“This Hawkins,” Beatrice said as if it was a bad taste, “this Hawkins. What do you know about it?”
“What should I know about it? I brought him aboard because I hadn’t any choice…”
“You could see this coming, with that ship inbound. You had to take every action to make this Hawkins a problem—”
“I hadn’t any instructions that said leave a man to freeze!”
“We’re not talking about that. You’re in a position to make judgments, you’re in a position to observe—I’m telling you use your head. That boy is a threat to you, do you understand? Austin won’t see him, no, of course Austin won’t so much as look at him—does this say to you he’s not interested? This boy’s had nothing but Hate Austin poured into his veins. And does this deter him? No. Altogether the opposite. Does a man tell Austin no? Does he?”
“Not damned often.”
“And this boy?”
“This boy is older than I am.”
“Bravo. You notice the point. This woman. This boy.—Austin does not take kindly to ‘no. ‘ It’s a major weakness in him.”
“So what do you want me to do?”
“Use your wits. This is not our friend. And there are degrees of rebellion that won’t amuse, do you see? Find them. Make them. Deprive this Hawkins of any reasonable attraction in this business. We have too much at stake here for self-indulgence, of his fancies or of yours.”
He didn’t ask how he was to do this. Beatrice wasn’t long on details. Beatrice wasn’t long on sleep right now, clearly, and about time Travis took over out there. Bad jump. He saw the signs of it. He took down half his drink. Beatrice took all of hers. He set his glass down and got up and went for the door.
“Damn Saby,” Beatrice said, having, apparently belatedly, remembered another offender on her agenda.
He stopped, his hand on the switch. “She’s involved?”
“Saby’s character judgments. Ouí. Certainement. What else but my sister’s child? Saby the judge of character. Chut!” Beatrice took up his glass, lifted it, silently wished him out the door and out of her thoughts.
The air was clearer outside. Ideas weren’t. Maman’s perfume was still in his nostrils, along with the scent of brandy. It clung to a man that dealt with her.
Corinthian’s alterday pilot. Perrault and not Bowe.
And tenacious of her position.
Maman never wanted a kid, that was sure. Probably Austin hadn’t been thrilled, in so many words. But maman when she came aboard and knew Austin in the carnal and the ambitious senses, had made the professional sacrifice…
Beatrice always did know Austin better than Austin knew himself.
Gave Austin a new experience, laid out of sex maybe imminently before birth, shoved him off on ten-year-old Saby and put a fresh coat of gloss on her nails.
So Beatrice was worried. Never ask whose ass was threatened. With Beatrice it wasn’t a question. Beatrice was worried and Beatrice was pissed at him for not freezing his Hawkins half-brother into a police puzzle.
And he didn’t know why he hadn’t, except the whole business had caught him off guard, and he’d made a fast decision, a decision he’d stuck by when it got complicated, and when, in Corinthian’s predeparture hours, it had looked less than sensible.
But nobody’d told him to kill anybody. Nobody’d told him it was a requirement. And, dammit, Austin had shot a couple of fools, but not on dockside—he’d seen Austin be scarily patient with guys who’d crossed him in bars and on the docks, when he’d thought Austin wouldn’t take it… that was the example he’d had, and where did everybody get so damned know-everything when he’d played it by the rules he’d been handed?
It was the way with every damn piece of hell he caught, he was supposed to have read it in the air, in flaming letters, different than anybody else on the ship.
Don’t get involved with the cops or with customs. Don’t do anything to get hauled into legal messes.
Wasn’t murder?
Wasn’t killing Austin’s own bastard kid just a little nuisance to the ship?
Wasn’t giving Marie Hawkins grounds to call the cops and name names just a little slight possibility of trouble, if her own kid turned up as an icicle in the warehouse Corinthian was using?