by Howard Engel
It wasn’t a trick of the sun. It wasn’t some dream enjoyed after I’d dozed off on the warm boards. I checked the details. Trask and the second carpenter used the same nails. Dalt Rimmer used another sort. Rimmer and the second carpenter appeared to have gone about their tasks cold sober. Trask’s work looked like a textbook example of how not to build a dock. For a long time I felt like I was playing a game of observation, a game in no way attached to reality. Then it hit me: if the board with the cleat attached was the one that killed Trask, as Lloyd had pointed out to me, then at the time it hit him, it had not yet been nailed to the dock. It was the first of the boards put in place by the second carpenter. In fact, the second carpenter could have been Trask’s murderer, hitting him from behind with the board, dumping the unconscious body into the water, then calmly nailing it in place so that it testified to the fact that Trask hit the board, and not the other way around. For insurance, two more boards were nailed into place before the second carpenter took his leave of the scene of the crime.
We were dealing with a very cool customer here. Not a hit-and-miss act of violence, but a well-thought-out crime that could up to now be described as perfect. But the ant and I were now on the trail, and with luck one of us would run him to ground.
Aline Barbour came up behind me wearing that pinkbikini with black edging. “Beat you to the raft,” she said, and running to the edge of the dock, plunged, a tan blur, into the water. I knew that I’d run a poor second, but I jumped in and followed her. By the time I got there, she was holding onto the raft with one hand, having already caught her breath. It took me a minute to corral mine, and then I hoisted myself aboard the float.
“I’ve been hearing about your adventures,” she said, pulling herself half out of the water and resting her arms on the canvas matting so that her bust rested on the edge of the raft.
“Who’s been talking out of school?”
“I heard about how you nearly got killed going back of beyond somewhere.”
“Oh, that, well, the serious fisherman has to be ready for anything. Have you been taking midnight canoe rides lately?”
“Every night. I love the lake when it’s quiet.” She pulled the rest of her body out of the water and lay alongside me on the canvas top of the raft. She took her white bathing cap off, and let her hair loose, like it was alive and demanding its freedom. Again, I found it hard not to concentrate on the tanned body. I watched the water drip from her forehead and off the tip of her nose and disappear in the crevice of the pink bikini top. Her toes were painted the colour of dried blood, her shoulders were smooth and luminous, with depth to them, like velvet.
“I hear that you were rescued by the man at the Woodward place. He’s quite a man of mystery. What’s he like?”
“We both know the answer to that Miss Barbour.”
“What can you mean by that?”
“Only that you have been watching that spot as often as you can. I think that we might get farther if we begin to trust one another.”
“You aren’t very tactful, are you?”
“It’s a waste of time when he’s getting ready to move out.”
“When? How do you know?” She was on her elbows, looking over me with sudden interest. She saw the trap she’d fallen into and relaxed. “Well, it doesn’t hurt to share information,” she said at length. We were now lying side by side with our knees up under the sun: hers, smooth and brown; mine white with curly black hair. We looked like examples of two species, not just different sexes of the same species.
“He bought a couple of boxes of groceries yesterday. I’m not guessing he’ll move before the middle of the week.”
“That’s not based just on groceries?”
“No. He’s waiting for something, and he won’t leave until he gets his hands on it.”
“On what?” she asked, and I said nothing. She lifted herself on one elbow and looked down at me. “You’re a funny man,” she said.
“Why am I a funny man?”
“Because you keep everything so tightly controlled it’s like you’d taken an oath or something. Are you always so serious?” She gave me the full extent of her smile. It was hard to remember that I was working.
“Where do you know Patten from?” I asked when I could get my mind back on the case.
“I’m just one of the people he swindled. Just one of the millions he’s trying to run out on.” Her cheeks began to glow with this, and her eyes were dark and serious. “We were all so young and impressionable. He seemed to offer us a new beginning, a new hope.” The blush had moved to her neck and beyond the frontier where it is normally possible to follow these rosy index fingers of feeling.
“Are you one of the group taking him, or trying to take him, to court?”
“You’re thinking of Elmo Nash, T.C. Sagarin, and the others. All they’re trying to get is money. I want more than money. I want to see him crawl.”
“That sounds like more than your wounded youth talking. His church is on the brink. You don’t talk like any of the little people he hurt.”
“People like David Kipp, you mean?” I tried to take that gift without showing any surprise.
“Sure, people like him. You want those fingernails pressed into him deeper than you’ve got them into your palm right now.” She looked down at her hand and released the pressure. “What’s your plot?”
“What’s yours? I know who you’re working for, and why you’re doing it. I could have you pulled off the case like that if I wanted to.” Suntan oil prevented an audible snap.
“But you don’t want to?”
“Not yet, anyway. In the meantime, we can both wait for him to make his move.”
“I see,” I said, wheels running in circles inside my head. She shifted so that I was getting, not only the curve of her torso, but now also the curve of her hips. She was physically persuasive, and I was only human. We didn’t change for about a minute, and then Chris and Roger Kipp shouted and climbed up on the raft, splashing cold water on both of us. That killed it. Or I thought it had. We rolled off into the water and swam back to shore. I grabbed my stuff on the dock and took my gooseflesh back towards my cabin to change.
David Kipp was just coming out of the screen door of my place when I got there. “Did you find what you were looking for?” He gave me that quivering lip again and leaned back against the wood of the cabin for moral support. I stood in his path and tried to look as though I might hit him if I had to. I was sucking in my gut to look less like a ninety-seven-pound weakling.
“Get out of my way, Cooperman. You’re not the law up here.”
“That’s right. But there’s lots of law around now that I need it.”
“Now wait a minute. Don’t get sore. Your door was open …”
“… and you just stopped by to prevent my belongings from blowing into the lake. Listen Kipp, I could bounce one off you and then get down on my knees and apologize for the blunder.” I thought of Cissy’s description of his long ape-like arms and hairy knuckles. I had to avoid a bear-hug or wrestling around in the remains of Joan’s petunias. “Did you uncover my black belt under my shirts? Kipp, you bother me. You’re bugging Mrs. Harbison and that bothers me. Stay away, she doesn’t like it. And as for the business up at the other end of the lake …”
“What are you talking about? I haven’t been over the sandbar in the whole week I’ve been here.”
“You were up the river leading from Little Crummock. Don’t play games with me. You were seen, Kipp.” The lip told me that he didn’t guess I was bluffing. “Besides, you gave it away yourself when you boasted about seeing the heron and dead deer. We both know where you saw them, don’t we?” Kipp was leaning away from me and making me feel like a bully in the schoolyard. I tried not to look at either of his big hands. If he made fists of them, I’d had it. I thought I’d better keep the banter sassy. “You saw more than wildlife up there, didn’t you, Kipp? You know that George McCord didn’t die of old age yesterday morning. I think we’
d better find Corporal Glover and first you tell him what you know, and then I’ll tell him what I know. We can flip a coin if you don’t think that’s fair. I’ll talk first if you want.”
“Look, I’m not saying anything to Glover I don’t have to. I hope you don’t misunderstand my being here. I’m not sore at you. I just want to know what’s going on, that’s all. And as for what I did to Patten’s boat, let him take me to court. I just lost my head when I recognized him under those whiskers. That bastard owes me, and I’ve probably had more satisfaction than most people are going to get.” Another gift landing in my lap.
“Where were you when Patten went by?”
“Back in the marsh getting pictures. I caught him in my telephoto lens. I was sure he didn’t see me. Or did you mean somebody else?”
“Keep talking. How long did you give him before you followed?”
“Ten minutes. No more. He left the boat at the clearing by the portage. I’m glad I did it to him, Cooperman. You can’t take that away from me.” I looked at Kipp and relaxed a notch. What the hell, I thought, let him keep that much.
“Kipp, what put Patten on your hit list? Aren’t you one of the gang taking him to court? What did he do to you that makes you chop holes in boats among other things?”
“What do you care? You’re here protecting him. I know that. I’ve seen you fishing together and playing chess on his dock. What do you care about the people he’s hurt?”
“Did he hurt you?”
“No, not me. It’s the boys’ mother. She’s all used up since she joined the Ultimate Church. Those TV evangelists are all a bunch of crooks, but Patten’s the worst of the lot. She can’t keep an idea in her head for two seconds any more. She won’t settle. She sits and watches TV all the time without seeing anything. Patten destroyed her belief in God, in religion, and in her family. There’s nobody at home inside my wife, Cooperman, and she used to be the dearest, most—”
“Okay, I get the idea. I’m sorry for your trouble, but remember there are laws in this country just like you have at home. I want you to stay out of my way from now on, Kipp. You hear?”
“I hear. Now you listen: somehow I’m going to get even with Patten.”
“Kipp,” I said with my face close to his, “you know in seven days time you could be dead a week.” His lip started quaking again and those hairy hands with the hairy knuckles and service-club rings came up to guard his mid-section. “Now beat it,” I said and he did that. As he ran off in the direction of his cabin, I heard the line I’d just used on him again in my head. Only this time I heard it in the voice of the TV actor who’d said it originally. He may have had it first, but my reading got results.
TWENTY-ONE
I had shed my trunks and was walking around in a towel sarong, when I heard the screen door slap shut. It was Aline. “I didn’t think we’d finished our conversation,” she said, parking her towel, bathing cap, sunglasses, and suntan oil on the kitchen table. She was in a light-blue terrycloth beach robe. I felt ill-prepared to throw myself into the role of host, since I was only a tuck away from total candour. She sat in one of the arrowback chairs, her robe falling open just enough so that I forgot that I’d already seen the pink bikini, and how she made it live up to its promises.
“Sorry I can’t offer you a drink,” I said. “I’m completely out of booze.” I hadn’t bothered to bring any, but she didn’t have to know all my secrets.
“I could make coffee,” she suggested, and I agreed, thinking that it would give me a minute to put some pants on. She swished the kettle to see that it was nearly half full, then lit the gas as though to the manner born. It came on with a wump. She found my instant, and spooned out two heaping teaspoonfuls into two cups. For some reason, I just watched her do it, like it was a trick or something I’d never been able to master. I settled down on the couch, where she joined me waiting for signs of awakening from the kettle. “You were saying that you thought Patten was waiting for something, Mr. Cooperman.”
“Call me Benny.” I didn’t answer her question. I was thinking about the perfect dark arches of her eyebrows, one of which slowly lifted as I forgot the question.
“Did you mean his passport?”
“Hmmmm? Yes, well, I knew he had to get one, and that it would take a while. You’ve seen that he has picked it up, have you?”
“One of his boys collected a large envelope from the box he has at the post office in Hatchway. But I don’t know in what name. That was this morning.”
“It won’t take long to find out,” I suggested.
“But I’m not sure you were talking about the passport.”
“Sure I was. That and the announcement of the Supreme Court on the church’s status. That’s the red light or the green light as far as his future in the States is concerned. They expect the decision around Friday. With two murder investigations going on, he’s not going to stay in the park a minute longer than necessary.”
Once again the terrycloth was letting me have free glimpses of Aline’s tanned self under the blue robe. I guess it was the robe’s approximation of a dress that found the tickling place. Not counting Maggie, I hadn’t seen a woman in a dress in over a week. I hadn’t realized how hooked I was on them. It must be all the fresh air and exercise in the park. It summoned up the blood as Frank Bushmill used to say. Aline was looking at my towel. She leaned close and kissed me, breaking away only long enough to whisper something in my ear.
“I finally understand what Mae West meant when she said, ‘Is that a pistol in your pocket, or are you just glad to see me?’” She was all over me like a tent and showed no sign of taking the kettle off the stove.
“Hey, wait a minute! What’s going on?” I said between the kisses, without putting everything I had into the reading of the line. I held on to the terrycloth until it came away, and then there was nothing but tanned arms and legs and the pink bikini with black piping. I hung on to some of that, and lost, somewhere along the line, the tuck in my towel.
* * *
The kettle was nearly boiling dry when I turned it off. Aline was asleep on the couch. The two cups stood side by side on the pine table. One of the cats was staring in the screen door and giving me a look I didn’t think I’d ever get from a furry creature. I slipped into my wet trunks and went into the water off the end of the dock for another short swim When I came out, I saw Joan wrestling with a big Johnson outboard motor which she’d attached to a mounted two-by-four between twin birches. She had the top off and was exploring the inner depths with her nose nearly touching the carburetor.
“Mike said the weather in Toronto’s terrible. I talked with him on the phone in town. He said it was like a Turkish bath in the Black Hole of Calcutta. Maybe we’ll get some business on the weekend.” She didn’t look me in the eye but went on smiling at the cylinder. “I’m the last of the optimists.” She wiped her hands on an oily rag and straightened up. “That’ll do until I get the part I need. That’s one thing we don’t have to order from the city. There’s a good marine supply store in Hatchway.” I was wondering why she made me a gift of her thinking out loud.
“I never did thank you for getting me ready for that excursion of mine. The sardines were right up my street. The bear didn’t fancy them.”
“Bear? God, Benny, we didn’t spare you anything, did we?”
“You’ve held the poison ivy off. Let’s accept the poison ivy as read. Any opposed?”
“Something else that doesn’t let up is coming back in a while and wants to talk to you.”
“Harry Glover of the Mounted?”
“Show no disrespect. The OPP are very powerful in the park.” She still wasn’t looking at me. I finished drying off with the damp towel and went back to the cabin. Aline was awake and bundled securely inside her terrycloth robe. There was instant coffee on the table.
“Glover’s coming back to ask a few more questions.”
“He’s not very original, is he?”
“There are questions I�
��d like to ask you myself.”
“I’m thirty-five, married but with an independent income. I like fast cars, chilled Chablis, and the clothes of the fifties. I’m a Libra. I have a low boiling point, love to scrap, but prefer making up. I’m a pushover for men with curly knees, only it’s not easy in town to separate the unshorn lambs from the shorn …”
“And you’ve known Patten for a very long time.”
“I thought we were talking about me? Here I am, opening myself up in an uncharacteristic way, and you have to bring up my bête noire. Benny, you have no couth.”
“How’d he win his bête noire status?”
“Oh, you are so boring. You should hear yourself. Boring! I want to hear you tell me about you. Who are you when you’re at home?”
“It’s a long sad story, and I’ll tell it to you sometime. We’ll go out for a canoe ride or sit in front of the fire in the Annex when I’m sure you aren’t just trying to change the subject. We are talking about Patten. When did you meet him?”
“Now you really are boring. I don’t care to answer questions. And you know you can’t make me. So why don’t we change the subject? Where’d you buy this instant? It must be twenty years old.” She was being touchy but trying her best not to seem touchy. She might not want an ally in whatever she was doing, but she couldn’t afford to turn my offer of friendship around altogether. I didn’t have a hold on her, I had no right to cross-examine her, and I couldn’t even storm out of the room and slam the door. It was my cabin. Besides, she’d already told me several things; I shouldn’t get greedy in my old age.