The net result is that the motor started on the first pull. By this time Amy had mounted the prow like a sadomasochistic figurehead and Bart was thudding up and down the ladder loading the Zode with our war supplies. This included a nice stack of Big Macs and pseudo-shakes we'd picked up at the McDonald's. No telling how long we were going to be out. I shifted into forward and Boone cracked open a Guinness. Bart leaned back between Amy's thighs and trailed one of his hands in the black brine. For some reason I felt formidable.
With this worthless motor, the trip from downtown to Spectacle Island took almost an hour. I was expecting Amy to get bored and petulant, or at least seasick, but I underestimated her. She actually kind of liked it out here. She'd never seen Boston from the water, few people have, so we basically spent half the time telling her where shit was. The 747s were coming down fast and thick at Logan and that was a sight. Bart had a Walkman with stereo minispeakers that you could plug into it, so we listened to an old Led Zep tape and later to a Sox game, in California, on the radio. Boone told some kind of interminable story about hand-to-hand combat with a Canadian helicopter in Labrador. I kept an eye on Castle Island Park, hoping Debbie would show up and give me a sign, but she didn't.
Spectacle Island was easy to find in the dark, because half of it appeared to be on fire. If I shut off the motor, we could hear the stereos from a distance of three miles. We had the slowest boat in the harbor and everyone else had gotten there first. Small boats occasionally crossed our line of sight and made silhouettes against the light.
Somehow I doubted they had all brought firewood along. They were probably burning whatever was at hand. There must be some great toxins in the air tonight. Before long we smelled them, a profoundly nasty and foul odor drifting toward us on a southeasterly wind.
“I guess we picked the wrong night,” I said.
Amy didn't understand. She thought that I wasn't sufficiently impressed by this party. Bart finally had to break the news to her: “They're not coming to party. They're coming to-” his silhouette turned to look at me “-just why the fuck are you coming?”
“Chris Laughlin ever tell you about his dad?”
“Yeah, he told me all about that fucking bastard.”
“Remember my enemy at Fotex? Who fell into the pond?”
“Oh, yeah, the rotating knives?”
“Yeah. That's roughly what we're going to do to Chris Laughlin's dad.”
“And what will that involve?”
“Beats me. Boone and I will just have to scope it out.”
“Looks like you'll have plenty of light.”
Amy was temporarily depressed that we were actually coming out to test a scientific theory, but she got over it. Meanwhile I was noticing something interesting, namely a big shadow that was blocking off about half of our view of Spectacle. We were getting to the point where we could make out some running lights, and eventually, Boone and I started aiming our humongous flashlights into that shadow, checking it out with binoculars. I already had an intuition about it. So did he, I guess, because we aimed our beams at the same place: high on the bow, where the name of the ship is written. It stood out nicely in rust-stained white: Bosco Explorer.
“It's not going anywhere,” he said. And when we got a little closer we could definitely see its anchor chains, coming out the hawsepipes up on the prow, descending straight into the water. The Basco Explorer, the toxic Death Star, was anchored about half a mile off Spectacle Island.
“Poyzen fans,” Bart said.
But Boone and I were just looking. He reached over and shut off the radio, and I dropped the motor to an idle.
“Spray paint,” I said.
Boone rummaged through one of our bags and came up with a can of black Rustoleum we'd picked up with the spark plugs. Bart shook it up and blacked out the GEE lettering on the sides of the Zode.
Most of those boat silhouettes were heading to or from Spectacle Island. But when we noticed one that was going sideways, headed for the Basco Explorer, I cranked up the motor so that we didn't look suspiciously slow. We buzzed across the ship's bow, giving it a hundred yards of clearance, and checked out the other side, which was glowing an almost imperceptible red from the fires on the island. We had to look straight at it for a minute or two before our eyes adjusted. We asked Bart and Amy to look the other way, because anyone might feel nervous if four people on a Zodiac were staring them down.
A small boat, a Boston Whaler, was bobbing alongside. One of the Brasco Explorer's davits was active, lowering a drum of some godawful cargo toward the boat.
“Deja vu,” Boone said. “Just like the old days. Except the little boat's on their side.”
That any of those Poyzen Boyzen fans could tolerate Spectacle Island was amazing. The stench nauseated. Maybe the smoke was rising off the island so they didn't notice it, drifting downwind, hitting an inversion layer, and spreading out close to the water.
Bart was tugging on my sleeve, pointing in the opposite direction, toward the mainland. A small strobe light was flashing away on Castle Island Park.
I turned my back to the Basco Explorer and hunched over our walkie-talkie. This was just a guess, because I hadn't asked Debbie to bring a walkie-talkie along. But I thought she might. I switched to the channel we'd used in Blue Kills and punched the mike button.
“Tainted Meat to Modern Girl,” I said. “Tainted Meat to Modern Girl. You there, toots?”
“This is Modern Girl,” Debbie said, quoting the song: “I got my radio on.”
“Nice to hear you, Modern Girl.”
“Very nice to hear you, Tainted. Where are you? I can hear the little Merc.”
“Right in front of you. Listen, you driving what I think you're driving?”
“What else?”
“How'd you get it started?”
“The guy who stole it put in a new coil wire.”
I made a mental note of that; just another reason to kill Laughlin. No one should know that much about me.
“Checked the oil recently?”
“Just had it changed, asshole.”
“Listen.” This part was going to be tricky; if Basco was listening to the frequency, they'd get suspicious. “Seen much traffic in your area? Whalers, maybe?”
“I understand.”
That was nice, but I didn't know how much she understood.
“We won't be able to swing by and get you for awhile. Until then, do you think you can entertain yourself? Go out for a drive and listen to some tapes, maybe?”
“Yeah. Maybe take some snapshots. Boston at night.”
Fantastic. She had a camera. More importantly, she knew how to use it.
“Ten-four on that, Modern Girl. We'll catch you later. Drive safely.”
“Always. Bye, Tainted Meat.”
The idea of sending Debbie out by herself at night to follow and take pictures of Basco goons was a little troublesome. But she'd been on some wild gigs and had always handled herself well. She was good at this sport. As long as she kept her hot little right hand off the stereo, off the phone and on the shift lever, nothing was going to catch her. Besides, she adored stress.
We'd left the Basco Explorer behind. Boone started looking into the flames again. Amy was facing backwards and she let us know when the Whaler took off, headed for the shore. Spectacle Island was looking real big, the line of flames was breaking apart into individual bonfires, and the music was drowning out our motor.
The final approach was not smooth. Pieces of debris kept fouling our propeller. Fortunately it was soft, whatever it was, so the prop just chopped it up, coughed and kept going. Boone was leaning over the back of the motor to check it out when he almost got thrown out of the Zode by a boat's wake. Some jerk-offs had just shot by us in a small boat with a big motor, and now they were swinging around for another pass.
“Hey,” Amy shouted, “alright, Chris!”
“Chris is too young for you, and he's actually a jerk,” Bart said.
Two or three
times a year, I got to hear one of Bart's relationships fall apart.
“Maybe you're too old,” Amy suggested. I was watching that fast boat. For a second I was afraid it was Laughlin himself. But asshole pere must have had other items on his dance card this night; Laughlin's awful son had tracked us down.
He'd brought his pals, maybe the same ones we'd seen before. The roar of their motor didn't drown out the sound of their laughter as they saw us wallow around in their wake. That was so much fun they came by for another pass, and another, and another. I could think of any number of ways to inflict injuries on them. For example, the Al Nipper approach: I took an empty Guinness bottle, of which we had several, wound up and drew a bead on Chris's head. But Boone caught my arm as I was about to throw.
“Why throw garbage at them,” he pointed out, “when we can steal their motor?”
Within five minutes we were on the decomposing shore, doing exactly that. Laughlin had bought himself a real nice one, a Johnson fifty-horse, and also coughed up a couple of full gas tanks for us. With this rig we could really haul ass. We mounted it on the Zode and then we left our ten-horse sitting in the bottom of Laughlin's boat. They'd neglected to bring their oars. I would have been happy to maroon Dad on this mound of trash, but the son deserved some sympathy.
We did most of this without lights, not wanting to draw attention to ourselves. So when I was standing thigh-deep in the water, lifting our old ten-horse off the transom, I could tell that the bottom half of the motor was greasy and slippery, but I didn't know why. When we dumped it into the bottom of the other boat, Boone checked it over with his flashlight and whistled.
Our motor was splattered with a lot of gore that had been thrown up by the propeller. Wet, fishy-smelling gore. Chopped Up fish, as a matter of fact.
Once we got it running, we took the Zode around to a deserted stretch of beach and left it there. No point in allowing these people a glimpse of a free, fast ride. We went slow, and aimed our lights into the water, which was full of dead fish. HARBOR OF DEATH. It made sense. The fish would get the PCB bug in their guts just like humans did, and they'd get sick and die in the same way.
Boone and I hiked back across the island toward the northern shore, toward the party. Bart and Amy were already there. It would be impossible to find them again, but that was okay. Bart was a survivor.. Finding a way back to Boston would be as easy for him as getting out of bed in the morning.
We walked slow; on Spectacle Island you never knew what was going to poke up through the sole of your shoe. Eventually, though, we crested a junk-heap ridge with a smokey, fiery halo and looked down on the festival.
Three hundred people, give or take, twenty bonfires and a dozen kegs. There was also a garbage party - someone had brought a garbage can and people had dumped into it whatever alcoholic stuff they'd brought with them, creating a mystery punch. And a fire hazard.
And I finally got to see the Satan worshippers. A dozen of them. Their black leather was somewhat more bizarre and expensive than that of the average fan. They were up on the hillside, standing in a circle, working their way through some kind of ritual that involved torches and large knives.
The big knives weren't too dangerous compared to the cheap revolvers that half of the guys on the beach were probably carrying, and a few spells and incantations didn't worry me as much as the Basco Explorer. But we swung around them anyhow, since a few grams of PCP could make anyone feisty.
Sometimes, they said, drugs led to possession. Then you had to get yourself an exorcist. The exorcist would come and call out the name of the evil spirit, and that would scare it away. This was all it took - no surgical operations, no chemicals, not even much of a ritual. I figured I was in a similar business. I stood in front of the TV cameras and called out the names of corporations. I lacked the power to do much more than that, but it seemed to be pretty effective.
Dolmacher had called out Basco's name earlier today. If I could find some kind of evidence under this barge, it would establish a link in my theoretical chain of events, and I, too, could call out their name. It wouldn't bring down Basco, maybe, but it would probably ruin Alvin Pleshy. And Laughlin would really be pissed.
Zodiac
33
BOONE AND I WANDERED straight through the party and over to the barge. Down by the shoreline, Boone kicked a couple of dead fish out of the way to establish his footing. Then I climbed up on his shoulders and got a handhold on the top of the barge. That got me over the top and then I helped him in.
There wasn't much here. The barge was made to carry some kind of dry, bulk cargo - coal or corn. It was divided up into garage-sized compartments that were open on top, and you could get around between them on catwalks that ran on top of the partitions. The Satanists had been here with their goddamn spray cans and labeled the whole thing with various kinds of nonsense; there was a HEAVEN sign with an arrow pointing toward the bow, and a HELL sign pointing to the stern. Right now we were in the middle, and it was labeled EARTH. Different compartments had been labeled with the names of different demons, or something, and little shrines had been put together in some of them, using household junk gathered from the island.
EARTH or HELL was the place to look. I didn't expect the transformers to be located in HEAVEN. When Basco had dumped them back in '56, they wouldn't have had any reason to drag them way up the slopes of the island. They'd have dropped them at the waterline, or below it, and covered them up. The impact of the barge might have dragged a few of them uphill, but not far.
We gave it a once-over to begin with, walked down all of those catwalks and aimed our flashlights into the compartments. If we were lucky we'd find something obvious. The Poyzen Boyzen cult had made a mess of things, covered up a lot of shit, but this was a big barge and a small cult and they couldn't screw up the whole thing.
A whiff of cool wind came in from the north, bearing that nauseating smell. I hadn't smelled it since we'd landed. Apparently it wasn't coming from the island at all. Maybe it was coming from the reactions going on in the Harbor: rotting fish added to its usual delicacies. There was a strong overtone of putrescine, which I hadn't noticed before; maybe someone had found my cache of the stuff and poured it into the sea.
Actually, it came from the compartment below my feet, where three mutilated corpses were sprawled on the floor.
They'd been there for a few days. The blood was brownish-black, and they looked a mite puffy, about to burst the seams of their black leather pants.
“Boone!” I said. He was with me in a few seconds. We squatted, like archaeologists looking into a burial pit, and observed in totally rude fascination. But after a couple of seconds, he began shining his flashlight on the walls of the compartment.
“Fragged,” he concluded. “Check out the walls.”
A lot of shrapnel had gone into those walls. The impact points twinkled on the rust like stars in a shit-brown sky. “Fragmentation grenades,” Boone continued, “or maybe Claymores.”
We started beaming our lights at the trash strewn around on the floor. This wasn't random garbage; it was bright, colorful and interesting. The remains of a shrine. And a big, rust-free, stainless steel pipe, maybe six feet long, was toppled across one of the bodies.
“That pipe's weird,” I said.
“There's all kinds of shit on this island,” Boone said. “Check that out.”
He was shining his light near the feet of a corpse. A wire was glinting in the light and at one end was a metal ring.
“Grenade.”
After that he led the way. Boone knew more about booby traps than anyone. He searched the barge, one row of compartments at a time, and I tagged along behind to make sure he hadn't missed anything. When he said, “Shit!,” I hit the catwalk. When he laughed, I got up.
We were a few yards past the shoreline, out in HELL. The compartment below had been dedicated to some demonic force named Ashtoreth. I'd already checked it out. There was a shrine here, basically a pile of junk - the obligatory t
oilet, some dolls' heads, wind chimes manufactured from old brake drums, rotating candelabras built on bicycle wheels. Boone had noticed something I'd missed. The shrine was built around an axis, a vertical pipe that rose from the floor of the compartment. The pipe was brand shiny new, not rusty, and it had a valve on the top. A padlocked valve.
“Laughlin's been prospecting,” I said. “Digging down into the PCB deposits. The Poyzen Boyzen devotees build shrines around the pipes. Or maybe he built them himself, as camouflage. And then he came around and booby trapped them.”
“Because he was afraid of you.”
“Maybe he knows I'm not dead?”
“No,” Boone said, “you died a week ago. Those corpses were at least that old.”
“I'll take your word for it. But I know why he was worried. This is great evidence, man.”
“Yeah. Evidence that fights back.”
Once we made damn sure there were no tripwires, we lowered ourselves down there. Then we squatted and investigated the heap of junk from a distance, saw the grenades, clustered around the pipe like coconuts on a tree, saw the wires.
Someone landed on my back. I turned my head a little so that when my face smashed into the floor, I was leading with my cheek and not my teeth. Whoever had jumped me was drunk and we ended up lying there, nestled like spoons for an instant, and then I just rolled over on top because it felt like he or she wasn't as heavy as I was.
I was right. But the second person, standing above me, astride my body, holding the ceremonial knife in his hands - he was heavy. He was obese, in fact. His floor-length leather cape spread way out, like Batman's.
There wasn't much I could do because I still didn't have my breath back. I gasped and moaned, getting my lungs push-started, but this didn't do anything about the guy with the knife.
Boone, over in the opposite corner, was giving a better account of himself. Someone had started by breaking a bottle over his head. She'd seen a lot of TV shows and thought that this would knock him out. Instead, Boone got pissed off and punched out her front teeth. Now she was shrieking like a bad set of air brakes, spinning and bouncing around the compartment like a top. A guy had gotten Boone in a bear hug from behind and lifted his feet off the floor, allowing him to kick with both feet - which isn't normally possible - and so he inflicted a bit of internal bleeding on a third attacker. I heard the ribs snap. But he didn't even notice. The person who was holding him off the ground spun him around and methodically rammed his face against a rusty wall about half a dozen times. The guy with the broken ribs was jumping up and down, shouting without using any words, stabbing at the air with his knife.