by Ted Wood
I broke the impasse. "This isn't something you should get mixed up in, George. It's only borderline police work. You've got a job to do here and a career to go back to in September."
He sighed. "This job looked good until I'd been doing it for a week. If it wasn't for fishing on my noon hour, I'd go crazy."
"Look, it could get exciting fast if the bikers came back into town. We need you here."
He grinned. "I'll try and remember that. It'll help keep my eyes from closing in the long afternoons."
"Make the most of the leisure. The line of work you're in means seven-day weeks, twelve—fourteen hours a day." I thought the idea might not have occurred to him before this, but he grinned like a kid with a new bike. "Yeah," he said. "Yeah, it does, an' I love it."
He picked up his pike. "For now, I'm gonna run this across the lake to my mother. She thinks I've forgotten how to fish since I went to school."
"That'll change her mind for her," I said, and then, because his eyes showed he was hungry for more information, I told him what I was planning to do. It wasn't complex. I would drive up to North Bay and ask around, see what signs of the Freedom for Hire people I could come up with. Somebody would know something. Maybe a gas-station attendant, maybe the barman at one of the beverage rooms, maybe the manager of the local bushplane service. I would follow up as far as I could.
He asked the obvious question. "How will you follow them, always supposing you can trace them?"
"I'm just going up to my house to throw the canoe on the car. Anyplace they're hiding I can reach with a canoe." He didn't say anything more. He just stuck his hand out to me and we shook. "If anybody needs me, Marcel Dupuis at North Bay will know how to get hold of me," I said. Then I thought about Sam. "Listen. One other thing. I can't take Sam with me. I'm going to have to move quietly. One bark out of him and we're both gone. Will you take him for a couple days?"
"Yeah," he said, Indian again. I knelt and fussed over Sam, rubbing his big head so that he squirmed against my hand eagerly like a puppy. I would miss him where I was going. George watched without saying anything. He feels the same way about my dog. We both know how good he is in support.
At last I stood up, raised a finger to let Sam know that this was official, then went through the handing-over procedure. When I'd done it, George said "Come," and Sam went to his side. George nodded to him, then shook my hand and wished me luck and I was on my way, alone. My house was still the way I'd left it. The soil is sandy and thin, and in August it's too hot for grass to grow, so you couldn't have guessed it was three weeks since I cut it last. I unlocked the house and dug out my backpack. I keep it ready to go, sleeping bag, fly dope, pot, plate, billy can, and a bare minimum of supplies. On impulse I threw in a couple of extra cans of meat and a bag of flour, which I slid into a plastic bag. Anything can happen in a canoe. Your gear had better be waterproof.
That was it. I paused for a moment in the kitchen, checking there was nothing else I needed, then took my combat jacket down from behind the door. It seemed silly now, in eighty-five-degree heat, but if I did head into the bush, the nights could get cooler fast. Besides, it was appropriate wear for the occasion.
FIVE
I drove into North Bay around one-thirty, past the doughnut shops and motels that reach out down the highway to greet you. It's not a pretty town, but it's prosperous, as mid-north Ontario towns go. There's a military base close by, and the town has a good sand beach on the north shore of Lake Nipissing, which is the size of a small sea. Now, in late August, the holidaymakers were everywhere, happily storing up sunshine on their skins to take back to the office and brag about.
I went directly to the police station and found Marcel Dupuis at the counter, tying trout flies. When he heard the door open, he scooped everything into the open desk drawer in front of him and leaned against it, but I knew about his hobby, so I just grinned.
He stood up and stuck out his hand. "Hi, Reid," he said, speaking English now that we were face-to-face.
"Hi, Marcel. Looked like a Royal Coachman. You have any luck with those Limey flies?"
He shrugged. "Me, I fish pickerel like a good Frenchman. No, I 'ave a customer, 'e pay me twen'y bucks a dozen."
That took care of the formalities, and we switched to the missing men. The detective had checked all the gas stations and restaurants around the fringe of town, trying to get a make on the car and its four people. Nothing. It was nominally his day off, and he had gone home, so there was no chance to talk to him, but it wasn't necessary. If he said he had done it, it was done. The next move would have to be mine. I discussed it with Marcel.
"I figure they'll have a camp set up somewhere away from any road so nobody will hear them shooting."
Marcel brushed his big French mustache and thought about it. "That make sense," he said. "If they wan' it quiet like that, they can' be near a road." He sat down, took out his half-finished fly, and held the clamp between his knees as he tied on the hackle. I waited. He was like a lot of men, I guessed. His thought processes were clearer when his hands were busy.
At last he said, "It means they go somewhere by canoe, or they fly. An' I guess they save time, fly."
"That's my reading. Is there any other plane service started up, besides the one at Heron Landing?"
He looked up and frowned. "No. Jus' Pete Robinson at the Landing. Unless dey 'ave a frien' wid a plane."
I'd thought of that one. If they did have their own wings, I'd lost them for keeps. Any nonprofessional tight enough with Dunphy to fly his men into the bush wasn't about to tell me where they'd gone. "Any idea who else has a plane?"
He shrugged. "You know 'ow it is. There's planes in an' out d' lodges, Americans, guys from Toron'o. Could be one of dem."
"I guess I'll try Robinson first, then make a sweep of the lodges, ask around, see what I come up with."
He whipped the knot on his hackle and unclipped the finished fly from the clamp. It looked perfect, but he held it up critically, then snipped an invisible extra hair from the hackle and laid it aside. "I don't see no other way," he said at last.
"There's always the chance they've taken a room in a motel somewhere. Maybe right in town, waiting for their buddies before moving on, something like that?"
He tucked the fly into a wallet made of coarse sacking, hooking it into the fabric. There were others in there, all identical.
"I'll get on to that," he said. "Take a couple hours on the phone."
"Thanks, Marcel. I'll go talk to Pete Robinson. I'll call in for messages. If you do find them, maybe you could keep tabs on them until I get back."
"Sure," he said. He put his fly-tying tackle into the drawer and reached for the yellow pages.
I thanked him and left, driving away with all the windows down, trying to blast the heat out of the car.
Heron's Landing is a smaller version of Murphy's Harbour. The locals live by renting cottages to the summer tourists and going into the bush to cut pulpwood in winter. The biggest industry in town is Robinson's Air Service. They have two planes, equipped with floats in summer, skis in winter. Pete Robinson flies one; his wife flies the other. They do most of their own maintenance.
If people looked the part, the way they do in movies, Pete would be six feet two and lean, with his face crinkled up from staring into the sunshine all day. Instead, he's built like a fireplug, short and thick and strong and given to bursts of savage bad language. I don't think he means any of it; it's automatic, like prayer to a priest.
He was changing the engine oil on the Cessna when I arrived, swearing in a low hiss. He looked up and frowned at me, trying to remember who I was. When it came to him, he wiped his hands on a piece of pink rag and came over. "Hi, Chief Bennett, from Murphy's Harbour, right?"
"Right, Pete, how's business?"
We shook hands, and he shrugged. "I was doin' fine until they raised the goddamn premiums on insurance. Now I'm flying the first three months of the year just paying those bastards. Aside from that, we'
re makin' out." He stood watching the oil run out into the broad funnel of the wheeled container, then asked, "What brings you up here, anyways? No fish left down in Murphy's Harbour?"
"I'm supposed to be on vacation in Toronto, but my lady's out of town working, so I got out of the city fast as I could."
The oil trickled to a stop. I noticed that even at the end it wasn't black. It looked fresh enough to use again. He took care of his machines. It was why he'd survived forty years in the business without falling out of the sky. He reached out and screwed the sump plug back into place, then tightened it precisely with a wrench, tight and safe but not overstressed. Professional all the way. This wasn't a guy you could fool with devious questions. I had to rely on his honesty.
"Have you been out this morning, Pete?"
"Yeah. Took a party from Ohio into Gull Lake. Fat old guys. Had to make two trips, one for them, one for their supplies." He turned and grinned. "If they drink all the bourbon they've got along, they'll never catch a damn thing."
He waited for my polite chuckle, then said, "Not the guy you're looking for, right?"
"Right. The guy I'm looking for is a long, thin Georgia cracker name of Wallace. He may be in the company of two other men. One around nineteen, long hair, around five ten. The other is forty, fair hair cut short, mustache."
His face never changed. He didn't jump in too quickly or strike a pose while he pretended to remember. "No, nobody like that. What'd they do?"
"Wallace is wanted for assault with a deadly weapon. A knife."
Robinson lifted a liter of oil and stood with it in one hand, looking at me very straight. "And that's why you're chasing him to hell an' gone?"
I owed him a little more, and I paid. "Not exactly. But it's how I'll be able to keep him if I find him."
He opened the oil container and tipped it into the engine. I waited, and finally he spoke, softly. "Can you tell me the reason? Or is it a p'lice matter?"
He turned and looked at me while I tossed the coin in my hand. Telling him was a breach of security. If he was talkative, the story would be all over the region in a couple of days. But if I didn't trust him, I was at a dead end. The great Ontario middle north had swallowed up Wallace and Dunphy and Michaels the way a jukebox swallows quarters. No choice. "Pete, this is confidential. But I need your help."
He nodded slightly. "I'll try."
"These guys are dangerous. They're off somewhere in the bush training to be soldiers, with real guns. I've followed them this far, and they've vanished."
"You tellin' me they're terrorists?" He didn't chuckle or express surprise. He was a sensible guy wanting facts. It looked as if I'd made the right decision.
"Not in Canada. They're training as mercenaries; then they'll head out somewhere and hire out."
"Bastards," he said, and frowned. "I worked a lot of places before I saved enough to set up here. One o' them was the Congo when they had their troubles. They had mercenaries in there. Ex-French Foreign Legion guys mostly. They were worse than the rebels; shot and raped their way through the whole goddamn region. Animals." It was like talking to the survivor of a bad firefight. I said nothing and waited until his old ghosts had settled down. At last he blinked and said, "I haven't seen anything like you're talking about. But I'll keep it quiet, ask around. I'd like to see the bastards outa business."
"Me, too. Appreciate anything you can do. I'm heading back to North Bay. I'll check in someplace and stay in touch with the police there."
He nodded, not speaking, then turned to his engine and poured in more oil. He looked grim. That made two of us.
I did what I could on the way back to town, stopping off at two lakeside lodges where I saw there were floatplanes drawn up. Both of the pilots were there to tell me they never took passengers except family members. One of them was a stockbroker from Toronto; the other was younger, with violently ginger hair that I realized was dyed when he told me he was a guitar player in a rock group. He was harder to believe than the other guy, but I asked at the bar and found he had arrived the previous night and hadn't left the lodge since.
At four I was back in North Bay, checking into the Northern Lights Motel on the edge of town. It was small but had a phone in the room. I used it to call Fred's apartment first, talking into the phone for three seconds after the beep, then staying silent for two and talking again. It triggered the mechanism, and I was listening to Fred as she told me she missed me and wondered if I was back in Murphy's Harbour fishing. She left her phone number, and I wrote it down and tucked the paper into my shirt pocket.
Then there was a second message. This one was from Mrs. Michaels. "Hello, Mr. Bennett. You were right about Jason phoning. He called this morning at around nine. Said he was flying out to the training ground. He sounded, oh, you know, kind of down, flat, something. Said he was going to grow up. Not to worry about him, he was with professionals. They would make sure he was trained to a hair. That's exactly how he put it—to a hair. Said he wouldn't be calling for a few weeks but not to worry." Her voice faltered here; then she cleared her throat and said, "I'm afraid this isn't very helpful, but he wouldn't answer any questions. Just told me not to worry." Another pause. "You have my number if you want to reach me. I'll call again if I hear anything more."
That was the end of the tape, so I hung up and thought about my next move. And I also thought hard about my motivation. Why was I following this up? The smart thing to do would be to cut my losses and head back to Toronto. I'd traced the kid this far. Now he'd vanished. By the time he came back into town, maybe a month from now, he would be fitter and wiser. He would have a war to go to, maybe even a safe little war from which he would come home with all the anger burned out of his system. It might even improve him. Hell, it had improved me.
And then I remembered his mother's face. That was a pretty good motivation, all on its own. On top of which, this was a request from Simon Fulwell, a guy I liked and respected. And besides that, the biggest reason of all if I was honest, I had nothing else to do but go back to Toronto, which I didn't want to do, or go back to the Harbour and do some fishing. Neither idea appealed to me. No, I would stick around a little longer, see if I could come up with a lead, then maybe get the police to come with me and arrest the mercenaries for possession of illegal weapons. In the bust, I could cut young Michaels loose, by force, if necessary, and steer him toward a legitimate military career. It's not everybody's choice, but for kids like him, or the angry eighteen-year-old I'd been, it's a chance to get your head straight and develop some pride.
A young father walked by outside with his three-year-old skipping alongside and a bucket of fried chicken in his hands. It reminded me that I hadn't eaten since the corned-beef hash eight hours ago, so I dropped into the motel coffee shop. It was early for dinner, but I ordered fish and chips. I've found that two good meals a day is all I need. In town with Fred, who was a great cook, I'd got into the habit of eating to her timetable, three times a day. It was good to get back to my bachelor habits. The place was licensed, so I had myself a Labatt's Blue and thought some more about finding young Michaels.
In the end it came down to waiting. The trail had died. Short of rushing off madly in all directions, I had no choice but to wait for a while to see if he came back into town, where I could hope to catch him at the airport, or to learn where he was by asking a lot more questions. I decided to do it that way. It seemed a better way to pass the time than sitting in Toronto, wondering how serious Fred was about being a one-man woman. I guess I'm no more neurotic than the average man, but it seemed to me that actresses have a harder time staying monogamous than most women do. They spend their working lives projecting themselves as someone else, and if they're as attractive as Fred is, it's somebody sexy. I guess I've been a policeman too long to ever put my suspicious nature behind me. We had a good thing going but a lot of miles between us. And while I was crazy about Fred, I wasn't sure any woman could feel the same way about me.
After my dinner I walked downt
own to the police station. A new man was on duty. I didn't know him, but he was expecting me. He was young and eager and bored with the quietness of a Sunday afternoon inside. He stood up when I came in and stuck out his hand. "You must be Reid Bennett. I'm Wally Kelso."
We shook hands and smiled, and he said, "Got a message for you from Robinson out at Heron's Landing. He said you'd be calling in for it."
"Great. Thanks. What did he say?" Kelso shrugged awkwardly. "Well, he's kinda ornery, you know. He wouldn't tell me. Said to tell you to call. You wanna use the phone?"
"Please." I took it and rang Robinson. His wife answered, and there was a long, echoing wait while she went outside and shouted to him and he picked up the extension in his hangar.
"Yeah," he said. "That Reid Bennett?"
"In person."
"Yeah, well, I got a lead for you. I flew a prospector into the area of—well, that don't matter. He's looking for gold, and the less people know about it the better. But anyways, while we was on the way up there, he told me he saw something last month up around Berry Lake." The hair on my neck started to tingle. I was on the trail again! "Over the Quebec border, isn't it? What'd he see?"
"Says there was a couple guys there in a camp. They were dressed in military gear, he said. You know the kinda caps the Americans wear? Soft but kinda tall, with a stiff front on them."
Fatigue caps. "Yes, I know what he means. What were they doing?"
"Well, he was on the other side of the lake, just coming in from the portage out of Laroche Lake. He was plannin' to cross and head on into Lac Glace. Anyways, he says they were running around there over the rocks; playing soldiers is what he said. An' then they started blasting away with automatic weapons."
"Bingo," I said, and he laughed.
"'S what I thought. Gotta be your guys training."
"What did he do? Did he talk to them, what?"
