An Incident At Bloodtide

Chapter Thirteen

Damned if it didn't look like he was right.

Just as a very wily and powerful Bennett Carver had predicted, all civil and criminal charges at both the state and federal levels were dropped, and before dinnertime I walked off Rikers Island a free man. I spent the next week and a half wasting a lot of time trying to track down Chick Carver and Roger Wellington, all to no avail. It appeared that Chick Carver had left the country, undoubtedly with a large amount of money his family had given him. Roger Wellington had been rewarded for past services with a solid-gold parachute as severance pay, and was rumored to be sailing somewhere off Tahiti. Carver tankers were delivering their shipments of oil, then obediently cruising back down the Hudson empty of everything but the bilge water and residual pollutants they had previously been flushing into the river. The Cairn Fishermen's Association was making plans for how to spend the hundred thousand dollars Carver Shipping had donated to them in memory of Tom Blaine.

Neither Garth nor I had forgotten the murder, but there seemed to be nothing whatsoever we could do about it. With the suicide of Julian Jefferson, there seemed to be no way to pin anything on anyone, and with the disappearance of Chick Carver and Roger Wellington, there wasn't even anyone to pursue; the ruling echelon of the company appeared to be totally insulated. It would be a waste of time, not to mention a threat to my credibility, to prattle on about a murder I couldn't prove to reporter friends who couldn't print anything I said, even if they wanted to, without having their newspaper sued for libel.

And so, despite my best intentions, I found myself, by default, following Bennett Carver's advice, going back to my work and life. The burning rage that had propelled me onto a tanker in the middle of a storm was now only a memory, and even the smoldering outrage that had replaced it had gradually cooled to a kind of residual anger that came and went like a mild case of malaria. I had become resigned to the fact that I would probably never be able to avenge the riverkeeper's death or the assault on Garth and me. I tried to console myself with the thought that at least my work, now that I was back in the good graces of the state, consisted of something other than the equivalent of stamping out license plates.

That was my general state of mind when Garth called me at six o'clock on a Thursday evening. I'd almost missed the call, as I was on my way out the door to pick up a gift for Harper, who was due back home from the Amazon in the morning; after some hesitation, I went back and picked up the receiver.

"Frederickson and Frederickson."

"Robby?"

"Yeah."

"It's Garth."

"I know who it is. I'm listening."

"Mary and I want you to come up for dinner. We miss you."

"When?"

"Right now."

"I assume you want me to bring along some friends who might be feeling blue and need cheering up?"

"No. Just bring yourself."

"You sure? The company might do you both good."

"No."

I glanced out the window at the clotted traffic on West Fifty-sixth Street and gnawed at my lower lip, trying to think. It wouldn't be dark for almost three hours. "I'm with a client. I probably won't be out of here for another hour or so, and traffic looks bad. It could be two or three hours."

"We'd really like you to come up right now, Robby."

"I told you I can't. If you and Mary get hungry, go ahead and eat without me."

"We'll wait. Get here as soon as you can."

I hung up, walked quickly to the stairway leading up to my apartment on the fourth floor. Robby, indeed. Nobody but our mother and Harper ever called me Robby; that, along with the fact that Garth had not called on my private line, formed a clear warning signal.

Upstairs, I took my Beretta and its shoulder holster out of the safe where I kept it these days, checked to make sure that it was clean, oiled, and loaded, and strapped it on; it had been sometime since I'd carried a gun, and it felt odd. For added measure, I took out my small Seecamp with its ankle holster, strapped that on. I went down to Garth's apartment on the third floor to pick up a souvenir from a case we'd handled many years before-a German-made sniper's rifle and a specially calibrated scope that went with it. Then I went down to the garage to get my car.

There was a tie-up on the George Washington Bridge, and I didn't arrive in Cairn until eight-fifteen, a half hour or so before sundown. I parked in the municipal lot beside the river to check out conditions on the water, center myself, and wait for dark. There was no wind, and the river was about as calm as it ever gets, virtually glassy. That was all to the good. I kept going over the brief conversation with Garth in my mind; I had clearly asked him if he wanted me to notify the police, or bring them along, and his answer had clearly been no. It meant not only that Sacra Silver was in complete control of the situation but that he was, in Garth's judgment, desperate enough to start killing people if he found himself trapped. I was on my own.

The good news, if it could be called that, was that Chick Carver hadn't left the country after all; the definite bad news was that he was back in the faces of Garth and Mary, and was now presumably relying on more than his mouth to do harm. The self-styled ceremonial magician was going to require some smoking out, and I thought I had just the right smoker for the job.

I needed a large, stable rowboat, and I thought I knew where to get one. As the sun dropped below the horizon, I started up the car. I drove north through town, cut west for two blocks to avoid driving in front of Garth and Mary's house, then headed back down toward the river and the huge mansion housing the Fellowship of Conciliation, the pacifist organization to which Mary had once belonged. The Fellowship had been an integral part of an investigation I'd conducted three years before, a case of murder and political intrigue that had brought me to Cairn in the first place and led to my brother meeting and marrying Mary Tree, the love of his life. The people in the mansion knew me; borrowing their rowboat would presumably present no problem. However, I was feeling increasing time pressure, and I didn't want to stand around in their lighted entranceway chatting them up or answering questions while holding a sniper's rifle in my hand. Consequently I parked out on the road, took the rifle and scope out of the trunk, and pushed my way through the hedge surrounding their property.

I made my way through the moon shadows, around the mansion, and down a long, sloping lawn to the river. The Fellowship's sloop was moored out in the river. There was a rack holding the group's three canoes and a kayak, and there was a steel Grumman rowboat tied to the dock. I looked up toward the mansion to see if anyone might be at the window; there wasn't. I untied the Grumman, hopped in. I put the rifle and scope down on the floor, fitted the hickory oars into the oarlocks, and began rowing out onto the river. I went out a hundred yards or so, then pointed the bow south. The tide was going out, carrying me along with it. I rested the oars on the gunwales and allowed the boat to drift, using the time to fit the sniper scope to the barrel of the rifle.

It took less than fifteen minutes to cover the distance to Garth and Mary's home, and from my position I had a partial view into the glass-enclosed music room that looked out over the river. I recognized the tall, slim figure of Chick Carver, backlit by the fluorescent lighting in the room. He had his back to me and was leaning against the windowsill. I couldn't see anyone else.

I trained the rifle on him, then adjusted the scope until I had the back of his head in the cross hairs. But I didn't pull the trigger. I was going to need a very good excuse-not only for the police but for myself-before I blew off a man's head, and Chick Carver aka Sacra Silver, intellectual thug and accessory to murder, taking his leisure in my brother's home, wasn't it. He didn't appear to be holding a gun on anyone, and in fact seemed to have his long arms folded across his chest.

Half a minute later, the tide and current had carried me out of viewing range. I put the rifle down, placed the oars back in the water, and rowed back upriver to a point where I could once again drift abreast of the house and try to appraise the situation further. A tug pulling a barge out in the deep channel would help some, since I knew that when the wake generated by the tug reached me, the rowboat would be raised two or three feet, giving me a better angle to see what was going on in the music room. I unscrewed the scope from its fitting on the rifle barrel, waited.

The tug's bow wave arrived just as I was drifting in line with the house. As the rowboat rode up on the swell, I put the scope to my eye, sighted-and what I saw in the second or two before the boat dipped down in the wave's trough disturbed me very much indeed. Mary was sitting at her piano over by the recording console, and appeared to be playing. Garth was sitting very stiffly in a chair near the center of the room, the bright overhead lights glinting off what appeared to be a bare wire wrapped around his neck.

While trying to decide whether Garth with a wire around his neck was sufficient reason to execute Carver, a second swell raised the rowboat back up. I sighted through the scope again as another person, a slight woman with silver-streaked, wheat-colored hair like my brother's, entered the room. I put the scope down. I would be doing no shooting from ambush. First of all, I could miss, and there would be no second chance; then there was no telling what Chick Carver would do with his hostages, including the littlest one. Even if I didn't miss, the last thing in the world the littlest hostage needed to see was the image of a high-velocity, soft-nosed bullet exploding a man's skull. April Marlowe's presence in the house almost certainly meant that Vicky was there too. I might gamble with the lives of Garth and Mary, in an effort to save them, but not the child's; too many people she loved and had once trusted had already tried a similar trick, and had twisted her mind, and almost killed her, in the process.

I had no Plan B, but it was time to put it into effect anyway. Whatever Plan B might turn out to be, it had to unfold inside the house, where I could further appraise and try to control the situation, minimizing any physical or further psychological harm to Vicky.

I rowed the boat to shore, worried now that my tardiness in arriving at the house could suddenly trigger Chick Carver into a killing frenzy. I landed a hundred and fifty yards downriver, where the scraping of the boat as I pulled it up on the shore couldn't be heard in the house. I wrapped the painter attached to the bow around a rock, then hurried along the shoreline to the house. As I went up the path beneath the overhang, I inspected the underside of the house, near its foundation, on the off chance that Carver might have planted explosives. There didn't seem to be any-which didn't mean that explosives might not be planted at the front or sides, but I didn't have time to check out the entire structure.

I took off my jacket, unstrapped my shoulder holster, and removed the Beretta. I shoved the gun into the waistband of my slacks, against my spine, then tossed the shoulder holster and harness off to the side. Then I took a deep breath, worked my face up into something I hoped resembled a smile, and pushed through the screen door. Mary was still playing the piano, and the decidedly incongruous music of Chopin drifted through the house.

"Hello?" I called loudly in my best faux-cheery voice. "Anybody home? How come I don't smell anything cooking? I'm hungry."

The music stopped. "In here, Mongo." It was Garth's voice, flat, with no trace of emotion.

I walked through the living room, and when I saw that Chick Carver wasn't standing in the doorway to greet me, I whipped the Beretta out of my waistband and placed it on the shelf of a bookcase that stood adjacent to the entrance to the music room. It was a snap decision; leaving the gun behind was a calculated risk, since I might never have a chance to get at it again, but I still had the Seecamp in my ankle holster, and it would have to be enough. If Carver saw or sensed that I'd known he was waiting for me, and that I had come armed, it would lessen any chance I might have of getting the drop on him.

I walked into the room, stopped just inside the door, and affected shock at seeing Chick Carver-at the same time quickly glancing around the room to see what the situation was.

Vicky was not in the room, which was at once both a relief and a worry. Mary was at her piano, staring at me with a strange expression on her face that I found impossible to read. April was sitting very straight in a chair a few feet in front of the piano, her feet flat on the floor, and her delicate hands folded in her lap. My witch friend and ex-lover looked pale but composed, as I would have expected. Garth was strapped into a metal chair in the center of the room, his pants legs rolled up and his bound bare feet in a tub of water. The wire around his neck was the stripped end of a cable, which snaked down from his body and across the floor to an amplifier with a glowing green light that indicated it was turned on. An auxiliary cable connected the amplifier to a foot pedal that was used for electric guitar special effects. The pedal, with its glowing purple, red, and amber lights, was only inches from Carver's right foot. If he stepped on the pedal, my brother, sitting in the improvised electric chair, would die instantly and noisily as his flesh burned and his brain boiled.

The tall, gaunt director of this little melodrama was still leaning against the windowsill, looking quite pleased with himself. In his right hand he held a cheap, nickel-plated Saturday Night Special, and it was pointed at my chest. I looked at Garth. His expression, as usual, was impassive, but I thought I detected more than a trace of curiosity and concern in his soulful brown eyes-understandable, under the circumstances, since he had been depending on me to pull off a rescue. Now we were both wondering what I was going to do next.

"You just keep turning up like a bad penny, don't you, Chick?" I said to the man across the room.

His self-satisfied expression instantly changed to one of rage. When he spoke, his raspy, nasal voice was even more high-pitched than usual, sharp and almost petulant, like a child's. I didn't like the sound of it at all. "Don't call me Chick! My name is Sacra Silver!"

"All right, Sacra Silver, what's the story here? You trying to graduate from accessory to mass murderer? As far as I know, you have yet to manage to kill anyone on your own. I'd think you'd want to keep it that way, quit while you're ahead."

"Shut up! Come in the room!"

"I am in the room."

"Come further into the room! Do as I say, you dwarf fuck, or I step on this pedal and turn your brother into a French fry!"

I walked to the center of the room, stopped beside Garth, looked over at April. "Are you all right?" I asked quietly.

"Shut up!" Carver barked as my witch friend nodded slowly. "Raise your arms to your sides and turn around very slowly!"

I did so-and was very happy I'd left the Beretta behind.

Carver continued in his angry child's voice, "Now open your shirt. Pull it all the way up."

"What's your problem, Sacra?" I asked as I began to unbutton my shirt.

"You're late!"

"I had business with a client, and I said so over the phone. Weren't you listening?"

"I didn't hear your car pull into the driveway."

"I just got a new muffler."

"Open your shirt and pull it up. Turn around."

"Listen, Sacra," I said, holding my shirt open and slowly turning, "if I'd known you were here, taping our conversation wouldn't exactly be high on my list of priorities of the things I'd like to do with you. Now, I asked you what was going on. Why all these other people? I thought this was between you and me."

"Who are you to talk?" he screamed at me, spittle flying from his thin lips. His face had suddenly gone crimson, and he was leaning so far forward that I was afraid he was going to lose his balance and fall, killing Garth by accident, or shooting me, or both.

"Just take it easy, Sacra," I said very quietly. "Calm down, and we'll talk about what it is you want."

Suddenly, in a sea change of emotion that both astounded and terrified me, his features wrinkled up, and he burst into tears. "You thought this was between you and me?" he sobbed. "You brought my family into this! You went to see my mom and dad, and you talked about me behind my back. You had no right to do that! You made me lose my job! Now I'm supposed to go to Europe and never come back, or I'll lose my inheritance. I don't even know anybody in Europe. Now even my mom doesn't want to see me anymore, and it's all because of you. It isn't fair!"

So that was that, I thought with a decidedly sinking feeling. Chick Carver aka Sacra Silver had skidded right around the bend. Garth had been absolutely right in insisting that I not invite the police to the party; this man was now more than ready to start doing his own killing, at the slightest provocation, and his first victim was only a footstep, or a twitch of his trigger finger, away.

"Where's the girl, Sacra?" I asked softly.

"Vicky's safe."

"She's not safe," April interjected in a low, dignified tone laced with anger and defiance. "She's unconscious in the trunk of this man's car. He made her drink some milk on the way down here, and it must have been drugged. She could suffocate in there. At the very least, she's going to be terrified out of her mind when she wakes up and finds herself locked up in a small, dark space."

"We're not going to be here that much longer," Carver said. He had stopped blubbering, and had undergone another mercurial shift in mood, this time to gloating.

"Sacra got April's name and address out of my address book when he was here before," Mary said in a curiously mild, wooden tone that made me wonder if she might not also be drugged. I looked over to where she was sitting behind the white piano, and found her staring off into space at a spot somewhere above my head. "Vicky was here then, and I told Sacra about her situation."

I sighed. "What do you want with Vicky and April, Sacra? They have nothing to do with any of this."

"You stuck your nose into that girl's family business too, didn't you, you little shit? After Mary told me about Vicky, I did some reading in the library. I know all about what happened. That's why I brought Vicky here, along with the woman who's been helping you to turn the girl against her parents. If I knew where your parents lived, Frederickson, they'd be here too. I'm going to teach you a lesson you'll never forget about sticking your nose into other people's private, family business and involving their parents. Now let's see how you like it!"

"You've already taught me a lesson I'll never forget, Sacra. And if I hadn't interfered in Vicky's family business, as you put it, she'd be dead. What do you plan to do with her?"

"She can't go back to her parents; thanks to you, they're both in the loony bin, and probably will be for the rest of their lives. So I'm going to be her father, and Mary will be her mother. If I have to go away, I'm not going to be alone. I'm tired of being alone, with nobody to love me. It's time I started my own family anyway."

There was no telling precisely what was going on in Chick Carver's decidedly deranged mind at the moment, the same as there was no telling what he was going to do from moment to moment, but the prospect of at least two lives being saved was infinitely better than a zero score, and so there was no way I was going to pose the unasked question.

Mary answered it anyway, speaking in the same wooden tone. "I've agreed to go with him, Mongo. Sacra's been right all along. He's the only man who's ever really understood me, and the only man I've ever really loved. Now that I realize that, I don't want to die."

Looking at Mary's face, listening to her voice, I didn't believe her at all-except, naturally, for the part about not wanting to die. I didn't think Garth believed her either, and I was surprised Chick Carver did. But the fact that the man had apparently bought her story could only be good news, of a sort; her ploy, if that's what it was, had at least gained her freedom of movement, even if at the moment I couldn't see what good it was going to do. She couldn't very well attack Carver with her piano. If I could get close enough to her to whisper, I'd tell her about the gun on the bookshelf outside the door, but I doubted whether Carver was going to let me do too much moving around. I had to find a way to stall and look for some kind of opening before killing time began, and the only weapon I had close at hand, in a manner of speaking, was my mouth. Sooner or later, Carver was going to tire of whatever game he was playing, and I had to make my move before then.

"Sacra," I said evenly, "take your family's money and split. If you kill us, the police are going to be after you no matter what country you try to hide out in. Considering the fact that you've already killed one man, some people would say that you're getting off easy."

"I didn't kill anybody!"

"You caused a man to be killed; you ordered his death. It's the same thing."

"Sacra," Mary said in a more animated tone, one that had become companionable and soothing, "tell Mongo what happened the same way you told us before. Explain why what's been done to you is so unfair."

Carver turned his head slightly to look at Mary, but the barrel of his pistol didn't move away from its dead aim on my chest. Mary gave him a reassuring smile, and he looked back at me.

"The whole business of using empty tankers to haul water to the Middle East was my idea," he said in a whiny voice that was laced with both rage and self-pity. "I put it in the office suggestion box. They loved it! The chairman himself took me to dinner to tell me what a wonderful idea it was. I got a five-thousand-dollar bonus, and they told Wellington to put me in complete charge of making sure that the plan was carried out."

"Do you know why they did that, Sacra?" I asked quietly, my gaze fastened on his trigger finger.

"To make me the fall guy if something went wrong!"

"Good thinking, Sacra. You'd be the fall guy if things went wrong-if charges started to go up the ladder. So far, that hasn't happened; everybody seems to have bought the story about the rogue captains. But things could change. That's another reason why you should leave now without doing something very stupid that's sure to draw attention to you, and make people start asking questions again."

I thought it was pretty good advice, but Chick Carver wasn't listening to anything but the twisted, emotionally stunted voices in his own head. He said, "Everything would have been fine if that son-of-a-bitch Blaine hadn't started messing around! He deserved to die! The company was making millions of dollars in extra profits on that water. Nobody else cared! Kuwait needed the water after all the fires, the company was happy to provide it for them, and I know I was due for a big promotion. And then it was all threatened because some jerk from some jerkwater river town was ready to make trouble just because the ships were dribbling a little oil in his precious river! What kind of sense does that make?!"

"It didn't make sense to you, so you gave the order to kill him. Tom Blaine was taking samples from all the ships, but you waited until he got to that particular tanker, because you knew you could bully its sorry liquor bottle of a captain into doing what he did. In the eyes of the law, that makes you equally guilty. Like I said, you should quit while you're ahead."

"He got what was coming to him, the same as you're going to get what's coming to you! Nobody gave a thought to that man's death until you and your brother started nosing around. And then you turned my parents against me. Now I don't have anything, and you're going to pay for what you did!"

Chick Carver was getting himself really worked up. Killing time was getting nearer, but I didn't have the slightest idea what to do to stop it. With my quickness, I was pretty certain I could dart to one side and start rolling. The chances were good that he'd miss me with his first shot, and by the time he tracked me and got off another I would have pulled the Seecamp from my ankle holster and put a bullet in his head. But Garth would die. I had to wait, keep hoping that something would happen that would give me at least a slim chance of saving my brother's life, along with April's and my own.

"You've already got me in your sights, Sacra," I said, suppressing a sigh. "You're taking Mary and Vicky with you. Why threaten April and Garth? What more do you want?"

"I want to hear you say you're sorry for turning my parents against me, and I want to hear you beg for your life!"

"Okay. I'm sorry I turned your parents against you, and I'm begging you for my life. Can we go now?"

It was obvious I should have chosen my words, or tone of voice, more carefully, for now blood rushed to the other man's face, and spittle appeared at the corners of his mouth. I certainly didn't want to play games with Chick Carver, but statistics showed that sincere pleading can just as easily trigger a psychotic episode as passive defiance, which can delay execution because it denies gratification. But the fact of the matter was that, with Garth's death only a footstep away, I just didn't know what to say to the other man, nor how to act. I could only play percent ages and hope that Carver would stand still and talk instead of walk.

"Say it like you mean it!" he shrieked.

"I can't, Sacra. You're making me too nervous."

"Then let me hear you beg for your brother's life!"

Garth, who had seemed almost bored throughout my exchange with Chick Carver, now spoke for the first time since calling me into the music room. "If you beg for my life to this skinny bag of shit, Mongo," my brother, who'd always had a way with words, said, "I swear I'll come back from the dead to break your scrawny neck."

"You heard him," I said to Carver, watching him, again thinking of the gun strapped to my ankle. Now I was trying to gauge how long it would take me, without ducking away, to simply reach down for the gun and snap off a shot. That would still take too long. He might or might not miss the stationary target I would present, but he certainly wouldn't miss the pedal with his foot; even if I managed to bore him right between the eyes, he would still fall on the pedal, and Garth would die. "He won't let me."

"We know you're going to kill us anyway, Mr. Silver," April said, her tone calm, quiet, and dignified. "It won't make any difference what Mongo, Garth, or I say to you. But it also doesn't make any difference if we die. Everybody dies." She paused, looked at Garth, then at me. She smiled warmly, and her limpid gray eyes glowed with affection. "I'm happy to die with friends I love and respect. As for you, Mr. Silver, your life is miserable now, and will only become more miserable after you kill us. You will only become more twisted and bent, and that is the only kind of love you will ever be capable of giving or receiving. It's 'rebound,' Mr. Silver, and I'm frankly surprised that a student of the occult like yourself shouldn't have perceived the dangers of the path you chose to take."

"I can see that I have to get your attention!" Chick Carver screamed as he lifted his right knee to an exaggerated height, almost to his chest, and then proceeded to stomp on the foot pedal in front of him.

Despite the fact that I'd been anticipating, dreading, just such an action, Carver's movement was still so sudden and unexpected-so unthinkable-that I didn't even have time to cry out. Now I screwed my eyes shut and screamed inside myself, expecting to hear the crackle of electricity over my brother's brief scream, then smell the burning of his flesh. But nothing happened. I opened my eyes, looked at Garth-and found him looking back at me. I glanced across the room at Chick Carver, who was staring at Garth in astonishment. And then we both looked down at the foot pedal under the sole of his boot. The lights on the pedal were out, as was the light on the amplifier.

Mary, sitting at her piano-which incidentally happened to be flush to the master console that controlled every piece of equipment in the music room and recording studio-had shut everything off at precisely the right moment.

Chick Carver started to swing his pistol around in my direction, then stiffened in shock as his own voice boomed throughout the room, at ear-splitting volume, from two huge floor speakers on either side of him.

WHO ARE YOU TO TALK?

It seemed Mary had been doing even more than keeping her right hand close to the off switch on the master console while she played her piano; she had also been taping the entire proceedings. This time I hadn't had to bring my own recording engineer with me; she'd been here all along, waiting for me to show up so that the show could begin. I wondered if Garth had known, or suspected. YOU BROUGHT MY FAMILY INTO THIS!

The high-decibel assault, combined with the realization of what had been done to him, momentarily froze Chick Carver. I dove to one side, snatched the Seecamp from my ankle holster, rolled over, and came up on my feet with the gun aimed at Carver's head, ready to fire. But Mary had already beaten me to the punch, in a manner of speaking.

There had been a twelve-string guitar resting on a high stool between Mary and Carver, and as her tormentor had started to turn toward me, she had jumped up from the piano, grabbed the guitar by the neck with both hands, and smashed its face into Carver's face.

EVERYTHING WOULD HAVE BEEN FINE IF THAT SON-OF-A-BITCH BLAINE HADN'T STARTED MESSING AROUND! HE DESERVED TO DIE!

Six of the twelve strings on the guitar were steel wire, strung under high tension, and they acted something like a cheese cutter on Mary's hapless target. The first blow flayed the skin from Carver's nose and left cheek, sending blood spraying in all directions. The second blow to his face broke the neck of the guitar and sent the man crashing back through the plate-glass window behind him onto the outside deck.

"I'll kill him!" Mary screamed, and, still holding the broken guitar with its tangled, bloody strings by the neck, leaped headfirst through the broken window after her intended victim.

"Uh, I'll be right back," I said to Garth and April as I quickly headed for the open space in the wall of glass.

"Take your time, brother," Garth said drily. "I think Mary has the situation under control."

That was a matter of opinion, I thought as I hopped over the sill with its necklace of broken glass onto the deck and found Mary kneeling behind the blood-soaked and wildly flailing Chick Carver. She had one of the steel wire guitar strings wrapped around his neck and was tugging on it with both hands. Blood was welling from her palms, where the wire was cutting into them, and from Chick Carver's fingers as he desperately pulled at the wire that was threatening to choke the life out of him if it didn't sever the carotid artery first. His face, or what I could see of it behind a shimmering mask of blood, looked like something a very large cat had been playing with. His gun was lying beside him on the deck, and I kicked it away.

"I'll kill him," Mary said in a very low, purposeful tone as she pulled even harder on the wire. She kept repeating it, like a mantra. "I'll kill him. I'll kill him."

A neutral observer would have to say that whatever spell Sacra Silver had cast over Mary had been broken. Apparently unhappy with her lack of progress, she shifted her position, sat down, and put both her feet in the space between Carver's shoulder blades for added leverage. She was just getting ready to give the wire another, really serious tug when I stepped between Carver's flailing legs, reached forward, and grabbed her wrists.

"Whoa, sweetheart," I said. "You've got him reined in nicely here. Take it easy. Nice job, incidentally-what you did in there."

But Mary wasn't going to be mollified by any of my sweet talk. She was still tugging on the wire, at the same time pushing on Carver's back with her feet, and threatening to pull me off balance. "I'll kill him, Mongo," she said through bloodless, trembling lips. "I swear I'll kill him."

It was April who, having freed Garth and mercifully turned off the blaring tape recorder, now saved the day, along with Carver's life and my dignity. She and Garth had come out on the deck, and now April quickly stepped behind Mary and put her hands gently on Mary's shoulders, while Garth gripped my forearms to help steady me. "Let go, Mary," April said softly. "It's over now. Let go. Let Mongo and Garth handle him."

Mary gradually relaxed her grip on the wire, although her face remained clenched in rage. Carver fell over on his side, both hands covering his bloody face, and I eased myself down on the deck next to him. April helped the trembling Mary to her feet, and then Garth went to his wife and took her in his arms.

"I have to get Vicky," April continued, gently easing Mary away from Garth, cradling the other woman's bleeding hands.

"Then I'll clean up Mary's cuts. Do you want me to call the police?"

"In about ten minutes," I replied. "After you take care of Vicky and Mary. Tell them to bring a doctor. And, if you will, you can bring our friend here a wet towel."

April nodded, then led Mary, now spent and slumped, into the house. Carver had curled himself up into a fetal position. He-was staring at me with his right eye through a slit in his blood-soaked fingers. There was no hatred now in the eye, not even rage. It looked shiny but empty, like a doll's button eye.

"The man looks like he could use a drink, brother," I said to Garth. "Me too. Would you do the honors?"

Garth looked at me curiously for a few moments, then said, "Somebody call you in off the bench?"

"You did. And you'll like this play."

He shrugged slightly, then turned and walked back into the house.

"I was the one who first warned you about rebound, wasn't I?" I said to the empty, button eye. "Now you're up to your eyeballs in shit, and there's no way you're going to wade out of it. We now have your taped confession admitting complicity in the murder of Tom Blaine, and you'll be facing additional charges of kidnapping and attempted murder. So, can we talk?"

After a long hesitation, Chick Carver nodded his head slightly. Garth appeared with two glass tumblers filled with Scotch and ice. I helped Carver up to a sitting position, then eased him back against the wall behind him. He took his hands away from his face, and it was all I could do not to avert my gaze. Blood continued to ooze from the lacerations on his face. His nose was broken, and it looked like his left eye was gone. Mary had played quite a tune on him. I handed him the generous tumbler of Scotch, which he downed in three long swallows. Garth squatted down beside me, stared at Carver.

"The police are going to be here in a few minutes, Sacra, so listen up," I continued quickly. "Now, I imagine you can try to cut some kind of deal with the cops by offering to tell all you know about Carver Shipping-about how all the executives approved of the idea you put in the suggestion box, how you were taken out to dinner, paid a cash bonus, and all that. Naturally the company will deny it. You tell me if I'm wrong, but I'll bet you don't have anything in writing, and any other bonuses you received were in cash. They're just going to claim you were in league with their mythical rogue captains all along. You're overboard, Sacra, and the sharks are circling. Your ex-bosses get away with the money they made off your idea, and they'll be laughing at you while you go away to prison. There's no way in hell you can escape a long term, and I'm not going to insult your intelligence by telling you there is. But Garth and I may be in a position to help you get something that I think means a great deal to you, and that's the respect of your father. Assuming we can convince the authorities to cooperate, which shouldn't be a problem, we can help you win back that respect, while at the same time getting in some licks at the boys in the gray suits who used you. Are you interested?"

There was another long pause. Then, in a thick voice, Carver said, "Yes."

"Me too," Garth said drily.

I picked up my tumbler of Scotch, handed it to Carver. "Then drink up while you have the chance, and keep listening. I've got a proposition for you. We're going to make Sacra Silver a star."