Curiosity Didn't Kill the Cat (23 page)

He crushed out his cigarette and picked up the phone.

*

“Hello, Charlie. Any action there?”

“Hell, no,” Duncan responded irritably. “You heard from Steve yet?”

“No. What about Carl?”

“Nothing. I checked with him about ten minutes ago. What about your…uh, mousetrap? Anybody take the bait?”

Conan looked down at the book, his eyes going cold.

“Yes. Charlie, I’m going to call Steve’s house and office and leave your number, in case he should happen to have anything to say to us. I have a little expedition of sorts lined up, and I’ll be out of touch for an hour or so.”

“An expedition! Listen, Conan, if you—”

“Relax. I’ll be there in ten minutes, and I’ll tell you all about it. And I think you’ll be interested in what I caught in my mousetrap.”

“Okay. I’ll be waiting.”

Conan cleared the line, then dialed Steve Travers’ home number, and while he waited for a response he opened the desk drawer and took out Charlie’s .32.

It might, indeed, come in handy.

CHAPTER 22

As the clear light of a green-tinged sunset faded, the
Josephine
picked her way along the rocky coastline, riding dangerously close to the rough waters off Jefferson Heights. By the time she moved past the headland into the comparatively quiet waters off Holliday Beach, the sky was entirely dark except for a reddish glow on the horizon.

But the calm in the open waters was only comparative. Conan clung to the starboard railing, bracing himself against the slow roll of the long sea swells. Those swells that looked like trivial wrinkles when viewed from the shore, loomed large from the deck of a small fishing boat.

He shifted the strap of the binoculars case on his left shoulder, glancing toward the pilothouse, where Olaf Svensen was working intently at the wheel, his craggy features limned against the darkness by the glow of the binnacle light.

Conan moved toward the bow a few paces, his gaze shifting from the scattered glitter of lights on the shore, to the single chain of lights gleaming on the horizon. But even as one part of his mind concentrated on the lights, another part was occupied with Olaf Svensen.

Charlie had questioned him closely about Sven, in no way satisfied with the scant information Conan could offer. Duncan noted that a man with a fishing boat might be quite useful to Mrs. Leen, and he was particularly disturbed that Sven was another frequent visitor at the bookshop.

Svensen had listened patiently to Conan’s instructions before they left the Bay, giving no indication that he thought it odd that Conan wanted to go out to sea at nightfall, staying as close to shore as possible, then stop at a certain point and wait with the lights and motor off. Sven’s only reaction was to draw his bristling brows together and state a price for this unusual excursion. Conan paid him, and they left the Bay with no further words.

It was that apparent lack of curiosity that made Conan wonder now. But Sven had never been a man to ask questions.

Conan turned his full attention to the lights, assessing the
Josephine
’s
position in relation to the shore lights and those on the horizon. At times, all of them disappeared as the boat dipped into the troughs.

He moved back to the pilothouse, glancing over Sven’s shoulder at the compass. After a few more minutes, he made another visual check, then turned to Sven, raising his voice against the roar of the motor.

“All right, Sven. This looks about right.”

The fisherman nodded, then shut off the engine, leaving the boat facing north, on a direct east-west line between the center of Holliday Beach and the trawlers. A few seconds later, the instrument panel went dark and the running lights blinked out.

The silence and darkness were profound, and Conan felt a momentary fear; a fear engendered by the black and omnipotent sea. He smiled at this atavistic sensation, then edged his way forward, stopping a few feet short of the bow. He took the binoculars from the case, braced his left elbow against the railing, and focused on the shore.

Before he left Holliday Beach, he’d stopped by his house and turned on certain lights. Now, he searched for that particular pattern of lighted windows, and at length found it, but only after three swells. The entire coastline disappeared every time the boat fell into a trough.

But once he homed in on the lights, he could keep the binoculars aligned with the spot fairly well between swells. Impatiently, he pulled his arm out of the sling; he needed both hands to keep the glasses steady. He waited for the boat to rise on another swell, then counted north from his house; the sixth set of lights belonged to Mrs. Edwina Leen’s unassuming little beachfront cottage.

He heard the heavy thud of booted feet moving along the railing toward him, but Sven stopped a few feet away, maintaining the conversational hiatus that had existed between them during the whole of this voyage.

Assured that he could keep his objective in sight, Conan straightened and turned the binoculars toward the horizon.

It was a paradoxically beautiful sight, that scintillant chain, with the delicate, golden crescent of a new moon hovering above it. He located a cluster of lights near the center of the chain; the mother ship, seagoing factory and focus of the fleet’s activities.

And as he lowered the binoculars, he was remembering the first time he’d seen the Berlin Wall. But there was no wall here; only an imaginary line called the three-mile limit.

Olaf Svensen’s voice rumbled out of the darkness.

“Yust you look at them damn Rooskies,” he muttered, his voice vibrating with rancor.

“Hell of a lot of them in this fleet,” Conan commented.

Svensen lapsed into a few bitterly spoken words of Norwegian, then returned to English.

“Factories!” he pronounced with profound disgust. “That’s all they be. Floatin’ factories. They don’ know what is, to be
fishermen
. And yust look how close they come in. They be runnin’ right on the line.”

“Are they running closer than usual?”

“You damn right, they closer!” Sven snorted. “They figure maybe nobody watch at night. They t’ink they yust sneak in close, and nobody know.”

Conan made no response as Sven lapsed into mumbling Norwegian again. He turned and sighted in on Mrs. Leen’s house, watching it through several swells. Then he took a deep breath, disciplining his mind to wait.

And it might be a long wait, he thought grimly. He might be too late, or in the wrong position, or the idea that brought him here might have no basis at all in fact.

*

A half hour later, he was still waiting. The moon had long ago slipped under the horizon, making the night even more oppressively black.

He longed for a cigarette, but wouldn’t risk lighting one. He’d already stopped Sven from lighting his pipe. On the ocean, a small light could be seen a long way.

And that was one reason he was here, shivering in the dark, waiting for something that might never happen.

“Sven—”

Svensen was still leaning against the railing next to him. He responded with a mumbled, “Ya?”

“Do me a favor; keep your eyes on those…Rooskies, and if you see anything unusual, let me know.”

“Okay. I keep my eyes open.”

Conan heard him moving across the deck to the opposite railing, and again felt a vague uneasiness. Sven still showed no apparent surprise at his unusual requests.

He braced his elbows against the railing and raised the binoculars, refocusing on Mrs. Leen’s house. The process had become routine by now. A large swell lifted the
Josephine
and dropped her into a trough, and he swore under his breath as the shore lights disappeared.

When he had them in sight again, Edwina Leen’s house had gone dark.

Conan tensed, unconsciously holding his breath. Another swell, but a relatively small one; he maintained his visual lock on Mrs. Leen’s house, oblivious to the tension-induced pain in his shoulder.

Then a tight smile of satisfaction crossed his lips.

From the darkened house, a tiny pinpoint of light appeared.

He controlled the impulse to shout his jubilation, concentrating on that white point of light. It had to be a powerful, extremely tight beam; a beam so tight, that had he been a short distance north or south, he’d have missed it entirely. Even now, he wondered if the boat shouldn’t be a little farther north for him to catch the full brilliance of it.

“Sven,” he called, “do you see anything over there?”

After a pause, Svensen answered, “No, not yet, Mr. Flagg. I see not’ing.”

The light began to flash on and off, the irregular pulsation continuing for a full minute as Conan watched, desperately wishing for some means of recording those impulses. Then it blinked off, leaving nothing but darkness.

“Anything yet, Sven?”

“They yust sittin’—no…wait. I t’ink I see—”

Conan turned, looked intently toward the trawlers.

“What, Sven?”

“A light. Yust a little, blinkin’ light. I can yust barely make it out.”

Conan crossed the deck, stumbling on the cover of the hold, reaching out blindly for the railing.

“Where was the light coming from—the mother ship?”

“Ya, the mother ship. That damn floatin’—”

“I have it.” He tightened his grip on the binoculars, fixing his intent gaze on one light among that glittering chain; one small, white, blinking light.

Mrs. Leen was desperate. Those signals were an admission of failure; failure to find the message that was hidden in the original copy of the Dostoevsky. No doubt she’d suffer for that failure, and for making this direct contact necessary.

But her ultimate fate was of little interest to him. She had her instructions now; those impulses carried the answers to her signaled questions.

He watched the flashing light and wondered if somewhere in this long-distance visual conversation he was witnessing, his own name might not be mentioned.

*

On the way back to Holliday Bay, Svensen had been complaining about a strange noise in the engine. As soon as he tied up at the dock, he returned to the pilothouse, and descended the narrow hatchway into the hold to diagnose her mechanical ills. He didn’t even seem to hear Conan’s good-bye, or notice his quick departure.

Conan took the steps up to the street level two at a time, and as he reached the XK-E, looked back at the
Josephine
. Sven was nowhere to be seen, lost in the hold.

A man of little curiosity, perhaps; or a man who had long ago ceased to be surprised. Or—and the thought made him pause—a man who knew more than he was telling.

But there wasn’t time to consider Olaf Svensen’s character or motives.

He backed the XK-E out of the parking space, and gunned it past the Coast Guard station north of the docks, then turned left up a side street, skirting the Bay, to the highway.

He found himself flinching at every shift of gears, but resigned himself to the pain. Another of Nicky’s pills would bring it under control.

A half mile from the Bay, he braked and pulled off the highway at a telephone booth. He left the motor running, glancing at his watch as he got of the car: 7:05. Mrs. Leen had had approximately thirty-five minutes since her exchange with the trawlers.

For a sick moment, he felt around in his pockets for a change, wondering if he were in the classic position of utter helplessness, facing a pay phone without that magic silver disk. But to his relief, his pockets provided the necessary passkey to communication. He dialed the Alton house, fumbling in his haste.

Duncan answered after only one ring.

“Conan, is that you?”

“Yes, Charlie, what’s—”

“Thank God! You okay? Where are you, anyway?”

“A phone booth, about half a mile south of the shop. Charlie, I hit paydirt. Mrs. Leen had a little téte-à-téte with the trawlers; light beams—very narrow and intense.”

“I’ll be damned. I’ll never laugh again when you start running off about property values.”

Conan couldn’t muster so much as a smile.

“That was about six-thirty. Charlie, she has her instructions now. What’s been going on there?”

Duncan’s voice had an edge of tension in it.

“Maybe that explains a couple of things. Chief, the old lady had a bonfire. That would be about six forty-five.”

“A bonfire? What do you mean?”

“I mean, she lit a fire in her fireplace, and it must’ve been a good one. Her chimney was spreading sparks all over the neighborhood. And in the last ten minutes, I’ve seen her look out her front window three times. Every time a car goes by.”

“She’s expecting someone, then.”

“Yeah. And that fire makes sense now. She was probably getting rid of any incriminating evidence around the house. She must be ready to blow town. That’s what that message to the trawlers must’ve been about.”

Conan closed his eyes, concentrating.

“No. There’s more to it, but that must be part of it. She’s waiting for someone; a ride. She hasn’t a car of her own; part of the poor act. What about Dominic?”

“I talked to Carl ten minutes ago, and he’s getting some action down there, too, but I don’t know what it means yet. He’s waiting for instructions.”

“Instructions?”

“Yeah, well, you see, he’s been prowling around since it got dark; he didn’t have a good enough view from that house he was in. Anyway, he says at about six-fifty, all the lights went out in the house across the street from Dominic’s; that telephone man’s blind.”

“All the lights—”

“Oh—there’s someone else. I guess the FBI sent a replacement for the Major; another guy showed up about six. The telephone man let him in; looked okay.”

“But what about the lights?”

“I don’t know what happened. Carl says the lights went out, so he slipped over to take a look. He couldn’t hear a sound inside, and the shades were pulled, so he couldn’t see anything. He went back across the street and checked Dominic, but he was still inside his house. Then he radioed me. He wasn’t sure it was a good idea to bust in on a couple of FBI agents unannounced.”

“He’s sure Dominic didn’t leave his house?” Conan leaned against the glass wall wearily, fighting to keep the tension under control.