“Nope. Never heard the name.” He sloshed whisky around in his mouth and swallowed. I waited a long minute.
“Maybe you remember a disgruntled fellow — what was his name — Starr. As I recall, couple of years back you owed him some money. He was threatening — correct me if I’m wrong here — to make you so ugly that you’d have to tie a porkchop around your neck before a dog would even come near you.”
“That barbarian!” He looked up from under his bushy eyebrows. “So it was you that cooled, Starr out?” I didn’t say anything. He threw back the rest of his drink.
“You’re a romantic, Charles. You were born several hundred years too late. This is not a propitious point in history in which to practice the romantic’s trade. We live in an age when minds are beclouded by materialism and greed. ‘Things are in the saddle and ride mankind,’ quoth the poet.”
“You sit there jabbering in Latin and quoting poetry, and you tell me I’m a romantic?”
Cook burped, got up, and made ready to leave. “By the way, Charles, do you remember the Laura B, Manny Cordeiro’s old dragger?” I nodded. “Well, Manny died, and the boat’s been on the beach for over a year. Word has it that a couple of the local wharf rats have taken to living aboard her.” He gave me a sloppy salute.
“Have a care, Charles. ‘Homo homini lupus.’ Man is, indeed, a wolf to man.”
The Laura B lay bathed in moonlight not far from Macara’s Wharf, her hull warped and her blue paint chipping. From my position among the pilings I had a clear view of the boat. Phil’s advice had been oblique, but I knew him well enough to follow it up.
I had no plan as such. I just figured on bracing Manso if and when he returned to the boat. He’d be easy enough to spot: Gilliat had described him as big, blond, and bearded, with a tattoo circling his left forearm that said “Hellraiser” in old English script. Bob also advised me that Manso enjoyed hitting people.
It was twelve twenty. The bars didn’t close until one. I settled down to wait.
Twenty minutes later Manso walked out of the shadows and onto the beach. I couldn’t see the tattoo, but the rest fit. I called his name and he swung around to face me.
“Who are you?”
“Easy. I just want to talk to you.”
He sighed and shrugged. “Cop, right?”
“Private cop.” His piggish eyes widened a bit at that.
“Oh, a private cop.” He moved towards me. “That’s different. I don’t have to talk to a private cop if I don’t want to.” He looked past me, around the beach, to see if I was alone.
“Might save you some grief if you do.”
“You think so?”
I nodded.
“Know what I think? I think cops are the lowest form of life on the planet. Lower than whale crap, and that’s on the bottom of the ocean.” He had been drinking, and it hadn’t done anything for his disposition.
“And I think I’ll teach you to mind your own business.” As he spoke he charged, swinging a beefy right hand at my head. I slipped the punch and hit him in the solar plexus with a right hook. He doubled over with a grunt and fell to the sand, struggling for breath. When he got it, he swore a bit and sat up.
“Now about that talk.”
“Screw you.”
“Be smart. The sooner the cops nail whoever blew up the cabin, the better for you. Somebody’s serious about folding your hand.”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“Come on, Manso. The guys that missed you in Maine aren’t going to give up.”
He shook his head. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, man. Nobody’s looking for me except the cops, and most of them couldn’t find their ass with both hands and a road map.”
“You don’t know what happened in Maine after you left?”
“No, man. I don’t know nothin’. I called the old lady third day I was there. There was a beef back here needed attention. I came back, took care of it. Right away the law’s on my case. I figured it had to do with this beef: I had to lay a beating on a guy. So I been keeping a low profile.”
I told him about Kessler. He thought it over for a minute.
“Look, Ace, I got enemies, but nothin’ heavy like that.”
“You sure?”
He got up and wiped sand off his clothes. “You think I’d be walking around out here, alone at night, no weapon, nothin’? Man, guys with bombs were looking for me, I’d be in goddam Australia. Yeah, I’m sure. You got the wrong guy.”
I believed him. As I had with the logic puzzle, I’d rejected the obvious. Only this time I’d made a mistake. The bomber had gotten the right man.
The cops released the contents of Earl Kessler’s apartment to his brother. I picked Luther up and we drove over there.
Earl Kessler had lived modestly. There were the bare necessities and not much more: a television, a few prints on the walls, a couple of dozen books, mostly on fishing and nature related topics.
I don’t know what I expected to find, but I gave the place a thorough toss. I even checked the undersides of the drawers, dumped out the coffee and the sugar, and unrolled the toilet paper and looked inside the cardboard tube.
“You reckon there’s a clue hidden there in the bumfodder?” Kessler’s voice dripped with sarcasm.
“You got an idea, maybe?”
“That’s what I pay you for,” he snapped. “Bright ideas.”
“Well, I’m fresh out. There’s no loose end to tug on here. Your brother lived like a monk: no vices, no girlfriend, no close friends at all. He didn’t even play cards or belong to a club.”
“He fished. He loved the outdoors. Always did.”
“Well, he loved it alone, looks like.”
“Never understood it myself.”
“What?”
“Fishing. Damned silly waste of time, and cruel besides. Fishing, hunting, trapping — cruel.”
“What’s the difference between raising deer and raising cows?”
“I got no livestock, mister. Corn and soybeans. No animals, save for my dog and a couple of barn cats. I couldn’t live with an animal only to send it off to slaughter. No, sir, I couldn’t.”
“Corn and soybeans?”
“Yep.”
“No endive?”
“What’s endive?”
“Never mind. It’s a bad Massachusetts joke.”
“We left no closer to Earl’s killers than when we came, but I liked Luther rather more than I had before.”
We drove to the industrial park and found the offices of Four-Lane Trucking. Kessler waited in the car. A receptionist passed me in to Ralph McIntyre without delay.
McIntyre’s office was functionaclass="underline" no chrome or leather or exotic wood, just a steel cubicle with a steel desk. A piston served as a paperweight, a miniature truck tire as an ashtray. The owner of Four-Lane Trucking was a large man with a military haircut. He lit a Camel and I asked my questions.
“Nah. Earl never mentioned anything about any problems. But then he was pretty quiet. Good bookkeeper, and naturally, we’re sorry as hell about what happened.” He took a long drag on the Camel, reducing fully half of it to ash.
“Any idea as to who would conceivably want to kill him?”
“Nobody’d want to kill Earl. It had to be a mistake. They were looking to clip someone else, way I figure it.” Another drag, the cigarette was gone. He saw me looking. “Filthy habit. I been trying to quit for years.”
“It wasn’t a mistake.”
“What wasn’t?”
“The bomb. Kessler was the intended target.”
McIntyre squinted at me. “You prove that?”
“Not yet,” I said, getting up, “but I will. Something smells in this whole thing. I intend to find out what it is.” I hoped McIntyre wouldn’t ask me how I planned to do it. I didn’t have an answer.