GUNNER (ALTON RHODE MYSTERIES Book 5) (12 page)

CHAPTER 18 - SUNK

I got up late Sunday morning feeling a little hung over. I made some instant coffee in a Krups set up in the kitchen just for that purpose and buttered up what was left of the baguette. I needed some exercise. I thought about running but then remembered the canoes. I called the desk and asked the owner how long it would take to paddle to the VFW post.

“About an hour, I would think. You’ll be going with the current. Coming back will be a lot tougher. Might take you a half hour longer. Be quite a workout.”

Just what the doctor ordered. I took a shower and put on some clothes I thought would be appropriate for both my river cruise and a VFW post. Jeans, golf shirt and sneakers, no socks. I also took a small windbreaker, with my gun in one of its pockets. Despite the price on my head, I wasn’t expecting trouble. But, then, it’s not the trouble you expect that gets you killed. 

I walked down to the river and righted one of the canoes. It was a sturdy aluminum Pelican Dakota and looked brand new. Inside were the paddle and two life preservers. I shoved the preservers in the bow and took off my sneakers and threw them in the bottom of the canoe. Then I pushed the canoe along the grass into the water, jumping in at the last second. I paddled out into the middle of the river and headed downstream. A lone fisherman on the far bank gave me a wave, which I reciprocated. The sun was up, but it was cool on the water. I was having a wonderful time. I’d have to talk Alice into doing this sometime. I passed several other fishermen, but there were long stretches where the river bent and there was so much brush and the trees so thick along the banks that I saw no one. Those were the stretches I liked the most. The isolation was as welcome as it was unexpected.

With the current as my friend, the paddling was easy. Finally, I reached a built up area, with buildings and stores and docks along the river. I soon came to the Salina Street bridge. As I passed under it I spotted the Army tank by the VFW post. I paddled over to a dock by the post and tied up next to a couple of outboards. I put on my sneakers and windbreaker and went into the VFW.

The place was jammed and the brunch smells strong. There were kids running around, looking like they’d been dressed for church. Tables had been set up and I could see family groups eating. There was a long line at a buffet set in the back by a wall. Two men wearing Army berets were sitting at a smaller table just inside the door taking money. A sign said “Buffet Brunch, $10. Kids, FREE!”

When it was my turn I said, “Do I have to prove I’m a veteran?”

“You have to prove you have ten bucks,” one of the men said. “Everyone is welcome.”

I paid my $10 and he put it in a metal box. He gave me a blue ticket from a big roll. In front of the other man was a roll of red tickets next to a sign that said “50-50.” I motioned to it and said, “How much?”

“Ten bucks a ticket, three for $25. Proceeds go to subsidize the brunch for vets who can’t afford it. Winner’s half usually comes out to about $500.”

I gave him $25 and headed to the bar. There’s always a bar at a VFW post, and it’s always open. A couple of old salts were sitting at the bar drinking boilermakers. I sat next to them. The bartender, a much younger guy with muscular, tattooed forearms came over.

“Whaddle ya have?”

“Can you make a Bloody Mary from scratch?”

I’m not a fan of prepared, bottled ingredients.

“Watch me.”

I did. Vodka, tomato juice, salt, pepper, Worcestershire sauce, dash of Tabasco, lemon and a big green olive.

“I don’t do celery,” he said, placing the glass in front of me. “There’s a supermarket down the street.”

It was a terrific drink, and I said so. Canoe paddling is good for a hangover, but so is a Bloody Mary. And usually more convenient. I asked him if he knew John Panetta.

“Sure. Used to come in occasionally. Scotch drinker. J&B. Nice guy. Shame what happened to him. Why?”

I took out my card.

“Just doing some background work, in case the cops ever get who did it. He ever talk about the old days, either when he lived here or when he was in Vietnam?”

“Not to me. He and the guy he was usually with mostly watched ballgames on TV. That’s what we usually talked about. Sports.” He looked over to the other guys at the bar. “Hey, Earl? Panetta ever talk the war with you guys?”

“Who wants to know?”

“This guy’s a private eye.”

I introduced myself to Earl and his buddy, Sam, and gave both of them my cards.

“I thought some nig,” Sam said, just catching himself as a woman walked by. “I thought it was a break-in.”

“Just covering all the bases,” I lied. I was getting used to it. “Can you help me out?”

“We were all in Nam,” Earl said, “but Panetta didn’t talk much about it. We wanted to hear how he won the Medal of Honor, of course, but he just gave us some shit about bein’ in the right place at the right time.”

“Actually,” Sam said, “he used to say he was in the wrong place at the right time.”

We all laughed.

“Point is, we didn’t press him or anything,” Earl said. “Man was a hero. He wanted to keep it to himself, that’s his prerogative. You in the service?”

“Yes.”

“Where?”

I told them.

“I hear that was some deep shit,” Sam said. He looked at the bartender. “Wasn’t that where you were, Bobby?”

“Iraq,” the bartender said.

“Oh, yeah. Tough to keep all the wars apart.”

We were all buddies after that. I even hit the buffet with Earl and Sam and sat back at the bar eating with them. Bobby the bartender made me another Bloody Mary.

The food wasn’t that good, but there was plenty of it. Sam and Earl rounded up a couple of vets who also knew Panetta, but they didn’t add much to what I already knew. John Panetta was a good guy, liked his Scotch, talked a lot more sports than war and, as far as they knew, had no enemies.

I bought a couple of rounds of drinks for my new friends, but I strategically switched to coffee. I didn’t want to accidentally paddle to Manhattan on the way back to the motel.

I paid my bar tab and gave Bobby my 50-50 ticket, on the proviso that if he won he had to buy some celery.

“Go fuck yourself,” he said, laughing.

As I got up to leave, Earl said, “Did you talk to Panetta’s friend?”

‘What friend?”

“I don’t know. Some guy where he moved to. I asked him why he was moving to Long Island and he said he had an old Army buddy there.”

“You mean Staten Island?”

“Yeah, right. Whatever. Did you speak to him?”

It was the first I’d heard that Panetta even knew anyone on Staten Island before he moved there.

“Not yet,” I said easily. “He’s on my list.”

Earl shrugged, losing interest. Boilermakers in the morning will do that, pancakes or no pancakes.

***

I was glad I’d limited myself to two Blood Marys. The trip back upstream was no picnic. But I soon got into a good paddling rhythm, buoyed by the realization that I might have just stumbled onto a clue. Unless Panetta was being facetious when he spoke to his VFW drinking pals, he had a reason for moving to Staten Island. And that reason might just have gotten him killed.

When I was in an open stretch of the river, the sun felt good on my back as I strained against the current. I did a paddling experiment, trying to find the most efficient way to alternate strokes. Two on the left, then two on the right, seemed to provide the most headway without any veering. I was traveling at a good clip when I entered a heavily treed bend in the Salmon and had to slow. It was a particularly deserted stretch. There was a large sycamore on the bank off to my left. I like sycamores and this was a particularly beautiful one. Not as big as the giant growing through the flagstone patio in my back yard — I was going to have to do something about that someday — but it stood out with its mottled green and brown coloring.

It was pure chance that I just happened to be looking at the sycamore when the bullet smashed into it with a “thump” that sent a shower of bark in all directions.

A high-powered rifle bullet travels faster than the speed of sound, so the “thump” preceded the “whack” that was the round breaking the sound barrier as it passed over my head. Finally, there was the distinctive “pow” made by the gasses exiting the rifle barrel. To unpracticed ears, the last two sounds can be hard to discriminate. But my ears, for better or worse, had a lot of practice. I immediately looked across the river to where the “pow” had come from. I knew it wasn’t deer season, but that didn’t mean much. The economy upstate was depressed and the kind of people who would kill 3,000 cormorants at a clip to preserve their livelihood wouldn’t be above a little poaching to fill the larder with some venison. I couldn’t see anything. Then I caught a glint of reflected sunlight. The canoe shuddered as the next shot tore into the hull at the waterline just below my seat. A third round crashed into the stern.

I was the venison.

The canoe began taking on water. There was a copse of trees on the bank that I thought would offer enough cover and I paddled toward it furiously. I felt like Daniel Day-Lewis in
The Last of the Mohicans
trying to put distance between himself and several canoes full of Huron warriors. Except the Hurons didn’t have a high-power rifle with telescopic sights.

My dash for the shore had a major disadvantage. I was almost heading directly away from the shooter, which meant he’d have an easier shot. The hairs on my neck stood on end. I felt like I had a huge bull’s-eye on my back. It’s not easy to zig and zag in a canoe, especially when you hunker down, and I almost tipped over. Another shot whizzed by my ear and thudded into the bank, which was about 20 feet away. I actually felt a rush of air as the round passed me.

I wasn’t about to chance a fifth shot. I pitched out of the canoe into the water and dove under. I swam to the front of the canoe and, putting it between myself and the rifleman, pulled it into the brush lining the bank. I positioned myself behind it and a small log jutting out from the bank. It would take a lucky shot to do me any damage, although I wasn’t feeling particularly lucky at the moment. Someone, I think it was Churchill, said that getting shot at with no effect was very exhilarating. I didn’t feel particularly exhilarated, either.  There were more shots. The first few continued to splinter the canoe and, then, the shooter, probably assuming that I was making a run for it, sprayed the shoreline. But the rounds went wide and high. Whoever it was couldn’t see me now. The canoe, now well-holed, settled into the water. I was about to chance reaching into it for my windbreaker and the gun in its pocket when another shot rang out and a round whizzed by. I could tell from the sound of the shot and the angle of the bullet’s impact that the shooter was probably moving upstream on his side of the river for a clearer shot. He was a determined son of a bitch. Surely, all the racket would attract the cops; the area wasn’t that rural. The last couple of seconds had sounded like The Battle of Fallujah. Another shot. Closer. I hated leaving my Taurus revolver but I surged out of the water onto the bank and bolted into the brush, collecting several nasty cuts on my face and arms. Three more shots and then nothing. He had to be using a semi-automatic rifle. Not as accurate as a bolt-action deer rifle with a scope. Otherwise, I’d probably be dead.

About 50 yards into the woods I stopped. I couldn’t even see the river. 

But now what? I was a cliché. Up the creek without a paddle. Hell, I was up the creek without a canoe. I estimated that I was about halfway back to the motel, which put me about a mile from the Salina Street bridge. I figured I was pretty safe on my side of the Salmon River, as long as I stayed away from the shoreline. I could hear traffic and I walked toward the sound. The woods and brush were still thick and I picked up a few more cuts and scrapes but I soon came upon a road that paralleled the river. I headed back toward town, where a man shooting at me with a high-powered rifle might stand out. I assumed that whoever had hired Vernon Maples, and tried to hire Veronica, Arman Rahm’s pet hit woman, had found a taker for the $20,000 on my head. They had obviously overpaid. I doubted Maples or Veronica would have missed me. Not that I was complaining.

A few cars passed me and I stuck out my thumb. They all sped up. I’m not sure I would have picked up someone looking as bedraggled as I did, dripping wet and cut up as I was. I eventually spotted a service station near the Salina Street bridge. The owner stared at me. 

“What the hell happened to you?”

I said I’d overturned my canoe. He looked dubious until I took my dripping wallet out and flashed some cash. He let me wash off in a restroom while he called a cab for me.

“I wouldn’t try any white-water rafting, I was you,” he said when I left.

The boys in his shop got a kick out of that.

When I finally got back to the Salmon Villa Motel, I apologized to the owner for sinking half his canoe fleet.

“I must have hit a rock,” I said. “She went down like the
Lusitania
.”

“Gee,” he said, “I’m sorry. But that’s funny. I just bought those Dakotas. Cost me $500 each. Company says they’re almost impossible to sink.”