Ben waited. The storm outside made the parlor seem all the more quiet.
He said, “Quite the headcount here, gentlemen.”
Lorton Dyze cleared his throat and said, “I asked this morning: Who are ye, Ben?”
Ben looked the old man dead in the eyes. “I’m Benjamin Fallon Blackshaw. Son of Ida-Beth Lilah Orne, of Smith Island, and Richard Willem Blackshaw, a man of Tangier. I’m born to this island. She’s my home. I’ll either die here, or die fighting for her wherever I am. Is that the pledge you wanted to hear, Lorton? Or is there some damn secret handshake I should know about? Maybe with a gob of spit? Or chicken blood?”
Dyze looked at his fellow Councilmen. Grinned small. “It’s a start.” He continued, “Let’s get us all synchronatored here. There’s been some trouble. What can ye tell us?”
Ellis obviously was not happy about this line of questioning, subtle as it was. Right now, it was not clear to him whether Chalk’s open hostility, or a cozy chat with this mob of ofays was more dangerous.
Ben hedged. “Lorton, what trouble do you mean?”
Dyze got agitated. “That mess over to the Harrises’! That poor woman! Who knows where Hiram is? And here in your own house, your own dog beat down to death. That big flash out toward the No Point Light. We already got Ginger buried out back. Charlene’ll be more complicated, of course. I know ye take my meaning in full. Now quit being so damn coy.”
Ben said, “We have visitors here. They took LuAnna. We got her back and took the lighthouse down. Hiram’s dead.”
At this, the Councilmen swept off their sou’wester hats in slow dirge-time unison, uncovering bald heads and grey ones. Many pates were battlescarred like tough old stray dogs, but they were all bowed in grief.
Ben went on. “Ellis and I left the Palestrina there at No Point where they took her. If these bastards come around again, there’s a fair chance they’ll use her.”
Dyze smiled approval at Ben, “I like that. Good idea leaving them with something big we’d recognize from a distance so they can’t get all sneaky.” Dyze spoke louder to the assembly. “Y’all heard the man. Everybody knows what the Palestrina looks like. Anyone aboard her is a bad’n. Shoot accordingly.”
Ben said, “I left a man tied up at the Harrises’. He was party to what happened there.”
Sam Nuttle smiled wickedly. “You mean a fellow with a busted-out leg, and a whole wad of duct tape on his head?”
Ben said, “That’d be him.”
Nuttle shook his head. Clucked with mock sadness. “I can’t confirm or deny I have a clue who you mean. If I did know, I’d say any man who was up to the Harris place ain’t there n’mare. Nor could I say where he is at present, excepting he might or might not’ve mentioned going for a long swim. And in this flaw, too.”
Ephraim Teach chimed in, “And if there was such a man, and supposing he went for that long swim, didn’t he strap on his lucky engine block before he jumped over the side?”
Nuttle said, “I can’t confirm nor deny it, Ephraim, though it’s surely got a plausible ring.”
Okay, Ben got it. Tug Parnell was dead. There were bloody hands all around, but this did nothing to assuage Ben’s conscience.
He pushed for more answers. “So what’s happening, Lorton? You must know. You brought me Pap’s letter yourself this morning. He was coming back. Ellis knew, too.”
A few disconcerted Councilmen shifted their weight and glanced at Knocker Ellis on hearing this news.
Ben went on, “As for me, I didn’t have a clue about any of this until we found his boat sunk and Pap drowned sob-wet.”
The Councilmen raised their sou’westers over their hearts again in honor of another fallen comrade.
Dyze took in the bad news, and said, “Your pappy was a fine man, Ben. I’m sorry.”
This entire conversation was truly odd. Ben pressed, “You were in the loop too, Lorton, Weren’t you.” Not an inquiry. An accusation.
“Your father might have dropped me a line, yes. Said to keep my eyes peeled, but for what, he didn’t say. Just to be ready. All of us. Don’t take offense, Ben. Knowing old Dickie-Will, I’m sure he kept ye in the dark for your protection.”
Ben felt anger rise. “I keep hearing that. I did the same with LuAnna. You see where that got her.”
Dyze looked back and forth between Ben and Ellis. “That girl knows where she’s from. She’s no Miss Fairy Pants. Now, Ellis, what all did Dickie-Will say to ye?”
Ellis figured the truth would be safest, for the moment. “He wrote that he was coming home with something. Didn’t say what, but he made me his partner in it if I could help. I said I’d do it. I owed him my life. I’ve been helping my friend Ben, since my friend Richard Blackshaw is dead.”
“Did he come home with anything like he planned?” This from Art Bailey, the waterman golfer.
Ellis said, “I can neither confirm nor deny that, Art. Ask my new partner.”
Ben got up from his chair, and reached into the hidden compartment at the back of the closet. He removed the gold bar. It was wrapped in a terry cloth towel stained from LuAnna’s baking wild blueberry pies that summer. The men of the Council craned in for a better view.
Ben unswaddled the gold. The men muttered approval. There were a few rapacious growls, but Sonny Wright whooped with glee like a boy. The bullion was undeniably beautiful.
Ben said, “Gold. That’s it. At a seventeen hundred dollars an ounce, it’s worth six hundred ninety-three thousand dollars in a proper market.”
Rapturous faces all around. Dyze stretched out his hands, and come-hithered with his knob-jointed fingers. Ben rested the bar in the old man’s grasp. Dyze cooed like an old man holding his first squirming grandchild.
“How precious a thing.” Dyze studied the cheerful minter’s mark. “And lookee! It’s smiling at me.”
Ben said, “There’s one problem you should know about. A big one. We don’t have a lot of time to sort it out.”
CHAPTER 33
Chalk felt surrounded by idiots, and beset by Senator Morgan’s spies and plotters. That meant he needed more intel. With no warm bodies at hand to play with, he lobbed in a call to get a situation report from Farron MacDonald. MacDonald was still running the B-Team’s operation. Maybe he still had Blackshaw’s pilot on life-support after the Wilkes-Barre firefight. By now the man must have talked. Chalk dialed.
“Redondo Surf Shop.” MacDonald still sounded bushed after the shoot-out. Not so glad to see his boss’s code name in the caller ID.
Chalk’s satellite phone was fancy, advanced, but not perpetually hack-proof. Nothing was.
“Everything coming up roses in Wilkes-Barre?”
MacDonald said, “More like pushing up daisies. The pilot? He, like totally bailed. No connecting flight.”
Blackshaw’s pilot was dead of his wounds. Chalk was enraged. “Damn! Damn! Damn! When?”
“Not twenty minutes back. Super sorry. Did everything possible.”
“I’m sure you did, Farron. Including shoot the son of a bitch full of holes in the first place. Did you get anything useful? An idea of Blackshaw’s plan? The bastard’s favorite color? Anything?”
MacDonald filled Chalk in. “So we pumped him full of adrenaline and epinephrine to wake him up one last time. I mean, the man got a sweet pharmaceutical-grade buzz at taxpayers’ expense. Some real Up in the Air Junior Birdman shit! Know what I mean?”
Chalk lost all patience. “I didn’t ask what you put into him. What did you get out?”
“That’s the thing. He just babbled. Nothing really useful.”