“Then you are of limited intelligence.”
“In Lebanon I would kill you for that.”
“We’re a long way from Lebanon, Comrade Fasil. If either of us ever sees Lebanon again, you may try at your convenience.”
14
RACHEL BAUMAN, M.D., SAT BEHIND a desk at Halfway House in the South Bronx, waiting. The addict rehabilitation center held many memories for her. She looked around the bright little room with its amateurish paint job and pickup furniture and thought about some of the ravaged, desperate minds she had tried to reach, the things that she had listened to, in her volunteer work here. It was because of the memories the room evoked that she had chosen this place to meet with Eddie Stiles.
There was a light rap on the door and Stiles came in, a slight, balding man looking around with quick glances. He had shaved for the occasion. A patch of tissue was stuck to a nick on his jaw. Stiles smiled awkwardly and fiddled with his cap.
“Sit down, Eddie. You’re looking well.”
“Never better, Dr. Bauman.”
“How’s the tugboat business?”
“To tell you the truth, dull. But I like it. I like it, understand,” he added quickly. “You done me a good turn getting me that job.”
“I didn’t get you that job, Eddie. I just asked the man to look you over.”
“Yeah, well, I’d never have got it otherwise. How’s with you? You look kind of different, I mean like you feel good. What am I talking? You’re the doctor.” He laughed self-consciously.
Rachel could see that he had gained weight. When she met him three years ago, he had just been arrested for smuggling cigarettes up from Norfolk in a forty-foot trawler, trying to feed a seventy-five dollars a day heroin habit. Eddie had spent many months at Halfway House, many hours talking to Rachel. She had worked with him when he was screaming.
“What did you want to see me about, Dr. Bauman? I mean, I’m glad to see you and all and if you was wondering if I’m clean—”
“I know you’re clean, Eddie. I want to ask you for some advice.” She had never before presumed on a professional relationship, and it disturbed her to do so now. Stiles noted this instantly. His native wariness warred with the respect and warmth he felt for her.
“It’s got nothing to do with you,” she said. “Let me lay it out for you and see what you think.”
Stiles relaxed a little. He was not being asked to commit himself about anything immediately.
“I need to find a boat, Eddie. A certain boat. A funny-business boat.”
His face revealed nothing. “I told you I would tugboat and that’s all I do is tugboat, you know that.”
“I know that. But you know a lot of people, Eddie. I don’t know any people who carry on funny business in boats. I need your help.”
“We level with each other, always have, right?”
“Yes.”
“You never blabbed none of the stuff I told you when I was on the couch, right?”
“Nope.”
“Okay, you tell me the question and who wants to know.”
Rachel hesitated. The truth was the truth. Nothing else would do. She told him.
“The feds already asked me,” Stiles said when she had finished. “This guy comes right on board in front of everybody to ask me, which I don’t appreciate too much. I know they asked some other—guys of my acquaintance.”
“And you told them zip.”
Stiles smiled and reddened. “I didn’t know anything to tell them, you know? To tell you the truth I didn’t concentrate too hard. I guess nobody else did either, they’re still asking around, I hear.”
Rachel waited, she did not push him. The little man tugged at his collar, stroked his chin, deliberately put his hands back in his lap.
“You want to talk to the guy who owns this boat? I don’t mean you yourself, that wouldn’t be—I mean, your friends want to.”
“Right.”
“Just talk?”
“Just talk.”
“For money? I mean, not for me, Dr. Bauman. Don’t think that, for God’s sake. I owe you enough already. But I mean, if I was to know some guy, very few things are free. I got a couple hundred. You’re welcome, but it might—”
“Don’t worry about the money,” she said.
“Tell me again from where the Coast Guard first spotted the boat and who did what.”
Stiles listened, nodding and asking an occasional question. “Frankly, maybe I can’t help you at all, Dr. Bauman,” he said finally. “But some things occur to me. I’ll listen around.”
“Very carefully.”
“You know it.”
15
HARRY LOGAN DROVE HIS BATTERED pickup along the perimeter of United Coal Company’s heavy equipment compound on his hourly watchman’s round, looking down the rows of bulldozers and dirt buggies. He was supposed to watch for thieves and conservation-minded saboteurs, but none ever came. Nobody was within miles of the place. All was well, he could slip away.
He turned onto a dirt track that followed the giant scar the strip mine had gouged in the Pennsylvania hills, red dust rising behind the pickup. The scar was eight miles long and two miles wide, and it was growing longer as the great earthmov ing machines chewed down the hills. Twenty-four hours a day, six days a week, two of the largest earthmovers in the world slammed their maws against the hillsides like hyenas opening a belly. They stopped for nothing except the sabbath, the president of United Coal being a very religious man.
This was Sunday, when nothing but dustdevils moved on the raw wasteland. It was the day when Harry Logan made a little extra money. He was a scavenger and he worked in the condemned area that would shortly be uprooted by the mining. Each Sunday Logan left his post at the equipment compound and drove to the small abandoned village on a hill in the path of the earthmovers.
The peeling houses stood empty, smelling of urine left by the vandals who smashed the windows. The householders had taken everything they thought was valuable when they moved out, but their eye for salable scrap was not so keen as Logan’s. He was a natural scavenger. There was good lead to be found in the old-fashioned gutters and plumbing. Electrical switches could be pried from the walls and there were showerheads and copper wire. He sold these things to his son-in-law’s junkyard. Logan was anxious to make a good haul on this Sunday because only an eighth of a mile of woods remained between the village and the strip mine. In two weeks the village would be devoured.
He backed his truck into the garage beside a house. It was very quiet when he turned off the motor. There was only the wind, whistling through the scattered, windowless houses. Logan was loading a stack of Sheetrock into his truck when he heard the airplane.
The red four-seater Cessna made two low passes over the village. Looking downhill through the trees, Logan saw it settle toward the dirt road in the strip mine. If Logan had appreciated such things, he would have enjoyed watching a superb cross-wind landing; a sideslip, a flare-out, and the little plane rolling smoothly with dust blowing off to one side.
He scratched his head and his behind. Now what could they want? Company inspectors maybe. He could say he was checking the village. The plane had rolled out of sight behind a thick grove. Logan worked his way cautiously down through the trees. When he could see the airplane again it was empty, and the wheels were chocked. He heard voices through the trees to his left and walked quietly in that direction. A big empty barn was over there with a three-acre feedlot beside it. Logan knew very well that it contained nothing worth stealing. Watching from the edge of the woods, he could see two men and a woman in the feedlot, ankle deep in bright green winter wheat.