Goofy Foot

by David Daniel

  I checked to see that the crates were still where they’d been. They were undisturbed. I set myself up in the shadows at the side of the building, out of the chill mist as best I could, and squatted against the wall and waited. I didn’t know exactly what I was waiting for. Somehow it seemed an alternative to acting, and maybe that’s why I was there, though something told me that Delcastro’s final act had links that tied to here in some way and that energies were in motion. Except for the occasional swish of a car going past on the road, invisible from where I was, things were quiet. And cold. I drew my coat closer to me. Midsummer, and I was cold.

  A mistake. That’s what I realized after ten minutes. I was in the wrong place. And this thought brought relief. I was out of harm’s way. My heart began to pump slower. The rain was thinning, too. I actually felt warmer. It was time to get the authorities involved.

  Then I heard the low thrum of an engine. I craned a look toward the road, but it was empty. I realized then that the sound was coming from the ocean. I listened, but it stayed out there, in the darkness. A fishing boat?

  I jumped when a voice called my name. I jerked around to see a figure in dark clothing move from the shadows of the seawall, not ten feet away. “Alex,” he repeated. It was Ed St. Onge. He hurried over and hunkered down beside me.

  “This isn’t New Mexico,” I said in lieu of something more revealing. I wanted to hug him. “How’d you know I’d be here?”

  “I didn’t. I guess I wanted to check out those guns for myself.”

  “I’m not sorry to see you.”

  “I’ve got enough murders back in Lowell to worry about,” he grumbled. “Like I’m eager to go hunting out of town for more.”

  “Who said anything about murder?”

  “Good, let’s keep it that way. I’m glad you’re alive.” He had on what looked like an army and navy store raincoat. He was staring at the dilapidated building at our backs, with its graffiti and chalky stucco facade. “When you mentioned the name on the phone, it didn’t click. I thought this place was history years ago.” There was wonderment in his voice. “I heard Bobby Vee sing ‘Blue Velvet’ here.”

  “Vinton,” I said.

  “What?”

  “Bobby Vinton sang ‘Blue Velvet.’”

  “Who’s Bobby Vee?”

  “He sang ‘Take Good Care of My Baby.’”

  He went back to recalling. “On a warm night, the doors would be open in front here. Often as not, somebody’d bite a knuckle sandwich and spit blood from a fat lip. A few kids would drink too much warm Schlitz and puke in the sand, and the local make-out king would get to third base with the local falsie queen in the front seat of his dad’s station wagon and go home feeling like he’d been jocked.”

  “Thanks for the memories,” I said.

  “It’s a whole crazy other world now.” He shook his head, clearing it. “I called your man Delcastro, he wasn’t in.”

  I told him what had gone down. His face creased into grim lines, and his eyes probed mine. “I think he caught a whiff of pending trouble,” I said.

  “Was he on the take?”

  “I don’t think he was palming cash. Gifts to the department in the form of the equipment and cars would’ve made it a lot easier to take, but the end result, yeah. I think Delcastro was beholden to Ted Rand. I think he obstructed an unexplained drowning investigation years ago. Maybe he intimidated a witness. It sat in the way of acting now.”

  “I’m liking all this less and less.”

  “Yeah. When’s the cavalry supposed to show?”

  “He’s here.” I gawked at him. “I didn’t call ATF,” he said. “You made the point pretty well.”

  “I was going to tell you the same.”

  “What are friends for?” He nodded at the sawed-off propped beside me. “Aren’t you going to introduce us?”

  The gun was as illegal as it could get. He could’ve busted me on the spot and sent me up. I winced. “I didn’t know what I might run into.”

  “Neither did I.” From the folds of the raincoat he pulled a riot gun.

  It was a great comeback, and I let him enjoy it. Then I said, “Is that from the LPD armory?”

  “Shh.”

  “But you’re not official.”

  “My shield and ID are in my desk drawer back in that city where this widow maker belongs. Where you and I belong,” he said emphatically.

  I relaxed a little more. “Then let’s make this easy. Let’s go in and get those crates, and you can deliver them to ATF on your way home.”

  He nodded. We started forward, and just then, someone emerged from the shadows by the seawall farther down to the left, jogging toward the water. He evidently hadn’t seen us. He stopped some fifty feet down the beach and blinked a flashlight at the ocean twice. The motor, which I’d heard earlier and which had faded into an almost inaudible hum, revved up, and lights came on a short distance offshore. Something in the pattern of the lights was familiar … and then I knew why. It was the same pattern I’d seen on the beach in front of the rental house two nights ago in the fog, lights that had vanished before I could tell where they came from.

  “What the hell …” St. Onge whispered beside me.

  A craft was emerging from the surf, coming right up onto the beach, like some sea monster from Japanese television. I realized suddenly that it was an amphibious duck. The only place you saw them anymore was rolling through Boston, full of tourists. But this wasn’t here for a tour. It growled up the incline on knobby oversized tires, lights glaring, and drew to a stop where the man with the flashlight stood. I could hear voices, but I couldn’t make out words. Then the man with the flashlight swung it toward the abandoned building with a quick jab, and the duck chugged our way.

  I shifted position and felt St. Onge do the same at my side. Through the glare of lights it was impossible to know who or how many were on the duck. It stopped ten feet from the back of the Surf, and the headlights died. Two men jumped down to join the man on the beach. Both of the newcomers were carrying assault weapons—fun little numbers that looked like TEC-9s.

  “For the record, it’s not cops,” St. Onge whispered. “I checked.”

  Maybe I’d hoped it was, hoped that this could all be explained and make sense and turn out okay.

  The man with the light blinked it again, and the duck backed off a distance to become just a dark shape in the spectral mist. The three men hurried toward the rear of the building. Soon we could hear the chirp of boards being popped loose. They came off a lot easier than they had for me.

  I kept scanning the scene, trying to determine if there was a teenage girl with them, maybe still in the duck. I was wondering if this was a gunrunning and kidnap ring of some kind. I didn’t know how many people were still aboard; there had to be at least one.

  We had only the advantage of surprise. The man with the light held it on the corroding stucco wall as one of the others yanked at a final board, which squawked feebly, as if tired of keeping its secret, and let go. The men stared into the black hole a moment, evidently debating who got to play tunnel rat.

  “Recognize any of them?” St. Onge whispered.

  Yeah, white males between the ages of twenty and sixty. I shook my head. The two with the TEC-9s slung them and crawled into the opening. The man with the light stayed outside, playing the beam into the hole. The amphib stood by, rumbling in the fog. St. Onge nudged me. “One more thing.” He handed me a pair of heavy latex gloves, the kind that evidence techs wore, along with practically everyone else in these days of contamination paranoia. But germs were last on his list of worries. “In case someone wants to scrape together a trail later.”

  The gloves made tiny squeaks of protest as I pulled at them, then they encased my hands like new skin. In a moment, the two men emerged, grunting with effort as they dragged out the first crate. The outside man lowered his weapon to give them a hand. I was suddenly thinking about what I’d told Van Owen, how inertia sometimes settled around you like
wet sand, and when a time came to take action, you no longer could. It was my show. I stood up and flashed my light in their direction and shouted, “Police! Freeze!”

  There were probably a half dozen better ways to handle it. I’m sure that the textbooks they study in the criminal justice programs at universities had recommended approaches. Mine might appear as a little sidebar: the bad example. But textbooks are rarely written by people who ever have to do what they write about. And I didn’t know what the hell else to say. I did know that if that’s all I said, you might as well tag our toes and put us in cold storage right now. I was aware of St. Onge darting to his left, away from me, perhaps wanting to give an illusion of numbers. I killed the flashlight, not eager to be a ready target from the duck, and stepped nearer so as to make the double-bore twelve-gauge visible. “You’re surrounded,” I shouted. “Don’t move.”

  The man with the light swung it toward the duck, slashing it in a signal. Suddenly, the amphib’s headlights came up, like klieg lights blistering a stage. I flung my arm up to block the glare, but even so I felt my night vision shrivel. A silhouette with a TEC-9 started back into the hole under the Surf. Ed’s riot gun barked, and the man went down headfirst. I could make out the other two scrambling for their weapons. Dropping the flashlight, I dived toward the seawall, rolling as I hit the sand. Their assault weapons went pop-pop-pop and chips of concrete flew.

  The duck’s motor gunned, and the vehicle came churning up the slope of beach like an ungainly sea monster, flinging damp sand from its knuckled tires. I could just make out a man standing behind the low windshield holding a rifle. A thin red laser beam cut across the stucco wall, seeking out, then finding, St. Onge, who crouched near the building. I drew the .38 and sent fire toward the duck. The vehicle swiveled abruptly, like a Tonka Toy in the grip of a heavy-handed kid in a sandbox, and closed on me fast. I saw the laser streak out like an angry finger, zipping across the seawall at my back.

  New technology has its place, but so does old. I snatched up the sawed-off. It was from 1928, and who knew but what the barrels would peel back like bananas, but I didn’t ponder it long. The staccato popping of the assault weapons was firecrackers; the shotgun’s boom was dynamite. One blast knocked the duck’s windscreen apart about where I imagined a driver to be. The second blast earned a scream. The assault rifles on the ground fired a burst, then fell silent. In the dark, I saw two men dart for the craft and get behind it as St. Onge fired his riot gun in a quick series of blasts whose sound alone would’ve quelled a Third World rebellion. I heard the rounds thunk into heavy wood and whine off steel. One of the men flopped in the sand and lay still. I knocked down a second, who got up again and scrambled up into the duck. As Ed reloaded, the duck started to grind toward him.

  I fumbled two more shells into the sawed-off.

  The duck was coming right at St. Onge. I raised the shotgun and fired. It kicked at me like an angry horse. The man who’d leaped aboard levitated, was flung sideways, and rolled off the vehicle, but his foot must’ve snagged. He was dragged bouncing along the hard sand. Whoever was inside didn’t notice or didn’t care. The vehicle swerved and St. Onge was clear. But as it passed him, someone inside shot him in the chest, and he went down. I ran toward him, firing the last round. The craft swung in a tight arc, its tires throwing sand, ribbing the beach with the tread tracks I’d noticed earlier, and rolled toward the water. The way the man flopped, I knew his bones were broken into pieces. At the water’s edge, the body hit a piece of driftwood or a large rock, gave a final bounce, and was flung aside.

  I got to St. Onge. He was facedown on the sand, his arms curled under him as if he’d brought them together to cover his wound, which I couldn’t see. He lay still. I dropped to my knees beside him. I called his name and got no reply. I debated for just one second, then I rolled him carefully over. He felt limp as a sack of sand. The front of his coat was ripped and wet. Feeling helpless all at once, I looked up the beach toward the road, wondering what to do. I could hear only the diminishing chug of the amphib.

  St. Onge coughed. With a moan, he sat up.

  I grabbed him. “I thought you were—”

  “Aren’t I?” He gazed around. “Something hit me.”

  But there was no blood. A round had evidently lodged in the thick leather of his shoulder harness, and another had ripped his coat’s shoulder, but he wasn’t hurt.

  With vast relief, I helped him up. He wobbled a little as he tried to walk, but then he caught on. We checked the two men on the sand; they weren’t as lucky. St. Onge looked at me. “Either one of them your guy?”

  They were strangers. The third man rolled in the surf—a few feet in, a few feet out—but he wasn’t Ted Rand either. I got my feet wet hauling him above the reach of the waves.

  “You okay?” St. Onge asked.

  My knees were gimpy. “Yeah.”

  “Me too.”

  It wasn’t the whole truth for either of us, but it was a start.

  The Sand Bar was only slightly busier than the first time I’d been there. The yin/yang philosopher looked up as we went in. If I thought he had answers to fill my needs right then, I’d have been glad to listen, but what I really needed was a drink. Maybe a chug-fest was in order. Ed and I moved to a table in a far corner. My shoes made squelching sounds. If we had been official, SOP would’ve required that forms be filled out, ballistics checked on all the weapons used, probably some kind of posttraumatic-stress counseling, and a full internal investigation. If we were official. Instead, we’d gathered up our weapons. I found the flashlight mashed flat. We dragged the crates of weapons back into the space where they’d been to get them out of sight. I didn’t think anyone would be coming back for them tonight. We peeled off the latex gloves and stashed our own weapons in the trunks of our vehicles.

  The bartender came over. “I remember you,” he said. “Olde Mr. Boston.” He grinned.

  “Yeah.”

  “You look pale. You ought to get some rays.”

  “A couple drinks will have to do for now.” I glanced at St. Onge.

  “V.O. double and a Bud,” he said.

  “Two,” I said.

  “That’ll work also,” agreed the barman.

  When he’d gone to get them, I said, “Maybe I should’ve just let them take the guns.”

  “They were selling death in the streets. They weren’t going to lie down.”

  “I could have walked away when I found the boxes. It wasn’t what I was after. I didn’t have to call you.”

  “How would you calculate the body count then? Not here, not today, but you can bet it’d be high.” He held out a hand, palm down, and I saw it tremble. “But we put some bad guys out of business.”

  “A few permanently.”

  He nodded grimly. “But we also clipped whoever in the staties made this possible. He won’t be able to hide. Unless he’s shark food already, his ass is grass. He’ll get pinched.”

  But Rand was smoke. Grab your metaphor. And maybe I’d blown everything. Maybe Rand had killed Michelle Nickerson when he’d killed her father—had them killed. No, I wedged that thought away. Why would he kill her? She was no threat. But I didn’t know. I didn’t have her.

  “Here you be, gentleman.” We took the drinks. The barman slid a glance at St. Onge, and then leaned toward me. “Don’t tell me it’s not a flat earth, brother. One day we all of us reach that horizon and go over into the void. In the meantime, do good where you can. I thought about what you asked me when you were in before. I recognized him.”

  I stared, then got it. “The guy Jillian was with when you saw her last?”

  “Uh-huh. I must’ve blocked it out, like a defense mechanism against reliving pain.”

  I glanced at St. Onge, who was concentrating on his drink, then back. “What pain are you talking about?”

  “The humiliation of playing against Point Pines—it’s like a conspiracy against every other team in the league. They crush us every time. The guy plays for the
m.” He set the drinks tray on the table and lifted a framed photograph from it. “Here he is here, the son of a bitch—getting an MVP award.”

  St. Onge kept out of it. I scanned the photo he had removed from the wall behind the bar—it was an end-of-season banquet, all right, and Ted Rand was there at the table with his players. “This guy here?” I said, touching the picture glass.

  “That’s him.”

  I was confused. It wasn’t Ben Nickerson. “You’re sure he’s the one she was with a few nights before her crash?”

  “A few nights? I’m talking a few hours. He left with Jilly that same night.”

  I stared again at Mr. Softball, at his sturdy, suntanned face, with its shaggy hair, and I recognized him even without the mirror shades.

  39

  I drove out to the Old Cape Road, through the lonely slack-water places, and in the stillness the old Surf ballroom seemed far behind. St. Onge had looked questioningly at me when the bartender took his photograph back, but I didn’t offer an explanation of what the cryptic exchange had meant, and Ed didn’t ask. He had already shoved his neck way out. “I’ve got to get back to Standish,” I told him. “Can you handle things here?”

  “An anonymous pay-phone call to the local heat is the extent of my involvement, then I’m out. I still haven’t packed for vacation.”

  He cut off my thanks with a wave. I left money for the drinks, and a five-dollar tip. So the cop named Shanley was the softball player who’d approached Jillian Kearns in the parking lot of the Cliff House and who’d been with her after she and I had parted at the lighthouse. That was interesting, but what it might signify would have to wait. Something else was beginning to knock at the back of my mind as I got in the Blazer. “Like a conspiracy against us,” the barman had said. He’d been speaking metaphorically, about a softball dynasty, but it reminded me of something I hadn’t given any thought to until now.