Blood of the Albatross

by Ridley Pearson

  He guessed Marlene would just be arriving at the Greenlake Grill now. He stopped and watched a couple leave the party over on Pier M. They both walked unsteadily—a bit high.

  He went through Marlene’s clothes, feeling a bit ashamed. He toyed through them carefully, so as not to disturb anything. In the bottom drawer, he found her large leather passport billfold. He opened it up. It was her photo, all right. Her last name was Jenner.

  ***

  Kepella had asked her for the money. Holst had it at his hotel. The drive downtown took fifteen minutes longer than she expected. By the time she reached the Washington Plaza’s lobby she caught herself tapping her Italian-leather shoe impatiently on the veneered marble floor. She wore the same hat and scarf, covering her face. She had used extra eye shadow to hide her growing black eye. The added cosmetics cheapened her appearance.

  Holst finally emerged from the elevator carrying a briefcase. He looked at her and felt triumphant. He had done this to her. He had broken her. She was his. He led her around a corner and out of sight of the registration desk to two overstuffed chairs bracketing a mock fireplace.

  They hardly talked. All he said was, “When you leave, you will pick up the valise. Now say something.”

  So she told him that she wanted the television back and she wanted to know how long this would all take. She was tiring of it.

  She thought about Jay incessantly. The wonderful sexual glow she had been feeling—saving—for Jay, had been extinguished by this vile man. What chance would she ever get to be with Jay again?

  She picked up the briefcase and left.

  ***

  Freddie the Firebug had all his professional gear in his knapsack. His wiry frame danced down the street charged by the speed he had mainlined only ten minutes ago. He loved to work on speed. He worked fast, real fast; he could hear a pin drop; and he could run fast, real fast. The meth made him quick as a jackrabbit, quick as Bugs Bunny. Freddie loved Bugs Bunny.

  He checked the address twice. Freddie had only loused up the address once, had torched the wrong box, but the dude had refused to pay him, so from then on Freddie always checked the address twice. This was the place. A screwdriver got him through the basement door, nice and quiet. Whew! That had been a hummer of a hit of speed. He was cranked; cooking with gas. Yessir, he felt fine.

  Freddie preferred paint thinner or lacquer thinner for basement jobs. It made the investigator’s job real tough. Basements were favorite spots for storing paint, rags, thinner. And if you used the right fuse, the right timer, then it was damn near impossible to tell the place had been torched. Of course, in a job like this it was more tricky, because the yellow man had wanted both the basement and the second-story apartment to go. Yeah, that was more tricky, but not impossible.

  Freddie liked the organic method. None of this electronic crap for him. Electronics stuck out like a sore thumb. Sift through the rubble, you could spot a timer every time. He carried a couple of household wall-timers, but rarely used them. Otherwise, Freddie preferred to use fuses that burned up in the blaze. Burn your evidence: that’s what his pal Elmore had told him at the JD center all those years ago; burn your evidence and there’s no way to trace it to you. Freddie used punks. A punk is like an odorless incense stick—that’s how Freddie thought of them. He only used one brand: Takanini from Japan. Best punks available. For a job like this he would time four or five sticks. He would sit around home for an hour or more watching the punks burn down, measuring the length they covered in various time periods. He had it down. He loved to watch things burn. He used two makes of candles as well, and he had invented the “Freddie Chimney”: a modified coffee can that allowed a candle to burn without the flame being seen. For a job like this—a three-hour burn—he would use both candles and punks. He had the rigs with him.

  To his delight, he found what every torch loves to find: an entire corner of the basement devoted to old paint products. Christ, he thought, I lug two gallons of paint thinner all the way over here, only to find a shitload of materials available. I should have cased the place, but yellow man insisted on no casing. In and out, he had said. So, in and out is what he would get. Freddie worked fast. He filled a couple of paper paint pails with paint thinner, soaked the rags he had brought, and made a nice long fuse over to a pile of stacked furniture. On one of the chairs, he placed a paper pail full of thinner. His wet rag-fuse led to the pail. He opened all the cans of paint and placed them around three open pails of thinner, over in the corner. The paint cans looked to Freddie like a circle of covered wagons. He used another quart of thinner to make a fuse to some bedding stacked close by under some wooden floor joists. Freddie loved the sight of wood.

  He had cut one of his candles to a two-hour-and-forty-five minute-burn length, leaving enough wick to light the punk. He had marked circles on the punk to indicate five-minute burn periods. He set up the Freddie Chimney and laid the fourth ring over the edge of the first pail of thinner. Then he left the basement and headed for the second-story apartment.

  Freddie was all set to use the screwdriver on the door when he turned the handle and it opened. He grinned. He liked easy jobs. No fuss, no muss. Mr. Clean will burn your whole house and everyone that’s in it…

  This wasn’t as easy to fudge as the basement. The apartment had been stripped clean. Bare as a baby’s bottom. He set down his knapsack and was about to unload all his gear when he had a thought. He walked over and opened the gas valve to the room heater. The utilities were on the landlord—the gas worked. He grinned. Freddie rarely used flashlights of any kind—too risky; he preferred to let his eyes adjust to the dark. He patrolled the room, checking the windows for leaks. One was stuck open a crack, so he used his screwdriver to jam it with a rag. Freddie was something of an expert with gas. He knew exactly how long a line would have to leak to fill a given size of space with enough gas to blow the box. It was just something he knew. He didn’t use a calculator; he simply looked around and started poking pinholes in the gray-plastic tube that ran from the regulator to whatever unit it happened to be—in this case the kitchen range. He poked about fifteen pinholes. The thin plastic skin on the connectors not only saved money for the gas company, they also made Freddie’s job a hell of a lot easier. Yeah, fifteen holes. In a couple of hours the place would be full of gas, and ready to blow. All it needed was a little flame.

  Freddie left the apartment, shut the door, and took two minutes to stuff the bottom crack with one of his rags. It looked fine. Just right. He calmly returned to the basement, checked his Casio watch—it had a light built into it when you pushed the upper right-hand button—and moved the punk one more ring up the edge of the pail full of paint thinner. Then he lit the candle. If he figured right, the second-floor apartment would blow quite a while after the basement lit, which to any bystander (how many bystanders would there be at three in the morning? he wondered) would fit with the way a fire might run. Yup. It was a real clean job. Just right. Freddie put the Freddie Chimney over the candle, sat down, and rolled up his sleeve. He always liked to keep an eye on things for the first few minutes, but he was dying for a nice hot vein full of speed…

  ***

  Kepella wrote down all the vital information: passport number, date and place of birth, full name, countries traveled to and dates. He returned the pen to his pocket, took the penlight out of his mouth, and climbed back off the boat carefully.

  He was so damned pleased with himself he decided to stop for a drink before trying to catch up with Marlene. One drink. He stopped at the first nice-looking place he saw. Oscar’s Corner Pub. The place was dark and quiet—just the way Roy Kepella liked it. It was a men’s bar. The tube was on in the corner, exhibition game between the Seahawks and Houston Oilers. Seahawks were all over them.

  The bartender, a happy sort of fellow, asked Kepella if he wanted another. Kepella was absorbed in the game. “Sure, why not?” he replied. It was late in the fourth quarter before he looked at his watch.

  ***

>   The band sounded great; the crowd moved to the beat. Jay leaned back and watched a delicate blonde bounce to the pounding of Jocko’s bass drum as Jimmy cut loose on a dazzling solo, full of bends and screaming high Bs. Jay let out a hoot and walked across the stage, egging on Jimmy, the lead guitarist, as a coach might cheer from the sidelines.

  The power failed. The room went dark.

  It was the third power failure in a week. Several high voices moaned their complaints. The band’s gear went dead in the middle of a chorus: only the drums and horns dribbled on for a measure before realizing what had happened. The emergency lights came on. Jay ad-libbed, hollering, “Looks like we melted the circuits. We’ll be with you in a minute.” A good part of the crowd laughed, mostly out of nervousness, Jay thought. People don’t like the dark unless they’re paired off. Someone came in from outside and yelled to the crowd, “The whole area’s out. Looks like most of the city.” Applause and laughs.

  The manager, who had been standing by the back room, saw a number of people head to the door and, knowing this could trigger a mass exodus, called out, “One round of drinks on the house! For everybody!” The bartender flashed the manager a confused look—the boss was not the generous type. The crowd heaved toward the two bars. Waitresses, on orders from the manager, delivered additional candles to each table, and the crowd settled into one of those “we’re-all-in-this-together” moods. Jay, never one to be outdone, told Jocko to get out the brushes and had Books get out the accordion they used on the Cajun songs. He went backstage and uncased his acoustic guitar, and when he came back to front and center, Jimmy was already waiting with a chair. He handed Jimmy the guitar, turned to the horns, Books and Jocko, and said, “‘Further on Down the Road.’” Rob, the bass player, set down his bass and stood alongside Jay, knowing that without the P.A. they would both have to sing the melody. Jocko counted off the song and the band started playing.

  Now they owned the place. The crowd exploded into applause, impressed by a band willing to keep playing, and within seconds the dance floor was packed with couples slow-dancing. Jay looked back at Jocko, who nodded, a cigarette dangling from his lips. The nod said, Jay, you’re something else. Jimmy looked over, smiled, and started singing along. “Further on down the road, you will accompany me,” went the song. Jimmy had arranged it, and it was one of those tunes that gave you goose bumps, because the message was right.

  These were the moments Jay lived for, he realized. It had nothing to do with dreams of money or the big time. If the truth be known, he was afraid of the big time. What he liked was feeling an entire crowd come together, making people forget their day-to-day problems, and watching them be carried away by the music. Jay liked to transport people into a four-hour fantasy, where there was little sense of time, little sense of the outside world, just a room full of music, a pretty girl, and time to kill. He leaned back and laughed in the middle of the song. This was what he lived for. This moment. This was it.

  30

  By the time Kepella phoned her, the blackout had ended. Marlene, having given up waiting, returned to the boat. The briefcase phone rang. “Hello?”

  “I thought I was being followed. I didn’t want to take a chance. Can we try again?” Kepella said.

  “Where?”

  “You pick. Where are you located?”

  She thought, You followed me here the other night. You know exactly where I am. But she played along. “I will meet you at the Jazz Alley, over in the University section.”

  “Fifteen minutes?”

  “It is open only another forty minutes.”

  “I’ll hurry,” he told her.

  “I will meet you there. Oh yes… I have what you requested.”

  Kepella had not trusted his own memory to keep track of the various files he had lifted and where each had been stored, so he had made an inventory of them and had stashed it in an envelope, in a briefcase, in a coat room, at the Pacific Regency Hotel. He had three keys on his keychain: one to his car, one to his apartment, and one to a rented storage area. In the rented storage area he had hidden a small bag containing an assortment of keys, each of which opened a different hiding place. He had been careful to make this as difficult a procedure as possible, so he could not be followed to one particular place. Any plan could be compromised, of course, but he and Brandenburg had agreed on a system that was complex but not ridiculously complicated. The most sensitive information had been placed in safe deposit boxes around town. The less sensitive material, some on cassette, some on paper, was stored in rental storage bins or checked at the bus depot.

  Kepella stopped at the Regency and studied his list to locate where he had put the printed information on spare computer parts. He had left it in another briefcase in a coat room only a few doors away. Brandenburg had emphasized that this was something they would come after, so Kepella had an envelope all prepared. The odd thing was, this was public information anyway. A few hours in a library, cross-referencing a variety of technical magazines, a run downtown and a look at the various properties owned by the various companies, and one could put it all together. Therefore, Kepella reasoned that this was a test. They—Wilhelm, via Holst, via Marlene Jenner—wanted to see what Kepella could bring them. He suspected they already had much of this information. They were baiting him, and eventually would seek bigger fish.

  Jazz Alley had a high ceiling, painted black to hide the water pipes and emphasize the stage lighting. Small tables were covered with blue-checked tablecloths and had wooden chairs pulled up to them. A platform stage was built against the far wall. A bar ran straight down one side of the club. Kepella paid his two bucks, cued the bartender, and up-ended a shot of Popov. He gestured for a refill. He finished the second shot of booze and, feeling warm, leaned back against the bar, looking for Marlene. She wasn’t at any of the tables, but he noted a deep alcove to the left of the stage. He threaded his way through the listeners—serious, attentive types—during the middle of a bass solo. The musician was pretty good. He received a warm round of applause before the drummer took over. Kepella had never liked drum solos.

  He spotted her sitting all the way in the back of the alcove, empty tables between herself and the closest couple. He edged his way toward her, thinking how lovely she looked in the dim light of the room. She noticed him approaching and offered the flick of a smile. Tolerant. He knew she probably loathed him after he had forced her to strip; but Roy Kepella had to play this as Roy Kepella would. He sat down, placing his briefcase next to hers. A waitress approached and Kepella ordered a vodka gimlet, up. Marlene ordered a white wine.

  When the waitress had left, Marlene asked, “You were followed earlier?”

  “It’s possible. I must be careful. One can’t be too careful.”

  She looked down at her briefcase. “Half now. Half on confirmation. How do I reach you?”

  “I’ll reach you. Tomorrow?”

  “Yes. Tomorrow is fine. I am interested in some other merchandise.”

  He raised a hand to stop her, turned a napkin to face her, and handed her a pen. “Please,” he said.

  She wrote it out slowly, in a precise, European hand. When she spun the napkin around it read: Deployment of green laser communication.

  He knew that so-called green lasers, the latest laser technology, would soon enable the Pentagon to communicate with the United States nuclear sub fleet at any ocean depth. The research had been underway a long time. If the U.S. nuclear deterrent was to be completely effective, the green laser system had to be deployed. The Navy had feared they had lost the technology to the Soviets in the Walker spy case, but were later relieved to find out the Walkers had not gained access to it. The most available public information put deployment in the late 1980s. Those in the know, like Roy Kepella, knew better. The question that had been raised in technical journals—and no doubt in the minds of foreign powers as well—was whether the Navy would go with land-based or satellite deployment. Kepella knew the answer as he sat staring at her. How far
should he go? Dared he risk giving away this kind of information?

  “Who are you working for?” he asked.

  “What?” she stammered.

  “Who are you acting for?”

  “You must be joking.”

  “Listen, Marlene. This is how I’m going to play this. For everything I turn over from now on, I not only want payment, I want information. The wrong information and I dry up.” This had nothing to do with his Brandenburg deal. This was strictly Roy Kepella. A drunk or not, Roy Kepella was patriotic. He had served his country twenty-one years plus—and if he was going to turn over this kind of information to Wilhelm, orders or not, he wanted to make damn certain he knew who was ultimately receiving it. In the event Brandenburg’s people failed to bring in Wilhelm, as the FBI had failed in Montreal, Kepella would have some hard information and quite possibly a trail worth following.

  The drinks arrived. Kepella and Marlene stared at each other, and the waitress, had she been attentive, would have realized this wasn’t love.

  “This is not possible.”

  “Marlene, listen to me.” He drank half the gimlet in one gulp. “I worked for the Bureau for many years. I have what we call a sixth sense. No matter what you say, I know you are being forced into this.” Brandenburg had suggested that most of the runners were outsiders, experts in a given field but having nothing to do with Wilhelm’s network. More often than not, these runners simply disappeared. “Don’t shake your head. I know, Marlene.”

  “I don’t know enough to help you.”

  “Let me be the judge of that.” He sensed it: she was on the verge of telling him something. His palms sweated. Damn, he thought, I’m an operative… this is amazing. Her eyes were glassy and she had put both hands into her lap because she couldn’t hold them still. “What do they have on you?”