Chesapeake Crimes Page 8

  She walked back to the car, turning back one time. “And if you were going to screw around,” she shook her head again. “Oh, Larry. Miss Mouse?”

  Jill Breslau is a lawyer and psychotherapist who has, indeed, worked as a divorce mediator. The major incidents in this story are unrelated to her actual experience. Some of the less dramatic events are true, though it’s to no one’s advantage to identify them. Jill lives in Maryland with her golden retriever, Mr. Jones. She has four adorable grandchildren who may find it difficult to imagine, when they grow up, that their grandmother could write about people who have wicked thoughts and do terrible things. She has written legal articles; this is her first short story.

  DEADRISE, by David Autry

  Plunging into the cold water of the Chesapeake Bay jolted me awake. Fear and panic overwhelmed me. I gasped for air as the boat sped off into the darkness. The last thing I remembered before hitting the water was a kaleidoscope exploding in my head. Someone on the boat had hit me from behind before dumping me overboard.

  My chest heaved as brackish water washed into my lungs. My arms and legs felt like lead. On the verge of passing out, I swam toward a small green light swaying back and forth in the choppy water. I was determined to survive. I had a score to settle.

  * * * *

  Brief snatches of my ordeal and rescue flitted through my sluggish brain as warm sunlight and the smell of fresh coffee began to revive me. I opened one eye. The digital clock on a bedside table read 9:05. I ached. The pain in my head pulsed. My throat was dry, and my eyelids felt like sandpaper. The room faded in and out of focus. I shut my eyes and counted to ten. When I opened them again, a lanky, weathered man stood over me. I guessed he was around seventy.

  I felt woozy but strong enough to sit up. The covers were damp, and I felt a sudden chill as I swung my bare legs over the side of the bed.

  “I’m washing your clothes, son, and you could sure use a shower,” the old man said, putting a cup of coffee and a bowl of soup on the bedside table. “I thought you might want something to eat.” He helped me into a faded blue terrycloth bathrobe.

  The broth was warm and soothing, and my strength began to return. As I ate, he told me how he’d seen me clinging to a navigation buoy bobbing in the bay. “It must have taken all your will to survive. I thought it best to bring you home with me.”

  “Where am I?”

  “Piney Point.”

  “I can’t thank you enough, mister…” I almost choked on the broth.

  “Newhouse, Bill Newhouse, and you’re Shelby Reid. I saw your ID when I spread the things in your wallet out to dry. I’m pleased to meet you, Shelby, and you’re welcome.” He offered me a large, work-roughened hand with long, square-tipped fingers.

  Clean clothes were on the bed when I finished my shower. “You had only one sock on when we pulled you out of the bay,” Newhouse said from the other room. “Come on in and we’ll get you fixed up.”

  “We?” Tucking in my shirttail, I stopped in the doorway, wondering who else was in the house.

  “Mr. Reid, this is my niece, Denise. She’s visiting for the weekend, as she often does. Join us for coffee.” He gestured toward a cushioned chair, identical to one occupied by a woman in her early thirties, about my age. Tall and athletic with a generous, friendly smile, she stood to greet me.

  “Denise and I like to take my boat out early in the morning to watch the birds and other inhabitants of the bay. It’s really spectacular, and we never know what we’ll find out there,” the old man said.

  I took that as my cue to explain how I came to be in their debt.

  I made up a story about fishing with some guys I met in a bar. “The three of us were on this fancy, new cabin cruiser, drinking and swapping fish tales. Then the owner said something about his buddy’s ex-wife, and they started arguing,” I said. “When the owner accused the other guy of sleeping with his wife, things got nasty.

  “They were pretty drunk,” I continued, “and things got out of hand. They started fighting like a couple of kids, and I tried to get in between them. That’s when one of them punched me, and I hit my head and fell into the water. Don’t think either of them noticed, they were going at it so hard.”

  My rescuers looked at one another, then back at me.

  “Maybe I should call the cops and tell them what happened,” I said, setting my cup down.

  “In a sense, you already have,” the old man said. “My niece is a sergeant with the Maryland Natural Resources Police.”

  Denise Newhouse smoothed back an errant strand of dark auburn hair, and her wide-set brown eyes narrowed as she asked, “Do you want to press charges against your fishing buddies?”

  I felt a wave of panic in the pit of my stomach. “No, don’t think so. Hell, I don’t even remember their names. Besides, it was pretty stupid of me to get on that boat with a couple of strangers in the first place.”

  Later Denise drove me to the bar in Solomons where I’d left my car. We barely spoke on the ride through the Southern Maryland countryside. Every so often a lonely farm house or the skeleton of a tree intruded on the open fields, still brown from the winter’s frosts and snow.

  We said our goodbyes, and I promised to return the sneakers her uncle let me borrow. On the drive back to my apartment in Baltimore, I pondered my next move.

  I’d spent months tracking the cocaine trade from small-time street dealers to their suppliers, and I wanted to go all the way up the food chain and get the whole story. But all I had come up with so far was a busted head and a pair of borrowed sneakers. What I needed was a different approach.

  * * * *

  Thanks to a crash course in undercover work from a cop friend, I eventually was able to pass myself off as an ex-convict looking for some easy money. Over the course of the next three months, I learned a lot about the drug business and could even tell the weight of a gram of coke just by feel. But the hardest part was keeping up with the constantly changing street lingo. It’s not just the names for all the drugs, but I had to know the latest slang for everything from the quantity and price of drugs to ordering a drink. A bartender can hang a jacket on an undercover man faster than anyone.

  I got to know most of the dealers and suppliers in Baltimore and bought enough of their wares to convince them I wasn’t a narc—I hoped.

  I was just leaving my apartment one chilly night when a supplier named Whitey came up behind. “Word is you’re looking for a payday,” he said in a coarse whisper. “But, hey, ain’t we all? Let’s pull in here for something to warm us up.”

  Whitey was about forty years old, blond, and watchful. He had a ruthless reputation that kept his street dealers in line. If anyone ever crossed him, there wouldn’t be a second time.

  Even though the weather was cold and windy, sweat ran down the back of my neck as we entered the Komoto Club. I tried to remember anything that might have made Whitey suspicious. Had someone recognized me from my days as a reporter with the old Washington Tribune?

  The Komoto was a favorite hangout among Baltimore’s criminal element. Whitey steered me to a corner table in the rear and ordered us both a double Jack Daniels. We waited in silence until the bartender delivered our drinks.

  “Yo, what do you know about boats and shit like that?”

  Whitey’s question caught me by surprise. That kind of casual conversation just doesn’t happen in the drug world. Strictly business and that’s it. There’s an unwritten law about not asking questions, and no one offers any information about themselves.

  I took a thoughtful sip of my drink before telling him I’d worked on a charter boat out of Annapolis before ending up in the state prison at Jessup.

  Whitey’s eyes scanned the dimly lit bar for anyone who might be close enough to overhear and leaned toward me. “I got what you might call a situation,” he said. “And maybe you could help me out and do yourself some good at the same time.” He paused. “You know a big supplier named Sketcher?”

  I tried to look indi
fferent even as my heart rate accelerated. But Whitey’s words had triggered a small earthquake under my chair. I reached for my glass, barely able to keep my hand from jerking as I bent to take a drink. Then I shook my head.

  “Well, me and him did business together for a few years, until he got greedy and got himself paid off for good,” Whitey said. “Now I got a shot at taking over his operation, and I need somebody who knows about boats to help me move stuff up the bay.”

  Sketcher had been one of the area’s biggest wholesalers in the drug trade, and I’d tried to get close to him for a long time. He was to have been an unwitting key source for my exposé on dope smuggling in the bay area, but that hadn’t worked out. Maybe Whitey’s ambition to move up was the break I needed.

  * * * *

  Three days later, Whitey and I drove to St. Mary’s County in Southern Maryland. I rented a waterman’s cottage on St. George Island, a tiny, two-square-mile community with a few dozen residents. Whitey checked into a motel in Leonardtown where he introduced me to a couple of small-time crooks who had worked for Sketcher a few years back. Whitey explained that when a drug shipment came up the Chesapeake, my job was to collect the drugs by boat and wait at my place for him to come get it. I’d be well paid for one night’s work about twice a month.

  Whitey said it would take a couple of weeks to get things set up. He drove back to Baltimore. I began searching the want ads for a used boat, something that wouldn’t draw too much attention.

  On my way to look at boats, I drove across the causeway to Piney Point so I could return Bill Newhouse’s sneakers. He seemed glad to see me again, and over coffee told me where I could get a good deal on an old deadrise workboat.

  Next day I took delivery. The previous owner, Newhouse told me, built the forty-foot craft in 1949 and used it to dredge oysters and harvest crabs for nearly sixty years. The boat was powered by a government-surplus GM six-cylinder diesel engine still in good shape, but her wooden hull and decking needed some work. I renamed her the Lady Janette and set about making repairs and repainting. I wish it had been so easy to patch up her namesake.

  I was washing out paint brushes one sunny afternoon when Whitey called. A shipment of cocaine was coming up the Chesapeake that night and would be stashed in a duck blind along the southern shore of Taylor Cove. My first job.

  I put the Lady J through her paces getting to know the area, located the drop point, then headed home for supper. About three in the morning, I took the Lady J out again. Even though the night was clear with a nearly full moon, I had a hard time finding the cache anchored among the reeds and grasses along the shore. The duck blind was an eight-foot flat-bottomed boat with a camouflaged pop-up canopy that blended in with its surroundings. It was an ingenious set-up with a whisper-quiet electric motor so it could be moved from one secluded spot to another.

  I hefted the duffle bag from the blind into the Lady J and headed back to my cottage. I covered my illicit cargo with a tarp and some coils of rope and brewed a pot of strong coffee. Whitey was supposed to meet me and take the drugs to a stash house, but by late morning he hadn’t shown. If something went wrong, I sure didn’t want to be left holding a load of coke worth millions.

  Repeated phone calls to Whitey went unanswered, so I decided to examine the duffle bag’s contents. Instead of cocaine, I found about forty plastic-wrapped packets of powdered chalk like the stuff used to mark boundaries and baselines on athletic fields. Was this a test to see if I could be trusted or was Whitey being double crossed? Either way, I was in a fix.

  I couldn’t think what else to do, so I decided to stay in character and act the part of a pissed-off ex-con. I waited until ten o’clock at night and put the duffle bag in the trunk of my car then drove to a roadside bar where Whitey and his crew often went.

  I pulled into the parking lot and backed my Honda up to Whitey’s Mercedes convertible. The afternoon had been unusually warm, and he’d left the car’s top down. I took the bag from my trunk, ripped it open with my seaman’s knife, and emptied the contents into Whitey’s front seat. I took a few minutes to work up my nerve and stomped into the roadhouse like I had a chip on my shoulder as big as a railroad tie.

  I spotted my quarry at the bar with his back to me. I scanned the shabby, dimly lit room for Whitey’s thugs and didn’t see them. I made straight for Whitey, grabbed his shoulder with my left hand, and spun him around on the stool to face me. I drew my right arm back, making a tight fist, and unleashed a roundhouse punch that landed solidly on the startled man’s jaw. My hand hurt like hell. I stepped back and let him get up so he’d know who had clocked him. He recovered quicker than I expected and tried to tackle me on the run. I landed three or four hard blows on his head and shoulders before we both crashed to the rancid, beer-spattered floor. I rolled out from under him and started to push myself up on one knee when I felt a jolt on the back of my head, and that kaleidoscope exploded again.

  * * * *

  The still night air was clammy and cool when I came to, slumped against a rusty wire fence on the edge of an open field. Along with the smell of damp earth, I caught the distinctive odor of a chicken-processing plant. My head and shoulders complained as I struggled into a lopsided sitting position. With my hands tied behind me around a wobbly wooden fence post, I banged my back against the pole until I could pull it out of the ground. I worked my bound hands down the roughened wood, wincing as splinters dug into my forearms.

  Savoring my small triumph, I rested, listening to the night. The flutter of an owl’s wings and a rustle among the dead leaves nearby sent a shiver up my spine.

  I maneuvered my arms under my butt and pulled my legs and feet through the loop so my hands were in front. I untied the rope with my teeth. After my head cleared, I stood and willed my shaky legs to carry me toward a murky glow in the distance. Somewhere along the way I’d lost my cell phone, so I walked to a gas station and called the first person I could think of to come get me.

  Bill Newhouse answered the phone, but it was his niece who picked me up. Back at my cottage, she dug out splinters and cleaned and patched my cuts.

  “I figured we’d cross paths again,” she said. “You should know, I didn’t believe that bull about drunk fishing buddies, so I did some checking. And guess what? Not only did nobody report you missing, you’re a reporter for Inside Access magazine, and you love the big story.” She leaned in. “Well, I love the big story, too, though for other reasons. I’ve been keeping my eye on you the last few months, waiting. Now here’s our chance.”

  Our chance?

  Sergeant Denise Newhouse, I soon learned, was not just a game warden. In one of those wild, you’re-not-gonna-believe-this coincidences, she was assigned to Maryland’s High Intensity Drug Unit. HIDU, as it is called, was set up to investigate and prevent drug trafficking on the Chesapeake Bay and its tributaries. When I had recovered from my shock, I figured she had a right to know that I was tracking the cocaine trade in the Baltimore-Washington area for my magazine. I told her one of my sources had arranged for me to meet a distributor named Sketcher the night she and her uncle rescued me. I’d driven to a bar in Solomons where two muscle-bound guys with shaved heads took me outside and searched me. When a white Ford van pulled up, one of the baldy twins jammed a hood over my head and—with little apparent effort—lifted me into the back.

  “After a torturous, suffocating ride, I was ushered aboard a swanky cabin cruiser that was supposed to take me to Sketcher,” I told Denise. “We were pretty far off shore when one of my escorts got a call on his cell phone. Next thing I knew somebody hit me from behind and dumped me over the side.”

  “So, you were supposed to meet Sketcher?” Denise’s gaze shifted from me to the floor. “Word is he got caught holding out on his customers, taking an extra cut for himself,” she said. “He and three of his associates were found in a warehouse. Each one had been shot execution style and had a hundred-dollar bill stuffed in his mouth.”

  I’d expected as much after my meet
ing with Whitey at the Komoto Club.

  “You should know that a guy named Whitey had taken over Sketcher’s operation, and I’ve got a job in his organization; or at least I did,” I said.

  “Look, if you had any sense you’d walk away from this before you get killed. No job is worth your life,” she said.

  “Can’t do it. It’s not just a job; this is personal. I owe it to somebody to shine the light on those cockroaches so the cops can stomp them out.”

  I told her about my best friend’s daughter who died of a drug overdose. Her name was Janette, and she was bright and full of life. She’d been an honors student at Johns Hopkins University until her drug habit took control. She ended up selling her books, her car, and herself just to get high.

  “It was the worst day of my life seeing her thin, drug-ravaged body in the morgue, and I had to break the news to her dad,” I said. “I felt empty and powerless. So at her funeral I made a promise to do everything possible to keep someone else’s son or daughter from dying that way.”

  “So, is it some kind of revenge or vigilante justice you’re after? Because if it is, I’ll have to arrest you for your own good.” Denise poured peroxide on a nasty gouge in my arm and asked what I planned to do.

  The medicine stung, and I gritted my teeth. “All I want is to get at the truth about the drug traffic and maybe find a better way to fight it. For years the government’s said they’re making headway against drugs. But my sources at the Drug Enforcement Administration say all this so-called success hasn’t put a dent in the drug trade. More dope than ever is on our streets, and it’s killing people every day. Something’s got to be done to stop it,” I said.