This opened the door to a chorus of similar inquiries and Dexter lowered his report to the podium, fashioning a provocative smile that muted the men and made most of the women want to leave their husbands. He added a theatrical pause, the subsequent hush that settled over the assembly captivating his audience and putting them completely at his mercy. Once again, I marveled at his talent. He was an excellent actor, his voice and the manner in which he used it as nuanced and intentional as the notes played by a concert violinist. I hated him for usurping Fiona’s affection with so little effort and yet found myself mesmerized along with the others while awaiting a verdict I already knew to be unadulterated balderdash.
“The final figure shows nine hundred fourteen pounds and seven ounces of ambergris at a purity of ninety percent,” he said. “I have consulted with my superiors at the Allegheny Chemicals Corporation and they are prepared to make good on their original offer for that portion of your specimen that is pure. It calculates to just over eight hundred twenty-two pounds.” Dexter then gave the final figure attached to the alleged sale: $37,444,752 or just to the north of $191,000 per Tesoro household.
The public declaration of an amount of money representing the national treasuries of a few small countries led to a good deal of whooping and leaping about. A few folks dissolved into a bizarre mélange of laughter and sobbing. One woman swooned. Milton Garwood had brought Mr. Sprinkles, absent his leash, and the little fellow was so unsettled by the range of emotions buffeted about the room that he began to screech and spit, eventually abandoning his post atop Milton’s head in favor of one of the four ceiling fans. Once there, the slow rotation of the fan, along with Mr. Sprinkles’ capricious decision to relieve himself, caused a considerable number of those packed into the chamber to be sprayed in a shower of monkey urine.
Now, when I think of that day, I recall a documentary film I once saw that followed jungle primates engaged in behaviors meant to establish dominance or encourage mating. There was a lot of screaming and arm-flinging in the film with the whole lot of excited chimps occasionally dashing about willy-nilly with no apparent purpose or destination in mind. This is more or less exactly what the good citizens of Tesoro did in those several minutes following Everson Dexter’s announcement, and with all the dancing and shouting and weeping and monkey urine dodging, I suspect Mr. Sprinkles, taking it in from his perch atop the ceiling fan, must have felt right at home.
Once things settled down, the crowd peppered Dexter with questions—all variations of when, where, and how the money would find its way into their pockets. Eventually, the expected question was posed, although its author was entirely unexpected. He had entered after the meeting was already in progress and then listened to the presentation from the back of the room, a tall, gaunt fellow whose English was flavored with a Russian accent.
“Your employers pay much more than other bidders. Why?” Dinkle’s man asked.
For a few moments the room was noiseless save the sound of the ceiling fans moving the air about and the window blinds gently clattering against their jambs. Not many folks around town had ever heard the fellow’s voice; indeed, more than a few thought he might be an apparition incapable of speech that did not involve ghostly screeching or howling. About half in attendance turned to look at him, the rest bowing their heads, as if expecting icy fingers might suddenly jerk them from their seats and into the bowels of hell.
Everson Dexter was the first to recover. He had been to enough auditions to know the difference between a dilettante funding his first play and a producer with some actual juice. Dinkle’s man had a serious way about him and Dexter fashioned an expression sober enough to evince proper respect.
“Ah, the question of the day,” he said. “I’ve been wondering when it might come. However, before I answer, perhaps the ladies in the room might wish to powder their noses.” He glanced at me. “The children, too.”
No one moved. You see, folks back then had just as healthy a craving for titillation as they do now and Everson Dexter’s suggestion that an impropriety was in store for those who stayed was a bit like waving bacon in front of a dog’s nose and then asking him to be satisfied with an old shoe.
“I see,” Dexter said when he saw every butt in the room still firmly glued to a chair. “Very well, then.”
It turned out that Milton Garwood had been correct, or so Everson Dexter wanted folks to believe. According to the fiction he foisted upon the assembly, the Allegheny Chemicals Corporation had discovered that ambergris possessed male enhancement properties far outweighing its commercial value as a perfume fixative. He delivered this utter claptrap in terms so couched they might well have been spoken in Latin. Nevertheless, everyone got the point, the men snickering, the women blushing and dabbing at their lips with handkerchiefs. I was the only kid in the room and a few nervous eyes were cast my way, particularly from Judy Buford who was clearly afraid that her “marriage, prayer, and a good night’s sleep” explanation of how babies were conceived was about to be debunked.
As nearly as I could tell, Dinkle’s man neither believed nor disbelieved the explanation Dexter offered. He listened impassively and then exited as noiselessly as he had entered. The meeting broke up shortly thereafter with a good many attendees heading over to the Last Resort where they took turns buying drinks for each other to celebrate their forthcoming lives of wealth and comfort. Old Axel Throckmorton had no way to know that the tabs building up had little chance of ever being paid off and kept pouring while his son confabbed with the rest of the Ambergrisians on the stage of the assembly room.
“In two days there will be a lot of angry people in this town,” James suggested to us.
“Not as angry as they’d be if Dinkle turned them out of their homes,” Miss Lizzie countered.
No one else spoke for a few moments because there was nothing else to say. Frankly, we had discussed and rehashed our plan and its possible outcomes so many times it had become a worn-out shoe with a hole in its sole, and the heel worn down. Mr. Judson, like many lawyers, was ill at ease with blank spaces in a conversation and eventually broke the silence.
“The ninetieth day is less than forty-eight hours away,” he summarized. “I’m sure Dinkle already has his foreclosure notices ready to send out. Once people start opening the letters, I’ll have a line at my office door in short order.”
He exhaled sharply, as if already exhausted by the task ahead.
“It’s not going to be pretty,” he said. “I’ll let everyone down as easily as I can, but we can expect a rough time of it until they find out what’s really in the boathouse.”
The plan was to do nothing in that regard, allowing Dinkle to discover the dinosaur egg on his own. Of course, the old gunrunner would be apoplectic, threatening all sorts of legal action. However, Mr. Judson once again assured us that the argument would have no merit before a judge insofar as the lines of credit were concerned.
“As long as the borrowers had no knowledge of what was actually in the boathouse, they’re safe,” he reiterated. “It was Dinkle’s decision to accept their ambergris shares as collateral and it was his responsibility to determine the value of that collateral. Of course, if he finds out about our part in all this…”
Mr. Judson eyed each of us in turn. He didn’t have to finish. We understood what would happen if Dinkle broke our egg before it was hatched: scandal, lawsuits, jail for the adult Ambergrisians, reform school for me. Indeed, there was little to reassure us. If our scheme worked, we were liars. If it didn’t, we would be criminals. It was a sobering comparison, and for the first time, I wondered which of those two hats would be the hardest to wear. No one spoke until Everson Dexter interrupted the silence.
“Well, I guess it’s time to bring down the curtain on my part in all this,” he said. He stood and moved away from Fiona, fracturing the intimacy they’d shared at the beginning of the town meeting. I hated him. The bastard is leaving her, I thou
ght and he was. I had yet to erase from my mind the disturbing image of Fiona sneaking from his room at the Kittiwake Inn, but she was my friend, and the idea that some morally bereft scalawag from San Francisco was about to dump her—just as my father had dumped my mother—made me want to defend what was left of her honor. I was about to take a poke at him when Dinkle’s man interrupted us a second time.
Once again, the phantasmagorical fellow did not so much enter as materialize, the doorway at the back of the room empty one moment, then framing his tall figure the next. He came down the center aisle, seeming almost to float. Upon reaching us, he handed Dexter an envelope, at the same time glancing at Fiona as if to say: You can do better than this man.
“Dinner,” he said, eyeing our imposter as if he could unmask him with merely his gaze. “…Eight o’clock.”
Dexter glanced at the card inside the envelope. He was nervous, the ghostly aspect of Dinkle’s man temporarily putting him off his game. A moment later he recovered, although apparently still anxious as he inexplicably spoke with a slight English accent.
“Thanks so much, old chap,” he said. “But I must take my leave. Train tickets and all. You understand.” He offered Dinkle’s man a weak smile that had the same effect a canary might have upon a cobra. “Regrets,” he added.
Dinkle’s man gave Dexter the same stony consideration once shown impertinent, new recruits to the Russian Imperial Army.
“I bring car at seven forty-five,” he said.
“Look, old boy, that simply won’t work. I’ve a train to catch in San Francisco.”
“Seven forty-five,” Dinkle’s man repeated, and with that, we all knew Everson Dexter would not be leaving. The curtain was not about to come down. Before we got to Act II in our play, there would be a final scene in Act I.
Dinkle’s man left without another word, acknowledging only Fiona with a polite nod. After he had gone, Mr. Judson turned to Dexter. “Are you up for this?” he asked the actor.
Dexter had been unsettled by the unexpected appearance of Dinkle’s man and remained so—his color less robust, his eyes blinking a bit too much.
“Not to worry,” he said in a way unconvincing enough to make us worry even more. “I can handle it.”
“Can he do this?” Miss Lizzie asked Mr. Judson, ignoring the fact that Dexter hadn’t moved from his chair.
“I said I could handle it,” Dexter reiterated, his attempt at indignance more prissy than reassuring.
“Dinkle is savvy, Hal,” Mr. Judson said, using Dexter’s real name for the first time. “He may suspect you and us already. That may be what this invitation is about. If so, you’ll have to be on top of your game or Dinkle will ferret out the truth…Either he or that walking corpse of his.”
“Maybe you and Miss Lizzie can go with him,” Mr. Johns suggested, eyeing our actor. “Or you, Fiona. You know…in case Mister Dexter wavers…Strength in numbers and all that.”
“I don’t need anyone else to go,” Dexter snapped. “I can handle it. How many times do I have to tell you?”
Mr. Judson ended the dispute. “No one else is going,” he said, his voice resolute. “Nothing will raise the hairs on Dinkle’s neck more than one of us showing up uninvited.” He shifted his gaze to Dexter. “It’s on you, Hal.”
Dexter gave manly squaring of his shoulders a shot, an effort that once again was more reminiscent of Claudette Colbert than Clark Gable. At the same time he laughed, although the sound was both hollow and humorless. He delivered his next line with the excessive bravado typical of a comic melodrama. “Hal? Who’s Hal? The name is Dexter…Everson Dexter of the Allegheny Chemicals Corporation.”
It was an attempt at humor, but no one laughed. I later knew some self-appointed comedians in the army who would not have given up before embarrassing themselves, but Dexter was experienced enough to accept our flat-eyed response as his cue to leave. He strode up the center aisle to the rear entry of the assembly room, hesitating at the exit to offer us a grin and a jazzy two-fingered salute. His last-ditch effort to win us over fell as flat as his joke, and he formed a petulant frown, then left in a bit of huff. Once he was gone, Fiona sighed loudly.
“God help us,” she breathed.
The group broke up then and everyone headed home. On our way out Mr. Johns expressed what we were all thinking. “I’d love to be a fly on the wall of that dining room tonight,” he mused. His comment was met by nodding heads and a low murmur of agreement. And that’s when I knew what had to be done.
Chapter Twenty-one:
Dinkle’s man squeezes the potato
Yurievsky walked the mile back to the Dinkle estate and went directly to his quarters above the garage. He carefully cleaned the road dust from his boots and applied fresh polish, recalling advice his mother had given him when he was a boy. “Always squeeze a potato before you eat it, Sergei,” she’d told him more than once. “If you find a soft spot, the potato has gone bad. Don’t trust the skin. The potato may look normal, but soft spots tell you it isn’t.”
When his boots once again shone, Yurievsky donned his butler’s garb and started for the main house to give the old man a report. He was late. Dinkle would be displeased. Like officers in the former Russian Imperial Army, the old man was patient with himself, allowing ample time to arrive at a decision of what order to give, but impatient for results once it was given. He would want confirmation that his demand had been met. And despite wearing the mask of invitation, Yurievsky mused, it was a demand.
As he entered the main house Yurievsky mulled over how much he should reveal to his employer. The ex-soldier had known his share of scientific types and engineers. They were a dry lot and far less attentive to their personal appearances than the villagers’ handsome expert with the dashing name. Yurievsky’s wife, Olga, had loved the theater in St. Petersburg, and her circle of friends had included many actors. Everson Dexter had seemed more like one of Olga’s friends than a chemist, his speech theatrically articulated, his hair perfectly coiffed, his eyes instinctively searching for a reflection of his own image in the windows of the assembly room. His testimony had seemed false as well, the collection of chemical terms populating his report reminiscent of a random sampling from the glossary of a textbook, rather than anything cohesive and logical. All told, Everson Dexter was a potato with soft spots.
As a sergeant in the Russian Imperial Army and an aide to Grand Duke Pavlovich, Yurievsky had learned to keep his opinions to himself. It was a habit he’d sustained in his present employment as Dinkle preferred it that way as well. The former gunrunner had secrets of his own, as Yurievsky well knew after carefully reading every document the old man entrusted to him for delivery to San Francisco bankers and brokers and lawyers and accountants. Yurievsky was no thief but had been around enough of them to recognize one, even when disguised in spats and a three-piece suit. He knew Dinkle to be less a businessman than a privateer, the papers shared with his cohorts revealing a pirate’s plunder in the form of tax evasion, insider trading, land grabs, and a very large toe dipped into a pool of water populated by the ruthless men who made their living as purveyors of illegal gambling and prostitution.
Yurievsky knocked on the door to the study. A moment later Dinkle’s bark sounded from the other side. The tall Russian hesitated, his hand on the doorknob. The old man would want a succinct report, but perhaps there was more to tell…something of greater value. Dinkle had contacts in the same dark world inhabited by the whore in Macao, the woman who had recognized a face in the only photo Yurievsky had of his wife and daughter. The old man occasionally tossed out a rumor or possible sighting by one of the crooks in his underworld network. In the beginning Yurievsky had followed up on each lead. He no longer bothered. They were all fabrications, tantalizing clues offered to shorten the leash that kept close Dinkle’s most valuable servant. It was the old man’s way. The former Indian Territories trader disdained kindnesses or favors,
contending that business and personal transactions were mismatched socks. What he couldn’t steal had to be obtained through barter. I don’t agree, Yurievsky often mused. Everything in life is personal. Robbery makes one man richer and able to buy food, another poorer and starving. Murder leaves a man dead, his murderer alive. The men I’ve killed for money did not see it as commerce. They took it personally, just as I took it personally when other men tried to kill me.
Even though Dinkle’s informants had thus far provided nothing, Yurievsky allowed his boss to believe that allegiance had been acquired via a proper trade. The bastard might one day unearth the right potato. One without soft spots when squeezed. Besides, the tall Russian told himself, it was useful for Dinkle to believe loyalty had been purchased, given the old man’s distrust of unencumbered faithfulness.
He entered Dinkle’s study. His employer was at the window. It was open and the ex-gunrunner looked out on a sea made choppy and loud by late afternoon westerlies. The old man held a glass with a single finger of scotch, swirling it gently as if dancing with the distant whitecaps. When Yurievsky didn’t speak, Dinkle looked over, his face simmering with expectation and incipient rage.
“Well?” he snarled.
Yurievsky recalled the serious faces of the visiting chemist and village leaders. Their voices had been hushed as he entered, then abruptly silent when they looked up and saw him. He remembered similar voices, those of Usupov, Grand Duke Pavlovich, and the others on the night before the Mad Monk was dispatched. The villagers—the lawyer, the banker, the midwife, the bartender, and the old lighthouse keeper; the young woman Irina might have become; the boy—all of them evidenced more than surprise when he spoke from the back of the room at the town meeting.
What frightened them…me?
Dinkle’s man quietly closed the door and then faced his employer.
“Well?” Dinkle demanded again. “Is he coming?”
Treasure of the Blue Whale Page 15
