by Ted Wood
“The chief’s paying. How’s that make you feel?”
He laughed and ordered toast and coffee to go and led me back to the station, munching. “The kid’s talked,” he said. “He didn’t arrange the killing, but he planned to charge Cindy Laver with theft. He’d shorted the cash deposit by forty-eight big ones. That’s why he didn’t make the deposit with her.”
“Nice guy. What’d he do with the money?”
“That’s where it gets kind of cute,” Doug said. He crammed the last of his toast into his mouth and couldn’t talk for a while. “He was paying for AIDS treatments for his brother. The brother’s gay an’ the father won’t speak to him or help him. So young Huckmeyer’s been skimming.”
I shook my head sadly. “Then he’s the white knight. No jury will convict him with that as a motive.”
“You’re right. I don’t think it’ll even come to trial,” Doug said. “It’s been two years of medication and treatments and the costs were sky-high. Like I said, it makes him look like Prince Valiant. I don’t see how they’ll make the money charges stick.”
“So what now? What’re we going for the box?”
“Yeah. He says he was scared and didn’t want to put the money right back into the bank. Wanted to talk to his dad. So he hid it until the old guy comes back from golfing in Florida.”
“If Manatelli knew about it, he’s likely still out his fifty,” I said. “Let’s go see. Did the bomb guy get here?”
“Yeah. There’s a guy from Burlington inside. Got enough gear with him to handle an A-bomb.”
“Good. I don’t want to get blown up again. Once was enough.”
“Shit. I’ll never forget that day,” Doug said seriously. “I figured you were going to lose your hands.”
“Good as new. Impulsively I pulled up my sleeves and showed him my scars, through and through on both forearms. “You done good, Bro, getting me on that chopper so fast.”
He didn’t speak, just put one hand on my neck and squeezed.
The bomb man was waiting for us inside the station, a trim little guy, around thirty, erect, as most short cops are, and officious, with a bristly little moustache. Doug introduced us and I told him about Sam.
“You sure he’s good enough for this work?”
“I’d bet my life on it. He’s better than any parts per million air sampler you’ve got in your bag of tricks.”
He shrugged. “It’s your ass, An’ this is your bomb, if there is one.”
He went in his own car. Huckmeyer came with Doug and me. He looked pale and teary but he held his head up as we passed through the same reporters and drove back to Cat’s Cradle.
I took Sam with us and we all went up cm the lift, the four of us and Sam. At the top, Huckmeyer sent the operator out of the lift house and stopped the lift. Then he knelt down in one corner and lifted out a piece of baseboard, a plank of pine held only by two nails which he pried out easily by easing the board forward.
“It’s under that board,” he said, pointing. “There’s screws in it but they aren’t fastened.”
The bomb guy had put on his protective clothing in the lift. Now he told us all to step outside. I watched him work, through the open door, my palms pressed over my ears, mouth open, just in case.
He lifted the board, moving very carefully and checking underneath. After he’d made sure it was safe he lifted it all the way out and called us back in, speaking softly. We tiptoed in and looked down. In the space under the floor there was a children’s lunch pail with a picture of Superman on the front.
“Okay. Stand back,” I said. “I’ll have Sam sniff.”
Doug shook his head. “Man. I gotta get you workin’ on my kids. That dog is the best-trained thing I ever saw.”
“The training doesn’t stick with anything that doesn’t eat kibble,” I joked and I sat Sam down and prepared him to take on the sniffing assignment. The bomb man was watching, disdainfully.
“I thought they need a special collar for sniffing work,” Doug said. He was exuberant, elated, like we were on R and R together in Bangkok.
“He needs a cue. It could be a collar. I use a word,” I said. “Think back to the worst word you know.”
Doug laughed and swore but I shook my head. “No, think Nam. Think Ho Chi Minh.” I said the name slowly, holding one finger in front of Sam’s nose. Instantly he barked. His head went down to the box but he didn’t touch it, just barked furiously.
“Easy, boy,” I told him, and stood back, patting his head.
“Good dog,” I said again and waited for Huckmeyer to speak.
At last he found a voice. “You mean there’s explosives in there?”
“That’s the kind of guy you were doing business with. Now let’s get outside and let this gentleman do his job.”
We stood back, down the back side of the slope from the lift house. It seemed like forever and Huckmeyer kept looking at his watch which didn’t help.
Finally the man came out, carrying the box. He set it down gently on the snow and took out a drill. “This is the hard part,” he said, his voice muffled through his head cover.
We watched as he drilled a hole in one side of the box, well down from the lid. He let the drill go in only the thickness of the metal. I was sweating as I watched him. He bent and peered through the hole, then drilled again. I was still sweating and I backed off another step, reliving the day when the guy in front of me on the trail stepped on an enemy mine. It wiped him out and peppered me. I remembered the pain on my smashed arms and waited, muscles clenched.
It took him half an hour. An endless half hour. Then he folded back the flap he’d made and reached inside with a pair of pliers. I heard the snip of a wire and fell flat instinctively, but this time there was no explosion. I got up slowly, seeing that Doug was also picking himself up. Huckmeyer was looking at us wide-eyed. The bomb man was taking his headpiece off.
“Okay, heroes. It’s safe now.” He was sneering.
Doug was coldly furious. He walked up and grabbed the guy by the shoulder. “Lissen up, asshole. You ever seen anybody blown away?”
“No.” The guy’s voice went up angrily. “Of course not.”
“Well, we have,” Doug said. “Show him your goddamn arms, Reid.”
“There’s no need.”
“Do it,” Doug thundered, and I did. The bomb man and Huckmeyer stared in wonder at the white marks on my forearms. They didn’t speak and to break the tension I said, “These wounds had I on Crispin’s Day. Remember, Henry Fifth? Maybe you saw the movie.”
“Shit.” The bomb man rubbed his chin with a gloved hand. “I’m sorry, guys. I didn’t mean anything.”
“Reid was ten yards from the guy who hit the booby trap,” Doug said. “That poor bastard was blown in half. His guts were draped all around the trees like a line of dirty laundry. Now just open the goddamn box.”
He was chastened. “Sorry, guys,” he said again, then opened the box. There was no money in it. Just four sticks of dynamite and the triggering device, the kind of contacts you find in security systems on house windows.
“You sure it’s safe now?” Doug asked.
“Safe as it can be. I don’t like dynamite, it sweats gelignite, but I’ve got shock-resistant packing in my cooler chest.”
“Then stow it and let’s go,” Doug said. “And don’t touch anything. We gotta check for prints.”
The man quickly lowered the box into his cooler, on top of a layer of sponge rubber. Then he packed it around with more rubber and closed the cooler. “Okay now,” he said.
Huckmeyer called the lift operator back from the place off in the woods where he’d been watching us. He was full of questions but Huckmeyer shut him up. “Somebody booby-trapped the place,” he said. “They were trying to extort money from me. It’s safe now.”
The kid whistled in horror, then Huckmeyer instructed him to get us back on the car and move us directly to the bottom of the hill, ignoring the other cars that came up as we did so.
“They’ll be madder’n snakes. But okay, Mr. Huckmeyer.” The kid did as he was told and we were down at the bottom of the hill in five non-stop minutes.
The kid in the lower lift house had more questions, and the lineup of skiers was furious, but Huckmeyer ignored them all and we went back to the car and drove into town. Nobody spoke on the way.
We got to the station and went in. The bomb man came in behind us, carrying his box of tricks. The chief summoned me. “What did you find?”
“A bomb. Homemade but it would have done the job. The Burlington guy did a great job. He’s got the bomb with him. It needs fingerprinting and maybe you can trace where the dynamite came from.”
“Where know where it came from.” The chief was angry. “Manatelli planted it. That’s where it came from.”
“He flew in from New York, or Newark, wherever. He didn’t bring explosives in his luggage.” I was weary and angry. The long wait in the cold had stiffened my sore back and I wanted to stand under a hot shower until my rigid muscles slackened. I guess my impatience was showing. The chief was polite.
“I see what you mean. We’ll work on it.” He paused and put the polite question. “You okay?”
“I hurt my back chasing Huckmeyer on the skidoo. I need some heat on it. Sorry if it shows.”
“You need a sauna.” The chief pulled out his wallet quickly, like a bargain hunter grabbing for cash to snap something up. “Here, this is my membership at the health club. Take it. The address is on it.” He handed me the card and I took it gratefully.
“Appreciate that. I’ll return it with the badge and gun when I’ve got the kinks out of my spine.”
“Good. Do that. And thank you.” He shook my hand, too hard. “Oh, and there was a message for you. Mr. Maloney wants to talk to you. He’s at his office. You know where that is?”
“No. Only his house.”
“Here. Let me write it down.” He turned and took a pen from the desk and wrote on the edge of a flier about car theft.
“Thanks, Chief. I’ll go see him first.”
“Good.” He beamed at me like a headwaiter and then turned away to talk to the cop at the desk.
I went out to my car, slowing down now, favoring my back. The hot shower, maybe even a sauna, loomed ahead of me like a vacation in the sun. After that I would phone my wife and head back into my own world.
An elderly woman was working a computer in the reception area of Maloney’s office. She stopped work and showed me through. Maloney was in his office with a clutter of documents on his desk.
He stood up, smiling. “Thanks for coming in, Reid. I have a couple of things to share with you.”
“Good. Everything’s falling into place.”
He waved me to a chair and indicated the coffee maker that was sitting on the side cabinet. I shook my head and he said, “Ella has been checking the books at Cat’s Cradle, along lines I suggested. She finds discrepancies.”
“How was it done?”
“It’s complex. Its a question of season memberships. They cost about twelve hundred dollars. Your Walter was hiding some of them from his bookkeeper. He had a number of passes made up outside the usual procedures and passed them along directly to members. He’s been able to hide the deficiencies so far because his father thinks the bad economic situation had kept people away. In fact, his son has been robbing him.”
“The chief told me he had. No details, but he also told me the reason,” I said. “Apparently young Huckmeyer’s brother, the actor, has AIDS. Walter’s been skimming to pay for the medical treatments. The father had disowned the other son and wouldn’t pay.”
“I’d heard rumors,” Maloney said. “That’s quite commendable of Walter, when you think about it. I’m sure his father will come around when he hears the whole story.”
“So what else is happening?”
“The bank.” He put both hands flat on the documents and leaned toward me. “I spoke to Brie Lawson this morning. He wasn’t anxious to talk about it but he’s in the process of arranging a transfer of funds to the Cayman islands. It’s in excess of a million dollars.”
“I heard that. I guess that’s where Manatelli is heading. He flew out this morning. We’ve got the police looking for him in New York and New Jersey, at Newark. The chief got a warrant for Murder One.”
“There’s more.” His eyes were shining with excitement. “About the money transfer, I mean. I was able to prevail on him to let me take a look at the transaction and we found that the amount going out had a slight clerical error in it. It was one decimal point out.”
“You mean he was set to transfer ten million instead of one?”
“Yes.” Maloney sat back. “The new woman at the bank, the one I told you about, is handling the move. The documents were all in order but when we dug into the computer we found that Manatelli’s account had been inflated. They were going to strip the bank.”
“But surely there are checks, safeguards. They couldn’t get away with that?”
“Not within the country, but by the time the cash was received, even electronically, in the Caymans, it couldn’t be retrieved.” He waved one hand. “Oh, technically it could, but it would take years to sort out the rights and wrongs of it all. In the meantime, the bank would be closed out. All its assets would be frozen. And Manatelli would be spending it all.”
“Has the woman been arrested?”
“Not yet.”
“Not yet? She should be in the station house asking to see her lawyer.”
“So far there’s no real crime. She could claim it was a clerical error.”
“So you have to go through with this?”
“Not completely.” He smiled a tight little smile. “Computers are so wonderful. They have a young teller at the bank, a boy called Jenkins. He’s a hacker. He spent the early part of the day with Eric revising his program for him.”
“To do what?” Computers are a blind spot with me.
“It will respond to the command to send the money to the foreign bank, responding to the transfer numbers on cue, but in fact the money will be rerouted to a new account, Eric has opened today in the bank’s name, within the branch.”
“So she sends it, sits there rubbing her hands. And the money’s never left the bank?”
“Exactly.” He allowed himself a smile.
“So that’s what all this was about. Manatelli started the business of buying credit slips just to get into the bank so he could take it over.”
Maloney nodded. “That’s how I read it.”
“But why here? There’s all kinds of banks closer to his home than this.”
“That was part of its attraction, I’d imagine. He was far enough from his own sphere of action that he could operate without fear of his employer’s knowing what he was doing. Remember, he has a million dollars of his own money in this sting. That almost certainly came from his employer and just as certainly his employer did not know.”
“Yes, but why here? Why Chambers of all places?”
“The only connection I can see is Jack Grant’s gambling.”
“That’s a possibility. But the amounts he lost are just spit to these guys. I saw his slips. His biggest loss was five grand at one time. That’s not enough to bring a big fish like Manatelli out of New Jersey.”
“Maybe that’s where it started.” Maloney held up one finger. “Atlantic City. There’s gambling there. Grant went at least once, about a year ago. I remember his father telling me. He had a very good time there, came back with money in his pocket.”
“And you think someone scouted him down there in New Jersey and followed him back here to check this place out?”
“We’ll never know unless Manatelli tells us when he’s arrested, and I doubt he’ll say anything he doesn’t have to,” Maloney said. He checked his watch. “Paul Grant is due in to see me.” He glanced up. “If you like, I can make arrangements for him to settle whatever indebtedness he’s incurred with you.”
I
thought for a moment. “No. That’s okay. I was only over at his place an hour or so. Forget it. But there’s one thing he could help me with, if you could spare a couple of minutes before you get down to business.”
“Sure.” He checked his watch again. “He’s always very punctual. I’ll see if he’s here yet.”
He went to the door and opened it. I heard him say, “Good morning, Paul, come on in.”
Grant came in. He looked as if he hadn’t slept at all. His face was gray and the circles under his eyes seemed to rest on his cheekbones. He nodded at me and grimaced, as close as he could come to a smile.
I stood up. “Good morning, Mr. Grant. I was just leaving but I wondered if you could help me on something before I go.”
“I’ll try.” He sat and Maloney went to the coffee server and poured him a cup. He took it without a word and tilted his face up to me politely. Let’s get this over with, his expression said. I have a life to return to after you’ve gone.
I started carefully, not wanting to cause him any extra pain. “This has nothing to do with your son’s death. The police think it’s a whole separate case.”
“What is it?” It had worked. He was relaxed.
“They found an explosive device this morning. They’re checking it of course for fingerprints and so on, but I wondered if you might know, from running a hardware and building supply outlet, where in Chambers you could get the materials to make a bomb. The trigger device and the explosive? I wouldn’t know where to look.”
He seemed relieved at the question. It hadn’t involved his son. He set down his coffee cup in the saucer and leaned back. He might have been sitting in a lodge meeting. “Even in a town as law-abiding as this it’s no problem to get your hands on four sticks of dynamite.”
His words hit me like the shock wave from an explosion. And in the sudden horror on his face I could see he had realized the significance of his words.
“No. It wouldn’t have been,” I said. “Not for you.”
He stood up, blustering. “What’s this man saying? Frank?”
Maloney looked at me but didn’t speak.
“Four sticks of dynamite. Plus the kind of five-buck security system window latch you sell.” I shook my head at him. “Really, Paul. I wasn’t sure until you said that. What happened? Did Jack tell you about the money? Is that why you knifed him? And threw him off the chair lift on the way up there?”
