Authors: Loren D. Estleman
“Save it for your memoirs. Did you recognize the man who picked him up?”
“Didn't know him from Beethoven. Look, I don't have a change of shirts here.” Blood had veined his white collar.
“What'd he say?”
“He said he was with the union. Right away I didn't like him, those guys are pricks. Said he got a complaint that Jack had sat in on bass for a private party in Grosse Pointe for less than scale. Jack climbed in next to him to argue about it and they drove off. I had to lug that elephant case of his inside. I was gonna burn him when he got back. Only he didn't.”
“Say where they were going?”
“No. C'mon, man, my break's over. I need this job.”
Macklin held his grip. “What else did you hear?”
“There wasn't nothing else. C'mon, man!”
“Guy in the car said DeGrew bent a rule, DeGrew said he didn't, they took off?”
“Yeah.”
“People don't talk like that, Johnny. They take time getting to the point. What else?”
“There wasn't nothing else.”
The knife dug a little deeper.
“Scavarda! Get your ass in here. We're losing customers.”
The voice came from a second-story window overlooking the alley. Its owner's face was cut off from their view by a tattered awning over the side door that had been there since before the building across the way was erected. Macklin released the musician. Scavarda rubbed his neck, smearing the blood, and fished a white handkerchief out of an inside pocket to staunch the flow.
“That's all for now, Johnny. I may be back.”
“Thanks for the warning.”
“A little cold water will take that stain right out of your shirt,” Macklin said. “But catch it before it dries.”
“Yeah.”
The killer poked another twenty-dollar bill into the other's breast pocket.
Scavarda prowled a black patent-leather toe among the spilled trash in the alley, found the button that had popped off his jacket, and retrieved it. He fiddled with it, looking down at his fingers. “I did hear something else.”
“Figured you did.”
“It isn't much. The union guy said something about Jack's being a hard fish to reel in. It sounded like fisherman's lingo.”
“Could be. That it?”
Scavarda nodded, looked at his spotted handkerchief. The bleeding had stopped. The hole was only a pinprick. “Well,” he said, and went inside, leaving the door open. Few people found it in them to close doors on Macklin, no matter how many flies gained entrance in the process.
Alone in the alley, Macklin used a clean cotton rag he found among the litter to wipe the blade of Herb Pinelli's great-grandfather's knife. More and more these days he found such repetitious acts helpful to his thinking, like an old man in a home rolling his wheelchair back and forth.
He'd heard the fishing was good around Port Huron.
CHAPTER 13
As the captured steamer ghosted over the gunmetal water, trailing shreds of fog from its mast and the flagstaffs flying the Canadian and United States colors, “Cap'n Eddie” Fielding worried about only one man in the pilot house, and it wasn't the one who called himself Don.
The chief hijacker leaned against the chart table at the back of the octagonal enclosure with his thumb hooked inside his belt next to where his Luger rested, eyes bright, one ear cocked toward the portable transceiver that crackled from time to time on the table with his partners' random comments. He spoke little and never moved except to shift his weight when one limb threatened to fall asleep or to grip the automatic pistol's butt when one of the other men moved too quickly. He was a dependable terrorist.
The man who worried the captain was Phil Holliday, his first mate. They had been friends, or as close to friends as a commander and his subordinate could ever be, for four years, and yet the old sailor was certain with the conviction of ten thousand days and nights spent on the water that Holliday lacked that last inch of what it took to command a ship under this particular stress. Rather, he fit the popular misconception of a ship's captain as a man of independence, resolve, and self-confidence bordering on massive arrogance. Only those who had been in the position knew that all of these things must be tempered by the ability to compromise. Cap'n Eddie had not risen from deckhand on an iron coffin of an ore carrier to his present authority without learning how to take orders. From his vantage point at the rear of the pilot house across its width from Don, the captain had ample opportunity to watch Holliday's back grow stiff and the nape of his neck redden as he stood at the windscreen watching for approaching craft. His helplessness clearly chafed, and Cap'n Eddie feared the inevitable blow-up.
“I always had the impression the captain ran this tub,” Don said, breaking the reverie. “You've got a man on the wheel, a man to look out, and another man to look out for what the lookout missed. What do you do, just stand around waiting for someone to say âAhoy, the white whale'?”
His tone was bantering, with no animosity in it. The old sailor answered without rancor. “When there's a big blow or a pleasure craft coming the wrong way downriver, eight men up here wouldn't be too much.”
“Yeah, someone has to blow the whistle.”
“Captain Fielding is the best skipper on the river,” Holliday snapped.
Don crinkled his eyes at Cap'n Eddie. “Kind of like having the best-looking legs on a girls' Olympic weightlifting team, huh, Popeye?”
“It's been claimed that if you can navigate the Detroit River, you can sail any body of water in the world,” said the old man.
“It isn't like waving a pistol around and saying stick 'em up.”
Lazily the armed man turned his attention to the first mate. “We don't need you, Wyatt. We've got a lookout and Barney Fyfe here to look out for the lookout.” He inclined his head toward the young security guard seated glumly on the turning stool near the starboard hatch.
“I might not be as easy to hit as a fat bass player.”
“Phil, for Christ's sake!” the captain exclaimed.
“You tell him, Popeye. Old Wyatt's quick on the draw for someone with dust in his holster.”
The captain changed the subject. “Why do you call him Wyatt?”
“'Cause his name's Holliday but he looks more like Earp.”
“I guess he does at that, with that handlebar.” Cap'n Eddie kept his tone light. “But maybe not as much as you look like Wild Bill Hickok.”
He had struck the right chord. Don smiled slowly behind his own moustache. “You won't find my back to any doors on this bucket, old man.”
“These bulkheads weren't built to stand up to Coast Guard bullets,” put in Holliday.
Don said, “They'll have to find us first.”
The fog had remained uniformly dense all day, as if the boat were towing its own cloud. Once they had heard the beating of helicopter blades overhead, but the noise hadn't returned and Don supposed that if it was a Coast Guard craft they were waiting for the curtain to lift before searching in earnest.
Holliday said, “This soup can't last forever. What are you going to do when the wind comes up and takes it away?”
“That's up to the Governor.”
Cap'n Eddie adjusted the hearing aid attached to his glasses. Moist air was hard on the transistor. “Do you really believe the Governor will release those prisoners?”
“You better hope so, Popeye.” Don lifted and resettled the Luger under his belt. “You better get down on your knees and pray to King Neptune he does just that.”
The security guard stood up suddenly. The gun leaped into Don's hand. “What's wrong, Barney, you got a bite?”
“I have to go to the bathroom.”
“Head,” Holliday corrected automatically.
“Head, whatever. I have to go.”
“So go.”
The guard edged past Cap'n Eddie and descended the short flight of steps to the captain's quarters above the crown deck.
That had been the most complicated part of Siegfried's plans, seeing to the functional needs of the passengers and crew. There was a head for the captain and one for the crew and two on the dance deck for the passengers, and after they had been searched for weapons the hostages were allowed to visit them two or three at a time. The two-man teams on each of the three main decks took turns relieving themselves and watching their charges, and when Don felt the need he radioed Larry to come up and keep an eye on the bridge while he used the captain's toilet. The choreography worked. But eight hundred frightened people with bladders and sphincters ranging from healthy to minimal were a lot, and there had been a number of accidents that had done little to improve either the atmosphere or the dispositions of captive and keeper alike.
“Where are we going?” Holliday wanted to know.
“East.”
It wasn't the first time the question had been asked or the answer given. This time the captain involved himself.
“For how long?” he asked. “We've only got fuel for twelve more hours. Erie's a big lake. We could drift for days before anyone rescues us.”
“Nice try, Popeye. You could steam for four days and still have enough oil to burn Toronto.”
Cap'n Eddie looked at him with the first faint blue glow of the dawn of admiration. “You did your homework.”
Don said nothing.
A stuttering noise sounded below, as of an outboard motor revving up and then stalling abruptly. A scream, then silence.
Don snatched up his portable radio. “Who fired that burst?”
A pause, then Larry's voice crackled out of the speaker. “I think it came from the bottom deck.”
“Fay?” Don released the speaker button, waited, pressed it again. “Fay, you there?”
“Yeah.” She sounded breathless.
“What went down?”
“Nothing. Benny Goodman just tried something sweet.”
“Who the hell is Benny Goodman?”
“Mr. Big Band. Crane. Nobody's bleeding, don't fret yourself.”
“Easy on that ammo.” He set the radio back down on the chart table just as the security guard came bounding up from the captain's quarters, tucking his uniform shirt into his pants. The guard's face was as white as the shirt. “Who got shot?”
“Sorry. You'll have to stay and see it again.”
The guard gave Don a puzzled look.
Three tiers below, Fay was standing with her radio hanging from its strap on her shoulder and the smoldering muzzle of her M-16 almost touching Chester Crane's long thin nose. The bandleader sat spraddle-legged on the deck at her feet, his bald pate glistening through wisps of gray hair. His toupee had slid off finally and skidded ten feet along the highly polished boards. A ragged line of closely spaced holes stitched the back of the bandstand where Fay had fired when Crane had tried to jump her. Coming down hard from her last cocaine toot, she had been yawning bitterly and he had thought to catch her off guard.
“White boy,” she said, “I don't know how you got this old.”
He tried out his best Trocadero grin on her. It lost some of its glitter under the few lights allowed to burn on the dance deck. “Can't blame a guy for trying.”
“Oh yes I can, Mr. Music. I got no sense of humor.”
“Everything square, Fay?” Sol's voice rang out calmly from the stern.
She called back that everything was sweet. Her smile as she went on looking at Crane was brilliant against the old gold of her face. He watched her through squinted eyes. The smoke from the automatic rifle was making them water. Still grinning, she raised the barrel, holding the weapon horizontal, stepped back a pace, and sank to her heels, laying the rifle on the deck. Then she straightened and moved back another step.
“You call it, Baton Man,” she said. “All you got to do is pick it up ahead of little Fay and fill her full of holes. You can move fast when you want to. For an old man with no hair.”
Crane looked down at the weapon just beyond his feet for a long moment before raising his eyes back to hers. “You're nuts,” he told her. “Doped up.”
“I'm stone cold. Pick it up, Señor Swing. 'Cause if you don't, Fay will.”
He placed his palms on the deck and shook his head, gathering his feet beneath him. The woman shook her own head, mocking him, and moved to scoop up the rifle. He kicked out with one leg and felt the jar to his knee when his foot connected. She howled. It was a nasty thin tearing sound, like the shriek of an enraged cat. He launched himself up stumbling, spun around and ran, scattering passengers from his path. Ran with his shoulders hunched and his head sunk between them, his back burning where the bullets would go. Behind him the black woman was screaming curses. The rifle's loose parts rattled. He made for the railing. He was a strong swimmer, had kept in shape at an age where most of his contemporaries were retired or taking their mail in hospitals. If there was a boat nearby, if he could tread water while his arms rested. It was a better chance than he had at the moment. His hands gripped the clammy beaded steel of the railing and he tensed his muscles to swing himself over.
He almost made it.
CHAPTER 14
“Just once I'd like to eat in a place where the food was as good as the view,” complained Bill Chilson, spreading butter on one half of a roll the approximate size and consistency of a cue ball.
Randall Burlingame sipped his wine and chuckled. “It comes into the building fresh, but a lot can happen in seven hundred and forty feet.”
“It should take the elevator.”
They were dining in the revolving restaurant atop Detroit's tallest hotel, decorated in leatherette and plush to resemble the inside of a candy box and just now overlooking through its tinted wraparound windows the shadowy skyline of Windsor across the river. Although it was not yet evening, a dusky gray screen blurred and flattened the details.
Chilson sneaked looks at the FBI bureau director over his meal of pressed sawdust masquerading as roast beef. He admired Burlingame, who, although he had been up since midnight, looked as fresh as if he had just had eight hours' sleep. Chilson himself had managed to catch a few winks at his room in the hotel, but he knew that the only break Red had taken was to shave and change shirts. He was an iron man, and if not for all that time wasted hassling with Hoover, would have been warming a chair in an office on the top floor of the Bureau's Washington headquarters years ago.