“Maybe. Maybe not. Cops don’t appreciate having people blown up in their jurisdiction. They’ll be motivated.”
“Well, I’m damn well motivated myself. I come all the way up here because I want some justice done. And not next year, or the next life neither. Never did have any truck with that karma nonsense. I figure if there’s any justice in this world you got to see to it yourself. Now, you interested or not?”
I was. It had seemed odd at the time that an anonymous bookkeeper from Cape Cod, an older man of modest means at that, should be the object of such an attack. It still seemed odd.
“Your brother have any enemies?”
“None I know of.”
“Had he made any changes in his life recently, or done anything unusual?”
“I don’t believe he had, but then I didn’t see Earl much. I’ve been fanning out to Illinois since ’53, sort of lost touch.” He shot me a look. “You ever work on a farm?” I said I hadn’t. Kessler snorted.
“Figured not.”
I let it go. Kessler struck me as the kind of guy who believed nothing of value had transpired in America since 1945. Hell, he could be right, but I didn’t want to get into it.
“All right, Mr. Kessler.” I slid a pad and small pencil across the desk. “Write down where I can reach you.”
He paused in his scribbling. “Another thing. Maybe you’ve noticed what a mess the courts are in these days, all them killers and drug fiends walking away free on account of the liberals all the time hollering about their ‘rights.’ ” He jabbed the pencil at me. “You find the people blew Earl up, don’t waste the taxpayers’ time and money, if you know what I mean.”
I assured him that I understood, took his retainer, and saw him on his way.
Bob Gilliat was a corporal in the state police. We’d played basketball together in high school and had managed to stay in touch in the years since. We were sitting at the counter in the Rudder.
“The bomb was heavy duty, Charles. Gelignite. Completely erased the cabin. There wasn’t enough left of Kessler to use for bait.”
“Time device?”
“Uh-uh. Motion sensor. Mercury switch. Very tricky, but once Kessler picked it up he was a dead man.” Gilliat took a bite of his eggs. “Jesus, what is this, rubber cement?”
Floyd strolled by, wiping his hands on a filthy towel.
“What do you time your eggs with, Floyd, a calendar?” I asked.
He gave me a disgusted look. “And who styles your hair, Charles? Your gardener?”
Gilliat grinned. “You guys been married long?”
“Say, Floyd. I’m having trouble with this puzzle.” I recited the problem of the ten guys moving the ten tons of sand. He hardly missed a beat.
“That’s simple, Charles. It takes them seven hours. A schoolboy could have figured that out.” He smiled smugly and disappeared into his kitchen.
Yeah. A schoolboy. I tried not to appear too humiliated.
“Any motive for someone swacking Kessler?”
“No. He was a nonentity: widower, bookkeeper, quiet, smalltime all the way. No bad habits, no known enemies.” He took a tentative sip of his coffee. “The way we figure it, the bomb was meant for someone else.”
“Why?”
“Well, it’s early in the season yet, and there were only two other cabins rented: couple of old guys up for the fishing. And Kessler. But here’s the interesting thing. The owner said that he gave Kessler a cabin that had been vacated just that morning. Seems that a homeboy, guy named Richard Manso from Provincetown, reserved the cabin for two weeks but only stayed a couple of days, then checked out.” He paused to bang some ketchup onto a pile of greasy fries.
“Manso is a part-time fisherman and a full-time drug dealer: coke and pot mostly, some steroids. Been arrested a couple of times. Used to be a dealer and also a thief in New York before gracing our peninsula with his presence.”
“What was he doing in Hay-shaker, Maine?”
Gilliat shrugged. “He told the camp owner that he was up for the fishing, getting away from the girlfriend for a couple of weeks. We haven’t proved otherwise, mainly because we haven’t been able to locate him. Yet.”
It seemed right. Small-time dealer gets too ambitious, maybe rips off the wrong people. Goes to northern Maine to cool off, but doesn’t go far enough. Someone, from either New York or the Cape, had been very angry with him.
Gilliat reached for his coffee, thought better of it, and downed a glass of water instead. “Looks like a mistake was made. It’s happened before. What’s your interest here, Charles?”
“Kessler’s brother. He wants to make sure justice is served.”
Gilliat raised an eyebrow. “Justice?”
I shrugged. “I have no problem with revenge. It’s an honest emotion, and it helps balance the books a little.”
“You’re starting to sound like a courthouse shrink, Charles. You know, the kind that hums a little Austrian waltz on his way to the witness stand to testify on behalf of some kink who sprayed the post office with an Uzi. ‘It vas, you see, a vay for dis conflicted man to lash out at the fadda figure—’ ”
I picked up the check, thanked Bob, and headed for my car.
A couple of hours later I was in Provincetown. I started at Manso’s last known address, an apartment just off Commercial Street. I was met at the door by a thin, tired-looking woman wearing jeans and a tie-dyed T-shirt. When I asked for Manso, she snarled three words at me, two of them rather impolite, and slammed the door.
It went downhill from there. No one knew where Manso was, if they admitted to knowing him at all. I’d expected it. This was a small, tight-knit community where outsiders asking questions are routinely shut out. I ended the day with nothing but sore feet to show for my efforts.
The next day was more of the same, and by midafternoon I’d had enough and headed for the Windjammer for a beer. The ’Jammer was the place of last resort for the fishermen and tradesmen in a town overrun by restaurants featuring salmon en croûte, medallions of pork in sweet potato sauce, and fusilli with capers and sun-dried tomatoes. Shot and a beer, pork rinds, maybe a burger — that was the order of the day in the Windjammer. I got a beer and settled into a booth.
I’d lived in Provincetown for awhile a few years earlier, and I still knew some people. One of them was Phil Cook, a personal injury lawyer specializing in dogbite cases and Jack Daniel’s. Especially Jack Daniel’s.
“You aren’t getting any better looking, Charles,” he said, sitting down across the knife-scarred table from me.
“It’s indelicate of you to say so, Phil. How’s the ambulancechasing business?”
He shrugged. “ ‘Sero venientibus ossa,’ my friend.”
“Say what?”
“ ‘For latecomers the bones.’ Or, to put it in the common vernacular, with which you are no doubt more conversant, ‘You snooze, you lose.’ ” He signaled for another drink. “Business is, unfortunately, a bit slow at the moment, although the bills arrive with depressing punctuality. It is the usual case of ‘a fronte praecipitium a tergo lupi.’ I fear.”
“Philly, can you for chrissake speak English?”
He shook his gray head sadly. “I said there is a precipice before me and wolves behind. Don’t they still teach Latin in the schools?”
“They don’t even use it in church any more, Phil. Decline of the empire and all that.” The waitress brought his drink and made a point of waiting for the money.
“And you, Charles. What brings you to town. Beach getaway?”
“I’m looking for a guy named Richard Manso. Know him?” There was the slightest pause as he brought the glass to his mouth.