Christopher Moore Island Of The Sequined Love Nun (v5.0) (pdf)

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children?
No.
Very good, she said. She plunged the needle into his shoulder and
pushed the plunger.
Ouch. Hey, you could have warned me. Aren t you supposed to swab
that with alcohol first or something?
She stepped to the door and smiled again. I don t think infec
Island of the Sequined Love Nun / 157
tion is going to be a problem, Mr. Pardee. Now don t panic, but in a minute
or so you are going to go to sleep. I can t believe you bought that bit about
the encephalitis. People get stupid living in the tropics, don t you think?
She went out of focus and the lines of the room started to heave as if the
entire structure was breathing. What was in& ? His tongue was too heavy;
the words wouldn t come.
You don t have a staff and you didn t call anyone at AP, Mr. Pardee.
That was a stupid lie. We ll have to put self-importance down under cause
of death.
Pardee tried to stand, but his legs wouldn t obey him. He slid off the
chair and his legs splayed straight out in front of him.
Beth Curtis bent over him, pushed her lips into a pout, and baby-talked.
Oh, are his wittle wegs all wobbly? She stood up straight and put her
hands on her hips. To Pardee her face floated like the moon through clouds.
She said, You re probably thinking that I m being unusually cruel to
tease a dying man, but you see, you re not dying right now. Soon, but not
right now.
Pardee tried to form a question, but the room seemed to go liquid and
crash over him like a black wave.
Sebastian Curtis walked down the dock to where the crew of the Micro
Spirit was unloading fuel drums from a longboat. He was wearing his white
lab coat over Bermuda shorts and a Hawaiian shirt, a stethoscope hung
from his neck like a medallion of power.
The Micro Spirit s first mate, who was drinking a Coke while supervising
the unloading, jumped up on the dock to meet the doctor. Good morning.
Good morning, Curtis said. Are you in charge here?
I m the first mate.
Curtis regarded the tattooed Tongan. Mr. Pardee will be staying with
us for a while. He s asked me to tell you not to wait for him.
That don t bother you? the mate asked. It seemed strange to him after
the effort Pardee had made to sneak onto the island.
No, of course not. In fact, we ve offered to fly Mr. Pardee to Hawaii
when he finishes his work.
The mate had never heard Pardee s name in the same sentence as the
word work. It didn t sound right. Still, he had his job to do
158 / Christopher Moore
and the doctor was paying double freight for these barrels. He said, Is he
going to pay his fare?
Curtis smiled and pulled a wad of bills out of the pocket of his shorts.
Of course. He asked me to give you the money. How much is it?
From Truk, one way, is three hundred.
The doctor counted out a stack of twenties and held it out to the mate.
Here s six hundred. Mr. Pardee asked me to pay the round-trip fare, since
that s what he originally contracted for.
The mate stared at the stack of bills. He had known Jefferson Pardee for
ten years and had never even known the man to buy a beer; now he was
just giving him three hundred extra dollars? Three hundred dollars that
the company and the captain didn t know about. Okay, he said. He
snatched the money out of the doctor s hand and shoved it into his pocket
before the crew could see.
He would get the whole crew drunk and they would toast the generosity
of Jefferson Pardee.
36
Return to the Sky
The Lear 45 was a working corporate issue, the seats upholstered in muted
blues and grays, facing each other over small worktables. For some reason
Tucker had expected something more unusual: bright carnival colors with
a monkey in a flight attendant outfit perhaps; a stark metal interior stripped
for cargo; maybe stainless steel over enamel with a lot of complicated
medical gizmos. Nope, this was the standard, run-of-the-mill station wagon
model of your basic four-million-dollar jet.
He slid into the pilot s seat and a rage of adrenaline coursed through
him, as if his body was reliving the crash of the pink Gulfstream. He fought
the urge to bolt, let the adrenaline jag settle to a low-grade nausea, then
started his preflight checklist. Everything looked normal; the instruments
and controls were in place. He snapped on the power for the gauges and
nothing happened: no lights, no LEDs, nothing.
He felt the plane move as someone came up the retractable steps and
suddenly one of the guards reached around him and inserted a cylindrical
key into a socket on the instrument board. The guard turned the key several
times and the cockpit whirred to life.
This thing has a main power cutoff? Tuck said to the guard.
The guard removed the key and walked off the plane without saying a
word. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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