Killer Waves Page 12

  I caught the sharpness in his tone. "One would think."

  He put his cleaning supplies back under the counter. "Well, once upon a time, that was the case. When this place opened up, years after the submarine got here, I was on the committee that raised the money and did the organizing. We had a number of volunteers who came in here and helped me out. The fund-raising went well for a year or two. And then things changed. Some of the volunteers moved away, others passed on, and still others got involved in other things. And most of these volunteers were my age or older. The younger generation... well, don't get me started. So we make do with the admission and a few donations here and there. Just enough to keep the place open and pay my magnificent salary."

  "It may be small, but there's a lot of good information in those exhibits," I said.

  "Ah, so there is, but we have lots more items that I'd love to display, but we don’t have the space for it. We could triple the size of this place and still not have enough room.”

  He reached over to a wall behind him and started flipping off light switches, and the click-click-click sound was loud in the lobby. "And what brought you here today, Lewis of Shoreline magazine? Got a hankering to learn more about Porter and her submarines?"

  "A bit," I said, "but I'm also looking to see if you remember a visitor you might have had here a couple of days ago. A dark skinned man, wearing a two-piece black suit, white shirt. He had a mustache. Might have spoken with an accent."

  He rubbed at his chin, and I could hear a faint scratching sound as his skin went across his chin whiskers. "No... I'm afraid I can't, but that doesn't surprise me. Most of these days I've been on the phone from the moment I come in to the moment I leave. Tour groups, God help us all, getting ready for their summer season. They call up and say they're going to come, and then they start dickering around. Looking for a group discount. Looking to combine a tour here with a tour at another museum, and couldn't I get a discount for them at that museum as well. Looking for a cheap meal right next door. When it gets that busy on the phone, I hardly even look up. Just take the money and pass over the lapel pin. This guy with a mustache a friend of yours?"

  "No, not really."

  "Then why the questions?"

  "Something I'm working on, something just a bit confidential. Sorry."

  He waved a hand. "Ah, don't worry about it. I knew a lot of confidential things when I worked at the yard. Got so that my late wife learned to stop asking so many questions when I got home from work. What else do you want to know?"

  "Ever hear of a guy at a shipyard or volunteering here at the museum with a nickname called Whizzer?"

  He grinned. "Sounds like a lot of guys my age with prostate problems. We're whizzers all right, clay and night, especially when we've settled down in bed or on the couch. Nope, can’t say that I do. I’m afraid this isn’t being a very productive trip for you.”

  Jack ducked into the small office at the rear and came out, struggling to put on a tan jacket while grasping a metal cane in his hand. "How long were you at the shipyard?" I asked.

  "Spent ten years in this man's navy, working on the old diesel pig boats. When I got out, spent another twenty years at the yard, following what my dad and my uncles had done, until I dinged up my leg. Got out on disability and puttered around until I joined up here."

  He went around the counter, leaning heavily on the cane.

  "I've really got to get moving along, if you don't mind. You can walk me out to the parking lot, if you'd like."

  "That would be fine," I said.

  Outside in the parking lot were my own Ford Explorer and his Dodge pickup truck. With the light growing dim, somehow the Albacore looked even bigger. Jack noticed that I was looking at it and said, "One of the first subs I helped build, back in the mid-fifties. You want to hear about secrets. We were all sworn to secrecy when we built that baby, because of the hull design and other new features."

  He walked a bit over to the Albacore, raised his cane and started using it as a pointer. "All the subs we built during World War Two followed the same design, but this one was radical. It served as a prototype for every type of sub that followed, from the Polaris to the Trident missile boats and the Los Angeles and Seawolf classes. More of a teardrop shape, enables the boat to move faster and quieter through the water. Boy, did she ever. You know, even now, almost a half-century later, the speed and the depths this boat reached are still classified information? Unreal, isn't it."

  I joined him, looking at the boat, thinking over what I had seen in the museum that had caught my attention. "Something that strikes me as unreal is that little display I saw, right before the Transitions gallery. About the German U-boats that came here in 1945."

  “Ha, yeah, that's a heck of a story, one that still isn't widely known." Jack started walking slowly back to his truck, "You see, back in May ’45, when the war in Germany was over, the U-boats were ordered to surrender. Most did, except for one that went all the way to Argentina. Supposedly there were rumors that that boat carried Hitler or some other Nazi mucky-mucks out, but that story was a load of crap."

  "Why's that?"

  "For the most part, the Nazi leadership didn't like or even understand their navy. For them to spend months in a U-boat, eating canned food and smelling each other's farts and sweat, no, there's no way they would have put up with that."

  We reached his pickup truck, which was rusting and whose tires looked as if they were about a month away from being officially classified as bald. There were two faded bumper stickers on the rear. One simply said, SUPPORT THE PORTER SUBMARINE MUSEUM and the other, THERE ARE TWO KINDS OF BOATS: SUBS AND TARGETS. He unlocked the door and climbed in, and I helped him with his cane.

  "The four subs that came here after the war, where did they surrender?"

  "On the high seas in the North Atlantic," he recalled. "The U-boats were to surface and announce their location in the clear over the radio, and fly a large black flag, if I recall. Destroyers from the British and the U.S. Navy came by and escorted them here. It was the nearest military port and a good secure place to look things over."

  He turned the key in the ignition, and the engine didn't do a thing. There was no clicking sound, no grinding of the engine, not a thing. He looked at me and he was embarrassed. "Damn thing's been giving me fits all month. My idiot son Keith, he promised me he would take care of it, but... damn."

  Jack turned the key again and again, and nothing happened.

  By now I had found that I liked the old man and his stories, and I quickly said, "Look, if you need a ride, I'll be glad to give you one."

  "No, that'll be a bother. I'll give Keith a call and have 'im come up ---"

  "I insist, really," I said, thinking about what it must have been like to be young and strong and in the Navy, defending your country, not knowing what your future would be like, probably not wanting to know that you would end up in Porter, disabled and alone, depending on the kindness of tourists to support you.

  He nodded, smiled. "I would greatly appreciate that, honestly I would." As Jack got out of his truck, I checked the time, and a relatively fresh promise came to mind, about a drink and conversation.

  "By the way, is there a phone around here I can use? I need to call up a friend."

  "Over there," he said, motioning with his cane. "There's a pay phone by the doorway."

  I left him by my Ford, and at the pay phone I called the offices of the Tyler Chronicle, and on the fourth ring I slipped into voice-mail hell, where I had to press numbers and stars and pound keys. It was one minute past five o'clock, and I'm sure the receptionist at the paper I had earlier met had gone out the door about fifty-nine seconds earlier. The fourth time I called the paper I surrendered and got Paula's voice mail, and left a message. "Paula, it's Lewis. I'm stuck up here in Porter for a little while. I'll try you at your apartment. The drink-and-conversation offer is still open, and I should be back in Tyler in a half hour."

  I called her apartment, got her answe
ring machine. I left a similar message there, and then hurried back to my Ford.

  As we drove through the one-way and somewhat twisting streets of Porter, I said, 'The German subs that came to Porter. Any Nazi officials and bigwigs on those boats?"

  "Nope, not at all," Jack said, holding his cane upright between his legs, like an old king holding on to his staff. "Three of the boats were regular attack subs, staffed by kids. I mean, average age of a U-boat captain back then was twenty-one or twenty-two. Can you believe how young all of us were back then? Teenagers, fighting and dying for our country. Now, I can't even t rust my boy Keith, who's almost forty, to remember to fix my truck. Here, take a right at this street."

  We were in a part of Porter that looked as if it didn’t get too many tourists. The street was narrow and the homes were old and jammed together in tiny fenced-in lots. This time of the year what lawns existed were still brown and dry. "Okay, that house up there. The small white one."

  I pulled into the narrow driveway. The house was two-story but about half the size of my own home. The porch had a sagging couch and a rusting refrigerator flanking the door.

  "The fourth boat," I asked. "Did that one have anything special about it?"

  "Ah, it certainly did," he said. "That U-boat was one of their big supply boats, and it was headed for Japan. The U-234, I think it was called. On board it had lots of strategic supplies, from electronics to optics to medicine."

  Thinking of Reeves and her agency, I said, "Drugs? Like opium, morphine?"

  His thin shoulders shrugged. "Who knows. But it was other things on board that got the military here all spun up. A jet aircraft, disassembled and in crates. Plans for the V-One and V-Two rockets. Some mercury. And there were even a couple of Japs who were going along for the ride, who committed hara-kiri out in the Atlantic instead of surrendering. A hell of a story."

  Jack reached over and shook my hand. "Appreciate the ride home, Lewis. And if you ever decide to do a story on the museum, or you decide you've got more questions about subs and such, give me a ring."

  "That I will, Jack, that I will," I said.

  He stepped out onto the driveway and then stopped, stuck his head back in my Ford. "Oh, yeah, one more thing about that last U -boat. The one with all the supplies."

  "What's that?" I asked.

  "Uranium, that's what," he said. "The boat had several hundred pounds of uranium that the Germans had processed, for their own atomic bomb. With the Allies closing in, they decided to give it to their Axis comrades in Tokyo. Pretty important stuff."

  Uranium. Atomic bomb. "I'd say."

  He laughed "And another thing. That uranium went missing, right after the U-boat was interned at Porter.

  My hands were on the steering wheel and the skin on the back of them started tingling.

  "No one knows publicly, and whoever knows privately ain't talking. There was a story in the Boston Globe a few years back, about some nuclear-weapons specialist doing a book on World War Two. She was trying to trace all the uranium that we and the Germans and the Japs had, and this shipment from Porter... just went missing. No records of it being disposed, no records of it even existing, except when it was logged in when it came to Porter. Poof. All gone. Just like that.”

  "Just like that," I repeated.

  "Yeah, well, the end of the war, a lot of funny things like that were going on. Hey, thanks again for the ride, Lewis."

  "Jack, you are very welcome."

  And as I watched him walk slowly up to the porch, relying steadily on his cane with every step, I recalled my last visit to the rooms that Reeves and her crew had rented back at the Lafayette House, and the documents I had seen, the documents in German.

  Then I backed up my Ford and went south, to Tyler.

  Chapter Ten

  The offices of the Tyler Chronicle were dark and closed up tight. I drove slowly through the parking lot and then continued out and made my way to High Street in Tyler. Paula lived in an apartment building about five minutes away from the center of town, and her car was in the building's tiny lot when I got there. Abutting the parking lot was a two-story motel, its windows and doors boarded up. A couple of months ago the place had been hit by an arsonist, and Paula told me that the owners were taking the chance to turn the place into condos instead of taking their insurance money and rebuilding the motel.

  As I got out of my Ford, Paula was coming out the main door of her building, black leather purse over her shoulder, wearing a short white jacket.

  "Hey," I called out. "Sorry I'm late. Did you get any of my messages?"

  "Sure, Lewis," she said, striding over to her car, "I got all three of them."

  I followed her over to the car. "Sorry, but I only remember leaving you three messages.”

  She turned to me at the car, a tired look on her face. “Sure I got the message on my office voice mail and the message on the answering machine at home. And there was a third message there, too, my friend. You see, earlier I wanted something simple. Conversation and a drink. That's all. Something friends and companions and occasional lovers-whatever the hell that means nowadays-can do without thinking, without even planning it. But those two little things didn't seem important to you tonight. That's the third message I got tonight. That what I needed wasn't important."

  I held my hands behind my back and clasped them tightly.

  "It surely was important," I said, speaking low and even. "Which is why I called you when I knew I was going to be late. If I didn't care or if I didn't think it was important, I wouldn't have made the effort."

  "And why were you late?" she asked, in the same tones she used when interrogating the town manager over discrepancies in the town's budget.

  "I was involved with somebody at the Porter Submarine Museum, for a story I might be working on."

  "Ah yes," she said, opening the door to her car. "Another story for Shoreline magazine that never appears. It must be tough, trying to keep track of your mysterious life."

  "I manage," I said. "Look, I'll make it up to you. Dinner instead of a drink. Right here and now."

  "You know what night it is, right? Tuesday night. Guess where I'm off to in an hour."

  Houston, we have a problem, I thought. "The weekly Tyler selectmen's meeting. I should have known, you're right. Look, I'll come along, sit next to you. We can write catty notes to each other about the town fathers as they drone on."

  There, a small victory, as a smile flickered across her face.

  "Nice offer. But not tonight. You go do your things mysterious. I'm off to have dinner with the new town counsel and then to work. Take care, Lewis."

  And then she got in her car, started it up, and was gone.

  An incurable romantic would have followed her, I suppose, and continued the debate, continued the argument, continued whatever it was that had been going on. But I had other commitments, other things to do.

  At the Lafayette House I could detect the odor of dinner being prepared in the fine kitchen of its restaurant, and my stomach started grumbling as I took the elevator up to the fifth floor. I went to Room 512 and knocked, and then knocked again. No answer. The door to Room 510 opened up and the redheaded member of the team, Gus Turner, poked his head out.

  "Oh, it's you," he said. "Looking for Laura?"

  "That I am," I said, walking over to him. "Is she about?"

  "She's ... she's on the phone right now," he said. "What do you need?"

  "I just want to give her an update."

  "Oh. Give it to me, then. I'll pass it on."

  "No offense, Gus," I said. "But I'm working for her. I'm not working for you. If I'm giving anybody an update, it'll be her. When she gets off the phone or whatever, she can give me a ring at home. That's where I'll be."

  He grinned as he closed the door. "No offense taken, Lewis. And you want to know why?"

  "I'm sure you'll let me know."

  "Because I predicted this, the first time we came to your house. Nobody says no to Laura. Nobody. It w
as just a matter of time before you came aboard."

  "Aboard what? The Titanic?"

  He smiled again, started closing the door. "I'll let her know. Have a great night."

  "You, too."

  I took the elevator back down to the lobby, and then made a detour to the dining room.

  A half hour later I was back home, sitting at the kitchen counter eating a Lafayette House lobster pie, which was the meat of two lobsters, sliced and soaked in melted butter, plopped right down in the middle of a seafood stuffing mix. The Lafayette House doesn’t do take-out dinners, but I have an understanding with the evening chef, an understanding that involves some cash donations on my part.

  The American Heart Association would probably collectively shudder in horror at what I was eating, and I was trying to balance the assault on my cholesterol level with a salad and a glass of red wine. It wasn't probably much of a balance, but we all have our fantasies.

  Just as I was finishing up, the phone rang, and it was Laura Reeves. As she started talking, I knelt before my fireplace and got a small fire going.

  "Lewis? Laura here. What do you have?"

  I struck a match and started burning a rolled-up editorial page from the Boston Globe. Some days, being used as fuel was its best use. "Gee, it's nice to talk to you, too, Laura. How was your day?"

  I could hear her sigh over the phone line. "My day was horrible, as was the day before and no doubt the day tomorrow. I'm sorry if I'm offending your delicate little sensibilities, so here I go again. Hello, Lewis. How nice to talk to you. I hope you're well. Did you do any fucking work today? Lewis?"

  I smiled, watched the flames dance up from the dying Globe and into the small pile of kindling. "How nice of you to ask. Yes, I'm fine, and I did have a busy day. I've talked to a detective at the Porter Police Department, the curator of a submarine museum in Porter, and an acquaintance of mine who's been known to be involved in things criminal. I've also talked to a local newspaper reporter and another detective with the Tyler Police Department. No Whizzer, no lead on Whizzer, but many promises to see what they can find."