by Jack Ewing
Dixon, stiff-legged, started for the boathouse. Gino prodded Toby with the gun to persuade him to follow the detective and the three men walked single-file down toward the lake.
The boathouse was about 30′ x 40′. Like the house, it was constructed of stone with a thick concrete foundation that disappeared beneath the waterline where the building extended over the lake. Inside, Gino flipped a switch, flooding the interior with low-watt light. Weathered wooden decking lined with rubber bumpers ran along back and sides of the structure. Boat hooks, oars, canoes, anchors, life jackets, rods and reels and other nautical gear hung on the walls. In one berth sat a sleek, black speedboat with huge outboards, while a dinghy and a pair of rowboats bobbed in the other.
Gino motioned Dixon and Toby into a rowboat—a fourteen-footer with fresh green paint inside and out—closest to the wide double doors opening onto the lake. With his free hand, the big man scooped up about fifty pounds from a pile of rusty chains of assorted sizes and let the links trail rattling into the bow.
The detective sat in the squared-off stern, while Toby took the middle seat, between oarlocks. Gino pushed open one side of the outer doors and, walking along the decking towards the lake, towed the boat by a rope tied to a metal ring embedded in the prow. When the vessel was almost clear of the boathouse, he gave the rowboat a final, vicious shove with one foot. As Toby took hold of the oars, Gino waved farewell and pulled the door closed again. The light went out.
Dixon, six feet away, became featureless, hunched head and shoulders silhouetted against the windows of Giambi’s house. Moonlight struck sparks from the barrel of the gun now in his hand.
Toby dipped oars and pulled though a full stroke. The boat glided along the water’s smooth surface. He leaned forward, pushing down to lift the dripping blades clear, got purchase and pulled again, putting legs and back into it. Against the interior light, he could see Gino’s hulking form as the big man re-entered the house.
“It’s a real break that big thug didn’t come with us,” Toby said. His second stroke had propelled the boat perhaps fifty feet from shore.
“Be quiet.”
“This way, we can row off and get help.”
“Shut up, I said.” Dixon waggled the gun. “It’ll happen like Mr. G ordered. Get used to the idea.”
Hot anger pinched words in Toby’s throat. “You’re making a mistake, Dixon. Worst, and probably last, mistake of your life.”
“Shut up and row, Rew.” He rhymed Toby’s name with “new.”
Toby chastised himself. He should have been onto the crooked detective sooner, should have recognized that pronunciation quirk, even electronically distorted and filtered through a telephone. Chalk it up to reluctance to believe a lawman had gone wrong.
“But that wouldn’t be unusual, would it, Frank?” he said. “You’ve made other mistakes.”
“I’m warning you.” Dixon pointed the gun at Toby’s face.
“What are you going to do if I talk, shoot me here?”
“If I have to, I’ll plug you now and row out to the middle myself.”
“That’ll put you in solid with your boss. We’re too close to shore. Somebody will hear the shot.”
“They’ll just think fireworks are starting up again. Kids shoot them off all the time down here.” Dixon sounded weary. “Shut up, will you? I don’t like this any more than you do.”
“Gee, you’ve got it tough. I’d feel sorry for you, except I’m the one about to acquire a new hole. I’m the one who’ll be wearing chains on the bottom of the lake.”
“You heard. What choice do I have?”
“You chose to be a cop, you’re supposed to stay clean. You swore a pledge when you joined the force.”
“I’ve been a damn good cop for a damn long time.” Dixon’s voice shook with emotion. “I’ve received commendations.”
“And look at you now.” Toby gave him a full dose of scorn. “A dirty cop. Another stooge bought and paid for by the mob. Shove your commendations.”
“Things happen.” Dixon’s voice was barely audible.
“Things happen to everybody,” Toby said.
“My wife would’ve died without Giambi’s help. I owe him.”
“You’ll always owe him. Face it: you’re not a cop any longer. Nothing you did before matters. Now you’re just one more small-time crook who’s about to become a murderer to save his own neck. Your mother should be very proud of you.”
“Shut up about my mother.”
“I hope you’ll be able to sleep at night.”
“Shut up, damn you!”
“Do your wife and kids know what you’re really doing while you’re supposed to be upholding the law?”
“Shut up!” There was an edge of hysteria to Dixon’s words. He waved the gun.
Toby rowed in silence for a few minutes to let the detective simmer down and to steal time to think. He felt new muscles, different than those used in painting, getting a workout. Blisters raised by the oar’s rough wood already began to form where his fingers met his palms. It had been years since he’d paddled a boat, not since his late teens when he’d worked at a marina one summer.
Over Dixon’s shoulder, he saw a rectangle of light marking Giambi’s glass-fronted living room. Man-shapes stood like black cutouts against the glow behind them, one large, one small.
The boat headed north, up the long axis of Cazenovia Lake. On a map, the lake looked like a small, misplaced digit—four miles long, half-mile wide—east of the major Finger Lakes. Like those other bodies of water, Cazenovia had been glacier-gouged during a previous Ice Age. Not as deep as the bigger lakes, but deep enough, its sun-warmed surface gave way quickly to bone-numbingly cold water a few fathoms below.
A cool breeze sprang up, making Toby shiver.
As the distance to shore widened and they cleared Giambi’s wall, he could see on either side the silhouettes of lakeside cabins and cottages and summer homes. Most were dark at this late hour but lights twinkled here and there among thick stands of deciduous trees in full leaf growing all around the lake. Far off to his right, the running lights of a boat moved towards a lit-up dock. Fishermen heading for home, probably, after a long day out on the water dipping lines and swilling beer.
“You know, don’t you,” Toby huffed, “no matter what you do, they’ll knock you off.” He let the boat drift. “Your partner, too.”
“Keep rowing,” Dixon said. “We’ll stop in a half-mile or so.”
“Need to catch my breath. I’m not used to this sort of work.”
“Dip those oars. You’ll be able to sleep for eternity soon.”
“You’re really going to do this?”
“I’m really going to do it. It’s you or me.”
“You’re living in a dream world. You’ll be dead ten minutes after you return. You know too much that could hurt the old man. He doesn’t like loose ends.”
“Maybe I won’t go back,” Dixon whispered.
“You don’t get it. Doesn’t matter either way. You’re a dead man whether you kill me or not. You might as well let me live.”
“If you live, I die for sure. If I kill you like Mr. G wants, I’ve at least got a chance.”
“Don’t make me laugh. You don’t have any chance. The old man will have you taken out the minute you dock. Gino will shoot you in the head and row you back out. You’ll end up in lake slime alongside me.”
“Pick up those oars.” He waved the gun.
Toby began rowing again, feverishly planning and rejecting schemes for escape.
Whichever way he turned, it didn’t look good.
If he stayed in the boat, he’d be shot.
If he dived overboard and Dixon somehow missed him, he’d probably drown. Or freeze to death in the chilly waters of Cazenovia Lake.
Giambi’s house was lost to sight and other dwellings began to peter out until there were no lights from shore at all. A cloud shaped like a grasping hand passed before the moon, turning the water to gliste
ning obsidian. A loon called in the distance.
“This is good,” Dixon said finally. “Stop rowing.”
Toby, muscles taut and vibrating, let oars trail in the water. The boat rolled in light chop. “You called to warn me off, Dixon. You used something to disguise your voice but I know it was you.”
“Yeah, I called. Borrowed a gadget put together by Dave’s buddy, the new Gyro Gearloose.” Anger crept into his voice. “Only you didn’t take my advice and keep out of it, did you? I warned you! See where your meddling got you? Now all your worries are over. Maybe mine, too.”
The cloud overhead moved off. Weak moonlight revealed Dixon holding the pistol in both hands, sighting along the short barrel at Toby. “Hold still,” the detective said tonelessly, “you won’t feel a thing.”
Toby watched Dixon’s finger tighten on the trigger. When he thought the explosion was inevitable, he dived backwards off the seat to the floor of the boat. His head struck something hard and he saw stars.
There was no shot. He’d mistimed his move.
The boat rocked as Dixon stood and stepped forward, knees working like pistons to maintain balance in the small craft, the gun extended for better aim. “Take it like a man,” he said in a grating voice. In diluted moonlight, his shiny face had a bluish cast, like steel. The harelip was lifted in a snarl, exposing crooked teeth.
The hammer clicked on an empty chamber.
Everything stopped for a heartbeat.
Sprawled in the bottom of the boat, Toby in desperation yanked an oar before Dixon could fire. A gallon of cold water sloshed across the detective’s face and chest, staggering him with surprise. Toby shoved and the wooden blade of the oar swiveled around, smacking Dixon in the hip. The boat wobbled violently while Dixon fought to regain equilibrium. He blindly pulled the trigger again.
Another click.
Toby hit him in the groin with the other oar. Dixon’s knees buckled but he didn’t go down. He shoved the oar and the wooden haft caught Toby in the stomach, knocking him back.
Toby’s hands scrabbled along the bottom of the boat, searching for something with which to put up a defense. His fingers closed around cold metal.
Dixon straightened, grimacing, ready to fire.
Toby blindly hurled a six-foot length of rusty one-inch chain, lumped into a loose ball. The ball of chain struck the detective square in the face and dropped straight into the water. Dixon yowled in pain. His free hand clamped onto the torn skin of his nose and cheek. He tried to raise the gun, which seemed to have grown heavy in his hand.
Toby lashed out whip-like with another, longer length of chain. Half-inch links took Dixon across the chin and wrapped quickly once, twice, three times around his head. Toby yanked his end of the chain as the gun finally went off, shockingly loud after two false alarms. The bullet hit the boat and hissed into the water. The flat report of the shot echoed up and down the lake.
Dixon toppled, arms out-flung in a vain attempt to keep from falling. Toby helped him along with an outward swing of an oar. He let the chain be jerked from his fingers and counter-balanced against the sudden lurch of the boat as Dixon cried out in surprise and fell overboard, arms and legs spread wide, with a tremendous splash.
Breathing hard and spattered with cold droplets, Toby eased into the middle seat again, gripping another short, heavy section of chain and watching the water where bubbles still rose to burst on the surface.
What should he do when Dixon came up? Whack him again? Or fish him out?
It was a moot point: there was no sign of the detective. After a minute, no more bubbles floated up and the water became still again.
For a long while, Toby just sat in the bobbing rowboat, his mind a blank.
Then in the silence he heard water trickling in: it came from a bullet hole in the side of the boat.
He fitted sore hands around the oars, reversed course in a wide arc and sculled back the way he had come.
Chapter 25
The leak was easily corrected by sitting slightly left of center so the hole was lifted above the waterline. Toby made the return trip at a leisurely pace, conserving physical energy so he could apply more wattage to brainpower.
If he played his cards right, this whole situation could work out well for him after all. Giambi would assume Dixon, after disposing of Toby, would fear for his own life—with good reason—and take off. The mobsters would therefore concentrate their search on the missing detective and leave Toby alone. Who looks for a man presumed dead and resting at the bottom of a lake?
Meanwhile, the cops would likewise be upset about the disappearance of one of their own and would pull out all stops trying to locate him. They’d be so preoccupied in this task they wouldn’t notice if an unimportant citizen like Toby vanished back into the woodwork.
That was the theory, anyway.
A change of scenery was definitely in order, Toby decided. Better now than later, when Syracuse lake-effect-winter—ice storms, bitter cold and regular ten-inch snowfalls—set in. Maybe he’d join Mac and Marta in Mexico. It was supposed to be temperate year-round there. The late Mrs. Puterbaugh, lying somewhere beside her husband (and who knew how many others) beneath the still waters of Cazenovia Lake, had raved about that feature.
Problem was, for Toby to pull off a convincing disappearance he’d have to leave money he’d received from Dezi Colangelo untouched in the bank. If anybody, good guy or bad, were still interested in him, that’s the first place they’d look. A withdrawal now, after his supposed demise, was out of the question. He couldn’t get at the safe deposit box of Mrs. Cratty’s trinkets, either: Giambi had his keys.
What would he travel on? He didn’t have a dime on him. As a known credit risk, he didn’t have any acquaintances that would not only stake him to an escape but keep their mouths shut about it as well. His truck was a dead giveaway and useless as a getaway vehicle even if he knew how to hotwire it.
So he’d hitchhike. And beg. And rely upon the kindness of strangers to get someplace where he could start over.
First, though, he had to survive the night.
As Toby rowed, cabins and lights reappeared along both shorelines. He glanced over a shoulder, corrected his course.
He’d stay smack in the middle of the lake until he was past the Giambi place.
Then he’d land at the extreme southern end, half a mile beyond the mobster’s home. From that point it would be only a short hike through hilly woods to Route 20 where, if he was lucky, he could thumb a ride.
Where could he go? How would he get there?
The lights of Giambi’s house should be visible a few hundred yards off to his right but the place was dark now. Still, he could make out the straight line of the wall and the massy bulk of the building inland, standing out against alternating beams of red and blue and white lights that strobed from the structure’s far side.
Funny, sounded like somebody had started setting off fireworks over there. Two deep-throated explosions—BOOM! BOOM!—reverberated over the water but no fiery streamers lit up the sky. Several sharp snaps, like a string of firecrackers, replied in counterpoint, followed by the tinkle and crash of breaking glass. From the darkness, a flame shot out sideways towards the house and a beat later a stuttering noise reached Toby’s ears.
It wasn’t a belated Fourth of July celebration he was witnessing; it was a war between cops and mobsters. The flashing red lights emanated from the tops of police cars. The noises came from firearms.
He stopped rowing opposite Giambi’s house, the better to watch and listen.
Something plopped into the water not ten feet away, between Toby and the house. He couldn’t tell if it was a spent bullet or a fish rising for an insect. To be on the safe side, he ducked low in the boat.
The battle on shore didn’t last long. Withering fusillades from outside made return fire from inside slow and then stop. A thick pall of white smoke hung over the house. Men shouted, their incoherent words drifting across the water. Flashlight
beams drew brief, unrecognizable patterns in the night as dark figures closed in on the house and darted inside. The cops were in control.
In Toby, curiosity wrestled with caution and won. There wasn’t anywhere else to go, really, not without transportation and money. He might as well see this thing through to the end.
He steered towards Giambi’s home, pulling the oars in long strokes. In moments, the prow grounded on gritty sand near the darkened boathouse. He climbed out, legs shaky, cold water lapping about his calves and slopping into his ankle-high boots. He pulled the rowboat onto shore where it would be handy if he needed to get away quick.
The house at the top of the slope was still dark, as though those inside hadn’t found a switch. Or maybe somebody had shut down the circuit breaker. Only the occasional wink of a flashlight through a window betrayed the fact somebody was alive inside. Crouching to present as small a target as possible, Toby took a roundabout route towards the house, squishing through close-cropped lawn. He hit the driveway and followed it alongside the house until he could see around front.
Pulled up haphazardly in the turnaround were a half-dozen police cruisers and several unmarked vehicles, doors open like wings, flashing light bars bathing house and grounds with splashes of blue and red and white, blue and red and white, blue and red and white. A policeman with a bandage around his head leaned against the hood of one car, eyes closed. Another uniformed officer was having a wounded arm attended to by a female cop with a first-aid kit. They didn’t see Toby flit past.
The side door of Giambi’s house was wide open and Toby crept towards it. The frame was splintered and the door panel beside the knob was deeply indented as though something heavy had struck it there. The object that had done the damage, a four-inch diameter steel battering ram with handles, lay abandoned beside the entrance.
From inside the house came muffled, unidentifiable sounds. Toby sidled through the doorway, eyes moving, senses alert. The interior was pitch-black, featureless, and Toby shuffled forward, hands outstretched to ward off obstacles. He found a flight of stairs and moved up one, two, three steps. On either side, his fingers encountered smooth wood: a hallway. His toe stubbed against a soft, heavy object and he almost fell.