Billingsgate Shoal (24 page)

Yes indeed.

Yes sir!

No.

After dinner two questions gnawed at me like rats
around a grain dryer. One: how did Schilling know I was seeking his
boat? That question was easy to answer: because Danny Murdock called
him up from the Schooner Race and warned him that I was snooping
around and getting hot on the trail. But the antecedent to that
question was this one: how had Schilling known to warn Danny about me
beforehand? How was the link made between my early watching of the
boat and Schilling's need to have me eliminated?

That appeared to be the interesting question.
 

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

JOE BRINDELLI and I had just arrived in Gloucester in
Mary's Audi. It was a warm, sunny day; a perfect Indian summer
weekend. We rolled to a stop in front of Murdock's Boatyard and
exited. We tried the bell with no result. We were walking along the
side of the worn-out house when a familiar face stuck out the window
above us.

"Who you lookin' for?"

"Daniel Murdock. Can you help us?"

I pointed lo Joe.

"This is Detective Lieutenant Brindelli of the
State Police. We'd appreciate your help."

She looked down at us quizzically for about fifteen
seconds. Then her eyes crinkled up and her mouth turned down sour.
Saliva drooled down her chin and her eyes were all wet and shiny. She
was bawling. She left the window in a hurry. A few seconds later she
opened the back door and hobbled down the short wooden flight of
steps and lurched over to us, drawing the frayed robe around her as
she came. She was looking down at the leaf-strewn sidewalk, crying.
She was drunk too. Joe grabbed her by the elbows and she collapsed
into him, sobbing. As for me, I had seen enough miserable women in
the past month to last a lifetime.

Joe sat her down on the stoop. She told us she hadn't
seen her husband in three weeks. Sure, he'd been on benders before
but he always came back, pale and shaking, a few days later.

"Have you gone to the police?"

She nodded, clenching the old robe up around her
neck.

"Two, three times, But they know Danny. They
think he just run off drunk. They say they'll look for him, that's
all."

"You," she said to me, "you were here
before a long time ago."

"Yes. I finally found your husband over at the
Schooner Race but didn't have a chance to talk with him—"

"—too drunk?"

"No. He just didn't want to. Can you tell me the
last time you saw Danny?"

"The police asked me that, too. It was on
September eighth, a Thursday."

That was the same night I'd seen him, and been
clobbered. We left Mrs. Murdock and walked back to the boatyard. The
door was locked and Joe returned for the key. It was the same as when
I'd seen it earlier through the window. Benches lined three of the
walls and were strewn with ball-peen hammers, swages, pressure hoses,
cutting torches, giant vises, and welding equipment. There were
ratchet tools, air compressors, gas bottles (metal tanks, actually),
power hacksaws, and a hundred assorted other implements. Interlaced
between all of them were empty beer cans. Though he preferred
Budweiser, he was obviously catholic in his tastes, for there was a
representative of every brand I'd heard of and then some. The center
of the building was taken up almost completely by the big metal hull
of a boat that was nearing completion. Danny Murdock did build boats,
and was pretty damn good at it too as far as I could see. The big
hull was cradled in a massive wooden dolly mounted on railroad
trucks. The trucks rolled on tracks that led down and out the big
hangar doors to the harbor. The dolly and trucks were hauled up the
track by a big electric winch.

We walked around past the hull and down the tracks.
Where they slid out of sight underneath the metal hangar door the
ground was damp with dirty water.

"What do you think?" asked Joe.

"I think Danny Murdock's dead. And I think he's
probably sleeping at the bottom of the harbor. Or else they took him
for a boat ride first and dumped him somewhere rather remote, like
perhaps halfway between here and the Isles of Shoals."

"You don't think he skipped? Does he owe
money'?"

"He's probably up to his ass in debt, but I
don't think he skipped. His disappearing the same day I was bonked on
the head is too coincidental. I think that Jim Schilling and Company
sensed his fear, his regret at becoming involved with them. It
wouldn't take a guy like Schilling long to decide what to do with
him."

We climbed up inside the hull and searched it.
Nothing. Next we went after the papers. This was difficult because
they were scattered to hell and gone all over the workshop. But most
of them were in two big drawers under the main workbench. Orders and
invoices were scrawled on forms that were obviously purchased from
dime stores. The writing wasn't very clear and there was no order to
the many sheets and lists. We scrambled through the jungle of paper
searching for a recurring name, a large job order. . .anything. There
was only confusion and messy handwriting.

Having struck out, we returned to the hull in the
center of the shop. We wondered where the owner was and when he'd
show up to claim his near-finished dragger. Almost all small boatyard
work is done on a custom basis, with the shipwright receiving a hefty
down payment at the outset. Where was this boat's owner? We gave the
place a last look around. Then I remembered Danny's wife saying she
was at her sister's the night it all happened. I grabbed a big hammer
and idly tapped it along the hull. Nothing. It bonged the same all
along its length. Then Joe asked for the hammer and went back up the
ladder. I followed and he was pointing to two squarish upright stacks
that projected up on each side of the vessel just forward of her
beam. They were made of folded steel plate, about two feet across and
almost ten feet tall. They were braced to the sides of the hull and
acted as frames to hold the cabin and bridge, which hadn't been added
yet. They were about eight feet apart. Joe bumped them with the
hammer: They both bonged. But I got down low just above the keel I
and did the same. The port pillar didn't bong, it thumped. We
examined the tops of these channels. The starboard one was capped
with a plate that fitted it exactly. The port one had the proper cap,
but the worst looking weld job I'd ever seen. The bead was all
glumpy, and had been run two or three times in spots. I even saw the
remains of two old welding rods that had frozen to the steel and had
to be chipped off with a cold chisel. No master craftsman had done
that.

"What do you think'?" asked Joe.

"You asked me that before. You're the cop. I'd
say we'd be smart to open these."

"I'm with you—"

"OK. The owner of this place is not here, but we
were admitted by his next-of-kin. So I'm going to get one of those
heavy duty drills and poke through."

"I'm still with you."

He watched while I hauled a big half-inch drill up
the ladder, cradling it on my hip, and set to work. I had a good
carbon bit working for me, but it still took almost ten minutes to
penetrate the half-inch plate at the top of the port pillar.
Cautiously, I sniffed at the hole.

"Well?" asked Joe anxiously.

"Naw. I just smell kerosene, or motor oil. Maybe
it's some kind of rust-proofing. Let me try the other one."

I did. It did not smell like motor oil. So much for
the upper portions, now to try lower down. I got an extension cord
and seated myself just over the keel, right in front of the starboard
pillar. It was dark down there but it didn't matter. I finished the
hole. Nothing. Then I turned and began at the port side. Even before
the drill pushed through all the way dark fluid collected on the bit.
When the hole was finished and I pulled the bit out, a stream of it
snaked out at me. I jumped to my  feet and called for a light,
which Joe provided. I looked at the fluid. It looked like old motor
oil. I collected some on my finger and sniffed. It smelled like old
motor oil. I wasn't going to taste it.

"I think it's old motor oil," I said
triumphantly.

Joe's voice boomed and echoed down to me: "'Why
would anyone do that?"

"Dunno," I said as I climbed up and out of
the hull and over to the nearest bench. I grabbed the longest welding
rod I could lay my hands on and returned to the bowels of the boat.
The electrode went into the hole about three inches and stopped. I
jabbed it in. It made no noise, just stopped. I wiggled it about,
pushing. Something. Not hard like metal . . . something. In the
starboard hole it went in easily until it fell in, plunking down out
of sight.

I rose to leave the hull, but just before I started
back up the ladderway my nostrils caught, the faint, faint whiff of
another odor. In my mind's eye I saw the bloated corpses of cattle
and deer, swollen like balloons, legs up in the hot sun. I saw the
clustering of filthy birds in a writhing, flapping heap with hooves
and antlers sticking out the sides.

"Well?" asked Joe."

"Well maybe they didn't drop poor Danny into the
drink near the Isles of Shoals after all. But I've got a way to find
out. Let's turn the heat up and get out of here for a few hours."

We decided to go to lunch. Joe thought it would be
nice to take Mrs. Murdock along. He had a heart of gold. We had a
tough time talking her into it. I suppose in her state she felt
rather ashamed of herself and her plight, and simply wanted to hang
around the wreck of a house and think about her wreck of a husband
and her wrecked life in general. But Joe succeeded in the end, and
Mrs. Katherine Murdock got dolled up enough to join us in the car.
She actually wasn't that bad looking, though a trifle lumpy and dumpy
from the life she'd led over the past dozen years. She had probably
been really pretty once.

We went to a place called the Captains Courageous
that overlooks the harbor. Mrs. Murdock put away three Southern
Comforts on the rocks and felt noticeably better. I ordered a cup of
clam chowder and a Heineken. Joe shot the works with a fisherman's
platter. Mrs. Murdock fought, down a clam roll and coleslaw. She
gagged a bit on the food, even with the three stiff drinks in her
gut. My guess was that with all the booze and worry she was having a
textbook case of anorexia and pyloric stenosis. This meant that the
more she drank, the less she ate. And the less she ate, the more
damage the liquor was doing to her. I had a feeling though that she
was shortly going to encounter a major life change that would either
break or save her.

It was a grim lunch. In keeping with my feelings
about that meal, I dined lightly. I was glad I did because before it
was over Mrs. Murdock announced she had to go to the 1adies room and
came back reeking of hydrochloric acid. She cou1dn't keep down the
clam roll after all; she had puked it up. Poor thing. Joe bought her
another Southern Comfort and we went back to the boatyard. On the
pretext of having forgotten something, Joe and I went back to the
work building. We knew by the smell right away.

I took a trouble light and shined it down into the
hold. I lowered it down by its cord and saw the flies swarming around
the hole in the portside pillar. They were going in and out like
honeybees at a hive.

"Oh, Jesus, Charlie. Oh my God."

"Yeah."

"Look, I'll take her away from here. I'll take
her over to the station so she won't be here when they cut him out."

"Good idea. Have them send a crew over. There
are cutting torches here but maybe they'll want to bring their own.
But get her away first, that's a good idea."

He took her in the Audi and I waited at the
boathouse. Outside. The aroma was getting thicker by the minute. The
first thing I did was turn off the ceiling-mounted hot air blower
when we came back and the building had dropped into the sixties. But
there was no stopping the putrid odor now. The motor oil was a good
idea. A stroke of genius. Covering the body with oil was like
preserving it the way the ancient animals were preserved in the tar
pits of La Brea. But with the oil gone and the warm air let in, the
weeks of festering were very, very noticeable.

Joe told me later that she didn't say any more on the
way to the station than she had at lunch, which was nothing. Her
husband was gone and she didn't know why or how. When asked about the
Penelope
, she
proclaimed no knowledge of it. She seemed to be telling the truth,
but she also admitted that she had suspected for some time that Danny
was engaged with illegal modifications and shady people.

I did not particularly want to witness the unearthing
of the late D. Murdock, but my presence was requested by the
officials, including my brother-in-law who, was apparently going to
get some important brownie points at headquarters. It didn't take
them long to cut him out of there, thank God.

Three men wearing nose masks went down into the hull.
They spotlighted the area and turned on the gas, and I heard the
sharp "pop" of the acetylene torch as it ignited, then a
hiss as they adjusted the long silver flame with a touch of blue halo
around it. That went through the plate steel quickly. The first thing
I saw slide out of the bottom of the big portside pillar was a booted
foot. I recognized the boot, even with the oil slime on it. Old Danny
Murdock would never again do his sloppy, drunken soft-shoe imitation
of Bojangles down at the Schooner Race. Those feet were forever
stilled.