‘Practically nothing. He said there was something wrong with the sinks, and I had a plumber check it, but they were fine. I guess he had to say something for his money, right?’
‘Sinks?’
‘That’s what he told me over the phone. I have the written survey somewhere, but I took the information over the phone.’
‘Zincs,’ Kelly said, laughing. ‘Not sinks.’
‘What?’ Rosen was angry at not getting the joke.
‘What destroyed your props was electrolysis. Galvanic reaction. It’s caused by having more than one kind of metal in saltwater, corrodes the metal. All the sandbar did was to scuff them off. They were already wrecked. Didn’t the Power Squadron tell you about that?’
‘Well, yes, but -‘
‘But – you just learned something, Doctor Rosen.’ Kelly held up the remains of the screw. The metal had the flaked consistency of a soda cracker. ‘This used to be bronze.’
‘Damn!’ The surgeon took the wreckage in his hand and picked off a waferlike fragment.
‘The surveyor meant for you to replace the zinc anodes on the strut. What they do is to absorb the galvanic energy. You replace them every couple of years, and that protects the screws and rudder by remote control, like. I don’t know all the science of it, but I do know the effects, okay? Your rudder needs replacement, too, but it’s not an emergency. Sure as hell, you need two new screws.’
Rosen looked out at the water and swore. ‘Idiot.’
Kelly allowed himself a sympathetic laugh. ‘Doc, if that’s the biggest mistake you make this year, you’re a lucky man.’
‘So what do I do now?’
‘I make a phone call and order you a couple of props. I’ll call a guy I know over in Solomons, and he’ll have somebody run them down here, probably tomorrow.’ Kefly gestured. ‘It’s not that big a deal, okay? I want to see your charts, too.’
Sure enough, when he checked their dates, they were five years old. ‘You need new ones every year, doc.’
‘Damn!’ Rosen said.
‘Helpful hint?’ Kelly asked with another smile. ‘Don’t take it so seriously. Best kind of lesson. It hurts a little but not much. You learn and you get on with it.’
The doctor relaxed, finally, allowing himself a smile. ‘I suppose you’re right, but Sarah’ll never let me forget it.’
‘Blame the charts,’ Kelly suggested.
‘Will you back me up?’
Kelly grinned. ‘Men have to stick together at times like this.’
‘I think I’m going to like you, Mr Kelly.’
‘So where the fuck is she?’ Billy demanded.
‘How the hell should I know?’ Rick replied, equally angry – and fearful of what Henry would say when he got back. Both their eyes turned to the woman in the room.
‘You’re her friend,’ Billy said.
Doris was trembling already, wishing she could run from the room, but there was no safety in that. Her hands were shaking as Billy took the three steps to her, and she flinched but didn’t evade the slap that landed her on the floor.
‘Bitch. You better tell me what you know!’
‘I don’t know anything!’ she screamed up at him, feeling the burning spot on her face where she’d been hit. She looked over to Rick for sympathy, but saw no emotion at all on his face.
‘You know something – and you better tell me right now,’ Billy said. He reached down to unbutton her shorts, then removed the belt from his pants. ‘Get the rest in here,’ he told Rick.
Doris stood without waiting for the order, nude from the waist down, crying silently, her body shaking with sobs for the pain soon to come, afraid even to cower, knowing she couldn’t run. There was no safety for her. The other girls came in slowly, not looking in her direction. She’d known that Pam was going to run, but that was all, and her only satisfaction as she heard the belt whistle through the air was that she would reveal nothing that could hurt her friend. As searing’as the pain was, Pam had escaped.
CHAPTER 3
Captivity
After replacing all the diving gear in the machine shop, Kelly took a two-wheel hand truck out onto the quay to handle the groceries. Rosen insisted on helping. His new screws would arrive by boat the next day, and the surgeon didn’t seem in any hurry to take his boat back out.
‘So,’ Kelly said, ‘you teach surgery?’
‘Eight years now, yeah.’ Roeen evened up the boxes on the two-wheeler.
‘You don’t took like a surgeon.’
Rosen took the compliment with grace. ‘We’re not all violinists. My father was a bricklayer.’
‘Mine was a fireman.’ Ketty started wheeling the groceries towards the bunker.
‘Speaking of surgeons …’ Rosen pointed at Kelly’s chest. ‘Some good ones worked on you. That one looks like it was nasty.’
Kelly nearly stopped. ‘Yeah, I got real careless that time. Not as bad as it looks, though, just grazed the lung.’
Rosen grunted. ‘So I see. Must have missed your heart by nearly two inches. No big deal.’
Kelly moved the boxes into the pantry. ‘Nice to talk to somebody who understands, doc,’ he noted, wincing inwardly at the thought, remembering the feel of the bullet when it had spun him around. ‘Like I said – careless.’
‘How long were you over there?’
‘Total? Maybe eighteen months. Depends on if you count the hospital time.’
‘That’s a Navy Cross you have hanging on the wall. Is that what it’s for?’
Kelly shook his head. ‘That was something else. I had to go up north to retrieve somebody, A-6 pilot. I didn’t get hurt, but I got sicker ‘n’ hell. I had some scratches – you know – from thorns and stuff. They got infected as hell from the river water, would you believe? Three weeks in the hospital from that. It was worse’n being shot.’
‘Not a very nice place, is it?’ Rosen asked as they came back for the last load.
‘They say there’s a hundred different kinds of snake there. Ninety-nine are poisonous.’
‘And the other one?’
Kelly handed a carton over to the doctor. ‘That one eats your ass whole.’ He laughed. ‘No, I didn’t like it there much. But that was the job, and I got that pilot out, and the Admiral made me a chief and got me a medal. Come on, I’ll show you my baby.’ Kelly waved Rosen aboard. The tour took five minutes, with the doctor taking note of all the differences. The amenities were there, but not glitzed up. This guy, he saw, was all business, and his charts were all brand new. Kelly fished out another beer from his cooler for the doctor and another for himself.
‘What was Okinawa like?’ Kelly asked with a smile, each man sizing up the other, each liking what he saw.
Rosen shrugged and grunted eloquently. ‘Tense. We had a lot of work, and the kamikazes seemed to think the red cross on the ship made a hell of a nice target.’
‘You were working while they were coming in at you?’
‘Injured people can’t wait, Kelly.’
Kelly finished his beer. ‘I’d rather be shooting back. Let me get Pam’s stuff and we can get back in the air conditioning.’ He headed aft and picked up her backpack. Rosen was already on the quay, and Kelly tossed the backpack across. Rosen looked too late, missed the catch, and the pack landed on the concrete. Some contents spilled out, and from twenty feet away, Kelly immediately saw what was wrong even before the doctor’s head turned to look at him.
There was a large brown plastic prescription bottle, but without a label. The top had been loose, and from it had spilled a couple of capsules.
Some things are instantly clear. Kelly stepped slowly off the boat to the quay. Rosen picked up the container and placed the spilled capsules back in it before snapping down the white plastic top. Then he handed it to Kelly.
‘I know they’re not yours, John.’
‘What are they, Sam?’
His voice could not have been more dispassionate. ‘The trade name is Quaalude. Methaqualone. It’s a barbiturate, a sedative. A sleeping pill. We use it to get people off into dreamland. Pretty powerful. A little too powerful, in fact. A lot of people think it ought to be taken off the market. No label. It’s not a prescription.’
Kelly suddenly felt tired and old. And betrayed somehow. ‘Yeah.’
‘You didn’t know?’
‘Sam, we only met – not even twenty-four hours ago. I don’t know anything about her.’
Rosen stretched and looked around the horizon for a moment. ‘Okay, now I’m going to start being a doctor, okay? Have you ever done drugs?’
‘No! I hate the goddamned stuff. People die because of it!’ Kelly’s anger was immediate and vicious, but it wasn’t aimed at Sam Rosen.
The professor took the outburst calmly. It was his turn to be businesslike. ‘Settle down. People get hooked on these things. How doesn’t matter. Getting excited doesn’t help. Take a deep breath, let it out slow.’