Flush - Carl Hiaasen [55]
I decided to make a run for it, crowds and all, and pray that nobody would try to catch me. Shelly had said that most of the regular customers were so heavy into the gambling that a rhinoceros could get loose on board and they wouldn’t care. I hoped she was right.
Quietly I gathered up the empty dye bottles—the only evidence that could ever incriminate me—and stowed them in Abbey’s backpack.
But as I reached out and unlocked the door, the metal handle began to jiggle violently. Somebody was trying to get into the head.
I grabbed the handle with both hands and braced my shoes against the sink.
“Hey, open up!” demanded a croaky female voice. “I gotta go!”
Either she didn’t see the OUT OF ORDER sign, or she was so desperate that it didn’t matter. From outside came a heavy grunt, and the handle was nearly yanked from my grip.
The door opened no more than two inches, but it was enough to give me a startling peek at the intruder. She looked about eighty-five in both age and weight, which wasn’t what I expected. She was pulling so ferociously on the door that I wouldn’t have been surprised to see a three-hundred-pound sumo wrestler on the other side.
“You open up right this second!” the old woman squawked. “I gotta go now!”
She wore a shiny copper-colored wig that fit like a helmet. Her face was caked with powdery makeup, and her sparkly fake eyelashes were longer than a camel’s. A cigarette dangled from parrotfish lips that were puffy and painted the color of sliced mangoes.
“Can’t you read the sign?” I asked through the crack.
“What sign, Einstein?”
That’s when I spotted the piece of cardboard between her feet on the scuffed floor. Shelly’s tack must have come loose.
“Hey, you’re not even a Mermaid!” the old woman snapped, spitting her cigarette. “Get outta that bathroom ‘fore I call Security.”
It took all my strength to pull the door shut.
“You little sicko!” She let out a string of cuss words that would have put my Grandma Janet into cardiac arrest.
“Go away,” I pleaded. “This is an emergency.”
“Emergency? I’ll show you a damn emergency.” The parrotfish lady pounded at the flimsy door with her bony fists. “My bladder’s about to blow like Mount Saint Helen, you hear me, young man?”
Now she was shouting like a maniac. I knew it wouldn’t be long before a crew member came running to see what was wrong.
“Listen up, you brat,” the woman said. “I’m gonna count to five and then I’m bustin’ in—and you better not be sittin’ on that john when I do. You read me, junior? It ain’t gonna be pretty.”
“Please don’t,” I said, but it was hopeless.
“One! Two! …”
There was no other choice. I stood up from the toilet, put on the backpack, and lowered one shoulder. When the nasty old buzzard barked “Five!” I crashed out the door, ducked under her flailing, twig-sized arms, and took off running.
Nobody would’ve paid much attention if she hadn’t started shrieking: “Catch him! Catch that rotten little pervert!”
Luckily, I’m pretty fast and not real tall, so I was able to dodge and weave through the legs of the gamblers. A few of them glanced up, and one or two actually made a lame grab for my shirt. Fortunately, most of them had been celebrating hard and were in no condition to chase after me.
Shelly’s eyes got as wide as saucers when I flew past the bar. A bleary, leathery-faced man who I assumed was Billy Babcock spun on his stool and exclaimed, “Is that a kid on the boat?”
I headed topside. An angry yell rose from behind me, and I turned to see two humongous guys in hot pursuit. They looked seriously ticked off. Each wore a tight red T-shirt with the words EVENT STAFF silk-screened across the front.
Shelly had warned me about them—the bouncers.
They bellowed at me to stop, but that wasn’t going to happen. I scampered to the upper deck and ran straight for the bow. Reflected below, in the glassy basin, were the twinkling, Christmassy lights of