“It’s a guy thing.”
“You made a fool out of yourself, everyone thinks you’re an arrogant idiot, and a totally useless incompetent. Andyou’ve lost my respect.”
“Then I suppose sex is out of the question.”
“Sex? I don’t even want to breathe the same air you do.”
“That hurts, Beth.”
“Do not call me Beth.”
“Ted Nash called you—”
“You know, Corey, I got this case because I slapped on the knee pads and begged the chief of homicide for it. This is my first real murder case. Before this, all I got was crap— hopheads blasting away at each other, mommas and poppas settling domestic disputes with cutlery, crap like that. And not much of it. There’s a low homicide rate in this county.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
“Yeah. You do this all the time, so you’re jaded, cynical, and smart-assed about it.”
“Well, I wouldn’t—”
“If you’re here to make me look bad, fuck off.” She stood.
I stood, too. “Hold on. I’m here to help.”
“Then help.”
“Okay. Listen up. First, some advice. Don’t talk too much to Foster or your buddy Ted.”
“I know that, and cut the ‘buddy Ted’ crap.”
“Look … can I call you Beth?”
“No.”
“Look, Detective Penrose, I know you think I’m attracted to you and you probably think I’m coming on to you … and you think this could be awkward….”
She turned her face away and looked out at the bay.
I continued, “… this is really hard to say, but … well … you don’t have to worry about that … about me….” She turned back and looked at me.
I sort of covered my face with my right hand and rubbed my forehead. I continued as best I could. “You see … one of those bullets that hit me…. God, how do I say this … ? Well, it hit me in a funny place, okay? Now you know. So we can be sort of like … friends, partners … brother and sister … I guess I mean sister and sister….” I glanced at her and saw she was staring out to sea again.
Finally, she spoke. “I thought you said you were hit in the stomach.”
“There, too.”
“Max said you had a serious lung wound.”
“That, too.”
“Any brain damage?”
“Maybe.”
“And now you want me to believe you’ve been neutered by yet another bullet.”
“It’s nothing a guy would lie about.”
“If the furnace is out, why is there still fire in your eyes?”
“Just a memory, Beth— Can I call you Beth? A good memory of a time when I could pole-vault over my car.”
She put her hand up to her face, and I couldn’t tell if she was crying or laughing.
I said, “Please don’t tell anyone.”
Finally, she got control of herself and replied, “I’ll try to keep it out of the papers.”
“Thanks.” I let a few seconds pass, then asked her, “Do you live around here?”
“No, I live in western Suffolk.”
“That’s a long trip. Are you driving home, or staying around here?”
“We’re all staying at the Soundview Inn out in Green-port.”
“Who’s ‘we’ all?”
“Me, George, Ted, some DEA guys, some other people who were here before … guys from the Department of Agriculture. We’re all supposed to work day and night, round the clock, seven days a week. Looks good for the press and the public … in case the fudge hits the fan. You know, in case there’s some concern about disease….”
“You mean mass panic about a plague.”
“Whatever.”
“Hey, I have a nice place out here and you’re welcome to stay there.”
“Thanks anyway.”
“It’s an impressive Victorian mansion on the water.”
“Doesn’t matter.”
“You’d be more comfortable. I told you, I’m safe. Hell, NYPD personnel says I’m allowed to use the ladies’ room at headquarters.”
“Cut it out.”
“Seriously, Beth, I have a computer printout here—two years’ worth of financial stuff. We can work on it tonight.”
“Who authorized you to take that?”
“You did. Right?”
She hesitated, then nodded and said, “I want them back in my hands tomorrow morning.”
“Okay. I’ll pull an all-nighter with this. Help me out.”
She seemed to mull that over, then said, “Give me your phone number and address.”
I rummaged around my pockets for a pen and paper, but she already had her little notebook out and said, “Shoot.”
I gave her the information, including directions.
She said, “I’ll call first if I’m coming.”
“Okay.”
I sat back down on the bench, and she sat at the opposite end, the computer printouts between us. We stayed silent, sort of mentally regrouping, I guess.
Finally, Beth remarked, “I hope you’re a whole lot smarter than you look or sound.”
“Let me put it this way—the smartest thing Chief Maxwell has done in his career is to come calling on me for this case.”
“And modest.”
“There’s no reason to be modest. I’m one of the best. In fact, CBS is developing a show called The Corey Files.”
“You don’t say?”
“I can get you a part.”
“Thank you. If I can repay the favor, I’m sure you’ll let me know.”
“Seeing you in The Corey Files will be repayment enough.”
“It sure will. Listen…. Can I call you John?”
“Please do.”
“John, what’s happening here? I mean with this case. You know something you’re not sharing.”
“What is your current status?”
“Excuse me?”
“Engaged, divorced, separated, involved?”
“Divorced. What do you know or suspect about this case that you haven’t mentioned?”
“No boyfriend?”
“No boyfriend, no children, eleven admirers, five are married, three are control freaks, two possibilities, and one idiot.”
“Am I being too personal?”
“Yes.”
“If I had a male partner and I asked him these questions, it would be perfectly normal and okay.”
“Well … we’re not partners.”
“You want it both ways. Typical.”
“Look … well, tell me about yourself. Quickly.”
“Okay. Divorced, no children, dozens of admirers, but no one special.” I added, “And no venereal diseases.”
“And no venereal parts.”
“Right.”
“Okay, John, what’s with this case?”
I settled back on the bench and replied, “Well, Beth … what’s happening with this case is that the obvious is leading to the improbable, and everyone is trying to make the improbable fit the obvious. But it don’t work that way, partner.”
She nodded, then said, “You’re suggesting that this might have nothing to do with what we think it has to do with.”
“I’m beginning to think there’s something else going on here.”
“Why do you think that?”
“Well … some evidence doesn’t seem to fit.”
“Maybe it will fit in a few days, when all the lab reports are in and everyone’s been questioned. We haven’t even spoken to the Plum Island people.”
I stood and said, “Let’s go down to the dock.”
She slipped her shoes on, and we walked down toward the dock. I said, “A few hundred yards down the beach from here, Albert Einstein wrestled with the moral question of the atomic bomb and decided it was a go. The good guys had no choice because the bad guys had already decided it was a go without any wrestling with the moral questions.” I added, “I knew the Gordons.”
She
thought a moment, then said, “You’re saying you don’t think the Gordons were capable—morally capable—of selling deadly micro-organisms.”
“No, I don’t. Like atomic scientists they respected the power of the genie in the bottle. I don’t know exactly what they did on Plum Island, and we’ll probably never know, but I think I knew them well enough to say they wouldn’t sell the genie in the bottle.”
She didn’t reply.
I continued, “I remember Tom once told me that Judy was having a bad day because some calf that she’d become attached to had been purposely infected with something and was dying. These are not the kind of people who want to see children dying of plague. When you interview their Plum Island associates, you’ll find this out for yourself.”
“People sometimes have another side.”
“I never saw a hint of anything in the Gordons’ personalities to suggest that they’d traffic in deadly disease.”
“Sometimes people rationalize their behavior. How about the Americans who gave atomic bomb secrets to the Russians? They were people who said they did it out of conviction—so one side wouldn’t have all the power.”
I glanced at her and saw she was looking at me as we walked. I was happy to discover that Beth Penrose was capable of some deeper thinking, and I knew she was relieved to discover that I wasn’t the idiot she thought I might be.
I said, “Regarding the atomic scientists, that was a different time and a different secret. I mean, if nothing else, why would the Gordons sell bacteria and virus that could kill them and their families in Indiana or wherever, and wipe out everyone in between?”
Beth Penrose pondered that a moment, then replied, “Maybe they got paid ten million, and the money is in Switzerland, and they have a chateau on a mountain stocked with champagne and canned food, and they invited their friends and relatives to visit. I don’t know, John. Why do people do crazy things? They rationalize, they talk themselves into it. They’re angry at something or somebody. Ten million bucks. Twenty million. Two hundred bucks. Everyone has a price.”
We walked out on the dock where a uniformed Southold policeman was sitting on a lawn chair. Detective Penrose said to him, “Take a break.”
He stood and walked back toward the house.
The ripples lapped against the hull of the Gordons’ boat, and the boat rocked against the rubber bumpers on the pilings. The tide was out, and I noticed that the boat was now tied to pulleys to allow the rope to play out. The boat had dropped about four or five feet below the dock. I noticed now that the writing on the hull said “Formula 303,” which, according to Tom, meant it was thirty feet, three inches long.
I said to Beth, “On the Gordons’ bookshelf, I found a book of charts—nautical navigational maps—with an eight-digit number penciled on one of the pages. I asked Sally Hines to do a super print job on the book and report to you. You should take the book and keep it someplace safe. We should look at it together. There may be more marks on the book.”
She stared at me for a few seconds, then asked, “Okay, what do you think this is about?”
“Well … if you ratchet down the moral dial about halfway, you go from selling plague for money to drugs for money.”
“Drugs?”
“Yeah. Morally ambiguous in some minds, big money in everyone’s mind. How does that sound to you? Drugs.”
She stared at the high-powered boat and nodded. She said, “Maybe we got panicky with this Plum Island connection.”
“Maybe we did.”
“We should talk to Max and the others about this.”
“We should not.”
“Why not?”
“Because we’re just speculating. Let them run with the plague theory. If that’s the right theory, better keep it covered.”
“Okay, but that’s no reason not to confide in Max and the others.”
“Trust me.”
“No. Convince me.”
“I’m not convinced myself. We have two strong possibilities here—bugs for money or drugs for money. Let’s see if Max, Foster, and Nash come to any conclusions of their own, and if they share their thoughts with us.”
“Okay … I’ll play this one your way.”
I motioned toward the boat. “What do you think that goes for?”
She shrugged. “I’m not sure … the Formula’s a pricey item … you figure three thousand a running foot, so this one, new, would be about $100,000.”
“And the rent on this house? About two thousand?”
“I guess about that, plus utilities.” She added, “We’ll find all this out.”
“And what’s with this commuting by boat? It’s almost two hours one way from here, and a small fortune in fuel. Right?”
“Right.”
“It takes maybe thirty minutes to drive from here to the government ferry on Orient Point. How long is the ferry ride? Maybe twenty minutes, compliments of Uncle Sam. Total about one hour door-to-door, as opposed to nearly two hours by speedboat. Yet, the Gordons took their own boat from here to Plum, and I know there were days when they couldn’t take their boat back because the weather had turned bad during the day. They’d have to take the ferry back to Orient and hitch a ride home with someone. This never made sense to me, but I admit I never thought much about it. I should have. Now maybe it makes sense.”
I jumped into the boat and landed hard on the deck. I put my arms up, and she jumped, grabbing my hands as she did. Somehow we wound up on the deck, me on my back, Beth Penrose on top of me. We stayed there about a second longer than we had to, then we got to our feet. We smiled awkwardly at one another, the way strangers of the opposite sex do when they find themselves accidentally bumping T&A and whatever.
She asked me, “Are you all right?”
“Yeah….” In truth, the wind had been knocked out of my bad lung, and I guessed she could see it.
I got my breath back and went to the rear, the stern, as they say, where the Formula 303 had a bench seat. I indicated the deck near the seat and informed her, “Here’s where the chest always sat. It was a big one, about four feet long, three deep, and three high. Maybe thirty cubic feet on the inside, insulated aluminum. Sometimes, when I sat on the bench, I’d put my feet up on the chest and slug beers.”
“And?”
“And, after work, on designated days, the Gordons leave Plum at the appointed hour and make a high-speed dash out to sea. There, out in the Atlantic, they rendezvous with a ship, maybe a South American freighter, maybe it’s a sea-plane, or whatever. They take on board about a hundred kilos of Colombian marching powder and dash back toward land. If they’re spotted by the DEA or Coast Guard, they look like Mr. and Mrs. Clean out for a spin. Even if they’re stopped, they flash the Plum Island ID and do a song and dance. In reality, they could probably outrun anything on the water. It would take an aircraft to chase this thing. More to the point, how many boats are stopped and searched? There are thousands of pleasure boats and commercial fishermen out there. Unless the Coast Guard or Customs or somebody has a serious tip, or someone is acting weird, they don’t board and search. Right?”
“Usually. Customs has full authority to do that and sometimes they do.” She added, “I’ll see if there are any reports with DEA, Coast Guard, or Customs regarding the Spiro-chete.”
“Good.” I thought a moment, then said, “Okay, so after the Gordons cop the junk, they make land at some prearranged spot or rendezvous with a small boat, and transfer the ice chest to the local pharmaceutical distributors, who give them another chest in return with a bunch of bucks in it. The distributor then drives into Manhattan, and another duty-free import is completed. Happens every day. The question is, Did the Gordons participate, and if so, is that what got them killed? I hope so. Because the other thing scares me, and I’m not easily scared.”
She mulled this over, looking around the speedboat. She said, “It might fit. But it might be wishful thinking.”
I didn’t reply.
She continued, “If
we can determine it was drugs, we can rest easier. Until then, we have to go ahead with the idea that it’s plague, because if it is and we’re not on top of it, we could all be dead.”
CHAPTER 6
It was after two A.M., and I was getting cross-eyed reading the Gordons’ computer printouts. I had a pot of coffee going in Uncle Harry’s big old kitchen, and I was sitting at the round table by the bay window that faced east to catch the morning sun.
Uncle Harry and Aunt June had the good sense never to have the entire Corey clan as house guests, but now and then they’d have me or my brother, Jim, or my sister, Lynne, stay in the guest room while the rest of the family was in some horrid 1950s tourist cabin.
I remember sitting at this table as a kid with my two cousins, Harry Jr. and Barbara, slopping up Cheerios or Wheaties, antsy to get out and play. Summer was magic. I don’t think I had a care in the world.
Now, some decades later, same table, and I had a lot on my mind.
I turned my attention back to the checkbook register. The Gordons’ salaries were deposited directly into their account, and their combined income, after being raped by the Feds and New York State, was about ninety thou. Not bad, but not that good for two Ph.D.’s doing brainy work with hazardous substances. Tom would have done better playing minor league baseball, and Judy could have worked in a titty bar in my old precinct and done as well. It’s a strange country.
Anyway, it didn’t take me long to see that the Gordons were overextended. It’s not cheap to live on the East Coast, as they’d undoubtedly discovered. They had payments on two cars, the boat, the house rental, assorted insurances on same, utilities, five credit cards, big-time oil company bills, mostly for the powerboat, and regular living and breathing expenses. Also, there was a hefty $10,000 down payment on the Formula 303, the April before last.
Plus, the Gordons contributed to a number of worthy charities, making me feel guilty. They also belonged to a book and music club, hit the ATM frequently, sent checks to nieces and nephews, and were members of the Peconic Historical Society. They didn’t appear to be in major trouble yet, but they were close to the edge. If they were making a nice side income from the drug trade, they were clever enough to stash the cash and get themselves in over their heads like all red-blooded fiscally fearless Americans. The question, then, was, Where was the loot?
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