Black Tide (16 page)

Felix nodded. "Horrified's a good word. A lot of unexpected heat that he doesn't need, especially if he's up to his ears in something else that's delicate. So --- in any event, the end result is the same. Again, my guess. The higher-up can't believe that guys who worked for him actually pulled a stunt like this and they all go for rides. Maybe there's a foul-up. Someone doesn't say the right word and all of them disappear without anyone of them saying where the paintings are. They end up here and peace breaks out and for five years they're forgotten."

"Until this summer," I said.

"Until this summer," he agreed. Felix crossed his arms and he stepped forward, cocking his head, as if he were a graduate art student and was trying to make an interpretation or something of Homer's brushstrokes. "Somehow, somebody got the word that these paintings were in a safe house that belonged to Jimmy Corelli. Maybe only a couple of people besides myself know the location of this particular safe house."

Felix turned to me and there was not much warmth in his smile. "In this type of occupation, it's easy to lose track of people. So. Here I am, Lewis, with stolen artwork that's worth millions of' dollars, and some bad guys want it back. Nameless wonders that leave messages on my answering machine and send me nasty notes.”

I stepped closer to look at the paintings and for a moment I felt the sense of awe and peace that Justin Dix had talked about back at the Scribner Museum. It seemed amazing that so much could be expressed with just a piece of canvas and some oils, and that anyone could have such talent. So much beauty, terror and history, all speaking silently to whoever was standing before them. I murmured something and Felix said sharply, "What did you say?"

"I said you could give them back."

"Not a good joke."

"True, if I was joking, but I wasn't joking, Felix." I took another step and looked at the brushstrokes, trying to think of the steady nerves and eyes that could make such shapes. "We could leave here and make a phone call to the Maine State Police, and in a half hour, they'd be safe and out of this house. Your nameless wonders would---"

Felix raised his voice and said, "My nameless wonders would stop playing games with me. They would be plenty mad and would just wait for the right time to put a couple of copper-jacketed slugs into my skull. Not a good joke, not even a good comment." 

“I thought you were confident in your skills?" I said.

“Confident, yes," he said, looking angry. "But not suicidal.  Lewis, I don't want to play the heavy here but we have an agreement. You're not thinking of---"

It was my turn to interrupt him. "No, I'm not going to call the cops when I get back to Tyler. It was just a thought, Felix. You made a good point. I'm still aboard."

That seemed to relax him and then I swallowed, thinking of what I had just done. Felix Tinios. His background, being raised in Boston's North End, and then ending up living in North Tyler as a “security consultant." One who had a dark and long history, and who was competent with almost every type of weapon. And in a few short words I had threatened something that he thought was his, something extraordinarily valuable.

Nice going, Cole. It must have been those three paintings. Something about them had just reached in and seized me.

I said, "What now?"

He rubbed his hands and said, "I pass along a message to people who are sending me hate mail. Tell them that I want a face-to-face. We'll begin the negotiations, and hopefully, in a week or two, this'll all be behind us, and the two of us will have significantly fatter bank accounts. Sound like an approach?"

"It does," I said, and I followed him as we went back to the living room, not bothering to say that I had my own approach, and that those three paintings had just decided that choice for me. I would not do anything to hurt or threaten Felix, and in doing so, I would follow his lead and leave the paintings be. But those promises were for Felix only. They weren't for his correspondents.

Once they had the Winslow Homers, well, I'd see what I do.

Outside it was still quite warm.

Later in the day we had lunch at the Weathervane Restaurant on Route 1 in Kittery, which is directly across the street from the Kittery Trading Post, a large sporting goods and outdoor store that likes to pretend there's no such place as L. L. Bean. For lunch I had a lobster roll and Felix had fried squid, and he offered me a couple of chunks, which I politely refused. I make it a rule never to eat any type of seafood that I don't feel comfortable in picking up when it's alive. Felix had a beer and I joined him, since he was driving and I was feeling fairly good about myself, about taking part in something, about getting out of the house. Felix was looking somewhat pensive as he held his beer bottle in one hand. Around us were full tables of tourists, coming to this part of Maine for the two miles' worth of outlet shops along Route 1. It was loud and I'm sure no one could hear what we were saying.

I said, "What's the point, Felix?"

He turned. "Hunh? What did you say?"

"I said, what's the point? You're skimming along the edge of something quite dangerous here. You know that. Do you really believe that these people are going to happily give you large sums of money for the safe house's location, and then leave you alone? That's a hell of a risk, even for you."

Felix looked around and leaned over the polished wood of the table. "What makes you think I have a choice?"

"You don't?"

He shook his head and said, "Look at what I do for a living, Lewis, what brings in my income. A lot of that is based on fear and respect. I roll over and play wedding-night virgin for these guys, give up the safe house without a fuss, and the word gets around, how long do you think I can still keep on working?"

"I get the point," I said. I scraped at the bottle's label with my thumb. "Do you think these nameless wonders are connected with your past? Are they from Boston?"

A waitress with short blond hair and a decade or so older than me walked by, carrying a full tray of fried food and three lobsters, and I heard her murmur, "Just another hour, Lord, let my feet go for another hour."

Felix stared at his own bottle. "There's some sort of connection with my past, I'm sure. But again, it's not something I can poke around and ask questions about. Don't want to make waves, Lewis. I don't want any future employers to think I'm one to welcome trouble. They like things quiet and discreet. Dealing with famous stolen art doesn't exactly meet that requirement."

"So. Job security. That's what's driving you."

He smiled a bit, and I saw that his five o'clock shadow was an hour early. ''And other security, too."

"Oh?" I said, and then it came to me. "Sorry. Dumb move on my part. I suppose in your line of work there's not much of a pension plan."

"Or a health plan. Or much of anything else, Lewis. One of these days I might get unlucky. Well, that's part of what I do. But there's a variety of unlucky out there. One is the type that ends you up in a lonely grave somewhere, with no visitors on your birthday. Another is the one that concerns me the most --- maybe ending up in a wheelchair, or trying to get by on a couple of shattered kneecaps, and with a bank account that's shrinking every month and Social Security thirty or so years away. So I'm investing in my future. No one else will."

At that moment I felt as though I knew more about Felix Tinios than at any other time. Usually he's all finely tailored clothes and correct wines in his kitchen at home and gruff seriousness about what he does for work, but sitting here in this seafood restaurant with paper plates and plastic forks and crumpled napkins before him, I thought I had caught a glimpse of what little voices were whispering inside of him.

I guess we had kept silent for too long and he was concerned about what I was thinking, for he put his empty beer bottle down and said, "Let's get back to Porter, so you can get your butt home. And I'll let you know the moment I hear anything from my nameless wonders."

"I'll be there," I said, and followed him outside into the afternoon.

Later that night I was on the back deck of my house, having safely made it home, but also feeling sour. Earlier in the afternoon I had spent a couple of hours in front of my Apple Macintosh Plus, trying to write my monthly column for
Shoreline.
Tomorrow was Friday and my deadline for the issue which was currently being put together --- February ---- and all I had to show for my two hours of work was an empty file folder in my computer marked FEBCOLUMN. I had snuck into the PETROSTAR file folder a couple of times but had gotten depressed over the scanty information that was being stored there. There was probably a real column or even a magazine-length piece in that file, but not for some time. I had to find the man's name, the man who gave the orders. Yet that wasn't troubling me as much as it should. Something else was.

Tomorrow, for the first time ever, I was going to miss a deadline for my magazine. I suppose in the grand scheme of things it didn't mean that much, especially since I had an extremely generous work arrangement with the editor of
Shoreline,
one Seamus Anthony Holbrook, a retired admiral in the U.S. Navy. A couple of years ago, feeling light on my feet and with another scar healing on my side, I had visited him at his office in Boston, in an old brick building near the soiled waters of Boston Harbor. I had just terminated my employment with the Department of Defense, and they were fulfilling the terms of our agreement by getting me a job as a columnist for
Shoreline
. Holbrook --- who had leathery skin and not much white hair and looked as if he had spent his Navy years aboard a clipper --- got to the point: "You supply a column each month, subject of your choosing. If it's crap, we either don't run it or we rewrite it and run it under your name."

This time, I couldn't even supply them with crap. Holbrook probably wouldn't care that much that I missed my deadline. He was just following orders in allowing me to work for
Shoreline,
and I would never be fired. But I didn't like the idea of a column appearing with my name and someone else's words.

Yet short of having a lightning bolt of inspiration poke me in the nether regions and spending the night writing, there wasn't much I could do about it. I picked up the glass of ice water and took a long swallow, hoping it would do something good to counteract all of the fat I had been eating that day. It was low tide and the waves were far off, and I looked over at the grassy mounds and trees of what was once the Samson Point Coast Artillery Station. I was lucky to be here, for hardly anyone ever came to this house to bother me. The south end of the artillery station ---- which was part of a state wildlife preserve ---- had been closed off to tourists and walkers since the discovery of toxic waste in some of the old bunkers. New Hampshire's financial condition being what it always is --- about five minutes away from bankruptcy --- I was sure that toxic dump wouldn't be cleaned up in the near future. So my privacy was protected through someone else's pollution. What a deal.

I left the deck and went upstairs to my bedroom. There's another deck that leads off to the south wall of the house and which is smaller than the first-floor deck. I undid the window and screen and walked outside, thinking maybe that I would take out my telescope, but there were clouds rolling in, and it didn't look good.

Instead I looked to the south, to Weymouth's Point and the beach where that mutilated diver had washed ashore only a few days ago. I still remembered the surprise on Diane Woods's face when I told her I had no interest in doing a column --- which would never appear --- about the type of people who could kill and mutilate a man like that poor diver. A job I had worked on at the beginning of the summer had led me down some dark paths and had come quite close to causing me serious harm, and I wasn't in the mood to go walking alone again anytime soon. There was the matter with Felix, but that was different. I wasn't by myself.

The diver, though. I should give Diane a call, to see if anything new had been learned, and to find out at least if the diver was now resting in a grave somewhere, a quiet place where he belonged.

Poor Diane. She was probably still fending off the advances of Roger Krohn, and was probably also wondering how she could work for him if he did become the new police chief of Tyler.

I turned and was going back into my bedroom when I caught a quick movement, one that made me think someone was there, and I was going to whisper "Paula?" until I saw that I had been fooled by the gathering dusk and my own reflection in the wall mirror. I leaned my back against the railing of the deck and thought of that evening, back in June, when Paula Quinn had been here and had spent the night.

It seemed so long ago. From the time I had met her Paula had given me messages in a variety of languages, telling me that she was interested, and I had given her my own: not now, I'm still working things through. But then there was June and there had been some blood spilled and I was feeling a terrible urge to prove something, and Paula had come here willingly and for a few brief and sweaty hours it had been wonderful indeed. Until that moment early in the morning, when she was sleeping in my bed and I had stepped out onto this very deck and had discovered that damnable lump on my side. I had been angry and upset and some sharp words were given back and forth to Paula, when I wouldn't --- or couldn't --- tell her what was going on. And now I was here and she was in her apartment in Tyler. I wondered if she was thinking about me.