Death in Deep Water

by Paul Kemprecos

  Sam said he’d try to line up a mechanic and I told him I would call later. Looking at water all day long had made me thirsty. I drove straight from the pier to a dark pub with a Batcave ambience. The bar used to be called the Porthole, but the hard-core drinkers who had trouble pronouncing two-syllable words slurred the name down to the ’Hole.

  I sat at the bar next to a bearish charterboat skipper. “Tell me, Cap,” I said, “do you think the Sophoclean definition of tragedy could be applied to a dead engine, a boatload of fish you couldn’t get to market and a hefty tow fee?”

  His booze-glazed eyes squinted from a face cooked to hamburger red by too many hard days in the sun and hard nights at the ’Hole.

  “I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about as usual, Soc, but I’ll agree to anything you say if you buy me a beer.”

  I signaled the bartender. He slid two mugs of Bud our way and followed it with a note.

  “For you, Soc. This guy has been trying to get you.”

  I frowned to let him know I realized it was déclassé to be called at the ’Hole. Some of the resident phonies have themselves paged so they will look important. I brightened when I read the name on the note. I went to a pay phone and charged a call to Boston on my credit card. A guttural voice answered, “Tremont Investigations.”

  “Hi Shaughnessy,” I said. “Got your message.”

  “Jeezus, Soc, I’ve been trying to get you all day. How the hell are you?”

  “Just dandy, Ed. I would have called earlier, but I was out fishing. I got in a little while ago.”

  “Yeah, I tried you a couple of times at home. Figured you’d show up at the ’Hole before the day was over. Listen, Soc, this is going to sound crazy, but what do you know about whales?”

  I pressed the telephone tighter to my ear. The jukebox was doing a heavy riff behind “Pretty Woman” by Roy Orbison. Fueled on high test, the late-evening crowd was cranking up to a dull roar.

  “There’s a lot of noise at this end, Ed. I thought you said ‘whales.’ ”

  “That’s right. Like Moby Dick. Listen, buddy, I need your help on a real weird case. You could bail me out and make a few bucks beside. Interested?”

  “Hell, Ed, I’m always willing to help an old pal.”

  “Terrific. Look, I’d like you to see a guy named Simon Otis. Tomorrow morning in Boston. He’ll give you the whole skinny. Then call me if you want to go for it.” He gave me a time and place and I said I’d get back to him.

  The charter boat skipper whose ear I rented in exchange for a brew was trying to hit on a couple of college girls. I finished my drink and went home to call Sam.

  He was about as apoplectic as his New England reserve allowed. “Every marine mechanic on the Cape is up to his eyeballs in work,” Sam grumbled. “I got a fella coming from Hyannis, but he can’t be here until tomorrow afternoon.”

  “I’ll be in Boston early in the day, so I’ll catch you later to see how you’re doing.”

  Sam said that would be fine.

  Kojak rubbed against my leg. I fed him a can of 9-Lives Savory Seafood dinner. Then I made myself a grilled tomato-and-cheese sandwich with Velveeta and whipped up a plate of angel-hair pasta with Ragu mushroom sauce. I washed it down with a couple of cans of beer. The Gods of Olympus never had it so good.

  The long day of fishing had sapped my energies. I flopped into bed, pulled the sheets over my head, and fell quickly into a deep slumber. The raccoons woke me up around 2:00 A.M. They were thumping the floorboards and screaming at each other in raccoonese. It could have been worse, I suppose; I was lucky they weren’t skunks. Eventually I got back to sleep. Around seven, Kojak walked on my head and woke me up.

  I gave him some breakfast crunchies, drank two cups of instant coffee, showered, put on a seersucker-blue sports jacket, tan slacks, and a pair of Top-Siders, and coaxed my 1977 GMC pickup truck into life. A half hour later I parked the truck at the Burger King off the Mid-Cape Highway outside of Hyannis. I picked up a Boston Globe from a vending machine and settled into a window seat on the P&B commuter bus.

  The ninety-minute ride to Boston gave me time to read the comics and check out the baseball box scores. The Red Sox were going through a midseason gyration, veering from triumph to disaster. It’s like watching a plane that has lost a wing. Your heart hopes it’ll come down safely even though your head knows it’s going to crash. I sighed, put the paper aside, and looked out the window. The passing scenery was a blur.

  What do you know about whales? Shaughnessy had asked.

  It was an odd question. Coincidental, too. Two weeks ago on a fishing trip, Sam yelled and pointed off to starboard. I followed his finger and saw only the blue Atlantic. Sam has years on me, but his eye is sharper than a sea gull’s on a dump run. I looked through the binoculars. A quarter of a mile away, a white feathery plume erupted from the sea in a spreading umbrella.

  Puff. Then another. Puff. The sun glinted off shiny black skin.

  “Humpbacks,” Sam declared. “Real pretty sight.”

  “Yeah, real pretty.” There are loads of whales on the fishing grounds in the spring and fall. No matter how often you see them, it’s always a treat. The whales moved in slow motion across the glassy sea. One of them breached, coming nearly straight out of the water. “We’re wasting our time fishing, Sam. How about turning the Millie D into a whalewatch boat? We could charge fifteen dollars a head and two bucks for a hot dog. I’ll run the grill.”

  “I’ll leave the whales be,” Sam replied. “I’ve given them enough trouble for one lifetime.”

  My hand was on the hauler switch, ready to start the hooks coming in. I hesitated, intrigued at Sam’s comment. My fishing partner is one of the gentlest men in the world.

  “Sam, I can’t imagine you giving anyone or anything trouble.”

  He scooped his pipe into a package of Edgehill and touched a match to the bowl. “It was during the war. Our side needed special oil for bombsight gears. Best oil came from blackfish—that’s what we used to call the pilot whales that strand on the bayside sometimes and get their pictures on TV. The government protects them now, but in those days the feds came down the Cape and told us they needed oil. Bunch of the boys and I would get in our motorboats whooping and hollering like cowboys. We’d drive the whales onto the shallows and they’d die on the flats when the tide went out. Then we’d cut the oil melons out of their heads.”

  “I never thought of you as a whaler, Sam.”

  “Me neither, Soc. It was fun the first couple of times. Chance to go make big money and help the war. Not much different than catching fish, I thought.” He puffed deliberately on his pipe, looking off toward the pod of humpbacks. “But one day we drove a couple dozen ashore near First Encounter Beach. I walked among them. They were making noises like children crying. The worse thing was a mother whale. She gave birth right then and there. Probably the shock of going aground. She and the calf died, a’course. I came home feeling like I had murdered somebody. Couldn’t sleep that night. I talked to Millie, and she said to do what I thought was right. Figured we could beat Hitler without making life miserable for those poor critters, so I quit doing it. After a bit, someone invented a way to use oil they got from the ground and they stopped going after the blackfish.”

  “You helped win the war, Sam. Things would have been tough if we hadn’t.”

  “Guesso,” he said. “Every once in a while, though, like when I see those humpbacks, I think back to the blackfish crying out there on the flats. It’s too late now, but I wish I hadn’t done it.”

  The moon-crater potholes on the Southeast Expressway jarred my thoughts back to the present. Minutes later, I got off at South Station. The address Shaughnessy gave me was an office high rise near Rowe’s Wharf, ten minutes’ walk from the bus stop. The fastest elevator shot to the top floor. I still had my finger on the button as the door whispered
open on a red marble lobby decorated with a city photo mural covering most of one wall. The words BAY STATE INVESTMENTS were overlaid on the mural.

  An attractive receptionist with a sweet smile efficiently extracted my name and buzzed somebody on an intercom, then ushered me briskly along a hushed hallway, opened a door, and quietly retreated.

  I stepped inside and sank into the ankle-deep beige carpeting of a cavernous conference room. Blue light streamed through tinted floor-to-ceiling windows that overlooked the harbor and the distant twin-legged control tower at Logan Airport. Clipper ships in full sail coursed along a wallpaper sea. Hanging above the hand-buffed oak wainscoting were maps of early Boston and portraits of the stiff-collared Yankee aristocracy who ran the city before the Irish and Italians took over.

  In the center of the room was a football-shaped dark mahogany table long enough to play shuffleboard on. Four men and a woman were seated at the far end. They looked at me as if I were making a Domino’s pizza delivery to the bar at the Four Seasons. A silver-haired man wearing a dark pinstripe suit launched himself out of his chair and strode athletically over with his hand extended.

  “Good morning, Mr. Socarides. Nice of you to come,” he said. “My name is Simon Otis.”

  He was about six feet, an inch shorter than I am, but he had a runner’s leanness that made him appear taller than he was. His grip was strong and his voice richly confident. It’s always that way with people who have reversible front and back names. He indicated a leather-cushioned chair. I sat down and he took a seat opposite me.

  With his mustache and natural elegance, Otis resembled an older Walter Pidgeon, the screen actor. I grinned at the thought and he grinned back. I was on a roll, so I grinned at the three Asian men and a young Asian woman who were also at the table. They were dressed in matching gray. The woman looked down at the steno pad in front of her, but the men showed off their dental work. I know when I’m outgrinned. I turned back to Otis.

  “Mr. Shaughnessy spoke very highly of you,” he said.

  “You’re in good hands if you’ve engaged his detective agency.” The woman scribbled in the pad, then leaned over and murmured to the three men who put their heads together and listened, brows furrowed.

  Otis sat back in his chair and tapped the side of his long nose with a slender, well-manicured finger.

  “We did substantial research before talking to Tremont Investigations. The agency has a very good reputation and extensive resources. Therefore, we were rather surprised at Mr. Shaughnessy’s recommendation. Because of the peculiar nature of our problem, he said it would be best to employ one person.” He paused, cocked his head slightly as if Shaughnessy’s proposal still struck him as mildly preposterous. “Mr. Shaughnessy suggested that that person be you.”

  “It was kind of Mr. Shaughnessy to recommend me, but not surprising. We worked as partners on the Boston Police Department.”

  The pen flickered across the steno pad again and there was another whispered conference. I took a deep breath and let it out slowly.

  “Yes,” Otis said. “He mentioned that.” He regarded me for a moment with pale gray eyes. “To be perfectly blunt, Mr. Socarides, I’m worried about putting this operation onto the shoulders of any one person. Particularly, an individual who is an unknown quantity to us. There is a great deal at stake here.”

  A notepad with the company logo, a stylized BSI, lay on the table in front of me. Next to it on a marble stand was a sharply tapered black ballpoint pen in a fake brass inkwell. I took the pen and doodled on the pad as if I were writing something important, then put it down on the glossy tabletop.

  “Let me be blunt, too, Mr. Otis. First of all, I don’t take every case thrown my way.” I gestured toward the others at the table. “And second, if you don’t mind, I’d like to know who these three gentlemen are and why they are so obviously interested in our conversation.”

  The woman’s hand froze in midstroke.

  Otis’s face flushed pink. “I’m sorry, Mr. Socarides. It was rude of me not to introduce you. I wanted to sound you out before we wasted time on introductions.”

  I sat back. “I have lots of time. Filene’s Basement doesn’t close until six o’clock.” I winked at the stenographer. She looked the other way.

  “Of course,” Otis said. He stood up. “This is Mr. Shimoro, Mr. Tanaka, and Mr. Mishuma.” I rose and shook hands as each man bobbed up and bowed slightly. Then I reached over and I took the stenographer’s hand. She tried to suppress a smile by tightening her lips in a disapproving pucker that didn’t quite make it, and held on until I sat down.

  The Japanese men remained inscrutable. Otis raised an eyebrow and went on with his presentation.

  “These gentlemen represent Shogun Industries, a major Japanese conglomerate. I’m the executive liaison between their company and ours. Bay State Investments is a real-estate development and holding company.” He patted the tabletop with his palm. “We own this building and a great deal of commercial and residential property in Boston. We have also acquired other promising companies, including one named Sea Amusements, which runs a marine theme park on Cape Cod. The park is called Oceanus. Are you acquainted with it?”

  An aquarium was the last place I wanted to go after looking codfish in the eye all day. “I’ve never been there, but I hear it’s got more fish than the Atlantic Ocean,” I said.

  He nodded. “The park was a sound investment. It has made money and appreciated in value. Ordinarily, we would hold on to it, but BSI has been badly hurt by the real-estate slump. We invested heavily in commercial real estate. Then the bottom fell out of the market. We’re faced with some unpleasant prospects. We want to cut the park loose and use the cash infusion to reconsolidate and show the stockholders and banks they have nothing to worry about. Shogun Industries has made an extremely generous offer, which we have accepted.” He paused. “There is one problem, however.”

  Otis flipped open a leatherbound folder at his fingertips. He removed a sheaf of newspaper clippings and pushed them across the table. On top was a Boston Herald front page. The headline was in mile-high tabloid type:

  “JAWS” KILLS

  WHALE TRAINER

  AT CAPE PARK

  I thumbed through the pile. There were clips from the Boston Globe, The New York Times, AP, and UPI. The Cape Cod Times article was played across the top of the page under a banner headline.

  KILLER WHALE FATALLY MAULS HANDLER AT AQUARIUM

  The story had been all over radio, print, and TV, so I was familiar with the main details. A trainer at Oceanus had been found dead and the suspected instrument of his demise was a trained killer whale. The news clips featured photos of the whale, an eight-ton hunk of blubber named Rocky, and of Eddy Byron, the dead trainer. I finished going through the clips and looked up. Otis was watching patiently.

  “The newsguys had a good time with this,” I said.

  He gathered the newspaper cuttings into a neat pile and squared the edges.

  “Yes,” he said. “We could have made millions of dollars in ticket sales capitalizing on the morbid fascination the public has with a killer whale who actually kills.”

  “Why didn’t you?” I asked.

  “We had more important issues to deal with.” He played with his mustache. “We’re in somewhat of a dilemma, Mr. Socarides. You see, Oceanus is under attack.”

  “Attack by whom, Mr. Otis?”

  He leaned forward on his elbows and folded his hands as if they would fly away. “Environmentalists. Ecologists. Animal-rights organizations. Some people call them ‘whale huggers.’ Well-meaning but fuzzy-headed groups who have a rather skewered view of things. They believe it is immoral to keep dolphins and whales captive for profit. They say parks like Oceanus are ‘whale jails.’ ”

  I waited, still wondering where a private investigator fit in.

  Otis went on. “They have lobb
ied the government for tighter regulations to the point it has become difficult to acquire permits for dolphins and virtually impossible to bring in new killer whales. The marine-park industry in this country has managed to survive, and prosper, but the incident at Oceanus changes that.”

  “How so, Mr. Otis?”

  “The animal rightists say the whale reacted violently because it was held in captivity. There have been protests. As many as six different organizations were picketing Oceanus at one time. There was an attempted boycott that failed, but we closed the park after a bomb threat.”

  “Bomb threats usually turn out to be hoaxes.”

  “Yes, we know that, but we had reason to believe this one was serious. We’ve lost a great deal in box-office receipts, but that’s only a drop in the bucket. We could weather those losses.”

  “Why don’t you?”

  “It’s much more complex. You see, the furor could torpedo our deal with Shogun. Japan is still hunting whales and is extremely sensitive to international criticism. Shogun believes acquiring Oceanus now, in the middle of this controversy, would leave them and their country vulnerable to further charges of whale exploitation and open the door to more of the kind of Japan bashing one hears out of Congress, particularly during an election year.”

  I looked over at the Japanese men. They were listening to the translation, dark eyes fixed on the interpreter, taking in her every word.

  “Nothing is as stale as yesterday’s news,” I said, turning back to Otis. “The public has a short attention span. Wait long enough and people will be diverted by a U.S. senator caught with a floozie.”

  “Ordinarily, I might agree with you. But we can’t afford to wait. If Shogun pulls out, millions of dollars in Bay State Investments property, this very building we’re sitting in, will be in jeopardy. So you see, we have to defuse the controversy as quickly as possible.”