He got back into his car and drove down to the lake, up Sheridan Road, and then up Clark Street and east on Belmont and parked in the lot of the yacht club. He got out of his car a few feet from where they’d found Harry Palm’s, and now he understood who Harry Palm had been coming to see.
The wind was picking up and the gray mass of rain clouds had turned into a tightly coiled cluster of thunderheads. He could smell the rain. The dark green surface of the harbor churned and heavy waves slapped against the shore and sent thick spray high into the air. The few boats that had been out on a hot, muggy Monday afternoon were heading in to beat the storm.
There were several dinghies tied to the little pier off the end of the yacht club, reserved for members going out to their yachts. He hopped the cyclone fence and lowered himself into a dinghy, then rowed out against the wind and waves to the blue yacht known as The Score. He was sweating when he reached it.
He tied the boat up to the cable of the yacht and then climbed up the side. He allowed himself the luxury of inspecting the boat and found nothing that surprised him. It was a floating penthouse with living quarters that would sleep six people comfortably, though there was no evidence that anyone but the man who owned the boat slept there. One bunk was unmade. He found a small, well-stocked refrigerator and a pantry with full shelves. The boat had a radio and even a small, battery-powered television. Rich man’s boat, with oak and maple paneling and furniture and gleaming brass fittings.
At the foot of the bed he found a full set of weights. There was liquor in a cabinet near the pantry, bourbon and vodka and one bottle in a leather pouch that looked like Cuban rum. He lifted it and felt no movement of liquor inside. He peeled the leather pouch down halfway and saw that the bottle was filled with white powder. He tipped it over and tasted it, and it was exactly what he expected.
There were no books on the boat. The man on this boat didn’t read. He lifted his weights and drank and did a couple of lines a night and planned murder. He lived on the lake and felt he was outside the law, somehow beyond it.
He made a circuit of the deck. In front of the cabin there was a heavy blue tarp folded haphazardly on the deck. Whelan stared at it and saw the outline of what it covered. He felt the breath leave him. Reluctantly he pulled back one corner of the tarp and saw the frosted brown hair, the dead skin, the dark marks on the throat, the staring eyes. Janice Fairs had found what she was looking for.
Whelan looked again at the body and knew he should leave this boat, leave it now.
He went across the deck and leaned against the railing and watched the lake and the traffic on Lake Shore Drive. There were bikers speeding by on the bike paths and a couple of joggers trying to beat the rain, and out on the great green hook of land that created the harbor he could see a group of young Latin kids packing in a barbecue and running off to their cars. There were hundreds of people in the immediate vicinity and thousands more speeding by on the drive, but he knew he would be alone in the harbor in a few moments.
The dense clouds hung low overhead and made night seem imminent. A pair of young women rode by on ten-speeds and Whelan watched them for a moment. When they left his line of vision he looked back along the benches and saw the solid figure in white that had not been there a moment ago.
He followed me. Whelan felt the breath go out of him.
Fifty feet away Henley leaned against the cyclone fence surrounding the harbor and stared out at Whelan. He was smoking something dark and blowing smoke out against the wind. Whelan folded his arms across his chest and stared back. Finally Henley tossed the cigar out into the water and moved back toward the yacht club. He emerged a moment later from a doorway and got into a dinghy, then rowed briskly out toward the yacht, as though the wind were no hindrance. He looked over his shoulder at Whelan every three or four strokes. Whelan watched him riding the waves and waited. There was nothing else to be done.
He watched as Henley tied the dinghy next to the one Whelan had used. Whelan looked around. A few feet away but up a short flight of steps was a fire ax. He’d never get there in time to get it out. Closer to hand at the foot of the stairway was a small wooden stool—not much, but better than nothing at all.
He heard the soft, firm footsteps coming up the side of the boat and realized that he was holding his breath. He let it all out and took out a cigarette. He bent down against the wall of the cabin, lit it, and inhaled just as the smooth head appeared over the side of the yacht.
The big man paused for a second, looked at Whelan, and smiled with his eyes. Then he vaulted his big body over the side rail and onto the deck. He put his hands on his hips and sniffed a couple of times, then brought out a handkerchief and held it to his nose, watching Whelan. Up close he looked bigger and quicker, his taste for violence almost palpable.
“Philip Fairs, I presume.”
The big man nodded slowly and the smile took hold of his face. “That’s right, friend. Philip Fairs. At your service.”
Whelan puffed at his cigarette and took his time blowing out the smoke. It was important to seem as calm as possible now, keep him thinking.
“Got something for you, Mr. Fairs. And I think you have something for me.”
Fairs blinked and hesitated, just for a second. “Oh? And what would you have for me?”
“Your partner was a talkative man. I have things for sale.”
Fairs stared for a moment. “Like what? Gimme a for instance.”
“You want to talk dollars first? You think this is free?”
“I figured you’d want to start talking dollars. I saw you come out, Whelan. Why else would you come see me alone?” Fairs wiped his nose again and sniffed. “Hay fever,” he said, holding up the handkerchief.
“If I put as much shit up my nose as you do, I’d tell people it was hay fever.”
Something hard came into the unearthly green eyes. Whelan shook his head. “I should have known about the contacts. A heavy, bald man like George Brister would have to do a lot more than change his eye color if he wanted to escape notice, but a man completely changing his appearance—shaving his head, growing a beard, changing the whole look—that guy would change his eye color.”
Fairs took a step closer and then moved slightly to his left, cutting off the clearest escape route. He smiled.
“So you thought I was Brister, huh? Thought you were tailing George Brister. Brister was just a fat slob, no muscle on him. He was a physical wreck.” Fairs rocked back on his heels and studied Whelan. “You’re a smart boy, huh? Rich told me you were pretty clever, but old Rich was no Einstein. Well, maybe you are smart. I like smart people, I can always use smart people.” He grinned and jabbed a thumb at his chest. “I’m smart, Whelan.” He tucked his thumbs into his pants pockets. “So what’s this gonna cost me?” He moved a half step closer and his eyes never left Whelan’s.
Whelan took a puff at his cigarette, looked at it for a second as though something were wrong with it, and shook his head. “Thinking you were Brister, that wasn’t the real problem. Thinking this was all about money, that was my mistake. It was never about money, was it?”
Fairs shrugged. “Fuck, no. Money’s nothing, man. I’ve made and lost more money in one year than you’d make in your whole life. I had an idea and I fucking pulled it off. I changed my whole life. I dropped out of one life and started a new one, and nobody even caught on.”
“Except your partner. Would have been a little too complicated, taking him out, too. Right?”
“Yeah, but that’s not why. He was useful. I went underground, he got to keep the company. He took a real light fall, old Rich, and basically people figured he was a hard-luck guy with a crazy partner who killed himself and an accountant who played with the numbers till everything was gone. He was happy I was gone, don’t kid yourself. He never cared much for being the two horse. And this way he could hang onto some of the money for me. And there was a lot of money, man.”
“Why come back?”
“To prove I could. And t
o get a little of my bread.”
“Why’d you start doing business with Harry Palm again?”
Fairs grinned and held out his hands. Then he held his finger to his nose and gave an exaggerated snort.
“Hey, I needed a little. A guy needs his recreation. He didn’t know who the fuck I was. He didn’t know anything about me. I never even used my real name when I made book with him before. I ran into him in a saloon on Rush one night. He didn’t seem to know much, so I told him I just left town because of some people I owed. He understood that kind of problem, old Harry did.” Fairs allowed himself a smile. “No reason why we couldn’t do a little business, now that I was back—put a few bucks down on a ball game or a horse, buy a little blow.”
“And when your wife came digging around to get something on Rich, Harry made you. He thought his ship had come in.”
“Stupid fucker. He really was. He still wasn’t sure what was going on. And her. Shit, she was the real thing I was leaving. That life.”
“Married her for her money in the first place, didn’t you? And then her old man got nasty.”
“That old asshole. I should’ve taken him out when I left.”
“What’s it like to start a completely new life?”
“Beautiful. It’s beautiful. It’s the only complete freedom, the only pure freedom there is. I took off and got a boat and I been going from coast to coast, man. The Gulf, Mexico, Central America. Couple more days I think I’m gonna try South America. I can go where I want and do what I want, and the whole world thinks I’m dead.”
“George Brister was a piece of luck, huh?”
Now Fairs moved closer and the smile fled. “Luck had nothing to do with it. I knew a loser when I saw one. If it wasn’t him, it would have been somebody else. I had this planned for more than a year, before I even met Brister. I brought him in, set it all up, set him down right in the middle of it, and took him out again.”
“Why not? He was disposable, right?”
“Yeah, that’s right. He was.” He was five feet away now, speaking through his teeth, and his face was flushed.
“How’d you get off the boat? No, let me try: you started the fire below deck, slid into the water, swam into the harbor…”
Fairs shook his head. “To the breakwater. I swam out. He smiled.
“And when the boat went up, every eye was on the fire. You had witnesses that saw you start it, saw it go up. And Brister was below, dead already.”
The rain started and Whelan could see the drops streaming down Fairs’s bald head.
“I still say a lot of it was luck. Brister’s corpse was too far gone from the fire and the water to be recognized. You put your clothes on him and your wedding ring and counted on the coast guard pulling out a thing with no face. And you counted on your wife to identify the body as yours so they wouldn’t have to look too closely at it. I talked to somebody at the morgue. It was just luck, Fairs. They don’t have to do an autopsy if cause of death is obvious and the next of kin identifies the body.”
“No, no luck. I planned it all out and pulled it off and every single step of it went perfect. I’m the smartest man you ever met in your life, Whelan.”
“You’re not nearly as smart as you think, Fairs. You’re starting to screw up left and right. You made old Rich nervous. He probably wanted you out of his life, so you killed him in broad daylight.”
“No, you made him nervous, Whelan, with your bullshit about Brister. I just had to clean it up.”
“And then there’s your wife. Came out here to see you, did she? In her icy way, she probably scared the shit out of you, Fairs.”
Fairs looked past Whelan to where the woman’s corpse lay beneath the tarp. He raised his eyebrows. “Found her, huh? She put it together, came out here, and got in my face and thought she was going to get off this boat in one piece and go to the cops. What a broad.”
“She didn’t ‘put it together,’ Fairs. I think she had an idea all along. I think she was smarter than you.”
Fairs stared at him and then he was moving quickly toward Whelan. Whelan flicked the cigarette into his eye, then reached around behind and got his hand on the wooden stool. Fairs covered his eye and took a step back but went right back on the offensive. He was bringing up a big left hook when the stool came down on the bare dome of his head. Even so, the punch landed, catching Whelan above the eye.
Whelan sagged back, felt his legs starting to go, and swung the stool again. This time he caught Fairs full in the face. He felt blood spray him and lurched back toward the cabin wall. Whelan sidestepped and looked around for something better to fight with.
Fairs staggered for a moment, put his hand to his nose, and glanced at his bloody fingers. Then he lowered his head and came straight ahead. He swung wildly, certain that he’d land one of those heavy hands, and Whelan backed off, swinging the stool. He stumbled over a coil of rope and started to go down, and the bigger man leapt toward him, making growling sounds as he came.
Whelan took a punch high on his cheekbone and fell onto the deck. He rolled as soon as his back struck wood and he felt Fairs’s fingernails scoring his back. He jumped to his feet and ran to the far railing of the yacht, then looked back. Fairs was on his feet and running, and Whelan knew he couldn’t stop him this time. He climbed over the railing and dove in.
He went down and felt a moment of panic as seaweed tugged at his legs. The water sucked one of his shoes off and he flailed and kicked to come up. Then he broke through the surface, took in a great lungful of air, and began churning to shore. It was raining heavily now and the rain dug up little spouts all around him. The harbor was a roiling mass of waves, and they slapped at him and tossed him and for a moment he thought he’d go under. The water smelled of spent gasoline and fish and tasted vile in his mouth, and his clothes weighed him down. When he chanced a look at the boat, Fairs was still there, leaning against the railing, blood staining his shirt. Twenty yards away he could see the green eyes following him.
He was ten yards from the little sandbar where they’d dug up Harry Palm when he heard the boat’s big engines start up. His heart was near bursting. He could feel the rain pelting him and in the background he could hear Fairs screaming curses at him. He flailed wildly toward shore and then felt solid ground beneath his feet, stumbled up onto the sand, gasping, and collapsed there. He turned and saw The Score going out into the harbor in reverse and relief washed over him. Fairs was at the helm and as Whelan staggered to his feet, Fairs turned and held up one hand and gave him the finger. Whelan could still hear him shouting.
He climbed up over the cyclone fence and walked through the sheets of rain to a pay phone near the bridle path. He wasn’t able to reach Bauman but the dispatcher said he’d send a patrol car and get word to Bauman.
Whelan hung up, walked slowly over to a bench, and sat down. He felt for his cigarettes and realized there wouldn’t be much left of them. He pulled out the soaked pack, fingered around inside and felt the soggy, shredded cigarettes, and gave it up. A few minutes later a squad car arrived and pulled up onto the sidewalk. The two uniforms inside were just climbing out when the gray Caprice showed up.
The older of the two police officers looked at him, squinting through the rain. “You made the call?”
Whelan nodded. He pointed behind the officer, toward the gray Caprice. “I called him, too.”
Bauman was prying his heavy body from the Caprice and he seemed to be mumbling, and the police officer laughed. “You called Bauman? What, you like to live dangerously? Don’t you know he hates rain?”
Whelan sighed. “Okay, so none of us are having a good day.”
The heavy rain drops made a slapping sound on his wet body and it was now coming down so heavily that it stung. He put his face in his hands and sighed, and when he looked up, Bauman was standing in front of him, trying to get a mustard-colored sport coat up over his head.
“I hate fucking rain,” he said.
“It figures,” Whelan answer
ed.
“So what’s this about, Whelan? What happened to you? Where’s your shoe? You go chasing after the smelt, Whelan?”
“No. I was talking to the guy who killed Harry Palm. He didn’t like me, so I had to get off his boat.”
Bauman stared at him for what seemed like minutes. Then he looked out at the boats in the harbor. “That the one that was taking off when we drove up?”
“Right.”
Bauman looked at Whelan for a moment and then looked away. “That the guy you been lookin’ for?”
“Yeah.”
Bauman half turned and squinted into the face of the wind and gave an irritated shake of his head.
“He ain’t going nowheres in this shit. There’s small-craft warnings out all over the lake. He’ll be back, Whelan.”
Whelan watched the dark, churning surface of the lake and shook his head. “No, I don’t think so. He’s on his way out. You want this one, Bauman, get on the horn and get harbor patrol or the coast guard.”
“They won’t come out in this,” one of the uniforms said. “They’re not stupid.”
“Then we’re not going to get the chance to talk to this fella,” Whelan said. He held his arms around him and shivered in the wind.
As they watched the storm take on force, a long, elegant sailboat eighty yards offshore pitched over. On the far side of the harbor the waves took a pair of sailboats moored close to each other and smashed them against the concrete arms of the mooring. From around the long hook of the harbor a small motorboat came in and they could see the two people on board hunched down against the wind. They made for the nearest part of the harbor wall and tried to anchor as the waves slapped the little boat against the wall. One of the men fell over and seemed to be in danger of drowning till the other tossed him a life preserver.
A Body in Belmont Harbor Page 27
