Billingsgate Shoal

by Rick Boyer

  "Dunno. I don't know of the arrangements he would have made in the event of his death. Surely he made some. . ."

  "And you say the corporation is privately owned, or by a limited number of shareholders?"

  "Right. I don't know how many but I can check. Anyway, rumor has it that when the board meets next they're going to file for bankruptcy unless some giant conglomerate will bail them out and take Wheel-Lock under it wings. But it's a little company. Only loose change, you understand? The only reason a bunch of us were talking about it is because of the story of Kincaid's death."

  "Tom, if Kincaid saw his company was going under, would feigning his death make sense?"

  "Not usually, unless he had some hidden angle. The best thing to check would be corporate cash flow. Was any large sum drawn from company funds—for any stated purpose within the last few months or so that looks suspicious? If so, your theory could hold some water. I think though that—hey! wait. . .oh shit, I thought—hey, there it is again!"

  He flipped his rod backward over his head hard, reeled in fast and furiously as he lowered the tip again, then yanked back again, setting the hook. I saw his rod tip tremble. DeGroot looked back and cut speed a tiny bit. When the fish headed in, he'd turn the boat slightly to follow it. But there wasn't much to do really but wait and watch Tom work the fish. The blue made three runs before Tom had it up alongside, and we gaffed it. Eleven pounds. A keeper, but nothing spectacular.

  But ten minutes later Jim tied into one from the bridge, and I went up to man the wheel while he cranked it in. Nine pounds. We searched some more, and came up with nothing. Moving over to Halibut Point, Jim and I hooked two at once and Tom had to mind the helm. Then Tom came down and he and I tied into two more. They were running a little bigger, between twelve and fourteen pounds. As we hauled them in over the side they flip-flopped and slid all over the cockpit, trailing slime and thin bright streaks of blood. The blood is hell to clean up, and Jim, a true Dutchman, is fastidious. I grabbed the nearest blue and whapped him smartly on the top of the head with the billy. Nothing. He continued to flip and work his mean jaws at me. Whap! Nothing. Whap!

  "Jesus Christ!"

  "Hard-headed little devils aren't they?"

  I whapped him twice more hard and he went limp. I plopped him in the well and went after the others. The bluefish is shaped like a torpedo, black and silver with shades of blue. They say the blue can see well out of water, and go for you. I believe it. Their heads are pointy, with a lot of mouth that's long, but not wide like a bass's mouth. You see a lot of teeth. Their heads are solid bone and thick carapace. A few minutes later we had all the stunned monsters in the commenced flipping around again. I killed them the same way I killed the lobsters, a quick thrust of knifeblade downward behind the head.

  "You say look for suspicious cash flow in Wheel-Lock?" I asked Tom, returning to our earlier conversation. "I can't do that. . .but could you?"

  "Not unless there was a special reason, like an investigation, or they wanted to let me. Wheel-Lock is a privately owned corporation. That stuff is private, and since they have no stockholders to account to, they can keep the information to themselves. The only people who can know it all—in a case like this—is the IRS."

  "Have you ever heard of a firm called A. J. Liebnitz?"

  Costello turned and looked at me, giving a low whistle. He thumbed the line through his fingers and thumb, feeling it play out.

  "Uh huh. Was Kincaid involved with A. J. Liebnitz?"

  "Don't know. Let's just say it's a guy who hasn't answered his mail in quite a while. Where's the company located and what does it do?"

  "Adolph Jacob Liebnitz and Associates is located on Grand Cayman Island in the Caribbean. I think it's just south of Jamaica. Tax haven."

  "I've seen the ads. It's a place where the very rich go to bury their funds."

  "Yeah, and pay nothing. They can just sit around down there and sip zombies and pina coladas and collect interest. A. J. Liebnitz is a commodities broker. Precious commodities. I think he owns half the gold and silver in the free world."

  "That's fairly interesting."

  "Old A. J. is quite a guy. There was an article about him not long ago in one of the financial rags. Jewish refugee from the Nazis. Both parents wiped out. Brothers and sisters wiped out. Arrived is Lisbon without a cent. Now he's worth—who the hell knows?"

  "And his firm deals mostly in precious metals?"

  "I think now he's branching out more and more into gems and art treasures. If it's precious—sought after—A. J. has a hand in it. But he made his name in gold and silver, yes. His name crops up wherever they're traded: Geneva, Zürich, Brussels, Antwerp, London, New York, Paris. If the subject's gold, the name Liebnitz will surface before long. He knows all the big deals: who's buying and who's selling and where and when. At all the big deals and auctions one of his representatives is there. They've got branch offices in all the big money centers."

  "I'm wondering if I could write the head office for information about this guy. . ."

  "Forget it. Liebnitz is as tight as a Swiss bank. Confidentiality of all clients' holdings is absolute."

  He turned the reel handle, watching the line making thin swirl marks in the ocean, and squinted in concentration. "Ab-so-lute," he repeated with finality.

  Disappointed, I gazed at the sea haze. Was there any way to pierce the shield of anonymity that surrounded Wallace Kinchloe?

  "What if I were from a law enforcement agency?"

  "No dice. Interpol, the FBI, and all the secret service organizations have been after Liebnitz and the Swiss banks for decades. They're tighter than clams. I'll tell you one thing though, whoever the guy is you have in mind, he's loaded: Liebnitz likes to brag privately that he only handles millionaires. His outfit is definitely not the minor leagues. Even to do business with him, you've got to be a heavyweight."

  "What kind of minimum deal are you talking about?"

  "I honestly don't know, Doc. But I know Liebnitz and clan pick and choose carefully. They have a minimum staff and want minimum overhead and bookkeeping. If you're not promising, they don't take you on."

  The line jerked and ran. I hauled and cranked. I was rewarded with what I was searching for: a ten-pound striped bass.

  "You're dribbling at the mouth. You OK?"

  I told him I was just salivating. A normal reaction to catching a big, plump sniper. I was rewarded twice more, with nice bass.

  It was a perfect day. The sun sank low in the west, silhouetting the twin lighthouses of Gloucester. The tide was swelled to it fullest and Whimsea rolled and yawed lazily in the broad troughs. The exhaust noise wafted up to my ears in a faint and peaceful burble. To the east the sky was dark bluish purple—to the west, brilliant red-gold. We broke out the steaming chowder as Jim swung around for the trip back. We eased back, taking our time. We passed the twin breakwaters of Rockport, which are man-made piles of granite a mile offshore. They lay dim, huge, ghostlike in the gathering dark, like mined hulks.

  I sat on the bridge, downing chowder and beer and watching for lights and buoys as we entered the channel. My watch said quarter to nine.

  "My cast stinks."

  "What?"

  "My cast and bandage. They're al1 full of fish slime. One of the biggest pains in the ass about this damn thing is I can't wash it. Hey, isn't Thursday night a good night for bar drinking? When I was in college we always used to go drinking Thursday nights."

  Jim replied that to his knowledge the bars were usually pretty packed Thursdays , especially during the summer months.

  "Instead of heading back with you guys I think I'll hoist a few in,Gloucester tonight."

  He looked at me in disbelief.

  "I thought you hated bars."

  "I do. But there's one here I want to pay a visit to. I'm told a certain boatbuilder hangs out there and I'd like to meet him."

  "Well, you should stay out of all of 'em. They're for commercial fishermen and all pretty rough, so I'm to
ld. They're not for the likes of us, Doc."

  "I was going to buy you guys dinner there. I just want to see a guy—"

  "I'm not interested, Doc. Don't know about Tom. I'm going home. Listen: I want you to give me your fish too, in case you don't come back."

  I thought this was in“poor taste, and so informed him. Tom declined also. We reached the harbor and made Whimsea fast and shipshape and parted_company on the dock. I told Jim to please call Mary and have her proceed with dinner without me. I knew this wouldn't make me popular, but I had to speak with Danny Murdock. And according to his wife, the Schooner Race was his second home.

  CHAPTER NINE

  I CLIMBED ABOARD the Scout, which I had relearned how to drive with my cast, dumped the thermos bottles in the back along with my fishing gear, and nudged my way out of the crowded marina parking lot. I headed into the center of New England's most famous fishing city, home of the indomitable fisherman, clad in his sou'wester, who stands watch over the harbor. He is cast in bronze, his hands on the ship's wheel, his eyes level and steadfast. He is probably looking directly into the teeth of a sixty-foot wave that is only seconds away from swallowing up his ship. On the statue's base are the words "Those That Go Down to the Sea in Ships." It is a memorial to all Gloucester fishermen lost at sea. It still happens, and every year the people still come to the harborside and throw wreaths into the water as the list of the dead is read. And then they sing beautiful hymns while the tide carries the wreaths out to sea.

  The Schooner Race and the other maritime bars are located on Main Street across from Gloucester's inner harbor. This small body of water is always jammed full with trawlers and freighters. The big boats are stuck together like cars in a crowded lot. I pulled the car up across the street from the bar right over the water just behind some collapsed piers. It was dark as I got out. I smelled fish stink. It was lobster bait. Lobstermen take fish offal, let it ripen in old tubs until you can smell it a mile away, then put it in little plastic baggies. They tie these baggies inside the trap. Just before they dump the traps overboard they punch little holes all over the baggie to let out the stink and fish slime. That brings in the lobsters, which are bottom dwelling scavengers. Anyway, you show me a lobster port and I'll show you odors that will stay in your memory a long, long time. I glanced at the dirty harbor water that oozed eight feet below me. Thank God at least for the huge tides of the Northeast; they douched the filthy place twice a day. The rotting fish guts were getting to me; I couldn't wait to get inside.

  I walked across the sandy parking lot that led up to the concrete walkway where I'd parked. I heard shouting down the street, and the rumble and blast of a big Harley chopper as it tore off and away. There was a knot of men standing around the entranceway of a small bar down there. It was the infamous House of Mitch. Compared to it the Schooner Race was your regular family pub.

  I thought again of the bronze statue of the fisherman, and the men who still risked their lives in the small boats out in the North Atlantic. Some boats went out for one or two weeks at a time. The men got four or five hours' sleep a day. They lived on coffee, cigarettes, beer, and candy bars. When they got back, either flushed with success or bitter with failure, they got bombed. Sometimes a man could make five or six grand in one trip as his share of the take, after the skipper's expenses. But sometimes two weeks of hell resulted in nothing. And sometimes the boat didn't come back at all. I'd heard stories of boats going out in the winter and getting so loaded up with ice that they simply turned upside down and slid under. And there's not a damn thing you can do about the icing; you just can't chip it off fast enough.

  I heard a juke inside as I approached the door. I entered. It was a pine-paneled place without windows. A big S-shaped bar snaked along the far side. Tables and booths lined the other walls.

  I ordered a beer and sat in the corner. The place wasn't crowded although it was past nine. I looked around. Hell, the Race wasn't so bad. In fact it was downright charming. The large mural photographs were stunning. They were pinup pictures of Gloucester's best-loved women. Then there were the rivals from the Maritimes too.

  There was the Gertrude L. Thebaud, the queen of them all. She was close-hauled on a port tack, and well heeled over, her lee rail awash. The Adventure on a broad reach. . .and in the far distance the triangular shape of the second-place boat. Right over my head was a shot of the Bluenose, a boat from Nova Scotia notorious for dashing the hopes of the New England challengers. They lined the walls, these pictures of the Grand Banks schooners, the most graceful medium-sized sailing vessels ever built. They were built sleek because the first boats back to port could demand the highest prices for their catch.

  I sipped and watched patrons dribble in. They looked young, which was Father Time's insidious way of tapping me lightly on the shoulder. I stared pensively down at the tiny stream of bubbles rising in my glass.

  The jukebox was getting louder too. A song was playing that went: "You are all that I am. . .(bum ta bum bum bum) You know ya make me feel like a bran' nehew man. . ."

  It was a C&W number, by a guy named Clyde McFritter, or something similar.

  The place was filling up faster and faster now; the boats were coming in. The girl behind the bar was kept solidly busy at the spigot, drawing mugs and pitchers of Schlitz dark. It seemed to me that most of the men were between twenty-five and thirty-five, and their clothes and general appearance were remarkably similar.

  To begin with, most of them had beards or moustaches. They all wore jeans, topped with hooded sweatshirts, flannel plaids, or knit sweaters. Rubber boots. It might seem to most people that they were overdressed for late summer. But many of them had been over fifty miles out at sea—some perhaps as far as Georges Bank. And it's always chilly there.

  They also wore either the knitted blue wool watch caps or the truckers' hats with long bills in front to protect them from the glare. The glare on the ocean is terrible, even on cloudy days. It can wear you out. The front of these caps bore the logos of manufacturers of things very macho. Beer companies. Companies that made trucks and diesel engines, firearms and knives. It couldn't help wondering what would happen if you went into the Schooner Race wearing a hat that said Singer, or Hoover, or—God forbid—Mop 'n Glo?

  Another standard item of the uniform was the folding hunter knife carried in its compact belt sheath. When unfolded with the blade locked open these are every bit as big as the regular sheath knives. All the lads in the SR were wearing them.

  Bits of conversations floated past. Most concerned themselves with fishing. The names of the fish weren't attractive ones like trout or salmon. Instead they had ugly names like hake and cusk. I ask you, how'd you like to dive into a plate of cusk? And if you've ever seen a cusk, you'd know why they named it that. . .

  It was past ten. I had better commence asking if I wanted any results concerning the whereabouts of Dan Murdock, erstwhile boatbuilder. Two fishermen came over to ask if they could borrow a chair that was sitting vacant next to me at the small table. I said sure and asked the nearest one—who was wearing a bill cap with the words Cummins Marine above the visor—if he knew where I could perchance find a boatbuilder named Daniel Murdock.

  The young man, whose name was Ted, lifted his head toward the ceiling and chuckled. They were sitting on the chairs backward, leaning their forearms over the seat backs, and sipping their shots and beers.

  "Murdock? Murdock? Sure he could build ya boat, if he ain't too bombed or strung out. What ya want him for?"

  "I need some extensive repair work done on a boat I'm thinking of buying. I've heard Murdock is good and—well—pretty cheap too."

  The men sat and swigged in silence for a few minutes as if they hadn't heard me.

  "Murdock. . .Dan Murdock. . ." the other man repeated. He said the name philosophically, as if it were a special precept, syllogism, or school of metaphysical thought.

  "Yes? Dan Murdock what?"

  "Danny Murdock's a drunk, mister, that's what. I guess he
was a pretty good builder but now he's a drunk. Spends a lotta time in here. Surprised we ain't seen him. Spends alotta time drinking in here and hidin' from his old lady."

  "Do you know where I can find him? If he comes in, can you guys point him out? I'll buy you a round."

  "No need to, mister. He's right behind you, and fried to the gills."

  "Heah ah is . . ." said a warbly voice in imitation of a black minstrel singer. He came shuffling over to us, sideways like a crab in a tide pool, working his feet like Buddy Ebsen. It was a poor imitation, mainly because he, was gassed. He did a bad Cab Calloway. He did a frightful Bill "Bojangles" Robinson. He tripped and slid to his knees. I noticed he was wearing one work boot. Its mate had disappeared to God knows where.

  He rose and fumbled with a pack of Camels. At least his taste in cigarettes was good. It had been twelve years since I smoked a cigarette. I still had dreams about Camels.

  Murdock lighted the cigarette that jiggled in his mouth. But he put the flame halfway underneath it, not on the tip. It made for an interesting smoke. His missing work boot reappeared. The mystery of its absence was instantly resolved as it arrived, airbome, from the other end of the room. It thumped is again this heavy mackinaw and dropped to the floor.

  "Thanks!" yelled Dan Murdock as he picked up the boot and hopped around pulling it on. "Been looking for it. . ."

  "Mr. Murdock? Am I addressing Mr. Daniel Murdock?"

  "Hmmmm?"

  "This guy wants some work done on his boat, right?"

  The man speaking was Ted, who was jabbing a finger at Murdock, motioning for him to he seated. Murdock leaned over and swayed himself along to the nearest chair, grunting and exhaling smoke, and accusing the cigarette—which was I not functioning the least bit properly—of having sexual intercourse with his mother. Or its mother. Or any mother. For a rolled piece of paper containing dried vegetable matter burning in the middle, it had an amazing sex life. Sitting down now and puffing and blowing, he finished pulling on his boot and fumbled with the laces.