The Penny Ferry da-2 Read online

  She didn't move, even when I knelt down and shook her.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Then Sam was next to me and I was murmuring a prayer between clenched teeth and everything was blurry but clear when I blinked. The bridge seemed to rock like a roller coaster. I lifted my eyes up and saw the big fawn-colored dog wandering over the yard far, far away. It was a dream. A very bad dream.

  "It's okay… goin' to be okay, Doc," I heard Sam say softly. Then Mary opened her eyes and stared at me. She didn't say anything, just stared. Then she looked confused. She frowned, and tried to sit up. We held her back. I heard Popeye barking far away.

  "Charlie?"

  "What?"

  "He hit me."

  "I know."

  "He hit me with his coat I think."

  "You're not shot anywhere? I can't see any blood."

  "No. I was standing here on the bridge when he ran past. He held out the side of his coat at me-"

  "Probably had a sap in his coat pocket," said Sam. "You'll be all right in a minute. just don't move fast."

  Sam should've been a doctor, I thought. Then I saw that her face was all wet. Wet with tears. Mine. I wiped it dry and she got up. When I saw that she was really honest-to-God okay, I dropped her arm and went over to the railing of the bridge and puked.

  I'm as tough as they come. You bet.

  I led her to the car and was about to slide behind the wheel when I looked back. I saw Sam walking up behind the dog with his gun in his hand. The dog was going through the blown-out doorway of the big mill building in the front yard. Popeye was walking slowly, stiff-jointed, in a stoop-shouldered stalk. Sam was looking up at the rows of dusky windows where a bad guy could lean out and loose off a couple of rounds. They needed help.

  "Can you drive? Good. Get out of here and find a pay phone at least live blocks away. Call the local fuzz and have them send a bunch of cruisers here. Then hang up and dial Joe in Boston. Don't come back here no matter what. I'll meet you at a pub called the Dubliner on Market Street."

  "But I don't know where Mar-"

  "Just ask; they'll tell you."

  "I'm not going unless you come too! You can't-"

  "Get out of here or I'll knock your block off"' I said, gripping her upper arm until she winced. I watched her speed off. Marital discussion is nice and everything, but when a couple of bad-asses are walking around the place with heaters drawn, discussion has no part in the program. Discussion is closed.

  I dogtrotted back through the gate and into the yard, headed toward the old wrecked chimney and the big building next to it where the man and dog stood frozen, straining forward yet still, like hunters in a field of quail. I trotted along a zigzag path, deliberately making myself bounce. I wanted to keep moving. I caught up to them. We all scanned the dark windows above.

  "He in there, Doc. That sucker in there. He tried to split the scene but ol' Popeye head him off."

  Still looking up, the gun muzzle raised to guard himself, Sam ran his sinewy arm down the leather lead and unsnapped it from Popeye's collar. The collar was big enough for a Clydesdale. He pointed at the near door and said stay. The dog placed himself in front of it in a half-crouch, mouth open, panting. Then the heavy flews drew back, revealing a mean grin. Popeye growled.

  "Ain't nobody goin' through that door," said Sam as he led me around the other way. We stood on each side of the old wooden door for several seconds, listening. Then we went in. The first floor was deserted. There was nothing in it but dirt anyway. We went to the far end where the dog was, then walked softly back to our side of the building, leaving the dog to guard the other, and went up. This was the floor with the old mattresses and office furniture piled high and strewn about. Dark and dirty, with a thousand places to hide and ambush.

  "Now I wish we had the d0g," whispered Sam. "You stay behind me now; don't get off to the side, you'll get shot."

  He didn't have to tell me. I was beginning to feel like Huck Finn on the old steamboat wreck: I was sorry I'd come. Halfway through the building and nothing. Then Sam stopped and held a finger to his lips. We waited motionless in the gloom. Then I heard it, a faint sound at regular intervals. Breathing. Somebody was in the building not far from us, breathing. Almost panting. I held the cane four inches above the ferrule, ready to wing it at the first thing that moved. Its knobby end was heavy, but it was a pathetic weapon against a handgun.

  Sam led me to a spot behind a plaster-covered column and an old tipped-over desk. He held his motorcycle keys up and began to jingle them softly. Then louder.

  "C'mon, Popeye," he said in a coarse whisper. "C'mon!"

  Instantly there was a rustling and scrabbling in the far darkness. Sam drew back the hammer of his piece with a loud clack.

  "Stay down," he said. I saw the dim figure of the man jump up from behind old boxes and furniture. He wasn't where we'd thought. A brightness and a big explosion, and at the same second Sam returned fire from our refuge behind the column. If you ever have the chance to be in an enclosed place with somebody letting off a large-bore pistol, don't take it. My ears hurt, and there was a silent ringing in them as I crouched deeper in the junk furniture. I finally raised my head when I again heard the scrabbling sound of someone moving fast in a crouch. The place was brighter now, owing to the fact that one of Sam's big slugs had torn away part of a metal window frame and let more sunshine in. Nothing like a little cheer…

  "Stay put," whispered Sam, inching ahead. The man had not left the building. Apparently he now knew that the dog wasn't really with us. Since I was not armed- and totally unprepared mentally for using a firearm against a human- Sam thought it best that I remain safely tucked behind the pillar. And I agreed. Sam catwalked to the next column. The rustling sound was moving to our right. I could see nothing there. The bright shaft of sunlight was a hindrance because it made the darkness beyond even blacker. All I could see was the explosion-bright dust-swirl in the sunlight. I heard the clack of the hammer as Sam cocked a the revolver. He shouldn't have done that, because less than a second later a big chunk of the column blew away inches from his head. Sam fired twice at where he'd seen the muzzle flash, but after all the roaring and ringing died away I could again hear that scrabbling and rustling sound that told me our quarry was still moving around. He was a cool one, too. Chances are he'd been in scrapes before. Hunkering down in the dust and dirt, I remembered my previous adventure in another old factory, where I'd almost lost my life because of people shooting each other. The morning had indeed taken, a nasty tum. I couldn't help wishing I were someplace else. Like Bhutan, for instance. I crept forward and to my right. I didn't want to pull any fancy stuff; if Sam mistook me for the other guy I'd have nowhere to hide. More scraping and rustling. Then I heard breathing pretty close by. Or was it farther away and I was just nervous? I was nervous, no doubt about that. More creeping forward. Two quickish jumps to my left. Sam. I thought…

  Next there was a long period of quiet. Which I did not care for at all. I'd rather have them shooting now and then just so I could keep my bearings. Then I heard the breathing coming closer, but before I had a chance to creep forward with my cane, Sam fired again. The shot was dead on, or almost, because I heard a distinct running and shortly afterward saw the upright rectangle of light which meant the far door had been flung open. Sam fired again as it swung shut. We charged the door and I saw the baseball-sized hole in it where the doctored bullet had I spread out on impact like a pancake. Running footsteps on the stairs. Another door. Where was the dog? We followed down, around, down, and out into bright daylight.

  There sat Popeye, who hadn't moved a muscle. He seemed glad to see us; obviously our stranger-marksman hadn't come out this way. Then the dog was off, sprinting around the corner of the big mill. Sam reloaded, and we followed in time to see our trenchcoat-clad friend making a beeline for one of the smaller buildings. When we got around the side enough to follow the action, we saw him rush in and slam the door behind him. The dog never broke stride, and must have
been doing at least thirty when he hit the door. Popeye left the ground fourteen feet in front of the door. For an instant he seemed to sail through the air like one of those gazelles in a slow-motion nature film. His black muzzle was down, and he hit the door just like the Billy Goats Gruff. It exploded, and he sailed right on in.

  "Gotdamn!" said Sam as we closed the distance. We backed up tight against the doorway, then Sam peeked around. We went in. The dog was standing in front of yet another door at the opposite end of the building. He was so far away, and the interior so dark, we could scarcely see him. We trotted toward him, flinging glances over our shoulders, and opened that door, and the dog went out trailing, nose to the ground, in the direction of the fence.

  "He's not inside anymore?" I asked.

  "Naw. Popeye would smell him. He gone now. And look."

  He pointed at a dark spot on the buckled asphalt.

  "Winged him too. Just a sliver, no more. But I winged him."

  We stared at the fence. Sam called the dog back. Popeye wasn't moving so fast. His eyes had lost their brightness. I realized how the beast had gotten his name. The eyes protruded from the flat, mashed face. Now they looked tired. I felt tired. Sam looked- tired. Our weary trio went slowly, half stumbling, back to the main gate. The dog sat, then sank to his belly. Popeye was working on a monstrous concussion.

  Two cruisers pulled up, sirens blaring, lights snapping, and we all got in.

  CHAPTER TEN

  The cruisers of the Lowell PD snaked around the old textile compound looking for the man we described. No luck. He was a slippery one, was the guy in the trenchcoat. More cars were dispatched to continue the search while we were dropped off at the Dubliner. The Market Street section is the New Lowell, the phoenix arising from the ashes of the abandoned mills. Across the street were new condos made from converted mill buildings.

  The Dubliner was an attractive pub that bordered an area increasingly filled with fine shops and busy offices. We found Mary pacing out front. Our greeting wasn't peaceful, but I realized through it all that her anger was the result of worry. We sat in a booth with one of the officers and I bought beers. The officer had coffee. We told him what had happened. Not only was he not impressed, but he informed us we had trespassed. Fortunately for us, Joe arrived shortly thereafter and smoothed things over. The squad car left for the factory, and we had lunch. The others dug into their bacon-cheeseburgers on bulkies, and I had a small Greek salad. Unless you're a lumberjack you've either got to skip lunch or go light. If you don't, before long you'll look like Santa Claus. We had more beer and then coffee. The strings were beginning to loosen, the tension of the 0. K. Corral incident receding.

  The manager, who had refused to let Popeye into the establishment, stopped by our booth in a distressed state. The bull mastiff had sprawled in front of the Dubliner's door for a little post-adventure snooze. Patrons and potentials, seeing the beast in their path, were afraid to enter or leave. I looked out the window and saw pedestrians glance down, shift into high gear, and move right on. They were avoiding the place like a herpes hooker. So we brought the big lug in and he went up to Mary and started wagging his tail and big fat butt around and whining and piddling. The manager looked on and shook his head slowly. Joe tried again to pat Popeye, who growled at him. Then Joe reached over and gave Sam a quick pat near his upper arm. Joe winced.

  "Use it?"

  "Uh-huh."

  "Score?"

  "Uh-huh. Indirectly; clipped him with a splinter I think."

  Joe groaned softly and pinched the bridge of his nose, his eyes shut.

  "You guys give me a pain in the ass," he said. He reached over and tapped me under the arm. "You packing iron too?"

  "Of course not, dummy. I don't even own a shoulder holster

  "Well I just never know with you, Doc. You're a strange one, with your fancy watches and-"

  "Pooooor baaaaaaby!" cooed Mary as she patted the dog's head. "Baaaaaby got a headache, hmmmmm?" She wrenched open his mouth and popped in three Excedrin, closed his mouth, held it shut, and massaged his throat until his big pink tongue popped out, which meant the pills had been swallowed. Sam watched, amazed.

  "Let's split," said Joe, getting up. "The state lab team will meet us at the factory. They're probably already there."

  The manager was glad to see us go. On the way I stopped at a hardware store and bought a small crowbar, a pony sledge-hammer, and a broad mason's chisel. I knew there were tools left at the scene, but in all likelihood the lab boys would want them.

  Within thirty minutes eight of us wound our way up the dismal stairs and onto the landing where we'd first spotted our man. e The room was halfway down the hall on the right. Right in the center of the big building. We went in. There was a very faint aroma in there I didn't like. A burnt smell. Popeye went over to the wall on the left and jumped up, sniffing. He whined and wagged his tail, then dropped to all fours and turned in a tight circle. Whined louder. Cried. Wailed. To the dog's left, near the door we had entered, the wall was torn. The plaster and lath had been hacked away from the studding and lay on the floor in a heap. This had been the falling noise, the patter of debris like heavy rain, we'd heard from the floor below before our mysterious friend had knocked off work and fled, shooting at us.

  "He picked the wrong place to look," I said. "That's why he didn't find it."

  "Find what?" asked Joe.

  "Johnny's pouch. It's in there. In the wall. Didn't you notice the dog's reaction? That's why we brought him in the first place. He just also happens to be good at bulldozing old doors. I'm going into that wall to get the pouch because I bet my anterior bridge is inside. Now you see why our errand doesn't look so dumb?"

  "I just wish you'd told me is all," he said. "And you're not doing any banging and digging until the lab boys case this place."

  And they did. While we watched from the doorway, they took photographs of everything, and one guy made a sketch showing measurements, the window and door, and the location of the old desk that was in there. The team dusted the place for prints, collected fibers and dust from the floor, placed some cigarette butts in vials, and carefully collected the tools (a hammer and cold chisel) left by our mysterious friend. Then they left. Joe, Mary, Sam, and I stared at the wall. Then Joe examined the floor closely and drew our attention to large scrape marks on the floor. They led to the heavy old desk. His eyes went back to the wall, which was ruined along its upper edge where it joined the ceiling. There was about a two-foot line along the top where the plaster and lath had been removed from the timbers a long time ago, perhaps in the expectation of installing plumbing pipes or heating ducts. But it had never happened. That meant there were deep troughs between the studs that ran all the way down the wall toward the floor. The big gash in the wall was as high up as a basketball net."

  "What they did was," said Joe, "they dragged that desk from the middle of the room over to the wall here, then dragged it back. Yeah, they dropped something down behind the facing all right."

  I watched the dog jump up again, forelegs on the wall, nose pointed straight up, whining. I took hammer and chisel and poked through the wall just above the floor, right below him. Nothing but space. I tried farther up and ran into horizontal cross bracing between studs. So I tried right above the bracing, and before half a minute was up I was seeing glimpses, through the plaster dust and crumpled, splintered lathboard, of gray canvas. When the hole was big enough I pulled at the cloth and then was holding the pouch in my hand. On it, in dark-blue letters, were the words LOWELL SUN.

  "Well, gotdamn!" said Sam.

  The dog took it in his steam-shovel mouth and sank to his belly, holding it between his paws with his chin resting on it. He whined and thumped his tail on the old dirty floor. Popeye seemed to know Johnny wouldn't be back.

  I returned to the hole and kept pecking away, hacking and tearing off slabs of plaster the way a pileated woodpecker works on an old dead tree. My mouthpiece was in there. I just knew it. And I'd save T
om and me a week's work if I could get it out. In fact, I was in such a sweat to retrieve my dental work that I didn't notice Joe. I heard him mumbling something but I couldn't-"

  "Why?" he shouted. I turned to face him. Joe had Sam get the paperboy's pouch for him, since he didn't want to lose an arm. He turned it inside out. Examined the seams, the carrying strap. "Why?" he repeated. "They got the pouch, took the packet inside, then ditched the pouch behind the wall just the way they ditched the gas masks.. . and for the same reason. But what happens? They come back for it. Why?"

  "Because they failed to get what they were after," I said. "They got the packet of documents from the public library all right."

  "What makes you so sure?" said Mary.

  "Because here's the envelope," I answered, gingerly pulling out as crumpled manila bundle that was slightly torn. Clearly visible on it was not only the Santuccios' address but the receiving stamp of the Boston Public Library.

  "Well done, Doc. Well done. You shoulda been a cop."

  I continued to punch, pry, smash, and chip at the wall. My reasons, and reasoning, were simple: there were two things in Johnny's pouch when he was murdered, the Sacco-Vanzetti documents in the packet and my anterior bridge in a small cardboard box. One they wanted, one they didn't. They'd taken the pouch to this location to examine it. Therefore, they'd disposed of the dental work the same way they'd hidden the pouch. In the old wall.

  Only it wasn't working out that way. When I'd demolished the rest of the wall, with Joe's help and encouragement, it yielded nothing except what we'd already found. I'd helped Joe a bit but struck out on my personal quest. I led them back down and outside, trudging across the old buckled asphalt and cinder. The tools clanked and clinked under my arm. I was down. Joe was up; his star would rise at headquarters. I would have to spend a lot of time and trouble redoing the piece. Damn it all.

  We asked Sam to dinner. He thanked us but declined, saying he had a lot of extra work to do at home. As we dropped him off I got out and walked with him over to the door, where he switched off the electronic alarm.