The Off-Islander

by Peter Colt

  Somewhere on Milestone Road, at forty-five miles per hour, the pipe and shot glass went out the window. I heard them smash and knew that traffic going to ’Sconset would finish the job. No glass, no fingerprints. No loops and whorls to say that I had been there. I nosed the truck into town, keeping my head down and trying not to be seen. I parked in the A&P parking lot in the far corner, near the gift shops and Captain Tobey’s restaurant. I got out, taking the keys. I left the window rolled down enough that the dog would have plenty of air.

  I walked toward the bandstand by Captain Tobey’s and then turned down the alley behind it. I found a small mews in which to take off Ed Harriet’s hat and coat and put on mine from Bean’s. His stuff went into the paper bag. The bag went into a public trash can a couple of blocks away, and I went to the ferry.

  The ride back was slow and uneventful. I was keyed up and kept wondering who was going to try to kill me next. When I got off of the boat, the Ghia was where I left her. I drove back to Boston the way I had before, back up Route 3. I had three hours between the ferry and the car to work it out. No one knew I was on Nantucket except Danny. No one knew that I had linked Ed Harriet and Charlie Hammond except Danny. Charlie Hammond, who had run out on the mob with a bunch of their money. Danny, who was a mob lawyer. Danny, who was owned by them. Or Danny, who was willing to trade my life to get in good with the Swifts. Or trade my life to keep his mob friends happy. As far as the bodies on the island, there was nothing to tie me to them. Who knows when they would be found and who would remember me, much less tie me to them?

  With any luck, it would look like Ed Harriet had a dreadful hunting accident, killing a hunter from off island. The shotgun shell would have his fingerprints. It was near the body of a man who looked like he might have sustained a shotgun wound. Who knows what his body would look like when he was found. Harriet’s car and dog would be found within walking distance of the ferry. The single shot glass on the table next to a bottle of Old Crow would look like a man who stopped to brace himself before he left forever.

  Chapter 23

  There was no one waiting to ambush me at my apartment. I took the fastest shower I had taken since basic training and dressed. Clothes went in my postman’s bag, and I broke down the Colt .32 and gave it a quick cleaning. I reloaded the magazine and switched holsters and guns. I put the Walther and everything that went with it in the bag, along with the keys, photos, and letter. My Colt would go in a safe deposit box on my way out of town. I put a five-shot .38 Smith & Wesson Chiefs Special in the outer pocket of the Bean’s coat. A couple of speed loaders in the left-hand pocket. I walked out and caught a Greyhound to Providence, Rhode Island, after the bank.

  Providence is a fine old city if you like political corruption, crime, and the mob. It has one-way streets, old mills, and some beautiful architecture on Benefit Street. Brown University and Providence College vie for academic supremacy of the city. Brown is trying to buy the whole thing one house at a time. PC is all about Catholicism and basketball. I wasn’t interested in any of it.

  The bus station in Providence was made up of rounded walls and orange plastic chairs. There were whores, junkies, and beggars inside for local color. You could buy newspapers, cigarettes, and gum. I bought a one-way ticket to Cleveland and walked out of the bus station.

  I made my way a couple of blocks away to the train station. It was a building of yellow-brown brick and, where there was wood, it was dark brown. It was a beautiful building that was in desperate need of some attention. It dated back to the Civil War, and the soldiers from Rhode Island shipped from this station along with the guns and uniforms made in the nearby mills. I paid for my ticket to New York.

  I spent the train ride wondering how to get out of this mess in one piece. Either Danny’s old friends had sent the man with the Ingram, or Deborah Swift was a much more ruthless person than I gave her credit for. Either one had a vested interest in Charlie Hammond being and staying dead. Either one had a vested interest in wanting me to join him. With Charlie Hammond gone, I was the only thing linking the pieces together. Now I had to convince them that there was no percentage in wanting me to be the same.

  Pennsylvania Station in New York was neither beautiful nor elegant. It was a testament to the atrocity called modern architecture. It was a series of dirty floors, escalators, glass, and granite. It had plenty of beggars, bums, junkies, and whores. Bored cops walked around twirling nightsticks, like angry, violent majorettes.

  There are a lot of hotels in New York, but The Algonquin was the one I ended up in. I gave a name and a bullshit story about not having ID. The desk man took extra cash to not care. I spent two nights with yellow legal pads and then a portable typewriter. I didn’t get to sit at the Round Table having cocktails with Mrs. Parker and her set. Nor did I get to enjoy the hand-drawn caricatures of famous writers. I spent a third day making copies, going to banks, and seeing lawyers. Two of Charlie Hammond’s safe deposit boxes were in Manhattan. I emptied one of the cash and contents inside without counting it.

  I called Deborah Swift’s secretary, and after a pause I was told that I was a very lucky man, as she was at The Pierre hotel in New York. The Pierre is the last vestige of regal New York elegance. It looks over Central Park and offers the service and charm of a bygone era. There is no finer hotel in New York.

  The switchboard rang me through to her room, and we agreed to meet. She suggested her hotel suite, and I suggested someplace less private. She suggested The Russian Tea Room, and I suggested the park at the UN. In the end, vodka and caviar won out.

  The front desk arranged for me to get a haircut and my beard trimmed. I looked less like a hippie and a bit more respectable, like a high school English teacher. I took a cab to Brooks Brothers and let them outfit me in a decent but casual sport coat and slacks. They also provided a dark gray car coat, made of a type of wool that was so expensive as to be obscene.

  Another cab took me to the legendary Paris Theodore’s Seventrees Ltd. I explained what I was looking for, and the mad, dark-haired genius himself attended to me. A shoulder holster for the Walther and a spare magazine. He also gave me the name of a friend of a friend who had a machine shop in a part of town that tourists didn’t go to. I thought about the extra trip but getting caught with a silencer was federal time. I thanked him and took another cab back to The Algonquin.

  I showered and changed into my new clothes. I adjusted the P38, a heavy, double-action, German World War II– era pistol. This one was in good shape, probably made early in the war. I chambered a round and lowered the hammer on the live round. I topped off the magazine, flipped off the safety, and holstered it. I loaded the two other magazines, and they went between my belt and waist on my left side. My new sport coat covered it all up nicely. My .38 went into the left-hand outer pocket of the car coat. I was ready for lunch or a shootout. I picked up a New York Times from the desk and took a cab to The Russian Tea Room.

  I walked in with the Times folded under my arm. I told the captain whom I was meeting, and we stopped to check my coat. The captain then brought me to a red leather banquette that was far from the door and, seemingly, the other patrons. Sitting at a table across the room facing us was her driver. No livery, just a suit and a large gun under his left armpit. He had not been to Seventrees Ltd.

  She held a hand out to be taken, without getting up. I sat down across from her on my end of the banquette. I put my folded Times down on the banquette next to me. “I hope you will forgive me asking Arthur to come in. You sounded a bit harried on the phone, and I was hoping to avoid any irrational behavior.”

  “Not at all. You are quite right, and it is prudent.”

  “Like carrying a revolver in a folded newspaper?”

  “Exactly. It is my version of Arthur.” She laughed, and despite the situation it occurred to me that Mr. Swift was a lucky man.

  “Well, why are we here, Mr. Roark?” She was all Lauren Bacall.

  “I have concluded your investigation. There have been
some complications that I wanted to explain in person. Also, I have written my summary of events. I reached into my right pocket, and Arthur briefly tensed up until he saw the buff envelope. I handed it to her.

  “You should read this now. It will save me from having to explain some of the nuances.”

  “That is fine. I took the liberty of ordering.” She waved her hand at a waiter, who was circling like a helicopter. Serving dishes arrived with cracked ice holding caviar. Chilled Russian vodka in glass dishes with more cracked ice arrived; plates with toast, smoked fish, and hard-boiled eggs arrived. She looked at me and smiled. “It isn’t poisoned, and I am not a femme fatale. Nazdarovya.” She drank a small glass of vodka in one gulp. I watched her throat move and wondered if I kissed her neck just under her jaw if Arthur would shoot me. It would probably be worth it. I followed suit with the vodka. I helped myself to food while she read, nibbling on toast and caviar.

  Half the vodka was gone, and the fish and toast weren’t doing much better. The caviar looked like a hill with a large divot in it when she looked up from my typed pages.

  “I think I understand a bit of your paranoia.” I nodded. “You didn’t know if I sent that man in order to keep this a secret.”

  “Yes, now it seems a bit far-fetched, but at the time . . .”

  “I didn’t, but I cannot say that I am not relieved. I have to assume that my father’s old cohorts in crime caught up with him, and the timing was unfortunate for you.”

  “If you didn’t send anyone, then yes, that is what we should assume.”

  “Now, Mr. Roark, is the time when you should tell me that you have made copies of this and left them with your lawyer in case of your untimely death.”

  “It would seem, Mrs. Swift, that I don’t have to.”

  “It would seem, Mr. Roark, that you and I read the same types of novels.” She smiled, and I understood why Ulysses tried every day for ten years to get back home.

  “There is more.” I handed her the safe deposit keys minus the one I had been at this morning, the papers that I found in Ed Harriet’s house, and the pictures of young Charlie Hammond.

  “These are keys to safe deposit boxes. I looked in two here and secured the contents of one as a bit of an insurance policy. If they are all similarly appointed, it could be used to defray campaign expenses, or be a slush fund that only you know about, or it could go to charity.”

  “And I can count on your discretion if I keep paying.”

  I laughed. That gets said to me and most private detectives in one form or another. “No, you hired me to do a job and it is done. I have been paid. I am not looking for anything else.”

  “One does have to wonder in this day and age.”

  “Not about me.” She didn’t seem to hear me. She was looking at the photos of Charlie Hammond.

  “What happened to him? Why?”

  “Mrs. Swift, he was involved in one of the bloodiest, most brutal battles in modern history. He had to endure hardships during it that are inconceivable to the average person. That changes a man. Leaves a mark. Maybe he left because he knew how much he had changed and didn’t want his little girl to see him in that light. I know that if it was me, I wouldn’t.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Roark. That was a kindness.” There wasn’t anything left to say. I left her alone with her thoughts and caught a train up to Boston. I spent the night at The Eliot Hotel, as Mr. D. H. Hellman. Cash can buy anonymity.

  Chapter 24

  The Eliot Hotel is a modest hotel in a nice area. It borrows a little class from the Harvard Club next door. It does everything it is supposed to in that it provides a bed and some discretion. The Eliot is that guy or girl you go home with when the bar closes. Just good enough.

  The Ritz-Carlton hotel, on the other hand, is Boston’s grand dame of hotels. She is elegant, majestically perched on most of a city block, facing the Public Garden and the Common. It has multiple, easily accessible entrances and exits. It makes it hard to watch and easy to slip in and out of. This weekend, the weekend before Thanksgiving, it was crowded because of the overflow from the Harvard/Yale football game. Two titans of academia and culture, neither of which could have beaten a decent high school team, turned this one weekend of football into a game more important than the Super Bowl, but only to those favoring blue and crimson.

  I was dressed to fit in. Loafers, gray wool slacks, light blue shirt, red sweater, and blue sport coat with no tie. I had, as a concession to my profession, the trench coat that Leslie had bought me. My hair was neatly trimmed, and all that remained of my scruffy beard was a neat mustache. I had Charlie Hammond’s 9mm Walther under my arm, spare magazines, a .38 in my left trench coat pocket, and a large buck knife in my pants pocket.

  I had been at the bar for an hour, nursing a scotch and soda. An hour before that, I was enjoying lunch in the Ritz Grille in the basement, and an hour before that I had strolled around like a leisurely tourist looking in shop windows. I hadn’t been followed, and no one was watching the Ritz when I arrived early. Anyone looking for a scruffy detective would have only seen an upwardly mobile Ivy Leaguer with a sweet mustache.

  Danny came in and looked around. I saw him in the bar’s mirror between bottles of top-shelf liquor. The Ritz knew no other kind. All he would have seen is my back and neatly trimmed hair, just like any other Ivy Leaguer. He sat down, and a waiter floated by and took his order. I watched him in the bar mirror for fifteen minutes. He kept looking around the room.

  I finished my own whiskey and with my raincoat over my arm, sat down opposite him.

  “I’m sorry, I’m waiting . . .” He stopped and then it occurred to him. “Andy.”

  “Yep.”

  “You cut your hair.”

  “What, are we married?”

  The waiter came by, and Danny held up two fingers in the universal signal for two more of the same.

  “How long have you been waiting here?” He was anxious.

  “Long enough to see the guys who were supposed to be looking for me go by without seeing what they wanted. Next time use better help.”

  “Andy, it isn’t like that.” He sounded aggrieved.

  “Yes, actually, it is.”

  The waiter brought two scotches and put one down in front of me and one in front of Danny. He glided off with the precision of a German sports car.

  “Danny, let’s say for the sake of argument that my hand in my folded raincoat,” which was sitting on my lap, “is wrapped around the butt of a .38 revolver. Let’s also say that it is pointed at your stomach.”

  “Andy!” Aghast.

  “Danny, after I left a message for you, a man with a silenced submachine gun came to kill me and Charlie Hammond. I was lucky, and I am still here. I don’t think the timing was coincidental.” Danny sucked in his breath. In all of our friendship, he had seen me angry, but he had never seen this side of me. The side that had come out of the jungle by the Ho Chi Minh Trail when many better men hadn’t.

  “It is funny, because that man with the submachine gun had two pictures. One was mine. Why would a man with a silenced submachine gun have my picture? Oh, and a picture of the man he killed?” It is a strange thing watching a man you have known your whole life deflate in front of you.

  “Andy, you were never supposed to be hurt. You were never in any danger.”

  “Danny, don’t be an ass. He was carrying an Ingram M10. The rate of fire is eleven hundred rounds a minute of. 45 ACP. It is hardly a precision weapon. It sprays bullets and bucks around like something in a rodeo. It has a useless little nylon strap in front that doesn’t help. I didn’t get hit because I was lucky. Nothing else. Charlie Hammond wasn’t so lucky. Also, your other clients might like you, but I am no one and nothing to them. For them, I am another loose end.”

  “Andy . . . it wasn’t supposed to happen like this.” He looked as miserable as I had ever seen him.

  “How was it supposed to happen? You weren’t supposed to betray me after years of friendship. Afte
r being the best man at your wedding and the only man your girls call uncle? Was it supposed to happen like that?” My voice had raised up a little.

  “Andy, please, please believe me. When you took the case, I thought you were looking for a missing dad. I didn’t know it was connected to them.”

  “Is that what all the fights with them in your office were about?”

  “How do you know about that?”

  “Oh, the FBI told me when they were trying to get me to give you up.”

  “FBI? Shit.”

  “Yep, the FBI. Hey, Danny, if no one wants to hurt me, then why the two clowns outside?”

  “They weren’t my idea. They said you were dangerous.”

  “Oh, Danny, you really do think you are the smartest man in every room you walk into. Don’t you see, they want me dead. I am the only thing that can connect them to Hammond. Well, they were right about one thing: I am dangerous.”

  Danny looked queasy.

  “Were you always looking for Hammond, or was it a coincidence?”

  “They were always looking for him. If I had known they were looking for him, I would never have asked you to take the case. They were after Hammond. He stole money from one of my clients that they were going to invest in a Las Vegas casino. He stole ledgers, documents that the Feds would love. They don’t have any interest in you.

  “He could have sent a couple of very powerful men to jail for the rest of their lives. They have been looking for him for ten years. They wanted him more than Deborah Swift ever could.

  “I didn’t realize that was who you were looking for until you were already involved. By the time I put two and two together and figured out that you were looking for their guy, I didn’t know how to stop you or tell you. I tried to stop them, but you can’t reason with those people. I told them if anything happened to you, I would quit. They told me there is no quitting. They told me what they would do to my wife, my girls. Andy, what could I do? I swear it was just an unlucky incident. I couldn’t hurt you. You are my oldest friend. Andy, come on . . . you can’t think I would set you up to be killed. You are like a brother to me.”