No one else was on the boat. There was never going to be a better chance.

“See, that’s what I’m talking about,” Dox said. “Don’t you ever wonder why you enjoy this shit so much? Or were you afraid if people found out about it back in old Mexico they’d have turned you out good and made you somebody’s bitch? And the worst part is-admit now, it’s just the two of us-you secretly wish somebody would.”

Fester smiled his psychopath smile again. “Turn around, cabrón.”

“Sorry, amigo, but giving my back to someone with your documented proclivities would likely spoil my whole weekend.”

“Turn around, cabrón. Or I’ll turn you around.”

Dox felt a dip in the boat that told him someone had just stepped onto it. Then footsteps on the stairs. Shit. He’d been so close to provoking Fester into a heedless charge. Well, maybe he could cause a little more animosity, enough to guarantee another encounter like this one.

“Come on, Fester, tell me the truth. You like those photos, don’t you? Where the men are wearing black leather masks and holding cat-o’-nine tails? Maybe some Nazi SS uniforms, you know what I’m talking about, the good stuff. I’ll bet you’ve got yourself a collection, I’ll bet you know all the best Internet sites.”

Fester’s face went white and Dox thought, Damn, I’ve nailed you dead to rights, you damn pervert.

The door opened and the young-looking guy walked in. He looked at Fester, then at the battery he was holding. “What are you doing?” he asked.

“Nothing,” Fester said. “Why are you back so soon?”

“What’s with the battery?” the young guy asked, his expression indicating he had a good idea of the answer and didn’t like it at all.

“Uncle Fester finds gratification in getting in some extra licks when he thinks no one’s looking,” Dox said. “This is just the first time he’s been caught in the act. You are all aware he’s homosexual, right? Ask him about his photo collection.”

“Shut the fuck up,” Fester snarled, and took a step toward Dox.

The young guy had a gun in his hands, and was pointing it at Fester, so fast it seemed like a magic trick. Dox blinked, wondering for a second whether he was seeing this right.

“I can’t allow that,” the young guy said, his voice perfectly calm.

“Mind your own fucking business,” Fester said, and the look in his eyes was so hate-filled and dangerous that Dox decided the young guy had shown first-rate judgment in not waiting to draw his weapon.

“I am,” the young guy said, still in the same no-nonsense tone. “And you’ll thank me for it later, when you’ve had a chance to cool off. For now, I want you to back up and go through that door. If you do anything other than comply with my clear instructions, I will shoot you dead.”

For one second, the room was perfectly silent. Then Dox said, “This is a difficult way to come out of the closet, Fester, but there are organizations that can help you with the transition. Hotlines, things like that. You just have to…”

The young guy took a step back. Keeping the gun on Fester, he turned his head to Dox. “You, shut the fuck up,” he said, and something in his tone made Dox decide he ought to comply.

Fester backed out as directed, and the young guy followed a moment later. Dox heard the door lock, then their footsteps going up the stairs.

He sat there for a long time after, thinking. He wasn’t sure whether he’d just created an opportunity for himself, or a death sentence. The one thing he did know was the next time Fester managed to be alone on the boat with him, he was going to find out.

25

A BEGINNER WOULD HAVE looked more closely, checking his perceptions, telling himself until it was too late it couldn’t be so. Someone with a bit more seasoning would have glanced away, but only after a startled reaction, and some visible effort, which would have warned the enemy he’d been spotted. A real survivor understands the essentials instantly. And what couldn’t be understood now, I would consider later.

I took the steps to the sidewalk and set down the box so I was standing between it and the bike. I put my back to Mr. Blond and started “unlocking” the bike chain, watching him in the side-view mirror attached to my shades. He was twenty yards away, not hurrying, but not taking his time, either. He was wearing a black wool hat, not so much against the cold, I was sure, as to make him harder to describe if there were witnesses. It might have been enough to throw me off, too, but his gait had that same liquid ease I remembered from Saigon, and that was all I’d needed to make him here.

How he’d found me didn’t matter for the moment. What he was here for, I could assume. My main advantage was clear: not only had I given no sign I spotted him, he didn’t even realize I knew who he was.

Now that my back was to him and he didn’t know I was watching, I looked more closely in the side-view mirror attached to the helmet. He had on a black, waist-length leather coat and, I now noted, gloves. It was how I would have done it. The hat to obscure features; the gloves to prevent prints; the coat as light armor in case something goes awry and the target rallies with a weapon. He was wearing shoes with thick soles, almost certainly rubber, and his footfalls were noiseless.

However he planned to do it, it would be close. If it were a gun, it would be small caliber for reduced noise profile, and he’d want the muzzle right against my head. Even if it were a suppressed larger caliber, he’d want to be as close as possible to be sure of the shot. A knife, of course, would be quietest of all. Regardless, by giving him my back, I would increase his confidence, change the implicit risk/reward calculus I knew was running through his mind, reduce the apparent dangers of proximity and thereby encourage him to enter the range I wanted.

I watched in the side-view. Ten yards now. A fresh dump of adrenaline surged through my gut and my limbs.

Eight yards. I unwound the bike chain from the frame. It was over three feet long and close to ten pounds, and attached at both ends by a heavy steel lock. I took hold of the end opposite the lock, pretending to wrap the chain around the stalk under the seat, letting him see my hands at work, keeping his confidence high.

Five yards. His right hand dipped into his coat pocket and eased out, his arm staying close to his body, his hand just in front of his thigh. His thumb flicked a lever and a blade appeared. A decent bet, I thought, that he’d decided to exploit the apparent opportunity to take me from behind by cutting my throat. The advantages would be certainty of lethality, and blood spurting away from him rather than onto his clothes.

Three yards. My heart was thudding like a war drum in my chest. I fought the screaming urge to turn and face him before he got any closer.

Two yards. He started to ease to the right to get around the box I’d set down. Now.

I spun clockwise, the chain in my right hand, the lock on the end of it coming around like the racket on the world’s nastiest tennis backhand. Mr. Blond’s reaction was instantaneous and showed a lot of training: he brought his left hand up to the right side of his face, turtled his shoulders, dropped through his hips, and, most important, stepped forward, inside the arc of the chain, where a blow would deliver less force. But I’d anticipated all of it, and action beats reaction every time. Between the length of my arm, the length of the chain, and the flex of my hips and legs, I had a lot of room to adjust. I drew in by an equivalent distance, and the lock snaked around and blasted into his upraised left hand and right temple like the end of a medieval flail.

His head snapped to the left and he staggered in the same direction. The chain came about, and as it passed my centerline, I swiveled my hips and swung it in again, forehand this time, coming in from my right. Mr. Blond’s weight was on his left foot and he couldn’t move out of the way. But somehow, even with his circuits scrambled as they must have been, he managed to drop his weight and get his left hand up again, high this time, palm out, his forearm protecting his face. The lock blasted his arm back into his head and rocked him to the right. But with a wounded quickness that amazed me, he managed to snake his arm around the chain and get a hold of it before it bounced past him.