Grey Lady

by Paul Kemprecos

  I said, “This is the story of the Moshup, isn’t it?”

  Warner nodded. “Lovely, isn’t it? As you can see, it’s not the type of art someone with a weak stomach would appreciate. I almost forgot to tell you the most interesting thing about it. The person who bought the collection, when Coffin’s estate was being settled, was Swain, the man depicted in the boat with Coffin, gnawing the marrow out his shipmate’s bones.”

  “That is odd. You’d think Swain would have avoided anything that reminded him of that experience.”

  “Yes,” Warner said. “You would think so.”

  I peered through the magnifying glass again and noticed that the harpooner and the man with the knife were the same person. I stared in amazement at the panels.

  “Could I borrow these photos?”

  “I have copies.” He handed me the envelope. “This has been fascinating, Mr. Socarides. I have to be going. Let me know if anything turns up.”

  “I’ll do that.” I took the business card from his fingers and put it in my shirt pocket. “This is a fascinating story.”

  The pan bone carving was a piece of history, and in its macabre way, a thing of beauty. But it was much more. What Coffin had painstakingly carved into the polished ivory was a homicide indictment of his fellow crewman. The harpooner in the initial attack on the whale and the man who’d stabbed, dismembered and eaten his crewmate were the same person.

  Swain.

  CHAPTER 25

  Nantucket was turning out to be a big fat time warp. I came to the island to look into a murder case, but increasingly, I was jumping from one time zone to another. Flick. I was Starbuck chatting with Captain Ahab about the whereabouts of Moby Dick. Double flick. I was dodging bullets in a fake slice of Africa with a beautiful descendant of a harpooner. Then I was making nice outside a Cold War bunker with a couple of Dobermans who wanted to have me for dinner. Now I was being drawn into a homicide investigation that involved three starving men in a whaleboat casting lots to see who would be the early bird special.

  I had to admire Swain’s skill at shifting blame from himself, but the scrimshaw told a different story. He kills Daggett’s ancestor, and conspires with Coffin to cover the whole thing up. After Coffin dies, Swain writes a journal accusing his late shipmate of murdering Daggett for food. He learns that Coffin carved the true sequence of events into a sperm whale’s jawbone, which Swain buys at auction. Before he can dispose of the incriminating evidence, he’s killed in a bar brawl and the bloody account of his crime goes into cold storage for a hundred or so years.

  As I walked back into town, a familiar voice jerked my rambling thoughts out of the 19th century and back to the present.

  “Hello, Mr. Socarides. Nice surprise.”

  Ramsey had popped out of an alley so suddenly that I had almost barreled into him. Maybe I’m a suspicious old gumshoe, but I guessed that Rosen had reported my travels to Ramsey so he could set up the convenient ambush.

  “Hello, Ramsey,” I said. “Small world.”

  “Nantucket is a very small world,” he said.

  “No argument there. Dr. Rosen was on the road behind me on the way into town and I saw him later near the marina.”

  “Then you see what I mean. Speaking of Rosen, how is Henry coming along under the doctor’s treatment?”

  I played along with the conversational side-step.

  “Daggett still thinks he’s Ahab. He’s closing in on Moby Dick. So I guess you could say that Dr. Rosen’s treatment isn’t working very well.”

  Ramsey ignored my attempt to inject Rosen back into our friendly chat. He gave a wag of his head and furrowed his brow in a pretty good imitation of real concern. “That’s a damned shame. What’s the latest on the trial?”

  I told him half of what I knew. “The assistant district attorney handling the case informs me that they are pushing for an early trial date. His boss is running for re-election and wants a quick conviction in a high-profile case.”

  “My God! What’s the defense strategy going to be?”

  “They don’t have much to work with. My guess is that they’ll accept a plea bargain. The D.A. drops the murder charge on insanity grounds if the defense agrees to place Daggett in a hospital rather than a prison. Even if he comes out of his Ahab phase, he’d be regarded as a threat to society. Whatever the outcome, he’ll be out of circulation a very long time.”

  “It’s hard to believe Daggett could have killed Coffin,” he said.

  I quoted Aeschylus about the sins of the fathers being visited upon the sons. A thoughtful look came to Ramsey’s face.

  “It seems that way, with Coffin and Daggett suffering because of what happened in that whaleboat. Hard to imagine how it must have been with these three men throwing dice to see who would sacrifice himself for the others. How’s Lisa taking all this?”

  “She’s having a hard time with it, but she is a very tough lady.”

  “Yes, she is, but she’s still going to need the support of her friends. I was on my way to her office. Maybe I can cheer her up.”

  From what I had seen, the best way for Ramsey to cheer Lisa would be to keep his hands and eyes off her body.

  “She won’t be there. She’s at the airport trying to pry conservation money out of a potential donor.”

  He gave a back of the throat laugh. “Lisa is like a pit bull terrier when it comes to pursuing funds for land acquisition. She’s pried a few dollars out of me.”

  “I’m sure there’s plenty more where that came from,” I said.

  We got into a grinning contest that ended when my jaw muscles began to hurt. I know when I’m out-grinned.

  “I don’t blame you for thinking that I’m just a greedy Wall Street type who worships at the altar of the money god,” Ramsey said. “But there are things about me that you don’t know.”

  “I think that it’s very possible there’s a lot I don’t know about you,” I said.

  I was thinking about the bomb shelter prison on his property and the question of why a respectable businessman had ties to a shady Russian thug called Ivan the Terrible.

  Ramsey put his hand on my shoulder. “Come down to the marina and I’ll show you that I have a much different side.”

  Ramsey was up to something. But I’d been scraping the bottom of my idea bin for ways to hook up with him again and here was my chance. I asked him to wait while I dropped some papers off at Lisa’s office, which was a few steps away. I went up the stairs to the office and used the key she had loaned me to get in. I wrote on the outside of the photo envelope with a felt pen:

  “Have new stuff on the Moshup incident. Went to marina with Ramsey.” I added the time and signed it with a big S.

  Ramsey was waiting patiently on the sidewalk outside the office. We made small talk about the traffic and tourists on the short walk to the Old North Wharf. When we got to the marina, Ramsey stopped and pointed to a pretty little sailboat nestled in a slip. It had a navy blue hull and white cockpit and sleek lines. The bright work looked as if it had been buffed with a toothbrush.

  “That’s my boat,” Ramsey said. “What do you think of her?”

  “Very sweet.”

  “She’s an Arleron. Self-tacking jib. She’ll turn on a dime. Twenty feet long.”

  “I would have expected something more along the length of the Volga.”

  Ramsey made a sour face. “I call Chernko’s yacht the Vulger. That kind of thing is not my style.”

  “Could have fooled me, Ramsey. Don’t forget, I’ve seen your house. You like big.”

  “My place is on the grand side. In the old days, a conspicuous display of wealth would be unseemly. Today, if you don’t advertise what’s in your bank account, it’s seen as a sign of weakness. In my business, the strong devour the weak.”


  “That doesn’t explain why you have a big house and a small boat.”

  “It’s a Nantucket thing. Buy a million dollar boat on this island and there’s always a guy who’ll spend ten million. Besides, going against the flow shows that you’ve got enough dough to not give a crap what people say.”

  “Like wearing jeans to a fancy cocktail party.”

  “That’s right. Do you have a few minutes to spare? We can take her out for a spin around the harbor. We’d be back in less than an hour.”

  “Fine with me,” I said.

  We walked out onto the dock and got into the boat. Ramsey cranked up a small battery-operated outboard motor while I cast off the dock lines. Then he backed out of the slip and motored away from the marina toward the harbor. When we got into open water, we unfurled the mainsail and the jib. I hauled in the sails until they stopped luffing and caught the wind. He shut down the motor.

  “You handle the sails and I’ll take the tiller,” he said.

  He pointed the boat so that the wind was off our stern. I slacked the main sheet and let the sail out on the starboard side until it was at right angles to the hull. I did the same with the jib on the port side of the boat so the sails were in the extended position called wing-to-wing.

  Ramsey kept the boat headed across the harbor and then we turned and came across the wind. I trimmed the jib and mainsail, and the boat picked up speed and heeled.

  “Good job, Socarides. You’ve sailed before, I see.”

  I had sailed on big boats owned by guys who needed crew for the Figawi race between the mainland and Nantucket, but I didn’t want to give Ramsey any more than I had to.

  “A little, back in Camp Hiawatha.”

  Ramsey grinned, this time for real, and for a moment we bonded like a couple of old sailors dancing on the wind.

  That moment passed quickly when Ramsey said, “Lisa tells me that you’ve been using her grandfather’s boat. The Pequod II.”

  “She offered it up, but I haven’t had much time with all the detecting work.”

  “Reason I asked, we passed Daggett’s slip on the way out and I saw it was empty. I wondered where the boat is.”

  I tried to deflect the lining of questioning. “Boat’s out of the water for repairs.”

  “Really? Lisa didn’t mention that. Who’s doing the work?”

  “Don’t remember the guy’s name. He seemed okay. Besides, I’m not paying the repair bill.”

  “You have to watch the locals. Some of the local mechanics are real land pirates. I had to pay a small fortune for some front end damage to my Bentley.”

  Uh-oh.

  “Too bad. My last chauffeur was a lousy driver, too. Had to fire him.”

  “I don’t have a driver. My car was stolen from my garage and used as a battering ram.”

  I let out a low whistle. “I read in the Inquirer that drugs are a big deal on the island, too. Maybe someone stole the car to buy drugs.”

  “I don’t think so. The car was found in town.”

  Ramsey was playing games. Someone in the helicopter had seen the registration number when Daggett’s boat sank under me. It would have been easy to trace its ownership. Ramsey would have casually asked Lisa about her grandfather’s boat, and she, innocently, would have replied that she had been offered to let me use it. I detected a growing edge in Ramsey’s voice. With his concentration diverted, he had let the boat drift off course.

  I said, “Wind’s shifting. Get ready to jibe.”

  A quick frown came to Ramsey’s handsome face, but he gradually pushed the tiller to prep for the maneuver. I hauled in the main sheet for a controlled jibe, so that the arc of the swinging boom didn’t snap the mast off. I hauled in the jib and we set off on a new course with the mainsail extended at right angles in a broad reach.

  “Nicely done,” Ramsey said. “Want to take the helm?”

  “Thanks.” We traded places and I pointed to the ferry dock where the big yacht was tied up. “How does Chernko like you calling his yacht the Vulger?”

  “I’ve never told him.”

  “Don’t blame you. Some guys don’t have a sense of humor. How long have you known him?”

  Ramsey hesitated. “A few years. We’ve put together some business deals.”

  “How’s that working out?”

  “Fine. We’re into developing markets. I can give you some tips if you have some extra cash to invest.”

  “Thanks. I may take you up on that. Lisa said you’re a venture capitalist.”

  “Some people call us vulture capitalists, or even worse, because we swoop down on weak companies, acquire them, do our magic and sell them at large profits.”

  “Any company I might know?”

  “Probably not. Most are pretty obscure. How is your investigation for Lisa going?”

  “Slowly. I’m following up on some unexpected leads.”

  “Such as?”

  “Ready about?” I said, giving Ramsey the warning that it was time to swing the bow around for a tack.

  He gave that quick little frown again. Then the bow swung across the wind and the mainsail filled out on the other side of the boat. He hauled in the sail and the boat heeled, again picking up speed.

  “Nicely done again,” Ramsey said.

  We switched places again.

  “Boat handles like a dream. Thanks for the sail.”

  “My pleasure. I’m glad to have this chance to talk to you. Take some advice from a fellow sailor. After we tie up, get on the ferry, and leave the island. Tell Lisa you’ve learned all you can, collect your paycheck and get lost.”

  I glanced at him. “I don’t get your drift, Ramsey.”

  “Ivan told me all about you. He said you and he have a history.”

  “I suppose you could call it that. I talked to a newspaper reporter who asked for my theory on a murder. I was quoted in the newspaper. Ivan thought I was talking about him, which I wasn’t, and sent a couple of his goons to threaten me. A day later someone torched my boat.”

  “You think Chernko had something to do with the loss of your boat?”

  “It had crossed my mind.”

  “So you came to the island to exact your revenge.”

  “I came to the island to work on the Daggett case.”

  “Have it your way, but it would have been far better if you had simply let the insurance company pick up the tab for your boat. My advice? Forget about it.”

  “You’re Chernko’s pal. Why are you so concerned about my welfare?”

  “I’m not,” he said in a flat voice. “You’ve unwittingly blundered into something bigger than you could ever understand. That’s your mistake, but Lisa’s right in the line of fire and she could get hurt.”

  That really caught my attention. Maybe the cold-blooded plutocrat had a streak of humanity when it came to Lisa.

  “Who would hurt Lisa?”

  “That’s not important.”

  “Here’s how I figure it, Ramsey. Say I took your advice. I’d go back to the mainland, reconstitute my charter business with a shiny new boat. One day I’d get a charter from four buddies. We’d be miles at sea, which is when they’d tell me they were friends of Ivan the Terrible. They’d slice me up and feed the pieces to the fishes. Chernko strikes me as a guy who likes to tie up loose ends. He might figure Lisa had been too close to me and she’d have to go, too.”

  “I would do my best to see that didn’t happen,” he said in a dead voice.

  “Then you admit it’s a possibility.”

  “I told you that this is big. It’s even bigger than me. Ivan is a force of nature. He usually gets what he wants.”

  “And in this case you want the same thing.”

  Instead of answering, he turned to
start the little outboard. I furled the sails as we moved toward the slip. He spun the boat around and guided it into the slip stern-first. I climbed out of the boat and said, “Thanks for the sail. See you later, Ramsey.”

  He gave a sad shake of his head. “I don’t think so. Sorry, but events seem to have moved more quickly than I anticipated.”

  I turned to make a snappy retort which is when I noticed the name Moshup on the boat’s transom. Flick. The Nantucket time warp.

  I walked from the slip to the parking lot. Some thoughtless jerk had left his vehicle directly in the way. I went to go around the black Chevy Tahoe. Four doors simultaneously flew open. Chernko’s goons emerged from the front seat and two dark-skinned guys popped out from the back.

  They hemmed me in, two in a side, and the Tall Guy said, “Get in!”

  He gestured with a hand that held a switchblade like the one that had been used to decorate my old boat. In fact, they all had switchblades dangling at their sides. I knew that if I got in the car the chances of living a long and healthy life would be slimmer than slim. They closed in, herding me like a stray sheep. Then they began to shove. I dug my feet in to prevent from being pushed into the back seat, which was fortunate because at that instant there was a loud thump and the SUV jerked several feet to my right.

  The cause of its sudden lurch was a black Ford sedan that had crashed into the rear bumper like a pool cue hitting a ball. The door on the driver’s side opened and John Flagg stepped out. He checked the front of his car and the back of the SUV, then came over to where we were standing. The switchblades had miraculously disappeared from sight.

  “Sorry about that. Hit the gas instead of the brakes. Everyone okay?” He glanced around. “Good. Who’s the owner? No big damage. Guess we should exchange licenses and registration.”

  Guess he was wrong. Tall Guy snarled something in Russian and he and his friends piled into the Tahoe. A second later, the SUV took off so fast that it fishtailed, then headed out of the parking lot and was lost in the traffic.