by Jack Lively
He threw me a couple of beer cans from the refrigerator. Two cans, arcing high through the air, one on the left, one on my right. I caught the cold and dense projectiles, underhanded one to Ellie. She held the cold can to her forehead. Hank was awake and Guilfoyle pushed a beer can across the table to him. I popped the tab and took a sip. Heavy on the hops.
While we had not been looking to catch fish, fish had nonetheless found their way into the net. Among them, a King Salmon. The King is the biggest species of Pacific salmon. Protected by law, with no commercial harvesting permitted. Guilfoyle said that he allowed one accidentally caught King to end up on his grill every season, and tonight was the night.
I watched Hank watching Guilfoyle as he filleted the big fish. Hank was gnawing at the beer can’s edge. I figured he wasn’t really seeing the knife slipping over bones and slicing off flesh, he was probably reflecting abstractly on the momentous day so far. The course of his life changed forever in a couple of seconds. Pretty much a random occurrence. Hard to get your mind around that. Hank caught me looking at him, held the gaze, and then looked out to sea. Ellie was staring into the darkness, unresponsive. I figured her brain chemistry needed replenishment. Luckily, that was coming right up.
Guilfoyle put the two sides of the salmon down on the grill and the pale flesh sizzled. Ellie raised her head, eyes narrowed. She said, “Oh my god, I’m starving.”
Guilfoyle said, “Five minutes on the meat side, five on the skin side. Then we eat.”
That’s how Guilfoyle did it. Freshest fish possible, squeeze of lemon, sprinkle of sea salt. Damn good. When we were done and satisfied, he came over and clapped a weathered hand on Hank’s shoulder. He said, “Hank, you were green as the hills when you came on board, but now you’re a real fisherman.”
Hank smiled weakly. “Thanks, captain.”
Guilfoyle put a pot of coffee on. He nodded to me and spoke to the boy. “Come on up to the wheelhouse with me, Hank. I have something to show you.”
When they had climbed the ladder, I looked at Ellie. She was fully alert, all systems refilled and replenished, raring to go. I was sitting in the galley. She swung her legs off the bench, came over and slid into the booth across from me.
“They’re going to clear the Beaver Falls murders. Zarembina and the two males. They’re expecting forensics to confirm.”
I said, “The same gun?”
“Yes, certainly not the teeth or the fingerprints.”
She placed both of her hands in front of her, flat down on the Formica surface. She looked at me and there was no sadness in her eyes, only a kind of burning anger. Ellie was tired, that was for sure. But it was the indignation that hurt. She said, “Tell me what you’ve got, Keeler.”
I told her all about the trip out to Bell Island. The men in the zodiac, and then the salvaged Russian submarine. She listened attentively. By the time I was finished, the coffee was ready. I got up and poured two cups. I slid back into the galley bench. Linked a couple of fingers through the cup handle and took a sip. The coffee was hot and strong and black.
Ellie said, “This confirms what we were thinking, that Zarembina was an investigator for the USNRC, just like she had been over at Energy.”
I said, “What isn’t clear is why she had to come up under a fake name, with a bunch of amateurs. The fact that nobody from any alphabet soup of a governmental agency has come forward for Zarembina, or to recover her body.”
“Are the Port Morris police making contact?”
She looked at me and nodded. “That’ll only take a few million years.”
Ellie looked at me for a while. Like an unseeing thousand-yard stare. She was thinking. Then she broke out of it. “People tend to rise to their level of incompetence. Zarembina was killed what, yesterday?” Ellie drum-rolled her fingers on the table. “Let’s talk this through a little more. I want to establish the basics.”
“Sure.”
Ellie said, “That submarine you found links Zarembina and Abrams to Bell Island, and by extension the mysterious Mister Lawrence.”
“Because Mister Lawrence owns the island now.”
“Correct.”
I said, “Zarembina, Abrams and Bell Island. Orbiting around them we’ve got Deckart and Willets, Amber Chapman, and those two Neo-Nazi assassins.”
We were both silent for a while, looking over across the ocean. The image of Amber Chapman came into my mind, front and center.
I said, “It’s going to flip if we keep pushing. It will start to shape up and make sense.” Ellie was looking at me intensely, I held her gaze. “This is going to be pretty big, Ellie. If you think about the property up there. The house and outbuildings, plus the installation on Bell Island. The fact we’re dealing with a company not just an individual. There’s something going on up there and we’re going to end up taking it down. We need to go hard, relentless.”
I saw Ellie contemplating, and I knew she was thinking about scale, about what and who might be out there. She said, “Jesus, I need to tell this to Smithson, the stuff about the submarine. We need to get help. We can’t do this on our own.”
I agreed. “Smithson’s not going to be enough. You’ll have to get the FBI involved, what’s the process?”
Ellie chewed that for a moment. “I’m not sure really. Some deep bureaucratic shit storm, that’s for certain. Let’s go see Smithson right now.”
I said nothing.
She said, “You got a better idea, Keeler?”
I said, “I have a few. Not all of them are collaborative. There are two things that you need to do now, Ellie. One of them is talking to the police here about bringing in the FBI. But we both know that that’s Plan B. In case we get taken out of the game. The other thing you need to do for both Plan A and Plan B is to get your hands on the building plans for the property up there.”
Ellie looked away for a long moment. Then she looked back. “What’s Plan A? I thought you just said we’d need to bring in the FBI because it’s too big for us to handle.”
I said, “Two layers of contingency, Ellie. We need both. Get the wheels turning with Smithson, then get your hands on information about the property. Push comes to shove it’ll be useful for us, and for the feds if and when they materialize. You’re best placed to do both. Whatever they call it. There will be a place somewhere in town with filing cabinets, a coffee machine and a photocopier. They’ll have building plans, septic plans, fire inspection certificates, and stuff like land use change records.”
She said, “Code enforcement office.”
“Sounds good to me. Get in there and get us some useable intelligence on whatever the hell is up there.”
“What, so you can invade?”
“Yes. But not right away.”
“Jesus, Keeler. What are you going to do right now, after this?”
“While you start on that, I’m going to join Dave.”
Ellie brought out her phone and tapped in a message to Dave. She said, “He’ll text me his location.” She appraised me. “You don’t have a phone do you?”
I shook my head.
She said, “That’s convenient.”
I said, “What’s your phone number. Case I need to call you.”
“With what?”
“There’s no shortage of phones, the world’s full of them, like cockroaches, rats, and bureaucrats.”
“You’re going to borrow someone else’s phone?”
I said, “That usually works.”
She reeled off her number. I memorized it.
Ellie said, “Smithson’s going to be at home. I’ll drop Hank off at my place on the way up. Then I’ll go and see about the other thing.” She slid out of the booth and came past me through the door and stepped out onto the stern. I stood up and stretched, slapping my hands on the doorway.
I said, “I’ll stay in touch.”
“With someone else’s phone.”
I shrugged. “Whatever.”
Hank came down from the wheelhouse ladder
and leaned out, holding one of the rungs. He swung around. He said, “Hey Keeler.” I looked up in time to see Guilfoyle throw the Remington rifle case down at me from up top. I caught it. He leaned against the railing looking down at me. “Me and Hank just cleaned it for you. You’re good to go, buddy.”
I slung the padded case over my right shoulder. “Appreciate it, Guilfoyle.”
He nodded at me, then disappeared back into the wheelhouse. Ellie put a protective arm around Hank's shoulders. He smiled shyly. Hank was holding a cardboard box with a hundred rounds of ammunition. The box was red and had the words ‘Federal Premium’ in white lettering. Hank said, “Sierra Match King loads, 175 grains. Guilfoyle’s not playing.”
I took the box from Hank. “He was a marine.”
Hank leaned against the galley. “You were military too?”
“Air Force.”
“How was it?”
I said, “I only remember the good parts, but there was a lot of bullshit, that’s for sure.”
Hank said, “What were the good parts like?”
“They were good, Hank. But like I said, there was a lot of bullshit that went with it.” Which Hank didn’t want to know about, because nobody wants to be bored by bullshit.
We left Guilfoyle on the boat. Walked through the cannery and out to the parking lot. Ellie’s truck was parked alongside Helen’s Land Cruiser. Before we split up, Hank held his phone out to me. He said, “Keeler, why don’t you take my phone?”
“Okay, Hank.” I reached over and took the offered phone. It was a small one, with just a number pad and a little screen.
Hank said, “Ellie’s number is already in it. Password is ‘helloworld’, one word no spaces.”
I looked at the phone. Each of the numbers had a couple of letters printed small in the corner of an already tiny button. Hello World with no spaces would be 4355696753. I figured using a phrase was a mnemonic device for Hank. As a computer geek I might have expected him to prefer numbers. Ellie took the phone from me and entered Dave’s number into the little device.
I got into the Land Cruiser, Ellie and Hank got into her truck. I watched them leave the parking lot. Ellie’s F-150 made a low chugging sound. It was a sound I liked. When they were gone I called Dave. Who was parked elsewhere, out front of the best Chinese restaurant in Port Morris.
I took the road toward town, and then cut into the trails before the first residential neighborhood began. It was dark up there. No streetlights. Nothing but the rainforest either side of the old Toyota Land Cruiser, pushing through the night. I preferred to come at the downtown area at an oblique angle, rather than straight on. Just in case anyone was watching the main roads.
While I drove, I thought about what we had not mentioned, the cruise ship.
Emerald Allure they called it. Nice name. Sounded about as phony as you could get. That enormous boat floated up there in the front of my mind. At the same time, in the back of my mind was the salvaged submarine. Except it wasn’t a salvage anymore. In my waking dream the sub was new and sleek. Cutting through the murky depths of the Pacific, powered by a nuclear reactor. I didn’t know much about how a nuclear reactor worked, but I figured it involved atoms being split and sparking off barely contained chain reactions. Fueled by a fissile material, like plutonium.
And swimming from the back of my mind to the front was Amber Chapman, like a pale mermaid moving through the dark waters.
Thirty-Four
The Land Cruiser was a comfortable vehicle. A big wide bench up front, same thing behind. I had the Remington long gun laid in the back seat. I removed the Glock from the glove box and put it up front with me, like an ugly but competent passenger tucked under my right thigh. The dashboard had a clock, which read a couple of minutes after eight.
It took about five more minutes to come down through the residential areas into town. I cruised past the Golden Lights Wok, not too fast, not too slow. The street was three or four back from the waterfront. At this time of night things were winding down. I didn’t see anyone walking. Nowhere to go. Stores were blank, nothing was happening. Nothing except the Chinese food being prepared in the Golden Lights Wok.
I clocked Dave slumped into the driver’s seat of a faded red Ford hatchback. I turned the corner and parked two blocks away. It took a minute to double back on foot. I came at the Ford from its blind spot. The model was Fiesta. There was a bumper sticker with the Alaskan flag, the Big Dipper in yellow against blue. Next to that was another sticker, older and just as faded as the car. It read ‘Proud Mother of a U.S. Soldier’. I figured Dave or a sibling had served, and he was driving his mother’s car.
When I slipped into the passenger seat Dave jerked upright from his huddled position. He glanced at me in panic. I looked at him and he settled down. Dave had parked with a clear view of the entrance through the driver’s side window, good view of the street through the windshield, and an acceptable view behind him through the mirrors. Not perfect, but workable.
He had been finishing up a donut when I came in. Dave wiped a leather jacket sleeve across his mouth and said, “See the Hummer?”
I had already seen the Hummer across the street, same side as the restaurant. A squat and ugly machine in matte black.
I said, “You sure it was Chapman?”
“Based on your description, yes. Four girls and two guys driving. Look two cars back from the Hummer and check out the Subaru.”
Two cars back a Subaru was parked facing the same direction. It was the vehicle I’d seen Willets driving the other day, when all of this had begun. In the dark, the car didn’t look teal, it had a murky color, like old seaweed on a beach.
I said, “Who’s in that one, cruise ship security?”
Dave turned to me. “How’d you guess?”
I said nothing.
He said, “One guy in the Subaru, uniformed. He came off the boat with the girls. Girls got into the Hummer with the other two, Subaru followed them here.”
“Recognize the other people from around town?”
“No, they don’t look like they’re from around here.”
“What do they look like?”
He said, “No beards.” Dave shrugged. He was wearing a parka, and his chin and upper lip were fuzzy with a very limited growth. It might have been limited, but it was all he had. He looked at me and I became conscious of the fact that I’d only just shaved my beard.
I said, “Did you do a walk by?”
“I did actually, but there’s no way of seeing inside. The front does take-out and the back has the seating. I didn’t want to go into the restaurant itself.”
I looked at the facade. The Golden Lights Wok had three windows that gave into a waiting area with a fancy counter. The counter was decorated with strategically arranged orchids, which I figured must be fake. Behind the counter, a paneled screen blocked off the rear part of the restaurant. The panels were painted in a calligraphy style. Chinese mountains with the odd heron flying up high, and oriental boats coming down winding rivers. The woman behind the counter was dressed in a pink sweater. It looked soft. She was concentrating on something right in front of her, maybe her phone.
I said, “I’ll go in.”
Dave moved his head incrementally to look at me. I flipped open the door handle but stopped short of pulling the door and activating the interior light. I had seen movement. A man was coming out through a break in the panels, from the back of the restaurant to the front. He was wearing a white uniform, with gold braiding on the shoulders and a hat. It was Willets. The uniform made him look even more untrustworthy. Like he’d stolen someone’s Halloween costume. It was in the angle of his hat, and the slight sloppy way that he’d tucked in his shirt. Willets had a Chinese food take-out bag in each hand.
Dave said, “That’s the guy. Watch him go to the Subaru.”
I said, “That’s a lot of Chinese food, Dave.”
Dave spread two fingers to brush across his faint mustache. “True. They make good egg rolls in ther
e.”
“You’re suggesting the bag is full of egg rolls, Dave?”
He looked over without moving his head. “No. I don’t know how many egg rolls are in there, Keeler. But if there are egg rolls, they will be good.”
We tracked Willets as he moved to the car and handled the take-out bags. He settled them safely in the passenger side floor, racking the seat forward to hold them steady. Then he went back around and got into the driver’s side. We watched Willets put his seatbelt on. I said, “Like a normal citizen, Dave.”
Dave said, “Yeah. It’s amazing how normal people look when you watch them for a little while. And then sometimes they go and do all kinds of crazy shit.”
I said, “You see a lot of crazy shit?”
Dave shrugged. “Not that much. But you do get your crazies up here, that’s for sure.”
We watched Willets take off. Part of me wanted to follow him. Another part of me wanted to get eyeballs on Amber Chapman. That’s the part that won out in the end. Wasn’t much of a competition. I got out of Dave’s car and walked back until I was directly across the road from the Golden Lights Wok. Through the big window I could see the space between panels that fed back into the seating area. I crossed over to get a closer look. There were two round tables visible. Large tables, filled with people eating and drinking. None of them were blonde, none of them were young, and none of them were Amber Chapman.
I opened the door and walked into the Golden Lights Wok.
Thirty-Five
The woman at the counter looked up at me and didn’t smile, not even a little bit. Her pink sweater was cashmere. It looked like somewhere you could crawl into and hide away until the winter was over. Which was a long, long time in Alaska. I’d only tried wearing cashmere once, and it tore to shreds in less than forty-eight hours. Too delicate for me. The woman looked about as delicate as a Mossberg 12 gauge. Her voice had a hard high-pitched edge to it, like something that could break glass.
“Take-out?”
I said, “No thanks. My friends are already here. I’ll just go back and find them.”