High Crimes

by William Deverell

  Billy Lee sighs. “I did a readout half an hour ago. We’re still a mile off Canadian waters. Damn, I’m beat.” He looks down at the .32, and he seems disgusted with it.

  There is a silence.

  “What are you thinking, Billy Lee?” I ask.

  “Wa-a-al, I’m thinkin’ I could use another toke. Shee-it, this is fine smoke. Jus’ so fine.” He pulls a number from his shirt pocket and wets it with his lips. “Three thousand bucks a pound is what I figure. We’re sitting on a hundred thousand pounds, an’ it seems like the whole world is sittin’ on top of us.”

  He sticks the joint into the corner of his mouth, strikes a wooden match against the barrel of the gun, and holds a wavering hand under the J until he finally gets a light. I am thinking, one more of these and he will pass out.

  “Toke?” he says, passing it to me. I shrug and drag on it, just a little. Pete takes a hit, too.

  “Perfect, ain’t it?” Billy Lee says. “The night. The fog. You know this here coast like your hand, Pete.”

  “This is where I live, Billy Lee. My backyard. I’m almost home.”

  “Almos’ home,” Billy Lee repeats. “Aw, man, if you was to get this sucker in behin’ some rocks, man, I bet they couldn’t get no fix on you.” He takes the joint again and does a long suck on it. “You figger that ol’ man’s boat shed is big enough to hold all this stuff?”

  “Yeah. Is that where the cops are waiting?”

  “Well, actually, I made it like I didn’t know.” He is talking tight, holding the air in his lungs. “So d’you think we could unload this here ol’ beater an’ take her out and sink her?”

  He blows out the smoke and studies the fat roach. “I mean, Jesus, man, when am I gonna get a chance ever again to put three hundred million dollars’ worth of pot in the ground? Never again in this ol’ boy’s lifetime.”

  And Billy Lee squints at the countermeasures pod. He fires six bullets into it.

  “Yeah, Pete, y’all claim to be gamblers.” He looks at me, then Pete, and spreads his hands wide apart. “Well, let’s go for it, man.”

  Chapter Forty

  Johnny Nighthawk

  The radio is bubbling like a coffeepot. There is a great deal of rapid-fire conversation. Fishermen. Hundreds of them, it seems. Out on the Grand Banks chasing an enormous school of cod. At eleven o’clock at night? Yes, at eleven o’clock at night.

  There is an edge in their voices, often a frantic sound.

  We are doing maybe three or four knots, going as close in this deserted shore as Pete dares. We can’t see the shore. We can’t see the sky or the ocean. We would be completely blind without the tools that Meyers provided us with.

  From the portside radar unit, Pete picks out the images of known — at least to him — landfalls along the coast. Pete uses the depth sounder as a navigation device as well. He knows the soundings through here and needs no chart. This is his world. He had helped old Captain Pike carry rum and brandy through here when he was a kid.

  I should be in the engine room in case Pete suddenly has to call down a reverse engine order, but I think he wants an audience.

  “I know these waters, boys,” he says, smiling, “like a French chef knows his kitchen.”

  The fog is as thick as jelly and darkening with the night.

  Pete is dodging behind the rocks like a soldier running from snipers. A few degrees east, a few degrees west. A wide sixty degrees to port, and I watch the fathoms tick off: nine, eight, four. A long three. Then five. And then deep water again, and Pete takes her around the other way, to starboard.

  “We just came through the Devil’s Coffin there,” Pete says. “Right between two brandies not forty feet apart. You can see their tips at low tide, and you have to ease in just gentle between them. They’ve taken out fifteen, twenty boats, mostly people not from around here. That’s why we call these rocks sunkers.”

  Pete is rambling on, happy as a porpoise. He is in control. He is Pete Kerrivan of the Butter Pot leading the English squadron in a merry chase. He is feeling good because we have reversed Mitchell’s scam right back on itself. The odds may not be overpowering in our favor, but they’re worth betting on. Eleven-to-ten and pick ’em, as Pete puts it.

  And that is enough to make us feel very alive.

  Pete has devised his own scam, and it might work. A scam that might suck away this Dunkirk armada that is noisily spreading a net of patrol boats along the coast. After Billy Lee shoots out the satellite transmitter and before we set off for Captain Pike’s, we sling thirty million dollars into the sea — we clear the decks of the bales that are under the tarps, throw them into the ocean, and watch them catch the current and run away.

  The last bale to go is the crippled one, the bulto that was sliced open by the U.S. Coast Guard. Billy Lee stuffs his pockets full of flowertops, then we heave it overboard in a cloud of dust and resin. Brain food for the codfish and mackerel.

  “High tide coming in, boys,” Pete says. “It drives a current east through here, a current like a river.” The current will carry the floating bultos down towards Fortune Bay.

  “A false trail,” Pete exults. “Just the way the Masterless Men did it!” Pete has always loved to tell the stories about how his eighteenth-century namesake and his men cut false trails through the caribou bushlands near the Butter Pot, enticing the pursuing English marines down dead ends that petered out in bush and swamp.

  When the police find the floating bales, I am thinking, there will be an uproar. But, God, if they find them too soon, they will be sweeping all around here with radar, heat sensors, noise detectors, who knows what. From all the voices on the radio, they sound like they’ve got every RCMP patrol launch in the Atlantic out there, plus the Coast Guard to boot. It’s like a naval blockade. . . .

  A few hours have passed, and now it is time for Stage Two of Operation False Trail. “Okay,” says Pete, checking the clock. He plugs into the emergency channel.

  “Fire!” he screams. “My God, we’re going down!” He yells out a pair of false coordinates. “Mayday! Mayday! Abandoning ship!”

  That is all. Brief, before they can triangulate on us with shoreside radio-direction finders. The position that Pete gave them over the radio is the point that he estimates the bales will have reached in about two hours.

  The radio is now like a beehive. Some stupido loses his head and blows their code, forgetting that we are supposed to be a school of cod. “Alta Mar? Alta Mar? Are you on fire?”

  Everybody is jamming the emergency channel — a half hour of pure chaos before clear directions are given for boats to head out to the position in Fortune Bay that Pete had announced.

  We turn the volume down to help Pete concentrate. “Judas Bight,” he mutters, “where are you?” He licks his lips, studying the radar and the fathometer. “Okay, this has to be Little Boot Tickle. We’re going to have to wiggle in here, boys, just so fine. Bad reef in here. The boys call it the Grim Reefer. Anyone hear any noise, that’s me scraping along a rock.”

  We are almost on top of a blue light when we see it. A ship’s lantern.

  Dit-da-da. “W” in Morse Code.

  And “W” in our operations is the first letter of Welcome.

  It is Bill Stutely in his Cape Islander, and a couple of the boys are with him.

  “My compliments to the captain, sorr,” Bill calls up to me, “and would ye kindly tell the captain that knowin’ as I do he’s a poor excuse for a sailor and as like as not to stay lost in the fog all night, we t’ot we’d come out and lead ye’s in.”

  ***

  At Potship offices, it seemed to be all crew and no captain. Mitchell was standing at the edge, watching and listening to the turmoil, but giving no orders. He had heard the distress call, played back to him on tape. There was no question it had been Kerrivan’s voice. But calling from where? Mitchell had counted too heavily o
n the Sat-Track, had not wanted any of the pursuit vessels to get too close to the Alta Mar for fear of spooking Kerrivan.

  The chief radio operator was trying to clear the channels, trying to organize a search for Kerrivan’s ship in an area concentrated around the coordinates he had broadcast. “Sir,” the operator called, “they’ve picked up some floating bales. Not far from the Mayday.”

  The Coast Guard commander went up to Mitchell. “They’ve probably taken to the longboats. The fire must have blown the Sat-Track transmitter. But, shit, if the bales have floated off the deck, the Alta Mar is probably at the bottom now.”

  Mitchell spoke slowly. “Commander, I want all boats to return to their stations.”

  “Inspector, it was a Mayday! Lives are in danger. We have no choice.”

  “It’s a con job,” Mitchell said. “We’ve been double-crossed by Meyers’s so-called fail-safe device. I know Pete Kerrivan.”

  “Inspector, I don’t have any authority to break the law. We’ve got to respond with a search and rescue.”

  “Your people are under my orders tonight,” Mitchell said. “I’ll take responsibility for the law. Put the net back together.”

  “Inspector —”

  “Put the net back together.”

  Chapter Forty-One

  Johnny Nighthawk

  The boys swarm onto the Alta Mar like pirates. There is no time to be wasted, little enough time for greetings. We have to be out of here well before dawn.

  There are a few quick handshakes for Pete and Billy Lee and me as we scramble wearily onto the dock. It takes the boys only seconds to open the holds and start the crane. They are experienced fellows: Dave Doncaster, Artie Bland, Wilbur Scathe, Stutely, and six others.

  Pete heads for a man who stands by the boat shed with a briar pipe ablaze. “I could smell that terrible concoction from halfway out the bay, Uncle.”

  “Y’er a foine quare sight, Petey,” says Captain Pike. “And ye smells yerself, loik a mess o’ rottin’ gurry.”

  But despite that he hugs Pete hard in his arms. Pete introduces us, and Pike grasps us with a leathery hand.

  “Ah, it’s loik the auld days,” he says. “And would ye takes a little drap o’ stuff?”

  Cups are passed around, and Captain Pike pours into them from a flask of warmed brandy. A pot of simmering fish and broth sits on the planks, and we go to it like starving wolves.

  “Some Mounties from Sin Jan’s come callin’ a few days back, Petey,” the old man says. “Checkin’ out yer auld acquaintanceships, they was, but I says to them, I says, six years gone by since I last set eye on the loiks of Peter Kerrivan. We drank a little tay and they went they ways. They was foine b’ys.”

  “Where’s Kevin?” Pete asks.

  “And ain’t he with you, Petey?”

  Oh, no, I think.

  “Like as not he stopped off somewhere before going home,” says Pete. But he looks worried, and I feel a little tight knot of doubt.

  We have no time to reflect on Kelly. I jump over to Artie Bland’s herring seiner and help him get his block and tackle set up to assist in hauling the shrimp-net slings from our holds.

  We dump the slings at the door of the boat shed, where some of the boys are hauling and piling, back-breaking work. I take some turns with them, and after some hours of this, I feel torn and wasted, my muscles screaming. Twice, nets break, and once a couple of fellows had to dive into the cold water to retrieve some of the bales, tie up the nets, and get a grapple on them. No wet suits, either.

  The grind and clank of the cranes seems deafening to our ears, but the noise is muffled by the fog.

  By five o’clock in the morning, the thousand bales are in.

  “Mr. Stutely,” Pete calls.

  “Sorr!”

  “Lock up the shed, Mr. Stutely.”

  “Aye-aye, sorr.” The shed doors close, and we hear the sweet clink of the padlock.

  “Gentlemen,” says Pete, standing on some piled dories, “the Queen.”

  We all raise our cups of brandy into the air. Some of the guys are roaring with laughter. This is a smuggler’s finest hour.

  Captain Pike gives Pete another hug as we clamber back aboard the Alta Mar to take her to the sea and scuttle her.

  “We’ll move the goods out in a couple of weeks, Uncle, after the heat simmers down,” Pete says. “If anybody asks around, you’ve seen no one, and you haven’t unlocked the shed in six months.”

  Old man Pike sounds cross. “Petey, b’y, for shame. Me pore moind ain’t gone loik ye t’inks. I knows how to handle the b’ys when they comes to visit.”

  He passes us up the rest of the flask of brandy, and we are off. On the way out, we unslip the longboat from its cradle and hang it over the side, so we can be away and gone in the time it takes to slash a knife across the lines.

  I remember thinking we have moved a long way from Peddigrew’s original plan to bring the ship into a wrecking yard in Halifax, where his so-called clients are supposed to be waiting for it.

  I am up on the bridge. The radio is crackling as busy as ever, describing our configuration and our colors. The police have dropped all pretense, and they are calling on civilian craft to look for a ship called the Alta Mar. As to locations, there are lots of wild guesses.

  “Believed now to be moving south towards the high seas,” is what their traffic coordinator suggests.

  “Then let’s not go to the high seas,” Pete says. He brings the ship around, towards the Devil’s Coffin. “There’s deep enough water just around here.”

  The marine weather report makes an unwelcome promise: a fine, sunny day, and the sun will burn away the fog. Already, puffs of twilight wind from a land breeze are beginning to stir the soupy air, to ripple it.

  Without warning, the ship explodes into a great open gap, and we are surrounded by a brightness that seems nearly blinding. The eastern sun is reflected back on us by a bellying bank of fog, and we are in the open, naked.

  “Jay-sus!” Pete shouts, and sends me scuttling down to the engine room to crank it up full speed ahead; into the next fog bank.

  The light through the porthole dims, and I sigh with relief knowing we are again in heavy mist. But the wind has started to rise, and the fog is rolling and beginning to clump up like swatches of cotton candy. Pete rings me, and I bring the engines to slow and go to topside again.

  “It won’t be long before we’re an ugly sore thumb on the ocean,” Pete says. “What do you think?”

  “I think we open the cocks here,” I say.

  Pete nods. “Open them up, and I’ll take her in a bit where it’s thicker, up into the bay behind the sunkers.”

  Billy Lee and I open the sea cocks, and water comes pouring in.

  With a rushing tide, we creep in dead slow between the horns of the Devil’s Coffin. Four fathoms, three fathoms, and we watch the floor of the sea sliding beneath us. Then we are through, into the deep water of the bay. I go below and bring the engines to a clanking halt.

  It is time now to say a prayer on behalf of the Alta Mar to the Old Man of the Sea, before his arms envelop her. Alta Mar, alias Mayor Juan Atrapa, we have been through much together, and I am unhappy that I maligned you and called you down and described you in obscene ways. May you sleep and dream of us.

  We fill glasses with brandy. “May the seas always be high above you, you dirty, beautiful old queen,” says Pete. We toss back our drinks, and we remember that Davy Jones likes a tipple and we toss him one, too.

  Except for the sound of water gurgling into the holds below, the air is as silent as the moon. But there is some distant sound within the silence. A muffled shout? A laugh? I look at Pete. He is squinting into the fog.

  And as we stand at the rail, straining, the fog rolls gently away, and spots of sunlight dapple the decks, and the waters of the bay open up arou
nd us.

  The sound again. The shouts of men.

  “I got a bite! A big one!”

  A flash breeze combs the mists from the far side of the bay, and we can see. Three hundred yards away, emerging out of the mists like some ghostly galleon, is a forty-foot anchored RCMP boat.

  A couple of guys in toques and heavy sweaters are out on the deck with mugs of coffee, jigging for cod, and one of them is yelling and pulling up his line, hand over hand. He obviously has a big fish on the hook end.

  “Get the net, get the net,” he yells.

  “Johnny,” Pete says softly, “go down and get the engines rolling. Billy Lee, get in the longboat and go the opposite way. You get extra gas and rations.” Billy Lee hesitates, but Pete presses into his hand a thick bundle tied with rubber bands — about ten thousand bucks from the stake that Peddigrew gave us. By now the men on the boat have spotted us.

  The generator balks for several agonizing seconds. I am frantic here, and there is water up to my ankles. The generator finally fires into action. Pete orders reverse, and takes the ship into a bootlegger’s turn, back and around, then forward, full speed ahead.

  The fast little police launch will take just minutes to climb right up our stern. Pete is going for the fog.

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Meyers was awakened by the dogs barking and snarling outside. Then the buzzer rasped. It was five-thirty in the morning. It would be the man from Switzerland. He opened the front door, whistled to bring the dogs away from the fence. A station wagon, with its lights off, was idling by the gate.

  Meyers turned the switch that released the gate, and through the leaded-glass windows he saw the man move his car into the driveway. Meyers turned the switch again, and the gates swung shut.

  A couple of his men came running from the guest house. “Take the dogs in,” he said to them in Spanish. The dogs were police-trained. Working as a pack, they would kill.

  The arms dealer climbed nervously from his station wagon and went quickly up the stairs to greet Meyers.