Crooked (13 page)

C h a p t e r                           1 8

 
T
he drilling rig bounced and groaned as it tried to withdraw the drill bit from the borehole. Water frothing at the edge of the hole suddenly disappeared. They all knew what that meant. The water was draining off into a void of some kind. Barney came forward with the Coleman lantern, his eyes meeting Sam’s.

“We into something?”

Sam nodded and flicked his cigarette away into the darkness. He shut off the water and pulled the hydraulic lever side to side in an attempt to free the bit from whatever it was stuck on some twenty feet below. He pulled another knob and the two piston-like stabilizers on either side of the truck pressed into the ground. Metal grinding metal rang along the drill rod until it came loose suddenly.

Sam looked at Joey, and they looked at Barney.

“Let’s put on a sampler, see if we can get ahold of something,” Barney suggested.

The Pazzos uncoupled the driver motor, hauled the drill rod out of the hole and up the derrick. They replaced the roller bit with a split spoon sampler and fed the drill rod back into the borehole. The sampler was an eighteen-inch hollow tube that could be split lengthwise and was used to recover portions of soil.

Guiding a cylindrical 300-pound weight onto the protruding drill rod with the help of a motor-assisted rope on the derrick, they proceeded to hammer the drilling rod into the earth.

Minutes later, the sampler was retrieved and Joey slammed it against the side of the truck, trying to get it apart. When it split open, Barney leaned in with the green glow of the Coleman.

“What the…?” Joey grimaced, fanning his face with his hand.

Sam just looked askance at Barney, who pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and held it over his nose.

The sample consisted of a yellowish-green and exceedingly pungent spongy material, sandwiched between discs of red wax. At the very bottom of the sample was a chunk of wood.

“Uh huh.” Barney nodded. “That’s cheese, all right.”

“Cheese?” Joey spat. “Cheese?”

“Very old cheese. Covered in wax, like in a wheel or ball, so it was watertight. This piece of wood at the bottom is either part of a crate or deck wood. Some of the boats here had cheese as cargo.”

“You knew we might hit fuckin’ cheese?” Sam blinked incredulously.

“Uh huh.” Barney grinned. “Didn’t think it was worth mentioning.”

Sam and Joey looked at each other, then looked at Barney.

“I don’t think this is the boat we’re looking for, fellahs. But let’s drill through it here, checking the wash water that flushes up from the hole for anything unusual.”

Sam snorted. “We’ve drilled in about every fucking street in this city, and we’ve found all kindsa shit. Bones. Seashells. Arrowheads. Glass of every color, metal of every kind, and everything from chalk to fuel oil to Pampers and phone books. But we never, ever found fuckin’ food.”

“We never found cheese, that’s for fucking sure,” Joey added.

Barney betrayed a sly grin. “First time for everything, fellahs.”

In the cavernous shadows below the Triborough Bridge, Silvi lowered her binoculars and squinted into the distance. The scene reminded her of the first time she came to America, startling the hell out of some night fishermen when she and forty other refugees beached at Fort Lauderdale. God, that stinking little boat! Better than a firing squad, she kept telling herself. Raising the binoculars again, she could see Sam start to lower the derrick while Joey loaded pipe onto the truck.

Silvi picked up her cell phone.

“Barney is finished for the night. He must call you soon.”

“Did they find anything?” Drummond cleared his throat.

“Barney put PVC pipe into this borehole. When he puts pipe in the hole, it means he has found the ship, yes?”

“Absolutely. When he calls, we’ll see if he at least found one of the boats, and if it’s the correct one. But with daylight in a couple hours, they won’t have time to extract the gold.”

“Drummond, how are we to take this gold? Maybe if Silvi knows your plan, she can help.”

“How so?”

“What if he finds gold tonight? I am right here, I maybe kill him and take this gold.”

There was a pause on the other end as Drummond mused over that possibility.

“You mean drive back here with the gold, don’t you?”

Silvi flushed.

“But of course.” Stupid, stupid, stupid. She reproached herself yet again for talking too much, which was what had gotten her into that jam with General Passamigo in Panama. She’d had to go and suggest that they stage a false assassination of Passamigo as an excuse for a junta. Her bosses never liked her ideas, good though they might be. She guessed it was because egotists were neurotics. But she’d be damned if this deal would sour on her.

“No, Silvi, this game is my invention, you see? We’ll do it my way. Don’t worry your pretty head about it. We’ll get the gold.”

Silvi and her pretty head felt patronized, and she had trouble keeping an edge off her voice.

“Yes, it is your game. I follow him home, then get some sleep. I call you tonight.”

Drummond was about to say good night, but Silvi had already hung up. He let the cordless drop into the pocket of his robe, smoothed back his hair, and poured himself a snifter of
jamu tuak,
a sort of Malukuan brandy to which he’d grown accustomed while searching for one of General Yamashita’s caches of WWII plunder. There was little doubt that
jamu tuak
contained opiates, which sharpened Drummond’s cunning. It was while under its influence that he had first killed, albeit in self-defense. But it takes a special resolve to use a
kris
to its best effect.

After a brief respite of river gazing on the balcony, Drummond slid the phone from his pocket and dialed a number.

“Hello, may I speak with Mr. del Solar?” He flicked his gold lighter at a Dunhill.

“Hold on,” a young man said.

“Hello.” The accent was Spanish, but especially sharp for that early hour.

Drummond exhaled smoke. “Put the plane back in the hangar for the night.”

C h a p t e r                           1 9

 
T
he following afternoon was one of February’s brighter, though no less frigid, incarnations. The previous evening’s slush storm had covered everything in two inches of foamy ice, like vanilla cake icing.

Barney stepped onto the concrete stoop wearing a terry bathrobe, the screen door slamming behind him. Alvin had just trailered a boat into the driveway and was honking his horn.

Barney sipped from his mug of coffee, eyed the boat, then eyed Alvin’s expectant face. “Didn’t say yet that I’d buy it.”

“
She.
Yuh call a boat
she
, buddy,” Alvin chided. “Don’tcha know nothin’?”

Barney plodded down the steps to take a closer inventory of the twenty-foot-long vessel. Her wide V-shaped hull was white fiberglass, and not without patches and dings. The windshield had a crack and part of the gunnel railing on one side was missing. On both rear flanks she sported the caricature of a devil and the boat’s name.

Barney tossed his cold coffee on the ground and set the cup down on the stoop. He climbed the side ladder.
“Devil Dog?”

The bucket seat was a disaster, upholstered almost exclusively in duct tape, and the entire blue interior needed repainting. A voltmeter in the dashboard had ice on the inside of the gauge, and the canvas Bimini canopy in the rear wasn’t merely mildewed but sprouting mushrooms. All the stainless steel fixtures had a hint of rust.

“Didn’t take very good care of the
Devil Dog,
did they?”

“Little elbow grease is all it’ll take to make her shipshape.” Alvin shrugged it off. “’Sa fixer-upper. Look at the twin Mercs, buddy!”

Barney cocked his head doubtfully and went aft. There were two relatively new-looking forty-horsepower outboards.

“This thing run? No mechanical problems?”

“It’s cold, but about high tide.” Alvin scratched his stubble. “Get yourself dressed. We’ll take her for a spin.”

And in an hour’s time, they were backing the
Devil Dog
into the East River a couple of miles upriver from Hell Gate. A bunch of other cabin-fevered boat zealots had come out to watch the operation. The sun hung low and orange over the river to the west, but a brisk wind robbed the air of whatever heat it afforded. Snorkel parkas, earmuffs, and stocking caps replaced the usual array of cheap yachting garb. The spectators huddled around a fire burning in a trash barrel like Eskimos at a weenie roast.

Alvin launched the
Devil Dog
from the trailer and guided her to a dock by a rope on her bow. Ice around the pier shattered as the hull came alongside.

Barney stepped aboard carefully, scanning the deck. “Well, it floats.”

“She.
She,
” Alvin scolded, blowing into his hands. He hopped aboard and took Barney around to the various parts of the boat, most importantly things having to do with priming the engines, throttle settings for starting, and turning the ignition key. Barney took it all in, as did the curious, hungry-looking audience on the dock.

Next, Alvin unfolded a chart and pointed with a mitten.

“We’s here. See, where it says ‘Pugsley’s Landing.’ Now, this here is the East River. Down here is Manhattan, and up here is Long Island Sound. This here’s yuhr compass. When it says north or east, yuh’s headin’ out to Long Island. When—”

“It says west or south I’m heading for Manhattan.” Barney nodded. “Uh huh.”

“Good, I see yuh got a good sense of direction. Now, see all these little numbers? These are how deep at low tide. And see these little triangles? These is buoys. Now listen careful. This is real important.”

“Real important,” the Eskimos murmured agreement.

“Buoys is of two colors. Red an’ green. Y’wanna keep a red buoy on the right when yuh’re returning. ‘Red Right Returning’ at all times when passin’ through channels, marked right here in dotted line. Yuh go outsida the channel, yuh can’t be sure what’ll happen. Now tell me, out loud, where do yuh keep the red buoy?”

“On the right, when returning, so I stay in the channel.”

The Eskimos on the dock all nodded approval.

Barney rubbed his jaw. “How do I know when I’m returning?”

“Goin’ toward the City is returning, goin’ away is goin’ away. See, this stuff is not real dif’cult, buddy.”

“What about at night?”

“Night?”

“Uh huh. Say I want to go out at night.”

Alvin shrugged a few times, his face scrunched in confusion. “Where you goin’ at night, buddy?”

“What about at night?”

Alvin sighed, as if confronted by a stubborn child. “They got lights, but…”

“You mean the buoys? The buoys have red and green lights?”

“Yeah.”

Barney glanced at the controls, the charts, and then took in the expanse of the river. His eyes finally came back to Alvin. “That all there is to it?”

“That’s it. ’Cept one of these days, if yuh feel like it, the DMV’ll give yuh papers for her.” Alvin flapped his arms, then straightened his captain’s hat. “OK, cast off. Let’s see if Barney can get her started.”

Barney primed the engines, settled into the driver’s seat, made sure the one lever was in neutral and the other was on “START.” He turned the key awhile before the engines coughed a blue cloud of smoke and erupted to life.

The Eskimos applauded, their mittens going
fwop fwop fwop
.

“Where to?” Alvin beamed. For a change, Barney didn’t have to think long.

“The Harlem River.”

Ice from the previous night’s storm clung to 14th Street’s lamp poles, lights, and awnings, all ablaze and glittering with the glow of the setting orange sun. Nicholas climbed out of a cab at Broadway and made for 15th Street, dodging slush puddles and slick spots. He stopped at a pay phone. BB picked up on the third ring.

“Skinny Nick may never be the same, you know that?” Nicholas said, thinking about another body part while rubbing his wrists where she’d tied him to her desk.

“I’ll rip Skinny Nick clean off if you don’t sell me that von Clarke,” BB said dryly.

“Got it. Parking lot for the Randall’s Island pool, say eleven tonight? Make sure the check is certified, or it’s no deal.” He hung up.

When Nicholas immersed himself in the gloom of 113, he found his favorite booth occupied.

“Gotcha.” Maureen’s face flickered in the candle glow.

Nicholas slid in the booth opposite her, careful not to jar the somewhat overtaxed Skinny Nick. He was relieved to see Maureen didn’t look in any mood for bedroom barbeque.

“Looks like you’re getting somewhere.” Nicholas gestured at her eye.

“Yeah, but it’s costin’ me. Spent yesterday afternoon pulling favors to get my kid brother outta jail. I had him tail Drummond and he got framed-up.”

“And I always thought you worked alone.”

“Ever think of taking on a partner, Nicholas?”

The gulp of Macallan went down hard.

“No.” First Mel, now Maureen. “Why?”

“Why not me?”

“I pass on work when I get more than one person can handle.”

“Sure, but you’re skimming a profit off me, and I’m doing all the work here. Not for nothing, Nicholas, but I feel like I’m back on the force, except with no backup. The reason I gave that shit up is you don’t get anywhere. There’s always another murder, always another stupid crook. Wears a person down.”

“Maureen, I don’t get enough work for two people.”

“Put and take, Nicholas—dollars to donuts you would if you had more manpower. Just think about it, OK?”

“I’ll get you another beer.” Nicholas went to the bar, worried about Maureen.

When he returned, he set the fresh beer down and slid across from her again.

“Maureen, I know what you’re saying. There’s times when you need a team. But we’re working as a team now, aren’t we?”

“Gee, thanks, Coach. I don’t need a pep talk, I need you to put yourself in the game here and help me out. I tapped into Yager’s caller ID, got a phone booth on Randall’s Island from which somebody called him at three forty-five this morning.” Maureen sipped her Bud and hissed a belch.

“What makes you think it was Barney?”

“I tailed Yager and his girlfriend, trying to see if they would lead me to him. But they made me. I got pegged.” Maureen pointed to her shiner.

“Ouch. You have any bio on them?”

“None on her. She’s Argentinian, tall and sexy in a sort of cruel way. Yager is English, thinning silver hair, overbite, glasses, deformed hand. He spent time in some foreign country or something.”

Something about what she was saying tugged at Nicholas’s memory, but he couldn’t place it. Maureen continued.

“Don’t know her name, ran his with friends at NYPD and it came back empty. I’m thinking it’s an alias. Is it usual for insurance companies to work with such shady people? Present company excluded, of course.”

Nicholas ignored the slight. “When there’s a lot of money at stake, they sometimes don’t care how they get it. The biggies, I’ve heard, have dirty tricks squads, but I’ve never run into them personally. Sounds like this guy Yager is one of them.”

“Anyway, they’re smart enough not to meet Barney in person anymore.” Maureen took a big gulp of her beer. “But by the time they knew I was following, I don’t think they had any time to keep Barney from calling. So when I bugged Drummond’s phone, I got four numbers. One from
Newstime Magazine
looking for a subscription, one from his girlfriend’s cellular, one from somebody named del Solar in Lake Komatcong, New Jersey—he’s a commercial pilot—and one from this phone booth. The last three were between three
AM
and four
AM
.”

“What makes you think—”

“Just listen a sec, will you? I went out to Randall’s Island. Nothing there, really, except a stadium. I lifted some prints from the pay phone. We may not have Swires’s foot, but we got his thumb. I matched a latent to a thumbprint on the hairbrush you gave me. I did it myself, so it’s not a lab ID. But, Nicholas, they’re real identical. Central pocket loops on both his thumb and forefinger, right hand.”

“Yeah, but what was he doing out at Randall’s Island?”

“Dunno, but we better stake it out for a while. But not me, not up-front and alone. Drummond and his girl know me now.”

“What’s out there?”

Maureen looked at her notes.

“Just the Parks Department, a sewage treatment plant, a fireman’s training center, a Sanitation Department training center, a bunch of ball fields, and a mental hospital. Think he’d be trying to bust out an inmate, some witness, something like that? I dunno, Nicholas. Not like there’s any bank vaults around.” She polished off her beer.

H Olbeter was suddenly illuminated standing next to the booth, tucking his gloves into his coat.

“Evening, Nicholas,” H said, while gazing at Maureen.

“H, meet Maureen McNary, a highly skilled investigator.” Nicholas winked at Maureen. “And Maureen, this is H Olbeter, a highly skilled investigator.”

Maureen slid out of the booth and shook hands with H briefly, favoring him with a scant smile.

“What’s the H stand for?” She took her coat from a peg and was surprised to find H helping her put it on.

“Honest, or heroic, or even he-man,” H quipped.

“It stands for the fact that he was orphaned, and in the paperwork they lost all but the initial of his first name,” Nicholas said.

“Have fun, guys. Gotta get some sleep.” She headed out the door. “Midnight tonight, on the island, Nicholas. Don’t be late.”

Don’t be late.
Mel.
Nicholas glanced at his watch. 4:17
PM
. Whew.

“Maureen, huh?” H took Maureen’s spot opposite Nicholas. “Irish?”

“Yep. She’s the one I got in your place, while you were away.”

“My friend, I’d say she was somewhat attractive.” H rubbed a pointy sideburn thoughtfully. “Muscular, with a black eye, and yet attractive. Give me her number.”

“Park Slope Investigations. It’s in the book. Look, I didn’t call you here to play
The Dating Game
. What are you doing tomorrow night?”

“You need me, you got me. What’s up?”

“I seem to remember you telling me you had a pyrotechnic license.”

“Sure. Long time ago, I used to work in the film business. Rigged explosions some. Mostly supplied and supervised shoot-outs for cop shows. You ever see that show
Crime Story
? Ah, but the work was too unpredictable.”

Nicholas rubbed his hands together.

“You still have the equipment for that?”

H looked uncertainly at his glass, spinning it between thumb and forefinger. “Yes, but we’d get in big trouble if we don’t get a permit from the NYPD.”

“You remember how to do it, right?”

“Of course.”

“Sure?” Nicholas reached out and stopped H’s hand from spinning the glass.

H looked up and blinked, his eyes turning indignant. “I was the best.”

“Was?” Could he trust this dope not to get him killed?

H pulled his drink out from under Nicholas’s hand and knocked it back.

“Who else you going to get? So you going to give me her number?”

“Maureen’s?”