5
The posh Mobile Bay Marina sat a quarter of a mile up the beach from the Grand Hotel. The information Charlie needed was strictly proprietary. Finally, a task suited to a horseplayer.
At the track, a fortune could be made with the knowledge that a favorite was running just because “he needs a race,” meaning he’s not fit to win, so the jockey will “school” him-just let him experience competition. Much of Charlie’s “job” had been wheedling such intel from grooms. The attendant in the Meadowlands owners and trainers parking lot often proved an oracle-just not often enough. At Aqueduct, the refreshment stand workers were Charlie’s best sources. Amazing what an owner would let slip while waiting for his seventh Big-A Big-B-thirty-two-ounce beer-of the day.
In the waterside village catering to the Mobile Bay Marina, the Grand Hotel, and a cluster of golf and beach developments, Charlie posed as a tourist. He was interested in chartering a yacht, he told the eager-to-serve proprietors in three of the quaint art galleries and boutiques crammed onto the short main street. He learned that the marina’s veteran harbormaster, known to all as Captain Glenny, viewed her job as part sheriff and part priest. Refueling a cabin cruiser took in excess of an hour, during which time returning yachtsmen regaled her with their adventures. In twenty years on the job, she had become their friend and confidante.
Charlie sensed such a woman would look upon any bribe with indignation. Were Bream among her charges, she would alert him within moments.
Charlie took a page from the Post and Daily News beat reporters at the track. Their jobs, consisting of little more than reporting the order of finish and adding a dash of commentary, placed them at journalism’s lowest rung. Nevertheless, their status as members of the media induced complete strangers to speak with the sort of candor psychiatrists rarely attain from their patients. The limelight acted as a powerful stimulant, even the few particles of limelight emanating from a department whose existence newspapers didn’t like to acknowledge.
Charlie’s cover began with a stop at a nearby Sears. He bought a baggy pair of khakis, an oxford shirt, Hush Puppy knockoffs, and an extra-large synthetic wool parka. The idea was to look like a journalist as well as hide his identity from Bream.
In the same mall, Charlie hit Cheapo’s, an office supply store. For $4.99 he printed himself business cards using the same name that appeared on his forged New York driver’s license, John Parker, and billing him as Editor at Large for South, a new lifestyles magazine based in Tampa. He chose Tampa because it was far enough away from Mobile to preclude Do you know? questions. Also Tampa was the only place in the South where Charlie had actually spent time-albeit all of it at Tampa Bay Downs.
The Mobile Bay Marina stayed open twenty-four hours. It was probably never more inviting than when Charlie arrived, the bay a pastiche of blues and silver, the sun having brought the air to the precise temperature at which being outdoors felt most invigorating. Rustic docks and gleaming hulls and spars swayed with the mild current. From the parking lot, he saw no one about, though there might be yachtsmen below deck. He wasn’t sure how to pass through the big entry gate without drawing their attention. Then he spotted the OPEN TO THE PUBLIC sign.
It felt like a gift.
The instant he set foot on the pier, a middle-aged woman burst out of the harbormaster’s office. She was stout and might have been pretty if she hadn’t appeared poised to bark at him. Her spiky hair was cut short, exposing a sizable collection of gold earrings, worn only on her left ear.
“How can I help you?” she asked with a none-too-subtle undertone of “You are obviously not a wealthy yachtsman or someone a wealthy yachtsman would want to see, so what the heck are you doing here?”
“I’m a reporter,” Charlie said.
She looked him over. “Doing something on the G-20?”
“Actually I write for South Magazine.”
“Uh-huh. Don’t know it.”
So much for the Limelight Effect.
“Lead times what they are, my story won’t run until the spring issue. We’re doing a piece on the prettiest harbors in the South, and so far this one gets my vote. Could you by any chance direct me to the harbormaster, Glenny Gorgas?”
“I’m Glenny.” She took in Charlie’s mock surprise. “Short for Glendolyn.”
“Pretty name.”
She warmed, but only by a degree. “So how can I help you?” He needed to find out which yachts had arrived in the last day or two. This time of year, the number wouldn’t be high.
“Do you, by any chance, have time to give me the dime tour?”
They walked the docks for twenty minutes, Glenny paying no attention to the sprawling golf course or the tennis courts, or the resort hotel itself, a town’s worth of pert three-story brown clapboard buildings, many of which loomed over the marina. Her focus was on the two hundred or so yachts, which she referred to as if they were their owners. Passing a sleek and towering catamaran, she said, with pride, “He made a hole in one last weekend.”
This was the opening Charlie had been waiting for. “Here in Mobile?”
“Mr. Chandler has a condo on the course at the Grand.” She smiled. “Sailing for him is an excuse to play golf.”
“Do a lot of the boat owners have homes here?”
“A few have condos here, but most live close enough, up in Montgomery or Birmingham. A handful in Tennessee.”
“How many people do you see during the winter?”
She sighed. “Winter’s a lonely time to be a harbormaster.”
He stopped, pointedly looking around. There was no sign of anyone, just the groans of ropes holding yachts to docks. “Is anyone here now?”
The harbormaster brightened. “Actually, I had two parties in yesterday, and one the night before that. January and February I get the occasional excursion to the Caribbean or Mexico.”
With manufactured fascination, Charlie scribbled each in his notebook. “It must be fun, when the people come back, to hear about their adventures?”
Glenny’s step added a skip. “Best part of the job.”
“Heard any good stories lately?”
“I’m expecting a really good one any time now, actually.” She pointed to an empty slip at the end of the far dock. “Anthony and Vera Campodonico, retired couple, spent their whole careers at Auburn-he used to be a dean. Now they go down to the Caribbean and South America looking for lost civilizations and stuff like that. He actually writes books about it.”
Probably not Bream, Charlie thought, given the Campodonicos’ ages.
Glenny strode ahead. “And of course there’s Mr. Clemmensen-Clem Clemmensen. Great guy. He just got in from Martinique.” She smiled at a relatively plain cabin cruiser. “Even when he goes on fishing trips ‘just to do some thinkin’,’ as he says, he comes back with yarns that involve either a girl or a barroom brawl, or a barroom brawl over a girl. Lately he’s been cruising around trying to figure out what to do with the rest of his life. He made a bundle in flight simulator software and basically retired last year at forty. Not bad, huh?”
“Sounds like a good story,” Charlie said, struggling to keep a lid on the high-voltage conviction surging through him that flight simulator software was a chapter in a cover story: Clemmensen was Bream.
Motion on the pier behind them seized their attention. Heading their way were two men in dark suits and sunglasses, one white and the other black, both athletic, clean-cut, and in their late twenties. Their stride was all business.
Once within hailing distance, the black man asked, “Charles Clark?”
Charlie tried to appear relaxed.
The men shared a nod. He’d failed.
“We’re Secret Service,” the white man said. “We were hoping to talk to you privately, sir.” For Glenny’s benefit, he added, “We have to interview everyone in the vicinity with out-of-state tags. Standard operating procedure.”
6
The Cavalry’s not as dead as they’re supposed to be, Charlie tho
ught.
Because his hands were bound in front of him by plastic cuffs, each turn slammed him into the door or the window as the SUV sped away from the marina.
The black man drove. Washington, according to his ID. The Secret Service badge the white guy had flashed identified him as Madison. Either the names were flagrantly fake or a simple instance of truth being stranger than fiction.
As the sun fell into the woods lining the two-lane country road to the local police station, their purported destination, their SUV approached an identical black vehicle, which slowed as it drew near. Washington stopped so that he was even with the other driver. Both drivers’ windows glided down. In the burgeoning darkness, Charlie could make out only a thickset man in the other car.
“How’s it going, Wash?” the man asked.
“Can’t complain-no one would listen. You?”
“Another day, another advance team packed off to Dauphin Street. You heavy?”
Washington glanced at Charlie in the rearview. “A Class Three.”
The thickset man yawned. “You boys hitting happy hour?”
Leaning across the seat, Madison said, “We sure hope so.”
“I’ll be waiting. Wash here’s been ducking me at Miss Pac Man.”
With a round of Later’s, they were off.
Charlie was almost convinced that Washington and Madison were indeed who they said they were. The laptop computer, bracketed to the console between the front seats, had a Secret Service gold star as its screen saver. The muted chatter from the police radio continued to include “Grand Hotel” and “protectees.” And if these guys were Cavalry, he would either have been dead by now or on a waterboard.
But why would the Secret Service want him? Aside from the fact that he’d been exonerated-although it wouldn’t be the first time in government annals that paperwork was slow to be processed-how did they even know where to find him?
Bream might have told them. He could have seen Charlie through a porthole.
“So what are we supposed to talk about?” Charlie asked the agents.
Madison turned around in the passenger seat, no trace remaining of his happy-hour banter. “Mr. Clark, for a heads of state event prep, the Secret Service is required to conduct advance interviews of all Class Threes in a two-hundred-fifty-mile vicinity.”
“I’m guessing Class Three doesn’t mean VIP,” said Charlie.
“It’s an individual in our database who-”
Washington cut in. “Who, we hope, won’t give cause for concern.”
“How did you know I was here?”
“We received a tip from a civilian who has a working relationship with law enforcement.”
“Not the private eye, LeCroy?”
Madison looked to Washington.
“We don’t disclose the identities of paid informants,” Washington told Charlie.
LeCroy must have snapped a photograph of Charlie with the Webcam he had used to produce his screen saver of the naked blonde, then sent the picture to his law enforcement “colleagues” in hope of collecting a reward for a tip leading to an arrest. Irksome, but better a betrayal by a two-bit PI than a setup by Bream.
“My record was cleared though,” Charlie said. “It’s supposed to be in the same classification now as driven snow.”
Washington slowed the car, to better focus on Charlie in the rearview mirror. “Sir, then why your interest in private vessels arriving from overseas?”
“I’m glad you asked. I believe there’s, like, a Class Ten at the Mobile Bay Marina, a guy bringing in high explosives.”
The agents exchanged a glance.
“I get it, I sound like one of the people who tells you they’ve seen a flying saucer,” Charlie added. “But just call Caldwell Eskridge, the director of the Europe division at the CIA. Or let me call him myself. I met with him at CIA headquarters yesterday about this matter. I’m almost certain the bad guy is passing himself off as a yachtsman named Clem Clemmensen.”
The resort town’s police station sat adjacent to a fire station and looked to be part of the same toy set. Sitting alone at the intake desk, Charlie waited for his claims to be verified and for the return of the personal items he’d been forced to surrender upon arrival-“just a technicality,” the duty officer had said. The policeman had also promised that, afterward, either Washington and Madison or one of the four cops on duty would take Charlie back to the marina.
An hour crept past.
Finally the duty officer reappeared. “Sir, I’m afraid we’ve got some not so good news.”
Charlie braced for the latest.
“We need to charge you for possession of a forged United States government document-your New York driver’s license. It’s a Class Two misdemeanor.”
This was good news by Charlie’s standards. Teenagers were caught with fake licenses all the time. “So is there a fine?” he asked.
The duty officer, a gangly, twentysomething Southerner, had warm blue eyes and the gentle manner of a kindergarten teacher. “A conviction carries a fine of up to a thousand dollars or confinement for up to six months, or both,” he said apologetically. “We’ll need to hold you here. Bail will be set tomorrow morning.”
Charlie’s initial thought, practical joke, was too much to hope for. Best case scenario, this was indeed his sort of luck. Worst case, Bream had somehow managed to keep him on ice here. No, that wasn’t the worst. The worst was that Bream or one of his confederates would be visiting.
Charlie decided to use his allotted phone call to solicit Eskridge’s help. Although arrogant, the division chief wasn’t stupid, and Charlie had a solid lead to give him.
After wending his way through the CIA’s telephonic maze, Charlie reached an agent on duty in the Europe division who promised, “I’ll get this to the chief right away.”
Then, once again, Charlie was behind bars. In this case, wire mesh. The police station’s “holding cells” weren’t cells so much as a single small room divided in two by a wire mesh sliding gate, with windowless walls painted cherry red, so bright as to be depressing. A stainless steel panel would provide him a modicum of privacy should he need the toilet in the corner. He was the only detainee, however.
He sat on the concrete bench running the length of the back wall and stared at the lone door, a slab of metal with a glass stripe at eye level. The door would not open again until breakfast-tray time, he thought.
If he was lucky.
A few hours later the door to the next cell opened, with a hydraulic hiss.
The duty officer ushered in another detainee, a handsome man of about forty with a deep tan and the physique of a former athlete. The man’s demeanor remained pleasant in spite of his circumstance.
Closing the door, the policeman said, “Don’t worry none, we ought to get this settled right quick, Mr. Clemmensen.”
7
The new inmate plopped onto the bench on the other side of the dividing wall. With a wave and conviviality better suited to a cocktail party than a holding cell, he said, “Hey there. Name’s Clem Clemmensen.”
Charlie wondered if he was in the midst of an illogical dream. “John Parker,” he said, sticking with the name on the forged license in case Clemmensen was in league with Bream.
“They got me in for an expired fishing license, even though I wasn’t fishing,” Clemmensen said. His indignation quickly gave way to a smile.
You’d be hard-pressed to make this guy unhappy, Charlie thought.
“Were you even on a boat when they picked you up?” he asked Clemmensen.
“Yeah, I just came in from Martinique. French island, you know it?”
“I’ve heard of it.” Charlie raced to connect Clemmensen to Bream. Could Bream have tricked the flight simulator software millionaire into transporting the washing machine to the United States? Or put a gun to Clemmensen’s head and forced him to ferry the bomb here? “So what happened? One of your friends was fishing?”
“It was just me on the boat.” Cl
emmensen sighed. “The young lady I was trying to lure aboard was spending way too much time with her scuba instructor.”
Charlie grunted sympathetically. “So you just motored on home?”
“Not until she went to the disco with him.” Clemmensen sat straight up, seemingly spurred by epiphany. “Know what I think’s going on?”
“What?”
“The dang G-20. There’s all kinds of screening being done by various local law enforcement agencies. Now me, I never done much worse in my life than drive over the speed limit. But on election days, I pull the Democratic lever, which sometimes doesn’t go over well in these parts. It’s just my luck that I get hauled in by the cops while the Campodonico bastard in the next slip rolls in tonight from a tropical rum binge and heads right out on a pub crawl. Rule is, you’re supposed to stay on your boat until Customs green-lights you.”
Charlie recalled the name Campodonico. Captain Glenny had been anticipating the Campodonicos’ return from their latest adventure in the Caribbean or South America. But they were elderly. Or was that cover?
“Campodonico, the university dean?” Charlie asked.
“That’s Anthony Campodonico,” Clemmensen said. “I’m talking about Tom, the nephew-in this case, the acorn fell awful far from that family tree.”
Charlie smelled blood. “I might know Tom, come to think of it. About thirty-nine or forty?”
Clemmensen chuckled. “ ‘South of forty’ is all he ever admits to.”
Charlie recalled Bream using similar phrasing. “North of thirty,” he’d said when telling of his hoped for transition from Lockheed’s Skunk Works to corporate jets.
What were the odds?
The door hissed open.
Clemmensen leaped to his feet at the sight of the duty officer.
“Sorry, sir, not just yet, Mr. Clemmensen,” the kindly cop said. He turned to Charlie. “Your lawyer’s here to see you.”
8
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