We ate our fill of the starter—“delicate avocado foam on a fire-roasted sea scallop”—and Helen and I eased out of the dining room when the main course was passed. We left our bags on our chairs to make it look like we’d just stepped out to use the powder room. I spotted Executive Guest Services Coordinator Heather Fanning table-hopping with a smile fixed to her mouth as she made sure everyone was having a wonderful time on this wonderful ship and was “hashtag blessed.” I gave Helen an almost imperceptible nod. Fanning was senior staff and her key card would be a master.
As we passed her, Helen snaked out a slender arm and retrieved Heather’s key card from her pocket. I shot Helen a wink. Her hands might shake a little, but she still had the talented fingers that made her the best pickpocket of all of us. She slid the key card into my hand and I palmed it as we headed downstairs.
I’d dressed for ease of movement in a black jersey jumpsuit and flats. Helen was wearing a linen shift the color of lemon drops and a pashmina a few shades darker. She’d finished the outfit with a twist of rough-cut amber beads at her throat. They rattled slightly in the hushed stillness of the crew’s quarters, just loud enough to attract attention we didn’t want. I put out my hand and motioned for her to take them off.
She plucked the seams at her hips. “No pockets,” she mouthed silently. I pointed to mine and she handed the beads over.
We found the crew cabins quickly. I had planned to break into the housekeeping closet to find the roster listing the cabin assignments, but there was no need. In college, we had papered the doors of our dorm rooms with brown paper grocery bags cut open and laid flat. Those were the days before answering machines, when people left messages on your door in grease pencil or felt-tip pen, and when the door was too full of notes or too many people had drawn dicks, you tore it off and started over. Here the doors were each fitted with tidy little whiteboards, but they served the same purpose. A dry-erase marker was neatly tethered to each one, and at the top, the name of the crew member assigned to the cabin had been printed in turquoise, the i’s dotted with starfish—a Heather Fanning signature touch.
We passed down the corridor, scanning the whiteboards until we came to Cabin 24. Kevin C.
I swiped the key card. There was a brief second of nothing and then a green light blinked; the mechanism clicked. I pushed open the door and we slipped inside, pulling the door closed behind us.
Helen’s eyes were round with horror. “Cams?” she whispered.
I looked around the cabin, answering her almost as an afterthought. “I didn’t see any.”
“But they might have them,” she persisted.
“Jesus, Helen, calm down. If they do, we’ll just say we’re elderly kleptomaniacs looking for something to steal. The worst they would do is slap us on the wrist and send us to bed without any dessert.”
She wasn’t happy about my flippancy, but she didn’t fight me. I turned to search the room, wondering if I’d made a mistake in bringing her. She had lifted the key card well enough, but her nerve was fading and the one thing you couldn’t afford to lose in our line of work was your composure.
I motioned for her to check the drawers, but I didn’t think we’d find anything there. Or underneath the mattress, though I slid my hands down the length of it anyway. The wardrobe was impersonal, hung with spare uniforms and one set of shore clothes.
Helen made her way methodically through the drawers, feeling her way through neat stacks of underwear—tighty-whities, I was sad to note—and T-shirts.
“There’s nothing,” she said as she shut the drawer with an expression of disapproval. “Maybe we should just give him the benefit of the doubt and wait to see what he has to say for himself.”
I ignored her and moved on. In the bottom of the wardrobe, there was a canvas bag with a printed name tag that said kevin cochran.
“Sloppy,” I said. In the old days, we always chose our own initials for an alias. It made it easier to cover slips of the tongue. Plus, if you had anything monogrammed, you could still wear it on a job. We had been trained with an old-fashioned attention to detail, but times had changed. Now the training was about gunsights and blast radius, and I hated it. I hated it even more for making me feel like a dinosaur in my own job, and I yanked open the bag irritably.
A book fell out, a worn paperback written by a man who was in love with guns and his own penis and probably not in that order. There was nothing else inside, and I realized it was a very big bag—much too big for the few personal items Fogerty had brought on board. I had just put the bag back when Helen called my name softly.