Red Herrings Can't Swim (Nod Blake Mysteries Book 2)

by Doug Lamoreux

  Lisa threw out her small but absolutely fine chest, lifted her proud chin, and poked her glasses up off the tip of her nose. “Because of what I have to show you in the boat.”

  God, the night was never going to end. “What boat?”

  “The boat I rented.” She turned giving me a view of the water, and of a twelve-foot aluminum craft with a small Johnson outboard to which I hadn't paid any attention, tied to the pier below our feet. She stretched her arm, twisted her supple wrist, and fanned her fingers like Carole Merrill offering a 'Let's Make a Deal' contestant a year's supply of grape Ne-Hi. Then she said (I kid you not), “Ta dah!”

  The coat she should have been wearing was spread out across the bottom of the boat, from mid-ship to the bow, covering several inches of dirty shipped lake water and… something else. A pair of soggy boots protruded. It didn't take a genius to see they had people in them. My mouth fell open but nothing came out. What could I say? I stepped from the pier, down into the boat (soaking my own shoes and socks), and lifted Lisa's coat. What I saw ruined my whole day.

  There wasn't much to him. He might have stood five-foot-four, back when he used to stand. He weighed maybe a hundred and twenty; a few pounds more with the weight of the water. He was soaked from crown to soles. His work boots were worn brown leather, with the frayed tops of once-white wool socks peeking out. He wore green bib coveralls over a gray button-down shirt, both worn. He wore a suit jacket, brown or tan, it was hard to tell as wet as it was, which seemed a bit odd over the work clothes. Soup and fish maybe? Had he been to an event or meeting it might have been healthier to skip? The coat's gray inside lining featured a tear from the left chest down to beneath the pocket. I guessed him at sixty but it was a guess. What I knew for certain was, he wasn't going to get any older. A sigh seemed in order and I produced one. Then, over my shoulder, I plaintively asked Lisa, “I don't suppose he came with the boat rental?”

  “No. He was in the water. I pulled alongside and dragged him aboard.”

  “Looks like you brought most of Lake Michigan with him.”

  “I didn't have to go that far. He was actually,” she pointed, “right there in the mouth of the thingy.”

  “The channel?”

  She snapped her fingers and nodded. She tried to add something but I cut her off with a sharp, “Wait, don't say anything else. Cripes!”

  Down the dock, passing through a pool of amber light cast by one of only three poles spanning the distance, headed our way, was a string bean of a male figure with a decided limp. The combination told me it was George Clay, the son of the old boat renter, and part-time boat renter himself. No doubt the one who'd provided Lisa's conveyance. I'd had dealings in one way or another with both Clay and his father. They were, after all, two ready sets of eyes when eyes were needed at the harbor. They rarely missed a thing and, therefore, came in handy to me on occasion. I wasn't surprised to see George headed our way.

  “Time for you to go,” I told Lisa.

  “Go where?”

  “Home. Anywhere. Just get out of here.”

  “But Blake…”

  “But nothing. There's a dead body; it has to be reported. We can't answer the questions that will follow. There's no way they will believe you went looking for a drowned man on the spur of the moment and just happened to find one. And there is no way we are telling the Chicago police you were led here by my psychotic flashes. To put it bluntly, 'This is another fine mess, Ollie.' Wenders would love a chance to bury either one of us so deep in Joliet they'd have to bring us air in paper bags. I don't want you any more mixed up in it than you are. Now I've got to make up a lie about why I rented a boat. And how I found our friend here. And what I've done with him since. I can't do that with you buzzing in my ear.”

  “Blake, I can help you.”

  “Don't force me to say, You already have.” I stopped there, keeping it to myself that, once again, my secretary had helped me – right into the soup. Why say it? What would have been the point? I might as well start swimming. But there was no time to waste.

  “George Clay is headed this way. Don't bother to look, just go, before he gets here. If I get thrown in the jug, I'll need you free to call lawyers, and Large, and God knows who else. Besides, if you don't get home safe, your mother will put out a hit on me.”

  “What about your mother?”

  “She'll take the contract. Go!”

  Lisa didn't want to but, bless her heart, she went. George Clay arrived in time to see her fade into the shadows of the parking lot. “Hey, Blake. Was that your secretary? She rented a–” Then it dawned on him where I was standing. “Oh, yeah, there it is.” Then it dawned on him what lay at my feet. “Hey, Blake, is that a–”

  “Yeah, George, it is.”

  “Wow. Lisa caught her limit, huh?”

  “No. She didn't. You haven't seen Lisa tonight. Got that, George? I rented the boat.”

  “You rented the boat?”

  “Right. I rented the boat. Do me a favor and make your paperwork say so.”

  “There isn't any. I mean there is, but I… sorta…”

  “See, George, we're on the same page. All you have to do is remember I rented the boat. Do that and I won't remember to tell your old man you're skimming customers by not logging the rentals.”

  “You're a hard man, Blake.”

  “John Wayne said it. It's a hard life.”

  “Okay,” George agreed with no indication he appreciated the free philosophy. “Who is he? Your dead guy?”

  “I don't know. Why don't you hop down here and help me find out?”

  George grimaced and threw up his hands. “Uh, uh. No, thanks. He's your corpse. You roll him.”

  Big surprise, I was on my own.

  But George still wanted to be helpful. “You want me to go call the cops?”

  “Hang on a second. Let me see what I can see first.” I reached down, grabbed the drowned man by his soggy jacket, and instantly regretted touching him. I felt an explosion of heat and pain in my head. Yes, I'd been thunderstruck again. My brain was on fire. Colors flashed in my eyes. The old guy, the boat, George, and the harbor vanished.

  Blackness. Nothingness.

  Slowly my vision returned; images spinning in my mind like a badly edited montage in a 60's LSD documentary. I saw shadowy crowds of faceless people, walls of stretched canvas, tight ropes on angle, electric cables like snakes on the ground, and brightly colored neon lights above. A roof of red and yellow stripes hid the sky and masked the time of day, or night, in this new unreal reality of mine. I heard a din of human voices, calliope music, shouting and laughter. I heard the shake of ice, bells going off, garbled tones over a loud speaker. I smelled hot grease and, I swear, freshly popped popcorn. I was in the middle of some sort of carnival. Then, as suddenly as they'd blinked to life, the lights were gone.

  I was swallowed by the blue of night. And there, in front of me, I saw a fish smoking a cigar. Laugh, kids, laugh. I don't make this stuff up. The visions hurt too much to joke about them. I merely report them. And I'm reporting I saw a gray cartoon fish. Maybe a dolphin? A tuna? What did I know about fish? I saw it through some kind of porthole in a circle of blue. It was smoking a black stogie, blowing smoke rings, and had a big No. 2 pencil tucked under its left fin. You're laughing. I wasn't. My head was splitting. And somebody was screaming.

  The screaming wasn't helping my head a bit. This wasn't a scream of delight. It was pain. It was terror. Then, boom, the angle from which I was seeing everything changed. Suddenly Lisa's drowned man was there in front of me, looking the same but different; the drowned man before he'd gone for his swim in the harbor. He was the one screaming. He was upright, dry but with a forehead bathed in sweat, his face contorted by fear. Then he fell away into the darkness. I heard a brutal thump and a cry of pain. I heard a splash into water.

  As quickly as these visions had come they were gone. I was back in George Clay's boat, leaning over the body of the drowned man, grabbing for the gunwa
le for balance, trying not to fall into the harbor. George was on the pier above staring down at me like I was nuts. For all I knew he was right.

  “You okay, Blake?”

  “Yeah,” I replied distantly, my mind on other things. George was a distraction. “Never better.”

  My hallucination had prevented me giving the corpse a going over. There was nothing in the world I wanted to do less than touch him again, but what choice did I have? I hadn't discovered a thing about him. I still needed to know who he was and why he was dead. I took a deep breath and grabbed his jacket again. Nothing happened, nothing otherworldly I mean, and I exhaled in relief. Then I went through his pockets. Sadly, I got bupkis for the trouble. His suit coat came off the cheap rack. The tear in the lining was more than a tear; a piece was missing. He had no identification. Other than a wet wadded dollar bill in the right front pocket of the coveralls, he wasn't carrying a thing. I left the buck where it was in case he needed tip money to get across the river. Yeah, I'm all heart.

  George was talking, had been for some time, and finally I gave him my attention. “Did you hear me, Blake? We got to call the cops, don't we?”

  “Not we, George,” I said, stepping up and out of the boat. “You. Phone away.”

  “You're not leaving me with this? You're not running out on me?”

  “I am leaving. But I'm not running. I've got to find out who this guy is. I've got to find out why he's dead. And I've got to do that before the homicide dicks wrap him around my neck.”

  “But if you just tell them that Lisa–”

  “Lisa wasn't here. Got that, George? Lisa wasn't here and she didn't rent your boat. I rented the boat! Is that too much to ask? To keep my secretary out of this mess?”

  “But I can't tell the cops all them lies.”

  “It's only one lie, George. One! Just tell them I rented the boat!”

  “Right. You rented the boat. And… you brought it back… with the body in it?”

  “Yes, George. I brought it back, as is, and I left. You don't know nothing from nothing. You can even call me a name in front of the cops, if you like. That will put you in good with them.”

  I couldn't blame George for being excited. I was a little excited myself. But Lisa had gotten herself in good and, now that I'd taken her place, I had to get me out. That meant tracking down the drowned man and the person or persons unknown who'd pushed him into the pool. All I had to go on was my 'carnival' hallucination. And a fish smoking a cigar. Either one, I was sure, had a ninety-nine percent chance of leading absolutely nowhere. It was daffy. But it was somewhere to start.

  “You rented the boat.” George repeated aloud on his way to notify the police. “Whatever you say, Blake. You can count on me.”

  Despite his fading promise, I once again had the feeling I had nobody and nothing to count on but the two idiots I usually hung with; me and myself. I left the pier with a plan consisting of little more than 'Be gone before the cops arrive'. The homicide boys, particularly Wenders, I knew, would flay me alive when they caught up with me. But that would be then.

  I jumped into my Jaguar, drove out of the marina, and right into Lisa's homemade soup.

  Chapter Four

  Other than a lame guess our drowned man appreciated a midnight swim, the only clue the body in Lisa's boat offered had been the visions delivered to my brain on contact. In an instant the din of the midway, calliope music, and the glitter of neon lights (if I was seeing what I saw) exploded in my skull. For some ungodly reason, I'd been transported into the nostalgic world of the carnival. An instant more and that vision had been replaced by the ridiculous sight of a cartoon fish smoking a cigar, by a scream from our drowned man, and by a burst of pain for me and a plunge into cold black water for him. What stew could I make from those ingredients?

  Working backwards from where the corpse was found adrift gave me Lake Michigan as a starting place. That was no starting place at all. Marine debris could cover a lot of territory and the body, flotsam or jetsam, could have originated anywhere in Chicago, northern Illinois, western Michigan, eastern Wisconsin, the Great Lakes or, for that matter, the Saint Lawrence Seaway. The pain I'd experienced offered no better clue; it was merely pain. His or mine? I wasn't sure. The fish meant nothing to me. Few cartoons meant anything to me. As a kid, the only 'funny' I ever read was Dick Tracy. I knew Flattop, Mumbles, Gruesome, and the rest, but I didn't remember any cigar chomping fish. I didn't do Saturday mornings inside. Rather than fight my mother for couch space, my weekend days were spent in the streets raising the anxieties of innocent neighbors. The fish was a mystery. The only part of the vision that made any sense at all were the lights and sounds of the midway. But I hadn't been to a carnival in ages.

  To the best of my knowledge, which I admit was limited, that year's fair season had come and gone in Chicagoland; in the city and surrounding counties. Midway attractions may have been teeming in the suburbs with corn dog sales out the wahzoo but, if they were, I didn't know about it. Just then, I was aware of only one such attraction in the city; some kind of to-do currently working to lure crowds to Navy Pier. As it was the only carnival I knew of, and it was on the lake, and might have provided a convenient venue from which to chuck a body into the drink, it appealed to me as a starting place. I headed for the near north side and the lake.

  Traffic was what it always was on a Saturday night in Chicago. I dealt with it by dialing in a metal station and letting Molly Hatchet warn me I was Flirtin' With Disaster. No news flash there. I soon pulled off of Lake Shore Drive, followed the Streeter Drive curve, and turned right for Navy Pier.

  Built between 1914 and 1916 at a cost of four and a half million pre-Depression Era bucks, Municipal Pier #2 jutted 3,300-feet out into Lake Michigan. Back then it was the largest pier in the world, handling lake freighter cargo, passenger steamers, and serving as a cool place for public gatherings in a time before air conditioning.

  The original plan called for four more like it, but Municipal Piers #1, 3, 4 and 5 were never built. Before construction on #2 had finished, the arrival of mass-produced trucks destroyed the lake freight industry. It might have been a total disaster had it not been for World War One. Wars were always good for business. The Red Cross moved onto the pier, and Home Defense, the Navy, and Army. A pier jail was even opened for draft dodgers.

  Following the Great War came the pier's 'Golden Age' when the rich laid claim. There were picnic areas, dining pavilions, a dance hall, a playground, and an auditorium (with WCFL Radio broadcasting from its north tower). It had a streetcar line, exhibition halls, a theater, and its own emergency room. Three and a half million visited every year of the 1920's. Unlike today's post-Vietnam antipathy for the military, these were the days when servicemen were revered. In 1927, in honor of our veterans, Municipal Pier #2 was renamed Navy Pier.

  The Great Depression worsened freight and passenger ship activity and New Deal agencies moved into the empty office spaces. Recreational use of the Pier continued, including the 1933 World's Fair (the 'Century of Progress Exposition') but, as Wouk said, the winds of war were blowing again. In the summer of 1941, Navy Pier was closed to the public and converted to a Navy training center with school rooms, drill halls, and barracks to accommodate 10,000 servicemen. Classes began six days before the attack on Pearl Harbor. During World War Two, two converted flattops arrived as freshwater training carriers. Fifteen thousand pilots received their carrier-landing training on Lake Michigan. Over 60,000 servicemen were trained on the Pier before the war ended.

  In mid-1946, Navy Pier was returned to the city. The aircraft carriers were sailed out and a submarine sailed in for the training of Great Lakes Naval Reservists. The University of Illinois operated the Pier for the next twenty years, opening it back up to the public for folkloric dances from around the world, international cuisine, and arts and crafts exhibitions. But in 1965 the University moved to their new Chicago Circle campus and the Pier again fell into disuse.

  The city tried again t
o do something with the aging hulk, renovating the east end buildings (furthest into the lake) as exhibition halls for the nation's bicentennial. But they failed to cache any coin for maintenance. Fort Sheridan's 81st Army Band played an occasional concert on the underutilized tourist attraction. Music and arts festivals popped in and out. A carnival occasionally strayed out over the water. But would the crowds ever return to Navy Pier?

  It sounded like a crowd, and sounded and smelled like a carnival, as I drove between the towers, under the massive arch (housing office space), and onto the Pier. Matching towers, on the distant end of that vast municipal construct, housed the old classrooms and dorms. Between stood over 3,000 feet of connected warehouses, running up and down each side of the Pier that, like the walls of a massive fort, created a great open inner rectangle. Halfway down inside that 'box' a temporary metal fence had been erected and, within that pen, stood – not a carnival – but a neon-lit midway fronting a bright and colorful circus, culminating in a great red and yellow striped Big Top tent!

  I found a parking space, locked my Jag, and took it all in.

  Even at a distance I could see one of those towering mobile Ferris Wheels, lit against the night sky, inside the entrance. Chicago, you may know, was home to the Ferris Wheel. The monstrous 'Chicago Wheel', designed by George Ferris Jr. and standing 264 feet high, was the largest attraction at the 1893 Columbian Exposition (the World's Fair). I know. I looked it up. The original wheel had thirty-six cars, each able to hold sixty people; 38,000 passengers a day at fifty (19th century) cents a pop. Back then that was not hay. But that massive piece of history was built on terra firma. This wheel, though much smaller, was on the Pier. What kind of maniac, with how large a death wish, would put a Ferris Wheel on a pier?

  Between the car park and the entrance, depending from or tacked to anything and everything big enough to hold them (the warehouses, fixtures, the cyclone fence), hung flags, banners, and posters splashed with the 'Amazing!' images of the 'Mind Boggling!' entertainments waiting ahead; acrobats, clowns, jugglers, lions, and tigers, and bears. No, it was no carnival. This was the All New Callicoat and Major Combined Circus. So much for my precognitive skills.