Marta hustled up the aisle, shining the flashlight on the boat names. First Edition, No Nonsense, SSCP. She rose on tiptoe, craning her neck to see the highest racks. Philly Boy, Compuboat, Hi-De-Ho. They sounded like a racing form, with name after stupid name. A grisly Sucker Punch. A boozy Mai Tai Time. The intellectual Einstein’s Dream and its dinghy Feinstein’s Dream.
Marta sloshed with dripping boots down row after row and read twenty more boat names, none worth repeating. She went down the aisles with the flashlight as fast as she could, left to right, bottom to top. The garage was silent except for the squeak of her boots as she turned. Finally the jumpy circle of light fell on Piratical. Marta almost dropped the flashlight.
The Piratical was a sleek motorboat and looked larger than its twenty-four feet because it was up on a rack. It was painted a bright white and made a huge wedge in the row, like a generous slice of birthday cake. It sat on the bottom rack, probably because it was the heaviest. There was a shiny gray outboard motor mounted next to the boat’s stairs. Marta climbed aboard excitedly.
The boat’s upper deck had a large sitting area shaped like a horseshoe, and elevated from the general seating was a padded driver’s seat behind a steering wheel; the helm, Marta guessed it would be called, though she knew nothing about boats. She stood by the helm, taking it all in as it fell under the flashlight beam. She was learning fast.
In front of the helm was a compass with a clear plastic bubble over it. Marta could see through it to a floating red needle. Every surface on the Piratical was neat and clean everywhere she looked. There was something strange about it, though; Marta couldn’t quite put her finger on it. She stood, puzzling, then checked her watch. Almost three o’clock in the morning. In a few hours the jury would reconvene. Marta had to hurry. She flicked the flashlight around the helm, but there was no place to hide anything.
Wait. There. On the left near the floor was a storage compartment. Marta squatted and opened the recessed cabinet. Papers! She pulled them out so she could see them better. A blue pamphlet that said THIS IS YOUR BOATING HANDBOOK and a packet of waterproof maps of New Jersey and the Chesapeake. A black Boating Almanac. Fuck! Maybe there was something stuck in its pages?
Marta flipped through the almanac, accidentally cracking its spine. Ouch. She loved books and never cracked their spines. But this time, it told her something. No one had read this book. She looked again at the maps. They were neat and unwrinkled in the flashlight’s beam. None of these references had been consulted. The boat was clean. Marta wondered if the Piratical had ever been used.
She straightened up and scrutinized the boat next to Piratical for comparison, Atta Boy. Its cup holders were lined with dirt and its driver’s seat was worn, with a worn pillow at the helm. The coiled yellow wire in Atta Boy’s storage was dirty, but in Piratical it was spotless.
Piratical had never been used. Sailed, driven, whatever. Had Steere bought the boat and never used it? Why? Did it mean anything?
Marta had to keep searching. She stepped over the maps and went down the couple of steps to the living quarters below. It was dark and she ran her fingers against the wall until she found a switch. The cabin was cleaner than a hotel room and smelled like a new car. A sink and microwave were to the left; a tiny refrigerator sat under a sparkling counter. Marta opened the refrigerator door, but it was empty and its racks hadn’t been put in. Its vinyl odor confirmed her suspicions. Never used. Did it matter?
She crossed to the eating area, which had a blue-striped seat around an oval Formica table. Shipshape and untouched. It didn’t make sense. Why buy a boat if you hate the sea? Why buy it and never use it? Marta sensed she was looking at a $40,000 file cabinet. Something was here. She would find it. She was getting close. She had to be.
She went into the living area and feverishly upended all the seat cushions. There was nothing. Behind the living area was a sleeping area in a matching fabric. She turned over all the cushions and clawed at the rug sections underneath to see if any would reveal some sort of hidden compartment. She found nothing.
Marta thought a minute. There had to be an engine, right? The boat didn’t run on baking soda. She remembered the gray outboard Evinrude she’d seen and hurried to the top deck. If there was an engine, it had to be up there somewhere.
She aimed the flashlight at the deck. On the white floor in front of the seating area were two aluminum handles. She swept the maps aside with her hand and yanked on the handle. The deck of the seating area opened up and underneath was a square-cut hole. A light went on automatically inside the hole and Marta set the flashlight on the deck.
VOLVO PENTA was written on the black engine, which looked like a car engine. She knelt down and felt around. There was no grease anywhere and no glop built up on what looked like a battery. The Piratical had never even been turned on. Turned over, who cared. Marta felt around in the engine and the other black things there. God knew what they were, but it didn’t matter. They weren’t hiding the papers she wanted.
She let the lid slam closed, plopped onto the deck, and picked up her flashlight, flicking it around aimlessly. The circle of light jitterbugged over books, maps, and the spotless deck. Marta had to be missing something. She wasn’t thinking clearly. Something had to be here, or all was lost.
She unzipped her jacket with a sigh and stretched out her legs like a stuffed teddy bear. Ice from her boot dripped onto one of the maps, and she watched the water drop. Drip. Drip. Wetting the map. Marta was suddenly too tired to figure or plan. To search or break in. She watched the water drip onto the map. It was a nice boat. Piratical. A pirate’s boat. A map. A map.
Marta sat bolt upright.
A treasure map? Could it be? She leaned over and grabbed the wet map. FIGHT POLLUTION TO KEEP YOUR WATERWAYS CLEAN! proclaimed the top map. Marta unfolded it with excitement. Pirates. A map. The treasure. The boat’s never being used. It all made sense. The Piratical was a logical place to store a map. A hiding place under everybody’s nose, yet almost impossible to find. The boat was in inside storage so the map wouldn’t get wet.
LITTLE EGG HARBOR TO CAPE MAY. Marta squinted as she read the map. The Atlantic Ocean was at the top in white and there were numbers everywhere. 24, 27, 37. Marta had no experience with nautical maps and guessed they were depths of the sea floor. It was land she was interested in, on a hunch that a man who hated the sea wouldn’t bury something under it, even if he could.
Marta’s eyes traveled the shoreline on the map. How like Steere. He was in real estate. His true love was land. It had made him his fortune, now it kept his secrets. And judging from his boat’s name, Steere thought of himself as a pirate. That meant the treasure would be buried on land, near the beach house Steere loved. Marta just sensed it.
She scanned the map left to right, looking for Long Beach Island. Ocean City, Sea Isle City, Seven Mile Beach. Where was Long Beach Island? She flipped the map over. There. At the left of the map it said Long Beach Island, over a tan length of land. The towns were Beach Haven and Holgate, then the island ended. It was the southern tip. Where was Barnegat Light? Marta wanted the north.
She threw the map aside and searched through the other maps. Maryland, Virginia, the Chesapeake. Nautical maps for waterways Steere would never sail. Decoys for the real map. She picked up NAUTICAL CHART 12324. SANDY HOOK TO LITTLE EGG HARBOR. Marta unfolded it and spread it out on the deck of the cruiser. It took up most of the floor.
On the map, two skinny strips of tan beach came from either side to meet in the center, like the claws of a hard-shell crab. At the center was the bulb that was Barnegat Light, and Marta traced with her finger where Steere’s house must be. She saw the lighthouse she had spotted in the distance, then the stretch of dunes, but there was no X for buried treasure. Was it too much to ask? A little help now and then?
Marta peered at the map under the flashlight’s beam, looking around the Barnegat Light area for a pen or pencil mark. Any kind of sign that would show where Steere had buried somet
hing. She saw nothing. She bent closer, her nose almost an inch from the map. Still nothing. She even thought back to what she knew the beachfront looked like. She couldn’t remember a marker or sign. It was a normal beachfront.
Fuck. Marta sat back up on her haunches. It had to be here. She was running out of time. Maybe it was the way she was looking at the map. She held it up close to her face and shined the light on it.
Suddenly something flashed in her peripheral vision. A little lick of light. What was that? Marta held the flashlight and looked over the top of map as she shined it. A tiny dot of light appeared on the deck of the boat. What? How?
She squinted behind the map. A minuscule tunnel of yellow pierced the map and came out the other side. It was right near Steere’s house, on the shore. Marta followed the light beam back to the map. There was the smallest of pinholes in the map. The flashlight’s beam shone through like a break in the clouds.
Marta flipped the map over and touched the pinhole gently. It felt softly ragged, a tiny pinprick. This was it. It couldn’t have been a mistake or coincidence. Marta had found the X, at least as much of an X as Steere would give. Her heart thudded with anticipation.
She flipped the map over again. The pinhole was about a centimeter from the shoreline. She looked at the scale. 1:40,000 nautical miles. There was something called statute miles, and yards. Not much of an X, but it was all she had. Marta would have to calculate the spot’s location. It was either that or dig up New Jersey.
41
Jen Pressman had managed to escape the mayor and was finally in a car. A municipal-issue Crown Victoria, it had no snow tires, and she had to drive slowly on the city streets. Broad Street and Philadelphia’s other main arteries had been plowed once, but it was slow going once she left them. Jen couldn’t drive fast anyway. The migraine was teasing her and she still felt sick to her stomach. Bright snow bombarded her eyes and her vision went in and out of focus. The Imitrex was keeping her migraine at bay, but intense pain lingered at the edges of her brain like a stage villain waiting in the wings.
Jen reached the expressway with difficulty. There was no traffic on the road because of the mayor’s ban. If a cop tried to stop her, she’d flash her City Hall ID and he’d let her pass. The job had catapulted Jen’s career into another zone entirely. If the mayor won reelection, she’d wait a decent interval to quit, then sell herself as a partner to the law firm with the highest bid. She’d hired most of the mayor’s staff, which would come in handy when she came back to lobby on a client’s behalf. The beauty part was that it worked even if the mayor lost the election. Either way, she was covered. Like Switzerland.
Jen fed the car more gas. Her headlights made two bright tunnels down the snowy highway. Streetlights and snow seared into her brain. The white spots at the back of her head burned whiter and brighter. Jen considered pulling over but she couldn’t. It was so damn late. If she stopped now she’d fall asleep in the car and maybe freeze by the roadside.
The car floated sideways toward the cement median, so Jen backed off the gas. Snow flew at her windshield, each flake a dot that grew bigger as it got closer. It reminded Jen of a foul ball that hit her at a Phillies game, as she sat with the city solicitor’s staff behind third base. Jen had seen the ball as it flew, spinning in an are right toward her, its red stitching going round and round. She had put her hands up too late to catch it. The hard ball hit her finger and bent it back, fracturing it. She had to sign a release saying she wouldn’t sue the stadium or the city. The city solicitor had laughed her ass off.
Jen stared out the windshield as she drove. It was getting harder and harder to see. The snow blew hard as balls being thrown at her. Hundreds of them, then thousands. Jen had been dodging them her whole life, in secret. Trying to drive between them, trying to get beyond them.
The car barreled ahead in the snow. Whiteness was everywhere, on the windshield and the road, covering buildings beside the expressway. There was no other car in sight or any form of life. It seemed so bright even though it was night. Jen fumbled for her sunglasses in the console but they weren’t there. It wasn’t her regular car since she hadn’t been able to find her purse with her car keys. She’d had to borrow another car from the municipal car pool.
Suddenly there was hot white light at the back of her eyeballs. Behind her eyes, in the center of her brain. Her headache flared into brightness and flames. Jen blinked to clear her vision but all she saw was a hot, molten core. She hit the brakes but the car kept moving straight, then sideways. She couldn’t see anything but white hot light. The car rolled over and over until it smashed into the concrete median. Jen felt nothing but agony, saw nothing but light. And in the split second before she died, she felt released.
42
Judy was trying to concentrate on Darning’s white notebook, but anxiety kept getting the best of her. Would Mary be all right? She picked at the bandage on her hand. Who shot Mary and why? Would they be coming after her next?
Judy glanced around her empty apartment for the twentieth time. It was quiet except for the plastic clicking of her Kit-Kat clock as its round eyes darted this way and that. Snow fell steadily outside. There was no traffic noise or sirens. Judy felt like she was the only person awake in the city. Except for the killer.
She shifted on a stool at the kitchen counter and shivered despite her thick gray sweatsuit and sweat socks. Judy’s apartment was three floors up and there was a buzzer system downstairs. It was a large apartment painted a soft ivory, with a galley kitchen off a large living room, where a foldout canvas futon sat against a wall in front of an Ikea coffee table. Pungent odors of turpentine and acrylics wafted from a bedroom converted to a painting studio. A red mountain bike and colorful loops of rock-climbing rope occupied the space under the two front windows. The articles reassured Judy that she was safe and at home. Secure.
She bent over Darning’s white notebook and tucked a strand of stray blond hair into a wide black headband. The notebook had a spiral at the top and was a typical assignment book, like a student might keep. A math student, that is. The notebook contained only numbers, written in pencil. They were recorded single-spaced on the skinny lines in a double column:
39203930
38475400
10983485
49832625
24930491
98563423
21049382
86241221
29282019
66734202
Judy counted the numbers on the first page. About thirty-six. She flipped through the book and estimated it held about 110 pages. So how many numbers were there in the book? 36 × 110. Oh-oh. Judy’s calculations fizzled as they traveled her brain’s circuitry. An attack of math anxiety. Judy told herself it was all society’s fault, but that didn’t make her add, subtract, or multiply any better. Long division was out of the question and caused ovarian cramps.
She retrieved a pencil from a jar of paintbrushes and palette knives. She scribbled the problem on a piece of scrap paper, bit her lip, and stumbled to a solution. About 3,960 numbers. But what did they mean? Judy stared at the lists. It was a nightmare — a mathphobe analyzing a notebook of numbers. She forced herself to think despite the disability imposed upon her by sexists and Republicans.
39203930. The number was too long to be a house or phone number. It couldn’t be a Social Security number because they were nine digits. Judy paused. Eb Darning had been a banker; maybe they were bank account numbers. She grabbed her purse from the counter, found her checkbook, and opened it. At the bottom of her Sierra Club checks were some blubby black symbols, then 289403726, then more symbols, and after that 0 384 273. The seven-digit number was her account number. Judy had to look at it every time she endorsed a check for deposit because she couldn’t remember numbers. It didn’t look like the eight-digit numbers in Darning’s notebook.
She hovered in thought over the notebook. Different banks had different systems. Maybe Darning’s bank had a different way of numbering accounts. But that w
ould mean the white notebook dated from when he worked in the bank, in the sixties. Judy examined the notebook. Couldn’t be. It didn’t look that old. Its pages weren’t curled or frayed at the edges. She guessed the notebook was three or four years old. Not carbon dating, but accurate enough.
So what did the numbers mean? They had to mean something, didn’t they? Darning was comfortable with numbers. With money. Judy thought a second. Maybe they were serial numbers from bills. She went through her wallet and pulled out the cash inside. Three one-dollar bills with Kelly green serial numbers. B12892443E. F40155765E. L34522346G. She dug deeper and fished out a twenty. B38-803945C.
Judy was intrigued. The serial numbers on the bills were eight digits, like the numbers in the notebook. But the serial numbers had letters at either end and the numbers in Darning’s notebook didn’t. Damn. What could they be? What would a certain serial number mean anyway? Counterfeiting? Bribes? Judy had nothing to go on and didn’t think they were serial numbers anyway.
She pushed the bills aside and picked up the notebook. Darning had written the numbers with a purposeful hand, not scribbled or messy. They almost looked as if they were copied from somewhere. Where? Darning had given the notebook to a little boy, Dennell. Why? Did Darning know Steere was going to kill him? Did Steere kill Darning for the notebook? Judy kept thinking of the eighty dollars in the shoe box. Where had Darning gotten it? Blackmail? Did the notebook have anything to do with it?
Judy had no answers so she went to the refrigerator. Her best ideas came to her while she stood in front of her Amana, and she believed it was the freon fumes. She breathed deeply. Still no answers. She grabbed the milk carton, popped the cardboard spout, and took a slug.
Rough Justice Page 23
