The Big Score

by Kilian, Michael;

  “That’s it?”

  “We’re working twenty-four hours a day.”

  “On the robberies or the homicide?”

  “On everything.”

  “Not anymore,” said the mayor. “We want you to drop this murder thing, let the state cops handle it. Mr. Moran agrees.”

  He could afford to, now that he’d gotten more publicity out of it than he’d received in his entire career.

  “You took a vote?” Zany asked.

  “We’ll do it right now.” Everyone at the table except Moran and the chamber of commerce man raised a hand.

  “How the police department conducts its business is supposed to be up to me.”

  “Who holds your job is up to us,” the mayor said. “We mean it, Zane. Forget this murder or we’ll turn the police department over to George Hejmal. He at least doesn’t think he’s Sherlock Holmes.” She lowered her eyes, and her voice. “I’m sorry. I know you’re just trying to do your duty as you see it, but we see it different. We were going to ask you to back off anyway. What you say about the robberies, how they might be someone trying to tell you something—that only makes it all the more necessary.”

  “I guess there’s nothing left to say.” Zany started to get up.

  “You know,” said the chamber of commerce president, for once not clearing his throat. “It might help if you’d drop by the businesses in town. Reassure them. Tell them you’ve got everything in hand.”

  “No problem.” Zany did that all the time anyway, excepting only the mortician.

  This time it was Moran who cleared his throat. “I’d like to ride around with you a few nights—in one of the patrol cars.”

  “Sure thing. I’ll arrange it with George. You can ride with him.”

  Zany went glumly back to the police station. Everyone there looked at him as he entered, but he said nothing, going directly into his office. There were some messages on his desk, one of them from the New York burglary detective. Zany crumpled it up and tossed it at his wastebasket. It missed and bounced back toward his feet. He stared at it for a long moment, then picked it up and spread it out on his desk, picking up his phone.

  The New York guy had nothing really to tell him. He’d checked with every single one of his sources and snitches, but there had been no word of any trafficking in the kind of art Zany had mentioned, certainly no Kirchners. However, the detective said he’d worked up a list of the collectors he knew about who bought such things. He asked if he could fax it to Zany. The collectors were mostly in the New York area, though there was one in Baltimore, and a couple in Philadelphia.

  “Don’t have a fax,” Zany said. “Just put it in the mail.”

  He gave the man his home address.

  The wind had indeed brisked up, gusting now to twenty-five knots and more, but instead of shifting to the north, it kept swinging back and forth—west to northwest and back again—keeping Matthias busy with adjustments in sail. He had taken over the helm from Poe as soon as they were past Montrose Harbor. He and the rest of the crew had put on foul weather jackets against the spray that was kicking up and the weather front that was approaching. Matthias had invited Poe to go below, but Poe had elected to remain topside, sitting next to Curland and trying to keep out of the way. He’d poured himself a strong scotch and water, asking Matthias to join him, but his skipper had declined, saying that would have to wait until after the finish—if then. Curland didn’t seem to drink much.

  Poe’s exhilaration had largely worn off, replaced by unspoken anger and frustration. Yeats had made one clumsy pass at trying to slow the commodore’s boat, cutting across its bow but not hampering it much, and now he’d fallen behind, as if deliberately. The commodore’s craft was in the lead, with Yeats second by several lengths. The Lady P was lying sixth—a good showing, considering their laidback start—but was losing ground on the leader. Matthias had changed course slightly to starboard, and the Lady P was pulling off to the right, slipping farther out into the lake. When this continued for more than a few minutes, Poe reached and pulled on Matthias’s sleeve.

  “What the hell are you doing?” he said.

  “Taking what you’d call a gamble.”

  “A gamble? On what?”

  “The wind. It hasn’t shifted the way it was forecast. You see that line of clouds along the coast?”

  Poe looked, then nodded.

  “That’s a weak storm front,” Matthias said. “I don’t think there’s much heavy weather associated with it. May not even be any rain. It seems to have stalled for the time being, but when it passes, that’s when the winds will shift for good, to northerly.”

  Poe’s turquoise eyes were full of impatience.

  “If the other boats stay close in like that, they’ll have to start tacking to make headway. If we hang out here far enough, we’ll be able to take a north wind on a close haul, without tacking. At least for a while. We should gain a lot of distance. Might even take the lead.”

  “I get the idea.”

  “When I say close hauled, I mean the absolute limit. It’ll get rough, and it’ll get wet. I really think you’ll be happier below.”

  Poe drank some of his whiskey. “You keep saying that. I’ll stick it out up here.”

  “At the least, put on some foul weather gear. You’ll get soaked enough even with that.”

  Matthias was wearing khaki shorts, boating shoes, and a bright-red waterproof jacket. Poe was in white pants, red polo shirt, and deck shoes. He’d thought he’d looked natty.

  “In a minute.” Poe drank again. He really hated being told what to do.

  He looked up at the huge straining sails, then over his shoulder, at the rest of the racing craft. “The other boats are pulling ahead.”

  “Don’t worry. When they start tacking, you’ll see them slow down in a hurry.”

  “The way we’re moving off to the east, I’ll need binoculars.”

  “That’s the plan.”

  “What if the wind doesn’t change?”

  “As I said, Mr. Poe, it’s a gamble.”

  They continued on their oblique course for nearly an hour—as best as Poe could determine at the increasing distance, falling back to twelfth or thirteenth. Another boat far back in the pack tried to emulate Matthias’s gambit, but decided on it too tardily. When it finally gave up, turning back on a straight northerly course, it was much farther behind than when it had begun.

  Poe watched another boat pass by on the western horizon.

  “Maybe we ought to think about getting back with the others,” he said.

  “It’s too late for that now. The wind’s out of the northwest. We’d have to tack to get back among them. Probably end up last.”

  Poe stared into the west. The line of clouds seemed to be larger, nearer. “We could be out of business.”

  Diandra had told Matthias, “You’d better make sure he wins that race.” He’d be out of business himself, for good.

  “If there’s one thing you can always count on with this lake,” Matthias said, “it’s a change in the weather.”

  The cloud line was moving, all right, and fast. The tops of the big cumulous billows were high, and in minutes they’d blotted out the sinking afternoon sun. The whitecaps were increasing. The mast stays hummed with the force of the wind.

  “Cindy!” Matthias shouted above it. “Go below and fetch Mr. Poe some foul weather gear.”

  The blond darted through the hatch. Another hand took her place at the winch. Matthias had earlier exchanged the big Genoa jib for a smaller sail. Now he ordered the mainsail reefed a couple of turns.

  The boat was heeling sharply. Poe had replenished his drink. He foolishly set down his cup to accept the gear from a speedily returning Cindy. The cup shot across the cockpit like something fired from a gun. A wave smacking against the hull doused Poe with spray before he quite got the waterproof jacket on. He swore. The clouds were tearing by overhead.

  “Don’t worry, Mr. Poe. This is hardly worth a small cr
aft warning,” Matthias said.

  Poe swore again.

  Matthias, gripping the wheel tightly, kept switching his gaze from aloft to abeam. To the west, there was a thin line of blue between the cloud base and the horizon. It ran uninterrupted from north to south. As they watched, it began to increase.

  “Clear sky over there,” Matthias said. “This’ll be over very soon.”

  Poe hunkered down, gripping the railing behind him with both hands, wondering if he should put on a life jacket. One of the crew members forward had done so. Heaving folds of water foamed over the rail opposite. It looked as if the boom and billowing mainsail were about to dip into it.

  Suddenly, with a wrenching lurch, the boat righted and the mainsail began to flap thunderously.

  “We’re in irons!” Matthias shouted. He looked up at the wind direction indicator on the little mast behind him. “Due north! Perfect!”

  Poe was confused. The blond was back at her winch, looking expectantly at Matthias. Other crew members were scurrying forward.

  “Ready about!” Matthias commanded.

  “Ready!” came a chorus of responses.

  “Helm’s a lee!” Matthias spun the wheel.

  Poe ducked as the big boom swung toward him. The girl and a crew member opposite her were cranking the winches furiously. The bow swung back toward the land. The sails cracked full of wind, which was coming now over the starboard side. Matthias had yanked himself over to the opposite seat. Poe followed, his shoes slipping on the Fiberglas deck, clambering furiously, pulling himself onto the seat. The heel now was worse than before, the mast tilted toward the coast. The bow thumped with each wave.

  “Perfect!” Matthias shouted again.

  Poe, wishing he were on his big motor yacht watching it all, pulled the hood of his jacket over his head.

  They seemed to be sailing hellbent for the shore—though, glancing along the line of the bow, Poe could see their angle of approach was long and oblique. The other boats appeared to be milling about, sailing back and forth. As Matthias had predicted, the Lady P drew steadily abeam of them and then ahead.

  “Son of a bitch,” Poe said. “You’re a genius.”

  “We’ve got to sail the entire coast of Wisconsin,” Matthias said. “It’s a long race to go.”

  “But we’re gonna take the lead!”

  “For a time. We have another twenty or thirty minutes of sailing on this bearing. Then we’ll have to turn due north and tack into the wind like the rest of them.”

  Poe slapped him on the arm. “I’ve got great faith.” He looked aft across the transom, the commodore’s boat two or three football field lengths distant, the other craft zigzagging behind it. “I’m going below.”

  “Dry off?”

  “No. I’ve got to make some calls over the radio. Business.”

  You can do business with anyone, but you sail only with gentleman, J. P. Morgan had said. What would that old man have made of Poe?

  “This wind’s going to stay northerly all night,” Matthias said. “We’ll have our hands full with the tacking.”

  “I’ll be in my cabin. Just let me know if that son of a bitch gets ahead of us again.”

  “He will, eventually.”

  Poe was looking at Cindy. She was cute, with an upturned nose, long legs, and a terrific tan. If this was his motor yacht, he might ask her to come down below with him for a drink. Poe wondered if Curland had anything going with her. According to his brother Christian, he’d been fooling around with the Langley girl. Maybe both these guys were cocksmen.

  “Just don’t let things get fucked up, Captain,” Poe said.

  He groped his way to the hatch.

  As promised, Zany spent the afternoon making his rounds of the Grand Pier, repeating the tour after dinner. Satisfied that everything was under control, he got onto the interstate and made the trip up to St. Joseph, pulling up at the county sheriff’s office. The sheriff wasn’t in, but his chief deputy was. He and Zany were fishing buddies. The deputy was a local man who had spent a few years with the Detroit police force, moving back home when he couldn’t take the huge, nasty caseload any more.

  “Coffee?” said the deputy, as Zany eased himself into an old wooden chair by the man’s desk.

  “Yes, please,” Zany said. “It’s going to be another long night.”

  “You still working that homicide?” the deputy said, bringing over two plastic cups.

  Zany sipped. The coffee was worse than his own department’s.

  “Not officially,” Zany said. “Got the word from the town fathers today. They want the State Police to take it over so I can deal with our little crime wave.”

  “We can’t spare you any more men, not with all this drug shit in Benton Harbor.”

  Zany shuddered at the mention of St. Joe’s decrepit neighboring city. Crime there was as bad as on the West Side of Chicago.

  “Somebody made the observation today that, if the winds had been different, that boat with the dead girl might have washed up here. What would you guys have done?”

  “Hell, that’s easy. Notify the Chicago cops and try to figure out where the murder took place.”

  “I’ve done both. The Chicago guys weren’t too helpful. Kinda busy these days. The coroner estimated she’d been killed around midnight. I had the Coast Guard work up a probable course for me, starting in Chicago. Calculating the winds and everything, they figured it traveled maybe twenty or twenty-five miles between that midnight and when it washed up in Grand Pier. That means she was killed pretty far out in the lake.”

  “Any idea where?”

  “There are a lot of variables to consider, but probably one side or the other of the Illinois-Indiana line. Indiana’s got a pretty good slice of the lake, you know.”

  “You going to call in the Indiana guys to help?”

  “I’m not supposed to call anyone. Drop the case or else. And that could mean my job.”

  “What the hell, Zany. We’ve got a lot of unsolved homicides in our files. Nobody’s sweating them.”

  Zany guessed they were mostly in Benton Harbor.

  “Until this, I didn’t have any. It isn’t just that we’re striking out that’s chewing on me; it’s that the perps are screwing around with me. They tried to link me with some murdered hooker.”

  “I read about that. I guess they whacked her pretty good. Throat job and all. Chicago cops turn up anything on that?”

  “They’re not looking very hard. They ID’d the woman as the perp in that big O’Rourke case of theirs. It tidied up things for them nicely. I don’t think they’re interested in poking around anything that’ll mess up their happy ending.”

  “You know the investigating officer?”

  “Yeah. Frank Baldessari. He’s an old friend.”

  “Why not go over and see if you can get him off his ass? If what you say is true, it seems to me that if you solve the hooker thing you got a good lead on who waxed your lady of the lake.”

  Zany stared into his coffee. “To tell you the truth, I hadn’t even thought about that.”

  “Police chiefs aren’t the only guys who got smarts.”

  “Trouble is, I don’t dare make another trip to Chicago. At least not an official one.”

  “Well, I wish I could help you, Zany. But I don’t see how we can get involved.”

  “Actually, there is something you could do, though I hope it won’t come to that.”

  “What’s that? We can’t spare you any more deputies.”

  “Depleting your manpower isn’t exactly what I have in mind.”

  Bobby Mann had been on the floor of the Michigan City casino most of the evening, but, noting the time, returned to his office and turned on the television set. He had to wait twenty minutes before the 10 o’clock news got around to the sailboat race story, but there it was—a beautiful big picture of Lake Michigan in the bright sunshine, a crowd of sails against the Chicago skyline, people all along the shore. Poe’s new boat figured largely i
n the story. They closed with a shot of Poe at the wheel, waving as the boats moved from the starting line.

  Mann flicked his television off with a remote control switch, then swiveled his chair to look out his window at the blackness that was the lake, stretching off to the limitless north. Poe and his boat would be way up there by now, but it would be another day or more before he reached Menominee. It would be several days more before he returned to Michigan City. After the race, there was supposed to be a big party in Menominee. And Poe planned to sail his boat back to Chicago.

  Mango Bellini had been in Chicago for the start of the race. If she’d come back to Michigan City, she hadn’t looked in on him. Mann was running the casino on his own, as was often the case nowadays.

  After glancing again at his watch, Mann pulled open a desk drawer and opened a metal cash box, scooping out a handful of change. He was going to use a pay phone to make his long distance calls, but didn’t want anything showing up on his credit card.

  He pocketed the coins, closed the box and the drawer, and left his office. After pausing at the downstairs bar for a drink and lighting a cigarette, he strolled out into the lobby.

  “Leaving for the night, Mr. Mann?” said the doorman.

  “Just going to get some air.”

  The wind was cool, coming straight down the lake. Mann turned onto the boardwalk. There was a couple necking at the railing, but they ignored him. Sauntering along, Mann came at length to some wooden steps leading to a parking lot. On the other side, near the street, was a public phone.

  He knew the Atlantic City number by heart. The party on the other end answered quickly, and the conversation was over in less than a minute.

  For his next call, he had to dig a folded piece of paper with the number on it out of his pocket. He let it ring six times, then hung up, immediately dialing it again.

  “Yeah?”

  “It’s me. You guys in place?”

  “Yes sir.”

  “I got the go. You’re on.”

  “Gotcha.”

  “Do it right.”

  “Always do.”