The Corpse Without a Country (12 page)

Her voice climbed with sudden excitement. “Peter, I just know they’re back of the robbery.”

“That still doesn’t let Reese out,” I said.

“Then if Reese
is
mixed up in it, they’re here to check on him because now is the time to make the distribution of the notes.”

She stopped, her eyes smudged with horror. “But if Reese
is
in it, then Arne must be too. I … I just can’t believe it of him.”

I said, “Arne’s hard to swallow, all right, but Reese isn’t. He could have got those lists you made up on the boats’ itineraries. And if the schedules are flexible, he could still use them. All he’d really have to know would be their ports of call.”

Jodi nodded miserably. I went on, “I’m sure Ilona and Ghatt are in on it, but I can’t make sense out of it yet. If I’m right, and Emily
was
working for her and spying on our office, then why would Ilona chase me to get a report whose contents she knew about? And why rip my clothes?”

Jodi said thoughtfully, “Maybe Emily has the answer. Only, where’s Emily?”

I said, “She’s as good a place to start as any. I’m sure she’ll be easier to catch than Ilona.” I thought about Emily for a while. “We saw her last at the Pad, so that’s where we’ll start looking for her.”

“But she wouldn’t still be there,” Jodi protested.

I said, “No, but Willie will be there. And I want a heart-to-heart chat with dear Willie.”

“Do you think
she
knows where Emily is, Peter?”

I looked into those beautiful eyes, wide with worry, and leaned forward, planting a kiss on the tip of her nose. I said, “I think Willie knows one hell of a lot.”

Jodi wasn’t so sure, but she agreed to go to the Pad. We took time out to go to her house so she could change her clothes. I mixed myself a drink and waited downstairs for her.

While I waited, I began to have visions of finding the right information and bringing in not only Emily but Ilona and Ghatt and dropping them all in Maslin’s lap. I could picture his expression as I wrapped up everything neatly for him.

I shuddered, because I had another vision—of Maslin’s expression if I tried this lone wolf trick and loused up. I reached for the telephone.

The line was open. Instead of a buzzling, I heard Jodi’s voice. “Peter?” I admitted it. She said, “I was just calling Reese’s man to tell him I can’t keep the dinner date I had with Reese, in case he should come home.”

Her breaking a date for me was the kind of thing I liked to hear, especially when the date was with Reese. I felt set up.

She said, “I’m through, so go ahead and make your call. I’ll be right down.”

I put down the phone and lifted it again. I had a clear signal. When I had Maslin on the other end of the line, I said, “Durham here. And I’ve got some ideas.”

He listened silently to my theory. I gave him everything except Arne’s possible implication. When I finished, he said, “Have you talked to Arne Rasmussen about this?”

“I can’t find him,” I said. “But I’m going looking for little Emily now. She may know where he is.”

“Now wait a minute, Durham …”

I said, “I’m off to the Pad, Maslin. I’m starting with Willie, so if you hear of the joint being wrecked, this time it’s true.”

“You know what I think of one-man gangs,” he said. “Lay off.”

I said, “I’ll play it straight, Maslin. And I’ll call you from the Pad.”

After a little more talking on my part, he finally agreed to let me make a try. I hung up, collected Jodi, and went to the Pad. The place was different, more brightly lighted and with more people. Wandering from table to table was a boy strumming a guitar and singing.

“That’s Cleve Trinder,” Jodi said. “He’s supposed to be a second Trillian.”

“That’s his own poetry he’s snuffling?”

“Naturally.” She put a quiet hand on my arm. No one was looking at us, not even Willie who was perched on a stool behind the bar.

“Order me a whiskey and water, please, Peter. I’ll be back.”

I watched her head through the curtains for, I assumed, the community john. I went to the end of the bar and waited while Willie examined me. She finally decided to see what I wanted, climbed from her stool and swaggered to me.

“Two whiskeys and water,” I said. “And where is little Emily tonight?”

“Don’t give me trouble, Durham.”

I said, “The cops didn’t hold me. What does that tell you, Willier?”

Her eyes narrowed. She tried to smile. She wasn’t pretty when she smiled; she wasn’t pretty when she didn’t smile.

“Look,” she said, “I’ve almost lost my license twice. I had to tell the cops something to protect myself.”

“Sure,” I said, “but tell me something else—the truth. Where is Emily? And where is Ridley?”

“They went out through the alley right after I … er … calmed you down,” she said.

“Ridley packing Emily?”

She smiled again. “He’s strong enough.”

I had felt his fists. I believed her. I said, “That still doesn’t answer my question.”

Willie lit a cigarette by scratching a kitchen match on the tightest part of her jeans. “All I know is that the alley leads down to the waterfront. There are boats down there. Ridley’s a good hand with a boat.”

I said, “Does he own one?”

“He did,” she said, “a fishboat he made into a cruiser.”

I wondered why she was being so free with her information. I wondered what was keeping Jodi. Willie went away and brought the whiskies. I sipped mine and waited for Jodi.

She wasn’t in the exhibit room. She wasn’t in the john. When I opened the door, there were three people in it, one using each of the facilities. None of them was Jodi. The girl under the shower blew water at me as I hastily backed out.

That left only the door to the alley that led to the waterfront. That led to Ridley Trillian’s boat.

I went down the hall and opened the door. The alley was dark. I could smell rotting vegetables heavy on the still air. I stepped down to the slippery floor of the alley, letting the door ride shut behind me. When it clicked closed the last bit of light went away.

I smelled the rotting vegetables again, but this time closer and more pungent. I had a chance for one deep breath. The rest I don’t remember.

T
HERE ARE SOME SENSATIONS
that once felt are easily identified from that time on. Being aboard a boat in choppy waters is one of those sensations. And it was one I was experiencing as I crawled painfully up out of the garbage-scented darkness someone had knocked me into.

Wherever I might be, it was not the alley behind the Pad. The smell of rotting vegetables was gone; in its place was the lingering odor of dead fish. And the darkness was more intense than that of the alley. This darkness was as thick as the sealed hold of a fishboat.

I needed only to feel the choppy motion under me and I knew that I was in the hold of a fishboat. I was going somewhere at about twelve knots. I put my hands beside me and pushed myself to a sitting position. I could feel the roughness of a blanket beneath my fingers.

Someone had been thoughtful enough not to let me lie on the accumulation of scales and slime that was probably under the blanket. But I didn’t feel like thanking him.

My head was thick with a dull pain concentrated at the top of my spine. My mouth was dry and filled with a filthy taste. I ran an exploratory hand over myself. Outside of the pain in my head and the taste in my mouth, I seemed to be in fair shape. I was also stripped down again. I had been left only my shorts.

Someone, I thought, was trying to be funny. I decided I was wrong. Someone was trying to make sure I wasn’t in any condition to go anywhere.

I also decided that my captor was a man. Men are a good deal more modest than women. A man would assume that being down to a pair of shorts would prove too embarrassing for me to think of trying to run somewhere in public. A woman might not.

But I had been practically down to the buff so often lately that I had lost all sense of embarrassment. All I wanted was out of this hold. I didn’t care who or what was waiting to gawp at me after that.

I lifted my hands and ran them over the underside of the decking that barely brushed my stretched fingertips. I was feeling for the outline of the hatch cover. I found it after shifting my position only once. It was a shallow hold, I thought; the boat wasn’t a very big one.

I got to my knees, twisted myself awkwardly into a position where I could get some leverage with my hands, and pushed upward.

The hatch cover gave with no trouble at all. The force of my heave sent it clattering to one side of the deck. A bright burst of sunlight hit me across the eyes, sending my head ducking back down into dimness.

I preferred being blind to smelling ancient fish. I caught the edges of the hatch with my hands and pulled myself onto the deck. I rolled away from the stench and lay breathing in sharp, clean sea air.

No one bothered to come and find out what I might be up to. I could feel the throb of the diesel engine under me and hear its steady pounding, and I could hear the whoosh of water peeling away from the bow of the boat, but I couldn’t hear anyone moving about.

I raised my head. From the angle of the sun I judged it was a little past noon. In the haze-obscured distance I could see the blue-green bulk of the peninsula to port. Closer, on the starboard side, was the large, sprawled bulk of Whidbey Island. We were well up its west side and angling away from it. Ahead and beyond the range of my vision would be the Islands.

I didn’t need a marked chart to guess where we were going.

I stopped admiring the scenery and examined the boat. First, it was a fishboat. Second, it had had a cabin built aft of the pilot house, cutting the amount of open deck and also the storage hold, to about eight feet-by-eleven feet. Third, Ridley Trillian had a fishboat he had converted to a cruiser, and fourth, I was giving odds I’d find Ridley at the wheel.

The wind had begun to find me and it had a fall nip to it. I got to my feet, holding to the top of the cabin while I waited for a little strength to flow into my legs. About belt high and directly in front of me was a shiny brass latch. I lifted it.

I ducked down and went into the aft cabin. It wasn’t very big but it managed to contain a small galley, a built-in dinette table, and a built-in leather settee. Forward of the galley was an opening that gave me a view into the pilot house. I could see a man’s leg and hand. I went into the pilot house, moving quietly on my bare feet. The leg and hand belonged to Ridley Trillian.

He turned and looked at me and grinned. I wanted to step forward and knock him away from the wheel. But I knew what kind of shape I was in, and I knew how fast he was. I stopped about eight feet from him.

He said, “You’ve got company, baby.”

A head came up the companionway leading down into the forward cabin. The head belonged to Emily Calvin. Her hair was a tousled mess; she wore no make-up; her face was puffy from sleep, and her small eyes had a hazy look in them.

She looked like the bass note of the beat generation.

She came up a little higher. She had given up her loose sweater in exchange for a denim halter that was barely able to hold back her large breasts. In place of jeans she wore shorts so short that they were almost Bikini style. She had heavy thighs to match her ample hips.

She saw me and giggled. She stopped and giggled again. I said, “You wouldn’t have an extra suit of clothes around by any chance?”

She giggled a third time. “You smell like a fish,” she informed me. Her enunciation wasn’t very good. She looked too pleased with herself to be seasick. I figured out that she was drunk.

She backed down into the cabin. I moved toward it and watched her. The cabin contained a double bunk, wide at the top and narrowing at the bottom. Across the narrowest of aisles from it was a shallow built-in dresser. On top of the dresser was a can of beer. Emily took it and tilted the larger hole in the top to her mouth. She emptied the can before she set it down again.

She burped and giggled again. She bent down and brought a fresh can of beer from somewhere under the bunk. She located a beer can opener and punched two holes. She held the can out to me.

To get it I would have to go down into that cabin with Emily. Somehow I didn’t want to; I remembered the office elevator too clearly.

“Not yet, thanks,” I said.

I glanced at Ridley. I said, “I’m glad you left her alive.”

He turned his head in my direction. “What the hell does that mean?”

“Whatever you want it to,” I said. My head was still thick. I wasn’t at my best with the repartee.

He shrugged and ignored me. I sharpened another needle. “Did you bring your dulcimer? I like entertainment on a boat trip.”

Ridley’s nostrils flared out. He dropped a loop of rope over the wheel, securing it, and stood up. He walked with the pitch of the boat, gracefully.

“I’m getting tired of hearing that kind of crap,” he said. “From you I don’t take it.”

I tried to duck but he was as fast as I remembered him. His fist was as hard as a piece of anchor chain and about as knobbly. I bounced off the bulkhead and fell forward, lost the rest of my balance when a sudden choppy current caught us, and went headfirst down into the forward cabin.

Emily was on her way up to watch the fight. There was no place for her to go but backward when I came at her. She didn’t seem to think of that possibility; she just stood and waited for my weight to hit her.

We went down in the narrow aisle between the bunk and the dresser. I wound up facing the pilot house with Emily lying across my chest. I could see Ridley grinning down at us.

He said, “Have fun,” and moved back to the wheel, out of sight.

Emily moved and now she was on top of all of me. I could smell the heady odor of beer on her breath. From the condition of her speech and the look in her eyes, she was well loaded with the beer. I put my hands out to lift her off me. I got two palmsful of bare skin. I moved my hands and met more skin. She had a good deal of it.

I said, “If you’ll shift a little to starboard …”

Through the beer haze, I could see the soupy look coming into her eyes. She shifted all right, forward so she could mash her lips down on mine. That kiss was almost as hard to take as Ridley’s fist had been. In a way it was worse. The fist had hit me and gone; Emily’s lips remained.