Backflash p-18

by Richard Stark

  Cahill did the honors: “Captain Lief Andersen, I’d like to introduce Assemblyman Morton Kotkind of the New York State legislature.”

  They both said how-do-you-do, and shook hands, Sternberg with grumpy dignity, Andersen with a more aloof style. “You have a beautiful ship, captain,” Sternberg told him, as though forced to admit it.

  “And you have a beautiful statehouse,” the captain assured him, nodding his narrow beak at it.

  They all turned to look, even Wycza, who usually ignored polite crap like that, and it was still there all right, slowly receding. It was now quarter past eight, and though the sun hadn’t yet set it was behind the Albany hills, putting the eastern slopes of the city in shade, so that the statehouse looked more than ever like simply a huge pile of rocks.

  Sternberg said, “It’s all right, I suppose. It’s always been a little too much like a castle for me. I’m too instinctive a small ‘d’ democrat for that.”

  “The schloss, yes,” the captain agreed. “I quite understand. That may be why I like it. There was nothing in Biloxi like that.”

  “No, there wouldn’t be.”

  “I understand,” the captain said, “your associates here carry weapons. As you know, on the ship”

  “That was all taken care of,” Sternberg broke in, and Wycza thought, now what.

  “I’m sorry, Mister Assemblyman,” the captain said, with the faint smile of someone whose decisions are never argued with, “but the company has strict”

  “This was dealt with,” Sternberg insisted, showing a little more impatience, almost a touch of anger, “when the arrangements were made.”

  “If you were told” the captain began, but then Parker, standing next to Wycza here in the background, interrupted him, saying, “Captain, Trooper Helsing and I apologize, but we have no choice. We are not permitted to be disarmed while on duty. It’s regulations. You could phone our barracks in Albany, speak to the major”

  Holy shit, Parker, Wycza thought, what if he does? What if he even asks for the phone number? Jesus, this was supposed to be solved, the fucking guns are the reason we’re playing this dumb game. What are we supposed to do now, shoot our way off the ship? Or hand over the goddam guns and play-act the whole evening and never get to do the caper. Walk into the money room and out again, say thank you very much, and go off somewhere and shoot ourselves in the head.

  But before Parker could finish his offer, and before they could know whether or not the captain would have taken him up on it, Sternberg burst in, furious, and now furious at Parker: “Renfield, what’s the matter with you? One phone call to the barracks about me being on this ship, and why,and allof our security is destroyed. The pressis there, Renfield! The press is always in those offices.”

  “Oh.” Wycza had never seen Parker look abashed, and wouldn’t have guessed he knew how to do it, but he did. “Sorry, Mr. Kotkind,” he said, with that abashed face. “I didn’t think.”

  Sternberg turned a glowering eye on Susan Cahill: “Ms. Cahill, my office made these arrangements with”

  “Yes, yes, you did,” she said, and Wycza felt almost sorry for her. She was between a rock and a hard place, and she hadn’t known this was going to happen. She said, ‘Just give me a minute, Mister Assemblyman,” and turned away, to say, quiet but intense, “Captain Andersen, could we talk for just a minute?”

  “Susan,” the captain said, “you know”

  “Yes, yes, but if we could just”

  “There’s a perfectly adequate safe in that corner right there, no risk could”

  “Captain.”

  And finally, not merely holding his arm but stroking the upper arm from elbow to shoulder, up and down, up and down, she managed to turn the captain away as though he were the ship itself and she the small but powerful tugboat, and she walked him away into the forward room, the one with the oval wall of windows.

  Once they were out of sight, Sternberg turned on Parker and hissed, “You knowthere’s to be no publicity about this! You understoodthat!”

  Playing it out, Wycza knew, for the benefit of the other crew members in the room, all of whom were pretending to be busy at other things but were clearly listening with all their ears. Still, as Wycza guessed, Parker could play at this game only so far. He’d gone back to his usual stone face, and all he said was, “Yes, sir. I think Ms. Cahill will straighten it out.” Enough is enough, in other words.

  Sternberg understood the message, and contented himself with a few harrumphs and a couple of glowers in the general direction of the receding city, until a much more cheerful Susan Cahill came back into the room, trailed by a discontented Captain Andersen holding fast to his dignity. “All settled,” she announced. “But you see now, Mister Assemblyman, just how careful we are on this ship.” Immediately spinning the scene from confrontation to a positive message.

  “And I’m glad you are,” Sternberg told her, gallantly accepting the spin. “I’m sorry, Captain,” he said, “if the special circumstances of this tour mean we have to bend a rule or two. I think you’ll agree it’s in a good cause.”

  The captain unbent himself, not without difficulty. “I’m sure it is a good cause, Assemblyman Kotkind,” he said, with a small bow. “We are newly arrived in your part of the world, we hope to become good neighbors and to be accepted by all our new friends, as time goes on. For that to be true, I realize, we will have to learn something of your ways. But for now, do follow Susan, let her show you this quite lovely ship, and although you are here for serious business, please do take pleasure in the scenery as we pass by.”

  “I will,” Sternberg promised. “Delighted to meet you, Captain.”

  “And you, Mister Assemblyman. I understand we’ll be dining together. I look forward to it.”

  “As do I. We won’t keep you, Captain, I know you’re busy.”

  As they were leaving, the captain even found a smile to show Parker and Wycza. “I certainly hope, gentlemen,” he said, “we shall not be seeingthose weapons of yours.”

  Wycza grinned at him. He knew how to handle a soft lob like that. “If you see my weapon on this ship, Captain,” he said, “I’m not doing my job.”

  4

  Ray Becker sat in an old wooden Adirondack chair on the screened porch at the back of the cabin, the bottle of Gatorade at his side, and watched the sunset over the river. It’s a new day, he thought. I’m starting over, and this time I’m gonna get it right.

  He was a fuckup, and he knew it. He’d been a fuckup all his life, third of five sons of a hardware store owner who was never any problem for any of his boys so long as they worked their ass off. Being in the middle, Ray had never been big enough or strong enough to compete with his meaner older brothers, and never been cute enough or sly enough to compete with his guileful younger brothers, so he was just the fuckup in the middle, and grew up knowing that about himself, and had never done anything in his life to make him change his opinion of himself.

  God knows he tried. He liked the Army, for instance. Go in there and do your job and don’t sweat about promotion, and the Army was never any problem for anybody, so long as they worked their ass off. But drink and bad companions have taken down many a better man than Ray Becker, and he did wind up with a bunch of clowns that had it in mind to rob the base PX, and of course they got caught, and of course Ray was the first to crack, so of course he was the one who wound up with the deal and testified against everybody else, and they went to Leavenworth while he didn’t even have a bad mark on his record; a general discharge under honorable conditions. Only the Army wouldn’t ever want him back.

  Policing turned out to be like the Army, only with different-colored uniforms. But the concept was the same; a strict set of rules, easy to understand. Stay within them, you’ll be all right. And in police work, particularly small-town police work, you didn’t even have to work your ass off.

  But the other little glitch was money. The old man had been as cheap a son of a bitch as it was possible to find, and still w
as, no doubt; Ray had had no contact at all with the family for more than ten years. What would be in it for him? Work for the old man, and get nothing out of it. The only reason the old man would know Ray wasn’t there was if he had to get somebody else to do the heavy lifting.

  Thirty-seven years old. A born fuckup who didn’t really want much in life, but who simply couldn’t keep himself from conniving. Show him a rule, and he’ll say, “Oh, thank God, there’s rules,” and absolutely mean it, and at the same time scheme from the get-go for some sneaky way to get around the rule, subvert it, defy it and ignore it. Maybe that was an inheritance from the old man, too.

  Well, Ray Becker’s fuckup days were done. This last one was the lesson, for good and all. Four million dollars in commercial paper being trucked north to Chicago out of some bank that went bust down south. A big tractor-trailer full of valuable paper and a handful of armed guards. Two unmarked cars, one ahead and one behind, with more armed guards, and here it all came, stitching up the center of the country, heading for the big stone banks of Chicago, America’s Switzerland.

  Who knew about this movement of so much valuable paper? Hundreds of people, all of them supposed to be trustworthy. Bank people, the security service that provided the guards, various federal agencies, and police forces along the way, that had to be told what was happening in their territory, as a courtesy and for practical reasons, too.

  Ray had no idea who set up the job, but one of the gang was an old pal of his from Army days’, one of the boys he’d sent to Leavenworth, who was out now and had joined up with a much more serious bunch of heist artists. Old pal Phil had found his way to Ray Becker to tell him he was prepared to forgive and forget the old Army days because old pal Ray was going to feed old pal Phil the information on how the truck full of valuable paper was coming through; what time of what day on what road with what additional escort. And just to show there were no hard feelings, Ray’s share was going to be two hundred thousand dollars. A nice little nest egg. And just to show this was all in earnest, old pal Phil was handing old pal Ray a thousand dollars, ten new one-hundred-dollar bills, on account.

  On account of that was all he was going to get.

  The final fuckup. Make a four-million-dollar robbery possible, get one measly miserable thousand dollars out of it, and be the only one who gets caught and goes to jail for it.

  Not this time. This time luck had been with him, for once. This time, he thought he’d been given the hundred forty thousand dollars that would help him clear out and start over under another identity somewhere else, but instead he’d been given Marshall Howell, and then Hilliard Cathman, and then Parker and the others, and then the gambling boat.

  Spirit of the Hudson.Luck is with me at long last, Ray Becker thought. So maybe I’ll take a little of tonight’s money, some time soon, take a ride on that gambling boat, see what happens. Not all of it, for God’s sake, not even a lot of it, not to fuck up all over again. Take a couple thousand, that’s all, see if my luck holds. Win some money, meet some nice blonde woman in a long dress with her tits hanging out at the top, drink a glass of champagne. Buy a necktie before I go.

  Across the way, the sun had ratcheted down out of sight. The sky over there was deep red above the jagged black masses of the Catskills, with blackness below, pierced by a few pinholes of yellow light. And here came the boat, the very boat itself, gliding down the river, just exudinglight. Spreading a pale halo out over the water and the air, a misty milky glow that made it look like a ship from some other universe, a mirage, floating into our plain dark world. Faintly, he could hear music, he could see people move around on the ship, the beautiful white boat surrounded by its veil of light.

  And you’re coming for me,he thought, whether you know it or not. He smiled at the ship. In his mind, the blonde woman leaned toward him, and she smiled, too.

  5

  For Greg Manchester, it was almost like being a spy. Here he was, on the Spirit of the Hudson,anonymous with his tiny pocket Minolta camera and his even smaller palm-of-the-hand audio cassette recorder, snapping pictures here and there around the ship, murmuring observations and data into the recorder, and nobody at all had the first idea he was a reporter.

  And the funny thing was, he didn’t even intend a negative story. It was just that the management of this ship, Avenue Resorts, based in Houston, Texas, was so antsy about the controversial nature of casino gambling that they demanded total control over every facet of any news story involving them, or they would withhold all cooperation.

  It was easy for the management to enforce that policy with television newspeople, of course, because television newspeople necessarily travel with so much gear, cameras and recording equipment and lights and all the rest of it, that they need cooperation everywhere they go. But Greg Manchester worked in the world of print, a reporter with the Poughkeepsie Journal,a daily paper in the town that just happened to be the Spirit of the Hudson’ssouthern terminus, and Greg Manchester was determined to get a story that was notmade dull and bland and predictable by an excess of cooperation with Avenue Resorts.

  His editor had been skeptical at first, since the Spirit of the Hudsonwas already an important advertiser, but Greg had said, ‘Jim, I’m not doing an expose. What’s to expose? They’re a clean operation. This will just be fun for the readers, to be a fly on the wall for one cruise of the glamorous ship.”

  “No controversy,” Jim said.

  “No controversy,” Greg promised.

  Well, it was an easy promise to keep. With the Spirit of the Hudson,with so much official oversight and political grandstanding all around it, everything was absolutely squeaky clean, from the place settings to the morals of the crew. So what Greg was doing was essentially human interest, which quite naturally led him to the girl in the wheelchair.

  Poor goddam thing, he wanted to hug her or something. She looked to be in her late twenties, the same as him, but so frail, so vulnerable, and yet so brave. If he wasn’t careful, she’d take over the piece, and he didn’t want that. She’d be in it, of course, a part of it, but the story still had to be about the ship.

  So he limited himself in the early hours of the cruise to one brief conversation with the girl in the wheelchair and the rather tough-looking man in a chauffeur’s uniform who wheeled her around. They were out on the promenade deck at that time, watching the shoreline go by, and he went over just to make a little small talk lucky in the weather, beautiful scenery, that kind of thing, just to establish a connection and they were both gracious, but she was obviously very weak and not up to too much talk, so soon he moved on, looked at other things, took pictures here and there (a few of the wheelchair girl, too, of course, and he’d have to learn her name before the cruise was over), and made his observations into the recorder.

  There was somebody else of interest aboard, too, a VIP of some sort, an ill-tempered kind of guy with a couple of bruisers who looked like they must be bodyguards, all being escorted around by Susan Cahill. He remembered Susan Cahill, though she’d have no reason to remember him, from the press conferences when the ship first arrived, when he’d just been a part of the herd of reporters all being schmoozed at once. Susan Cahill was sexy and smart and tough as nails, and Greg could see she was treating this short fat sour-looking man with the softest of kid gloves. Somebody important, at least to the Spirit of the Hudson.

  He took pictures in the better dining room, on the port side of the ship, but actually ate in the sandwich joint on the other side, since he didn’t have an expense account for this little jaunt. He visited the casino but didn’t play, and noticed that the craps tables were the most popular (and the loudest) and the two roulette wheels the least. Six blackjack tables were open, three with a ten-dollar minimum and three with a twenty-five dollar minimum, and all did well. The rows of slot machines were almost all occupied almost all of the time, but the video poker games didn’t draw as big a crowd.

  The ship arrived at Poughkeepsie a little before eleven, and would stay
at the dock for ten minutes. Now Greg was sorry he hadn’t taken the train up to Albany; if he had, he could get off now, because he had just about everything he needed for his story, except the name of the girl in the wheelchair and the identity of the VIP, which would take no time at all. But he’d driven up this afternoon, so his car was up there, so he had to do the round-trip. But that was okay, there could still be more to learn.

  A little after eleven, the ship steamed out away from Poughkeepsie, made a long curving arc out to the middle of the river, then slowly pivoted on its own axis there, while the customers who could tear themselves away from the gaming tables crowded along the rails to stare, until the prow was finally pointed upstream, white foam now giving it an Edwardian collar as the ship’s engines deepened their hum and they started up against the current.

  Well, he might as well get his two “who” questions answered, so as the lights of Poughkeepsie faded in the night darkness behind them Greg went looking for the girl in the wheelchair and his VIP.

  He found the VIP first, in the casino, with his bodyguards and Susan Cahill, glowering in disapproval at the roulette wheels. The floor manager, a neat young guy in the royal blue and gold uniform of the ship, stood at parade rest just inside the casino door, and Greg approached him, saying, “Excuse me. That must be somebody important, I guess.”

  “Hethinks so,” the floor manager said. He had some sort of southern accent.

  Greg laughed. “Who does he think he is?”

  “New York State assemblyman,” the floor manager said. “Not that big a deal, Iwouldn’t think. Name’s Kotkind, he’s from Brooklyn.”

  Greg blinked, and stared at the VIP and his entourage across the way. “Are you sure?”