down in the Sea of Japan. The Northern Lights picked up something—”
“Who the hell are you?”
“I told you.”
“You don’t work for no fucking magazine—”
“You took stolen goods and that makes you part of the murder. All those men killed on the Fujitsu,” she said. Her voice was so cold that he could feel it like an icy hand on his chest.
“I didn’t kill anyone. You get off my boat.”
“I want to know about the computer,” she said. She watched him and he couldn’t look at her for a moment. Then he turned to her and his eyes were full of rage. “I could slice your liver, girlie, and feed it to the fish.”
“Funo. He’s right on deck.”
“And that slant as well, both of you.”
She stood up and stared at him.
“Get off my boat,” he said.
“You’re going to be in bad trouble before very long,” she said.
“What are you, the G? You working with Keller? What the hell is this about?”
“Keller was looking for one thing. I’m looking for something else. You want to talk to me, Peterson, you really do. I’m at the Holiday Inn and you can call me. Talk to me. You really want to talk to me.”
“I got nothing to talk to you about.”
“All those men drowned. And they’re looking for it already and when they find out you’ve got it, they’ll come after you and nobody is going to help you then. But you might have some time if you talk to me.” Very cold still, her green eyes like a sea waiting for the storm.
“Get out, get out.”
“Remember to call me. Room two-ninety. Rita Macklin.”
He heard himself screaming at her but she was already up the ladder to the deck and Funo was suddenly on deck and he helped her down the gangplank. But Peterson would not come up. He was shouting curses at her and her face was white.
“What happened?” Funo said.
She shivered then at the touch of his hand on her sleeve and looked into his eyes. “It’s true, Ernie. The damned thing is true and I don’t know what to do with it now.”