Star Chamber Brotherhood

by Preston Fleming

  "Concord? That's so odd. Years ago Peter and I came very close to buying a house there. Of all the towns we looked at, Concord was by far my favorite."

  "Name a time and I'll set it up for you," Werner volunteered. "I know Parker well. He taught my daughters."

  Carol's eyes met Werner's and a grin spread across her face.

  "Really? You could do that for me?"

  "Tomorrow, if you want," he proposed. "Listen, here's my suggestion. Why don't you pack a small bag and stay at Linda's tonight. I just ran into some of those demonstrators outside and, if they're homeless refugees, I'm the President–for–Life. Somebody powerful appears to be backing them and, the more I think about it, Harriet may actually be right for a change. I smell trouble tonight."

  "But what about all my things?" Carol asked uneasily. "If they break in, they could make off with everything."

  "It takes longer than one night to loot an entire building," Werner assured her. "Even a professional mover couldn't do it. But, just to be on the safe side, when you leave, use the back door and don't let anyone see you go. Especially ‘you know who.’ And don't take anything larger than a shoulder bag, so they'll think you're coming back tonight."

  "We can each carry a bag," Linda volunteered. "You should definitely bring the silver."

  "And if you want to leave a list for me on the kitchen table, I'll come back after the Club closes and load a backpack or a suitcase for you. It ought to be quieter by then. If I see anything, I'll be sure to call the police."

  "What a marvelous idea!" Linda declared. "Carol, why don't you pack a bag for him right now? Will there be a safe place for it at the Club?"

  "I'll lock it in Jake's office. It's as good as Fort Knox."

  ****

  Frank Werner's last night as proprietor of the Somerset Club bar passed without incident. Monday nights were generally slow and Werner was careful not to tell anyone other than Jake that he was selling the business or leaving the Club. He wanted no farewell party, no reminiscences, no attention whatsoever.

  Just after eleven o'clock, Werner left Steve in charge while he took a break to visit Jake's office. All the arrangements having been made earlier in the day for the sale of the bar business and Werner's inventory of spirits, Jake had drawn enough cash to pay Werner in full.

  Upon seeing Werner enter the room, Hagopian removed a manila envelope from a file cabinet and laid it on his desk.

  "Would you like to count it?" Hagopian asked with a bemused smile.

  "Yes, but only to make you feel better, Jake. You know, I'm really not as simple–minded as I look. You’re getting a genuine steal at this price. Next week you'll turn around and sell the club and the bar together for a fortune. You ought to thank me for this, Jake."

  "Oh, I do thank you. Very much indeed," the old man replied jovially. "And, yes, I do happen to have a buyer willing to pay an attractive price for the Club. But that's why I bought it in the first place. And it's why I took a chance on you. I'm very happy that it worked out for both of us."

  "It did," Werner agreed, picking up the envelope. "You've been a great friend, Jake. I'll miss you."

  "So where will you go next?" Hagopian inquired.

  "I'm thinking of opening a bar in Utah," Werner mused. "With the Mormon Church gone, they've gone back to drinking out there, big–time. It could be a good place for a high–end watering hole. And I always did plan to go back there once I found my daughter."

  "Why not? Those folks need whiskey as much as everyone else, I suppose," Hagopian mused.

  "What's more," Werner confessed, "my girlfriend lost her apartment. Without a residence permit in the town, I'd be out on the street again. I'm too old for camping, Jake. I want a place of my own."

  Werner opened the clasp on the envelope and laid four bundles of banknotes on the desk.

  "You go ahead and count," Jake urged. "I'll pour." And with that, Jake Hagopian reached into the bottom drawer of his desk and brought out a bottle of his cherished Armenian brandy and two heavy shot glasses.

  ****

  The clock on the wall at the Somerset Club bar read fifteen minutes to twelve when Werner left Jake's office and returned to his post behind the counter. The last patron had paid his tab and all the stools were empty. Since Steve had already finished cleaning the counters and sinks, Werner dismissed him and suggested that he pay a visit to Jake's office the next morning to receive some good news about a possible promotion. Steve thanked him warmly and probed for further details but, as Werner would reveal none, the younger man offered Werner a vigorous handshake and set off for home.

  A moment later, after putting his jiggers, shakers, strainers, and muddlers in their proper places on the shelf behind him, Werner turned around to find a nattily dressed middle–aged man occupying the barstool directly across from him.

  The man wore a brown tweed sport coat and gray flannel trousers, his hunter–green knit tie fastened low to his starched white shirt with a gold tie bar. He removed his olive loden hat and laid it on the stool beside him. The man was Dave Lewis.

  "Still time for a quick nightcap, bartender?" Lewis asked with a roguish smile.

  "Sure, partner, name your poison," Werner responded easily.

  "How about a shot of your best bourbon."

  "Do you have a particular brand in mind?"

  The visitor shook his head.

  "What brand do you drink, bartender?"

  "Me, I drink the bar whiskey and save the good stuff for the customers," Werner answered.

  "Then bar whiskey it is. Make it a double, straight up. And pour one for yourself. We'll drink to Kamas. May we never hear that name again. And we'll hoist another to your team. Fine men, all of them."

  Werner pulled a bottle with a torn label from under the bar and filled two shot glasses to the rim. Each man let the whiskey glide down his throat until his glass was empty.

  "I understand you're leaving soon," Lewis remarked upon setting his glass on the bar and letting out a contented sigh. "Your timing is good. Your work is finished here, Frank. It's time to move on."

  The comment struck Werner as odd, particularly since he had told no one of his plans, but he let it pass.

  "Another round?" he asked the visitor.

  "Sure, if you have one, I'll join you."

  Werner crouched low to reach for another bottle under the counter but when he rose, Dave Lewis had disappeared.

  ****

  Frank Werner noticed the flames on Harvard Street even before his train reached the Coolidge Corner Station. The moment the sliding doors opened, he tucked his duffel under his arm like a football and set off at a run toward Carol Dodge's apartment building.

  Police cars and fire trucks already blocked the street and firemen scurried to roll out their hoses and connect them to the nearest fire hydrants. Tall yellow flames reached out from most first– and second–floor windows and dense clouds of smoke billowed from the roof and windows of the topmost floors. It appeared to Werner that the building was lost before the battle had even begun.

  Werner elbowed his way through the crowd to the section of the police cordon nearest the building and stared in awe at the inferno. He thanked God that he had urged Carol and Linda to leave that afternoon but prayed all the same that neither of them had returned to retrieve more valuables. To lose all her worldly possessions would deal Carol a heavy blow, but it seemed to Werner that such an event might be what was required to send her life in a new and more positive direction. Perhaps Concord could offer her that.

  No sooner had Werner completed this thought than he saw a woman wriggle free from the straps holding her to a stretcher near a waiting ambulance. The woman wore jeans and an oversized white t–shirt darkened by soot and smoke. She ran to the nearest fireman and seized his arm as if to drag him toward the burning building.

  "You've got to save them!" she screamed. "There are people inside! Come, I'll take you there! Please, come quickly!"

  But the fireman was of a different mi
nd. He encircled her petite figure with his arms and gently herded her back toward the ambulance, where emergency workers rushed forward to retrieve her. In the glare from the portable light stands surrounding the fire trucks Werner had a clear view of her face and realized that the woman was Harriet Waterman.

  At that moment conflicting thoughts flashed before Werner's mind. Foremost was the fear that Harriet Waterman might be right and that Carol and Linda could still be trapped in the building. In an instant Werner reversed course and bulldozed his way back through the crowd. He ran to the first shop he could find that was still open, a twenty–four–hour pharmacy.

  Werner set his duffel on the floor, pulled a twenty–dollar banknote from his wallet and asked if he might make a local phone call. The turbaned pharmacist stroked his graying beard and accepted the money with an unctuous smile before withdrawing a phone from under the counter.

  Werner dialed Linda Holt's number and heard her groggy voice answer on the fifth ring.

  "Hello," she responded sleepily. "Who is this?"

  "Yes!" he mouthed silently while holding his left hand tightly across the mouthpiece.

  A moment later Carol Dodge joined the call on an extension.

  "Hello?" she answered in an annoyed voice that was music to Werner's ears.

  But Werner said nothing. When the pharmacist gave him a puzzled look and opened his mouth to speak Werner raised a hand to silence him.

  "Carol?" Linda asked. "Did you pick up, too?"

  "Yes," Carol responded. "But I don't hear anyone on the line. Must be a wrong number."

  That was all Werner needed to hear. He pressed the button to end the call.

  Both women were now accounted for while he was precisely the opposite. Aside from the women's safety, Werner could scarcely believe the miraculous piece of luck that had just landed in his lap.

  "Please accept this gift from me, my friend," he told the pharmacist, holding out another twenty New Dollars. "All I ask is that you forget you ever saw me. Will you do that, my friend?"

  "For a valued customer like you, Sir, most definitely," the Indian answered in a singsong voice.

  Werner handed him the banknote, returned the phone, and walked out the door onto the darkened street.

  ****

  Two hours later Werner glanced at his watch, which read ten minutes before three a.m. He finished the dregs of his third cup of coffee and left the all–night diner on Beacon Street where he had sat with his duffel since leaving the pharmacy shortly after one in the morning.

  The night air felt refreshingly cold on his face as he continued west on Beacon for three more blocks before withdrawing into the shadows at the edge of a parking lot. There he waited until an eighteen–wheeled tractor–trailer slowed down and turned on its high beams as if its driver were trying to read a street sign.

  Werner stepped quickly to the curb and waved at the driver: a sturdily built black man in his late forties with a neatly trimmed beard. The driver lowered his beams and opened the cab's passenger door. Werner climbed in and strapped on his seatbelt.

  "Ready for a road trip?" the driver asked with a welcoming smile.

  "Never been more ready in my life, Jonah," Werner answered as he settled back into his seat. "But there's been a slight change in plan. Tell me, how far south are you going on this run?"

  "This one's to Orlando," Jonah Tucker replied.

  "Then I'm with you, Jonah. All the way."

  "No stop in New Jersey?"

  "Nope. Going to the end of the line. And then some."

  "That'll be just fine by me," Tucker said. "But I thought you were headed back to Utah. To settle down, I mean. When we first met on the way out here, that's all you ever wanted to talk about. That and your daughter, anyway. What happened? Change of heart?"

  "Yep. Change of heart, all right," Werner replied with a boyish grin. "I've decided to go deep sea fishing."

  "Fishing!" Tucker exclaimed. "I've never heard you talk about no damned fishing! What do you know about deep sea fishing, anyway?"

  "Nothing at all, Jonah. But I know a man with a fishing boat who's going to take me out with him. And I have a really good feeling about what I'm going to find out there."

  And as if to reassure himself, Werner zipped open his duffel one more time and unclasped the manila envelope inside. There he found four bundles of banknotes, a letter from his daughter Marie, a card in Hector Alvarez's handwriting with the name and address of a charter boat operator in South Florida and a U.S. passport in the name of Harvey Konig showing a photograph of Frank Werner.

  ****

  Preston Fleming was born in Cleveland, Ohio. He left home at fourteen to accept a scholarship at a New England boarding school and went on to a liberal arts college in the Midwest. After earning an MBA, he managed a non–profit organization in New York before joining the U.S. Foreign Service and serving in U.S. Embassies around the Middle East for nearly a decade. Later he studied at an Ivy League law school and has since pursued a career in law and business. Preston lives in Boston with his wife and two children. He has written five novels.

  E–mail: preston@prestonfleming.com