by Gorman, Ed
A lot of the windows were smashed, and the door leading inside was hanging free from its hinges. We went up the wide steps and gingerly stepped in. I flashed the light around. The roof had leaked and there were puddles of water on the floor. We went to the left, where there was a great open room, stretching out into the distance. I slashed the light around again. Rusting frames for bunks were piled high in the corner, and there was an odd, musty smell to the place. Lots of old memories came roaring back, being in a building like this, smelling those old scents, of the soap and the cleaning and the gun oil ... and the smell of the men, of course.
I squeezed Mandy’s hand and she squeezed back. Here we had all come, from all across the country, to train and to learn and to get ready to fight ... and no matter what crap the RKO movies showed you, we were all scared shitless. It was a terrible time and place, to come together, to know that so many of you would never come back ... torn up, blown up, shattered, burned, crushed, drowned. So many ways to die ... and now to come back to what was called peace and prosperity and hustle and bustle and try to keep ahead. What a time.
“Let’s go,” I whispered, not sure why I was whispering. “I want to get out of here before someone spots our light.”
“Yes,” she whispered back, and it was like we were in church or something. I led my client down the way, our footsteps echoing off the wood, and I kept the light low, until we came to the far corner, the place where the windows looked out to the east, where a certain man had been in his bunk, the sun hitting his face every morning.
“Here,” she whispered. “Shine the light over here.”
She knelt down at the corner of the room, her fingers prying at a section of baseboard, and even though I half-expected it, I was still surprised. The board came loose and Mandy cried out a bit, and I lowered the flashlight and illuminated a small cavity.
“Hold on,” I said, “you don’t know what — ”
But she didn’t listen to me. She pushed her right hand and arm and rummaged around, and she murmured, “Oh, Roger. Oh, my Roger,”
She pulled her hand back, holding a shoebox for Bass shoes, the damp cardboard held together with gray tape. She clasped the box against her chest and leaned over, silently weeping, I think, as her body shook and trembled.
I gave her a minute or two, and then touched her shoulder. “Mandy, come on, we’ve got to get out of here. And now.”
And she got off her knees, wiped at her eyes, and with one hand, held the cardboard box and her small leather purse against her chest.
Her other hand took mine, and wouldn’t let go, until we got back to the boat.
• • •
In the boat I pushed her off and started up the engine, and we started away from Gallops Island. The wind had come up some, nothing too serious, but there was a chop to the water that hadn’t been there before. With the box in her lap, she turned and smiled at me, and then leaned forward to me. I returned the favor, and kissed her, and then kissed her again, and then our mouths opened and her hand squeezed my leg. “Oh, Billy ... I didn’t think it would work ... I really didn’t ... look, when we get back, we need to celebrate, okay?”
I liked her taste and her smell. “Sure. Celebrate. That sounds good.”
But I kept on looking at the water.
I kicked up the throttle some more.
• • •
It didn’t seem to take too long, and as we motored back to the docks of the Shamrock Fish & Tackle, Mandy turned to me and started talking, about her life in Seattle, about her Roger, and now that with this box in hand, she was ready to start a new life, and I tried to ignore her chatter as I got closer to the dock, and I looked up at the small parking lot, and there was an extra vehicle there.
A Packard, parked underneath a street lamp.
As I got closer to the docks, doors to the Packard opened up, and two men, with hats and topcoats and hands in their coats, got out.
Mandy was still chattering.
I worked the throttle, slipped the engine into neutral, and then reversed. The engine made a clunk-whine noise, as I backed out of the narrow channel leading into the docks, and Mandy was jostled, saying, “What the — ”
“Hold on,” I said, backing away even further, now going back into neutral, then forward, and then speeding away. I turned and saw the two guys climb back into the Packard and back out onto L Street. I turned and grabbed my flashlight and switched the engine off, and now we drifted, in the darkness, by all those dark islands. Mandy turned around, looked at me, and said, “Billy ... what the hell is going on?”
“You tell me,” I said.
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“Mandy ... what’s in the box?”
“I told you,” she said, her voice rising. “Souvenirs! Letters! Photos! Stuff that means so much to me...”
“And the guys in the Packard? Who are they? Friends of Roger who want to giggle over old photos of him in the Army?”
“I don’t know what you mean, about — ”
I pointed the flashlight at her face, flicked it on, startling her. I reached forward, snatched the damp box from her hands, sat back down. The boat rocked, a bit of spray hitting my arm. “Hey!” she called out, but now the box was in my lap.
I lowered the flashlight, seeing her face pursed and tight. “Let’s go over a few things,” I said. “You come into my office with a great tale, a great sob story. And you tell me you get hooked up with me because you just happened to run into one of the sleaziest, in-the-bag cops on the Boston force, a guy who can afford a pricey vacation home on a New Hampshire lake on a cop’s salary. And right after you leave my office, a sweet girl, far, far away from home, you get into somebody’s Packard. And now there’s a Packard waiting for you, at dockside. Hell of a coincidence, eh? Not to mention the closer we got to shore, the more you blathered at me, trying to distract me.”
She kept quiet, her hands now about her purse, firmly in her lap. “Anything to say?”
My client kept quiet. I held up the box. “What’s in here, Mandy?”
Nothing.
“Mandy?”
I put the box in my lap, tore away at the tape and damp cardboard, and the top tore away easy enough. There was damp brown paper in the box, and the sound of smaller boxes moving against each other. I turned the box over a bit, shone the light in. Little yellow cardboard boxes, about the size of a small toothpaste container, all bundled together. There were scores of them. I shuddered, took a deep breath. I knew what they were. I looked up to her.
“Morphine,” I said. “Morphine syrettes. Your guy ... if there was a guy there, he wasn’t training as a radioman. He was training as a medic. And he was stealing this morphine, to sell later once the war was over. Am I right? Who the hell are you, anyway?”
My client said, “What difference does it make? Look, I had a job to do, to get that stuff off that island, easiest way possible, no fuss, no muss, and we did it. Okay? Get me to shore, you’ll get ... a finder’s fee, a percentage.”
I shook the box, heard the other boxes rattle. “Worth a lot of money, isn’t it.”
She smiled. “You have no idea.”
“But it was stolen. During war time.”
“So what?” she said, her voice now showing a sharpness I had never heard before. “Guys went to war, some got killed, some figured out a way to score, to make some bucks ... and the guys I’m with, they figured it was time to look out for themselves, to set something up for later. So there you go. Nice deal all around. Don’t you want part of it Billy? Hunh?”
I shook the box again, fought to keep my voice even. “Ever hear of Bastogne?”
“Maybe, who knows, who cares.”
“I know, and I care,” I said. “That’s where my brother was, in December, 1944. Belgian town, surrounded by the Krauts. He took a chunk of shrapnel to the stomach. He was dying. Maybe he could have lived if he wasn’t in so much pain ... but the medics, they were low on morphine. They could only use morphine on gu
ys they thought they might live. So my brother ... no morphine ... he died in agony. Hours it took for him to die, because the medics were short on morphine.”
Mandy said, “A great story, Billy. A very touching story. Look, you want a tissue or something?”
And moving quickly, she opened up her purse, and took out a small, nickel-plated semiautomatic pistol.
“Sorry, Billy, but this is how it’s going to be. You’re going to give me back my box, you’re going to take me back to the dock, and if you’re a good boy, I’ll make sure only a leg or an arm gets broken. How’s that for a deal?”
I thought for a moment, now staring at a face I didn’t recognize, and I said, “I’ve heard better.”
And I tossed the box and the morphine syrettes into the dark waters.
• • •
She screamed and shouted something, and I was moving quick, which was good, because she got off one shot that pounded over my head, as I ducked and grabbed something at the bottom of the boat, tugging it free, and then I fell overboard. The shock of the cold water almost made me open my mouth, but I was used to it, though never this cold. I came up, coughing, splashing, and my flashlight was still on the boat, still lit up, which made it easy for me to see what happened next.
The skiff was filling with water, as Mandy moved to the rear, the boat rocking, trying to get the engine started, I think, but with her added weight at the stern, the boat quickly swamped and flipped over, dumping her in. She screamed. She screamed again. “Billy! Please! I can’t swim! Please!”
I held up my hand, holding the drainplug to the rear of the skiff, and let it go.
She floundered some more. Splashing. Yelling. Coughing. It would be easy enough to get over there, calm her down, put her in the approved life-saving mode, my arm about her, to get her safely to shore. So easy to do, for I could find her in the darkness, just by following the splashes and the yells.
The yells. I had heard later from someone in my brother’s platoon, how much he had yelled, towards the end.
I moved some, was able to gauge where she was, out there in the darkness.
And then I turned and swam in the other direction.
• • •
BRENDAN DUBOIS is the award-winning author of eleven novels and more than one hundred short stories. His short fiction has appeared in Playboy, Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, and numerous other magazines and anthologies, including The Best American Mystery Stories of the Century, published in 2000 by Houghton-Mifflin. His short stories have twice won him the Shamus Award from the Private Eye Writers of America, and have also earned him three Edgar Award nominations from the Mystery Writers of America. Visit his website at www.BrendanDuBois.com.
THE CARETAKER
By Terence Faherty
One
“Jackson Hole is the name of the valley. Jackson is the town. Never call the town Jackson Hole, or people will think you’re a flatlander.”
To Anne Abbott’s ear, the person offering this advice sounded like a flatlander himself — from Iowa, perhaps, or Kansas — but she didn’t call him on it. She needed the job he’d offered her too badly. And she liked this real estate manager, Wayne Sedam. True, he spent more time on his hair and clothes than the men she’d grown up around, though in keeping with the local convention his current outfit — sheepskin coat, jeans, and cowboy boots — was elaborately casual. But he hadn’t balked at the idea of hiring a female caretaker for one of the properties under his charge, Osprey House. The previous caretaker had left without notice to join a cowboy band, so Sedam was well motivated if not desperate. Still, Anne was grateful.
They were standing on the flagstone patio behind the house as they spoke. Anne was admiring the log home’s many windows and gables. In one of the French doors, she caught her own reflection and appraised it: tall, broad shouldered, and plain. The sketch made her sigh, and she glanced quickly at Sedam to see if he’d noticed. He was examining the neighboring mansion.
“This part of the valley was all little ranches not many years ago,” he said. “Now it’s half ranches and half estates. Ten years from now, you’ll have to drive down to Hoback Junction if you want to see a cow.”
Anne, who’d lived all her life around cows, doubted she’d put forth the effort, but she nodded as though carefully making a mental note as Sedam went on.
“Neither Osprey House or that place over there is rented out when the owners are away, which is most of the year. In fact, I doubt the owners of Osprey House will ever be back. It was built by a dot com millionaire named Zollman as a vacation home for the skiing season. His wife took one look around Jackson and lit out for the coast. Wyoming was too far from Malibu for her. She’d like her husband to sell the place, but he’s run off to sulk somewhere in the South Pacific and no one can get hold of him.”
Thank God for that, Anne thought, or I’d be waiting tables somewhere. She’d come to Wyoming to work as a guide on the Snake River, but the short summer season wouldn’t feed her all year. The caretaker’s job was ideal, giving her a place to live as well as a steady income. Mrs. Zollman might not have cared for Jackson Hole, but to Anne it was close to heaven, even if it did snow in late May.
It was flurrying now. Sedam was holding the lapels of his beautiful coat tightly together with one hand, his attention still absorbed by the large house across the meadow. It was cedar-sided with chimneys and front porch pillars of stacked stone.
“What’s that place called?” Anne asked.
“Millikan House, after the owners, a husband and wife team of New York cardiologists. They should have called the place Heart Disease House, after what paid for it. The Millikans come out for two weeks in the winter and five weeks in the summer. Those years we have a summer. Let’s go inside.”
Sedam showed her from room to room, starting in a large television and game room with fireplace and cathedral ceiling. The gourmet kitchen was open to a farmhouse style dining room, the long table of which could seat twelve. Anne pictured the Zollmans sitting at opposite ends of that table, glowering at each other. The master suite, its bathroom larger than any apartment Anne had ever rented, and a mechanical room completed the ground floor. The latter held duplicate hot water tanks and furnaces.
Sedam explained the redundancy. “Because of the log construction, there are no ducts in the house. Heating is by hot water. One system supplies the radiators, the other the sinks and showers. All running continuously, per the owner’s last orders. You should see the bills. By the way, you will see the cleaning people. They come once a week, also according to orders. I don’t know what they find to clean.”
Upstairs there were four more bedrooms, each with its own bath. Throughout the house, the gray daylight was warmed by the honey color of the walls. The logs were so perfectly smooth that Anne ran her fingers along them to convince herself that they were really wood. Nowhere in the house did she see a personal touch, a family photograph or a book.
Her own quarters were in a small ranch house behind the fourcar garage. Compared with Osprey House, it was Spartan, but Anne fell in love with it at first sight. She had to fight the temptation to seize its keys from Sedam when, at the end of their tour, he displayed his first reservations.
“I feel a little guilty about leaving you out here by yourself,” he said, as he twirled the key ring maddeningly on one finger. “You’re only a few miles from town, I know, but this is a lonely spot. Feel free to call my cell if you’re ever uncomfortable.”
Anne asked herself if this manicured man might be interested in her. But before she’d more than worded the thought, Sedam added, “Or you could call Gitry.”
“Gitry?”
“He’s the Millikans’ caretaker.” Sedam waved the keys in the direction of the cedar house. “It’s not one of my properties — it’s managed out of Cheyenne, a stupid arrangement — so I don’t really know the man, except by his reputation. He’s become a little bit of a recluse, from what I hear. And
a man of mystery. Still, if some emergency comes up, I’m sure he’ll help out. You caretakers have to stand by one another.
“It’s part of your code,” he added, laughing.
He handed Anne the keys, pressing them into her hand. “Good luck.”
Two
One week later, Anne paused on her morning run to admire the beauty of her valley. To the north, beyond Jackson, the snow-covered and jagged Grand Tetons stood out against a deep blue, cloudless sky. To the east and nearer to hand were the foothills of the Wyoming Range, already clear of snow and very green. They’d be covered in wild flowers in a week or two if the weather would only hold. Anne resumed her run, climbing high enough into those hills to gain a panoramic view of the spur valley in which Osprey House stood.
That morning there was a low fog in the valley, so low that the taller trees and rooftops pierced it. Anne heard the cattle calling to one another on a nearby ranch and felt a delicious guilt. Those cows were someone else’s responsibility, not hers. Then a pair of trumpeter swans flew past her just above the fog bank, honking to each other as they went, as though arguing about directions.
“The Zollmans,” she thought, “reincarnated.”
The swans’ noisy flight took them directly over Millikan House.
“That’ll wake you up, Mr. Gitry.”
She’d yet to glimpse her fellow caretaker, though she’d spent most of her first week in the valley watching for him. There’d been little else for her to do. No snow had fallen, so she couldn’t plow, and the grass wasn’t growing yet, so she couldn’t mow. She’d started the tractor and the ATV and changed the oil in each. She’d set out family photos and well-worn novels around the little ranch house, giving it something the log mansion lacked. And she’d watched for Gitry.
His failure to appear was intriguing to her, more intriguing even than Wayne Sedam’s description of Gitry: a man of mystery. Her practical side told her to be patient, as it often did. Gitry was simply holed up like she was, waiting for the seasons to sort themselves out.
She lost what little warmth the recently risen sun was providing when she descended again into the valley proper. The fog that was holding off that sun reflected and amplified the very regular sound of her footfalls and the complaints of the magpies she disturbed as she followed an overgrown fence row.