The Whale's Footprints - Rick Boyer (30 page)

"Well, it's better than your research."

"You mean you're not going to run down those
items?"

"Oh, sure. I'll humor you. In fact, that should
be coming in this afternoon. Hell, the new computer networks are
amazing. We plug into a phone line here, we get everything on
companies. We plug into another line, we get everything we want on
cars, trucks, vans, coast to coast. We can now contact the FBI's
master fingerprint files via modem and get visualizations of prints
on computer screens in seconds. Same with mug shots. You believe it?"

Joe and I were sitting out on the brick terrace
nursing our drinks while Mary pan-fried filet mignons in butter in a
very hot skillet, searing the meat so the juice would stay in. We
were going to eat them with gobs and gobs of béarnaise sauce. If
you're going to go with cholesterol, go all the way. As Mae West
said: "Anything worth doing is worth overdoing."
Fortunately, we were downing massive quantities of alcohol to cut the
fat and keep our arteries clear.

I mean, hey: your health is important.

The phone rang for Joe, and he got up with a grunt
and walked inside for it, doing that slow, rolling shuffle of his.
It's like the walk of a big bull elephant. You see an elephant
sauntering along and you figure he's dawdling, but in fact he's doing
eight miles an hour.

Joe was in there awhile, which told me my information
might be coming in. I was correct; he came back holding his notebook.
"Okay . . . here we go. First the car. The Mercedes Five-twenty
SEL belongs to a Mr. Hunter Whitesides. Actually, H. V. Whitesides,
the Fourth. Pahdon me . . . Whitesides has no priors, no record of
any kind. So what we do with guys like this is, we go to the second
tier. You know, run a check on financial standing, medical history,
other personal stuff."

"You can do that? I thought that was illegal."

"Right you are, my boy. It's against all the
invasion of privacy statutes. Nobody's supposed to run this kind of
check unless it's voluntary, like for a handgun permit . . . or, if a
guy wants to apply for insurance, or a fancy credit card or something
similar. Then he signs a slip authorizing people to check him out.
You tell anybody we're doing this, it's our ass."

"I'll keep mum. So what about Hunter Whitesides
the Fourth. Shit, with a moniker like that, you'd think he was an old
Yankee blueblood."

"And you'd be right. Financial standing is
triple A, gilt edged. Two addresses: a P.O. box on Nantucket Island,
and a residence on Tuckernuck Island. Top dollar. No lien on the car,
and it's about sixty K. Went to Princeton, class of forty-six. That
means he avoided the draft in the big one. Thanks no doubt to daddy's
big bucks, and friends in high places. Got something on his old man,
in fact. The Whitesides were big in banking in the twenties and
thirties. Daddy, Hunter the Third, was in tight with Governor Alvin
Fuller. Remember him?"

"
Oh yeah. The friend of the working man."

"Count on it. Anyway, Whitesides headed up the
banking commission and a lot of other commonwealth stuff. You ask me,
it was the old man's state connections that got Whitesides off the
hook in World War Two. But I'm only theorizing."

"Any occupation listed? Married?"

"No occupation. Probably doesn't need one.
Married and two boys—nothing on them, though we could look. Wife
died twelve years ago. So know what I think?"

"What?"

"Tell you after I tell you about OEI. Oceanic
Enterprises, Inc., was founded and chartered in nineteen
seventy-three. Its purpose, as stated in the charter, is to 'locate,
acquire, and develop the resources of the eastern continental shelf
for commercial and humanitarian ends.' Quote, unquote."

"Sounds nice. Too nice."

"Yeah. Sounds to me like an underwater mining
company or something. But interesting point: one ofthe main financial
backer is, guess who?"

"Hunter Whitesides."

"Uh-huh, he's one of them. Then there's a Dr.
Michael Chisholm. I suppose it's a doctorate in geology or something.
And finally, William A. Henderson, Falmouth, Mass."

"Ahhhhhh . . ."

" '
Ahhhh,' what?"

"I dunno," I shrugged, 'just 'Ahhhhhh.' "

"Well anyway, OEI is in trouble. Deep financial
trouble. I can't understand why they're not in chapter eleven
already. All Cochrane told me over the phone was that there's a ton
of overdue notes with a lot of banks and lending institutions. OEI's
been on the skids for the past four years."

"So Henderson's hurting, possibly desperate.
Maybe Whitesides was brought in to bankroll the company at the
beginning, or maybe brought in later as a corporate sugar daddy to
help bail the firm out of debt."

"Possible."

"But then again, maybe not. Maybe Hunter
Whitesides, despite his gilt-edged pedigree, is experiencing some
hard times, too. Maybe he's worn out three pairs of scissors clipping
his daddy's coupons."

"That had crossed my mind. So you've hit on the
Henderson-Whitesides connection, Doc. But so far, despite financial
reversals, everything concerning OEI appears to be aboveboard."

"I'm just wondering why Bill Henderson would
form a company like OEI. Wouldn't a mining and explorations company
be against the interests of fishermen? If you had to guess, wouldn't
you think so?"

"Uh-huh. But that's the beauty of it, Doc.
Everybody in this state knows how off and on fishing is, right? So
what does Henderson do about fifteen years ago when he's got some
extra cash? Buy another boat? No. He diversifies."

"So when the fishing's off," I said, "he
can make money on the other side of the table. Wait a minute; we were
aboard
Highlander
for
the better part of an hour. That boat isn't four years old yet. If
he's hurting so bad in his investments, how'd he afford her?"

"Good question. We can check around the edges on
that one. But I'm beginning to think Bill Henderson is more clever
than he lets on."

"Dinner's ready, guys," called Mary,
appearing on the terrace working a wire whisk in a stainless steel
bowl. She was putting the finishing touches on the béarnaise.

"Ahhhhh," sighed Joe, following her inside,
"once more into the breach, dear friends . . ."
 

TWENTY-THREE

ALL OF A SUDDEN it was Labor Day. On the weekend of
September 9, we realized it had been a month since the unsolved
murder of Andrew Cunningham. Time sure flies when you're having fun.
But I had just completed a full week of post vacation work and it
seemed to cheer me up. Work is good for that. It seems, in my case
especially, that idleness breeds boredom, and boredom leads quickly
to depression.

What was new? Well, Jack called from Woods Hole to
tell us that the MBL and Lionel Hartzell had mutually decided that he
would terminate his stay at the lab. According to Jack, that was good
news for a lot of the folks at Woods Hole. Another ray of sunshine on
an otherwise bleak horizon was that Morris Abramson's precious cargo
of hideous marine bottom-feeders met with a mysterious malady that
killed most of them off. Take out your handkerchiefs. Moe was
downhearted, and couldn't figure out what had decimated his beloved
menagerie.

Since we're on the subject, I'll inject something I
once heard: if someone drops iron—even an old-fashioned cut
nail—into a marine tank the results can be disastrous.

Hey, I know what you're thinking, and it wasn't me.
In fact, it wasn't even iron. Moe hired a guy from one of Boston's
leading pet fish suppliers, and he did all sorts of chemical tests
but couldn't find the cause. It must have been Divine Intervention.
So with that in mind, I promised to go to church at least three weeks
in a row.

Joe and Paul Keegan continued to hammer away at the
Providence mob connection, and even succeeded in hauling Falcone in
for tough questioning. Joe didn't tell Mary about this; she'd think
he was picking on the poor, sweet kid. Anyway, they still couldn't
make anything stick, even with the help of Howard "the
Drugstore" Evans, who was growing more scared by the second and
wanted nothing more than to be off the stand and shipped out to
Steamboat Springs, or wherever he was to begin his new life under the
Witness Protection Program.

The month or so that follows Labor Day is a pleasant
time in New England, and it's especially nice on the Cape. The ocean
is warm, the days are crisp and clear, it's chilly at night, and
ninety percent of the tourists are gone and the roads actually work.
And so Friday evening of that Labor Day weekend found Mary and me
down at the Breakers, spiffing up the place after all the houseguests
and partying of the summertime, getting it ready for the cozy family
weekends that we would enjoy throughout the fall. Joe was due to come
down and spend a quiet weekend with us. The boys were wrapping up
their summer in Woods Hole, apparently determined to squeeze another
week of fun out of the season before all their friends either
returned to school or went elsewhere for jobs.

Mary was carrying a special letter in her handbag
that she wouldn't let me see. I had retrieved it from our mailbox in
Concord just before we left. All I knew was, it wasn't for her; it
was addressed to a Ms. Candace Lockewood.

"Do you still have Ms. Lockewood's letter?"

"Yes," she said. I saw that her jaw was
trembling.

"What's wrong? Is she in trouble or what?"

But she didn't answer me. She walked back to the
dining room table fast, snatched the letter out, and tore it open
with shaking hands.

"Hey, you can't open other people's—"

"It's for me, dummy. That's my pen name. My
nom
de plume."

"Candace Lockewood? What the hell's wrong with
Mary Adams?"

"Get serious, Charlie—she broke off and read
the letter, her eyes zipping over the page. "Yippee! Yippee!
They like it!"

"They do?"

"Yes, they do!" she cried, holding the
sheet of paper to her breast with a look of ecstasy. And if the paper
were human, it would have been wearing an ecstatic look as well. No
doubt the expression was similar to Maria's on seeing Fuente's face
in a crowd. I picked up the envelope and saw that it was from a New
York outfit called Fountainhead Press. Never heard of it.

Mary wouldn't show me the letter. She said I could
see it later. So we returned to vacuuming and dusting and
straightening up. Joe said he'd be down in time for a late dinner,
and he'd promised to bring the raw materials. Mary remembered she had
to change the sheets, so she hustled upstairs while l finished
vacuuming. Then I unloaded the dishwasher and took out the trash in
big black plastic bags. When I came back inside, Mary was calling me.

"Charlie? Help me move this bed!"

She was in the boys' room, tugging at the far brass
bed, which had been stripped.

"Well, you had no trouble with the other one,"
l said, pointing to its freshly made twin.

"Yeah, but this one seems heavy, and I don't
want to leave a mark on the floor." So I grabbed the head of the
brass bed while she grabbed the foot, and we lifted and yanked the
bed far enough away from the wall that she could get behind it.

"
Gee, I think I left some marks on the new
varnish anyway," she said, looking down at the floor. Sure
enough, there were faint pale streaks where the feet had dragged
across the finish. I hefted the bed out of the way and rubbed the
floor. Then we made the bed and went into the third bedroom, the
guest room, to get it ready.

Halfway through making that bed, I stood up and
stared out the window.

"That bed's too heavy," I said, and we went
back into the boys' room. I approached the far bed and lifted the
foot. Then I went to the head and lifted it. No wonder Mary had had
trouble; the foot of the bed was much heavier than the head. Went to
the other bed and lifted the foot. Not particularly heavy. Lifted
foot of far bed: heavy. What gives?

The beds were brass, not antiques, but well made and
handsome, with vertical ribs of wide brass tubing at head and foot,
the head being much higher, with a gently curving brass rail on top.
The foot had two big end posts at each side, and a horizontal rail of
brass joining them.

On top of the end posts were big brass initials,
shaped like the "onion domes" of the churches in Bavaria
and Russia. I unscrewed one of the finials, which was fastened
firmly. Then both of us were peering down into the hollow brass post.
We saw paper a few inches below the lip.

Mary took hold of the paper and pulled, but it
w0uldn't budge. She pulled harder, and it tore. No good. I unscrewed
the ornate brass cap on the other side and looked in. Same thing. And
the paper wouldn't budge there, either.

"There's something in there besides paper,
Charlie," said Mary. 'just gotta be."

So then we eased the mattress, complete with clean
sheets and comforter, off the box spring and onto the other bed. We
put the box spring on the floor on the far side of the room. The late
afternoon sun streamed in through the gabled windows. Mary and I got
on one side of the bed and gently turned it up on its side, then,
walking around to the other side, gently lowered it until it was
upside down. We were both breathing a little hard; the brass was
quite heavy. Then I grabbed the underside of the foot of the bed
frame and jerked up. Nothing. I jerked up again and again, and
finally a paper-wrapped cylinder fell onto the floor with a loud
thump. Then another fell out. Then two more. We checked the other
side, and with a little pulling and prying, Mary got three out of
that side as well. Seven bundles of . . . what? Mary picked one of
the cylinders up and began to peel the paper off. I rushed over and
grabbed it from her.