Edward Gorman - The Autumn Dead

I parked up in the bluffs and got out, taking my binoculars with me. Haskins had pulled into the marina's private parking lot. Without a card to open the automatic device, I was never going to get in there.

I brought the 'nocs into focus and began following him from his car, down along the pier, past several clusters of chittering houseboat owners, to a small leg of pier where a splendid white yacht overwhelmed everything within sight.

Two men stood on the prow of the yacht. Ted Forester, tan, trim, silver-haired, wearing the sort of casual Western getup you associate with very rich Texans. And Larry Price, smoking one of those 100-mm cigarettes, blue windbreaker contrasting with his movie-star blond hair and his weary sneer. By age forty-three he had to be tired of hating people as much as he did. He had to.

It happened very quickly.

Dave Haskins had not quite gotten aboard when Larry Price reached out and slapped him. He hit him hard enough that Haskins fell back into Forester's arms. Then Forester grabbed Haskins and shoved him against the cabin. All this was in pantomime. It was not unlike a silent movie. Everything looked very broad and theatrical.

I had no idea what was happening here, but I felt certain it had something to do with a missing suitcase and with an accidental overdose that wasn't accidental at all and with the mysterious mission of a crazed woman on a black Honda motorcycle.

I got back in the Toyota and drove the rest of the way down the hills, swerving once to avoid a squirrel who sat by the roadside looking much cuter than any rodent had a right to, and then easing on into the traffic flow, flanked on one side by a BMW and on the other by a Porsche. These guys probably thought I was here to clean out some houseboat toilets that had gotten plugged up over the years.

I parked just outside the private gate. From the glove compartment I took the Smith amp; Wesson.38 I'd used back in my days on the force, pushed it down inside my belt, and then set off over the gravel to the yacht a quarter mile away.

The people I passed were as festive as carnival goers, smiling, laughing, saying hi though they didn't know me, standing atop houseboats watching speedboats cutting through the long miles of river lying east. There had been paddle wheelers here as recently as a hundred years ago, and now the smell of fish and the scent of mud and the white flash of birch made you want to be a boy of that era and see one of the big wheelers come sidling into the cove half a mile downriver.

When I got to the leg of the pier where the yacht sat, I touched the.38 as if for luck. They were below deck now, the vast white boat empty up top, its three red mast pennants flapping with the force of gunshots in the wind.

When I got abreast of the yacht, I moved quickly, jumping aboard without pause. Then I stood there, waiting to find out if they'd heard me. If they had, they'd come up through the small oak cabin doors. And they would not be happy.

From what I could see, the yacht had a large aft deck, an upper salon and lounge, and carried decals that designated Twin Cummins main engines. There was a lower dining salon, and it was there I assumed the three of them had gone.

Everything was given over to the wind here, the cold clear force of it, and the scent of water. I heard nothing from below.

Then a voice said, "You planning a party tonight?"

When I turned to him, I saw that he was a dapper elderly man in a Hawaiian shirt and white ducks and baby blue deck shoes. Liver spots like tattoos decorated his hairy white forearms. When he saw who I was he frowned, obviously disappointed.

"Oh, I thought you were one of the Forester party." His tone implied that I owed him an explanation for not being such.

Damn, I thought. My idea had been to get as close to the cabin as possible and hear what was going on. Standing here talking was bound to get them up from below deck. I wouldn't learn anything at all.

But then I got lucky.

A woman of similar age called to the man from down the dock. He waved to her.

"I'm with maintenance," I said quickly.

"Oh," he said, "maintenance." He said it as if he knew exactly what I was talking about. I was glad he did. Then, "My wife. She wants me to help her paint the walls. On our houseboat."

I wished he weren't talking so loudly. I wished he would leave.

She called again and he shrugged, as if embarrassed a woman would have such power over a man, and then he left. I stood there counting minutes on my Timex again, waiting for them to burst through the cabin doors and demand to know what I was doing there.

Another three, four minutes went by. And nothing.

I touched my.38 for luck again, then crept over to the far side of the cabin and knelt down and pressed my ear very hard against the thin white wall.

I hoped the next few minutes would prove I would be well rewarded for all my trouble of the past hour or so.

Iknelt to the left of two windows that looked down into the dining area. A single

glimpse had shown me that Forester and Price stood over a chair in which Dave Haskins sat, hands in lap, head down, miserable.

Forester said, "There's one thing the three of us need to do. And that's keep calm."

"Calm, right," Price said. "With this little bastard thinking of going to the police."

In a voice that was almost a sob, Haskins said, "Larry, honest to God, I didn't say I was going to the police, I only said maybe we should."

"Maybe we should? You little candy-ass. Don't you know that would ruin us? Every goddamn one of us."

"Maybe they wouldn't prosecute," Haskins said. He sounded painfully young and naive.

"Right," Price said. "Maybe that fat-ass mayor of ours would give us a medal."

Forester said, "That's enough, Price."

A sullen silence ensued. There was the sound of wind, the aroma of meat cooking on a grill somewhere nearby, laughter warm as the sunlight.

Forester said, "I got another letter today. Just reminding us to be there tomorrow night at ten at Pierce Point."

Another silence. Once, Haskins moaned. Price swore continuously.

"I'll take care of this son of a bitch," Price said.

"You'll calm down and shut your mouth," Forester said. He had one of those tempers you could push a long way but then suddenly no further.

"Two hundred thousand dollars," Price said. "We can't afford it."

"Do we have any choice?" Forester said.

"Oh yes," Price said. "I forgot all about your political ambitions. It'd be worth two hundred thousand to you to ensure that you got a shot at congress next time, wouldn't it?"

Haskins said, "We could go to the police. Tell them what happened. Tell them-"

Forester said, as if to a child, "Dave, try to understand something, will you?"

"All right, Ted."

"It's not so much a question of legal culpability here. It's a question of what would happen to our reputations once it got out. Think it through, Dave. Think of how your wife would feel, or your children, your friends at the office, the people you know at church. Think of how they'd look at you. In their eyes, you'd never be the same again. Every time they saw you, they'd think about it. They might not even mean to. But they would."

Another silence.

Dave Haskins said softly, "You're right, Ted. I wasn't thinking clearly."

"If that goddamn Dwyer hadn't come along the other night at the reunion, I would have beaten it out of her," Price said. "Who she was working with, I mean."

"You sure she was involved in this?" Haskins said. "Somehow-"

Price laughed. All his cynicism was in the sound. "Somehow you don't think she was the kind to get involved in shaking somebody down for money?"

"She wasn't cruel," Haskins said.