Cocaine and Blue Eyes

by Fred Zackel

  "Freeze!" Just as the Japanese were leaving.

  They freaked. They hit the ground screaming. A couple of jokers in the rear took pictures. One drunk thought a Hollywood movie was being filmed. He started applauding.

  The cops lowered their guns.

  "What did I tell ya?" the hawker said. "Somebody's in trouble." His pale eyes said they hadn't seen it all, but they had seen too much.

  We went on down the street together.

  "How was your Christmas?"

  Chapter 29

  I knew the day was shot by the seventh ring. I tried thinking who'd call this time of morning. No one was worth talking to at this time of the morning. I lifted my eyelids, then answered the damn thing.

  A man's voice. "If you want them, they're sailing with first light," he whispered.

  I closed my eyes. "Good for them."

  "You don't want them to sail without you."

  I asked why not, but the sucker had hung up.

  I hate telephones.

  I was nearly awake by Third Street. Chain-smoking the cigarettes Ruth had left behind. My face felt tight, like my skin was shrinking. I popped a couple of codeine tablets and thought about hot coffee. But the all-nite gas station by the shipyards was closed for the holidays, and the vending machines were locked inside. The moon was just setting. It had a frosty halo. The fog had come in thick, like 100% lambswool. The only sounds came from the foghorns on the bay.

  In daylight, the streets of Butchertown bustle with delivery trucks and semis. But only a paycheck keeps people here, and after office hours the streets are wide and empty, spooky with long shadows, home only for alley cats and squad cars. This section of the city is old, and the streetlights really are farther apart.

  I parked at the head of the dead-end street. A faint light shimmered like a hand-held flashlight from the third floor of the fish company. Another night visitor? I unlocked my trunk and retrieved my gun, then hoofed it down the long shadows. Time for some alley-creeping.

  I boosted a window by the loading dock and padded across the concrete. Harsh white light came from naked light bulbs, and water puddles shared the reflection with dirty windows. I found the staircase and felt my way to the third floor. The corridor was lit with a single fluorescent panel. There were no lights inside the Anatole offices.

  I went inside and the thin beam of my flashlight played across the shadows. A telecopier, a bookkeeping machine, a Xerox machine. Desk calculators, comptometers, typewriters and postage meters.

  The soft glow came from Riki's office. I took out my gun and moved to one side. I felt for the knob, then shoved the door open.

  "Who's there?" Her voice.

  Ruth sat on the floor staring at my gun. She was surrounded by ledgers and journals. A long row of metal cabinets was behind her. The drawers were opened, and manila files stuck up.

  "What are you doing here?"

  "I work for Pac-Con," she said.

  She waited. I had nothing to say.

  She stared at my gun. "Old man Anatole's our client." She swallowed air. "He wanted somebody to infiltrate his company."

  I put away my gun. I took my time. "You called him about me, didn't you, from that phone booth on Market. And he asked you to find out more about me."

  Her jade eyes. "I had to. This is my first solo." Her eyes were bone-dry.

  I said goodbye and went the way I came.

  The long aluminum tables glowed with the moonlight that came through dirty windows. A cardboard box, soggy and crumbling, blocked my path. I stepped around, right into a puddle. Then I stopped. The plant was closed for the holidays.

  I went back to the box. Chunks of shaved ice lined the insides. A path of water led towards the refrigerated storerooms. They looked like bank vaults in the night.

  I followed the path. Only one storeroom was unlocked, and the path dead-ended in front. I opened the storeroom and went inside. The room was colder than a morgue photo and darker than death. A blast of frigid air almost sucked my breath away.

  I found the light switch. A soft blue light glowed on the ice, and the ice became just as blue. I saw my breath was like cigarette smoke.

  Frosted walls and mounds of ice. Shaved and crushed and in cakes. Cases and cartons dotted the mounds. Squid and dungeness crab. Shrimp cocktail sauce and kippered cod in sour cream. Tartar sauce and salmon caviar. Frozen carcasses of halibut, alabaster and headless like a mermaid's tail.

  The path of water had frozen into a trail of ice that ended at a mound of shave ice. The mound was higher than any other mound, higher even than the cake ice.

  I started shoveling with my hands. They quickly went beet-red, then pale with blue veins. As blue as the ice itself. I dug until I found a pale white leg, until I uncovered a pale blue thigh. I scooped ice away until I was brushing it from the dead woman's eyes.

  Her eyes were half-open, vacant, a study in eternity. They were larger than robins' eggs, as blue as the Bay at dawn. I tried closing them. The eyelids slowly rose to half-mast. Blue eyes that wouldn't stay closed, not even in death. I had no coins to keep them closed.

  She lay like a broken china doll. Unlike most stiffs, she looked younger than she was. There were bruises on the baby fat. The body was damp and rigid. She'd been here a while. The autopsy would say how long.

  She had been shot in the temple by a small caliber pistol. Probably her sister's missing gun. There were a few specks of burnt powder around the bullet hole. She had been shot at close range. Three or four feet at most.

  There was no blood on the hole or around it. The body had cooled, melting the ice, and the ice water had washed the hole. Just a small black hole you could stick a pencil in.

  I left her where she lay. I didn't bother closing the icehouse door or turning off the blue light. The police shouldn't scout dark shadows for corpses.

  I found a telephone near the smoke house. The operator connected me with the Southeast District Police Station. The duty officer took my story and told me to wait around. I couldn't think of any place I could go to get away from Dani Anatole.

  After I hung up, I pulled over an empty salmon crate. I lit a cigarette and waited for the meat wagon. It was too cold to smoke in the icehouse, and I needed a cigarette bad. It's always like this for me. Which is the way it should be. I never want to get used to the sight of a corpse.

  "Put your hands in the air and don't make a move."

  I looked up. "Hello, Alex. How's it going?"

  He leveled the shark rifle. "Let's go."

  "Sure." I stubbed out my cigarette.

  Alex marched me outside to the China Creek piers. The huge trawler was the only Anatole boat present. A few interior lights overlooked us. The long black freighter was still berthed across the estuary, a mountain's shadow in the setting of the moon.

  Jack Anatole studied charts in the deckhouse. He looked up as we filed in. "How did you know?"

  "I got a phone call," I told him.

  "Looks like we're going crabbing." He started folding his charts. "Was he carrying a gun?"

  Alex swallowed. "I forgot to check."

  "It's on my waistband," I volunteered.

  I was frisked and Alex took my gun. He held it on me while Jack used sailor knots to tie my hands in front of me. I didn't try to resist.

  "I thought you said you don't point guns."

  "You didn't have to come here." Jack finished and looked over at Alex. "Get ready to cast off lines."

  "What are you going to do about Dani?" I asked.

  "We're not gonna forget her," he said. "She's just gonna have to catch up later, that's all."

  Alex cast off the lines. The diesels cleared their throats, and the trawler began to drift. Jack opened the throttles, and we began to sluice up the long black channel. He blew two high-pitched whistles, then followed up with a third at a lower pitch. The bridge man left his shanty to raise the Third Street bridge. He saw us and waved.

  Alex jabbed me with my gun. "You're not fucking up Mexico for
me," he hissed.

  We all waved back. Then sailed into the Bay.

  The sunrise was cold gold and glacier white, and the Bay at dawn was as blue as Dani's eyes. The city was a jewel, and the skyscrapers were like jagged glass. The streetlights on the Bay Bridge were a golden arc to Oakland. A rainbow of colors reflected from the water.

  "How about some coffee?" Jack asked.

  "What about him?" Alex asked.

  "Take him to the galley with you."

  Alex shoved me aft towards the galley. He had been simmering inside, and once away from Jack, he started poking me with my own gun, trying to get me riled. I was patient, docile, until we reached the galley. I was ready then to start changing the odds.

  "Does Jack know you rifled Dani's houseboat?"

  He forgot he had a gun and, with his other hand, he grabbed my shoulder and spun me around. He smacked me with his gun hand. I saw it coming and tried to roll away. He hit me hard, and the gunmetal slammed against my cheekbone. It jarred me and broke the skin.

  It was a moment before I could speak. "You wouldn't do that if I were untied." I could feel the blood oozing out.

  He laughed, surprised at his own strength. "I'm not dumb enough to fall for that crap," he said.

  "Sure you are."

  He was just pissed enough for showboating. He jabbed with his right fist. His body wasn't close enough to connect, so I didn't bother flinching. His fist swished the air inches from my chin.

  "You're one of the dumbest monkeys in the world."

  His fist swished past again. This time I flinched. He was angry and losing his touch. He was pretty good at swishing the air, though.

  "You're a real toughie," I told him. "I can just see you as a teenager. Terrorizing old folks at the corner drugstore. But then Daddy bought your first car, and you and all the other toughies went off to the drive-in for strawberry pie."

  He tried another right jab. I still outweighed him. I followed it and fell against him, making him fall back against the galley wall. He tried countering with a left hook. I grabbed his belt with both hands and pulled myself against him. His hook flew over my shoulder. Since he was so close, I kneed him. As he buckled, I slammed him into the wall again, pinning both arms against wood, knocking the wind from him. I used both hands to sucker punch him. He crumpled, gasping and choking. I pulled him upright and shoved him into the wall again. Then I came up on the soft of his neck with clasped hands. He was out.

  "That's enough." Jack had the shark rifle. "Over there," he commanded.

  I waited in a neutral corner. Spent my time looking around the galley for miracles. I recognized the galley from Dani's houseboat. This was where she had gotten her design. No reason not to be home on the range.

  Alex stumbled to his feet, saw me and growled.

  Jack had no sympathy. "There's some booze in the locker behind you." He gestured with the rifle. "As for you, pal, the party's over. Upstairs."

  "Dani's been on this boat," I said.

  He corrected me. "Ship." Then he connected. "She's been here?"

  I pointed both hands at the sink. A clean glass sat beside an empty bottle of Galliano. "That's what she drinks, isn't it?"

  He was scornful. "She's not the only person who drinks that shit."

  "Look at the bottle," I said. "Men don't wash their empties."

  Jack puzzled over that, hesitated then gave Alex the rifle. "Here. Hold it on him." He turned back to his partner again. "And don't try anything while I'm gone. I might not be able to save you again." He went aft towards the cabins. He was back almost immediately with Dani's overnight case. "What do you know about this?" he demanded.

  I had nothing to say. Dani was a corpse in an icehouse. She was surrounded by halibut and albacore. By now, she was probably defrosting. There was an APB out on me by now, too. I had to get home somehow.

  He shook the barrel. "Okay, upstairs, then."

  We sailed beneath the Golden Gate Bridge. The trawler seemed to pitch in all directions from the crosscurrents. The bridge was clouded in swirls of tulle fog.

  Chapter 30

  We sailed westward, away from the city and the continent. The sun rose and melted the fog into patches. The sky was ice-white, and the ocean was new denim. Sailboats, like shark fins, on the horizons.

  Jack was the total sailor. He never took his hands from the wheel, and his eyes never stopped combing the waters. He sailed like a grunt on patrol, still looking for the enemy, and he was enjoying himself.

  I spent my time watching the water shadows on the ceiling. They had made me sit on the deckhouse floor. It was damp and chilly. I was still tied in sailor's knots. I knew better than to test them. They'd been tied by a professional fisherman. I felt like a hound dog waiting for his master's kick.

  Alex was just as uncomfortable. Restless, he paced up and down like a man outside Intensive Care. He had smoked several joints, taking quick puffs, not holding them in long enough. From the way he kept eyeing me, I should be stuffed down a sewer.

  It was noon when we reached the Farallones. We sailed around the big island, away from the Coast Guard station. Jack cut the engines and we coasted. A western wind eased us along the leeward shore.

  A million seabirds wheeled and darted above us, while on the rocks seals and sea lions worked on their tans. Whole rookeries of gulls and cormorants roosted above them in the granite fractures. Grebes came up, got shy, dove beneath the boat, disappeared.

  Jack saw the marker first. A long blue and white marker, not fifty yards from us, rising and falling in the slow swells. The trawler sidled closer on an outbound approach. Brown pelicans dive-bombed the waters near us.

  Alex brought the marker alongside with a boathook and Jack helped him haul up its line. A kelp-coated crabpot came aboard last. They used a scaling knife to cut its cords, then brought a parcel inside. It was oilcloth completely sealed in inch-thick wax.

  Alex disappeared down the galleyway. When he returned, he carried a cardboard box. He unloaded an icepick and a mirror, razor blades and test tubes, plastic straws and some aluminum foil, methanol and a propane camping stove.

  He used the icepick on the parcel, then stuck a straw through the hole. The straw came out with an inch of whitish crystals. They looked like snowflakes, shiny and almost transparent.

  He tasted the cocaine first. He seemed to like its bitter flavor. While he waited for his tongue to numb, he dumped more onto the face of the mirror. He spread it around, then broke the flake with the razor blade and formed it into a long thin line. He used another straw to snort his way down that line. It hit his mucous membrane like a gunshot. He threw back his head, snorted air in after it, then swallowed like a baby with a mouthful of ice cream.

  He separated the rest of the cocaine. He dumped some into a test tube and filled it with methanol. As it started to dissolve, he lit the propane stove. He set the next sample on a swatch of aluminum foil and held it over the low blue flame. He was pleased at the way it burned.

  "How's it going?" Jack asked.

  Alex looked up. "Well, there's no bubbles," he told us. "No rust in the residue, either." His speech was slurred. His tongue had numbed. He licked his lips and smiled at us. His eyes were bright enough for beacons.

  Jack relaxed. He had little to do, just hold my gun on me. He lit a cigarette and waited for Alex to finish the cobalt test for color.

  I watched Jack with his cigarette. He held it and took measured puffs with the coals cupped inside his hand. Some guys smoke that way when they step off the plane from Vietnam.

  He felt me staring. A boyish grin appeared. "Just a little toot for me and my friends."

  "How much is a little toot?"

  "Fifteen kilos. Thirty-three pounds."

  "That's a lot of toot."

  "Coke's hard to get." His grin broadened. "You gotta buy it when you can." And he was one proud owner.

  "What's the street value?"

  "Uncut? Maybe a million."

  "What did you pay for it?"
/>
  He didn't mind. "A little more than half that."

  "All by yourself?"

  "Dani and me covered half."

  "Alex covered the rest?"

  He smirked. "He couldn't get change for a quarter."

  "Don't tell me it was Joey Crawford?"

  "That little shit." The grin was gone. His face was brittle with anger. "He couldn't tell flour from coke." Jack was so angry, he was spitting my way with every word. "He ruined Dani's party because he couldn't tell them apart."

  "Alex said we're sailing to Mexico."

  "What?" He looked at his partner. His anger vanished and he laughed. "Why should we sail south? Who'd we sell this shit to?"

  Alex was bent over a hot test tube. The liquid inside was becoming the same blue as cold steel. He mumbled something, then said he was too busy to talk. Maybe he was. He was sucking his gums, and there was sweat on his face. His eyes were brighter than headlights. He looked like a mad scientist hard at work.

  Jack wasn't finished. "Our wholesale cost's higher than their retail," he insisted.

  Alex leaned back. "Sweet baby Jesus," he crooned. He couldn't restrain himself any longer. "It's almost pharmaceutically pure!"

  Jack froze. "No bullshit?"

  "No bullshit." Alex giggled. "Cross my heart."

  "Oh my god. It's all over." Jack could have cried from happiness, but he was grinning like an alkie who had just bought himself a wine cellar. "It really is. I never have to work again." He savored it with closed eyes, then remembered I was still here. He looked over at me. "You can tell your clients they were too late."

  "And what happens to me?" I asked.

  "We dump you first chance we get."

  "Over the side?"

  He went rigid. The muscles stood out in his thick neck. He raised my gun until it pointed at my heart. I looked into his eyes and froze inside. Only the grunts had gunfighter eyes.

  We waited until his muscles relaxed.

  "There's a lot of small islands up by Vancouver," he told me. "You might make it to civilization by spring, if you're any kind of woodsman."