Treasure of the Blue Whale

by Mayfield, Steven;

  “Pretty smart bunch, aren’t you?” Dinkle said. He moved to the wall where his authentic George Washington rare documents were displayed, peering at them as if searching for a code within the letters. “Well, I’m a pretty smart fellow myself,” he said. He faced us. “Did you really think you could fool me?”

  Dinkle’s claim of shrewdness was a conceit. Despite his boast, he had been completely fooled until pulling open the boathouse doors. However, at that moment I did not appreciate his hubris; rather I saw the trader from the Indian Territories who had supposedly killed a man over fifty cents worth of whiskey, the elegant nonchalance and quietly sardonic voice mere disguises to mask a cold-blooded killer. He was terrifying, and I found myself trembling and on the verge of tears.

  “That’s enough, Cyrus,” Miss Lizzie said, glancing at me. “You’ve made your point.”

  “I’ll decide when enough is enough, Elizabeth,” Dinkle hissed.

  I felt my mother’s hand on my shoulder. Like me, it trembled very slightly and I wondered if Miss Lizzie’s green concoction would be up to the task of keeping Ma steady. Meanwhile, James, Mr. and Mrs. Judson, and Mr. Johns were calm but quiet, presumably sizing up their opponent. Fiona and Miss Lizzie were not so circumspect.

  “Stop frightening these boys, Mister Dinkle,” Fiona said.

  “You want your money, Cyrus,” Miss Lizzie added. “So, let’s talk about that. There’s no need to scare anyone.”

  “Ah, the money,” Dinkle sneered. “You want to talk about the money, Elizabeth. That’s good. It’s a good start. It won’t end there, but it’s a good start.”

  His voice was thin, his face slightly red, his words leaving spittle on his lips. He was no longer the convivial Dinkle evidenced on the night of the second town meeting. He had shed that personality entirely, allowing us to see the rabid dog just beneath the surface. He was furious and had a right to be; yet I somehow knew it was not our fraud that had enraged him. He was a criminal. He understood crime, respected it. No, his anger was born of disgrace. We had embarrassed him and the taste of humiliation was far more sour than the wine bottled from his vineyard’s grapes. Even at my tender age I knew that only a very large draught of revenge could wash it away, leaving him disinclined to lift his heel from our throats until we turned blue.

  Despite Dinkle’s malignant demeanor, I was oddly less fearful. Some men’s egos are too fragile to allow reason to trump their lust for retribution. It is difficult to respect such men; indeed, one neither pities nor fears them. You simply face them and I was no longer afraid as Dinkle went on, pointing his finger first at Mr. Judson and then Miss Lizzie.

  “Judson, you and Elizabeth will make me whole,” he said. “You, too, Mister Johns. I believe a surtax is warranted. Let’s say…fifty percent. That’s a fair number I believe.”

  Dinkle’s demand provoked gasps. “That’s highway robbery,” Miss Lizzie sputtered. “I’ll not pay it.”

  “You will pay it, Elizabeth,” Dinkle snapped, “unless prison appeals to you.”

  He curled his lips into something lizard-like and evil.

  “Insofar as that goes I must insist that some of you go to jail. Frankly, you should be grateful. I have a number of business associates who would convict and sentence the lot of you to a cemetery. But I’m a forgiving man, so it’s merely jail…I think for you, Miss Littleleaf. Perhaps you can learn to hold your tongue in there. Jail for you, too, bartender. You won’t be missed.”

  Dinkle looked at me next and I felt as if his eyes had opened an artery in my wrist.

  “Off to reform school, young O’Halloran. Both you and your brother. The pair of you are destined for prison anyway. Might as well get a head start.”

  “Now just ease up there a damned minute, Dinkle,” James interrupted, taking a step closer to Alex and me. “You leave these boys out of it or I swear to God…”

  James went on but I can’t recall anything he said, his voice suddenly lost among other voices; indeed, while willing to swallow Dinkle’s threats against themselves, James, Miss Lizzie, Fiona, Mr. and Mrs. Judson, and Mr. Johns weren’t so circumspect with Alex and I in the old man’s crosshairs. Only Ma remained silent, making for the desk where she grabbed the naked man statue. Holding it above her head with both hands she went after our host with murder in her eyes. It probably sounds funny—this small woman going after a thug like Dinkle—but the old man didn’t laugh. Despite a pretense of amusement, he moved quickly to put his man squarely between he and Ma. Undeterred, she kept coming, but Dinkle’s man easily thwarted the attack, pinning Ma against his chest with one arm, while disarming her with the other.

  “You’ll not do a thing to my boys,” she shouted, struggling to escape the tall Russian manservant. “I’ll kill you first.”

  After that, a good deal more shouting and threatening was pitched at Dinkle. The Ambergrisians’ anger seemed to salve his own and the old man watched them in the same way a crooked boxing promoter views a fixed bout, a tiny smirk on his face betraying advance knowledge of the outcome. Alex and I stayed away from the fray, my brother observing Dinkle like an entomologist examining a beetle for the right place to insert a pin, while I simply didn’t know what to do or say. After all, I was only ten years old.

  The room was noisy for a time. Ma struggled to escape Dinkle’s man, and for a few moments, it seemed that the ex-soldier and James might square off. Then, the tall Russian released my mother, offering James a slight bow as he turned her over to him. The exchange allowed Mr. Judson to get the horses back in the barn.

  “All right, Cyrus, you’ve had your fun,” he said, his voice loud enough to quiet the others. “Let’s just be reasonable. There’s a middle ground here. Let’s bargain.”

  Dinkle erased his smirk, replacing it with an icy expression and a terrifyingly pithy observation. “I don’t believe any of you are in a position to bargain,” he said.

  Dinkle was a canny fellow, a man who dealt in lies and shadows. Hence, he had a well-honed instinct that helped him hear the rattle of an enemy in the low grass or spot the glint of a badge in the high rocks. It was an instinct that was, for the first time in his life, about to fail him, offering nary a scent of the betrayal he was about to suffer—a bit of treachery mounted by the only person in the room whom Dinkle trusted, a man whose loyalty had been duly purchased, one who had always kept his opinions to himself.

  “You are not in position to bargain, either,” Sergei Yurievsky said to his boss.

  Dinkle’s head swiveled toward his valet-chauffeur, his face filled with both surprise and rage. He was met by Yurievsky’s level gaze, an expression that silenced the old bandit. It was as if the ominous Russian’s fierce eyes had peppered Dinkle with poison darts, rendering him as speechless and still as the statue of the naked man. I almost laughed. Even now, there is little I find funnier than a bully who suddenly realizes that he is a lamb trying to victimize a lion.

  “Don’t talk,” Yurievsky said to his employer, afterward turning to us. His face had softened. “Please,” he said, indicating the empty chairs with a sweep of his arm. His manner, menacing with Dinkle, was now courtly. Even so, we all remained standing. Fiona shook her head, her lips forming a tight line.

  “Thank you, Mister Yurievsky,” she said, “but you mustn’t get into the middle of this. Things are bad enough. Don’t lose your job over us.”

  Yurievsky smiled at her, a thing that seemed at first grateful and then somehow sad.

  “I mean it, Mister Yurievsky. For your own good, stay out of it.”

  Fiona was a beautiful woman with both a voice and an expression in her toolbag that she used to get her way with men who were too damned obstinate to admit they were wrong. “I’m not proud of it,” she once told me, “but this is the world the good old boys have created. It’s their own damned fault if I use it against them.” She’d never found it necessary to use her siren’s voice or demeanor
with Yurievsky and didn’t now. Instead, her eyes seemed to plead with him to ignore her advice and save us.

  “What the hell is going on?” Dinkle suddenly demanded, the prospect of his man trampling on his carefully orchestrated revenge stiffening his spine. “Now, listen here, Yurievsky—”

  “Be quiet,” Yurievsky said, holding up a hand for Dinkle to consider. The ex-soldier’s eyes remained on Fiona, almost matching the desperation in hers; as if a great, internal struggle transpired behind his usually indecipherable aspect.

  Dinkle’s complexion reddened, the gash of a scowl cutting into his features.

  “Who the hell do you think—?”

  Yurievsky turned to his boss, dropping the hand. “Be quiet,” he repeated and his tone—both lethal and dismissive—once again silenced the old man. The tall Russian turned back to Fiona, offering up a face I’d seen before—on that cold winter day when he drew a heart in the condensation on the mercantile’s window.

  “Uspokoysya seychas,” he said, his words as soft and warm as old flannel. Settle down now.

  A moment passed, and when Fiona didn’t respond, he repeated the words. I looked at her. We all did. Her head was tipped to one side like an inquisitive puppy, her expression wrinkled as she peered at Dinkle’s man as if trying to spot a distant lighthouse through thick fog.

  “Uspokoysya seychas, moya sladkaya myshka,” Yurievsky added, his voice quiet. Settle down now, my sweet little mouse.

  I did not speak Russian and still don’t. But the sadness within Yurievsky’s words was unmistakable. Sadness and relief. He seemed strangely relieved.

  “Moya sladkaya myshka,” he repeated.

  Suddenly, Fiona’s lips parted. Her eyes widened and she blinked as if visualizing an apparition, one resurrected from long-buried memories and unanswered prayers. Her breathing grew uneven and she wobbled dangerously, trembling as if newly born. I thought she might faint and moved to help, but Yurievsky reached her first, supporting her with an arm around her waist.

  “Myshka?” she repeated in a whisper, staring into his face. “Myshka?”

  Dinkle’s man helped Fiona to a chair. This time she did not protest.

  “I don’t understand,” she stammered, even though it seemed as if she did understand; that lack of comprehension was perhaps less frightening to her than fear of it. Her eyes had filled with tears and she clutched Yurievsky’s hand, her knuckles turning white.

  “Ne plach, Myshka,” Dinkle’s man said. Don’t cry, little mouse.

  Fiona reached up to touch his cheek, moving her fingers across it like a blind woman seeking familiarity from darkness.

  “Moya myshka,” Yurievsky murmured. “Moya sladkaya myshka.”

  Like most children, perhaps all, I did not easily fathom the notion of prior childhoods among the grown-ups in my life. My mother had been a child as had James and Mr. Judson and Angus and Miss Lizzie. And Fiona. Still, they seemed to me to have always been adults. Especially Fiona, whose adulthood put her outside my reach, whose effortless and very mature confidence was so mesmerizing to me. And yet, as Yurievsky whispered in her ear Fiona Littleleaf seemed tiny and vulnerable—as much a child as I, her face awash in memories of a past long forgotten. Of course, I did not understand what had changed her. None of us did. Only later would we learn about Yurievsky’s wife and daughter and that Fiona was much more than the “young woman Irina might have become.” She was, as it turned out, exactly the young woman Irina had become. The proprietor of our town mercantile and the Kittiwake Inn, the postmistress of Tesoro, California, and the person we’d all known as Fiona Littleleaf—adopted niece of Rosie and Roxy Littleleaf—had been christened in 1912 as Irina Yurievsky, the firstborn and only child of Sergei and Olga Yurievsky.

  “Papa?” Fiona whispered to her father. “Papa, eto ty?” Is it you?

  Yurievsky leaned over until his lips nearly touched her ear.

  “Prosto slushayte seychas, Myshka. Papa ispravit yego.” Just listen now, little mouse. Papa will fix it.

  Fiona nodded dully and her father straightened, releasing her hand.

  “Mister Judson,” he said quietly. “Forgive me. I am Russian and English sometime fail me.” His words were directed at the lawyer, even though he kept dark eyes angled at his boss. “We have word in Russia when one person threaten another with secret,” he went on. “Sometimes against men for money, sometimes against women for…the bedroom. Is word for this in English. You know it?”

  Once again Dinkle interrupted, something I couldn’t help admiring just a bit. Yurievsky was menacing enough to make Medusa look away, but the former Indian Territories trader had more courage in reserve than I’d appreciated. “That’s enough of this damned nonsense,” he barked.

  Yurievsky then offered his employer a face I had never seen on anyone, his expression utterly emotionless, his eyes dead. It was a look of murder personified, the face of a man who had killed without feeling or regret and would do so again if necessary. Dinkle, too, had killed men, but it had been a product of impulsiveness and rage. The face of Sergei Yurievsky was not enraged, but the aspect of someone who had murdered without emotion, a man who took a life because it was his job and the next thing to do. It was far more terrifying than the killer’s face I’d seen on Dinkle and the ex-gunrunner now seemed terrified as well. He stopped talking.

  “This word, Mister Judson,” Yurievsky reiterated, once certain his employer would not again interrupt, “You know it, yes?”

  As a litigator C. Herbert Judson had been around his share of murderers and was not unnerved; indeed, he seemed almost pleased.

  “’Extortion,’” he said. “The word you’re looking for is ‘extortion.’”

  “Ah…‘Extortion,’” Yurievsky replied as if testing the sound of it. He looked at Mr. Judson. “Is illegal, this ‘extortion,’ yes? Is against the law?”

  “It is.”

  “A man go to prison for extortion, yes?”

  “Yes.”

  “I see.”

  Yurievsky glanced at me and his murderer’s eyes softened, replaced by something warmer and yet indisputably haunted. His lips began to curl upward, then flattened, his inner thoughts abruptly shielded as if lowering the visor on a helmet.

  “So, two millions…and fifty percent. Very much money, I think,” he continued. “And Dinkle use secret for this. Is extortion, yes?”

  Before Mr. Judson could answer, Dinkle jumped in, the mention of money enough to replace his fear of Yurievsky with a trader’s instincts.

  “What do you want, Yurievsky? Is this a shakedown? If so, stop wasting time. Just name your damned price.”

  Yurievsky eyed his boss.

  “No price,” he said.

  “Then stay out of it. This is none of your business.”

  Once again, Sergei Yurievsky offered the assassin’s face to his boss.

  “Is not business,” the ex-soldier said. “…Is personal.”

  He went to Dinkle’s liquor cabinet and poured a small amount of vodka into a glass, afterward downing it in a single swallow.

  “You are not only one, Dinkle, who know extortion,” he said. Yurievsky indicated the rest of us with a lift of his chin. “These people not only ones with secret. You have many secrets. I go to government hall…I find papers. You have warehouses with iceboxes and stoves, yes? I visit. No iceboxes, no stoves. Many guns and whiskey and cigarettes. But no iceboxes, no stoves. Can you explain? Maybe yes, maybe no. I find house where women see men for money. I find businesses that are not businesses.”

  He looked at Mr. Judson and shrugged as if to dispel doubt.

  “Is true. I visit. Nothing there. Just address. They are…uh, shells. Is right word? Shells?”

  “Shell companies,” Mr. Judson replied. ”But you’re close enough.”

  Yurievsky returned his gaze to Dinkle.

  “
I also read papers you want delivered…and papers in your safe.”

  This was a revelation that might have raised Dinkle’s eyebrows if he’d had any. Yurievsky chuckled at the shocked expression on his employer’s face.

  “Yes, your safe. I know how to open. I watch you open…many times. You are not careful.”

  He shook his head as if bemused.

  “You have many papers for man with so much money to hide. Does American taxman know about hidden money? Again, I think maybe yes, maybe no. You have dangerous partners. They sentence enemies to cemeteries. This is what you say, yes? Do dangerous men know about safe? About hidden money? Do they? I think not. I think much those dangerous men do not know.”

  He eyed Dinkle, nodding grimly.

  “But I know,” he said.

  Dinkle coolly appraised his employee. The terms of their relationship had been abruptly and unexpectedly re-defined; to his credit, the old scoundrel impressively transformed in response, his rage turning to reason as he weighed his options, mentally ticking them off until one emerged that provoked a sneer.

  “You’ve got nothing,” he snorted. “Papers! You think they’ll prove anything? Papers disappear.”

  Yurievsky shrugged.

  “Maybe,” he said. “Such things can be like dead fish…float to surface even after you think them gone.”

  The tall Russian pursed his lips like a headmaster trying to decide what to do with an unruly student.

  “Anyway, papers are matter for sheriff and judge. For lawyer like Mister Judson, or, perhaps, for your dangerous men. As for rest of it…?”

  He nodded to indicate me and my co-conspirators.

  “The boathouse empty. They hide it. A crime, yes, but how much crime? Not very much, I think. In Russia, put against wall and shoot, but this not Russia. You tell sheriff and judge, feathers ruffled…”

  He looked at Fiona.

  “Is right, Myshka? Feathers ruffled?”

  She nodded. The color had returned to her face and she now stared at her father with a mixture of astonishment and pride.