Friday harbor, p.16
Friday Harbor, page 16
"First come the sweats, the fever, the confusion—ten times worse than any flu you've ever had. Then come the shakes and hallucinations. Then holy terror. Madness. I've heard men say they saw the devil himself appear at the foot of their bed—those who survived to tell the tale, that is."
"Sheriff, please."
"Rupert's been drinking a lot," said the obese man in the corner.
"Mannix, I told you to mind your business," Jane Hill growled.
"I'm giving them something so they don't take you away, you stupid hag."
"Rupert's been drinking a lot?" Miles asked her. "More than usual?"
She shrugged. "Maybe. Probably."
"Has Rupert been up to anything funny lately?"
"He's always up to something funny."
"And?"
She looked back down at the table. "Just, I don't know—last week he was bragging on another one of his schemes. How it was going to make him rich."
"What scheme?"
"He didn't say. I told him he was feeding us all a line, trying to convince us he's something he ain't. But he said just watch him. Said he had something big in the works. Said he'd be in the catbird seat soon, with more gold than anyone could ever spend."
"Gold?"
"Money."
"Did he say money, or did he say gold?"
"Well, I—money, I think. I don't rightly remember. Maybe he said gold. If he did, he probably meant it, you know, uh . . ."
"Symbolically?"
"Yeah. Sym, uh—you know, gold, as in money. But that was last week. This week he ain't talking about any gold. This week he's just drinking himself silly and looking like he saw the ghost of Indian Chief Leschi."
TWENTY-SEVEN
"Rupert got a phone call and abruptly left fifteen minutes before we arrived," Miles said as the door of the speakeasy closed behind them and they walked back up the pier toward shore. "Of course he did. I'll tell you, Floyd. It's starting to feel like we're always just a few minutes late. Always one step behind."
"The owner's name, Chiu," Floyd said. "It's another Cantonese name. The Mandarin equivalent is Zhao."
"So," Miles said, "the tongs are Cantonese. And now we have a Cantonese speakeasy owner whose barkeep is serving high-end Glenfiddich in his low-end rat hole of an establishment—this just after a probable rumrunner was very possibly relieved of a shipment of Glenfiddich."
"Plus, we have Rupert Hawkins," Floyd said, holding up a finger as he made each point, "who was recently seen giving two unusually well-dressed Chinese men a ride from the steamship terminal, who we already know was working with Angus Cooper aboard the Daisy this past week, who owes Chiu an awful lot of money in gambling debts, and who has been drinking even more than usual, looking like he saw a ghost, and recently bragging about something big being in the works. Something maybe involving gold. That's too many things lining up for it all to be a coincidence."
"I wouldn't put too much weight on what that poor drunk woman thinks she may or may not remember."
"Sure. But saying money is one thing. Saying gold is quite something else. They aren't words you tend to confuse."
"Still."
"You know, it's common for wealthy families to bring their gold with them when they emigrate via steamship," Floyd said.
"What does that have to do with anything?"
"I'm thinking back on all the stuff you found in Hans Jensen's tool shed. The Haro Strait nautical charts, the tide charts, the old newspaper clippings."
"About the wreck of the Empress of Burma?"
"Yes. Consider this—we know the Lucky Lena and the Daisy were observed, on more than one occasion, loitering in the general vicinity of where the Empress of Burma sank, out off D'Arcy Island, right? And didn't you say someone spotted an actual salvage ship in that area the evening before the Lucky Lena was spotted adrift?"
"The Deepwater Doubloon out of Seattle. Yes. A professional salvager. You think they were diving the wreck for lost gold?"
"It would explain why the Jensens had an expensive German deep-water diving apparatus," Floyd said. "Maybe word got around that the wreck of the Empress of Burma has been found. Maybe there was known to be gold aboard. Maybe there was a race on to recover it. Or maybe the Jensens were already in the process of bringing it up, someone found out, and then robbed them of it."
"That's a lot of maybes," Miles said, wondering at Floyd's sudden focus on a theory he was sure was nothing but a potential distraction. His suspicions of Floyd stormed back to the forefront of his mind. "Do you think somebody warned Rupert Hawkins that we were coming?" he asked, watching Floyd's face carefully.
"Warned? I suppose anything is possible," he said, looking genuinely thoughtful. "But who would have warned him?"
For a brief moment, Miles wondered whether Floyd had been in his hotel long enough to make a phone call when they'd stopped by for his raincoat. He'd have had to be very quick in making one, as he'd only been inside for a couple of minutes. But it wasn't beyond the realm of possibility.
With a splash, a California sea lion surfaced just below them, peered up with giant brown eyes, and gave them a deep, loud moan, probably begging for the food it was accustomed to getting from company workers who dumped their lunch leftovers off the dock. Distracted by it, Miles stepped on a long rusty joist nail nestled in a gap where one of the old pier planks had rotted away.
"Son of a whore!"
"What is it?" Floyd looked down to see a good inch of nail sticking, dead center, out of the top of Miles's shoe. "Oh, damn, Miles."
Gritting his teeth as beads of sweat broke out along his hairline, Miles slowly, gingerly raised his foot until it slid free of the nail.
"I knew I should have worn my damned boots," he said, wincing.
"We'd better get you back to the station," Floyd said.
But Miles hardly heard him. His mind was preoccupied with the fact that he'd have to catch the last steamer to Bellingham that evening so he could go to the hospital for tetanus antitoxin serum. That he would miss his dinner with Marion.
*****
As they were about to pass the Hotel de Haro, Miles and Floyd spotted the lime works owner, Errol Buchannan, and two broad-shouldered members of his security detail—each of them carrying 12-gauge shotguns—coming straight at them from up the wharf.
"This should be interesting," Miles muttered while they were still out of earshot.
Buchannan wore a bowler hat, a close-cropped red beard, and a dark three-piece suit. His men were similarly attired. None of them were smiling.
"Errol," Miles said. "What a wonderful surprise."
"You know you've let a Bolshevik onto your little island?"
"The hell are you talking about?"
"Edward Callahan of the Knights of Labor. Here to stir up trouble. Man should be shot for treason."
"I'll bear it in mind."
"I bet you will," Buchannan said, his cold, pale blue eyes measuring, assessing. "What are you doing here?"
"Looking for someone at the Smokehouse."
"Why?"
"A matter of police business."
"You're limping."
"I stepped on a nail on your pier. Went clean through my foot. Consequently, I'm not in much of a mood to deal with your territorial pissings right now, Errol.
"You have no cause to interfere with goings-on at the Smokehouse."
"You mean aside from the naked disregard of state and federal law?"
"Nobody sought my permission to enter my property."
"Yeah, well, I don't know that you're aware of this, Errol. But my jurisdiction actually includes your little company town here."
Buchannan's expression remained impassive, so much so that it was menacing.
"Remember, Sheriff. If it weren't for my company town, the rest of you hayseeds wouldn't have phone lines or electricity yet."
Miles turned to Floyd, then said, "And on the seventh day, he rested."
"You're the second trespasser at the Smokehouse that I've had to deal with today," Buchannan added. "I have better things to do with my time."
"I thought the Smokehouse was open to the public."
"Not if a person is only there to interfere."
"Who was interfering?"
"Aside from you? That crazy lay preacher, McCaskill."
"McCaskill was at the Smokehouse?"
"He was huddling in the trees just off the end of the pier, watching who came and went, mumbling fire and brimstone quotes from the Good Book."
Miles and Floyd exchanged looks.
"Look, Sheriff. I'm asking you, as a gentleman, to not interfere with what goes on at the Smokehouse. There'd be general mutiny among my workers."
"Maybe you should pay them more, and in something other than company scrip. Like dollars, say."
"Working-class men like you need their petty distractions. It gives them something to live for. Otherwise, why get out of bed? Why go to work?"
"Don't worry, Errol. Nobody is going to pull the plug on the Smokehouse. Incidentally, did you know they're serving Glenfiddich in that rat hole?"
"No."
"Know where it came from?"
"No. Anything else?"
"The card room is run by a Chinese, is it not?"
"What of it?"
"Is he a member of one of the Seattle tongs?"
The robber baron gave Miles a hard look. "You read too many dime novels, Sheriff."
"Are you refusing to answer my question?"
"Whether the owner of the Smokehouse is a member of a tong? I'm not in the habit of asking questions like that. And frankly, I don't care."
"As long as the money comes in, right?"
"What is that supposed to mean?"
"I mean the establishment is on your company's property. You get a cut of the action, don't you? Or would you rather I call it above-market rent?"
Buchannan's eyes narrowed. "Sheriff, I'll tell you what—you take care of your fiefdom, and I'll take care of mine." The men stared each other down until Buchannan said, "Anyway, you'd better scamper back to your little fish camp of a town or you're going to be late."
"Late for what?"
"For supper, boy. Doesn't your mother still cook your supper every evening? Don't you still live in your mother's house?"
Miles's right hand rose until his fingertips just touched the cold steel butt of his holstered pistol. He gave serious thought to stepping forward and pistol-whipping Buchannan across the face—a feat he could manage without compunction. But he knew that Buchannan's escorts would gleefully crack his ribs—or his skull—with the butts of their shotguns before he could disengage. Buchannan knew it too.
It was Buchannan's way of reminding Miles of who was really in charge—and that money always trumped the law.
Miles took a couple of deep breaths through flared nostrils before he and Floyd turned and walked away.
"That was enlightening," Floyd muttered once they were out of earshot.
"Was it?"
"I learned that not only does your mother still make your lunches for you, but you still live with her as well. Surprise, surprise."
*****
The moment he got back to the station, Miles rang Marion and told her about the rusty nail.
"So," he said, "unfortunately, I'm going to have to catch tonight's boat to Bellingham so that I can get the tetanus antitoxin serum at the hospital first thing in the morning. Which also means that I can't meet for dinner."
"You don't have to trouble yourself with all that," Marion said.
"Only if I want to live."
"Nonsense. We'll just call Swedish Hospital in Seattle and have them send the serum up on the Bangor tomorrow morning."
"They'll insist that it be prescribed to a medical professional to administer the injection."
"Right. We'll have Sylvia make the call."
"Sylvia?"
"She's a nurse. She was in the War."
"Sylvia was in the War? You're kidding."
"I'm not. So we can have dinner after all. See you in an hour."
Miles was elated. He hung up the phone with a huge smile on his face. At that moment, Bill came flying through the door. "Sheriff, I've been looking all over for you."
"I was out at Roche Harbor, like I told you. What's up?"
"Akroyd's body washed up at Smallpox Bay."
After a stupefied moment, Miles almost chuckled. "Of course," he muttered, reaching for the phone to re-cancel dinner with Marion.
TWENTY-EIGHT
It took Miles, Floyd, and Bill the better part of an hour to get back out to the far side of the island and make their way down a short trail to Smallpox Bay—a small indentation in the western shore, barely 200 feet wide at its mouth and flanked by rocky outcroppings. It was less than a mile south of Akroyd's shack near Sunset Point. At the head of the bay, there was a small gravel beach just big enough to accumulate a few driftwood logs—and, today, a body discovered by a dairyman who'd walked down from his nearby farm to exercise his Labrador retrievers.
The men stood around Akroyd's scrawny corpse. It was beached, face up, along a line of seaweed and other debris near the high tide line. His stringy hair and beard were a sandy, disarrayed mess. He was shirtless and shoeless, his skin a shriveled and lifeless white. His vacant eyes were partially open and his mouth agape as if he'd died wanting to speak. But something—probably related to the large gash on the left side of his head—had stopped him.
Floyd knelt down for a closer look. "This injury to his head is at least six inches long. It's ragged. Irregular. I can't think of the right word. Maybe an indentation from the edge of a big, jagged rock."
"I wonder why he's half naked," Bill said.
"His shirt and shoes could have come off in the water as the surf and tide pulled and tumbled him," Miles said.
"Or, if he was fleeing, he might not have had time to dress," Floyd said.
"Fleeing from what?" Bill asked.
"Or who?" Miles said. "Alright. Let's take stock. He was probably alive this morning, given that we found warm coffee and bacon and a hot stove at his shack. It's a possibility that he heard us coming, ran for it, and, say, lost his footing and fell off the bluff, cracking his head and falling into the water in the process."
"That strikes me as unlikely," Floyd said, "because I doubt he could have heard us coming with all the noise of the wind whistling through the trees this morning."
"Good point," Miles said. "For that matter, if he'd caught sight of us coming down the trail, then we probably would have been close enough to see him run for it. Of course, it's also possible that someone called and warned him that we were coming, and that it led to the same result."
"Another possibility," Floyd said, "is that someone else got to the shack just before we did, and, for whatever reason, prompted Akroyd's flight and consequent fall. Or even that that someone cracked Akroyd's skull with a big rock, then tossed him into the water."
Miles shook his head. "Someone who always seems to be one step ahead of us."
"Let's not start hatching conspiracy theories just yet," Floyd said. "Still, assuming it's a viable possibility, why would someone kill Akroyd?"
"You might also ask why someone would cut pages out of Akroyd's vessel observation logbook covering the very day the Lucky Lena was hijacked, assuming it wasn't Akroyd himself who did it. Maybe he really was working for both sides, like you theorized."
"And maybe somebody figured out he was a double-dealer," Floyd said, "and terminated his employment with extreme prejudice."
"Whatever the case, I sure would like to have a word with Rupert Hawkins and Angus Cooper." Miles exhaled and looked out to sea. "What a day. I suppose we'd better wrap him up and get back to town. It'll be getting dark soon."
"Shouldn't we go try to find Hawkins at his house?"
In futile hope of still getting to see Marion, even for a short time, Miles had been trying to ignore the little voice in his head that had been asking the same question. "Well, there's, uh . . ."
"There's what?"
"Nothing. You're right. We should." Miles straightened his back. "This day is just never going to end, is it?"
*****
They arrived at Hawkins's shotgun house on the edge of town just as it was growing dark. Though it stood on a quiet street of well-maintained homes, Hawkins's place was a dump—its roofline sagging, its paint flaking, its yard overgrown with weeds. There was no light within.
The men marched up to the door and gave it a loud knock.
"Hawkins!" Miles shouted. "It's the sheriff! Open the door!"
Nothing.
"He's probably passed out in there," Bill said.
Miles gave the door another pounding. It made no difference.
"I've come to assume that you'll kick the door in whether you have a warrant or not," Floyd said.
"Safe assumption," Miles said. But just as he lifted his leg and took aim with the flat of his foot, he thought twice and tried the knob. It was unlocked. He threw the door wide open. "Hey, what do you know?"
Entering, they were greeted by stagnant air carrying the combined odors of spilled whiskey, bile, and old urine. Odors of such pungency that they made Miles's eyes water. "Holy cow," he muttered.
"Holy drunk cow," Floyd said. "Make that an entire dairy of sick, drunk cows wallowing in their own piss."
"Nice turn of phrase, Floyd," Miles said, pulling his shirt up over his mouth and nose.
"Does Hawkins smell as bad as his house?" Floyd asked.
"He's no gardenia."
"How do people ride in his car when he's working as a taxi driver?"
"I imagine they hold their breath."
Miles tried the light switch, but nothing came on, so Bill retrieved a small lantern from the truck, and they took a look around as a trio bound to the light.
Though technically a house, the inside made Akroyd's shack seem clean and well maintained by comparison. The wood floor was soft in multiple spots. The walls and interior doors were damaged and stained by the scratching of long-departed dogs. There was a filthy, bare mattress in the far corner of the front room. Mouse droppings all over the kitchen floor. No food in the pantry, save for one dented can of scrapple that looked as if someone had tried to open it by bashing it with a sharp rock. Broken glass on the floor appeared to be that of a liquor bottle.
