“Why don’t I take you home?”
“Do you have a car?”
“In Cape May.”
She stared at her empty glass. “I live just up the road—on the bay. You want to walk?”
“Sure.”
Turko’s abductors had taken his extra clothes with him from the apartment, and Pec had left them for him in the trunk of the gray Dodge in a sort of duffel bag. Digging through it, Turko had found something more dignified than his beach outfit—running shoes, khaki trousers, white shirt, and a blue windbreaker.
The rest of his possessions were in there too—though not his vodka and, pointedly, not his gun.
This might have been simple precaution on the Kosovar’s part, or it might have been spite. For all Pec’s unexpected and unusual talkativeness, he was still angry. But then, Pec was a man who had been angry for years.
What Turko knew now was that Pec was also scared. He was answerable to someone for what Turko did and did not do. For the week he’d been given to succeed at this new task, Turko would not be completely powerless.
He drove the Dodge up to Philadelphia, left it at a downtown parking garage with fingerprints wiped clean, walked to 30th Street Station, and bought an unreserved one-way ticket to Baltimore, paying cash.
Buying a copy of the local paper, he turned first to the sports pages, only afterward returning to the front page and the bridge-bombing stories.
The quotes the main story had from the FBI were much the same that had been on television earlier, but the newspaper reporter had gotten more information elsewhere—probably from the Maryland State Police.
He wrote that the three men supposedly found burned to death in the Eastern Shore house had been shot before the fire, an indication that there might have been others involved in the plot. This was elementary police work of the most basic kind. It was surprising that the FBI had withheld the fact. Assuming they were not so stupid as to have overlooked the possibility of shooting as the cause of death, he could only presume they were playing games—keeping their prey from finding out or even guessing how much they knew.
There was nothing Turko could do about that. What he could do was keep them from knowing anything more.
He found no mention in the paper whatsoever of the heavy blond woman on the balcony who’d been eliminated as a witness by the team Pec had sent to his Ocean City apartment to get him. Obviously, no connection had been made—unless the FBI was trying to keep that quiet too.
The train to Baltimore had few passengers, with only a dozen or so drowsy, nondescript people in Turko’s coach. He kept reading his paper, ignoring all.
In Baltimore, he walked from the depot to the Inner Harbor Waterfront, a festively crowded public amusement area that included a half-dozen museums, all manner of shops and restaurants, an early 19th-century warship, and moorings for numerous boats and yachts. There was a throng despite the late hour. Turko moved through it, trying to keep his duffel inconspicuous, turning off finally to cross the street and enter a parking garage a block away.
He had just gotten the engine started in a small Honda station wagon when he realized his error. He had no parking stub to hand the cashier.
After a moment’s thought, he decided to go through with the theft.
“Lost my ticket,” he told the sleepy black man in the booth. “Guess I’ll have to pay the full day rate.”
“Yep.”
The cashier made a notation, studied the computerized device before him, then hit a button, which showed that Turko owed twelve dollars. He gave the man the amount in exact change.
The gate flew up. As Turko turned into the street, he thought he heard a woman’s voice cry out. Realizing it could be the car’s owner, he headed west and north into the worst neighborhood Baltimore possessed, halting in a side street beneath a streetlamp with a burned-out or shot-out bulb. He changed the license plates in darkness, tightening the nut with some difficulty.
He froze. There was someone behind him. He had no pistol. He would have to get very close to these people if he was to protect himself.
There were two black youths, one of normal height, one quite short.
“What you doin’ there?” said the short one.
“My license plate was coming off.”
“You knows where you is?”
“Yes.”
“You got any money?”
The taller one had a gun. Turko stood up, studying him.
“Ah acks you if you got any money?”
“Yes. Yes, I do.”
“Give it here.”
Turko took a step closer to the youth as he reached into his pants pocket, then took another, circling, closer step as he pretended to struggle nervously getting the wallet out. Opening it, he started to take the money out, but the short one leapt forth and snatched it away.
Seizing upon the moment, Turko lunged to within the taller one’s reach, took hold of both gun and forearm, cracked the latter on his knee with enough force to break it, then grabbed up the pistol in time to get off one well-placed shot at the shorter robber, who cried out and fell backward, still clutching the wallet.
Taking that back, Turko fired a final shot into the boy’s head. The tall one, watching all this, started backing away.
Turko killed him with one round, then got into the Honda and drove away fast.
He ditched the small Japanese sedan at a parking lot at one of the plazas along the Interstate, stealing a Volvo station wagon and driving it north and east. There were police cars at the Susquehanna River bridge, but they weren’t stopping anyone. He proceeded on into Wilmington, left the car at the railroad station parking lot, and then walked along the Christiana River until he came to a sort of dump bordered by weeds and trees. There he lay down for the night, using his duffel for a pillow.
Westman and Cat walked up Savannah Road, stopped at the Diary Queen for a couple of cones, then continued on to the little town beach that faced Delaware Bay. The view was pretty. Westman could see all the way across the bay to the light off the Cape May channel.
She led him back to a sand-strewn road. Her house was a few blocks down.
They heard gunfire, but it proved to be from a television set.
“Burt’s found himself a war movie,” she said. “He’s a frustrated would-be combat pilot. If they played these things continuously, he’d never go to bed. I can’t tell you how tired I am of hearing John Wayne make patriotic speeches.”
“We’re at war now,” Westman said.
“Not a war like World War II. Nothing so competent.” She started up the steps to her screened-in porch, then turned. “Would you like to come in? I have some wine, if that’s what you’re drinking.”
“I would—but I won’t. I have a small inflatable I have to get across the bay by morning.”
She looked over the dune to the darkness beyond. “Okay. Good night then.”
“I’d like to help you,” Westman said.
“What did you say?”
“Help you with what you’re trying to do—as long as it doesn’t cross regulations.”
“There’s not much about Burt Schilling that’s regulation.”
They stood looking at each other a long moment. Somewhere out in the bay, a gull called. Another answered.
“Good night then,” he said.
The lights of Cape May across the bay seemed festive, as though a great and wonderful party was in progress. As he headed the inflatable out Roosevelt Inlet into the open water, Erik found his own mood much the same.
The waves were following, from time to time striking Westman’s inflatable abeam as he kept the throttle forward. He was getting wet, but that didn’t matter. He gave the wind no thought.
His cell phone was ringing. He let it.
Chapter 14
Bear Gergen had set a six-pack of Budweiser, a book, and a rusty lawn chair on the deck of his salvage tug, putting it in a position that afforded him an ample view of the aft deck, where cousin Leonard’s w
ife Mary Lou was sunbathing. For whatever reason, she didn’t much like tan lines, and was exposing herself to the hazy morning sunshine without benefit of bathing suit, lying bottoms-up on a towel and leafing through a copy of a mindless movie magazine.
Gergen was always interested in Mary Lou, and the geography of her all-over suntan, but he was not stupid. Mary Lou didn’t seem to like her husband Leonard much. She certainly enjoyed provoking him, which, Gergen was sure, was why she’d traipsed out on deck wearing only the towel her very flat belly was now lying on. Gergen had no great fondness for Leonard either. But his cousin was quick to anger and very violent when he got that way. Also, Leonard had been an honest partner to Gergen, if to no one else. Gergen had enough trouble in his life without inviting in more.
They were tied up at the dock in Wilmington hard by Interstate 495—not in some sneak motel somewhere. Bear Gergen contented himself with looking.
She glanced up. Gergen kept his eyes where they were, but slipped her a wink, wanting her to be certain he knew what was what. Mary Lou apparently got the idea, but upped the ante of the game anyway. She rolled over on her back, exposing the only portion of her anatomy that had escaped a tan.
He and Mary Lou were alone on the tug. His crew was off getting drunk, laid, or stoned—or all three. Leonard had taken his motorcycle over to New Jersey to score a little something. His boat and personal watercraft business down in Maryland had been left in the charge of one of the idiot teenagers who worked for him.
No. It still wasn’t a good idea. Gergen turned his chair more to the side. Mary Lou was distracting him from a problem. They’d taken nearly forty of those great big bags of marijuana off the Breezee B. A Philadelphia drug dealer had offered fifty thousand for the lot and sent one of his thugs with five thousand as a down payment. Gergen had immediately had second thoughts, and tried to give the five large back, but the bastard had insisted on completing the deal, threatening to blow Gergen’s head off if it didn’t happen. Bear didn’t do a lot of drug business, but figured this was high-quality weed. He could probably do a lot better elsewhere—like maybe especially New York, just a couple hours away.
Unfortunately, he no longer had the five thousand. His crew hadn’t been paid for a couple of weeks and he’d been compelled to give them something on account. What he had to do was get his stash to New York, do a deal, and find a way to get five thousand back to the Philly dealer, whose name was Enrique Diller.
Maybe he should have had his mind on something other than drugs. Three men were coming toward him along the dock. One of them wore a Coast Guard uniform; a second a sport coat and tie; and the third was in boating clothes—looking like he had just stepped off one of those America’s Cup boats.
Gergen recognized the man in the sport coat—U.S. Customs Agent Paul Elward, a longtime acquaintance, though certainly no friend. The other two were strangers to him, though he knew a lot of Coasties.
“Mary Lou,” said Gergen, his eyes still on the approaching men. “We got visitors.”
He glanced to see her gather the towel around her middle, then return to her recline.
“Mr. Gergen,” said Elward, stepping onto the deck, without invitation.
“Howyadoin’?” said Gergen, setting down his beer can. “This an official visit?”
Elward looked about the tug, pretending to pay scant attention to Gergen’s comely cousin-in-law.
“This is Special Agent Erik Westman of the Coast Guard Investigative Service,” Elward said. “And Lieutenant Tim Dewey of the cutter Manteo.”
“Shouldn’t you guys be looking for bridge bombers?” Gergen asked.
They were not amused. “We are,” said the one named Westman.
Gergen tried to keep his eyebrows from upward movement. “You got some problem with me?”
Elward leaned back against a capstan. “That motor-sailor you brought in, the Breezee B?”
“I’m still waiting to hear on the salvage award.”
“They put her in dry dock and pumped out the bilges.”
“Right. Check for hull damage and like that.”
“They found like maybe a million dollars street-value of cocaine and heroin down there. In waterproof sacks.”
Gergen whistled. His mind was full of unspoken profanities.
“You didn’t know about that?”
“No, sir.”
“You didn’t look down there?”
“The main cabin had three feet of seawater in her, Mr. Elward. I stayed below only long enough to make sure there wasn’t anyone aboard, and that she wasn’t taking on more water.” He stared down at the deck, thinking. “Cocaine and heroin, you say? Not marijuana?”
“There were a couple sacks of weed here and there, but it was mostly hard stuff,” Elward said.
“Three bodies washed up down on the Delaware shore,” Westman said.
“Yeah?”
“You saw no survivors, Gergen?” said the customs agent. “No sign of anyone?”
“She was abandoned when I took her in tow,” Gergen said. “I radioed that information to the Indian River Coast Guard Station. Three bodies, you say. Who were they?”
“They haven’t been identified. The girl wasn’t wearing any clothes.”
Elward treated himself to a glimpse of Mary Lou. Gergen merely shrugged.
“There was no naked lady when I went aboard her. I went through every cabin. My bet is they abandoned ship in a hell of a hurry when it looked like that boat was going to capsize—which from the looks of her she almost did.”
“A lot of the storage drawers were pulled out. The drawers were hanging out in every cabin.”
Mary Lou rolled over back onto her stomach, dislodging some of the towel. Elward’s attention followed this distraction.
“When we came into port, Mr. Elward, I made a search for valuables. Everything I found I entered on the manifest. Wasn’t much. Couple of cameras, binoculars, stereo. If you want to search my vessel here, or my office, go ahead. Anytime.”
“I don’t doubt your honesty, Mr. Gergen. If you were a thief, you wouldn’t have left a million bucks in hard narcotics aboard that boat.”
“You got that right,” Gergen said.
Elward was now openly staring at Mary Lou. She rolled over, sat up, and stared back.
“We just wanted to talk to you about it,” said Elward. “If you think of anything, or hear about anything, let us know.”
“Sure. Always do.”
“I’m afraid you can’t count on salvage money from the sailing yacht any time soon,” said Elward. “Use in the commission of a crime—narcotics trafficking. That complicates things.”
Gergen gazed at him bleakly. “You mean I’m not going to get anything?”
“Sure. Your costs. But it’ll take a while for the courts to work it all out.”
“Why? Do they think that dope belonged to the owner of the boat?”
“They’ve got to work it all out. Meantime, you’ve got something coming for that rust-bucket freighter.”
“A little something. Do you know how much it costs to run this outfit—how much it cost to haul that hulk in?”
“You’re in a high-risk business, Mr. Gergen,” Elward said. He turned to go.
“Here’s my card,” said Westman. “If you hear anything about those three, or remember something, anything, give me a call. They’ll find me.”
Gergen pocketed it. He had quite a collection of these snitch cards. Sometimes he made some extra money that way. What the government chumps hadn’t figured out was that the only time he passed on information about the criminal activities of others was when he wanted to distract authorities from his own criminal activities. It was useful to have a Coast Guard cutter headed upriver when he was doing business downstream.
As he watched the Feds depart, it occurred to him exactly what he and Leonard should do with the part of the sailboat cargo they’d hidden away in a half-sunk barge south of the Delaware Memorial Bridge. Nothing. That rusty old wrec
k had been lying in the shallows there for years—ignored because it presented no hazard to navigation. Gergen would just leave the stuff there.
For now.
Meantime, he needed some more money. It would have to come from legitimate business. A guy had come by with a kind of odd job. Recovery of some World War II relic or something on the sea bottom off of Cape Henlopen. Gergen hadn’t heard from him since. He’d call the man back that night.
Mary Lou stood up, leaving the towel on the deck.
“I’m going below,” she said.
“Suit yourself.”
“What about yourself?”
“I’m happy where I am.”
“Yeah? How happy?”
“You’d be surprised.”
He picked up his beer, drank, then turned to his book—a paperback copy of Richard Marcinko’s Rogue Warrior: Task Force Blue. Marcinko had been a Navy SEAL too. Knew his MagSafe Plus-P frangible SWAT loads and his Mad Dog DSU-2 serrated-blade knives to a T. Gergen loved his stuff. Tom Clancy’s too. But his favorite book ever was Ernest Hemingway’s To Have and Have Not. That rummy sonofabitch knew his ocean. Knew boats. Knew what hard times could be like. Knew that you had to do what you had to do.
Bear Gergen had discovered Hemingway in college. He was the only member of his family ever to go to one, though it was only a community college in North Jersey. According to the Navy, he had an IQ of 138.
“You got all the brains there is in this family,” his mother had told him. “You got no excuse being a fuckup like the rest of ’em.”
He set down his book and finished his beer. Maybe you didn’t always have to be smart. Not every single minute of every single day.
Gergen stood up and stretched, giving the dockside area a casual but careful surveillance.
Then he went below.
Burt Schilling sat atop the dune across the street from his house, idle that day because the weather was too rough for either fishing or searching for the bombs. Sipping from a sixteen-ounce bottle of Coca-Cola that he’d half-filled with rum, he watched the ships in the bay. The nearest was an inbound container vessel running low in the water dangerously close to a reef known as the Shears. Burt wondered who the ship’s pilot might be and what sort of conversation they might be having on the bridge, so far off the safer course. Beyond the freighter, several ships lay up to the northwest in Big Stony Anchorage, likely coal ships or tankers waiting for a pilot out of Lewes or their turn at Delaware River docks.
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