Macovich thought it wise to remain inside his unmarked car and observe the altercation, which was quickly turning violent. Let’s see what the pretty white boy does about this, he unkindly thought. That’s what you get for being the teacher pet and babysitting the guv’s nasty daughter. Ha. Ha. Yeah, I ain’t seen a good fight in a while. Wait ’til Doc Sca’petta sees what you doing out here. Huh. She kick your butt to the moon and complain to Sup’intendent Hammer.
“You idiot!” Andy shouted at Regina.
“You’re the idiot!” she fired back at the top of her lungs.
“Now look at what you did!” Sammy bellowed at her. “You better hope this dead lady’s family don’t see her body all banged up! Wait ’til the funeral home find it with bruises and busted bones!”
“Dead bodies don’t get bruises, ” Andy told him. “And I doubt any bones were broken. ”
Sammy was enraged by the sight of Maybeline bleeding, and he shoved Regina against the van and snatched his keys from her. She shoved him back and kicked his ankle. Then she socked him in the eye and bit his hand when he grabbed her by the arm. Andy got between them and was putting Sammy in a chokehold as the door leading inside the building flew open and Dr. Scarpetta, dressed in a surgical gown and gloves, emerged to see what all the commotion was about.
“That’s enough, ” she announced in a voice that commanded attention. “Stop it right now!”
Twenty-four
By high noon, Fonny Boy had finally figured out how many turns to the left and right would spring open the padlock if he used the combination 7360, which was nautical, he supposed, for 7-Up.
As he had expected, the secret compartment contained a pint of Bowman’s vodka, a pack of cigarettes, and, thank goodness, an Orion flare gun that was made of plastic and had a range of twenty-one miles. There were three cartridges, each with a candlepower of 15, 000, and Fonny Boy fired all of them straight up into the air. He and Dr. Faux held their breath for a minute as they drifted in the bateau, still out in the middle of nowhere, the crab pot doggedly following them.
“You shouldn’t have shot them all at once, ” Dr. Faux said, discouraged and peckish. “Why did you do that, Fonny Boy? It would have made more sense to fire one and wait for a while, then try a second round and eventually the last one. Now we’re right back where we started from, lost at sea with no food or water. Put that pint of vodka back. All it will do is make you silly and more dehydrated. ”
What neither he nor Fonny Boy could possibly know at the time was that three Coast Guard pilots and an engineer were out in a bright orange Jayhawk helicopter on routine maneuvers. They were flying at an altitude of five hundred feet when three small fiery rockets streaked past their windshield and startled them considerably.
“Jesus Christ! What was that?” the pilot in command exclaimed into his microphone.
“Someone’s shooting at us!” the engineer blurted out over the intercom from his bench seat in back.
“No, no, I think they’re distress signals. Flares. ” The copilot calmed down his buddies. “Did you see how bright they were, like they were phosphorous?”
“We’re not in a restricted area, are we?”
“No way. ”
“Gotta be flares, then. ”
The flares went out quickly but left rapidly fading white streaks across the sky that were easy to trace back to the source, providing one moved fast. The huge helicopter turned on an eastern heading and within minutes spotted a bateau with two people on board, who began waving their arms frantically. The Coast Guard pilots and crew also noticed a buoy that most likely was attached to a crab pot.
“Shit. Tangierians, ” the co-pilot said.
“Yup. And guess what? They’re in the crab sanctuary, ” retorted the engineer. “Look at that bright yellow buoy. A crab pot. ”
At the same time they spotted the buoy, Fonny Boy and the dentist heard the unmistakable thudding of helicopter blades. Fonny Boy had been conditioned to resent the Coast Guard, which, he thought, did nothing but persecute watermen. But he was feeling unusually optimistic because of the rusting piece of iron in his pocket. Didn’t his mother always say there was a reason for things? Had he not helped the dentist escape, run out of gas, and been rescued by the Coast Guard, he never would have discovered a sunken ship that was plainly marked with a crab pot that, unbeknownst to Fonny Boy and Dr. Faux, was drifting with the current because the rope was too short.