The Penny Ferry - Rick Boyer (3 page)

"The dogs weren't barking, so he's got to be out
with them," said Joe, leading us around the corner.

We went over to the Lucky Seven tavern, which at five
in the afternoon was filled with regulars sipping draft beers and rye
and gingers and watching the Red Sox. A man behind the bar was
adjusting a rack of potato chip bags. He had a damp bar rag slung
over his shoulder. Nobody had seen Johnny, so we walked back to the
house.

"There's his car," said Joe, pointing to a
new Olds Cutlass. "He can't be far."

"Where do we try next, the laundromat?"

"Dunno. He'll be back shortly. Listen, Doc, I
just know that if Johnny did pick up that dental work for you, it's
sitting right on his coffee table. Tell you what. You two wait here.
Sit down on the front steps while I go get the groceries. Be back in
twenty minutes."

So we sat there until he came back. Still no Johnny.
Now Joe rubbed his beard stubble and looked a bit worried.

"When was he supposed to deliver the stuff to
you?"

"Yesterday."

"And he didn't call or anything?"

"Nope."

Joe went back to his car, opened the trunk, and
returned carrying a metal toolbox.

"Follow me," he said. And we did.

At the top of the small side stairway, just outside
Robinson's door, Joe set the toolbox down and opened it. It was dark
up on the landing but we could see that the box was packed with
tools, most of which were strange to me. The most familiar things
were two gigantic rings of keys.

"Johnny's not going to like this particularly,
but it's not like him to default on a delivery and not telephone.
Hmmmm. Medeco D-Eleven deadbolt. . . piece of cake. Baldwin pin
tumbler mortise lock . . . Big lock's unfastened— he's been home .
. ."

He hummed a little ditty while he burgled the door,
and before very long we stepped inside the dim apartment. "Good
thing I'm an honest man," he said, turning on the lights. The
living room opened right off the door. The window shades were half up
and the sunlight looked bluish in contrast to the yellow-gold glow of
the sun passing through them. Faded gingham curtains wafted in and
out with the slight breeze from one window which was wide open. There
was a love seat against the wall and two old stuffed chairs that had
seen better days. Much better days. A TV sat on a small table facing
the couch. Above the couch on the wall were boxing photos of Robinson
in his prime; with his almost shaven head, he looked a bit like
another Massachusetts fighter: Marvin Hagler of Brockton. There were
some big posters too, publicizing upcoming fights.

"Oh Christ," said Joe in a weary voice. I
followed his gaze down the short hallway and saw Robinson sprawled on
the floor. He had that frozen spastic look, that almost comical
appearance of the silent-movie pratfall, an embarrassing frumpy look
of a pile of old clothes with a person inside.

He was dead.

Joe stayed where he was and held up his hand as a
sign for us not to move.

"Tommy! Here Tommy!" he called. "Susie!
Susie? Here girl!"

Silence and stillness. Mary started for the man on
the floor, but her brother held her in check.

"Hold it, Mare. If Johnny's here he's got a
hundred and eighty pounds of fur and fangs with him. And they can
tear hell out of a Tyrannosaurus Rex when they're mad. Here Tommy!
Here Susie!"

I started down the hallway.

"Tommy and Susie are either gone or indisposed,"
I said, "or they'd have been on us like lightning when we first
came in."

I knelt down on the worn carpet runner and looked at
the late john Robinson. Handsome. Smooth, nut-brown skin that was
tight and unwrinkled. A kind face with large and expressive eyes.
Short salt-and-pepper hair, like mine except curly. His eyes were
open a fraction. He still wore his Windbreaker jacket. His clothes
were the ones he wore when working: blue gabardine uniform well
tailored, almost dapper on his fine body. There wasn't a mark on him.
I could see no blood anywhere. Heart attack? Sudden cerebral
hemorrhage?

Joe knelt down beside me and let out a slow sigh.

"This was one nice guy, Doc. A good man who
never made a crooked buck and who always helped people who needed it,
even if it meant sticking his own neck out. This makes me sick."

"Could have been accidental. Look, the body's
cold but not stiff. Then he's been dead for over twelve hours. He's
still got his coat on; he'd probably just come home. Maybe he was
walking toward the kitchen and just collapsed. An autopsy will tell
us."

"Where are the doggies then? Tommy! Susie?"

I looked up at the old black wooden door at the far
end of if the short hallway. The doorknob side was cracked and
splintered along its length, as if the door had been smashed open. I
opened it and looked inside at the tiny bedroom. Mary stood behind
me, looking over my shoulder.

"Here they are, Joe. In here. Looks like it
wasn't accidental after a1l."

One dog was just inside the door, lying on its back
and twisted through the body as if it had died in pain. It was a
female shepherd, the one Joe had called Susie. The bigger, darker
one— Tommy— was frozen in front of a window that was open all the
way. He was lying on his stomach, his head on his outstretched paws.
His mouth was partly open and his lips curled in a frozen snarl. Both
dogs were unmarked.

"How the hell were they all killed? Doc, see any
signs of bludgeoning?"

"No. But that doesn't mean there wasn't any."

Joe went back to Robinson and knelt down again,
pointing at the holster on his belt.
 

"
Look here," he said to us. "Smith and
Wesson model ten, a standard-issue thirty-eight. Never taken out of
the holster."

"
But look," said Mary, "this strap is
unfastened. Don't people carry it snapped?"

"Good eye, honey; yes they do. So Robinson came
home, shut the door behind him, and began walking down the hall with
his jacket still on. Then something happened. Somebody jumped him and
the dogs . . . or something. But whatever it was, it was fast. He saw
it or heard it, but only had time to flick off his carrying strap."

"And he had the reflexes of a boxer, Doc. He was
very fast for an older guy, and tough too. I wonder . . ."

Joe pulled up Robinson's right pantleg. There, was a
small holster strapped to his leg with a tiny snub-nosed revolver in
place.

"
His belly gun. Smith and Wesson Bodyguard
Airweight. Untouched. Let's try the other leg."

Up went the left pantleg. Fastened to the left calf
was a bone-handled stiletto. Finally, on his belt up under the
Windbreaker was a spray canister of Mace.

"He was a walking Sherman tank," I said.
"Too bad it didn't do him any good."

"This is real nasty, Doc," said Joe,
glancing around nervously, "and it looks like a pro job too.
Looks like some of Johnny's old enemies finally caught up with him."

"
But what killed him?" asked Mary.

"A good question. No marks are visible on him or
the dogs. No blood either, except in the bedroom, where Tommy tore
into someone. So john Robinson, lighter, armed to the teeth and with
two big attack dogs, comes home from work Friday afternoon. Now
they're all dead. Doc, how would you handle a heavily armed boxer
with two dogs?"

"Gas."

"Exactly."

I dropped to my hands and knees and looked around.

"
'There's no odor remaining," I said, "but
that's to be expected. It was yesterday and windows are open. Thing
is, how was it dispersed? It had to be fast—"

"To your right," said Joe. "There,
next to your knee—"

I reached over and retrieved a pair of glasses with
gold frames and tinted lenses. Attached to the top of the frames were
two small convex mirrors, one on each side. They were the type worn
by bicyclists for seeing backward. With these two mirrors out on both
sides Robinson could see directly behind himself, in the manner of
horses and deer. The mirrors were most useful when he walked up dark
narrow alleys and stairwells, where hiding places and thieves abound.

"Now," pursued Joe as he leaned over me,
"these glasses were thrown off to Johnny's right side. Let's
assume he was walking down the hall as you suggested. His glasses
being four feet from him means they were flung off his face, right?"

"Right. Probably when he spun around fast."

"
Real fast, Doc. As fast as only a boxer can
turn, like to avoid a punch, no?"

"Uh-huh," said Mary. "He spun his head
to the right and at the same time jerked the safety strap off his
gun. So there was something— like a noise— right near this
table."

And on my hands and knees I was looking at it. A
faint conical stain lay on the wallpaper directly under the table. It
spread out as it rose like an inverted triangle. It was dark; it
looked like smoke. I decided not to lean over and sniff it. Then all
three of us were looking at it. There was no doubt it was a scorch
mark.

"An explosion," said Joe.

"Yeah. And the explosion is what sent the gas
flying all over the place instantly. Thing is, how'd they get the
explosion to occur when Robinson was right nearby? And what sort of
canister did they use?"

"Took it all with them. We'll be able to
identify the gas, though. I'm gonna call the lab now. Don't move
anything."

Joe went out to his cruiser to call the crime lab and
the locals. We had some time to kill. I wandered back into the small
living room and snooped. I wanted to see if my anterior bridge was
anywhere around.

Snooping is something I deplore in people, like
gossiping. But it's surprising how easy it is to become a snooper.
Looking around at the possessions of one absent or deceased, you find
yourself saying, I wonder why he had that thing? Or, why on earth did
she have so many of those? I stared at stacks of old magazines.

Most were back issues of The Ring. They went all the
way back to the late sixties. Did Johnny have a girlfriend? There was
no evidence of it. And when Joe came back he said he knew of no
romantic interlude in Robinson's life since the death of his wife in
'fifty-eight.

"The dental work you said would be here isn't,"
I said.

Joe and I sat on the love seat and speculated on the
murder. Mary went back toward the bedroom, saying she wouldn't touch
anything. Joe said there were lots of people who had reason to hate
Johnny Robinson. I was staring at the tan-and~gray carpet when Mary
screamed from the bedroom. We rushed in and found her backed up
against the wall, as if at attention. She was gritting her teeth and
shaking all over. A trembling hand reached out and pointed at the
corpse of Tommy, the dog next to the open window.

"L-look in his mouth . . ."

I leaned over and noticed something between the dog's
clenched fangs. When I tried to pull the teeth apart I felt them
touch me, and shuddered.

"What are they?" asked Joe.

"
Fingers."
 
 

CHAPTER THREE

The boys from the lab, and the local police, weren't
long. Prior to their arrival Joe and I busied ourselves by trying to
reconstruct the sequence of events. One of the first things we
noticed was a recently bored hole the size of a pea in the broken
door of the bedroom. The hole was at eye level. A peephole.

"Okay, here it is, Doc. The guy, or guys, watch
the hallway with the door closed. They're here behind the closed door
when Robinson and doggies come home. They watch. When he's opposite
the gas bomb in the hallway they somehow fire it— "

"Yeah, but the dogs don't die right away. Maybe
they're hip to something fishy a few seconds before the gas explodes
around them. Maybe they smell trouble. So they charge this door and
smash it open. Then the gas does its work and they die too. But not
before Tommy grabs one of them— I keep thinking there's more than
one— by the hand and rips off two fingers. Then the killers escape
by this window here that we found ajar. See? There's a small porch
roof just below it, then an easy drop to the ground, even for an
injured guy."

"Won't work, Doc. if the dogs broke down the
door the gas'd get the killers too."

"No, Joe. They'd be wearing masks. You can bet
on it. If the gas was to be at all effective, especially against two
quick dogs, it'd have to be very potent. They'd have masks."

"Then how'd they set off the charge from in
here?"

"Some kind of juice; a trigger of some kind.
Let's look around a little outside till the help comes."

After discovering the human fingers in the dog's
mouth, Mary had decided she'd had enough of sleuthing for the day and
split for the Lucky Seven. Her brother and I found her in said joint,
hiked up on a barstool with the other fellas, a shot glass full of
clear liquid in front of her. She saw us come in out of the corner of
her eye as she knocked back the shot and slapped the heavy glass down
on the bar...She squinted at us menacingly.