“We’re thinking,” I told Porky.
“Well, the clock’s running. Just wanted you to know. I’m paid for my time.”
“Of course you are,” I said.
“Fair’s fair,” Porky added.
“What else would fair be?” I said. I asked Greta, “What would you do?”
“Are you really asking?” she said, her camera halfway to her eye.
“Yes, of course.”
“I’d forget about it,” she said quickly, “it’s just pot.”
“You got a point,” I said. “You should run for governor.”
“The Kennedys got rich rumrunning,” she said. “It’s the same thing.”
I looked at her. I was still thinking about the pigs. They made a hell of a racket. Three or four of them had their snouts pressed through the bars of the truck, flinging drool and hay onto the dock. The sideways gull listened from up on the stanchion. Porky smoked a cigarette. Every time I looked at him he pointed to his watch, tapped it, then nodded his approval that the clock was running.
Wally came over and said the Coast Guard had delivered the owner of the boat to the old Pease Air Force Base. He was on his way to collect the pigs. His brother, the lawyer, had weaseled in and was now with him. The staties were bringing him. Wally reported that the dispatcher said that the Coast Guard said that whatever I was going to do I had better get doing.
“How do I know which pig it was?” I asked. “This is crazy.”
“Maybe one of the pigs has the munchies,” Greta said. “That’s the best way to tell.”
“You got pigs?” I asked Porky.
He shook his head.
“How about a holding lot?”
He shook his head again.
“Okay, let me ask you this. You know anyone who keeps white pigs like these?”
“Sure,” he said and flicked his cigarette into the water. It hissed as it went out. “Guy up in Dover. Big operation.”
“Let’s go, then.”
“You want me to take them over there?” Porky asked.
“Yes.”
Porky shrugged, then climbed into his truck. The lobster traps jiggled again when he pulled off the pier. One of the lobstermen in yellow gave me the finger as we pulled out.
We drove behind the pig truck. Greta What’s-her-face drove behind us. It took us fifteen minutes to arrive at a large farm that smelled like pigs. It was a dirty place. I counted three Ford trucks that had been cannibalized for parts sitting in the front yard. A man in a filthy Carhart jacket stood framed in a large barn door when we pulled into the dooryard. He had a cigar in the center of his face. He looked like Robert Frost’s backward brother.
“Get her out of here,” he said, pointing to Greta. He had seen the Humane Society insignia. “Those people are nothing but trouble.”
He said it before we had climbed out of the squad car.
“Wally,” I said, “go tell Greta to get out of here. Tell her it’s private property.”
Wally nodded.
Porky hopped down from his truck and introduced me to Bill Froglich. Bill didn’t shake hands. He was filthier than he first appeared. The barn behind him didn’t look great, either. But spooling around the barn on either side were two herds of white pigs. They resembled the ones we had in the truck.
“Why should I help you out?” Bill asked after I explained the situation. “Who the hell cares who smokes pot? I sure as hell don’t.”
“We’ll pay you for holding them,” I said.
“How much?” Bill asked.
“What’s fair?”
“They might have disease. Could ruin my whole herd, don’t you know?”
“How much?”
“Fifty dollars a day,” he said. “Plus feed.”
“Okay,” I said to Porky. “Put them in that pen over there.”
I pointed to the pen on the right side of the barn. Porky hopped back in the truck. Bill Froglich walked over to the pigpen and kicked at the fence a little. The white pigs backed away, then swarmed forward again. I watched their pink noses sniffing through the fence slots. From out on the road, when the pigs were quiet, I heard Greta snapping pictures of us all.
The pot smuggler was a normal-looking guy. Probably a fisherman, I figured, down on his luck. He had a reddish beard and fairly long hair, but the hair, except for a ponytail, was curled up under a black watch cap. His name was Danny. He didn’t seem nervous or distraught, despite the day he had had. His lawyer brother, on the other hand, couldn’t shut up. The brother was a slick guy in a gray suit who also wore a ponytail. His tie was supposed to be funny. It had a picture of Curly, of the Three Stooges, poking his fingers at you as if he wanted to dot out your eyes.
He gave me a business card. The card said his name was Albert Torsey. It also said he handled domestic litigation, which was a fancy way, I guess, of saying he was a divorce lawyer.
“Very funny,” Albert said as soon as he saw the pigpen. “Mixing them in like that. But the pigs are tattooed on the ear. Are you supposed to be tricky?”
“So go get them,” I said. “Probably a little muddy in there. You might want to change shoes.”
“This is my brother’s livelihood you’re playing with,” he said. “And the joke’s on you. If one of those pigs did vomit up something, how would you know they were our pigs that did it? Why not the other guy’s pigs?”
“You got me,” I said. “You guys are just too smart.”
“Pigs with pigs,” Albert said. “Ironic, isn’t it?”
“I guess we’ll just impound them,” I said. “Check for disease.”
“You got no right,” Albert said. “You’re interfering with a man’s right to happiness.”
“We’ll keep them for a week. You get a court order, we’ll release them.”
“You’re just jerking our chain,” Albert said. “I can get a court order. And I can bring suit against you for harassment.”
“Pig harassment?”
Wally started yelling then that two pigs had passed plastic bags. One of the pigs hadn’t quite succeeded and the bag hung half out of the pig’s butt. It was gross. We all watched. Danny, the lobsterman-turned-dope-smuggler, shook his head.
“Not my pigs,” he said.
“Of course not,” I said.
We cleaned the bags on a feed table next to the barn. Wally hosed them down. I held them with a pair of pliers Froglich gave me. I stacked the bags when they were cleaned. It was merely a guess, but I figured it rang out to over a pound in nine baggies.
“You going to make it easy?” I asked Danny.
He looked at his brother. His brother shook his head.
“Our position, those bags could have come out of any pig here. You screwed yourself, Detective.”
“Might be prints on the bags,” I said. “Fibers. Come on, you watch the cop shows. Figure it out.”
“They got molasses on them,” Wally said, “the bags. Something gooey. I guess they get the pigs to eat them that way.”
“We can run it down,” I told the brothers. “It’s a pound of dope, some dealing charges, but it’s pot. You cooperate, things will go easier.”
The brothers looked at me. I waited for a second, then called the office. I told the office to call out to the island. I got a police officer named Smith on the line. Smith was a constable, he told me. I asked him to go over to Danny’s house and call me back. He said he would after I gave him the number.
“Here’s a bet,” I said when I clicked off. “You’re a bachelor, aren’t you, Danny?”
Danny nodded.
“What I bet is, a guy like you doesn’t have a ton of things around to save leftovers. That’s just not the way life is. Single guy, you eat day to day. I’m making no judgments. I’m telling you how we figure things out, okay?”