by John Knoerle
Jimmy stepped down the stairs just about then. He registered his disapproval by cocking his scattergun. I had an odd thought as I carried the block of cash to the Packard, my back braced for an imminent blast of buckshot.
I had witnessed every type of weaponry imaginable during the war. 500 pound frag bombs, 88 millimeter cannon, fifty caliber machine guns, mortars, howitzers, GI pineapples and Kraut potato mashers. But I had never once encountered a shotgun on the battlefield. Shotguns were for hunting grouse. There was no glory in being killed by a shotgun. It was, in fact, an insult.
I opened the passenger’s side door and turned to face Jimmy on the steps. The Schooler was clanking and clunking around inside the shed. Jimmy waved his sawed-off in my direction.
“They get fifty gees and they go away,” I said to Jimmy as I dumped the block of currency into the front seat. “They earned it.”
Jimmy’s hiss was like a plume of cigarette smoke in the frozen air. He curled his lips to say something vile that Ambrose didn’t wait around to hear. The Packard shot backwards.
Jimmy raised his shotgun to his good eye, like you needed to aim a sawed-off shotgun. I whipped out the .32 and sighted down my arm at Jimmy’s big ugly head.
“This one’s got bullets Jimmy. Trust me.”
Ambrose spun half a donut on the frozen silt, straightened out and wove his way east toward the cantilevered bridge. Jimmy shifted the pig snout sawed-off from the Packard to myself.
The Schooler ducked out of the boathouse at this commotion and stood in the doorway. He had no visible reaction to the Mexican standoff between Jimmy and myself. He said “Stop this nonsense” and went back inside.
Jimmy and I remained in place, guns pointed at each other’s heads. The Schooler was correct. The situation was nonsensical in the extreme. But I was determined beyond all reason not to be the first to blink, not to surrender to the iron will of this one-eyed grouse-hunting s.o.b.
The Schooler’s shouted “Hurry up” broke the spell. Jimmy lowered his sawed-off and, cursing, went back inside the shed.
I took a last look around the perimeter. Where the hell had the bastard come from?
Then I saw it. Under the boathouse, painted white, crusted with ice. You had to look twice to see it. A rowboat, bottoms up. How Jimmy knew to come to Whiskey Island and hide himself under an overturned rowboat was a question for another day.
I put the .32 in my pocket and climbed the steps to the shed. It was The Schooler’s show now. Jimmy and I were just along for the ride.
Chapter Forty
I had expected to find a broad beamed diesel scow inside the corrugated shed, something bulky and muscular. But the boat that sat up on a V-shaped dry dock frame was a sleek 30-foot Chris Craft cabin cruiser with dual props. The Tin Lizzie. The kind of boat Pepper Pike nobs use for sport fishing on weekends. Summer weekends. The Schooler had obviously taken leave of his senses.
“I need a volunteer,” said Henry. He was holding a ten-foot aluminum pole topped with a large hook, held it upright at his side like a scepter. “One of you has to trust the other one for a few minutes. Any takers?”
If this wasn’t the easiest decision I ever made it was a close second. Ditto Jimmy.
“Such mistrusting young men,” sighed The Schooler, fishing out a quarter. He flipped it, caught it and slapped it on the back of his hand.
I called heads.
It was, of course, tails.
“Jimmy and I will climb aboard,” said The Schooler and gestured toward the bow. “Your job is to pull the chocks.”
The Tin Lizzie sat on two horizontal crossbars. The one underneath the bow was lower than the one underneath the stern. Wooden chocks were wedged between the front crossbar and the hull. Removing them would send the boat plummeting down the scooped steel ramp.
The Schooler continued. “After the launch you unhook the launch ramp from the shed wall - use the crowbar - lower and seal the front wall and close and lock the side door. Go to the edge of the bank and use the boathook to slide down to the lake - it’s only eight feet or so - then pole your way out across the ice to the boat. Keep an eye out for gray spots. Once you reach us grab the stern with the boathook.”
I considered these instructions for a moment. “This is a joke, right?”
“We’ll pull you aboard once you’re done.”
“Gee thanks.”
Sirens crisscrossed in the distance, one getting louder, one fading away. The Schooler handed me the ten-foot boathook and climbed aboard the Tin Lizzie. Jimmy followed. I didn’t see his smirk exactly but I could feel it.
I positioned myself at the bow of the boat. The Schooler had thought this through, sort of. The chocks on either side of the hull were attached to ropes that had been twined together. One good yank would release the chocks simultaneously, launching the boat. What The Schooler had not adequately considered was the fate of the yanker. What I was staring up at was no ordinary boat hull. It was shiny steel and serrated at the prow like a carving knife.
“Let’s launch!” said The Schooler.
I looked behind me. The open front wall was only six feet away. Not enough space for me to flop back and avoid a serrated appendectomy. I would have to be nimble. Whatever happened to smacking the bow with a bottle of champagne?
I gave the twined rope a mighty tug, the Tin Lizzie lurched forward. I staggered backwards, caught myself and dived left.
The Chris Craft wobbled from side to side as she cleared the dry dock cradle and nosed down the jerry rigged launch ramp. I turned to watch her progress. She was heavy in the stern, which kept her serrated bow from slicing the jerry-rigged launch ramp in two, but the scooped metal ramp was barely wide enough to hold her. She would have to gain speed to avoid yawing over.
She did. The Tin Lizzie bucked and humped and dove down those last few yards below the bank and busted a gash in the frozen lake, busted it fat and wide. I watched The Schooler fire up the inboards, watched the twin screws churn slushy water. Jimmy and The Schooler were all aces, they could motorboat off to points unknown while young Harold waved a tear-soaked hankie from the bank.
Where the hell was the damn crowbar? The Schooler said there was a crowbar. I searched left, I searched right, stepped on something hard. There it was.
I pried up the hooks that fastened the launch ramp to the lower lip of the open wall. The ramp clattered to the frozen ground below. I unhinged the front wall and let it slam shut. I crossed to the side door, picked up the boathook, shut the light, shut the door, snapped the padlock closed.
I stopped to scoop snow over the pool of clotted blood outside the shed, then trotted to the lake bank. The Tin Lizzie had already plowed a twenty-yard long channel through the ice.
I looked down from the bank. The shoreline was only eight feet below, as promised. Unfortunately it was a jagged pile of boulders. I leaned down and probed at the pile with the butt of the boathook, trying to find a pivot point, looking to pole vault myself over the rocks and onto the ice. The pole found a crevice with some play in it.
I looked up. The Chris Craft continued to plow north in the moonlit dim.
I dug the boathook into the crevice. It bit, leaving me with a pole vault handle approximately ten inches long. I sat down on the bank. That got me another foot or two of pole. I gripped it with both hands and pushed off with my feet.
The pole swung out towards the lake and came to a stop at 90 degrees straight up. I clung to my perch like a flagpole sitter. I shifted my weight to the seaward side, braced a leg against the pole and pulled on the hook with both arms. The boathook drooped over like a licorice whip, depositing me deftly on the icy lake.
I yanked the pole from the rocks and duckwalked north along the carved channel, keeping an eye out for gray spots, whatever they were, determined to walk all the way to Canada if that’s what it took to get my dib. I could barely see the Tin Lizzie furrowing through the ice field ahead. Goddamn Jimmy Streets. What else? Goddamn Jimmy Streets had his sawed-off to The
Schooler’s head.
Then an amazing thing happened. The distant thrum of inboard motors changed pitch and the Tin Lizzie buzzed backward at a rapid clip.
I put my foot on the neck of the boathook and straightened it out best I could. The Schooler put the engine in neutral when he got close and drifted back in my direction. I snagged the stern with the boathook and prepared to board.
The Schooler pointed toward shore. “The launch ramp!”
“Huh?”
“We need to grab the launch ramp!”
Sirens swirled from nearby, the cops were climbing all over the West Side. Now seemed an inappropriate time for housekeeping.
“Go back!” said The Schooler.
I shimmied back toward the shoreline on the silvery ice as the boat backed up beside me. We reached the head of the ice channel that the boat had dug. The front end of the launch ramp was submerged.
“Pry it up,” said The Schooler. “Use the boathook.”
I tried my damndest but I had a lousy angle and no way to brace myself. Sirens carved bright loud circles in the frozen air. Why was this so all-fired important?
The Schooler grimaced. “Get on board!”
I heaved the spindled boathook into the back of the boat and minced my way along the edge of the ice channel. The Schooler handed the boathook to Jimmy and issued instructions.
Jimmy stood at the stern and dug down in the water. He reared back as the boathook snagged the launch ramp.
I inched closer and planted my feet to climb aboard. That’s how I learned what a gray spot was. It’s a thin sheet of ice with slush underneath. I gulped air as my head went under.
I’m a good swimmer under normal circumstances. Not so good in frigid water wearing a topcoat and leather shoes. I backstroked and frog kicked best I could but the sodden coat dragged me down like an anchor. I struggled to shed the damn thing, fumbling at buttons as I sank. For the second time in an hour I said my goodbyes.
It was under twenty feet of water, standing at the bottom of Lake Erie, that I stripped off and discarded my $90 vicuna topcoat. Broke my heart. I swam to the surface and gulped air.
“Hoist him up,” said The Schooler. Jimmy reached down and offered his hand. I took it.
I shivered on the deck as The Schooler put the inboards in gear and motored north through his pre-cut channel. Jimmy stood heroically on the stern holding the boathook in both hands, dragging the long metal launch ramp off the lake bank and into the ice channel.
The far end of the launch ramp snagged on something just before it reached the lake. Jimmy lost his footing and fell forward over the gunwale. I jumped over and cinched my arms around his waist, God knows why.
We held fast. Jimmy, his face lashed by icy prop spray, arms extended, gripping the boathook like grim death. Me, soaked to the skin, legs splayed for leverage, clutching Jimmy’s backside to my crotch.
We held fast and reeled in the long shiny sea serpent. When its silvery tail finally submerged The Schooler told Jimmy to unhook. The launch ramp sank quickly. Jimmy and I uncouple-ed and stood as far away from each other as possible.
The Tin Lizzie picked up speed. The channel would scab over with a crust of ice by daylight. And Jimmy, The Schooler and yours truly would vanish without a trace.
Chapter Forty-one
“I’ve made a study of bank robbery,” said The Schooler, at the helm of the Tin Lizzie, half a mile offshore. Jimmy and I stood on either side of him, studiously ignoring each other.
I was ignoring Jimmy anyway. His good eye was probably drinking in the spectacle that was Harold Schroeder. Having stripped off my waterlogged clothing and toweled off, I was now clad in Schooler hand-me-downs. A sailor’s watch cap, ill-fitting gloves, a long sleeved shirt I had to tug past my elbows, a sweater vest, highwater pants and a windbreaker I couldn’t zip closed. Oh, and leather bedroom slippers and white socks.
“Robbery is easy,” said The Schooler, standing on the bridge, peering through the windshield at the icy lake. “You can control events inside a closed space. It’s the getaway that’ll kill you.”
We had been making slow and steady progress through the harbor ice and Henry was well pleased. Harbor ice was generally thicker than lake ice, or so he said. All I knew about ice came from chunking it off the sidewalk. One patch breaks up easy, the next patch breaks your back.
“You use roads, they put up roadblocks. You use public transportation, they stake out the depot. I thought a small plane on a private strip might solve the problem until radar came along.”
The Schooler had been studying this for a long time. Radar had been around since before the war.
“I’ve always liked boats, motorboats. An eighteen-foot speedboat with a hundred horsepower Evinrude can outrun a Coast Guard cutter on a flat lake. But Lake Erie never stays flat for long.”
I looked down from the bridge, at the vast moonlit ice field arrayed before us and said, drolly, “It looks pretty flat at the moment.”
The Schooler’s smug smile said that’s entirely the point.
“The Coast Guard doesn’t have a way to pursue us?”
“They have an iceboat. The Mackinaw, just commissioned, magnificent ship. Ten thousand hp diesel, welded hull, no rivets. And bilge pumps that shift water in the ballast tanks fore to aft.”
“What does that do?”
“Lets the captain rock the vessel front to back if he gets stuck. But the Mackinaw clears shipping lanes, it’s not a pursuit vessel.”
I gestured at the frozen harbor. “So where the heck is it?”
“She is clearing the Toledo-Detroit channel at the moment. We’ve got Cleveland harbor all to ourselves.”
Lucky us. “This ice thick enough to support a car?”
“Sure.”
“Then what’s to keep the coppers from sending a buncha squad cars after us?”
The Schooler’s grin was wry, one-sided. “Their lack of imagination.”
I returned his grin. “I thought iceboats had to be big.”
“Not, it’s all about hull design, and plenty of horsepower.” The Schooler looked down from the bridge at the arctic seascape. “That’s the theory anyway.”
I bounced a look off Jimmy. He made brief eye contact before he looked away. Theory was not a word we wanted to hear at the moment. Jimmy said as much.
“You haven’t tried it the fuck out?”
The Schooler’s face glazed over. “What’s that?”
“This tub. You been hammerin’ at it for months. I know all about it.”
The Schooler shrugged. I asked the question. “How did you know all about it?”
“I looked into it,” said Jimmy. “Got suspicious when the old man didn’t have a tan this last summer. It meant he wan’t out snaggin’ walleye with his high hat pals. I looked into it. I figure there’s only one reason a man puts a one-inch steel skin on the hull of a fishing boat.”
Well. That explained how Jimmy knew to go to the boat shed. What it didn’t explain was how he got there.
The Schooler, one hand on the helm and the other on the throttle, answered Jimmy after a time, explained why he hadn’t tried the boat the fuck out. “You can’t take a big stakes gamble with nothing at stake.”
The impenetrable circularity of this statement brought me up short. It sounded like Jap poetry. But I took his point, I think. Ike didn’t get a dress rehearsal for D-day. You can’t do a dry run on a secret mission.
I turned to look at the distant shore. The city of Cleveland was nothing but a fog of misty lights and the Terminal Tower. We were a million miles away. I spun around when Henry jumped up off his captain’s chair and said, “Oh screw.”
I thought it some trick of the light at first, an optical illusion, an icy blue mirage forty yards off the bow. It didn’t belong there, that was sure. The Schooler worried the helm and goosed the throttle. We churned closer.
“What is that?” I said.
“I don’t know,” said Henry Voss. “I know about windrow
s and pressure ridges. But I have no bloody idea what that is.”
Jimmy clambered forward and perched at the stem of the prow. I shook my head in wonder. A five-foot wall of ice extended east-west as far as the eye could see.
I’m not a big believer in divine retribution, the hand of God reaching down to smite the wicked and all that. It seemed to me God had been asleep at the switch the last five years. Still. If what we were looking at wasn’t a sign from above my name isn’t Harold Martin Schroeder.
A long perfect glistening blue wave. Concave, frozen and curled at the tip.
Chapter Forty-two
“I can’t make sense of it,” said The Schooler.
He had throttled back and sat in the captain’s chair, staring down from the bridge at the sculpted wave. “A windrow looks like a tumbled down wall, broken blocks of ice piled up by the wind. A pressure ridge is a hump. Tidal currents cause ice plates to fissure and overlap. It makes a hump in the ice, a foot high, maybe two. Nothing like this.”
I couldn’t make sense of it either and I didn’t care to. This wasn’t a field trip.
The Cleveland PD might be Keystone Kops chasing their tails but Commander Seifert had told the full story to the feds by now. Plump-fingered Chester Halladay would be climbing the walls when he learned about the first-ever robbery of a Federal Reserve Bank, a robbery aided and abetted by an operative he recruited. Once the roadblocks and stakeouts came up empty search planes would be launched. Or had been already. We didn’t need to waste time trying to make sense of an ice formation. We needed to get busy busting through it.
That’s what I told myself. What I did was continue to stare at the perfect rolling frozen wave ten yards off the bow. The base, like the lake, was thick and gray. The wave tapered gracefully as it swept upward, however, and crested in a curl as clear as Steuben glass. The moonlight painted it a pale and shimmering blue.
I had seen a great deal in my twenty-five years but I was unprepared for this. So I did what any red-blooded can-do American would do, I concentrated on the mechanics. If the icy blue mirage could be made sense of then it wasn’t an evil portent from on high now was it?
