The Whale's Footprints - Rick Boyer (29 page)

"Yeah?" he managed, leaning down to speak
through the metal air vent. Obviously a verbal chap. I pulled out my
new county medical examiner's badge and flashed it.

"I'm on business for the Commonwealth of
Massachusetts," I said in a low, confidential half-whisper. "I
am investigating a series of burglaries and a murder. Follow?"

"Uh, shuwa. Yeah, I follow." His eyes
bugged out; he drummed his fingers fast on a two-page color
photograph of Madonna, wearing a leather corset, eight-inch heels,
net stockings, and a bowler hat. They've got nice pix; you've got to
give them that. The Wall Street Journal can't touch them there.

"It's absolutely imperative that I have somebody
on my side who's reliable and smart. Frankly, you look like that kind
of guy."

"I do?" he said, amazed.

I stepped back, a confused look on my face. I
shuffled my feet, became reluctant. "Well, don't you think so?
Maybe I misjudged you."

"
No. No. I can help. Who are you?"

I explained I was a private physician on state
business, and told him what I was looking for. I didn't lie, even a
little bit. I didn't have to. The kid was all ears. To top it off, I
took a twenty and slid it under the glass.

"Consider this a personal gift, from me," I
said. "But you go blabbing around and wreck everything, I'll be
very disappointed. In fact, I'll be downright pissed off."

"No prawblem, no prawblem."

I said he was to keep a sharp eye out for the stern
trawler
Highlander
,
and call me the second she pulled in. Furthermore, without being seen
by the boat's crew he was, if possible, to keep track of whoever came
and went.

"And just maybe you could remember what
direction they go, okay?"

"No prawblem. You gawt it."

"And one more thing, Melvin," I said,
reading his name off the badge on his shirt, "if we bust this
thing wide open, do you have any objections if your name and picture
appear in the newspapers?"

"You kiddin'?"
he said, practically wetting his fresh-pressed, gabardine guard's
slacks. "No prawblem."' I handed him four  phone
numbers: my home, office, cottage, and Jack's number in Woods Hole.
He told me to have a nice day, and I left for home.

* * *

"Okay, pal, what's up?"

"Nothing's up. What do you mean?" It was
the next morning, and we were having breakfast together in the
kitchen.

"I mean you're fidgeting around, Charlie. I know
the signs."

One of the things that's so maddening about Mary is
that she always knows; she always finds out. I told her briefly about
bribing the kid in the guard shack. She was less than elated.

"What are you doing?" I asked, seeing her
make a beeline for the phone.

"Telling Joe. What else? Somebody's got to make
sure you don't get killed."

I protested that it was just a routine check, but she
dialed anyway, and I went off to work.

The call came at ten forty-five, just as I was
suturing a third molar extraction on a comely twenty-year-old co-ed
named Jo Anne Fleming. The call was taken by an assistant who fills
in for Susan Petri when Susan's helping me with surgery. "We're
in surgery, so tell him to hold," said Susan through her gauze
mask. In her right hand she held the bloody suction tube, in her
left, spare sutures.

I finished the suture and shot Jo Anne with a hefty
dose of penicillin, then picked up the phone.

"Dawktah Adams? Melvin Combs, down at New
Betfid?"

"How you doing? See anything?"

"
Yeah. The
Highlandah
pulled in a few minutes ago down at the fish dawk. She'll be theah
maybe six, seven howahs anyway—"

"Good. Keep an eye out. Can you leave the
shack?"

"
No. Nawt on duty. But I get a lunch break at
eleven."

"
Good. Skip lunch and spend the time watching
the boat and who comes and goes. Try to remember the people, and
where they came from and where you think they're headed. And act
casual and stay out of sight. I have a patient at one, but l should
be down there by four."

"No prawblem. Have a
nice day."

* * *

I pulled into the asphalt area near Melvin's guard
shack at four-fifteen. I wore a fisherman's long-billed cap, aviator
glasses, jeans, and a dark-blue canvas pullover. Even if Henderson
and son saw me from the
Highlander
,
they wouldn't recognize me.

Melvin's guard shack was occupied by a stranger. I
skirted the tall cyclone fence and went down to the water. There was
Henderson's big sixty-foot stern trawler, pulled up to the fish dock
at Bertelsen's freezer warehouse and market. There were a slew of
boats there, but the big, new Highlander stood out, white and sassy,
against the other boats. I sat down on the concrete of a neighboring
pier and leaned my back against a giant piling there and watched. I
could've seen better with binoculars, but they'd attract attention. I
pulled out my pipe, loaded it, and lit up. To all appearances I was
just a waterfront hanger-on idling away a summer afternoon.

It didn't take me long to find Melvin. He was
standing, in his guard's uniform of course, flat against a wall of
the warehouse, arms spread out and stuck to the wall, like a ledge
clinger about to jump. Every so often he'd peep around the corner at
the boat, then snap back behind the wall. Sweet jesus.

I circled around and came up on him from behind.

"Melvin—I said in a whisper.

He screamed and jumped out of his skin, twirling
around like a majorette in full view of the pier. I crooked a finger
at him and motioned him in. "Great job, Melvin; I'1l take over
now. What did you see?"

"A bunch of 'em walked off the boat and headed
up theah," he
said, pointing south, past
the giant freezer warehouses.

"
How many, and what did they look like?"

"A big white-haired guy. I think he must be the
ownah. And two youngah guys. They been gone, maybe hahf an howah."

I slipped him another twenty, thanked him, and told
him to walk casually back to the guardhouse as if nothing had
happened.

"I'll be in touch if I need you, Melvin. As you
walk back, please don't look around.

"No prawblem. Have a ni—"

"Same to you. So long."

The big white-haired guy would be Bill Henderson.
Probably one of the younger guys was his son Terry. And perhaps the
third guy a crew member. I ambled south, taking care not to appear to
be in a hurry or have any definite destination, glancing toward the
water. More warehouses, two fisheries offices, another dock, a marine
tackle shop, and a repair shed. Another office attached to a
hangar-type building and supply yard, another pier . . . and that
appeared to be about all. I sat down on a clump of turf at the foot
of an earthen rise that led back to the streets behind me, and puffed
my pipe and sat. My gaze wandered from building to building. Nothing
was unusual. Nothing seemed out of place. And also, I bet that
Highlander did indeed have a hold full of fish. And so the crew,
faced with several hours' wait until they could unload the catch,
went up the line for a smoke and a gam. So what?

I rose and walked still more, all the way past the
big docks down to where Rodney French Boulevard began snaking its way
down the peninsula toward the hurricane gates. Not seeing a soul down
that way, I turned and headed back, idly kicking at stones, tin cans,
and other junk. I passed a series of sheds, and then walked opposite
the office that was attached to the hangar. Then I stopped in my
tracks. Along with a pickup truck and a compact sedan, a big blue
Mercedes was parked at the office building, and damned if it wasn't
the same one I saw pull up near the Woods Hole dock the previous
week. I was sure of it, and I knew it hadn't been there ten minutes
before. So it had just arrived, which suggested its owner knew the
Highlander
had just
arrived and had come to meet it.

I looked at the office building. There was a blue and
white logo on it showing a stylized Neptune with trident set against
wavy blue lines. In a way, it reminded me of the logo of the Cousteau
Society. Under it were the letters OEI. What the hell was OEI? Then I
saw three words underneath the logo, but I was still too far away to
read them. I had to get closer; I wanted the license plate number of
the Mercedes, too.

Ambling to and fro, stopping now and then to throw
rocks into the water and watch the gulls, I got close enough. Hoping
nobody inside was looking out, I read Oceanic Enterprises, Inc., on
the side of the office building. I read the Mercedes's plate number
and kept repeating it to myself until I got downrange far enough to
write it down. I had also seen that the hangar-type building and
office were joined together. Furthermore, there was a large work boat
moored next to the hangar, which had been invisible from where I
stood earlier. It was almost the size of the
Highlander
,
but much older and rather beat-up. It was a western rig, which meant
cabin and wheelhouse forward, with a long, wide deck aft and a very
heavy-duty crane. She was built along the lines of a coastal trawler,
with a high bow, pronounced sheer, and low freeboard aft. I also saw
a big air compressor rig on the afterdeck, which I figured could be
used to power air tools, or, more likely, air hoses for "hard-hat"
diving. The yard was untidy, littered with marker buoys, oil drums,
geared machinery, and long, canvas-covered mounds of something,
perhaps pipe or reinforcing rods. Thus, I reasoned, OEI was some sort
of marine engineering or salvage firm. I then tried to think what
possible connection a firm like this would have with the murder of
young Andrew Cunningham. My conclusion was: not much.

I walked up past the guard shack, buttonholed Melvin,
and said that regrettably the lead didn't look too promising, but
that I'd let him know.

"But nevertheless, don't mention this to anyone,
Melvin. There has been a murder; there could be a lot of danger to
you. Know what I mean?"

"No prawblem. Have—"

"
Goodbye, Melvin."

Driving back I realized
that nothing much had come from my surveillance, of New Bedford. I
had a tag number and the name of a firm. Also, perhaps, I had the
knowledge that the Slinky connection, however tenuous, was much more
promising than this
one.

* * *

"Well, it's no surprise to me, sport, that you
didn't bump into much down there" said Joe, making himself a
giant G and T in a half-liter beer stein. Whenever he shows up at my
house, either house, his first act is to see how big a dent he can
make in my liquor cabinet. "While you were farting around in New
Bedford, Paul Keegan and I were following up in Providence. Guess
what? It so happens we stumbled onto a connected guy being held on
other charges, i.e., possession with intent to sell. Name's Evans,
nicknamed "the Drugstore." This guy's a prime candidate for
the WPP—"

"Witness Protection Program?"

"You got it. And boy, is he gonna need it. See,
the state guys nailed him sitting on four kilos of pure, uncut
Columbian coke. Naturally, this puts a lot of pressure on the poor
baby. So next thing you know, he's implicating several leading
families of Providence, and who else but Falcone, our friend Slinky.
Seems Slinky's been in on the nose-candy trade, despite his earlier
cover-up. And it looks like we'll be getting enough evidence and
testimony to put him away . . . maybe for good.

"So Slinky was involving the Cunningham kid."

"Yep, Yep, yep, yep. I think the pieces are just
about in place. And think about it, Doc, Mary: between Slinky and the
Drugstore, don't you think they'd know enough about drugs to doctor
up a capsule to do the kid in?"

"Possibly."

"At least possibly. More like probably. You ask
me, my original thinking on this thing is on the money: Slinky needed
a safe cover to help run coke in from a mother ship. The Cunningham
kid was in hock to him, so he'd be the likely bagman, using Woods
Hole research vessels, which wouldn't be stopped and searched. It's
perfect."

"If it's so perfect," said Mary, "then
why did Slinky go to Arthur Hagstrom last month and tell him the kid
owed money? Huh?"

"
Good question, Mare," I said. Leave it to
her to cut through to the meat.

"Okay . . . you wanna know why? Simple: the kid
refused to play ball. So Slinky went to Hagstrom as a last resort.
And finally, he had to kill Andy because he wouldn't budge"

I rocked my open palm back and forth. "Iffy,
Joe. There it gets kinda iffy . . . For example, how does your theory
explain the two burglaries, huh?"

"Simple: Andy had the coke and held out,
planning to sell it himself for a fortune."

"And you think this kid, smart enough to get
into the best med schools in the country, and having grown up in the
mob's home town, is gonna do that?"