Corkscrew

by Ted Wood

  I heard the crackle of my car radio and went back to get the message. I connected, and a girl's voice said, "Are you in private, or am I coming over the airwaves?" The voice made me grin. It was Fred, an actress I got involved with after a hassle the previous winter. Fred, for Freda, thirty-two with Rita Hayworth hair, the color of a pint of English beer. I hadn't seen her for six months, but she phoned me often. I liked her a lot, but she had her life, and it didn't center on a place as small as this.

  "You're on the air, kid. You want to try one of your radio parts for me."

  She laughed, brightly enough that a visitor to the liquor store heard and whirled to see where the pretty girl must be. I turned the volume down on the radio, and she went on. "Then I'll keep it wholesome. Remember that key you gave me? I just used it. I'm here for the weekend, looking for some sun and games."

  "There's some stuff in the fridge. Pretend you're doing that Mexican-food commercial and put some tortillas together. I'll be there in five minutes."

  "Chauvinist," she said, and hung up.

  I put Sam in the car and got in, grinning. She was too good an actress to be happy for long playing house in Murphy's Harbour, but we had made a real twosome for the month she'd been with me. And now she was back. Good news.

  I checked my watch. It was four-thirty, eight hours since I'd last eaten. I'd take a half-hour lunch break before getting back to work, although I didn't know what I was going to do about tracing the boy. Perhaps I should go back to the house and see if his stepfather had sobered up enough to remember anything else. Otherwise, there wasn't a lot more I could do besides walking around looking for him, like any other citizen.

  The radio called again as I was putting the car in gear. I picked up the receiver. "Police chief."

  "Chief, can you come up here right away?" There was panic in the voice, but I recognized it. Joe Davies, who ran the township's only campground and trailer park, up north of the far lock. I wondered what was making him tense.

  "Can do, Joe. What's the problem?"

  He spluttered a little, nervous and half-embarrassed. "I've, er, got a couple of gennlemen here who wanna stay an' I've told 'em no but they won't leave."

  My bikers had landed, by the sound of it. "Be there in five," I said.

  Davies was waiting for me at the gate, a big archway built of cedar logs that he'd cut when he cleared the site. Beyond him I could see the neat rows of trailers on their hard standings, plus some tents. A bunch of little kids were playing with a Frisbee, and there in the daisy chain were the two bikers, like a couple of ugly bears at a picnic. Except for the anxious faces on the parents in the background, nothing could have been cooler.

  "It's them bikers," Davies told me. He was sunburned and lean from all the outdoor work but nervous as a bank teller during a holdup.

  "What do they want? Just to stay?"

  He nodded. "Yeah, they say there's fourteen o' them. But shit, they'll scare off all my regulars. This is a family place."

  "They look harmless enough right now."

  "Now's now," Davies said quickly. "But three o'clock in the morning, when they're all drunk an' tearin' the place up, they won't be harmless."

  "Do you have any rules for this place, something we can hold them up by?" Civil liberties are a pain sometimes; laws are made for oddballs like these. Their freedoms are worth more to the lawmakers than the peace of mind of a hundred ordinary people.

  "No booze," he said. "No booze at all."

  "Then why's that citizen holding a beer?" I pointed to one of the dads in the background who was sucking on a Labatt Blue, getting his guts together for a fight if the bikers turned nasty.

  "Oh, shit. I'll throw him out if I hafta. He shouldn't be drinkin'." Davies was trembling with anxiety.

  "Won't stand up. But I'll have a word with them." Again I left Sam in the car, his head sticking out of the open window so he could be with me in a second if I whistled. I walked into the ring, caught the Frisbee, and tossed it to the nearest biker, the guy I'd flattened. "Hi. Got your tire fixed okay?" I asked.

  "Yeah," he said, and whipped the Frisbee on, then stepped out of the circle to come over to me. On his feet he was less of a menace, about five six and dirty, but I could always get a tetanus shot if I had to bust my hand on him. "Yeah," he said again, growling at me in that same cultivated tone his boss had used. "We're lookin' to make a reservation, but the little guy says no." He paused and grinned, showing a complete set of brown teeth. "I guess he ain't heard of our civil rights."

  Out of the corner of my eye I saw Davies talking to the beer drinker, who immediately hid the bottle and turned away. "Yeah, well, he's got this rule here, no drinking. And you guys aren't exactly charter members of the Temperance Union."

  He accommodated me with a laugh, from the mouth only, his eyes drilling into me like the knife he would have preferred to use. "Seems like there's a lot of it goin' around," he said. He hooked his thumb back over his shoulder. "That fellah in the blue T-shirt is boozing right out here in front of these poor little suggestible kiddiewinkies."

  I nodded. "Agreed, and the same camper is right now being kicked out. But that's not the problem. The thing is, where are you guys going to camp?"

  The other one had joined him, not threatening me, standing alongside him, almost shoulder to shoulder, friends with a common problem. This one's eyes were calmer. It wasn't his tire I had shot away. "Yeah," he said easily. "Now you got it."

  "Well, that's not hard to solve. There's a patch of township land, close to the water, flat, no trees, just what you want. Hell, we had a bunch of Boy Scouts there in June."

  They looked at me in surprise. They hadn't expected civility. They were looking for a confrontation.

  "Where?" the one in the German helmet wanted to know.

  "Well, it's not a glamorous place, but it's quiet, and if you wanted to party, you wouldn't have the neighbors complaining."

  The other one said, "Sounds good to me, Jas."

  "Get on your bikes. I'll take you up there," I said. German helmet stood his ground. "Al said the campground," he growled. I could see he didn't want a campsite; he wanted my head on a charger.

  "Naah, get a campsite was all he said." The other one wasn't as uptight as German helmet. He would have kicked me, happily, but it wasn't high on his agenda at that moment. "Let's go see," he said amiably. He tugged at Jas's arm, and after a second he broke off eye contact, and they walked away to their bikes, starting them up with a roar that sent the mothers scuttering like hens to round up their children.

  I got back in the car and waited for them, then drove the half-mile farther to the town dump site. It's not fancy—there are car bodies sticking out of the ground and piles of earth placed over each day's collection of garbage to discourage the bears that used to scavenge the place in the evenings—but next to it is a flat, gravelly meadow that runs down to the road that divides the place from the water's edge.

  I saw the bikers exchange looks as I drove in through the gates and on to the meadow, where I cut the car motor and got out. They had stopped behind me, and Jas was looking at me through eyes as tight and angry as arrow slits in a castle wall.

  "This is the goddamn dump."

  "It's also the overflow campground. Like I said, we had three hundred Boy Scouts here last June. They didn't object."

  "Yeah." The other one laughed. "Us an' Boy Scouts on the same field—ain' that a howl."

  I waited, trying to look calm. I didn't want them near my turf at all, but this was a compromise that would offend the fewest people. It might even make them calm enough that they wouldn't bother hoorahing the town.

  Jas cleared his throat and spat. Then he said, "Let's go see Al," and turned to rocket away, standing up on the back wheel with the torque of his acceleration. Impressive. The other one grinned at me and did the same, roaring down the road at speeds I should have summonsed them for if I hadn't been hoarding my tiny victory.

  I didn't see them anymore on my ride back.
My place is on the north end of town; they would have passed it before I got there. Freda's Honda was parked under the silver maple in the yard, so I honked and got out of the car. She came running out of the house, red hair flying. She was wearing a pale green shirt and stylish baggy white pants. Her smile was a yard wide.

  "Hi, Reid." She threw her arms around me, and I swung her off her feet and kissed her. Then she wrestled free. "Come on in, let me feed you." She stooped and patted Sam and whisked ahead of me, up the steps to the front door.

  I followed her in, liking the way she walked. She's on the tall side, around five eight, and she moves nicely. It was going to be good having her along, even just for the weekend.

  I still hadn't spoken, but she didn't give me a chance. She took my cap off and sent it wheeling onto the couch. "Now, let's have the other half of that kiss," she said brightly, and that took us the rest of a minute.

  "Welcome back," I said. "What's the occasion?"

  "You can thank my rat-fink agent," she said. "I was accepted for Prisoner of Second Avenue in Calgary. I was going to be Edna. But he told me he'd got a TV part, bigger money, better exposure, so I let it go. Then I found he's screwing Aggie Cassidy. He sent her for the TV role, and I was out in the cold."

  "Can you sue, change agents, what?"

  "Monday," she said. "But in the meantime I wanted to get out of the city, out of context, and work out what comes next."

  "This," I said, and kissed her again. Not everybody's kisses match, but ours do, and we lingered over it until I found myself needing her, immediately. She pulled away from me and laughed.

  "You don't change," she said. "Before or after the tortillas?"

  "I don't think it's romantic to make love on a full stomach," I told her, and she took my hand and led me upstairs.

  We kissed again beside my sunken-centered double bed; then she stood back and shucked her shirt. She was wearing a creamy brassiere, almost transparent, and I could see her nipples engorged under the fabric. She unzipped the slacks and let them fall, then kicked them away like a lazy child. Her panties were the same fine fabric, and I stood looking at her like a farm boy at his first vaudeville show.

  She flopped down on the bed, on one elbow. "You can look or you can play. It's up to you," she said, and I reached down to unbuckle my gun belt, holding my holster with one hand as I slipped the belt out through all the loops in my pants, then put belt and gun on the floor. She looked at me, her face tightening with need. "The rest has got to go," she said thickly. I unlaced my boots, then slipped quickly out of the shirt and pants. She lay back. "You big bastard," she said softly. "I've missed you in the damn city."

  I finished undressing her, very slowly, and we made love, gently at first, building the anticipation almost to the point of pain. Then I rolled her flat and pulled her toward me. She groaned as we came together, and we were the happiest people in Murphy's Harbour.

  Afterward we showered together, contented and slow, then I got dressed again and left her sketching in the little makeup she uses by day. Down in the kitchen Sam was lying on the cool old tile floor, and he looked up at me and wagged his tail. I patted him and turned the heat on under the mixture Fred had stuck in the frying pan.

  Being a policeman is a condition, like having blue eyes or being afraid of heights. Where a civilian would have accepted Fred's return as plain good fortune, I couldn't help wondering what had happened to bring her back to me. The last time I had seen her, after she went back to Toronto in the late winter, she had been with a guy about my age, a creep, I thought, with a California tan that he wore like a suit of golden armor among all the pallid Toronto faces. She had called him "darling," but then, she was an actress. Everybody is darling to an actress. My guess was that he must have been her agent and wasn't darling anymore. Part of me wondered how much of a darling he had been.

  She came downstairs a minute later, and I opened a bottle of Iniskillin rosé she had brought from Toronto and put in the freezer compartment of my rattly old refrigerator. I had just poured the wine when the phone rang. It was Murphy. "Bad news, Reid. They just found the kid."

  Freda was holding up her glass in a toast, but she must have read my face, because she sat down, slowly lowering the glass as I looked at her, through her, and asked, "Where?"

  "Just north of your place. Some pickerel fisherman snagged the poor little bastard in that weed bed south of Indian Island."

  "Keep him there," I said. "I'll be right over."

  Chapter Four

  By the time I got to the lock there were about a hundred people there. Everybody within running distance of the scene plus the occupants of all the cars that had crossed the bridge since the body was brought in. Most of them seemed to have cameras, and they were jostling one another for the chance to take long shots of the area above the lock. It's a one-lane bridge, and it was jammed with cars with their doors hanging open, but when I switched on the siren for a few seconds, the drivers ran back to move on and let me through.

  I drove over and out onto the grass beside the lockhouse. The siren hadn't affected the people here. They were clustering as close as they could to the edge, talking and pointing, one kid even laughing, proving to himself how cool he was.

  I let Sam out of the car and told him, "Speak." He bounded forward on stiff legs, snarling and barking, and the crowd peeled open like an onion, layer on layer, until I could walk through and join Murphy and the two young men standing with him. I paused to tell the crowd, "You're not helping. Stand back, please." The people closest to me did back off a foot or two, but the pressure from the back of the crowd was building again, so I patted Sam and told him, "Keep." He paced around the area, snarling if anyone advanced, keeping the closest people pushing back angrily against the pressure from behind.

  Murphy pointed to one of the men, who was wearing a flowered shirt and pale blue slacks. "He found the boy."

  I nodded and went out to the water's edge to look into the boat. The small body was laid out in the bottom of it, hands by its sides, as peaceful as if the boy were asleep. His hair was still damp, drying from dark brown back to gingerish in the sunlight, and his Camp Sunrise T-shirt and blue jeans were black with water. There was an injury on the left side of his head, about the height where he might have been hit by somebody taller than he was, somebody right-handed. There was no shoe or sock on the right foot. Possibly he had been trying to kick his shoes off so he could swim better, but then again, I doubted if he could have been conscious after a blow like the one he'd taken on the head. It looked far too severe to be an accidental bump.

  I turned and asked the man, "Where did you find him?"

  "South of that big bare rock, you know, up to the left of the channel, this side of the narrows." He had an intelligent face, pale under the ruddiness of his new tan.

  "Was he floating?"

  The other one answered, "No, Off'cer. He was down the weeds. We were drifting for pickerel, and Fred's hook caught him."

  He stopped, and the other one gulped and went on. "Yeah, in the pants, thank God. I don't know how I'd have felt if I'd snagged the poor little guy." He thought for a moment and went on. "I was hooked into the belt loop of his jeans. I thought it was a rock at first; then, when he came, it was kind of steady, almost easy, like when you've got a big pickerel on and he hasn't started fighting."

  "What test line are you using?" I asked him. The strength of the line would give me an idea how great the strain had been.

  "Thirty pounds," he said, then gave an apologetic half grin. "I know that's heavy, but I hooked a muskie last year and lost him. I didn't want that happening again."

  "A good job you didn't lose this," I reassured him. "Now, how long ago did you find him?"

  They looked at one another, and the first one said, "I didn't check the time, but it must have been about twenty minutes ago. We came right here. It was quicker. There were boats jammed up all around the marina or I'd have gone in there."

  "You did right," I assured him. Th
en I took out my book. "Can I have your name and address and where you're staying up here?"

  "Sure, Fred Dobos, one-fifteen Davisville, Toronto." He gave me the apartment number, and I wrote it all down, then the lodge where he was staying in town. His friend's name was Jack Innes, also from Toronto, staying at the same place up here.

  I shut the book and turned to Murphy. "Could you phone McKenney, please, Murph, and the doctor. Ask him to come to the funeral parlor as soon as he can."

  "Sure thing." Murphy turned away, stumping through the crowd on his artificial leg, shoving angrily as people jostled him, scared of losing their places at the scene. Around me cameras were clicking, some of them even flashing, their lights pallid in the bright sun. I turned back to the two men.

  "Which side of the island, do you remember?"

  "Mid-channel side. Maybe thirty yards out."

  I nodded. "And did you see any boats going up or down through the narrows before this happened?"

  Dobos shook his head. "Sorry, Off'cer. We'd just got there. We went right up there from the marina."

  "Well, did anything pass you, coming or going, as you went up the waterway?"

  They looked at one another, trying to remember. Then Innes said, "Nothing much. There was a water-skier out, just this side of the island—three kids. The one who was skiing was good. He was going on one ski, you know, slalom. We were watching him. I didn't see anything else."

  Murphy had returned, and before he could report, I asked him, "Any idea who three kids with water skis might be, Murph? Did they come through here?"

  He shook his head. "Not today. Could be anybody."

  "The one kid was a bit of a hotdog apparently, going slalom."

  Now he nodded. "That could be young Cy Levine; he's pretty good." He turned to the two men. "What kind of boat was with him, a blue Fiberglas with a big Merc motor?"

  "Yes." Innes was certain. "A blue boat, the same color as his swimsuit. Remember, Fred, I made some comment about him being color-coordinated."