“Why does Shondell want y’all?” he said.
“Tell him,” Julian said.
“He believes I’m growing in power,” she said. “He thinks I’m working in concert with Father Julian to ruin his name.”
“How are you going to acquire more power?” I said.
“I’ve already explained that, but you refused to hear,” she said.
“Don’t start that stuff again,” Clete said. “We keep it simple. We take it to them with tongs. Right, Dave?”
But Clete was fooling himself. He knew we had little control of our fate. And he did not want to accept that we were dealing with preternatural forces.
“There’s something we haven’t told y’all,” I said. “About Shondell’s collectibles.”
“What collectibles?” Julian said.
“Instruments of torture,” I said. “He was about to put us through the grinder. Except someone tore his machinery apart — someone who could twist iron wheels like licorice.”
Leslie looked into Clete’s face. “Do you remember me, Mr. Purcel?”
“What, from the Quarter?” he said.
“During your torment in the Keys. I saved you.”
“No, no, no,” he said. “No thanks, no help wanted, no more green monsters in my life or archangels flying around.”
Leslie sat down by her daughter and stroked her hair. “If you can be kind to Gideon, you will change American history.”
“I don’t want any of that crap,” Clete said. “I’m going to cool out as many of these guys as I can and worry about the other stuff later on. Like after I’ve been dead a few hundred years.”
Carroll had gone into the head. He came back out, his face white. “There’s a porthole in there. Take a look.”
“What is it?” Clete said.
“See for yourself,” Carroll said. “I don’t want to believe in stuff like this. My head is coming off my shoulders. It’s some kind of mind-fuck. Sorry, Father.”
“I think I’ll survive,” Julian said. He went into the head, then came back out, pinching the bridge of his nose and widening his eyes, as though arranging words in his head before he spoke them. He looked at Clete. “Did you kill someone today?”
“No,” Clete said. “I ran Adonis’s head into the bulkhead and put a hypodermic needle in a guy’s neck.”
“The man you injected, what was he wearing?”
“Silver overalls.”
“He’s tied to the mast of Gideon’s prison ship. His entrails have been pulled out.”
“I didn’t do anything like that,” Clete said.
“I didn’t say you did,” Julian replied.
“What time of day is it out there?” Clete asked.
“You tell me,” Julian said. “The sky is purple and green and full of electricity.”
“Dave, we’ve got to make a move,” Clete said.
Just then the yacht pitched, then seemed to mount a swell and dip forward and slip down a deep trough. It smacked bottom with such force that it jarred out teeth and splashed seawater through the porthole in the head.
“Come on, Dave, don’t just stand there,” Clete said.
I looked at Leslie and her daughter. I had the feeling I would never see them again.
“Do you hear me, Dave?” Clete said.
“Let’s go,” I said.
“What about me?” Carroll said.
“Give me the piece and stay here,” Clete said.
“I’m not up to it?” Carroll said.
“It’s me that green bastard is after,” Clete said. “You may be the guy who has to get everybody home, Carroll. Do us a solid.”
“Yeah, no problem,” Carroll said, handing the .25 semi-auto and spare magazines to Clete. “Yeah, we’re gonna get through this. Right? Somebody knows we’re here. We just got to hold on.”
Have you ever seen someone rolled up in an embryonic ball at the bottom of a foxhole, his eyes squeezed tightly shut, his forearms clamped on his ears, while an artillery barrage marches through his position? That’s what Carroll LeBlanc made me think of.
Chapter Thirty-nine
Clete and I went into the passageway. The yacht pitched again, almost knocking both of us down. The only time I had been in seas this violent was during Hurricane Audrey in 1957, when I was on board a drilling rig. As then, I felt as though we were inside a maelstrom, one in which the physical laws of the universe had been suspended. I heard dishware crashing, furniture turning over. I felt a wave hit the gunwale and the side of a hull with the density and power of wet cement.
Behind me, someone opened the hatch on the cabin and stepped outside. It was Leslie.
“What is it?” I said.
She moved close to me so Clete couldn’t hear. “Maybe I’ll see you in another time.”
I looked up and down the passageway. We were totally vulnerable. “Leslie, this isn’t the time for it.”
“I know.” Paradoxically, she stood on the tops of my shoes and put her arms around me and pressed her chest and head against me. I could feel her heart beating and her breath on my skin.
“You’re a good man,” she said. “So is Clete. No evil can ever destroy you.”
Then she was gone. She didn’t walk away. She was just gone.
“Dave, don’t just stand there,” Clete said. “Haul ass.”
“I was talking to Leslie.”
“Leslie? There’s nobody else here. Come on, big mon. We’ve got to get out of Crazy Town.”
The electric lights began flittering as we worked our way forward. Then they went out altogether and came back on. Two popped, the glass tinkling on the deck. A tall figure came down the ladder from the main deck. He was wearing flip-flops, his face in shadow, his hands tanned, his midnight-blue silk shirt unbuttoned on his chest and stomach, his tight white bell-bottoms hanging below his navel. He looked high.
“What are you doing here, Johnny?” I said.
“Trying to save you from getting killed,” he replied. “I saw you on the surveillance camera.”
“Who else saw us?” Clete said.
“Nobody,” he said. “It’s chaos up there. Half of the electrical system is down. Uncle Mark is going apeshit.”
“You don’t look like you’re about to lose the love of your life,” I said.
“My uncle shot me up.”
“You let him?” Clete said.
“I was asleep. That tin box Adonis had, those were my works. I put a hotshot in there. I was gonna use it on myself if I didn’t get Isolde back.”
Clete looked at me. If Johnny was telling the truth, Clete had jabbed the hotshot into the neck of the man in the silver overalls and killed him. “What’s going on with the green monster out there?” Clete said.
“He wants to talk with you,” Johnny said.
“Don’t tell me that,” Clete said.
“He said it over our radio. Just before it went dead.”
“Can you get us some heavy firepower?” I said.
“Bell has all that stuff,” Johnny said.
“Where does he store it?” I said.
“I don’t know.”
“You’re not being helpful,” Clete said. “You’ve got to get out a Mayday.”
“There’s some kind of shield around the yacht,” Johnny said.
Clete looked at me again, then at Johnny. “Go back down the passageway to the cabin where Father Julian is and stay there.”
“No.”
“No?” I said.
“Isolde is on her way here,” Johnny said.
“From where?” I said.
“Another ship. I’m going now. I don’t like the way y’all are talking to me.”
“Then hoof it, kid,” Clete said.
Johnny went back up the ladder. He glanced back once, his face twisted with either hurt or anger, before disappearing.
“Think he’ll rat us out?” Clete said.
“Let’s get on the starboard side,” I said. “At least he won’t know our whereabouts.”