Sargent had the Sloe Gin to worry about. One of the diesels was erratic, and we had damaged one of the screws in an attempt to cozy up to the reef when we tried to position ourselves directly over the sunken Garl. Huntington was instructed to stay with the Sloe Gin and guard the gear. The little man must have liked his assignment since it was one of the few things he didn't grouse about.
Hannah and I had to attend to other matters, not the least of which was hustling up Poqulay's ill-gotten gains. That, I figured, could best be accomplished by tapping Mookie, who understood such things and knew I was good for it. "Elliott gets the right kind of clients," he always said through his big toothed grin, "rich ones!"
After Westmore's finest was taken care of, there was the little matter of filing a progress report to the guy who was holding the purse strings back in Clearwater. I had already started rehearsing my lines. The fact that we had located the wreckage of the Garl was bound to encourage the old boy. The fact that we couldn't find the cylinders now that we had found the boat was a different matter altogether.
I convinced Hannah that another round of "what if" was called for, and under the circumstances it wasn't all that much of a drag. Just leaving the foggy clump of rocks called Big Doobacque seemed to lift her spirits. I was on the bridge when she appeared with a couple of tall glasses of Scotch and ice and turned to toast the brooding chunk of coral. "It may be for only a few hours," she said, grinning, "but I can't tell you how glad I am to get away from that damn place. It's depressing."
I took her offering, thanked her and thought about the task ahead of us.
"So… we go into Negril, get ourselves all pumped up again, and come back… right?"
"We gotta find those tin cans," I said.
"Suppose," she said casually, "they just aren't there. Suppose somebody else has already gotten them, or suppose the whole thing is an elaborate ruse." She took a sip of her drink.
"One thing at a time. Like who?"
"Marshal Schuster, for example. Suppose the real reason he pounded knots on your head in that men's room was the fact that he didn't want you to even look for them."
"Why the hell would he do that? All he would be doing is calling attention to the fact that he's as interested in finding the cylinders as his old man."
"Elliott, I'm surprised at you. That's very conventional thinking. Suppose it has nothing to do with any potential commercial value of the Bachmann process. More than that, suppose it has nothing to do with him not wanting his father to play around with this little life after death theory. Suppose he has a completely different reason for wanting you to stay away from the Cluster."
"Did anyone ever tell you that you talk in riddles?"
Hannah twisted her face into a funny half-scowl. "Put yourself in his place. Try to think like Marshal Schuster."
"Daddy Harry always told me assholes can't think."
There was only a trace of a smile. "Look, Elliott, we've already speculated on the fact that young Schuster wouldn't want his daddy to have the Bachmann process on the outside chance that it just might work and then sonny boy would never get his share of daddy's estate. The way the laws read now, that money would be tied up in the courts from now until kingdom come while the legals tried to figure out whether Bearing's fast-frozen remains constituted a legally dead man or not."
"If that's not the case, then the only other possibility is that he wants the process for its potential commercial value."
"Wrong," Hannah said emphatically. "Come on, Elliott, be creative."
I shrugged my shoulders. "Okay, so I ain't creative."
Hannah took a sip of Scotch, smacked her lips and lowered her voice. "What if Marshal has some other interest in all of this. Maybe that little research lab he's supposed to be running down in Boca is just a front."
"Go on."
"Let's suppose your old college chum is somehow connected to Alonzo Zercher."
Wham! It hit me. Not one piece of the puzzle had tumbled into place — but several. Hannah had finally gotten through to me. I knew I was grinning, but there wasn't a hell of a lot I could do about it.
"Make a little more sense? The picture a little clearer now?" she asked, fluttering her lovely eyelids in mock coyness.
"No wonder you've got all the equipment. Our friends at NASA don't give a tinker's damn about Bearing Schuster's little mission, do they? This is a federal matter, right?"
Hannah grinned, puffed her chest out, confirmed nothing and at the same time confirmed everything.
"I'll be damned," I muttered. "You're a plant."
"Let me put it this way, Elliott. My boss — my real boss — couldn't care less about some supposedly frozen World War Two dictator. But he did see all of this as a once in a lifetime chance to get an inside peek at Zercher's clearing house for Columbian drugs in Deechapal."
The lady was impressive. She had what us boys like to call "balls." "Then you aren't NASA, and you aren't an engineer?" I knew I must have sounded like a teenager who just discovered his girlfriend wore falsies.
"Elliott, Elliott," she trilled, "I'm all those things and more… plus I'm pretty good in bed, too."
I wasn't about to challenge the lady. I figured Hannah Holbrook could assess her level of expertise a whole lot better than I could. Instead, I asked the obvious. "Is all this stuff about young Schuster sheer speculation, or are you working with concrete facts?"
"Let me put it like this. Bearing Schuster, according to everything we've been able to learn, threw young Marshal out ten years ago and cut him off without a cent. Apparently his daddy told him the money machine quit printing right then and there."
"Look Hannah, don't get me wrong. I don't care for Marshal Schuster — but don't underestimate him. He's no dummy. Maybe he went to Boca and turned that little company of his into a gold mine. Maybe the lad was a financial whiz bang just waiting to blossom after he crawled out of his daddy's long suffocating shadow."
Hannah's knowing grin began to spread. "Nay, nay, Mr. Wages. People in my line of work have lots of resources. My friends at the IRS testify that Marshal's little plaything hasn't turned a profit in years. Last year alone his losses were far in excess of seven figures."
"Which could explain why he's willing to gamble on a long shot like a cryonic process developed over forty years ago. It could mean nothing more than he's downright desperate."
"It doesn't work that way. The fact of the matter is, young Schuster parades around with far too much money for someone who captains a sinking financial ship."
"I suppose it's safe to assume you and your cohorts have checked all his investments and holdings?"
Hannah nodded. "Indeed we have. From what we know, Marshal shouldn't even be able to pay attention. Yet there he is with a very expensive piece of beach front real estate, a veritable stable of exotic cars, seen in all the right places with all the right young ladies and spending money like water."
"That still doesn't tie the lad to Zercher," I insisted.
"By the time I'm through telling you what I know, you'll think it's a good possibility."
"Okay, lay it on me."
"Would you like to guess who ran the Schuster research facility on Deechapal?"