Billingsgate Shoal

by Rick Boyer

  I shrank back against the wall and sidestepped slowly about eight feet to my right, toward the end of the dock. There were two stacks of fish bins there, stuck into one another like cardboard hamburger baskets. They smelled mighty ripe but I was glad; nobody in his right mind would get within six feet of them. l snuggled right in between them, and then slid down to my knees. I peered out down the dock again. Now the flickering movement was close enough to be visible when I looked straight at it. Two of them, and they weren't midgets either.

  They came up the wharf slowly, as quiet as alley cats. They, too, wore dark clothes. I drew out the folding hunter and opened the blade, locking it. It was mighty pathetic, but if they saw me and came at me, I was going to lash out at them with a couple of wide swipes, then run for the end of the dock and dive in. I was getting good at midnight harbor swims.

  I shrank back as the two men approached. As they walked by one grabbed the other by the sleeve and pointed at the small blue cruiser. The other man looked at it awhile, then turned to the other and spoke in a barely audible whisper.

  "Them?"

  The other nodded.

  "We'll go in the back then. I haven't the stomach for it—"

  "The word's come down. McGooey."

  "Come on—"

  They crept on toward the very end of the wharf. I caught the faint whiff—very faint—of liquor. One man spoke with a real brogue, but it didn't sound like the man I'd met in the Buzarski barn. The other man sounded like an American. I peeped out at them as they paused beside the wall. I heard a metallic clack. It was either a doorlatch or the cocking of a pistol. The men were gone. I waited perhaps half a minute to make sure they weren't going to pop out again, then eased up into a standing position. Inching along the wall I kept eyes and ears alert. Nothing. I picked up the pace, heading toward the fence.

  But just before I reached the end of the long wharf building, one of the small doors opened in front of me along the side of the warehouse wall. I slid up against the wall, trying my damndest to shrink right into it. A figure emerged from the doorway and began to walk past me. I knew he would have to see me. There was nowhere to go. He turned just as he passed me.

  "John?" he whispered.

  "Shhhhh!"

  "Listen. . .I jus—hey, you're not John—"

  But by that time I had shoved a hand into his gut just below the center of the rib cage. Not a fist, a hand. A set of fingers straight as I could set them, rather like an ice spade. A fist won't carry the force in far enough to hurt; that's what Liatis Roantis told me anyway. It seemed to work. He bent his knees a bit and bowed down right in front of me. I switched the steel flashlight into my right paw and thunked him on the nape of the neck medium hard. I didn't want to hurt him—whoever he was—any more than was necessary to effect a quick exit. He tumbled down without a sound, let out a slow sigh and rolled just a wee bit, like a kid in a scary dream. He kept moving to and fro, as if aware, even in his semiconscious state, of the discomfort I'd put him in. I reckoned he would not emerge well disposed toward me.

  I started back down toward the foot of the wharf again, fast and quiet. But the good cards just weren't turning up.

  Just before I reached the same small door it opened again. I was so close It swung into the wall right next to the hinges. The door covered me as it opened all the way, and I saw the shadow of a big man emerge and walk right on past me. He went over toward the edge of the pier, dipped his head into cupped hands, and lighted a cigarette. I saw the fiery halo surround his head. He wore a trenchcoat and a tweed hat.

  "John's" friend was in a semi-doze not thirty feet from where he stood. He would thrash and groan, maybe yell, any second. The end of the wharf was another twenty yards. But there was no cover. I knew the man who'd come out for a smoke would discover his fallen comrade long before I could make it. By instinct I'd caught hold of the metal door before it swung all the way shut. It was pivoted on a hydraulic door closer. I twisted the doorknob quickly, forcefully back and forth in a millisecond. No go. As I had supposed, it opened only from within without a key. If I wanted to hide, it was now or never, I really had no choice. I ducked around behind the closing door and followed its swinging path into the blackness of the huge building. After all, I told myself, if the doors opened from the inside, I could always get out again.

  You jerk, an inner voice answered. You said that about twenty minutes ago when you scaled the inner fence. And now look what a sweet pickle you've gotten yourself into.

  I had to admit it wasn't very promising:

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  THE PLACE WAS huge and jet black; I groped forward for twenty or thirty feet. Although I had my flashlight in my hand, I didn't dare use it. Once I felt something hard bump up against my chest. A tall oxygen cylinder. Thank God I hadn't knocked it over; the noise it would've made in that big covered arena as it hit the cement floor would have rung out like a cannon shot.

  I continued to feel my way along. Gradually my eyes got accustomed to the darkness, and I could see the faint giant oblong ring of pale gray up above. The warehouse building had a sectioned roof, and a ring of narrow vertical skylights that circled the whole thing.

  I heard a creak and a whish behind me. I turned and saw a pale upright rectangle of light. The door was open; somebody was coming in. I dropped to a crouch and then a crawl, trying to hold my left hand out to ward off obstacles. In three seconds I had run smack into a big pillar, which I promptly scrambled around. I was none too quick, either, for just then a light shone. It was the man I had seen leave after I walloped the Friend-of-John, who now held up his Zippo as a torch to see and search.

  I stayed hidden behind the concrete piling. The man snapped the lighter shut and was gone. I listened, but could hear nothing; he must have been wearing rubber-soled shoes. Had he seen the fallen man? How could he not? And wasn't that why he'd held up the lighter?

  I hastened toward the door. There was a tiny window in it, probably the kind made of thick glass with chicken wire inside it. Using my sense of direction—which is awful—managed to sneak back toward it. The tiny rectangle of window light got clearer and clearer as I drew up to it. Only a few more feet to freedom; with the man inside I could now safely depart.

  Except that the door was now locked from the inside too. The cards weren't getting any better.

  I sneaked back into the far interior of the big building again. Now what? I crouched behind a pillar—either the same one or a mate to it—and thought. I looked at my watch; it was just after 3 A.M. If I could remain hidden in the building long enough Jim would seek me out. But how long would that be? My note said I should be back an hour from now. Fine. But Jim might sleep through the alarm or shut it off unconsciously. I could have a six- or seven-hour wait. If they knew I was in the building, there was no hope. How to get out?

  Perhaps I should try the back door, the one used by the first two characters I'd seen on the pier. Christ, the pier was more active at night than during the day. They had walked on up to the far end and hadn't come back. Since the door I'd entered was at the land end of the building, the smartest thing to do was to poke along the length of the warehouse and look for any way out. Any way at all. And I must do it quietly, slowly. It was three-fifteen when I heard the noises. The first one was the slow dripping sound of water into a pool.

  Having nothing else to home in on, I headed toward the dropping water. And when I arrived, I first heard the distant voices. I crept closer, and the voices grew louder. They seemed to come from underneath me and I couldn't figure out why. A light beam swept quickly around over my head. I froze, crouched, and felt my pulse rocket up to about The beam played around the place for another few seconds, then flicked off. Watchman.

  I tried to remember in my mind's eye what I had seen in the light's path. No doubt I would have seen, and remembered, more if I hadn't been trying to shrink into the floor. There were stacks of crates and pallets. I saw the brief silhouettes of two lift trucks. Barrels . . . I saw some old b
arrels. Home-made ladders of nailed two-by-fours.

  I remembered something else, too. It was a thing of wire mesh, like a cage, toward the middle of the building, and big. I never saw it in the beam because. . .because. . . why? Because whoever held the beam didn't shine it on the cage for the simple reason that he was standing next to the cage. So then what was the cage thing? I had seen only the indirect illumination of it; there was no way of knowing exactly what it was, or did.

  I was moving all this time, perhaps out of sheer nervousness more than anything. Most of the time I crawled because it kept my balance intact, my center of gravity low, and my profile down. I groused through the old place like an elephant feeding on the veldt at midnight. I kept heading toward the poit! poit! of the drip. Hell, at least it was a direction, a straight line.

  A glow reached up through the floor. Pale, faint yellow: the glow of tungsten light bulbs. I snaked behind a series of cardboard cartons set on pallets. I oozed toward the big square hole in the floor where the faint yellow light was coming from. Then I saw—as faint as faint can be—the big crinkled wire mesh screening. It was the cage I'd been wondering about. An elevator shaft. A big freight elevator. But who'd have guessed that this dockside warehouse had a lower level?

  Probably nobody would guess it. And that's probably exactly why somebody chose the place to sneak around in at night. Then the goddamned flashlight came on again. I was close enough now to see who the sentinel was. It was the Marlboro Man—the guy who'd stepped outside for a smoke and locked me in this place. I wanted to bean him, and take his key. But he shined the light down on the floor and opened a door at the side of the big steel cage. Before it closed I could hear the sound of his feet descending steps. It was a stairway that apparently wound around the elevator shaft. The pier had big granite block sides that rose up a good twelve feet above the harbor water at high tide, maybe a bit more. But the construction of the wharf, the big stone blocks and ancient appearance of the structure, would lead anyone looking at it to assume at once that it was solid clear through. But this wasn't the case. Smack dab in its center was another level, reached by heavy elevator and adjoining stairway. Even if this cellarlike cavity in the dock was twelve feet high, it I would still be above water level.

  But I wanted no part of it. I wanted clear of the whole thing. I wanted to beat it out to a pay phone, chunk a coin into the slot and raise Mary at DeGroot's and tell her to seek out brother Joe and Brian Hannon, the Coast Guard, the militia, and all the rest and surround the place and stop all this bad jazz.

  So I commenced worming my way along the floor again, but a bit faster now that the watchman had descended the stairway, and oozed my way to the back of the building. There had to be an exit back there. Had to. I left the big square hole behind, with its soft yellow glow and wire mesh skin. It was dark as pitch again and I felt better. I don't know why all the horror movies and gothic novels keep the myth alive that darkness is frightening. Nothing's further from the truth. When you're on the run the dark is your best friend. It's a great place to hide from keen-eyed predators. That is why 90 percent of small defenseless mammals have become nocturnal.

  I belly-crawled, crouched, tiptoed, and slunk my way to the far side of the big building until a hundred ineffable messages—probably long-dormant auditory and kinesthetic cave man signals—told me that the wall was not far ahead. I have thought since that it must have been echoes that warned me. For all its silence, a big warehouse must have a noise level of some sort, perhaps ten thousand minuscule waftings, drippings, flutterings, hissings, and the like that swarm about the big place, like a school of fry in a tank. They must then echo off walls, and present a different noise pattern to a person approaching the building's terminus. Or something. Hell, I don't know why, I just knew it.

  Then I smelled it: the very faint whiff of alcohol. It was as subtle and sweet as baking bread, that ethereal odor of hospitality, of food and friendship.

  I turned around quick and headed the other way.

  I was beginning to feel like one of those trick cars you wind up that never goes off the table. Every time it senses the edge, it does a 180-degree turn.

  I couldn't get out of the goddamn warehouse.

  And then a strange sensation overtook me. Maybe it was the lack of sleep or my nervous state in general. I imagined that the elevator shaft in the center of the building was the vortex of a whirlpool. Try as I might, the inward spiral was swooshing me along into its square yellow maw. It had perhaps licked out at me as I brooded aboard the Whimsea, as fine and subtle as the mycelium of wood-pulp fungus, hair-thin and stretching many yards, invisible. Once in the factory compound it had licked out again, like a rainbow of promise or the dry creek bed, the arroyo followed by the thirsty prospector. Once inside the building it was stronger and stronger, until now it resembled the lead tentacle of a giant squid, wrapped around my torso and drawing me in toward the gnashing beak amidst the folds of slimy muscle.

  I had decided, upon smelling the faint booze breath, not to meet Mutt and Jeff, the guys I first saw on the pier who spoke briefly in my hidden presence., They didn't sound that friendly to begin with, and the metallic clack I'd heard as they rounded the far comer of the pier didn't add to their collective image. The best thing for me to do was to snake all the way back again to the other end of the building. I would find a hidey-hole there, deep behind or underneath some crates or skids or barrels, and wait. Wait till some bodyguard opened the door again, allowing me to dash by him and out. Wait till dawn, and Jim called the fuzz. Wait till hell froze over, but not to—

  A giant spider jumped on my face. It clung across the front of my skull with menacing ferocity. It squeezed its inky legs down tight.

  A hand.

  Then two quick belly chops and a kidney punch and I was down and doing a slow roll. But before I could yell the least little thing the spider came back, jumped upon me again, and found my mouth. It snuggled down and made a nest there, tight. I couldn't speak. I couldn't even breathe.

  There were two of them. I saw a light flicker between cupped hands. Flashlight again. Strong arms had pinned mine behind me. They helped me to my feet. I wasn't eager. Who was it? Probably the watchman by the cage. I had made a small sound and been ferreted out. I didn't think it was Mutt and Jeff. I smelled no booze, and also they were, as far as my crude and damaged reckoning could place them, still at the far terminus of the big brick barn.

  A whisper said: "Walk forward slowly until I tell you to stop. Keep your hands up above your head where I can see them at all times. If you drop them or try to turn I'll kill you before you know what's happened. Nod your head to show you understand?

  I did. I felt the cold pressure of a gun muzzle in my spine.

  "Now walk forward slowly where I point the light."

  He pointed it at the doorway to the stairs, and I started walking. The pressure left my back but I didn't try anything. The episode in the barn had taught me how foolish that course of action was. The man—and it wasn't the same one who'd gotten the drop on me earlier—certainly held the pistol aimed square at me.

  "Open it and start down."

  I swung the door back and entered. On the fourth or fifth step down the door snapped shut behind us. Then it grew light. I could see the winding staircase I was descending. Lights were on. Apparently it was a strict policy to show no lights on the warehouse's ground floor.

  We kept walking around and around, down and down. Who was down there? What monstrous hairy arthropod clutched at the middle of the great web, waiting for me? Was it Sydney Greenstreet, complete with cigar and fez? Emperor Ming? The Rockettes?

  I had a feeling it was none of the above.

  "Keep going," the voice said.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  WE WALKED UNDER the reflector lights of the lower level. Here the huge concrete pillars were much heavier and more numerous, about twelve feet apart and arranged-in grids to hold up the entire center portion of the warehouse above. There was only one row
of lights on; the pillars and old spools and drums that cluttered the place disappeared gradually into the darkness on each side of us. The place was big. Not as big as the vast amphitheater above, but big nevertheless. Ahead of us was a metal-clad door hung with counterweights on pulleys. I sure didn't like the look of it.

  "Stop," he whispered.

  We waited. I expected to feel a tap on the back of my neck, then a blinding white flash. Then nothing, because I would be dead.

  But nothing happened.