Billingsgate Shoal

by Rick Boyer

  "Now why on earth would you say that?"

  "OK, here's Doc Adams, the hero who cracked the gun-running ring. Fine. But then you get me to tap the post office I box of what's-his-ass—"

  "Wallace Kinchloe. Who of course was really Walter Kincaid."

  "Fine. Anyway, we tap the box and what do we find? A letter from this plush bank in the Caribbean that indicates that old Kinchloe's got a fortune in gold he's about to deposit there."

  "So?"

  "So then, what you do is convince me to go in with you to buy the Rose at auction, with the hopes—no,.wait, not the hopes, the expectation—the expectation, mind you, of cutting open the hull and having gold ingots pour out all over us."

  "Let's try over here near this workbench?

  "But where are the ingots? Where are those doubloons?"

  "Get over here will you?"

  "'No dammit! To hell with it; I'm leaving."

  "OK fine. Leave me the key."

  "What are you doing?"

  "We've checked the oil pipes; they're in the right places. There is a big oil tank out there, buried beyond this foundation wall. It does have feeder pipes to the smaller tank inside. So be it. But look farther down the wall."

  He joined me as we slid aside the heavy workbench. Low on the basement wall was a metal flue door.

  I opened the metal door and shined the flashlight inside. I fully expected to see a tunnel, with 'all that —glitters' at its terminus. The bottom of the flue was filled with ashes. It was elbow deep in stupid ashes. The back of it was lined with brick.

  "Well?"

  I felt back at the brick that lined the flue pipe. It was genuine: raspy, rough, ceramic—any description you could name. It was going nowhere.

  We went upstairs. I checked the portion of the living room that was exactly above the room in the basement we'd just left. Nothing. We looked under rugs, behind curtains, in window sills—nothing.

  "Charlie, look," said Joe in a tired, placating tone, "your hunch just didn't turn out, that's all. If there was a fortune, and if Kinchloe or Kincaid—whatever the fuck his name was—hid it away, don't you think he'd do it in some rented place where he could get at it quickly and safely—at a moment's notice—away from his wife and her boyfriend, huh?"

  I admitted to myself that his theory made sense. Unhappy and disgusted with his home life, why would he bother to hide his treasure trove here?

  "Let's go," I said. I picked up flashlight, Polaroid camera, and began to zombie myself toward the front door.

  We locked the mansion up carefully as we departed, then I got in the car and purred off.

  But two blocks away, I found myself turning the car around. It had to be there. Had to. If it were a stash of cash, or even jewels, another hiding place might make more sense. But not gold bullion. It was heavy and hard to carry around. It needed a home.

  "You crazy?"

  "Let's give that furnace room forty good minutes, Joe, then I'll throw in the towel."

  "Done," he said with a weary sigh.

  We went over the room with the systematic precision only a detective and a surgeon could muster. In considerably less time than forty minutes we found a bucket with a shovel in it. The bucket had been concealed behind the boiler.

  "I may be crazy, but these look like fireplace ashes to me," said Joe, raking through them.

  We opened the flue again. The ashes in the bottom matched those in the bucket. I didn't know enough about flues to be sure, but I would bet odds something fishy was happening with the furnace flue. And come to think of it, the door to the flue looked awfully big too. We examined the iron door, its . hinges and mountings. . .everything. It looked as old as the house.

  "Goddarmnit Joe, there is a septic tank buried alongside that oil tank. What the hell's it there for?"

  "If there's an entrance to it, maybe it's outside."

  "Maybe, but I doubt it. I've looked it over three times carefully. And remember how close to the foundation it is."

  I stepped back and looked at the brick wall in front of me. The big oil pipe came in at exactly the right place. OK, that made sense. The flue, and the door, was in exactly the right place. There was a flue, and I could look up it to where it joined the chimney.

  No good. I could not detect the signs of disturbed masonry anywhere. But this Kincaid was a clever old guy. He did everything in style. He spared no pains, or costs. I knew that by his house and his company headquarters. He was a sharpie, was old Kincaid. Perhaps he'd been laying treasure away for years and years, and finally decided to construct some secret vault before disappearing. And he would enter the place on the eve of his departure, and take the stuff aboard his refitted boat, seal it in down near the keel, and slide aways to Queen's Beach, "Where Paradise Begins. . ."

  "It's in there, Joey. I tell you it's in there. It's just very cleverly concealed."

  Joe opened his pocket knife and began picking and pecking inside the flue.

  "Hey hey hey, look at this, Charlie. This corner mortar is peeling off like rubber cement."

  The jackknife blade scooped away the old mortar along both back seams of the brick flue. Then we realized that it wasn't mortar; it was simply caulking compound—probably applied with a gun and smoothed down with a fingertip—covered with wood ashes to make it appear old. Joe worked quickly. In less than a minute both seams were clear; the back wall of the brick flue was free of the side walls by an eighth of an inch. I rapped hard on the back wall, which was two feet across. It didn't sound hollow; it was gen-u-wine brick. Joe shoved at it, tried to slide it. No go. It was solid. Joe hunched down in front of the hole and took his chin in his hand. `

  "Sombitch Charlie. She doesn't wanna budge."

  "There's gotta be a gizrno. . .a lever or—"

  "Yeah I know what you mean. Let's get back to looking."

  So we scoured the place again from top to bottom. Nothing. Yet we'd found some fake mortar; that was enough to keep us at it. So we trudged around the furnace and all its pipes; we examined the floor and all the walls. Clean as a whistle. We were just about to give up for a second time when Joe noticed the small hole in the masonry right behind the furnace. It was only as big in diameter as the base of my thumb. It was low in the wall, about two feet from the floor. It was just about invisible. But it was the only thing in the to wall that wasn't perfect. I shined the flashlight beam into the hole. I had a lot of trouble peeking in because it was so small. About six inches inside a brass nut shined back at me. The curious thing was, it was three-sided. It was an equilateral triangle. I stepped back and looked at the hole again. Its outer edges were worn and rounded. It was whitewashed the same shade of white as the remainder of the foundation wall. Yet inside it was a shiny brass bolt head of strange configuration. I'll be damned, I thought.

  The innocuous-looking hole in the wall was ten feet from the ash door.

  "Naw, it couldn't be—" said Joe.

  "Oh yes it could. Thing is, where the hell is the gizmo used to turn the nut? Perhaps old Walter carried it with him. If that's the case we'll never—"

  "No! No he wouldn't. Don't you see? The head's triangular. How many triangular bolt-heads have you ever seen in your lifetime?"

  "None." .

  "Right. So the gizmo, as you call it, has got to arouse suspicion. It's in fact more of a key than a lever since it's shaped uniquely. Doc, he wouldn't tote it around. He wouldn't want to lose it; he wouldn't want it seen."

  "You're absolutely right. And he wouldn't hide it anywhere near the hole either, would he?"

  "No!"

  "Then let's follow the example of Poe's Purloined Letter: Do you remember where the missing letter was hidden?"

  "Can't say as I've ever read the story."

  "It was hidden in the most inconspicuous place: with a bunch of other letters. So where do we look for this tool?"

  Walter Kincaid's workshop was very big, as one would expect of a millionaire engineer. There were drill presses, lathes, joiners, jigsaws, a
drafting board, tap and die sets—the works. We rummaged through a whole passel of exotic micrometers, gauges, metal rules, combination squares, and just about everything that places like Woodcrafters and Brookstone's sell. We looked through exotic hardwood tool chests lined with green felt that held tools from Sweden and Germany. We looked through drawers and racks of lowly screwdrivers and nailpullers.

  Nothing.

  And then Joe saw a rack of carefully labeled cigar boxes that lined a high shelf. One of these was labeled "Miscellaneous Bits."

  He took this down. Of the twenty or so metal drills and bits inside, one had a curious head. It was a round terminus as thick as my thumb, with a triangular socket at its end. My pulse revved up like a jackhammer. The base of the bit was the standard four-sided tapered shank that fits into an old-fashioned crank brace. I grabbed the brace from its place on the pegboard, inserted the strange bit,` and tightened the chuck. Then we made our way back to the furnace room. I inserted the crank contraption into the hole. The socket thunked home perfectly.

  "Does it?" asked Joe.

  "Like the proverbial hand garment."

  I turned the brace; it wouldn't budge. Then I reversed the crank, and heard a slow regular grinding deep in the wall. Joe ran over to the ash door and shined the flashlight in; I kept grinding away, like a storekeeper cranking in an awning.

  "Son. . .of. . . a. . bitch. It's moving!"

  I joined him and peered inside. The brick back of the flue was half an inch to the right. A narrow fissure was now visible along the left side. Darkness, the darkness of space, lay beyond.

  "Walter Kincaid, you genius you—"

  "The guy was an engineer, yes?"

  "Uh huh, and it shows too. He was an expert at locks. I think he also realized that concealment and secrecy are far stronger security than the thickest bank-vault doors."

  "Sure. If you don't know where the money is, how can you get it?"

  Joe took a turn at the crank. I supposed it was a rack and pinion design, in which a geared-down wheel with teeth moved a straight piece of steel with matching teeth; There were probably ball bearings or smooth metal wheels to help move along the slab of genuine brick, which would weigh a few hundred pounds. It worked slick as a whistle, and showed the inventiveness and determination of Kincaid, No wonder the guy was loaded. He was smart, cagey, and worked like a dog. He had probably designed the set-up, machined and fabricated most of it himself or at the Wheel-Lock factory, and installed it alone, perhaps in the space of three or four grueling days of long labor during one of Laura's rendezvous with Schilling.

  As Joe turned the crank I watched the fissure widen. For every eight turns of the crank the slab opened another inch. The bricks had been mounted in a steel frame set on big steel dolly wheels. I shined the light through a circular concrete tunnel a yard long and saw the glint of gold eight feet away.

  Now I knew how Howard Carter must have felt when they broke the seals of the last chamber in Tutankhamen's tomb, and entering, he saw the gold sarcophagus still in place. "Howdja like to retire, Joe?" I said laughing.

  * * *

  We spent only about twenty minutes in the small concrete cubicle fashioned from the shell of the septic tank. A description of the treasure trove wouldn't do it justice. The most spectacular part of it was twenty-two gold ingots. Kincaid had lined them up like miniature loaves of bread on a clean pine, board. I hefted one of the li'l critters. It weighed ten kilograms, and felt like it. It was stamped with an embossed seal of the double eagle of Austria on the bottom. What was it worth?

  "Dunno, Charlie. Let's see, gold's going for about seven hundred dollars an ounce, that's, uh, over eleven thousand dollars a pound, and these things weigh twenty-two pounds each—"

  "Each one's worth almost a quarter of a million dollars."

  "Doc, I feel dizzy."

  "Twenty-two ingots, that's well over five million in the gold bars alone."

  "Charlie, I feel really dizzy."

  We rummaged briefly through the rest of it. There were polyethylene file card cases filled with old coins. There were various historic relics in a big wooden box. There were pieces of scrimshaw and pewter. But mainly, there was the gold. In bars and coins, it sat there and glimmered in the beam of our flashlight.

  "How we gonna carry this out?" he asked me.

  "Wecan't. It's not ours."

  "C'mon Doc. Listen, if we each take two bars we c—"

  "No I'm serious, Joe. You're a cop; you know the rules."

  "So? I'll quit being a cop. I'll retire, as you wisely suggested. Now listen, we'll just—"

  "Now you listen, the last thing we want to do is screw this whole thing up by taking it illegally. By the laws of maritime salvage, this gold and treasure is the property of Walter Kincaid, deceased—or at least presumed deceased."

  "Right. And then, it would gosto his next-of-kin, wife Laura—also deceased, and without relatives."

  "So—and I've checked this—the treasure belongs, again by law of salvage, to whoever owns the house."

  Joe was so dizzy he went topside for a breath of air while I tidied up the chamber and left it intact. We cranked the brickway shut behind us and re-puttied the seams with caulking seams with wood ashes, making them look astoundingly like mortar, placed new ashes in the bottom of the flue, swept up clean, and departed. I had the funny-shaped bit with me. "I wanna keep this key," I said.

  I stumbled on the way out in the dark basement hallway. I limped all the way to the car. In my pocket were a dozen color prints of the treasure. I had taken them for a special reason.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  WE FORMED a syndicate for the sole and express purpose of purchasing the Kincaid residence and splitting the swag. Since the realtor was asking a cool four hundred-grand, a fairly hefty down payment would be required. We—Joe and Mary and I—figured that five thousand earnest money plus a hundred grand down payment would seal it up for us. But we had to move fast. Beside the three of us were Jim and Janice DeGroot, Tom Costello, and, at my insistence, Morris Abramson. Jim balked a bit at this. Who the hell was Morris Abramson and what part did he play in finding the treasure? After all, he said, another member meant another cut of the action. But I insisted. To maker our stand official, Mary suggested that if Jim didn't like the arrangement he could always pull out of the syndicate altogether.

  Jim shut up right away.

  Leave it to Mary to nail things down when they get a bit sticky. I figured that with Moe in on the deal some worthwhile cause would come out smelling like a rose. But when I called him he told me he had no spare money at all.

  "Sony Doc, I gave my last bit of discretionary income to the Sisters of St. Jude. They run a halfway house for runaway girls. Try me in a month or so."

  "It'll be too late you dummy. You know you're the stupidest Jew I've ever known?"

  "You know you're the pushiest gentile I've ever known? And if there's one thing I cannot stand it's a pushy gentile—"

  "Don't worry, Moe, you're in the syndicate."

  Mary and I decided to cough up ten percent of our claim, which would, be the lion's share, to Moe. It soothed our consciences—made us feel a little less like outright thieves.

  We sat in our living room and passed around the pictures. Everybody drooled and licked their lips. Especially DeGroot. If he could ever love anything even a tenth as much as he loves money, it hasn't been invented or discovered yet. The members of the syndicate were to split the proceeds of the treasure sale in portions and shares according to their contributions. As Chief Treasure Finder I reserved the right to invest, and claim, fifty percent in the Adams family's name. The name of the syndicate was coined by Mary: Golddiggers of Seventy-nine.

  We all thought it was cute. But then we were going to be filthy rich; we would have thought a hammerhead shark was cute.

  We decided that Jim DeGroot would be the buyer. My involvement, or even Joe's, would tip off everyone that the house had an unexpected attraction. Jim made his initial
contact with the realtor and phoned us.

  "Old man Kincaid made a codicil in his will before he arranged to disappear," he said. "As Laura told you, he left at the house to the Wheel—Lock Corporation, not to her. I betcha she and Schilling were surprised, and not too pleased, about that development, The board of directors of Wheel-Lock has decided to offer the house. for sale, as we know. However, they must meet and decide if the buyer is a good bet. Then they'll affix their OK to the buy and sell agreement?

  "Sounds OK. Just hang in there and wave that cash around. We're waiting on pins and needles."

  The only absent member of the syndicate was Moe. While I he wished the operation luck and success, he told me over the phone that the thought of money bored him.

  "It's what you can do with it that's exciting, Doc. If I make anything let me know and I'll tell you where to send the check."

  But Jim DeGroot returned to the domicile in bad spirits, and asked for large quantity of same.

  "I can't believe it," he said, cradling his big paw around the frigid glass.

  "Well what?"

  "I just can't goddamn believe it.

  "Well what?"

  "The Hare Krishna."

  "Yeah. The Hare Krishna what?"

  "The goddamn, bald—headed, dip—shit Hare Krishna have bought the Kincaid place!"

  "I can't believe it," we said in unison. "I just can't believe it."

  And we couldn't.

  "Know what they did? They put down two hundred thou in cold cash. A registered bank check from the Merchant's National. Cold cash."

  "Jesus. All those shopping center handouts. All those flowers at Logan Airport. . . all that drum beating and chanting on the Common."

  "I can't believe it," wailed Mary and Janet.

  "The board of directors of Wheel-Lock met this rnorning. They are going to sell the company to an Arab consortium—"

  "The Decline of the West. . ." I intoned.

  "—and they looked at the offers the realtor presented to them. Ours was fine. . .but the Hare Kristna's was a good deal better."

  "I can't stand it," said Joe.

  There was a glum silence. I told the would-be syndicate to follow me. We arrived in my small, book-lined study in a few moments' time. I turned on the double brass student lamp.