by Jack Du Brul
Harry accelerated away from the conflagration, shifting smoothly through the gears. Built in an age long before airbags and automatic seat belts, the Rolls’ thick metal skin had protected the engine’s vital areas, and other than a wrinkled fender the luxury car was none the worse.
“That ought to buy us some time,” Mercer said with satisfaction.
“I see a sign for the Atlantic City Expressway,” Cali said.
“Where?” Harry asked, peering through the windshield.
“Straight ahead.”
“What, that green blur above the road?”
Cali smiled. “Yeah. It’s actually the right-hand green blur.”
In moments the big car made its grand entrance onto the expressway, the main artery out of Atlantic City and back to the mainland. The Garden State Parkway was only a couple of miles ahead. Traffic on the inbound lanes was heavy but fortunately there were very few people leaving the city. Harry edged the Rolls up to seventy.
Mercer continued to glance behind them in case Poli somehow managed to get the Geo running again. He was about to dismiss a fast-approaching vehicle until he noted the distinctive paint job. The Honda Del Sol had to be doing a hundred and twenty as it barreled down the expressway, cutting through traffic with the effortless grace of a slalom racer.
“Will this guy ever quit?”
“What is it?” Cali asked. She looked over her shoulder and saw the fast-approaching sports car. “Jesus.”
“What do you want me to do?” Harry asked. They were outgunned and were no match for either the Honda’s speed or its agility.
Before Mercer could come up with another plan, Poli’s teammate began firing again. Unlike before, the smooth asphalt gave him a steady shooting platform, and rounds found their mark.
“Cali, do you speak French?” Harry growled.
“Huh?” She wasn’t sure if she’d heard right, or if Mercer’s friend had lost his mind.
Harry kept one eye on the rearview mirror as he drove. His jaw was set firm and there was the barest trace of a smile on his lips. He kept watching the Del Sol edge up to within ten feet of the back bumper. “I want to know if you speak French because I’m gonna ask you to pardon me using it.” He paused for another second, judging angles and speed, then shouted, “Fuck you, buddy!”
Standing on the brake pedal didn’t have the dramatic results Harry had expected. As if ignoring the driver’s wishes, the heavy car merely rocked forward on its suspension in what could be described as a stately deceleration. The maneuver forced Poli to apply the Del Sol’s brakes, tricked out discs that could have stopped the nimble sports car on a dime. Sensing an opening, he raced alongside the Rolls to give his partner a clear shot into the Silver Wraith.
This is what Harry had been waiting for. He spun the wheel in an attempt to crush the light Honda between the Rolls and the guardrail. He could see Poli almost smile at the vain attempt, as he applied more brake to tuck in behind the Rolls-Royce once again. But Harry had another trick up his sleeve. He reached for the hand brake and gunned the engine to build up enough RPMs to slam the transmission down into third gear. The big car shuddered at the insult to its machinery, but it complied. This time the deceleration was almost instantaneous, as the big in-line six-cylinder engine quickly lost power. Poli was also quick, but not quick enough. The Rolls pinned his Honda against the guardrail and held it there effortlessly. A shower of sparks, torn metal, and fiberglass spewed from the Del Sol as it was remorselessly smeared against the metal barricade. Its right front tire blew and its steel belt ripped through the fender like a grenade going off, and still Harry kept up the pressure, all the while laughing demonically.
“Harry,” Cali screamed. “Gun!”
Poli’s partner had recovered enough to try to fire into the Rolls while Poli fought to keep the disintegrating car from climbing the railing.
Harry shoved the hand brake back into its recessed slot and swerved away from the Del Sol. He slid the transmission back into fourth and watched in his rearview mirror as the little Honda slid to a stop in a cloud of smoke. There was a lick of flame from the blown tire, and steam erupting from the crushed radiator. Harry caught Mercer’s eye in the mirror and repeated what Mercer had said moments earlier. “Now, that ought to buy us some time.”
Mercer squeezed Harry’s bony shoulder. “You drive my Jag like this and I will kill you.”
Harry chuckled. “I have a confession to make.”
The tone made Mercer nervous. Even Cali picked up on it. “Yeah, and what’s that?” Mercer asked with trepidation.
“Tiny and I have been pulling your leg about me driving when we come up here. I haven’t been behind the wheel of a car in years.” He craned his head around to look at Mercer. “But, hey, it’s like falling off a bike. Do it once and you never forget.”
“Eyes on the road please.”
“I don’t think we should use the Garden State,” Cali said. “Even though the police are going to be busy at the Deco Palace, there’s sure to be a description out of a stolen Rolls-Royce.”
“Good thinking,” Mercer said.
“So where are we heading?”
“Get onto 9 North. We’re going to have a chat with a guy named Erasmus Fess about a safe his father claimed fell from the Hindenburg not long before it exploded.”
It took forty-five minutes to reach Waretown and locate the home of Erasmus Fess. The sweep of the Rolls’s only working headlight revealed that the property had once been a farm. There was a one-story farmhouse with a shed roof overhanging a sagging porch. At some point the original support columns had been removed, and now the whole affair was supported by unpainted two-by-fours. The sofa on the porch was the bench seat of an old car mounted on a metal stand. The forlorn house was covered with a fur of peeling and cracked paint. Flickering blue light spilled from the front window. The Fesses were home watching television.
Behind and to the right of the house was a metal-roofed barn that looked even more neglected than the yard. There were half a dozen cars parked randomly around the house. Most were rusted heaps sitting on flattened tires, with smashed windshields and rumpled fenders. A flatbed tow truck stood watch over the vehicles, “Fess Towing and Salvage” written on its door above a phone number. Behind the barn was a corrugated metal fence that stretched out into the darkness. The gates were open, and inside was a sea of abandoned cars lined up in meandering rows. A large forklift sat just inside, its steel tines thrust through the side of a Volkswagen like the lance of a knight through the armor of an enemy.
“Jesus,” Harry breathed as he shut off the engine. “If we see a kid playing the banjo or someone comments on how pretty my mouth is, we’re outta here.”
“Amen, brother, amen.” Mercer stepped from the car and tucked the automatic pistol behind his back. A cat raced off the porch and vanished under one of the dilapidated cars.
With Harry and Cali behind him, Mercer mounted the sloping porch. A screen door hung awkwardly from its broken hinges. The torn screen was loose and showed signs of being clawed by the cat. Mercer shouldered it farther aside and rapped on the main door. When there was no response he hit it again, a little louder.
“Get the goddamned door,” a male voice shouted from inside, almost loud enough to rattle the windows.
“I’m busy,” a woman shouted back. From the sound of it, both were seated in the front room no more than a few feet from each other. Harry hummed the theme from Deliverance.
“Jesus, woman! I’m watching Wheel. Go see who it is.”
“Fine.”
A moment later the front porch light, actually a naked bulb hanging from its wiring, snapped on. In seconds it had attracted every insect within a five-acre area. The woman who opened the door had a cigarette dangling from her slack mouth, and a bovine expression. She wore a housecoat that showed off her thick, blue-veined calves. Her feet were shod in slippers and Mercer could see that her toenails were cracked and yellow, more like horn or the rough body of a bee
tle. Her eyes were watery behind the cigarette smoke, an indeterminate color, and small. She was as thick as she was wide and probably tipped the scales in the two-hundred-and-fifty-pound range. The shadow of a mustache on her upper lip was inky black.
Behind her was a short hallway and the kitchen. The old metal sink was piled with dishes, and the fly strips above it were blackened with their victims.
“Mrs. Erasmus Fess?” Mercer said, hiding his revulsion. He put her age anywhere between fifty and a hundred.
“That’s what it says on the marriage license.” Her high-pitched voice and brusque manner made her sound like she was screeching rather than talking. “What do you want?”
“I would like to speak with your husband.”
“Who is it, Lizzie?” Erasmus Fess shouted from the living room just off the entrance.
She turned to face her husband. “How the hell should I know? He wants to talk to you.”
“Tell ’em we’re closed. Come back in the morning if he wants a car or a tow.” He then cajoled the contestants on his television. “Come on. Big money. Big money!”
“You heard him. Come back tomorrow.”
She began to swing the door closed but Mercer shot out his foot to stop her. She continued to press on the door for a moment, not understanding why it had stuck.
“Mrs. Fess, this isn’t about a car or a tow job. My name is Philip Mercer and this is Cali Stowe and Harry White. I’m here because of the safe your husband once offered to Carl Dion.”
At that, a furtive look flashed behind her close-set eyes. “You’re here about the Hindleburg safe?”
Mercer didn’t bother correcting her pronunciation. “That’s right. We came up from Washington, D.C. Does your husband still have it?”
“Have it? Hell, he don’t get rid of nothing. He’s still got the bite marks from his first case of crabs.” She turned to yell at her husband again. “Ras, they’re here about the Hindleburg safe.”
“Ain’t for sale,” Erasmus Fess shouted back.
“Yes it is,” Lizzie said hotly. “I told you back when to just give that damned thing to the feller from Colorado.” She turned to address Mercer and the others again. “Ever since Ras’s father found it we’ve had nothing but bad luck. After he dragged it home ain’t been no kids born in the family. I got seven brothers and sisters and Ras had eight. Don’t make sense we never had children.”
“Could be the crabs,” Harry muttered.
Cali silenced him with a look. “How about cancer?” she asked Lizzie Fess. “Does your family have a history of cancer?”
“Sure do. Ras’s daddy and younger brother both died of the cancer. And me and one of his sisters had our titties cut off ’cause of it.”
Given the amount of fat she carried and the shapeless coat she wore, it was understandable that no one had noticed she’d undergone a double mastectomy.
“Had they lived in the house after the safe was found?” Cali asked.
“Sure did. That’s why I said the safe brought bad luck. Ras’s oldest brother didn’t get along with his father none and moved away before they found the safe, and he’s fit as a fiddle and has twelve kids and a whole mess of grandkids.”
Cali whispered to Mercer, “Sounds like we’re on the right trail. Elevated cancer rates, sterility. Remind you of anywhere?”
Mercer’s mind had already cast back to the isolated village along the Scilla River in Central Africa. Chester Bowie must have brought a sample of the uranium ore with him on his return to the United States, but just before the Hindenburg met its fateful end he had tossed it from the airship in a safe. What astounded Mercer even more than the sample’s bizarre odyssey was how it had remained radioactive enough to cause cancer at the farm and sterilize at least one if not both of the Fesses.
The Wheel of Fortune theme music reached its crescendo and then the television was shut off. A moment later Erasmus Fess approached the door. Unlike his wife, he was rail-thin and raw-boned. He wore a pair of oil-stained coveralls with his name stitched over his chest. His hair was sparse and gray and he had dandruff the size of Corn Flakes. He wore thick glasses that magnified his bloodshot eyes and he sported five days’ worth of silver stubble. He belched a cloud of beer breath and held out a ropey arm to Mercer.
“Erasmus Fess.”
“Philip Mercer.” They shook hands.
“Why are you interested in the safe?” Fess asked.
“What difference does it make?” Lizzie hollered at her husband. “He wants to buy it.”
Mercer hadn’t come out and said that he wanted to buy the safe, but he nodded anyway.
A speculative, almost feral look came over Erasmus Fess. “Twenty thousand. Cash.”
Fess wanted five thousand more than he’d offered Carl Dion, but that wasn’t an issue for Mercer. He would have bought the safe, and its contents, for anything Fess asked for. The problem was he just didn’t have that kind of money on him. He could write a check for that amount easily, but he knew Fess would never accept it, and there was no way the scrap man would want the paper trail from a credit card transaction. Mercer hated that they’d have to wait until morning for a bank to open, but he saw no alternative. Then he remembered Harry’s winnings. He shot his friend a look. “Easy come, easy go, old boy.”
“Huh?”
“Empty your pockets.”
“What?” Harry finally got what Mercer wanted and his face turned red. “Forget it. I won that money fair and square.”
“Relax,” Mercer said soothingly. “I’ll pay you back when we get home.” He would then turn around and present a bill to Deputy National Security Advisor Lasko.
Lizzie and Erasmus Fess’s eyes bulged when Harry withdrew two thick bundles of hundred-dollar bills from his windbreaker. He handed the stacks to Mercer. “I should ask for a receipt.”
Mercer presented them to Fess but didn’t hand them over. “I want to see the safe first. And I want you to throw in a working car. We sort of borrowed that Rolls outside.”
Fess peered out into his driveway at the elegant car. He cast a practiced eye over the luxury car, paying particular attention to the ruined fender and dented doors. “I’ll give you a car so long as you forget where you parked that one.”
Mercer had hoped to return the Silver Wraith to its rightful owner and thought he could call the police as soon as they were safely back in Washington, but he knew the Rolls would be a bundle of parts by the time they hit the Maryland border. Tomorrow would just have to be a bad day for some insurance company.
“Deal.”
“You should give him the papers too,” Lizzie said to her husband.
“Papers?” Cali asked. “What papers?”
“Ras’s father had the safe opened back in the fifties. Don’t know what else was in it, but there were a bunch of papers. A note or something. He made a copy of it and locked the originals back inside. Ras, where did they get to?”
“God, you talk too much, woman,” Fess groused. He ran his fingers through his hair and unleashed a blizzard of dandruff. “They’re in the office file. Bottom drawer. Behind the paperwork for them airplane engines I bought five years ago.”
Mercer wasn’t surprised that Fess knew where the papers were. He suspected that the salvage yard owner could put his hand on any piece of scrap in his sprawling yard.
“Let’s go,” Fess growled. Harry said he’d wait on the porch, and he’d talked Lizzie into giving him a drink by the time her husband grabbed a flashlight from the tow truck’s cab.
“You ain’t no collector like that writer fella from Colorado,” Fess said as he unlocked the chain link gate guarding his scrap yard. “What do you want with the safe?”
“There’s a chance it belonged to my grandfather,” Cali said before Mercer could come up with a lie. “He was returning from Europe on the Hindenburg. He always carried a safe with him. He was a jeweler.”
At that Fess stopped short and shone the light in her eyes. “Ain’t no jewels in the safe, I ca
n guaran-damn-tee you.”
“Do you recall what was in it?” Mercer asked.
“I was fightin’ in Korea when my pappy had it opened. He said there wasn’t nothing in there but the notes and a shot put.”
“A what?” Cali and Mercer said in unison.
“A shot put. Like athletes use. Said it was nothing but a round ball o’ metal.”
He led them deep into the salvage yard, past ranks of demolished automobiles and trucks. Mercer spotted a burned-out fire engine, several boats, and the boom of a large crane. There were countless tarry patches of oil dotting the sandy ground, and a tire pile that had to be twenty feet tall. Night animals scattered at their approach, and shiny eyes watched them from the darkness.
Near the back of the yard was a metal shed. Fess used another key from his jangling ring to open the door. He stepped inside and pulled the chain to a single bulb dangling from the ceiling. Why the junk on the shelves that lined the shed needed protection from the elements was something Mercer couldn’t understand. Most everything looked like valueless hunks of rusted metal.
“I keep the good stuff in here,” Fess said.
Mercer wasn’t going to ask what exactly qualified this to be “good stuff.”
Fess shoved a transmission from out of a corner and bundled up a filthy piece of canvas to reveal the little safe. It was about a foot and a half square and made of dark metal, with rust on the prominent hinges. On the single door were an offset dial and a small handle.
“Be right back,” Fess said and scuttled from the shed.
“The shot put has to be an ore sample,” Cali said as soon as Fess was out of earshot.
“No other way to explain it,” Mercer agreed. “Remember the old woman said Chester Bowie sent crates of dirt away by river, but he must have kept some ore with him. He refined it and must have put it in the safe to block the radiation.”
“But enough has leaked to affect Erasmus and Lizzie.” Cali thought for a moment. “I’m going to have to report this site to my bosses at the Department of Energy. We need to get a NEST team down here right away. We need containment.” She looked around the shelves. “God knows how hot all this junk is.”
