Grey Lady

by Paul Kemprecos

  “I always look as if I could use one because I usually do,” I said.

  She passed me the keys to her MG.

  “You can drive,” she said.

  CHAPTER 5

  Ten minutes later, I pulled up in front of the Wauwinet Hotel, tossed the MG’s keys to the car valet and escorted Lisa into Topper’s restaurant. The hostess smilingly obliged our request for a table off by itself, and found us a two-seater in a corner of the deck. The lights of Nantucket town sparkled like gemstones across the harbor. A sweet salt-spray rose perfume floated on the warm summer breeze.

  The waiter came over for our drink orders. Lisa asked for a Kir cocktail. I went for a shot of Macallan malt whiskey. When the drinks came, I raised my glass. “A toast to Ahab and Moby.”

  Her glass stayed on the table. “I’m curious. Why would you raise your glass to Moby Dick, who sank the Pequod, and caused the death of nearly all of its crew, including yourself, Mr. Starbuck.”

  “Precisely because that’s who I am, according to your grandfather. Starbuck.”

  Lisa furrowed her brow. “Maybe I’m just being dense. I’m afraid you’ve lost me.”

  “Understandable. Let me lay it out for you. Ahab snapped after Moby bit off his leg. Racked by pain and humiliated at having to hop around on a peg-leg, Ahab let his desire for revenge become a destructive obsession. My namesake, Starbuck, tried to discourage him from his insane quest.”

  “You have a good grasp of Melville, I see. I’m still not clear why I should join a cheering section for the whale.”

  “The whale was not evil, Starbuck argued; Moby was a force of nature and had attacked Ahab in self-defense after he harpooned it. Unlike the whale, Ahab had human intellect, but he denied the fact that Moby’s reaction was animal instinct and attributed it to human-like malevolence. Blinded by his anger, Ahab ignored Starbuck’s warning. Thought of him as a traitor. When Ahab enlisted his crew in his unholy cause, he doomed them. And himself. And me.”

  “You’re looking quite healthy for a dead man. Are you saying Moby was the victim?”

  “Think of it. Guys like Ahab were using him for a pincushion. He had suffered as much physical pain as Ahab. Maybe mental as well. Moby could have been vindictive as Ahab said. Who knows what goes on in a whale’s mind? But in any case, both Ahab and Moby were victims of their own fate.”

  “Ah. Now I understand. I think.”

  “Good, because my harpoon-throwing arm is getting tired holding this glass. I suggest that we make the first toast to Ahab.”

  We clinked glasses. She took a sip of her cocktail, keeping her eyes on me over the rim of her glass.

  “Maybe Gramps wasn’t being crazy when he made you his first mate, Mr. Socarides. I think he saw the philosophical qualifications that could help him out of his predicament.”

  “Not sure I agree, but I’ll admit that you were right about this being a fascinating case.”

  The warm evening was too pleasant to fill our conversation with autopsies and murder weapons. We made small talk, exchanging personal information in the cautious way new acquaintances do when they’re not sure of each other.

  She asked about my background and I gave her an edited version of the Socarides biography. She picked up on my sudden shift from the job of catching criminals to catching codfish.

  “That was a drastic change, cutting short what must have been a promising career in law enforcement.”

  “I had professional and personal reasons. I’ll tell you about them when we get to know each other better. Your turn now. My incredible powers of deduction suggest that the D in your middle name stands for Daggett.”

  “I’ll give you five Sherlocks on a scale of ten, because it is family related. Only not the Daggett family. The D stands for Daphne, my Cape Verdean great-grandmother.”

  “What’s the family tie-in to the Daggetts?”

  “It all goes back to the Moshup. Remember how I told you that the original Henry Daggett never returned from the voyage.”

  “How could I forget? He survived the whale attack and ship sinking, but not the hunger of his shipmates.”

  “Correct. He left a widow with two sons back on Nantucket. They grew up and married. Each had large families, as was the custom at the time. One of their male offspring married my great-grandmother Daphne. Among their descendants was my father, who was a foreman with the Daggett construction firm. He and my mother were killed in a car accident when I was quite young.”

  “I’m very sorry to hear that. I lost a good friend the same way and know from experience what a hole it leaves in your life.”

  “My grandparents did their best to fill it. Gramps was my mother’s dad. He was devastated, but his biggest concern was me. After the accident, he and my grandmother took me into their house and into their lives. When my grandmother died of cancer, he became my caregiver.”

  “He did a good job from what I can see.”

  “Thanks, I appreciate that. A lot of the credit goes to a local widow who pretty much became my surrogate mother. She and Gramps encouraged me to study law. Said I had a natural sense of fairness. I graduated from Harvard law and took a job with a big firm in New York. Married. Divorced. No children. Returned to Nantucket to seek solace.”

  “And did you find what you were looking for?”

  “Yes, I did. There’s a lot of development pressure on the island, so as a conservation lawyer, I keep pretty busy. The work doesn’t pay much, but I live in Gramps’ house and my office building is owned by a family trust.”

  “His instincts were on the mark when he advised you to become a lawyer.”

  “Guess I should have studied criminal law instead.” A sad smile came to her lips. “I never dreamed Gramps would be involved in something like this.”

  “You told me that Henry’s personality change went back to the night of the murder?”

  “That’s right. You remember the open land we passed on the way to Siasconset.”

  “The Serengeti.”

  She nodded. “A bird-watcher found him there roaming around in a daze. He had a head injury and he was babbling this craziness about Moby Dick.”

  “The Serengeti is several miles from the museum. Any idea how he got there?”

  “The police found his car pulled off the main road, so he must have driven.”

  “Do they know how he got the injury?”

  “They think he fell maybe.”

  “Could the injury have had something to do with his personality change?”

  “I’ve been told that it’s possible. He’s been a collector of Melville for as long as I can remember. That library you saw in his apartment contains several first editions of Moby Dick. The doctors said the trauma may have caused a shift from his real world to the fictional one. Unfortunately, he couldn’t say where he had been that night. Without a record of his movements we couldn’t establish an alibi.”

  “Any chance he’ll come out of it?”

  “He might snap back any minute. There’s no guarantee that he would remember anything of what happened.”

  I signaled the waiter for another Macallan and stared off at the glittering lights across the harbor.

  “Let’s talk about Coffin. Tell me what you know about the murder victim and your grandfather.”

  She shook her head. “Nothing is simple about this case.”

  “I’m beginning to see that.”

  “You have to go back to the cannibalism on the Moshup whaleboat.”

  The waiter arrived and recommended the prime rib or the turbot. Lisa and I exchanged glances, and in anticipation of the cannibalistic topic of our conversation, we both ordered fish. We broke out in laughter for no apparent reason. The waiter simply shrugged, and went off to the kitchen, probably muttering to himself about d
affy tourists.

  “I’ll try to get through this part of the story before dinner arrives,” Lisa said. “Picture this scenario. You had three men in the whaleboat. Coffin, Daggett and Swain. They had avoided starvation by eating the bodies of their comrades and were on the brink of madness. When Daggett died, they ate him. A passing ship picked the survivors up a couple of days later. They returned to Nantucket. They hardly talked about their ordeal. Nobody pressed them. As I said, wounds were still raw from the Essex loss.”

  “What happened to the two survivors?”

  “Swain opened a guest house. He was quite successful. People liked to stay at a place whose owner was a celebrity of sorts.”

  “The conversation around the dinner table must have been fascinating.”

  “He didn’t talk much about his last voyage, from what I understand. He eventually made enough money to acquire a hotel in Boston. He expanded this investment into a small empire of hotels and bars.”

  “Did Coffin parley his reputation into similar success?”

  “Not at all. Just the opposite. Coffin never got over the Moshup experience. He was broken further when his young wife left him. She couldn’t abide living with a cannibal. Ab Coffin was descended from Obed’s brother. While Swain flourished, Coffin eked out a living making scrimshaw, which he sold to tourists. As I said earlier, Ab ran a respectable but not very profitable antiques business on the island.”

  “You said Coffin’s descendent and your grandfather were on the museum board and that they argued about policy. Could you be more specific?”

  “It was little things, mostly. Where to place a display. Acquisitions. It was good-natured discussion for the most part. But that changed when they argued over whether to spend money on a scrimshaw collection. Coffin was pushing for the museum to buy it, supposedly through a third party. My grandfather was against the acquisition. The dispute brought the old cannibalism case to the fore one night. Coffin told my grandfather at a board meeting not to oppose him. ‘Remember what happened with our ancestors,’ he said. He apologized later that he meant it as a joke.”

  “Funny sense of humor you Nantucket folks have.”

  “Henry took it as a threat and that only made things worse. When Coffin was killed, the police theorized that the needling got to be too much. That it pushed Gramps over the edge so that he snapped and killed Coffin. He became the only suspect. I told the district attorney at the preliminary hearing that Gramps is not a violent person. The D.A. said that may be, but he theorizes that the Ahab personality emerged because Henry’s inner self could not comprehend the enormity of his actions.”

  “Which brings us back to Ahab.”

  “Yes. Now that you’ve met Gramps what do you think?”

  I know from Vietnam how a shock to the senses can warp your sense of time and space. Something happens, and in an instant you switch from one universe to another.

  Henry Daggett could have been the thoughtful old Melville scholar going about his business when his reality shifted. I remember the force the gentle old man used when he swept his telescope down as if plunging a lance into an invisible whale.

  I was about to say all this, but Lisa, who’d been patiently waiting for my brain to hook up with my mouth, lifted her gaze and smiled.

  “Michael. How nice to see you.”

  She was talking to a man who had come out onto the deck from the main restaurant. He strolled over to the table and said, “I saw your car in the parking lot and the hostess told me you were out here. How are you?”

  “I’m fine, Michael. Would you care to join us?”

  “Thanks, Lisa. I’d love to, but I’ve got to hook up with a potential investor.”

  I thought I saw a flash of relief in Lisa’s eyes, but she said, “That’s too bad, Michael. Mr. Socarides, this is Michael Ramsey. He’s an old friend of the family.”

  I stood up and we shook hands. He wore olive slacks and a dark green linen blazer over an open linen shirt. He was about my height, with narrower shoulders. He had an athletic physique but his movements were surprisingly wooden and robotic. His face had the same type of dichotomy. It was handsome, with a broad forehead, square chin and even features, but there was little animation except for a shifting of the eyes and a quick jerk of the head as he flashed me a blinding white smile.

  “Nice to meet you, Mr. Socarides. On-Island for business or pleasure?”

  I glanced at Lisa. “A little of both.”

  The eyes narrowed and the frozen smile stayed in place. He turned to Lisa.

  “How is your grandfather doing?”

  “As well as can be expected. I’ve brought in a Boston lawyer who is working on a delay while Gramps undergoes further psychiatric evaluation. Thanks again for lending us Dr. Rosen.”

  “It’s the least I can do, Lisa. Well, let me know if I can be of additional help. In the meantime, I’d like to invite you over for cocktails tomorrow evening. Perhaps you would like to come, too, Mr. Socarides.”

  “Thank you for the invitation,” I said. I sensed the invite had more to do with his curiosity than any desire to see me again. “I’m heading back to the mainland tonight.”

  “Another time, then.”

  We shook hands, going through a repeat of our earlier hand-grip contest, then he bent over and gave Lisa a kiss. It was aimed for her lips, but she turned her face slightly at the last second so that he brushed her cheek. I watched him disappear into the lounge and then sat down again.

  Lisa gave me a bemused smile. “Care to try your powers of deduction on Michael, Mr. Socarides?’

  “That’s easy. Nice clothes. Nice dental work. Nice haircut. Strong handshake and a few callouses, suggesting a tennis player. Oh yeah. He’s rich.”

  “Is that all you can come up with?”

  “No. He has a casual arrogance that some people develop when they think the successful acquisition of money entitles them to respect from peons like me. He tried to crush my hand, which shows he’s an alpha male. He didn’t like it when I gave him the lobster claw treatment.”

  She clapped her hands lightly.

  “That’s Michael. Anything else?”

  “Did I say he’s rich?”

  “He’s very rich. He scoops up marginal companies and drains them for every dollar. Closes them down or moves operations out of the country. Your deductive powers are going to be a big help to my grandfather.”

  It was a soft pitch, low and outside. I could have hit it out of the ballpark had I chosen to take a swing. Lisa was one of the prettiest women I’d ever met. She was smart and funny, too. She reminded me of Sally Carlin, who left Cape Cod a couple of years ago when she discovered that slightly alcoholic beachcombers like me are a dime a dozen. But this was no ordinary case, and I had a potential legal problem I had to deal with back home.

  “I’m no Sigmund Freud, but it’s pretty clear that your grandfather is mentally ill,” I said. “From what I’ve seen and what you’ve told me, there’s a real possibility that he’s guilty.”

  Anger flashed in her eyes. “I’ll never believe that.”

  “But a jury might, which is why I’ll repeat my earlier suggestion that the money would be better spent having an extra criminal defense lawyer on your team.”

  “You won’t take the case?”

  “It doesn’t seem necessary. Your grandfather says he wants to kill the great white whale. The prosecutor would have no trouble associating that statement as a veiled confession of a past misdeed.”

  She gave a sigh of defeat. “I’ll give you a ride to the dock. I’m afraid you missed the high-speed boat, but you can catch the car ferry back to the mainland.”

  She paid the tab. I protested, but she said, “I invited you. Business.”

  We didn’t talk much on the ten-mile drive to the Steamship Autho
rity terminal. We got out of the car and she walked me to the gangway of the car ferry Iyanough, where she handed me her business card. She wasn’t about to give up, which made me like her even more.

  “Obviously, I’m disappointed,” she said. She stood so close I could smell the shampoo in her hair. “Would you promise me to do one thing? Sleep on it for twenty-four hours. If you still think it’s not for you, give me a call.”

  I said that I would think it over. We shook hands and she held onto mine.

  “Mr. Socarides, my grandfather is my only family. If he died of a heart attack, I could live with that. Having him in limbo is simply awful. You connected with him somehow. So please….” She paused to clear away a catch in her throat. “Please.”

  She let go of my hand finally and headed back to her car. I watched her walk away, and then climbed the gangway, feeling as if my shoes were full of lead. Moments later, I stood on the high deck as the ferry cast off and slowly headed out of the harbor. On the way past the lighthouse, I had a close view of a big yacht, tied up at the end of the pier that had not been there on my trip in. I saw that it had a helicopter pad and I got a glimpse of the name on the fan-tail.

  VOLGA

  I wondered what a yacht named for a river in Russia was doing in Nantucket. But I was too tired to think about it. As soon as the ferry cleared the Brant Point lighthouse, I went back inside and found a seat near the cafeteria bar. The ferry was practically deserted. I ordered a beer and chatted about the fortunes of the Red Sox with the night shift cafeteria manager.

  The trip on the slower ferry was almost twice the time the high-speed boat took to get to Nantucket, and it was late in the evening when we rounded the harbor buoy and entered Lewis Bay. I walked out onto the deck, and that’s when I saw that the entire harbor lit up with a flickering red and yellow light. The cool night air was heavy with the acrid smell of smoke.