Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 44, No. 7 & 8, July/August 1999

A Terrible Storm by William T. Lowe

I broke my ankle the week before the Great Ice Storm, but I did what I could during the emergency. With a cast halfway up to my knee I couldn’t handle a chain saw or drive a truck or run a back-hoe, so I worked in the shelter the fire department had set up in the Fountain Town Hall.

As people were driven out of their houses by the storm, they were brought to the shelter; we assigned them cots and issued blankets. The women’s auxiliary kept the kitchen open day and night. Since I used to be a deputy sheriff, I know most of the people on this side of the county, and I kept a log of names so relatives could find each other.

It snowed on Sunday, and a heavy freezing rain began on Monday. In hours everything was coated with ice. Twigs as small as pencils were encased in three inches of ice. Mature trees splintered and fell under tons of weight. In less than a day power lines were down, phones were out, roads were blocked from the Adirondacks far into Canada. There was a continuous barrage of noise — limbs tearing away from trunks and crashing into ice-coated underbrush.

By Tuesday the shelter was pretty well organized. The fire department had hooked up some generators to provide light. The Red Cross sent in cots and blankets and bottled water. Without electricity, grocery stores had no refrigeration; they donated meat and produce and milk.

Fountain was dark and deserted. Schools were closed. The only traffic was work crews. The hardware store had been open but was out of batteries, flashlights, any kind of heaters. The Mobil station pumped gas with a standby generator until the underground tank ran dry. We had already had four inches of freezing rain.

Everybody knew what had to be done. Clear the roads so repair crews could reach downed power lines. Check the houses, transport people to the shelter. Watch for wires on the ground, stay clear of overhead branches. The fire department, the ambulance squad, the highway crews all worked double and triple shifts.

The Town Hall had a basketball court — that was where we set up some eighty cots. I slept that night in the clothes I had on, my cane and some aspirin for my ankle at hand. The rumble of generators outside and snoring and coughing inside didn’t keep me awake.

Like the other small mountain towns we were isolated, but we were in good shape. We had radio contact with the police and hospitals; we had bottled water, kerosene, and the promise of oxygen tanks tomorrow. The radio said the storm was not about to let up, but we were too tired to worry about it.

On the second day I logged in more people, those who had decided against staying at home without heat or lights or a telephone. Someone brought in games and puzzles for the children. The women gravitated to the kitchen.

A Mrs. Julie Allen brought me a cup of coffee at my desk by the door and handed me a letter.

“Mr. Sessions,” she said, “the Post Office is closed, and this letter can’t go out. What can I do?”

I explained that because we were now a federal disaster area the mail trucks were not running. I put the letter in my pocket. “I’ll mail it for you the first chance I get.”

“Thank you, Mr. Sessions.” She remembered something. “Oh, there’s a check in it. It really should go registered, and I left home without my purse...”

“Don’t worry. You can pay me back later.” She thanked me again and headed for the kitchen. Before I put the letter in my pocket, I glanced at the address. Reverend Daniel Fisher, Church of the Sacred Word, a post office box in Orlando, Florida.

Mrs. Allen must have spread the word that I would be a substitute mail drop. That afternoon another lady asked me to mail a letter. It was addressed to the same Reverend Fisher in Orlando.

I was busy; I forgot about it. The shelter was also headquarters for the relief effort. Work crews came and went, clearing downed trees and utility poles. One crew went through town pumping out flooded basements. As soon as Route 9 going south was open, the power company began trucking in tons of dry ice to be distributed here and in other small towns to people who wanted to maintain their home freezers.

The freezing rain continued, coating everything except workmen’s faces and the warm hoods of trucks. Now there was the threat of flooding along the river. Volunteers began showing up from all over the county, asking what they could do to help. I paired them up with local crews.

“Are you sure we can’t rent a car or something to get outa here?”

It was the man who called himself Charlie Silva. A road crew had found him and a companion stranded on Route 22 yesterday and had brought them in.

“No, Charlie, I’m afraid you’re stuck here. Everything is grounded except emergency vehicles.”

“Okay, okay,” he said apologetically. “Just askin’.”

“Don’t worry about your car,” I told him. “It’s safe enough for now.” The car was on a side road off the highway, and it would stay there because a thirty foot oak burdened by a ton of ice had fallen directly in front of it.

Silva was short, mid-twenties, black hair, dressed in sports clothes. He struck me as the type who would spend a lot of time on street corners and know a lot of baseball and football statistics. His girlfriend was named Elaine Hagen. She was younger, medium blonde, with the neat manner and dress of a salesclerk. When I checked them in, Charlie told me they were from Garden City on Long Island and had been visiting in Montreal.

The next day Charlie had another question. “Who can I sue for letting that tree fall on me?”

“Why, nobody. It was an accident. And you didn’t get hurt.”

“We were both scared. That’s mental anguish. Somebody must own that property. Somebody I can sue. I think we got a case here.”

“No, you don’t,” I said. “Forget it.”

He shook his head and turned away. Clearly I didn’t understand the fine points of big city law.

Elaine Hagen helped out in the kitchen and gave some tired mothers a break by playing with their children. She was an attractive girl, but two things made me suspicious.

When she and Charlie Silva arrived at the shelter, Elaine was carrying a large cardboard box. She kept it with her everywhere she went. And she was on her way home from Canada.

There is a growing market for illegal copies of movie videos, music discs, and other copyrighted items. Most of the pirated merchandise comes across the Pacific and spreads east from California. It’s sold on the street and in bars for a quarter of the legitimate price. Recently some of the blackmarket material has been smuggled down from Canada.

Five dozen knockoffs of an Oscar-winning movie or a chart-topping music single would fit into a large cardboard box.

I’d been watching for a National Guard truck with a load of generators to be delivered to some dairy farms several miles out of town and had a vehicle standing by to show them the way. A young man named Jerry who used to be in my Scout troop would drive me. When the truck arrived, I hobbled out to the car.

I’d been indoors for a day and a half; I wasn’t prepared for what hit me as we drove through the dark and deserted town into the countryside.

Huge trees, their branches gone, standing like grotesque sentinels. Young birch and alders bent double, their top branches ice-locked in the ground. Frozen underbrush shattering like glass as branches fell from trees. The strong smell of pine and cedar in the air like an invisible, cloying fog.

The Guard truck followed closely as we drove around piles of debris, watching for downed power and phone wires. I wanted to go faster; I knew the people on the dairy farms needed those generators desperately.

Without power for the pumps, the cattle couldn’t be watered. Nor could they be milked on schedule as they should be. Without these elementary attentions the cows would sicken and die. The generators would save many animals, but the storm would take a terrible toll.

“Show me where they picked up that city couple,” I said to Jerry on our way back. “I’m just curious.”

Charlie Silva’s car was a late model blue Pontiac sedan. It was on a short lane that led to an old barn, and it was blocked by a large fallen oak tree. “Pull over, Jerry,” I said. “Take a look inside.”

Jerry climbed over the tree and circled the car. “Nothing,” he reported. “Doors locked, trunk locked. Nothing showing inside, not even a road map.”

He got back in the car. “That guy is sure in a hurry to get out of here,” Jerry commented. “He’s going around offering fifty bucks to anyone with a saw to cut up that tree so he can get his car out.”

On the way back I wondered why Silva had pulled off the main road in the first place, and on a lane that led only to an old barn.

By nightfall the phone company had patched a line into the Town Hall, and I used the phone to call a friend of mine at state police headquarters in Ray Brook. I had made a note of the license number of the Silva car, and I asked him to check it for me.

“You don’t think we got enough to do?” he growled. “This storm’s got us out straight, Hank.”

But he did check the number. The blue Pontiac wasn’t stolen. Neither was it registered to a Charles Silva of Garden City, Long Island.

I added the names of two old friends to my shelter roster, Courtney Smith and his wife Gloria. Limbs had blocked Court’s driveway, and he had run out of fuel trying to saw them up. A big tree had fallen across the roof of the kitchen. And with no electricity for the heat tapes, the water pipes in his house and barn were freezing.

“The least of my problems, Hank,” he said.

I knew what he meant. I helped them get settled and left them alone. They sat by themselves, talking quietly. The Smiths owned a hundred acres of maple trees; their livelihood was sugaring. They’d been counting on the syrup to send their two girls to college.

They had to watch helplessly as the weight of the ice destroyed tree after tree. Eight out of ten of their maples had been ruined, and the relentless storm continued through the night and the next three days.

My contact had said the blue Pontiac was owned by a Frank Gratto in Hempstead, Long Island. Hempstead is not far from Garden City. Casually I asked Elaine if she knew anybody named Frank Gratto.

“Sure,” she answered. “That’s Charlie’s uncle. He gave us this trip to Montreal. He wanted Charlie to bring his car back for him, so we flew up and Uncle Frank paid for the tickets.”

So Charlie was just doing a favor for an uncle who lived on Long Island but left his car in Montreal. An uncle who was suspected of racketeering and had three arrests for unlawful possession of a controlled substance.

Some people who had canned food and bottled water and firewood decided to ride out the storm at home. For a few it was an adventure, for others a tragedy.

In spite of the warnings, people used kerosene heaters in closed rooms; they put gasoline-powered generators in basements or on closed porches. Reports of carbon monoxide poisoning came from all over. The first signs of poisoning, headaches and nausea, were usually ignored until it was too late.

Ted Rosenbaum, another friend of mine, was in charge of our evacuation detail. He had a crew going from door to door, to make sure any people at home were safe and to deliver food supplies. A large room at the rear of the building was operations center. Long tables were covered with raingear, battery radios, ice scrapers. Cigarette smoke layered the high ceiling.

Ted had a table against a wall and a tax list he had scrounged from the clerk’s office. As I walked up, two men had just come in from outside, stamping the slush from their boots, shrugging out of their black raincoats.

“We hit every house on Grove Street,” one of them told Ted. “And Separator Street is clear except for that old man at the end by the river. Want us to try him again?”

Ted shook his head. “You guys get something to eat. There’s some mighty good stew today.” He pointed at his map. “Then circle through the Jersey section in the morning.” The men headed down the hall to the cafeteria. Ted looked at me. “That’s old Caleb McCullen down by the river. You know him, don’t you, Hank?”

“I know him. As stubborn as they come.”

“Lives there alone, doesn’t he?”

“Not quite alone,” I said.

Ted was tracing the river on his map.

“There’s an ice jam downstream here.” He pointed. “The river keeps on coming up, nobody will get in there tomorrow.” He looked up at me. “You want to take a ride?”

I had my cap in a back pocket. I put it on and picked up one of the raincoats. “Let’s go,” I said. I wagged my cane. “You drive.”

Ted had the keys to a four-wheel drive vehicle; we headed out of town toward the river. We passed a power company bucket truck and digger. The crew was installing a new service pole. I had heard that over a thousand utility poles were already down in the northern part of the county. Giant steel transmission towers had toppled over near the Canadian border.

Behind us we could hear chain saws snarling as we inched our way down Separator Street, named before the Civil War when the iron mines on Palmer Hill and the smelters by the river were working. The snap of limbs breaking and crashing on the underbrush sounded like small arms fire. Larger branches, weighted beyond endurance by the ice, broke away with an angry loud crack.

“Sounds like a mortar,” Ted said.

“Yeah.” I wondered where Ted had heard mortar fire. I’d have to ask him sometime.

The air was heavy with the scent of pine and cedar. The ground was thick with needles and twigs and small branches. I hope we don’t have a dry summer, I thought; this will be tinder for a heck of a fire.

Caleb McCullen lived in an old trailer on the bank of the river. To reach it we drove down a dirt lane that dropped down from the paved road. Ted stopped the car, and we looked at the river, already out of its bank and foaming whitely in the dim light.

“That water keeps comin’ up, it’ll take out this road by morning,” Ted said. “You better talk that old man into comin’ out with us now.”

A yellow light shone from a small window. I knocked on the door, heard a voice inside, and walked in, Ted behind me. Caleb stood in the center of the room, a bent old man who looked closer to ninety than seventy. A woodstove in a corner threw some heat, but it was cold in the room. An oil lamp on a table was the only light.

Caleb looked at us in alarm, but his expression softened as he recognized me. “How do, Henry,” he said almost formally.

“You’re welcome to come in and set, Henry,” Caleb said to me, “but I know why you’re here and I’ll tell you like I told those people yestiddy...” He straightened as much as his back would allow. “I ain’t goin’ to leave my place here, no, sir!”

I knew he was stubborn, and I wasn’t about to argue with him. “That’s all right, Caleb,” I said pleasantly. “You can stay here if you want to. I came to fetch Chester.”

“Chester?” He looked at me in surprise. “What do you want with him?”

Chester was Caleb’s dog, a little cocker spaniel, the only thing in the world the old man had to love, and to be loved by. I made a show of searching around the room, looking behind the only armchair, under the skirt of the table.

“I’m not going to see Chester maybe drown or starve to death,” I said over my shoulder. “Now, where is he?”

I saw Caleb’s eyes go toward the woodbox by the stove. As I crossed the room, Caleb moved to stop me.

“You can’t take him, Henry! You got no right!”

“Yes, I do, Caleb. I’m still an officer of the law, you know. I won’t stand by and see a crime committed. I’m taking your dog to the shelter in town where he’ll be safe. You can stay here if you want to.”

The little dog was in a box behind the stove. Its hind legs were withered sticks, the result of a long-ago accident. Caleb had found the dog beside the road minutes after a car had run over his hindquarters, crushing his legs. Caleb had cared for the dog, and later he fashioned a two-wheel cart and harness with which the dog could pull himself around.

I stooped to pick Chester up. “Find me a blanket to wrap him in,” I said.

Caleb stopped me with a hand on my shoulder.

“Wait, Henry! They told me I couldn’t keep him with me in town,” Caleb said, his voice ragged with panic. “He’s all I got, Henry, you know that!” His voice cracked. “He needs me!”

“I know, Caleb.” I touched his shoulder. “Listen to me. They were wrong. You can keep him with you at the shelter.” From close by outside I heard the snap and crash of another tree falling. From the door Ted said, “We best be going, Hank.”

Caleb straightened up, the little dog in his arms. “Do I have your word on that, Henry?”

“You do. Now, let’s go before the river takes out your road here.”

“All right then.” Caleb put on an old overcoat and wrapped Chester in a wool sweater. He handed me the little cart and harness. To Ted, standing by the door, he said, “We’re ready, sir.” To me he said, “We thank you, Henry.”

When we got back, I had a message to call Sergeant Early in Ray Brook. I had to wait for the phone. There was only one line, and people in the shelter were using it to contact relatives on the outside, but I finally got him.

“You still got that ’94 Pontiac out there in the boonies? The one the city boy was driving?”

“Yes, Vern, it’s still here.”

“Keep your eyes on it.” He paused. “I can’t tell you much, buddy, but Customs and BCI picked up on the description and the plate of that car. I don’t know why they’re interested, but they are. I told them it was over there in Fountain and you had seen it, all right?”

“Sure. It won’t go anywhere; it’s blocked by a big tree.”

“Don’t do anything to get the guy suspicious. We’ll get back to you.” And he hung up.

As I walked down the hall to the kitchen, the ceiling light came on. I didn’t realize what had happened until I heard people cheering all over the building. We had fight! The electric company had restored service to this part of town.

We were still prisoners of the storm, but part of our sentence had been lifted.

By noon the next day I had been entrusted with four more envelopes addressed to a Reverend Daniel Fisher in Orlando. I was suspicious. I recalled the mail scams I’d heard of — you have won a fabulous prize, an uncle you never heard of left you some priceless real estate, all you have to do is send us your life savings.

What did I know about the people who had written the letters? They were all elderly, the ideal targets for a mail fraud, all members of Saint Agnes Church in town. Not much to go on, but my friend Ted was also a member of Saint Agnes.

“You happen to get a letter from a Reverend Fisher down in Florida?” I asked Ted over coffee.

“Yeah. Felt sorry for that old missionary he wrote about. Dying of cancer like that. I was going to send a few bucks, but I got busy.”

I tried to be casual. “Something about needing an operation, wasn’t it?”

“Yeah. Big medical bills. The old man was booked into Sloan-Kettering for an operation but needed payment in advance. Plus airfare.”

“Reverend Fisher’s church is in Orlando, right?”

“He said it was a small church. Just getting started. Not in the official register yet.”

I didn’t say anything. Of course it wouldn’t be fisted.

Dolls. The box Elaine was so careful of contained a dozen or so new dolls. I happened to walk through the dining room as she was showing them to a circle of delighted children and parents. The dolls were cute little figures of animals and people, soft plush bodies and endearing expressions.

“You’ve got your Barbies and your Kens,” Elaine was saying, “and your Barneys and Cabbage Patch Kids and your Elmos, but now—” she held up two of the dolls “—here’s the new thing in dolls, the new collectible... the Beanie Baby!”

She handed one to me. It was a little fox about ten inches long, brown and white with little button eyes. A heart-shaped tag in the one ear said his name was Sly, and there was a little poem about him.

“They don’t talk or snore or dress up,” Elaine told the mothers. “They just cuddle, and they’re inexpensive enough so you can have lots of them. There’s Dotty the Dalmatian and Mel the Otter and Stinky the Skunk and Percy the Goose...”

The Beanie Babies were trade-marked. Their popularity made them obvious targets for illegal imitating, and it would take an expert to tell whether these were genuine. I asked Elaine what she planned to do with the dolls.

“They’re for display in the shop where I work,” she told me. “Then I’ll use them for birthday presents.” She smiled. “Don’t worry, Mr. Sessions, I know about trademark infringement; I wouldn’t sell bootleg stuff.”

I was getting worried about the people in the shelter. They were getting restless, and it was depressing to realize that the cleanup after the storm would take months. Men worked outside if they were able. Women kept the kitchen open, improvised a laundry, fretted about the homes they’d had to leave.

All of us were afraid the ice sheet would ruin the spring alfalfa crop. Eight miles of transmission lines were still down just north of here. There were more reports of flooding. The governor called for emergency funding. The latest count of people without power was over a hundred thousand in five counties.

There were many stories of wildlife suffering — deer injured by falling limbs, trapped in deep snow, starving because their food was encased in ice.

We were running short of milk and bread, the two things we usually took for granted. But we had plenty of volunteers. The Red Cross had people from far away as California.

Then Father Joe Doyle did something to relieve the gloom. He offered hot showers to one and all.

The rectory was only a three block walk from the shelter. During the storm Father Joe had stayed at the rectory, saying that people knew they could find him there if he was needed. The farm supply store set him up with a big generator for power and bottled gas for his water heater.

The offer of a hot shower was a big morale boost, even with a five minute time limit and bring your own towel. I was signing up people for it when I was called to the phone.

It was my friend Sergeant Early. “About your Reverend Daniel Fisher, Hank. He is a minister; he does have a correspondence school degree. He runs mail scams out of his home in Orlando. Always uses the religion angle to ask for money. He’s been tagged twice.”

“How does he get his prospects’ names?”

“He works a computer to get magazine subscription lists. Sometimes he snags the names of credit card holders.”

I thought about the letters in my pocket. “The people he reached up here all belong to a garden club.”

“There you are. Maybe they all take the same magazine. Or maybe their names were on a seed catalogue mailing list. Whatever. Tell your friends to save their money.”

“Right. Thanks, Vern.”

As I hung up, I glanced out the window. The rain had changed to snow. That had to be a good sign. Maybe we could close the shelter soon.

What I wanted to do now was get the cast off my ankle. What I didn’t want to do was hand those letters back and tell the people they had been suckered by a scam artist in Florida.

“Where’s Charlie?”

“He’s gone to pick up our car,” Elaine said. “Somebody told him a highway crew cut up that big tree.”

“How did he go?”

“I think he caught a ride with a truck going to Malone.”

I looked through the rooms of the shelter. No Ken, no Jerry. I hobbled to the rear of the building and looked over our motor pool. Only two pickups in sight. The first one had a stick shift; with my leg I couldn’t manage that. The second one was automatic, and the key was in the ignition. Thankfully, the windshield was clear of ice.

I used the edge of the pickup’s roof to haul myself up and levered my leg inside with my cane. Somebody yelled as I drove away, but there was no time for explanations.

The side road where Charlie Silva’s car was trapped was about ten minutes north on Route 22. On the side of the highway a line of fresh stumps followed the path of the power poles.

The snow had stopped, but the sky was threatening again. What had happened five days ago was that a low pressure front had stalled directly over northern New York. High pressure Arctic air had funneled down to meet a jetstream loaded with warm tropical air from the Gulf. We got an instant Ice Age. The last thing we needed now was more snow.

I wanted some answers from Charlie Silva. I didn’t think he would leave the area without taking Elaine with him. And she was back in the shelter; he would have to pass me to get there.

The oak tree had been cut into sections and dragged aside. I turned down the lane and stopped in front of the blue Pontiac. Charlie was trying to scrape the ice and snow off the windshield and windows.

He was surprised to see me.

“Morning, Mr. Sessions,” he said cheerfully. He went on with his scraping.

“You weren’t going to leave without saying goodbye, were you, Charlie?”

“Oh no. I thought I’d catch you when I went back to pick up Elaine. I think we can get out of here today.”

The front door of the old barn was about ten yards away. I saw tracks in the snow from the car to the barn, but I assumed Charlie had gone in to look around. I walked around the car, trying to see in the windows.

Casually I asked, “Frank Gratto isn’t really your uncle, is he, Charlie?”

“No,” he admitted. “He’s a guy I do things for sometimes.”

“Jobs like picking up this car in Montreal?”

He nodded.

“Where’d you pick it up? In a body shop?”

He stopped and looked at me. “So what if I did?”

“It must have been in a body shop, Charlie,” I said lightly. “You ever notice that the upholstery on the doors is different from the seats?”

“So what if it is?” He wasn’t cheerful now. “And what’s with the questions anyway?”

I turned to face him. “And why would a young couple driving south from Montreal to Long Island turn off the highway and stop in front of this old barn?”

Charlie looked around uneasily. The sky was overcast and promised more snow. The barn was to his left, the ruins of the oak tree to his right, my truck blocked the way to the main road. He realized he was afoot and with noplace to go.

“I’ll tell you what I think, Charlie,” I went on. “Somebody working with Frank Gratto hid something in this car. Something illegal. And when they were ready to send it across the border, Uncle Frank sent you to drive it down.”

I waved my cane at the old barn. “I think you were supposed to meet someone here, Charlie. Were you going to switch cars or unload this one? Too bad the weather turned sour on you.”

He didn’t say anything; he wouldn’t look at me. I changed the subject. “That Elaine is such a nice girl. Is she in on the deal?”

That surprised him; he shook his head. “Nah. She’s just my girlfriend. She works in a gift shop.”

I knew Charlie had used the telephone in the shelter. Part of my theory was that he had been asking for instructions.

“What did Uncle Frank tell you to do when the storm is over?”

He shrugged. “The deal’s off. Take the car back.”

“That’s not what’s going to happen,” said a man’s voice behind me.

I shouldn’t have let him sneak up on me. He must have seen my truck, left his car on the main road, and walked down. He wouldn’t have made any noise in the snow.

I turned; he was standing a few feet away. In his early forties, dark, muscular, wearing cold weather gear and a red hunting cap that looked very out of place.

“Stand easy, Pop.” His right hand was in his pocket. I had no doubt as to what he was holding.

To Charlie the man said, “All right, kid, so we were real late that day. Lousy weather. Time we got here you were gone, and we didn’t know how to move that friggin’ tree.”

“Sure, okay, that’s all right,” Charlie said nervously.

The man took his hand out of his pocket, holding a black automatic that looked like a .38. He pointed it at me.

“Now, here’s what we do. Kid, you move Pop’s truck out of the way and give me the keys to the car here. Then you go down the road and hitch a ride someplace outa here.”

To me he said, “Pop, you forget you ever saw...”

Some forty years ago in this part of the forest a young white pine seedling grew proud and straight. It grew taller each year, giving shelter to animals, sanctuary to birds, shade to the barn. Then a week ago the forest was ravaged by a catastrophic ice storm. The pine withstood the assault for days and finally — now — a mighty limb split away with a loud report.

The man was startled; he turned to look as the limb crashed to the ground a few yards away. There was time enough to reverse my cane, take one step, and bring it down on his wrist. The gun fell into the snow at my feet.

The man gasped and clutched his arm. “You old bastard!”

“Watch your mouth, creep,” someone said. “What’s going to happen is you’re going to jail.”

Two men had appeared from the door of the barn. They both looked like lawmen, and they both held pistols.

“Never mind, Mr. Sessions,” one man said, “we’ll take over. I’m Ben Wilkins, U.S. Customs. We know who you are.”

The other man said, “Harold Page, BCI. Thanks for your help.”

I leaned against the Pontiac and took several deep breaths as the agent named Page put handcuffs on Red Cap, the man I had hit. To Charlie he said, “You’re under arrest, too.”

“Yes, sir,” Charlie said in a weak voice. He looked confused. Until now I had been just a nosy old man who worked in the shelter. Then all at once I had neutralized a muscle man and plainclothes cops were calling me by name.

Wilkins was talking on a cell phone. “We’ve got the car and a couple of errand boys. Come on in and pick us up. And hurry up; it’s cold out here.”

He offered me a thermos of coffee, and I took it gratefully. “We had a state highway crew cut up that tree first thing this morning, and we staked out the car. The chief said give it a day and then tow the damn car to the impound lot in Malone. But I thought somebody would show up sooner or later.” He shivered. “I’m glad it was sooner.”

As casually as I could, I asked Page, “So I was right about the car?”

He nodded. “We knew this meet was going down, and we were going to crash the party. We picked up the car at Champlain and followed it here, but the storm screwed everything up.”

“What’s in it?” I asked. It had to be something important to have two agencies working on it. I knew narcotics generally move from south to north and that payment comes back through Canada into the States. “Money?” I guessed.

“We don’t know for sure until we take the car apart, but if our contact gave us the straight dope, there’s a hundred thousand dollars in counterfeit hundreds in there. The new hundreds.”

Two cars showed up on the highway, and several men got out. I gave one the keys to the truck, and he moved it out of the way. They put Charlie in one car, Red Cap in another. Agent Wilkins drove me back to town.

I asked him about the two young people, Elaine and Charlie.

“The girl was just window dressing. Charlie? If he doesn’t have a record, they’ll probably let him go. Nobody should be that dumb.”

The great storm was over. There had been countless instances of neighbor helping neighbor, of kindnesses by strangers, of the vitality of small communities. Medium security prisons had opened their gates to give shelter to storm refugees and sent inmates out on cleanup details. A caravan of forty cars and trucks from Plattsburgh drove over icy roads to deliver cords of firewood to two beleaguered towns in Quebec.

It was Saturday and Father Joe and I were watching Jerry and some others load the last of the cots on a truck to be returned to storage. We were closing the shelter, and we were anxious to get home and assess the storm damage.

I explained the Florida situation to Father Joe and said I was in a bit of a hurry. He took the hint.

“I’ll be glad to return the letters for you,” he said. “Will the police be able to prosecute this man for trying to cheat people that way?”

“They’ll try. He’s been convicted of intent to defraud before. You might caution Mrs. Allen and the others to be very careful of requests for money that come in the mail,” I said. “There are ways to check them out.”

“I will, Hank.”

I handed him the letters I’d been holding. Father Joe put them in his pocket and looked at me with a little grin. “I guess you saved me some money, too, Hank.”

He took an envelope out of a pocket and showed me the address. It was the familiar Reverend Daniel Fisher in Orlando.

“This can be our little secret, all right?”

“Sure thing, Father Joe.”

“Take care of that leg.”

I went home. It had been a terrible storm, but as I saw it, things could be worse.