Billingsgate Shoal (33 page)

I shrank back as the two men approached. As they
walked by one grabbed the other by the sleeve and pointed at the
small blue cruiser. The other man looked at it awhile, then turned to
the other and spoke in a barely audible whisper.

"Them?"

The other nodded.

"We'll go in the back then. I haven't the
stomach for it—"

"The word's come down. McGooey."

"Come on—"

They crept on toward the very end of the wharf. I
caught the faint whiff—very faint—of liquor. One man spoke with a
real brogue, but it didn't sound like the man I'd met in the Buzarski
barn. The other man sounded like an American. I peeped out at them as
they paused beside the wall. I heard a metallic clack. It was either
a doorlatch or the cocking of a pistol. The men were gone. I waited
perhaps half a minute to make sure they weren't going to pop out
again, then eased up into a standing position. Inching along the wall
I kept eyes and ears alert. Nothing. I picked up the pace, heading
toward the fence.

But just before I reached the end of the long wharf
building, one of the small doors opened in front of me along the side
of the warehouse wall. I slid up against the wall, trying my damndest
to shrink right into it. A figure emerged from the doorway and began
to walk past me. I knew he would have to see me. There was nowhere to
go. He turned just as he passed me.

"John?" he whispered.

"Shhhhh!"

"Listen. . .I jus—hey, you're not John—"

But by that time I had shoved a hand into his gut
just below the center of the rib cage. Not a fist, a hand. A set of
fingers straight as I could set them, rather like an ice spade. A
fist won't carry the force in far enough to hurt; that's what Liatis
Roantis told me anyway. It seemed to work. He bent his knees a bit
and bowed down right in front of me. I switched the steel flashlight
into my right paw and thunked him on the nape of the neck medium
hard. I didn't want to hurt him—whoever he was—any more than was
necessary to effect a quick exit. He tumbled down without a sound,
let out a slow sigh and rolled just a wee bit, like a kid in a scary
dream. He kept moving to and fro, as if aware, even in his
semiconscious state, of the discomfort I'd put him in. I reckoned he
would not emerge well disposed toward me.

I started back down toward the foot of the wharf
again, fast and quiet. But the good cards just weren't turning up.

Just before I reached the same small door it opened
again. I was so close It swung into the wall right next to the
hinges. The door covered me as it opened all the way, and I saw the
shadow of a big man emerge and walk right on past me. He went over
toward the edge of the pier, dipped his head into cupped hands, and
lighted a cigarette. I saw the fiery halo surround his head. He wore
a trenchcoat and a tweed hat.

"John's" friend was in a semi-doze not
thirty feet from where he stood. He would thrash and groan, maybe
yell, any second. The end of the wharf was another twenty yards. But
there was no cover. I knew the man who'd come out for a smoke would
discover his fallen comrade long before I could make it. By instinct
I'd caught hold of the metal door before it swung all the way shut.
It was pivoted on a hydraulic door closer. I twisted the doorknob
quickly, forcefully back and forth in a millisecond. No go. As I had
supposed, it opened only from within without a key. If I wanted to
hide, it was now or never, I really had no choice. I ducked around
behind the closing door and followed its swinging path into the
blackness of the huge building. After all, I told myself, if the
doors opened from the inside, I could always get out again.

You jerk, an inner voice answered. You said that
about twenty minutes ago when you scaled the inner fence. And now
look what a sweet pickle you've gotten yourself into.

I had to admit it wasn't very promising:
 

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

THE PLACE WAS huge and jet black; I groped forward
for twenty or thirty feet. Although I had my flashlight in my hand, I
didn't dare use it. Once I felt something hard bump up against my
chest. A tall oxygen cylinder. Thank God I hadn't knocked it over;
the noise it would've made in that big covered arena as it hit the
cement floor would have rung out like a cannon shot.

I continued to feel my way along. Gradually my eyes
got accustomed to the darkness, and I could see the faint giant
oblong ring of pale gray up above. The warehouse building had a
sectioned roof, and a ring of narrow vertical skylights that circled
the whole thing.

I heard a creak and a whish behind me. I turned and
saw a pale upright rectangle of light. The door was open; somebody
was coming in. I dropped to a crouch and then a crawl, trying to hold
my left hand out to ward off obstacles. In three seconds I had run
smack into a big pillar, which I promptly scrambled around. I was
none too quick, either, for just then a light shone. It was the man I
had seen leave after I walloped the Friend-of-John, who now held up
his Zippo as a torch to see and search.

I stayed hidden behind the concrete piling. The man
snapped the lighter shut and was gone. I listened, but could hear
nothing; he must have been wearing rubber-soled shoes. Had he seen
the fallen man? How could he not? And wasn't that why he'd held up
the lighter?

I hastened toward the door. There was a tiny window
in it, probably the kind made of thick glass with chicken wire inside
it. Using my sense of direction—which is awful—managed to sneak
back toward it. The tiny rectangle of window light got clearer and
clearer as I drew up to it. Only a few more feet to freedom; with the
man inside I could now safely depart.

Except that the door was now locked from the inside
too. The cards weren't getting any better.

I sneaked back into the far interior of the big
building again. Now what? I crouched behind a pillar—either the
same one or a mate to it—and thought. I looked at my watch; it was
just after 3 A.M. If I could remain hidden in the building long
enough Jim would seek me out. But how long would that be? My note
said I should be back an hour from now. Fine. But Jim might sleep
through the alarm or shut it off unconsciously. I could have a six-
or seven-hour wait. If they knew I was in the building, there was no
hope. How to get out?

Perhaps I should try the back door, the one used by
the first two characters I'd seen on the pier. Christ, the pier was
more active at night than during the day. They had walked on up to
the far end and hadn't come back. Since the door I'd entered was at
the land end of the building, the smartest thing to do was to poke
along the length of the warehouse and look for any way out. Any way
at all. And I must do it quietly, slowly. It was three-fifteen when I
heard the noises. The first one was the slow dripping sound of water
into a pool.

Having nothing else to home in on, I headed toward
the dropping water. And when I arrived, I first heard the distant
voices. I crept closer, and the voices grew louder. They seemed to
come from underneath me and I couldn't figure out why. A light beam
swept quickly around over my head. I froze, crouched, and felt my
pulse rocket up to about The beam played around the place for another
few seconds, then flicked off. Watchman.

I tried to remember in my mind's eye what I had seen
in the light's path. No doubt I would have seen, and remembered, more
if I hadn't been trying to shrink into the floor. There were stacks
of crates and pallets. I saw the brief silhouettes of two lift
trucks. Barrels . . . I saw some old barrels. Home-made ladders of
nailed two-by-fours.

I remembered something else, too. It was a thing of
wire mesh, like a cage, toward the middle of the building, and big. I
never saw it in the beam because. . .because. . . why? Because
whoever held the beam didn't shine it on the cage for the simple
reason that he was standing next to the cage. So then what was the
cage thing? I had seen only the indirect illumination of it; there
was no way of knowing exactly what it was, or did.

I was moving all this time, perhaps out of sheer
nervousness more than anything. Most of the time I crawled because it
kept my balance intact, my center of gravity low, and my profile
down. I groused through the old place like an elephant feeding on the
veldt at midnight. I kept heading toward the
poit!
poit!
of the drip. Hell, at least it was a
direction, a straight line.

A glow reached up through the floor. Pale, faint
yellow: the glow of tungsten light bulbs. I snaked behind a series of
cardboard cartons set on pallets. I oozed toward the big square hole
in the floor where the faint yellow light was coming from. Then I
saw—as faint as faint can be—the big crinkled wire mesh
screening. It was the cage I'd been wondering about. An elevator
shaft. A big freight elevator. But who'd have guessed that this
dockside warehouse had a lower level?

Probably nobody would guess it. And that's probably
exactly why somebody chose the place to sneak around in at night.
Then the goddamned flashlight came on again. I was close enough now
to see who the sentinel was. It was the Marlboro Man—the guy who'd
stepped outside for a smoke and locked me in this place. I wanted to
bean him, and take his key. But he shined the light down on the floor
and opened a door at the side of the big steel cage. Before it closed
I could hear the sound of his feet descending steps. It was a
stairway that apparently wound around the elevator shaft. The pier
had big granite block sides that rose up a good twelve feet above the
harbor water at high tide, maybe a bit more. But the construction of
the wharf, the big stone blocks and ancient appearance of the
structure, would lead anyone looking at it to assume at once that it
was solid clear through. But this wasn't the case. Smack dab in its
center was another level, reached by heavy elevator and adjoining
stairway. Even if this cellarlike cavity in the dock was twelve feet
high, it I would still be above water level.

But I wanted no part of it. I wanted clear of the
whole thing. I wanted to beat it out to a pay phone, chunk a coin
into the slot and raise Mary at DeGroot's and tell her to seek out
brother Joe and Brian Hannon, the Coast Guard, the militia, and all
the rest and surround the place and stop all this bad jazz.

So I commenced worming my way along the floor again,
but a bit faster now that the watchman had descended the stairway,
and oozed my way to the back of the building. There had to be an exit
back there. Had to. I left the big square hole behind, with its soft
yellow glow and wire mesh skin. It was dark as pitch again and I felt
better. I don't know why all the horror movies and gothic novels keep
the myth alive that darkness is frightening. Nothing's further from
the truth. When you're on the run the dark is your best friend. It's
a great place to hide from keen-eyed predators. That is why 90
percent of small defenseless mammals have become nocturnal.

I belly-crawled, crouched, tiptoed, and slunk my way
to the far side of the big building until a hundred ineffable
messages—probably long-dormant auditory and kinesthetic cave man
signals—told me that the wall was not far ahead. I have thought
since that it must have been echoes that warned me. For all its
silence, a big warehouse must have a noise level of some sort,
perhaps ten thousand minuscule waftings, drippings, flutterings,
hissings, and the like that swarm about the big place, like a school
of fry in a tank. They must then echo off walls, and present a
different noise pattern to a person approaching the building's
terminus. Or something. Hell, I don't know why, I just knew it.

Then I smelled it: the very faint whiff of alcohol.
It was as subtle and sweet as baking bread, that ethereal odor of
hospitality, of food and friendship.

I turned around quick and headed the other way.

I was beginning to feel like one of those trick cars
you wind up that never goes off the table. Every time it senses the
edge, it does a 180-degree turn.

I couldn't get out of the goddamn warehouse.

And then a strange sensation overtook me. Maybe it
was the lack of sleep or my nervous state in general. I imagined that
the elevator shaft in the center of the building was the vortex of a
whirlpool. Try as I might, the inward spiral was swooshing me along
into its square yellow maw. It had perhaps licked out at me as I
brooded aboard the
Whimsea
,
as fine and subtle as the mycelium of wood-pulp fungus, hair-thin and
stretching many yards, invisible. Once in the factory compound it had
licked out again, like a rainbow of promise or the dry creek bed, the
arroyo followed by the thirsty prospector. Once inside the building
it was stronger and stronger, until now it resembled the lead
tentacle of a giant squid, wrapped around my torso and drawing me in
toward the gnashing beak amidst the folds of slimy muscle.

I had decided, upon smelling the faint booze breath,
not to meet Mutt and Jeff, the guys I first saw on the pier who spoke
briefly in my hidden presence., They didn't sound that friendly to
begin with, and the metallic clack I'd heard as they rounded the far
comer of the pier didn't add to their collective image. The best
thing for me to do was to snake all the way back again to the other
end of the building. I would find a hidey-hole there, deep behind or
underneath some crates or skids or barrels, and wait. Wait till some
bodyguard opened the door again, allowing me to dash by him and out.
Wait till dawn, and Jim called the fuzz. Wait till hell froze over,
but not to—