"Okay, baby!" Angelo said. "Time to rise and shine." He poked his head into the vehicle and released the seat belt. With that accomplished, they got Amy out of the car.
"She doesn't weigh much, does she?" Franco commented.
"When her boss last night said she was small, he wasn't joking."
With relative ease, they walked Amy out the pier. The cold air off the river revived her to a degree, and she actually helped them so they didn't have to support her entire weight. The only relatively difficult part was getting her across the narrow gangplank and into the stern of the boat.
"What should we do with her while we get under way?" Angelo asked.
"Well, she hasn't gotten sick, so let's put her into one of the forward cabins. I don't want her getting up and just falling overboard. Wait here and hang on to her while I turn the light on in the main saloon and below."
It was a little more difficult moving Amy on the boat than it had been on the open pier, but they managed to get her into a cabin and draped her over a bed with her feet still on the floor. Just in case she did get sick, they spread towels under her head. When they were finished, they stood up and looked down at the woman.
Suddenly, Franco bent over, grasped the lapels of Amy's coat, and rudely ripped it open. The buttons flew off in various directions and clattered to the floor.
"You know something?" he said. "If you don't look at the hair and you ignore the zits, she's not bad. What do you say?"
"We did give her a date-rape drug," Angelo said, as his scarred lips twisted into a half-smile. "We shouldn't waste things."
"Yeah, it would be like the stem cell and frozen embryo hassle. I mean, if you're going to flush them down the toilet, why not use them?"
Franco and Angelo regarded each other. Their respective smiles broadened until they laughed.
"Okay," Franco said. "Once we're under way, we'll flip for who goes first."
"You got a deal, man!"
With more alacrity than they'd shown all evening, Franco and Angelo went back up on deck. Franco continued up to the bridge deck while Angelo disembarked to handle the mooring lines. By the time Angelo had the bowline free and tossed onto the bow, Franco had the diesel engine purring like a contented cat. Angelo ran back and loosened the stern line from its massive dockside cleat. Just as he was about to toss it into the stern, his eye caught a glint of light back along the pier in the area of the fuel pump. For a second, Angelo stared into the darkness. When it didn't recur, he assumed it was a brief reflection of the light issuing from the Full Speed Ahead on the fuel pump's glass gauge cover.
Angelo tossed the mooring line onto the boat, scampered across the gangplank, and pulled the gangplank aboard. "All clear," he shouted up to the bridge deck. As the yacht began to move out of its slip, Angelo went around and pulled in the thick, white bumpers. As he did so, he was caught in the reddish glow of the running lights that Franco had just turned on.
BRENNAN HOVERED BEHIND the fuel pump for longer than he thought necessary. He didn't want to take any additional chances. He was worried that while he was trying to make out the name of the yacht, he'd caught Angelo's attention. The problem had been that in the corner of his field of vision, Brennan had seen Angelo suddenly stand bolt upright and stare directly toward him for a beat. Brennan realized after the fact that it was possible for light from the yacht to reflect off the front of his rather large binoculars.
When the sound of the yacht's engines had receded enough that he was reasonably sure he'd not be seen, Brennan hazarded a glance around the pump and saw the Full Speed Ahead's running lights close to two hundred yards beyond the end of the pier. Believing there was no way he could be seen at such a distance, he jogged back down the pier, past Franco's car, and then all the way up to the rear of the marina's parking lot. He didn't see Carlo's black Denali until he was almost upon it. He quickly climbed into the front passenger seat. He was out of breath. "Well?" Carlo demanded.
Brennan held up his hand to give himself a few deep breaths.
"They took her onto a yacht," Brennan managed.
"Since we've come to a marina, that's not all that enlightening, especially since you thought they drugged her in the bar."
"I'm sure they drugged her!" Brennan shot back. He didn't like being ordered around by Carlo. "They had to practically carry her out of the bar."
"Okay, okay! Don't take offense."
"You should do some of the running around if you don't trust me."
"I said okay, they drugged her," Carlo said. "Do you think this ridiculous shenanigan was just to pork her? I mean, this has been a lot of effort. There's certainly enough broads out in Queens so that they didn't need to come all the way out here in the sticks."
"It can't be just to get laid," Brennan said disparagingly. "What's the matter with you; are you stupid?"
For a moment, the two men stayed quiet. The strain of the evening's activities had gotten to them. Finally, Carlo spoke: "We shouldn't be busting each other's balls. This has not been a picnic like I thought it would be. With that said, we have to come up with something to tell the boss."
"They made the effort to take the yacht out. I can't imagine they'd bother if they just planned on getting laid, nor would they make such an effort with a chick that certainly wasn't special. We are missing some major piece of information."
"You really didn't hear anything they said back at the bar?"
Brennan glared at Carlo.
"Okay okay you already said you didn't. It's too bad, though. It was the perfect opportunity."
"The music was too loud. It was boom, boom, boom," Brennan said while repeatedly slapping his fist into his open palm. "I couldn't hear myself think, much less someone else's conversation."
"Maybe they took the boat out so after they finish with her, they'll just dump her into the drink."
"That seems like a weak explanation to me," Brennan said, suppressing the urge to make a stronger value judgment. He knew that one of the benefits of a date-rape pill, if that was what they probably gave her, was that the woman remembered zilch.
"Well, we can't follow them anymore tonight unless they come back."
Give me a break, Brennan thought but did not say. Instead, he said, "Thanks to my binoculars, which I brought along, I think I know the name of the boat. I mean, I couldn't see it too well, and it was bouncing up and down, but it looked like Full Speed Ahead."
Carlo turned to Brennan. "Hey, that might be something Barbera would like to know."
Oh, really? Brennan questioned silently and sarcastically. Sometimes he truly wondered how Carlo had gotten to where he was in the organization.
Carlo got out his cell phone and called Louie Barbera.
When Barbera was on the line, Carlo gave a quick description of their evening so far. Louie was instantly taken aback. His first question was the name of the business where the girl worked, but unfortunately, Carlo and Brennan had no idea. Louie then asked them if by any slim chance they knew the name of the boat.