by Jack Lynch
Catlin relaxed slowly. “Is that it?”
“Not quite. Backing up again, yesterday after the shooting at the airport, Harry Shank sent me to meet a gray slab of a man named Edward Bowman. When I told Bowman what happened to Polaski the man was beside himself. I took it that he was a part of this business deal old Harry was trying to put together. I sensed some sort of exchange was supposed to take place. Something Polaski was bringing in—money, I guess—for something the gray man had. When I’d spilled all the bad news, Bowman asked if you knew what had happened. Then when I saw Erica—Mrs. Shank—this morning, she said Bowman also was in favor of my coming up here to find you. So now I’ve found you, and you’re current with the situation in San Francisco as of this morning. At least to the extent that I know it.”
He was thinking about it all. I’d about given up on his telling me anything. I was content to sit and sip my bourbon and listen to the rain beat down. When I’d drained the glass, Catlin rose without a word and carried it to the bar to fix another. I sighed and stretched some. It was a comfortable way to live if you didn’t have to go out into the rain much. Catlin was returning with my drink when a muted tone came from a box on the wall with some buttons and switches on it. Catlin frowned as he handed me the glass.
“You didn’t bring anybody with you, did you, Bragg?”
“No. What’s wrong?”
“And there wouldn’t be any reason for anybody to follow you?”
“Not up here that I can think of. What is it?”
“Nothing, probably. Something broke an electronic beam in the garage. Probably just deer or a coon.” He sat back in his chair. “Bragg, assuming you are telling me the truth, you seem to be pretty casual about your own importance in this matter.”
“Importance?”
“Yes. You’re our only link with the dead Buddy Polaski. It makes you a key to the puzzle. If you had drinks together, you and Buddy must have had some conversation before he went to pick up the luggage.”
“Mostly small talk.”
“Was he able to say anything after he’d been shot?”
“Just barely.”
“Whatever it was might have been important. Buddy was clever. He wouldn’t have let the whole thing just go to hell if he had a way to save it. You were the one way he had.”
“He uttered about two words that I couldn’t make sense of. I think it was to do with the money he’d stolen back east.”
“Probably so. We all knew he’d be bringing in money with him. How much, we didn’t know. We were hoping it would be enough to buy out Bowman and the Duchess.”
“The who? You don’t mean that awkward young thing with the hiccups he had with him? Brandi, she called herself.”
Catlin was looking at me with a funny expression. “I never heard of her. Gretchen Zane is the one I meant. She bosses him.”
“A young woman?”
He snorted. “You nuts? She’s probably had her face and some other things lifted, but she’s older than either one of us.”
“That wasn’t her.”
“Hmmm. This Brandi. Did she have large jugs?”
“What?”
“Uh…” He raised his hands to his chest, cupping them.
“Oh, yeah. Come to think of it she did.”
“Christ, you don’t suppose fast Eddie has…oh well, it doesn’t matter, I suppose. Anyway, what we’re trying to buy out is—call it a little war booty. It’s something a number of us stumbled upon in a God-forsaken place during the war in the Pacific. None of us knew what we had then, of course. It was disguised.”
He burst into laughter. “It was so goddamn primitive and simple one of us should have discovered it long ago.”
I tried to sound curious but casual. “What was it?”
“No, Bragg. For now it’s enough that you know it had a lot of pieces to it. Each in its own right is worth plenty. But put them all together and find the right buyer and…”
He sighed and steepled his hands before his face, dreaming about things. “It amounts to a goddamn fortune, Bragg. A goddamn fortune. Anyhow, Buddy Polaski had some of the pieces. Harry Shank had some. Eddie Bowman has some. So has the Australian. But I got most of all.”
“Why’s that?”
“Because back then I was stronger and meaner than the others.” A smile flickered across his face, as if it were a small personal joke. “Actually I just grabbed up more than anyone when the Japs came down on us.”
“And you all kept them—whatever they are—all these years, not knowing they were worth anything?”
“Damn right. War souvenirs.”
“But how did you discover their value?”
“Beats me. Harry never said. This idea of rounding them all up seems to have been his, but I don’t think he was the one who figured it out. I don’t mean to be all that mysterious, Bragg. I’m sure that one day you will know. It’s just smarter for now that you don’t. Any one of us could have unraveled the puzzle, so to speak, but the goddamn things were so commonplace-looking—the sort of thing that you bring back from a war and stow in an old trunk or some place like a lot of other memories, then get on with your life.”
“Can you give me a clue as to what they look like?”
“How do you mean?”
“I mean are we talking about buttons or balloons? Pages from a book or gold bars? You said Buddy Polaski had some of these mysterious pieces Harry was trying to round up. He wouldn’t have left them behind in New York. Maybe they’re even what the gunmen were after, instead of the money. If you give me some idea of the size and texture of whatever Polaski was bringing out it might help me guess what he did with them.”
“You’re a smart man, Bragg,” Catlin said slowly. “You’re right, of course. Buddy would have arranged a way to get them out here. Let’s just say that most of them are approximately the size and shape of a large man’s fingers. Some were shaped a little different than that, and some of them were a little bigger than others. But that’s a good, general enough idea.”
“Could the ones Buddy Polaski had fit into an attaché case?”
“Sure. No problem. Even mine would. Almost, anyhow.”
“That’s something, at least.”
“Now maybe you can appreciate the importance of whatever Buddy might have told you. If we can round up all of these pieces, they might be worth ten or twenty times what they’d bring in if they were sold off individually. How did you and Buddy hit it off during the time you spent together?”
“Okay, I think. We didn’t hold hands and read poetry to each other or anything, but I felt he could be trusted. Just before he got shot he said there was an errand he wanted me to run for him. He didn’t say what it was, but I didn’t feel I’d be sticking my neck out any. Despite his rough manner, he seemed a far more honorable man than Harry Shank ever was.”
Catlin smiled again. “You’re a good judge of character as well, Bragg.”
I took another drink of bourbon and leaned back to roll it around inside my mouth while I studied Catlin. “I’m pretty good at judging lots of things. You, for instance.”
It amused him. “What about me?”
“You’ve really got the people around here buffaloed. I mean you’re not exactly the rough-hewn hillbilly who moved here a long time ago to stare at the trees and all. Your vocabulary, this room, the electronic doodad on the wall over there—you’ve been out and about some.”
“Some. But I don’t see any need to advertise it to the fine townspeople. When I leave it’s usually in the middle of the night. I can take the county road south a way before crossing to the main highway. But I spend more time here than anywhere else.”
“In this weather?”
“I grew up in country like this. I’m comfortable here. What business I have to do with the rest of the world can be done by telephone, for the most part. The hunting’s good. Fishing is excellent, and there aren’t a lot of goddamn fools practically living in your lap up here.”
“S
peaking of the telephone, how about giving me your number? And there’s something else I’m curious about.”
“What?”
“When you learned these things you have were so valuable, what did you do with them? Put them in a safe deposit box somewhere?”
“No, they wouldn’t be readily available that way.”
“So they’re around here somewhere? Maybe Polaski thought of something similar.”
“Not likely. Not while he was flying out here, at least. I wrapped mine in oilskin and stuck them into a gunnysack.”
“And then?”
“I put them up on the roof.”
“The roof?”
“Sure. Who’d think to look up there?”
The box on the wall began to beep steadily, and Catlin’s face tensed. He got to his feet. “We have company. More than one from the sound of things.”
He motioned for me to follow him out to the kitchen. “You say you did some shooting yesterday. Do you have a gun on you?”
“No. I’ve got two of them in my suitcase, down in the car.”
He opened a tall storage cabinet and brought out a semiautomatic rifle, checked the action and laid it across the counter top. He reached back in and handed me a shotgun. His movements were crisp and deliberate, as if he were very accustomed to handling weapons.
“You positive you weren’t followed?”
“Not positive, of course not. From Forks?”
“From San Francisco.”
“If somebody followed me all that way, they were very good. But the two who killed Polaski seemed like pros.”
He nodded. “The shotgun is loaded. I take it you can use it.”
“I can use it.”
“If this is as serious as it seems, I’ll be leaving. Right away. We might see each other again in San Francisco. Until then I’d like you to think hard about whatever Buddy managed to say after he’d been shot. He had a good head. If he was sending you on an errand, he trusted you. Whatever he had to tell you he would have kept simple. Something you could work out.”
“I’ve already…”
He signaled for silence and snatched up the rifle. He’d seen or heard something I hadn’t. He slipped out from behind the counter and crossed to the front door, listening. He stared a moment at the edge of the drapes covering the front room window. He turned and came back to the kitchen, signaling again for me to be silent. He motioned for me to cover the back door with the shotgun, and positioned himself behind the counter with his rifle aimed toward the front of the house.
There was a rattle of gunfire out back. I braced myself, but it didn’t sound close to the rear door. More shots were fired and there was a sudden shattering of glass in the front room. I glanced over my shoulder. Somebody had come through the plate glass window and was struggling to disentangle himself from the drapes. A hand with a pistol came free and fired once, wildly into the ceiling. Catlin emptied his rifle into the figure with a single burst. Whoever it was yelped once, then tumbled backward through the shattered glass.
Catlin changed magazines and reached into the tall cabinet to fill his pockets with more. His rifle had been altered so it would fire full automatic. That was illegal most places I knew of, but it didn’t surprise me Catlin had done it. He reached back into the cabinet and handed me additional shotgun shells. I stuffed them into my pockets.
“I’m going through a trap door in the bedroom to the roof,” he told me. “After I get what’s up there I’ll be leaving. I want you down in the basement. You’ll find a narrow door up front opening into the garage. From the other side it looks like a tool rack. Get down by your car and shoot at anyone going by. I’ll be going out a back road after creating some diversions. First chance you get, make a run for it.”
“What about the man you shot?”
He stared at me blankly. “What about him?”
Catlin didn’t wait for me to answer. He crossed and opened a door leading down to the basement. He turned on a stairwell light. “Bolt this from your side. The lights are dual-controlled. There’s another switch by the garage door. Good luck.”
He shut the door behind me. I bolted it and went down the stairs and back to the door leading to the garage. I turned off the lights and waited a moment for my eyes to adjust to the dark. I hadn’t heard any gunfire outside since Catlin shot the stranger upstairs. I wondered how many others there were. If I didn’t get out of there by the time Catlin did, I’d have to deal with them by myself. I took a half breath, held it, and opened the door a crack. There was nothing to see. The only sound was the steady downpour of rain. The door swung easily on oiled hinges. I slipped into the garage and crouched alongside my car.
A new burst of gunfire came from the rear of the house. I heard an answering volley from Catlin’s rifle. I crawled around the deep end of the garage and up along the other side to where I could get a shooting angle at anyone moving up to the front door of the house above. There was more gunfire from in back, then somebody else opened up along the far side of the house. A man shouted something I couldn’t make out. He was answered by a new voice, nearby and off to the left of me in the dark.
“The roof? What the hell?”
It wasn’t much, but it was enough for me to spot the man who went with the voice. He was crouched beside a tree next to the drive, about twenty yards from where I squatted. He rose and stepped out for just a moment, scanned the house, then ducked back behind the tree. At best I would have had a bum shot at him. I decided to stay put and keep quiet.
Floodlights came on, blinding me and anybody else out in the darkness. They were mounted just below the eaves of the house. I threw up a hand to ward off the glare. Catlin’s rifle fired again from the roof. There was more yelling and everybody seemed to start shooting at once. It was more loud than deadly. I doubted if anybody could see much in the glare of the floodlights with the rain drumming down.
The guy behind the tree had started shooting as well. He was trying to take out one of the floodlights. There was another shout from the side of the house just as all the lights went off, leaving everybody in the dark again. I could hear the sound of an engine starting up from behind the house. It must have been Catlin. He didn’t sit around waiting for it to warm up. The vehicle moved out with a low roar.
I blinked and tried to adjust my eyes to the dark again, but the man behind the tree was going to make it easy for me. He left the tree and moved toward the front of the house, his figure silhouetted by the lights on inside the house. He was kind of fat. I aimed low for his legs and fired both shells at him.
He went down with a scream, rolling and dropping the gun he’d been carrying and clutching one knee. I broke open the shotgun and rammed in two more shells. Now the wounded man began shouting hoarsely.
“Trap! It’s a trap, you guys! Trap!”
He was dragging himself back from the house toward the trees. He kept yelling to his buddies. They came running out around the front corner of the house, firing randomly. They must have believed their wounded friend’s warning. When they reached him they wheeled and fired wildly back toward the house, then each of them grabbed him by an arm and lugged him back down the road and out of sight. A couple of minutes later I heard the sound of a car start and drive away, back down toward the country road. I could watch the car’s tail lights for several moments. I wondered if they could have been the men who gunned down Polaski in the airport, but it’d been too dark for me to get a good look at them. After they disappeared I just squatted and waited. About the time I thought I’d get a cramp in my legs I eased back from my position, stepped back around the front of my car and moved cautiously up to the other front corner of the garage from where I’d been before. I scanned the area carefully for several moments. If anybody was still out there they were very good Indians indeed.
I got out the car keys and opened the trunk of the car as quietly as I could. I carried my suitcase back through the toolrack doorway and locked things up behind me. I didn’t bother to turn on
the lights, but groped inside the case for my .45. I slipped it into my pocket then felt around for a small flashlight I carried there. Using that I made my way back up the stairs and into the house.
Nobody else had broken in. Things were about the way they’d been except for the chill air blowing through the shattered glass in the front room and the rain-dampened drapes blowing there. I had done what I’d come up to do and what I really wanted to do next was to put my tail between my legs and leave. I doused the lights in the front of the house and peered out behind one edge of the drapes. I guess I’d sort of hoped the man Catlin had emptied a rack of bullets into had magically pulled himself together and gotten out of there. No such luck. He was crumpled on the concrete landing. The rain was rinsing his blood off the concrete and carrying it over the edge to the ground below. I opened the front door and ducked outside long enough to grope his wrist for a pulse I knew I wouldn’t find. Whoever or whatever he’d been was all finished. I went on back into the house, resigned to spending a few more hours in the rain forest, and phoned Deputy Taylor. The deputy was not amused. After I convinced him it wasn’t a joke and that I wasn’t drunk, he told me to stay put, sneezed and hung up.
SEVEN
It took a while to sort out things to the satisfaction of the Clallam County authorities who drifted in through the evening to look over the death scene. Not that I played all that leading a role. Just enough of a one to offer a suggestion here, a supposition there. I pretended to be pretty innocent about things. I was just a gent carrying a message up from down south who had the misfortune of stumbling in on one of Henry Catlin’s mysterious business deals that had gone bad. I didn’t see any sense in having them wringing their hands over a lot of bad business that might have trailed after me from San Francisco. I figured these people had enough to do just coping with the rain.
Catlin apparently had kept a camper parked in back that he could drive down a crude road connecting a quarter of a mile away with the other unpaved road that ran back down to the county highway.
