In her cabin, Mrs. Cobb lay on her small bunk, trying to remember. Her husband's soothing, frightened words washed over her like surf. That terrible burned body, those eyes that opened suddenly like a porcelain doll's...
On deck, Dr. Matthew Caswell held back a wave of revulsion as the sailors dumped the blackened thing that had once been a man onto a stretcher and followed the doctor into the infirmary. Heat attacks were not uncommon on board cruisers the size of the Coppelia. Strokes, food poisoning, broken arms and legs, even a couple of premature births. But nothing like this. He hoped the captain had already radioed the island police for a boat to take the vile-smelling cadaver in front of him to the morgue before he upchucked his breakfast of two bloody Marys and a beer chaser.
He set his nurse, retching, to cutting the body's clothes off as he attended to the formalities of confirming death. The first of the formalities was to down half the hip flask he carried. All else were technicalities.
Even through his whiskey haze, Caswell saw that an autopsy was in order back on the island. Third-degree burns throughout, severe loss of blood, and an amputated leg on top of it all. Newly amputated, too, by the looks of it: Undoubtedly a shark. Long tendrils of flesh hung from the top of the leg near the hip, and the bone had been snapped. The poor fellow had taken a long time to die.
Holding his breath, Caswell placed his stethoscope against the man's chest, making a mental note to replace the instrument at the next port, along with the hip flask, which was far too small.
"Wait a minute," he said half to himself.
"I've found some identification, Doctor."
"Quiet."
Oh, no. It couldn't be. It was next to impossible.
"Call the captain," he ordered. "Tell him to come here."
But it was true. The doctor rushed frantically to get a proper tourniquet on the leg, then wheeled out an I.V. with a pint of plasma.
Why me, he moaned inwardly, his hands trembling. Matthew Caswell hadn't operated in years. Of all the places on earth for a dead-serious medical emergency to turn up, why did it have to be here? With him? "I'm sorry," Caswell whispered to the barely breathing remains of the stranger who was fated to die under Dr. Matthew Caswell's unsteady knife. "I'm so terribly sorry, mister. You've been through so much. You deserve better."
Then a strange thing happened. The burned man on the table opened one blackened eyelid. He held his gaze on the doctor for a long moment before lapsing back into unconsciousness.
He saw me, the doctor thought. He saw, and he knows what I am. "I was a good surgeon once," Caswell said aloud. Then he ran to the toilet and vomited the entire morning's intake of vodka and beer and rye into the ship's tank.
The captain entered without knocking, a handsome, efficient-looking man in his forties who was clearly impatient to get rid of the body and continue the cruise. "What is it?" he snapped.
"This man's alive," Caswell said, spitting into the sink.
"Oh, Jesus Christ."
"He can't be moved. He'll have to stay here until I can..." The doctor shivered involuntarily. "... Can operate on his leg. Shark damage, and he's got extensive electrical burns. You can see the diamond-shaped pattern on his palms and thigh. It was probably a fence. Also, he's in shock. He'll need skin grafts and a lot of blood..."
"You're going to operate?" the captain sneered. "Well, that shouldn't take long."
The doctor ignored him. "I can perform the operation in a few hours, but Ill need a small team from the island, a couple of surgeons and—"
"Don't make me laugh, Caswell."
"... And three or four good nurses. And some plasma, at least six pints. They can take him back to the hospital when I'm through."
The captain smiled indulgently, a cruel smile reserved for rummies and other washouts who tried to sound like they knew what they were doing.
Well, Caswell thought, I can't say I didn't earn the man's disrespect.
"How many hours are we talking about?"
The doctor wiped his forehead with the back of his hand as he helped the nurse assemble his instruments. "I don't know. Three or four, unless he dies. Look, I've got to hurry. Please try to get me some help, Captain."
"Three or four hours," the captain muttered. "The passengers'll miss half a day in Jamaica."
"Captain, please. Do as you like, but you must leave now. I've got to scrub."
The captain turned with a disgusted sigh.
"I need that team, sir."
At that moment, Mrs. Hank Cobb sat bolt upright in her bunk, her eyes wide and staring.
"Lie down, Emily. I told the doctor—"
"We know that man, Hank," she shrilled.
"What man? Oh, Emily, not that— that thing down there."
"Those eyes," she screamed. "Those teeth!"
"Please, dear—"
"He's the cook! The ship's cook. He gave me the recipe for that celery seed dressing, don't you remember?"
Hank Cobb searched his memory. "The cook..."
Half a city block away, in the ship's infirmary, Alberto Vittorelli was fading back out of his brief episode of consciousness. The black wall of the ship— how did the ship appear? The woman screaming, the bobbing faces all around him, their wet hair plastered to their heads, the gentleman in the white suit moving hurriedly above him now, his expression of worry so deeply graven on his face that it seemed almost comical.
The antiseptic-smelling white room began to swirl around him. Of course they had come to rescue him. Without Vittorelli, the ship would sail with no sauces. He closed his eyes to the whirling, darkening place, its lone occupant the worried gentleman in white. But the spinning continued inside Vittorelli like a tight, diminishing merry-go-round. The riders on the merry-go-round (Faster! round and round it went, faster and faster!) were the men in the sea with him, their sailor uniforms bright in the dark water, the sailors and the screaming woman and the worried gentleman in white. And at the center of it 'all, so small how, small and disappearing, was another face, cold and commanding, swept by yellow hair, lit by the palest ice-blue eyes, a face he would never forget...
?Eight
The next morning was Sunday. Remo sprang awake to a deafening howl, the thunder of heavy, bewildered footsteps, and the clanking of glasses and ice cubes. He wrapped a towel around himself and headed for the kitchen, but Sidonie intercepted him just outside the bedroom.
"What you do out there?" the housekeeper accused, her eyes pinched into little black marbles. "This place a mess."
"We had visitors last night," Remo said lamely.
Sidonie craned her neck past him into the bedroom, where Fabienne was groaning awake, her hand held to her throbbing forehead. "Land sake, boy," Sidonie gasped, stepping backward in indignation. "What for you got her in your bed?"
Remo passed up the obvious explanation in view of the fact that Sidonie was a friend of the girl's, and also because she had to weigh in at over 225 and already had a couple of belts of rum in her. "She's been hurt," he said.
Sidonie waddled tentatively into the room, her ice cubes tinkling in her glass as she swayed her heavy bulk toward the girl in the bed. When she saw the chain of bruises around Fabienne's throat, she placed her hand over her heart, tossed down the full glass of rum, and waddled menacingly back toward Remo. "You do that, white boy?" she growled.
"Come on, Sidonie. Why would I do that?"
She pressed her face close to his, rum fumes invading his nostrils like bayonets. "Maybe underneath that soft white skin, you a mad dog." She lifted an eyebrow.