Fatal Harbor

by Brendan DuBois

  A few moments passed as he curled up on the ground, rocking back and forth, looking about the same shape and intelligence as a jumbo shrimp.

  I got off the steps and walked over to him. “Sorry I was so direct there, professor . . . or do your students call you instructor? Or Mister Marvel?”

  Through gritted teeth, he said, “They call me Ken.”

  “Wow, that’s very forward-thinking of you. Getting down with the students, sharing and discussing issues of the day.”

  “You bastard. . . .”

  “Nope, my birth certificate says otherwise. But I will admit I’m in a foul, foul mood.” I squatted down on the ground, carefully keeping a good distance away from him. “You see, I’m trying to locate a single bit of information, and after lots of travel, bad food, and so-so sleeping accommodations, I’ve come to you. My mistake was thinking that you and I could have a civilized discussion, perhaps come to a mutual understanding and respect of each other’s positions, and then go on from there. But when you came at me full of attitude, well, the part of me that’s not the better angel of my nature emerged. My apologies.”

  His hands fell away from his private parts. His breathing eased. He got up and into a sitting position. “You sure move fast for an old guy.”

  “A compliment and insult in one sentence. I’m sure you fit right in at the Philosophy department.”

  He ran a hand across the bald part of his head. “Yeah, but there’s no future there. No future in anything in higher education that doesn’t produce good little worker bees and consumer bees. Plus I’m an instructor, which means no tenure, lots of hours, and minimal pay. And the tenured ones, no matter which department they belong to, they live in that special ivory tower where they’ve managed to quickly pull the ladder up after them.”

  “We’ve all got problems, don’t we. Look, I’m looking for some information about the anti-nuclear demonstrations. I get that and I leave.”

  “Maybe I’ll call the Lee cops, have you arrested for assault.”

  “Maybe you will, and I’ll say it’s all a misunderstanding, with no witnesses. To be terribly self-promoting, I’ll drop a name or two in law enforcement that will cast suspicions on you and make me look like the citizen of the year.”

  He rubbed at his head again, moved his legs around. “So what are you looking for, what information about the demonstrations?”

  “I take it you were involved with them?”

  “Damn right I was. We’ve got to stop the madness of—”

  I held up my hand. “Please. I was there for a number of days. I know all the talking points. You were with the Nuclear Freedom Front, right?”

  “Sort of. Knew some people there, worked with them.”

  “Good. Because I’m looking for Curt Chesak.”

  “Why do you want to know where he is?”

  “Let’s just say I’m from the Publishers Clearing House prize patrol and leave it at that.”

  “No,” Ken quickly said.

  “No, what? No, I don’t know where Curt Chesak is living, or no, I’m not going to tell you?”

  His expression hardened. “Just no. Take it any way you like.”

  I made a point of sighing. “Fair enough. No hard feelings, eh?”

  I stood up and extended my hand, and he took my hand and I helped him up, and then I kept on helping him up as I pulled him, tripped him, and then pushed him to the ground. I got on his back and deftly undid my leather belt, and in a few seconds I had him secured by the wrists. A lot more cursing ensued—again, nothing particularly original; I guess a mind is a terrible thing to waste—and near the doghouses, I found some lengths of rope. In a few minutes, I had my belt back, and I had a very unhappy college instructor under my control.

  “Wasn’t it Plato who said philosophy is the highest form of music?” I asked. “Not sure if I have the ear for music or philosophy, but let’s see what I can do.”

  CHAPTER NINE

  I moved around his cluttered yard, discovered a lawn chair, which I brought back. Late-fall insects were battering themselves around the spotlight, and the dogs, having eaten their fill, were lying down, watching me and their supposed master.

  Lawn chair before him, I sat down and said, “What’s with the dogs?”

  “What about them?”

  “Why do you keep them outdoors like this, all chained up? Very medieval, don’t you think?”

  “I hate the damn things. Why should I have them in my house?”

  “Then why do you have them?”

  He spat at me, missed. “I don’t have them. They belong to my damn ex-wife Melissa, and every week she promises me she’ll come here and pick them up. Damn bitch is in California now . . . how in hell is that supposed to take place?”

  “You’re a college instructor, Ken, I’m sure you’ll figure it out.” I crossed my hands in my lap. “Here’s the situation. I want to know where Curt Chesak is. From your replies, I have a pretty good idea you know where he is.”

  He said I should perform an impossible sexual act upon myself. I said, “I’ve heard worse. So here we go. I want that information, and I’m prepared to wait a very long time for you to give it to me.”

  Ken said something rude again about my parentage. I said, “Words, professor. Just words. Haven’t you taught your students about the origin of the phrase ‘sticks and stones’?”

  His breathing quickened. “What are you going to do, torture me?”

  “Nope. Learned a long, long time ago that torture results in poor intelligence results. People will say or do anything to escape torture. I’m not going to touch you at all, Ken. Not one bit.”

  I crossed my legs and looked at him. He looked at his house, his ex-wife’s dogs, and then to me. “So what the hell is going on here?”

  I held my hands out. “So we wait. I’ll wait here, and you’ll wait there on the ground. It’s going to get colder. Your circulation will start to fail. You’ll get thirsty, hungry, and any bathroom needs you have will need to be taken care of where you lie. I might get up, stretch my legs, wander into your open home to see what I might scrounge for food and drink, and maybe come back out here and keep on sitting with some blankets to keep me warm. I might turn off the floodlight so I can get some star-gazing in. So that’s what’s going on, Ken.”

  Another explosion of words sent my way, involving my parentage, my sexual habits, and certain barnyard animals.

  I said, “Again, I’ve heard worse.”

  He gave up about three hours later. “Please,” he whispered. “Please.”

  “You know the deal.”

  “Curt . . . a real fucking mystery man . . . came in and, depending on who you talked to, either was from Boston or L.A. or New York . . . smart, wicked smart . . . but after he joined the NFF, went from being a grunt to the guy running the joint. . . .”

  “Why is that?”

  “Who the fuck knows . . . he just had this . . . knack . . . of running things . . . and money, he had lots of money . . . always in cash . . . we need camping gear, no prob . . . cell phones . . . no prob. . . .”

  “Where did the money come from?”

  “Nobody knew that either.”

  “What about Professor Heywood Knowlton? From BU?”

  “Gave him chops . . . introduced him around . . . vouched for him . . . I got the feeling he brought Curt to other professors in other colleges. . . .”

  One of the dogs got up, walked in a circle, urinated, and sat back down. “You said he was a mystery man. What sort of clues did you figure out?”

  “I’m so damn cold. . . .”

  “I need to know more.”

  He coughed. “Don’t know if this means anything . . . couple of my girl students . . . they were in love with him . . . him being a bad boy and all . . . they cooked for him, cleaned, probably boffed him. . . .”

  “Very sweet. Go on.”

  “. . . one night, one of the girls came to me . . . she was doing his washing . . . found some papers stuck i
n his pocket. . . .”

  “What were they?”

  “Didn’t make sense. . . .”

  “Doesn’t have to make sense. What were they?”

  “One was a boarding pass . . . from Boston to Dulles . . . the other was a scrap of paper, a phone number or something . . . written on hotel stationery, located in Crystal something or another.”

  “Crystal City? In Virginia?”

  “Yeah. . . .”

  “So what was the phone number for?”

  “Huh?”

  “Come on, Ken, you’re a smart fellow. You tell me you weren’t curious, you didn’t give that number a quick dial?”

  He coughed again, kept quiet. By then I was sitting with two wool blankets over my legs and torso. I held up one of the blankets. “So close, Ken, so very close.”

  “. . . a bunch of lawyers. A law firm. On K Street in D.C. . . . you know who lives there. . . .”

  “I do,” I said. “Lobbyists. The name of the firm?”

  “I don’t remember . . . the receptionist spoke so fast . . . but O’Toole was one of the names . . . I know that . . . O’Toole . . . God, please, please. . . .”

  I got off the chair, gently rolled him around, tried to undo the knots. I couldn’t do it. His struggles and the cold had tightened the knots, so I went into his house and his dirty kitchen, came out with a serrated steak knife, and cut away the ropes. He yelped and I spent quite a few minutes, rubbing his wrists and ankles, helping him get the circulation going again. When I thought I had made progress, I wrapped him in the two wool blankets and sat him up. I also tossed the steak knife into the woods.

  “So long, Ken,” I said. “Sorry this all took place.”

  “What,” he spat out, “you’re apologizing now? You expecting me to accept that?”

  “Not for a moment,” I said. “What happened to you was my responsibility, my fault, start to finish. I regret every second of it.”

  I started walking up the driveway. He yelled after me. “But why? Why do you want Curt so bad?”

  Over my shoulder, I said, “He hurt a friend of mine, put her in a coma, practically killed her.”

  His voice raised in a screech. “This? You did this to me over a friend?”

  “I did,” I said. “And if you had any friends, you just might understand that.”

  He yelled some more and I kept walking, exhausted. When I was out of eyesight and earshot of the not-so-good professor, the enormity of what I had just done to him over the past few hours struck me. I slowed my walking, stopped, and, with a massive cramp and heave, bent over and vomited into Ken’s driveway. Not much came up, not much at all. It’s been said that more often than not, people feel better after throwing up, after expelling whatever was bothering them.

  Not tonight. I felt empty and my mouth tasted foul, and what was bothering me refused to leave.

  Back to the service station I walked, and in a dim light from the closed building I saw the bus schedule and saw that it had ceased service for the evening. I looked up and down the road and saw no headlights. Lee is a lovely small town, but I doubted there was a motel room within walking distance. I took out my cell phone, made a call, and then put the phone away. I waited. I put my hands in my coat, walked around the small parking lot of the service station. A half moon was shining. A wind came up and leaves skittered across the road. Some distance away, an owl hooted.

  I seemed far away in time and place from the crowded demonstrations near the ocean some days back, with the scent of pepper gas and tear gas in the air, the crowds of people chanting, trying to break into the power plant perimeter, and that dark, cloudy, rainy day when a dedicated group did get in, burned a few buildings, and where two of the demonstrators ended up shot dead.

  Adding to the murder that had taken place a couple of days earlier.

  I paused in my walking. A car roared by, didn’t stop. I thought of other things, of police being pushed back at that last demonstration, of seeing Diane Woods being pushed up a slight incline, all alone, trying to defend herself, falling back, Curt Chesak upon her, wielding a lead pipe which he brought down again and again, eventually holding up her police helmet in triumph.

  Remembered a lot of things. Started getting cold. Kept on walking around.

  Headlights. The car slowed down and it was a rattling blue Ford sedan with EXONIA CAB on the side. Window rolled down, and the older woman inside said, “You again?”

  “We’ve got to stop meeting like this.”

  “Only if you stop paying. Hop in.”

  I got in the rear, and she turned around in the lot and headed back out. “Exonia?”

  “Yes.”

  “Tyler Inn and Suites?”

  “Yes again.”

  We drove on for a few minutes. “You know my name is Maggie. What’s yours?”

  “I’m Lewis.”

  “Lewis, may not be any of my business, but what the hell’s going on with you? You seem to be a guy without a car, but you dress and speak all right, have all your teeth, smell good. So you’re not a loser.”

  “Maybe I just don’t like to drive.”

  “Hah,” she said, turning well through a sharp curve. “This ain’t Boston or Cambridge. Public transport sucks. Way I see things, only losers don’t have cars. Guys like you, if your car is in the shop, maybe you get a rental, maybe borrow a car from a friend.”

  “Good observation. You always been a cab driver?”

  Maggie laughed at that. “Used to work as a secretary in the Manchester police department. Retired and decided not to sit on my ass all day and get my brains sucked out by the TV, and take care of my alleged better half. This gig gets me out and about, meeting people, stuff like that. Besides, I love to drive.”

  I folded my arms, looked out the side window. Should be getting back to Exonia in about ten, fifteen minutes.

  Maggie said, “Sorry. Asking too many damn questions. All you’re paying for tonight is a ride, that’s it.”

  I said, “You see a lot of justice there on the Manchester streets, working for the police?”

  “Sometimes. Not all the time. But at least they were trying. What, you trying to get justice done?”

  “I am.”

  “You a cop, or a P.I.?”

  “You know any cops or P.I.’s who get shuttled around in a cab?”

  “Can’t say I do. So you’re keeping a low profile.”

  “That I am.”

  “Anonymous cab, staying at a hotel, paying in cash . . . must be some serious justice you’re looking for.”

  “It is.”

  “Family or friend?”

  “Friend.”

  “Who is he?”

  “She,” I said. “She. And she’s the finest woman I know.”

  “Wife? Girlfriend?”

  A sharp tang of . . . guilt? Anger? For I realized what I had just said, and knew I was so glad Annie Wynn wasn’t there to hear it.

  “Just a friend.”

  She glanced back at me. “That’s one hell of a friend you got there, Lewis. And you need any more transport, I’m your gal. And despite my loud mouth, I know how to keep secrets.”

  “Thanks, Maggie.”

  CHAPTER TEN

  In the morning, after a restless night at the Tyler Inn and Suites, I had a cup of coffee for breakfast and walked up to the Exonia Hospital. Back to the ICU, and another cop was sitting guard outside Diane’s room, and Kara Miles was standing next to him, talking. The cop was yet another bulky guy with short hair, and Kara patted his shoulder as I approached, and he visibly relaxed.

  Kara looked tired. No surprise there. She had on sneakers, gray sweats, green T-shirt, and a gray hoodie sweatshirt. I gave her a quick hug and smelled stale coffee and grease.

  “Lewis, so good to see you.”

  “Same here. How is she?”

  Slight shrug. “Bit of excitement last night . . . it looked like she was responding to some outside stimuli, or whatever they call it. I was talking to her and her ey
es opened. Just for a moment or two. God, I was so excited. But the doctors said it might have just been an unconscious reaction.”

  She quickly grabbed my hand, squeezed it. “But she’s in there. I know she is. She’s hearing everything . . . I just know it. And later today, they’re going to take her off the ventilator, see if she can breathe on her own.”

  “Can I see her?”

  Kara released my hand. “Go ahead. I’m sure she’d be glad to hear your voice.”

  I slid open the door to her room and stepped in. Nothing much had changed; there were still plenty of get-well cards, balloons, and floral bouquets crowding a shelf near the window. I went over to Diane, sat down, held her left hand. The usual gear and equipment was over her, bleeping and blooping. She was still breathing via a ventilator, white tape across her mouth holding everything in. Her face was still bruised and bandaged, and I reached up and gently traced an old scar on her chin, where a long-ago fight with a drunken male in the booking room had scarred her when she was just a patrolwoman.

  “When you finally get your lazy carcass out of here, think of all the stories you can spin about your new scars,” I said. “Impress the town manager and the selectmen. Maybe get you a raise one of these days.”

  Thump-thump, and the hiss of the respirator.

  “I got Kara’s back, no worries there. Even if you’re in rehab for a couple of years, or longer, I’ll watch over her.”

  Thump-thump, hiss.

  “Remember when we first met, about six months after I moved in? My place was a dump, belonged to the Department of the Interior. Given to me as a bribe to keep my mouth shut for my service at the Department of Defense. I hired a local woman to clean the joint for a few months, especially while I had to wait to get the windows replaced. All that beach sand blowing in, getting into the clothes and bedding. Mrs. Martin. Nice woman, but her nephew had scammed her and had taken all her savings.”