Kate picked out Dave's well-thumbed paperback edition of Crime and Punishment. She hadn't read the novel since she'd been in Law School, when it really had seemed like one of those books that might change your life. Or, at the very least, the way you thought about criminals. Idly she was turning back the cover when something caught her eye. Something was printed there, on the inside cover, in bright blue ink.
Something was stamped on it.
She stared at it incredulously, as if she had been admiring some clever bookplate, reading the words printed inside the simple roundel with more care than if they had been a visa on the passport for which she had been searching.
But this was something much more revealing.
She whispered the words out loud, as if she needed to hear them spoken in order to absorb what was implied.
'Property of the Miami Correctional Center at Homestead?'
Could it be that Dave really was a thief? And not just a thief, but an ex-con?
Hearing his shower end, she closed the book and returned it quickly to the shelf. Then, slipping into the spare dressing gown, she left the stateroom and went up to the galley. Maybe she could rustle up a relaxed, loving and laid-back sort of face along with some breakfast.
In the galley Kate put on the kettle to boil, and started to fry some ham and eggs, all the while considering the evidence that was before her: the new clothes; the bookshelf more typical of some jailhouse auto-didact than a millionaire; and the five aces Cary Grant-style proposition he had made her. There seemed to be no other conclusion that she could form. Dave really was a thief, and a convicted one too. She realized that he had been perfectly serious, as indeed he had said he was.
Al, summoned upstairs to the galley by the smell of fresh coffee and frying sausage and ham, brought home to her this wasn't a Cary Grant movie. Al was Luca Brazzi, Tony Montana and Jimmy Conway all squeezed into the one short-barrelled pump-action shotgun. Right down to the rifle sight, the hardwood stock attitude, and the blue metal jaw.
'Time is it?' he growled.
'Just after six,' she said, perky as an airline stewardess responding to a first-class passenger. You got all sorts going first class these days.
'Six o'clock? Jesus, what are we doing, abandoning ship or something? Six o'clock.'
'You want some breakfast?'
Al sighed uncomfortably and stooped to look out of the galley window, checking on the weather. He sniffed loudly, like he was hunched over a couple of lines of coke, and said, 'I can't make up my mind if it's better to eat so that I got something to throw up or if it's better not to eat so that I don't throw up at all.'
Kate smiled sweetly, trying to overcome her nerves. Who were these guys? And what were they doing on the ship? Was it possible they had anything to do with Rocky Envigado?
'Al?' she said. 'Have you heard the expression, the cook could use a hug? This particular cook only requires a "yes please" or a "no thankyou". The ultimate destination of this food I'm cooking, be it toilet bowl or ocean, is of absolutely no account to me.'
Al grunted biliously. Uncertainly he eyed the breakfast Kate was cooking. Rubbing his bare belly, for he was only wearing shorts, he said, 'Maybe I'll just have some Wheaties.'
'Have you got a hangover or something?'
'Naw. I'm feeling sick in anticipation of feeling sick, on account of the weather.' Al poured out a bowlful of cereal, then some milk, and began to shovel the stuff into his mouth.
'The weather? What about it?'
'You don't notice it, huh?' he remarked with milk dribbling down his unshaven chin. 'Must be another good sailor. Like the boss.'
Kate glanced out the window. What with making love and her shock discovery about Dave, she had hardly noticed the swell underneath the ship. Outside the sky was gray and threatening and a stiff breeze was whipping the flag on the stern of the Jade in front of them. It looked as if the storm was catching up to them after all.
'Me, I ain't much of a sailor,' confessed Al. 'I get sick looking at a glass of salt water.'
'It does look kind of rough,' Kate admitted.
Coming into the galley, Dave said, 'Are you talking about Al, or the weather?'
Al sneered, dumped his empty bowl in the sink, and reached for the coffee jug. Kate stepped fastidiously out of his way as from a large and smelly dog.
Noticing her flinch from Al's bare torso, Dave said, 'Couldn't you put a shirt or something on, Al? It's like having a giant coconut rolling around in here.'
Al slurped some coffee and said, 'Some women like hairy men.'
Dave said, 'Dian Fossey and Fay Wray don't happen to be sailing with us.'
