A Pure Double Cross (23 page)

The Schooler's grin was wry, one-sided. “Their lack of imagination.”

I returned his grin. “I thought iceboats had to be big.”

“Not, it's all about hull design, and plenty of horsepower.” The Schooler looked down from the bridge at the arctic seascape. “That's the theory anyway.”

I bounced a look off Jimmy. He made brief eye contact before he looked away.
Theory
was not a word we wanted to hear at the moment. Jimmy said as much.

“You haven't tried it the fuck out?”

The Schooler's face glazed over. “What's that?”

“This tub. You been hammerin' at it for months. I know all about it.”

The Schooler shrugged. I asked the question. “How did you know all about it?”

“I looked into it,” said Jimmy. “Got suspicious when the old man didn't have a tan this last summer. It meant he wan't out snaggin' walleye with his high hat pals. I looked into it. I figure there's only one reason a man puts a one-inch steel skin on the hull of a fishing boat.”

Well. That explained how Jimmy knew to go to the boat shed. What it didn't explain was how he got there.

The Schooler, one hand on the helm and the other on the throttle, answered Jimmy after a time, explained why he hadn't tried the boat the fuck out. “You can't take a big stakes gamble with nothing at stake.”

The impenetrable circularity of this statement brought me up short. It sounded like Jap poetry. But I took his point, I think. Ike didn't get a dress rehearsal for D-day. You can't do a dry run on a secret mission.

I turned to look at the distant shore. The city of Cleveland was nothing but a fog of misty lights and the Terminal Tower. We were a million miles away. I spun around when Henry jumped up off his captain's chair and said, “Oh
screw.”

I thought it some trick of the light at first, an optical illusion, an icy blue mirage forty yards off the bow. It didn't belong there, that was sure. The Schooler worried the helm and goosed the throttle. We churned closer.

“What
is
that?” I said.

“I don't know,” said Henry Voss. “I know about windrows and pressure ridges. But I have no bloody idea what that is.”

Jimmy clambered forward and perched at the stem of the prow. I shook my head in wonder. A five-foot wall of ice extended east-west as far as the eye could see.

I'm not a big believer in divine retribution, the hand of God reaching down to smite the wicked and all that. It seemed to me God had been asleep at the switch the last five years. Still.
If what we were looking at wasn't a sign from above my name isn't Harold Martin Schroeder.

A long perfect glistening blue wave. Concave, frozen and curled at the tip.

“I can't make sense of it,” said The Schooler.

He had throttled back and sat in the captain's chair, staring down from the bridge at the sculpted wave. “A windrow looks like a tumbled down wall, broken blocks of ice piled up by the wind. A pressure ridge is a hump. Tidal currents cause ice plates to fissure and overlap. It makes a hump in the ice, a foot high, maybe two. Nothing like this.”

I couldn't make sense of it either and I didn't care to. This wasn't a field trip.

The Cleveland PD might be Keystone Kops chasing their tails but Commander Seifert had told the full story to the feds by now. Plump-fingered Chester Halladay would be climbing the walls when he learned about the first-ever robbery of a Federal Reserve Bank, a robbery aided and abetted by an operative he recruited. Once the roadblocks and stakeouts came up empty search planes would be launched. Or had been already. We didn't need to waste time trying to make sense of an ice formation. We needed to get busy busting through it.

That's what I told myself. What I did was continue to stare at the perfect rolling frozen wave ten yards off the bow. The base, like the lake, was thick and gray. The wave tapered gracefully as it swept upward, however, and crested in a curl as clear as Steuben glass. The moonlight painted it a pale and shimmering blue.

I had seen a great deal in my twenty-five years but I was unprepared for this. So I did what any red-blooded can-do American would do, I concentrated on the mechanics. If the icy blue mirage could be made sense of then it wasn't an evil portent from on high now was it?

“We had a lot of snow early in the week, a lot of wind the last few days,” I said to Henry as Jimmy monkeyed his way back from the bow, swinging from cleat to grab rail. “If one of the whatchamacallits, a pressure ridge or window…”

“Wind
row.”

“Right. If one of those was already in place wouldn't it act like a snow fence? The ones you see along the highway, keep snow off the road?”

Jimmy joined us on the rear deck. “It's solid, top to bottom.” The Schooler swore a blue streak.

I continued. “The whatchamacallit collects the windblown snow, the temp falls, the snow freezes. The temp rises, more snow falls and drifts against the snow fence. The temp falls, the snow freezes. And so on.”

“That doesn't explain the wave formation,” said Henry.

“But it explains how you can have a five-foot wall of ice on a frozen lake. Once it's in place the onshore wind does the rest, shapes and chisels it. Hell's bells it's nothing but a frozen snow drift!”

I looked to my audience for acknowledgement of my brilliant bit of deductive reasoning. Jimmy put hands in his armpits and attempted to stamp feeling back into his feet. The Schooler said, “I should've installed a bow prop.”

The hell with ‘em. God was not conspiring against me. It was only Lake Erie and Chester Halladay, and I could lick them any day.

“The ice on the other side of that wall should be thin, right?” I asked. “Just like the snow on the lee side of a snow drift.”

“Presumably.”

“Then all we need to do is bust through and we're home free.”

The Schooler roused himself from his funk. “Here's what we need to do.”

-----

You wouldn't think it possible to work up a sweat standing on a frozen lake at night in single digit temperatures but you'd be wrong. It was boathooks again, but The Schooler had replaced the hooks with a new attachment, a big-toothed saw with a sharpened tip.

Funny joke on ol' Hal. I thought The Schooler had rescued me from Jimmy's sawed-off because he valued my smarts. Turned out he just wanted another swabbie, deckhand, ice hacker, whatever it was Jimmy and I were as we balanced on slick lake ice and stabbed and sawed at the sculpted wave with ten-foot aluminum poles. This was not easy to do in bedroom slippers.

We were stabbing and sawing because The Schooler had made a mistake. He had neglected to ironclad the hull all the way up to the gunwales. If we were to breach that five-foot wall it would be at the point of a big-toothed saw.

Jimmy stood to starboard of the hull, I stood to port. The plan was to cut a notch in the frozen wave large enough for the cabin cruiser to pass through. Jimmy was sawing away at a furious pace, I took a more measured approach. The ice below my feet was spider webbed with cracks. I wasn't taking another dip in Lake Erie no matter what.

Then I heard the far off drone of an airplane.

I notched the saw and used the ten foot pole like a towline to pull myself across to the frozen wave. I straddled it, unscrewed the attachment, set down the pole, grabbed the big-toothed saw in my gloved hands and got busy.

My saw strokes were short and quick, no handle to hang on to. Jimmy's strokes were longer, using the full length of the blade. Long and strong beats short and quick every time so I pushed down on the blade with all my weight. The plane droned closer. It was flying slowly, searching.

Jimmy and I were hard at it, neck and neck with about two feet of ice to go when our captain yelled, “Back on board!”

We looked up and saw why. The plane banked and turned, about a mile away. It looked like a twin engine Grumman Goose, there was no mistaking that squat high-winged profile. It was conducting a spotlight-sweeping grid search of the lakefront. The area it was searching was Whiskey Island.

Jimmy punched at the notch in the frozen wave with the butt of his pole before we shuffled along the ice and climbed into the back of the boat. The notch didn't budge.

The Schooler nudged the bow of the
Tin Lizzie
against the sawed notch and gently throttled up. He couldn't gun it for fear the icy wave would tear open the bow above the steel skin. The Schooler reversed engines and tried again. And again.

“Not working, we need to raise the bow,” said The Schooler. “If we haul the ballast in the hold up to the stern we might…”

We looked skyward as the Grumman did another bank and turn. There wasn't time to rebalance the cargo load. The Schooler removed an anchor from a stow box on the main deck and clipped the end of the anchor chain to a metal ring on the stern. He handed the anchor to Jimmy.

“Toss it high,
on
the ice, as close to our wake as you can get.”

Jimmy reared back and let ‘er rip. The anchor landed on the ice, to the right of the channel the boat had carved. It landed and lay there in a heap. None of its prongs had bit. Henry Voss turned to us, full face.

“An extra twenty gees to whoever climbs out and plants that anchor.”

“I'll go,” I said. “But I'll need some better shoes.”

It wasn't just the promise of an extra twenty thou that returned me to the frozen surface of Lake Erie in white socks and Jimmy's shoes - they were one size too big but perfect for ice walking with their rippled soles. It was basic geometry.

You can kick a sphere from here to Sandusky, you can stomp a rectangle flat. Only a triangle wants to stay put and be itself.
Jimmy needed The Schooler to get his payday. I did too. The Schooler needed us to help him get where he was going and back him up when the exchange was made. We were a triangle now, Euclid's indomitable structure.

I dug two anchor prongs into the ice and pressed down with my foot to make it fast. I gave The Schooler the go sign, he nursed the throttle forward. The anchor chain grew taut, the Chris Craft sat back on its haunches. I heard the search plane bank and turn.

If I remembered rightly the amphibious Grumman Goose carried up to five passengers. Five armed-to-the-teeth G-men would be my guess.

“Go, dammit!”

The Schooler counted down. Jimmy unclipped the anchor chain from the stern on three as Henry throttled all ahead full.

The armored bow of the
Tin Lizzie
leapt up and busted through the notch in the frozen wave, smashing it to smithereens and surging into the thin ice on the other side, free and clear.

I minced forward on the slippery surface, keeping an eye out for gray spots. I leaned myself against a section of the sculpted wave, watched the Chris Craft tear northward, listened to the throbbing drone of the Grumman Goose and waited to see if Euclid was right about that triangle.

I wasn't left to freeze to death on Lake Erie. Euclid was right about the triangle.

The
Tin Lizzie
reversed engines after crashing through the sculpted wave. I wished for a camera. Were I fortunate enough to survive this screwy adventure no one would believe this part of the story.

The Schooler cut the inboards, the cabin cruiser drifted back through the notch in the wave. I cringed when I saw Jimmy pick up a ten-foot pole but he had, thoughtfully, unscrewed the spear point saw. I grabbed the pole, pulled the boat close and lunged for the gunwale. Jimmy, in another thoughtful gesture, snagged me by the back of my belt and dumped me face first on the deck.

I stood up and shook myself off. “Nice slippers.”

Jimmy ignored me, he was staring skyward. The twin-engine Grumman was no longer crisscrossing Whiskey Island, the search plane was now circling in a tight pattern. They had found something of interest.

The Schooler cranked the throttle, the
Tin Lizzie
took off. I used my newly acquired ripple-soled shoes to secure my balance. Jimmy sloshed around on the sloppy deck and fell on his butt.

The Grumman was still a half mile off and we were running without lights. They hadn't seen us, but they were examining something under that thousand-watt spotlight. Only one answer to that question. The G-men had spotted the narrow channel we had carved in the ice.

The Schooler gripped the helm for dear life as the cabin cruiser bucked and galloped. The ice was scattered here, free-floating
plates that offered hit and miss resistance to the steel hull.

The good news was that we weren't leaving much of a trail, what with the scattered ice. The bad news was that the Grumman was no longer circling in a tight pattern. The twin-engine amphib was now buzzing straight up our icy trail.

I huddled in a corner and attempted to keep the contents of my stomach where they belonged. This was something I knew well, hunkering in a bunker, waiting for the devastation from above. Jimmy did not. He reached into his coat and palmed his nickel-plated .45 as he watched the Grumman sweep closer. He was ready to do battle.

Hardee har har.

The Grumman Goose had wing-mounted machine guns if memory served but the feds wouldn't use ‘em. They didn't want the
Tin Lizzie
at the bottom of the lake. Chester Halladay would want a clean capture of the bank robbers and their ill-gotten gains. The ill-gotten gains anyway. Halladay would not be overcome with grief if the bank robbers in general and Harold Schroeder in particular weren't around to answer embarrassing questions.

The pilot would swoop down low to let the G-men squeeze off short submachine gun bursts through the slid-open hatch, targeting the inboard motors and anyone dumb enough to remain up top. Hiding below decks would keep me alive for a minute but then what? Once the
Tin Lizzie
was disabled the pilot would land the Grumman, the feds would board the boat and some hotshot G-man would top me off as I cowered in the head.