by Paul Doiron
“That’s him, getting away,” said the tanned old man.
Moments later, I heard the unmistakable noise of someone pulling the cord on an outboard motor.
I took off down the hill, rounding the corner of the building just as the engine sparked to life. Smith was seated in the stern of a battered, square-bowed aluminum boat. His hairy face was bruised and bandaged. He was wearing a flapping bathrobe over board trunks. His chest and lanky arms were mottled with tattoos.
He turned the throttle, gunning the engine, but in his haste, he had forgotten to untie the stern line from the cleat. The sudden acceleration brought the boat up short. The bow rose almost vertically from the water, but the rope didn’t snap.
By now, I had reached the dock. “Police! Stop!”
As the boat swung around like a dog testing the length of its lead, Smith lifted the prop from the water. The screw continued to spin. The rope stretched in a straight line to the transom of the boat. Gas fumes boiled blue in the air.
“Police! Cut the engine!”
Panicked, Smith glanced around the boat in search of some edged tool to cut the line. In doing so, he let go of the outboard. The weight of the engine dropped the propeller back into the lake. The spinning screw threw up a rooster tail.
“Mr. Smith, I just want to talk!”
The last thing I expected was for him to pull a handgun. He must’ve had it hidden in the pocket of his robe. He pointed the barrel at me from a distance of five yards. I heard the shot just before I dove into the lake.
15
I am not sure how long I was underwater. Long enough to draw my Beretta from the holster inside my waistband.
I surfaced with the dock between Smith and myself, hearing the outboard revving and the dock creaking ominously as the nylon rope strained at the cleat. My mouth, full of lake water, tasted like I’d been sucking on a bullfrog.
What I thought was a second shot turned out to be the snap of the stern line as it finally gave way.
Treading water, I watched John Smith’s newly freed boat accelerate down the lake. I hadn’t been this pissed off in a long time. I tossed my handgun onto the wet planks and pulled myself up from the lake in one motion.
Because I had water in my ears, I had trouble hearing the old man calling to me. Finally, I saw him motioning from his own dock. A blue-and-white runabout rocked in the wake Smith had left behind.
“We can catch him!” he shouted.
Dripping, I stooped to grab my Beretta. When I straightened up, I saw that the tanned man was already idling toward me in his motorboat. His was a superior craft to Smith’s in every respect. It had a windscreen and a cockpit with two seats and a steering wheel. Most importantly, it had a muscular four-stroke Mercury engine.
As he swung alongside the dock, I leaped aboard. “What’s your name?”
“Max Glassman.”
“I’m Mike Bowditch. I’m a game warden.”
His shiny brown skin smelled strongly of coconut. “I figured you for a cop. The Mook’s criminal associates travel in packs. That’s what my partner and I call him.”
Smith was heading south at a good clip, but the aluminum boat’s squared-off bow slowed his speed. The boat bounced off every wave. Nor did its captain seem to realize he was being pursued.
“Thank you for helping me, Max.” I holstered my wet weapon. “Your neighbor is more dangerous than I’d realized.”
“I would say so!”
I glanced around the boat and located a personal flotation device. “Could you put this on for me, please?”
“You’re kidding!”
“I’ll hold the wheel.”
When he saw I wasn’t joking, he took the vest and pulled it over his wiry shoulders.
“What about you? Don’t you have to put one on, too?”
“I should,” I said, taking the opportunity to slow the engine to the faintest crawl. “You’re a good swimmer, Mr. Glassman. I can tell. If you weren’t, I wouldn’t do this to you.”
His eyes widened as the meaning of my words hit home. By then, it was too late. I had grabbed him firmly by the biceps and with a twist of my hips flipped him over the side. The vest kept his head from going under, but he managed to swallow some of the lake.
“I can’t have you in the boat if he’s shooting at me!” I shouted. “I’ll be back to get you as soon as I can.”
“You can’t just—”
“The state will reimburse you for any damage to your boat. You have my word on that.”
“Damage?”
He had floated far enough away that I felt safe to give the engine some gas. I turned the wheel to keep the prop from splashing him. Even above the roar of the outboard, I heard the native New York obscenities he lobbed after me.
By this time, Smith had realized he was being chased. He had opened up his two-stroke engine, heading for the narrows between the upper and lower lake. I was unfamiliar with this body of water beyond the vague memory of seeing it in a dog-eared atlas.
I gave a guilty glance back at Glassman and was relieved to see that he was already crawling toward the near shore, swimming with well-practiced strokes. Exigent circumstances had come to define my life.
The runabout was a pure pleasure to drive. If the engine wasn’t new, it had been perfectly maintained. I didn’t crash into the waves the way Smith did but skipped over them, feeling the bounce as ripples up my spinal column.
As I closed the distance, I began to worry that Smith was stupid enough to open fire again. I had no interest in engaging in an aquatic gunfight with this weirdo, especially when a Jet Ski might show up at any second. I had more than enough deaths on my conscience.
Fortunately, the ominous weather was keeping other boaters off the lake.
Off to my right, I saw the wetlands where the river entered the lake and, up ahead, more of the same emergent vegetation—arrowhead, pickerelweed, and cattails—hemming the narrows.
I plotted an intercept course. I gunned the engine and shot forward at forty miles an hour. My acceleration was so sudden I had to grab the windscreen to keep from sliding.
My burst of speed caught Smith off guard. He must have dropped the pistol, trying to draw a bead on me, because I saw him glancing desperately around the bottom of the boat. As I roared up on his port side, he lifted his head, realized he was heading into the thick of the marsh, and gave the outboard a jerk back toward the thoroughfare.
What he’d failed to see was the half-submerged log in front of his bow.
The boat struck the dead tree with a terrific noise—the same metallic shriek you hear during a car crash—and slammed to a stop. The collision caused Smith to tumble forward and over the gunwale nearest to me. He must have struck his skull on one of the aluminum seats, because he went down like a lead weight.
I backed off the bowrider to a safe distance, tossed out the mushroom anchor, and dived headfirst into the lake. In the shallows, the water was as warm as a baby’s bath.
Unidentifiable clumps of vegetation, torn loose by the roots, floated before my eyes along with sand stirred up from the bottom. I kicked hard toward the spot where I’d seen Smith go under, hearing the thwack-thwack-thwack of his still-spinning propeller. If he had been using a dead man’s switch, the engine would have gone off the second he fell overboard.
I stayed down as long as I could, trying to peer through the shimmering sand, feeling that incomparable sensation when you begin to run out of oxygen and your brain becomes a circus balloon expanding inside your skull. Finally, I popped up to fill my lungs. I scanned the surface for a floating body. Seeing none, I dived down again, disturbing a musk turtle that had been trying to pass unnoticed along the bottom. I saw sunken beer bottles but no Smith.
If I didn’t find the unconscious man soon—assuming he was unconscious—he would drown.
The third time I rose to the surface, I realized that I’d been played.
I began swimming at top speed toward Max Glassman’s runabout. Sure enoug
h, Smith had already pulled himself into the bobbing craft. However bad a tumble he had taken, he hadn’t been knocked cold. He had a fresh cut on his head. Blood streamed along his jawbone and dyed his salt-and-pepper beard pink.
He was pulling up the anchor, hand over hand, as I came up on him. Maybe he thought he could hurl the toadstool-shaped weight at me, but I was too close. He threw himself forward into the cockpit, desperate to restart the engine before I could gain a handhold on the swimming ladder.
“Hey!” I said. “Asshole!”
Distracted, desperate to flee, he ignored me.
“You’re not going anywhere! Not without these!”
I raised my right arm out of the water like Excalibur from the mere. My middle finger protruded through the steel ring that held the keys to Glassman’s boat.
16
I drew my Beretta from its Kydex holster and trained the sights at him while treading water.
“Don’t think it can’t fire because it’s wet. Now raise your hands above your head.”
As he followed my instructions, his robe parted, revealing a belly emblazoned with offbeat motorcycle tats. DON’T WORRY BE HORNY. ADVENTURE BEFORE DEMENTIA. LOUD WIVES LOSE LIVES. He’d even had blood-red bullet holes tattooed across his abdomen.
“Back up to the bow while I climb up,” I said. “I will shoot you if you so much as flinch. That’s a promise, not a threat.”
Clutching the keys tightly in my palm, I used that hand to pull myself up until my waterlogged boots found the bottom rung of the swimming ladder. Then I stood up carefully. If Smith had thought to rock the boat, I might have lost my balance and fallen back into the lake. But he had come to terms with the reality of his predicament.
John Smith stood in the bow with hands raised. There were bits of plant matter—torn rushes and pondweed—in his bloody beard.
It was my first real look at the man in the flesh. Underwater, he had lost all but one of the bandages from Charley’s alleged assault. The exposed wounds were ugly in the extreme. There was a laceration, stitched with black sutures, under his right eye and a blue-green bruise under the left. There was yet another contusion on his bald temple.
“Turn away from me,” I said in my most commanding voice. “And kneel down.”
Not that I needed to fake the anger.
“I can’t kneel. I’m disabled.”
I understood now what Carol Boyce had meant about Smith being “but a ruin of a man.” His body was all out of kilter. One rounded shoulder rose higher than the other. That knee didn’t bend. I wondered how many months he’d spent in the hospital after the motorcycle crash that (I guessed) had rearranged his skeleton.
I ordered him to lift his hand while I cuffed one of his wrists. He didn’t fight me, but he didn’t help either. I dragged him to the cockpit. I pushed him down in the passenger seat—his bad leg extended out straight—and cuffed his wrists together behind the seat back.
“You and I are going to have a conversation,” I said, “but first, I need to make sure your neighbor isn’t adrift out there.”
“Fuck that Jew,” he said.
I swatted him on the side of his shaved head. He glared at me.
I stuck the key into the ignition and restarted the engine, then turned the runabout around and began cruising north toward the spot where I’d jettisoned Max.
Halfway up the lake, I slowed and surveyed both shores. There was no trace of Glassman, but I sighted his orange life vest hanging from a piling at the end of someone’s dock. I had been correct in my judgment that the lean man was a daily swimmer.
Still, I faced a difficult explanation at best and a potential lawsuit at worst.
“What are you doing now?” Smith asked.
“What does it look like I’m doing? I’m dropping anchor.”
“What the fuck for?”
“You’re going to answer my questions before I bring you back to shore.”
“Who are you?”
“A friend of Charley Stevens.”
At the mention of the pilot’s name, Smith’s mouth trembled. There could be no question that my friend had inflicted the lopsided man’s injuries. I could scarcely believe it.
“You said you were police,” he said. “You could have been anyone.”
“We’re not in an interrogation room, Mr. Smith. No one is recording us. The sooner you tell me the truth, the sooner we can get off this lake. I want to know about the badge.”
“What badge?”
“The one my friend took from you in Machias.”
“He stalked me, that motherfucker. Stalked me all the way up here. And then, he forced his way inside my house and beat me to a pulp. It was embarrassing! A guy that old.”
“You must have provoked him.”
“He’s got Alzheimer’s or something. He should be locked up in a nursing home.”
“Describe the badge.”
“It was brass, tarnished, and said STATE OF MAINE WARDEN on it.”
“Was there an identifying number?”
“Maybe. I don’t remember. Look, I’m going to catch hypothermia if we stay out here.”
I grabbed his rigid knee to turn him toward me. “By now, you’ve probably realized that I can be a pretty violent guy myself. What was the number on the badge?”
“One thirteen.”
The digits meant nothing to me, but clearly they had mattered to Charley.
“And where did you acquire it? I want the truth.”
“People bring me things. I give them cash up front if I think I can make some scratch. It’s just normal, everyday business.”
“Which people?”
“People who have stuff they don’t know what to do with.”
I sat down across from him in the driver’s seat. “What happened to you, Smith?”
“What do you mean?”
“You crashed your bike, right?”
“Hit a moose. I should be dead.”
“Where?”
“Route 11 north of Ashland. That road is fucking moose alley.”
“I believe you,” I said. “Hearing you tell the truth is helpful because it makes me appreciate what a talented liar you are.”
“Fuck you!”
I put my hand on his knee as if to wrench it but restrained myself.
“What is it with you game wardens? Can’t you see I’m handicapped? This is more police brutality.”
“You just tried to murder me, asshole.”
“I didn’t know who you were or what you wanted. You looked dangerous. You are dangerous!”
“That’s a common problem for you? Having dangerous men show up at your door?”
“When you live in the sticks—”
“Here’s the deal. The police are going to be waiting for us when we get back to shore. I don’t know how your other neighbors respond when they hear a gunshot on the lake, but I’m pretty sure Mr. Glassman has called the cops.”
“I was in fear for my life. And when I saw you chasing me in Max’s boat—”
“How long have you been selling stolen merchandise?”
His lip began to tremble again, but not from the cold.
“That’s a big part of your business,” I said, “selling items brought to you by burglars. Heroin and meth addicts need quick cash for drugs. The problem is that pawn shops are pretty well policed. And the cops keep an eye on Craigslist and eBay. It’s not so easy for nonprofessional thieves to find fences.”
“That’s a bogus accusation.”
“We’ll see what turns up in your house.”
“You have no grounds for a warrant.”
“Judges tend to be permissive when a person opens fire on a law enforcement officer. But I’m not sure your biggest worry is what the cops are going to find inside your garage. I’d be more concerned about my criminal associates hearing you were spilling their names as part of a plea deal.”
He jerked his head up. “I would never—”
“But how can they be sure?”
“You’d lie and put my life in danger?” Fear had made his voice into a thin squeak.
“You tried to shoot me, asshole.”
Back at the northeast side of the lake, I saw blue lights pulsing amid the trees. At least one state trooper had arrived.
“Have it your way,” I said.
“I bought the badge at a yard sale!” Smith said. “I bought it from a college girl up in Presque Isle who didn’t know what it was.”
17
Smith didn’t remember the address of the yard sale where he’d purchased the badge, but he knew the street in Presque Isle, which was something.
Less helpful was his description of the woman who’d sold it to him.
“Great tits and she liked showing them off. She kept leaning over the table. And she was wearing those basketball shorts with the stripes up the side. Nice ass, too.”
“What about her face?” I asked. “I’m assuming she had one.”
“You wouldn’t have needed to put a bag over her head or anything.”
I resisted the urge to swat him again. “What color were her eyes?”
“Brown.”
“And her hair?”
“Dark.”
Smith hadn’t caught her name, but she had a roommate or roommates. They were college students, clearing out a rented house before they scattered for the summer.
“How much did you pay for the badge?”
“Twenty bucks. I tried talking her down, but she wouldn’t budge, the little bitch. She was hard-nosed. I think she must’ve been French.”
By French, he meant Franco American. Many of the people living this close to the New Brunswick border were descended from Acadians who had hid in the forests when the British decided to round up the first settlers and “transport” the ones who surrendered. Thousands perished on the ship voyages. Le Grand Dérangement, as this wretched episode came to be called, was an act of genocide, noteworthy only in that it had been committed by Europeans against Europeans. Some of those Acadians, or Cajuns, ended up in Louisiana, where they would end up inventing zydeco music, crawfish étouffée, and one of the most colorful dialects in the English language. I was of Acadian descent on my mother’s side.
