CHAPTER 7
Tess was up late the night before, talking with Juan. And she was up early that morning to meet Paul Godwin and the senator and her husband for the trip down to Galveston. She was exhausted, and her first-class seat on the plane was so deep and comfortable she felt like she might melt into it. She’d been looking forward to sleeping a little on the ride down, because planes always put her to sleep. Instead, she’d been forced to listen to Sutton and her husband argue.
It started when he asked the flight attendant for the best single malt scotch she had.
Rachel Sutton had said, “Are you nuts? It’s not even six a.m.”
He’d said, “Okay, fine. A Bloody Mary then.”
And from there the argument had gone round and round some invisible point in their past that was both a part of whatever this tension between them was and more than that. Things between them were complicated, Tess could tell.
“It’s not his drinking,” Paul said to her.
She looked at him.
“If that’s what you’re thinking, it’s not that.”
He was leaning in close to her, whispering.
“I wasn’t trying to spy,” she said, embarrassed.
“No, of course not. They can be kind of hard to ignore sometimes.”
She nodded, and waited a moment for him to say more, but he didn’t. She went back to looking out the window. The sun was coming up and she wondered where they were. There was a river down there, snaking its way through a brown landscape. Tracing its course out to the horizon made her think of how tired she was. Maybe she could sleep, even with them arguing.
“He was drinking pretty heavy when I first met them,” Paul said suddenly. “That was during her first term.”
“How long ago was that?”
“Oh, about thirteen years ago. I was right out of law school, all gung ho for the Democratic Party. I was gonna make a difference, you know?”
“Have you?”
He shrugged. “I guess it depends on how you measure it.”
“So, you’re world-weary now, is that it?”
He smiled.
“So what changed?” she asked.
“With me?”
“No.” She hooked a thumb toward the seats behind them, where Rachel Sutton and her husband were doing their best to stare off in opposite directions. “With them.”
“Ah.” His smile softened a little. He had a nice smile, she thought, boyish, innocent looking. She supposed he was cute, in a way. He was certainly no Juan Perez, but he was okay. “Well, her career really started to take off. She works sixteen hour days, six days a week. Did you know that?”
She nearly reminded him that she’d been watching every move the senator made for the last month, but she didn’t. Instead, she just shook her head.
“All that hard work paid off. She won election after election, all the while taking a larger and larger role in the party, and the more her career took off, the more his had to get put on hold. He had a thriving practice back in Del Rio, but he gave it up for her.”
Tess didn’t see the problem. “Makes sense.”
“Well, yeah, to our generation. He’s from a different time, though. Reminds me of my dad, kind of. The man never changed a diaper, never did the cooking. Except for burgers on the grill on Labor Day. You know the type? He was the breadwinner and all that. The man’s place is to provide, the woman’s to run the home. Dr. Sutton’s the same way.”
“Are you saying he resents her for doing well?”
“Yeah, pretty much. He’s never come out and said so. I don’t think he’s even admitted it to himself. But I’d say that’s pretty much the score between them.”
“That’s awful,” she said. “That seems really sad to me.”
He shrugged, but she could tell it bothered him, too. She wondered why he was telling her all this. It wasn’t really her concern. She was here to do a job, nothing more.
But it’s because it bothers him so, she realized. That’s why he was telling her. He was like some grown-up kid watching his parents inching closer every day toward divorce.
Or maybe it was more one-sided than that. Maybe he was so fiercely loyal to Rachel Sutton that he tended to look at everything in her world through a lens of hero worship. Either way, it was going to be an interesting vacation.
She heard them talking again.
“Don’t you dare shush me again,” Dr. Sutton snapped.
The senator whispered for him to be quiet, but it didn’t work.
“I don’t care who hears, damn it.”
“Uh-oh,” Paul said. He stood up. “Excuse me.” He took his iPad and a manila folder out of his carry-on, smiled at Tess, and said, “I was saving this for the ship, but I guess now’s the time. Back in a sec.”
He went back to the senator’s seat.
Tess heard him tell Dr. Sutton he wanted him to look over a PDF on the iPad, something about rural issues in health-care reform. He said he needed a doctor’s take on it. Then he handed the manila folder to the senator.
“What’s this?” Senator Sutton asked.
“Notes on your speech to the National Urban League next month.”
A moment later, he dropped down in the seat next to Tess. The arguing from the Suttons had stopped. She glanced back at them. Both were reading, absorbed.
“They’re like children sometimes,” he said. “You just got to keep them busy.”
She studied him, and was genuinely surprised by how deftly he managed the older couple.
“You care about them a great deal, don’t you? Her especially.”
His smile wavered for just a second, as though he suddenly realized how much of his hand he’d shown her.
But then he recovered his grin. “Hey,” he said, “it’s what I do.”
Tess got her first look at the Gulf Queen from the gangway. The sun was piercingly bright. Even with her sunglasses on, the sky was a washed-out blue. The breeze was hot and smelled like the ocean and oil. Against the late summer sky, the ship looked as tall as a building. It was impossibly huge.
“Oh, cool!” a boy shouted as he sprinted by her.
The boy, who couldn’t have been more than ten, climbed the railing and pointed toward the bow.
“Look, Mom! Look at that!”
The boy’s mother, a beleaguered looking woman in a red top and brown gypsy skirt, shouted for him to get down. She charged ahead and took him by the hand with a death grip that made him cry out. But it didn’t seem to deter the boy any.
Tess was almost even with them when the woman finally pulled him down. She smiled tiredly at Tess, who smiled back. Tess liked kids, even though she’d begun to suspect, much to her mother’s frequently voiced disapproval, that she would never have any of her own. Looking up at the ship, then letting her gaze wander down the vastness of its lines, she certainly understood the kid’s sense of awe. It was an impressive ship.
But then they stepped off the gangway and Tess’s mind clicked into a different mode. Gone was the tiredness, the sense of childlike glee at the size of the ship. There was a crowd here, and her charge was wading into it. That meant she was back on the clock.
They entered the reception deck, which reminded Tess an awful lot of the nicer ballrooms in the capital’s best hotels. The ceiling and the columns and the balcony along the far wall were white and gold and trimmed in highly polished hardwood. The floor was marble, with mosaic waves drawing the eye inward, toward a large central room featuring a larger mosaic of two dolphins chasing each other around a golden crown, the symbol of the Caribbean Royalty Cruise Line. Crew members in crisp white coats and black pants formed a reception line on either side of the entryway, all of them smiling and offering help with questions and directions. And at the far end of the receiving line stood two men, the captain and his first officer.
Tess had done research on both of them before leaving D.C. The captain was Mark Rollins, a Brit. He was tall, slender, white haired, dignified looking. He had done ten years in the Royal Navy followed by a good, if undistinguished career with Caribbean Royalty.
The man next to him was Anthony Amato, the first officer. He was an Italian out of Bensonhurst, dark haired, short, stocky, probably fifteen years younger than his captain. In his late thirties, Tess reminded herself. No military service in his background, but he had graduated from the Merchant Marine Academy and had a sterling service record during the six years he’d served in the Disney Cruise Lines and the ten he’d served with Caribbean Royalty.
But the fact that the two men were here waiting for them didn’t bode well.
Tess turned to Paul Godwin, who was standing to her left, taking pictures of the entryway with his iPhone.
“You’re seeing this, right?” she said to him. “I said I didn’t want to make a production of our arrival.”
“Huh?” he said. He looked at the reception line and nodded. “That? Nah, it’ll be fine. Wow, can you believe this place? You see pictures of ships like this, but you never really get a sense of how big they are until you’re standing inside them.”
Tess sighed. What was the use? He wasn’t listening to her. Neither was the senator. She’d told them, during their briefings, that to alert the Caribbean Royalty Cruise Line of their visit was to invite unnecessary attention. Ship captains were like hotel managers. Tell them they were getting a visit from a celebrity, especially one about whom whispers of the presidency were already starting to circle, and they turned into obsequious idiots.
Tess told the senator what would happen. The captain would greet them at the door. He’d make a fuss and the next thing any of them knew, the whole ship would know Senator Rachel Sutton was aboard. Any hopes of keeping a low profile would be out the window.
But, of course, she’d been overruled. The senator, Tess quickly figured out, had no intention of keeping a low profile. This was going to be her big slap in the face to the cartels, and she wanted to be seen. She wanted the cartels to feel the sting of her slap.
“And besides,” Sutton had said, “it’ll be rude to keep that from the captain. The man’s no doubt proud of his ship.”
Tess had held her tongue after that. At least they hadn’t alerted the media.
Tess looked past Paul, to where the senator and her husband were standing. Passengers were coming aboard, families mostly, a few of the adults doing a double take when they saw the senator. People she didn’t know kept getting between her and the senator, something that made Tess nervous.
She pushed her way through the crowd, raising an eyebrow from one man who couldn’t quite figure out how to get out of her way until she practically shoved him aside.
Tess got next to the senator and gave a man a dirty look when he tried to approach Sutton. The man got the idea quickly enough and turned away, going back to his wife and muttering something Tess guessed wasn’t flattering.
“Agent Compton,” the senator said.
Sutton had been careful all that morning to address Tess by her first name, as they’d all agreed, and her abrupt shift back to her title made Tess stiffen involuntarily.
“Yes, ma’am?”
The senator leaned in close enough to be heard at a whisper. “I am not a sheep,” she said, “and you are not a sheepdog. Do we understand each other?”
“I’m sorry, ma’am. I only wanted—”
“No,” Sutton said, cutting her off from any further discussion with a flick of her hand. “I’ve got this. Everything is fine. You just need to back off and relax.”
She looked like she was expecting Tess to challenge her, but Tess just nodded. It wasn’t worth the argument, not if everybody onboard recognized Sutton at a glance, which they were obviously doing.
“Good,” Sutton said. “Now, we have a captain to meet.” She turned to her husband. “Come on, Wayne. Put on a smile.”
“Senator Sutton,” Captain Rollins said, extending his hand. “So glad to have you aboard.”
There were greetings all around and Tess, out of habit, hung back a little. So did Paul. They stood side by side, and she caught him smiling at her. He knows the drill as well as I do, she thought. Alert and at the ready, but out of the way.
Then First Officer Amato broke away from his captain and joined Tess and Paul. “I imagine this will be a nice break for you, Special Agent Compton.”
“How do you figure that, commander?”
“Well, this is one of the safest environments you’re likely to work in. Nobody comes aboard, after all, without us knowing about it. And plus, you’ve got help. I’ve got a full security detail for this voyage ready and willing to help you in any way we can.” He flashed her a winning grin. “In fact, they’re all around us right now.”
Tess hesitated before answering, debating with herself about how to handle this. Amato and his team meant well, and she certainly didn’t want to embarrass this man when he was willing to be on her side, but they were a bunch of amateurs, and amateurs had a way of getting underfoot. Still, they might be useful, to a point.
She said, “I see you don’t have any women on your team.”
Amato looked stunned, like he didn’t know exactly how to respond to that.
“Well, uh, no. As a matter of fact, we don’t. I guess you checked up on us.”
“I did, yes. But that was just observation. It looks like you have an eight-man team, right?”
“Uh, that’s right.” Amato smiled uneasily. “How did you know?”
Tess pointed to two men leaning against the upstairs railing. “Those two up there. That man over by the buffet. And there, there, there, and those two over there.”
Amato said nothing.
“Are any of your men armed?” she asked.
“No,” he said, his voice almost a whisper.
She gestured toward her carry-on. “Well, in that case, I won’t completely relax.”
Captain Rollins was looking at her now. “Agent Compton, do I understand you to say you brought a weapon aboard my ship? You’re armed.”
Tess smiled. “To the teeth, captain.”
Later, as they walked to their staterooms, Paul came up beside her. “You enjoyed that, didn’t you?”
“What?”
“Amato looked like somebody had shot his dog when you pointed out his security people.”
“Hey,” she said, mirroring the grin he’d given her on the plane, “it’s what I do.”
The four of them made their way up to Deck 7, passing casinos, delis, theaters, bars, and even an indoor shopping mall, all of it interconnected by a maze of hallways that seemed to go on forever.
Paul stopped at a junction and took out his iPhone. He’d downloaded an app for this, he’d said on the plane. Maps, show times, restaurant reviews—he had it all covered. He studied the phone now, looked left, then right, and started off to the left.
Tess cleared her throat and pointed right, keeping her hand down so the senator couldn’t see.
“Uh, I think it’s this way,” Paul said and headed to the right.
The senator nodded. She looked impatient, like she couldn’t get to the room fast enough. She and her husband were enjoying a temporary truce, Tess saw. They weren’t happy with each other, that much was obvious, but at least they weren’t yelling at each other anymore.
Paul fell in beside Tess. “Thanks for the help back there.”
“No problem. They make these things like this to encourage exploring.”
“Yeah, well, it makes me feel like I’ve been swallowed whole.” He nodded down the long hallway in front of them. “Fair warning, though. We see some kid on a Big Wheel coming around the corner and I’m out of here.”
She laughed. “Deal.” She put a hand on his shoulder and was surprised to feel him go suddenly tense. At first, she thought she’d startled him, but then she saw him sniff the air and turn to watch a pretty girl in a floppy hat go walking down the hallway.
She cleared her throat again.
He turned to her. “What?”
“If we’re going to be engaged you need to stop looking at other women.”
He smiled, but it wasn’t the winning grin she’d already grown to like. He looked distracted, like he was worried.
“Something wrong?” she asked.
“No, just . . .” He glanced behind them again, but the girl in the floppy hat was already gone. “It’s nothing,” he said. “I just thought I recognized her perfume.”
They were at their cabin now. Tess opened the door and saw a monkey made of rolled and folded towels sitting on the foot of the queen-sized bed. “Hey, look at that,” she said, pointing at a couple of chairs out on the small shelf that passed for their veranda. “We’ve got a view of the ocean.”
“Yeah, that’s nice,” he said. But he was looking at the bed. “I thought we were going to get two twin beds.”
“For a honeymoon?”
He didn’t smile.
“Is that gonna be weird for you?” she asked.
“You mean, uh, sharing a bed? No, of course not.”
“Uh-huh. Well, hurry up and get over it, okay? We’re playing a part here and the housekeeping staff will talk if they see we’re not sleeping in the same bed.”
“You don’t think they know the senator’s here already ?”
“Maybe. The service did make Rollins and his officers sign confidentiality agreements, though. Hopefully, if they’re good to their word, we should be able to keep things on the down low. For a while, anyway.”
“How long do you think that’ll last?”
“At least until we put Mexico in our rearview mirror, I hope.”
She opened her luggage and laid out her pool things, a black bikini and a wrap, some sunscreen, and an Atlanta Braves baseball cap.
He watched her emptying out her bag. “Can I ask you something?”
“You don’t snore, do you?”
“Huh? No, it’s not that. It’s about that girl I met at the Washington Hilton the night of Senator Sutton’s speech.”
“What about her?”
“She was nice. Do you really think she’s the same girl in the picture?”
She considered him for a moment before answering. She remembered his disbelief when she’d told him that his new girlfriend looked an awful lot like the serving girl for one of Mexico’s most powerful drug bosses, the way he’d scoffed at her. She remembered the way he’d looked at the picture of the seventeen-year-old girl holding out a beer to Ramon Medina, the way a shadow of a doubt had darkened his expression.
In the end, he’d agreed not to see her again. He’d given over her phone number and had sat glumly through a humiliating debriefing in which he’d described every detail of his night with her.
Tess, for her part, had been sure that night. Maybe it had been Juan’s certainty rubbing off on her. Maybe it was the thrill of working a high-profile team that made her see shooters in every shadow. Regardless, she was less sure now. It just seemed so unlikely, and really, she’d only seen this Monica Rivas woman for a moment, and that across a crowded room.
“I think it’s best we play it safe for now, don’t you?” she said.
“Yeah, I guess. It just seems so crazy. How could she be that girl? I mean, she went to Harvard.”
That was true, Tess thought. They’d checked that. It had only taken a few phone calls. Her biography seemed airtight.
“Do you think maybe she just happened to meet him when she was younger or something? You know, like a random thing? Maybe she had no idea who he was.”
She shrugged. “Anything’s possible. Agent Perez is researching her now. If there is anything to it, he’ll find it.”
He nodded, but didn’t look convinced.
“Hey,” she said. “Cheer up.” She reached into her bag and pulled out a military-issued M4 machine gun. She tossed it on the bed on top of her black bikini. “We’re on vacation, remember?”