Drowned Under Read online

  We landed in Melbourne four hours late.

  I tried Harriet the instant I was through the forty-five-minute Customs Line. No response.

  I’d read Australian taxi drivers resented the class distinction of fares sitting in the back, so I climbed into the passenger seat. It felt completely weird, especially being on the side where I was usually in control of the vehicle. At least my tourist status allowed me to press my face against the window so I wouldn’t constantly scream, “We’re on the wrong side of the road!” or “I’m too young to die!”

  I kept my brake foot pressed into the floorboard and my eyes glued for exotic scenery. No such luck. I was starting to realize, the ten miles around any international airport looked the same. Hideous. Just low, cheap, industrial buildings, chain-link fences, and sadness.

  I perked up at the sight of the Melbourne skyline, though, and, fifty minutes later, the driver told me we were approaching Port Melbourne. I was already over-tipping him and gathering my things when he stopped in a tiny roundabout, ringed with palm trees and surrounded by polished, generic condos, and insistent, well-manicured bike paths. The glistening floor-to-ceiling condo windows looked out on the choppy water all the way to Tasmania and then, Antarctica. Neither was visible, sadly.

  There were other things which weren’t visible. First, people. Second, the cruise ship.

  For a minute, I couldn’t even locate the terminal until I glimpsed the “Station Pier” sign on the quaint, inflated, World War II-green Quonset hut in front of me. It was barely big enough to hide an SUV, much less a two-thousand-passenger ship.

  I looked at my adjusted watch. 3:30. It should still be here. A security guard in a too-tight uniform and patchy red beard approached, grinning.

  I smiled back. “Could you please give me the time?”

  “I can give you a lot more than that.” Seriously?

  When he saw my face, he looked at his watch. “Half four.”

  I had mis-changed my watch over the Marshall Islands. Dammit.

  “It went right on time. Need somewhere to stay?” He raised one ginger eyebrow

  “For thirty seconds?”

  He glared at me and stomped off. What were the rules on sexual harassment these days? If you rebuffed them and it hurt their feelings, were you supposed to back off the rejection to make them feel better? Or kick them in the balls?

  I grabbed my BlackBerry and tried Harriet. No response. My chiffon was damp and itchy and I could feel my false eyelashes going limp. I realized that, minus one or two hours of interrupted sleep on the plane, I’d been up for two days.

  There was a tiny nautical-themed bar beside the terminal. I was headed there when I heard a whistle. I whipped around to see a slight but gorgeous man in a dark blue golf shirt running toward me. As he got closer I read the white word Police on his chest.

  “You Redondo?”

  I hitched up my Balenciaga and held out my hand. “Cyd Redondo, Redondo Travel.”

  “Scott. Harbor Police. Friend of Harriet’s.”

  “Thank God. What did she say?”

  “For me to drop you on the boat.”

  “Fantastic. Thanks so much.” It was just like Harriet to be kind enough to arrange a speed boat. Bless her.

  Scott the cop grabbed my twenty-two-inch rolling bag and gestured me down the pier toward the police boat. I reached into my purse. I would need a scarf for my hair and my heaviest duty sunglasses to keep my lashes anchored. What else?

  I usually went for tight skirts, to give my hips a longer line, but they did restrict movement, so for ventilation and room for going up and down cruise ship stairs, I had opted for a Bisou Bisou permanent pleat swing skirt in a pale push-up ice cream orange. It swung like a beaded curtain just above my knees. With my nude-colored Steward Weitzman strappy sandals, I figured I looked continental enough for a boat ride.

  “Will we get wet?”

  “Not if we’re lucky.” Scott winked. I had always heard that men outside of America appreciated more mature women, but I’d thought it was just wishful thinking or PR.

  We arrived at the speed boat, then passed it.

  “Oh, no,” I said, as he stopped in front of a police helicopter instead.

  This wasn’t the first time I had been rescued by a helicopter. I hadn’t been dressed for it that time, either. My scarf might be good for an open boat, but was possibly Isadora Duncan territory with rotor blades. I folded it back into my purse. Scott reached for my carry-ons.

  “Is this covered by my trip insurance?” Helicopter-to-ship transport started at thirty-five thousand.

  “It’s covered by the fact I dated Harriet’s sister and it’s a slow day.”

  “What about your paperwork?”

  “No worries. Standard casino check.”

  Australia didn’t allow gambling on cruise ships until they were more than twelve nautical miles out.

  “Clever. I didn’t realize the ship was big enough for a landing pad.”

  “It’s not.”

  Chapter Eight

  “I thought you said you were dropping me on the boat.”

  “I am. Glad you dressed for it,” he grinned, checking out my whirly skirt. It was only eight inches below my Chantelle “Africa” thong. I had bought the whole set at La Petite Coquette’s End of Everything sale. Why, why hadn’t I put on the matching boy shorts instead?

  Scott stored my luggage, while I gripped my purse. Once we were inside, he explained we’d be traveling with the doors open, so I needed to be strapped in. That was reassuring. I insisted on attaching the handles of the Balenciaga to an S-clip on my harness. I tried to keep visual contact with my other two bags, for whatever good that might do.

  My stomach dropped as we lurched straight up off the dock. A couple of other cops on the blue and white police boat waved as we headed away from the skyscrapers and cranes of Melbourne, south and out to sea. I looked through the door at the water below and reminded myself that in eight seasons, Thomas Magnum, P.I. had never fallen out.

  “How long will we be flying?” I needed to calculate my drop prep time.

  “Not long. They’re only about five miles ahead. Probably still doing a muster for the add-ons. Still inside our jurisdiction.”

  “How far does your jurisdiction go?”

  “How far do you want it to go?” He moved his hand from the gear shift to my thigh.

  “Not that far.”

  He put his hand back on the gear shift. “Understood. Six miles.”

  “Just six miles? That’s not very far.”

  “Six for the Melbourne and Harbor Police. Twenty-four for the Victoria State Police.”

  “And if something happens further out?”

  “Up for grabs. Interpol, sometimes. Coast Guard, sometimes. Some of the cruise lines have their own investigators. Depends. It’s pretty much the Wild West in international waters.”

  “Do you have a lot of cruise crime near the port? Robberies? Rowdy tourists?”

  He laughed. “Nah. Almost none, as it goes. Occasionally some drunken crew members. All the really good stuff happens two hundred miles out.”

  “I can hardly wait,” I said.

  “That’s what they all say.” Scott took the helicopter higher.

  “So when you say ‘drop me,’ how exactly does that work?”

  “We prefer to call it lowering.”

  “It’s pretty damn low, all right. In the United States we would call this a bait and switch.”

  “Harriet said it would be better to surprise you.”

  “She absolutely did not.”

  “Okay. She didn’t. I wanted to enjoy at least part of the flight.”

  “Bastard. I’m serious, what am I going to have to do?”

  “See that rope ladder right there?” I looked over and saw a coil of string.
<
br />   “That thing that looks like a shoelace?”

  “It’s super cord, it can hold up to five hundred pounds.” Thanks to the psychotic Qantas weight limit, even with my carry-ons, I could stay under that. I just hoped I’d have enough weight to keep the ladder from flying up into the rotors. This was crazy. Why was I doing this?

  Then I thought about the Manzonis, wherever they were. I thought about Harriet and how many favors she’d called in to get me this trip, not to mention the private port-to-stern transportation. I thought about my family, and how I needed to redeem myself to them and all of Bay Ridge or it wasn’t really worth making it home alive.

  “So, talk me through it,” I said.

  “Okay. I’ll get as low as I can and throw out the ladder, then you climb down, and jump from there onto the deck.”

  “Just sort of free form? Can’t you attach me or something, in case I get wobbly or lose my grip?”

  “Do you really want to be attached to a moving helicopter?”

  “Yes or no?”

  “I can, but it will make it harder once you get close to the ground. You’ll have to take it off or unhook it.”

  “I’ll take my chances. How about a life jacket?” He rolled his eyes. “I saw that.”

  “Do you really think I’m going to miss the boat and drop you in the Bass Strait? Besides, I’ll keep hold of you until you stabilize yourself on the ladder.”

  “Don’t you need to keep flying?”

  “I’m dexterous.” He winked.

  This was the second time in two months I’d had a chance to flirt with a helicopter pilot. I wondered whether, as a group, they were good in bed? They were capable of concentration, and speedy action if necessary, but they could also be, well, flighty, and quick to exit.

  The last time I’d been in a helicopter, I’d been rushing to save my plus one, Roger Claymore, from death by poison dart frogs. Looking back, I’m not sure he fully appreciated my efforts, and the layers of lies he’d told me, even if they were necessary, still stung. So I tried to appreciate Scott’s muscled forearm as it pointed to his target, the Tasmanian Dream, coming up on the horizon. I sat up straight and opened my Balenciaga. Purse, don’t fail me now, I thought.

  I pulled out headbands and hair ribbons, bobby pins, hot pink duct tape, and one of my Tupperware nesting boxes. Tupperware had not only saved my life, but the life of my Madagascan chameleon on my last adventure. This time it might save a few other crucial items, including my passport and false eyelashes. Extensions were never quite the same after they got soaked.

  “Don’t look. Drive,” I said to Scott, who was staring at me.

  “It’s called flying.”

  “Then fly.”

  It was no easy task to peel off and hold onto my eyelashes beside an open helicopter window. Thank goodness I always used extra glue. I managed to peel them off and stick them to the front of my passport in the Tupperware. I encased it in pink duct tape, and put it back in my purse. Then I put the purse in my rolling backpack. I could handle the wheels digging into my back for the short time I had left to live. It wasn’t easy getting it on while strapped in, but updrafts were the mother of invention.

  Now, I just had to anchor my other rolling carry-on to my body. Which was stronger? The shoelace rope or my La Perla? This was a tough one. I didn’t want my decision to be affected by the fact that Scott was watching my every move with disbelief, so I went for both. I took two hair ribbons and tied them tight through the rolling pack handles and the backpack handles, then hooked them through my bra straps. That way, even if the harness broke, my stuff would land, or sink, with me.

  “You can’t take all of that on the ladder,” Scott said. “If there’s too much weight when you jump out it can unbalance the copter.” Great. “Just let me throw it down.”

  “How’s your aim?” I asked.

  “I’m the best bowler on my cricket team.”

  I had accidentally seen a cricket game on ESPN. “I’ll hold it.”

  “It’s your party. There it is.” The Tasmanian Dream was coming up too soon.

  I had done my research on the ship before I left. It had twelve decks and could carry nineteen hundred passengers and seven hundred crew—a “good ratio,” as we say in the travel business. The ship had been built in 1986 and was commissioned to Darling Cruises in 2001.

  None of these facts prepared me for the sight of the wedge of blue and white cutting through the heliotrope water—I got heliotrope wrong on the SATs, so now I used it as much as possible.

  Scott was right, it didn’t look like there was anywhere for the helicopter to land. Actually, it didn’t look like there was a lot of room for anything to land, including me. The largest portion of the top deck had a swimming pool in its middle. Dozens of passengers in orange life jackets were rammed in around it. I guessed they might scatter if I screamed loudly enough on what looked like a long way down.

  I could handle the drop. I knew I could. Given my family’s John le Carré level of spying, the only way I had managed any kind of social life had been climbing/jumping down from my fourth-floor attic room on a regular basis, usually in stilettos. I could probably stay on them at twenty knots. And I was good at holding tight to my bags, at least in a gunfight with an amputee. Those things weren’t really the problem.

  The problem was, I couldn’t swim.

  Chapter Nine

  I reminded myself that in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Sundance couldn’t swim either, and he made it down that river. Long term, though, not so much. And as Butch said in the first scene I ever saw with swearing, “Hell, the fall’ll kill ya.”

  Not if I could help it. I looked down at the purple-green waves and the orange deck below. My stomach did a preemptive jump. This was nuts. What was I doing? And for Sandra Manzoni, who had pricked a hole in my diaphragm? Twice? No, I was doing it for Barry, who punched Ralph Pinkowsky’s nose when he stole my lunch. I tried to sit up to my full height.

  “Ready, Robocop?”

  “Almost.”

  I took two flat, elastic Jackie O headbands and tied them together. I stuck my feet through my improvised headband-belt, and wiggled it up and over my pleated skirt to anchor it around my thighs. It would make landing harder, but at least it reduced my chances of flashing the passengers and crew, who would surround and judge me for the next five days and six nights.

  I nodded at Scott. He hooked a rope through the S-clamp. “Want to practice unhooking this before you’re airborne?” I opened and closed it a few times. He looked down at my shoes. “Sure you want to wear those?”

  “Least of my problems.” The idea of climbing down in bare, flat feet was much more terrifying.

  I had prepared for 1) wind 2) swinging 3) moisture 4) death. Hair disaster was the only probability left. I swirled mine up, tied it, then secured it with the bobby pins. This was going to be fine. It probably wasn’t much farther down than a roller coaster on Coney Island. I felt the copter slowing down.

  “Time to unhook. I’ll hold onto you and throw out the ladder.”

  “And you’ve done this a bunch, right?”

  “Once. With a U.S. Army Seal. You’re going to have to stand up. Good thing you’re short,” Scott said.

  “Screw you. And stop laughing. How do I get on the ladder?”

  “Just pretend you’re climbing backwards into a swimming pool. And don’t look down until you hit the final rung.” The last time I’d climbed backwards into a pool my brousin Jimmy had tried to drown me.

  Great. I wasn’t going to let him know that his advice might as well have been in Chinese. Okay, here went nothing. I checked that I was still attached to the safety rope and that my carry-ons were secure. I took a deep breath, unhooked my seat belt, then grabbed onto it as I turned to face Scott.

  “We’ll always have Melbourne.” He tucked his card into the front pock
et of my carry-on.

  I reached back with my heel into—thin air. Thin, whirling air. I jabbed my leg around until my stiletto finally caught a rung of the rope ladder. Scott gave me an encouraging smile.

  “Keep the damn thing still, will you?” I yelped.

  My other foot found the rung. I felt pretty “back heavy” and had to lean forward to stay stable. I took Scott’s advice about not looking down as I repeated the process—air, rope, air, rope, rope burn. It would be okay. At that moment, a huge gust of wind caught the ladder and I almost lost my grip as I floated too close to the landing skids. I heard squeals below. I must have clinched my glutes then, as my headband-belt broke and released my swirly skirt. Upward.

  “How many more rungs?” I yelled.

  “Do you really want me to look?”

  Then I could tell that I was close, because people were screaming “Jump!” So much for my stealth vacation, secretly investigating the crew.

  Were they just cheering me on, cheering my Chantelle thong, or something worse? I finally looked down and saw the deck, no farther than the bottom of our fire escape. Of course, I was used to landing on grass, not concrete. I decided a broken leg was really going to hamper my vacation. Water gave me the willies, but there were dozens of people in life jackets to retrieve me before I drowned, so it might be a good idea to swing out over the pool before I let go. But I didn’t want my luggage wet, especially my purse. Even Bay Ridge Leathers would have a hard time with red leather and chlorine. I noticed a tall, buff man with a lifeguard tank top and matching Speedo staring up at me. From this angle, he had nice dirty blond hair, at least on top.

  I pointed to my bag. “Can you catch this?”

  He nodded. I was having to trust a whole lot of strangers today. I unhooked and tossed the larger bag first, to test his reflexes. He caught it and placed it on a lounge chair. People clapped. Good. He had an audience, which meant incentive.

  There was still my backpack, with my Balenciaga inside. Bad things had happened the last time I’d let go of it, so I hesitated. I heard Scott yell for me to hurry up. As I moved to unhook the rolling backpack, my fingers slipped and I lost hold of the ladder.