The Rough English Equivalent (The Jack Mason Saga Book 1)

by Stan Hayes

  “Got their pictures?”

  “And the other vitals for the guy; I’ll get the girl’s stuff later today.” Moses said, handing him the large manila envelope he’d dropped on a adjacent chair.

  “I figure 5 G’s each. OK, pal?”

  “That’s fine.”

  “OK. Call me here tomorrow.”

  The cab crawled along the narrow riverside street in Queens. “D’jya say 723?” the cabby asked Moses.

  “723-A.”

  “Dere’s 737. 733. 725. Oops, 721.”

  “Just hold it here.” Moses looked along the row of one- and two-story buildings that backed up on the East River, shading his eyes against the morning sun’s reflections bouncing off the windows of Manhattan skyscrapers. “OK. Wait while I ask somebody.” Stepping out of the cab, he walked into the closest of the businesses, number 721. A battered counter stood between him and a gray-haired man of about sixty in a worn shop apron, hunched over a workbench. “Mornin’,” he said to the man’s profile.

  “Whaddya want?” the man asked him without turning from his work.

  “Lookin’ for 723-A.”

  “Next door. Upstairs.”

  Moses opened a glass-paneled door that led to a narrow staircase. Reaching its top, he looked down a hall with four doors cut into its walls. The first on his right had 723A hand-stenciled on it in yellow letters. He pushed the button on the door-facing; he gave it a couple of minutes. Just as he was about to knock on the door, it was opened by a thin, fortyish man dressed in a short-sleeved shirt and slacks. The man waited for him to speak. “Mr. Weiss?”

  The man nodded. “You here for Mr. Bisceglia?”

  “Yeah. Excuse me for a minute while I pay off my cab.”

  He rejoined Weiss, who beckoned him through a doorway that led into a large open space, which held several large buoys in various stages of overhaul and repair. Weiss motioned him into a chair beside his desk, which sat in one corner. “Mr. B said you were lookin’ for some type of fuse.”

  “That’s right. I need ta detonate a charge a couple of hundred feet underwater.”

  “What kind of charge?”

  “Dynamite. Three, four sticks.”

  Weiss looked at him quickly over rimless glasses, then looked out the shop’s rear door beyond the hoist at the river. “You want this to work the first time, of course.”

  “Yes. Yes, I do,” said Moses.

  “Who’s putting the gadget together?”

  “I am.”

  “Built an underwater piece before?”

  “Yes,” Moses said, “but it’s been some time.”

  “Be sure to vent the housing. Water won’t hurt anything, but you don’t want a false reading. A hydrostatic fuse is what you want. Predetermined depth settings at 25, 50, 75 and 100 meters. Works with standard blasting caps, which simplifies things.”

  “Sounds great. Got ’em in stock?”

  Weiss smiled. “This isn’t a store. I’ll order it and send it over to you. What’s the address?”

  “I’ll pick them up here, if you don’t mind. I’d like three; can you have them here tomorrow?”

  “The day after. Call me to be sure I have them.” He gave Moses a business card.

  “OK. What do I owe you?”

  “My fee’s five hundred, and the fuses’re one-fifty each. Nine-fifty. You can pay me when you come back.”

  “OK. Is there a cab stand close by?”

  “Better let me call one for you,” Weiss said.

  Sitting at the bar at Reuben’s restaurant just off 5th Avenue on 58th Street, he waved to Linda as she walked through the door, and stood to meet her with a hug and a kiss. A teal blue knit dress sheathed her lean body. Lightly bloodshot eyes looked into his with the customary candor. “You never give a girl much warning, do you?” she said.

  “Sorry; didn’t have much myself. Whaddya say we get a table?”

  The waiter came and went, and they sat doing general reminiscence for a few minutes. “So how’s life in general, kid?” asked Moses.

  “It’s been better, Mose, to tell the truth. Sometimes I wonder what I should be doing that I’m not. I’ve been here damn near ten years, I’m still doing the same job, with damn little to show for it. This is no town to grow old in.”

  Stifling a grin, he said, “Well, you’ve got a few years left. You’re not even thirty.”

  “No, but so close to it I can smell it, or smell of it. Why don’t you marry me and take me away from all this?”

  “Jeez, now I know it’s serious, if you can say that with a straight face. That is a straight face, isn’t it?”

  “None straighter. You’re a neat guy; they should’ve made a few more like you.”

  “Just as well they didn’t,” he said with a grin. “What’s up? You still seein’ the guy that rents you the boat?”

  “Rented me the boat, and for less than you’d believe. I’ve been off the Petrel, and Roger Brannon, for nearly six months. I’m in a dump just off Columbus Avenue on West 69th.”

  “I’m sorry. Wanta talk about it?”

  “What the hell good would it do? It’s just my personal edition of the old New York story. Successful ad man keeps young girl on the side, promises to divorce Connecticut wife and marry young girl, years go by and the promise’s repeated until it’s forgotten. Successful ad man finds new girl as young as his now-not-so-young-girl used to be, and things get sticky. It’d be funny if it weren’t so pathetic. I just feel stupid, and since a lot of my work was coming from Roger’s agency, I also lost that when I suggested that he kiss my ass on my way out.”

  “What you need, my dear,” said Moses, “is a new boat.”

  “No shit.”

  He paused to let the waiter deposit two dark draft beers and the café’s namesake sandwiches. “Ever think seriously about movin’?”

  “Sure. I’ve also thought seriously about jumping off the George Washington bridge, among other things. I guess I’ve just been frozen since I left that fuckhead. Why do you ask?”

  “Because I need your help. In a big way.”

  “Well, you know you’ve got that,” she said. Does it involve me moving?”

  “What I’m thinking of doin’ involves leavin’ behind as few loose ends as possible. Part of the process’d be for you to leave New York, because people could be nosin’ around here lookin’ for me after I’ve gone. You’d be a lot harder to find in a marina in, say, Miami than you would be here in the city.”

  Her blue eyes darkened. “Seems like you’re always leaving someplace. “What’s the deal?”

  “The deal is this; I’d like you to pack your stuff, catch a train down to Balamer, rent a car, drive back here and throw your stuff in it, drive back to Balamer and buy a cabin cruiser that’s fit for offshore work. Big enough for six people. Then I want you to shake it down, provision it and pick up a friend of mine and me down South. Take us on a little cruise, about two week’s worth, I’d say. Then drop us, bring the boat back solo and dock it where you please, since it’ll be yours, and forget that any of the above ever happened. Sound OK?”

  “Sounds like I wanta do it. When?”

  “Soon. But I want you to sleep on it, because I need a definite, non-cancellable commitment.”

  “Hey,” she said, bending over the table so her eyes were inches from his. “I’d do it without the boat. Just say when.”

  Using an East 22nd Street address provided to him by Johnny Boots, Moses spent the next few days renewing his identity as Peter Wessel. Buoyed by Johnny’s willingness to provide as complete a relocation package as he’d agreed to do, Moses wasn’t about to let any grass grow under his feet. When he had his new driver’s license and passport in hand, he closed Moses Kubielski’s account at the Canal Street branch office of Credit Suisse, receiving a bearer draft in the amount of $6,520,447.02, and deposited it in a new account for Peter Wessel at the Bank of Basel three blocks uptown.

  Chapter XXVIII. Friggin’ in the Riggin’

&n
bsp; The Annapolis gulls greeted the dock’s latest human arrivals to a series of low passes that ended with their determination that no food would be forthcoming. The largest of the group alighted on the cabin roof of the sportfisherman Striker, moored stern-to, two berths from the end. “There she is,” said the broker, a tall, spare fortyish man in fresh-pressed khakis and Topsiders. “1953 Chris Craft. Forty-six foot of offshore fishkiller. Flying bridge. Twin 160-horse Chryslers with less than a hundred hours on ‘em. Dual generators and bilge pumps, heavy-duty batteries. Holds 210 gallons of gas. Forward and *aft cabins. Full galley, two heads. Fighting chair. Twin bait wells. UHF and VHF radios. Radar. Depthfinder. She’s a lot of boat; the owner lives in San Francisco now, and wants to move her. Shall we go aboard?”

  “By all means,” said Linda.

  Moses woke much more slowly than usual, coming out of a dream that had put him back on the Gulf of Mexico, where he’d spent anxious hours over the weekend. He’d tested Package Number One successfully, but memories of the explosion’s ferocity had made his first night back in Bisque a restless one. The trip in all its detail lay smoldering in the forefront of his consciousness.

  Waving his thanks from the helm in response to the deckhand’s “Good fishin’!”, Moses had headed the rented 22-foot Lyman out of Destin, Florida’s harbor, the rising sun already warm on his left shoulder. Package Number One sat securely inside the outsize tackle box he’d bought in Fort Walton Beach, just across the entrance to Choctawhatchee Bay. The Gulf of Mexico’s 100-fathom curve runs close to shore at Destin; an hour’s run due south at thirty knots would give him depth in excess of two hundred feet, the hydrostatic fuse’s setting of seventy meters, that he needed. He had built Packages Number One, Two and Three within twenty-four hours of his return from New York, and was gratified to find that his skills in this work, acquired long ago, had come back to him so quickly. Each package consisted of a six-volt dry cell battery, three sticks of dynamite, a blasting cap, one of the three fuses that he’d bought in New York and the necessary connecting wire and sealing compound* to render the packages essentially waterproof, if not watertight, per Weiss’s advice.

  Passing from the bay into the Gulf, Moses was relieved to see just a few small craft, none of which were on a heading near his. He throttled up the boat’s six-cylinder Grey Marine; at just past nine, the boat’s newly-fitted fathometer slipped past two hundred feet. Cutting the engine to idle, he opened the new tackle box and removed the green oblong file box that was Package Number One’s container. He opened the box and double-checked the soldered joints, one between the fuse’s arming switch and a length of rod that extended through a hole drilled in the box’s end nearest the fuse, the other securing a wing nut on the outside end. Satisfied that he could arm the bomb with a clockwise quarter-turn of the wing nut, he taped the box’s lid shut with several turns of electrical tape, first around its shorter dimension, then around the longer. Returning to the boat’s controls, he moved the throttle to full power and set a course for Destin, checked the horizon for boat and ship traffic, and seeing nothing, armed the bomb and cast it over the starboard side, counting off the seconds from the splash. At twenty, the boat having taken him some two thousand yards from the drop point, he cut the power and turned south again. Almost as soon as he did, the ocean erupted in front of him, a geyser of water shooting at least a hundred feet into the still-cool morning sky. The boat lifted more than a foot as the concussion wave passed under him. As the water calmed, Moses took up a westerly heading and moved at flank speed toward the fishing grounds that the deckhand had recommended.

  As his feet hit the floor, he thought about the thousands of fish that he’d killed with Package Number One. A high price to pay, he thought, but unavoidable, given what I’ve set out to do. And the price’ll go up next month.

  The summer sun was still bright at seven p.m. as Moses finished his briefing on the successful bomb test. “I wonder where their nest is,” said Paul Pulaski.

  “Whose nest is that?” Moses asked after swallowing a bite of hamburger.

  “Herr und Frau Cardinal, pecking around down there by the water.”

  “Hard to say,” said Moses. “There’re quite a few of ‘em around. Don’t believe I’ve ever seen a Cardinal’s nest, though.”

  “This is quite a place you fell into. It’s a shame to think about leaving.”

  “Well, when there’s no real choice, why waste time with regrets? Cuba’s not bad, either.”

  “I’m sure. Can’t imagine your being able to get into a position like the one you have here, though.”

  “Whaddya mean, ‘position’?” asked Moses.

  “I mean, my friend, that you’re someone in this town. You have influence. People value your opinion about things. That’s an enviable position in which to be, and it can’t have been easy to get there. Don’t you think you’ll miss it?”

  “Miss it? I guess so, now and then. But to tell you the truth, I’m kinda tired of playing the role of big- well, medium- fish in a little pond. I pretty much fell into it, and if you hadn’t showed up, I’d’ve found some other way to fall out of it. Actually, I was thinking about seeing if I could talk Buster Redding- you met him?”

  “Don’t think so.”

  “He’s the Hudson dealer; races one in these ‘late model’ stock car races around the Southeast. I’d thought about seein’ what he’d take to audition me as a driver.”

  “Well! You were getting restless.”

  “And maybe a little old, too- at least to the point that spendin’ most of my time sellin’ beer, and fuckin’ and drinkin’ myself silly with what’s left over, holdin’ my interest like it used to.”

  “I don’t want to seem unsympathetic, old friend, but I must tell you that from my personal perspective, I think that a year or two of this life would be very nice indeed.”

  Moses smiled. “Actually, it was right nice for a lot longer than that; but ten years of anything’s a pretty good stretch. And from your personal perspective, I’d think you might agree.”

  It was Brück’s turn to smile. “And KGB years are dog years. I’m starting to believe that we can pull this off. At least, what I’ve seen you do so far makes me think that we have a chance. Bremen taught you well. I’ll bet none of that bomb material came from anywhere around Bisque.”

  “Nope. I told you about th’ fuses, and I took a little ride up to Tennessee for th’ caps and dynamite.”

  Still smiling, Brück said “It’s a shame we never worked together. I’d have enjoyed it.”

  “Whaddya think we’re doin’ right now? But we’ve got most of this operation in front of us. Lemme take you through the plan, top to bottom, and you tell me where it’s weak.”

  Chapter XXIX. Go Fish

  “Annapolis Motor Inn,” said a bored male voice.

  “Deposit three dollars and seventy-five cents for three minutes, pleeeuz.”

  Moses fed the phone slot. “Room 431, please” he said over the bell’s last ding.

  “Hello.”

  “Linda.”

  “Yes.”

  “Mose.”

  “Hi.”

  “Just mailed you a copy of our arrangements for the holiday.”

  “Oh, great. We’re all set here.”

  “Good. You should have it by Wednesday. I’ll call you Thursday to see if you have any questions.”

  “OK. We’re looking forward to seeing you.”

  “Yeah, us too. It’ll be fun. ’Bye.”

  “Bye.”

  She would be in Savannah on the Fourth. Weather permitting, they’d rendezvous two days later.

  “Jack.” The squawk was uncharacteristically hushed.

  “Hm.”

  “Sorry to wake you, pal. Need to chat with you before I go, and time’s a’wastin’.”

  Jack sat up, of whom had an his eyes. “Where you goin’ this time?”

  “TAD to your Uncle Mose. And I think it’s about time you went ahead and thought of ’im that wa
y. He’s nearer family to you than some others you got blood ties to.”

  “Reckon you’re riit. Whaddya mean, TAD?”

  “Picked that up from your one of yer other uncles. Gene Debs. Navy lingo for temporary duty.”

  “OK. How temporary you talkin’ about?”

  “Just to get him where he’s goin. I think he’ll appreciate th’ help, comin’ from a friend a’yours. And I’m damn sure he’s gonna need it.”

  “Whaddya think you can do?”

  “Just shadow ’im for riit now. He won’t see me ’til it’s time. I’ll definitely be flyin’ with ’em when he and Dieter leave here next month. But I won’t have time to check back with you for awhile.”

  “Flx.”

  “Huh.”

  “I have this feelin’ about you. One I never had before riit now.”

  “Whassat?”

  “That you’ve been around here a lot longer than you’ve let on.”

  “Hm.” He said it in a way that reminded Jack that birds of prey could chuckle.

  “Am I riit?”

  “Yup. Matter of fact, we’re all there is left.”

  “Left from what?”

  “Left from th’ human fuckin’ race, boy. I guess I shoulda tolja.”

  “Yes,” said Jack. “It woulda been niice. Why doncha tell me now?”

  “Well, there’s a handful of us left. You could call us spirits, I reckon. I took up this Goshawk getup so I wouldn’t scare you, and now I’ve gotten used to it. But I was a boy like you once, though, thousands of years, give or take, back up th’ road.”

  “What happened?”

  “Well hell, we just kept on evolvin’, to th’ point that it didn’t seem to make much difference. Got to where we could see up an’ down th’ line. We finally broke time down, an’ thought it’d make a difference. But you know what? It didn’t.”

  “Well, I don’t guess I can really get ahold of that riit now. You go on, Flx. Th’ main thing riit now’s for them to stay safe. I’ll miss ya, buddy, but you’re exactly riit. It’s gonna be a full-time job ’til they get where they’re goin’, whatever all this other shit’s about.”