The Damagers Read online

  I asked about one of the details that concerned me: “What did the boat’s owner die of?”

  Mac glanced at me sharply, annoyed at having his instructions interrupted by a question he’d probably intended to get around to answering later.

  After a moment, he said, “Truman Fancher had a heart attack in North Carolina, near a small town called Coinjock, while bringing his boat north from Florida along the Intracoastal Waterway. He was steering at the time. His wife was taking a nap down in the cabin. She awoke when the boat veered out of the channel and ran aground.”

  “A heart attack,” I said without expression.

  “That was the official verdict.” Mac paused, and went on deliberately. “The boat was refloated without damage and brought to its home marina in Oyster Bay, New York.”

  “Where’s Oyster Bay?”

  Mac said, “It’s on Long Island but not very far from New York City… That was in June. Early in July, Lorelei III was lent to a married couple, friends of the Fancher family, for a weekend cruise. The woman, Mrs. Henrietta Guild, came on board on a Thursday to lay in supplies and make other preparations. Her husband was to join her after work on Friday. When Mr. Nathaniel Guild arrived at the dock on Friday evening, he found the boat dark. Going aboard, he stumbled over his wife’s body. She was in her nightgown; she had been killed by several blows to the head. The weapon was apparently the emergency handle for the power windlass, employed to bring the anchor up manually if the electricity failed. Apparently it was kept in a convenient place in the cabin ready for use.”

  “A weapon of opportunity,” I said. “Looks as if whoever did the job didn’t come intending to kill. A professional hitman would have brought his own club.”

  “Perhaps,” Mac said. “Or perhaps that is exactly what he wants us to think. At any rate, the body was quite cold, so the crime had presumably taken place the night before.” After a moment, he went on. “The family then chartered the boat to a young man named Martin Jesperson, who planned to cruise up the coast to Maine and back.”

  “New Englanders say ‘down the coast to Maine,’” I told him. “Because the prevailing winds blow that way. The hard part is coming back against them, uphill so to speak.”

  “Indeed? That is very interesting.” Mac’s voice was dry. “Heading out Long Island Sound, Mr. Jesperson had some engine trouble. He used the radio to call for help, and was towed into the nearest marina. The following day, after a mechanic had solved his problem, he started eastward again; but only a few hours later the Coast Guard was notified that a ketch-rigged vessel was aground on a nearby shoal with nobody visible on deck. The boarding party found Lorelei III uninhabited. Jesperson’s body was not recovered until the following day. Mr. Jesperson had apparently fallen overboard and drowned. The verdict was accidental death. The boat was returned to the marina. It has, as I indicated, been put up for sale. You will be given the funds with which to buy it.”

  I grimaced. “A real hoodoo ship, eh? Let me get the history straight. Who was Truman Fancher?”

  “He was a wealthy man who had a yacht dealership in Oyster Bay—more a hobby, I gather, than a serious source of income—and was a well-known sailor. He had made an impressive racing record with series of large, fast sailing yachts. However, when well up in his sixties, Mr. Fancher retired from competition, sold his latest racing boat, and bought the comfortable motor sailer that concerns us, in which he cruised Long Island Sound and New England in the summer, Florida and the Bahamas in the winter.”

  “And he was bringing her up from Florida last spring, when he died.” I frowned, thinking it over. At last I said, “Afterward, a surprising number of people seem to’ve been interested in a dead man’s boat; it seems almost indecent the way the poor old bucket was hardly given a chance to catch her breath after losing her owner so tragically. You’d think that, even if they yearned to sail on a boat on which a man had just died, folks would be a little hesitant about approaching the grieving family so soon. The way you told it, Fancher was barely buried and the boat was hardly back in her home slip before people were beating on the door asking to borrow or charter her.”

  Mac gave me the thin smile that’s about as much amusement as he can manage. “Your instincts are sound, Eric,” he said. My real name is Matthew Helm, but I answer to Eric on official occasions; and this office is about as official as we get. Mac went on. “You do not need to take the matrimonial bonds of the Guilds too seriously, or their close friendship with the Fanchers. Actually, they were not married, and neither of them was named Guild, any more than Jesperson was named Jesperson.”

  “I see,” I said, although that was an exaggeration. “So we’re all phonies together. Well, I don’t mind owning a yacht, even a jinxed one, but I hope nobody expects me to impersonate a yachtsman. They speak a special language that I never quite mastered the previous times I had to operate afloat. The jargon is as bad as computerese; just trade RAMS and ROMS for ports and starboards. It’s almost impossible to fake. If I pretend to be an old salt, I’ll be spotted as a phony right away.”

  Mac nodded. “So we are making you a book sailor, occupation photojournalist, from the waterless deserts of the Southwest, who has read every nautical volume he could lay hands on—we’ll supply you with a suitable, well-thumbed library to bring aboard—and dreamed of sailing alone around the world in the wakes of Captain Joshua Slocum and Sir Francis Chichester, but never actually handled any vessel larger than an outboard fishing skiff. But an uncle died and left you a fairly substantial sum of money, a little over two hundred thousand dollars.” The background, apart from the nautical reading and the rich uncle, was fairly close to my own; the photojournalist cover is one I often use by default, when there’s no pressing need for me to assume another identity. Mac went on. “You decided to haul your cameras and word processor east and follow your salty dream. It is really amazing how many people have that dream. Even in our cynical profession it seems that a considerable number of the men, and even some of the women, hope upon retirement to buy little cruising boats and sail away into the sunset.”

  I asked, “Am I supposed to sail away into the sunset on the good ship Lorelei III?”

  “No. At least not immediately, and if you do go, as I have said, the direction will be south, not west. But first you will spend the remainder of the summer, as I said, just fixing up the boat and learning how to sail it.”

  I frowned. “What’s so special about this particular motor sailer aside from the fact that three people have died on her?” I asked. “Or off her, if Jesperson actually died in the water.”

  “We have not been told what else makes the boat unique, if anything does,” Mac said. “As for the deaths, Truman Fancher may have had a genuine heart attack— he’d had one earlier, but had made a good recovery— but there is apparently some room for doubt. In order to dispel or confirm that doubt, and to find the answers to some other questions, Mr. and Mrs. Guild, so-called, were ordered aboard Lorelei III by the agency that has now requested our assistance. That is as much information as we have been given. Our colleagues are operating on a strict need-to-know basis.”

  I sighed. “And as usual they don’t think we need to know very much. I suppose Jesperson was put aboard, officially, to investigate what happened to Fancher and Guild, and I’m going on this jinx ship to investigate what happened to Fancher, Guild, and Jesperson.”

  Mac nodded. “At least that is the ostensible goal of your mission. And I think you can safely assume that, while Mr. Fancher may just possibly have died a natural death, the individual who clubbed to death the lady calling herself Mrs. Guild was not just a stray seagoing mugger even if he did use a weapon he found on the scene, and the so-called Mr. Jesperson was not really alone on board and did not really fall overboard by accident.” He regarded me for a moment. “In support of this assumption is the fact that when Nathaniel Guild recovered from the first shock of finding his ‘wife’ dead, he smelled propane; the boat was full of it. The master gas valv
e was open and a hose had been removed from a certain fitting. I’m afraid I can’t give you the exact technical details, but a candle was found on the counter in the kitchen—I suppose I should call it a galley. Fortunately ‘Mrs. Guild’ had left a hatch open that her murderer failed to spot and there was a thunderstorm the night she was killed; the high wind caused enough of a draft to blow out the flame that had presumably been left burning. If it had continued to burn, Lorelei III would have exploded violently when the gas rose high enough in the cabin to be ignited.”

  I said, “Well, if there is something on board that somebody doesn’t want found, the simplest answer is to destroy the boat completely. What about the other incident?”

  “There was over a foot of water in the cabin when the Coast Guard arrived. The discharge hose of the galley sink apparently leads directly to a valve—I believe they call it a sea cock—in the boat’s hull which, open, allows the dishwater to drain into the ocean. The clamps had been loosened and the hose had been pulled off the valve, which was left open, allowing the sea to pour in. And the bilge pump had been turned off. It is assumed that the boat was actually aimed eastward, in the hope that it would sink where Long Island Sound is reasonably deep, but some malfunction of the automatic pilot, which was engaged, caused it to swerve to the north and hit the shoal. The quick response of the Coast Guard prevented it from filling completely. They, of course, immediately shut the sea cock and pumped out the water.”

  “Just the same, it sounds as if I’m going to have a soggy mess to deal with,” I said. “That saltwater never really dries.”

  Mac said, “We are, as I’ve said, supplying you with a cover of sorts; if the opposition, whatever it may be, thinks that we, or you, are stupid enough to trust it to keep you safe, so much the better. We are, of course, hoping that it will not.”

  I nodded. “So I’m not really there just to investigate two or three murders, or even to search the boat for interesting clues. It’s also a decoy job. Since the vessel seems to be reluctant to tell us anything, maybe we can get some answers from the people who are haunting it homicidally?” I made it a question.

  Mac did not answer directly. He said, “The agency concerned, which has been keeping Lorelei III under observation since Jesperson’s death, has decided that somebody else should be put aboard. However, having lost two of their own valuable people on this boat, they think it advisable to replace them with more expendable human material from other government sources.” He shrugged. “Well, it is what we are paid for, Eric.”

  A polite name for our organizational mission, which is not publicized around Washington, is counter-assassination. When a government agency starts losing people to somebody too tough for them to handle, they can call on us to take him, or her, out for them, discreetly. But very often we’re called in simply because there’s a hot spot that needs filling by a gent, or lady, somewhat more bullet proof than the usual run of government employees. This was a fairly typical situation: somebody had come up short a couple of agents and didn’t want to risk misplacing any more. Just me.

  I said, “If somebody does come for me, what’s my reaction supposed to be?”

  “Very simple,” Mac said. “First, you prevent them from killing you, and from destroying the boat. Then you capture them and call a certain telephone number, and they will be taken off your hands. If you should of necessity wind up with some dead ones, it will be understood, and you will be protected, but live and garrulous ones are preferred. The lady who passed on the instructions spoke in terms of a giant conspiracy; she would like one of the conspirators for interrogation.”

  I sighed. “Oh, gee, golly, another giant conspiracy, I don’t know if my heart can stand it, sir.” I yawned widely. Mac did not react to my horseplay, and I went on. “But if I sit on that boat until the cold autumn winds start to blow, and nothing happens, then, you say, I’m supposed to cast off the dock lines and proceed south?”

  “Yes,” Mac said. “You will head for Florida by a route that will be given you, hoping for trouble along the way. By that time, you should have the boat in good cruising order, and yourself, too.”

  It was time to bring up another important detail he seemed to be neglecting. I said, “Maybe. But with all the work to be done on this motor sailer, it’s obviously not going to be available for boating practice a lot of the time; and I’ve only got a couple of months. I doubt that even if I had the whole summer to play with it I could turn myself into a real seaman and navigator. Sure, I can fake it—I’ve done it before; sailing isn’t all that difficult—but this is a hell of a lot bigger boat than anything I’ve ever managed by myself, and if these people feel it’s important to get her south in one piece, they’d better give me some help. Cruising alone, little as I really know about it, there’s a chance I’ll have their expensive bucket on the rocks before I’m out of Long Island Sound.”

  Mac nodded. “I told our friends that, while you had managed to survive several missions afloat, you could hardly be called an expert seaman. They said it was hoped the operation would be concluded before autumn; but if it was not, they would supply a good hand to help you…”

  3

  Ziggy Kronquist had the sail up before we passed Duck Island, just outside the river entrance. Again she wanted to do it all herself so she’d learn where everything was and how it worked.

  Standing at the wheel in the deckhouse, I had a pretty good view of the operation, forward through the windshield and upward through the large, transparent, overhead hatch that could be slid back like a car’s sunroof—well, actually it couldn’t, at the moment, since I’d stowed the deflated, folded-up rubber dinghy in the way of it, figuring that this late in the year a sunroof wouldn’t see much use. Besides, there was no other convenient place to put the dink. (The little two-and-a-half horsepower motor for it was clamped to the rail aft, if it matters.)

  The hatch was designed, not only for ventilation, but for observation: to let the helmsman keep an eye on the mainsail above him. When we left the marina, the big sail was rolled up on its patent furling gear along the aft side of the mast; but as we reached open water, Ziggy started pulling on the outhaul, and it unrolled like a vertical window blind—well, a triangular vertical window blind. The smaller staysail up forward, when she got to it, had no such tricks; it just went up the stay like any normal sail.

  I felt Lorelei III heel a bit, and then lean farther to a stronger gust as we passed the end of Duck Island and received the unobstructed wind off Long Island Sound. Blocks rattled and creaked as the girl up on deck retrimmed the sails to the new breeze. Down in the deckhouse, I followed instructions and steered us out past the buoy marking the west end of Long Sand Shoal in the middle of the Sound, and then bore off eastward to put us on the course for Plum Gut that she’d punched into the loran.

  This was one of the electronic marvels on board that I’d studied but by no means mastered. There was a whole array of gadgetry suspended from the overhead—ceiling to you—above the chart table in front of me: an ordinary radio-tape deck for entertainment, a battery of engine instruments you wouldn’t believe, the loran for position, a VHF radio for communication, and a depth sounder for showing how much water was under Lorelei III’s six-foot keel. I’d been advised to leave the radio, the loran, and the VHF on at all times, since transistors don’t wear out and the warmth would keep the instruments dry and prevent corrosion. Below them, just ahead of the steering wheel, was the dial of the knot meter—seagoing speedometer to you—and the control panel for the autopilot; forward of that was the compass. To starboard of the wheel was the big, old-fashioned, hooded radar; and let’s face it, although I’d played with it from time to time, I still hadn’t really mastered the knack of relating the fuzzy pattern of blobs on the little screen to what was happening around the boat.

  But we weren’t using radar at the moment; and the loran was easier to learn. I knew how to get our latitude and longitude out of it any time I wanted them, and the ability made me feel naut
ical as hell; however, there were a lot of other functions I still couldn’t manage without having the instruction manual open in front of me. The one Ziggy had programmed into the machine told me exactly how to get to the buoy off Plum Gut: all I had to do was watch the display and steer to keep it centered. Navigation made easy. After I’d put the ship on her new course, there was more squeaking and creaking on deck as Ziggy trimmed the sails again; then the port deckhouse door slid open and she joined me, a little flushed and breathless, pushing back her windblown hair.

  “Hey, you steer not so badly. Is it not a marvelous day? Let me put something on this förbannade hair, and then I would like to steer, if you do not mind, but not in this stuffy cabin. I will take it at the outside station… Just a minute.” She ducked down the companionway forward and came back immediately, tucking her hair away under a blue bandana. “How do we change over the steering?”

  “No problem with the steering,” I said. “It’s hydraulic, like I said, and works from either station without any switching, but the engine control down here has to be in neutral before you can use the one topside.” I pulled back the single lever—throttle and gearshift in one—and the rumble of the diesel died to a low murmur. “You go on up. You don’t have a tachometer up there so I’ll have to holler at you when you’re back to cruising RPM.”

  I let her know when she had the topside control set correctly. Then I stepped outside—it was three steps from the deckhouse floor up to the side deck—and made my way aft along the narrow walkway, secure inside the substantial teak railing that seemed like considerably more protection than the flimsy wire lifelines to be found on most sailboats. It occurred to me that somebody must have given Jesperson quite a heave to put him over that husky thirty-inch fence.

  I climbed a couple more steps to join Ziggy on the raised aft deck, like the poop deck of a Spanish galleon, that was actually the roof of my cabin. She stood at the big destroyer wheel at the rear of the deckhouse. Unlike the varnished, wooden one below, this wheel was shiny stainless steel. There was more wind than I’d thought, and a considerable amount of rigging whine and sea splash.