Amy didn't understand. She thought that I wasn't sufficiently impressed by this party. Bart finally had to break the news to her: “They're not coming to party. They're coming to-” his silhouette turned to look at me “-just why the fuck are you coming?”
“Chris Laughlin ever tell you about his dad?”
“Yeah, he told me all about that fucking bastard.”
“Remember my enemy at Fotex? Who fell into the pond?”
“Oh, yeah, the rotating knives?”
“Yeah. That's roughly what we're going to do to Chris Laughlin's dad.”
“And what will that involve?”
“Beats me. Boone and I will just have to scope it out.”
“Looks like you'll have plenty of light.”
Amy was temporarily depressed that we were actually coming out to test a scientific theory, but she got over it. Meanwhile I was noticing something interesting, namely a big shadow that was blocking off about half of our view of Spectacle. We were getting to the point where we could make out some running lights, and eventually, Boone and I started aiming our humongous flashlights into that shadow, checking it out with binoculars. I already had an intuition about it. So did he, I guess, because we aimed our beams at the same place: high on the bow, where the name of the ship is written. It stood out nicely in rust-stained white: Bosco Explorer.
“It's not going anywhere,” he said. And when we got a little closer we could definitely see its anchor chains, coming out the hawsepipes up on the prow, descending straight into the water. The Basco Explorer, the toxic Death Star, was anchored about half a mile off Spectacle Island.
“Poyzen fans,” Bart said.
But Boone and I were just looking. He reached over and shut off the radio, and I dropped the motor to an idle.
“Spray paint,” I said.
Boone rummaged through one of our bags and came up with a can of black Rustoleum we'd picked up with the spark plugs. Bart shook it up and blacked out the GEE lettering on the sides of the Zode.
Most of those boat silhouettes were heading to or from Spectacle Island. But when we noticed one that was going sideways, headed for the Basco Explorer, I cranked up the motor so that we didn't look suspiciously slow. We buzzed across the ship's bow, giving it a hundred yards of clearance, and checked out the other side, which was glowing an almost imperceptible red from the fires on the island. We had to look straight at it for a minute or two before our eyes adjusted. We asked Bart and Amy to look the other way, because anyone might feel nervous if four people on a Zodiac were staring them down.
A small boat, a Boston Whaler, was bobbing alongside. One of the Brasco Explorer's davits was active, lowering a drum of some godawful cargo toward the boat.
“Deja vu,” Boone said. “Just like the old days. Except the little boat's on their side.”
That any of those Poyzen Boyzen fans could tolerate Spectacle Island was amazing. The stench nauseated. Maybe the smoke was rising off the island so they didn't notice it, drifting downwind, hitting an inversion layer, and spreading out close to the water.
Bart was tugging on my sleeve, pointing in the opposite direction, toward the mainland. A small strobe light was flashing away on Castle Island Park.
I turned my back to the Basco Explorer and hunched over our walkie-talkie. This was just a guess, because I hadn't asked Debbie to bring a walkie-talkie along. But I thought she might. I switched to the channel we'd used in Blue Kills and punched the mike button.
“Tainted Meat to Modern Girl,” I said. “Tainted Meat to Modern Girl. You there, toots?”
“This is Modern Girl,” Debbie said, quoting the song: “I got my radio on.”
“Nice to hear you, Modern Girl.”
“Very nice to hear you, Tainted. Where are you? I can hear the little Merc.”
“Right in front of you. Listen, you driving what I think you're driving?”
“What else?”
“How'd you get it started?”
“The guy who stole it put in a new coil wire.”
I made a mental note of that; just another reason to kill Laughlin. No one should know that much about me.
“Checked the oil recently?”
“Just had it changed, asshole.”
“Listen.” This part was going to be tricky; if Basco was listening to the frequency, they'd get suspicious. “Seen much traffic in your area? Whalers, maybe?”
“I understand.”
That was nice, but I didn't know how much she understood.
“We won't be able to swing by and get you for awhile. Until then, do you think you can entertain yourself? Go out for a drive and listen to some tapes, maybe?”
“Yeah. Maybe take some snapshots. Boston at night.”
Fantastic. She had a camera. More importantly, she knew how to use it.
“Ten-four on that, Modern Girl. We'll catch you later. Drive safely.”
“Always. Bye, Tainted Meat.”
The idea of sending Debbie out by herself at night to follow and take pictures of Basco goons was a little troublesome. But she'd been on some wild gigs and had always handled herself well. She was good at this sport. As long as she kept her hot little right hand off the stereo, off the phone and on the shift lever, nothing was going to catch her. Besides, she adored stress.
We'd left the Basco Explorer behind. Boone started looking into the flames again. Amy was facing backwards and she let us know when the Whaler took off, headed for the shore. Spectacle Island was looking real big, the line of flames was breaking apart into individual bonfires, and the music was drowning out our motor.
The final approach was not smooth. Pieces of debris kept fouling our propeller. Fortunately it was soft, whatever it was, so the prop just chopped it up, coughed and kept going. Boone was leaning over the back of the motor to check it out when he almost got thrown out of the Zode by a boat's wake. Some jerk-offs had just shot by us in a small boat with a big motor, and now they were swinging around for another pass.
“Hey,” Amy shouted, “alright, Chris!”
“Chris is too young for you, and he's actually a jerk,” Bart said.