Backflash. Part 4

There were about a dozen of them, widely s.p.a.ced along the sh.o.r.eline, under the overhanging branches, and it took Parker a minute to figure out what they were. Fifty-pound sacks of peat moss. Facing upward, they hung just barely above the water, suspended from strong-test fishing line fastened to all four corners of each bag and to strong tree limbs above. In each bag, two long slits had been cut along the upper side, and marijuana planted in the peat moss through the slits. The young leaves were bright acrylic green, hardy and healthy. The bags and their crop received filtered sunlight through the trees, but would be invisible from just about anywhere, including low-flying aircraft. You'd have to steer in here from the river to see them, and even then you pretty well had to already know they existed or you probably wouldn't notice.

"We're a long way from the ocean," Hanzen said, steering slowly along beside his babies, looking them over, "but we still get the tidal effect. Twice a day, they get a good long drink of water."

"Nice setup," Parker agreed.

"My only problem is, if somebody steals a boat," Hanzen said. "Then you got deputies in their launch, poking in places like this, looking for the G.o.ddam boat, and finding all this. Happened once, could happen again. In the fall, maybe, a fisherman might anchor in here, do some fly-casting out into the current, but by then I'm harvested and out of here."

"You got much of this?"

"Sixty bags, up and down the river. Little farther on, there's one more batch I want to check, that's all in this direction." Hanzen smiled out at the empty river. "You can really be alone out here, if you want," he said. "If you know what you're doing out here, the world's your oyster."

"I suppose so."

Hanzen studied Parker. "You don't like rivers," he decided. "Water, whatever. But you're doing something, and right now you need the river, so I guess what you're looking for's a place to go out from the bank, or come ash.o.r.e, or both. I'd be happier if you didn't use my place down there."

"I need to be farther north," Parker told him.

"Closer to Albany," Hanzen suggested, "but not all the way to Albany."

"Right."

"And you'd like to mark it, and not tell me which spot you picked." Hanzen grinned. "That's okay, I understand. Only it won't work."

"No?"

"Things look different from the land," Hanzen explained. "From out here, you could pick the spot you want, but when you get on sh.o.r.e you'll never find it."

"Not without you, you mean," Parker said.

"Not without somebody knows the river," Hanzen said.

"Somebody I trust," Parker said.

Hanzen grinned again; things didn't bother him much. "You're already trusting me," he said, "out here on my boat, even though that's a little.22 under your shirt. Come on, let's head upriver, and you sing out when you see something you like."

10.

They spent three hours on the river, and there were four spots along the way that Parker thought he might be interested in, three on the east sh.o.r.e and one on the west. Hanzen had road maps in his cabin that showed this part of the river, and he pointed out to Parker where each potential spot was, so he could see what road access he'd have, and what towns were nearby.

From time to time, as they moved, long low barges went slowly past, upriver or down, piled with boxed cargo or with trash. The crews waved, and Hanzen waved back, and each time their smaller boat rocked from side to side in the long slow undulations of the barge's wake, no matter how far off to the side they were.

They also saw, at one point on the way back, as they hugged the more thickly settled western sh.o.r.e, a fast speedboat, white with blue trim, heading downriver across the way, close to the opposite bank. A police launch. "Stay away from my babies, now," Hanzen told it.

Parker said, "They patrol much?"

"Not at all," Hanzen said. "Not enough activity on the river to keep them out here regular. They'll come out for the fun of it, sometimes, in the daylight, but at night they only come out if there's a problem." Nodding at Parker, he said, "You can count on it, though, if there's a problem, they will come out."

"All right," Parker said.

A while later, Hanzen said, "Seen enough?"

Parker looked around. "We're back?"

"That's my mooring," Hanzen said, pointing across the river, where nothing specific could be seen. "I don't think you care about anything south of this."

"No, you're right."

"You might as well pay me now."

Parker took the envelope out of his hip pocket and handed it over. Hanzen squeezed it enough so the slit opened and he could see the edges of the twenties. Satisfied, he pulled open one cabin door long enough to toss the envelope onto the bunk. "Nice doing business with you, Mr. Lynch," he said. "Maybe we'll do it again sometime."

"Maybe," Parker agreed.

As Hanzen steered them across the wide river, Parker held the map down on the cabin top and studied the possibilities. If it seemed like the job would work out, Mike Carlow would come here and look over the routes, see which one he liked best, which one fitted in with whatever way they decided to work it.

When they were more than halfway across, with the current slapping hard at the left side of the boat, Parker could begin to see the dark red color of the Subaru straight ahead, parked just up from the water. He could see people, too, three of them, in dark clothing. And two or three motorcycles. "You've got visitors," he said.

Hanzen nodded. "Friends of mine. And you're just Mr. Lynch, a man looking for a place to put a restaurant with a river view."

"Here's your map," Parker said.

"Put it in the cabin," Hanzen told him, so Parker opened a cabin door and dropped the map in onto the bunk next to the envelope of twenties, then shut the door again.

Hanzen slowed as they neared the sh.o.r.e, and Parker looked over at the three of them waiting there. Bikers. Two were heavyset middle-aged men with heavy beards and mean eyes and round beerguts; the third was younger, thinner, cleanshaven. All were in leather jackets and jeans. The two older ones sat on the ground, backs against their motorcycles, while the third, jittery, hopped-up, kept walking this way and that in the little clearing, watching the approaching boat, talking to the other two, looking back up the road they'd all come down. Finally one of the older men spoke to the young one, who agreed and came down to the water's edge to wait for the boat.

Hanzen steered carefully forward, and the young biker leaned way out over the water to grab the prow. As he pulled the boat partway up onto the bank, Hanzen again stripped out of shoes and socks and pants, and rolled them in a ball. "Ernie!" he called, and the young biker, who had a face like a white crow with smallpox, looked alert. "Catch!"

Hanzen tossed his bundle of clothes, and Ernie caught it like a football, with both forearms and belly. The other two bikers laughed, and Ernie turned around, jumpy, with a twitchy grin, to pretend to throw a forward pa.s.s. One shoe fell out of the bundle onto the ground, near the water.

Hanzen, sounding more bored than irritated, called, "Don't f.u.c.k around, Ernie, you don't want to get my shoe wet. Pull the boat round sideways so Mr. Lynch can get off."

Ernie hustled to pick up the shoe, carry it and the bundle farther from the water, put them down, and hurry back to pull the boat around at an angle to the bank.

Parker said, "See you around."

"Anytime," Hanzen said. "You know where I am." He stuck out his hand and Parker shook it, then climbed over the side onto the bank.

The older bikers watched with slow interest as Parker walked toward the Subaru. Behind him, at Hanzen's continuing orders, Ernie pushed the boat free of the sh.o.r.e, apparently getting his own feet wet in the process, and that was good for a general laugh.

Parker got into the Subaru. Offsh.o.r.e, Hanzen was tying the anchor line to the float. Parker started the Subaru, backed in a half-circle, shifted into drive, and saw that one of the bikes, with its owner seated leaning against it, was in his way. He drove forward and put his foot on the brake, and the biker pretended not to see him, to be interested in watching Hanzen wade ash.o.r.e.

Parker leaned his head out the Subaru window: "You care about that bike?"

The biker turned his head. He contemplated Parker for a long minute, unmoving, and just as Parker took his foot off the brake he grunted and struggled to his feet and wheeled the bike out of the way.

Hanzen was on sh.o.r.e now, drying his legs with a towel Ernie had brought him from his own bike's saddlebag. Parker completed his turn to the dirt road and jounced over the railroad track.

They all watched him go.

11.

Claire had her own car, a gray Lexus, legitimately registered in her name at the Colliver Pond address. She'd driven off in it three days ago, to look into Hilliard Cathman's private life, so when Parker heard the garage door opener switch on at three that afternoon it was probably Claire coming back. But it didn't have to be Claire coming back.

Parker had been seated in the living room, looking at maps of New York State, and now he reached under the sofa to close his hand on the S&W.32 revolver stored there. He tugged, and the clip holding the revolver gave a small metallic click, and the.32 nestled into his hand.

He rose, crossed the living room and hall and the kitchen, looked through the hole he'd drilled a long time ago at eye level in the door between kitchen and garage, and saw the Lexus drive in, this side of the Subaru already parked in there. Claire was alone in the car, and didn't seem troubled by anything. He watched her reach up to the visor to lower the garage door behind her.

When Claire walked into the living room, Parker was again studying the maps. The revolver wasn't in sight. He looked up and said, "Welcome back."

She nodded at the maps. "Planning a trip?"

"You tell me."

"Ah." She smiled and nodded. "You can keep them open, I guess. After I shower and you bring me a drink, I'll tell you all about it."

It was nearly six when they got around to talking, the long spring twilight just starting to stretch its fingers outside the house. Claire sat up in bed, back against the headboard, a sheet partly over her. Her drink, the ice cubes long gone, she held on her up-bent knee, the tan skin looking browner against the clear gla.s.s. Parker, in black trousers, paced as he listened.

She said, "Cathman's a widower, his wife died of cancer seven years ago. No girlfriends. Three grown daughters, all married, living in different parts of the northeast. Everybody gets along all right, but they're not a close-type family. At Christmas he'll go to a daughter's house, that's about it."

"He's alone?"

"He lives alone. In the two-room office he's got for his consulting business, he has a secretary, an older woman named Rosemary Shields, she worked with him for years when he was with state government, she retired when he did, kept working for him. She's one of those devoted secretaries where there's never been s.e.x but she'd kill for him and he wouldn't know how to live without her."

"He has to know other people," Parker said. He frowned out the window at the lake, where it now reflected the start of sunset, as though a lot of different pastel paints had been spilled on it. "He isn't a loner," he said.

"Not by choice," Claire agreed. She sipped at her drink and said, "He's always been a bureaucrat, his friends have always been other bureaucrats. They all got older together, retired, died off, moved away. He's in correspondence with a couple of people in Florida, one in California. He still knows a few people around Albany, but doesn't hang out with them much. When he wants to see somebody in his office on business, the guy is usually in for him."

Parker touched the window gla.s.s; it was cool. He said, "Money?"

"His retirement. The consulting business brings in a little, not much. He's lived in the same house for thirty-four years, in a suburb called Delmar, paid off the mortgage a long time ago."

"Protgs? Young bureaucrats coming up?"

"He's on the wrong side of the issue," she said. "Or he's got the wrong issues. And he was never important enough to cultivate. I think basically people are ready to forget him, except he's still around here and there. Comes to the testimonial dinners and the news conferences."

"Brothers, sisters?"

"Two older brothers, both dead. Some cousins and nephews and nieces he never sees. He comes from two old New England families, his first name, Hilliard, was his mother's maiden name. Anglican ministers and college professors."

Parker nodded, then turned to offer Claire his thin smile. "That's why the anti-gambling."

"His forebears would turn in their graves."

"Armed robbery," Parker said. "They'd spin a little for that one, too, wouldn't they?"

"I'd think so," Claire agreed.

Parker turned back to the window. The spilled paint on the lake was getting darker. He said. "He'll think about those forebears, won't he? He'll want to make it right, not upset them a lot."

Claire watched his profile and said nothing.

After a minute, Parker shook his head in irritation. "I don't like wasted motion," he said. "But I just have the feeling, before this is over, I'm gonna have to put Cathman out of his misery."

12.

Rosemary Shields was as Claire had described her: a rotund older woman with iron-gray hair in an iron arrangement of tight coils close to her head. She escaped an air of the maternal by dressing in browns and blacks, and by maintaining a manner of cold clerical efficiency. When Parker entered her office through the frosted gla.s.s door that read: 1100.

Hilliard Cathman a.s.sociates in gold letters, she was briskly typing at her computer keyboard, making sounds like crickets in the walls. She stopped the crickets and looked up with some surprise; not many people came through that door. But Parker had dressed for the part, in dark suit and white shirt and low-key striped tie, so she wouldn't be alarmed.

"Yes?" she asked, unable to hide the surprise, and he knew she mostly expected to hear he'd come to the wrong office.

Parker shut the door. The hall had been empty, the names on the other frosted gla.s.s doors along here describing law firms, accountants, "media specialists" and "consultants." Camp followers of state government. "Cathman," Parker said.

Surprise gave way to that natural efficiency: "Yes, of course," as she reached for the phone. "Is Mr. Cathman expecting you?"

Was Cathman expecting anybody? Parker went along with the fiction that business was being done here, saying, "Tell him it's Mr. Lynch. Tell him I'm with the Parkers."

"Yes, sir," she said, and tapped the intercom b.u.t.ton on the phone.

While she murmured into the phone, not quite studying him out of the corners of her eyes as she spoke with Cathman, Parker looked around at the office. It was small and square and without windows, the walls lined with adjustable bookshelves full of law books and technical journals. The one clear area of wall s.p.a.ce, behind Rosemary Shields' desk, contained a pair of four-drawer filing cabinets and, above them, a large framed reproduction of Ben Shahn's Sacco and Vanzetti poster. So Cathman was not a man to give up a cause just because it was dead.

Rosemary Shields hung up: "He'll be right out."

"Thank you."

And he was. Parker turned toward the inner door, and it opened. Cathman stuck his head out, like a mole out of his hole in the ground, not sure what he was going to see, and relief showed clearly on his face when he saw it was Parker out there. Fortunately, his Rosemary had gone back to her computer keyboard and didn't see her boss's face. Or was she in on it, along for Cathman's U-turn into crime? Parker doubted it, but there was no way to be sure.

"Oh, yes," Cathman said. "Mr. Lynch, of course. Come in, please."

Parker followed him into the inner office, and Cathman shut the door, his manner switching at once to a fussy indignation. "Mr. Parker," he half-whispered, in a quick high-pitched stutter, "you shouldn't come here like this. It's too dangerous."