"Because this is a no-fail grill that produces perfect cheeseburgers, that's why."
She shook her head. "Where's the adventure in that? No-fail grills are fascist."
I politely pushed my way past her into the kitchen to get a plate. “When it’s making the trains run on time or making a perfect cheeseburger, cooked medium rare, then fascism does have its attractive points."
As promised, lunch was completed in the allotted time, and we ate at the kitchen counter, eating small carrot sticks and a fistful of potato chips with our burgers. About halfway through Diane made contented noises and said, "You're right, these are perfect. I take back everything bad I said."
"The day's improving already," I said, and we finished up a few minutes later. As she helped me clean up and wash dishes in the sink, she said, "While the food is as good as any restaurant at the beach, I sure as hell don't have to wash up afterward."
"Think of it as the price you pay for my charming company." She bumped her hip into mine and was going to say something when we both heard a high-pitched beeping noise. Diane glanced at her side and said, "That's a pager going off, but it sure isn't mine."
"Uh-huh," I said, wiping down a plate.
"No, I'm serious. There's a pager going off in here. Lewis, why in the world would you have a pager?"
I put down the plate and washcloth. 'That's an excellent question. Excuse me for a sec, will you?"
I left the kitchen and went upstairs, taking two steps at a time. In my bedroom the little black pager was chiming at me from the top of an oak dresser. I looked at the display and recognized the number as belonging to the Lafayette House. I juggled the pager in my hand a few times and then went over to the small second-floor deck that juts out from my bedroom to the south. I slid open the glass door and stood on the tiny deck, and then let the pager drop from my hand.
I leaned over the deck railing and watched its progress. It fell straight down onto a collection of rocks ranging in size from an egg to a bowling ball. From this height, the pager seemed to explode in tiny black pieces of plastic. I took a deep breath of the ocean air and went back downstairs.
We had small dishes of chocolate ice cream for dessert and I said, “How goes the battle between you and Paula Quinn over the newspaper interview?”
She licked the spoon clean before going in for another bite.
"Oh, right now I'm being a caustic little bitch, not returning her phone calls, not bothering to help her set up an interview."
"You figure you can keep doing that for a while?"
"Why not? About the only time it'll change is when that new editor over there gets on the horn with the chief, and he orders me to cooperate. Until then, I'm like the morning fog. You can see me but you can't hold me."
I rattled my own spoon on the edge of my ice cream dish.
"And what will you do once the interview begins?"
The phone began to ring, and Diane looked at me quizzically. "Don't worry," I said. "I'll let the machine pick it up."
"Aren't you being mysterious today," she said.
"And I intend to be a bit more mysterious before the day is over. So, back to my original question. Once the interview gets underway, what will you do then?"
She seemed to think about that for a moment, and then she idly licked her spoon. "Oh, hell, I suppose I could seduce her and see what happens... " Then Diane laughed, and I smiled with her. "No, really, I know Paula. Nice young lady, enjoys playing with nice young boys like you. Besides, I'm not one to cheat. No, you know what I'll do, Lewis? I'll do the interview, discuss my background as a cop, how I grew up in Porter, so forth and so on. I'll be extremely polite and cooperative. And when the time comes that she feels compelled to ask me who and how I love, I'll politely say it's none of her business.”
I finished off my own dessert. "Unfortunately, her boss believes it's his newspaper's business to know."
"Then they can publish and be damned," she said.
"I'm pretty sure Paula's previous offer is still open," I said. "Hot story in exchange for dumping this profile story."
"And I'm positive that my previous position hasn't changed as well," she said. "I'm not going to trade professional favors as part of my personal life. Won’t happen. Now, if you’ll permit me, I’d like to change the subject for a moment.”
“Go ahead.”
"Earlier, you said something about being mysterious today. What do you mean by that?"
Almost as if on cue, my phone started to ring. She looked over to the phone and at me, and said, "What's going on?"
"I'm working on a new story," I said, as the phone stopped ringing and the answering machine did its thing.
She eyed me skeptically. "A real story, or one of those stories that will never appear in print?"
"One that will never see the light of day, which makes it mysterious. Look, what can you tell me about the drug activity around here?"
"Around here meaning Tyler Beach, or around here meaning the seacoast?"
"The seacoast."
"Well." She stretched out her denim-clad legs and plunked her feet down on my coffee table. "Tyler being Tyler, you can use that as an example for the rest of the area. Most of the stuff is low-key, marijuana or party drugs like Ecstasy. We do what we can --- and please note, I'm speaking in the royal 'we' --- to keep a lid on it. That's all we can do. There's harder stuff like coke or heroin, but so far, not that serious a problem."
"How about dealers?"
She looked over at me, eyes a bit merry. "What are you doing, looking for the proverbial Mr. Big, sitting in a luxurious mansion with a fistful of gold chains around his hairy neck and an AK -47 across his lap?"
"The thought's occurred to me."
She gently slapped me on the leg. "Then forget it, friend. Most of what occurs here is done on the sideline. Some loser will have a hobby of breaking into cars or houses, and will deal a little on the side. Probably drives over to Manchester or down to Lowell or Lawrence to pick up his supply, which he immediately cuts with oregano if it's marijuana and baby powder if it's cocaine. In the off-season, it's mostly locals, and when the tourists invade, it's still the locals, plus a few out-of-staters looking to make a few extra bucks on their vacation.”
"Nothing coming through the harbors?"
"You mean Tyler and Wallis? Lewis, please, you're making me laugh! This isn't south Florida. What goes through those harbors are tour boats, whale watchers and fishermen. Both harbors are so small that if somebody is bringing in something that isn't a tourist or a dead fish, people will know. It's a clannish group, those fishermen, and if someone is doing something like smuggling to make an extra buck or two, then by the next day our phone tip-off line would be filled with anonymous tips, telling us who's smuggling what."
"How about Porter, then? It's a big-enough city."
Diane put her empty dish on the coffee table. "Porter's just a grown-up version of Tyler. You can take everything I mentioned about Tyler and just multiply it. Just a bunch of losers and young kids who don't know any better. No Mr. Big, no grand schemes of smuggling in stuff from boats."
"Even with a harbor as big as Porter?"
"The harbor doesn't matter," she said, as the phone began ringing again for the third time since she had come by, and this time she ignored it. "What matters is the shipping that brings your stuff up from the Caribbean. If you're going through the islands down there and heading to the States, you're taking a trip of a day or two. Easy to slip in and out. Going up the Atlantic coast is another thing entirely. More time on the open seas means more time to be followed, to be spotted. Plus, down there, you've got lots of small craft and charter boats. Delivery is laughably easy. But not up here. No, you need a ship that can make the haul from the Caribbean up to the North Atlantic. And then what? Courier watercraft to bring stuff in from the supply ship? No, not hardly. Too difficult. The ports up here are working ports. Drug smuggling is too much of a losing proposition."
"Even if there's pressure
on the other ports down south?" She glanced at her watch. "Jeez, look at the time. Hey, walk me up to my car, will you?"
"Sure," I said, and I grabbed a light green L.L. Bean jacket and went outside. She slipped her arm inside of mine and said, “This supposed story you’re working on. I’m going to use my keen detective skills and say that it has something to do with that guy who ended up dead in his car a while ago, and those fed types who came in with their license plate numbers that don't exist."
"You deserve a raise," I said.
"Then please write a letter to the town manager, will you?
And what's so important about this dead guy anyway?"
Lots of possible answers to that one, so I gave her the first one that came to me: "He practically died on my doorstep, and I don't like that."
As we walked up the bumpy dirt driveway, the Lafayette House gradually came into view to the right. I imagined that whoever was calling and paging me this day was having a lousy time, and that thought made me smile.
"Pressure," she said. "You said something about pressure, on the other ports down south. Care to explain?"
We had reached the edge of the parking lot, where Diane's dark green Volkswagen Jetta was parked. It still had the thirty-day temporary paper plate attached to its rear.
I said, "If the cartels and smugglers were getting pressure from the other ports down south, wouldn't they think of expanding to ports up here? Like Porter or Portland?"
She shook her head sharply. "Those guys do what they like, and what they like is down south. If the pressure on the ports increases, they go to bringing it in on airliners. If pressure builds on the airlines, then they try driving it up 1-95. Look, pressure and getting intercepted is part of their business. It's like a supermarket assuming that a certain percentage of their goods are going to be shoplifted. It's nothing surprising, nothing out of the ordinary. It's what they plan for. All right?"
"Sure," I said. "You're making a lot of sense. But tell me, is there somebody I can talk to at the shipyard?"
"Nope, sorry," she said. "I can’t help you there.”
"How about the Porter police, then? A fellow detective?”
“What, so he can tell you what I just said? Man, you are being mysterious today?”
"Part of my alluring nature, which so far hasn't worked on you."
She laughed and patted my cheek. "It's going to take more on your part to make yourself alluring, no offense intended. Some surgery and hormone therapy, to start. Look. Joe Stevens. A detective in Porter. I've had some dealings with him. He's young but good. I'll make a call."
"Thanks."
As she headed toward her car, I thought of something else.
"Hey, Diane?"
"Yeah?" she said, turning and zipping up her coat.
"The Porter Naval Shipyard. I thought you had a fair number of relatives who worked there."
Now she seemed cold and tiny in her coat. "I do. But you said you wanted to talk to someone who could help you. Lewis, those relatives of mine who work at the shipyard, I haven't talked to in years. Let's just say that they could become bosom buddies with the new boss at the Chronicle, if they knew what he was up to. Clear enough?"
I nodded. "Clear enough. Thanks."
But she didn't say anything else as she went to her car. Back home there was a little red numeral 4 on my answering machine, which meant that I must have missed another call while walking out with Diane. Gee. I erased them all and went over to the television set and the cabinet that supported it, and opened the bottom door. Past my collection of videotapes from such subjects as the Apollo moon landings to D-Day were the five I apes I had rented the other day from the Falconer video store. I look out the unviewed tapes, removed the receipt, and then put the tapes on the counter.
The phone started ringing again. Time to get moving, before Beeves and her boys came bursting through the door.
A half hour later, I was at another store in Falconer, this one on Route 1, just south of the main gate for the Falconer nuclear power plant. This store was in a small plaza that had a jewelry store, a pet store, and a place where one could drop off packages to be delivered. The clerk was a sullen-looking youth who was smoking what smelled like clove cigarettes. The adult section this time was past a doorway blocked by long streams of beads, and I pulled another five tapes to be rented.
Once again, since I was a new renter, the clerk asked me to fill out a form, which I did, and within a couple of minutes I was out the door. Shivering slightly in the cool April afternoon was a heavyset man holding a cardboard sign crayoned with the words FORNICATORS WILL PAY THE PRICE. He looked at me and called out, "God bless!"
"If you say so," I said, and left Falconer, a lonely soldier in the battle for something or another.
I was lucky this afternoon, for Felix was home and willing to chat. We took up residence in his kitchen, and he offered me a bottle of Molson Golden Ale and poured himself a glass of wine. He had on jeans and a long-sleeved black turtleneck shirt, and I made a show of cocking my head, as if listening to something.
He sat down in a captain's chair across from me by the kitchen counter, noting my look. "Something wrong?"
"Nope," I said. "Just listening to see if anybody's taking a shower and needs to be rubbed down or something."
Felix laughed. "Oh, Mickey. She's working at the stables this afternoon, and I'm going up to see her in a few minutes. She's trying to teach me to ride a horse."
"And how's she doing?"
"She's doing well, but unfortunately I don't get much time in the saddle, so to speak. Something always manages to come up to interrupt the lesson."
I tried to act innocent. "Does that mean you get your lesson fee back?"
Another laugh. "Hardly. What's up with you?"
"Trying to get a handle on something," I said.
"Something to do with the dead guy in the parking lot?"
"The same," I said, taking a satisfying swig from my Molson. "Well, I did some work on that, like you know. Whoever he is, he wasn’t connected to anything that I’m familiar with, or with friends of mine. An out-of-towner in every aspect. What else do you need to know?"
I looked around the clean kitchen, where cooking pots and pans and culinary instruments of all types hung in plain view. I've always said Felix should do a shooting-and-cooking show --- a unique concept, one I was sure would be a surefire success --- but he always demurs, saying he doesn't need the publicity,
"Drugs, as clichéd as it may sound," I said. "I think the guy was connected somehow to the unofficial pharmaceutical business, and I want to know more."
Felix rubbed a thick finger around the rim of his glass.
"What makes you think I know anything at all? You know what I've always said and done: Nothing to do with drugs, at all. Too many crazies."
"True, but I'm just looking for some information. Is the trade around here so attractive that someone would be killed for it?"
A shrug. "People get killed all the time, sometimes for pocket change or because somebody stepped on somebody else's sneakers. But a death over the local drug market .. Lewis, it doesn't sound right."
"How's that?"
He rubbed the finger again across the glass edge. "Too diffuse, too penny-ante, too low-level. Even in Boston and New York and Hartford, there's hardly any gangbanging activity at all. Those cocaine and crack wars, they're mostly over, and that's in the big cities. Up here? Never even came close to that level of violence, either then or now. Which makes me suspicious if somebody told you that guy was whacked over the local drug trade."
I took a cold swallow of the Molson. "Suppose the guy was connected to a cartel, looking to come up here and expand their business?"
"In what way?" he asked, suspicious.
"Start importing their materials around here. Like Porter Harbor.”
Felix said, “Excuse me for being blunt, but have you lost your mind? Forgot where your sock drawer was this morning? Putting orange juice in your breakf
ast cereal?"
"No, no, no, and thanks for the concern."
"Well," he said, hunching himself over so his elbows rested on the polished kitchen counter. "I don't doubt that some stuff moves in and out of Porter, but it's a commercial port, and a small one, at that. The guys from the cartels, they like to work in familiar turf, familiar ports. This far north and something this small doesn't make any sense whatsoever."
He looked up over the kitchen sink, where a small clock rested on a shelf, next to a row of spices. "Running out of time, my friend. Anything else?"
"Yeah, if you don't mind."
He smiled widely. "Knowing where I'm going and what I'll be doing with the dear Mickey this afternoon, I'm feeling particularly generous. Go ahead."
"I'm trying to find someone in the local area, somebody associated with the Porter Naval Shipyard."
"You got a name?"
"I've got a nickname," I said. "A guy called Whizzer."
"Whizzer?" he asked.
"Whizzer," I confirmed.
He finished his glass of wine, slapped his hands against his flat belly. The sound almost echoed in the house. "I'll give it a go, Lewis, but it sounds like a guy who has a bladder problem. Not somebody hooked up with the drug business."
"Maybe so, but if you could find him, I'd appreciate it. Even tell a few lies about you to Mickey the next time I see her."
"Sure, I'll see what I can do. In the meantime, hurry up and finish your beer, so I won't be late."
A couple of minutes later we were outside, and he started walking to his blue Mercedes convertible. "By the way, you okay on this?" he asked.
"Okay on what?" I asked.
"Whatever it is you’re looking for. I know you like to poke and pry at things mysterious, usually when it interests you or involves a friend. Whatever for, I've never been quite sure why. Must be your law-abiding nature."
"Must be," I said.
"But this thing sounds too nutty, even for you. Dead guy in a car, fed types crawling around, looking for a guy named Whizzer. You working for the feds on this, Lewis, or is this freelance?"
I said, "Let's just say I'm working."
He gave me a straight look "Okay. I understand. But understand this. Be careful. Feds always have their own agenda. Always. And most times, they don't share their agenda with us little people. So watch your step."
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