Cruise Control Read online

  I looked all around the vicinity for Guy X. There were a few dark-featured men but none had the look I had in my mind’s eye. I started to wonder if I had the wrong picture in my head, the way movie stars never look the same in real life. Not that I had met that many movie stars. But I looked around the room and saw a decent number of recognizable faces. I saw a Hall of Fame quarterback from Denver and a coach from Chicago. A couple of owners of teams that never seemed to do any good. They all looked a little different in real life. Perhaps we all did.

  We chatted for a while and Ron watched me watch the room. He raised an eyebrow and I shook my head. After a while they went back to mingle with friends. I didn’t know anyone there except Danielle and BJ Baker, and I was already with one of them, and the other I didn’t much care to see. So we took another drink and watched some folks play roulette. I didn’t see the point. It was purely chance, no skill involved. It was tedious to play and more tedious to watch, but those around the table were reacting to the bouncing ball like they had some kind of control over it. Chance was part of life. Sometimes a pitch hit the bat in the middle, and the ball flew from the stadium and you lost, and sometimes the exact same pitch just missed the edge for a game-winning strike. But more often than not, good pitches won games and bad pitches lost them.

  I caught the flash of a familiar white uniform as the captain headed for us. He thanked me again and I introduced him to Danielle.

  “I trust your cabin is satisfactory,” he said.

  “Can I move in?” Danielle smiled.

  “For the duration of the cruise, consider it your home.”

  “Thank you.”

  The captain grinned at me. “I understand you played football at University of Miami.”

  “I was on a football scholarship. Played might be overstating things a bit. I played more baseball.”

  “Dual athlete.”

  “Once upon a time. Can I ask how you know that?”

  “I’m in the information business, Mr. Jones.”

  “Where does steering the ship come into it?”

  “I have officers for that.” He looked at our drinks. “Can I offer you a refill?”

  “Why not?”

  “Let me introduce you to some people.”

  Captain Sterling was wrong. He wasn’t in the information business, although information was key to his role. His real business was the people business. He was charming and engaging. All the intel in the world did nothing for you if you had the demeanor of Henry Kissinger. But Sterling knew how to wield his information. He was like a politician. He knew everyone, their significant others, their team allegiances and their drink preferences. I started to wonder if he had someone whispering into his ear. That thought stopped me in my tracks. The notion that he had an earpiece just like the security guy at the door wasn’t completely outside the realm of possibility.

  Sterling introduced us to a group who turned out to be largely team owners. The interesting thing about them was this: They didn’t talk about football. This was Pro Bowl weekend, one week until the Super Bowl. And that was the footballiest day of the football season and they didn’t mention the game at all. Not the upcoming game, not the players, not the history of it all. On the one hand, it was reasonable. I owned a car and I didn’t talk about cars much, except with my mechanic. But then I never went on car-themed cruises the week of the Daytona 500. If I had, I could conceive of chatting about cars to someone.

  They were engaging people despite, or perhaps, because of it. They asked me what I did for a living, and I told them I was a contract killer. It always gets an uncomfortable giggle with the upper crust. They’re never really sure if I’m kidding, and I’m never really sure if they actually know a contract killer and think I should be more discreet about it. Danielle told them she was with the FDLE, which she had to explain as being like the Florida version of the FBI.

  “I’ve never heard of it,” said one woman. “And I winter here every year.”

  “Do you carry a gun?” asked another.

  “Most of the time, yes.” Danielle smiled.

  They seemed quite impressed with that.

  “Mr. Jones,” said a man with wire-frame glasses who owned a team on the left side of the Rockies. “Weren’t you the one who did that work for BJ Baker?”

  “Yes, sir. That was me.”

  “I heard he was very impressed.”

  “I heard different,” I said.

  The man nodded. “He can be quite the handful, BJ. But I have a matter that might be the sort of thing you can help with. Do you have a card?”

  The fact was I did have a card. My office manager, Lizzy, had insisted that we get them done up. She was really thinking about Ron. He met a lot of people who had matters that were the sorts of things we could help with. He had probably given a card to Frederick Connors.

  I pulled a card out of my wallet. It was curved to the shape of my butt but the man in the glasses didn’t seem to care. He tucked it away in his breast pocket.

  “I’ll be in touch.”

  “Okay.”

  The man turned to one of the other owners. “Now who wants to try their luck on the craps table?”

  They all nodded like that was an excellent idea. The man looked at me and Danielle. “Ms. Castle, Mr. Jones?”

  “We’ll leave you to it.”

  His wife frowned. “Are you sure you won’t join us?”

  I nodded and whispered, “I have a body to get rid of.”

  Her eyes went wide and she said, “How exciting.”

  We took our leave and grabbed seats at a bar away from the gambling tables. Two big guys were already at the bar. These guys weren’t big in the sense that most people think of it. They were enormous, built like retired super heroes. They were in regular suits, not tuxedos, and the material for their suits must have been measured by the acre.

  I nodded to them as I sat and ordered two drinks.

  “Enjoying the cruise?” asked the one closest to me.

  “I could do without the suit,” I said.

  “I hear ya.” He had a neck like a California redwood and it didn’t look at home in a buttoned-up shirt and tie. “But at least the beer’s free.”

  “Amen to that,” I said. “I’m Miami Jones.”

  “D’Vante Morrison.”

  We shook hands. I’m a reasonably big guy. I’m a tick over six foot and have pitcher’s shoulders, and I have the hands to match. But my hand disappeared inside D’Vante’s. He could have pitched a bowling ball. His palms were like old leather. I introduced Danielle and he introduced his drinking partner, Adrian Pascal. I looked them over but I didn’t recognize them.

  “You gentlemen play?” I asked.

  D’Vante nodded. “Once upon a time.”

  “Pro?”

  D’Vante nodded and then asked, “You?”

  “College.”

  “What school?”

  “Miami,” I said.

  “Hence the name.”

  “Right.”

  Adrian spoke in a deep voice that reminded me of Harry Belafonte. “So what brings you to this thing?”

  “Work, I suppose.”

  “You front office?”

  “No. I guess you could say I work security.”

  “Security? At the bar?”

  I nodded and sipped my beer.

  “Nice gig.”

  “I like it. So you guys are all part of the pomp and ceremony?”

  “Us?” D’Vante shook his head. “No, sir. We just here to make up the numbers, I guess.”

  “It must be a nice chance to catch up with old teammates, though.”

  Adrian shook his head. D’Vante said, “It is. Not that there’s many of us left.”

  He said it the way a veteran spoke of GI pals from a long-forgotten war. I took a good look at both of them. They couldn’t have been more than fifty. But they looked aged. Like that factory-beaten furniture that appears as if it came across on the Mayflower but really came on a containe
r ship from Guangzhou last summer. The men’s faces were hard and lined and it aged them some, but it was their eyes that aged them most of all. They had no sparkle. The color had seeped out and left them flat and dull.

  “You’re not that old,” I said with a smile I didn’t feel.

  “There’s old and there’s old, you know?”

  I nodded.

  “Adrian here is gonna be inducted into the Hall of Fame next week, you know that?” D’Vante said. Adrian sipped on his beer as if he was embarrassed by the accolade.

  “Congratulations,” I said. “What position?”

  “Offensive tackle,” he said.

  “What about you, D’Vante?”

  “Tight end. And don’t let my man tell you that tackle story. He played every position in the Gang of Six.”

  As he said it, a synapse fired in my brain and I connected the dots. Suddenly, I remembered them. In the early nineties they had been on one of the best offensive lines in football. For a couple years they were known as the Gang of Six, which I recalled being a strange moniker given that the standard offensive line in football only has five players in it. But there were six of them, and they could mix and match and move their positions depending on what plays the coach wanted to run. They were big and powerful and fast. They were fearsome. Looking at the big men before me, it felt like such a long time ago.

  “Gang of Six,” I said. “I remember you.”

  The men smiled gently but said nothing.

  “You guys were ferocious.”

  “Yes, sir,” said D’Vante.

  “Well, congratulations on the Hall of Fame,” I said to Adrian. He watched me but didn’t answer or pick up his drink. D’Vante took up his own drink and tapped the glass of his buddy, who then nodded and picked his up.

  “To the Hall of Fame,” I toasted.

  “To Clete,” said Adrian.

  D’Vante nodded. “Clete,” he said softly.

  “Clete?” Danielle asked.

  “Clete James,” said D’Vante. “He was one of us. He recently passed.”

  “I’m sorry,” said Danielle.

  “We all pass some time.”

  “We do,” I said. “But let’s delay it as long as we can, hey?”

  “When you old, you old,” said Adrian.

  “You’re really not that old,” Danielle said.

  “Football years is like dog years,” said D’Vante. “You age seven for every year you play.”

  I was going to say something clever when I saw two women approaching with purpose, like school principals or Mormons. D’Vante turned to see what had caught my eye.

  “We in trouble now,” he said.

  One of the women stopped by him and said, “I thought we might find you here.”

  “Just enjoying the hospitality,” said D’Vante.

  “You know Adrian here needs his rest.”

  The second woman had put her hands on Adrian’s shoulders. He tilted his head in response, like a puppy.

  D’Vante slipped off his stool. “It was nice talking with you folks.”

  “And you,” I said. “I hope you enjoy the cruise.”

  As Adrian passed, I offered him the best for his Hall of Fame induction. He nodded and may have smiled. The woman behind him, who I assumed was his wife, smiled for sure.

  “Thank you,” she said. She looked dressed to kill but resigned to the fact that she wasn’t hitting the town tonight.

  We watched them walk away and then Danielle turned to me.

  “He needs his rest? It’s dinner time.”

  “It’s Florida. Dinner time could be four in the afternoon.”

  “You’d love that, wouldn’t you?”

  “I would love—”

  I didn’t get to finish my thought because all hell broke loose in the casino.

  Chapter Eleven

  This was not a Wild West kind of crowd. This was the kind of crowd that believed in following the rules, mostly because they wrote the rules. But they were also a competitive bunch. Former players might have stopped playing the game, but they hadn’t left their competitive natures back in the locker room when they hung up their cleats. And the people who owned the teams were generally rich business types who used cash reserves rather than points on the board as their way of keeping score.

  So whatever way it had happened, no one was going to take being called a cheat lying down. But that was what had transpired. Someone at a card table accused another player of being a cheat, of slipping a card into the deck or some such. I didn’t think such a thing was possible, but this wasn’t Vegas. Tempers frayed and chairs got knocked over and punches were thrown. We watched the disturbance ripple across the room, and then all of a sudden security people were everywhere.

  We stayed at the bar and watched things play out. Danielle remarked how proud she was that I hadn’t gotten involved. I wasn’t afraid of getting dirty if the situation warranted, but I preferred keeping my fights to issues that involved me, and this most definitely didn’t. We saw Army come into the room and talk to a few of his guys, and then a couple of people were escorted out. The room didn’t return to its previous mellow state. There was a jacked energy in the air. The kind of buzz I recalled when I used to take the field.

  Army saw us at the bar and strode over.

  “The cowboys getting out of hand?” I asked.

  “I underestimated these people,” he said. “Is it a full moon tonight?”

  “Not sure the moon’s even up yet.”

  “In that case, we’re in for a long night.”

  “You look like you’ve got it under control.”

  “Here we do. I always have extra bodies in the casino. Gambling has a habit of bringing out the devil in folks. But elsewhere . . .”

  “What happened elsewhere?”

  “We just had another disturbance in the Hall of Fame room.”

  “The museum? Tell me it wasn’t BJ’s Heisman.”

  “No. A fight, we think.”

  “You don’t know?”

  “There was a lot of he said/he said by the time I got there with my guys. But we’ll figure it out when we check the video.”

  “Cameras everywhere,” I said.

  “Excuse me, Mr. Mahoney.” We turned to see the auctioneer, Arnold. He was still wearing a bow tie but he looked less like an accountant now, since the tie was accompanied by a tuxedo. His head glistened with a sheen of perspiration.

  “Yes, sir?”

  “I was just informed there was a melee in the Hall of Fame room.”

  “A melee?”

  “A disturbance. And another in here.”

  “Yes, sir. But both situations are under control now.”

  “Yes, I’m sure. My concern is more with regard to the auction room.”

  “What about it, sir?”

  He leaned in like he was about to share state secrets.

  “Is it secure, Mr. Mahoney? I see a lot of personnel in here, and I assume more reported to the disturbance in the other room. So who is watching the auction items, Mr. Mahoney? There are some very valuable pieces, and the vendors are concerned.”

  “Sir, that room is not open to the public. It is locked and under guard.”

  “And those guards were not called away to these disturbances?”

  “No, sir, they were not. There are two entrances to ballroom two and we have personnel on both, to be relieved on a rotating basis until the room opens again tomorrow for you and your vendors to prepare for public exhibition.”

  “You’ll forgive me if I prefer to verify that? The vendors are concerned.”

  “I can show you the video feed, if you like. Or I’ll be happy to take you down to ballroom two and you can see the guards yourself.”

  Army was clearly adept at handling the well-heeled clientele. I had imagined the ship would be more of a party vessel with its short weekend tours, and perhaps this trip was an anomaly. But either way, Army moved between the socioeconomic groups with ease. Just as well for h
im, as I noticed a line forming behind Arnold, with more concerned faces. The closest these folks usually got to violence was watching it on the field on Sundays, and even then, you didn’t hear the impact of three-hundred pound body on three-hundred pound body from behind the glass of the corporate boxes.

  Arnold turned to the worried faces and gave them a translation of what Army had just said. It was all under control, nothing to be concerned with. He would personally oversee security for the auction room. Though, I was pretty confident he didn’t plan on sitting outside the door all night. One of the vendors—a guy I thought I recalled hanging a tropical Gauguin for auction—asked if he could follow along, just to be sure. Then another said if the first guy was going, then he was going too. Then it became a quorum. Arnold turned to Army.

  “Let’s all go for a walk, folks,” Army said.

  Army nodded to us and turned to lead the group away.

  “Shouldn’t you be going with them?”

  I found Anastasia Connors standing before me.

  “Since you are security, so-called.”

  I gave her a big grin. “Of course,” I said. “We were just letting the vendors walk ahead.”

  She gave me a look that suggested she didn’t believe me.

  I winked at Danielle and she slipped off her stool.

  “Field trip,” she said.

  We let the group of vendors, including Anastasia, form a line behind Army. We looked like a shore tour off to visit a rum distillery, or those swimming pigs in the Exumas. Danielle and I took up the rear. About a dozen of us trooped over to the elevator. The ballroom being used for the auction was one deck down from the casino. Danielle and I took the stairs and waited for the elevator to meet us. Army gave another nod as he led the group out and we again dropped in behind.

  The corridor opened up into a lobby, and we found a man standing outside a closed door, like the Secret Service guys who wait while the president does his business inside. The man was at attention. I wondered if someone had given him the heads-up that we were on our way down.

  “Chief,” he said to Army, like they actually were in the army.

  “Smith,” said Army. “Anything happening?”

  “All quiet, sir.”