While the novel is still being finalized for publication, I thought that I would share with you an excerpt from the book. I hope you will enjoy reading it.
DEAD IN THE WATER
“Lieutenant Morales,
Lieutenant Morales, please wake up, sir. Hurry. We need your help right away.
Lieutenant Morales, please sir".
I rolled over in bed and
pulled the alarm clock closer to my face so that I could read it better. The clock's dial glowed 5:00 in a sickening
green color. Was that a.m. or p.m.? I
really had no idea. It seemed like I had a hard time remembering things lately.
In fact, I wasn’t even too sure how I had ended up back in my own cabin. Or at least I thought it was my own cabin.
“Lieutenant Morales, please
answer me if you are in there. We need
your help right away. We think there may
have been a murder on board the ship.” The voice sounded to me like a roar,
even through the thick cabin door.
After a few seconds, I got
my bearings and was finally able to recognize the voice as belonging to one of
the new security guards I had recently hired to replace two guards who had been
fired for drug smuggling shortly before I was hired as head of security on
board the Mardi Gras.
“Roman, Roman, something or other,” I mumbled
as I rolled over onto my back, as I finally remembered the name of the man
whose voice I heard outside my stateroom door. “What the hell does he want at
this time of the morning,” I wondered. “Goddamn him, just when I was starting
to fall asleep after being awake all night.”
The pounding on my door
continued but all I wanted was to be left alone. I had a throbbing, migraine headache, and I
felt like I might throw up. I did recall
that the Captain’s welcoming party the night before had gone on for a lot
longer than usual and I had drunk way too much tequila. I did not particularly
like tequila, but there was a certain young woman at the party, who I was
drinking with and she loved tequila. Lots of it. I could barely keep up with her as we downed
tequila sunrises together at dinner and later at the bar in the ship’s lounge.
Truth be told, I hadn’t had a drink in over a year since I left LA. Little
wonder I felt so lousy now.
“What was her name? I’m not
sure that she even told me.” I thought
that she was Asian----Chinese, or Vietnamese or maybe, Korean, but I wasn’t
even sure about that. But I was certain
that she was quite beautiful. She wore her long black hair down to her waist
and her eyelashes seemed almost as long. She had on a black, silk, split leg
dress that was slit to her hip and showed off her surprisingly long brown legs.
I thought she looked incredibly sexy. “I must look her up this morning.”
“Get me some coffee. Black,
no sugar,” I yelled as I started to climb out of the narrow single bed. “I’ll
be right out.” I climbed slowly out of bed and stood up and immediately I
realized that the ship was not moving. Usually, when the ship is moving, I feel
a little unsteady when I first get out of bed or stand up from a chair. When I
was being interviewed for the job as head of security aboard the Mardi Gras, I
had told the interviewer that I had lived my whole life in California and had
never been on a ship before. He assured me, “Don’t worry; you’ll get your sea
legs in no time.” He was wrong. It had been six months and I still seemed to
feel woozy half the time.
Once out of bed, I walked
over to the far side of the cabin and looked out the small porthole. The ship
was enveloped in a thick, black fog. I couldn’t tell where the water ended and
the sky began, it was so thick. We must be stopped in the middle of the Gulf of
Mexico. I hoped it was only the fog and
not some mechanical problem that had caused the ship to be dead in the water.
There had been a rash of
mechanical problems recently on all of the Mariner cruise ships. A few months
before I came on board, there had been a suspicious fire in the engine room of
the Mardi Gras, which had required the evacuation of the ship. Passengers
aboard all four of the Mariner ships also had gotten violently ill from the
norovirus. The cruise line’s public relations department had issued press
releases claiming that all of these intestinal problems were caused by the
passengers themselves. But, because of these problems, the cruise line had
become fodder for the late night, television talk show hosts almost every
night. Bookings were definitely down as a result and Mariner had recently filed
for bankruptcy.
I had been chief of
security on the Mardi Gras for almost six months. I had found life aboard the
Mardi Gras to be quite pleasant. Since I
had come on board, I and my deputy, and our crew of eight security guards had
investigated several robberies and assaults on board the ship. Most of these
were of a petty nature. I made sure that
security aboard the ship was quite tight because it is well known that some
passengers on cruise ships are affluent and travel with a considerable amount
of cash and jewelry. For that reason, a variety of petty criminals and a few
well-trained thieves stalk the cruise ships to prey on those passengers. But
murder? I quickly dismissed the thought that there had been a murder on board
my ship. Not that I wasn’t familiar with murder. I had seen plenty of murders while working
homicide out of the Ramparts Division west of downtown Los Angeles, where there
were frequent homicides in that most-densely populated part of the city.
But, undoubtedly, I said to
myself, this supposed murder on board the ship, will turn out to be nothing but
a false alarm. It was early March and there were hundreds of college kids
aboard the ship for spring break, many of whom got quite drunk on the mai tais
and other drinks that freely flowed aboard the ship. I thought that this
“murder” may just be one of those college pranks that those kids loved to play
on the crew just for the hell of it.
I convinced myself that Roman had failed to
examine all of the facts. The facts do not lie, I said to myself. For me, Roman
was just a little too excitable and I may have to reconsider his hiring, Little
did I know how wrong I would turn out to be.
“I hear you, you idiot. I
hear you. Now just keep quiet. You’ll
wake up the whole damn ship.” The last
thing that I wanted to happen was to have Roman create a panic among the
passengers on the ship with these cries of “murder.” Some of the passengers who were awake were
probably already wondering why the ship was stopped in the middle of the Gulf
of Mexico. Now, if they heard about a murder on the ship---well, who knows what
might happen.
Every week, the Mardi Gras sailed
between Miami and Cozumel, Mexico, with a short day stop in Key West, Florida.
The four and five day cruises ran between early January and early May. At one
time, the Mardi Gras had been a state of the art cruise ship, but now it had
seen better days. Several times during the last year or so, it had stopped dead
in the water due to mechanical problems.
The Mardi Gras generally
had almost 2000 passengers on board as well as a crew of at least 1000. The
logistics of providing food for those 3000 people were astounding. The
logistics of interviewing those same 3000 people about a potential murder or
disappearance were even more frightening to me.
Yet each of those 3000
people was a potential witness who might add something to the puzzle if indeed
there was a murder. On the other hand, we were still a day’s sail away from
Miami. The last thing we needed was to
stir up mass hysteria among the passengers and crew if they thought a murderer
was loose among them.
“I’ll be right out, goddamn it. And quiet
down, for God’s sake,” I yelled through the door.
The last thing I did after getting dressed and
before leaving my cabin was to put on my St. Michael medal which I wore on a
silver chain around my neck. I never
went anywhere without it. St. Michael was the patron saint of police officers
and I believed he had saved my life more than once. I had been an altar boy
when I was a kid and even thought about becoming a priest. My mother would have loved it if I had been
ordained a priest, but I knew that I was not cut out for the religious life.
But I still believed and tried to get to Mass as often as I could. When I was
still on the LAPD, some of the other cops would call me “St. Mario” because I went
to Mass so often. I sort of liked the nickname.
“So, where is this
so-called murder?,” I said as I stepped out of my stateroom into the narrow
hall. I was surprised to see not only
Roman, but also Sergeant Virginia Boudreaux, my deputy and, most surprisingly,
Captain Antonio Vivaldi, the captain of the Mardi Gras. The Captain was wearing his immaculate dress
white uniform, which always looked as though it had just come back from the dry
cleaners. I had been told that some crew members sometimes joked about Vivaldi
because his name was the same as the famed Italian composer and they had heard
the Captain playing Vivaldi’s music in his cabin long into the night. I myself
preferred Herbie Hancock’s jazz albums.
“This must be serious to
get you out of bed this early, Tony” I joked to the Captain. But Vivaldi did
not laugh and said nothing in response.
“Lieutenant, I think you
should take this matter seriously,” said Sergeant Boudreaux. “We believe a
woman may have been murdered on her honeymoon.”
“So, you believe a woman
has been murdered,” I said. “And on her honeymoon, no less. Well, tell me,
where is the body?”
“Well, sir, there is no
body,” piped up Roman.
“No body, but a murder has
been committed. Very interesting. This is an impossibility. Why are you
wasting my time? Are you sure this is not just one of those spring break
pranks?” I was still irritated at being
awakened so early in the morning and I was almost ready to turn back and return
to my cabin to sleep off this powerful hangover that was gripping me.
“It is very complex” said
Captain Vivaldi.
“Murder is always complex, Tony. But you must
have a body.” I continued, “And who is this woman who has been murdered.”
Captain Vivaldi again
responded, “Her name is Linda Weigand. She is on the cruise ship with her new
husband, Robert. It was her husband who called to report that she was missing
and that he suspected she may have been murdered.”
Suddenly, this
disappearance took on a totally new flavor. Maybe this was something more than
just a sophomoric, fraternity brothers’ prank.
