Billingsgate Shoal

by Rick Boyer

  "Who's there?" he asked. His voice had an anxious tone, which surprised me.

  "Who is that behind us?"

  No answer. I then heard the click of his flashlight. It was probably as good a chance as I'd get, and I was just about to begin my spin and high kick when he told me to move on. There went my last chance. We stopped in front of the metal fire door. .

  "Knock on it. Hard."

  I did.

  "Who is it?" said a barely audible voice.

  "Hartzos. I found a spy, John."

  "Police?"

  "Don't know. He knocked Micky cold out on the dock, then worked his way in."

  "Where were you, Hartzos?"

  "He must've come in when I was with Micky. I got to get back up quick. Want help with him?"

  "No. Step back." I thought the voice was faintly familiar. ..A The heavy door slid open. It was almost dark beyond; A flashlight shone on our faces.

  "Well?" asked Hartzos.

  Still the man with the light was silent.

  "John, do you want me to stay?"

  "Uh uh," was the grunted reply. I heard the sound of fading footsteps behind me as Hartzos the watchman returned to his post. They certainly had the place sealed off effectively. Two tall fences with barbed wire, a series of deserted buildings, a lower level of an old wharf with solid rock walls, and a swarm of silent `guards that prowled around in the pitch black.

  The man grabbed me by my upper arm hard and I felt a gun in my ribs, He spun me fast around and up against the doorjamb as he flicked off the flashlight. I heard the big door slide shut and John and I were alone. I didn't like the feeling one bit. When I next heard his voice it was right in my ear: "Well, well, Doctor Adams, you certainly dawnt seem to have such bleedin' keen luck mucking about in old buildings, eh?"

  "You!"

  "Shhhhhh! Now you listen good these next few seconds or we're both dead, hear?"

  "I hear. But tell me who you are—"

  "Shhhhh!" He jammed me in the rib cage hard with the gun. The voice commenced again, in a whisper almost delicate for all the menace it conveyed.

  "Who I am's not important. Savin' your neck should be, and your chances aren't good. If they find out we've met before we're both dead. You've never laid eyes on me."

  "Right. Never laid—"

  "C'mon!"

  He marched me through a narrow hall into the room beyond. I will never forget that room. As I entered it I was almost buoyant with hope that I'd run into my friend from the barn again. But one glance around the dismal chamber with the damp rock walls was enough to take the tar out of anybody. The room was perhaps twenty by thirty feet. The ceiling was low. It was full of junk: old cable spools, machinery, and crates and pallets. A doorway in the far wall led to another room or passageway that was dark. What dominated the room was a chute that projected at an angle from above. At the chute's end was a long narrow table of sheet metal with wooden sides to it. It was a dressing table for fish. Along the sides of this table were troughs, no doubt for the fishheads and offal that were discarded. These emptied into another chute directly above a large grating in the floor as big as a door. The steel grate that covered the black hole in the floor had an ominous look. It could have been the doorway to an oubliette. A sound came up through the grating. The sound of sloshing water. This room, originally used to store cable, had been converted into a processing room by the fishery. Now abandoned even in that role, it made a perfect place to hide in.

  The big man sat with his back to me. He was listening to a VHF radio, his head bowed in concentration. A slender, lithe figure emerged from the far dark doorway and stopped and stared at us. John prodded with the gun and I sat down on a stack of pallets.

  "Jim, look," said the figure.

  Schilling turned around and scowled at us. The slim figure disappeared into the dark doorway and reappeared immediately with something long and dark. It approached us silently, and then became fully visible a few feet from us. The delicate hands pointed a Colt Commando assault rifle at me.

  "Ah the charming Doctor Adams. You surprised to find me here?" asked Laura Kincaid.

  "Not really," I answered. "I realized that you were the only person who could have told Schilling about my suspicions. I told nobody else. And I think it was your big friend here who opened the front door while we were talking/out in the garden. I know you don't really have a maid."

  "Yes, it was a clever game you played with me. I realized too late who it probably was on the phone, and that made us even more anxious to get rid of you."

  "Ah, but we didn't," said Schilling as he shuffled up behind Laura Kincaid. "You were lucky. I hit you too lightly up in Gloucester. I knew it before you hit the water. You had turned a bit at just the right instant and the sap slid off the side of your head—"

  "So you waited around to make sure."

  "But it wasn't good enough. You're a wily one, Adams, but stupid. Even our warning of the dog wasn't enough I see."

  I turned to Laura.

  "I guess it's not too difficult to imagine what happened to your husband."

  She looked away impatiently for a second, then faced me, frowning. .

  "I knew you were trouble as soon as you called me. I told Jim to put himself out underneath the car so he could get a good look at you as you left. You were stupid to hunt out Murdock."

  "And he was obviously stupid to help you," I said. I looked at my watch. "There are several things you should know. One: the police and Coast Guard all know I'm here. They also know you're not hanging around the Rose. Even they can spot a decoy as obvious as that—"

  Schilling and Laura exchanged a quick glance. It was fleeting, but enough to tell me they were a little bit afraid.

  "Second, this whole place is going to come alive shortly after four o'clock. That's in less than half an hour."

  Schilling lost control. With a deep, guttural roar he leapt forward and pasted me one on the side of the jaw and sent me sprawling on the smooth concrete floor. It was damp and very cold. Apparently I'd messed up his plans enough so that he was mighty irritated.

  "It won't work, Adams, your making up a cock and bull story to throw us off balance. You're the one who's in trouble now. A few things you should know. First, the security here's air tight. It's a wonder you managed to get in at all but as we can see, you didn't get far. Second, there are four or five ways out of here, including that long tunnel behind us. If need be we'll leave that way and we've got some stuff back there that'll make anyone chasing us wish he'd never been born. We were just getting ready to make our last run; we got skunked earlier tonight but now we're ready and nobody's getting in our way. You're leaving here too, Adams, but by a different exit."

  He spun around and went over to the big grate, which he snatched up from a deep squat, just like an Olympic weightlifter. He staggered three steps with the huge metal screen and dropped it. It clanged down in a flurry of sparks. Schilling walked over to the pit and peered down.

  "Put you right in here with all the old fish guts."

  I felt a deep sickening dread under my ribs. My lower half seemed made of water and my mouth had a fuzzy, electric feeling. I felt on the verge of some kind of seizure. I was very scared. I had to talk, to keep them talking. I needed all the time I could buy. I glanced over at John, who held his Walther muzzle down. In a sense he represented my only hope, and I didn't even have the faintest idea who the hell he was.

  "I wouldn't have. . . wouldn't have become at all interested if it weren't for the boy's death," I said.

  "That was an accident," said the woman. "Jim saw the Navy insignia and panicked. The boy was on the far side of the boat and he took a swipe at him with a fish billy. He just. . . never came back up."

  "Ah. So that settles it. That easy is it?"

  She struck me across the face with the muzzle of the rifle. The flash arrester did a nice job of opening up the left side of my cheek.

  "You shut up. Shut up!"

  "So you know my name. How did
you find out?" asked the big man. He was built like a fullback, and had obviously worked out heavily to increase the beef up around his chest and shoulders, But there was something missing, something weak about the eyes and mouth that turned my stomach.

  "I took your picture in Wellfleet. I'm not the only one who knows you didn't die in Alaska. Assuming you get away tonight, you've still had it, pal. They've got your number."

  "Who? Names!" screamed Laura. "Name some names, quick! "

  I did. I named Ruggles, Brindelli, Hannon, O'Hearn, and two others. I mentioned the army chap who couldn't wait to get his hands on the people who stole the army's rifles.

  It was then I realized I had blundered into something that could make me inadvertently reveal something about John. Out of the corner of my eye I could see him visibly shudder. I saw his heavy shoulders sag a bit, and knew he was almost as distraught as I was.

  Jim Schilling sat on an old crate and rubbed his big jaw.

  "He knows the whole thing, Laura. I want him out. Now."

  "Won't do you any good. All of them know too."

  "Then where the hell are they?" he screamed, and glared at me.

  He had me there. I sure as hell wished I knew.

  "Just tell me," I asked, "who are the guns for?"

  "They're going to Ireland," said Laura.

  "Then you are supplying the IRA—"

  She smiled a smug grin and shook her well-groomed head back and forth.

  "No. They're going to our people in the south, to give the Irish bastards a taste of their own medicine. The arms we send from here will be used to kill the IRA murderers and terrorists. If things get rough—as they will, I'm sure—then they'll be used against the populace of the south. If they can do it to us, we can do it to them."

  She smiled serenely. It looked totally incongruous that this middle-aged, stylish woman should be holding a military rifle. But hold it she did, and with evident familiarity too.

  "I remember now, you're English—"

  "My, my, you certainly have dug around; haven't you, Doctor? Yes, I'm British. But my home was Ulster, not England; My family owned a factory in Belfast, until it was bombed out by the thugs from the south. When my father wouldn't give in to them, they killed him and burnt the factory to the ground. We were ruined. We came here to start all over again. I was so desperate for money I married a man I couldn't stand,—a tinkerer-genius who founded his own company. Living with him was pure hell. For years I looked for a way out."

  She looked in Schilling's direction, then back at me. I looked at both of them quickly, then back at Laura. Then I shot a quick glance at John, who slumped scowling in the far doorway as if unsure what to do.

  "Does he know about how you killed Walter?" I asked.

  They were both silent for a few seconds. Then Schilling came back. I thought he was going to hit me again, but he didn't. Bless his cowardly heart.

  "You may not know this," he said to me, "but changing the Windhover into Penelope was entirely Walter's idea. He made arrangements with Murdock's Boatyard and had the bogus papers drawn up in the name of Wallace Kinchloe—"

  "Yeah, I know. And so do the police. I assume you two got wind of the scheme just at its completion and stepped in to take delivery of the boat from Danny Murdock, right? The fact that the boat owner's wife was one of the parties claiming the vessel no doubt convinced Murdock that Kincaid hadn't been betrayed."

  "You've got it, almost exactly. Laura overheard a snatch of phone conversation between Walter and Murdock one afternoon as she went to his study to ask him about some bills. Before she knocked on his study door she heard his voice on the phone. The four words that stuck in her memory were: Why don't you tell Adams what they were, Laura?"

  "Keep your mouth shut," she replied.

  "So you intercepted your husband's plan to disappear just at the right time. His own game plan insured your success."

  "That's true," said the big man, "but you must keep in mind what a thorough son of a bitch Walter Kincaid really was . . .and what ungodly hell he put us, and all his employees,.through."

  I sensed I had one hole card left. I had to play it exactly right or I'd cash in my chips—involuntarily—and wind up as crab bait at the bottom of that big, dark hole.

  "Laura, I'm going on a long shot here, but I'm assuming that Walter didn't exactly leave you sitting pretty. Did he leave you the house? Is that all?"

  She looked at me for almost ten seconds, the hate in her eyes growing all the time.

  "Not even that. Just the furniture. The company got the house. Can you believe it?"

  "I can believe it, Laura. I can also believe your late husband was a pretty smart operator. Perhaps he sensed your hatred, your infidelity?"

  "Infidelity!"

  She brought the butt of the rifle around sharply into my jaw. Had it been solid wood it would have done real damage. As it was the nylon stock threw my head back and made the right side of my. jaw ache. It wasn't that bad. I knew I was in for much worse.

  "Listen to me now," I said. "I happen to know that your crackpot husband struck it rich, big. He finally found that treasure trove he'd devoted his life to. I intercepted mail to an elite commodities trader that proves it. I know where the treasure is. You don't. I don't know how much you're expecting to make off these hauls, Schilling, but I can promise you it won't even touch what the late Walter Kincaid has laid up in his secret hidey-hole."

  "Oh bullshit," said Schilling.

  "No. He was headed for the Bahamas. You knew that of course, didn't you?"

  "No. How did you find that out?" he asked.

  "Kincaid had a post office box in Boston under the name Wallace Kinchloe—the same name he used for the Penelope's papers. I got access to the box through the police. He had bought a condominium on St. Thomas for three hundred thousand, and had also arranged for the deposit of a large quantity of gold bullion—tax-free—on the island of Grand Cayman. Kincaid was not only going to lose himself, he was going in style."

  "And where's the gold now?"

  I stayed quiet. Schilling looked over at John.

  "Now Adams, see that fellow who escorted you in here? He's a former member of the Provisional Wing of the IRA. He betrayed them, and now has their death sentence on his head. He knows a good deal about interrogation, don't you, John?"

  The stocky man with the blue watery eyes nodded quickly. His expression didn't change.

  "He knows things like how to scrape your shinbone with a knife blade, and how to smash your knees and shoulders with a mechanic's hammer. . .don't you, John?"

  I didn't like the sound of any of this. And I knew that once they had the information they needed I was done for. I looked at my watch again. It was ten to four. Pray to God DeGroot would awaken.

  Laura Kincaid approached me. Her face and eyes showed absolutely no emotion.

  "Where is it?" she asked. Her tone was polite, clipped.

  "No," I said, and that was all.

  Then I felt my entire lower half go red with searing pain. Laura Kincaid drew her canvas-clad foot back again to deliver another full kick to my crotch, but I had crossed my legs. I bit through my tongue in the pain, and half rolled over. I watched the spit and blood run out of my mouth through clenched teeth. I think I was whining or screaming with my mouth shut. The yellow concrete floor rolled back and forth. I felt another kick in the small of my back, and my head sank down onto my arms.

  "Where is it, you shit! Where is it!"

  I felt another kick, and another. . .and another. . . and another.

  Things went dark and swirly for a while, then I heard Schilling's voice right above my ear.

  "I really think she'll kick you to death, you know, if you don't tell us."

  "Get away, you oaf. Let me handle it—"

  "Laura, please—"

  The last thing I remembered before passing out again was that Big Jim Schilling didn't call the shots. Tiny, pert, trim Laura Kincaid had him by the short hairs. I didn't blame Walter K
incaid for trying to lose himself one little bit. When I woke up they had propped me up against the crates. They commenced to get very nasty. What they did to me almost mined what little faith I have in the human race. I can't talk much about it, even now, because it makes me want to get a job in a munitions factory. John shot a grim and determined glance at me now and then, but did nothing more. It was only after I finally admitted that the gold—a fortune in bullion—lay sealed in the Rose's hull that they dragged me over to the edge of the pit. I was kneeling down in front of it. I couldn't see into. the empty blackness, but I heard the sloshing of water, the gurgle of slime and cold wet.

  "Poor Doctor Adams, and such a handsome devil too. Your wife's going to miss you—"

  And it was at that point that the horror and indignity of the situation hit me with full force. Until then I was immersed in fear or pain, or both. But now, I heard the words with an indescribable mixture of hatred and outrage. Outrage at what would happen to Mary and the boys.

  "Hold on. It's not wise, I think, to do this now."

  It was John. He was standing next to me.

  Then he began to move casually toward Laura. He moved in an awkward shuffle, but moved nonetheless. He had replaced the Walther in his coat. He approached Laura Kincaid, who had again picked up the Colt Armalite Commando. She cradled the short-version assault rifle in her arms rather clumsily now, tired from her exertion. Still there would be no arguing with the clip of high-velocity rounds she could send forth at the twitch of her finger.

  "Nobody can hear it. I want him out."

  John was moving toward her. He shambled, but moved with a certain ominous stealth and deliberation that she picked up.

  "Hey, did you search him?" asked Schilling.

  John hesitated half a second, then shook his head. It was the half-second wait that did him in. I think he remembered that I'd had a gun before, and if he answered no and they found one on me, it was all over for him.

  "Forgot. I thought Hartzos searched him."

  Schilling patted me down quickly and recovered the Buck folding hunter knife. It was long but trim; it was no wonder Hartzos hadn't seen a bulge in my hip pocket.