Cold Smoked

by K. K. Beck

  Shaking and angry, she made her way to the phone. She called 911 and told the dispatcher she had just come back and interrupted a burglar. “He was wearing a ratty old fur coat and a ski mask,” she said, “and he just ran out my front door onto Federal Avenue.” She had said “he,” but she wasn’t sure what sex the intruder had been. That foot pushing down on her shoulder had seemed strong, but she remembered reading somewhere that there was considerably less difference in strength between men’s and women’s legs than their arms.

  From her position on the ground, Jane had no idea of the size of this person. As soon as she put down the phone, she dashed onto the porch to see if she could see which direction her intruder had taken.

  There was no sign of anyone on the quiet street.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  When they arrived, the policemen seemed pretty blasé about it all. “It reminded me of some kind of vermin,” Jane told them after giving a description of the fur-bearing creature.

  “Vermin is right,” said one of the cops. “Kids, mostly, burglarizing houses while people are at work. They go for jewelry and CDs. If you ever think someone’s been in the house, don’t go in yourself. Call us.”

  By the time they finished checking the windows and showed her how easy it was to get inside through her living room window, obscured by a big camellia bush, it was time to go talk halibut.

  Fishermen’s Terminal was tucked quietly between two Seattle neighborhoods, Magnolia and Ballard. Jane remembered a more or less ramshackle collection of buildings around the bay where the fishing fleet was moored.

  The whole thing had apparently been rebuilt, and because she was early for her meeting, she walked around to take a look. The renovation was really quite nice, all galvanized metal with dark turquoise trim, pretty but still presenting a sufficiently industrial appearance so it seemed like a working facility and not some tourist trap.

  The facility housed a collection of businesses catering to fishermen who’d been at sea for a while—a shower and a barber shop, and a bank; various stores that sold gear and clothing; some corporate offices of seafood companies; and a fish market and a couple of restaurants.

  Jane walked along the dock, with its fibrous-looking heavy planks and the smell of creosote, and looked at the vessels with names from the north like Alaska Mist and Northern Star.

  A Japanese tourist, backed up against a pile of bright orange net, was taking pictures of a couple of bearded fishermen stacking crab pots.

  Near the center of things stood a large monument, a big column encrusted with various species of fish. She recognized Dungeness crab and salmon. “A big flat creature with two eyes on one side of its head” was how Carla had described halibut—a similar smaller creature, she supposed, was a sole. There also seemed to be a sturgeon and an octopus and lots of other fish she couldn’t identify. She stepped back nervously, imagining Norm rushing out and demanding she name all the fish there.

  At the top of the pillar, in the style of Lord Nelson, though on a much smaller scale, stood the statue of a smiling, boyish-looking fisherman in a waterproof jacket with stiff hair in points that presumably had been shaped by the wind, pulling up a fish on a rope. He looked a bit clunky. Jane thought the artist had done a better job on the fish.

  A plaque announced that this was the Fisherman Memorial. Off to one side, Jane watched a middle-aged woman in sweat pants, a parka and a chiffon head scarf bend down and leave a mason jar with some early spring flowers—saxifrage and quince still in bud—against a low wall. A few florists’ bouquets in cellophane were already lying there. The woman stood back for a moment and then walked away, car keys in hand.

  When she had gone, Jane went over to the wall herself. It listed the names of local commercial fishermen who had died at sea, year by year, starting in the late nineteenth century and ending with the previous year. The water around the area was so cold that if anyone fell in, they’d die in minutes. She imagined the recent ones had drowned in Alaskan waters, where most of the fishing was done nowadays.

  She checked her watch and made her way back to Chinook’s. The sign outside was a huge salmon. Inside was a big, noisy restaurant with big windows looking out over the boats, and a trendy-looking hostess in a tight suit and heels. The idea of young men dying in icy water seemed very distant.

  She found Norm at a table in the bar, with two large men who were obviously brothers. Both were relaxed-looking guys with the tough and unflappable look of bar bouncers. One had dark hair and a dark beard with some gray in it and wore a T-shirt that had an attractive illustration of a salmon and lettering underneath that read “There’s No Nookie Like Chinookie.” The other had a tractor cap and a seventies-style mustache and sideburns. His T-shirt read “Say No to Drugs. Don’t Eat Farmed Fish.” When Carla had said they were poor representatives of the industry, she might have been referring to their loutish appearance. T-shirts that talked, Jane felt, tended to knock about ten points off the wearer’s perceived IQ. Wearing that tractor cap in a restaurant sliced it down a few more points.

  The three men were already drinking beer, some sales material from Norm’s arsenal spread out in front of them. Norm, looking thin and weedy next to the burly Putnams, seemed to have adopted a hearty, one-of-the-boys manner that didn’t seem entirely convincing to Jane.

  “Hey, we’re businessmen just like you guys,” he was saying as she sidled up. “We like to show our customers a good time. That’s why we have that hospitality suite.”

  “Yeah,” said the man with beard, leering. “I appreciate the thought, but I can get laid all by myself, Norm.”

  Jane resisted the urge to point out that according to his T-shirt, he was willing to settle for a hot date with a cold fish. The other brother giggled.

  Norm saw Jane, gave a decidedly guilty start, rose and introduced her. One was named Bob and one was named Don. Jane wasn’t quite sure which was which but decided it didn’t matter.

  “So you got rid of Carla,” said Chinookie, nodding with satisfaction.

  “She was a troublemaker,” said Say No. “I’m glad she’s outta here. You don’t need her kind on the magazine, Norm.”

  Jane ordered a white wine and wondered just how much of their company she was going to have to take. The fact that Norm was at the very least joking about being some kind of a procurer for his advertisers made her feel a little squeamish. The way Chinookie was checking her out made her wonder if he didn’t think she was available with a half-page ad. He did a standard and not very well-disguised head-to-toe-and-back body scan while she was standing and even took the trouble to lean back a little in his chair and watch her cross her legs under the table after she sat down. Maybe he’d spent too much time at sea.

  She slapped the tape recorder on the table and said brightly, “Let’s talk halibut!”

  “The way that resource is managed sucks,” said Chinookie with a dark look. “The way I see it, fish is the last food you have to go out and kill to eat. In the wild. There’s no way a lot of pencil-necked geek biologists should be telling guys like us, that have the balls to go out after it, who can go out and who has to stay tied up at the dock. Let the strong survive, that’s what I say.”

  Jane nodded. “So you don’t like the management proposals from the council,” she said.

  “Hell no,” said Say No. “Let anyone who wants to go out after it. The fish don’t belong to a bunch of bureaucrats. They belong to whoever gets there first. It’s in scripture,” he said.

  “That’s interesting,” Jane said warily.

  Norm looked a little wary too as Say No leaned forward on his meaty elbows. “You think it’s just a coincidence that a couple of the apostles were fishermen? God was trying to tell us something. And what about that deal with the loaves and fishes? Jesus didn’t run out, right? That’s God’s way of telling us there are enough fish.” He leaned back triumphantly. “It’s right there in Genesis. God gave man dominion over the fish of the sea. Man! Not the International Pacific Halibut C
ommission.”

  Jane nodded and tried to look as if she were mulling over this theory of fishery management, meanwhile racking her brain for another of Carla’s canned questions so as to cut him off at the pass.

  “What about long term?” she said. “You know, the Norwegians are commercially farming halibut. Could that eventually affect the price of Alaska halibut?”

  Chinookie snorted. “It’s another species. Atlantic halibut. The Japanese will never go for it. They like Pacific species.”

  “Besides,” said Say No, “fish farming is disgusting. We’re supposed to go out and catch the stuff and risk our necks. Not grow it in tanks. It’s right here in Exodus. Chapter seven, verse eighteen. ‘The fish that is in the river shall die, and the river shall stink.’ ”

  Jane smiled a little nervously. Norm coughed and looked into his beer, and Chinookie put a big hairy hand over his brother’s in a surprisingly tender gesture. “Don’t mind Don,” he said. “He gets a little carried away sometimes.”

  Don certainly sounded like someone who had got his chubby hands on a Concordance during a bad acid trip. Or maybe a bad fishing trip.

  Bob smiled indulgently. “We never went to Sunday school when we were kids, but he got hooked on this Bible stuff from watching these TV preachers.” He rolled his eyes just a little, as if to indicate he wasn’t buying into it but was willing to humor his brother.

  Jane nodded sympathetically. If Don had been to Sunday school, maybe his theology and biblical scholarship would be a little more carefully thought out.

  Bob continued in his soothing voice, something Jane thought he might have developed from managing a lunatic relative for so long. “Everyone in the wild salmon business has seen a noble way of life threatened by farmed Atlantic salmon flooding the market. It’s hurt some mighty good people up in Alaska. We’re pretty touchy about aquaculture.” He gave a nice little smile. “I guess you know salmon farming’s a hanging offense in the state of Alaska.”

  Don looked at his brother with a big idiot’s grin. He looked as if he really believed the death penalty would be carried out.

  Bob went on: “But we realize times are changing. That’s why I support generic salmon marketing with the farmers. They aren’t going to go away.”

  Jane revised her opinion of Bob. Maybe there was a little more to him than a testosterone-driven Hemingway wannabe, catching fish with his bare hands and biting their heads off. And he seemed rather sweetly protective of his brother.

  She asked Bob a question about pricing and availability of halibut in the near future, let him drone on into the tape recorder and pretended to listen. She hoped Don hadn’t stumbled across something prophetic in the book of Revelations about fish prices.

  When Bob came to a halt, Jane hit the tape recorder with a decisive thwack, hoping she had enough there for Carla but deciding, nevertheless, that she’d put in as much effort with these guys as she could stand.

  “Thank you so much for your time,” she said. “You’ve given our readers lots to think about, halibutwise. I hope you’ll like the piece I write.”

  “We better,” Don said with a nasty, gloating expression.

  “You’ll love it,” Norm interrupted with a frightened edge to his voice. “In fact, we’ll fax you a draft so you can check it for accuracy.”

  Jane doubted they taught this technique at the Columbia School of Journalism, but she just nodded and said, “Absolutely.”

  “Now let’s talk about that half page,” said Norm.

  “I’ll let you gentlemen discuss that by yourselves,” Jane said like a bright young thing who knew her place and accepted cheerfully that the business side was all too important and high-powered for her. “But first, Norm, have you got that ticket and itinerary?”

  Norm produced it from a nest of papers in his briefcase and seemed grateful to see her go.

  In the car she checked the materials he’d given her. The tickets said Carla Elroy. She’d have to change that. And it was tourist class. Too bad. There was a changeover in Copenhagen, but she’d heard there was some fabulous duty-free shopping there.

  The itinerary listed lots of odd-sounding towns, tours of various fish plants and interviews with a bunch of people with strange letters in their names—little circles over the A’s, slashes through the O’s.

  There was also, she noted happily, a visit to Bergen. That was where Trygve Knutsen held forth. Surely it wouldn’t be too hard to wangle her way in to see him.

  She felt a familiar sense of elation as she pulled out of the parking lot, the sense of triumph she had when she had lied successfully. True, Norman Carver and the Putnam brothers weren’t particularly crafty adversaries, but they all seemed to believe she was a fish journalist, something she hadn’t even known existed until quite recently.

  Now she had her ticket to what might prove to be a good case. She headed toward Carla’s to drop off the tape and hoped this would be her last task before setting out on her own line of investigation.

  But it hadn’t been a complete waste of time. While she had dreaded this meeting, and the Putnams, the Tweedledum and Tweedledee of halibut, had proved to be less than inspiring companions, she had learned something of interest. It sounded very possible to her that Norm Carver used that hotel suite to provide female companionship as a sales incentive scheme. Was that what Marcia had been doing there? Entertaining a client? She knew who might know.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  When Jane had dropped off the tape in Carla’s mailbox (she wasn’t up to any more fishy conversation or a visit to that murky, aquatic basement apartment), she went to a phone booth outside a BP gas station and once again called Marcia’s colleague Stacy, the other Highland lass at the Seattle Seafood Show.

  “Hi,” said the familiar Minnie Mouse recorded voice. “I can’t answer the phone right now, but if this is Steve, I’ll be doing a demo at the Thriftway on Queen Anne. Come and see me there if you can. I was sort of thinking you would have called by now. How come you didn’t?”

  Jane sighed and resisted the temptation to say, after the beep, “He didn’t call because he didn’t have anything specific to say, and your basic need for constant telephonic reassurance is something he mistakenly interprets as pointless nagging.” Jane had reached an age where she often felt compelled to counsel younger women to change their expectations in line with male reality.

  Instead she hung up and drove back across the Ballard Bridge to Queen Anne Hill, where she found Thriftway with no problem. While she hoped Steve would show up there at some point, she hoped it wasn’t now.

  She wouldn’t have recognized Stacy, who was now marketing to upscale daytime shoppers instead of fish executives at an out-of-town convention. The wet-lipped makeup job, French can-can hosiery and killer pumps were gone, replaced by a Sunday school teacher flowered print dress and a big white apron. Stacy looked well scrubbed and wholesome and was handing out little morsels of pizza on toothpicks at the end of aisle three.

  Jane had prepared herself with a shopping cart and thrown in a few items. Now she lingered to the side a little, feigning interest in a display of tortilla chips while Stacy squeaked at an older lady: “Yeah, they have a really neat texture, and they don’t get like all mushy and gross like some microwavable pizzas. We’ve got some coupons for them, a whole dollar off for two, if you’d like. They’re in frozen foods.”

  When the customer had drifted off with her coupons, Stacy turned to Jane and gave her a breathless canned pitch. “Care to try our new microwavable pizza?” she said. “Just five minutes from the frozen state to the table, and I think you’ll find they’re as good as the pizzas they deliver.” She wrinkled her nose for emphasis. “And a lot faster.”

  Jane bit into one. “I think I saw you at the seafood show,” she said.

  “That’s right,” said Stacy. “You look sort of familiar. Were you demoing something there?”

  “I was the lounge singer at the Meade Hotel,” said Jane.

  “I remember. Y
ou sang those really romantic old-fashioned songs. How ya doin’?”

  “Pretty good,” said Jane. “Wasn’t it terrible about that other girl?”

  Stacy nodded. “I know. God, it was so weird.” She gave short shrift to a mother and her baby who had stopped in front of her card table. “Try one,” she said absentmindedly, gesturing toward her plate and handing them little napkins before turning eagerly back to Jane. “The thing is, I was dressed just the same. I keep thinking it could have been me, maybe. I mean, if it was some psycho. There were plenty of creepy guys at that show.”

  “Is that what you think happened? Some psycho killed her?”

  “I don’t know. See, I was going to go home afterward, but Marcia wanted us to go out and have a drink. I was sort of mad at my boyfriend, so I thought I’d stay out late just to bug him.”

  “Good thinking. That’s a better idea than trying to force them to call through guilt or something,” said Jane, pleased of the opportunity to pretend Stacy had already grasped this important fact of courtship while in fact planting the idea.

  “So anyway, we go into the party and she goes like, ‘There are some nice guys who want to buy us a drink,’ and I’m like, ‘Okay, why not?’ And then she ends up with this guy who was really drunk, and before I know it she leaves with him. I ended up with some catfish salesman from Mississippi who was a perfect gentleman, thank God, and he took me to dinner with some of his buddies and then put me in a cab to go home, and next thing I hear is she’s been found dead.”

  “Was she a friend of yours?” said Jane, eating a piece of pizza, which was too salty.

  “No. I’d never worked with her before. She was new to the agency. Anyway, I did find out where she lived, because my car broke down that day, and when I called the agency to see if they’d pay for a cab, they set it up for me to go with her. I live on Capitol Hill, near Broadway, and so did she, so I like walked over to her house. She lived in this huge, rich house, I couldn’t believe it.”