Fun With Problems (10 page)

"They're all one of them," Scully said. "Eat from the same trough. Fuck their little differences, they ain't no friends of mine." He paused and leaned over his swab. "You all right, kid?"

Taylor kept swabbing, trying to dig the mop deeper into the steel deck than was possible or the work called for. When he had worn himself down he stepped out through the hatch onto the ladder that led to the wheelhouse and looked out over the ocean. There was a fair wind up, the sky clearing fast. Scully spotted Taylor in his half reverie and winked at Jimmy Junior three ladder steps above them. Taylor was in deep-think mode.

"Guy was okay," he said quietly to Jimmy Junior, "once he stopped drinking and trying to grow weed out west."

In his reverie Taylor was pondering Eric. Just a nihilist. Nihilists, Taylor believed, were the living dead. They couldn't take a punch and you couldn't wake them up with one. Whatever made them the way they were made them allergic to light, so they lived their lives outside it, laughing down holes. No wonder this Eric had transformed himself into the world's biggest asshole. Wasn't even his fault. And that was why he was so ugly and stupid and clammy and walked and talked and drank and mocked like a fool. Dead to grace. All of it suspended, withdrawn, none within, none without. But, he thought, Annie was wicked smart and you needed to pay attention to her at times. She had done well, Taylor considered, to spare Eric the beating of his life.

"Look at that bastard," Scully said to Taylor. "Looks like a fat turkey, don't he?"

"That's about it," Taylor said. His attention turned to the Secretary, who was walking to lean on the car deck's rail. You can't teach a man like that through mercy, Taylor thought. Born to kill—kill the grass they walk on and their own kind. Then you got a lot of them never knew a goddamn thing except what some flunky told them that they wanted to hear and they never so much as thought about it again.

Scully and Taylor looked off to starboard and saw an old swordfishing boat, all lines and shrouds and pulpit, running toward the ferry harbor. The fog was clearing as fast as your eyes could handle it.

"Holy shit," said Scully. "How long since you saw one of them? There ain't even any more swordfish."

"Sportfishing," Taylor explained. "Too much time and money. Now, the old man"—he meant Negus—"could tell you how they ran thirty, thirty-five of them sweethearts from Block Island Sound to Nova Scotia. Right outa this harbor."

The Secretary stood against the rail of the car deck between two worried-looking agents, the Afro-American woman and a younger man. The agents' concern did not seem to center on the Secretary in any personal way, but to involve the things around them, spare, uncomplicated things that seemed to menace them—the ocean, the clearing sky, car vibration from the ferry's engines.

"I need more air," the Secretary told his guardians. None of the three looked at the others.

"Where would you be comfortable, sir?" one of the agents asked.

The Secretary looked up the ladder toward the next deck. Taylor and Scully were working just above that one, right below the wheelhouse.

"Would you like to sit on a bench outside, sir?" the young man asked. "There's a row of benches topside."

"He's speaking to me like I was a geriatric patient," the Secretary complained to the woman. "I'll tell you where I want to go."

The younger agent led the way up to the A deck. The woman climbed behind. Jimmy Slaughter Junior popped his head out of the hatch to have a look.

"You people have to be there?" the young agent called up. Captain Negus heard him on the bridge, looked down through the glass and swore at him.

"No," he muttered, "we'll just let you shitbirds drift over to Portugal."

The Secretary took a seat at the end of the row of outside benches. This left the young male agent with no place to sit, so he manfully placed his hands on the backing of the seat row and stood to the Secretary's right. The young woman stood behind them.

The Secretary turned his head to fix the agents with his raptor's eye.

"Sometimes," he said, "I wonder if I get the best of you people."

The woman in the pantsuit flushed under her dark skin.

"Sir, the presidential detail..." she began. Her colleague was violently shaking his head to caution her. From farther down the A deck the chief agent was walking toward them, arms folded.

Then the Secretary leaped to his feet. He pointed up at Taylor.

"You stupid long drink of water," he screamed. "You useless little scut runner. You're staring at me!"

The agents leaped to their feet, but the Secretary was halfway up the metal stairway to the hatch where Taylor was polishing brightwork. Taylor was taken by surprise. The younger agents were coming up fast, the chief agent behind them. The victim of his own astonishment, Scully froze and stared.

"You murdering dog!" Taylor shouted back at the Secretary. "Shittin' up our island while mothers' sons die! You goddamned pirate." Scully backed down the ladder, keeping an eye on them.

"You faggot," the Secretary yelled at Taylor. "Think you push me around? You measly punk." The agents struggled with him in vain. He commanded the strength of madness.

Taylor's recollection of the struggle would always be compounded of confusion and a lust to kill. His veins and muscles were engorged for combat, but his arms still trembled. He was so surprised and angry he could not make his hand obey his own strength. Next, to his disbelief, he was airborne, falling and headed straight for the water below.

Captain Negus killed the engines and wheeled to port. Scully was shouting. The whole crew came to the rail one deck down, all of them shouting at once, "Man overboard!" as the young agents looked on. Scully turned on the
Squanto's
emergency siren and slid down the rails of the inboard ladder. Everyone took off for their man-overboard stations. The two youngest agents, male and female, were in a tangle at the foot of the ladder.

The Secretary raised his arms to heaven, looking wild-eyed and triumphant. Captain Negus's repeated blasts of the ship's horn were confusing to everyone.

The Secretary's face was as bright as Moses' own. Laughter foamed and bubbled in his throat and spilled over his teeth. He had lost his glasses.

"Did you see that? Pathetic punk of a loser. Tried to kill me and got his own skinny ass wasted."

In the water, not as cold as he had feared, Taylor felt himself slipping toward the
Squanto's
hull. The green-painted freeboard below the fender rose and fell above him like a living wall; she was underloaded and high in the water. With all his strength Taylor set off in a rowing backstroke to put ocean between himself and the hull, the slowing screws aft. Falling, he had sunk deep, but he was quick and at home in the water. The
Squanto
hurried past him as though she were fleeing for the ferry dock. He rested on his back and breathed regularly.

The agents and the crewmen on the
Squanto
tried to carry the Secretary down to the row of seats below.

"Don't move him right now," the chief agent said. "Keep him still."

"Did you see it, you men? Got his own skinny ass wasted."

The Secretary struggled with his bodyguards, attempting to assault Taylor again. The chief agent looked up at Captain Negus.

"Let's get this thing to Quonset Point," he said. "There'll be an ambulance."

"We got a man in the water, officer," Jimmy Slaughter told the agent. "I think we best get him back."

They did not have to put a boat over to get Taylor aboard. Jimmy Junior and Scully guided him back with marlinspikes and hauled him over by force of arms. Scully brought blankets and coffee from the galley. The agents had stayed beside the Secretary, who sat in a swoon of triumph. His screams, celebrating his strength and overcoming, echoed off the metal bulkheads. He declined coffee in order not to be interrupted and even refused a blanket.

Scully and the crew looked on while the agents took Taylor's coffee from his hands and tossed it over the side. Two of them bent his arms behind him and forced him to his knees on the deck. One slid plastic handcuffs over his wrists.

"You're under arrest for assault on an officer of the United States cabinet and on federal officials," the young woman informed him.

Negus, who had sent Jimmy Junior up to take the wheel, interrupted her reading of Taylor's rights.

"Fuck you doin'?" he asked her.

The woman blazed up at him. "You got a problem, sir? You stand aside or you're going with him."

"Listen, Captain," the senior agent said wearily. "Just get this thing to Quonset Point. We got an ambulance and backup there."

Captain Negus looked at his watch.

"We ain't going to Quonset Point," he told the agent. "Ace! Officer! Quonset Point's over two hours aboard this motor vessel. I got a crewman freezing cold and maybe injured. I'm going to the island Coast Guard station."

"Sir," said the agent in charge, "they don't have what we require there."

"I know what they got there, Ace. They got a chief corpsman. The victim got a wife there."

"The victim?" the agent in charge asked.

The young woman stood as if transfixed. She spoke rapidly and mechanically.

"We'd have to get a helicopter for the Secretary's safety," she declared. "We can't take the perpetrator in the same aircraft or vehicle. I haven't read this man his rights!" she said, turning toward Taylor as though he were unoccupied space. "I haven't finished reading the subject his rights."

"I know my rights!" Taylor shouted. Scully came out of the galley with another cup of coffee for him and a replacement blanket. In an after hatchway, the Secretary was locked in silent struggle with a much larger agent, and the others turned to watch him. After a moment the big man prevailed and drew the Secretary out of the hatchway.

"I seen it," Scully told them all. "Kid just passed a remark. Crazy old fuck threw him over."

"We all saw it," the captain said, although he had not, really. "Kid just passed a remark."

When they tied up, the Secretary was free of restraint though closely observed by his guardians. The crewmen were telling the agent in charge that they had all seen it. Taylor had simply passed a remark. The agent in charge seemed to be writing it down. On the dock, people took pictures of the Secretary's triumphant turn around the top deck. He was smiling broadly. But suddenly his mood changed. He began to snarl and swear at the small crowd.

"Sir," one of the agents asked the cabinet officer, "would you like to come down and take it easy?"

"Like hell," said the Secretary. "Feeling fine. I'm not afraid—we have to defend ourself from fanatics. Little bastard!" he screamed. "Scum of the earth! Ha ha!"

Officer Ussolini took Captain Negus's report over the satellite phone. He pulled up in his squad car, lights flashing. Negus went down to the pier to talk to him.

"What's the matter with him?" the island cop asked. "He go nuts or something?"

"Nuts? He thrown Taylor Shumway off the ferry."

Ussolini stared at him.

"So?" he asked after a minute. "Is there a complaint?"

"I got a complaint. I don't know about America in general."

"You mean he just tossed Taylor over? Without no provocation."

"Wasn't any. Old guy's bad-eyeing Taylor. Kept him from work. Interfered with him. You know Taylor. He passed a remark."

"Jeez."

"Next thing the guy puts Taylor in the drink. No provocation, not particularly, no. His own detail tried to stop him."

"This is a high-ranking individual," Ussolini said.

"Christ," the captain said, "that's the whole point, ain't it?"

While they talked, one of the agents walked over to the squad car.

"We'd appreciate it if this incident was kept confidential," the man told them.

"Yeah, what am I supposed to tell the company? What do I tell the Coasties?"

The agent was annoyed. "We'll take care of that, boss. Don't worry about it."

"Lot of people seen it," Negus said.

"Don't take it on yourself—you know what I'm saying?"

On the top deck of the ferry, the Secretary seemed to be in flight from his own security detail. The chief agent looked around uncomfortably. His eye fell on Eric, who looked disheveled and was walking up to the pier.

"Who's that guy? Didn't you have him in custody?"

"We're not holding him. He's just some writer," Ussolini said.

Approaching the gangplank now, the Secretary seemed to be edging away from his guards, who were moving subtly to block his path.

Negus and the officer watched Eric. He was looking for his glasses, which were hanging from his shirt collar.

"He's a freelance reporter. He's on assignment for
Roxy
magazine."

"
Roxy?
" Negus asked. "I thought they were a fuckbook."

"That's what I thought. But I talked to this woman editor—sounded educated. Like she had clothes on."

"What do you know!"

"I called Sheila, too, to come down." Sheila Toolin was the all-season doctor on the island. "And you know what? They said forget about it. They got their own doctor."

"Keepin' quiet about it, ain't they?"

"I hope someone told Annie."

"I told her," the cop said, shaking his head. "Bells of hell, Delbert, you didn't want to be there for that." Ussolini looked up the hill. "She'll be coming down with Sheila. They better get the old fucker off island. Anyway, I bet ya Annie gets it in the paper next week. Me, I gotta write a report. Them Secret Service, they'll be scattered to the winds of the world. I gotta live here."

"I wonder how much of a screwball old Eric over there is. Hey, Eric!" Negus beckoned Eric with the crook of a finger. "You do stuff off the record?"

"Of course," Eric said. "I never got anyone in trouble for talking to me." This was not altogether true. Eric could be quite discreet, however. "Did the Sec really throw Taylor off the boat?"

Officer Ussolini looked troubled.

"Wait a second, Del," he said.

"Word's gettin' out, Charlie," Captain Negus told the policeman. "Annie's gonna write about it. You're gonna write it up for the record. They know they can't kill it."