“You ever going to cough up?”
“Next payday,” I vowed.
“I'll see you in half an hour in the Pentagon cafeteria,” he said.
I hung up and almost immediately the phone rang again. I didn't recognize the caller ID on this one. It did, though, have an unfamiliar international area code. I picked up.
I heard a cough echo down the line. I knew that cough from somewhere.
“Hello? North Pole?” said a male voice.
“Sorry?” I replied.
“Is this Santa Claus?”
“What?”
“You remember? You gave me your card.”
That wasn't a big help. I handed around my card like flu virus got handed around on public transport.
“I met you on the Natusima. The name's Cooke.” He coughed again, a rasping metallic sound.
My memory kicked in. “Cooke with an e, right? You're the cook.”
“You got it.”
“What can I do for you, Mr. Cooke?”
“You said I should call if anything came to mind.”
“That's right.” The line wasn't great. There was a couple of seconds of delay every time he answered a question. I wondered where he was calling from.
“You asked me whether I saw the guy who got eat fall in the water. I told you no.”
“I remember.”
“Well, y'see, I said no ‘cause I didn't see him fall. That's because he didn't fall—the Jap guy was thrown.”
EIGHT
Thrown? So you saw this happen?”
“I was having a smoke on the deck, in my spot — the place where I met you,” he said. “There wasn't much light from the moon. It was real calm, but cold. A storm was comin' in. I saw the doctor come out the hatch. He was drunk. I watched him lean up against the gunnel and I heard him puke over the side. I turned to flick my smoke into the water. Next thing I hear is a shout and a splash. I look back and the doctor ain't there no more.”
“You said he was thrown. How do you know he didn't slip?”
“You've been on the boat. The gunnel — where he was standing — comes up around your chest. If he'd slipped, the only place he'd have landed would've been his ass. Going over the side there wasn't possible, not without help. And he wouldn't have been able to jump it. He weren't no athlete. And anyway, like I said, he was drunk, swaying about like the ground was movin' under his feet, only it wasn't.”
“What about you, Mr. Cooke; were you also drunk at the time?”
“I'd had a drink or two, but I wasn't fallin' down.” “If you saw a man in the freezing water, why didn't you raise the alarm? Or throw in a life preserver?”
“He went under right away. I couldn't see him.”
This didn't feel right. Cooke saw, or rather heard, a man go overboard, yet he'd done absolutely nothing about it. So what if he couldn't see him? With a little fast action, the doctor could have been saved. And then it hit me. “You wanted to see what would happen.”
“What?”
“You said you saw him… I think the words you used were ‘he got eat.'“
“Did I say that?”
“Yes, you did.” I sensed a shrug coming down the line like I'd accused him of accidentally burning a hole in my parka with a cigarette. “You watched the shark eat a man for the hell of it — for entertainment.” I had the image of Dr. Tanaka in the water, screaming for help, choking with white cold fear. No one would have heard his cries — everyone was at the party. Everyone except for Cooke, and according to him one other person — the killer.
“I didn't do no crime,” Cooke said.
There's nothing in the rule book that makes it a crime to stand around eating popcorn while you watch someone else commit murder. There's also nothing in the rule book that said I couldn't make him squirm. “In a certain light, you could be portrayed as an accessory to murder. You witnessed a crime take place. You were right there, and you did nothing to stop it.”
Cooke came back fighting. “Accessory? I don't think so. Like I said, it was a dark night, and the doctor was in shadow. It might be that I could change my mind about what I saw. And anyway, you know and I know, there ain't no crime in minding your own damn business.”
I'd met plenty of people like this guy over the years, the type that enjoyed watching others take the heat and, in this particular instance, get eaten alive. “So what you saw was hidden in shadow, and you were also drunk,” I told him. “That makes anything you might tell me worthless.” Even a half-wit prosecutor could chew holes in this guy's so-called eyewitness account.
“There's a killer walking around who should be locked up. I'm just a concerned citizen, doing my duty.”
“Yeah, right.”
“Do you want to know who threw the doctor overboard, or don't you?” he said.
At this point, I had no investigation. That was because, according to the Tokyo Police and indeed to my own report, the one I was about to submit, no crime had been committed. So of course I was anxious to know if Dr. Tanaka had been murdered, only I didn't want to give this asshole the satisfaction of knowing he was the one about to wind me up and set me loose. Sometimes, though, Justice has to take whatever she can damn well get. “Just tell me what you saw,” I said, making my voice sound bored.
“After the shark had had its fill, I saw another person on deck.”
“You keep going on about how dark it was. So how come you can all of a sudden see someone's face out there?”
“I got a good look at him when he opened the hatch to go back inside. He stepped into the light.”
This asshole was drawing it out like a wood splinter.
“I saw the professor,” he said.
“Professor Boyle?” I asked, making sure.
“There weren't any other professors on board,” he replied, enjoying the moment.
Why would Boyle murder his associate? The question reminded me of Durban and her story about the panda. Perhaps there was another shark there that night cruising the Natusima's stern, a shark in a man's skin. “Where are you calling from, Mr. Cooke?” I asked.
“So now you're interested, right?”
I let the delay in the line answer for me.
“I'm on the Natusima,” he said after a lengthy pause that ended with a cough.
“You still tied up in Yokohama Bay?”
“No. In the Philippine Sea, heading toward the Marianas. I'm using one of them satellite phones.”
There was the delay accounted for. Wonderful. “Why didn't you tell me any of this when I was on your ship?”
“I wasn't sure about what I saw.”
“And you are now?” I wondered if Cooke had waited to see if there were any angles worth playing. Had he perhaps unsuccessfully tried to blackmail Boyle before this attack of civic-mindedness had overcome him?
“Yeah — couldn't get it out of my head.”
Sure.
“I also thought maybe you'd think I done it. And if the professor fingers me, it's my word against his. Who're you going to believe — a guy who peels spuds for a living or a doofus with letters after his name?”
He had a point. But something about Professor Boyle didn't jell. And now I had a witness to the crime, albeit one whose story was as flimsy as a bride's negligé. The question now: What to do about it?
“When are you back in port, Mr. Cooke?” I could see myself being winched out of a helo onto the deck of the Natusima to take Cooke's statement in person. Like hell I could.
“Just over a week. We'll be pulling into Guam.”
Guam: Andersen Air Force Base. I could get OSI there to take Cooke's statement or, failing that, someone from JAG. “Mr. Cooke, I want you to write down everything you've told me, date it, sign it, and have it witnessed by the ship's master. Then I want you to fax it to me.” I gave him the number. “When you arrive at Guam, you'll get a visit from someone who'll ask you a bunch of questions.”