Crowell had been dead more than a half century before the golden, late fall day when I crossed paths with his ghost.
I had spent the morning scrubbing down the deck and cleaning out the galley of my charter fishing boat Thalassa. The rods and reels were stowed in the back of my pickup truck. I’d scheduled a forklift to raise the boat out of the water and lower it onto a wooden cradle to be tucked under a plastic blanket for a long winter’s nap.
The fishing season had been as good as it gets. Nantucket Sound teemed with schools of hungry striped bass, and every one of them had a death wish. The skies were sunny, the seas gentle and the tips generous.
Hooking fish wasn’t something I thought I’d be doing for a living, but as the ancient poet Homer once said, our destiny lies on the knees of the gods.
The Immortal in charge of my fate must have had restless leg syndrome, because I fell off his knee, cutting short my college education in philosophy for a lesson in life, and death, paid for by the U.S. Government in Vietnam.
After mustering out of the Marines, I became a cop and worked my way up to detective in the Boston Police Department. I was engaged to be married to a beautiful and intelligent woman whose only blemish was her judgment in men.
I might have weathered a corruption scandal at the BPD if I kept true to the code of silence, but I lost my will when my fiancé died in a car accident.
After the funeral I got in my car and headed south from Boston with a bottle of vodka, driving until the road ended at a deserted Cape Cod beach. After a few slugs from the bottle, I fell asleep in the lee of a dune. I woke up to the cries of hovering gulls and the rustle of breaking waves. I staggered off the beach and was sobering up in a coffee shop when I met an old fisherman named Sam. He was looking for a crewman. I said I might be interested in the job.
Either Sam had been desperate, or he’d seen the desperation in my face, because he simply nodded and said, “Finestkind, Cap.”
Fishing was tough, but cheaper than stretching out on a headshrinker’s couch. More effective, too. Rolling out of bed at three in the morning to catch the tide, commuting twenty miles into the Atlantic Ocean and working a twelve-hour day forces your mind to ignore the little demons of regret tap-dancing in a corner of your brain.
The wind, and sun reflecting off the glassy sea had burned most of the sadness from my face and darkened my skin, hiding the lines of bitterness lurking at the corners of my mouth, even though they were still there. Sam accused me of going native when I went for the pirate look, with a gold earring, and a droopy mustache that decorated my upper lip.
More often than not my mouth was set in a grin as Sam gossiped about townspeople, fish, and the cooking prowess of his wife Mildred. When Sam retired I took over his boat, but couldn’t cut it on my own. I cleaned up my act, mostly, and bought a charter fishing boat with a loan from my family.
Every day was an adventure. I had to make sure my clients didn’t fall overboard or hook themselves instead of a fish—a state of alertness that had called for a higher degree of sobriety than I was used to. I’d been busy from sunup to sundown, subsisting on Mountain Dew and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.
In the off-season I’ll earn a few bucks with an occasional commercial diving job. There’s not much demand to go underwater during the winter. I’ve held onto the private detective license I got after leaving the Boston PD, but there’s even less call for a PI.
With my boat coming out of the water, and no jobs in the works, money would soon be tight. I set a course across the marina parking lot for a waterfront bistro named Trader Ed’s. I was thinking that a frosty beer might help me come up with an idea how to keep the boat loan payments to my family flowing during the lean months. I was about halfway to my bar stool when a silver Mercedes convertible pulled up beside me and braked to a stop. A woman wearing a dark gray pinstripe suit got out from behind the steering wheel.
“Excuse me,” she said. “I’m looking for a boat captain named Aristotle Socarides. The harbor master pointed you out.”
“That’s me,” I said. “How can I help you?”
“I’d like to retain your services.”
“Sorry,” I said, shaking my head. “I’m done fishing for the year. My boat will be out of the water in the next day or so.”
“That’s not a problem.” She removed her sunglasses to reveal coral-colored eyes under arching brows. “My name is Bridget Callahan. I’m an attorney. I know that you’re a retired police officer and that in addition to running a charter boat, you sometimes take on cases as a private detective.”
“Word gets around.”
“Thanks to modern communications technology.”
She held up a cellphone. On the small screen was the face I see in the mirror during the morning shave. The earring and mustache of my pirate days were gone. I was now a serious businessman. The photo of me at the wheel of the Thalassa was from the business section of the Cape Cod Times. The headline was: “Former Cop, Charter Captain Moonlights as Private Eye.”
“I mentioned the private eye thing to the reporter as an aside,” I said. “I don’t have a lot of clients.”
“All the better. You’ll have time to take a case for a client of mine.”
“Depends, Ms. Callahan. I don’t do divorce investigations. They’re too dangerous.”
“Nothing like that. My client would like to recover some valuable property.”
She tucked the phone in her pocketbook and handed me a business card. The words embossed on the card in gold told me that Bridget Callahan was a partner in a Boston law firm that had more ethnic names than the United Nations.
“Big legal powerhouse, as I recall,” I said. “Making partner couldn’t have been easy.”
“It wasn’t. It took talent, hard work and a willingness to deal with difficult clients.”
“Congratulations. Does this case involve one of those difficult clients?”
She nodded.
“Why come to me? My last big case had to do with oyster poachers. Your firm must have staff investigators.”
“We do. One of them gave us your name. He said you’d be perfect for this job. That you take unusual cases.”
She mentioned a retired detective I knew from the BPD.
“He’s a good cop,” I said. “What makes this so unusual he can’t handle it?”
“The client is a bit eccentric.”
“In what way?”
“He’s a collector,” she said, as if that explained everything.
“Does this eccentric collector have a name?”
“His name is Merriwhether Ruskin the 3rd. He wants to meet you.”
“Send him over. I’ll be here for at least another hour.”
She brushed a curl of silver and auburn hair back from her face as she collected her thoughts. “Mr. Ruskin doesn’t get out much. He has, um, peculiar health issues. It’s hard to describe. He’d like to talk to you in person.”
I glanced up at the clear blue autumn sky. The raw north winds and slag gray clouds of winter seemed far away, but it would be spring before I earned another paycheck. Meanwhile, the boat loan statements would arrive with the regularity of waves breaking on the shore. A job for a rich client would get me through a few months, maybe longer.
Trader Ed’s would have to wait. “I’m ready when you are,” I said.
“Wonderful,” she said. “Let’s go for a ride.”
Bridget’s client lived twenty minutes from the marina on the shores of Nantucket Sound, in a gated community of sprawling silver-shingled houses hidden behind tall hedges that protected their owners’ privacy as effectively as castle ramparts. The only things missing were moats and drawbridges. A long gravel driveway led to a two-story mansion surrounded by manicured lawns of impossible green. A white-trimmed porch bordered with hydrangeas ran along the full length of the house.
On the drive over, Bridget talked about growing up in the gritty working class enclave of South Boston, making her Harvard law d
egree even more impressive. I talked about my roots in the former factory city of Lowell and my stint in the Marines. We were chatting like old friends by the time we got to the house. She snapped the switch into business mode as soon as she parked behind a black Cadillac sedan in the circular driveway.
“This is it,” she said.
This was a mega mansion that looked to be at least ten-thousand square feet in size. I had to crane my neck to take in the whole length of the front porch and the three-story height.
“Nice little shack. What does Mr. Ruskin do to pay the lighting and heating bills in this place?”
“He doesn’t have to do anything. He comes from an old New England family that made its fortune years ago in labor procurement, energy and pharmaceuticals.”
Bridget answered the question with a straight face, but the airy lilt in her voice sent me a different message. “I get it. The skeletons in the closet of many a respectable Yankee family. Slavery, whale butchery and the opium trade, in other words.”
“Yes. In other words. Mr. Ruskin currently dabbles in nation-building.”
I had to think about that. “Gun running?”
“Guns, missiles and bombs. And people to use them.” She cocked her head. “I think I like you, Mr. Socarides.”
“Soc. My friends call me Soc.”
“Very well, Soc. I answer to Bridge. Shall we?”
The slightly stooped man who answered the front doorbell looked like the greeter in a funeral parlor. Gray hair, grayer face and matching four-button suit, all the color of fog. Speaking softly in an undertaker’s voice, he said, “Follow me to the visitation room.”
He led the way down a long hallway, opened a door and ushered us into a rectangular space around twenty feet square. Three walls were plain. The fourth was covered by a hanging tapestry that showed a medieval hunting scene of sharp-toothed dogs taking down a unicorn. The fact that the victim was an animal that never existed did little to ease its pain at being ripped apart.
The gray man pressed a wall button. The tapestry slid silently aside to reveal a glass window. He pointed to a leather sofa facing the window, then left us alone.
The lights on the other side of the window went on seconds after we had taken our seats. We were looking into a big room. Directly in front of us was a metal and plastic desk and chair.
The room was a zoo of the dead. Animal heads of every kind festooned the walls. Their eyes were glassy and their expressions far from happy. Antelope, mountain goats, bear, some big cats.
Bridget was silent.
“You’ve seen this before?” I said.
“Yes,” she said. “I think it’s kind of creepy.”
“Ever wondered what hunters do with the rest of the animal?”
“That’s even creepier.”
“What is this place?” I asked.
Before she could answer, a door swung open between a pair of tusked boar heads at the far end of the room. A ghost-like apparition entered the room, made its way in our direction, and stopped next to the desk. It wore a hooded white suit, like the kind worn to protect against hazardous materials. A white gauze mask covered the lower part of the face. The feet were encased in fabric pull-ons.
“You’re right; Ruskin is eccentric,” I murmured.
“That’s not him,” Bridget said. “That’s his valet.” She put her finger to her lips, then glanced at a red plastic globe on the wall above the window. “That’s a camera and a microphone that is very, very sensitive.”
The door opened again. Another man entered, leisurely walked the length of the room, and stood next to the figure in white.
“Ruskin?” I whispered.
Bridget nodded.
I’d pictured Ruskin as a raw-boned flinty-eyed Yankee with a mouth full of horse teeth, mop of unruly hair and a profile that looked as if it had been carved from a granite quarry. Bad call. Ruskin was as bald as a bullet, had a neck that belonged on a cartoon bully and looked as if he chewed steroids as candy. He was wearing a snug T-shirt and shorts that showed off a buff physique. His hands looked as if they could hurt someone.
He said, “Thank you for coming, Mr. Socarides. Please pardon the unusual meeting arrangements. This is a protected environment. I suffer from a number of acute allergies, all potentially life-threatening. It’s a rare, progressive affliction particular to the Ruskin family. This gentleman is an employee of mine. The suit he has on is to protect me from outside allergens that would cause a severe reaction.”
Despite his mauler looks, Ruskin spoke with a cultured accent that carried echoes of an English boarding school.
“No different than talking over the phone,” I said, although it was a lot different. “Ms. Callahan said you need a private detective to recover some valuable property.”
“Correct. Tell me, are you familiar with the work of Elmer Crowell?”
“The bird-carver?”
“That’s right, although he was much more than that. Allen Elmer Crowell is considered the Father of American Bird Carving. He was the master of a unique form of American art who has been called the Cezanne of waterfowl carvers. Another question. Have you heard of Viktor Orloff?”
I would have to have been stuck in a cave not to know about Orloff. His face had been in all the papers and on TV. “Sure. Orloff was the financial guy who conned his clients out of millions of dollars. Were you one of them?”
Ruskin’s lips twitched in an almost-smile.
“I knew better than to invest money with that slimy old grifter. We had a business arrangement. He had agreed to sell me a preening merganser.”
“Come again?”
“It was a carving, part of a set of six half-scale models that Crowell had carved for special friends. I own the other five. I paid Orloff for the decoy, but before I could pick it up he was arrested and put in jail. The judge denied bail because Orloff was a flight risk. His house was sealed with all its contents.”
“Including the bird?”
He nodded. “As you probably know, Orloff was convicted and went to prison. He had my money but I didn’t have the decoy.”
“No chance of getting your money back through legal channels?”
“Unlikely. Even if I could dig it out of whatever black hole Orloff had hidden it in.”
“I see the problem. There must have been a long line of people trying to get their investments back.”
“I wasn’t an investor. I could prove that I owned the bird. I didn’t want my money. I wanted the decoy to complete the set. An intact set of Crowell decoys would be worth millions, but the bird was desirable to me as a collector.”
“Any chance you could get the house unsealed?”
“Yes, under ordinary circumstances, but the house burned down before my lawyers could file a claim. Cause of the fire is still unknown. Then Orloff died in prison of a heart attack, which surprised many people who didn’t think he had a heart.”
“The decoy?”
“It supposedly went up in flames.”
“You sound like you have doubts.”
Ruskin whispered to the man in the white suit, who went to a wall cabinet and slid open a glass door. He reached inside and came out with a large plastic cube. He carried it back to Ruskin who set the container on the desk, flipped the lid back, took something out and held it above his head like an offering to the gods.
The carved bird in his hands was around half the size of a real one. Its copper-colored head was turned back in a graceful curve with the long, sharp beak pointed at the tail. The gray and white feathers painted on the wooden wings looked so real they could have riffled in the breeze.
“The preening merganser has everything Crowell was famous for,” Ruskin said, lowering his arms. “Attention to detail, accuracy, and beauty.”
“You’re confusing me, Mr. Ruskin. You said the merganser is missing, presumably burned.”
“It is.”
He turned the bird over and brought it to the window, close enough for me to see the blac
k oval sticker on the bottom. Printed on the sticker in silver letters were the words: “Copy of A. E. Crowell Preening Merganser. Product of China.”
“A Chinese rip-off?” I said.
“Yes. A well-done fake, but still a fake.”
“What does it have to do with the missing bird?”
“Everything, Mr. Socarides. Only someone with access to the Crowell carving could have made a reproduction that is so accurate in every respect to the original.”
“Not sure I understand.”
“Ms. Callahan?” Ruskin said.
Bridget explained.
“The reproduction was advertised for sale in a collectors’ publication. It was purchased for a hundred and fifty dollars. My firm’s investigators traced the bird to a manufacturer in Hunan province, China, which specializes in making wooden reproductions of all kinds. The original piece is scanned digitally and the data fed into computer-guided laser carving machines. Skilled craftsmen do the final detailing.”
“That would mean the Chinese had access to the original?”
“Indirectly,” she said. “A company in upstate New York does the scanning and transmits the data to China.”
Ruskin rejoined the discussion. “And I believe the American and Chinese companies used the real decoy to manufacture the fake.”
“Do you know who contracted for the work?”
“No. Someone dropped the carving off, waited while it was scanned and picked it up. Payment was in cash.”
“Could they have copied it from a photo?”
“Yes. But not as accurately as this,” Ruskin answered. “Crowell knew bird anatomy from years as a professional hunter, and his birds were accurate in every detail. Moreover, he imbued his models with life. This is good for a fake, but without the hand of the master it is just a prettied up piece of wood.”
“Have you been able to run a trace on the magazine ad?”
Nothing Good Happens After Midnight: A Suspense Magazine Anthology Page 16