Billingsgate Shoal

by Rick Boyer

  I grabbed the ladder top. It thrummed and trembled. The fish was on the line.

  I had company.

  There was no choice now. I had to either find another way down or risk the pipe and the electric wires. I swung my head over the side two feet to the left of the ladderway, then moved it slowly to the side of the cage, with only my eyes peeping over the edge. I could see a vague glimmering down there. Far, far away. I grabbed the ladder top again. The vibration didn't feel any stronger. Then l noticed a pattern to the vibrations, a regular heartbeat of motion through the vertical steel. It was fairly slow. Schilling was indeed wounded—otherwise a man with his strength and vigor could dash up the rungs as fast as or faster than I had done.

  I scurried back to the roof edge where the big pipe dove over the side and straight out to the next building. I swung cautiously over the tile, grabbing the inside edge of the big slick slabs with the tenacity of Beowulf, and poked my feet down. I felt them touch the pipe. I then stood on it, and was almost ready to release my grip, when I felt the sickening loss of resistance from below as the pipe sagged. I clung, and drew my feet up in a fetal position, then hunch-crawled back over the tile like a wounded spider all balled up.

  The clock was ticking. I could now hear the faint fring fring fring of scraping feet on the metal ladder. He had that Ingram slung over his shoulder, his flashlight ready too. I remembered—in a tenth of a second at the longest—scoffing at a fish trap in northern Minnesota when I was a kid. I couldn't believe all that seething protein behind the wooden slats in the river could be so dumb. Now I knew exactly how those poor fish felt. Like me, they'd made a mistake. They'd made a wrong tum. That's all it took. I turned fast to go to the far side of the roof. I would cry one last quick search for a way down before lying in wait at the ladder's top, ready to lunge at the murderer with my hands and teeth.

  I bumped into the metal pipe again, and heard it groan. I wiggled it. It gave some. Then I ran along its length for perhaps sixty feet before I found what I wanted: a completely crumpled section of the old steam pipe. Three sections of pipe lay scattered on the gravel roof. I grabbed the nearest one and heaved it up. It was black iron, three feet long, and very heavy. One end of the six-inch pipe had a flange, with holes around it for bolts. I dug the fingers of my right hand into this handle and tugged it back to the ladder. The light was again playing along its upper terminus. Then it went off. I hefted the pipe in both hands. I could scarcely lift it. I rested the smooth end of it on the shiny hard tile. As it rolled a bit it made a heavy grating sound, like sand in a mortar and pestle. I reached over and grabbed the ladder sides. There was a heavy vibration, and speeded up too. I chanced it; I looked over. I could see Schilling scurrying up the ladder to kill me. He wasn't looking up. I moved my head way over to the edge of the steel cage—the left side—so I could peer at him with my right eye. He glanced up once. I saw the white face outlined by the dark beard. The wispy-thread line of the puka shell necklace against the tanned neck.

  I hated him.

  He didn't see me apparently, even in the soft light of full dawn. His head lowered again as he resumed climbing. I saw now the dark line along his back, wide, cylindrical, like a black man's arm with the hand cut off. The Ingram. I hooked my fingers around the flange of the pipe and slid, it over off the tile. The weight of it pulled down hard on my arms and drew my chest down tight on the tile so it ached. My left wrist burned. I walked forward two steps on my knees—felt my kneecaps digging into the loose stones that covered the asphalt roof. Schilling was about three stories below me. All the lines of the metal ladder cage seemed to converge upon him, the small winking figure in the center of the vertical tunnel.

  I peered through the section of iron pipe. It had a wide bore, like a stovepipe. Through it I could see very clearly. I moved the pipe to and fro, from side to side, by shifting my weary body and shoulders. Soon I looked straight down the bore—as if down a telescopic sight—and could see nothing but the climbing figure far below.

  I couldn't do it. Much as I hated him, I could not get myself to drop the pipe on him.

  Considering the great weight of the pipe, the sharp, spadelike edge of the male end of it, and most especially the long distance it would travel, at thirty-two feet per second squared, it was deadly as a bazooka shell. It would slice him in half, pulverize him.

  But I couldn't.

  It's pretty hard to go to school for over twelve years learning to make bodies whole again after illness and trauma, and then decide to dissect one instantly by way of gravity. But the dark side of me—of Homo sapiens—was working too. I wanted him dead, and I knew it. Admitted it. Mostly because it was fairly obvious by now that he wanted me dead. And he would do it. He'd more than proven that. I had to wait. I needed a sign. . .a signal. . .

  Then he looked up. I peeped at him through the lowered pipe. He was too far away, the light too faint, to read his expression. But I thought I saw in the growing light, his eyes widen. He stopped climbing, and his slow, startled stare gazed up in wonder, and the beginnings of fear. Was it the I fear that Allan Hart had felt? That Walter Kincaid and Danny Murdock felt?

  He was halfway up the ladder. The network of steel rods surrounding him was a little over two feet wide; There just i wasn't any place the poor bastard could go. I saw a broad swirl of light-flicker, a Fourth of July whirligig of dancing light beam and flash, and then a distant dry clatter. He'd turned on the flashlight and dropped it. My fingers and wrists ached now with the holding of the big steam pipe. I saw a great flurry of motion below—saw Schilling's big form sway back and forth, one arm moving quickly, then the other. Then I got my sign. l received the signal, loud and clear. I heard the cocking of the Ingram's bolt, and knew he was about to send a fatal burst of slugs up to take my head apart.

  I had drawn up my arms six inches as I saw him squirm around, my fingers still curled around the one-inch flange of iron. . .When I heard him jerk back the bolt, I let my arms drop in perfect unison, letting my tired hands flow outward with the descent of the heavy pipe. Because I knew I had to release it smoothly, on a very straight path, or it might hang itself up and bind. in the cage. It fell straight as an arrow, a finned bomb, a mortar shell down its own tube. The last vision I had of it was curious: I could still peer down its ever-diminishing bore. And even more curiously, in the milli-second before I drew my head back from fear of its being blown off, I noticed that in that pipe bore, Jim Schilling's head and shoulders loomed larger and larger—geometrically—awfully fast.

  I had drawn my head back and down, like a mortarman, and waited for the bullets to sing up toward me. They spanged off the steel cage and rocketed drunkenly off the old brick wall.

  But they didn't catch me.

  Jim Schilling screamed. It was fitting that he should see his own death coming, and scream in terror.

  He shouted, "NO!"

  Only the scream was cut off in the middle. A dull clacking sound interrupted it, like a melon being opened with a swipe from a machete—the blunt edge down. It was the sound of his skull being cut in half.

  Then silence.

  I looked over the edge after half a minute of catching my breath. I saw a big black shiny thing askew in the ladder cage, tilted at a crazy angle, wedged into the iron bars. And then I made out a pair of twisted. legs and knees intertwined in the ladder rungs, They were doubled up, almost pointing up at me. Schilling was underneath the pipe; he hadn't fallen down the cage to the ground. That meant I had to go down there and kick him loose in order to get past him to the ground.

  I didn't relish it.

  Yet the alternatives were clear: either attempt the crossing on the wilted pipe (something I wasn't even remotely considering) or else climb down the six stories on the outside of the cage. Again: no way. So like it or not, to return to earth I had to haul myself back down that barred steel tunnel, and somehow dislodge the corpse I had just created.

  The corpse I had just created.

  I had never killed a human b
eing before in my life. No matter how vile, how evil and cruel Schilling had been, the thought struck home.

  I climbed back down. It was scary. It was now light. enough to make me realize how danm high the ladder was. But I kept my eyes stoically glued to the brick wall in front of me, watching the rows slide smoothly upward a foot in front of my face.

  Then I felt the pipe with my foot. I looked down, and wished I hadn't. I wished instead I'd simply waited up on top of the roof for a reasonable period (like three years) until somebody came and took me off. Jim Schilling, that big and brawny bully, was doubled over, compressed against both sides of the cage by the force of the death blow. His knees pointed up, bottoms of feet resting on the ladder rungs and against the wall behind them. His body was bent, as if in Moslem prayer, except he was facing straight up, toward the Pole Star, rather than toward Mecca. His back was pressed tight against the far end of the cage. His head was facing the pipe that had terminated his nasty life. But his face, and the entire front portion of his head, was curious by its absence. The pipe's lip had caught him as he jerked back, plowing down through the skull at midpoint, removing the front half, face, and mandible. What stared at the jammed pipe was a superbly cross-sectioned head, revealing much of the brain stem, soft palate, throat cavity, and larynx.

  I placed my instep underneath the pipe and drew it up with all my remaining strength, which wasn't much. I worked the free end of the pipe around until I could once again grab the flange. Then I lifted it up and dropped it to the side of Schilling's body; It rattled around in the cage a bit on the way down, then thunked sideways into the asphalt of the courtyard.

  There remained Schilling. Even in death, he would be a pain. It shall spare the gruesome and clinical anatomical details of removing him from his death perch. My feet, and 175 pounds, finally dislodged his corpse from its weird Yoga stance by thumping down on the blood-soaked shoulders until he straightened out enough to slide down the tunnel cage and thump onto the ground with a sound like a sack of wet laundry. I then reached the ground, took a quick look around, and promptly toted myself over to a dark corner of the courtyard where I proceeded to throw up.

  Copiously and repeatedly.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  AS SOON AS I could stagger upright, I lurched around the corner and stumbled toward O'Shaughnessey. I wanted to pay him my respects, especially since I was the indirect cause of his death. Every part of my body hurt. But the fun and games still weren't over.

  I stumbled along until my foot thumped an oil drum. Up ahead of me I heard the metallic clacking of a big hammer being pulled back. God Almighty I was sick of that sound. I fell forward as the big pistol boomed. There was a long, drawn-out whine. The slug had ricocheted off a wall and was now heading over to Duxbury.

  "For Christ's sake!" I shouted.

  "My Jesus, is it you?" `

  "I thought you'd been killed—"

  "Hmmmph. Not bloody likely. I was certain you'd been killed. I thought you were Marlowe."

  "No. I killed him with a bomb. How are you?"

  "Fine," said the Irishman: Then he slid over into a heap on the ground, the revolver clattering after him.

  I raised his legs, putting them up on a concrete ledge, then covered him with my sweater. He needed help, and fast. Then I heard the breee-om breee-ow of the first police wagon. I saw I them stop at the outer gate just long enough for one of them to cut through the chain with a pair of giant cable cutters. In two seconds they'd skidded to a stop in front of me, their rack of blue and white lights swirling and winking. I saw a big pair of shiny black boots approaching me as I bent over the fallen man. They, grated and crunched on the gravel that covered the asphalt. The trooper stared down at me, bewildered. He reached down and picked up the big gun that was lying seven feet from me. His partner, gun drawn, was moving in a fast crouch around to my side.

  "Get an ambulance here fast," I said. "Do you have an oxygen bottle? If so, get it over here on the double."

  They did.

  I pointed to the remains of Thug Number Two, the kid who had been so deadly accurate with the pistol, that lay almost invisible in the dark shadows of the wall.

  "There's another dead man up in the far courtyard. Seems he went and lost his head. There are at least two more dead people in the big building on the pier. One of them you won't find because she took a dip. Be careful of that building; there may be some nasty people still inside it, though I doubt it highly."

  "What happened? Tell us everything," said the older officer. But I didn't have time because just then two more cruisers came in, followed by the ambulance. I helped place O'Shaughnessey on the litter. We got a plasma bottle over him right away., He kept puffing away at the oxygen mask. Still, when I put the cuff on him, his blood pressure wasn't even registering on the gauge. Poor O'Shaughnessey had kept himself going the past hour on adrenaline and Celtic pluck. He certainly had no blood left.

  I was hunched over him in the ambulance as we headed for the hospital. As the big van wheeled and started its siren, I looked out the back and could see the police cutting through the inner fence, then barreling through the gate in their cruisers. The blue lights were winking, sweeping along the old dirty buildings.

  In the emergency room they typed him as A Positive; I rolled up my sleeve and they pumped a pint of mine into him. Then he got two more bags, and they had a third ready. As soon as he was stabilized he would undergo surgery to close that blood vessel. Then they would set the leg. It would require a steel pin, they told me, because the X-rays had shown a big hunk of femur gone. But I'd guessed as much earlier; that big .45 slug had walked away with it, and taken the vein too.

  An internal specialist looked over my Sport Section and pronounced it reasonably intact, though I still fairly rang with pain down there. My ribs were taped (two were cracked) and they placed a special walking cast on my left heel for the time being. It would be several months—at least—before I could run again. I didn't like that. During all this time the Law had been waiting patiently, unobtrusively, in the background. I had almost forgotten the polite young officer until O'Shaughnessey dozed off and the nurse came in to give him a bath prior to surgery. Then he oozed up into the foreground and requested I accompany him back to Cordage Park, the last place on earth I wanted to go.

  We swerved into the complex and I wobbled out of the cruiser. The night's adventures, coupled with the missing pint of blood—now hopefully speeding the Irishman's recovery had done me in. The police had finished photographing Thug Number Two, and now drew a coverlet over him. Poor kid.

  "Any idea who he was, Doctor?"

  "No. He was an American though. He talked like an American, not from across the water—"

  "Thank you. Now if you could just come with us back here. . ."

  Oh no. I had to go and view Schilling's remains again. They had the body covered for obvious reasons. Even the hardened law officers couldn't stand the sight of the Headless Horseman. But three of them were staring into the pipe, transfixed. I bent over. The first thing that caught my eye was a gleam of gold amidst the clots of red tissue. The gold was set on yellow-white. It was one of Schilling's molars, riding on the jawbone that was packed tight into the pipe with the rest of his head. And then I saw a bright white dot amongst the gristle and gore: Schilling's hearing aid. `

  It was as if the head had been canned. I found the notion outrageously funny. And then I imagined shopping at the supermarket, throwing things into the cart: can of beans, cling peaches, asparagus, human head, corned beef hash—

  A demonic, aching giggle was trying to surface. I knew if I started laughing perhaps I wouldn't stop for days and days.

  Watch it! Watch it, Doc. . . y0u're letting this thing get to you . . . you're taking it way too seriously—

  I grabbed at my sides and sat down. Faces peered into mine, asking me questions. I told them to leave me alone. They persisted. Then I heard a faint but familiar voice:

  "Yeah I know this isn't my jurisdiction,
but I am a law officer. Matter of fact I am Chief of Police, OK? And this is Detective Lieutenant Joseph Brindelli of the—huh, you know him? Well good because we're here to stay."

  Brian Hannon, my brother-in-law in tow, stomped around the corner of the building and toward me. He was flicking his eyes everywhere, his trenchcoat flapping open in the wind of his walking. He stuffed a Lucky into his mouth and cranked fire to his Zippo, trailing clouds of pale blue smoke behind him. Joe gambled along in his wake, murmuring apologies and explanations to the local officers.

  "We're gonna nail this thing down. Bell, Donnato, get moving. Each of you take a building. We're gonna swarm over this place like flies on dogshit."

  I waved my arms and they caught sight of me. DeGroot, bless his heart, had called them after the alarm went off, only he'd waited thirty-five minutes first just to make sure I was overdue. I confided to Joe that I did not feel like answering questions and leading the fuzz all over Cordage Park, showing them exactly what happened, how, when, and why. But he told me I bloody well would have to, and to bear up nobly under it, and that he and his loudmouth friend—this was said in a whisper—would stand by me.

  And so I told the whole thing, from the time I left the Whimsea in the dead of night until the first police cruiser arrived and spotted me hunched over O'Shaughnessey's prostrate form.

  "And the other man," asked Brian, "the big man you say is an IRA Provo. You have any idea where he might have gone?"

  "Laura Kincaid mentioned a boat called the Coquette. It was to be their escape. You might alert the Coast Guard and tell them to be on the lookout for it. I have a hunch it's on the big side. I kind of hope the guy gets away, this time anyway. He saved my life."