“If you need a razor or a toothbrush—” Gillespie began.
“I have to make a telephone call,” I interrupted him, “then visit home.”
Gillespie was plainly unhappy, but he was uncertain how best to handle me. I was no prisoner, despite being locked up overnight, yet I was certainly something very exotic. I might have been one of the CIA’s own, yet I had still come from the shadowy and unknown world of international terrorism, and that made me into a mystery. Perhaps they thought I had been contaminated by the vengeful creatures that came from the slums and refugee camps of the old world to give the new world its worst nightmares? Gillespie himself was very straight arrow; tall, fit, punctiliously courteous and businesslike, and clearly reluctant to let me use the phone, but he seemed to recognize my determination and so waved me toward a desk.
I needed to talk to an old friend. I would have much preferred to have talked with him in private, for I regarded my business with Johnny Riordan as an entirely personal matter and I doubted whether the CIA would agree with that view, but Gillespie’s presence was giving me little choice. I would have to risk the CIA knowing about Johnny.
Johnny and I had been friends since childhood, when his father used to look after the Cape house for my father. Old Eamonn Riordan was a fisherman, and a good one, but his son was an even better one. Johnny had a natural talent for boats, the sea and for living. He was a great man, a raw force of nature, a muscled lump of goodwill, common sense and kindness, but he was also a man I was loath to involve in any trouble for Johnny Riordan was a father, happily married, and without a mean fiber in his body except perhaps toward those politicians who constantly interfered with his livelihood. Johnny tried to scrape a bare existence from lobstering or scalloping or tub-trawling the seas about the Cape, but in the lean months, all twelve of them most years, he was forced to keep his family fed by taking on other jobs like stocking grocery shelves. Johnny thought the sacrifice worthwhile so long as he could continue fishing, for he loved the sea and was probably the finest seaman I had even met. I had not spoken with Johnny in seven years but I knew, if only he was home, he would not blink an eyelid if I did call. Nor did he. “So you’re back at last, are you?” he laughed. “Which means you’ll be wanting a meal.”
“No,” I said, “I want to meet you at my house. Now. Can you make it?”
“Sure I can make it. The politicians won’t allow us to go fishing these days just in case we catch something. I tell you, Paulie, those congressmen couldn’t catch their rear ends with their own bare hands, not even if you painted it scarlet for them. Did you hear about the new catch restrictions? Courtesy of Washington?”
“Just meet me!” I interrupted him. “Please, Johnny, now!”
Johnny’s pick-up truck was already parked in the driveway when Gillespie and Callaghan drove me home. Two golden retrievers wagged their tails in the back of Johnny’s truck, for no pick-up truck on Cape Cod was complete without at least one dog. I thought Johnny might have been waiting in the truck’s cab, but instead I found him ensconced before Sarah Sing Tennyson’s hearth where he was telling my tenant tall tales of prohibition; how the Cape Codders used to run rings round the federal agents, and how there were still forgotten caches of Canadian whiskey in some of the cranberry bogs and trap sheds. Sarah Sing Tennyson, like everyone else, was entranced by Johnny who had a natural and contagious enthusiasm. “Well now, look who it is!” he greeted me ebulliently. He was a big man, with a shock of black hair, a broad black beard and an open cheerful face.
“You’ve met my tenant?” I gestured at Sarah.
Sarah Tennyson smiled thinly. “Don’t you knock before going into other people’s houses?”
“This is my house,” I said.
“It’s good to have an artist living here, isn’t it?” Johnny tried to defuse the atmosphere with happiness. He gestured at Sarah Tennyson’s paintings which were mostly of the Nauset Lighthouse, but rendered so gloomily that they might have depicted a watch-tower in hell. “I was telling her how they tried to teach me to do art at school! What a waste! I couldn’t even draw a box, not even with a ruler to help. And good morning to you!” This last greeting was to Gillespie who had followed me into the house.
I hurried Johnny into the kitchen before he could start a general conversation about the weather and the fishing and the beaches. “Make free in my house, won’t you, Shanahan?” Sarah Sing Tennyson called after me.
“Mr. Shanahan!” Gillespie seemed to be worried that I might try to make a bolt out of the back door.
“This is family business,” I said firmly, then I dragged Johnny into the kitchen and slammed the door shut.
“What’s going on?” Johnny asked me. “She told me she’s renting the place! I knew she was here off and on, but I thought she just borrowed it from Maureen at weekends. But I haven’t seen Maureen for months, so I couldn’t ask her. I know Maureen’s husband is here sometimes, but—”
“It doesn’t matter,” I cut Johnny off. I knew I would have only a few moments before Gillespie interrupted us and I dared not waste a minute. “Listen,” I told Johnny, “there’s a boat being delivered to you. She’s coming from Spain and I had her sent to you. She’s coming deck cargo from Barcelona, and a customs agent will call you from Boston. I don’t know when she will get here, but probably in about six or seven weeks, OK? There shouldn’t be any customs duty to pay on her, because she’s registered in Massachusetts. These are her papers.” I took the original Rebel Lady papers from my oilskin pocket and shoved them into a bemused Johnny’s hands. “If there are any problems, this will help.” I began peeling hundred-dollar bills from the roll I had collected when I closed down my bank accounts in Belgium. “I paid for her carriage through to the Cape, but you’ll need to hire a big crane to get her off the truck.” I peeled away yet more bills. “She weighs damn nearly eighteen tons. Don’t ask me why she’s so heavy, but her original owner was probably nervous of tipping her over in a strong wind. Her new owner’s name is on those papers, and he asked you to take delivery, understand? You agreed to store her here for the winter.”
Johnny riffled through the hundred-dollar bills, then gave me a very disapproving look. “This isn’t drugs again, is it, Paulie? Because if it is, I’m not helping. Don’t even ask me.” He held the money back toward me.
I pushed them back again. “I swear to God, Johnny, this has nothing to do with drugs. On my mother’s grave, there’s nothing illegal inside the boat.”
“Nothing?” He was still suspicious.
“There’s gold aboard her,” I told him reluctantly, “which is why I don’t want anyone to know about her. If anyone asks what we’re talking about in here, you’re agreeing to look after this house while I’m gone. You understand, Johnny? The boat’s a secret.”
“Gold! In her hull?” Johnny seemed cheered by that thought, then watched in amazement as I slipped the rest of the hundred-dollar bills inside my false passport, added Teodor’s other false papers, then reached up to raise one of the spare bedroom floorboards that comprised the kitchen ceiling. Johnny supported the floorboard while I fumbled along the top surface of one of the kitchen’s old black beams. Eventually I found the cavity I had long ago hollowed into the beam, and into which I now dropped the passport, papers and money.
“There shouldn’t be any problems with the boat,” I told Johnny. “Her papers are in order and I’ll probably be back before she arrives anyway.”
“You’re going away again?” Johnny sounded disappointed, which was flattering after so many years.