The Liquidator

by Nick Carter

  "You're a bourbon man, I understand," he said.

  "You seem to know a lot about me."

  "Yes." He was standing at a mellow old cellaret, pouring from a cut glass decanter into a jumbo glass.

  "Water?"

  "Just rocks, thanks."

  We took our drinks — I think his was sherry, but I couldn't be sure — into the kitchen, where he opened a few cans and whipped up a quick supper that tasted like nothing that ever came out of cans. When I complimented him on it, he waved away the flattery.

  "When you're at sea for weeks at a time in a small boat, Mr. McKee, you devise all sorts of interesting things with beans and corned beef hash. Otherwise you have a mutiny on your hands."

  Afterward we went out to the back porch. The rain was still pelting down, and though the night was chilly, I felt warm and protected under the deep, sheltering roof. A short stretch of sand led down to the edge of the water, where dark wavelets lapped greedily at the shore.

  Nathaniel pointed off to our right. "The yacht club. A small place, and we won't go there right away. For obvious reasons, I keep my own boat at the marina, which is just beyond there. In a few days, when I feel you can pass as a yacht broker, we'll give you a test at the club."

  "A test?"

  "Why not? Did you think I was going to give you a crash course without a final exam?"

  I hadn't thought about that, but I had to agree it seemed like a good idea. On the other hand, I still didn't know why. So I asked.

  "Oh, it's too late to discuss all that this evening, Mr. McKee. Come back inside a moment."

  We returned to the livingroom, where he took down a book from a shelf. I noticed that there were a number of identical volumes side by side; at least the dust jackets were all the same.

  "At the risk of seeming immodest, I'd suggest that you take this with you for bedtime reading," Nathaniel said. "Even though I wrote it myself, it's not bad."

  The title was Lines & Spars, and in my hand it felt as heavy as the Manhattan telephone directory.

  "Just to get you in the mood," Nathaniel was saying. "Immerse yourself in the trivial details of fitting out and handling a sailing craft, as long as you can stay awake. But be careful, Mr. McKee."

  There was a different note in his voice that brought me up tense. "Careful?"

  He smiled. "Don't let the book fall on your face as you're dozing off. It's heavy enough to break your nose."

  * * *

  The next few days were a madhouse of physical and mental exhaustion. We sailed Nathaniel's thirty-nine-foot ketch up and down the Sakonnet River, which isn't a river at all but an estuary where the tides boil in and out like Colorado River rapids. Well… maybe not quite that violently, but it's quite an experience to be running with a pretty fair wind astern, all sails flying, and find yourself going backward with the tide. At one point even Nathaniel admitted defeat and turned on the auxiliary motor to help us make it to the dock. That made me feel better. There's a kind of mystique surrounding deep-water sailors; you get the impression they'd rather drift forever than resort to their engines, but Nathaniel made no apologies.

  "If you have to get somewhere," he said, "get there the best way you can. We're not racing, and we're not showing off."

  To test my navigation and all-around boat-handling, we took a cruise that lasted a couple of days. First to Cuttyhunk, which isn't all that far, but Nathaniel thoughtfully chose a day when the fog was so thick you could almost roll it into little balls and store it. He sat in the cockpit, not too close to me, and read a book while I struggled with the wind and tides and the fact that I could barely see as far as the bow of the ketch. I was pretty proud of myself when we made the buoy marking the entrance to the harbor, but my wily instructor had one more little surprise in store for me; he hadn't mentioned that a good-sized set of waves breaks right through the harbor entrance, and when we arrived they were big enough to make a surfer's mouth water.

  So I did the smart thing, dropping the sails, no help from Nathaniel, and switched on the auxiliary. He didn't say a word, but I got the impression he would have done the same thing.

  From there we took off for Martha's Vineyard, spent the night on board in the Edgartown harbor, and left early the next morning for Block Island, a stretch of blue-water sailing with no landmarks in sight. I learned some things about drift and compensation I couldn't have taught myself in a dozen years, and when the high, dull red cliffs of the island came into view, I was more relieved than smug.

  We rounded the island and went into Great Salt Pond, the natural harbor on the west side. It was still daylight, late afternoon, and Nathaniel suggested we go ashore.

  "I figured we could make it back to Newport by tonight," I said.

  "No hurry. Have you ever been here before?"

  "Never."

  "It's an interesting place. Let's go rent a couple of bicycles and take the tour."

  "Bicycles?"

  "Of course! It's the only way to travel when you're not on the water."

  So we went ashore, tying up at a high dock that was built primarily to accommodate the summertime ferries that run between the island and the mainland. The little cluster of shops and food stands seemed to be closed, but Nathaniel knocked on the door of a weathered, sagging building. A woman opened up; she had a scarlet face, which meant she was either a lifelong lush or had some sort of terrible disease. Anyway, she beamed when she saw Nathaniel, gave him a hug and then escorted us to the rear of the building, where a shed housed a couple of hundred bikes stacked all over each other like jackstraws.

  "Take anything you like, Mr. Frederick. Long as they run, huh?"

  We dragged a couple of bikes out of the pile, checked them out.

  "These will do nicely, Mrs. Gormsen," Nathaniel said. "We'll be back in a couple of hours, probably."

  "You stayin' overnight or sailin' out?"

  "We haven't decided. Do you want to feed us?"

  The woman chuckled heartily. "Oh Lord no, Mr. Frederick. This time o' the year we mostly live on frozen hot dogs we didn't sell last summer. You're welcome to it, but I don't think you'd want it."

  "I won't debate that point," Nathaniel said, swinging a leg over the seat of his bike.

  We traveled the main road, a potholed strip of blacktop that ran past vacant, shuttered old hotels and summer boarding houses, any of which might have had their quota of ancestral ghosts lurking behind the blind windows. Block Island is a high piece of land; we traveled past areas that looked like the moors of England, dotted with slate gray ponds. But we weren't entirely isolated; when we were halfway down the island we encountered a young couple on a tandem bike, pedaling steadily and obviously having a marvelous time. We gave them room, and they waved and laughed, then disappeared into the deepening twilight.

  "I didn't think anybody visited here off season," I said to Nathaniel.

  "Oh, there are always a few oddballs. I rather like to see them around."

  We pedaled on until we reached the far end of the island, a high bluff overlooking the Atlantic. From where we stood, it was an impressive view, maybe a hundred feet down with the waves crashing relentlessly against the rocky shore below. Far off to our left was a lighthouse, its beam just beginning to circle through the gathering night. Nathaniel and I stood for a few minutes, taking in the cool, clean air blowing from somewhere like the Azores. Then we turned back to our bikes.

  With the noise of the wind and the waves, we hadn't heard the car approach; now it stood, headlights out, battered grill nosed against our bicycles. A man stood by the open door on the driver's side, and behind the windshield I could make out a blur of a face, but I didn't pay much attention to it. I was a lot more interested in the shotgun the man was pointing in our direction.

  "Mr. Frederick?" he asked, his voice weak against the wind.

  "Oh my," Nathaniel said mildly.

  "You remember me?"

  "I'm afraid so." Nathaniel didn't move; he kept his hands at his sides and seemed almost r
elaxed. "It's been so long, though…"

  "A lot longer for me." He moved the shotgun slightly in a way I didn't like. "They didn't believe me, you know. They thought I was working for your people instead of them, and it was more'n a year before they let me go."

  "You must have had a difficult time."

  "It was living hell! A whole goddam year on that factory ship, and it weren't no pleasure cruise!"

  "No, I don't imagine so, Graves." Nathaniel took a half-step toward the man and pointed at the shotgun. "Are you intending to use that?"

  "I didn't come out here for the fresh air."

  I could see now that he was a man in his late thirties, with big-knuckled hands and a seamed face roughened by wind and water. Under his nondescript windbreaker his impressive shoulder muscles bulged.

  "How did you happen to find us here?" Nathaniel went on. Another half step.

  "Been on the island a couple o' weeks, ever since they turned me loose. My wife comes from here…"

  "Oh, of course. And Mrs. Gormsen is your mother-in-law, isn't she?"

  "You catch on pretty good." Graves moved forward. "I guess you and your friend best back up to the edge of the cliff there."

  "Are you going to shoot us or do you think you can make us jump?"

  "Don't make no difference to me, Mr. Frederick. I was fixin' to pay a call on you over to Newport, but you saved me the trouble today."

  "If I'd known our Red fishing friends had let you go, I might have changed my itinerary." Nathaniel kept that genial half-smile on his face, calm as though he were facing a classroom filled with eager pupils.

  "Yeah, well I didn't figure they'd send you a telegram. You set me up pretty good, Mr. Frederick, and I don't forget nothin' like that. Only reason they didn't kill me was…"

  "Because you weren't terribly important, were you?" The change in Nathaniel's voice was remarkable; now there was a sneer in it.

  It got the reaction. Graves started toward him, his face livid even in the gathering darkness. He swung the shotgun up to use it as a club, and the retired schoolteacher dove in under it. He drove stiff fingers into the man's gut, using his other forearm to block the blow from the shotgun barrel. Graves doubled over, eyes popping. Nathaniel hit him again in the same spot, this time turning his hand over and nearly lifting the man off his feet, fingers hooked under his sternum. Graves tried to screech, but only a strangled sound of agony came from his wide-open mouth.

  Nathaniel took the shotgun from his hand as he let the man sag to the ground. There was a smile of mixed satisfaction and regret on his face as he looked at Graves, writhing in excruciating pain — and he looked a little too long.

  The other car door opened, and a woman got out. I could tell it was a woman because she wore pink plastic curlers in her hair; otherwise she was dressed more or less like the man who lay at Nathaniel's feet. She carried a pistol.

  So did I. Wilhelmina, the Luger that was as much a part of me as my right arm, jumped from her shoulder holster. I dove at Nathaniel, knocking him aside as the woman aimed the big old revolver in our direction. Because of the wind and surf I hardly heard the sound of the shot, but felt the searing pain as a bullet ripped a gouge out of my upper arm.

  Woman or no woman, I shot her. One clean shot, right through the heart; she was too close for me to miss, and I had no intention of just wounding her.

  She dropped like a stone, the revolver falling from her fingers like a toy she'd suddenly grown tired of. Nathaniel was already getting to his feet, the shotgun pointed at Graves.

  "Very nice, Mr…ah… McKee. She seemed to know what she was doing with that weapon." He bent over the woman's body and shook his head. Then he picked up her pistol and shoved it into his belt. "Now we do have a little problem."

  "Yeah."

  Graves was still writhing at my feet, trying to get up but unable to, any more than he could talk.

  "Pity he involved his wife," Nathaniel was saying. "Or at least I presume that's who she was. Is that right, Graves?" He bent low over the other, man.

  Graves nodded, his face distorted, neck corded.

  "Then I suppose you're not likely to forgive me for her death." He shook his head pityingly. "No, hardly likely after your performance this evening. So…" He shrugged. "Sorry, Graves." He reached for the man's chest, dug relentless fingers under the ribs and kept pushing — higher and higher, probing for the heart until his hand was nearly buried in the flesh. Graves yowled faintly, legs thrashing; Nathaniel casually cuffed him across the face, never relaxing the pressure. Then the man lay still.

  The retired teacher stood up, wiped his brow with the back of a hand. "I don't know if he's dead or not, but it's not really important. Will you help me get them back into their unfortunate car?"

  It wasn't the most convincing accident ever staged, but the fact that the old Chevy's automatic shift had a tendency to snap out of gear made it all a little less implausible. We switched on the ignition, rolled the car to the brink of the cliff, and pushed it over the side. Nathaniel didn't wait to see it hit the rocks below; it was too dark to see much of anything, anyway.

  I looked toward the lighthouse.

  "Don't worry," he said. "If they'd heard anything, they'd have been here by now. Their concern is what's happening out at sea, not along the shore. Shall we return the bikes to Mrs. Gormsen?"

  The riding wasn't easy in the dark; my bike light didn't throw a beam much beyond my front tire, and Nathaniel's didn't work at all. But he seemed to know where he was going, and as we rode slowly across the island, he told me what Graves was all about.

  "He was a fisherman, boatman, call him what you will. Worked mostly out of Montauk, at the tip of Long Island. Just across there." He pointed to our left, where I knew there was a stretch of water separating Block Island from the mainland. "Some years ago the Reds recruited him. Common labor, you'd call him in the espionage business. His job was simply to keep his eyes open. There's a lot of submarine activity around here, for instance; Block Island Sound is a principal access to the Atlantic from the New London sub base. There were other things. Graves worked on charter boats, and quite a lot of people with important government connections come out this way for a few days of relaxation. Even Nixon did when he was campaigning in sixty-eight, you know. At any rate, I was put on to Graves by our mutual friend in Washington, and since I was handy and knew a bit about boats, I was assigned the job of… neutralizing him." He grinned over at me as we pedaled side by side. "Normally I don't accept active assignments, but it happened I could use the money Hawk offered."

  "What was that business about a factory ship?" I asked, swerving to avoid a pothole the size of a backyard swimming pool.

  "Ah yes, that was how they worked it. As you must know, the fishing fleets of many nations — Russia in particular — are working just a few miles off our shores. What rivalry there is economic rather than ideological, so there's a fair amount of communication between the various boats, regardless of nationality or politics. So it wasn't hard for Graves to deliver his reports to one Russian boat or another. But sometimes he would have messages that were urgent, and then he would signal with a light — right from those cliffs where his brakes failed and he and his wife plunged to their deaths…"

  "About that," I interrupted. "Maybe his death can be made to look like an accident, but how about hers? She's got a nine-millimeter slug in her."

  "Yes, yes. Not very neat. However, at this time of the year that part of the shore is so deserted that if the car is underwater — and it should be — by the time the mishap is discovered there won't be enough left of the bodies for the local authorities to suspect anything but an accident. If they do, well, that's what our friend in Washington is for, isn't it?"

  I didn't have to say anything; this mild-mannered schoolteacher who could kill in cold blood was way ahead of me.

  "At any rate," Nathaniel went on as we started down a long, gradual slope toward the cluster of buildings and docks beyond, "I managed to convince G
raves that I was a sympathizer. It wasn't difficult; he has that sort of mentality — believes schoolteachers are all Communists of one degree or another. Eventually I persuaded him to send a message that would bring one of the fishing boats inside our territorial waters — strictly forbidden, of course. A Coast Guard cutter was standing by, and there was a carefully orchestrated — and futile — chase while I pretended to take Graves prisoner. He escaped, made his way down to the harbor on the other side of this island and stole a power boat to make his getaway. He was successful, needless to say; he located one of the Red trawlers and was taken to the factory ship, which does a bit more than process fish. Frankly, we expected them to take him back to Mother Russia, but evidently their facilities are more sophisticated than we thought."

  We were nearing the row of weathered buildings close to the docks. "Why go to all that trouble?" I asked. "Wouldn't it have been simpler just to arrest the guy? Or eliminate him?"

  "Well, you know the man in Washington; he doesn't explain anything he doesn't have to. But my theory is that if we had arrested Graves and tried him, it would have been a senseless exercise. After all, he was merely a local fisherman doing a dirty little job on the side for extra money. A trial could very well have made a martyr of him, and these days we have more than enough of those. On the other hand, if we could convince the other side that he was a double agent, which we seem to have done to some extent, they would be forced to spend a great deal of time and effort in checking out their other common labor to be sure they weren't all like Graves."

  It was exactly the way I had figured it, so I dropped the subject. "What about her?" We were slowing in front of Mrs. Gormsen's shuttered hotdog stand and bike-rental emporium.