Billingsgate Shoal da-1 Read online

  "You don't think he skipped? Does he owe money'?"

  "He's probably up to his ass in debt, but I don't think he skipped. His disappearing the same day I was bonked on the head is too coincidental. I think that Jim Schilling and Company sensed his fear, his regret at becoming involved with them. It wouldn't take a guy like Schilling long to decide what to do with him."

  We climbed up inside the hull and searched it. Nothing. Next we went after the papers. This was difficult because they were scattered to hell and gone all over the workshop. But most of them were in two big drawers under the main workbench. Orders and invoices were scrawled on forms that were obviously purchased from dime stores. The writing wasn't very clear and there was no order to the many sheets and lists. We scrambled through the jungle of paper searching for a recurring name, a large job order… anything. There was only confusion and messy handwriting.

  Having struck out, we returned to the hull in the center of the shop. We wondered where the owner was and when he'd show up to claim his near-finished dragger. Almost all small boatyard work is done on a custom basis, with the shipwright receiving a hefty down payment at the outset. Where was this boat's owner? We gave the place a last look around. Then I remembered Danny's wife saying she was at her sister's the night it all happened. I grabbed a big hammer and idly tapped it along the hull. Nothing. It bonged the same all along its length. Then Joe asked for the hammer and went back up the ladder. I followed and he was pointing to two squarish upright stacks that projected up on each side of the vessel just forward of her beam. They were made of folded steel plate, about two feet across and almost ten feet tall. They were braced to the sides of the hull and acted as frames to hold the cabin and bridge, which hadn't been added yet. They were about eight feet apart. Joe bumped them with the hammer: They both bonged. But I got down low just above the keel I and did the same. The port pillar didn't bong, it thumped. We examined the tops of these channels. The starboard one was capped with a plate that fitted it exactly. The port one had the proper cap, but the worst looking weld job I'd ever seen. The bead was all glumpy, and had been run two or three times in spots. I even saw the remains of two old welding rods that had frozen to the steel and had to be chipped off with a cold chisel. No master craftsman had done that.

  "What do you think'?" asked Joe.

  "You asked me that before. You're the cop. I'd say we'd be smart to open these."

  "I'm with you-"

  "OK. The owner of this place is not here, but we were admitted by his next-of-kin. So I'm going to get one of those heavy duty drills and poke through."

  "I'm still with you."

  He watched while I hauled a big half-inch drill up the ladder, cradling it on my hip, and set to work. I had a good carbon bit working for me, but it still took almost ten minutes to penetrate the half-inch plate at the top of the port pillar. Cautiously, I sniffed at the hole.

  "Well?" asked Joe anxiously.

  "Naw. I just smell kerosene, or motor oil. Maybe it's some kind of rust-proofing. Let me try the other one."

  I did. It did not smell like motor oil. So much for the upper portions, now to try lower down. I got an extension cord and seated myself just over the keel, right in front of the starboard pillar. It was dark down there but it didn't matter. I finished the hole. Nothing. Then I turned and began at the port side. Even before the drill pushed through all the way dark fluid collected on the bit. When the hole was finished and I pulled the bit out, a stream of it snaked out at me. I jumped to my feet and called for a light, which Joe provided. I looked at the fluid. It looked like old motor oil. I collected some on my finger and sniffed. It smelled like old motor oil. I wasn't going to taste it.

  "I think it's old motor oil," I said triumphantly.

  Joe's voice boomed and echoed down to me: "'Why would anyone do that?"

  "Dunno," I said as I climbed up and out of the hull and over to the nearest bench. I grabbed the longest welding rod I could lay my hands on and returned to the bowels of the boat. The electrode went into the hole about three inches and stopped. I jabbed it in. It made no noise, just stopped. I wiggled it about, pushing. Something. Not hard like metal… something. In the starboard hole it went in easily until it fell in, plunking down out of sight.

  I rose to leave the hull, but just before I started back up the ladderway my nostrils caught, the faint, faint whiff of another odor. In my mind's eye I saw the bloated corpses of cattle and deer, swollen like balloons, legs up in the hot sun. I saw the clustering of filthy birds in a writhing, flapping heap with hooves and antlers sticking out the sides.

  "Well?" asked Joe."

  "Well maybe they didn't drop poor Danny into the drink near the Isles of Shoals after all. But I've got a way to find out. Let's turn the heat up and get out of here for a few hours."

  We decided to go to lunch. Joe thought it would be nice to take Mrs. Murdock along. He had a heart of gold. We had a tough time talking her into it. I suppose in her state she felt rather ashamed of herself and her plight, and simply wanted to hang around the wreck of a house and think about her wreck of a husband and her wrecked life in general. But Joe succeeded in the end, and Mrs. Katherine Murdock got dolled up enough to join us in the car. She actually wasn't that bad looking, though a trifle lumpy and dumpy from the life she'd led over the past dozen years. She had probably been really pretty once.

  We went to a place called the Captains Courageous that overlooks the harbor. Mrs. Murdock put away three Southern Comforts on the rocks and felt noticeably better. I ordered a cup of clam chowder and a Heineken. Joe shot the works with a fisherman's platter. Mrs. Murdock fought, down a clam roll and coleslaw. She gagged a bit on the food, even with the three stiff drinks in her gut. My guess was that with all the booze and worry she was having a textbook case of anorexia and pyloric stenosis. This meant that the more she drank, the less she ate. And the less she ate, the more damage the liquor was doing to her. I had a feeling though that she was shortly going to encounter a major life change that would either break or save her.

  It was a grim lunch. In keeping with my feelings about that meal, I dined lightly. I was glad I did because before it was over Mrs. Murdock announced she had to go to the 1adies room and came back reeking of hydrochloric acid. She cou1dn't keep down the clam roll after all; she had puked it up. Poor thing. Joe bought her another Southern Comfort and we went back to the boatyard. On the pretext of having forgotten something, Joe and I went back to the work building. We knew by the smell right away.

  I took a trouble light and shined it down into the hold. I lowered it down by its cord and saw the flies swarming around the hole in the portside pillar. They were going in and out like honeybees at a hive.

  "Oh, Jesus, Charlie. Oh my God."

  "Yeah."

  "Look, I'll take her away from here. I'll take her over to the station so she won't be here when they cut him out."

  "Good idea. Have them send a crew over. There are cutting torches here but maybe they'll want to bring their own. But get her away first, that's a good idea."

  He took her in the Audi and I waited at the boathouse. Outside. The aroma was getting thicker by the minute. The first thing I did was turn off the ceiling-mounted hot air blower when we came back and the building had dropped into the sixties. But there was no stopping the putrid odor now. The motor oil was a good idea. A stroke of genius. Covering the body with oil was like preserving it the way the ancient animals were preserved in the tar pits of La Brea. But with the oil gone and the warm air let in, the weeks of festering were very, very noticeable.

  Joe told me later that she didn't say any more on the way to the station than she had at lunch, which was nothing. Her husband was gone and she didn't know why or how. When asked about the Penelope, she proclaimed no knowledge of it. She seemed to be telling the truth, but she also admitted that she had suspected for some time that Danny was engaged with illegal modifications and shady people.

  I did not particularly want to witness the unearthin
g of the late D. Murdock, but my presence was requested by the officials, including my brother-in-law who, was apparently going to get some important brownie points at headquarters. It didn't take them long to cut him out of there, thank God.

  Three men wearing nose masks went down into the hull. They spotlighted the area and turned on the gas, and I heard the sharp "pop" of the acetylene torch as it ignited, then a hiss as they adjusted the long silver flame with a touch of blue halo around it. That went through the plate steel quickly. The first thing I saw slide out of the bottom of the big portside pillar was a booted foot. I recognized the boot, even with the oil slime on it. Old Danny Murdock would never again do his sloppy, drunken soft-shoe imitation of Bojangles down at the Schooner Race. Those feet were forever stilled.

  He oozed out of there like baker's dough. Like pink-gray Silly Putty. He was a formless puddle of stinking goop.

  "Can I leave now?" I asked, and headed for the door and fresh air even before I got the answer.

  We rode back to Concord in silence. Twice we stopped the car on the side of 128, and got out and walked around slowly, breathing deeply.

  ***

  We had Joe stay for dinner. Gradually, as the day progressed, he talked more and more of food. Still, we didn't eat much. Mary was in a sense glad of the discovery of Murdock's body, since it meant once and for all that I hadn't been I imagining all this maritime skulduggery, and that finally the authorities would pitch in and help out.

  "You're not alone anymore on this thing, Charlie, you should be glad of that," she said.

  "Yeah, and I can bet the first son of a bitch to show up will be Brian Hannon. You watch. Pass the wine please and fill the glasses. I want to propose a toast: To Mrs. Katherine Murdock-May her lot in life improve."

  "Hear, hear," echoed Joe. "After all, it could hardly be worse."

  ***

  "-and the best thing is, Doc, you're not alone on this thing anymore. Why we-"

  "You're excused, Chief Hannon," I said into the phone.

  "Now wait. After all, who provided-"

  "Excused!"

  "Now look, goddammit! I went out on a limb for you. I'm telling you the way it is. I went along with your harebrained scheme to play down your survival. I helped you plan that lame-brained cruise of yours aboard the Ginger Rogers-"

  "The Ella Hatton."

  "Well, whatever. And I'm investigating the people whose names you gave me. I've got some stuff, for instance on the girl who went cruising with Walter Kincaid."

  Dammit, the son of a bitch had me there. `

  "What'd you find out?"

  "It can wait."

  "Look. Be here at nine."

  "No, you look. You cannot order policemen around. You will be here at the time I say. Clear?"

  "Naw. Forget it, Chief."

  "What time was that again? You said your place?"

  "Nine."

  ***

  Chief Brian Hannon sat sipping on a Tab.

  "The oil. I wonder how they thought of the oil?"

  "Because," said Joe, "there were drums and drums of diesel fuel outside. After stuffing Murdock down the steel channel, they covered him with diesel fuel, then put the cap on and welded it tight. If we hadn't discovered him there he'd have remained for ages."

  "Now what about Walter Kincaid's girlfriend?" I asked. "That she never was. I've tapped every source I know, official and unofficial, and I can tell you for certain the girl Jennifer Small just isn't, at least around the North Shore. Whoever told you about her is mistaken."

  I considered this tidbit carefully. It meant a lot.

  "And what about our humane friend Jim Schilling?"

  "Looked clean as a whistle except for one big thing that he'd managed to hide for a long, long time: dishonorable discharge. Assaulting a superior officer. Did time in the stockade. Court martial. DD."

  "Thanks for the help, Brian. Now can you plunder Box 2319 for me? My brother-in-law has cold feet in that department."

  "Look, Charlie, I have cold feet because it happens to be illegal. It's illegal until the PO. officially declares it an abandoned box. At that time-and I've got an intercept notice in-the contents will fall into my lap. And maybe yours. Maybe, Charlie."

  I grunted in disgust.

  "It would seem to me it might be a good idea to keep a sharp eye out for the Rose, and Jim Schilling, along the coast of Cape Cod Bay," said Brian.

  I let out a whistle of disbelief.

  "You mean with the help of all your former friends? The ones who were so put out and embarrassed by your jackass friend Doc Adams?"

  Chief Hannon spoke out of the comer of his mouth as he clamped his fangs around a newly lit Lucky. He flumped around awkwardly on the couch as he stuffed his matches back into his pocket.

  "Now goddammit, Doc, I never said that. Not exactly anyway. What I said was-"

  The evening dragged on with slashes and parries, advances and retreats, assertions and reversals. I was pretty bloody sick of it before long, and was glad when my two Great Buddies, the law officers, departed.

  I had what I wanted for the moment. Joe had delivered the goods on Item # 2 on my list of requests: the identity and whereabouts of the owner of the blue van I photographed on the pier in North Plymouth.

  He handed me the data earlier on in the evening, telling me to do nothing until I talked with him. Well, I'd talked to him all right, so now I could do something..

  And I did.

  The next morning I went to the office bright and early, and went over my bills and invoices. I scheduled in patients for the third week in October when I knew my hand would be fine. I answered overdue correspondence by talking for two hours into a tape machine. I wanted to get the office work behind me. I wanted to clear the decks.

  I went to the Rod amp; Gun Club shooting range and pumped two boxes of twenty-two rounds through my Ruger Bull-Barrel, fast-firing every other clip.

  After lunch I headed west on the Mass Pike in the Scout station wagon. With me were binoculars, my camera system, and the fact sheet describing the owner of the Ford Econoline van: Rudolph Buzarski _

  121 Mt. Pleasant Drive

  Belchertown, Mass.

  Age: 54 Ht: 6 ft. 1 in.

  Weight: 215 Hr: Brn

  Eyes: Blue

  Upon reading this poop sheet, I began to disbelieve that Rudolph Buzarski was a shady character. Poles are the most crime-free of all ethnic groups. They may whack you on the head in a football game. They may beat you at bowling and chortle over it. They may get stinko at a polka party and break their accordions. But as far as really nasty behavior goes, they are damn clean. They also have the nation's lowest unemployment rate, a distinction that's generations old. Western Massachusetts is an old-line Polish enclave, full of truck farmers, dairymen, small contractors, and the like. I sped along the Mass Pike wondering about old Rudolph. He could be an onion farmer. He could have two dozen head of fine Holstein that he'd call by name and lead into the barn each night and kiss goodnight-each one on her big wet salty-nose. He could be a tobacco grower, since the Connecticut River Valley grows a lot of the prime wrapper leaf for the cigar industry. He could run a small trucking firm. But he wouldn't… couldn't be involved with Jim Schilling. I pulled into Belchertown and got gas, asking for the whereabouts of the Buzarski place. I was told that the Buzarski farm was a mile ahead and to the right. See, he was a farmer.

  I took the route indicated and came upon his spread, set of from the main highway by a mile.

  The Buzarski place was a showpiece. Out front there was a fruit and vegetable stand fairly dripping with the produce grown on the flat, green land of the Connecticut River Valley. The alluvial flood plain that lines the river on both sides for miles is rich. The proof of it was before me as I ambled around the stand eyeing the squash, early pumpkins, late tomatoes, sugar-and-butter corn, Indian corn, apples. It was a cornucopia. Off behind the stand the kelly-green grass shot away level for hundreds of yards, then commenced to hump and dip a bit
. Behind the far rises were the distant mountains of the Berkshire range. It sure was pretty. The farm was too big. How could I find out about the blue van, and its driver, without arousing suspicion? If it were a small place a quick glance around and perhaps two questions could settle it. But this place was the King Ranch compared to most of the truck farms. Two big white barns with silos stood far away off to the left. A score or so of Holsteins and Brown Swiss stood munching in the pasture. There was a goat here and there. Far off to the right were two low buildings with slatted walls. From their shape, and from the ripe aroma that wafted over from them now and then, I guessed them to be hog barns. Was there anything Rudolph Buzarski didn't raise?

  I studied the roads. There was the one I was on, Mt. Pleasant Drive. But there were numerous side and access roads that crisscrossed the Buzarski place. After buying some corn I returned to the car and headed along the access road that ran into the farm. If stopped, I could merely say I had gotten lost.

  The house was half a mile in. It was modest, a shingle-sided blocky structure with a big porch around two sides. Tire swings for the kids. A big willow tree and three oaks near the house. Small kitchen garden. A trellis of roses., A birdbath. Norman Rockwell could have painted the scene, perhaps adding Grandma and Grandpa sitting in their rockers on the veranda behind the gingerbread latticework of carved railings and cornices and spindle screens, looking out over the farm from the hilltop] house, listening to the robins cluck on the lawn… perhaps smelling the kielbasa and sauerkraut from the kitchen.

  I stopped the Scout and began swearing to myself. Why had it taken me so long to realize what had happened? Obviously, I'd been duped by my own brother-in-law. Perhaps he and Brian cooked the scheme up together. Perhaps even Mary had had a hand in it too! I had been sent off on a wild-goose chase to stay out of trouble. It was glaringly apparent that the only place safer than the Buzaxski farm was the vault at Chase Manhattan.