The Penny Ferry - Rick Boyer (7 page)

He turned and looked at me as a car passed us at high
speed.

"Wherever it is, we gotta find that pouch. Could
be the key."

We took Memorial Drive to Mass. Ave., cut around the
M.I.T. campus, and pulled up at a tiny cinder-block building, painted
white, just off Kendall Square. It was surrounded by a high Cyclone
fence. The windows were small and covered with grating.

Soon we heard a faint rumbling and popping sound
growing louder and louder, a sound like a miniature artillery war
advancing at great speed. An old red Honda motorcycle skirted the
building and came to a stop in its own special parking space in a
tiny niche in the Cyclone fence. It was a vintage bike, a 350 twin
with loud pipes. As the driver revved the throttle prior to shutting
it off, it growled and backfired.

The driver's passenger was a curiosity. It was a huge
dog, wearing goggles, which sat on a specially made platform on the
back of the double seat. The dog was big and blocky, and fawn-colored
with brindle stripes on his big Hanks. When the engine stopped he
lowered his wide head and pawed at the goggles with the side of his
front foot. The driver turned, pulled the goggles down so they
dangled from around the animal's neck, pulled the bike up on its
stand, and took off his helmet.

Sam Bowman, like his dead partner, was a black man.
Also like the late john Robinson, he was a man who kept himself in
shape. The man who snapped the heavy chain lead to the studded collar
on the bull mastiff was whipcord lean and had wide shoulders. The
shoulders sloped down like a barn's gambrel roof from a wide and
sinewy neck. He walked toward us with vigor and purpose. The giant
dog stayed right at his left leg. When I he stopped to shake hands
with us the dog sat down and looked blankly ahead. We all went to the
front door, and Sam took a key chain from his pocket and unlocked
three big deadbolts. Then he inserted a small key into a
complex-looking box with a meter in it.

"Whole place is bugged," he said softly.
"Anybody fool with this door, the police know about it. I just
shut it off."

We walked inside. It was a single room with a sink
and a coffee maker at one end, and an enclosed john. There were two
desks. Sam sat down behind the bigger one, a hard rock-maple rolltop
that had three large spindles on top which were stacked up with
impaled receipts and slips. A big safe stood against the far wall.

The floor was spotless linoleum, waxed. Sam unsnapped
the heavy lead and the big dog ambled over to a raised platform
covered with old carpet, where he sank to his belly and regarded us
with a blank stare. He had a black muzzle, like all mastiffs, and a
big steam-shovel mouth. His wide chest and heavy shoulders were
hunched with wads of muscle, even in repose. Big blood vessels showed
under the short, velvety coat. A whole lot of dog. Sam nodded in the
direction of the beast.

"That's Popeye. Nobody fool with Popeye. He all
business."

"How you doing, Sam?" asked Joe.

"I been better. I been a whole lot better, Joe,"
he said.

"I know. We're real sorry. All of us are really
sorry."

The man frowned and bunched his big shoulders.

"Somebody gonna pay," he said.

"Sam, as we told you over the phone, we'd like
to look at Friday's log sheet to see exactly where Johnny went and
when. Also, if we could find out what he was carrying . . . if it's
known—"

Sam nodded and shuffled through a stack of papers on
the big desk.

"Now the murder could be unconnected to any of
this; it could l be the result of something awhile back."

"I know. No way of tellin' is there? I think
maybe it was something way back, Joe. Nothin' he did Friday was that
important or valuable, except that fancy cup for the Harvard Museum,
the Fogg."

"And the museum piece was valuable?" asked
Joe.

"Oh yeah. About half a million bucks or
somewheres. But it was delivered safe to the Fogg. I know because
Johnny called me hisself after he delivered it. He called at—"

Bowman checked the log sheet.

"— lessee, ten twenty-seven. He just called to
check in, see if there were any more jobs that come in over the
phone, you know. There was nothing more, so that's the last I heard
from Johnny. Ever."

"Didn't you see him after the last job?"

"Naw. On Fridays we had a deal. If no more jobs
came in over the wire after three, I split. Johnny would stop in
after his last job with the log sheet . . . usually. That is, if the
last job was pretty nearby. Otherwise he'd take the sheet home with
him in the pouch and I wouldn't see him till Monday at seven-thirty.
That's when we'd meet here every day, for coffee and to talk. About
the only time we had to visit, except lunchtime, if he was nearby
enough to stop in."

"Did he leave his pouch here, Sam?" asked
Joe.

"No. He took the pouch home with him every
night."

"Did he ever carry stuff home with him too?"

"Sometimes, if he couldn't make the connection.
It was rare though. Generally, most of our business was right here in
Boston and Cambridge. 'Course too, being black, we do some stuff for
bidnesses in Roxbury and Dorchester. Fact, we do most everywhere
around here but Charlestown and Southie."

This comment needed no elaboration to either of us;
we knew what the racial climate was like in both of these Irish
enclaves. In fact, it wasn't much better in the Italian neighborhoods
of the North End and East Boston, either.

"I show you the log sheet he left here Friday
after I was gone," said Bowman. He opened the notebook and Joe
copied out the deliveries that had been entered:

8:30 Futurelife Laboratories— Cambridge
9:23 Fogg Museum (Fabrianni)— Cambridge— Boston
10:08 Harvard University Press— Cambridge
1 1:00 Boston Public Library— Boston— North End*
2:45 National Distilling— Cambridge
3:41
Ramco Metal Fastener— Cambridge— Somerville
4:10
Investment Alloy Labs - Cambridge - Concord*

We studied this sheet awhile and asked Sam if he had
any hunches regarding it.

"No. They're all routine things. Some of those
companies, they want us to carry cash— not large amounts— to
some of their truckers. Dunno. Maybe they not sposa be on the
payroll. Hell, we don't ask questions, we just deliver. Don't truck
for the Mob, though. We won't be bagmen. No sirree."

"Sam, what do these asterisks mean?" I
asked.

"
They mean the job wasn't completed. The
pickup's been made but not the delivery. Hey wait a minute, Doc, this
one here's you: Investment Alloy Labs. That's gold work, right?"

"
Yes. And I was interested whether or not Johnny
picked up the piece, and apparently he did. That means it was in his
pouch when they got him, and lost."

"You're not suggesting that as a motive are
you?" asked Joe.

"No. Certainly Dependable carried much more
valuable stuff than that, like the museum piece."

"I just thought you were thinking that because
there are very few places where Johnny could have been nailed
successfully. Here and his home are about the only places I can think
of. Couldn't do it on the street without a lot of gunplay and noise.
Since it happened at his home, and with a bomb that must have taken
at least several hours to construct, I'm inclined to think it was
strictly a revenge killing and had nothing to do with the stuff he
was carrying."

What Joe had said made a lot of sense.

"But then why'd they take the pouch?"

"Throw us off. just like the missing fingers on
the corpse in the chimney."

"They must've wanted him dead awfully bad, Joe.
Sam, if you think of anything that might point somewhere, I'm sure
you'll let Joe know."

Joe paced the small office nervously. Occasionally he
glanced at the big green safe, five feet high, that stood against the
wall so that it was visible through the front door and the windows. I
saw two spotlights above it, angled so they would illuminate it fully
at night. He dialed a number and talked to somebody at the lab at
Ten-Ten Comm. Ave.

"Did you get any more latents? Well, there are
some more places we might want you to check out . . . Huh, for
supper? Gee Frank, that's nice of you. I don't know, uh, where I'm
eating tonight exactly . . ."

He glanced over at me, covered the receiver. Subtlety
at its best. I groaned inwardly and glared at him, saying nothing.

"Uh . . . wanta know where I'm eating tonight .
. . uh . . .what's Mary, uh . . . you know—"

"Marinated flank steak, sautéed mushroom caps,
fresh asparagus," I said with a weary sigh. An almost orgasmic
shudder passed through Joe's big frame and he snapped his cop voice  
back into the phone. ·

"No Frank, I won? be able to. Something's come
up out in Concord."

We sat facing Sam, who had placed his big wide palms
down on his neat desk.

"I'm gonna be looking for whoever did this, Joe.
And when I find him I'm gonna kill him. Or them. Don't care how
many."

"Sam, I know how you feel. But it's unwise for
you to— "

"— don't matter about wise. My partner's dead.
My bidness I gonna shut down maybe. Got nothin' left now 'cept
Popeye."

At the mention of his name the big dog jerked his
head up.

"RRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!" he said.

"Hush up, Popeye. Cool yourself," said Sam.
He closed the logbook, then stopped quickly, lowering his head and
squeezing the bridge of his nose.

"Gonna miss him, Joe . . ."

"Yeah. We all will. A better guy never lived.
Listen: why don't you put on some coffee?"

While Sam occupied his mind with the coffeepot, Joe
asked him over his shoulder, "What's this Futurelife
Laboratories? Some kind of pharmaceutical company?"

"Naw. They a little far-out company. You know,
one of them places that takes little cells and bends 'em around, make
a different kinda animal out of it—"

"Oh, you mean recombinant DNA? Gee, I didn't
know you were involved with that stuff," I said.

"Yeah. They give us these steel buckets full of
little-bitty growin' things, you know. Got big strong tops on 'em
with bolts all around to hold it down tight, so nothin' leak out.
Like a pressure cooker. All we do is tote 'em from one lab to another
seven blocks away. Piece of cake."

"
And you've had no trouble or anything with that
account?" Joe asked. "Nothing strange lately?"

"Nope. Been four years now. No fracas."

"Okay. How about this Harvard University Press?"

"Man-u-script," intoned Sam. "We do a
lot of manuscript deliveries for publishers 'cause they need 'em
right away. Seems publishers always runnin' late. These books all the
same; can't read 'em. Big thick suckers on stuff nobody ever heard
of. Nothing unusual there either."

"All right. Now what's this pickup for the
library?"

"Some guy in the North End, I think he was a
lawyer, died a few months back and left his papers to the public
library. It was just a bunch of papers. For some reason Johnny
couldn't get ahold of whoever it was he was sposa give 'em to. So he
still had 'em with him, just like your fancy gold dental work, Doc."

"And there was nothing of value there?"

"Naw,just papers."

"
Okay," resumed Joe. "Moving right
along, we come to the afternoon jobs. National Distilling and Ramco
Metal I'm assuming are other routine deliveries like Futurelife?"

"Yep. Routine cash deliveries, same as every
other Friday for the past four and a half years."

"
How much did Johnny have with him?"

"Less than four grand. Here, I'll check."

Sam went over to the large green safe with the double
doors and twirled the big black dial. In less than a minute he had
the thick doors swung open and was reading off a lined sheet of
notebook paper taped to the inside right door.

"
Three thousand four hundred sixty dollars,
even."

"And it was all delivered?" asked Joe.

Sam shrugged and stared into the safe.

"If it wasn't, we'd a heard I think." He
continued to stare into the safe, which was divided into many small
compartments and stuffed with papers. He began to rummage about in
one of the upper compartments, reaching his arm deep inside.

"And when Johnny called you at ten
twenty-seven-after he'd completed the first three jobs—he said
everything was normal? Fine?"

"No," replied Sam, "but he didn't say
nothin' to indicate it wadn't." He was feeling deep inside the
safe, as if he were finding what he was looking for. It sure was a
big safe.

"Then I think we can rule out anything out of
the ordinary on the first three calls. And probably the last three in
the afternoon, which includes your lab work, Doc. That leaves the
errand for the library involving the lawyer's papers from the North
End. What kind of papers were they, Sam?"