Black Tide (42 page)

I went back through the living room and down a short hallway carpeted in a light tan color that seemed to show every scuff or stain that it had ever suffered. For a trailer, the building was wide and roomy. I could see why mobile homes like this one were popular. For not much money, you had the illusion of living in a real home, and for some families, this illusion would be the best that they could ever do. But I wouldn't want to ride out a tornado or hurricane in one.

The first door to the right led to the bathroom, and unlike the rest of the trailer, it seemed reasonably clean, as if it had just been washed. There was the usual stuff you find in a bathroom, and I left after a minute or so. Beyond the bathroom were two more rooms. One was being used as a bedroom, with a box spring and mattress on the floor, and more piles of clothes and magazines. The magazines were similar to the ones I had found in his old apartment in Bainbridge: art magazines and men's magazines. Quite a combination. I looked through the closets for a moment --- some security guard uniforms and other clothing, boxes on the floor --- and then I left. The room smelled of sweat and mildew, and I was glad to get out.

There was just one room left. I took a breath, tried to ease the trembling in my hands and opened the door.

Nothing. Just piles of boxes, clothes and some pieces of furniture salvaged from the apartment. I looked underneath a desk. Nobody. Craig Dummer was not home.

So where in hell was he? And what did he mean by those messages he left on my answering machine?

Feeling a bit light-headed and almost relaxed, I went back to the living room and dumped a pile of newspapers and magazines on the floor so I could sit down on the couch. The couch gave a little belch of dust when I sat down, and my stomach twinged at what the papers had uncovered: a half-eaten cheeseburger resting on a greasy paper napkin. What a dump. I couldn't understand how anyone could live like this. Except for the bathroom, the whole mobile home was a health threat, was eligible to be condemned, was ---

Except for the bathroom. I was back in the bathroom, on my hands and knees. The white tile had been freshly washed, but in the center of the floor there was a rusty stain in the grouting that made me uneasy, and I didn't feel any better looking in the bathtub. It had also been scrubbed, but the washing couldn't hide gouges in the tub's side. I touched the gouges. They were sharp and raw. I sniffed the air, smelling nothing save the strong odor of cleanser. This room had been cleaned, and had been cleaned well, and not so long ago.

I got back on my hands and knees, looked some more, and behind the toilet I found evidence that the cleaners had missed something.

A human tooth, still bloody at the root.

Chapter Twenty-Four

In another minute of searching I found something else that almost made me use the toilet for something it wasn't primarily designed for --- a piece of bone, with brain tissue still attached, about the size of a quarter. I dropped it and left the bathroom quickly. In the kitchen I ran the water and scrubbed and scrubbed at my hands, then I sat down on the dirty linoleum floor with my back against the refrigerator and tried to think. All of my alarms were jangling and voices were telling me to get the hell out. For a change I tried to ignore the voices. I went back to the storage room and the bedroom, and I started tossing the place, being careful where my hands ended up.

In the storage room I found a file folder that contained some of Craig Dummer's financial background. There were check stubs dating back almost five years, and something about the companies he worked for sounded familiar. In his bedroom I found some more men's magazines and a couple of videotapes of movies that never made it to Oscar night. The room made me feel awful, but I stayed, and it was in the closet that I found something that made me clench my teeth with both the anger and the joy of discovery.

Hidden way back in the closet, behind shoes and bags full of socks, was a shoebox. In the box was a ski mask and a .380 Smith & Wesson automatic pistol, with silencer attached. I removed the magazine and counted out the cartridges. One was missing, and I was certain when it had been fired, over a week ago.

I was also certain where it had been fired. Into the side of Tony Russo's head, in front of me and Felix Tinios.

I spent the next fifteen minutes in that mobile home wiping down everything I had touched, and then I got the hell out.

At home I didn't do anything except sit on the back deck with my knees up to my chest, watching the stars rise in the east. It was a cool night for a change, another warning of the cold winter that was approaching. In the span of four short weeks the local population would plummet, as the motels and hotels closed up, as the owners of the cottages drained the water systems, shut off the electricity and nailed sheets of plywood over doors and windows. Four short weeks. I wondered where I would be, what I would be doing and what I would be thinking at that time.

The stars seemed very bright indeed. Upstairs in my study was the folder I had stolen from Craig Dummer's silent and haunted home, but that would wait. I needed to turn down the volume in my head, needed to make everything seem less edgy. I went back inside and from the cellar I pulled out my summer sleeping bag and a rolled-up mattress pad, and then I grabbed a pillow from the couch. In a quick movement upstairs and back, I retrieved my 9 mm Beretta, then I went out to the rear deck, carrying three Molson Golden Ales with me. I was sure that Felix wouldn't begrudge me this one indulgence.

I unrolled the mattress pad on the hard wood of the deck, spread out the sleeping bag and crawled inside. I sat up against a wall and sipped at the first of the Molson Golden Ales, letting the little movies, the dark fantasies and thoughts race through my mind as I looked out into the limitless miles of the ocean. Craig Dummer, alone in the mobile home, being threatened. Taken into the bathroom, trembling and stinking with fear, sweat running down his face, urine leaking down his leg. Forced into the bathtub, a couple of gunshots to the head. Silencer, of course, though even with a silencer great chunks of bone and flesh are torn away. Then the body is taken out and the cleanup begins, but ends abruptly, leaving behind a couple of pieces of … well, of evidence. And then the pistol and the facemask, hidden, but not so well hidden. Left behind in the closet. Why? And why bother taking the body and doing the cleanup?

I was surprised at how quickly I had finished the first Molson, and I started working on the second. Out on the ocean a light moved, a light representing a boat, a man or woman, and a family, staying busy and trying to make a living out on the unforgiving ocean. Busy. The person or persons in that trailer had been busy, quite busy, with the corpse of Craig Dummer in the bathroom of that trailer. Somehow, the decision is made to take the body out and to hide the fact that Craig is dead. Keep it covered up, no publicity, no newspaper headlines, nothing to distract anyone from what is going on.

And what's going on?

Nothing.

Except for Friday. Day after tomorrow. The exchange of the safe house's location and the paintings for the money that was promised Felix Tinios.

Was Craig going to blow something on the exchange? I thought about that some more, and somewhere between the second and third Molson’s, I fell asleep.

Morning after the night out on the deck seemed to come early, but I managed to roll over and pull part of the sleeping bag over my head to get some more sleep. The less said about breakfast and what I felt like, the better. Suffice it to say that ten o'clock I was in my study, nibbling on buttered toast and drinking an iced tea, looking through Craig Dummer's file, which was one of those accordion cardboard folders that open up. For all the mess and dumped clothes and dirty dishes and crumpled newspapers that I had found in his apartment in Bainbridge and his trailer in Exonia, the man had kept pretty good records. Year-by-year collections of pay stubs, W-2 forms and photocopies of job application sheets. In the five years since the theft at the Scribner Museum, Craig had worked at seven companies in the Manchester-Bedford-Concord area as a security guard, never lasting longer than a year at any job.

Not much of a career path. Then I got my first surprise. His salary. I'm no expert on many things, including the pay practices for security guards, but something seemed wrong about Craig Dummer getting paid about four times the minimum hourly wage. It was a hefty salary, one that didn't make any sense, and it was a wage that started out big with his first job and then grew by a few percentage points with each new job. Something seemed screwy indeed.

Then there were other surprises. Stuck in the folders of the file were torn-off sheets from a Gary Larson desk calendar. I smiled as I read each cartoon and then I looked on the reverse. Notes had been written on the back. I checked the dates; the oldest cartoon was nearly five years old. I looked again at the writing, which was crabbed and small and hard to read. The oldest cartoon had a note that said something like "The wait begins." Another said, ''A whole year. Hard to believe." A couple were indecipherable, but one said, "Europe seems so far away," and another said, "What is to be done?"

A diary, or a journal. Or a record of something not going right, for many years in a row. There were a few cartoons that made reference to someone called "The Man."

"Someone had a big mouth that night. I think I got The Man's name." The date was a week after the theft. A month later: "Confirmed! It was The Man." And a few months after that: "The Man is a sissy. Quickly offers a deal for my closed mouth."

The most recent cartoon was just over a week old. On the reverse: "Such awful work. But it had to be done, hard as it was. Europe and the payoff awaits."

I checked the date again. The same day that Tony Russo was killed.

I went downstairs and made myself another iced tea, and when I got back to my book-lined study, I returned to the paycheck stubs. Seven different companies. DiskJets. Grayson Enterprises. Data Lock Systems. Blue Horizon Software. Uplink Corp. Ravine Data Service. Mycroft Computer Development. All seemed high-tech or computer-based, but something about their names nagged me. I took a couple of swallows of iced tea and put the sweating glass down on my desk, next to my computer. One of the paycheck stubs --- for Mycroft Computer Development --- said ''A Division of Brass Cannon Systems" in tiny print at the bottom.

Brass Cannon Systems.

"I'll be damned," I whispered. I reached across the desk and pulled out the
Petro Star
file, and in the listing I stole from DefNet, there it was. Brass Cannon Systems.

Owned by one Cameron Briggs.

I quickly got on the phone and went to work, pretending to be one Sam Matheson, reporter for
Business Week
magazine. A half hour later, I put down the phone and started rubbing my face. All seven companies were connected to Cameron Briggs, who owned some of them outright and held a major portion of the stock of the rest. Craig Dummer and Cameron Briggs. Craig and The Man. I leaned back in my chair, staring up at the ceiling. I wanted to pick up the phone and make a call, and ask Cameron if he had been in Exonia last night scrubbing down a bathroom, but instead I waited.

I'm glad I did.

In the afternoon I was out on the deck when the phone rang. I took it outside, trailing the long cord. It was Roger Krohn, and he didn't waste time.

"I have the information you wanted," Krohn said. "You ready?"

"Hold on, will you?" I went upstairs and retrieved a pad of paper and a pen, and when I carne back to the deck I held the phone to one ear as Roger talked to me.

"Operation Harpoon," he began. "Joint Suffolk County-FBI investigation into corruption and organized crime influences in and around Boston Harbor. Looking at all aspects of harbor business: who controlled the longshoremen's union, who had influence over the container traffic and who passed along what funds to what companies. Case was opened about seven years ago and was then closed out a little less than two years later, with no arrests, no recommendations, no future investigations."

"Who were they investigating?"

"The usual suspects. Local mob, government and business leaders. People who had influence on the piers, on what went in and out of the harbor. File indicates some preliminary investigative work had been done but then a budget crunch carne and with nothing solid to move on, the case was closed out."

"Do you have the file right in front of you?"

A slight pause. "Yeah, I do. Why?"

"Got a couple of questions. On the organized crime side, were they looking at Jimmy Corelli?"

Roger laughed. "Hell, I don't have to look at the file to confirm that. Look, Lewis, anything serious going down in Boston or eastern Massachusetts back then, the feds and the Suffolk County DA would be looking at Jimmy Corelli without question. It's a given, an automatic. They were looking at him right up to the day he croaked in Leavenworth."

"But is his name on the list?" I insisted. I made out the sound of shuffling papers.

"Yep, he's right here."

"Okay," I said, doodling aimlessly on the pad of paper. "One more question. On the business side of the ledger. You see anything there on a Cameron Briggs, a guy from New York City?"