Death in Deep Water Page 3

  “I’m not trying to talk myself out of a job, Mr. Otis, but public relations has never been my strong point.”

  He chuckled dryly. “We don’t need PR people. We have dozens of those. But we do require a skilled and persistent investigator for the formidable task we have in mind.”

  “What’s that, Mr. Otis?”

  He paused for dramatic effect and drummed his fingers on the table like a riverboat gambler bluffing a mark.

  “We would like you to prove the killer whale is innocent.”

  Chapter 3

  Maybe it was time to see an ear doctor. My hearing failed whenever somebody said the word whale. First with Shaughnessy, now Otis. I straightened up in my chair, leaned forward, and resisted the urge to cup a hand behind my ear.

  “Sir, could you run that by me again?”

  Otis’ razor-sharp eyes stared at me gravely from under thick brows. “It’s really very simple. We want you to exonerate the killer whale.”

  “You’re telling me the whale did not kill the trainer?”

  Otis dismissed the notion with a careless wave of his hand. “I have no idea as to the animal’s guilt or innocence. Nor do I care.”

  “I confuse easily, Mr. Otis. Could you elucidate?”

  “Gladly. You see, those animal-rights groups I mentioned, and one in particular, are using the incident as a rallying cry. They want to shut down all marine theme parks, not just Oceanus, or tangle them in a web of regulation that would make it impossible to operate. As long as doubts about Mr. Byron’s death remain, these people can argue that the whale, not the trainer, was the victim. We would simply like those doubts removed.”

  “I’m still not sure where I fit in.”

  “We want the incident investigated. Quietly. Mr. Shaughnessy suggested we send in an undercover investigator to work at Oceanus. He thought your background as a diver, a fisherman, and a police officer made you the ideal candidate. We want you to join the park staff and simply keep your eyes and ears open.”

  Animal nuts who slap Save the Whales stickers on their bumpers give me a pain, along with organizations that use pictures of cute little harp seals as an excuse to put their hand in someone’s pocketbook. So I wasn’t comfortable working for a client who exploited anyone or anything.

  Even if the whale had bopped his trainer, there wasn’t much anybody could do about it. No electric chair in the country is big enough to hold a rogue killer whale. On the other hand, there was a simple question of justice at stake. Nobody, human or not, should be tagged with a bum murder rap. I thought about Sam’s World War II story again and it gave me the push I needed to make up my mind.

  “Okay, Mr. Otis,” I said. “I’ll see what I can do.”

  “Splendid. Before you take the case, I should warn you. We have a time limit of one week from tomorrow. If the situation hasn’t changed, Shogun will withdraw its offer.”

  “I’ll do my best, but I can’t promise anything.”

  Otis smiled and nodded at the Japanese men. We shook hands like pals at a drugstore cowboy reunion and they departed with the interpreter trailing behind.

  The door clicked softly shut and we were alone. Otis eyed me thoughtfully. “I hope you didn’t mind those gentlemen. They asked to sit in on the interview. Since they hold the purse strings, I thought it prudent not to refuse. It was important to show them we were moving on this problem. We can talk more freely now. Do you have any questions?”

  “A few. If the whale didn’t kill the trainer, that narrows down the possibilities considerably. Could the trainer have been killed by accident?”

  “Highly unlikely.”

  “That reduces the number of options even further, Mr. Otis. Are you or your company prepared to accept the possibility of foul play?”

  Otis got up. He walked over to the window with his hands clasped behind his back and stared out at the harbor.

  “We’ve considered the option that the trainer was murdered by another human,” he said as coolly as if he were discussing a stock transfer.

  “Why would anyone want to murder your trainer?”

  “Aside from the usual reasons one has to murder another person, there are those who might like to sabotage the park, the purchase deal, or this company.”

  “You sound as if you have someone specific in mind.”

  “Oh, yes,” he said, turning back to me. “Mr. Shaughnessy and I have discussed some possible suspects. People who have reason to wish Oceanus ill. I suggest you give him a call.”

  “I’ll do that.”

  “We hope there is a far more palatable explanation, but a murdering human is something we could live with better than a murdering whale.” He gave me a wry smile. “It’s an odd world we live in, isn’t it? A whale who murders is a sensation. A human who murders is, as you indicated, yesterday’s headline.”

  “Dead is dead, Mr. Otis. It doesn’t matter to your trainer if the whale killed him or not.”

  “Quite true, Mr. Socarides, quite true. But it matters a great deal to us.”

  * * *

  The big clocks on the Customs House tower told me I had two hours to wait for the bus back to Cape Cod. My stomach growled like a hungry puppy. A breakfast of black coffee is worse than no breakfast at all. I walked away from the harbor toward the narrow streets of the financial district. Minutes later, I turned off Washington Street into an alley no wider than the cowpath it was when Sam Adams organized the Boston Tea Party a few blocks away.

  The Delphi Restaurant was in an old Joe and Nemo’s at the end of the alley. The restaurant walls were decorated with Aegean Island posters and washed-out photographs of club sandwiches. A half-dozen customers sat at Formica tables reading newspapers over their coffee. Standing behind a curtain of hotpot steam was a tall man whose black curly hair rimmed a Mephistophelian face. He was arguing with a little old man who wore a double-breasted three-piece suit and a fedora. He was shouting at the customer, but the mock scowl on his mouth couldn’t hide the amused gleam in his dark eyes.

  He wiped his hands on a greasy apron. “I’ll go over it again, my friend. The salad with the lunch special comes with one kind of dressing. Greek dressing. No French, no Russian, no Thousand Islands. This is a Greek restaurant. You want fancy, you go to Locke-Obers around the corner, but you’ll pay two-ninety-five just for a lousy glass of water.”

  “Skip the salad,” the man grumbled. “What comes with it?”

  “I told you. Vegetables or rice. The vegetable is green peas and onions. Boiled to perfection.”

  “What about the rice?”

  “Yeah, you can have the rice with gravy or the rice with no gravy.”

  “That’s it? That’s all?”

  “Naw. You can have just the gravy with no rice. So take your pick.”

  “I’m picking another restaurant,” the older man snapped. He slammed his tray onto the chrome-plate slider and stormed out the door.

  The counterman laughed and shook his head. Then he spotted me and grinned broadly. He came around the corner, pumped my hand, and put a hairy arm around my shoulder. “Yasou, Cousin Aristotle, what brings you to these parts?”

  “Yasou, Cousin Nicholas. I was in town and heard the Delphi makes the best gravy with no rice in Boston.”

  He gave me an evil grin. “Aw, that guy. He knows damn well what the menu is. Christ, he’s memorized it by heart. He’s an old widow guy, kinda lonely, and a good fight over the daily special makes his day. He’s probably got more money than God, but he walks over here from the backside of Beacon Hill so he can give me a hard time. Counts the beans to make sure I’m not shorting him. Sometimes I leave off the rolls just to get him going. It’s a game we play. He’ll be back. My day wouldn’t be complete if he gave someone else an ulcer. Hey, want some chow? It’s on the house.”

  I grabbed the abandoned tray. “Yeah, I need some Greek so
ul food. It’s tough to get the real thing down in fish-and-chips land. Carve me off a couple of pounds of gyro. And I’ll have a Coke to go with it.”

  “You get the super gyro.” He used a knife that looked like a scimitar to slice thin strips expertly off a tapered hunk of spiced lamb hanging vertically in a heated spit. He placed the meat in a circular loaf of pita bread, first laying in some onions, tomatoes and yogurt dressing. He wrapped the sandwich in waxed paper, set it on a plate, and called a dark-haired kid from the back room and asked him to take over the counter. Then he grabbed a can of Coke Classic and put it with the sandwich on my tray and ushered me to a corner table.

  Nicholas gave me a run-down on his wife and kids. I listened, chewing my way through the gyro.

  “So that’s me, cuz,” he said finally. “How’s the rich branch of the Socarides family doing?”

  “They’re doing just fine. The frozen-pizza business is competitive, but you know my mother. She’s got that hardheaded Cretan stubbornness, so Parthenon Pizzas is thriving. The not-so-rich branch of the Socarides family is still fishing on Cape Cod. I guess I won’t starve to death as long as I’ve got a taste for cod, and relatives in the food business.” I took another bite of gyro. I had to hold the pita bread with two hands. The hot lamb juice trickled down my chin and I wiped it away with a stiff paper napkin. “God, this is delicious, Nick. Glad to see you haven’t lost your touch.”

  “Thanks, cousin. It’s an old family recipe. Speaking of family, it looks like you might be getting some down on the Cape.”

  My mouth was too full to reply. I shook my head.

  “I thought you knew about Uncle Constantine.”

  I gulped down the mouthful. “I knew Aunt Thalia died. She was a real sweetheart. I remember when they came up to visit from Florida years ago. What’s that got to do with me?”

  “Guess you haven’t talked to your mother. Constantine’s got a job on the Cape this summer.”

  “Uncle Constantine?”

  Nick nodded.

  Uncle Constantine’s name brought back a flood of wonderful memories. He was my favorite uncle, a character out of a Kazanzakis novel, bluff and earthy, with a lusty love of life. He had made his living as a sponge diver in Tarpon Springs. Once a year he and my aunt Thalia and my cousins came north to visit my family. I’d be excited for weeks ahead. Constantine would sweep into the house and pick me up with one callused hand. I thought he must be as strong as Hercules, and I probably wasn’t far off the mark. He’d bring me sponges, exotic conch shells, and shark’s teeth off the beaches in Florida. I still had some of them.

  Best of all were his stories. How he’d fought off the hose-like tentacles of the giant octopus who chased him for miles, or escaped from the clutches of a clam big enough to swallow a man. Even then, I knew the tales were embroidered for impact, but there was nothing false about my uncle’s limp, the legacy of the bends that had killed far more sponge divers than any monster of the deep.

  My reaction to Nick’s news was a combination of delight and confusion. “A job? At his age? The only thing he’s ever done is hard-hat sponge diving.”

  He shrugged. “I don’t know the details. I just heard it from Cousin Basil.”

  I looked around for the skinny hunched-over man who usually cleared the tables and swept the floor at the Delphi. “Where’s Basil now?”

  “He went out for an early lunch before the office crowd comes in.”

  “He goes out for lunch?”

  “Yeah, he prefers Thai food. I can’t figure it. Anyhow, he doesn’t know any more about Constantine than I told you. Give your mother a call. I’m sure she’s got all the details. How’s the gyro?”

  I munched down the last of the pita bread and wiped the grease off my hands. “Incredible. Tasted like it came from one of those stands in the Plaka over in Athens where you can hear the bouzouki music coming out of the tavernas. One more bite and I would have started dancing.”

  Nick smiled like someone who was used to praise but never bored by it. It was nearly lunchtime. Customers were coming in, grabbing trays and cutlery and lining up at the counter. Nick’s young assistant worked like a dervish, but the clattering onslaught of hungry office workers was starting to overwhelm him.

  “Got to get back to work, Cousin Aristotle. Manuel looks like he needs a hand.”

  “Who’s Manuel?”

  “Kid behind the counter. He’s a Brazilian. Good worker. Never complains. That’s his mother at the cash register. They don’t speak much English, but that’s okay, I’m teaching them Greek. First time I ever heard anyone speak it with a Portuguese accent, but they’re gonna be talking like they just got off the boat from Pireaus.”

  I got up. “Thanks for the food, Nick. I’ll catch you next time I’m in Boston. Say hello to your family for me.”

  He slid behind the counter. “You bet, Soc. Hey, look who’s back.”

  The elderly man who slammed out of the restaurant earlier grabbed a tray from a stack, set it on the chrome slider, and shuffled forward in line.

  As I walked by he said, “I’ll have the special with Russian dressing.”

  Chapter 4

  The spicy taste of Nick’s super gyro still clung to my mouth when the P&B bus dropped me off at the Burger King around midafternoon. I retrieved my pickup and drove across the Cape toward Hyannis, then swung east on Route 28, passing a tower of pizza, a Chinese restaurant that features black light and hula dancers for the bus tours, past motels, fast-food eateries, and T-shirt shops. Olde Cape Cod it wasn’t.

  The traffic-choked two-lane strip that runs along the Cape’s south shore used to be the worst-case example of greed and apathy on Cape Cod. Pure Coney Island. That was before fake Colonial-style malls began to spread across the Cape like malignant toadstools. Now Route 28’s antique tackiness is almost refreshing by comparison.

  I left the strip at a dolphin-shaped sign with the word OCEANUS printed on it and drove south toward Nantucket Sound. Minutes from Route 28, a similar sign marked an entrance flanked by neatly trimmed shrubs and two jolly-looking concrete whales the size of Buicks. Four people lounged against the sculptures or sat lazily on the grass.

  My arrival galvanized them. They saw me and grabbed signs made of white and colored poster board squares tacked onto lengths of wooden strapping. A goateed man and a young woman came around to my side of the truck. A couple of gray-haired women in identical purple tie-dyed shirts stood at the ready, holding their posters like Crusaders wielding two-edged swords.

  The young woman smiled pleasantly, but her mouth didn’t match the heated intensity of the level gaze behind her large-framed glasses.

  “Sir,” she said politely, “we hope you’re not going to Oceanus.”

  I smiled back. “It was sort of on my mind.”

  “We would urge you not to.”

  The man stepped forward. “There’s no point going inside, friend. The park is closed.”

  “Thanks for the information. I know it’s closed.”

  One of the middle-aged women came around to my window and poked her nose close to mine. “Do you know what Oceanus is?” she said severely.

  “I believe Oceanus is an aquarium, ma’am.”

  The woman’s face turned the color of brick and her mouth twisted into an angry scowl. I felt like a kid who had just given the wrong homework answer to the meanest fourth-grade teacher in school.

  “It is not an aquarium,” she shrilled. “It is a place that keeps living, thinking creatures prisoner against their will in death tanks.”

  “That’s right,” her tie-dyed twin chimed in. “It’s nothing but a whale jail.”

  The two women began to chant, “Whale jail, whale jail.” The others took up the chant and all four of them marched around the pickup, bobbing their posters in rhythm like delegates at a political convention.

  It gave me a chance
to read the posters. Drawn on one in Magic Marker was a skull and crossbones. In place of the eye and nose sockets and teeth was the message WHALES DON’T MURDER. Another poster had a crudely drawn killer whale who stared sadly from behind bars. The message was simple: FREE ROCKY. The remaining posters said AGGRESSION IS A DESIRE TO BE FREE, and more simply, SHAME. Printed in the corner of each poster-board square were the letters SOS.

  “Hey, folks,” I called.

  They ignored me, circling the truck like a band of Apache warriors attacking a wagon train. I raised my voice and tried again. They chanted louder and drowned me out. So I leaned on the pickup’s horn for about ten seconds. That got their attention. They stopped chanting and waited for me to say my piece.

  I hung out the window. “I know you’ve got a job to do. You’ve made your point and I get the message. But I’m just a poor working slob and I’ve got some business to attend to, so I’d appreciate it if you’d step aside.”

  Their belligerence evaporated like morning mist and they stepped back. I put the truck in gear and drove between the concrete whales.

  As I went by, the man smiled and said, “Have a nice day.”

  Then they all took up the chant again.

  “Whale jail, whale jail . . .”

  The driveway widened into a parking lot big enough to hold several hundred cars, but the sea of blacktop was deserted. I parked near the main gate, got out of the pickup, and looked around.

  Oceanus had been gouged out of a pretty estuary. Tall downy marsh grass and cattails bordered the dark banks of a tidal creek that ran toward the sparkling waters of Nantucket Sound, less than a quarter mile away. The air was heavy with the fecund odor of sunbaked mud. I strolled over to the gate.

  The arched gateway was framed by stylized metal sculptures of dolphins and flanked by colorful killer whale totem poles. The gate itself was locked tight. I peered through the steel bars. No one was at the ticket turnstiles. Closed signs hung over the shaded box-office windows. Overhead, blue pennants bearing pictures of killer whales in white circles snapped in the breeze. The only other noise was the occasional clok of a clam dropped onto the blacktop by a gull.