The Penny Ferry da-2

by Rick Boyer

  "This any better, guy?" I held out my wrist to Joe and he laughed. I replaced the Mickey Mouse watch with the gold Omega, threw on my clothes, and went down to make coffee. Mary called after me from the bedroom. Were we going to church? No, Joe answered from the guest room, we had to go into Cambridge. We had a quick breakfast of coffee and croissants, then Joe and I left for the city in his car. Mary retired to her workshop. At a stoplight on Route 2 Joe didn't budge when the light turned green. Cars behind us honked.

  "What's wrong?"

  Joe looked as if he'd seen a ghost. He turned to me and said in a half-whisper: "His pouch."

  "Whose pouch? Hey, move or pull over, guy, these polite Massachusetts drivers are getting impatient."

  We moved ahead and Joe took the slow lane, staring ahead with his brows furrowed.

  "Here we are with a dead courier, and the one thing we overlook is his carrying pouch. Hell, I never saw Johnny without it. It was an old newsboy's pouch. Gray canvas with a shoulder strap. It had the words Lowell Sun on it in dark-blue letters. Now he could have left it at his office. But as I remember, he usually took it home with him. Do you remember seeing it up in Lowell?"

  "No. You know it wasn't there. I think the killers took it."

  "Hmmm. That could be the motive. Gee, I remember Johnny telling me all about the pouch. Had it since he was a kid delivering papers up in Lowell. There weren't that many blacks in Lowell then. He'd have to go into white neighborhoods to make his route. He took a lot of abuse. As a result he learned to fight. But he told me it was the pouch that most often saved him. It was his badge of legitimacy, his reason for being in the strange neighborhood, It was his Saint Christopher's medal. I think that's why he kept it all these years."

  He turned and looked at me as a car passed us at high speed.

  "Wherever it is, we gotta find that pouch. Could be the key."

  We took Memorial Drive to Mass. Ave., cut around the M.I.T. campus, and pulled up at a tiny cinder-block building, painted white, just off Kendall Square. It was surrounded by a high Cyclone fence. The windows were small and covered with grating.

  Soon we heard a faint rumbling and popping sound growing louder and louder, a sound like a miniature artillery war advancing at great speed. An old red Honda motorcycle skirted the building and came to a stop in its own special parking space in a tiny niche in the Cyclone fence. It was a vintage bike, a 350 twin with loud pipes. As the driver revved the throttle prior to shutting it off, it growled and backfired.

  The driver's passenger was a curiosity. It was a huge dog, wearing goggles, which sat on a specially made platform on the back of the double seat. The dog was big and blocky, and fawn-colored with brindle stripes on his big Hanks. When the engine stopped he lowered his wide head and pawed at the goggles with the side of his front foot. The driver turned, pulled the goggles down so they dangled from around the animal's neck, pulled the bike up on its stand, and took off his helmet.

  Sam Bowman, like his dead partner, was a black man. Also like the late john Robinson, he was a man who kept himself in shape. The man who snapped the heavy chain lead to the studded collar on the bull mastiff was whipcord lean and had wide shoulders. The shoulders sloped down like a barn's gambrel roof from a wide and sinewy neck. He walked toward us with vigor and purpose. The giant dog stayed right at his left leg. When I he stopped to shake hands with us the dog sat down and looked blankly ahead. We all went to the front door, and Sam took a key chain from his pocket and unlocked three big deadbolts. Then he inserted a small key into a complex-looking box with a meter in it.

  "Whole place is bugged," he said softly. "Anybody fool with this door, the police know about it. I just shut it off."

  We walked inside. It was a single room with a sink and a coffee maker at one end, and an enclosed john. There were two desks. Sam sat down behind the bigger one, a hard rock-maple rolltop that had three large spindles on top which were stacked up with impaled receipts and slips. A big safe stood against the far wall.

  The floor was spotless linoleum, waxed. Sam unsnapped the heavy lead and the big dog ambled over to a raised platform covered with old carpet, where he sank to his belly and regarded us with a blank stare. He had a black muzzle, like all mastiffs, and a big steam-shovel mouth. His wide chest and heavy shoulders were hunched with wads of muscle, even in repose. Big blood vessels showed under the short, velvety coat. A whole lot of dog. Sam nodded in the direction of the beast.

  "That's Popeye. Nobody fool with Popeye. He all business."

  "How you doing, Sam?" asked Joe.

  "I been better. I been a whole lot better, Joe," he said.

  "I know. We're real sorry. All of us are really sorry."

  The man frowned and bunched his big shoulders.

  "Somebody gonna pay," he said.

  "Sam, as we told you over the phone, we'd like to look at Friday's log sheet to see exactly where Johnny went and when. Also, if we could find out what he was carrying… if it's known-"

  Sam nodded and shuffled through a stack of papers on the big desk.

  "Now the murder could be unconnected to any of this; it could l be the result of something awhile back."

  "I know. No way of tellin' is there? I think maybe it was something way back, Joe. Nothin' he did Friday was that important or valuable, except that fancy cup for the Harvard Museum, the Fogg."

  "And the museum piece was valuable?" asked Joe.

  "Oh yeah. About half a million bucks or somewheres. But it was delivered safe to the Fogg. I know because Johnny called me hisself after he delivered it. He called at-"

  Bowman checked the log sheet.

  "- lessee, ten twenty-seven. He just called to check in, see if there were any more jobs that come in over the phone, you know. There was nothing more, so that's the last I heard from Johnny. Ever."

  "Didn't you see him after the last job?"

  "Naw. On Fridays we had a deal. If no more jobs came in over the wire after three, I split. Johnny would stop in after his last job with the log sheet… usually. That is, if the last job was pretty nearby. Otherwise he'd take the sheet home with him in the pouch and I wouldn't see him till Monday at seven-thirty. That's when we'd meet here every day, for coffee and to talk. About the only time we had to visit, except lunchtime, if he was nearby enough to stop in."

  "Did he leave his pouch here, Sam?" asked Joe.

  "No. He took the pouch home with him every night."

  "Did he ever carry stuff home with him too?"

  "Sometimes, if he couldn't make the connection. It was rare though. Generally, most of our business was right here in Boston and Cambridge. 'Course too, being black, we do some stuff for bidnesses in Roxbury and Dorchester. Fact, we do most everywhere around here but Charlestown and Southie."

  This comment needed no elaboration to either of us; we knew what the racial climate was like in both of these Irish enclaves. In fact, it wasn't much better in the Italian neighborhoods of the North End and East Boston, either.

  "I show you the log sheet he left here Friday after I was gone," said Bowman. He opened the notebook and Joe copied out the deliveries that had been entered: 8:30 Futurelife Laboratories- Cambridge

  9:23 Fogg Museum (Fabrianni)- Cambridge- Boston

  10:08 Harvard University Press- Cambridge

  1 1:00 Boston Public Library- Boston- North End*

  2:45 National Distilling- Cambridge

  3:41 Ramco Metal Fastener- Cambridge- Somerville

  4:10 Investment Alloy Labs – Cambridge – Concord*

  We studied this sheet awhile and asked Sam if he had any hunches regarding it.

  "No. They're all routine things. Some of those companies, they want us to carry cash- not large amounts- to some of their truckers. Dunno. Maybe they not sposa be on the payroll. Hell, we don't ask questions, we just deliver. Don't truck for the Mob, though. We won't be bagmen. No sirree."

  "Sam, what do these asterisks mean?" I asked.

  "They mean the job wasn't completed. The p
ickup's been made but not the delivery. Hey wait a minute, Doc, this one here's you: Investment Alloy Labs. That's gold work, right?"

  "Yes. And I was interested whether or not Johnny picked up the piece, and apparently he did. That means it was in his pouch when they got him, and lost."

  "You're not suggesting that as a motive are you?" asked Joe.

  "No. Certainly Dependable carried much more valuable stuff than that, like the museum piece."

  "I just thought you were thinking that because there are very few places where Johnny could have been nailed successfully. Here and his home are about the only places I can think of. Couldn't do it on the street without a lot of gunplay and noise. Since it happened at his home, and with a bomb that must have taken at least several hours to construct, I'm inclined to think it was strictly a revenge killing and had nothing to do with the stuff he was carrying."

  What Joe had said made a lot of sense.

  "But then why'd they take the pouch?"

  "Throw us off. just like the missing fingers on the corpse in the chimney."

  "They must've wanted him dead awfully bad, Joe. Sam, if you think of anything that might point somewhere, I'm sure you'll let Joe know."

  Joe paced the small office nervously. Occasionally he glanced at the big green safe, five feet high, that stood against the wall so that it was visible through the front door and the windows. I saw two spotlights above it, angled so they would illuminate it fully at night. He dialed a number and talked to somebody at the lab at Ten-Ten Comm. Ave.

  "Did you get any more latents? Well, there are some more places we might want you to check out… Huh, for supper? Gee Frank, that's nice of you. I don't know, uh, where I'm eating tonight exactly…"

  He glanced over at me, covered the receiver. Subtlety at its best. I groaned inwardly and glared at him, saying nothing.

  "Uh… wanta know where I'm eating tonight… uh… what's Mary, uh… you know-"

  "Marinated flank steak, sauteed mushroom caps, fresh asparagus," I said with a weary sigh. An almost orgasmic shudder passed through Joe's big frame and he snapped his cop voice back into the phone. ·

  "No Frank, I won? be able to. Something's come up out in Concord."

  We sat facing Sam, who had placed his big wide palms down on his neat desk.

  "I'm gonna be looking for whoever did this, Joe. And when I find him I'm gonna kill him. Or them. Don't care how many."

  "Sam, I know how you feel. But it's unwise for you to- "

  "- don't matter about wise. My partner's dead. My bidness I gonna shut down maybe. Got nothin' left now 'cept Popeye."

  At the mention of his name the big dog jerked his head up.

  "RRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!" he said.

  "Hush up, Popeye. Cool yourself," said Sam. He closed the logbook, then stopped quickly, lowering his head and squeezing the bridge of his nose.

  "Gonna miss him, Joe…"

  "Yeah. We all will. A better guy never lived. Listen: why don't you put on some coffee?"

  While Sam occupied his mind with the coffeepot, Joe asked him over his shoulder, "What's this Futurelife Laboratories? Some kind of pharmaceutical company?"

  "Naw. They a little far-out company. You know, one of them places that takes little cells and bends 'em around, make a different kinda animal out of it-"

  "Oh, you mean recombinant DNA? Gee, I didn't know you were involved with that stuff," I said.

  "Yeah. They give us these steel buckets full of little-bitty growin' things, you know. Got big strong tops on 'em with bolts all around to hold it down tight, so nothin' leak out. Like a pressure cooker. All we do is tote 'em from one lab to another seven blocks away. Piece of cake."

  "And you've had no trouble or anything with that account?" Joe asked. "Nothing strange lately?"

  "Nope. Been four years now. No fracas."

  "Okay. How about this Harvard University Press?"

  "Man-u-script," intoned Sam. "We do a lot of manuscript deliveries for publishers 'cause they need 'em right away. Seems publishers always runnin' late. These books all the same; can't read 'em. Big thick suckers on stuff nobody ever heard of. Nothing unusual there either."

  "All right. Now what's this pickup for the library?"

  "Some guy in the North End, I think he was a lawyer, died a few months back and left his papers to the public library. It was just a bunch of papers. For some reason Johnny couldn't get ahold of whoever it was he was sposa give 'em to. So he still had 'em with him, just like your fancy gold dental work, Doc."

  "And there was nothing of value there?"

  "Naw, just papers."

  "Okay," resumed Joe. "Moving right along, we come to the afternoon jobs. National Distilling and Ramco Metal I'm assuming are other routine deliveries like Futurelife?"

  "Yep. Routine cash deliveries, same as every other Friday for the past four and a half years."

  "How much did Johnny have with him?"

  "Less than four grand. Here, I'll check."

  Sam went over to the large green safe with the double doors and twirled the big black dial. In less than a minute he had the thick doors swung open and was reading off a lined sheet of notebook paper taped to the inside right door.

  "Three thousand four hundred sixty dollars, even."

  "And it was all delivered?" asked Joe.

  Sam shrugged and stared into the safe.

  "If it wasn't, we'd a heard I think." He continued to stare into the safe, which was divided into many small compartments and stuffed with papers. He began to rummage about in one of the upper compartments, reaching his arm deep inside.

  "And when Johnny called you at ten twenty-seven-after he'd completed the first three jobs-he said everything was normal? Fine?"

  "No," replied Sam, "but he didn't say nothin' to indicate it wadn't." He was feeling deep inside the safe, as if he were finding what he was looking for. It sure was a big safe.

  "Then I think we can rule out anything out of the ordinary on the first three calls. And probably the last three in the afternoon, which includes your lab work, Doc. That leaves the errand for the library involving the lawyer's papers from the North End. What kind of papers were they, Sam?"

  "Just some papers from a case a long, long way back. Forget it, Joe, it's old history. It was for the library, uh… archives. That's what they said: archives."

  "Then I think we can rule it all out. It was a grudge hit, probably from the Mob. When we consider that it must've taken time to build the bomb and plan the thing, which happened like clockwork, then I think we can rule it all out."

  "I think so too. But remember, Joe, I used to be a cop in this town. I still know cops all around here. And state guys, like you, and some of the Feds even. I got connections and contacts. I'm gonna keep an ear to the ground, hear? I'll keep pumpin' these dudes, hear? When I find out who it is I'm going huntin'."

  We didn't say anything. Sam Bowman didn't seem to me to be a fellow to argue with. And if he had Popeye along, one would have to think not only twice, but a third time at least. Then I noticed that two of the lower cubbyholes in the safe were packed with stacks of what looked like bills. Legal tender. Coin of the realm.

  "What's all that stuff that looks like money?" I asked.

  "Money," said Sam. "That why it look like it."

  "How much is there, Sam? Looks like a bundle," said Joe.

  "Twenny thousand five hundred dollars. Small bills. It's our I stash. Looks like it all mine now."

  "Why don't you keep it in a bank?" asked Joe. "You'd get interest on it."

  "Got plenty in the bank. Got about a quarter million bucks between us. This here's emergency cash money. Also, the bank I blows up, we still got the loot here."

  Sam was slowly drawing out his arm now. When his coffee-colored hand emerged from the cubbyhole it was holding a blue cardboard box. Heavy. I didn't have to be told what was in that famous blue box, even before I saw the S amp;W monogram on the lid. Sam placed the box down on the desk, took a long pull of coffee, and lift
ed the lid.

  "Now what the hell are you going to do with that?" asked Joe.

  Sam was holding a giant revolver in his right hand. It was finished in bright nickel. Its bore was big enough to stick a palm tree in. Sam put the piece down quickly on the desk. The room seemed to shake a bit. He walked back over to the big safe.

  "I tole you, Joe. I'm goin' huntin'."

  "No you're not." Joe stood up and started for the safe. In less than a second the big dog was in front of him in a crouch. The mouth was half-open, the front of the lips curled up in a combat snarl. A deep rumbling filled the room. Joe froze.

  "Be cool, Popeye! Don't come no closer, Joe; he's trained to stay between you and the safe whenever it's open. Little trick I taught him."

  Sam fished around further back in the cubbyholes and drew out another box, which he carried over to the desk. Joe squatted on his heels in front of the dog and held out his hand. The dog stared blankly at it.

  "I'm good with dogs, Sam, right Doc? Watch. Here Popeye! Here boy! C'mon… caaaaaa-mon boy. Tchh! Tchhh! Caaa-"

  "RRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!".

  A Joe stood up, chagrined.

  "Don't think you're having much luck," I said.

  Sam looked up from the desk. He was loading the revolver with the cartridges he had just fetched. They were spilled out all over the maple desktop and looked as big as lipsticks. The ammo box

  said FIFTY CENTERFIRE PISTOL CARTRIDGES 45-CALIBRE LONG COLT. 185-GRAIN HOLLOW POINT.

  Big bullets that would go very slowly from the big handgun. I hefted one; it was heavier than a golf ball. And there was the gun itself. Perhaps the Nimitz could use it for a sea anchor. "How much does Popeye weigh, Sam?"

  " 'Bout a hundred thirty. Not too much fat on him."

  There was a decisive clack as Sam slammed the loaded cylinder into the revolver's frame. He replaced the spare cartridges and put away both boxes. Joe stood up and came over to the desk. The dog likewise went back to his bed and sank to his belly on the old carpet. Sam opened a lower drawer in the desk and brought out an empty shoulder holster, which he ducked into, then replaced his light jacket. He slipped the big silver gun into its snug resting place underneath his left armpit.