The Maine Massacre

14

"But that's not the firm we are trying to locate," the commissaris said, stooping to read the clumsily written sign hanging askew just inside the entrance of the long dark corridor: SYMONS TOY AND NOVELTY COMPANY, IMPORT AND EXPORT. "This is some wholesale company. Ah, here we are." He adjusted his glasses and peered at the business card that had been fastened to the sign's corner with two thumbtacks: BOSTON BETTER HOLDING, JAMES D. SYMONS, PRESIDENT. "SO we did come to the right address after all." He straightened up. "Symons. Same name, must be the same man. A versatile businessman, our Mr. Symons. But to judge from the sign his wholesale business must be the more important of the two. Amazing. Let's become acquainted with him."

A dirty bulb further along the corridor seemed to be the ramshackle building's only illumination. The commissaris limped ahead slowly, tapping the cracked floor with his cane.

They climbed a flight of stairs and faced a door that had been painted pink a long time ago. The commissaris knocked.

"Welcome, gentlemen. The door is open."

The voice was gravelly, and the words teetered off into a squeaky cough.

They went in. There were shelves and tables loaded with cartons. Part of the floor had been used for a display of miniature electric trains, but two locomotives had hit each other head-on and a disorderly heap of railway carriages was garnering dust between a tin station and a mountain over-grown with faded plastic evergreens. A torn mask, presiding over a row of other smaller masks, stared at them from the rear wall. They all depicted the same old female face, toothless, pimpled, wrinkled. The faces were green, the string wigs orange. They smiled from drooling, wormlike lips and the eyes, made of cut glass, were glittering with insane delight.

De Gier stopped and studied the array.

"Yes, gentlemen? The masks are of interest, are they? I only have the one model left, in various sizes, and as I can't offer a selection I will discount them, of course. But I think I should start off by showing you my new items. This box, for instance, a most profitable proposition, and there will be immediate delivery for limited quantities."

The commissaris and de Gier turned to face Mr. Symons. They saw a fairly young and fairly well-dressed man with red-rimmed eyes. He had walked across the room so that the masks stared over his shoulders and his own face became part of the display of demented creativity.

"Look at this box, gentlemen. Here, let me open it. What do you see? Little plastic building blocks, nothing new, Germany has been marketing them for years, good steady line, the kiddies love it, and at every Christmas and birthday party everybody in the family gives the little dears additional boxes so that the wunderkinder can build bigger cranes and tractors and trucks and what have you. Bread and butter line, right? But expensive and not too much margin. The Krauts have patented the stuff and they can call the cards. A-ha! But this box doesn't come from Germany, gentlemen, it comes from Taiwan, and the price is half of what you are used to paying. You've been happy to pay the German prices so far, so how happy will you be when you pay the Taiwan prices that are half of what the Krauts have been daring to ask? How happy will you be? I ask again, and the answer comes to mind immediately. You will be doubly happy. A moneymaker, gentlemen, sell it for ten percent less than the German stuff and it will shoot across the counter. And the quality is excellent. Beautiful stuff, gentlemen, I've a thousand boxes in stock and mote on the way, delivery early next year. Well? What do you say, gentlemen?"

"Interesting, Mr. Symons," the commissaris said, "but you must be mistaking us for somebody else."

Symons smiled politely. "Yes? You aren't from the Total Toys chain stores?" He checked his watch. 'Ten o'clock, they said they would be here at ten-thirty. I thought you had come early. Never mind, gentlemen, you can buy my Taiwan boxes too. I'm not reserving them for anybody special, first come first served."

"No, Mr. Symons. We are not in the toy business."

Symons' smile hardened, then disappeared. "No? You wouldn't want to sell me anything, would you? I'm not buying these days, I'm clearing my stocks for a while. The times are hard, gentlemen, and the competition is tough and capital-need I mention capital?-is scarce."

"The Boston Better Holdings Company," the commissaris said. "We've come to see that company, and you are its president I believe."

Symons walked to the back of the room and sat down under a tattered wire mobile dangling small cardboard hands from its rusted extremities. The hands had long, bent fingernails and pointed in different directions as the draft in the room moved the mobile. Symons waved at two low chairs. "Sit down, gentlemen. That company has been so dormant for so long that I had almost forgotten its existence, but it's true that I am its honored president. What would be your interest? The company owns this building and pays me a flimsy wage for serving as its janitor. You wouldn't want to buy the building, would you? That would be good news indeed. Do the insurance companies want to build another sky-poker? Can I tell my shareholders that fortune is smiling at last?"

"No, sir. We are not after Boston property. We are after a property called Cape Orca on the Maine coast."

Symons shook his head. "Tell me another, sir. Nobody knows where Cape Orca is. I know where Cape Orca is, but I am a most exceptional man, widely read and widely traveled. You would be a foreigner, sir, am I right?"

"From Amsterdam, the Netherlands."

"Exactly, so how would you have come across Cape Orca, a little splinter of the large solid block that is die U, S, and A?"

"I will tell you," the commissaris said. "My sister owns a house and some land on Cape Orca. Her husband died recently, and she asked me to come out and liquidate her estate. It so happens that I am interested in her property myself, as an investment. I have some surplus capital in the Netherlands, waiting to be invested in a country where taxes are still payable. I like Cape Orca-I think it could be developed profitably-but I want more than just my sister's few acres. I walked around the cape a bit and noticed that there are some empty houses, some of them wrecked and burned. If I buy I would buy the whole strip. The town clerk was good enough to inform me that the properties were registered in the name of a Mr. Astrinsky, but Mr. Astrinsky wasn't around when I went to look for him. He is traveling I believe. But yesterday morning I ran into the Jameson town clerk again and he told me that he had just found out that your company now owns the properties. And as I had some business in Boston anyway I thought I might see you. The shore strip would be for sale, wouldn't it?"

Mr. Symons had been listening while he played with the contents of the Taiwan box. He had also opened and closed the drawer of his desk a few times.

"Yes," he said. "I see. Well… How about a small drink to start the day properly, gentlemen? You are talking big business, and I always find that a small drink heightens my powers of perception. Some fine whiskey perhaps? I happen to have a bottle on tap and if you reach out to that shelf on your right you'll find three clean glasses."

"Surely!" the commissaris said. "That would be a splendid idea indeed, sir."

"But it'll have to be a small one. I'll have those sharpies from Total Toys here in a minute and I really must convert my junk into greenbacks. It'll be a miracle, but miracles have come my way before, the Lord is good and must be blessed from time to time, although a good kick into his divine ass can be recommended too sometimes. One of my pet theories, it has a lot of details and twists and turns, but we don't have the time to discuss it fully now. Here we are, gentlemen, three of the best, your very good health!"

"Now," Symons said a few seconds later. "Now, about Cape Orca. It so happens that the shareholders of Boston Better Holdings did discuss their interest in Cape Orca recently. They have been holding the land for a while now, but I only sent in the deeds a few days ago, for registration. The properties were bought for development, of course, but the shareholders are old, and hard to prod into activity. That's why nothing has been done. Now if you were willing to pay a price…"

"Yes," the commissaris said, "the price. What would be the price?"

Symons held up a hand with three rings, each with a different-colored stone. The hand dropped by its own weight, grabbed the bottle on its way, and poured a little more whiskey into its owner's glass.

"Of, course. You need to know a price. But I have no price, not today. There are several shareholders, and I'll have to round them up and make them talk sense. The effort will take time. You have some time, sir?"

"A few days."

"And where can I reach you?"

"In Cape Orca. I am going back to my sister's house this afternoon. She has a telephone."

Symons got up. "Very well, sir. Let me write the number and your name down and you'll hear from me. Within a few days, no doubt about that."

"Another front, sir," the sergeant said as they walked back to the hotel.

"Yes, sergeant. If he hadn't been drinking he would have betrayed himself easily, but the alcohol kept his mind steady and made him come up with a good enough answer. He'll be telephoning Astrinsky now, trying to find out who we are. And Astrinsky will tell him. Symons won't be over-worried. On the contrary, he might be pleased. Our visit may have given him an opportunity for blackmail. Symons knows who the real owner is behind Cape Orca. He may be able to charge money for keeping the name a secret."

"We can find out, sir. There'll be a chamber of commerce here. Boston Better Holdings will be registered, and the name or names of its owners should be on file."

It took a while to find the chamber of commerce, and it took longer for the clerk to give them the required file. De Gier and the commissaris both smiled at the same time. "Bahama Better Holdings Company," the commissaris read. "How's that, sergeant? Do you want to fly to the Bahamas?"

"And find another company behind that one, sir?"

"Very likely. But there will be an end to the maze, sergeant. If we keep at it we'll find our way out."

"The Bahamas are British I believe, sir, or independent by now. It might be a bit of a job to trace the shareholders. We might telephone the Dutch consul on the islands."

"No, sergeant. If we do that we have to go through Amsterdam headquarters, and the chief constable isn't even aware that we are involved in an investigation. We should also remember that our boss is the sheriff of Woodcock County, Maine, USA. The investigation isn't ours at all. We are free-lance detectives employed by the Jameson sheriff's department."

De Gier grinned. "Are we, sir?"

"Of course."

"But your sister wants the right price for her house, sir."

The commissaris' voice dropped to a hissing whisper. "Really, sergeant. That's private business. If the sheriff had shown no interest in Cape Orca I would have advised Suzanne to take her thirty thousand and get out while the going is good. But it so happens that the sheriff is interested and we can bring him some positive information now. Astrinsky is shaken and Boston Better Holdings is a front. That Mr. Symons is a bad egg, not a very bad egg though. He is too weak to be evil. Just rotten. Yes, I think we can advise the sheriff to push a little further."

"Where do you think Astrinsky stands, sir?"

The commissaris waved his cane. "Astrinsky? Either a middleman or a true criminal. I would think that he is a middleman. I can't understand yet why Astrinsky consented to play the game in the first place. He isn't courageous by any means. I wonder what the connection between Astrinsky and the wanted party is. Just greed?"

"Half the people I have arrested were breaking the law to make money, sir."

"Yes, sergeant. But the desire to make money is a symptom of all sorts of emotional disturbances-greed is only one of them. Mr. Astrinsky, yes, hmmm… I would like to think that his part in the game is a little more complicated than it seems to us now. Not just greed. I would be disappointed if we uncovered nothing else. The stories his daughter told you are fascinating. She should be an unusual girl. And if that assumption is true, her father might have more depth than we have given him credit for."

They had to cross the park again to reach the hotel, and the commissaris walked slowly, stopping every now and then to study the trees. Most trees were adorned with small name plates, and the commissaris mumbled the Latin words, following the English classifications. Three men with long black beards sheltered under an impressive oak. They eyeballed the commissaris solemnly and greeted him by holding up three identical flat, unlabeled bottles.

"One, two, /top!" the tallest man said, and the three bottles pierced the three beards.

De Gier nudged the commissaris' arm. "Let's go, sir. When they have swallowed that they'll be looking for trouble."

The commissaris quickened his step. "No more trouble, sergeant, no more than is strictly due to us. You're right."

But they ran into a little more trouble before the day was over. There were other passengers on the plane to Jameson: several hunters and Michael Astrinsky. Astrinsky raised a hand when he boarded but made no effort to start a conversation. The commissaris dozed and de Gier smoked and looked out the window. Nothing but clouds, nothing happened, they didn't even hit any air pockets.

When the plane landed the cruiser was waiting. The sheriff didn't smile when the commissaris limped up to him.

"Good to see you, sir. I was waiting for you. I've just come back from the scene of a crime. Bob and Bert are still there. I think I'll have to call in die state police for sure now. Bernie got himself shot in the head this morning, on a road that goes nowhere, north of Cape Orca. His head is almost off. The weapon was a shotgun, fired from close quarters. Perhaps you'd like to have a look at his corpse before I sound the alarm and call in the supercops. You might see something we've missed."