Dark Tiger

by William G. Tapply

  The Stroudwater Inn sat on a bluff overlooking the mouth of the Stroudwater River where it emptied into the Fore River in the southwest corner of Portland. The coffee shop, which appeared to have once been a brick Cape Cod house, was a hundred yards up the river past the inn, separated from it by a couple of modest private homes.

  Calhoun parked in front and got out of his truck. It was about three minutes before eleven.

  He headed for the front door. Alongside the building under an awning was a bricked patio area overlooking the river with about a dozen round metal tables and matching metal chairs. A single man was sitting at one of the tables reading a newspaper and sipping from a coffee mug. The other tables were vacant.

  The man looked up and said, “Mr. Calhoun.” Not a question. He recognized Calhoun.

  Calhoun went over to the man’s table. “You Mr. Brescia?”

  The man pointed at the chair opposite him. “Sit down.”

  Calhoun sat.

  “Want coffee? A sticky bun?”

  As if she’d been listening, a waitress appeared. “Can I get you something, sir?” she said to Calhoun. “Coffee? Some breakfast?”

  “Just coffee,” he said.

  “Sir?” she said to Mr. Brescia.

  “I’m good,” he said.

  The waitress left. Brescia put his forearms on the table and leaned toward Calhoun. “I know all about you,” he said.

  Calhoun shrugged. “That makes one of us.”

  “What would you like to know, Mr. Calhoun?”

  He shook his head. “Nothing. I’m all set.”

  Mr. Brescia smiled. He was, Calhoun guessed, somewhere in his late forties, early fifties. A bulky man, thick in the shoulders and chest, but not fat. Coarse black hair, cut very short. Swarthy coloring, big lumpy nose. “I probably know things that you’d like to know,” he said. “All you’ve got to do is ask.”

  “Why don’t you just tell me what you want,” said Calhoun. “There’s no sense trying to mess with my head. It won’t do you any good.”

  “Fair enough.” Mr. Brescia reached down and picked up a thin attaché case from the brick patio. He put it on the table between them, opened it, slid out a large manila envelope, shut the attaché case, and put it back on the patio floor beside his chair. He unclasped the envelope, reached inside, and took out an eight-by-ten black-and-white photograph. He laid it face up on the table and turned it so that Calhoun could look at it.

  The photo was taken through the front windshield. It showed two people sitting in the front seat of an automobile—a man behind the wheel, his head thrown back, and a woman slumped against him in the passenger seat. They were obviously dead. The woman’s face was pressing against the man’s shoulder so that Calhoun couldn’t see it very well. She had light-colored hair.

  There was a black hole on the side of the man’s head, right in front of his left ear. Calhoun put his finger on the hole in the photo and arched his eyebrows at Mr. Brescia.

  Mr. Brescia nodded. “Bullet hole.”

  “Who’re these people?”

  “The man’s name was McNulty. He was one of our . . . operatives. The woman was a local girl named Millie Gautier. A townie. Sixteen years old.”

  “She have a bullet hole, too?” said Calhoun.

  Mr. Brescia put his fingertip on the middle of his forehead and nodded. “The weapon was in McNulty’s left hand.”

  “Murder and suicide,” said Calhoun.

  Mr. Brescia shrugged. “Looked like that.”

  “But you don’t think so.”

  “No. For one thing, McNulty wouldn’t do that.”

  “Somebody shot both of them, then.”

  Mr. Brescia nodded.

  “Townie,” said Calhoun. “What town?”

  “St. Cecelia.”

  The waitress appeared with a mug and a carafe of coffee on a tray. She put the mug in front of Calhoun, filled it from the carafe, and put the carafe on the table. “Anything else, gentlemen?”

  Mr. Brescia waved his hand in the air. “No, thank you.”

  After the waitress left, Calhoun said, “St. Cecelia. That’s way the hell up there in Aroostook County, ain’t it?”

  “Up there on the Canadian border,” said Mr. Brescia. “Potato country. Potato fields and blueberry burns, mobile homes and satellite dishes and rusted-out car bodies.”

  “Millie had a boyfriend who didn’t take kindly to her being with your McNulty?”

  “We think it’s more complicated than that.”

  “You want me to go up there and figure it out, is that it?” said Calhoun.

  Mr. Brescia shrugged. “We want you to go up there and figure out what McNulty was doing that got him shot in the head.”

  “You don’t know what he was doing?” said Calhoun. “Your own—what’d you call him?—your operative?”

  “Our operatives,” said Mr. Brescia, “have a good deal of latitude. Our system is unique among government agencies. We select our people for their intelligence and initiative and resourcefulness, we train them thoroughly, and then we trust them and support them. They are mostly out there on their own, and we don’t necessarily expect them to keep us updated on what they’re doing or even where they are.” He smiled at Calhoun. “Doesn’t that ring any bells with you, Stoney? I’ve just described your career with us.”

  Mr. Brescia hadn’t called him by his first name before. It made Calhoun cautious. He shook his head. “Rings no bells with me.”

  “Our mutual friend said you’d say that.”

  Our mutual friend being the Man in the Suit, Calhoun assumed. “Why me?” he said.

  “In spite of your, um, memory problems,” said Mr. Brescia, “we are convinced that you have retained your training, that you are still a superior operative.”

  “I’m intelligent,” said Calhoun. “I take the initiative. Resourceful. That’s still me.” He smiled. “What makes you think that?”

  “We’ve kept an eye on you. As you know. We don’t miss much, Stoney. You’ve solved two murders since you’ve been up here in Maine. Your sheriff calls on you to help him figure things out. You’ve shown intelligence, initiative, and resourcefulness—and courage to burn—not even to mention all of the survival and self-defense and problem-solving skills that were instilled in you at great government expense.”

  “That make me any different from your other operatives?”

  “What makes you different,” said Mr. Brescia, “is that in addition to all that, you are also a registered and licensed Maine guide. Not only that, but a guide with an excellent reputation, a highly sought-after guide. One of the best, we understand.”

  “I’m not doing much guiding these days,” said Calhoun. “I’ve learned I don’t like it much unless I’m sharing my boat with somebody whose company I enjoy, and I’m finding there ain’t all that many people who qualify. I’ve been happy taking care of the shop. Kate does some guiding. She’s as good at it as me, and she tends to like people.”

  Mr. Brescia was smiling. “You even talk like I imagine a Maine guide would talk. Nobody would know you grew up in South Carolina.”

  “So what’s my bein’ a guide got to do with your McNulty getting shot in the head?”

  “Last we knew of him before he turned up dead,” said Mr. Brescia, “he was staying at a place called the Loon Lake Lodge, which happens to be a high-end fishing lodge on, you guessed it, Loon Lake, which is one of a series of connected lakes in the northwest corner of Aroostook County. That’s genuine wilderness, Stoney, right up there on the Canadian border. Real wild country. Bears and moose and eagles and damn few people. We figure that what happened to McNulty stemmed from what he was doing at the resort. We think he ended up in St. Cecelia, which is about thirty miles south of Loon Lake, connected only by an old logging road but still the nearest township, with that poor dead girl as a way of deflecting attention from the Loon Lake Lodge.”

  “So you want me to hire on as a guide at Loon Lake and figure out what got McNult
y killed?”

  Mr. Brescia nodded. “We want to know what McNulty was investigating. We assume what got him killed was connected to that.”

  Calhoun smiled. “I imagine it could get me killed, too.”

  “Yes, it surely could,” said Mr. Brescia. “McNulty was a damn good man. Knew how to take care of himself, and look what happened to him. It’s a dangerous job, no doubt about it.”

  “So why should I do this?”

  “I’d think that would be obvious by now, Stoney.”

  “Because you can get me and Kate kicked out of our store,” said Calhoun. “Because you can get Walter kicked out of his rehab facility.”

  Mr. Brescia shrugged. “Because we can make anything happen.”

  “Say I’m willing,” said Calhoun. “I can’t just go knock on the door of the lodge and say, ‘Here I am, ready to be hired.’ ”

  “Don’t you worry about that. They’re going to come knocking on your door. We’re only asking you to agree when they do.”

  “That’s askin’ a lot,” said Calhoun.

  Mr. Brescia shrugged. “Consider the alternatives.”

  Calhoun nodded. “I know I’ve got to do it. I don’t have to like it.”

  “You don’t have to like me, either,” said Mr. Brescia, “but you do have to work with me.” He fixed Calhoun with his dark, baleful eyes. “All you have to do is what I ask.”

  “What else do I need to know, then?”

  “Two things,” said Mr. Brescia. “First, we believe McNulty had latched on to a national security issue. We don’t know what, or how it’s related to the Loon Lake Lodge, and we realize we might be wrong. For all we know, he was there just to do some fishing and stumbled onto something. Whatever it was, now he’s dead, and that doesn’t seem to be a coincidence.”

  “National security,” said Calhoun.

  “Wish I could tell you more, but that’s all I know, and even that is surmise. In any case, we’ve got to take it seriously.”

  Calhoun shrugged. “You said there were two things.”

  Mr. Brescia nodded. “The second thing,” he said, “is this. Those bullets weren’t what killed McNulty and Millie Gautier. They were both already dead when they got shot.”

  Calhoun arched his eyebrows. “Already dead, huh?”

  “That’s right.”

  “What’d they die of?”

  “Since it had the appearance of a homicide,” Mr. Brescia said, “the local sheriff turned both bodies over to the state’s medical examiner in Augusta. The ME was the one who figured out that the gunshots were postmortem, though she hasn’t yet been able to figure out what did kill them. For now she’s calling it natural causes.”

  “Is that what you think?” Calhoun said. “Natural causes?”

  Mr. Brescia shook his head. “No, I don’t.”

  “Why shoot somebody who’s already dead?” said Calhoun.

  “That’s something you’ll find out for us,” said Mr. Brescia. “It could’ve just been some jealous boyfriend, found the two of them parked in a car in the woods, thought they were sleeping. Hell, it could’ve been anybody. It might’ve had nothing whatsoever to do with what McNulty was investigating.”

  “You don’t believe that.”

  Mr. Brescia shrugged. “No, I suppose I don’t, but anything’s possible.”

  Calhoun lifted his coffee mug to his lips. The coffee had gone cold. He put down the mug. “Okay,” he said. “What else?”

  “You’ll be asked to hire on as a guide at Loon Lake,” said Mr. Brescia. “Take the job. Go up there. Figure out what McNulty was up to. When you do, tell us. Then you can go home. That’s all.”

  Calhoun smiled. “That’s all, huh?”

  Mr. Brescia nodded. “Not a word about this. To anybody. No exceptions. Understand?”

  Calhoun nodded.

  “No hints as to where you’re going, or why. I can’t emphasize this strongly enough.”

  “I get it.” He was wondering what he could say to Kate. She wasn’t going to like it, he knew that much.

  “At Loon Lake,” said Mr. Brescia, “you’re a temporary guide. Nobody up there will know any different, even the owner. That’s your cover. Don’t blow it.”

  Calhoun nodded. “I told you. I get it.”

  Mr. Brescia reached into his pants pocket, took out a business card, and handed it to Calhoun.

  Calhoun took it and looked at it. Two phone numbers and an e-mail address and the letter B. That was all. “Okay,” he said.

  “One more thing,” said Mr. Brescia.

  Calhoun looked at the man. “What?”

  Mr. Brescia’s eyes were dark and impenetrable. “You better not let me down.”

  “That a threat?” said Calhoun.

  Mr. Brescia shook his head. “I don’t issue threats.”

  “Sounded like a threat to me.”

  “No, Stoney. It was a statement of fact, that’s all. Just get the job done. There’s no room for failure. This is too important. Understand?”

  “Sure,” said Calhoun.

  “Don’t make me regret trusting you.”

  “I said I understand,” Calhoun said.

  Mr. Brescia smiled. “Okay,” he said. “Good luck.” He didn’t stand or offer Calhoun his hand.

  Calhoun got up from the table, nodded to Mr. Brescia, and headed back to his truck.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Toward closing time on Friday afternoon Calhoun was helping one of the local guys, a lending officer named Ben Fallows from the Portland Savings and Loan, pick out some landlocked salmon flies for his annual trip to Aziscohos and Parmachenee lakes and the Big and Little Magalloway rivers. Calhoun was pushing the old-time, traditional Maine streamer flies that presumably imitated smelt—Gray and Black Ghosts, Ballou Specials, Dark Tigers, Warden’s Worries—but Mr. Fallows seemed to believe that modern flies made from flashy synthetics had to be improvements, just because they were newer. “Refinements,” he called them.

  Calhoun made his case, Mr. Fallows shrugged a couple of times, and Calhoun realized he didn’t really give a shit what flies the banker brought with him. It didn’t matter that much anyway. They’d all catch fish if they were cast to the right places and fished properly. If they weren’t it didn’t matter, either.

  Just about then the phone rang. Kate, up at the counter, answered it, then called, “Hey, Stoney.” She held the phone up in the air. “For you.”

  Calhoun touched Ben Fallows on the arm and said, “Grab a bunch of whatever you want and take ’em to Kate. They’re all good. You can’t go wrong. I gotta get the phone.”

  He waved to Kate and pointed to his office. She nodded.

  He went into his office, shut the door, picked up the phone, and said, “Okay. I got it.”

  When he heard Kate disconnect, he said, “This is Calhoun.”

  “Stonewall Jackson Calhoun? The Maine guide?”

  “I do some guiding,” said Calhoun.

  The voice on the other end said, “Mr. Calhoun, my name is Martin Dunlap. I own a fishing lodge up near the Canadian border, and I have a proposition for you that I think will interest you.”

  Here we go, thought Calhoun. Just like Mr. Brescia said. An offer I better not refuse. “Okay,” he said. “Shoot.”

  “Oh, no,” said Dunlap, “not on the telephone. It’s too complicated for the telephone. We should be looking at each other, face-to-face. Why don’t I just meet you at your shop? That will also give me the chance finally to meet the legendary Kate Balaban.”

  “Nope,” said Calhoun. “You want to meet with me, we got to make it somewhere else.”

  Dunlap hesitated, then said, “Okay, I understand. I’ll take you to lunch, then. Tomorrow all right with you? Can you meet me at the Sandpiper at one o’clock?”

  “I can,” said Calhoun, “but I’d like to have some idea what your proposition is all about.”

  “It’s about a job, Mr. Calhoun.” Dunlap paused. “I was led to believe that you would be receptive
.”

  “Who led you to believe that?”

  “Why don’t we talk about it over lunch tomorrow,” Dunlap said. “Would that be okay?”

  “Sure,” said Calhoun. “The Sandpiper. I’ll be there.”

  “Excellent,” said Martin Dunlap. “One o’clock. See you then.” He hung up.

  When Calhoun returned to the front of the store, Ben Fallows was at the counter, and Kate was counting the flies he’d selected.

  “I got a few of everything,” said Fallows. “You never know what the fish might want.”

  Calhoun nodded. “Some days they just lay there saying to themselves, I ain’t bitin’ nothin’ except a yellow Matuka with three strands of Flashabou on each side tied on a 4XL Limerick hook with white thread. Other times they might wait all day for a Carrie Stevens Black Ghost, and if they don’t get an authentic one, they say the hell with it, they’d rather go hungry.”

  Fallows frowned at Calhoun as if he thought he might be having his leg pulled but wasn’t quite sure.

  “Stoney’s right,” said Kate. “You can’t have too many flies with you, because, like you said, you never know what the fish might be thinking.”

  Ben Fallows spent about a hundred and fifty dollars on his assortment of salmon flies. He seemed quite pleased when he left the shop.

  “So,” said Kate after the bell dinged behind Mr. Fallows, “who was that on the phone?”

  Calhoun felt that he was sinking deeper and deeper into his deception. He hadn’t exactly lied to Kate, at least not yet, but he’d withheld a ton of truth from her. Sooner or later he’d have to tell her what he was doing, and even then, he couldn’t tell her much. He knew that after he had lunch with Mr. Dunlap tomorrow he’d have no more excuses. He’d have to talk to her. He didn’t look forward to it.

  “It was just some guy, wanted to talk about fishing,” he said.

  The Sandpiper was a sprightly multicolored Victorian building on Baxter Boulevard overlooking Back Cove. It had once been a run-down private residence, but then a couple of ex-schoolteachers from Boston bought it, gutted it, renovated it, hired a chef from San Francisco, named it the Sandpiper, and turned it into one of the most popular high-end restaurants in Portland. It was particularly popular with wealthy tourists and summer vacationers from out of state.