The Whale's Footprints - Rick Boyer

by Rick Boyer

  "You can do that? I thought that was illegal."

  "Right you are, my boy. It's against all the invasion of privacy statutes. Nobody's supposed to run this kind of check unless it's voluntary, like for a handgun permit . . . or, if a guy wants to apply for insurance, or a fancy credit card or something similar. Then he signs a slip authorizing people to check him out. You tell anybody we're doing this, it's our ass."

  "I'll keep mum. So what about Hunter Whitesides the Fourth. Shit, with a moniker like that, you'd think he was an old Yankee blueblood."

  "And you'd be right. Financial standing is triple A, gilt edged. Two addresses: a P.O. box on Nantucket Island, and a residence on Tuckernuck Island. Top dollar. No lien on the car, and it's about sixty K. Went to Princeton, class of forty-six. That means he avoided the draft in the big one. Thanks no doubt to daddy's big bucks, and friends in high places. Got something on his old man, in fact. The Whitesides were big in banking in the twenties and thirties. Daddy, Hunter the Third, was in tight with Governor Alvin Fuller. Remember him?"

  "Oh yeah. The friend of the working man."

  "Count on it. Anyway, Whitesides headed up the banking commission and a lot of other commonwealth stuff. You ask me, it was the old man's state connections that got Whitesides off the hook in World War Two. But I'm only theorizing."

  "Any occupation listed? Married?"

  "No occupation. Probably doesn't need one. Married and two boys—nothing on them, though we could look. Wife died twelve years ago. So know what I think?"

  "What?"

  "Tell you after I tell you about OEI. Oceanic Enterprises, Inc., was founded and chartered in nineteen seventy-three. Its purpose, as stated in the charter, is to 'locate, acquire, and develop the resources of the eastern continental shelf for commercial and humanitarian ends.' Quote, unquote."

  "Sounds nice. Too nice."

  "Yeah. Sounds to me like an underwater mining company or something. But interesting point: one ofthe main financial backer is, guess who?"

  "Hunter Whitesides."

  "Uh-huh, he's one of them. Then there's a Dr. Michael Chisholm. I suppose it's a doctorate in geology or something. And finally, William A. Henderson, Falmouth, Mass."

  "Ahhhhhh . . ."

  " 'Ahhhh,' what?"

  "I dunno," I shrugged, 'just 'Ahhhhhh.' "

  "Well anyway, OEI is in trouble. Deep financial trouble. I can't understand why they're not in chapter eleven already. All Cochrane told me over the phone was that there's a ton of overdue notes with a lot of banks and lending institutions. OEI's been on the skids for the past four years."

  "So Henderson's hurting, possibly desperate. Maybe Whitesides was brought in to bankroll the company at the beginning, or maybe brought in later as a corporate sugar daddy to help bail the firm out of debt."

  "Possible."

  "But then again, maybe not. Maybe Hunter Whitesides, despite his gilt-edged pedigree, is experiencing some hard times, too. Maybe he's worn out three pairs of scissors clipping his daddy's coupons."

  "That had crossed my mind. So you've hit on the Henderson-Whitesides connection, Doc. But so far, despite financial reversals, everything concerning OEI appears to be aboveboard."

  "I'm just wondering why Bill Henderson would form a company like OEI. Wouldn't a mining and explorations company be against the interests of fishermen? If you had to guess, wouldn't you think so?"

  "Uh-huh. But that's the beauty of it, Doc. Everybody in this state knows how off and on fishing is, right? So what does Henderson do about fifteen years ago when he's got some extra cash? Buy another boat? No. He diversifies."

  "So when the fishing's off," I said, "he can make money on the other side of the table. Wait a minute; we were aboard Highlander for the better part of an hour. That boat isn't four years old yet. If he's hurting so bad in his investments, how'd he afford her?"

  "Good question. We can check around the edges on that one. But I'm beginning to think Bill Henderson is more clever than he lets on."

  "Dinner's ready, guys," called Mary, appearing on the terrace working a wire whisk in a stainless steel bowl. She was putting the finishing touches on the béarnaise.

  "Ahhhhh," sighed Joe, following her inside, "once more into the breach, dear friends . . ."

  TWENTY-THREE

  ALL OF A SUDDEN it was Labor Day. On the weekend of September 9, we realized it had been a month since the unsolved murder of Andrew Cunningham. Time sure flies when you're having fun. But I had just completed a full week of post vacation work and it seemed to cheer me up. Work is good for that. It seems, in my case especially, that idleness breeds boredom, and boredom leads quickly to depression.

  What was new? Well, Jack called from Woods Hole to tell us that the MBL and Lionel Hartzell had mutually decided that he would terminate his stay at the lab. According to Jack, that was good news for a lot of the folks at Woods Hole. Another ray of sunshine on an otherwise bleak horizon was that Morris Abramson's precious cargo of hideous marine bottom-feeders met with a mysterious malady that killed most of them off. Take out your handkerchiefs. Moe was downhearted, and couldn't figure out what had decimated his beloved menagerie.

  Since we're on the subject, I'll inject something I once heard: if someone drops iron—even an old-fashioned cut nail—into a marine tank the results can be disastrous.

  Hey, I know what you're thinking, and it wasn't me. In fact, it wasn't even iron. Moe hired a guy from one of Boston's leading pet fish suppliers, and he did all sorts of chemical tests but couldn't find the cause. It must have been Divine Intervention. So with that in mind, I promised to go to church at least three weeks in a row.

  Joe and Paul Keegan continued to hammer away at the Providence mob connection, and even succeeded in hauling Falcone in for tough questioning. Joe didn't tell Mary about this; she'd think he was picking on the poor, sweet kid. Anyway, they still couldn't make anything stick, even with the help of Howard "the Drugstore" Evans, who was growing more scared by the second and wanted nothing more than to be off the stand and shipped out to Steamboat Springs, or wherever he was to begin his new life under the Witness Protection Program.

  The month or so that follows Labor Day is a pleasant time in New England, and it's especially nice on the Cape. The ocean is warm, the days are crisp and clear, it's chilly at night, and ninety percent of the tourists are gone and the roads actually work. And so Friday evening of that Labor Day weekend found Mary and me down at the Breakers, spiffing up the place after all the houseguests and partying of the summertime, getting it ready for the cozy family weekends that we would enjoy throughout the fall. Joe was due to come down and spend a quiet weekend with us. The boys were wrapping up their summer in Woods Hole, apparently determined to squeeze another week of fun out of the season before all their friends either returned to school or went elsewhere for jobs.

  Mary was carrying a special letter in her handbag that she wouldn't let me see. I had retrieved it from our mailbox in Concord just before we left. All I knew was, it wasn't for her; it was addressed to a Ms. Candace Lockewood.

  "Do you still have Ms. Lockewood's letter?"

  "Yes," she said. I saw that her jaw was trembling.

  "What's wrong? Is she in trouble or what?"

  But she didn't answer me. She walked back to the dining room table fast, snatched the letter out, and tore it open with shaking hands.

  "Hey, you can't open other people's—"

  "It's for me, dummy. That's my pen name. My nom de plume."

  "Candace Lockewood? What the hell's wrong with Mary Adams?"

  "Get serious, Charlie—she broke off and read the letter, her eyes zipping over the page. "Yippee! Yippee! They like it!"

  "They do?"

  "Yes, they do!" she cried, holding the sheet of paper to her breast with a look of ecstasy. And if the paper were human, it would have been wearing an ecstatic look as well. No doubt the expression was similar to Maria's on seeing Fuente's face in a crowd. I picked up the envelope and saw that it
was from a New York outfit called Fountainhead Press. Never heard of it.

  Mary wouldn't show me the letter. She said I could see it later. So we returned to vacuuming and dusting and straightening up. Joe said he'd be down in time for a late dinner, and he'd promised to bring the raw materials. Mary remembered she had to change the sheets, so she hustled upstairs while l finished vacuuming. Then I unloaded the dishwasher and took out the trash in big black plastic bags. When I came back inside, Mary was calling me.

  "Charlie? Help me move this bed!"

  She was in the boys' room, tugging at the far brass bed, which had been stripped.

  "Well, you had no trouble with the other one," l said, pointing to its freshly made twin.

  "Yeah, but this one seems heavy, and I don't want to leave a mark on the floor." So I grabbed the head of the brass bed while she grabbed the foot, and we lifted and yanked the bed far enough away from the wall that she could get behind it.

  "Gee, I think I left some marks on the new varnish anyway," she said, looking down at the floor. Sure enough, there were faint pale streaks where the feet had dragged across the finish. I hefted the bed out of the way and rubbed the floor. Then we made the bed and went into the third bedroom, the guest room, to get it ready.

  Halfway through making that bed, I stood up and stared out the window.

  "That bed's too heavy," I said, and we went back into the boys' room. I approached the far bed and lifted the foot. Then I went to the head and lifted it. No wonder Mary had had trouble; the foot of the bed was much heavier than the head. Went to the other bed and lifted the foot. Not particularly heavy. Lifted foot of far bed: heavy. What gives?

  The beds were brass, not antiques, but well made and handsome, with vertical ribs of wide brass tubing at head and foot, the head being much higher, with a gently curving brass rail on top. The foot had two big end posts at each side, and a horizontal rail of brass joining them.

  On top of the end posts were big brass initials, shaped like the "onion domes" of the churches in Bavaria and Russia. I unscrewed one of the finials, which was fastened firmly. Then both of us were peering down into the hollow brass post. We saw paper a few inches below the lip.

  Mary took hold of the paper and pulled, but it w0uldn't budge. She pulled harder, and it tore. No good. I unscrewed the ornate brass cap on the other side and looked in. Same thing. And the paper wouldn't budge there, either.

  "There's something in there besides paper, Charlie," said Mary. 'just gotta be."

  So then we eased the mattress, complete with clean sheets and comforter, off the box spring and onto the other bed. We put the box spring on the floor on the far side of the room. The late afternoon sun streamed in through the gabled windows. Mary and I got on one side of the bed and gently turned it up on its side, then, walking around to the other side, gently lowered it until it was upside down. We were both breathing a little hard; the brass was quite heavy. Then I grabbed the underside of the foot of the bed frame and jerked up. Nothing. I jerked up again and again, and finally a paper-wrapped cylinder fell onto the floor with a loud thump. Then another fell out. Then two more. We checked the other side, and with a little pulling and prying, Mary got three out of that side as well. Seven bundles of . . . what? Mary picked one of the cylinders up and began to peel the paper off. I rushed over and grabbed it from her.

  "Don't, Mare! We don't know what it is. How do we know they aren't explosive or something?"

  Well, we watched them awhile and they just sat there, so we took all seven cylinders out onto the deck and placed them on the picnic table under the yellow beach umbrella and stared at them. I noticed Mary was drumming her fingers, her eyes bugged out with curiosity. I wanted to wait a minute or two, at least, to see if they started ticking or humming. As a diversion, I asked to see the letter from Fountainhead Press. She went and got it:

  Dear Ms. Lockewood:

  ` We have now read the four sample chapters of your book, Hills of Gold, Men of Bronze. I am pleased to inform you that the reaction from our staff so far has been quite favorable! We look forward to seeing the completed manuscript as soon as it's available. Meanwhile, don't hesitate to call us and keep us informed as to your progress.

  Incidentally, we urge you to overcome any shyness you might have in writing your love scenes, Ms. Lockewood. While quite descriptive, we feel they certainly could go a lot farther in conveying the physical passion that obviously plays so key a role in your fine novel. Quite frankly, we're asking you to be more explicit with the sex, Candace. After all my dear, these are the eighties. As they say on the street,

  let it all hang out!

  Sincerely,

  Louisa Latour,

  Managing Editor

  I put down the letter.

  "More explicit? Did I read that right, Mary?"

  "Yep. Well, I guess I better stop pussy-footing around, so to speak. No more beating around the bush. Get right to the meat of the problem . . ."

  "Louisa Latour? I bet that's not even her real name."

  "So? Candace Lockewood's not my real name, either."

  "This whole operation is downright tawdry, Mare. You've already got a novel that's just this side of X-rated and what do they want? More sleaze!”

  "Can do," she murmured, smiling implishly. "Caaaaaann dooo . . ."

  I returned to the picnic table and carefully hefted one of the paper-wrapped cylinders. I don't have an extraordinary fondness for paper-wrapped cylinders. My mercenary-commando buddy, Laitis Roantis, carried one with us during the Daisy Ducks' escapade in the mountains of North Carolina. It was packed with extra-high-grade plastique, or cyclonite, and was powerful enough to blow a mountain apart. Still, it wasn't nearly this heavy . . .

  I pulled the paper softly. It unwrapped, and I realized the paper was folded over several times. I unrolled all of it and found myself staring at a hunk of grayish rock in a perfect cylinder, two inches in diameter and maybe nine inches long. I was almost positive I knew what it was.

  "Huh? Is it rock? Granite?"

  "It's rock. I remember when I was a kid in high school my parents had friends who lived in central Indiana. He was a part-time oil prospector, and he had pieces of rock exactly like this. It's a core sample, from a special drill bit that carves out these cylinders deep in the ground."

  "What are they for?"

  "They tell what kind of rock there is at various levels below the earth's surface. By the color and texture, I'd say this is limestone. And I know a way to find out, too. We have white vinegar, don't we?"

  While she went into the kitchen, I carefully unwrapped another cylinder. This one had a dab of flat gray paint on one end, and some numbers written on the gray in heavy black ink. The rock looked different, though; it was tan colored and softer. Sandstone? Caked mud? I sure couldn't tell. Mary came back with a bottle of white vinegar. I spilled a little on the gray rock. Instantly, there was a fizzing and bubbling.

  "Wow, Charlie!"

  "It's limestone. That's the acid test, as they say. Limestone is pure CaCO3: calcium carbonate. It reacts strongly with acid, just like the old soda-acid fire extinguishers. I learned that trick back in high school chemistry."

  "What about the others?"

  "I don't know. I think if Joe takes these to a lab he can—"

  "Charlie! Look!"

  She had unfolded one of the wrapping papers, revealing faint squiggly lines inside. We unfolded it still more. It unfolded and unfolded, like a road map. When we were finished, we had a piece of paper a yard wide and almost eight feet high. We took it into the porch out of the wind and spread it on the table.

  "What the hell . . ."

  "Beats me," I said, looking at layers and layers of wavy graph lines in ink.

  "Looks like an EKG, only . . . only . . ."

  "Yeah, only far more complex, with maybe six or seven different types of recording."

  "What're you two doing, wrapping presents or what?"

  We turned to see Joe standing in the porch d
oorway. His arms were full of groceries and bundles wrapped in white paper. He put the food in the kitchen and joined us, examining the pieces of core and the strange graph closely, clucking his tongue and smoking intently. His face looked serious. Deadly serious.

  "Where'd you find all this?"

  We told him.

  "What do you think it all means?" asked Mary.

  "I don't know what it means in and of itself," he said, turning the rock samples around and around in his huge, plump, brown hands, "but I am sure that they're the reason Andy Cunningham was killed. This is the stuff they've been looking for. Right here is the reason for the burglaries. And as we were beginning to suspect, they've got nothing to do with Lionel Hartzell. And maybe even nothing to do with Eddie Falcone and his friend the Drugstore."

  "I'm calling Jack," said Mary, turning quickly to go inside. Joe grabbed her hard by the elbow.

  "Not so fast, Mary," he said softly. "I came down here on another bad errand, I'm afraid—"

  "Oh Joey! Did the grand jury—W

  "Yeah. Handed it down. Murder one. At three-thirty today. Sorry."

  There was an awful silence in the air, filled with fear, surrounding us like bad electricity. And a bitter, sick taste in my mouth, like an old tin can. Then I recovered, or did my best at it.

  "C'mon everybody," I said softly, "we were expecting it anyway. With Hartzell off the hook, it was just a question of time."

  "Two quick things, both good," Joe continued, putting his arms around us. "One: bail is set for fifty grand. That's nothing for murder one, so that shows you how they're really viewing this thing. And two: this new evidence. Hey! It points the finger away from Jack."

  He looked at each of us in turn, wearing a smile that was too forced. He then turned his gaze back to the littered table.

  "I don't know where the hell it does point," he said, "but it's pointing away from Jack."