Calamity (Captain Grande Angil Mysteries)

by Robert G. Bernstein

  Post held the strut out to me and I took it. He then found a mechanic’s stool on steel casters and sat in it as if the adrenaline rush had just caught up with him. He rolled himself out of the artificial light and into the shadow of the wing, inboard of the engine cowling. I walked a few steps to stand closer.

  “The important thing here,” he said, “is that even though you have other landing gear types, bicycle, single-main, etc., ninety percent of your landing gear falls into these two categories, taildragger and tricycle. It’s the former that dominated the scene for forty years of commercial air transport. So right there, you can knock out a whole bunch of airplanes.”

  “Forgive me,” I said. “I’m not questioning your expertise, but you sound so sure and I’m not seeing it as clearly as you.”

  “Well,” he said. “It’s kind of simple, really. You have these two types of aircraft, the C-47 Skytrain and the C-46 Commando. But guess what? Even though the Douglas ends up with more business, it’s the C-46 that has the special ops attraction, because it can carry more than twice the cargo. It’s a much bigger, more powerful airplane, and it has bigger, heavier landing gear. Get it?”

  “Bigger plane. Heavier landing gear. Bigger single strut design.”

  “Exactly. These planes had a great service life as cargo planes. There was at least one Canadian operator who used them into the nineties. And they were huge performers for Air America.”

  “Air America,” I said. “The CIA airline?”

  “Yep. Called C.A.T. previous. Civil Air Transport. The guys had all kinds of nicknames for ‘em. The Whale, The Curtiss Calamity, the Flyin’ Coffin. the Plumber’s Nightmare. Crews hated ‘em because they were a maintenance headache. But they flew, sure enough, and saw plenty of action. Used ‘em in Vietnam, the Bay of Pigs. Who knows where else?”

  “Indeed,” I said. “Who knows?”

  17

  “I’m thinking this could be a complete waste of time,” George said.

  We were sitting in my makeshift office having coffee and homemade donuts that he’d brought from The Tasty Shop in Rockland. I was on my third donut and I could feel a small anvil forming in my stomach. To say these things were on the dense side would be like saying Angelina Jolie had slightly fat lips.

  “I put it in somebody else’s capable hands,” I said.

  “Whose?” George said.

  “Warren Post at the museum turned me on to a guy who used to be an Air Traffic Controller in Bangor. He’s retired now but he’s writing a book. I told him I was looking into a C-46 plane crash in Maine; he didn’t know anything about it and he got intrigued, said he’d look into it and get back to me.”

  “It’s weird,” George said. “I thought you knew every shipwreck and plane wreck on the coast.”

  “So did I.” I tossed the uneaten portion of my fourth donut back in the bag.

  “Something wrong with it?” George said.

  “Nothing I couldn’t fix with a chisel or a jack hammer,” I said.

  “Yeah,” George said, scowling at what he had left in his hand. “Now that you mention it.” He threw the rest of his donut in the bag, crumpled the bag and tossed it across the room into the trash. It landed as if he had thrown a belaying pin. “So now what?”

  “I have to make another run at Tanner, then talk to my client.”

  “That should be fun.”

  “I’ll meet Tanner on neutral ground. I asked around at the ferry terminal and found out he leaves once a month to visit someone off-island. He stays a day or two and then comes back the night before the first ferry. He gets a good spot in the parking line and a room at the Navigator and drinks himself to sleep at the bar.”

  “If you think Tanner in a bar is going to be neutral, I think you need to go back to Private Cop School and retake Drunken Bum 101.”

  “It’s all I got,” I said. “Besides, I don’t think Tanner is a bum. I think he’s got a sugar mommy.”

  “Isn’t that kind of the same?” George said.

  I shrugged.

  We drank our coffee and gazed through the office windows at the cove beyond. The worm diggers had arrived with their hip boots and five-gallon buckets. They lit cigarettes in the shadows of the tall poplars and pines at the edge of the south bight, waiting for the late December sun to warm the mud. A few of them drew on cigarettes so feverishly it was as if losing a single milligram of nicotine to the morning air would stay their cause forever.

  “I’m a relief captain for the ferry service,” I said. “I know everybody down there. I told a few people on the sly to tell me the next time Tanner headed for the mainland. It’ll give me an hour and fifteen minutes to rent a car and meet him. Maybe he’ll go someplace interesting. If he does, I’ll ask him about it at the Navigator.”

  “I didn’t know you worked for the ferry?” George said.

  “I don’t get called that often, hardly ever. The state prefers to give the overtime to their full-time employees. I only hear from them when it’s an emergency.”

  “Like when they have to take an ambulance out to the island at three in the morning.” George finished his coffee and placed the empty cup on my desk.

  “I get one or two of those a year,” I said. “Most of the time I’m called when the Red Sox or Patriots make the playoffs.”

  Outside, the diggers started their trek onto the mud. They didn’t look happy about it, and I had nothing but sympathy and respect for their efforts. Trudging through the thick ooze of Turkey Cove was hard enough, but bending over and picking out bloodworms for three to five hours was a test of any man’s mettle.

  “Have you talked to your client about any of this?” George said.

  “Not yet,” I said. “She called and left a message, said she was planning a weekend in Bar Harbor. I think she wants me to meet her there, give her an update.”

  “Tell her where her money is going.”

  “She doesn’t seem the type.”

  “You mean to care about money?”

  “I think being burned half to death and losing your husband and kid in a house fire will change a person’s perspective, give them an appreciation for what really matters in life. Don’t you?”

  George nodded thoughtfully. “You gonna tell her about the plane?” he said.

  “Too early to take that cake out of the oven.”

  “You gonna tell her about Weston and Exeter?”

  “Nope. Those were on my dime.”

  “So . . . you got nothin’ to tell her.”

  “A boat trip to Vinalhaven. A dozen greasy homemade donuts.”

  “I paid for the donuts,” George said.

  “Terrific,” I said. “I just saved her ten bucks.”

  George stood up on his toes and stretched for the ceiling, letting out a sonorous groan in the process. Afterwards he reached across my desk and picked-up a heavy brass pin I had salvaged from the Alfred E. Zeeman, a five-masted schooner shipwrecked on Metinic Island Ledge in the late eighteen hundreds.

  “I think you’re wrong about one thing,” he said. “Everybody cares about money. Those who don’t have it, care about getting it. Those who have it care about losing it.”

  18

  As I was on standby waiting to hear from people — Post’s friend the retired Air Traffic Controller, Mrs. Bowers about her trip to Bar Harbor, and the guys from the ferry who were slated to drop a dime on Tanner — I did some engine work on the boat. It took a half a day to replace both the cam liner and impeller in the seawater pump, and two days and one night to tear apart the after-cooler, bath it in acid and paint it. I burned through three and a half days without a peep from anybody, so I reamed the heat exchanger core with a twenty-two caliber bore cleaner, replaced the oil cooler, and did a lube oil and filter change. I was about to flush the cooling system and replace the coolant when Al Winslow, an AB on the Charles Philbrook, called me on the cell.”

  “You owe me a lunch,” he said. “Your boy just stepped on the ferry.”

  “Wh
at’s he driving?” I said.

  “Cadillac Escalade. All black.”

  “You’re pulling my leg.”

  “I never bullshit a bullshitter,” he said, and hung up.

  I rushed to change out of my work clothes, pack my sea bag and get to the car rental place at the Owls Head airport. This time I chose a white Chevy four wheel drive pickup thinking it would have plenty of power for a tail and still be nondescript, especially here in Maine. I drove it back to the ferry terminal with thirty minutes to spare and waited patiently on Main Street. For a second, and only a second, I thought about walking over to The Tasty Shop a couple of blocks away. Instead, I walked up Main to the Brown Bag, filled my thermos with coffee and bought two sandwiches to go, a roast beef sub with Camembert cheese and Italian dressing, and a tuna pocket with bacon and avocado. The two sandwiches I placed in the cooler I had transferred earlier from the back of the Rover to the bed of the rental. The thermos I laid on the seat beside me.

  The ferry pulled into the pen at zero eight forty-nine and secured lines. Ten minutes later they had emptied the vehicle deck. There were only two cars and one of them was my black Escalade. I gave it plenty of lead-time as it came through the terminal parking lot, turned right on Main Street and then left on Route-1 South. I stayed between four and five car lengths back all the way down Route-1 but almost lost him in Wiscassett when a beast of a tractor-trailer pulled in front of me and slowed traffic to a crawl at the Boothbay Harbor junction.

  Tanner took Route-295 through Portland and got on the Maine Turnpike in Scarborough. The highway made it easy to follow but by the time we got to Saco at around eleven in the morning I couldn’t stop thinking about my sandwiches in the bed of the truck. Fortunately, Tanner pulled into the Biddeford Service Stop. I had a chance to get the bacon pocket out of the back and top off the fuel tank, which needed less than six gallons. Full of fuel and partially satisfied with my tiny sandwich I backed into the truckers’ lanes and waited. I had an easy time picking up the Escalade when Tanner headed South again. His particular Escalade wore a bumper sticker that carried the message: “National Marine Fisheries Service: Destroying Fishermen’s Lives Since 1976.”

  A light snow began to fall, peppering the windshield and the pavement. It was cold enough that the precipitation on the road looked like a thin veil of smoke being whisked around by the traffic. I glanced at dark clouds ahead and the tops of the trees lining the roadway and noticed for the first time the gathering wind and the other ominous signs of a brewing Nor’easter. Tanner and I were driving into the teeth of the storm and more than likely I would be making my return trip on its heels. Being that I had left the house and the boat without checking the forecast I switched on the radio. The rental had a Sirius satellite receiver and I was able to get a NOAA report right away. Sure enough, a strong low-pressure area was tracking over the coast. We were in for a nasty blow.

  Tanner continued South on Route-95 through the New Hampshire toll and picked up Route-495. All hopes for it being a short trip ended when he got off at the 290 Interchange and drove past Worcester. He picked up Route-90 West, stopped at the Mass Pike Service and Food Court for coffee and fuel – where I topped off the tank again — got back in his truck and exited a few minutes later at Route-84. I ate my roast beef sub at seventy-five m.p.h. and was hungry again when we crossed the New York border. By the time we got on Route-78 I thought I would slip into a diabetic coma.

  Six hours later, and in the midst of a driving rainstorm, Tanner pulled into the Loews Annapolis parking lot on West Street in Annapolis, Maryland. He parked his Escalade diagonally across two spots and went into the hotel carrying an overnight bag. I drove around the corner and found an empty space on a side street. I locked the truck and walked briskly to the hotel. I entered the lobby as if I owned the place and sauntered confidently but cautiously over to the hotel restaurant. I saw Tanner at the front desk and made sure he didn’t catch a glimpse of me looking over the menu board. From my position inside the arched doorway of the restaurant I could see Tanner clearly. He picked up his room key and signed in, then waited a moment for a thick manila envelope that the hotel clerk handed to him. I watched as Tanner opened the package and peered inside. He seemed to get very agitated by what he saw or didn’t see in the envelope.

  I was in a quandary. The blue claw crab marinara sounded delicious. So did Cajun crab cakes. But chance favored Tanner being just as hungry and just as interested in what the hotel restaurant had to offer. He was probably headed to his room to shower and change and then he would be back here to order my damn crab cakes or crab marinara. The thought of him eating succulent food in a cushy tavern while I sat in my truck outside in the rain sipping lousy coffee and eating Little Debbie donuts was not sitting too well. Ah, the exciting, romantic life of a P.I.

  When I returned to the truck I discovered that a person or persons unknown had liberated my empty cooler from its resting-place in the bed. Oh well, it could have been a lot worse. My forty-five Warthog had been stashed in the glove box, and I had forgotten to lock the doors.

  This mundane theft turned out to be a seminal moment for me because from this point forward I resolved to carry the piece despite the legal ramifications. Most states didn’t honor the Maine carry permit, which is why I also had permits to carry in Florida, Connecticut, New Hampshire and Massachusetts.

  I started up the truck and drove around the block to an empty spot in front of a brick office building across from the hotel. The location gave me an excellent view of the main entrance, the Escalade and the restaurant’s outer door. If Tanner left to see someone, I would have no difficulty picking up his tail again. Unfortunately, I wouldn’t be able to tell if anyone came specifically to see him, unless I knew the person. The parking lot already looked crowded, and I could see people going in and out of the restaurant and the coffee shop next to it. If one of those people was here to meet Tanner, I would have made the trip for nothing. There was also the slim possibility Tanner would use an inside door and leave through the back. Sweet serendipity would have to accompany me on this one.

  To help prevent a potentially important clue from slipping through the cracks, and also to pass the time and keep myself awake, I decided to write down license plate numbers. My sea bag held a small pair of seven-by-fifty Zeiss field binoculars and a cheap digital camera. I ignored the camera, useless in a driving rain at night, and used the binoculars. I couldn’t see the plates of all the cars in the lot but I saw enough of them to increase my odds.

  At nine thirty-nine, with rain and sleet pummeling the cab like a cannon blast of nickels, an Annapolis police cruiser pulled up to my truck and turned on his searchlight. The patrol car slid into the eastbound lane facing the wrong way and parked with his left bumper and fender inches from the front gap in my driver’s door. Shielding my eyes with my left hand, I pulled out my Maine driver’s license and held it up to the windshield. With the patrol car in front of my truck and the searchlight blinding the cab, I had no view of the hotel or parking lot. I wasn’t the most experienced investigator on the loose in Maryland but I surmised that this was not an ideal situation for a stakeout.

  “Exit your vehicle and approach the cruiser slowly.” The cop’s voice came through his loudspeaker.

  I couldn’t see a thing.

  I cracked my driver’s window and yelled: “You come here. And turn off that damned searchlight.” To make things easier for him, I switched on my interior light and kept my license plastered against the inside of the windshield.

  The searchlight stayed on and the cop’s voice came back over the loudspeaker again, a bit more forceful this time.

  “Damn it to hell! Get out of that god damn truck.”

  I picked up my cell phone and held it to the window with my free hand, then I dialed Nine One One and put the phone to my ear. A female dispatcher answered almost immediately. “What is the nature of your emergency?”

  “I need to be patched through to the cop rousting me on West Stree
t in front of the Loew’s Annapolis.”

  “What is your name, Sir?”

  “Grande Angil. Grande with an e Angil with an i,” I gave her my driver’s license number and a description of my vehicle. “It’s a rental,” I added.

  “Sir, I advise you comply with the officer on scene. He has complete authority in this situation.”

  “Listen, sweetheart. I know my rights. I’m sitting here peaceably in a rental vehicle on a public street in a public parking lot minding my own business. I’m not getting out of this truck in this rain unless it’s a dire emergency. If your patrol officer wants to see my I.D., tell him to get off his ass and get out here and ask for it.”

  There was a pause, after which she said: “Hold, please.” She sounded very annoyed.

  I waited thirty-seconds and then the cop in front of me got on the phone. “You need to get out of that vehicle mister and show me some I.D.”

  “I don’t need to do any such thing,” I said. “I’m parked legally on a public street and you’re interfering with my civil rights. If you need to see my credentials then put on your slicker and hat and get your lazy fucking ass out of the patrol car. I promise to be a good boy and keep my interior light on and both my hands in plain sight, and you can do me a big solid and turn off that damn searchlight.”

  There was a brief pause and then over the phone he said: “Don’t move, asshole. I’m having you checked out.”

  It took another thirty-seconds. I still had the license pressed against the windshield and my eyes averted and partially covered by my upper arm when the searchlight went off and the patrol car backed away and then idled forward about twenty feet. I shut off my interior light and when my eyes readjusted I checked on Tanner’s vehicle. It hadn’t moved, and he wasn’t in it.

  “Thanks for nothing,” I said into my phone.