Death Across the Lake

by Lyle Hightower

  “I didn’t agree to rent out this room to river people. You all rented this room under false pretences.”

  “Now hold on a second,” I said. “I didn’t want to have to tell you this, but we’re not merchants. We’re not river people either.”

  Irene looked at me nervously.

  “Well then who the hell are you?”

  “We’re with New York State security services, here to infiltrate a a gang of bandits that’s taken up camp along the riverside. Now if we have any more trouble over this, I’m going to have put you in custody. And on account of the fact that we’re supposed to be here for at least a week, that means you’re going to have to live in our room with us, bound and gagged. I’m sure you can understand.”

  She stood there, warily. I hoped that most likely being illiterate, she wouldn’t ask to see any ID.

  “You get changed out of those outfits on the double,” she said. “And I’ll overlook this incident. I can’t have you two around here, looking like that. It’ll kill my business.”

  We got into the room and everything was as we had left it. Irene immediately started taking off her outfit, and sat on the bed in her undergarments. Maybe the close proximity meant that she was no longer squeamish about being nearly naked around me, but I was surprised. She got up again and went to take a shower. I sat around on the bed, still wearing my poncho. When she emerged from the shower, she looked entirely different. A day’s worth of dirt had been removed, and with its absence she seemed suddenly bashful, and asked me to turn around while she got back into her regular clothes.

  “We need to get back into that office,” she said. “The data in those files could identify every one of Leffert’s agents in Vermont. It could turn the tide of the war.”

  “There’s half the Empire State Militia standing between us and that data,” I said. “So unless you’ve got an army, a real army, not a thousand angry farmers with pitchforks, we don’t have a chance in hell of getting in there.”

  It was an intractable problem, but I could see the wheels turning in her head, and I didn’t like it one bit. I was ready to go home, but I could see she wasn’t going to give up.

  “We can’t just walk away,” she said.

  “Wouldn’t it be enough just to kill him? Getting into that safe is above my pay grade.”

  “What about that person you know, who could get into the safe. We just have to find them, no?”

  “We still have to get into that building. How are we going to do that?”

  “We just need a plan. A big one.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  “We used to call him the cracker. I realize it’s not the most original name, but that was what he did. He was freelance. We even used him sometimes. He didn’t care who paid him. His underworld clients didn’t seem to care either. Finally, we busted him for a bank job, but he escaped. Last I heard he was here, in Plattsburgh,” I said.

  “Sounds like the kind of guy we need.” Irene said, laughing half-heartedly.

  “I’m not looking forward to seeing him. He was in pretty bad shape last I saw him. Drank too much. Leaving the state as a fugitive won’t have helped his drinking problem. He had a bad habit of turning up on my doorstep for a while, after he skipped town. He’d take the ferry over, drinking all the way, and manage to make it to my front door in the middle of the night. He’d make a racket and I’d have to bring him inside before anyone saw him. It’s not a good look for a Burlington police detective to have a fugitive show up at his door, drunk and flailing in the middle of the night. I didn’t want to have to arrest him. I mean, he wouldn’t have lasted a day in prison. I’d felt relief when he escaped, to be honest. Saved me the guilt of locking him away. He wasn’t a bad guy. Anyways, I’d let him sleep it off, and then send him right back on the ferry. I haven’t heard from him in a while, maybe he’s doing better. The real question is, where do we find him. He’s likely to be somewhere he can work, make enough money to get by, but somewhere he can sink into the background.”

  “That could be anywhere,” Irene said. She was rooting around in her bag for something to eat.

  “Last thing he told me was that he made some money doing repairs. Appliances, machinery, that kind of thing. Computers sometimes.”

  Irene suddenly looked interested.

  “Rare skill,” she said.

  “You’re not the only person who knows how to swing an internet.”

  She looked at me funny, and said, “we should check the central market. See if any anyone there knows about him. Do you know what name he was living under, last time you saw him?”

  “Morty. He said he was calling himself Morty.”

  We walked back into town, still dressed as river people, landlady be damned. She scowled at us as we left the motel, but she didn’t do anything about it. The central market was a warren of shacks and prefab buildings just north of the main strip. It was late in the afternoon when we got there, but the place was still buzzing with people, looking to buy provisions, or clothes, or have their shoes fixed. The place also did a brisk business in all kinds of repairs.

  “We have to be careful, we can’t go around asking every single person if they know someone named Morty. We’ll arouse suspicion,” Irene said.

  “Let’s find a repair stand. See what they say.”

  Though people still didn’t look at us, as river people we were more welcome in the central market than we had been on the streets of downtown. We were still ignored, presumably because we didn’t have any money, but no one glowered at us or threatened us.

  We came to a stand, barely a stand at that, where a large bearded man in his fifties sat. The stand was made of unpainted plywood, and there was a stack of old broken TVs behind it. There was a sign above it that said ‘John’s Aplyanse Shoppe.’ He looked as likely as anyone to know if Morty was around.

  “You know a guy, fixes fridges, name of Morty. About your age, tall, thin, grey hair. Probably clean-shaven.”

  ‘John’ eyed me suspiciously. “You got some’n to fix, or what?”

  “I do, but I was looking for Morty.”

  “Why should I tell you if I know ‘im or not? If I seen ‘im, you gonna let me fix whatever it is you need fixing? I don’t think so. So get out of here, unless you got some’n for me to fix.”

  “I think you know exactly where he is. And you’re going to tell me,” I said.

  John laughed. “You river people. You all think you’re so special, but you’re just rats. Funniest bunch of weirdos I every saw.”

  Irene pulled her poncho aside, showing him the gun she had tucked into her pants. “We ain’t river people. Now you tell me, or we’ll kill you faster than you can say refrigerator.”

  He gulped. “You wouldn’t get away with it. Too many people around.”

  She pulled it out further to reveal a silencer attached to it. “You’d just collapse, and by the time anyone knew what was happening we’d be long gone,” I said.

  “Alright, alright. If it matters that much to you. He works for Hannigan, over that way, fourth row of huts over there,” he said, pointing at a trailer that had a lineup of men and women holding various implements and appliances, waiting to have them fixed.

  “I should have known,” I said. “Of course it’s the busiest place in the joint.”

  “You’re damn right. Since Morty started working for old Hannigan, he’s driving me out of business. All I gots is these old TVs to sell now.”

  He looked genuinely miffed, and I handed him a few hundred New York Dollars. He looked at the money, counted it and huffed. “Thanks, I guess,” he said.

  We walked to the shack with the long lineup, and walked up to the counter.

  “Excuse me,” Irene said.

  “Back of the line,” the man at the counter said. He was an older man, wearing a green tunic. He didn’t bother to look up.

  “It’s not about a repair,” she said.

  “Then don’t bother getting into the line. But please back away
from the counter. I’ve got customers to serve,” and then he called out “next.”

  A tired looking woman holding a baby came up to the counter and plonked down a pair of garden sheers. “Need these sharpened.”

  “That’ll be $2,400. You can come get them tomorrow after 3pm. Next,” he said, giving her a ticket.

  “We need to talk to Morty,” Irene said.

  “Morty’s busy,” he said, still not looking up. “Next.”

  A man came up to the desk carrying what looked like a toaster, though it was badly burned.

  “I can’t do nothin’ with that, mister,” the man behind the counter said, and the man with the burned out toaster walked away, dejected.

  “Should we just force our way in?” I whispered.

  “We shouldn’t make a scene. Let’s wait around back, see if he comes out,” Irene said.

  We found an old parking barrier to sit on, and waited it out. The crowds ebbed and flowed, but the line only got longer as we waited. Whatever it was Morty was doing, the word had gotten out. By the looks of the line, he had enough fixit work to last three lifetimes.

  The sun was starting to go down when the back door to the shed opened, and there was Morty, good old Morty, stretching his arms out and jogging a little in place, looking older, much older than the last time I’d seen him. But he was wearing nicer clothes, and his hair was cut. The steady work agreed with him, clearly.

  “Morty,” I called out, and he looked at me. Spying what he thought were river people, he looked confused, even a bit scared, and withdrew slightly. I got up to walk over to him.

  “It’s me, Benny Bailey,” I whispered, not wanting to bring attention to myself. Irene was now standing next to me.

  He put his hand to his forehead. “Jeez Bailey, what happened to you? Are you living down by the river?”

  “No Morty. I’m in disguise. I’m still B.P.D. This is Irene, the town librarian.”

  He looked even more confused.

  “We need you for a job, Morty.”

  “Oh no. I don’t do that stuff any more. No way.”

  “Your boss know you’re a wanted felon?”

  “I’m not a wanted felon here. Just over the water.”

  “You think he’ll care?”

  Morty looked back at the building.

  “Jeez Bailey. You really know how to make a guy feel special. Meet me at the Boom Room at nine tonight, we’ll talk.”

  “Great Morty.”

  “Do you have to dress like that? I’ve got a reputation to uphold.”

  “Yeah, we do.”

  Morty shrugged and silently went back inside. We walked back to our motel and waited for our meeting.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  Morty looked around the room furtively. We were in the back corner of the Boom Room, a dive on the edge of the strip, at a large round table. A quiet, dour atmosphere pervaded the place. Men and women sat alone or in small groups, for the most part looking sad and downtrodden. This was not a place you’d find happy tourists looking to spend their winnings.

  “I can’t believe you’re walking around looking like a couple of river rats. Takes balls, I guess. Not that it’s something to be proud of.”

  “You wouldn’t have given us a second glance,” I said.

  He shrugged again, with a look that said ‘to each his own.’

  “What is it you need me for?”

  “We need you to blow a safe,” Irene said.

  “Where is this safe?” he asked.

  Irene leaned in, speaking in the lowest possible voice. “A Militia building in the west end.”

  Morty went white.

  “I’m leaving,” he said, and started to get up. I grabbed his arm and sat him down again.

  “We’ve got a boat, south end of town. All I have to do is find out where you live, and we’ll come and get you in the middle of the night and spirit you back to Vermont. I know a judge who’s real eager to throw the book at you.”

  “You wouldn’t do that,” he said, with a little too much derision.

  “Take your chances,” I said.

  “This is important,” Irene said, cutting in. “If you understood how important it is that we get what’s in that safe, you’d–”

  “I’d what? Help you? I don’t think so, honey. I have to look out for myself, and that means not getting killed.”

  “The Republic itself is at risk,” she said.

  He sat back and looked like he was taking this in.

  “What’s in it that’s so important?” he asked.

  “We can’t tell you,” I answered. “But I think you should take Irene’s word for it. This is big, and if you help us, I think I can get the deck cleared for you. ‘For exemplary service to the Republic’ or something like that.”

  He seemed to consider this a moment.

  “No, no, no. I’ve got a livelihood going on here, I can’t just up and leave. There’s nothing for me back there,” he said.

  “Listen. Buddy. What are you making working for Hannigan? Ten grand a month? Fifteen? Come back to Vermont, start your own business, you could be making ten times that inside of a year. New York is a third-world country. You can’t make real money here.”

  Irene smiled and tried to hide it.

  “You do this job, they’ll roll out the welcome mat for you so fast you won’t know what hit you. You can set yourself up in Burlington, at the electronics market, big stall, you’ll make a killing.”

  The look on his face told me he was listening.

  “Just crack this one safe, we’ll go back home, get the legalities settled, and send for you, easy peasy.”

  He looked anxious, and a wheezing noise came out of his throat. It built like the sound of a steam kettle coming to a boil as he vacillated, ending only when he finally said, “Ok. I’ll do it.”

  Morty insisted on understanding the whole plan. Irene was hesitant, citing operational security, but he put his foot down and refused to participate unless we explained the whole thing. We went back to the motel, where we were less likely to be overheard, and Irene went over the tactical plan as it stood, which entailed sneaking into the building at night, when we were less likely to be seen approaching the building.

  “Never gonna work,” he said. “You should know that, you’ve been there. The place is crawling with militia. We’ll never make it in, let alone out, alive. And from what you’re describing, I’m going to have to blast through the floor, and that’s noisy. Anyone in the building is going to hear.”

  “Then how do we do this?” Irene asked.

  “We need to draw them out. Something has to seem more important than guarding the building,” he said.

  “Why does anyone even live in this godforsaken rat’s hole?” I asked. They both turned and looked at me.

  “I’m serious. Answer me that question. Why does Plattsburgh exist? What’s the use of it?”

  “I don’t understand your question, Bailey,” Morty said.

  “Answer it, and you’ll understand what I’m getting at.”

  “Trade? Casinos? Tourism? No other reason anyone would come here.”

  “So what’s more important that that building?” I asked.

  “Trade, casinos, and tourism,” Irene said, understanding. “We blow up the casinos. Or at least make them think someone is blowing up the casinos.”

  “I don’t have that big a stash of explosives,” Morty said. “And it’s the wrong kind anyways.”

  “But I do,” Irene said, opening up her kit. Inside were four grenades, four incendiary grenades, and another four smoke grenades.

  “Jeez, she really comes equipped.”

  “We need someone to plant these, someone who can sneak in and out of town without being noticed,” I said. “A lot of people, if we want to pull this off right.”

  “The river people,” Irene and I said, in unison.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  Morty left around midnight to go back home and get some sleep. We planned t
o meet the next night at the motel at 7 pm, if we could get the cooperation of Benji and his people. If we couldn’t, I didn’t know what we were going to do. I fell asleep wondering if we would be able to pull it off.

  We got up with the sunrise and ate breakfast from a food stand near the marketplace, the only place that would serve us in our river people attire. I’d gotten used to the bizarre mishmash of fabrics and textures I was wearing, but I don’t imagine the townsfolk had. Everywhere else just told us to get lost. After breakfast we walked towards the river, and descending the slope we came upon Benji’s camp again.

  It was much as it had been when we left. Children played, and a breakfast fire cooked food for the twenty or so people who sat around in the warm morning sun, doing chores or sewing. A young woman with red curly hair and wearing a heavy dark poncho approached us.

  “You’re back,” she said. “What brings you here again?” She said this without any hint of apprehension or nervousness.

  “Is Benji around?”

  “He’s in his hut, I’m not sure if he’s up yet. Why don’t you follow me and we can see if he’s awake?”

  She led us up the embankment to the hut we’d slept in only two nights before. A kind of haze breathed out of its open windows, and as we approached a strange botanical smell filled the air. Benji was lying on a mat on the ground in his hut, his eyes closed, and smoke emerging from a censer that was burning next to him on the ground.

  “Benji,” the woman whispered. He didn’t move. She whispered his name again and he stirred. He opened his eyes, and with an expression of great contentedness on his face, he sat up and looked at us.

  “Oh, hi, you two again. I was in my dreamspace. Please excuse me for not having been there to greet you into our community once again. I see you’ve taken to our clothes,” he said, pointing at what we were wearing.

  “It’s the easiest way to get around in this town,” I said.