The Keeper

by George C. Chesbro

  “Thanks, Detective. You really know how to lift a girl’s spirits.”

  “I was right. You do know something about that explosion.”

  “What happened with the phone call?” Jade asked wearily.

  “Nothing. I told the guy who answered the phone what you told me to say. He told me I had the wrong number, and then he hung up. I didn’t see that there was anything to gain by calling again.”

  “You were correct.”

  “You were using me to send a signal to somebody.”

  “Not here, Roy.”

  “Talk to me, Jade. I’m thinking that maybe now you’re in deep shit yourself because of what you had me do, and maybe because of other things I don’t know about.”

  Jade sighed, and then glanced over her shoulder into the living room where Max Jr., an open book on his lap, was sitting on the sofa and looking at her inquiringly. She turned back to Roy and stepped to one side. “Come in. I don’t want to talk out here.”

  Roy followed Jade into the house and through the living room, raising a thumb as he passed the boy. “Hi, bub!”

  Max Jr. grinned and raised a thumb in reply. “Hi, bub!”

  “Maxie,” Jade said to her son, “try to finish the problems on that page by yourself. I’ll be back in a few minutes. Mom’s got things to do.”

  Jade led Roy into her study, and then shut the door behind them. She sank down wearily into the swivel chair at her desk, and motioned for Roy to sit in an overstuffed armchair set against the wall. “I don’t have anything to say to you, Roy. I just didn’t want to talk out there. My son gets upset when he thinks his mother’s worried about something or in any kind of difficulty. I’m sorry you didn’t get any satisfaction from the call. Maybe you did dial the wrong number. What I’d like you to do now is forget our conversation ever took place.”

  Roy stared at Jade intently as he leaned forward in the chair and rested his forearms on his knees. “Let’s cut the bullshit, Jade,” he said in a low voice. “What am I, the village idiot? You knew I’d never buy that cockamamie story about some Navy public relations office. In effect you were admitting that you know more about this business than you’re telling anybody, but you gave me the number and had me make the call anyway. That took a lot of guts. You knew the joker on the other end of the line would hold you responsible for putting me in touch with him. Who did I talk to?”

  “You agreed not to ask questions.”

  “I didn’t agree to anything. I’m a cop, and cops ask questions. I’m also the cop who’s going to nail the murderous bastards who killed that family, and you’re going to tell me how to do it.”

  Jade slowly shook her head. “I can’t help you, Roy. I don’t have anything to tell you.”

  Roy was silent for some time, staring at Jade while Jade stared back. Finally he said, “I’d like to hear more about the ‘just Navy stuff’ you did while you were in the service. I’d also be most appreciative, both personally and professionally, if you’d explain to me what the hell that thing on Jack’s boat was and who you think set the charges that destroyed it. Don’t bother telling me it involves classified information, because by now I guess I’ve figured that out all by myself. This is a murder investigation, Jade; my murder investigation. I promise that whatever you give up stays with me.”

  “I can’t tell you if something’s classified, Roy, because I’m not in a position to know such things. I can’t tell you what that thing on Jack’s boat was, because I don’t know.”

  “Stop lying to me, lady!” Roy shouted, blood rushing to his face as he suddenly sprang to his feet. “What the hell’s the matter with you?! Two kids and their parents got blown to bits, and it’s my fucking fault! Do you think I’m going to sit here and-?!”

  Jade moved with a quickness that caught Roy completely off guard, lunging forward and striking him in the center of the chest with the heel of her hand, driving him back down into his chair. The blow had been delivered with such force that he was having trouble breathing, and for a few moments his heart beat irregularly. As he struggled to catch his breath he stared, transfixed, into the fiery green eyes of the tall woman who now stood over him, her thumb pressed against his left temple in a manner that made him feel curiously light-headed.

  “You listen to me, you self pitying, sanctimonious son-of-a-bitch,” Jade said in a voice that was soft but somehow brought to Roy’s mind an image of a knife passing through silk. She removed her thumb from his temple; suddenly he was able to breathe easier, and his head cleared. “You keep your voice down when you’re in my home. You upset my son with your shouting, and I’ll kick your ass out the door.”

  “Holy shit,” Roy said in a mild, bemused tone as he rubbed his chest with one hand and his temple with the other. “You pack quite a punch, lady. Great balance, leverage and focus. Where the hell did you learn to do that?”

  “You think you’ve cornered the market on guilt, mister? None of this would have happened if I hadn’t advised Jack to call the Coast Guard in the first place. I should have handled it differently, but I didn’t because I was too worried about my own ass. I’m more responsible for what happened than you are, so I don’t want to hear any more of this guilt-ridden Lone Ranger shit from you. All right? You may not be the village idiot, but you sure as hell are acting stupid now. You make a lot of assumptions and draw a lot of conclusions about me, and then you start flapping your mouth and acting on your assumptions without a thought in the world about what the consequences might be for my children and me if you’re right. How dare you assume that I don’t want those killers caught as badly as you do? Has it once occurred to you that I might have very good reasons for proceeding so cautiously? You’re a macho hairy brain, Roy. You can see that I’m afraid? Well, good for you. I’m usually pretty good at hiding what I’m thinking and feeling. But how dare you presume that I’m afraid for myself? How do you know I’m not afraid for you? I’m certainly afraid for my son and daughter, because I’m worried about what would happen to them if anything happens to me, but I took a big risk anyway. I made myself extremely vulnerable by asking you to do something I hoped might just even things up for Jack, and what I get in return is a big, bad wolf huffing and puffing at my door and swearing to redeem his lost honor. Bullshit. Let’s assume, just for the sake of argument, that you’re right about my being in possession of certain classified information. Let’s also assume that I suspect a connection between the thing on the boat, the explosion, and some very dangerous, totally ruthless people. Let’s suppose I’m right. Can you even begin to appreciate how much danger you could be exposing me to if you start acting like a blowhard?”

  “I hear you,” Roy said quietly.

  Jade stepped back, thrust her hands into the pockets of her jeans and smiled thinly. “Good. I’m glad we had this little chat.”

  “I get the message. I should have gotten it sooner, when you gave me the number to call.”

  “Assuming there’s a message to get, yes, you should have.”

  “Help me, Jade. Let me help you. I promise I’ll be as cautious as you. Tell me what’s happening.”

  “I don’t know what’s happening, Roy. Truly.”

  “Then at least give me some clue to where to start looking for answers. Point me in the right direction. I don’t think the F.B.I. is doing shit, and they wouldn’t tell me if they were.”

  “I think we’ve had enough conversation for one evening. Good night, Roy.”

  Roy rose from his chair and went to the door. He put his hand on the knob, but did not turn it. “Jade,” he said, tilting his head back slightly, “I understand that you’ve tried to cut me out because you want to protect me, and because you want to protect your kids from anything that might happen to you. Well, now I’m cutting you out. Before you ever came on the scene I knew that the explosion was a lot more powerful than one that could have been caused by a small mine strapped to some fish’s back. That’s the personal observation on which I’m basing my own investigation, not be
cause of anything you’ve told me, which is nothing, and not because of any suspicions about your background, which are now forgotten. But there’s still the problem of that call you had me make.”

  “You didn’t give your name, and they wouldn’t have had time to trace it.”

  “Please. These hypothetical very dangerous and totally ruthless people you mentioned will know with dead-bang certainty who gave up the number. Is somebody going to come after you?”

  “What’s done is done, Roy. I don’t want to talk about the call, and I want you to forget about that too. I hope you destroyed the paper I wrote it on.”

  “I did,” Roy said, and turned around to look at Jade. “Are you in any physical danger now?”

  “I can take care of myself, Roy.”

  “So you demonstrated. But that doesn’t answer my question. Are you in danger because of my calling that guy in Washington?”

  “If you were to wake up tomorrow morning to discover that you’d been fired from the police force, had your pension from the NYPD taken away and were facing a possible prison term, would you consider yourself in danger?”

  “I’d consider myself in a very unpleasant situation, and I’d really be pissed.”

  Jade laughed. “That’s why you should forget you made the call.”

  “What call? And who the hell is Jahli Aden, anyway? Sounds like a foreigner.”

  “And you’d better be very careful about who you talk to and what you say while you carry on this private investigation.”

  “I will. Thanks, lady.”

  “For nothing. Good night, Roy.”

  “Good night. Jade.”

  Chapter Six

  She had known that the chances were slim that Roy Mannes’ call to Admiral Hubert Roberts would be enough to pressure the Chief of Naval Intelligence into covertly providing restitution for Jack Trex’s loss, but she had acted out of a nihilistic, dual sense of outrage and guilt. What she had been certain of was that she would be punished, and quickly, at which point she would use the renegade threat of going public with everything she knew or suspected about the Jolly Roger in an attempt to defend herself, her freedom and her livelihood.

  But nothing had happened. She had waited until ten, and then gone to bed thinking that the F.B.I., as added punishment, would come for her in the middle of the night. But that hadn’t happened either. She had slept fitfully, suffering a succession of anxiety dreams, but had awakened in her own bed in the morning feeling oddly exhilarated, refreshed by relief. She had made breakfast, seen Max Jr. and Fatima off to their respective schools, and was now at work where she most loved to be, out on the river.

  If she wanted to, Jade thought, she could infer something extremely unfavorable, even sinister, from the fact that she had not been visited by the F.B.I., or even received so much as a phone call from Roberts to, at the least, upbraid her and perhaps make more threats. Her former superior and mentor could quite possibly destroy her, and the fact that he had made no overt move, at least none that she was aware of, thus far to even make her uncomfortable seemed decidedly odd.

  She chose to take an optimistic view of the situation. She had, if only over the telephone, directly confronted her former commander to demand compensation for the trawler, and it seemed he had blinked - at least to the extent that he had not moved to immediately crush her.

  Giving Roberts’ telephone number, which was classified information, to Roy Mannes had been reckless; she had been surprised at the depth of feeling she had about the lost boat and family, and just how far she might go to resolve the problem. Now, rather than dwell on what might happen to her she preferred to think that perhaps she had gotten Roberts’ attention and that the man was more than slightly concerned about what she might tell reporters if she were put in a position where she had nothing left to lose.

  And she was still determined to see that Jack Trex was compensated for the loss of his trawler by the Navy, which, she remained convinced, was responsible for the tragedy. It might be too much to hope that they would ferret out the men responsible for the deaths of the man and woman and their two children, but if money were not forthcoming soon, she would consider what action to take next.

  She entered Haverstraw Bay from the south and headed toward the eastern shore to make a visual check of the water in front of a manufacturing plant she suspected of illegally dumping residue waste into the river. She put her engines into neutral a few hundred yards offshore, and then used her binoculars to scan the water around the plant, looking for telltale signs of greenish foam or streaks of red and brown. The water looked clean, and so she replaced her binoculars on the peg beneath the cockpit’s canvas Bimini before heading back south at a leisurely pace, occasionally using her marine radio to banter with the captains of the tugboats and tankers she passed.

  Her thoughts turned to her children.

  So far, the arrangement to allow Fatima to attend the religious school at Hebron Nablus seemed to be working out satisfactorily, in fact much better than Jade had initially thought it would. Most important, her relationship with her daughter had not deteriorated any further, and Fatima’s emotions appeared to have stabilized. In addition, the academic standards at the school were higher than Jade had thought they would be, and she was satisfied that the school’s curriculum would prepare her daughter for college.

  Fatima was certainly being challenged; in addition to a full academic schedule, the girl was learning Hebrew and taking Talmudic studies. Jade regretted that they spent so little time together, but then she had to admit to herself that they had spent even less time together when Jade was in the Navy and she and her husband had left the rearing of their children to various surrogates. Under the circumstances, Jade considered herself fortunate to have a chance to try to bridge the emotional gap between them. She felt her best course of action now was to offer Fatima her unconditional support and love, wait, and hope for the best.

  This was not the case with Max Jr. Heeding her son’s pleas, and against her better judgment, she had not gone to Cairn High School to talk to Max Jr.’s principal, teachers and guidance counselor. Max Jr. continued to be beaten and taunted. She would not tolerate it, would not stand by and watch Max Jr. retreat ever deeper into himself. She was not yet sure what action she would take, but she was definitely going to do something, either help her son learn to stand up for himself or somehow personally intervene to shield him from the torment caused by others.

  She was cruising in the middle of the river and was just off the abandoned General Motors plant in Tarrytown, near the Tappan Zee Bridge, when her radio scanner picked up a distress call; a powerboat’s engine had failed, and the craft was adrift in the deep channel. When the sender mentioned the General Motors plant and bridge as landmarks, Jade realized that the boat must be close. She throttled back the engines of the Boston Whaler, took her binoculars off their peg and scanned the water around her. Finally she spotted the boat to the north, a mile or so behind her and a half mile closer to the eastern shore. From the streamlined shape of the black and crimson craft, it appeared to be a high-powered cigarette boat. Jade replaced her binoculars on the peg, pushed the throttle forward and turned back upriver.

  There were three men on the racing boat. One was bent down under the open cowl of the engine housing, so Jade could not see his face. The other two were shirtless and standing at the port gunwale waving to her. One man was about her height, five feet ten or eleven, and the other, who wore sunglasses, was over six feet. Both looked to be in their early to mid-forties. Their hair was close-cropped, and they had the kind of lean, muscular torsos that are usually associated with weight lifting and regular, vigorous exercise. Both men were grinning sheepishly as she pulled alongside. Now Jade could see that the man without the sunglasses had a scar running from his left ear down his cheek to the corner of his mouth.

  “Having problems, gentlemen?” Jade asked as she dropped fenders over her starboard gunwale and threw a line to the taller man. “I’m the riverkeeper i
n these parts. Maybe I can help. If I can’t get you started, I’ll put in a call to a mechanic after I tow you out of here. The deep channel is no place to be sailing the tide.”

  “Thank you, ma’am,” the man with the sunglasses said as he wrapped the end of the line Jade had thrown him around a steel cleat at the stern of the cigarette boat. “It must look pretty silly, three gorillas like us stranded out here without so much as a paddle. The engine conked out and none of us knows a damn thing about motors.”

  Jade scanned the horizon to both the north and south. Seeing no sign of barges or tankers, she stepped up on the gunwale of her Boston Whaler and jumped down into the men’s boat. “I do,” she said. “I don’t see anything bearing down on us, so let me see if I can’t fix whatever’s wrong. Do you have a tool kit?”

  The man bent down over the engine was also muscular and lean like the others, over six feet. His red hair was not cut quite as close as the others’ on the top and sides, and the nape of his neck had been shaved in a peculiar manner to give the hairline the shape of an inverted W. He turned from the engine and looked up at Jade. He had a ruddy complexion, dark brown eyes, and a leering grin Jade did not care for. He said, “Sure do, Ma’am. I’m really glad to see you. All I’ve managed to do down here is get myself covered with grease.”

  “Let me take a look,” Jade said, stepping over to the engine housing.

  The man with the red hair straightened up and stepped to the side. Jade picked up the flashlight the man had been using and leaned over to look at the engine. Almost immediately she felt a strong hand grip the back of her heavy cotton uniform blouse, and then she was yanked backward and thrown against the cockpit’s bulkhead with such force that the back of her head bounced painfully off the polished teak. When she looked up, the man with the red hair and leering grin was standing over her and between his two companions. The machine pistol in his right hand was aimed at her chest.