An Incident At Bloodtide

by George C. Chesbro

  "Come again?"

  "An oceangoing oil tanker flushing out its bilge, ballast, and holding tanks after making a delivery. That's how that stuff got in the river."

  He gave me a nod, but it was tentative. "That could be the answer, I suppose; but to get these concentrations, you'd have to collect your samples right at the port virtually as a tank was being flushed, or you'd get more dilution with river water."

  Which would explain why Tom Blaine had been diving at night, in the deep channel, beneath a tanker.

  It didn't explain why Tom had died, but it hinted strongly at a grisly conclusion. If a tanker was in the process of flushing its tanks, it wasn't going anywhere at the moment. But in this case the main turbines had been turned on. It seemed inconceivable to me that a captain would choose to murder a man over some bilge water, but it was beginning to look as though that was exactly what had happened.

  "Frank, you don't know anything about pollution laws, fines for dumping, that sort of thing, do you?"

  The chemist shook his head. "Can't say that I do, Mongo."

  "Well, then," I said, gathering up the jugs and printout sheets, "I guess I'll just have to go find somebody who does."

  Chapter Seven

  The nearest Coast Guard Command station was located in the New York Harbor, on Governors Island. It was a short subway ride for me, but a trip into the city for Garth. Nevertheless, when I called to tell him about the lab report on the samples, and what I intended to do next, he insisted that he wanted to go with me. I hung around the office catching up on paperwork until he arrived, and then we headed for the subway.

  We actually got in to see the top man himself, one Captain Richard Marley. Marley was a beefy man with a pleasant manner, curly brown hair, and light brown eyes that, to my consternation, seemed to glaze over when I explained why we had come, and started to hand him the computer printouts.

  "Excuse me," he said, taking the papers from my hand, then setting them off to one side of his desk before sinking back into his leather swivel chair. "This wouldn't have any connection with that riverkeeper up in Cairn, would it?"

  Garth and I looked at each other, then back at the Captain of the Port of New York. Garth said, "As a matter of fact, it would. Those are laboratory analyses of water Tom Blaine took out of the Hudson north of here. He died getting those samples."

  Marley blinked, sat up straight. "Died?"

  "He got chewed up by the propeller blades of some tug or tanker."

  Marley winced, half turned away. "Jesus. You're sure it was a tug or tanker?"

  "It's what the coroner said. A normal powerboat, even a cigarette boat, would have sliced him up, but not into the sushi he ended up as."

  "He could only have been run over by a big boat if he was in the deep channel. What the hell was he doing diving in the deep channel?"

  "Getting those samples," I said with some impatience, pointing at the sheets of paper on the corner of his desk. "Or samples just like those. There's more than one ship involved. The samples I had analyzed came from two different ships, almost certainly tankers, and he was probably killed by a third."

  "And you two have been hired to look into the death?" Marley asked in an even tone. "Or are you working on a pollution case?"

  "We haven't been hired by anybody to do anything. You might call what we're doing a labor of love."

  "I'm sorry to hear about Tom Blaine's death, Frederickson," the burly man said, once again leaning back in his chair. "I'll admit I considered him a pest, but he always thought he was doing the right thing, and he worked damn hard at his job. Just what is it you want from me?"

  "For openers," I said tersely, "an investigation into the circumstances of his death — which I understand is your job."

  He didn't like that, but at least it got his attention. His jaw muscles tightened, and his light brown eyes glinted. "Where did you get that idea?"

  "From people who claim it isn't their job — local cops, and presumably the state police, since they never showed up. I haven't checked with the FBI, CIA, or United Nations, but I'm sure they'd tell me the same thing — that whatever happens on the Hudson is your jurisdiction."

  "You want to know what my job is, Frederickson? I'll tell you. This is the largest operational command in the Coast Guard. Six thousand ships a year pass through this harbor. I'm responsible for monitoring oil spills, polluters — "

  "Aha," Garth said with quiet intensity.

  "And a few other little things. It's our responsibility to enforce the laws of marine navigation; we're responsible for averting terrorist threats. I command three hundred and forty men and women, and thirty-two ships on the Hudson River all the way from this port up to the Canadian border. Now, gentlemen, we love the environment, the seas and rivers, as much as the next person — probably more, or we wouldn't have chosen to serve in the Coast Guard. But we're not an arm of the Environmental Protection Agency; we're armed forces. We're not pollution detectives. We don't have the manpower. One of Tom Blaine's problems was that he thought we should be pollution detectives, and that we should spend all our time helping him clean up his relatively small bailiwick up there around Cairn. If you've got a major oil spill from a tanker, we'll be on the scene in minutes; but if I had to cooperate with every environmentalist, every individual who brought in a lab report about some bad water and asked us to do something about it, there wouldn't be enough hours in the day to do that work, much less carry out our mandated responsibilities. Blaine wouldn't accept that position, and I finally had to bar him from this facility and stop our people from taking his phone calls — not because I wanted to, but because I had to. The reason your local police don't want to handle it is because they have to answer to the local politicians, and the politicians don't want to rattle the cages of the local industries that pay a lot in school and property taxes. In short, if you want something done about a minor pollution problem upriver, you're going to have to rattle the politicians' cages, not mine. I'm not saying that whatever's on those sheets doesn't represent a real problem; you're just going to have to take it someplace other than the Coast Guard."

  "This may be more than just a minor pollution problem, Captain," Garth said quietly. "Tom Blaine was killed collecting samples like those. Maybe he was murdered."

  "Murdered?" Marley said it as if the word itself had a bad taste.

  I stepped closer to the edge of the desk. "Yes, Captain. Tom wasn't stupid enough to dive under a moving ship. There would be no reason for an oil tanker captain to power up the props while he was at anchor and flushing out his tanks."

  "Who says Blaine was killed by an oil tanker, and who says a captain was flushing out his tanks in the river?"

  "It's the conclusion the chemical analyses on those printouts points to — if you'd care to look at them." I paused, waiting to see what the Coast Guard commander would do. He glanced at the sheets, then looked back at me. I continued, "Garth and I think there's a good possibility that a captain of an oil tanker turned on the engines of his ship, knowing Tom would be killed, to stop Tom from collecting samples of what that captain was dumping in the river. If you'll look at those printouts, you'll see there was all kinds of toxic crap in the samples. I take it flushing out tanks in an inland waterway is illegal, right?"

  Captain Richard Marley ran a hand through his thick brown hair, which immediately sprang back into place. "I think you're looking at the problem from the wrong end, Frederickson, and it's leading you to make unwarranted conclusions. A certain amount of leakage from bilge and ballast tanks is unavoidable — even though Tom Blaine would certainly have argued otherwise. There would be absolutely no reason for a tanker captain to risk a fine by flushing out his tanks in the river, because he'd have nothing to gain; he has nothing to transport back to the refinery in those flushed tanks. He delivers oil, then goes back to his shipping point in the Middle East, or wherever, to pick up another load. He has an entire ocean voyage to wash out ail his tanks at his leisure."

  Garth
said, "Maybe he was taking a load of something out."

  Marley extended his hands out over his desk, palms up. "What? The industries up the river are users of oil, not suppliers. You know how many millions of gallons those tankers can hold? They're not used for carrying seltzer. There aren't any chemical plants up there with either a capacity or product that requires tanker transport; barges, yes, but not tankers. That's what's wrong with your speculation. For the sake of argument, let's suppose a captain did flush his tanks in the river — maybe by accident, since I can't think of any reason for it. You think a captain is going to murder a man over what amounts to a relatively minor infraction? It would be like killing a traffic cop over a parking ticket. I find it highly unlikely."

  "My brother and I would just like to make sure, Captain," Garth said in a flat tone.

  "Look, I have no doubt that Tom Blaine was investigating something he considered important, and gathering evidence he hoped his employers could use in court. He was always investigating something; it was his job, and he loved it. But that doesn't mean there's a connection between what he was looking into and the fact that he was run over by a very big ship. You use the word 'murder,' but my guess is that the captain of whatever vessel killed him wasn't even aware of what had happened. He still isn't. And if he doesn't know what happened, then it's damned unlikely that you're ever going to be able to identify with any certainty the ship that was involved. That leaves you with whatever data you've got on these computer printouts you've brought me. I'm not unconcerned about whatever pollution violations may have occurred, gentlemen, but I can't set a precedent by doing for you what I wouldn't do for other people who came here with similar requests — as much as I personally might want to. I know who the two of you are, and your reputations truly precede you. It's why I agreed to meet with you personally. My recommendation is that you approach the appropriate New York State authorities with whatever you think the problem may be — pollution, or murder, or both."

  So much for our visit to the Coast Guard. "Captain," I said, "I presume you keep a log of every commercial vessel that passes in and out of this harbor?"

  He nodded curtly. "Each and every one."

  I took a pad and pen out of my pocket, wrote down two weeks' worth of dates, put the paper down on the captain's desk, literally under his nose. "Sir, there's a time frame around the Tuesday night the medical examiner thinks Tom died. Would you be willing to give us the names and registration numbers of the oil tankers that were on the Hudson River on those dates?"

  "No," he replied immediately, as he pushed the paper away from him.

  "My brother and I are private investigators licensed by the state of New York, Captain. This is business, not a personal favor. Our licenses entitle us to certain privileges and courtesies from both state and federal agencies. You can check with any agency we've ever dealt with in the city, state, or federal government. You'll find that not everybody likes us, especially in this administration, but I think you'll also find that they all have respect for the way we deal with information, privileged or otherwise, that comes our way in the course of our business. We won't embarrass you."

  "You mentioned privileges and courtesies, Frederickson, not rights. Again, if it were up to me personally, I'd just give you the information you want with my blessing. But I can't do that. It sets a precedent. If I hand Coast Guard data over to you, I'd have to honor the same request from every private investigator in the country, if it was made. It wouldn't be good policy."

  "Nobody will know where we got the information."

  "I'd know. Bring me a court order, and I'll give you the list — and buy you both a drink besides. But otherwise, no."

  "You know we can't get a court order."

  Marley looked uncomfortable. He averted his gaze, drummed his fingers on the desktop for a few moments, then looked at us out of the corner of his eye. "I really would like to help you gentlemen — maybe as a tip of my hat to Blaine, who pestered the hell out of me because he wanted a clean river. You want a list of oil tankers that were up the Hudson on certain dates, and I can't give it to you. There may be other organizations that compile such data. Have you considered other sources?"

  Garth and I looked at each other. I didn't have the slightest idea what our coy Coast Guard captain was talking about, but Garth apparently did. "Thanks, Cap," he said, nodding to the man behind the desk. "Come on, Mongo. Let's go back to the brownstone and pick up a car."

  * * *

  I asked Garth, "You notice anything peculiar about these pictures?"

  We were back at Jessica Blaine's home, in the basement. We had returned to ask the woman if we could borrow one of her husband's old ledgers, which we intended to show to a representative of the Cairn Fishermen's Association in the hope that he might be able to link the codes on the plastic jugs to past violators. Jessica Blaine had told us we could take whatever we wanted. I had forgotten about the photographs of tankers on the corkboard over Tom Blaine's battered desk, but now, as I stood staring at the display, I understood why the riverkeeper had taken them. They were evidence.

  Garth looked up from the ledger he was studying, shrugged. "He liked to take pictures of tanker traffic going up and down the river. So what?"

  "Up and down the river. That's the key. Look at the waterlines on those ships."

  Garth stared at the photos for a few more moments, then clucked his tongue. "Aha. They're all just about the same."

  "Thank you, Dr. Watson. You'd expect them to be riding low in the water going upriver, because they're carrying shipments of oil. They should be riding a lot higher going back downriver, but they're not — at least not as much as you'd expect. It means they damn well do fill up with something after they deliver their oil and flush out their tanks, and whatever they're carrying back displaces about the same amount of water as the oil."

  Garth shook his head. "Marley told us there isn't even one industry upriver that ships out liquids in quantity, and yet here we have a dozen tankers, presumably coming from different locations, and all fully loaded as they head back downriver. The only cargo I can think of from around here that would fill that many tankers is . . . water."

  "Right. River water. It may not be exactly fresh, but it's not totally saline either. It would be a lot easier to purify than seawater, a real bonus if you depend on desalinization for fresh water, and most of the capacity of your desalinization plants was recently knocked out by an invading army. I'll bet they're taking the stuff to Kuwait, and maybe a few other Middle Eastern countries."

  "A goddamn slick trick, stealing millions of gallons of river water, and right under everyone's nose," Garth said, starting to take down the photographs, slipping them into the back of the ledger he held. "So now let's see if you and I can't find out who's gone into the sideline of selling the Hudson."

  * * *

  The Cairn Fishermen's Association rented office space in the basement of an Episcopal church in the center of town. We walked there, found the volunteer on duty to be an attractive red-haired woman in her early thirties who told us her name was Lonnie Allen. She had green eyes that went nicely with her red hair, and the kind of deep, even tan that comes from spending a lot of time on the water. She was wearing sandals, stonewashed jeans, and a Clearwater T-shirt.

  We told the woman why we were there, then handed over the plastic jugs, computer printouts, photographs, and ledger for her to examine.

  "That's oil tanker discharge," she said after only a cursory glance at the printouts.

  "Right," Garth said. "We were hoping you might be able to provide us with a list of the tankers that were in this area around the time that Tom Blaine was killed."

  Lonnie Allen nodded curtly. "We keep records of shipping traffic, but I don't have to look on the list to tell you where the samples in those jugs came from. The 'C' on the labels stands for Carver — Carver Shipping. In fact, all of the tankers in those photographs belong to Carver; they have red and yellow stripes running the length of the ship just
above the waterline, although they're often too faded to see. What you have on the labels after the 'C' is the registration number of the tanker the sample was taken from. You can't see them in the photos, but the registration numbers are usually stenciled on both the bow and stern; from across the river, you can usually make them out with a decent pair of binoculars."

  "Carver as in Bennett Carver?" Garth asked.

  The woman nodded. "Our local Bennett Carver, yes. Carver, by the way, is by far the largest shipping line on the river. Bennett Carver founded it, but he retired a couple of years ago after taking the company public and cashing in for a hundred million or so. We were sorry to see him retire, because he was always pretty cooperative while he ran the company. And responsible. I guess things have changed. The analysis of the samples in those jugs tells us they've been flushing their tanks in the river. That's illegal."

  I asked, "Who runs the company now?"

  She shrugged. "The usual faceless board of directors, under some CEO whose name I can't recall right now. When we find somebody to replace Tom, which won't be easy, we'll put him or her to work on this tank-flushing business."

  "Garth and I think there may be more to it, Lonnie. If you look closely at those photographs, you'll see that the tankers are fully loaded going back downriver. We think they may be carrying river water back to the Middle East to sell."

  She picked up one of the photographs to look at it more closely, raised her eyebrows slightly. "You're right," she said, a hint of annoyance in her voice. "If it's river water they're carrying, that would be illegal too. The law says that the waters of the rivers and lakes in this country belong to all the people. In effect, these tankers would be shipping stolen goods."

  "What would be the penalty if they were convicted of that?"

  She put the photograph down, shook her head. "It's hard to say — maybe a couple of hundred thousand, probably less. Not enough, and not as much as they'd probably spend in legal fees to fight conviction. If they knew we had hard evidence, they'd probably simply stop. It's not the fines they worry about, it's the bad publicity. The fines don't usually mean that much to a company as big as Carver Shipping."