Death Stalks Door County (26 page)

Cubiak was nearly to the door when he remembered something else. “When you examined Anders's body, were you able to determine how long it'd been since he'd lost that tooth?”

“No question it was quite recent, maybe even that morning. The socket was swollen and bloody. It's possible he lost it on impact. I looked for it but Halverson's men had made a mess of things already, probably tamped it into the ground. Why?”

“Just wondering,” Cubiak said.

W
hen Cubiak coasted into Beck's driveway, the only light on in the mansion was in Beck's downstairs corner office. Through an uncurtained window, the ranger saw Beck. He was on the phone, striding back and forth. He was ebullient, smiling and gesturing grandly. Why not? So far everything had gone the way he had predicted.

Earlier, after he'd finished with Bathard, Cubiak had stopped at the Kozy Kafe for the Thursday evening hot beef and cherry pie special. Over several cups of coffee at the restaurant and then a beer at the corner bar, he worked through what he'd learned about Beck's secret harbor plan. Bathard's assessment of the project seemed too low key and Jocko's version overly grandiose. Cubiak needed more information and decided to try and get it directly from the source without tipping his hand.

When Beck hung up, he knocked. The door opened abruptly.

“You? What the hell are you doing here tonight?” Beck said, the stink of alcohol on his breath.

“There's something I wanted to discuss.”

“Now?”

“I was in the area.”

Beck hesitated. “All right, come in, long as you're here. Go, fix yourself something to drink.” He moved aside and motioned toward the bar. “Just don't tell me you're here to whine about the regatta again.”

Beck's office was palatial compared to Bathard's, and as luxurious as the coroner's was sparse. A large mahogany desk matched the floor-to-ceiling bookshelves that lined two walls. The fireplace was surrounded by black marble and above it a polished birch mantel displayed a tasteful sampling of awards sculpted in crystal and brass. Light jazz purred from unseen speakers.

Only the best at Beck's bar, too. Plymouth gin, Blanton's bourbon, and a bottle of twenty-five-year-old Calvados. Cubiak loaded a glass with ice and then reached for the buffalo grass vodka. “It
is
about the race,” he said, measuring out a few drops.

“Christ almighty already,” Beck said as he snagged the half-empty Calvados. “We've been over that business a dozen times. I'm telling you there's nothing to worry about.”

“The way it's organized, all the boats are vulnerable to attack. It's impossible to police the miles of shoreline, and there's no way we can monitor the small skiffs and boats that will line the route loaded with people angling for a better view. It's too dangerous.”

Beck scoffed. “You've been crying wolf ever since the festival started. But look what's happened. Exactly nothing. We got through the first two days with no incidents. We'll be fine.”

“There's going to be another attack. And it's going to be well planned and organized.”

“You got any proof ?” Beck tossed back his drink. “No? No proof. Then stop all this doomsday talk.”

“We could at least alter the route. Scramble things up.”

Beck laughed. “You fucking nuts? The regatta route is tradition, and in Door County we don't mess with tradition. Up here we do things the way we always did them.”

“You mean, the way you want them done.”

Beck laughed again. “That's exactly right,” he said, refilling his glass. He held out the bottle.

“I'm done,” Cubiak said and retreated to an easy chair near the fireplace. For a moment, the two men regarded each other. Then Cubiak began again.

“I'm coming to appreciate that you pretty much run the show. Call the shots, don't you? Last week, you said things were going to happen, and that I might benefit. I didn't pay much attention at the time, wasn't particularly interested, to be honest. Maybe I'm still not. But at any rate, I'm willing to listen.”

“Well, well, finally starting to wake up to reality,” Beck said. He crossed back to his desk and reclined against the front, studying his visitor. “See that?” he said as he pointed over his left shoulder to a wall covered with framed photos, certificates, and news clips. “That represents four generations of family history. Four generations”—he held up the appropriate number of fingers—“to move up the ladder from immigrant status to top of the heap. People say we were lucky, but they're wrong. We were successful, and success doesn't derive from luck alone. You know what you need to succeed? First, you need to recognize opportunity and take advantage of it when it rises up in front of you.”

Beck rocked back and forth on his heels. “Let me tell you a little story to illustrate my point. It starts with my great-grandfather, John Dugan Becker. He was eighteen when he came to this country, worked in the Chicago stockyards for a year, hated the noise and confusion of the city, and came up here, doing whatever and living like a pauper. In four years he had saved enough money to open a small quarry. There were dozens of operations like that around here, men breaking their backs cutting stone from holes in the ground. But Becker had a knack for business and slowly expanded the operation until he had six or seven employees and contracts with a couple builders in Milwaukee to provide stone for their buildings. He was a handsome man by all accounts and could have married any one of the beautiful immigrant girls working as maids to the wealthy landowners up here. Instead, he married one of the girls from town, thought it would do more to secure his position with the locals.”

A tradition you continued, Cubiak thought.

“In 1871, two things happened: my grandfather was born and more than three square miles of Chicago burned to the ground. Everything was made of wood back then, not just the buildings but the sidewalks and streets even. The city fathers' decision to rebuild in something less flammable created a demand for stone that no one could ever have imagined. While the owners of the other quarries plotted strategy, my great-grandpop dug into his savings and borrowed what he could. It's said that in one weekend, he tripled the size of his crew and leased half the barges operating this side of Green Bay.

“In a decade, he shipped more hewn rock two hundred miles down the lakefront than the rest of the stonecutters put together. The man saw an opportunity and ran with it.”

Beck emptied his glass. “You know what else you do to succeed? You create opportunity when there is none. At the time Great-grandpop was running stone to Chicago, every boat that left Sturgeon Bay for the Windy City or any port south of here first had to sail
west
and then
north
to the tip of the peninsula before it could travel
south
in Lake Michigan. Just think of the time wasted when Lake Michigan was less than two miles from the east end of the Sturgeon Bay harbor. All anyone had to do to subtract a hundred miles from the journey was dig a ditch and connect the two bodies of water.”

“I suppose your great-grandfather dug the ditch?”

Beck roared; he liked that. “No. He put his money in with other forward-thinking business leaders, and together they hired the men and equipment to dig the canal. Then they charged other shippers to use it!”

“The American way,” Cubiak said dryly.

“Exactly. But nothing lasts. Nothing. Sit on your ass and the world marches right past you. To succeed, you also have to be flexible and willing to shift gears. When the demand for stone dried up, the family went into the shipbuilding business! For years, they built ore boats and barges. War broke out, twice, and they churned out cruisers and destroyers. Then supertankers came along. Even if we could build vessels that size there was no way to get them through the Saint Lawrence Seaway and to the oceans. What'd we do? We retooled, refocused our marketing strategy, and emerged as one of the country's premier manufacturers of private yachts, large sailing craft, and automobile ferries.”

“Right.”

Beck began pacing again. “Remember what I said about opportunity? It's everywhere. Keep an open mind and you'll find it. Know where I found it?”

“No idea.” Cubiak retrieved his host's glass and refreshed it.

“Not here in the good old staid Midwest. No, I found it on the global scene. Went to Princeton, did you know that? Bunch of uptight East Coast assholes but they got connections and through them, I made valuable international contacts, people with unlimited wealth.”

“What's all this got to do with me?” Cubiak said. Cupping his empty glass, he reclaimed his seat.

“Plenty. I'm linked into people who have money to eat and what I've discovered is that they're fanatics about safety. Bulletproof everything. Fences. Dogs. Bodyguards. Metal detectors inside the front door, for chrissake. These people aren't stupid but they are scared; they know that what they've got, everybody else wants. They see a world filled with hate and distrust and violence. They're living in a time when they're the targets for every extortionist or revolutionary with a gun and a grenade. And here, hell, the yokels don't even bother to lock their doors at night.”

Cubiak sat up. The conversation was finally moving where he'd intended it to go.

“Now, it's true I can offer these rich bastards top-of-the-line luxury boats, but so can a dozen other shipyards. So I asked myself: What else? What can I offer that's unique? And I realized it was the thing staring me right in the face.

“What I can provide is a little bit of Camelot. The peace of mind they crave. A secluded playground isolated from war, terrorism, disease, and deprivation. A refuge—for the elite. Here on the peninsula and on Washington Island as well. This is strictly confidential,” Beck said as he handed Cubiak a large leather-bound book.

Paradise Harbor
. The title was embossed in gold letters, just as Jocko had said. Cubiak opened the cover and paged through. Here was Door County metamorphosed into the ultimate luxury community, gated and crowned with stunning amenities. A modern medical complex staffed by physicians from the not-too-distant Mayo Clinic, an expansive health spa, stables, and even artificial hot springs. For security, an electronic underwater grid in the newly dredged Fish Creek Canal and in the surrounding offshore waters. The state-of-the-art network of hidden microphones, not unlike the Navy's SOSUS system, could detect and track any manmade sound, providing early and adequate warning of possible intrusion.

“Well, what do you think?” Beck was puffed with excitement.

“Impressive.”

“You haven't seen the half of it!” At the back of the room Beck switched on an overhead light and lifted a white sheet off the conference table to reveal a three-dimensional model of Washington Island.

Gone was the utilitarian ferry dock with its funky general store, family restaurant, and moped and bike rental shops. The village that had grown up along the isle's main road no longer existed. The waterfront cottages and frame houses were no more. In place of the inlet where the ferry docked, Beck had ordered up an elaborate harbor for the kind of vessels the very rich favored. Overlooking the facility was an upscale resort, similar to the one planned for the peninsula. Even more incredible was the transformation of the interior into a hunting preserve. Instead of cows and fruit trees, Beck's Washington Island was dotted with miniature statues of wild game.

“Tigers and elephants?” Cubiak said.

“A four-season hunting preserve, stocked to order according to the calendar. Black bear in spring. Moose in winter. Ah, but there's so much more. The island is a unique land formation, a true gift from nature. More than four hundred million years ago, during the Paleozoic Age, half the continent was covered by an ocean. The receding waters left massive deposits of dolomite that became Niagara Falls out east and here in the Midwest formed the bedrock of both the peninsula and Washington Island. The result: scenic bluffs on the mainland and interconnected tunnels on the island.”

At Beck's touch, the island model swung open to reveal a honeycomb of underground caverns. “A man can stand upright, the tunnels are so tall. Some are even wide enough for ATVs to get through. And they're impregnable. In fact, during World War II, the Army stored secret documents down there. When the Cold War started, a local entrepreneur tried to promote the tunnels as the ultimate fallout shelter before the state stopped him.

“A primitive venture,” Beck observed dryly. “For my purpose, the tunnels will be outfitted with private living quarters, gourmet food service facilities, and a medical clinic, all to be used in extreme emergencies only.” In such a haven, a person could disappear whenever necessary. Most important, he said, it was readily operational.

Beck stepped back from the table. “Paradise Harbor: Shelter from the storm.”