Rae watched Virgildisappear over the side, then said to Cattaneo, “I’m gonna go lay down. Call me when you turn around.”
“You want somebody to lay down with?” Regio asked, showing some teeth.
“Okay, you win the day’s lame asshole award,” Rae said. “I don’t need some wannabe Tony Soprano climbing on me. Icoulduse a little sniff of cocaine, if you happen to have some in your pocket.”
Cattaneo: “We don’t carry drugs. Or even use them, really.”
Made Rae laugh: “You don’t carry drugs? You mean, except for a hundred kilos of pure white boy?”
“Pure white boy. Sounds like a right-wing campaign slogan,” Lange said.
“Get your sleep,” Cattaneo said. “Gonna roll some. If you think you’re gonna hurl, try not to do it on the bed.”
Rae stretched outin the middle berth, tried to ignore the boat’s motion, and dozed; at some point, she woke, and felt somebody had peeked through the door, checking on her, but the door was closed and the cabin dark when she sat up. The Sig was cold against her leg, and might have been visible while she was asleep, but the room was dark, gun was dark, her leg was dark, and the gaffer tape was black, so, she thought, she was okay.
She straightened herself up, checked the gun, which was solid, left the cabin and climbed the stairs—Cattaneo called it a ladder—into the cockpit. A light mist, little more than a fog, was falling on the boat, dampening her face.
“How are we doing?” she asked.
“We’ll make the turn in a couple of minutes,” Cattaneo said. “Sit down and enjoy the night. There’s a poncho in the locker just below the ladder.”
She went back down the stairs and got it, pulled it on—a piece of plastic with a head hole and a hood—climbed back up the stairs and sat next to Regio. They made the turn, and off to the west, the oceanside condos had an eerie glow in the mist.
“Where are you from, Ally?” Cattaneo asked. “I mean, originally.”
“New Orleans.”
“New Orleans. Only been there a couple of times,” Cattaneo said. “Gotta tell you, I don’t understand the charm, though I had some shrimp thing that was good. My wife knew about it.”
“Well, it’s got beat up the last few years,” Rae said. “Still like it, though. They do got good food there. Good weed, good music.”
“Huh. Used to be a big Mafia town,” Regio said. “Long time ago, not much going on there now. All those ratshit gangbangers selling eight-balls and killing each other. Used to have some nice casinos, nice ladies.”
“You mean whores?” Rae asked.
“That’s ungenerous,” Cattaneo said.
“Ungenerous, but right,” Lange said. “I once spent a week down there and some of those women were flat nasty. I talked to one who had a scar that started between her tits and went all the way down to her pussy. Straight line. Some guys get off on that, I guess. Nasty.”
“If you didn’t get off on it, how do you know it went all the way down to her pussy?” Regio asked.
“She told us.”
“She told you?” Rae asked. “Just like that? ‘Yeah, I got a scar that goes from my tits all the way down to my pussy’?”
“Look. I was in a titty bar with this dufus motherfucker from Queens whose old lady would never let him go to one, so we got to New Orleans and he had to go. Anyway, she was hustling drinks and she was wearing a bikini and dufus saw this scar and asked her where it stopped.”
“And she told you?”
“Yeah. I don’t think he was the first guy who asked,” Lange said.
They rode alongon that thought for a while, until Rae asked, “How much longer?”
Cattaneo looked at his watch. “Forty minutes.”
“You really gonna pay me’n Willy a million dollars?”
“If Willy keeps bringing up the goods, damn straight. Theremay be a lot more than that. This was only the first load coming up the coast. We might get them to dump it further north next time, but Willy’s skills are exactly what we’ve been looking for. I like the way this boy works.”
