“My guess is the two of you are locked together,” I went on. “Like
rams, with tangled horns. Hoffman can’t move in and destroy
Aruk overnight because you might expose him. But he’s still
able to grind the island down gradually because he’s younger
than you, confident he’ll survive you and eventually have his
way. And I’ll bet controlling Aruk’s important to him on two
levels: the money from the development project,
and
he wants
to erase what he did thirty years ago from his mind.”
“No, no, you’re giving him way too much credit. He’s
got no conscience. He simply wants to exploit for profit.” He
turned around suddenly. “You have no idea what he has in mind for
Aruk.”
“A penal colony like Devil’s Island?”
His mouth stayed open and he managed to work it into
another smile. “Very good. How did you figure it out?”
“He’s in with Stasher-Layman, and in addition to instant
slums they build prisons. Aruk’s location is perfect. The
dregs of society shipped and warehoused far, far away, with
nowhere to escape.”
“Very good,” he repeated. “Very, very good. The bastard
told me the details that night at dinner. He wants to call
it “Paradise Island.’ Clever, eh? But there’s more: the
waters surrounding Aruk will be used to sink other dregs:
barrels of radioactive waste. He’s confident of receiving
environmental clearance because of Aruk’s obscurity and
because once the economy shuts down completely and the
island’s depopulated, there’ll be no one to protest.”
“Nuclear dumpsite,” I said. “Perfect complement to the
prison: toxic water’s another escape deterrent. If Hoffman
pulls it off, he manages to fight crime and pollution on the
mainland and pocket big cash payoffs from Stasher-Layman.
Cute.”
““Cute’ is not an adjective I’d apply to him.”
Different music drifted from the game room. A woman
singing,
This old man, he plays two . . .
“When did you first suspect he was involved?”
“When the Navy started treating us differently. Ewing’s
predecessor was no saint but he was civil. Ewing has the
demeanor of an assassin—did you know he was sent here as
punishment for lewd behavior? Tied a woman down and took
photographs. . . . From the moment I met him, I knew
he’d been sent to punish
Aruk.
And that Hoffman had to be
behind it. Who else even knew about the place? I wrote to him, he
never answered. Then Ben caught Creedman snooping in my
files and I asked Al Landau to do some research. He learned
the skunk had worked for Stasher-Layman and what they were
all about. But I had no idea it was a dumpsite till Hoffman
bragged about it after dinner. Apologizing for not answering,
he’d been
so
busy. Then that same
smile.
”
“Were your letters threatening?” I said.
“Poo! Give me credit, son. I was discreet. Nuances,
not threats.”
“Nuances that he ignored.”
“He said he hadn’t wanted to put anything in writing.
That’s why he’d come personally.”
“Why’d he invite all of us to dinner?”
“For cover. But you notice that he got me alone.
That’s when he boasted and made his offer.”
“To buy you out?”
“At a laughable price. I refused and reminded him of my
little diary.”
“What did he say?”
“He simply smiled.”
“If he’s worried about the diary, why can’t you get him
to stop the project?”
“I—we negotiated. He pointed out that stopping
completely would be impractical. Things have gone too far.
To reverse what’s already been done would call attention to
Aruk.”
“And you agreed to consider it because of the kids.”
“Exactly! Though the bastard thinks it’s my own
lifestyle I don’t want jeopardized.” He grimaced. “You’re
right, he and I are stalemated: he doesn’t want publicity
and neither do I. My only goal is to let my kids live out
their lives in peace—how long do they
really
have?
Five years, maybe six or seven. Hoffman’s project will take years
to complete even under the best of circumstances—you know
the government. So, hopefully, he and I can achieve
some sort of compromise. I’ll sell off token bits of
land to the government, take my time, delay things without
seeming unduly obdurate.”
“The Trading Post, and your other waterfront holdings.”
He nodded. “And the money will be set aside for you two.”
“A compromise,” I said. “As you both let Aruk die.”
He sighed. “Aruk’s been good to me,
but I’m an old man and I know my limitations. Priorities
must be set. What I’ve demanded from Hoffman was to slow
things
down.
”
“Did he agree?”
“He didn’t refuse.”
“The man cold-bloodedly murdered six dozen people. Why
would he give in to you?”
“Because of my insurance.”
“I still don’t understand why, if you can ruin him, you
don’t have more power.”
He scratched the tip of his nose. “I’ve told you
everything, son.”
He reached out to pat my shoulder and I backed away.
“No, I don’t think so,” I said. “When you returned from talking
to him you looked shell-shocked. Not like someone who’d
negotiated a compromise. Hoffman reminded
you
about
something, didn’t he?”
No answer.
“What’s he holding over you, Bill?”
He stepped further into the ramp.
“First things first,” he said. “My offer.”
“First answer my question?”
“These things are irrelevant!”
“Honesty’s irrelevant? Oh, I forgot, the truth is
relative.”
“Truth is
justice
! Getting into irrelevant areas
that bring about injustice is
deceitful
!”
This old man, he plays ten . . .
“All right,” I said. “You’re entitled to your privacy.”
I looked at Robin. She cocked her head very slightly,
toward the cavern.
“Goodbye, Bill.”
He held me back. “Please! Everything in due time!
Please be patient!”
His crinkled chin shook so hard his teeth knocked.
“I’ll tell you everything when the time’s right, but first I
must have your commitment. I believe I’ve earned it! What
I’m offering you would enrich your lives!”
“We
can’t give you an answer just like that.”
He climbed further up the ramp. “Meaning you think I’m
mad and your answer is no.”
“Let’s get back and clear our heads. You, too. Pam
needs to know you’re safe.”
“No, no, this isn’t right, son. Leaving an old man in
the lurch after I’ve . . . flayed my soul open
for you!”
“I’m sorry—”
He clutched my arm. “
Why not just agree?
You’re
young, robust, so many years ahead of you! Think of what you can
do with all that wealth.” His eyes brightened. “Perhaps
you
could figure out a way to save Aruk! Think of the
meaning
that
would bring to your lives! What else
is
there to life but finding some kind of meaning?”
I removed his fingers from my arm. The record in the
game room had caught. The old man playing ten, over and
over . . .
“I was wrong,” he said, behind me. “You’re not the
compassionate boy I thought you were.”
“I’m not a boy,” I said. “And I’m not your son.”
The retort bursting out of me, the same way it had out
of Dennis Laurent.
The look on his face . . . I
felt
like a
bad son.
A maddening man.
Mad or on the brink of it.
“No, you’re not,” he whispered. “Indeed, you’re not.”
Robin took my hand and we both left the ramp. Moreland
watched us, not budging.
After we’d gone a few steps, he turned his back on us.
Robin stopped, tears in her eyes.
“Bill,” she said, just as sound came from the top of the
ramp.
Moreland looked and almost lost his balance.
Another noise—hollow, metallic—came from above,
just as he straightened.
Then rapid, muffled footsteps.
Two figures in black rain slickers barreled down the ramp.
One grabbed Moreland. The other stopped for a fraction of a
second, then came toward us.
Glossy wet slickers, galoshes. All that rubber buffed
brighter by moisture.
Like giant seals.
Anders Haygood splashed water on us as he waved the
automatic.
Chapter
36
His heavy face was calm, the lower half shadowed by stubble.
Wide mouth set, gray eyes as dead as pebbles.
“Against the wall.” Practiced boredom. Ex-cop’s
familiarity with rousting suspects.
He frisked me, then Robin. She gave out a high-pitched
sound of surprise. Not reacting was agonizing.
From where I was standing I could see Tom Creedman with his
grip on Moreland. From the way his fingers hooked, it must
have hurt, but Moreland wasn’t showing it. Staring at
Creedman, as if trying to snag his eyes. Creedman’s face was
rain specked and sweating, his gun jammed against Moreland’s
rib cage.
“The boys from Maryland,” I said. “Off on a South Seas
lark.”
Creedman’s black mustache arced in surprise. Haygood
flipped me around with a surprisingly light touch. His
cleft chin looked rough enough to hone a blade.
I smiled. “Why’d you pull me over, officer?”
A muscle in his cheek jumped.
He put his gun against my heart and chucked Robin’s
chin. His hand dropped lazily onto her chest. Brushing.
Squeezing.
Robin’s eyes closed. Haygood continued to touch her,
studying me.
I looked at Creedman. The water rolling off the top of
his hat and into his eyes. He flinched, and Haygood finally
let go of Robin.
“Never met a cannibal before,” I said. “Who did the
surgery? Or was it both of you?”
“Fuck off,” said Creedman.
Haygood said, “Chill,” but it was unclear who he was
addressing.
Creedman frowned but shut up.
The rain, louder; they’d opened some kind of hatch
aboveground. Found the tunnel with the help of all the doors I’d
had to leave open. The slab sticking out of the
laboratory
floor.
They’d probably climbed down and walked some distance before
figuring out where it led. Unable to broach the webbed door,
they’d retraced their steps, made it over the wall, and come
in from the other end.
The rain blocked out the music from the game room. I
could still hear the nagging drone of the generator.
“The boys from Maryland,” I repeated. “Reporter buys
information from cop on a murder case, gets them both fired.
Reporter finds a job with Stasher-Layman and procures cop a
position there, too. Must be a close friendship.”
Creedman wanted to say something, but a look from Haygood
silenced him. Haygood the pro . . . he kept his gun
steady while examining the cavern with all the passion of a
camera.
“You’ve done lots of cute things for the company,” I said,
“so now you get a sun-and-fun assignment. But does the home
office have any idea you handled it by replicating the murder
that got you into trouble in the first place? Slicing up
women and pretending to
eat
them? Or maybe you
didn’t
pretend. You did say you were a gourmet cook,
Tom.”
“What is this?” said Haygood, “a
bomb shelter or something?”
“If I know about Maryland, don’t you think others do?”
Creedman looked at Haygood.
Haygood continued to inspect the cavern.
“What they don’t know,” I said, “is the part of it
that’s wishful thinking, Tom. Telling me it was a rape-murder
when it wasn’t. A few problems in
the
potency
area?”
Creedman turned red and tightened his grip on Moreland.
Haygood repeated, “A bomb shelter?”
“Japanese supply tunnel,” said Moreland. “My little
sanctuary.”
Keeping his eyes away from the game room.
“What do you have down here?”
“Old furniture, clothes, a few books.”
“Let’s take a look.”
“There’s nothing interesting, Anders.”
“Let’s take a look, anyway.” Haygood waved us forward
with the gun and told Creedman: “Bring him over.”
Creedman poked Moreland and the old man tripped forward.
“You two, out,” said Haygood, when they’d passed. He
looked down the narrow opening and frowned. “Don’t surprise
me, doctor. You go in front, Tom. Anything happens, kill the
girl.”
Creedman didn’t argue. I’d have pegged him as the one
in charge. Class snobbery. Haygood’s police experience gave
him the edge.
I thought back to the day we’d arrived. Haygood on the
dock, butchering the shark with quiet authority.
Haygood and Skip Amalfi.
Was Skip just a cover, allowing Haygood to come across as the
aimless beachbum? All along, Haygood’s attitude toward him
had been a mixture of patience and contempt. Watching,
amused, as Skip peed on the sand. Remaining in the
background as Skip harangued the villagers.
Tolerating him the way you tolerate a dull sibling.
Skip, stupid enough to get sucked into a fantasy of
running a resort. The dream probably planted by Haygood.
Skip peeing in front of women. . . . Had he also
been involved in the cannibal murders? Probably not; too
unstable.
But he
had
served his purpose the night of Betty
Aguilar’s killing: fishing on the docks, as Haygood knew he
did most every night. There to hear Bernardo Rijks’s cries of
alarm, rushing over to subdue Ben.
Haygood and Creedman had murdered both girls. First, AnneMarie
Valdos on the beach, a rehearsal for Betty and setting up
Ben. And the stimulus to local unrest that had justified the
blockade.
Then, Betty in Victory Park—what had they used to
lure her? Dope? Money? One last fling before motherhood?
Cutting her throat and carrying out the mutilation.
Drawing Ben out with a bogus emergency call, then choking him out,
pouring vodka down his throat, and positioning him with the
corpse.
An ex-cop would know how to pull off a perfect choke
hold.
An ex-cop would know about positioning corpses.
The park because it was secluded and a common spot for
partying. And because Rijks the insomniac walked by every
night.
Even if Rijks hadn’t heard the moans, he could have been
led by a night-strolling Creedman. Not as neat, but no
reason for anyone to catch on.
Because Ben came from trash and Betty had been
promiscuous.
Ben lying asleep on the carnage. An absurd alibi.
Skip’s outrage, genuine. Hostile to Moreland because
his father resented the old man, he’d eagerly whipped up the
villagers’ anger.
Framing Ben had killed three birds with one stone:
damaging Moreland irreparably, getting rid of his
protégé, and causing another deep rip in Aruk’s
social fabric.
Hastening the exodus from the island.
Hoffman and Stasher-Layman’s war of attrition.
Perhaps Hoffman had decided to speed things up after coming
face to face with the old man, his stubbornness . . .
Believing Moreland cared about the island, when all he
really wanted was a few years of peace for the
kids.
Moreland willing to do anything to prevent Hoffman from
finding out about the kids. Willing to let Aruk die, buying
time.
The two of them circling like wrestlers, waiting for an
opening.
Still, the same thing bothered me: if Moreland had that
kind of power over Hoffman, why not bargain harder?
Creedman stepped in front of me. “Stay back.” The thin
mustache was beaded with perspiration.
“Sure, Tom. But when this is over, share some gourmet
recipes with me. How about
girl
bourguignon?”
Creedman’s nostrils opened. From behind, Haygood
cleared his throat and Creedman grabbed Moreland and cuffed
him through the passage. Then he turned sideways and
squeezed in himself. When he was several paces ahead of us,
Haygood cupped Robin’s buttock, squeezed, and
shoved.
“Go, babe.”
Then the heel of his hand hit me in the lower back.
We filed out. When the passage widened, Creedman
stopped and Haygood herded us into the center. The dead eyes
shifted as he heard something.
Music from the game room. The broken record removed.
Something new asserting itself above the generator.
The wheels on the bus go round and
round . . .
“What the . . . ?” said Creedman.
The game room was less than thirty feet away, the door
partially open.
Haygood said, “What’s with the music?”
“I like music,” said Moreland. “As I said, it’s my
refuge.”
“Kiddie music?” said Creedman. “You
are
one buggy
old fart.” His eyes brightened: “Do you bring little girls down
here to play?”
Moreland blinked. “Hardly.”
“Hardly,”
Creedman imitated. “Maybe you bring kiddies
down here to play
doctor.
”
The doors on the bus go open and
shut . . .
“Projection,” said Moreland.
“What’s that?”
“A Freudian term. Projecting one’s own impulses onto
someone else. That’s what you just did, Tom.”
“Oh, fuck off, you self-righteous bag of shit.” To us:
“Bet you didn’t know Dr.
Bill
here was once the ace
pussy-hound of the U.S. Navy. Big-time stud,
chased everything in a skirt, the younger the better.
Remember those days, Dr.
Bill
? Chasing and bagging, dark
meat, light meat,
any
kind of meat? Just couldn’t control
your pecker, could you? Drove poor
Mrs.
Bill to one-way
surfing.”
Moreland said nothing, did nothing. That blank
look . . .
“Turned herself to shark chum,” said Creedman, “because
Dr.
Bill
here couldn’t stop playing doctor with the local pussy.
Nice advantage, that M.D. Knock some little thing
up, do your own abortion—”
“Unlike you,” I said. “Assault with a dead weapon.”
Creedman snarled. Haygood clicked his tongue and said,
“Check out all these doors.”
“Maybe
you
should,” said Creedman. “You’re the
expert.”
Haygood shrugged and pushed Robin, Moreland, and me
close together. Backing away, he said, “Not the stomach, the
head,” and Creedman raised his gun till it was half a foot
from Robin’s right eye.
“Any problems,” he said, “I want to see her brains on
the wall.”
He stepped back some more, pausing a few feet from the
entrance to the latrine, then flattening himself against the
wall the way cops do and inching toward the opening, gun
first.
Waiting. Looking back at us. Waiting some more.
He peeked in. Took a long, slow look.
The broad face puzzled.
Moving to the next door, just as carefully.
“Wait,” I said. “It’s rigged—that door and the
others. He’s got it booby-trapped.”
Haygood turned.
“He
is
nuts,” I said. “Stockpiling food and
clothes and survival gear, preparing for the end of the world. I’d let
you blow yourself up, but he’s rigged enough explosives to
turn us all into soup.”
“That so?” said Haygood.
“Tell him, Bill.”
“Nonsense,” said Moreland. “Utter nonsense.”
Haygood thought a while. “What doors are you saying are
rigged?”
“That one for sure,” I said. “The room where the
music’s coming from has a package of dynamite hooked up to
the record player. The cable runs into another room.
Connected to a generator—listen.”
The drone.
“He’s got it set up so if the record arm’s lifted, boom.
There are probably other traps, too, but that’s the one he
showed
us.”
“Ridiculous,” said Moreland. “Go take a look, Anders.”
“How about
you
go in there,” Haygood told him.
“Turn off the music while I watch you.”
Moreland blinked. “I’d rather not.”
“Why not?”
“Because it’s silly,” said Moreland.
“Come over here,” said Haygood.
Moreland ignored him.
“Come over here,
piss
ant.”
Moreland closed his eyes and moved his lips silently.
Creedman took hold of his shirt and yanked him forward.
“Move, you crazy asshole!”
Moreland passed within Haygood’s reach and Haygood got
behind him.
“Go,” he said, shoving the old man.
Moreland stumbled and stopped. “I’d rather not.”
“Go or I’ll kill you, sir.”
“I’d rather—”
“Okay,” said Haygood, smiling at me. “Thanks for the
tip, doc. What else should we know about?”
“I wish I knew.”
The driver on the bus says, “Move on
back . . .”
“Fucking maniac,” said Creedman. “Let’s shoot all of
them right now and get the hell out of here, Anders.”
“I don’t think so,” said Haygood.
Ordered by his bosses to keep Moreland alive. Till the
insurance policy was found. . . . Hoffman going along
with the stalemate for thirty years, willing to wait a while
longer.
Thirty years of silence from Moreland had convinced him
the paradise needle had been forgotten. So he’d felt safe
in refocusing his energies on Aruk. Wanting to destroy the
island, depopulate it, rebuild it in his own image.
Moreland claimed it was simply greed, but I doubted it.
I visualized Hoffman at a D.C. power lunch with the
brothers from Stasher-Layman. “Soft money” changing hands, a
discussion of potential sites for a multibillion-dollar
project, with Hoffman getting a chunk of the profits.
Storing human garbage along with plutonium and cobalt
and strontium.
The need for an isolated spot. A remote place with no
political constituency.
Hoffman smiling and coming up with one.
Finding out that Moreland still lived on Aruk, but that
the doctor was unable or unwilling to reverse
the island’s economic problems. The population sliding, the
welfare checks coming in regularly; what little commerce
there was, dependent upon the Navy base.
Send in the advance team: Creedman, Haygood, the
Pickers. Probably others. The goal: hasten the decline and
isolate Moreland so that the old man would sell out cheap.
Then Moreland starts writing letters, and the team’s
told to speed things up.