J. Jance - Lying in vait

Women don't seem to faint as much as they used to, at least not as much as they did in the old black-and-white movies my mother watched on TV once she was too sick to sew anymore. She spent countless sleepless nights in the company of one late movie after another.

And in those old thirties movies, when one of those pencil-thin female stars keeled over, there was always a strong leading man to catch her on the way down and deposit her on the nearest bed or couch, depending upon whether or not they were married at the time. My guess, though, is that none of those silver-screen beauties weighed nearly as much as Else Gebhardt.

The woman stood six-something in her stocking feet. Stark naked, she would have outweighed me by a good thirty to forty pounds. She outweighed Alan Torvoldsen, too, especially considering the full-length wool coat, but Champagne Al didn't seem to notice. He simply swept her up into his arms and strode off down the dock. Janice Morraine bent down and retrieved the picture before the wind blew the photo into the water, while I trailed off after Alan and Else.

"Where are you taking her?" I asked.

"To my boat," Alan grunted. "She needs a place to lie down."

"How far is it?" I asked.

His jaw stiffened with exertion and effort. "Just over there," he said, motioning with his head toward the next dock. "It's not far."

Maybe not as the crow flies, it wasn't far. Hitting a tennis ball, from one dock to another, even I could have managed it. But for a man carrying more than his own weight, down half the length of one dock and halfway up the other, it was a hell of a long way. Still, that's one thing I remember about Champagne Al from way back before he even had that name. He was always stubborn as hell. Stubborn and tough.

By the time we started up the other dock, beads of sweat popped out on Alan's brow. Else had come to and was already arguing. "Put me down," she insisted. "I'm all right. I can walk."

"I'll put you down when I'm good and ready," Alan Torvoldsen replied.

He finally stopped in front of one of the ugliest excuses for a fishing boat I had ever seen. Instead of the graceful old Torvoldsen family schooner Norwegian Princess, this was an old steel-hulled, T-Boat-class army lighter trying to pass itself off as a respectable member of the fishing fleet. The name of the boat was newly lettered on the stern- One Day at a Time. That name told me a whole lot about where Champagne Al might be coming from as well as where he'd been during the almost thirty years between then and the time when we'd been schoolmates together at Ballard High.

"Here," he said, setting the protesting Else down on her feet and turning to me. By then his whole face was drenched in sweat. Rivulets rolled down the back of his bald head and neck. He took off the cap and scrubbed away the perspiration with the sleeve of his shirt. "You hold on to her until I hop aboard," he ordered. "Then we'll both help her over the rail."

"I don't need any help," Else asserted, but she wasn't able to deliver. As soon as she tried to move under her own power, the wooziness returned, and once again she leaned against Alan for support.

In the end, it took both of us to help her climb aboard One Day at a Time. As he led her toward the galley aft of the pilothouse, I heard Alan Torvoldsen mumble something about "…one stubborn damn woman."

And although the remark was true as far as Else was concerned, I don't think Alan Torvoldsen had a whole lot of room to talk.

I climbed aboard and followed both of them into the galley, where I found Else Gebhardt seated on a narrow bench beside a tiny, bolted-down, Formica-topped table. She sat there with her elbows resting on the table and her hands clasped tightly to her face. It looked to me as though she was using her hands and fingers to physically hold back tears.

Without a word, Alan opened a locked cabinet with a key and took out a bottle of aquavit. Silently, he poured a generous shot into a glass and then placed it on the table next to Else's right elbow. Then he turned to me, one eyebrow raised and questioning.

I remember trying some of that potent stuff long ago. I know the heart-pounding, head-zinging rush. Even back in my most capable drinking days, I couldn't handle aquavit. "None for me," I said. "I'm working."

Champagne Al nodded sagely, returned the bottle to the cabinet, and turned the key in the lock.

"Drink it, Else," he told her kindly. "You need it."

But when Else Didricksen Gebhardt dropped her hands away from her face, there were no tears visible. Strangely enough, her grief seemed beyond tears. Shock works that way sometimes. Her face was pale, verging on gray, and the fierce blue light in her eyes had faded. She stared dully at the shot glass of liquor without making any effort to pick it up, almost without recognizing what it was.

"How is it possible?" she murmured. "Who would do such a thing?"

If she was expecting an audible answer to either of those two rhetorical questions, none was forthcoming-not from Champagne Al, and not from me, either.

Turning his back to her, Alan fiddled with the control on the galley stove, removed the cover plate, and then waited. When the well in the bottom of the stove filled with fuel, he lit one end of a twisted-up paper towel and used that to light the stove. Once satisfied that the fire was properly started, he replaced the cover, set a grimy coffeepot to heat, then turned back to Else, who had yet to touch her glass.

Alan studied her for some time but said nothing. Finally, he plucked a pack of cigarettes from his pocket, withdrew one smoke, and lit it with a wooden match he struck on his pants leg. He dropped the used match into a chipped, broken-handled coffee mug that was filled to within an inch of the top with an accumulation of ashes, spent matches, and dead cigarette butts.

Leaning impassively against the sink, Alan exhaled a plume of unfiltered Camel cigarette smoke that quickly filled the small galley. He seemed disinclined to say anything at all to break what was fast becoming an unnervingly long silence.

"I finally got Gunter to stop smoking," Else whispered sadly. "That seems pretty silly now, doesn't it? Stopping smoking may prevent lung cancer, but it doesn't make much difference if someone decides to murder you."

With no more warning than that, Else Gebhardt's tears returned. When two of them slipped silently onto the table, she quickly wiped them away. Meanwhile, Alan Torvoldsen remained oddly silent. It seemed as though the effort of carrying Else from one dock to the other had somehow robbed him of the ability to speak. Or the need.

"He was a good man, Alan," Else continued softly, her glance searching Alan's impassive face. "Gunter was a lot like you, you know," she added. "I've always been sorry about what happened. I'm sorry you two could never be friends. I think you would have liked him."

Alan Torvoldsen's eyes narrowed in a look that might have been anger or anguish, I couldn't tell which, and the fleeting expression disappeared before I had a chance to catalog it. With his eyes once more carefully veiled, he stared off over the disheveled graying hair on Else's once-blond head. His distant gaze seemed to drill a hole deep into the smoke-yellowed, years-old pinup calendar tacked to the bulkhead above and behind her.

The stark, empty expression on his face wasn't suitable for casual indoor use, or for mixed company, either. It came uncomfortably close to the thousand-yard stare I've seen occasionally on the faces of Vietnam vets who are going down for the count, unfortunate losers who are trapped in that crazed, memory-filled catch-all mental health professionals call Delayed Stress Syndrome.

Forgotten between his fingers, Alan's smoldering cigarette dribbled a trail of gray ashes across the already ash-strewn galley floor. When he noticed it finally, he shook the rest off into the mug-turned-ashtray he still held in his other hand.