I sat up and shifted and found a better place to stretch out, where no white oak ribs dug into me. I kept telling myself that Janine was perfectly all right. There wasn’t a thing in my pockets of any earthly use to me. And there was nothing I could reach. I managed to doze off a few times. The motion was restful. At eleven fifteen by my watch I awoke and heard the latch on the small hatchway entrance to the forward bilge click.
Freddy Hazzard came crawling through, wearing a pair of my fresh khaki pants and a clean T-shirt. He nodded and reached back through the hatch and lifted a half bucket of water through and put it within reach. He reached again and brought in a brown paper bag and put it beside the bucket. “Mr. McGee, there’s milk and bread and cheese in the sack and a roll of toilet paper. You’ll have to make out best you can with a bucket, because I’m not about to let you loose until there’s a good reason.
“Where’s Mrs. Bannon?”
“She’s just fine. I found some chain and a padlock, and I got her chained in the head by one ankle, and I took her some food first.”
“Where are we?”
“Anchored in the flats just off Sands Key, way east of the channel, maybe twelve mile south of Miami. I had me a time working this thing out of that big marina. The wind takes it. I fished commercial about every summer I was a kid in school. Mr. McGee, I found your fuel tables in the drawer next to the chart rack. With the fuel aboard it figures out to maybe four hundred miles range. Does that sound about right to you?”
“Why should I tell you anything, Freddy?”
He squatted on his heels, balancing easily to the motion of the hull. He looked at me in a troubled way. “I got that little runabout boat in tow. That’s what gave me fits getting clear of the boat basin. I’ve been checking her over, and I think she’s got maybe three hundred miles in her because the tanks are topped off full. Cuba would be easy, but I’ve got the feeling it would be another kind of jail. I’ve been checking weather and there’s a good five-day forecast. I think I could just about get to the Caicos Islands. There isn’t much of any red tape or government there because, like a friend explained to me, they used to belong to Jamaica and when Jamaica went independent, the Turks and Caicos Islands weren’t in that deal. I’ve got your papers and I can scorch them up some like this boat burned, and leave enough to read so I can pass for you where nobody knows you. I’m sorry about the way it has to be, but if I’m going to be you, I’m going to have to leave you and her fastened tight to this thing when she runs out of fuel and I open her up and let her go down. I thought of all other ways and there just isn’t a one. Now, I’m telling you this, how it’s going to be, but I’m not telling her because she’d come all apart. And you won’t be telling her because you and she aren’t ever going to see each other again. It’s the only chance and I’m sorry about it, but I have to give it a try. Now you want to know why you should tell me anything. It’s because when the time comes, I can lay one on your skull bone and hers too and you’ll drown without knowing a thing about it. And I’ll make you comfortable as I can meanwhile. Her too. But every boat has cranky ways, and when this thing isn’t acting right, I want to ask you what to do and you tell me right. If you don’t, you aren’t either one of you going to be comfortable hardly at all. And you should know that when I was carrying her into the head and getting that chain fixed on her leg, I thought about how full-grown women like that always made me feel dumb and clumsy and afraid to even think of touching them. But since she’s going down to the bottom anyways, it wouldn’t matter what happened to her beforehand. I might mess with her and I might not I couldn’t say right now, but there’s not so much chance of it if you act right. So right now I want to know just where to put those tacs to get the top range out of this thing.”
“It isn’t going to work.”
“It’s the only chance I’ve got. What rpm, mister?”
“Eleven hundred.”
“Where’s the switch on the automatic pilot?”
“Up on the topside controls, under the panel, over on the port corner.”
“Where’s your compass correction card?”
“Pasted to the inside lid of the box where the rule and dividers are.”
He nodded. “I got a nap, but I need a lot of catching up. I’m going to sleep out the rest of the day and move on out of here about dusk. I’ll bring you down some blankets so you can rest better, Mr. McGee.”
“Don’t knock yourself out with favors.”
He left. It was just a wild enough idea to work, if I’d been alone aboard. But Meyer would know Janine had been aboard, and so would Connie Alvarez. They would never quit, not until they found out what happened. Small comfort.
So this had to be the time. During this long afternoon. Don’t count on his getting careless later on. Because even when pooped, he wasn’t careless. He’s been on the run. His two shipmates are latched up tightly. The bed is deep and soft. The sea rocks him. He may never sleep as deeply again.
So get to it, McGee. Get something working, mostly your dull head. Nothing in the pockets. Escape needs tools. Like a belt buckle? Ah yes. A careful young man. The old jail training. Belt and shoelaces were gone. What have you got that’s made of metal, fella? Well, you have a corroded old bucket and you have a wristwatch, and you have some fillings in the fangs, and that is it.
And if you had metal, what could you do? You might try to pick the lock on the cuff. Think nothing of the fact that they are designed to be pickprooЈ Or if you happened to have a very thin and fairly narrow piece of spring steel, you could maybe work it into this little aperture where the cuff clasps together and maybe free the ratchets somehow. Except the good sets, like this one, have little knurled places designed to keep you from doing just that.
The hatch latch clicked and it opened and he shoved two blankets in far enough for me to reach them and slammed it again. Nice gesture, fella. Thanks a lot.
More appraisal. The cuff would slide along the heavy pipe bracing. They were in the shape of the letter X laying on its side, and I was cuffed to the one with its low end on the starboard side, the high end on the port. They did not quite touch at the center of the X. There was room to get the cuff between them. I could stand up, if I kept pretty well hunched over. I gave myself very good grades in the handyman department, at least in that bracing chore. I had hacksawed them to fit snugly, then slipped the collars over them, each with a base about four inches across with four, big bolt-holes. Even with the biggest wrench aboard, I would have had trouble. The rust looked as solid as the steel.
Suddenly I remembered that they were just friction collars. They were not threaded on. And the lip was about one inch deep. So, if a man could put his back into it, and put enough of a bend in one of them to make it an inch shorter, it would slip out of the bolted collar and that intelligent fellow would be free.
I made a blanket pad to protect my back. I hunched under the cross pipe, got myself nicely braced and tried to bend it. I tried until the world turned jet black with little streaks of red flickering through it. I tried until my ears were full of blood roar and my jaws ached and the pipe was grooving my bones, but it did not bend a quarter of an inch, if that.
I sat down and panted for a time. My eyes stung with sweat. Impasse. The only possible way I could get myself loose, other than chewing my hand off at the wrist, was to bend the pipe brace. And I couldn’t bend it.
Give me a lever and a place to stand, somebody said. Or was it a fulcrum? Anyway, he was going to move the earth. If a reason had been given, I had forgotten it.
Sure. With a lever or a winch or a truck jack, no problem at all. I drank some milk and ate some cheese. Okay McGee. Sit here and make yourself a truck jack out of some bread, cheese, a watch, a pail and two blankets. The old know-how.