Death in Deep Water

by Paul Kemprecos

  “Where does he have his headquarters?”

  “SOS has a main office in California, and Schiller goes back there a few times a year. He operates out of his apartment in Cambridge. No salary. SOS is a shoestring operation. Apparently it survives on contributions and speaking fees. You’ll like this, though. He stays down your way during the summer. Wellfleet.”

  I told Ed to hold and reached for the Cape Cod telephone book. Only one Schiller was listed in Wellfleet. It was a woman’s name, Ursula Schiller.

  “I’ve got a possibility,” I said. “I’ll go see if it’s my man.”

  “Good luck, but for Chrissakes, be careful. Sounds like Schiller’s elevator doesn’t go to the top floor.”

  “Thanks, Ed, I’ll keep your advice in mind. One more question. Do you think the Sentinels are capable of making a bomb?”

  “Let me put it this way, Soc. If I got the Sentinels pissed off at me, I’d start checking under my car before I turned the ignition key.”

  Shaughnessy’s blunt appraisal was still on my mind as I turned off Route 6 into Wellfleet, a twenty-minute drive from my boathouse. Wellfleet is an artsy, picture-postcard town sandwiched between the Atlantic Ocean and Cape Cod Bay. Seafood gourmets consider the Wellfleet oysters gathered from the edges of the big bay among the best in the world. The coffee shop on Main Street is called the Lighthouse and the bell in the robin’s-egg-blue steeple of the Congregational church rings ship’s time.

  I drove through the village and turned onto Chequesset Neck Road, a narrow macadam strip that runs along the buff-colored cliffs overlooking the harbor. The Schiller mailbox marked the entrance to a crumbling blacktop driveway that wound up a hill through scrub pine and locust trees. The drive ended after a quarter mile at a slate-colored Victorian house with a mansard-roof turret. It looked like one of the spooky houses Charles Addams used to draw in the New Yorker.

  An old Chevy van was parked in the drive. I pulled up next to it and walked around to the side of the house. A man stood on a ladder slapping dark blue paint on the first-floor window trim. He was getting more paint on his full ginger-colored beard and his clothes than on the trim.

  I cleared my throat. “Excuse me. I’m looking for Ursula Schiller.”

  The man wiped a glob of paint off his nose and looked at me with curiosity. “Ursula isn’t around. In fact, she rarely uses the place.”

  “How about Walden Schiller? Is he ever around?”

  “Sometimes. Who wants to see him?”

  “My name is Socarides.”

  He daubed the trim with a wet brushful. “Got a message for him?”

  “Yes, please tell him I want to talk to him.”

  I handed up my business card. The painter studied it thoughtfully and climbed down the wobbly ladder.

  “I’m Walden Schiller,” he said.

  Reality didn’t jibe with my mind image. I had pictured Schiller as a lean and ascetic glassy-eyed fanatic. This guy looked more like a young Santa Claus. His eyes were Kris Kringle blue and they twinkled with good humor behind square steel-rim glasses. He was about five-foot-eight, slightly overweight, with the wide shoulders of somebody who chopped a lot of wood. His torn jeans and green-and-white Boston Celtics cap were splattered with dark paint stains.

  He removed the cap to wipe the sweat off his forehead and got a new paint smear on his receding hairline. His hair was pulled back in a short ponytail tied with a rubber band.

  “Sorry not to be more friendly. I’ve been trying to touch up that trim for days. It really takes a beating from the sun and salt air. Every time I get up on the ladder, somebody or something gets me down. You got my interest with your card, I must say. Why does a private detective want to see me?”

  “I want to talk to you about Oceanus.”

  He gave me an engaging grin. “Now you’ve really got my attention.” He rinsed his brush in a pailful of turpentine and covered the paint can. “Let’s go out back.”

  We walked behind the house and sat in a couple of wood-slatted Adirondack lawn chairs. I looked at the two-story turret. “Interesting place you’ve got here.”

  “Thanks, but it’s not mine. It belongs to my aunt Ursula. I pay rent just like anybody else, although I get a discount for doing work around the house. The Schillers are an old Yankee family that has never been known for largess, even, or should I say especially, to other Schillers, whom they regard as bloodsucking leeches. So tell me, what’s happing with my favorite whale jail?”

  “The owners hired me to prepare a complete report on the Eddy Byron affair.” I didn’t tell Schiller I was working undercover at Oceanus, and there was no reason for him to find out unless he showed up on the picket line. From Shaughnessy’s description of Schiller as a behind-the-scenes guy, that didn’t seem a possibility. My candor was also partially pragmatic. Schiller didn’t impress me as somebody I could blindside.

  “That still doesn’t explain why you came to see me.” There was no hostility in his voice, and his mouth was set in a bemused smile, but his eyes were steady and inquisitive.

  “Eddy died, and that might have been the end of it,” I said, “but SOS made sure it wasn’t. You called for a boycott after Eddy’s death. You still have pickets out there. You wanted the park closed, and it was. A bomb threat shut it down. I wondered if you had something to say. And besides, it was a nice day for a drive to Wellfleet.”

  Schiller picked some paint out of his beard. “Mr. Socarides, do you know anything about the Sentinels?”

  “You can call me Soc. In answer to your question, I know you’re not the national Audubon Society.”

  He laughed. “I sincerely hope not. We’re more of a grassroots organization. No mailing lists, no salaries, no big administrative budget. The mainstream groups think we’re a bunch of environmental rednecks who go around raising hell. It’s an image we don’t discourage, although it’s more complicated than that. We think Mother Earth is in big environmental trouble, and since the planet is mostly ocean, we’ve chosen to make our stand with our feet in the sea.”

  “Why did the son of an old Yankee family decide to get his toes wet?”

  “Precisely because of that family, Soc. The Schillers hail from Fairhaven originally, right next to New Bedford. My ancestors made a fortune financing the ships that murdered whales for lamp oil and corset stays.”

  “Hard to believe that you’re carrying the cross for something your ancestors did a hundred years ago.”

  “You’re right. I could have been like all the other Yankees who shrugged off the fact their families made their fortunes from whaling or slavery or child labor in the textile mills.”

  “Why didn’t you?”

  “My grandfather’s fault. He was a rara avis, a Schiller with a conscience. His father was the cold-blooded old bandit who made big bucks slaughtering whales. But Grandpa was an environmentalist before there was such a thing. Butterfly collector, bird-watcher. He even persuaded the family to contribute land for a park. A very little park. He idolized Thoreau. It was his idea to name me Walden after the pond where Thoreau had his cabin. He was a gentle guy, and he did some good, but after I moved to California, I saw that somebody had to take direct action.”

  “What changed you?”

  Schiller’s eyes grew icy, and he set his mouth in a tight line.

  “You must have read about the dolphins being killed by the tuna industry. Yellowfin tuna will school beneath pods of dolphin. The boats set their nets around the dolphins and herd them in with the tuna. Some dolphins escape, but most die in the tuna nets.”

  “I’ve heard most of the tuna companies brag now that their product is dolphin safe.”

  “That’s a major development. For years there was lots of talk and no action. The Marine Mammal Protection Law was passed in 1972 to protect the dolphins. When it came up for renewal in 1988, some of us wanted to show it wasn’t w
orking, that dolphins were still being slaughtered.”

  “Did you?”

  He nodded. “I got a job as a crewman out on a tuna boat and brought my camera. The boat used helicopters to spot the dolphins. Then they’d be herded toward the mother ship with chase boats or bombs in the water. The mother ship would set the net. They’d catch a thousand dolphins in a set, and almost all of them died. Even when you try to release them, the mortality is high. They get crushed, they drown, their beaks get broken and their flippers ripped off. The deck would be awash in dolphin blood. The animals would get mangled and torn apart in the machinery. There’d be more blood in the water. Then the sharks would come in.” His voice became tight with emotion, dropping almost to a low growl. “Dolphins don’t die quietly the way fish do. They squeal and shriek with terror and pain. They flail around trying to get out of the net. It was like a scene from Dante!”

  “You had a lot of guts to do that. The crew probably would have tossed you overboard if they knew what you were doing.”

  He shrugged. “They thought I was shooting pictures for my family. The toughest part was keeping my mouth shut, even participating in this slaughter. The pictures went national and the politicians got into the act. Congress didn’t have the courage to buck the tuna industry by banning the practice of setting on dolphins. They passed new regulations that limited the killing, but didn’t stop it. A lot of the tuna boats are foreign vessels, so they’re not directly subject to U.S. regulations. Maybe sixty-to-eighty thousand dolphins are still killed each year. It made me see the futility of going through the process. I decided direct action was the only option.”

  “What sort of direct action?”

  “Here’s one example. The tuna boat I shipped out on sank at the dock one day.”

  “Did the Sentinels have anything to do with that?”

  “We like to think it was Divine Providence.”

  “Was Eddy Byron’s death Divine Providence, too?”

  “In a way,” he said, wrinkling his brow. “We think Oceanus bears the responsibility for the trainer’s death. They confined the whale to that tank. A killer whale normally cruises fifty to one hundred miles in a day. No pool in existence can duplicate the animal’s environment in the sea. It’s bad enough keeping a dolphin captive, but it’s even tougher for an orca because of its size. Both animals are sonic creatures; they use sound to locate themselves and the food they eat. The echoes must bounce off the tank walls and drive them crazy. It would be like a human living in a room with mirrored walls. We humans take them away from their family members, put them in this crummy tank, then add stress by making them perform those dumb tricks. They can get ulcers, just like humans.”

  “What’s that got to do with Eddy Byron?”

  “I doubt the whale killed Byron on purpose. I think he was like a convict who’s had a rough day and takes a swing at the first prison guard who makes him blow his stack. The whale might have been in a bad mood. Maybe it didn’t mean to kill the trainer, but it’s a powerful animal. We’re saying that this was an unnatural act for an orca, and it proves what a lot of people have been saying right along. Whales and dolphins do not like captivity. No orca has ever killed a human in the wild. But there isn’t a pool in the world large enough to house an orca without risking aggressive behavior.”

  “What do you hope to accomplish at Oceanus?”

  “Oceanus was planning to expand. That means it will need more dolphins and whales.”

  “Where does it plan to get them?”

  “I’ll tell you where; it plans to get them at sea, somehow, to yank them away from their pods, and we’re not going to let that happen. We’ve got a toehold there. We’re delaying that expansion. We’re going to keep that park closed and use the trainer incident as a springboard to shut down whale jails across the country. We won’t rest until every marine mammal held prisoner goes free.”

  “That’s a tall order for a small organization like SOS.”

  “We know our impact is limited, but we think we’ve got a chance.”

  “What do the mainstream environmental groups think of this?”

  He leaned forward in his chair and curled his lip in contempt. “Look, Soc, Greenpeace has a budget of ten million, but only a fraction of that goes into direct action. They’ll harass a Russian or Japanese whaler for the TV cameras, but they’re more interested in selling bumper stickers and T-shirts. You don’t see them out there picketing unless there’s a network cameraman around. The mainstream environmental groups liked us at first. They said we inspired them. That we brought passion to the cause that they couldn’t match. Now they think we’re a bunch of crazies, ecoterrorists. But they know we can galvanize public opinion and force the issue politically by raising hell.”

  “What about those who say places like Oceanus are educational?”

  “Let me tell you how educational they are,” he said, his eyes narrowing. “The marine amusement parks are a twenty-five-billion-dollar business in this country. Kids could be educated just as well looking at mock-ups. They don’t have to watch a trainer ride on a killer whale’s back or see a dolphin play toss ball.”

  “What will you do if Oceanus decides to reopen?”

  “They would be very unwise to do that.”

  “Will they get another bomb threat?”

  “Making a bomb threat would be against the law, Soc.”

  “Sinking a tuna boat is against the law, too.”

  Walden Schiller spread his hands apart. “It’s against the laws of man, my friend. The rules we impose on ourselves can change from day to day or they can be repealed, depending on who has power at a given time. The laws of nature are absolutes. And we think it is absolutely morally wrong to keep dolphins and killer whales in captivity. These are intelligent creatures. They can manage their own lives, and if they had the choice, they would greatly prefer the open seas to a concrete or metal tank and a life of being a circus clown. So if a tuna boat is killing dolphins, or if an aquarium keeps animals in captivity, they are breaking the laws of nature, and that should be remedied, even if doing so breaks the artificial laws of man.”

  “Hypothetically speaking, if the choice came between a dolphin or orca or human, would you choose the animal?”

  “I regard those creatures as remarkable, maybe superior beings, who deserve to be free. And I will do anything I have the power to do to make that freedom come to pass. Anything.”

  “Even if it hurts innocent people?”

  “Our philosophy is called Deep Ecology. In other words, we think a mouse has the same rights as a man, equal title to the earth. That the human species may be a cancer on the planet. So when you measure a human being against the fate of the world, he comes out a second best. We don’t want to injure anyone, we just say leave things alone and you won’t have to worry about being harmed.”

  Neither one of us spoke for a minute. The air was charged. Schiller had revealed more of himself than he intended. He squinted at the house. The grin came back on his face.

  “Damn, I’ve run off at the mouth. I’d love to talk all day, Soc, but I’ve got to get back to my painting before I succumb to inertia.”

  I got out of the chair. “That’s all right, I appreciate your time.”

  “No problem. Maybe after you get through working for Oceanus, you’ll be primed to join the Sentinels. No dues. No monthly meetings. You just have to have a general anarchist inclination. I’d guess you’ve already got an antiauthority streak or you wouldn’t be working outside the system as a private investigator. Give us a try.”

  “I’ll think about it.”

  Schiller nodded and got up to walk me to my truck. We were shaking hands when a battered blue Jeep bumped into the drive and two people got out. They looked as if they’d been at a 1960s peace rally. The blond guy had shoulder-length hair and a beard like shredded wheat. He was dressed in army camouflage
and wore airman’s sunglasses. His companion was a thin woman in faded jeans with heavy-lidded eyes and long face set in a sullen expression. Her raven hair was parted in the middle and worn straight down. I bet myself she smelled of patchouli. The man glanced right by me as if I weren’t there, but the woman stared like someone eyeing an insect that should be squashed. Walden went over to greet his friends. He didn’t introduce us, so I got in the truck.

  As the pickup bumped out the long driveway, I reviewed my impressions of Schiller while they were still fresh in my mind. One thing was very clear. Under his elfin exterior there was a steely resolve and sharp intellect. His observation about my attitude problem when it came to authority was pretty accurate, and it told me something else. While I was sizing up him, trying to get a handle on where he was coming from, Schiller was doing the same with me.

  Chapter 15

  Dan Austin sprang up from behind his desk. “Migod, man, are you all right? Mike Arnold told me what happened in the shark tank. Christ, that’s absolutely incredible.”

  Seeing Austin was the first thing I did after returning to Oceanus from my talk with Walden Schiller. “I’m fine, but I can’t say the same for your fishies,” I said, sliding into a chair. “The shark tank looked like a bowl of Manhattan clam chowder. Were there any survivors?”

  Austin sat down and rubbed his eyes like a man with a migraine headache. “Damn few,” he grunted. “Whitey’s got a few scars, but she’ll pull through if they don’t get infected. Some of the smaller fish are okay. The nurse shark got torn to shreds. She was a big target and couldn’t defend herself. We’ll have to restock. It’s going to take months to round up some new fish and it will cost us money I’d rather not spend. Christ, it couldn’t have happened at a worse possible time.”