Somebody had a spotlight in my eyes. The bullhorn said, "Paul, are you all right?" It was a man's voice, and I didn't recognize it. Then a girl shouted from the dark, "Paul?" The wind was still around fifteen to twenty knots, and she didn't have the bullhorn, but it was Janie all right. They were upwind of me, which was stupid, and I decided nobody aboard their boat really knew what he was doing. If their motors quit they'd drift right down on me.
I motioned them to come around to the lee side, and as they moved they got the blasted spot out of my eyes. It was the power cruiser I'd seen in the Inlet. I made enough hand signals and shouts to finally get over to them the idea that they'd have to throw me a line if they wanted me aboard, and when they did I got it around my waist and let them pull me. I went in to my knees for the second time that night before I scrambled up the side to their deck.
George was at the wheel, with Janie standing next to him. Down below in the cabin, Doug was trying to keep his guts from coming up, having long since lost everything he had eaten in the last couple of days. A gravelly voiced middle-aged guy with a potbelly did the hauling to get me aboard.
"Where's Balsinger?" George asked me as soon as I was aboard. I pointed over the side. While he was pondering that, Janie came over to me, put her hands on my shoulders, and looked at me for what seemed like a long time. Then she sat down on the stool opposite the helmsman's seat.
"What kept you?" I asked George.
"That damn storm," he shouted. It really wasn't all that loud on board, but I supposed he had got in the habit of shouting when the wind was stronger. "We got in the bay there behind the spit, and the waves were so damn big I thought we'd sink. I had to run in under Protection Island to get out of the storm. Been looking for you for two hours."
"Thanks a whole bunch, buddies," I said. I really wasn't mad at them. With that big windcatcher cabin and the huge transom there was a real chance the boat would be swamped if you didn't know how to handle her, and George obviously didn't.
"Janie wanted us to come after you," he said. Potbelly added, "Wanted us to? The chick damn near mutinied." I looked over at her. "I'm glad somebody worried about me."
"We didn't know what we could do anyway, Paul," she said. "George thought Balsinger would shoot you if we got close to you and he kept saying you were a sailor and Balsinger wasn't, so I shouldn't worry. I guess he was right."
"Hell, Balsinger wasn't any trouble," I told them. "Him I could handle, it was his two friends in the fishing boat that almost got me."
Janie jumped up. "You see, I knew we ought to follow Paul," she told George. He wasn't very interested in what she said, but he turned to me and asked, "Where is this fishing boat? Can you identify it?"
"Sure," I told him. "Easy as pie. It's the fishing boat with the cabin top blown apart by a stick of dynamite. I'd look off the rocks just before you get to Port Angeles, if you really want to find it. There'll probably be pieces all along the shore from there to Ediz Hook and beyond."
"What in hell did you do?" he demanded.
Potbelly went into the cabin and started fussing with the radio while I explained what had happened to everybody. When I got to the part about dynamiting the fishing boat, George looked unhappy, but he didn't say anything.
Potbelly called out, "Radio for you. Now." I went below, and he told it, "Here's Larry. Over."
There wasn't any question as to who was talking. With some people electronics makes quite a change in their voices, but Shearing sounded like he was coming over a radio all the time, if you know what I mean.
"I take it your friend is enjoying a trip in somewhat warmer climate. Over," the box said. Potbelly told me this wasn't a secure circuit, whatever that meant, and handed me the mike.
"Yeah, and his friends too. Over."
"It is important that the Neighbors don't find out we saw him off. They might have the wrong idea. Can you do something? Over."
"We could come home. Will that do? Over."
"It will have to if that's all you think of. Do so. Out."
I told George, and then came the perfect bitch of a job of getting back aboard Witch in that wind. I took a line with me, and after I got the anchor up they towed me off toward Admiralty Inlet. They towed her too fast, but nothing came apart, so we were back in Seattle by early afternoon. This job was costing me all my sleep.
We had the meeting in Shearing's office downtown. You reach it by going to an insurance brokerage office, from which, if you know how, you can reach an adjoining suite.
I told him the whole story, about the chase and the cruise, and the sinking of the fishing boat. He didn't say a word while I told it, just made little marks on the paper in front of him. This time he was drawing sailboats, little ones, big ones, and boats with an absolutely insane rigging scheme. After I finished, I asked him, "Why did that fishing boat attack me on sight like that? It still doesn't make that much sense."
"It makes very good sense. Your guess as to what they would do with Roger if they found him was probably a good one. Since they had orders to kill him, and they couldn't be sure who had gone overboard, they went right ahead with the job. They would want to finish you both and sink your boat while the storm kept any traffic out of the Straits. Is there any chance the Coast Guard can tell there was an explosion aboard the fishing boat?"
"If there's enough fishing boat left to examine after the rocks get through with it, yes," I told him. "But I doubt that they'll know it was dynamite. Lots of things explode on boats, particularly gasoline." I lit my pipe, thought for a second of the conditions along that stretch of coast, and said, "Unless they go in for salvage operations, they won't find it if they haven't already."
"Then I think we can forget about the fishing boat. What of Balsinger? Will he be found?"
"How should I know? I had him put on a life jacket, he should float, so I'd say there was a reasonable chance he'll wash up somewhere and be found. But lots of people who go overboard in the Straits never are."
He thought about that for a minute. "In case they do, I'll release enough evidence on him so that the police will be looking for him on a narcotics charge. They can devise their own theories of how he got there. We have his book deciphered, and that will clean up most of the narcotics organization. It also helps a little in understanding the espionage group, but not much. Pity you couldn't bring him in alive . .." He drew a battleship firing into the little flotilla of sailboats, lit a Camel, and looked at me again. "We didn't get the top men, you know. But we have cut off their sources of money for a while, which will slow down their espionage activities. We even recovered quite a bit of their money, which will come in handy for things like your boat."
"I really am sorry I didn't get him alive," I said. I meant it, too. When he first said that, I had started to say something sarcastic, then I realized that Shearing knew as well as I did what he had said and how he meant it.
"Yes. Well, the narcotics organization is rather thoroughly destroyed. Louis took in most of the pushers and distributors. We have also given him Richard Wahlke, and there's sufficient evidence even with today's courts to send him to prison for a while. The girl, Nancy Snow, claims she thought the bags they took out of the film boxes contained LSD and were being distributed to a secret religious organization. We are inclined to believe her, and I think she will get off with probation. She met the Wahlke boy through Carole Halleck, by the way. We still don't see just where the Halleck girl fit in. —Oh, and Nancy Snow also says she knows for a fact that you were not aware of the contents of those film boxes. The Halleck girl told her. So you won't be charged with anything." He stopped talking, finished his cigarette, and looked at his drawing. Then he looked back at me. "You see what this adds up to?"
I didn't, and told him so.
"None of that group who knew you to be involved with us are alive. If any of them who ever heard of you are left, and that's doubtful, they know of you only as an unwitting courier. Your cover is still in good shape, except for getting out a story of y
our break with the Halleck girl before she was killed. So if you want a job looking for the rest of that group, it's still open. For an untrained man, you didn't do too badly at all."
I thought about this for a minute. I wanted to tell him to shove it, with his offer of a career in the junior spy business. He sucked me into this thing, and now I was damn well out of it. But I thought about drainage systems and that racket, and I wasn't very interested in them. I could see myself sitting in my house, staring at plans for structures I didn't care about, thinking about Janie and George and seasick Doug, and it didn't make a good picture. There was something about the last couple of weeks. I had never felt more alive in my life, and now it was over, and I didn't really want it to be. Finally, I didn't say anything. I just looked at him.
"You've got time," he told me. "Actually you've got a training class coming. It starts in five days, runs two weeks. You should have had it before we put you on this mission, so you can take it now and still quit when it's over. We owe you that."
"I'll let you know," I told him.
"You do that. Through Janie. I want you to help her ease out of the relationship with you as the rest of the District sees it. And you ought to get it out that you and Carole Halleck had a fight and she left mad. Janie's expecting you at seven tonight at her apartment. You don't mind, do you?"
It hurt when he mentioned Carole, but it wouldn't do her any good, and to be honest I couldn't tell if it was just that she kept me from being alone. I remembered Janie, and how she'd been worried about me and how at least I wouldn't sit tonight in that room, feeling someone behind me was reading a book and looking at me over the top of it. I walked to the door, stopped, and looked back at him. "No, I don't mind," I told him.
THE END
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Red Heroin
Table of Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Red Heroin Page 17
