Big fish, p.8
Big Fish, page 8
•"Altmeyer doesn't like to do that," said Rachel. "He's too stubborn."
"I was afraid of that.''
"It's simple enough." Altmeyer continued. "Ever)thing has been tried, so you pick a way that's a little less obvious than the others, and maybe they'll be too busy with people who are being more flagrant.''
"They're starting to soften," Rachel called, staring down at the pot on the stove.
•"Good. When the whole mess comes to a boil, turn it down a little so it simmers. It has to stav hot."
Bucky smiled. "You're full of surprises. I had Rachel figured as the gourmet chef. What is it?"
"Lead fishing sinkers." Altmeyer sipped his coffee as he walked over and looked into the pot. "They'll be ready in a minute."
*T can wait," said Bucky. "I'm on a diet."
"You can help me," Altmeyer said. "The idea is to pour a little liquid into the can, slosh it around so it forms a very thin, even film over the whole inside, then pour the extra lead back into the pot."
"Without spilling any of it on the floor or stove," Rachel added.
"Without spilling any of it, or burning yourself," Altmeyer went on. "When you've done one, set it upside down on the dish rack so there won't be any drips or uneven places when it dries."
Bucky stood up and joined Altmeyer. "What exactly are we doing?"
"We're putting on aprons and gloves, for one thing," Rachel said. "I can spot a spiller at a glance."
"It's really pretty simple," said Altmeyer. "We line the cans with a little lead, so the machines in the airport can't see through them. Japan is a great place for this because half the people in the airport will be bringing in American food for homesick friends. Last New Year's the department stores in Tokyo were getting thirty bucks for a sixpack of Campbell's soup."
Bucky held his gloved hands in the air as Rachel tied a pink apron behind his back. "How do you know things like that?"
"Don't be silly, old Buck," said Rachel. "We're importers. Right now in Tokyo a side of beef would make a nice gift. Anything they don't raise in quantity makes a nice gift."
Altmeyer poured a dipper of molten lead into a shiny fifteen-ounce can and turned it quickly between his gloves, then poured out the excess. "I thought of this a few years ago
when there was a brief surge in the arms market m Bolivia. I bought the canning machine in Seattle. The outfits that take sport fishermen out after salmon all have them so the customers can mail home the fish. After the pictures are developed it's about all you can do."
"What were you sending to Bolivia?"
"Ammunition. I was fitting ten ounces of 7.62-millimeter rounds in each can, sixty cans a case. Whenever there's a revolution going on, anything that looks like food gets in. By the time the market closed, one case was worth—"
"What closed the market?"
Altmeyer stirred the pot of lead as he talked. "It's like any other business. When the big chains decide to move in, the small businessman has to get out. That time the United States government picked the same side I'd picked, and about a week later ammunition was free."
Bucky picked up a can and stared warily at the lead bubbling in the pot. "When we've done this, what goes into the can?"
"Three little pistols I picked out. They're called 'Auto Nine' because they have an eight-round magazine and hold one in the chamber. They only weigh eight-and-a-quarter ounces, and if you take off the shde and the barrel you can fit the parts in a can."
"I see. Canned heaters. But you must have three dozen cans here."
"Four are for silencers and extra clips. That reminds me. They fire .22 Long Rifle ammunition, so if you have to use yours, remember what you're doing. You have to fire at close range and hit somewhere important. Once it's in there it'll rattle around a little and tumble, so it'll do a lot of damage, but don't expect to stop a charging sumo wrestler unless you see a couple of holes in his forehead. When in doubt, keep firing."
"Very appetizing. Last time I was in Japan I estimated that the chances of being charged by a sumo wrestler were
about the same as my chances at home of being beaned by a relief pitcher for the Dodgers, and I decided I could live with that. What are the other cans for?"
"We'll have a few extras, to raise the odds," said Alt-meyer. "If somebody decides to open one, we may as well have something with us that won't ruin his day."
"Like what?"
"Canned soup, beef stew, that kind of thing," said Rachel.
TOKYO
As they passed through the pneumatic doors to the sidewalk in front of the airline terminal, Bucky set his suitcase on the ground and held up his hand. "Taxi!"
"Not that one," said Rachel as the black car accelerated past them. "We want a yellow one."
"Why?"
"They only go to railroad stations." She peered up the drive, where scores of cars and buses maneuvered for positions near the curb. "That one," she said, and Altmeyer moved toward the drive. She turned to Bucky. "It's tricky during rush hour."
A Japanese man saw the cab and held up two fingers. The driver veered in toward him, slowing. Altmeyer stepped behind the man, just out of his peripheral vision, and held up three fingers. The cab rolled past the man and jerked to a stop beside Altmeyer, its rear door popping open automatically.
Altmeyer handed the driver a card with something written on it in Japanese characters. The driver nodded and handed it back.
Rachel said to Bucky, "You have to be ruthless, which is Altmeyer's only authenticated virtue."
"So now we're going to a railroad station?"
"The Imperial Hotel is about two blocks from Tokyo Station, which puts it close enough. At three times the meter price, two blocks will go by without his noticing them, especially after driving an hour or more."
"Then what?" asked Bucky.
Rachel studied her watch. "It's now five on Monday afternoon here, which means it's midnight Sunday in Los Angeles. So your only choices are sleeping or eating. You don't get to choose which day it is."
"How about you, Altmeyer?" Bucky said. "I read something that said you don't get jet lag if you force yourself to stay up until the locals go to bed. I'd say that means at least five hours of eating would help us brave the culture shock."
Altmeyer watched the heavy traffic around them. "Let's get settled in the hotel and pop open a couple of soup cans first. A few ounces under my belt will make all the difference."
Bucky turned to Rachel. "Does he have an itinerary, or does he just navigate by waiting for something to move in the water, like a shark?"
Altmeyer spoke without looking away from the window. "It's five thirteen. We'll be in our hotel rooms by six forty-five. It will take me until seven to open the cans and reconstitute the delights to be found therein. You will arrive at our room at exactly eight wearing a dark suit appropriate to dining in one of the better establishments to be found in the vicinity. They're called ryoriya. After dinner we'll go back to the hotel and sleep until nine in the morning. At nine thirty you'll join us again, this time for breakfast in the hotel. After that we go to Yokohama to watch the ships come in. The Shonan Express leaves Tokyo Station every half hour, and it takes only a half hour to get to Yokohama."
"Amazing," said Bucky. "Such premeditation. How long will we be in Yokohama?"
"That depends. The ship we want to watch isn't due until day after tomorrow. I expect it'll make a pretty sight steaming into the harbor tomorrow around sunset. At Yokohama you can watch it without getting the sun in your eyes."
"How do you know these things?"
Rachel sighed. "I'm afraid something moved in the water."
"You should remember," Altmeyer said. "It was the gentleman we took boating a few evenings ago."
Altmeyer stopped walking and cupped his hands to shield the flame of his lighter from the breeze that swirled between the warehouses and out into the harbor, setting up complicated patterns of shallow waves. He squinted past the flame at the group of Japanese men in green coveralls who were sitting along the base of a dark blue cargo container on the next pier. "That makes twelve," he said, and glanced at his watch as he walked on.
"Is twelve a quorum?" said Bucky. "It'll be dark soon."
Altmeyer shrugged. "It might not be enough to unload a ship, but it's enough to convince me one's coming before tomorrow. Only it's supposed to be this pier, not that one."
"So it's true," said Rachel. She walked beside him, picking her way along the crumbling concrete of the pier.
Altmeyer flicked his cigarette into the water, then reached into his shirt pocket, extracted the pack, and studied it.
"What are you doing?" said Rachel.
"Memorizing the brand. 'Geobugson, Fine Korean Cigarettes.' " He tossed the full pack into the water.
They walked in silence along the weathered jetty toward the distant hillside above the water. Altmeyer stared ahead, his hands in his pockets.
Bucky muttered to Rachel, "I hope he's not planning on walking all the way up there to commune with nature before he gives up and goes home."
Altmeyer heard him, and quickened his strides unconsciously as he spoke. "We've got a little problem about that. They sent that guy—Leif the Unlucky—to Mexico after us. By now they must know he's not coming back, which means that we are. So home might be a lousy idea right now."
"So what do we do?" asked Bucky. He glanced at Rachel.
Altmeyer walked on. "It would help if I knew what they think they're doing. I can't figure out why they didn't just pay us off. Their profit is already enormous."
"I know studio executives who would kill to cut their overhead by two million," said Bucky. "Expenses are real money, and profits have a way of showing up after somebody else is sitting at your desk."
"It's not the same," said Altmeyer. "These people know of one thing I can deliver, but they don't know of anything I can't deliver. They might be tossing away a chance of making ten times as much."
"Maybe they don't appreciate you."
"It must have something to do with the guns," said Altmeyer. "They must be doing something special with them that they don't want me to find out about. It can't be just the money. I guess the only thing we can do that might help is find out what they're going to do with the guns. It's not very promising."
Bucky said, "I suppose we could show up for the unloading. I'm not suggesting that. In fact, I'm suggesting we don't. But we could."
"Too risky," said Altmeyer. "The cargo container is supposed to be sealed and safe, but until it's been signed off by a Japanese inspector we'd better stay away from it."
Rachel smiled. "Thank you."
"You're welcome."
"Not for being sensible, for giving me an idea. I'd almost forgotten about the authorities. They're our leverage. Pay up or we tattle. Isn't that what they're so worried about? It beats bursting into the warehouse and threatening those longshoremen."
"It'd be a waste of time anyway. It's pretty unlikely any of them would know what we were saying."
"What about the anonymous tip to the police?"
"One problem with it is that it's hard to give an anony-
mous tip if you have to bring along a translator. Besides, it's not enough of a threat to make them give us the money, just enough to make them a little more eager to kill us off."
"I was afraid you'd say that," said Rachel. "If you had more time you'd think of more reasons. But you don't."
"I don't?"
"No, you don't. Look down there."
Altmeyer stopped and looked down the long, sloping street, past the warehouses and docks to the darkening slate-blue water. As he watched, a pair of tugboats gently nudged their bows against the black hull of a small freighter, easing it slowly up to the pier.
"There's no hurry," said Altmeyer. "It'll take a couple of hours of work with the crane to get the cargo containers off the deck. The people we want to talk to won't be any more anxious to be there for the customs inspection than we are."
"I'm tired," Rachel said. "I'm going someplace where I can sit down."
"Tired?" Altmeyer laughed. "I'd never have believed it. You're never tired. Even Bucky isn't, and he's a walking display of all the vices."
Rachel ignored him. "I'm also going to get some dinner. It's going to be very good and very expensive, and I'm going to linger over it for some time."
"Then we'd better go up on the bluff. That's where the foreign section used to be, and that's still probably the best place to look for a restaurant that'll serve Americans." Altmeyer stepped out into the street and waved his arm at a taxi that was whining up the long incline toward them.
As Rachel sauntered after him she said, "It's going to be a restaurant where I can get a steak from one of those steers that they raise on hot food and give massages to every day. I don't care if it comes from Kobe or Kansas, just so it's big."
Altmeyer stepped aside as the door of the taxi popped
open, then leaned down to brush his lips against Rachel's cheek as she entered the cab. "You're full of surprises." "Not if you keep your eyes open."
As THEY WALKED out of the restaurant at the top of the bluff and approached the waiting taxi, Altmeyer stopped to stare down at the harbor, his head cocked as though he were trying to line up the lights below with a space between two manicured shrubs across the road.
Bucky and Rachel sat in the cab watching as he stepped quickly across the street to join them. He sat beside the driver and pointed his finger down at the harbor, smiling and nodding.
"Nice view from up here at night," said Bucky. "Lots of lights on the water." Then he added, "That doesn't mean I want to go rowing."
"They moved it," said Altmeyer.
"Moved what?" Rachel asked.
"The ship." Altmeyer sat tapping his fingers on his knees, as though impatient to get down the hill. "While we were eating they moved the ship to the next pier."
"Are you sure?"
They could see Altmeyer's head nodding in the dim light.
As the cab reached the bottom of the slope and bounced upward across the first intersection, Altmeyer waved his hand and pointed toward the brightly lighted window of a bar in the next block, where a crowd of men in suits seemed to be collecting.
The driver stopped and said something in Japanese, but Altmeyer nodded and smiled in a pantomime of dumb incomprehension until he gave up. Altmeyer handed him a few bills, and said, "I know, pal. No foreigners allowed, private club and all that." As he stepped into the street, he said, "Happy trails."
After the taxi turned the corner and slipped out of sight, Altmeyer ushered Bucky and Rachel along the street toward the harbor, walking quickly. He glanced at his watch, and
seemed to walk faster. Rachel could feel the flat of his hand exerting a firm, gentle pressure between her shoulder blades.
As they turned the next corner they could see the short, black ship moored at the pier where they had stood that afternoon. The concrete platform was bathed in the bright yellow light of sodium flood lamps mounted along the eaves of the low hangarlike building on the pier. Already there were four stacks of cargo containers three deep on the wharf, and above them, another container dangling from the cable.
"What now?" said Bucky. "Can you recognize the container with the cotton in it?"
"They all have cotton," Altmeyer said. "The hold is full of fish in freezer compartments. What we want won't be here. Take a look at those guys unloading."
Rachel said, "They're not the same ones who were here before. The others were wearing green jump suits."
"What we want will be at the next pier. I should have figured it out before." They walked along the jetty, staying away from the glare of the lights.
When they were still a hundred yards from the rear of the warehouse that dominated the next pier, Altmeyer stopped and pulled them back into the shadow of a huge coil of steel cable that sat among some large, empty crates. Altmeyer whispered, "Do you see the car?"
Bucky peered down the road, where a black car sat behind the warehouse. He nodded.
Altmeyer said quietly, "It's got to be one of Nagata's bosses, Bridges, Walker, or Bone."
Bucky turned to Rachel. "Is he serious?"
"It's what they called themselves," said Rachel. "Nagata seems to be their interpreter."
Altmeyer spoke quickly. "That car can't carry a ton of metal, so there will be a truck inside for the guns. Rachel, you're in charge of the truck. When it comes by here, get anything you can: a license number, anything you can read, but stay invisible."
"Okay."
"Bucky, you're in charge of the area around the car. That includes the door of the warehouse. If the first head to pop out isn't mine, put a bullet into it, come back for Rachel and tr>' to make your way back to the train station. The last Tokyo train pulls out at twelve thirty. If you miss it or can't get to it, wait them out. They won't look very hard for you, because they can't hang around here with the guns."' Without waiting for an answer. Altmeyer moved off in the darkness.
Bucky whispered, "Wait," but Altmeyer was already too far away. Bucky said, 'T hate this. It's a lousy plan, and I don't even know what it is, except that Tm supposed to shoot people."
"Quiet," Rachel whispered. "Let's go." "But he said you had to stay here." "He meant 'here' in the larger sense. Come on." The two followed in the direction Altmeyer had taken, moving quietly toward the warehouse in the darkness. Ahead of them there was a sudden splash of light as a door opened and a man's silhouette appeared in the doorway, and then the light vanished.
Altmeyer closed the door gently, sidestepped behind a row of plywood boxes on wooden pallets, and stopped to listen. There were voices in the warehouse speaking rapidly in Japanese—were they angry, alarmed? He waited for two minutes, but the tone didn't seem to change, and the speakers were still a distance from him. But there was another sound in the background, like a small engine. Could it be a forklift for moving these boxes?
He felt reluctant to move from the door, but if there were a forklift, he couldn't wait for it. Slowly he worked his way down a row of boxes, stepping on the surfaces of the wooden pallets so his feet couldn't be seen under them.
